Background
Omaha, commonly known as Omaha Beach, was the code name for one of the five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, during World War II. Landings here were necessary to link the British landings to the east at Gold with the American landing to the west at Utah, thus providing a continuous lodgement on the Normandy coast of the Bay of the Seine. Taking Omaha was to be the responsibility of United States Army troops.
The primary objective at Omaha was to secure a beachhead of eight kilometers (5.0 miles) depth. The battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division was given the eastern half. The initial assault waves, consisting of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces, were carefully planned to reduce the coastal defenses and allow the larger ships of the follow-up waves to land.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach
The Game
With the recent release of the new FOW American book for late war, Battlefront has started to open up possibilities for late war fights using version 4 of the FOW rules. With this now available, we opted to make this month our Normandy gaming month! The new book includes most of what you would want to field Normandy period US forces (although the M-18s seem to have been lost at sea…). More interestingly for what we needed for our gaming, was the addition of new scenarios and rules for amphibious and airborne landings. For our first game, we took a shot at the beach landing scenario in the new book.
The scenario gives both sides force totals in points to choose their forces from. The Germans are a little more limited, in that many of their points must come from bunkers and defenses. The set up of the objectives forces the German player make hard decisions to cover the approaches. The Americans have much more flexibility in their forces, but have to make decisions on where they enter and how they manage the “tides” pushing their forces down the beach. What is particularly “neat” is that the victory is determined totally about the US player taking objectives within a timeframe. Causalities do not effect the outcome. The US player gets to recycle their forces, so the mind set is totally different than most FOW scenarios. With all that in mind, we gave the scenario a shot.
- Manteuffel
The Germans set up their defenses focused on their left and used their infantry (mobile units) on the right. The US tried to hit the full frontage in the initial landings to try to pin the Germans and find an opening. This proved not to be successful, as the US forces took heavy casualties, with little effect on the defenders. With the initial assaults repulsed, the US forces decided to concentrate their attack on the left hand flank. While there was a small break into the German positions, the follow on forces were not able to clear the mines or advance (three turns in a row of failing all pin tests…). With time coming to an end, the US forces finally breached the minefields, but it was too late and time ran out on the scenario. The US forces were still trapped on the beach an would need another day to break the German front!
