The Formidable KV1

 

I came across a couple of accounts that reflect the formidable nature of the KV1 tank and the surprise of German tank crews as they came across these  behemoths of their day.

24th June 1941, the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, near Raseina. A lone KV1 held up a German combat group for a day at strategic crossroads.

20th August 1941, near Leningrad, a single hull down KV1, held up 8th Panzer Division, destroying 22 German tanks and receiving 156 hits!

I have recently re-bought back into the boardgame series Panzer, designed by James Day and published by GMT. 

To re-familiarise myself with the tank part of the rules, doing a few knock-about games with just a few tanks would be a good rules intro and an opportunity to do a lone KV tank defending against the odds!

The expansion modules do include an early war KV, but I have not punched those counters out yet, so staying with the core title, I do have a KV-1S (42). There is a scenario in the box that has them in use in late '43. For the Germans, the same scenario has Pz IIIM's, so that's that!

A few notes .... both sides are counted as seasoned. The lone KV is worth 64 points and a platoon of four Pz IIIM's is worth 212 points - so that's fair :-) 

The German tanks with ordinary AP shells for their 50/60 guns cannot penetrate the KV frontally, though they may get a lucky track shot. If they get a bit closer and have APCR rounds (random test), they can knock a KV out frontally.

In contrast, the Soviet 76.2 / 43, can likely see off the more lightly armoured Pz III's.

At Start

Above - in our game, the lone KV-1S is on hill A.17 (map A), a low feature, the four Panzer III's with enter the board (above left circle with grey counters) 1200 metres away.

The game does come with beginner / advanced and optional rules. I will be using the beginner rules, but as I have played before, the gun / armour / shooting system will be swapped out for the advanced rules and command rules will be added.

We shall resurrect our old east front veterans, who we have previously met, Junior Lieutenant Ivan Sokolov in the KV and 1st Lieutenant Otto Müller in the tank marked 100.  

Above is the data card for the Panzer IIIM. It will either scare you or delight! 

The first time that I ran this, the German tanks got badly mauled, this is the second run.

Turn 1 - The Panzers enter play in a single stack. The KV is on an Overwatch order and fires at the moving target, causing damage to Müller's tank! The Panzers are under Move orders and even now at 900 metres distance they cannot harm the KV, even their APCR is unlikely to do the job.

Turn 2 - The Germans win the initiative, not that it matters as they just want to move ahead as fast as possible, so they won't be firing. The KV selects another German tank and fires - a miss!

Muller has been allocated two orders, he and another tank will edge a little closer with the hope that next turn, they have enough APCR to start engaging the KV frontally, while the other two tanks will move towards the bottom of the hill, which is a blind spot to the KV (due to the plateau nature of hill levels).

Turn 3 - The Soviets win the initiative, this is important now because they want to fire first. They hit one of the two tanks moving towards the blind spot and get a knockout. The Germans fire second.

Müller has APCR but misses.

Tank 101 (that stayed back with Müller) in haste, load up AP and miss.

Tank 102 was brewed up at the start of this turn.

Tank 103 Moves to the lower side of the hill (see below).

At this point, I would be inclined to pull the KV out, it is about to become compromised, but in our opening accounts, the crews stayed at their post. Retreat / retire was not a practical option to them ... so Sokolov tells me that he is following their great example and staying put!

Turn 4 - This time it is the Germans that get the Initiative and they choose to fire first. Tank 101 has put APCR into the spout, fired and hit the KV front hull. At 700 metres the APCR penetrates with a value of 20, the KV, with a slight benefit from the higher ground has an armour value of 18, so is penetrated. Rolling on the results table gives us a knock-out.

Well that was short and sweet! The German platoon starting with 4 tanks has one destroyed and one damaged, a better result for them than in the previous game and tank 103 didn't have to risk exposing themselves when climbing the hill to get to point blank range (I did this in the last game and in the next turn, the Soviets won the initiative and fired first ..... knocking out the German tank.

This could be re-run a few times, easily getting different outcomes. The Germans need to have enough APCR to engage frontally, not a certain thing here as they need to roll 5 or less on a D10 each shot to get it, or get behind the KV to fire at the weaker armour, again not a certain thing, but perhaps help their chances would be helped with a track hit on the KV ...... not a certain thing :-)

So a very simple action and I am now back up and running with the core tank rules. It is time to add in some other rules and that is how this system works, you bolt rules on as and when you are ready to explore that part of the system.

I will go for scenario 1, which gives around 10 tanks per side, T-34's and Panzer IV's in a meeting engagement, Perhaps Otto Müller and Ivan Sokolov will grace us with another appearance :-)

The core Panzer module has just gone out of print for the third time. It is on the P500 list at GMT to hopefully be reprinted. In the meantime, the only new copy that I am aware of is at Second Chance Games (UK). I believe it is their last copy ...... because I was told that I bought the second to last copy - phew!

Resources.

I have another bit of webspace called COMMANDERS, it is more magaziney than here and updated frequently. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

There is another post about Ivan and Otto that highlights their respective tank training schools. LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2018/09/panzer-and-tale-of-two-tank-platoons.html