France 1940 Campaign - Initial Thoughts

At some point over the Xmas and New Year hols my mind turned to trying to run a BKCII campaign based upon the Invasion of France 1940. I had been thinking of Operation Barbarossa, but given that I had pretty much all the British painted and ready to go, it would be easier to go down the French route, as I would only have to paint up the Germans. This is still quite a task mind you but with a campaign in the offing, this would hopefully focus my mind.

Lately whilst dealing with back and cold issues, I have been doing some background reading. Now most books focus on the breakthrough at Sedan and its aftermath, as one could argue that it is the defining action of the campaign. However little is given over to the Belgian, Dutch and British actions in comparison. I did manage to find a book that covered the latter in some detail (see below) but would still like to read up on the Belgian and Dutch at some point, so if anyone knows of some good books, please let me know!

An old book but still a favourite of mine, that gives a good basic overview of the campaign, but also the build up that led to it. Filled with lovely illustrations and some nice snippets of info, it is worth getting IMHO.

A superb book that puts the whole campaign into perspective from the German side and explodes many myths. Sadly it covers little of the actions in Holland and Belgium, but is just what you need for Sedan and the breakouts after that. The only downside is that the publisher did not translate the maps which are in German. A minor quibble though.

This really is an excellent book which gives a great overview of the campaign and especially all the C&C issues that dogged the Allies. Highly readable and with a good focus on the British actions, which is naturally useful for my plans.

A rather battered book, but still good and a very readable account of the British actions during the campaign, with info that is hard to find elsewhere. The detail can be a bit overwhelming once the troops start their retreat towards Dunkirk, but full of the sort of info I want and need for my campaign planning.

With enough reading having been done over the past few weeks, really the question is how best to approach and run this campaign, whilst keeping it playable, enjoyable and within the constraints of using BKCII as the ruleset? So in no particular order, I've far come up with the following main points to be considered.

The overiding issue is actually how best simulate the campaign over a given number of games? One simple route would be to use a board game to generate the actions that might be suitable to transfer to the table top. This is something that Norm Smith has done successfully with other periods and if I had a dedicated games room, would certainly be worth considering. However I don't so as much as I might like to give this a try, it will have to wait for another time maybe. I could use the Warplan 5.5 maps as I did last year with my Operation Market Garden campaign, which worked very well, but did require a lot of paperwork on my behalf. Whislt this is no bad thing, given the nature of the campaign once the inital breakthroughs has happened, my thoughts are that this would not work as well. I have not discounted it just yet though.

My current thinking is to use the standard scenarios in the BKCII rulebook as a good starting point for the actions, alongside narrative driven outcomes based upon what happened historically. So for example the first action might be an Encounter type game based upon the British armoured screen in front of the Dyle Line bumping into the advanced elements of the German forces. After that a Hasty of Deliberate Attack on the Dyle Line itself, with a Breakthrough action thereafter and so on. This is certainly much easier to run and to generate a feel for the campaign based upon the very confused nature of the fighting. So I will do some more work on this to see if it still fits the bill for what I'm after.

Whilst the British started at the Gort Line during the 'Phoney War', when advancing there were calls to halt at the Escaut once the breakthroughs at Sedan had come to light, rather than pushing on to the Dyle as planned. It would certainly be interesting to see what might have happened if the British has stayed put in their relatively strong positions, but this doesn't take into account the fact that the Belgians and Dutch could have been defeated piecemeal first. Also the French were fighting the last War and so were expecting a drawn out campaign and din't want to fight on their border, where they industrial areas and Paris would be in range of German artillery and aircraft. Although an interesting 'what if?' that might be better played on a boardgame, for the moment I am going down the historical route and starting along the Dyle.

As much as I like to field air support during my games, for the British sadly this is rather limited and certainly on available for the very early stages of the battle. Whilst my Fairy Battle and Bristol Blenheim sit in front of me waiting to be painted, they will only get a cursory part in the action, unless some spectacular successes keep them in the campaign. Likewise for the Germans their Stukas will be absent early on but play an increasingly great role as the campaign unfolds and if and when they breakthrough the Dyle Line. I may take some artistic license with both sides depending upon how things unfolds, which is the advantage of a narrative campaign played solo!

Brtish tanks and 'Penny Packets'. I hadn't realised how late on in the campaign that the British armour arrived and in pretty limited numbers. Broadly speaking therefore the Light Tanks will be in action first, followed by some Infantry tanks and then finally the Cruisers. Not many will make it to the table due to logistic issues alongside mechanical ones. In BKCIV they have a neat rule where if any Unreliable tank moves move than a half move, it has to test to see if it breaks down or not. This is a simple way to replicate the issues faced when using British tanks. 

In contrast the Germans will have plenty of armour later on, but initially it will be limited to Armoured Cars and a few Light Tanks. Once the breakthroughs have taken place, then the heavier German tanks will be able to make an appearance, but not in too great a number, given that most of the Armoured Divisions were to the South and around the Sedan breakout and drive to the coast.

I hadn't realised that the British mixed up their Brigades in terms of quality, with some having 2 Regular and 1 Territorial Battalion, or the reverse. This caused issues with C&C as well as having poorly equipped and trained troops in the frontline and the inherent problems that that caused. With BKCII this is easily covered by the C&C built into the game and the quality ratings of the troops that can be fielded.

Against this of course you have generally speaking extremely well trained and commanded German troops, although at times they had their off days. As with the above, this is easy to sort out in BKCII.

One of the hardest things to replicate is the fact that whilst the British tended to hold their position along the Dyle, their flanks were constantly being turned as the French and Belgian troops withdrew, often without warning. Later on things stabilised but for the initial engagements it was a tricky business. But I need to bear in mind that the Germans tried frontal assaults to start with the more often that not failed, with them then learning to attack junctions between forces and to exploit the opportunities thus created.

Added to the above was the fact that the British had to defend far too a broad frontage, often twice as long or more than recommended for a Battalion or Brigade. So when along the Dyle Line, they should be quite far apart and with little defensive positions such as pill boxes or barbed wire from which to fight. Added to this was the complete confusion of C&C almost from the off, with some units having no radios at all!

Whilst the Fallschirmjager were used in Holland, they weren't against the British, but I must admit I am tempted to include them at some point, either for a small airborne drop or as general ground troop support. Stretching things too far? Possibly but again this is the advantage of a narrative approach.

We all know of the pityful plight of the refugees during the campaign, but I hadn't quite appreciated how much of a problem they caused to the British trying to move back from the Dyle as well as to units moving up in support. Again BKCIV has some optional rules for these so will check them out. 5th Columnists were an issue too, not massively so and I think using the Sniper rule is the easiest way to cover this, but only when in or near BUA's.

I hadn't realised that the British troops arrived in ports as far away as Cherbourg and Nantes, with their supply dumps far back from the Belgium frontier. This caused major logistical problems when trying to bring up Corps level assets and below. So quite often the British artillery had limited stocks of ammo or that the 2pdr ATG was released for use until quite late on, when it was too late for them to make any real difference. In BKCII the Dispersed Artillery covers this quite well and limits could be placed on how often an artillery unit might be able to fire. For Divisional and Corps level assets, then this is easy to do by having them appear and certain parts of the campaign.

To my mind the trickiest thing to do is to replicate the very confused nature of both the fighting and the overall view from the Allied side as to how the campaign was actually unfolding. Along side this one needs to take into account the German fear, often overidden or simply ignored, of their open left flank etc. My thought it to use suitable Random/Chance cards that fit in with each game as the campaign unfolds. I think it is simple to implement yet captures the nature of events at anyone time. Some thoughts need to go into these of course to get it right and not too intrusive so as to alter the game too much.

Well that's enough to be getting on with for now. My priority first and foremost is to paint some German troops and a few extra AFV's before I can kick things off. Terrain wise I'm OK but if the weather permits then I might make a few bits'n'pieces to add to the look of the campaign. Hopefully it will warm up so that I can get some priming done!

TTFN.