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#1 Peter M. Skaar

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Posted 26 September 2020 - 08:47 PM

I ran a Kursk game a few years ago at my friend, Scott's, house.  I do not remember how the game came out but we had some fun.  There were lots of tanks on both sides.  Some of the images are a bit more blurry than I would like but will hopefully give an idea of the scope of the game.  The vehicles and terrain are mine.

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#2 healey36

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Posted 27 September 2020 - 05:40 AM

What, no Elefants? Looks like a fun time, Peter, and the terrain is outstanding.

 

While often billed as the war's biggest or greatest tank battle, Kursk was certainly more than that at the start. We have played a number of Kursk "slivers" here, not much more than a 1000 yard frontage and maybe a mile or two deep, typically with 4-6 players. Go bigger and it becomes overwhelming and nearly unmanageable from a game perspective, not to mention the amount of time consumed. The scenarios have been built around the Germans' set-piece attempt to punch through two or three defensive belts into the open ground beyond (typically where the bulk of a Soviet tank brigade is lurking). If you put everything out there (large numbers of tanks, mechanized infantry, Panzerjägers, air support, volumes of arty, large numbers of antitank guns and rifles, redoubts, mine belts, juiced-up breakdown rules, etc.), it's a tedious slog and quickly becomes apparent why the German effort was doomed from the start. Granted, the scale is a bit compressed compared to historical positioning, i.e. miles of ground typically separated the defense lines rather than a few hundred yards, but you get the idea.

 

Back in the late-1980s we played a lot of armor battles using GDW's Command Decision ruleset. There were elements of CD that were brilliant, especially the command and control rules, but one big turn-off for many players was the one to five scaling of units, i.e. one tank represented five in the order of battle. A 65-tank Panzer regiment basically boiled down to 13 vehicles (excluding the support stuff). That might seem awful, but for big battles like Kursk, it actually worked rather well. Twenty-six tanks and you had the scaled-down armor contingent of a Panzer division. I still have a copy of the original set around here somewhere, but untouched for many years.



#3 Peter M. Skaar

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Posted 30 September 2020 - 12:19 PM

Thanks very much, Healey!  Here are some pictures of my Elephants.  The four Elepants were not available for the game shown but they await deployment in a future Kursk related game or even a later East Front game.  The models are by GHQ.  GHQ does not currently make the Ferdinand which was the earlier version deployed at Kursk.  I would use my Elephants anyway for Kursk.  I think people would understand.

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#4 healey36

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Posted 30 September 2020 - 04:13 PM

Those are outstanding, Peter; very nicely painted and decaled. We used to have a Ferdinand here in Maryland at the armor museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, but since the BRAC realignment, it went elsewhere (not sure where). One doesn't realize how big the vehicle was until you get up close.

 

Ferdinands or Elefants, I don't recall which, were used in the German counterattack (Fischfang) at Anzio in early 1944. That would be an interesting dust-up to model/game.

 

Ferdinand Anzio
Elefant or Ferdinand of Panzerjäger-Abteilung 653, captured by US troops at Nettuno, May of 1944.


#5 Peter M. Skaar

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Posted 30 September 2020 - 07:39 PM

Hi Healey!  Thank you very much.  I have been to Aberdeen and did see the Elephant they had there.

A little history.  The Ferdinand made its combat debut at Kursk in July 1943.  I think there were 2 battalions of them with 90 deployed.  They served after Kursk as well on the East Front and were pulled out in November/December for refitting and upgrading to the Elephant.  The main difference between the earlier Ferdinand and the later Elephant was the addition of a hull MG and a commanders cupola which replaced the split hatch.  If I recall, there were about 48 remaining Ferdinands that were converted, so slightly over 1/2 of the original 90.

One company of 14 was sent to Italy while the rest were deployed back on the East Front where they actually served very well in their intended role of long range tank killer rather than as assault tanks.



#6 healey36

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Posted 28 February 2021 - 09:12 PM

Thanks for the details, Peter. Here's a couple of shots of the Elephant at Aberdeen, taken sometime back in the 1990s during a photoshoot for the Ordnance Museum magazine:

 

APG Elephant A

 

APG Elephant B
 

I was fortunate to get inside for a number of shots of the interior as well. Like most of the equipment stored on the field, the vehicle was in rather rough condition, having only had the exterior painted a few times. It later got a scheme applied reminiscent of the war, but I've no idea what, if anything, was done with the vehicle's interior.

 

Nearly all of this stuff was disbursed during BRAC; I'm not sure where the Elephant wound up going (presuming it's no longer at APG).

 

Healey



#7 Peter M. Skaar

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Posted 01 March 2021 - 06:03 PM

Hi Healey

They refurbished the Elephant at Aberdeen a few years ago.  If I recall correctly, when I went in 2004 they had done some major restoration work on it and repainted it.  My camouflage is somewhat similar on 3 of my Elephants to the one at Aberdeen.  Here are a couple pictures of the restored Elephant.

 

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#8 healey36

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 08:49 AM

Thanks for the photo update, Peter. It looks like a good job was done on the repairs and repaint of the exterior. Hopefully the issues on the interior were dealt with as well. Sitting out in the open for nearly fifty years had resulted in a lot of damage, especially to the floor and engine bay.

 

Looking back at these photos brings back a lot of memories of what was once the most extensive armor museum here in the states. Working with Jack Atwater, who was director of the Ordnance Museum at the time, there was a private effort made to raise funds for the construction of a number of sheet-metal buildings, attempting to get as many of the vehicles out of the weather and inside as possible. The Department of the Army had declined to fund it, so we turned to private sponsors. This was long before the internet-based fund-raising tools of today, so it involved a lot of face-to-face appeals and legwork, nearly all of which were unsuccessful. Even the fraternal veterans organizations, who we thought might be willing to help out, declined to participate. It seemed the rationale was that the stuff belonged to the government, so the government should take care of it. When BRAC came along, most of the collection was moved to Fort Lee in Virginia, but a few pieces went to Knox, then subsequently were transferred to Benning. I suspect there's still some stuff at Aberdeen, but it's been a long time since I've been over there to have a look around. 

 

Here's a shot of the controls on the right-hand side of the Elephant's driver position taken some 25-30 years ago, which gives a sense of the scale of deterioration of the internals:

 

APG Elephant C
 
The driver position was on the left-front of the vehicle, separated from the radio-operator's position on the opposite side by a raised box which houses the air tanks for the hydro-pneumatic steering. No. 102 was one of the survivors from Kursk, rebuilt at Nibelungenwerk in December, 1943, then shipped to Italy in February, 1944 as part of I.Kompanie/schwere Panzerjager-Abteilung 653, which was comprised of eleven Ferdinands (Elephants) and one Berge-Ferdinand (recovery version). It participated in the attack on the Allied beachhead at Nettuno. The vehicle was subsequently captured in Italy during the Allied offensive that began on 24 May 1944.
 
Interestingly, I've never seen a photo of a Berge-Ferdinand. That would make for an interesting vehicle conversion. 


#9 Peter M. Skaar

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 03:24 PM

That is very interesting information, Healey.  The last time I was at Aberdeen was in 2004 as I recall.  I had been there on at least 1 other and maybe 2 other occasions prior to that.  I was pleasantly surprised that they were working on some restorations.  It is too bad about the funding.  You would think that with all the money the government has for other things, that they would have a maybe just a few million for doing some major restoration on these historic vehicles.  Alternatively, they could have sold some of them to either private collectors or other museums that could afford to restore them.



#10 healey36

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Posted 04 March 2021 - 09:38 AM

My hope is that the stuff went somewhere where it will be faithfully preserved, refurbished, possibly "restored". Many would like to see this stuff run again, but that's an entirely secondary issue for me. At some point it feels like one moves beyond simply preserving an artifact, on to making it into something it never was. There was a time when I would have been all for a complete restoration (if that's even possible), but as I've gotten older I've grown wary of that. Would I like to see a King Tiger lumbering across an old farm field somewhere? I'm not so sure that I would.

 

Anyway, all this talk has me thinking of ordering up a couple blisters of GHQ Ferdinands/Elephants. Recreating a small part of Prokhorovka or the counterattack at Nettuno could be interesting.



#11 healey36

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Posted 17 March 2021 - 03:09 PM

One final observation - I wonder if "102" was the vehicle number at the time it was captured. It's a weird number, as the digits typically indicated company/platoon/vehicle, for instance tank 213 would be Company 2, Platoon 1, Tank 3, or do I have this balled up? Perhaps a commander's vehicle? Also, the font seems rather small. 



#12 Peter M. Skaar

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Posted 24 March 2021 - 12:29 AM

Hi Healey

 

102 would probably be one of the command tanks in the company.  Typically, but of course not always, the German company command vehicles would be numbered either 100 or 101 for the CO and 101 or 102 for the XO.  The platoons in the company would typically be numbered as you described.  There are many variations with some units only having 1 or 2 digit tactical numbers or even no visible numbers at all on occasion.

When I painted my Elephants, I used an example of one from the Eastern Front that had the cross on the sides and rear but no apparent numerical markings on the vehicle.






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