Command Ops Update: Chir River Battles

I've spent the last week or so reading about the German efforts to break 6th Army out from Stalingrad.  During that reading I came across the Chir River Battles and thought this would make a great scenario for EFCO.

Well as it turns out so did Panther Games around 3 or 4 years ago.  There is a thread in the forum from 2011 about these battles which looked to be the basis of an EFCO release that included screenshots, completed scenario descriptions and a discussion of how to simulate Red Army tactics using the game.

When I started out making my poor man's version of the EFCO estab and my Operation Hubertus scenario I never looked back through the forum to see what others had thought about the Eastern Front game.  It turns out there were plenty of interesting opinions and discussions of the possibility.

If you are new to the game like me, and haven't read the older EF forum threads I encourage you to do so here.

Having read this, I abandoned the thought of doing a scenario based around the Chir River battles and I am looking back at Stalingrad.  When I created my Race to the Volga and Operation Hubertus scenarios I was not tracing maps and made some educated guesses about the terrain.  I've since started tracing maps with the help of BG in the Matrix forum and have been tipped off about a great map site called Loadmap.net.

So now I am tracing southern Stalingrad and considering a two scenario mini campaign that follows the entry of 14th Panzer and 29th Motorized division into the suburbs south of Stalingrad and the subsequent battle for the Grain Elevators along the Volga there. At the very least I will finish the map trace and release it for others to create their own scenarios from.




Comments

Anonymous said…
Out of interest, what are you reading that covers these battles ?
thanks...
Chris said…
Currently I am reading Erich von Manstein's lost Victories. He talks about the fighting along the Chir quite a bit.
Chris said…
"Lost Victories"
Anonymous said…
ah yes thanks. I've been going over a few books on this subject. Panzer Battles by Mellenthin, Beyond Stalingrad by Sadarananda and Winter Storm by Wijers.
Also "Order out of chaos: a study of the application of Auftragstaktik by the 11th Panzer
Division during the Chir River battles 7 - 19 December 1942" is knocking around in pdf form on the web. ta
Chris said…
Very cool. I will have to check them out!

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