Camp Cromwell 20/05/08

2000 pts Breakthough on 8x6 table

Jim's Fucilieri v. Rich & SteveJ's Strelkovy - Russians defending.

The Russians deployed their two souped up Strelkovy either side of the centre, their Gods, A/T & Honeys were in their left rear & their HMGs on their right.

The Ities put 1 Fucilieri in the flank attack. On their left thay had, in order, L6's, Semo 47's, Brexias, Guastatori, Fucilieri , HMGs & Fucilieri. Their right had A/tank in front then

the 75's and the 100's behind.

The Italians attacked immediately on their left using a village & wood as cover while the so called Itie armour advanced around the open flank. The Russians moved their HMGs & a/tank guns towards the rear objective and their 9 Honeys headed across the centre to intercept the Itie armour. The Itie infantry attack petered out against the swarm and they hunkered down in cover to let the artillery, Stukas & armour do the work.

The GODs took out a 100 howitzer on their first salvo but then got pinned down by counterbattery fire & did little else for the rest of the battle. The Honeys were the Itie's big worry & they hit them with Stuka's, 100's & 75's. The Stukas took out 2 Honeys, the 100's and the 75's both got another, including the leader, then before the 2IC could take over and move them on, the guns inflicted a mass bailout which lead to morale failure & the loss of the whole platoon.

While all this was going on the flanking Fucilieri came on and hunkered down in a village under a hail of HMG fire as the armour raced to the rescue. The HMGs were overan by the L6's of doom and the objective taken. The Stukas & artillery destroyed the a/tank guns while the Strelkovy was still coming over. The GODs, finally unpinned, could do no more than bail a L6 so the Ities held the objective.
A very exciting & close battle - as Breakthoughs can be. For once, the Regio Aeronautica actually did something - they knocked out 2 GODs, 2 Honeys & 2 a/tank guns - not bad for sporadic ! The Russians lost 2 platoons out of 5, the Ities only one out of 11, but they had 1 on sole survivor & 4 more below half surviving on hot dice.

Pic 1 is taken behind the Russian left early in the battle. The GODs are in the foreground, the Italian artillery just off the left edge. Italian Infantry is attacking the village & their armour is working around their left.

Pic 2 shows the itie armour closing in on the HMGs defending the rear objective.