US 7th Armoured Division vs Heer Armoured in Dust Up

A massive armoured column is to tempting a target for Rudel to ignore!

Game 1 of Operation Cobra (1650 LW) was against Matt and the mission was Dust Up.  Matt was playing a mixed German armoured force against my US 7th Armoured Division.  His list looked like this:

Heer Armored Company
HQ Panther
2 x Panther platoon
3 x StuGs
3 x Whirblwinds
3 x Panzer IV Hs
Infantry platoon with PaK 40 and 15cm gun
Stuka Rudel

US 7th AD
Patton
OC in E8
2IC in Jumbo
4 x Shermans (2 x E8, Jumbo and M4A1)
4 x Shermans (2 x E8, Jumbo and M4A1)
4 x Stuarts
Armoured Mortar platoon
Recon platoon with 1 section
3 x Preists
AOP

Set Up

Objectives are bottom centre, the white near the centre of the table, by the craters 3/4 of the way up and finally in the woods top centre

StuGs, AA with the OC and infantry protecting the objective

Infantry ready to dig in on the objective

Priest Guard the US 7th AD depth objective

A massive US armoured column ready to roll out

Turn 1

Rudel arrives only to be shot down by the Priest

Old Blood and Guts himself watches and the huge armoured swarm surges forward

The lead platoon commander reaches the nearest objective

Turn 2

Rudel arrives again aiming for the massive column only to be shot down again

At the beginning of turn 2 the US 7th AD hold the objective giving a 6-1 win without a single casualty.  After some discussion between starting over or continuing we decide to continue to play and the US guns make short work of the OC and his Panther

Rudel swoops in opening up with his cannons while a PaK 40 opens fire knocking out a M4A1

German AA move in position and open fire on the AOP knocking it out of the sky

Turn 3

Rudel swoops in again, this time to be shot down by the Stuarts

The Stuarts then move and take out 2 of the German AA guns

Shermans take out the StuGs and continue knocking out infantry stands and the attached guns

The other Sherman platoon finally takes out the StuG platoon

Turn 4

Panthers arrive from reserve and the US armour immediately shifts a platoon to deal with them

Rudel final finds his mark destroying the armourd mortar platoon outright!

Stuarts and Shermans open firing killing infantry and the final SP AA gun and then assaulting what was left.  There were no survivors

Turn 5

Smooth ride and Detroit's finest pay for themselves in spades and the Easy Eights are able to flank and then destroy the Panthers

Even the arrival of the Panzer IV H platoon can't help the Germans as the lighter tanks evaporate in the face of the Old man and his Easy Eight

At this point Matt's company broke and we called part 2 of the game.  It was really great we got to play it out.  Matt made a really big mistake not having someone on the live objectives but we talked about it after the game so he hopefully won't make it again.  He was an outstanding sport and I'm really looking forward to play against him again in the future.