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ColinWright -> RE: Tactical Reserve & Local Reserve (1/29/2008 1:16:49 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Karri
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ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Well, I was just looking at British deployments for I and II Corps in Flanders on 15 May 1940 (Ellis, p.47). Five divisions, three up and two back. In each division that was on the line, two brigades up and one back. A net of four brigades dug-in and on the line out of fifteen theoretically available.
While this doesn't prove all the others were standing by as reserves as opposed to being dug in somewhere, it does suggest a strong aversion to having all units committed to the line...and a lack of faith in a doctrine that would hold that units can simultaneously be in a defensive deployment and able to act as reserves.
It's defence in depth...I would assume the other brigades were at least in some sort of defensive posture as opposed to standing ready to move.
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As a rule, I don't think troops are simultaneously available to function as reserves and deployed so as to defend a section of a defensive line. They may well be deployed with an eye to defending their particular locality, but that's an entirely different matter from being spread out and holding a full length of defensive frontage, as an 'entrenched' status in OPART implies they are.
Of course, there are all sorts of half-way points that OPART can't reflect -- but I'm not convinced allowing units to be simultaneously entrenched and also on 'reserve' status would improve TOAW's fidelity to reality.
As said at least in comapny level this is the case, the units are ready to move and in well chosen spot to defend in. The only problem would probaply be with artillery, but that would depend on the scale again.
If we would then assume that the hex is overcrowded, and that all 9 untis have to just defend their 'locallity'? As a rule of thumb I'd say it's a question fo tiem and scale. For example with weekly turns it would be possible, with half week turns, well Patton did it with an entire army. Why not an unit that alrady knows where to move.
I don't think so. There's no mention of these units forming a second line that the advance battalions withdrew to at any point -- nor is there any reason to think that they did. Rather, they were held ready to counter-attack German penetrations -- and that is what they did.
The discussion could go on interminably. One can always speculate as to what battalions that weren't up front were doing instead, or shift what example one considers-- as you just did -- or -- as 'Golden Delicious' did -- shift the time frame under consideration from the whole turn to the time needed to react.
For some large part of the possible combinations of time and scale, the change would not necessarily be an improvement, and in any case, it wouldn't affect the tactics I use one whit. To my mind, that's sufficient to prefer that programming energy go elsewhere. There are plenty of potential changes that unequivocally would be improvements, and that would be relevant to my style of play.
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