COUNTERSTROKE AT SOLTSY - Strategy & Tactics Press

Rescue at Entebbe
Musashi Ronin
Number 232
U.S. $22. 99
Wi t h Co m p l e t e
historiCal Ga m e
Featured Game:
Catherine the Great (Solitaire)
COUNTERSTROKE
AT SOLTSY:
The Road to
Leningrad 1941
strategy & tactics 1

War on Terror
This is the third game in the Lightning series. Fight the war on terror with America’s
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Marines, Special Forces and Propaganda Warfare. War on Terror is an ultra-low
complexity card game for all ages. The focus is on fast card play, strategy, and fun
interactive game play for 2-4 players. Includes 110 full color playing cards and one
sheet of rules.
D-Day
June 6, 1944, the day that decided the fate of World War II in Europe. Now you command the
Allied and Axis armies as each struggles to control the five key beaches along the Normandy
coastline. If the Allied troops seize the beaches, Germany is doomed. But if the assault fails,
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decisions that send troops into battle, assault enemy positions, and create heroic sacrifices
so others can advance to victory!
MiDWay
From June 4th to June 6th of 1942, a massive battle raged
around the tiny Pacific island of Midway that changed the
course of World War II. The victorious Imperial Japanese
Navy was poised to capture the airfield on the island of
Midway and thus threaten Hawaii and the United States.
The only obstacle in their path was an outnumbered US
fleet itching for payback for Pearl Harbor. You get to command
the US and Japanese fleets and their squadrons of fighter planes, torpedo
bombers and dive bombers in this epic battle!
TiTle
QTY Price TOTAl
Lightning War on Terror $19.99
Lightning midway $19.99
Lightning D-Day $19.99
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#232
9(10) Asia, Africa, Australia (Express)
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a Fa s t & ea s y pl ay i n G Gr o u p o F Ca r d Ga m e s
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Leningrad
TiTle
QTY Price TOTAl
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Easy to Play Games
This great introductory game covers Army Group North’s drive to Leningrad
during the summer of 1941. It features hidden values for the Soviet
units that only become known when they are involved in combat. Surprise
attacks are essential to the success of either side, and the arrival of reinforcements
can dramatically shift the course of battle. Leningrad features enough
surprises to ensure that each game will be different and exciting.
Components: 100 counters, 11” x 17” mapsheet, 8-page rule book. $14. 00
Across Suez
On 6 October 1973, troops of the Egyptian Third Army performed a
masterful surprise crossing of the Suez Canal, overwhelmed the emplaced
Israeli defenders along the Bar Lev line, and established themselves in force
in the Sinai. The Battle of Chinese Farm is an operational level game that
simulates the great battle between the Egyptian Second and Third Armies and the Israeli Defense Force as they
battle for Suez canal. Included are special rules for commandos, Egyptian Marines and paratroopers.
Components: 80 counters, 1 mapsheet, 8-page rule book. $10. 00
Leningrad $14.00
Across Suez $10.00
Captivation $25.00
1st item Adt’l items Type of Service
$8 $2 UPS Ground/US Mail Domestic Priority
15(20) 4 UPS 2nd Day Air (Metro AK & HI)
14(10) 2(7) Canada, Mexico (Express)
17(25) 7(10) Europe (Express)
20(25) 9(10) Asia, Africa, Australia (Express)
Captivation
Be the first player to move all your cones around the board and
into your home. Captivation plays like backgammon, only better.
Unlike backgammon, everyone moves in the same direction. Two
cones of the same color on one space are safe, however a single
cone can be captured. When you land on a space with only one
cone of another player on it, you stack your cone on top of it and
capture it. Until you move that cone again, his or her cone can’t
move! A captivating family game for two to four players that can
be played in 30-60 minutes.
Components: mounted board, rules sheet, dice and 40 cones. $25. 00
SUB To Ta l
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PO Box 21598, Bakersfield CA 93390-1598
• (661) 587-9633 •fax 661/587-5031
• www.decisiongames.com
strategy & tactics 3

Editor-in-Chief: Joseph Miranda
FYI Editor: Ty Bomba
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4 #232
ConTEnTS
F E A T U R E S
6 Counterstroke at Soltsy:
July 1941 the Road to Leningrad
The Blitzkrieg receives an early check as the Red Army
takes on the Wehrmacht.
by Vance von Borries
20 Catherine the Great:
Strategy in the Age of Enlightenment
In an era of limited wars and enlightened monarchs,
the Russians build an empire.
by Joseph Miranda

F E A T U R E S
RULES
R1 CAThERinE ThE GREAT
by Joseph Miranda
ConTEnTS
42 Entebbe: Turning point of Terrorism
The Israelis strike back and turn the tide in the
war on terrorism.
by Kelly Bell
52 miyamoto musashi:
Legendary Swordsman
Japan’s greatest samurai creates a legacy of
both war and philosophy.
by Ltc a Pope
dEpARTmEnTS
31 for your information
the maccabees:
Hammer of the Hebrews
by Kelly Bell
Codename Blue Peacock
by Mark Lardas
naval mine Warfare During the Cold
War
by Carl Schuster
Peace in Cambodia: untaC
by Peter Schutze
37 ThE LonG TRAdiTion
58 mEGA FEEdbACk
number 232
jan/feB 2006
strategy & tactics 5

COUNTERSTROKE AT SOLTSY:
July 1941
on the Road to Leningrad
6 #232
Axis units are in italics; Allied units are in plain text.
By Vance von Borries
The objective was Leningrad. From the shores of
the Baltic in East Prussia to the marshes around Lake
Ladoga, Germany’s Army Group North, commanded
by Field Marshal von Leeb, struggled over an immense
battlefield. Operation BARBAROSSA, the invasion of
the Soviet Union, opened on 22 June 1941 and Leningrad
was to be wiped from the earth. To the Nazis, the
city was a symbol of the revolutionary origins of the
Bolsheviks whose destruction would be an immense
propaganda victory. For the Soviets, the defense of
Leningrad was a test of will. The merciless struggle
would be fought on the many roads to Leningrad. And
one of those roads ran through the small city of Soltsy.
It was there the timetable of conquest was upset and
Army Group North lost its momentum.
Plans
Army Group North included two infantry armies
(16 th and 18 th ) and one Panzer Group (4 th , the equivalent
of an army, with Col. Gen. E. Hoepner commanding).
In accordance with original BARBAROSSA
instructions, debate began over the path of future operations.
The plan was prepared under the guidelines
of the Army General Staff (OberKommando der Heer,
OKH) and were finalized in Army Group North’s order
of 8 July. That order assumed that a Finnish offensive
along the shores Lake Ladoga and an advance of 3 rd
Panzer Group from Army Group Center northeast via
Nevel toward Velizh would occur shortly after 10 July.
Those operations were supposed to tie down Soviet
forces facing Army Group North’s flanks. With Leningrad
cut off, 4 th Panzer Group would take the city.
Sixteenth Army would advance on Kholm and send
a flanking force against Velikie Luki to protect the

strategy & tactics 7

8 #232
army group’s southeastern flank. Eighteenth Army’s
mission was to conquer Estonia and capture the Soviet
naval bases at Tallinn and Paldiski. Units of 4 th Panzer
Group were to move directly north to occupy the Narva
crossings near Kingisepp, thereby preventing a withdrawal
of enemy units from Estonia. The weakness to
the plan was that until 16 th Army could move up, 4 th
Panzer Group would have to defend alone against enemy
counterattacks from east of Lake Ilmen.
On 8 July OKH issued a directive significantly
changing the plan of Army Group North. Army Chief
of Staff Gen. Franz Halder was concerned about Army
Group Center’s battle of encirclement in the Smolensk
area. There were insufficient mobile forces to complete
the envelopment, so 3 rd Panzer Group would not
move north after all.
More, Hitler wanted 4 th Panzer Group to cut off
Leningrad to the east and southeast. Halder, who at
the time assumed Army Group North enjoyed a clear
numerical superiority, readily agreed to the plan.
That shifted the main effort of the offensive to the
Novgorod-Volkhov-Shlisselburg line and was also intended
as support for the Finnish attack from the north.
The Army General Staff also ordered infantry divisions
to move toward Leningrad to make the mobile
units available for other tasks as soon as possible. In
sum, OKH stopped the preparations for a direct assault
on Leningrad and demanded the shift of the main effort
to the army group’s right. Leningrad would not be
taken by direct assault. Instead, it would be by-passed
from the southeast, encircled, and placed under siege.
Army Group North accepted the order without
much comment. That can only be explained by von
Mastermind at work: FM von Leeb plans the attack.
Leeb’s belief the Soviets would continue to withdraw
if attacked, as had been the case up until then. More,
the army group staff believed Soviet forces southeast
of Leningrad were the last units in the area capable of
offering serious resistance. And von Leeb welcomed
the opportunity to rest his hard-driving formations and
bring up fresh troops. He even doubted the Soviets
were determined to hold the approaches to Leningrad.
The View from Moscow
Stalin and the Red Army Staff (STAVKA) divided
the Eastern Front from the Baltic to the Black Sea into
three “Glavkom,” or Directions, a Soviet military term
with no western equivalent. Each Direction—Northwestern,
Western and Southwestern—was roughly the
equivalent of a German Army Group. Marshal K.Y.
Voroshilov was in command of the Northwestern Direction.
Stalin needed people he could trust to command
each Glavkom, and Voroshilov was exactly that
kind of man. He was a crony of Stalin’s from the days
of the Russian Civil War and for some time he had
been the People’s Commissar (Minister) of Defense.
When Voroshilov arrived in Leningrad on 10 July,
he had, on paper, at least 30 divisions available for
the defense of the Northwestern Front; however, only
five of them were at full strength, the rest averaging
only about a third of their authorized men and equipment.
Accordingly, the Soviet defense was to rely on
fortifications. The Luga Line was the first of several
fortified systems defending the approaches to Leningrad.
About 30,000 civilians worked around the clock
to build it. At the moment when Army Group North
encountered the outer defenses of the Luga Line, the
Luga Operational Group, with regular Red Army divisions
backed by militia, had some 300 kilometers to
hold. Reinforcements were committed out of the reserves
held in Leningrad.
Directly in the path of 4th Panzer Group’s advance
was Gen. Lt. V.I. Morozov’s 11th Army. It had been in
action since the beginning of the invasion, and its one
tank and six rifle divisions were understrength. Soviet
rifle divisions were normally expected to hold combat
frontages of six to eight kilometers, but the rifle
divisions on the front line were required to hold three
times that. On 10 July, Army Group North outnumbered
the Northwestern Front by 2.4 to 1 in infantry,
4 to 1 in guns, 5.8 to 1 in mortars, 1.2 to 1 in tanks,
and 10 to 1 in aircraft. When the Germans attacked,
the Soviets retreated immediately. That was mainly
due to the fact they were overextended and heavily
outgunned, but also because they were out of range
of army command. It seemed disaster had struck once
again for the Red Army. Morozov was left with only
blocking forces to stop the German drive to Leningrad
and Novgorod.

Opening Moves
Fourth Panzer Group began its advance on 10 July
with two motorized corps using divergent roads. Manstein’s
56 th Motorized Corps (8 th Panzer and 3 rd Motorized
Divisions) advanced on the right in the direction
of Porkhov-Soltsy-Shimsk-Novgorod. On the left was
Reinhardt’s 41st Motorized Corps with three mobile
divisions (1 st Panzer, 6 th Panzer, 36 th Motorized) and
one infantry division (269 th ). Reinhardt was moving
up the Pskov-Luga-Leningrad axis. Fourth Panzer
Group was determined to get to the starting positions
for the Leningrad encirclement within four days. That
represented an advance of about 300 kilometers (190
miles), a preposterous distance for the time allowed.
The Germans could succeed only if they encountered
neither resistance nor difficult terrain.
A further dilemma arose when Fourth Panzer
Group found itself unable to protect its 200 kilometer
long eastern flank and, as events would prove, not
even its own rear. On the other hand, all five of the
mobile divisions leading the advance were in excellent
condition, perhaps the peak of their effectiveness
for the war. The one exception was the SS Totenkopf
Motorized Infantry Division. It had taken considerable
casualties in heavy fighting on the Stalin Line fortifications
at Sebezh. As a result, Totenkopf had to disband
one of its three motorized infantry regiments and was
not in position to advance with the rest of 56 th Motorized
Corps. On 12 July, Army Group North ordered the
SS division moved to Porchov for re-organization.
Nonetheless, 56 th Motorized Corps advanced swiftly.
On 11 July Porchov was taken by Gen. Maj. Curt
Jahn’s 3rd Motorized Division. Following behind was
Correlation of Forces, Morning, 15 July 1941
Soviets Ratio Germans
Personnel 50,500 1.6 – 1.0 30,700
Tanks and assault guns 105 .5 – 1.0 192
Artillery pieces 199 1.5 – 1.0 132
Comparison of Soviet 70 th Rifle Division to
German 8 th Panzer Div. at Soltsy
Soviet
70 th Rifle Div
8 th Panzer. Div.
Soviet Account
likely # of
Germans
All Soviets at
Soltsy, 15 July
Soviet: German
Ratio
Personnel 15,333 16,120 14,900 30,000 2.0 – 1.0
Tanks 16 201 186 56 .3 – 1.0
Artillery 53 60 48 95 2.0 – 1.0
Note 1: Estimated total then engaged
Note 2: Germans likely had still fewer tanks due to mechanical breakdowns.
Gen. Maj. Eric Brandenburger’s 8 th Panzer Division,
which moved quickly toward Sitnya, some 20 kilometers
west of Soltsy. But 56 th Motorized Corps achieved
little breadth in its penetration. Each of these two divisions
advanced with only one assault group to the front.
Facing them were small blocking forces of Soviet armor
and infantry from Gen. Maj. M.L. Chernyavsky’s
1 Mechanized Corps. To the Soviet rear, the remains of
Col. V.K. Gorbachev’s 202 Motorized Rifle Division,
reinforced with NKVD Destroyer Detachments, organized
the city of Sol’tsy for defense, mobilizing armed
detachments of civilians.
With considerable resistance developing along the
Luga road, on 12 July Hoepner switched the three mobile
divisions of Reinhardt’s corps to the northwest.
He hoped for a breakthrough to Leningrad over the
Ivanovskoye and the Koporye plateaus, where the terrain
was open. That left only infantry on the road in
front of Luga.
Hoepner’s decision was clearly incompatible with
the OKH orders of 8 July. Nonetheless, the episode
provides a good example of the comparative independence
panzer commanders had at that time in the
war. Manstein later writes that the change of direction
was: “…a particularly risky move when one
considered that even though the enemy
forces engaged by the corps to date had
been outfought, they were far from annihilated…Be
that as it may, we were still
convinced that the corps would continue
to find its safety in speed of movement.”
strategy & tactics 9

10 #232
Manstein Alone
On 11 July, Manstein issued Corps Order #21. The
8th Panzer Division would advance along the axis
Porchov-Borovichi-Sukhlovo-Soltsy with the objective
being the bridge over the Mshaga River. The 3 rd
Motorized Division would advance along the axis
Borovichi-Saklinye-Vsheli-Mal Utorgosh, with the
objective being the bridge over the Mshaga River at
Medved. SS Totenkopf would remain in corps reserve
under Army Group control. Engineers would continue
building and restoring bridges along the Usa and Shelon
rivers.
The advance toward Shimsk began briskly on 12
July in sunny weather. At Borovichi, Soviet blocking
forces were driven off by 1 st Lt. Fronhoefer’s battlegroup
of 8 th Panzer Division (III /Panzer Regiment 10,
Motorcycle Battalion 8, II/23 rd Flak Battalion), which had
led the advance from Borovichi. It faced increasing
opposition all the way to Sitnya, where it established a
small bridgehead. That night Soviet infantry supported
by tanks counterattacked but were thrown back.
On 13 July, Manstein issued Corps Order #22, calling
for a continued advance toward Novgorod. Fronhoefer
again led. His battlegroup was immediately en-
gaged by Soviet infantry and tanks. At about 3:00 pm
Fronhoefer’s men broke through after destroying over
40 tanks. They rolled forward and reached the railroad
line just west of Soltsy. From there a motorized battalion
reinforced with tanks drove swiftly east, then
stopped for the night.
Meanwhile, the rest of Fronhoefer’s group reached
the western edge of Soltsy. There they drove back the
Soviet 682 nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (of the 202 nd
Motorized Division). The 645 th Rifle Regiment counterattacked
and a Red Army bayonet charge threw the
Germans back five kilometers. Later that evening the
Germans attacked again and secured Soltsy along with
a large quantity of supplies. Soviet supplies were, however,
notoriously incompatible with German needs.
On 14 July, 8 th Panzer Division continued along the
north bank of the Shelon River. A German forward detachment
got as far as the Mshaga River near Shimsk,
but found the bridge there already blown. Manstein’s
flanks were wide open, 40 kilometers to the left and 70
kilometers to the right he had to detach units to screen
them. 8 th Panzer Division was spread over 70 kilometers.
The Battlefield
The Soviet Union often presents a picture of open steppe and endless fields of grain, but northern Russia, including the Novgorod
region (the area of this battle), is covered by vast woodlands and dense thickets, with numerous swamps interspersed. To the German
soldiers it was a gloomy primeval forest. Around Lake Ilmen, the terrain blocked offensive operations except along the few cleared areas.
Roads were poor to abysmal, were poorly mapped, and generally followed the river lines. They led through sand, bog, forest and swamp
and favored the defense at every turn. Some soggy roads may never before have seen the passing of a motorized vehicle.
Rivers could be the best-defined lines for advance since they were on the maps and were generally free of dense foliage. Because of
the time and resources needed for engineers to build pontoons, the Germans tried their best to seize bridges by quick raids.
Woodlands presented special tactical problems. Both sides had difficulty getting their heavy guns off the roads. Once deployed, the
artillery found targets hard to pinpoint. Area fire could be effective, but it required many forward observers. Telephone landlines were
impractical, and radios were in short supply in the Red Army. Once a target was identified, special fuses were required or most blast effects
were lost in the mud. And the defenders found it difficult to entrench in the marshes.
During 1941, German formations at all levels tended to bypass forests and swamps. Mechanized divisions occupied the roads and
sought to fight in open terrain. Generally, that forced defending
Soviet infantry to retreat into the depths of the forests. German
infantry would pursue no farther than necessary to protect
the Rollbahn (the main German supply routes), and that actually
suited Soviet tactics. Soviet units sometimes took bear trails, following
Suvorov’s principle: “Where [even] the deer does not go,
there the Russian soldier will go.” That played into the Red Army
strengths of concealment, ambush, preference for close-in fighting,
and adaptability to the elements. Later in the war many of
the by-passed formations would plague the Germans’ supply lines
with guerilla warfare.
It wasn’t as if the Germans lacked intelligence about the
region. Many repatriated Volksdeutsch and Baltic refugees were
available to give detailed information. Air reconnaissance was
plentiful, and numerous German officers had served in the Baltic
region during the First World War and in the Freikorps campaigns
following. Even clandestine intelligence agents provided information.
Yet German military intelligence casually disregarded much
of it and processed little of the remainder. So the Wehrmacht was
fighting in an ever-increasing fog of war.
Into the east: Motorized columns clog the roads.

The German plan called for 3rd Motorized Division
to cover the corps’ northern flank, but that unit was
experiencing its own difficulties. The road system was
composed largely of narrow dirt paths cutting through
swamps with few bridges. A detachment under 1st Lt.
Feldkeller managed to push its way forward, but ran
into an aggressive Soviet defense. The time was ripe
for a counterattack.
Counterstroke
Soviet reconnaissance had established that the road
along the Shelon River was choked with columns of
German tanks and other vehicles. In the Soviet view
the arrogance of the “Hitlerites” was such that they
neglected the security of their flanks and rear. Eleventh
Army staff quickly came to the conclusion the
situation was favorable for launching a counterblow,
where a gap of 100 kilometers had formed between
the 41st and 56th Motorized Corps. The catalyst, how-
ever, was a message sent on 10 July from G.K. Zhukov
of the Supreme High Command in Moscow. Zhukov
severely criticized 11 th Army for failure to launch a
major counterattack and hinted of the consequences of
continued inaction.
With that inducement, the Soviet Northwestern
Front commander, Gen. Maj. P.P. Sobennikov, decided
to exploit the developing gap between the enemy
corps. [The Northwestern Front was a subordinate
formation of the Northwestern Direction. ed.] He had
two primary objectives: disrupting the German offensive
toward Novgorod and smashing the 56 Motorized
Corps. Voroshilov formalized the arrangement by
directing 11 th Army to make strikes from converging
directions to encircle and destroy the enemy. Units of
11 th Army regrouped into northern and southern operational
groups.
continued on page 14
strategy & tactics 11

12 #232
The Armies
The Red Army
The June 22 nd 1941 German invasion of the USSR caught
the Soviet Union’s “Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army” at
the worst possible time. It was still recovering from Stalin’s
purges, in which thousands of officers at all levels of command
were executed or exiled, effectively decapitating
much of the Red Army. Soviet armies resembled their Western
counterparts on paper, with corps controlling divisions
and a plethora of support units the purge, however, as well
as casualties, made it impossible to maintain that structure,
so by the end of the year the Soviets eliminated the corps
headquarters and made the divisions directly responsible to
the army commander. In the field, units were often combined
as “operational groups” for specific missions. That was an
expedient, and it more or less worked until the Red Army
could recover. At higher echelons, the armies were grouped
into “fronts” (army groups) and those into “directions.”
Then there was the reorganization of Soviet armor. During
the 1930s, the Red Army had pioneered mobile warfare,
creating mechanized corps of two tank and one motorized
infantry division each. Those units had much potential, but
the experience of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) caused
the Soviet command to believe large-scale mechanized warfare
would not work. So they broke up the tank divisions
into independent brigades that were supposed to be used as
infantry support units. Then, prior to the German invasion,
the Red Army reformed the mechanized divisions and corps.
All of which led to confusion. Units lacked combined arms
training, logistics were poor, and staffs ranged from inexperienced
to non-existent; however, the Soviets had many
excellent tanks coming off the assembly lines, such as the
T-34.
The Soviet air force was intended to be a direct support
force. Air divisions were assigned directly to fronts and
armies. Despite large numbers of aircraft, the Red air force
performed poorly in the first year of the war. That was due to
a lack of trained pilots, poor logistics, bad command control,
and a general dispersion of effort.

The Germans
German panzer groups were independent
mobile units. Unlike the numbered
armies, the panzer groups were not
supposed to be used to hold sectors of the
front, but instead were employed as operational
forces to gain the decision. In
the 1941 campaign, they were frequently
switched across the Eastern Front to exploit
opportunities. As a result, the Germans
made some incredible advances, but
at the cost of wear and tear on the vehicles
and men. Among other things, German tank replacement was minimal
in 1941, as Hitler wanted to use new production to build up
reserves rather than committing tanks piecemeal at the front.
The panzer groups were initially composed of motorized corps
(later redesignated panzer corps), each with several panzer (armored)
and motorized divisions. As the war progressed, the panzer
groups were redesignated panzer armies and ended up holding sectors
of the front. They also received considerable infusions of nonmotorized
formations, with a corresponding decline in mobility. A
major German dilemma, which was never resolved during the war,
was their lack of strategic reserves. Crises had to be met by switching
divisions across the theater of operations or pulling units from
other fronts.
The Luftwaffe in 1941 was still at the highpoint of its effectiveness.
Its operational air doctrine and high state of training allowed
it to concentrate anywhere on the front. The Luftwaffe was
an integral part of the blitzkrieg, striking deep into the enemy rear
and covering deep-ranging panzer columns. But its strength was
frequently dissipated when used as a “fire brigade,” bailing out
ground forces with close support and air supply.
strategy & tactics 13

14 #232
Reinforcements were already moving into the Luga
Line and some were transferred to 11 th Army: Col. L.V.
Bunin’s 21 st Tank Division, Gen. Maj. A.Y. Fedyunin’s
70 th “Order of Lenin” Rifle Division, and Col. V.Y.
Tishinsky’s 237 th Rifle Division were all allocated to
the Northern Operational Group. Those divisions were
facing the Germans for the first time, though the 70 th
at least had the experience of fighting the Finns in the
1939-40 Winter War. The Soviets were gambling, as
the overall correlation of forces was only marginally
favorable. They had insufficient armor and Red Army
tactics left something to be desired at that time in the
war, but they would enjoy a high degree of surprise in
a favorable battlefield position.
The counterstroke at Soltsy began on 14 July with
subsidiary moves to set the trap. The Northern Operational
Group, built around the headquarters of the
newly arrived 16 Rifle Corps, attacked from the line
Gorodishche-Utorgosh with two divisions toward Sitnya
and with one toward Soltsy. The Southern Group
was built around Gen. Maj. A.S. Ksenofontov’s 22 nd
Rifle Corps (formed in Estonia of 180 th and 182 nd
Rifle Divisions), and included the remnants of 202 nd
Motorized Division plus the recently reformed 183 rd
Rifle Division. It deployed facing the exposed German
southern flank for a push north to Sitnya. The plan was
Waiting for the Soviets: German antitank gun crew.
for the groups to launch converging thrusts to encircle
and destroy enemy forces. In the skies above, Soviet
aircraft would provide direct support.
At 3:00 am on the 15 th , the following radio message
arrived at 4 th Panzer Group headquarters: “Rear area
services of 8 th Panzer Division, three kilometers east
of Borovichi, are defending against enemy attack with
machineguns and mortars.”
Throughout the 15 th , similar reports were received
at German command posts. The Soviets had launched
a powerful attack from the north into the flank of 8 th
Panzer Division, and simultaneously from the south
over the Shelon. That meant the bulk of 8 th Panzer’s
combat units, being located between Soltsy and the
Mshaga, were cut off from the division’s rear echelons.
Further, the Red Army had pushed up forces from the
south to close the German supply route. At the same
time, advance elements of the 3 rd Motorized Division
came under renewed attack by the 237 th Rifle Division
at Maloye Utorgosh. In hard fighting, the 3 rd ’s troops
repulsed seven Soviet attacks, some in hand-to-hand
fighting.
Forming the hammer of the Soviet drive was 70 th
Rifle Division, which enjoyed a favorable local ratio
of force. By 6:00 am on 15 July all of the 70 th ’s

Comparative Unit Strengths, 1941
Manpower AFV MG Mortars AA DF Guns Artillery MT
German
Panzer ‘41 division 15,600 165 1,067 30 74 75 70 2900
Motorized division 16,400 821 712 93 28 71 38 2800
Infantry division
Soviet
17,200 3 643 142 11 79 70 942
Tank division 10,940 475 ? 852 (2) (2) (2) ?
Motorized division 11,600 326 ? 1582 (2) (2) (2) ?
Infantry division, May ‘41 14,400 293 491 150 4 69 32 685
Infantry division, July ‘41 10,700 - 279 78 6 34 8 249
Manpower = full strength
AFV = total armored fighting vehicles, tanks, assault guns; includes armored cars and half tracks in certain units
MG = machineguns; includes anti-aircraft machineguns and vehicle-mounted weapons
Mortars = total mortars
AA = anti-aircraft guns, 20mm and larger; multi-barreled weapons count each barrel
DF Guns = all artillery direct fire weapons and antitank guns larger than 20mm; includes some self-propelled pieces
Artillery = all howitzers and multiple rocket launchers; includes some self-propelled pieces
MT = motor transport vehicles
Notes
1) This number is cited in several sources, but seems to assume the attachment of a tank or assault gun battalion to the division.
The number of organic AFVs was probably 20-30.
2) Total all “guns,” weapons 45mm and greater (except 50mm mortars).
3) In some divisions, 16 light tanks and 13 armored cars.
Note: the diagram of the German 56 th Motorized Corps includes the 290 th Infantry Division, which was detached prior to the
operations described in this article.
units were in position. A last minute reconnaissance
led to the 68th Rifle Regiment going around Soltsy to
put it into position to cut off 8th Panzer Division. Detecting
that movement, a German battlegroup of two
battalions of motorized infantry supported by tanks,
immediately attacked and penetrated into the 68th ’s defensive
zone. But suddenly the German column found
its own rear and flanks under attack. According to the
Soviet account, the Germans panicked, leaving behind
15 destroyed tanks and 200 dead and wounded.
With the preliminaries out of the way, the Soviet attack
developed in its full fury, with 8th Panzer Division
standing alone against 3rd and 21st Tank Divisions, 22nd ,
52nd , and 80th Rifle Divisions, and 22nd Rifle Corps,
consisting of 180th , 182nd and 183rd Rifle Divisions,
and the 202nd Motorized Division. The battle raged
west to Borovichi as the Soviets crossed the Shelon
River and thrust from the north with the 70th and 237th Rifle Divisions and parts of 21st Tank Division.
By late in the day, 8th Panzer Division had divided
into three battlegroups:
• the Shelon sector under Oberst Scheller ( Infantry
Regiment 8, I and III/Panzer Regiment 10, II/Artillery
Regiment 61, Recon Battalion 59, II/Nebelwerfer Regi-
ment 52, 8
strategy & tactics 15
th Panzer Regiment);
• the railroad bridge sector under Maj. Schmid ( Antitank
Battalion 43, Pioneer Battalion 59, Flak Battalion
92, minor units, 8th Panzer Regiment);
• and well forward along the Shelon River a battlegroup
under 1st Lt. Crisolli (II/ Panzer Regiment 10,
Infantry Regiment 28, II and III/Artillery Regiment 80,
II/Flak 23, minor units of the 8th Panzer Regiment).
Scheller found himself under heavy attack with reports
of the Soviets at the edge of Soltsy. From above,
Soviet aircraft attacked road-bound columns. By midday
panic had set in with some German units. That
evening, Red Army infantry was entering Soltsy but,
since it was starting to rain, at least the Soviet aircraft
were grounded. For the night, the battlegroups of 8th Panzer Division organized an all-round defense.
The next day, 16 July, 8th Panzer Division fought
while fully surrounded. Early that morning it withdrew
from most of Soltsy and established its main defense
line along the road west of the north-south railroad.
A battle still raged over Soltsy airfield where German
tanks came under direct fire from enemy anti-tank and
artillery batteries. German motorized units attacked
twice but were thrown back. Red Army pressure on

16 #232
the German flanks threw the defense into confusion as
room to reorganize simply was not there. The Soviet
Northern Group, in particular 70 th Rifle Division, attacked
again and at times fighting was hand-to-hand.
After 16 hours of hard fighting, 8 th Panzer Division
was on the verge of defeat, cut off from its path of
retreat. The Soviets also succeeded in penetrating between
the 56 th Corps’ divisions. Late in the day the
Germans evacuated their last footholds in Soltsy.
Meanwhile, 3 rd Motorized Division reported it was still
under heavy attack.
The Luftwaffe made a showing on the 16 th despite
difficult flying weather. German bombers struck Soviet
railheads and engaged Red Army columns. Destroyer
Group 26 also made an impact with its Bf-110
fighter-bombers, whose pilots were trained in close air
support of ground forces.
But the Soviet air force was also busy, attacking
day and night with four aviation divisions and the 1 st
Long Range Bomber Corps, in all about 235 aircraft.
A particularly successful raid occurred on the night of
15-16 July when the 4 th Composite Aviation Division
of Col. I.K. Samokhin attacked a concentration of German
tanks. In five days of action (14-18 July), the Soviets
conducted about 1,500 sorties in the Soltsy area,
compared to about 960 German, the latter spread out
over the entire Luga front. Soviet bombers included
bridges in their target list, forcing the Germans to deploy
anti-aircraft units at each—and the 88mm highvelocity,
dual-purpose guns were needed to counter
Soviet armor.
Soviet bombing accuracy was poor and the Germans
generally held the initiative in the air. The Soviets
usually came off the worse in air-to-air action
because their aircraft were nearly all obsolescent and
their pilots poorly trained. Yet air losses were not great
for either side. The Luftwaffe was overstretched, try-
Red eagles: Soviet aircraft in a makeshift field.
ing to meet too many requirements across an expanding
front.
Southern Thrust
The Soviet Southern Operations Group enjoyed
success on the 16th , at least at first. On the far left
Col. I.I. Kuryshev’s 182 Rifle Division had attacked
Porchov on the 15th , taking the eastern part of the city
and beginning to encircle the rest. Like the rest of the
Southern Group, that division was too weak, and by
the evening of the 17th it had been driven well back
along the road to Dno with German mechanized units
pursuing. During the 18th the division fell apart and its
command was taken over by Col. M.S. Nazarov.
Col. S.I. Karapetyan’s 183rd Rifle Division covered
the center-left flank of 22nd Corps operations. Over
a three-day period the division continually attacked
German columns retreating to the west toward Borovichi.
Early morning 16 July, units of the 183rd Rifle
Division forced the Shelon River with a surprise attack
and crossed the Novgorod road. The attack succeeded
in demolishing a German column.
During that engagement, an important role was
played by artillerymen of the 624th Howitzer Artillery
Regiment, led by Capt. Y. Leninis. According to the
Soviet account, he gathered all the guns on hand in the
division into one group, which with accurate fire inflicted
heavy losses on the Germans. The Germans retreated
in disorder and the road along the Shelon filled
with burning German equipment.
Prominent on the German side in this fighting was
the 1st Munitions Column bringing forward ammunition
in spite of enemy artillery fire. The Germans reported
a total of 60 vehicles lost. The 183rd Rifle Division
was unable to follow up on its success, and a
request for reinforcements brought only a commission
to count captured equipment. The Germans responded
to that attack by sending up a battalion of the SS Totenkopf,
a motorized infantry battalion from 3rd Motorized
Division, the 48th Pioneer Battalion, and a company of
tanks. Those units managed to stop the Soviets at the
river line from Borovichi to Ilemno.
The 3rd Tank Division’s 5th Tank Regiment fought
actively in the area of Dolzhitsy, Gorushka and Sukhlovo
under the command of Maj. G.I. Segeda on the 17th .
The tankers claimed they encircled and destroyed an
enemy force composed of up to 240 motor vehicles
loaded with ammunition and fuel. That was likely the
German group that had pulled out of Soltsy the prior
evening.
Seven vehicles were captured, one of which contained
chemical shells. Also captured were secret
documents of the German General Staff concerning
preparations for the utilization of poison gas in the war
against the Soviet Union (which, were never carried
out). That was a politically difficult loss for the Germans.
As soon as OKH found out, they requested a full

German vs. Soviet Armored Fighting Vehicles, 1941
German Type Gun MGs Weight Armor Speed HP/Wt Crew
PzKw Ib tank - 2 6.6 tons 13mm 40k/h 15 2
PzKw IIf tank 20/55 1 9.5 tons 35mm 40k/h 12.8 3
PzKw IIIe tank 50/42 2 19.5 tons 50mm 40k/h 12.8 5
PzKw IVe tank 75/24 2 23 tons 45mm 42k/h 13.0 5
PzKw 38(t) tank 37/40 2 9.7 tons 25mm 42k/h 12.9 4
StuG IIIb AG 75/24 - 22 tons 50mm 40k/h 14.9 4
Sd Kfz 231 AC 20/55 1 8.2 tons 14.5mm 85k/h 18.3 4
Sd Kfz 251/1 APC - 1 8.5 tons 12mm 50k/h 13.0 12 1
Soviet Type Gun MGs Weight Armor Speed HP/Wt Crew
BT-7 tank 45/46 2 13.8 tons 20mm 58k/h 32.6 3
KV-1A tank 76.2/30 3 47.5 tons 100mm 35k/h 11.9 5
T-26b tank 45/46 2 9.5 tons 20mm 30k/h 9.5 3
T-28c tank 76.2/26 3 32 tons 55mm ? 15.6 6
T-34/76a tank 76.2/30 1 28.2 tons 60mm 50k/h 9.1 4
T-35 tank 76.2/30 2 5 45 tons 30mm 29k/h 11.1 10
T-60a tank 20/50 1 6.4 tons 50mm 49k/h 13.3 2
SMK tank 76.2/30 3 3 58 tons 60mm 24k/h 8.6 7
BA-10 AC 45mm 1 5.2 tons 15mm 56k/h 16.3 4
Notes
Gun = main gun bore width in millimeters/length
of gun in terms of number of calibers (that is, multiple
of the bore width)
MGs = number of machineguns
Weight = weight when combat loaded
Armor = maximum in millimeters (usually frontal)
Speed = maximum road speed in kilometers per hour
HP/Wt = horsepower/weight (tons) ratio, a measure
of the vehicles maneuverability
Crew = normal operating crew
Type AC = armored car; AG = Assault gun; APC =
Armored personnel carrier
1) Includes transported infantry
2) The T-35 also had 2 x 45mm guns mounted in
separate turrets.
3) The SMK also had 1 x 45mm gun mounted in a
separate turret.
Red armor rolls.
strategy & tactics 17

18 #232
report from Manstein about the loss of those top-secret
documents.
At the center of Soviet 22 Corps Col. I.I. Missan’s
180th Rifle Division began the offensive a bit later.
Moving in a northerly direction from Dno, it advanced
25 kilometers to reach the Shelon River. There it joined
the attack in progress and took its share of prisoners
and equipment.
The Germans fought desperately to break out of the
encirclement. From 15 to 16 July, the 202nd Motorized
Division claimed it destroyed more than 100 enemy
trucks, around 50 tanks, and a great number of personnel.
Turning Point
On 17 July the Germans undertook urgent efforts
to rescue their troops. SS Totenkopf was released from
army group reserves and entered the Sitnya battle. One
battalion helped 3rd Motorized Division smash a series
of Soviet armored and infantry attacks at the village of
Baranovo. All told, 3rd Motorized Division repelled 17
attacks that day, a good measure of how Soviet battle
coordination was breaking down. With the approach
of Totenkopf, 8th Panzer Division concluded its breakout
to the west. It completed its move out of the front
line on the 18th and went into reserve.
By 18 July the crisis was over. The 56th Motorized
Corps was firmly established east of Sitnya on a line
Dubrovo-Baranovo, generally facing east by northeast,
and still pressed by attacks from 70th Rifle Division.
The earlier danger to the southern flank was
removed as 1st Corps (11th and 21st Infantry Divisions)
moved up in support. With the 182nd Rifle Division
breaking, and the 183rd Rifle Division almost caught
in an encirclement, the Red Army was running out
of steam. But the Soviets were not yet finished. They
German infantry walks.
sent in additional forces, among which were elements
of 1st Mechanized Corps. They proved insufficient in
the face of German regimental groups reinforced with
armor. The 5th Motorcycle Regiment found itself surrounded
at one point, but the arriving 202nd Division
restored the situation. On the morning of the 19th , German
troops entered Dno and Soviet troops were in full
retreat. On 20 July the strategic initiative shifted north
of the Shelon, and the Red Army was also retreating
there. The struggle for Soltsy was over.
Endgame
Soltsy was one of the most outstanding Soviet
counterblows in the first months of BARBAROSSA. It
played an important role in slowing the pace of Army
Group North’s drive toward Leningrad and Novgorod.
The Red Army had won valuable time for the organization
of the defense of Leningrad and the arrival
of reserves, and for the improvement of combat skills
and morale.
Still, the Red Army derived no operational lessons
from the battle. There was little in the way of coordination
between the converging columns. Overall command
and control was poor. Essentially, the operation
devolved into a series of attacks in which each division
attacked on making contact with the Germans.
There was also little coordination between neighboring
units. Casualties in the assault waves could be up
to 50%, and most divisions burned out quickly. No
Soviet casualty figures are available for the Battle of
Soltsy but the casualties could not have been any less
than that typical elsewhere. As an example, 70th Rifle
Division entered the battle over-strength with 15,333
men; a month later it recorded only a few hundred
troops still on the roster.
The Soviets credited themselves with inflicting a
defeat on a picked enemy force, throwing the Germans
back 40 kilometers and routing 8th Panzer Division.
Eighth Panzer Division was indeed cut up and out of
action for about a month. Parts of 3rd Motorized Division
and the rear services of the 56th Motorized Corps
also suffered. Overall, Army Group North stopped for
three weeks before renewing its offensive. It was those
weeks that provided enough time to save Leningrad.
German losses were serious but not disastrous.
Some 50 tanks were destroyed or seriously damaged,
and operational armor was reduced to about 100 as
of 20 July. Yet many of the damaged vehicles were
repaired. Troop losses amounted to about 550 killed,
wounded, and missing in 8th Panzer Division, 220 in
the SS Totenkopf Division, and proportionately the
same in 3rd Motorized Division. That was a loss rate
of 110 men per division per day for the period 14 -18
July, which was typical of heavy engagements. Divisional
replacement pools were exhausted and Manstein
considered his divisions to be exhausted. Gen. Paulus,
chief quartermaster of OKH, informed Manstein

on the 26 th that replacements were indeed available—but
they were far back on the road to Germany. Much more
troublesome were the equipment losses in 8 th Panzer Division.
They were high and difficult to replace. Germany
was too short on mobile divisions to have a panzer division
knocked out of action for a month.
Then came the delegation of blame. In his postwar
memoirs, Manstein was critical of Hoepner’s decision to
withdraw the SS Totenkopf Division from the right flank of
his corps after its earlier battles to the south. Manstein had
indeed requested on 14 July a return of SS Totenkopf and
that was refused by Hoepner. It is likely the army group
commander felt he needed at least some reserve for the
attack on Leningrad. Manstein later urged the insertion of
his corps behind that of Reinhardt’s on the lower Luga, but
that was forbidden by Hitler. The Führer even followed up
with a visit to von Leeb’s Headquarters on 21 July, where
he demanded Leningrad be “finished off speedily.”
With the defeat of 56 th Motorized Corps and stalemate
elsewhere along the Luga Line, German forces paused to
gather strength for their next general offensive. Hitler directed
that any farther advance toward Leningrad would
have to wait until the infantry of 16 th Army had secured
the eastern flank of the army group. Later he authorized
units of 3 rd Panzer Group and the whole of 8 th Air Corps to
move north from Army Group Center to assist Leeb in his
renewed offensive, scheduled to begin 8 August. Notably,
plans still included the encirclement of Leningrad from the
southeast, and in the end, that was accomplished if only
by a narrow margin. But Leningrad was never taken.
The objective: Leningrad, with Soviet militia mobilizing.
References
Carell, Paul, Hitler Moves East, New York: Ballantine, 1963.
Dieckhoff, G., 3.Infanterie-Division, Cuxhaven: Erich Borries D.und V.,
1960.
Erickson, John, The Road to Stalingrad, New York: Harper & Row, 1975;
p.182.
Glantz, Col. David M., Forgotten Battles of the German-Soviet War (1941-
1945), Vol.I., self-published, 1999.
Haupt, Werner, Army Group North, the Wehrmacht in Russia 1941 - 1945,
Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1997.
Haupt, Werner, Die 8.Panzer-Division im Zweitenweltkrieg, Freidberg: Podzun-
Pallas- Verlag, 1987Yu.S. Krinov, Horst Boog, et al, Germany and
the Second World War, Vol. IV, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998; pgs 541-
542.
Kislinsky, V.S., Net nechego dorozhe: Dokumentalnyy ocherk, Leningrad:
Lenizdat, 1983.
Kvaley, S.F., “202-ya strelkovaya diviya I ee komandir S.G. Shtykov,” Ha severo-zapadnomfronte,
1941-1943, Moscow: Izdatel’stvo “Navka,” 1969
Levi, S. (ed), Borba latyshskovo naroda v gody velikoy otechestvennoy
voyny (1941-1945), Riga: Izdatelstvo “Zinatne,” 1970.
Lubey, L. (ed), Borba za sovetskuyu pribaltiky v velikoy otechestvennoy
voyne 1941-45, Book One, Riga: Izdatelstvo “Liyesma,” 1966.
v.Manstein, Eric, Lost Victories, Chicago: Regnery, 1958
Salisbury, Harrison E., The 900 Days, New York, 1969.
Sydnor, Charles W., Soldiers of Destruction, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1977.
Istoriya ordena Lenina Leningradskogo voyennogo okruga, Moscow: Voyenizdat,
1974.
Luzhskiy rubezh god 1941-y, Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1983.
“Combat in Russian Forests and Swamps,” Dept. of the Army Pamphlet No.20-
231, dated July 1951; and “Terrain Factors in the Russian Campaign,” Dept.
of the Army Pamphlet No.20-290, dated July 1951.
strategy & tactics 19

20 #232
CATHERINE THE GREAT:
Strategy in the Age of Enlightenment
by Joseph Miranda
The Age of Enlightenment, roughly the period from the
Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the outbreak of the wars of
the French Revolution (1791), was characterized by strategic
parameters that led to a formalistic style of warfare. Military
objectives were limited by the necessity to maintain the balance
of power. Yet despite the formalism, a power operating outside
the mainstream of Europe was able to build a continent
spanning empire—that was Russia.

War and Society
The Treaty of Westphalia brought to an end the
Thirty Years War (1618-48). That war had originally
started as another round in what was becoming a seemingly
endless series of religious conflicts in Europe,
triggered by the rise of Protestantism in the early 16 th
century. The issues Protestantism raised went beyond
religion and included fundamental political disputes.
Since the rise of the Carolingian Empire in the 8 th century
AD, the European ideal was to form a united state
ruling over the entire continent. The Holy Roman Empire
was an attempt to bring about this universal state.
The Holy Roman Empire, as wits frequently described
it, was neither “holy,” nor “Roman,” nor much of an
“empire.” Not since the Dark Ages had even the city
of Rome been included within the empire’s boundaries
and, in fact, the papacy frequently fought against various
emperors, the latter coming from various German
houses.
By the 17 th century, the Holy Roman Empire was
little more than a collection of states in central Europe,
loosely organized around a fragmented Germany with
the capital in Vienna and the throne in the hands of
the Habsburg family. Challenging the empire, not
merely militarily but ideologically, were the rising
national states of Europe The protestant churches of
Sweden and England, since they did not acknowledge
the supremacy of the papacy in Rome, provided an
ideological counterbalance to the centralizing and universal
appeal of “empire.” And even Catholic France
frequently put its national aspirations higher than any
pan-Catholic or even Christian interests, frequently allying
itself with the Moslem Ottoman Empire.
All that came to a head with the Thirty Years War,
which initially pitted Catholic Austria and Spain (representing
the empire) against Protestant German states
and then Denmark and Sweden. But the nature of
the conflict changed with the intervention of France
against the empire. French national interests demanded
Europe not be consolidated under a single great
empire. The war came to an end with the aforementioned
Treaty of Westphalia. While the treaty did not
end warfare in Europe, it did fundamentally change its
nature.
The Thirty Years War was fought with unprecedented
disregard for the civilian populace, with pillaging
and devastation a normal part of operations.
Aside from the moral issues, the destruction of crops
and cities undermined the civilian economies. That, in
turn, undermined the power of the governments to collect
taxes and maintain order. The European governments
decided it was time to restrain their armies and
minimize the destruction. It wasn’t simply a matter of
altruism, but also of self-preservation. Out of control
armies were as much a threat to the kings and princes
as they were to the citizenry. For example, Albrecht
Wallenstein, the imperial warlord of the Thirty Years
War, had amassed more power than the Hapsburgs and
might have set himself up as emperor were it not for
his assassination in 1634
There was also the growing professionalization of
the armies. Up until the mid-17 th century, recruiting
was a haphazard affair. Soldiers were drawn from mercenaries,
quasi-professional regulars, and remnants of
feudal levies. Countries such as Sweden showed that
a regular military with a professional officer corps
was the way of the future. A regular army had the advantages
of superior discipline and training. Recruits
needed to be exercised in the drills required to employ
the complex tactics of the day. Officers were drawn
from the nobility, and that had the added benefit of
putting them to some good use.
Politically, the states of Europe were becoming
more centralized. Feudal relationships were disintegrating
and being replaced by central government administrations
with taxation and nation-wide laws. That
meant governments could mobilize far more strength
than they could in the past, and did not waste time and
resources in civil war. All that was backed by new ideologies
that justified centralized rule: the divine rights
of kings as well as Hobbes’s Leviathan.
With well disciplined armies and centralized states,
the European governments had instruments with
which they could conduct warfare as if it were a game
of chess. And, not incidentally the army could be used
to maintain the monarch’s power by suppressing any
rebels.
In a sense, what the Treaty of Westphalia recognized
was that among European monarchs there was
no issue worth mutual self-destruction. By limiting
conflict to disputes over the balance of power all states
could be assured of their continual existence. Yet the
Age of Enlightenment was also an age of war—even
if limited. But the wars were fought not to conquer
entire countries or to establish a European-wide polity.
For the most part, they were “civilized” affairs that
resulted in the acquisition or loss of a border province
or two.
Balance of Power
The central feature of both war and international
politics in this era was the balance of power. Simply
put, the balance ensured no one European state became
strong enough to dominate the entire continent. Effectively,
that meant the old ideal of empire was dead.
Each state would keep its integrity and, while borders
might fluctuate, only minor gains and losses of territory
would be allowed. Even a monarch as powerful as
Louis XIV of France (1643-1715) proved incapable of
defeating the balance. In the War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-14), his attempts to set a relative on the
throne of Spain led to a European coalition marching
against him. Ironically, what saved him in the end was
strategy & tactics 21

22 #232
the same balance. The other European states saw Britain
as becoming too powerful, and so withdrew from
the anti-French coalition.
Consequently, military operations tended to be
conducted with an eye toward the postwar settlement.
What was gained on the battlefield could be traded for
advantages at the peace talks, and even the loser might
come home with something. For example, during the
Seven Years War, a French objective was conquering
the kingdom of Hanover in Germany. The reason was
the British monarchy had strong links to Hanover, and
Paris could hope to trade any of Hanover’s territory
that French armies seized for, perhaps, the return of
French colonial possession in America or India that
had been conquered by the British. Similarly, the Russians’
gains in their 1787-92 war against the Ottomans
were largely given back to the Turks owing to the pressures
other European capitals put on St. Petersburg.
While there may have been little love for the Ottoman
Empire in Europe, there was even less desire to see a
powerful Russia dominating the east.
All that underscored a more fundamental dilemma:
how did one actually conquer a country in the 18 th century?
Charles XII of Sweden tried. In the Great Northern
War (1700-21), he led a Swedish army deep into
Russia. While he won some initial victories, they led
nowhere strategically because his foe, Russian Emperor
Peter I (the Great) refused to capitulate. And Peter
had plenty of room into which he could retreat, given
the expanse of his empire. So the Swedes plunged
deeper into Russia, finally marching into the Ukraine
to link up with Cossacks who were in rebellion against
St. Petersburg. Charles finally attacked Peter at the
epic Battle of Poltava (28 June 1709), and went down
to defeat. The Swedish army was largely annihilated,
and only after much difficulty did Charles make it
home. Poltava is one of the decisive battles of European
history insofar as it ended Swedish supremacy in
northern Europe and also brought the emerging Russian
Empire to the forefront as a great power.
The Swedes had been out of their depth from the
start of the Great Northern War. Swedish power was
based on the Baltic, with the Swedish Empire including
not only the homeland but also Finland, Pomerania
in northern Germany, and the Baltic states. Swedish
naval domination of the Baltic gave them interior lines
of communication. Effectively, they could reinforce
any part of their empire by sea. Economically, Baltic
trade gave them the wealth to maintain the empire and
also consolidate political relationships with the littoral.
By moving deep inland in Russia, Charles was cutting
himself off from his economic and military base. Even
if he had somehow managed to defeat Peter at Poltava,
he would have still have faced the overarching
dilemma of actually ruling Russia. The Swedes lacked
both the infrastructure to administer the country and
the army to maintain order internally.

The Rise of Russia
Modern Russia really began with the rise of the
Muscovite state that, until the end of the European
middle ages, was little more than a vassal of the Mongol
Khanate of the Golden Horde. But a powerful vassal
it was and, by the early 16 th century, Moscovy had
largely destroyed the remnants of Mongolian power
west of the Urals. The Russians then continued to expand,
absorbing the ancient states of Novgorod and
Kiev, as well as sweeping deep into Siberia and Central
Asia.
Of course, when dealing with assorted Mongols
and Asian peoples, the Russians had little concern
for balance of power issues. Consequently, conquest
tended to be complete, including extensive colonization
of subjected peoples. In a sense, it was a clash of
civilizations. The Russians were better organized, and
they also had a military advantage. Traditionally, the
peoples of the Asian steppes relied on horse-mobile
armies that were capable of outmaneuvering enemies
both strategically and tactically. But the rise of modern,
disciplined Western armies equipped with gunpowder
weapons returned the tactical ascendancy to the Europeans.
They could easily smash a nomadic army on the
battlefield. Strategically, the Russians used a combination
of forts, military colonies and secured trade routes
to limit the mobility of steppe armies as well as extend
their own rule. Then there were the personality issues:
the rise of Russia took place in the era of such great
leaders as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, while
the steppe peoples failed to produce another Genghis
Khan or Tamerlane.
The constant eastern warfare gave the Russian military
something of an edge when it came to the practical
aspects of war. Commanders had to be good, or they
would be annihilated. In the 18 th century, the Russian
military proved adept at organizing mobile, combined
arms columns to track down nomad foes. And Russian
commanders such as Alexander Suvarov also became
good at fighting and winning decisive campaigns.
All that underscores the Russian divergence from
contemporary European warfare. The Russians had
a frontier into which to expand. The other European
powers did not, at least not on the continent—hence
their competition for colonies in the Americas and India.
At home, the Europeans were forced into a limited
form of warfare in which diplomacy and mutual preservation
were overriding considerations. The Russians
had more room to maneuver.
Enter Catherine the Great
Catherine, later known as the “Great” (see the sidebar
on biographies), came to power at a unique time in
European history. The year 1762 saw the beginning of
the end of the Seven Years War, which pitted the great
powers against each other both on the continent and
around the world. Britain and Prussia emerged from
the war as the leading powers of Europe, while France
and Austria had their stars eclipsed by battlefield defeat
and financial exhaustion. It was especially bad for
France, which lost its colonies in the New World. [For
more on the Seven Years War, see S&T nr. 231. ed.]
Russia was in a position to assume the mantle of the
primary continental power. And that Catherine did, by
the usual method: war. During her reign (1762-96),
continued on page 26
strategy & tactics 23

24 #232
The Players
Abdulhamid I (1725-1789). Abdulhamid reigned as Sultan of
the Ottoman Empire from 1774 to 1789, an era which saw
Turkish fortunes on the decline. He lost wars to both Austria
and Russia, the former power gaining Bukovina, and the latter
the Crimea (an Ottoman vassal state) as well as a chunk
of the Ukraine. His empire was saved from destruction only
by the intervention of the other European powers, notably
England, Sweden and Prussia, who did not want the Austro-
Russian alliance becoming too powerful.
Abdulhamid saw much of the problem with his empire
was it had long since fallen behind the Europeans in various
ways. He made some attempts to modernize the armed
forces and to restrain the independent warlords, but it was a
matter of too little too late.
Frederick II (1712-86). Frederick, King of Prussia (1740-86) is
generally known by his title, “the Great.” He is also known
for personally commanding the Prussian Army in the War
of the Austrian Secession (1740-44) and the Seven Years
War (1756-63). Those wars resulted in Prussia gaining and
holding the rich province of Silesia. More importantly for
the history of Europe, Frederick established Prussia as the
most important state in Germany and as a major power of
the day.
Frederick built up the Prussian army as a decisive instrument
of warfare, emphasizing the military education of
officers, severe training for the regiments, and the use of
precision tactics on the battlefield. He proved adept at using
the strategy of the central position to fight off his French,
Austrian and Russian foes.
Domestically Frederick considered himself an enlightened
monarch, liberalizing various laws, developing the
economy and supporting culture. He also corresponded
with the great French philosopher, Voltaire. His final campaign,
the War of the Bavarian Succession (1777-79), was
a largely bloodless affair and became known as the “Potato
War” due to the diet of the troops.
Catherine II (1729-96). Catherine, in Russian Yekaterina, was
born Sophie Frederike Auguste, the daughter of the German
prince, Christian August von Anhalt-Zerbst. As was typical
with much of the European nobility,
she became involved in a political
marriage to Peter, the grandson of
Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725),
and heir to the throne of Russia. She
arrived in Russia in 1744, which at
the time was ruled by the Empress
Elizabeth. Catherine found court life
boring, but used it as an opportunity
to educate herself for her assumption
of power, becoming something of an
advocate of popular ideas (among
the aristocracy) about the Enlightenment.
She also proved to be effective
in charming assorted nobles and, in
so doing, creating relationships that
would enable her to later seized the
throne.
Elizabeth died on 5 January 1762. Peter became emperor
and promptly ended Russia’s participation in the Seven
Years War. Among other things, that saved Frederick the
Great’s Prussia from being overrun by the coalition armies.
Peter (raised in Germany) quickly alienated the aristocracy
with his open contempt for all things Russian. He was also
preparing to get rid of Catherine, but she struck first. On
9 July 1762, she led the regiments that deposed Peter and
then proclaimed her self empress, being formally crowned
in Moscow in September of that year. Peter, meanwhile
was spirited away and then assassinated.
Catherine continued Peter the Great’s policies of modernization.
Among other things, she secularized the properties
of the Orthodox Church in order to balance the budget.
She also convened a commission to look into establishing
a constitution. Catherine had planned to emancipate
the serfs, but the realities of Russia soon took precedence.
Freeing the serfs would have meant losing the support of
the nobility and the landowners, and possibly her throne.
More, Pugachev’s rebellion shook her faith in tolerant policies.
So instead, she tightened up on the serfs and increased
the power of the state.
Catherine fought a series of wars that resulted in the
aggrandizement of her empire and, especially in Europe,
would give Russia the shape it was to retain until 1918.
She intervened in the ongoing Polish Civil War, placing a
client ruler on the throne, then, in three partitions (1772,
1793 and 1795), divided the country with Prussia and Austria,
taking the eastern part for Russia. She fought two wars
against the Turks (1768-74, 1787-92), annexed the Crimea
(1783), and fought the Swedes to a standstill (1788-90).
She probably would have had her armies march all the
way to Constantinople had not the other European powers
stopped her. Still, she did much to consolidate the hold she
had on her domain, investing state funds in building towns
and military colonies. She also had the services of some
capable ministers and generals, such as Potemkin and Suvarov.
The outbreak of the French Revolution shook Catherine,
who, while dabbling in Enlightenment politics, was not
about to surrender any of her own power and privilege.
She died before she saw the world she had created challenged
by that Revolution, but even so, in 1812 her Russia
was able to absorb the full strength of Napoleon’s Grande
Armee.
Gustavus III (reigned 1771-92). Gustavus came to power in
what amounted to a military coup. He made some attempts
to restore Sweden to its status as a great power (lost owing
to its defeat in the Great Northern
War in the early part of the
century), but had to deal with
the growing power of Russia in
the east. Fearing future Russian
aggression, Gustavus declared
war against Russia in 1788,
and then launched an invasion
while St. Petersburg was preoccupied
with its ongoing Turkish
war. While initially victorious,
the Swedes were defeated on
both land and sea, though they
managed to pull off a final naval
victory that gave them some
bargaining power in the ensuing
negotiations. The war ended in
1780 with the restoration of the

status quo, but in the long term it was the Russians who were
the winners.
Maria Teresa (1717-1780). Maria Teresa started off life as a pawn
in the great power struggle, but she became one of the greatest
monarchs of the century as archduchess of Austria, Queen
of Hungary and Bohemia, and Holy Roman Empress. When
she was but a lass, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI had gotten
most of the powers of Europe to consent to the Pragmatic
Sanction, in which they agreed to recognize a woman as heir to
the Habsburg Empire—he was thinking of his daughter, Maria
Teresa. In October 1740, Charles died, leaving Maria Teresa as
the new empress. Fredrick II of Prussia refused to recognize
her, his motive undoubtedly to seize the rich Austrian province
of Silesia. The following four years of warfare saw Maria Teresa
consolidate her rule as she raised troops and modernized
the army.
While the War of the Austrian Succession saw the loss of
Silesia to Prussia, Maria Teresa embarked on a program of reforms,
alleviating some of the oppression of the peasantry and
restricting the power of the nobility. She was in part responsible
for provoking the Seven Years War in 1756, in an attempt
to regain Silesia. Among other things, she reversed traditional
Habsburg policy by creating an alliance with France. And she
was also, in part, responsible for bringing Russian interest and
the Russian army into central Europe.
Gregory Aleksandrovich Potemkin (1739-91). Potemkin rose
to become the most powerful man—though not person—in
the Russian Empire. His not-so-humble beginnings were with
Moscow University and the Imperial Guard, and he was part of
the coterie who made Catherine empress of all the Russias. As
one of Catherine’s lovers, he maintained a high profile in the
empire. More importantly, he was able to get things done. He
performed well in the First Turkish War (1768-74), and later
drew up the plan that would lead to Russian annexation of the
Crimea. One of his other plans was the Greek project. The idea
behind it was the Russians would dismemberer the Ottoman
Empire and then set up a revived Byzantine Empire. The Russians
went so far as to support Greek rebels and send a fleet to
the Aegean in a remarkable voyage that brought the Russian
navy from the Baltic to the Mediterranean in 1788. But the
other European powers, while not enamored of the Ottomans,
had no desire to see a Russian-dominated eastern Mediterranean,
so the project was scotched.
Catherine made Potemkin governor-general of the southern
Ukraine. While he did much to develop the region there was
a lot left undone. Supposedly, when Catherine toured there in
1787, he erected facades of buildings along the way to give the
appearance of a growing economy, hence the term: “Potemkin
Village.” The Russian Navy later named a battleship after him,
and in 1905 it became the scene of an abortive mutiny against
the last of the Russian emperors.
Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev (or Pugachov) (1742-1775).
Pugachev, of course, was the man behind the Pugachev Rebellion.
That rebellion did much to shake Catherine’s empire to its
core. Yet Pugachev himself came from humble beginnings as
a Don Cossack, and he fought as a soldier in the Seven Years
War. Following service against the Prussians and Turks, he was
discharged from the army as an invalid. Wandering throughout
Russia, he became familiar with the various oppressions and
cruelties of the government, and also with various dissident
groups. Arrested in 1773 for desertion, he escaped and then
raised the flag of revolution.
Pugachev claimed he was really Emperor Peter III,
Catherine’s deposed and executed ex-husband. Gathering
a growing following of downtrodden peasants, displaced
workers, dissident clergy and disgruntled cossacks, he soon
swept over much of southern Russia, storming several cities
and wreaking havoc on the nobility. By declaring the abolition
of serfdom, he threatened the foundation of the Russian
state and, with his armies approaching Moscow, Catherine
had to do something. And something she did, dispatching
an army under Gen. Suvarov that promptly smashed the
rebels in 1774. Pugachev was betrayed by some Cossacks
and turned over to government forces. He was executed in
Moscow, defiant to the end. The interesting thing is Catherine
recognized the problems that had led to the rebellion,
mainly the deprivation of rights from the serfs, but could do
little to change them insofar as serious reform would have
threatened her own rule.
Alexander Vasilyevich Suvarov (1729-1800). Suvarov was
one of the major military innovators of the 18 th century. He
was renowned for training his troops to fight according to
the conditions of the battlefield, and he ran rapid campaigns
in which he sought a decision. All that was at a time when
parade-ground precision and formalistic campaigning were
the order of the day. Suvarov began his military career in
a Guards regiment, commissioned in 1754 as a lieutenant.
He fought in the Seven Years War (1756-63), and wrote a
training manual in which he advocated realistic field training.
His later military treatise, called “Science of Victory,”
emphasized speed and mobility, as well as attacks brought
home at the point of the bayonet.
In campaigns against the Poles (1768-72), the Turks
(1773-74), and in the Caucasus (1782), he showed superior
qualities as a tactician. He rose slowly in rank, though, not
being especially favored in St. Petersburg because of his
lack of manners. Nonetheless, he was promoted to general
in 1787. There followed his victories over the Turks (1787-
91), and his suppression of the Polish Rebellion (1794). At
long last, in 1794, he was made field marshal and appointed
commander of the Southern Army, but it was a short-lived
triumph. The new Emperor Paul I (1796-1801), disliked Suvorov’s
emphasizes on realistic training, preferring to mold
the Russian army with 18 th century Prussian-style parade
ground drill (Paul even brought back classic 18 th century
uniforms.) Suvarov was unfairly accused of treason but exonerated.
In 1799, with the French Revolution in full swing, Suvarov
was recalled to the active list and given command
of a new Russian army. He proceeded to clear the French
from northern Italy and prepared to invade France itself, but
was forced to withdraw when his Austrian allies met defeat.
Returning to St. Petersburg, he found court intrigue had deprived
him of official honors. While he died in 1800, he
later became a Russian military hero and was undoubtedly
one of the most successful commanders of his era.
strategy & tactics 25

26 #232

The Turks
The Ottoman Turks were once the mightiest military power in Europe, but by the 18 th century
they had begun their long slide into eventual dissolution as an empire. The last real threat
the Turks posed to Europe was in their 1683 invasion that reached the gates of Vienna before
being driven back.
One reason for the Ottoman decline was the devolution of power from the central government
in Constantinople toward local feudal lords, the latter having their own interests that
were not necessarily those of the sultans. The Ottomans could no longer mobilize the kinds of
armies they once did for massive invasions. All that was happening at a time when the European
powers were becoming more centralized and their armies more professionalized.
The Ottoman military had traditionally been a combination of professionals, feudal levies
and auxiliaries. The professionals included the Janissaries, who were elite infantry, and
Sipahis (or Spahis), who provided regular cavalry. Ottoman nobles were required to provide
levies of troops, and some of those were good. Finally, there were numerous auxiliaries, such
as the infamous Bashi-bazouks, who came along for the loot. In the 18 th century, warlords
raised many of the empire’s armies, and while theycould often be effective in the field, they
did much to undermine the power of the government in Constantinople, since the local armies
were often used to maintain the nobles’ power.
On the battlefield, Ottoman tactics relied on mobility, perhaps too much so. Skirmishers
would snipe at the enemy while cavalry would maneuver to envelop a flank. The Ottomans
brought along large numbers of artillery to provide a base of fire. What the Ottoman system
lacked was well disciplined infantry capable of firing in ranks. Instead, skirmishing was the
order of the day. Even the Janissaries tended to fight in loose formations emphasizing individual
action. By tradition, each Janissary could choose his own weapon from the Ottoman
arsenals before going on campaign. Indeed, there is a certain irony there, for while European
armies of the 18 th century are sometimes criticized for being too rigid and neglecting their own
light troops, in the Ottoman military the situation was the opposite.
There were men in the Ottoman Empire who tried to organize European-style army units, with well disciplined volley fire
by the troops. But the innovators were resisted by traditionalists who saw nothing wrong with the system, or, believed if there
was something wrong it was that traditional methods were no longer being fully applied. Too much change would undermine the
traditional power bases of the empire, especially those like the Janissaries who had a vested interest in keeping affairs, especially
military affairs, the way they were. In the end, the Ottomans would pay for that lack of foresight with defeat in a long and dreary
series of wars with Austria and Russia.
Catherine expanded Russia’s borders to absorb eastern
Poland, the Crimea and Black Sea littoral, and the
western Ukraine.
Catherine also decided to reverse the Turkish conquests
of the last several centuries by invading the Ottoman
Empire. To that end, she supported Greek rebels
and even sent a fleet to the eastern Mediterranean. That
was an impressive feat for the day, given the general
Russian inexperience in naval matters. The Russian
fleet defeated the Turks in June 1788 in the Aegean.
That victory, in conjunction with Russian and Austrian
land advances in the Balkans, could have brought
the Ottomans to their knees, but the Turks were saved
when the other European powers intervened in order
to maintain the balance of power. Still, Russian naval
operations were an impressive display of military
power.
One of Catherine’s great triumphs was the partition
of Poland. It was actually a series of land grabs by
Russia, Austria and Prussia, working together in 1772,
1793 and 1795. The result was the Polish state, once
one of the most powerful in Europe, disappeared from
the map and did not re-emerge until the chaos following
World War I in 1918. While that seemed to be a
violation of the balance of power, it was a special case
in which the three great powers of eastern Europe were
united in their objectives. More, Poland was located in
the center of the three and on the front of their geopolitical
lines of expansion. Another reason the great powers
could partition the country was the Poles were fighting
among themselves and were unable to offer a united resistance.
Domestically, Catherine was in the same predicament
as other Enlightenment monarchs. While advocating reform,
too much reform would undermine her own power
and that of the aristocracy who supported her. Inevitably,
her reforms strengthened the power of the state by increasing
revenues and reinforcing the military.
The extent of Catherine’s accomplishments can be
seen by looking at the map. The territory she gained for
Russia exceeded in extent that of the entire Prussian kingdom.
The effectiveness of the system she left to her descendants
on the throne could be seen in the following
decades, when Russia provided the wherewithal to defeat
the forces of the French Revolution and Napoleon.
strategy & tactics 27

28 #232
The Armies
18 th century armies had three basic arms: cavalry, infantry
and artillery.
Cavalry consisted of three general types: heavies, mediums
and lights. Heavy cavalry, sometimes called cuirassiers,
wore body armor (usually a breast- and back-plate)
and were mounted on large horses. They were intended for
shock action. An interesting touch was some armies gave
their heavies a breast-plate but no back-plate. The idea was
that was both a “compliment and a reminder,” that is, recognizing
they never turned their back to the enemy, and if they
did, they would be more vulnerable.
Medium cavalry were usually called dragoons. Originally
dragoons had been mounted infantry who could also
act as general purpose troops, providing advanced guards,
scouts and pickets, but by the mid-18 th century they served
largely as combat cavalry.
Light cavalry, often termed hussars, performed such
functions as scouting and skirmishing but, again, could be
involved in shock action. Some armies had auxiliary light
cavalry. The Austrians had their pandours, while the Russians
had the Cossacks. Often those axillaries were good at
independent action but less effective in set-piece battles.
Most infantry of this era were armed and equipped in the
same way: with a flintlock musket, socket bayonet and short
sword. The smoothbore muskets were effective in massed
volley fire up to 100 meters. The limited range and rate of
fire necessitated rigid “linear” tactics in which troops were
placed in geometrically correct lines to maximize the number
of muskets pointed at the enemy. Fire was either by ranks
or platoons. Under the latter, an infantry line would be divided
into sections or platoons, and each platoon would fire
as a single unit. The advantage of platoon fire was it allowed
for concentrated fire at a single point.
The bayonet allowed the pikes, which once formed up to
half of each regiment, to be dispensed with. The sword was
maintained long after it had any battlefield use largely as a matter
of décor. There is some debate about which weapon caused
the most casualties. Probably, artillery was the chief killer on
the battlefield, bladed weapons probably the least, with muskets
somewhere in between. The main effect of swords and bayonets
seems to have been psychological: a line of troops advancing
with cold steel might break the morale of a defending line and
cause it to flee.
Most armies had units of grenadiers. Originally, they were
soldiers armed with hand grenades, used by storming parties
against entrenched enemy troops. By the 18 th century, the hand
grenade had fallen out of fashion on the battlefield, but the
grenadier units were maintained. They consisted of the tallest
and bravest men, who were given the most difficult tasks such
as leading assaults, or maintained in reserve for critical actions.
They were armed much the same manner as line infantry,
though often with more elaborate uniforms.
There was some light infantry, though it seems to have
fallen out of use with most European armies. That was odd, as
up until the mid-17 th century it was standard practice for infantry
units to detach parties of musketeers as skirmishers. They
would move to the front or flanks to engage in fire fights with
the enemy, or to seize objectives into which the more ponderous
infantry formations could not easily move. The Austrians
did have light troops, but they were auxiliaries. The French did
some skirmishing in their North American colonies, while designated
light infantry companies did not appear in the British
Army until the late 1750s.
Enlisted personnel were usually recruited from the lower
classes of society; valuable citizens were not to be wasted as
cannon fodder. The kings also feared arming the growing middle
class, who might then use the military to deprive them of
their divinely granted rights. It was not uncommon in the Russian
military for lesser nobility to begin a military career as an
enlisted ranker, but then move up rapidly.
The highest regular echelon of command in that era was
the regiment. Depending on the country, a regiment consisted
of from one to four battalions. Higher units, such as brigades,
“columns” and armies were generally ad hoc affairs; however,
there was some experimentation with “legions,” consisting of
infantry, cavalry and artillery.
Armies also maintained special formations called Guards.
Originally, they were the bodyguards of the sovereign, but by
the mid-18 th century they were corps of elite troops. In Russia,
the Guards were recruited from the nobles. That made them extra
insurance for the emperor or empress, since they were presumably
more reliable. On the other hand, the Russian Guards
were frequently involved in factional infighting and palace
coups.
The Russians also maintained a special relationship with
the Cossacks. The Cossacks were the descendants of peoples
who had fled from the surrounding regions and settled along the
Black Sea littoral and the Caucuses. The Cossacks maintained
a rough democratic egalitarianism, and their leader, or hetman,
was elected. They served as Russian auxiliaries in return for
certain privileges and generally made fine, if undisciplined,
light cavalry.
One special Russian unit was the Gatchina Corps. It was
set up by Catherine for her son Paul, so he would have an army
with which to “play.”

Tactics
Battlefield tactics used combined arms. Artillery provided
the firepower to break an enemy line and run up the casualties.
Infantry would advance to finish off a shaken enemy
or maintain a defensive wall of fire. Cavalry maneuvered
and closed in for shock action.
Several of the more effective commanders of the era
emphasized infantry attacks with bayonets leveled: these
included Charles XII, Frederick the Great and Suvarov.
Charles’s use of the bayonet at Poltava in the face of entrenched
Russian artillery led to disaster, but it worked on
more than one occasion for the Prussians and Russians.
When that tactic worked, it was inevitably because it was
part of a much larger battle plan in which artillery was used
to provide fire support.
Frederick employed the attack in echelon to concentrate
his sometimes numerically smaller army against larger foes.
He concentrated one wing of his army against a vulnerable
enemy flank, and that gave him great victories at Rossbach
(5 November 1757) and Leuthen (6 December 1757). His
use of the echelon tactic also led to stereotypical attacks and,
as a result, his enemies were able to counter with such techniques
as holding back reserves to deal with the threat.
Toward the end of the 18 th century, there was much experimentation
with skirmish and column formations. Columns
were not a reversion to phalanx-style mass attacks
with cold steel; rather, columns were essentially deep infantry
formations used to maneuver units about the battlefield.
Meanwhile clouds of skirmishers would snipe at the enemy
in order to keep him pinned down and disrupt his formations.
When the enemy’s line was sufficiently dislocated,
or a vulnerability found, the commander would launch his
infantry to take advantage of the situation. The artillery, of
course, was doing the majority of the killing, and what the
column-skirmish tactics were supposed to do was keep the
main line of infantry out of contact with the enemy until the
decisive movement. Those tactics did not reach full fruition,
however, until the Napoleonic era.
strategy & tactics 29

To purchase the game that covers the battles featured in
this issue send your name and address along with:
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30 #232
Now you can experience this epic period with
Catherine the Great
CATHERINE THE GREAT is a purposed-designed solitaire wargame of the expansion of the Russian Empire under Empress
Catherine II (1762-96). The player conducts the affairs of the Russian Empire and its allies, while the game system does the same
for the anti-Russian coalition made up of a shifting alliance of powers.
Central to play of the game are its ‘policy cards.’ They trigger various strategies, powers at war, and other events that shape the
general course of play. Policy cards are activated in one of two ways: the Empire player can choose which policies he will activate,
while coalition policies are activated by the draw of markers. The Empire player may move his forces freely. The game system
moves coalition forces according to a schedule of precedence.
The objective of the game is for the Russian Empire to have gained an advantageous position at the end of play, measured in
terms of geographic objectives. The player must, however, also look toward maintaining the “balance of power,” or he may face
disintegration of the entire European state system. Depending on how well the player attains his objectives, will be the thing that
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While Catherine the Great has been designed to be a solitaire game, more than one can play at the same time as part of a Russian
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the most veteran gamer taking the role of Czar and deciding who gets what resources.
Each region represents a distinct geographic area or province within a power. Each unit represents an entire army or fleet. Each
turn represents five years. Designed by Joseph Miranda.

Did you Know
•
•
•
•
•
The “America First Committee”
was an isolationist lobbying
group organized in the US shortly
after war broke out in Europe
in 1939. At its peak, just prior to
Pearl Harbor, the committee had
850,000 members, all dedicated
to keeping America out of World
War II. Among some of the more
prominent were: future presidents
Gerald Ford and John F.
Kennedy; ex-president Herbert
Hoover; authors Sinclair Lewis,
Henry Miller and Gore Vidal;
architect Frank Lloyd Wright;
historian Charles Beard; poet
e.e. cummings; aviator Charles
Lindbergh; and media pundit
H.L. Mencken.
The US Army presently deploys
over 10,000 computers at brigade-level
and below.
During the June 2005 reenactment
of the naval Battle of
Trafalgar, held to mark its 200th anniversary, some 150 sailing
ships from over 35 countries
converged in the waters of the
English Channel. In order not to
offend any participants from nations
whose forebears had been
on the losing side of that great
Nelsonian victory (namely the
French and Spanish), the British
sponsors of the event referred
to the two sides only as the “red
team” and the “blue team.”
From May 1917 through November
1918, when the Allies’
trans-Atlantic convoy system
between the US and Europe was
in force, there were 1,134 such
groupings containing a total of
16,693 merchant vessels. Despite
the threat of German U-boats,
fully 99 percent of those ships
made it across unscathed.
An emerging school of thought
among today’s military strategists
holds that by 2025 the main
causes for war will be natural
resource acquisition and control.
Between now and then, world
•
•
population is expected to increase
from 6.3 to 8 billion, and
fully 80 percent of that growth
will take place in countries least
capable of supporting it. Water
and energy are expected to become
the two most fought over
resources.
Judging by the basic assumptions
used to govern Pentagon
wargames these days, two new
factors have been added into US
planning for future campaigns in
the War on Terror. First, this war
is now expected to take up to
eight years to be fully resolved.
Second, neither Republican nor
Democratic administrations are
seen as being willing to mobilize,
or even inconvenience, the
nation’s citizenry and economy
for war. That means all plans
must take into account that
large-scale reinforcements will
likely not be available should
something go wrong, while
at the same time allowing for
campaigning across time spans
too long to make for easy control
of outside variables.
An emerging hot spot in the
War on Terror is the sparsely
settled tri-border area shared by
the South American nations of
Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
In the past few years the Mid-
East terrorist groups Hezbollah,
Hamas and Jemaah Islamiyah
have all set up cells there. Their
main activities are arms and
drug trafficking, counterfeiting,
money laundering, software
piracy and selling forged travel
documents.
We need writers for this FYI column.
If you can write tight, pithy articles of
no more than 2,000 words on interesting,
obscure, or otherwise little known
aspects of military history, contact the
FYI editor, Ty Bomba by emailing him
at:
•
•
•
FYI
For Your information
The US Army presently has
51,000 personnel assigned at
brigade-level and below whose
main task is collecting and
analyzing intelligence data. By
2011 that number is planned to
increase to 66,000.
During the next 12 years the US
Army will spend an estimated
$18 to $20 billion on new trucks.
According to the main planning
document for that spending,
titled “Tactical Wheeled Vehicles
Strategy,” all future truck purchases
must be at least “armor
ready.” That is, even if they
come off the assembly line unarmored,
they must be so designed
as to readily accept “protective
kit upgrades” in the field, should
that become necessary.
As of September 2004, the
defense of the greater Washington,
DC, area has been entrusted
to the Joint Forces Headquarters
- National Capital Region
(JFHQ-NCR). Headquartered at
Fort Lesley J. McNair, within the
city, the new command organization
has approximately 4,000
personnel immediately available
to defend the capital and the
surrounding counties, organized
as follows:
strategy & tactics 31

32 #232
the maccabees:
Hammer of the
Hebrews
from the Dustbin of History
In 167 BC a war for freedom
erupted in Judea, at that time a province
within the Seleucid Empire. The
Seleucids were one of the dynasties
descended from the Macedonian
generals who’d succeeded Alexander
the Great following the breakup of his
empire. In 198 the Seleucids, based
in Syria, seized the Jewish homeland,
which had recently been under the
suzerainty of the Ptolemies of Egypt,
the latter yet another Macedonian
dynasty.
At first the change in occupying
forces had little effect on the Jewish
people, who remained free to practice
nominal self-government and, most
importantly, their religion. Generations
of Judeans were accustomed to
benign overlords, and Antiochus III,
the Seleucid ruler, was no different in
that regard. Upon his death and the
installation of his son Antiochus IV
Epiphanes in 175, however, intolerance
and tension became the order of
the day.
Hoping to simplify the job of
ruling, Antiochus IV ordered a new
policy in 168, imposing a common
Greek language, culture and religion
(Hellenism) throughout his empire.
Of course, attempting to force the
Jews to worship the pantheon of
Greek deities was an unsustainable
error. Rioting broke out in Jerusalem.
Antiochus dispatched one of his
most competent generals, Appolonius,
to quell the insurrection. Seleucid
troops soon thereafter massacred most
of Jerusalem’s population and burned
all documents they found containing
Mosaic law. They also looted the
Temple of Solomon and desecrated
its sanctuary by converting it into a
“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.”
shrine to Zeus. Word of the atrocities
spread swiftly and general rebellion
erupted across Judea.
When a Seleucid officer named
Apelles took his small command to
occupy the Judean village of Modiin,
its inhabitants, led by their priest
Mattathias, rose up and wiped out the
intruders. It was the first in a long line
of military reverses for Syria in what
came to be called the “Maccabean
Revolt.”
It took a year for the Seleucids to
even learn the fate of their missing
troops. By then Mattathias had died
and one of his five sons, Judah the
Maccabee, had succeeded him as
Jewish commander. The rebels spent
the hiatus recruiting, training and
gathering information.
With a keen military mind, Judah
realized he would have to start slowly,
building up his army to the point
where it could confront the Seleucid
military machine. He recruited soldiers
and created confidence as well
as combat experience by conducting
raids and ambushes. His men
annihilated Seleucid patrols, leaving
no enemy troops alive to report the
action. The Jews used their tactical
successes to assemble an arsenal of
weapons captured in those fights.
Judah also labored to train his men in
unconventional tactics against which
their dogma-bound opponents would
be unprepared.
The Seleucids’ main battle tactic
centered on the phalanx. Heavily
armed and armored infantry were
packed together in a tight formation,
each line shoulder to shoulder. Their
smallest phalanxes contained 2,000
men deployed in areas 120 yards
wide and 15 yards deep. Soldiers
in the first five lines held their long
spears horizontally, while the men
in the 11 following lines held theirs
vertically, in reserve for those times
—US Gen. Colin Powell, July 1995
when they were needed. The mass
of a well handled phalanx could
run over any foe on a conventional
battlefield. While powerful, though,
phalanxes were unwieldy, and their
mere deployment instantly gave up all
element of surprise.
Sometime in 166, Apollonius led
2,000 Macedonians toward Jerusalem.
They passed through terrain marked
by defiles and canyons, perfect for
ambush. Dividing his own 600 men
into four sub-units, Judah deployed
at a place called Nahal el-Haramiah.
There the invaders marched blithely
into a narrow passage harboring the
well trained, hidden, prepared and
motivated Jewish warriors. It was late
afternoon when the Maccabeans fell
on the column’s vanguard, causing
havoc as the troops farther back in the
column continued to press forward,
with the Macedonians ranks, and
pikes entangled among each other.
Then an arrow struck and killed
Apollonius, while the Maccabeans
smashed into the Syrian flanks from
north, south and east. The Judeans
wiped out the Seleucids, capturing all
their weapons and equipment.
A year later the rebels wiped out
an even larger force sent by Antiochus.
Waylaying the Seleucids in the
pass of Beth-horon, Judah, wielding
the sword he had taken from
Apollonius’s corpse, led the final
assault himself, whereupon his 1,000
men slaughtered 4,000 foes.
Flush with victory, the Maccabean
army swelled with recruits as
news spread of the latest triumph.
Meanwhile, Antiochus was bedeviled
by an unrelated civil war that had
broken out in the eastern part of his
domain. That new conflict benefited
the Judeans by siphoning off forces
that otherwise would have been sent
against them.

Preoccupied with his civil war,
Antiochus sent one of his relatives,
a general named Lysias, against the
Judeans. Lysias’s level of military experience
and acumen remain unclear,
but it didn’t take an Alexander to
comprehend his instructions: “Uproot
and destroy the strength of Israel and
the remnant of Judea. Blot out all
memory of them in the place. Settle
strangers in the territory and allot the
land to the settlers.” (I Maccabees,
chapter three, verses 36-37.)
Already numbering approximately
20,000 men, the Seleucids were
further reinforced by an unrecorded
number of Idumean troops at their
sprawling encampment just to the
south of Judea. That bivouac also
hosted large numbers of slave traders,
all anticipating a bonanza upon the
defeat of the insurgents. Those merchants
brought not only chains, but
also hefty amounts of gold and silver
in anticipation of setting up a lucrative
market. The camp itself therefore
become a rich prize.
Learning from his spies the
Seleucids planned to attack at night,
Judah abandoned his own camp after
lighting a number of bonfires to make
it appear still fully occupied. While
6,000 Seleucids groped in darkness,
searching for the elusive rebels, the
Jews circled behind them to assault
their camp at dawn. And attack the
Judeans did. Amid the pandemonium
of stampeding horses and elephants,
the invaders were cut to pieces while
panicked survivors fled in disorder
toward the coast.
The victors helped themselves to
the treasures of the captured enemy
camp, which included yet another
massive cache of weapons. News of
the plunder swelled Judah’s army to
around 10,000, all spoiling for further
action.
Lysias escaped the debacle, made
it back to Syria, and frantically raised
yet another expeditionary force, hoping
to surprise the Judeans by returning
more quickly than they expected,
as well as salvaging his own reputation
with his master Antiochus. The
Maccabees, however, remained ready,
and easily routed the new force near
the city of Beth-zur in southernmost
Judea.
After Judah upended yet another
large Syrian invasion in the spring of
161, the Seleucids broke off action for
a year, lulling the Judeans into believ-
ing they had won. The Maccabean
army began to disperse, and in 160BC
the Judeans were unable to survive a
new, massive and unexpected attack.
Judah himself was killed in the final
battle.
The Maccabean Revolt died along
with the leader who had made it
possible, but it was not a real victory
for the Seleucids. Their empire had
bled too much during the eight year
uprising. Its armies were depleted and
its coffers drained. Before long, the
ascendant Roman Republic moved
in and conducted what was one of
their easiest conquests enroute to their
mastery of the Mediterranean littoral.
— Kelly Bell
Codename Blue
Peacock
During the early days of the
Cold War, western Europe was hard
pressed. The British, then responsible
for halting any potential Warsaw Pact
sweep across the Northern German
Plain, lacked the financial and manpower
resources of the United States.
So the British government came to
believe stopping the “Red hordes”
might call for desperate measures.
One solution explored was an
atomic land mine, for which a War
Office “specification” was issued in
1954. The document called for a 10
kiloton device that could be triggered
remotely from up to three miles away,
or by a clockwork timer that could
be set for up to an eight-day delay. A
study followed in 1955. Its conclusion
was that atomic mines buried
in northern Germany could indeed
thwart a Soviet advance across the flat
expanses of the British sector.
In 1955, Britain’s nuclear arsenal
was limited to one design, the “Blue
Danube” bomb, first tested in 1952
and then in service with the Royal Air
Force. The Blue Danube, a plutonium
bomb, had been created as a free-fall
aerial device, carried to its target in a
bomber. In 1955 it was the only nuclear
weapon immediately available
to the British. The design became the
basis for the army’s new atomic land
mine, codenamed “Blue Peacock.”
Converting the Blue Danube to
an army munition offered challenges.
The weapon was big: Blue Danube
weighed 10,000 pounds, was over 24
feet long and five feet, two inches in
diameter. It was intended to be stored
under climate-controlled conditions,
and it was expected to be under the
control of the British military until
it had been delivered. Blue Peacock
would – by its very nature as a supermine
– be left alone for up to a week
in primitive field conditions.
Blue Peacock ended up using the
Blue Danube detonation system in
a larger casing that was also made
waterproof and airtight. It could
therefore be buried, dumped into a
lake or river, or simply left on the
ground. A surface burst would create
a 375 foot crater. Buried 35 feet deep,
Blue Peacock would dig a hole 640
feet across.
Since the bomb would be untended,
anti-tamper devices were
also added. The casing was pressurized,
and pressure switches and tilt
switches were added. Once armed,
Blue Peacock would detonate 10 seconds
after being moved, if the casing
lost pressure (for example, if gunfire
punctured it), or if it was filled with
water.
Field tests indicated a European
winter might chill the bomb below
the detonator’s operating temperature.
Therefore the bomb was insulated
with fiberglass batting, and a unique
heating system added – live chickens.
The birds were to be sealed inside
the casing with a week’s worth of
birdseed and water. The fowls’ body
heat would keep the detonator warm
enough to fire, at which time Blue
Peacock would flash-fry the birds
along with everything else within
its range. [Talk about a “chicken
outfit”…ed.]
The Army Council ordered 10
Blue Peacock mines in July 1957, and
Britain’s atomic weapons establishment
built two inert prototypes later
that year. One of them was used to
test the design in a gravel pit near
Seven Oaks. Only then did wiser
heads decide the project was too
desperate.
Blue Peacock had meanwhile
grown to 16,000 pounds (weight, not
cost in Sterling). Operational deployment
of the weapon would therefore
have required an item the size a
large locomotive boiler to have been
secretly trucked around Germany.
Various devices were to be used to
disguise the mine’s purpose. One
cover story called for Blue Peacock to
be described as “an atomic power unit
for troops in the field” – an accurate,
strategy & tactics 33

34 #232
if incomplete, description.
The best reason for second
thoughts actually came from the 1955
policy paper. In it, the army’s chief
engineer stated: “A skillfully sited
atomic mine would not only destroy
facilities and installations over a large
area, but would deny occupation of
the area to an enemy for an appreciable
time due to contamination.”
In 1954, Britain still considered
Germany to be an occupied nation;
however, by 1958 it had become an
ally. Sanguine destruction of facilities
and installations and widespread
atomic contamination was therefore
no longer acceptable.
The Ministry of Defense canceled
Blue Peacock in February 1958.
Newer, smaller atomic weapons
replaced the Blue Danube. One of
the Blue Peacock casings was tested
to destruction, and the other idled
quietly at an RAF base before being
consigned to a historical collection
at the end of the Cold War. Blue
Peacock became just another curious
footnote in history.
Blue Peacock again gained attention
in the spring of 2004, when
documents relating to its development
were included in an exhibition
at the British National Archives.
While other information about it had
been released in 2002, the exhibit
contained the first public mention of
the avian heating system. The press
release including that information
was issued on April 1 st – April Fool’s
Day. Yet the story was less an April
Fool than an ironic coincidence. As
the head of education and interpretation
at the National Archives told the
BBC: “The Civil Service does not
make jokes.”
—Mark N. Lardas
naval mine Warfare During
the Cold War
Naval mine warfare between
1945 and 1990 was dominated by the
two contending major naval powers,
the Soviet Union and NATO (North
Atlantic Treaty Organization). In
both cases, World War II experience
shaped their systems, both operationally
and technologically.
In World War II, German minefields
had so constrained Soviet naval
operations that afterward the Soviets
seized and held large numbers of Ger-
many’s mine warfare experts in order
to exploit their knowledge. In fact,
most Soviet mines and mine warfare
tactics of the Cold War were direct
derivatives of World War II German
mines, mine warfare research, and
tactics. More, the Soviets came to
maintain the world’s largest mine
warfare and mine countermeasures
forces.
NATO also took mine warfare
seriously, but having enjoyed greater
naval success against the Germans in
World War II, showed less interest in
studying or exploiting the defeated
nation’s operations, research and
systems. Nonetheless, NATO navies
dedicated significant resources to
mine countermeasures. Having relied
predominantly on the British for mine
countermeasure support in European
waters, and having encountered relatively
few mines in their campaigns
against the Japanese in the Pacific,
the US Navy took almost no interest
at all. That would prove embarrassing
on several occasions.
Mines come in two primary
categories: moored and bottom. They
also come in two types determined by
their method of detonation: contact or
influence. A contact mine detonates
when the target makes contact with it,
while influence mines are detonated
by the target’s influence on the maritime
environment (for example, how
it changes the magnetic field, water
pressure or electrical potential, or the
sound it puts into the water).
Moored mines are tethered on a
cable moored to a casing resting on
or above the bottom. Bottom mines,
as the name indicates, lie on the
bottom. Moored mines can be either
contact-detonated or influence-detonated,
while bottom mines are always
influence mines. The tactics used to
counter mines differ according to the
category and type used. In fact, the
oldest (and long-considered obsolete)
moored contact mine was the most
common naval mine employed operationally
during the Cold War.
Naval mine warfare can also be
broken into two categories, offensive
and defensive. Offensive mine
warfare consists of those operations
conducted to attack the enemy’s
maritime operations and interests.
Normally that means they’re conducted
in enemy waters or waters
used by the enemy. Defensive mine
warfare consists of operations under-
taken to protect friendly forces, their
activities and interests. In either case,
mine warfare can consist of mine-laying
or countermeasures (operations
conducted to neutralize mines).
Mine-laying is the simpler of
the two operations. Virtually any
platform (surface ship, submarine or
aircraft) can lay mines. For example,
when Iran laid mines in the Persian
Gulf in the late 1980s, they did so
from a wide variety of innocuous
surface craft, including dhows (small
wooden cargo ships) indigenous to
those waters. The Iranians’ purpose
was to hide their involvement in a
mining campaign the international
community had condemned. Their
responsibility could not be established
conclusively until a US Navy vessel
captured an Iranian supply ship delivering
mines to one of the minelayers.
That incident constituted the basis for
one of the growing concerns of the
late- and post-Cold War eras: terrorist
use of mines to attack shipping.
Where mine-laying is relatively
simple and safe, mine countermeasures
are complex and dangerous.
Minesweeping is the oldest method,
using ships that tow their countermeasures
equipment through the area
where mines are suspected or known
to be. Minesweepers are constructed
of non-ferrous materials (wood, reinforced
fiberglass), use special propulsion
systems, and are heavily sounddampened
to reduce their “influence
signatures,” all in order to prevent
detonating any influence mines over
which they might pass. Since they
do precede their own “sweep gear,”
however, they face a high risk of
inadvertent detonation from the very
mines they’re sweeping. (The US
pioneered the use of helicopters for
minesweeping during the late 1970s
to provide its mine countermeasures
forces greater mobility and speed.)
Mine hunting is employed against
bottom mines, and involves using
precision sonar and other equipment.
Before the late 1980s, divers would
be sent to investigate and disarm
suspected bottom mines. It was slow,
difficult and dangerous work. As the
Cold War ended, however, most Western
mine hunting began to be done
using underwater remotely piloted
vehicles to approach and destroy suspected
mines. The US also pioneered
the use of highly trained dolphins for
that mission.

The method of mine countermeasures
used in any one place is always
determined by the type of mine
encountered. Moored mines can be
swept by gear towed behind minesweepers.
Once such mines’ mooring
cables are cut, they float to the
surface where they can be destroyed
by gunfire. Bottom influence mines,
however, particularly those that try
to defeat influence sweeping through
the use of a counter-countermeasure,
are more difficult to defeat. Influence
sweeping requires the sweeper to tow
a system behind it that simulates the
various influences ships impart on
their environment. The intent is to
detonate the mines at a safe distance
behind the sweeper.
Without foreknowledge of the
mines’ type (magnetic, magneticacoustic,
pressure, etc), the commander
must simulate all the influences
the mines may be targeting. By the
1970s, some mines could also be set
for specific target types (for example,
cruisers or aircraft carriers instead of
destroyers), further complicating the
mine countermeasure problem.
Mines with counter-countermeasures
allowed a pre-set number of
targets to pass before detonating.
Others had pre-set activation and deactivation
dates, either to ensure safe
passage during set periods, establish
a “sanitation date,” or just to further
complicate the mine countermeasures
problem. Defeating those mines
necessitated extensive sweeping for
several weeks just to provide a probability,
not certainty, of safe passage.
Worse, since pressure mines relied on
the level of pressure engendered by
a ship’s passage through the water,
phenomena that varied according to a
ship’s size and speed, they could not
be fooled by simulation devices. They
could only be detonated through the
use of a specially designed ship of the
size and type that generated both the
required “pressure wave” and had the
reinforced hull and systems to survive
the blast. Ultimately, the problems of
defeating pressure mines led to the
development of mine hunting.
Mine hunting is even slower than
minesweeping and was, in its early
days, far more dangerous. Though sonar
and other sensors can detect bottom
mines, those systems also detect
a large number of non-mine objects
with similar shapes and dimensions.
Further, tides, marine life and bottom
materials tend to obscure mines over
time. Hence every suspected mine has
to be investigated individually. Some
mines have anti-diver devices, either
attached or placed nearby, which
detonate when any small metallic
object remains near it for a set time.
All the dangers involved led
Western nations to develop and rely
increasingly on methods that didn’t
require divers. The American use of
dolphins in Vietnam and the Persian
Gulf was a controversial solution.
Most Western nations relied on
remote underwater robotic systems as
the Cold War drew to an end, as does
the US today.
Mine warfare figured prominently
in four of the hot wars that occurred
during the Cold War: Korea, Vietnam,
the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and the
Iraq-Iran War. Ironically, World War
I-era moored contact mines dominated
the minefields of all but the second
of those conflicts. The US Navy was
also embarrassed by its lack of mine
countermeasures forces in three of
those wars, and only avoided such
embarrassment again in Vietnam
because the North Vietnamese didn’t
employ mines to any significant
degree.
The US encountered few mines
during the early naval operations of
the Korean War. Expecting a short
war and seeing little risk of US
involvement, North Korea saw little
need for protective minefields when
its troops invaded South Korea in
1950. Then Gen. MacArthur’s landing
at Inchon changed Pyongyang’s
strategic thinking. China’s leaders
were also aware of the US Navy’s
amphibious capabilities, and they
therefore emphasized the use of
mines in coastal defense operations.
The two allies laid thousands of
Soviet-supplied naval mines off North
Korea’s coast in 1950-51, placing
the largest concentrations around the
country’s eastern ports. With almost
all of America’s mine countermeasures
units having been decommissioned
after World War II, the USN
had to reactivate Imperial Japanese
Navy mine sweeping units, including
their crews, to sweep the thousands of
moored contact mines encountered off
Wonsan and Hangnam harbors. That
embarrassment rejuvenated America’s
mine warfare consciousness and
efforts in the 1950s, but those new
forces were placed in reserve by the
early 1960s.
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War saw
the next significant employment of
naval mines when Egypt closed the
Suez Canal and the Israeli port of
Eilat by laying thousands of mines
in and around their approaches. The
Egyptians sprinkled bottom influence
magnetic mines among the moored
contact mines in their minefields.
Though the minefields didn’t affect
operations by the Israeli Navy’s
smaller combatants, it prevented their
destroyers and transports from using
those waters. It also deterred merchant
shipping from entering Eilat.
Fortunately for Israel, the fields off
Eilat contained a manageable number
of mines. The moored contact mines
were cleared in a few days, but it took
several months of mine hunting by
divers to clear away the bottom influence
mines.
It was the US that employed naval
mines in the largest numbers and to
the greatest effect during the Vietnam
War. The Viet Cong occasionally used
floating mines in South Vietnam’s
rivers, and the North Vietnamese
employed a few moored contract
mines on an ad hoc basis. The US,
however, used aircraft-dropped mines
to close North Vietnam’s Haiphong
Harbor and other ports to shipping.
Equipped with a variety of sensor and
counter systems, those mines proved
far beyond North Vietnam’s ability to
sweep, closing the ports completely
to shipping. The impact of those
closures contributed to bringing North
Vietnam to the negotiating table,
and the agreement that ended that
war included a requirement for the
US to clear the minefields, a process
that took over two months. A few
months later, those same USN mine
countermeasures units joined with
Egyptian forces to conduct the mine
clearing effort that allowed the Suez
Canal to be reopened after eight years
of closure. As the 1980s approached,
however, the US refocused its naval
forces on open ocean operations and
left mine countermeasures to its allies.
Iran employed mines surreptitiously
during its war with Iraq in the
1980s. Since laying mines in international
waters violated international
law, Iran conducted its operations
covertly, using nominally civilian surface
craft to lay moored contact mines
in the Persian Gulf’s shipping lanes.
strategy & tactics 35

36 #232
Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups
also used moored contact mines off
the coast of Lebanon during that
same time; however, that campaign
inflicted little damage and proved a
major embarrassment once Tehran’s
involvement was exposed.
It also embarrassed the USN.
Lacking effective mine countermeasures
units that could operate in
the Persian Gulf, American forces
escorting tankers there had to have
the tankers they were protecting precede
them. In effect, they used those
tankers as ad hoc minesweepers. The
need to do so was driven home on 14
April 1988, when the USS Samuel B.
Roberts was nearly sunk by an Iranian
mine. A modern warship was put
out of action for months, and nearly
sunk, by a mine using 80-year-old
technology. The Iranian mine wasn’t
even as advanced technologically as
the 1906 British mine from which it
reportedly was derived. That incident
highlighted mine warfare’s potential
cost-effectiveness and inspired a
new round of American investment
in mine countermeasures. The USN,
however, still had to rely on its allies’
mine countermeasures units during
the 1991 Gulf War, and two of its
ships suffered mine damage during
that deployment.
The Cold War was not marked
by major naval engagements, not
even during the hot war conflicts
that occurred during that era such as
Vietnam. Naval mine warfare was a
key concern, however, and remains so
in the present day. It doesn’t take high
technology to make or deploy a naval
mine. They are cheap and easy to
make and lay, particularly if accurate
placement isn’t a concern. Their existence
or suspected presence in a harbor
or shipping lane has a paralyzing
effect on the affected governments
and populations. Defeating naval
mines and, perhaps more importantly,
identifying the perpetrators who made
or laid them, will remain a political
and military concern well into this
new century.
— Carl Otis Schuster
Peace in Cambodia: untaC
The UN Transitional Authority in
Cambodia (UNTAC) was the largest
UN operation conceived until that
time, with an order of battle of up to
22,000 personnel and US $3 billion
in funding. It also had the broadest
mandate ever given a UN force since
the end of the Korean War: run the
country until elections could be held,
while also overseeing the withdrawal
of the Vietnamese Army, and the
repatriation from refugee camps of
nearly a quarter of the population.
UNTAC also marked firsts for several
of the participant nations, as China
deployed peacekeepers and Japan
shared with Australia the leading diplomatic
role in running the mission.
Bulgarian infantry also participated
for the first time.
As has often happened with UN
efforts, carelessness and expediency
came close to defeating everyone’s
best efforts. Though they had the
mandate and manpower to do more,
the international civil administration
merely co-opted the existing government
infrastructure. Predictably, that
offended the other three factions in
the country, with the enraged Khmer
Rouge, who had never been enthusiastic
about UNTAC, pulling out of the
process altogether.
Following elections, King Sihanouk
was reinstated as the titular head
of government, with his son Prince
Ranariddh, in his capacity as leader
of the royalist Funcinpec Party, and
Hun Sen, of the Cambodian People’s
Party, serving as joint deputy prime
ministers. Unfortunately, the elections
merely papered over existing
divisions, and all parties maintained
control of parts of the armed forces,
which were actually “national” in
name only.
On 5 July 1997 the unstable
situation changed when Hun Sen
launched a coup with only minimal
armed conflict. He claimed the coup
was triggered by Ranariddh’s open
alliance with the Khmer Rouge, at
that time under Khieu Samphan’s
control following Pol Pot’s death.
One of the most important factors in
the new government was the potential
change to the military status quo, as
the Khmer Rouge were still under
arms. In fact, the future of Cambodia
remains uncertain to this day.
Factions
Besides the Vietnamese staying
behind, who are a mix of settlers,
retired soldiers and members of the
existing (Hang Samrin) government’s
forces, there were four main Cambodian
factions during the UNTAC
period. In descending order of importance,
they were as follows.
The Heng Samrin-led, Vietnamesebacked,
government based on the National
Union Front for the Salvation of Kampuchea
Party, which had been formed when
the Khmer Rouge split into pro-China and
pro-Vietnam factions during 1977 and
1978.
The Khmer Rouge were the rabidly
Maoist communist remnants of the murderous
Pol Pot regime, still supported by
China and at least ideologically still under
Pol Pot’s sway.
The Armee Nationale Sihanoukist
(ANS) was composed of the armed supporters
of Prince Sihanouk, who had been
deposed by his prime minister Lon Nol. His
faction received the largest share of western
support during the guerilla war against the
Vietnamese occupation.
The Khmer Peoples National Liberation
Front (KPNLF) had its origins in the old
American-backed Lon Nol government that
had come to power in 1970.
Peacekeepers
For administrative purposes Cambodia
was divided by UNTAC into 11 regions,
usually along provincial boundaries,
each under the titular command of the
peacekeeping nation deploying the largest
force. At the time of the elections, when
UNTAC’s maximum strength was reached,
there were a total of 15,991 military
personnel including nearly 900 observers,
3,359 civilian police and about 1,600 other
UN civilians and contractors deployed.
The following military order of battle
lists units by those regions along with the
unit’s main base town.
1 – Sisophon: Dutch infantry battalion
(including marines).
2 – Siem Riep: Bangladeshi infantry battalion,
Indian medical company, Polish
logistics company, French engineering
company.
3 – Phnom Thbeng Meanchey: Pakistani
infantry battalion.
4 – Stung Treng: Uraguayan infantry battalion,
Indian medical platoon, Singaporean
logistics platoon.
4 – Kratie: Polish engineer company.
5 West – Kampong Thom: Indonesian
infantry battalion, Chinese engineer battalion,
Polish logistics platoon, Indian
medical (field ambulance) platoon.
5 East – Kampong Cham: Indian infantry
battalion, Polish logistics company.
6 – Sihanoukville: French infantry battalion,
Polish logistics company, Philippine
naval patrol.

7 – Takeo: Japanese engineer battalion.
8 – Battambang: Malaysian infantry battalion, Thai engineer
battalion, Pakistani logistics company, Australian
signals company and air transport group, multi-national
mine clearance training unit.
9 East – Kampong Speu: Bulgarian infantry battalion.
9 West – Kampong Chnang: Tunisian infantry battalion,
Malaysian air transport group.
Phnom Penh: Ghana and Indonesian infantry battalions,
German medical battalion, Australian signals battalion,
French air transport group, Uruguayan naval patrol.
Most of those contingents were composite forces rather
than standing formations. Forty New Zealanders served
with the Australian communications unit. There was also a
multi-national MP company with a maximum strength of
217, including 20 Australians.
Notable Events
On 26 February 1992 an Australian soldier was wounded
when his helicopter took ground fire in the Kompong
Thom area.
April 1993 was the most dangerous month for UN military
personnel, with seven fatalities and 15 injured. Three
separate incidents around Kampong Speu left four
Bulgarians dead and nine wounded. One Japanese UN
employee and his interpreter also died.
During early May 1993, a Japanese policeman was killed
and 13 UN personnel were injured.
On May 20 1993, a rocket fired during factional fighting
missed its target and killed two UN observers in the
Chinese engineer compound in Kampong Cham.
On 27 July 1993, an Australian soldier on guard at UNTAC
headquarters in Phnom Penh killed a Cambodian policeman
after he fired at a criminal suspect fleeing past the
building.
In August 1993, an Australian soldier was forced to
smash his radio before fleeing from a Khmer Rouge attack
with his mixed nationality team. The team was rescued by
Thai soldiers and returned to their base unharmed. That
same month, the commander of the Australian contingent,
Lt. Col. Russell Stuart, faced charges after his service pistol
was stolen along with his vehicle. And Chinese troops were
forced to wear differently patterned uniforms because the
Khmer Rouge were extensively supplied with standard
green Chinese uniforms and weapons. A German army
medic was shot dead in a motorcycle drive-by in Phnom
Pehn. After the trouble experienced during the repatriation
homeward of the first 400 Bulgarians, Australian military
police escorted the second flight home.
A total of 41 military personnel became casualties, as
well as four observers and 14 civilian police.
operation Gemini
Australia’s military involvement in UNTAC reached its
peak strength of 600 during the elections, winding down
to 150 by the time UNTAC disbanded. There were also
substantial contributions to the civilian police and election
forces. Australia also provided the initial military commander,
Lt Gen. John Sanderson, who retired in October
1992.
—Peter Schutze
the Long tradition:
50 issues ago, S&t 182:
Balkans 1941. Joseph Miranda drives in
with a simulation of the Wehrmacht’s 1941
blitzkrieg against Yugoslavia and Greece.
Veteran gamer Maj. Donald Mack marches
into the Sudan with “Chinese” Gordon
and the Khartoum campaign, while David
Nicholas takes to the barricades with the
Freikorps. Pierre Corbeil, Charles Plummer
and Jay Schindler go Beyond Wargaming
with an analysis of the simulation game as
a professional tool. And Anthony Howarth
closes out with a look at unit cohesion during
the wars of religion.
100 issues ago, S&t 132:
iron Cross.Tactical level combat in World
War II, brought to you by Mark Sprock
and Allyn Vannoy. Thomas Kane updates
everyone on the fighting in Beirut, and Al
Nofi goes to historical extremes with pieces
on both the gladiators and the proliferation
of weapons in the modern world.
150 issues ago, S&t 82:
fifth Corps. This was something of a
modern warfare issue, with Fifth Corps, a
grand tactical simulation of the US Army
versus the Soviets in a “what if” World War
III. Design credits include the prolific Jim
Dunnigan, the solid John Butterfield and
the artistic Redmond Simonsen. Elsewhere
in the issue, Col. Trevor Dupuy (yes, that
Col. Dupuy!) analyzes the Suez battles in
the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and Charles
T. Kamps covers NATO’s Central Front.
Rounding out the issue and keeping readers
up to date are Briefings and FYI.
200 issues ago, S&t 32:
napoleon at War. John Young uses the
Napoleon at Waterloo system to wargame
the Battle of Borodino, where the Grande
Armee took on the Russians on the road to
Moscow in one of the biggest bloodbaths
of the Napoleonic era. The game puts the
slightly superior French against the entrenched
Russians in a contest that is often
not decided until the last roll of the die.
Issue articles include Al Nofi’s Napoleon
at War and Lenny Glynn and Dave Isby
on Pershing in the Great War. Plus Pass in
Review and Sid Sackson on games.
strategy & tactics 37

38 sigNature #232
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S&T 233 Dagger Thrusts. What if Patton had been
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strategy & tactics 39

40 #232

Der Weltkrieg SerieS
the Western Front:
1914-1918
Der Weltkrieg series #6. The Western
Front: 1914-1918, contains six scenarios,
each covering a major WWI campaign
fought in France or Belgium. It can also
be played as a start-to-finish simulation
of the entire western front, or linked with
other games in the series into a grandcampaign
covering all the European fronts.
The scenarios are: “August 1914: The Schlieffen Plan;” “May 1915:
Ypres;” “February 1916: Verdun;” “July 1916: The Somme;” “April
1917: Nivelle’s Offensive;” “March 1918: The Kaiser’s Battle.”
Components: one 22” x 34” mapsheet, 1,680 die-cut counters, standard and
scenario books, corps displays, and player aid cards.
taNNeNberg & galiCia
Der Weltkrieg series #2. This is a division/brigade level WW1 game
that covers the campaign in East Prussia and southern Poland in 1914.
You assume the role of the commander of either the German or Allied
armies. The forces available to you are
the same ones commanded by the historic
participants.
Components: 560 counters, two 22x 34” mapsheets,
player aid cards, standard and scenario
rule books.
serbia & romaNia
Der Weltkrieg series #3. Covers the World
War I campaigns in Serbia and Romania
with links between the two campaigns as
well as to the previous volumes.
Components: two 22x 34” mapsheets, one
11x17” mapsheet, 560 die-cut counters, standard and scenario rule books, player
aid cards.
$69. 95
the sChlieFFeN plaN
Der Weltkrieg series #1. This game covers the fluid warfare of the
western front from 1 August to 15 November 1914. You assume the
role of commander of either the German or Allied armies. The forces
available to you are the same as those commanded by the historic participants,
but it is up to you to make your own strategic decisions and
execute your own plans as you see fit.
Components: one 22 x 34 inch mapsheet, a rule book and player aid cards, 560
die-cut counters and one die.
$39. 95
$39. 95
$39. 95
Don’t forget to pledge for the next two games:
Grand Campaign (#13) and middle east Campaigns (#17). information
on the Pledge page on the Decision Games website.
Send To: Decision Games,
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or use the order form on page 55
italiaN FroNt: 1915-1918
Der Weltkrieg series #5. This wargame contains five separate scenarios,
and can be linked with East Front (and later West Front)
games of the series for duration games.
May 1915: 1st Isonzo
The first battles along the Isonzo are a futile foreshadowing
of what is to come.
May 1916: Strafexpedition
The Chief of Staff of the Austro Hungarian army, Conrad von
Hotzendorff, feels the time is right to strike a blow against Italy.
He ignores the advice of German Chief of staff von Falkenhayn,
who sees the main threat coming from the Russian front.
The Italians in the southern Tyrol have neglected their rear area
defenses. That, and the fury of the Austro-Hungarian attack, puts
the Italian army in peril. Cadorna, its commanding general, rushes
reinforcements to the front. It is a dicey affair, but the Italian lines
hold; the threat along the Isonzo is checked.
May 1917: 10th Isonzo
In endless offensives, valiant Italian infantry go over the top
and into the maelstrom of the Isonzo. Each battle differs from the
last only by its increasing intensity and skyrocketing casualty list.
In the end, both armies are exhausted. The Italians have become
weary of the war, but the Austrians believe one more effort on the
Isonzo can break through.
October 1917: Caporreto
When the Central Powers strike, they break through the Italian
lines along the headwaters of the Isonzo. German and Austrian units
pour through the mountain passes and into the Italian rear areas.
Caporreto is an overwhelming victory for Germany and Austria;
but Italy is not fully defeated, and her citizens rally.
June 1918: Albrecht & Radetzky
Conrad’s attacks across the Piave are initially successful, but
his divisions then bog down. The Austrians are unable to push their
bridgeheads far enough forward to keep their pontoon bridges out
of range of Italian artillery. Unable to reinforce their spearheads
or maintain viable supply lines, the Austro-Hungarian armies fall
back, awaiting the inevitable Italian counterattack.
Components: one 22” x 34” mapsheet, 560 die-cut counters, standard and
scenario books, player aid cards.
$39. 95
strategy & tactics 41

entebbe:
turning Point of terrorism
by Kelly Bell
42 #232
On 27 June 1976, 11:35 a.m. local time, Air France
Aerobus 139, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris, touched
down at Athens International Airport. The Boeing 707
was in Athens to refuel, offload some passengers and
embark others. The situation was perfect for a hijacking—the
terminal was packed with passengers and the
Greek airport was notorious for its lax security.
A young woman and a young man boarded the
plane separately and handed their passports to a policeman
at its entrance. The woman’s passport was Ecuadorian
and identified her as M. Ortega. The man’s
was Peruvian and named him as A. Garcia. The officer
waved them aboard without bothering to examine
the contents of a handbag the man was carrying. Had
anyone gone to the trouble to check “Ortega’s” and
“Garcia’s” first-class tickets, they might have noticed,
though neither was listed as Kuwaiti, reservations had
been made in Kuwait, and on the same day of 20 June
1976.
Two young Arab men entered and sat down in row
28. One of those newcomers carried a large package
that, again, was not checked by airport security.
Eight minutes after liftoff the “Peruvian” rose from
his front-row seat and raised his champagne glass high
while facing the plane’s rear. It was a signal to his
comrades, and he and the “Ecuadorian” woman headed
for the cockpit. At that moment the two Arabs in
row 28 produced pistols and yelled, “Hands up!” Air
France 139 was being hijacked. While this seemed to
be one more hijacking in a decade known for political
violence, it would become a turning point for counterterrorism.
And it would all happen at a remote airport
in the heart of Africa—Entebbe.
in the air
The “Peruvian” pulled a handgun and a hand grenade
from his satchel and pushed his way into the
pilots’ compartment. He ordered the crew to fly to
Benghazi, Libya, where the plane refueled. The Aerobus
took on 42 tons of fuel in Libya, and at 9:35 p.m.,
local time, it lifted off and headed south. At 3:35 the
following morning with 15 minutes of fuel remaining,
Air France 139 landed at Entebbe, Uganda.
The hijackers were German-born Wilfried Bose
and his female accomplice, known only as Halima.
Bose had matriculated in the Baader-Meinhof terrorist
organization. A confirmed radical, he later joined
Dr. Wadia Hadad’s Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine (PFLP). Their Arab comrades were Haled
Haleileh and Ali el Meyari. They were met at Entebbe
by Abd-el Razak el-Abed, Jail el Arja and Faiz Jaaber.
All were members of Dr. Hadad’s PFLP.
Hadad was coordinating the operation from his
headquarters in Mogadishu, Somalia. He had a list

of 53 terrorists to be released from Israeli, American,
French and West German prisons in return for the hostages.
Hadad had chosen Entebbe partly because he believed
it beyond the reach of Israel’s military and any
possible rescue. Also attractive were Ugandan dictator
Idi Amin’s anti-Semitic views. Among other things,
Amin had stated that Adolf Hitler had not murdered
enough Jews during the Holocaust. Hadad figured the
Ugandan dictator would provide troops to protect the
operation once on the ground. And sure enough, the
hijackers were greeted warmly at Entebbe Airport by
Amin himself, who placed his army at the hijackers’
service.
The hostages were herded into the Old Terminal
building (as the structure was called) to await developments
as the Israeli government negotiated with
the PFLP. When Amin first visited the hostages he announced:
“I support the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, and I think that Israel and Zionism is
wrong. I know that you are innocent, but the guilty one
is your government. I haven’t slept since you arrived. I
haven’t yet received the demands of the Popular Front,
but I promise you that I will do everything to protect
your lives.”
jerusalem
In Jerusalem, Tuesday evening, 29 June, a cable
arrived at the foreign ministry. It was from the Israeli
embassy in Paris. Haim Baron, the prime minister’s
personal assistant, immediately took the communiqué
to Foreign Minister Yigal Allon. The message relayed
detailed instructions from Entebbe:
• All 53 terrorist prisoners to be released and brought
to Entebbe Airport.
• A plane for the hijackers to be brought to Entebbe.
• Air France must arrange the flight to Entebbe of
the terrorists imprisoned in Israel. The aircraft will
carry the prisoners released by Israel, the aircrew,
and no one else.
• The other countries requested to release prisoners
must make their own arrangements to transport
them to Entebbe.
• The ambassador for Somalia in Kampala, Uganda,
Hashi Abdulla, will represent the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine in negotiations with the
government of France, and the hijackers will recognize
no one else as representing their interests.
• France will appoint a representative who will handle
negotiations with the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine.
A 1:00 p.m., Thursday, 1 July, Israel time, was given
as the deadline for these demands being met. Though
Hadad meant business, so did the Israelis. As soon as Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and his cabinet were
clear on the situation, they ordered the military to commence
plans for a rescue mission.
Back in Entebbe the PFLP members separated the
49 non-Jewish prisoners from the Jewish ones, jamming
192 of the latter into a room 40 by 80 feet. This
segregation of prisoners reminded Yitzak David of
how SS Dr. Josef Mengele had separated him from
the rest of his family upon their arrival at Auschwitz
concentration camp in Poland. He had been healthy
enough to be selected as a slave laborer, and therefore
survived the war. His loved ones were sent straight to
the gas chambers.
On the evening of the 29 th , Israeli Army Gen. Mota
Gur, chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF),
addressed a group of high-ranking officers: “Gentlemen,
I was asked this afternoon by the prime minister
if the IDF can rescue the hijacked hostages from Entebbe
Airport. Gentlemen, what have you got to say?”
There was no shortage of suggestions.
The following day Maj. Gen. Yitzak Hofi, head of
Israel’s secret service organization, Mossad issued orders
to his operatives to gather every scrap of information
on what was transpiring at Entebbe Airport.
Rabin’s advisor on counter-terrorism and espionage,
Maj. Gen. Rehavam Zeevi, went to work assembling
a staff of Mossad’s senior intelligence agents. When
he had summoned all his operatives, he outlined mission
directives: get data and distribute it to competent
authorities, produce situation scenarios for the prime
minister and the ministerial team, keep the heads of
secret services in the diplomatic and operational picture,
and evaluate the possibilities of diplomatic and
strategy & tactics 43

44 #232
military action. Rabin quickly rejected a proposal to
drop paratroopers to free the hostages. “It would be
an Israeli Bay of Pigs,” he exclaimed, referring to the
suicidal 1962 CIA assault on Castro’s Cuba.
Israel’s Air Force was commanded by Gen. Benny
Peled, and during 30 June’s morning tactical conference
he assured his fellow military chies that Entebbe
was not beyond the range of the IDF’s C-130 Hercules
transport plane. If a rescue mission were to be carried
out, it would be the transport of choice to carry a team
of commandoes to the target zone. As Peled saw it, the
only real danger in such a mission would be if hostiles
opened fire on the aircraft as they came in to land, but
he considered that unlikely since the terrorists would
probably be taken by surprise.
At 12:30 a.m. Allon telephoned the Israeli ambassador
in Paris, Motke Gazit. “The government is meeting
in Tel Aviv, and I guess we will have a decision,
one way or another, by 10:30 or 11:00 [the morning
of the next day] at the latest. I’ll let you know the results
immediately, and you will have to relay it to the
French so they can tell Kampala before the ultimatum
expires.”
The statement was carefully worded to make it
sound like the Israeli government had decided to agree
to the hijackers’ demands. At that time the terrorists
also released their non-Jewish and non-Israeli captives.
By sundown 30 June, 105 Israelis remained imprisoned
in the sweltering Old Terminal.
The first deadline was approaching. Four hours
before it expired, Rabin addressed his top-ranking
ministers on the subject of whether to submit to the
hijackers’ demands. Allowing no one to shirk their
responsibility by abstaining, he called for a show of
hands. The gloomy politicians (who were not yet privy
to the developing plans for a rescue mission), voted
unanimously to give the terrorists what they wanted.
All were already pondering the dismal future sure to
come as other terrorists would inevitably move to ex-
Lt. Gen. Mota Gur goes over the plans.
ploit this precedent. Finance Minister Yehoshua Rabinowitz
grumbled: “We have let ourselves in for a very
dangerous example—very dangerous! Did we have
any other choice?”
The military was working desperately to create that
choice.
The newly released captives were flown to Paris.
As soon as they touched down, Israeli officials and
Mossad operatives grilled them on the site and situation.
Rabin’s officers needed to know precisely where
the prisoners were being held, how many Ugandan
soldiers were guarding the terminal, what kind of
weapons they were carrying, how they and the terrorists
were dressed, exactly what the terminal looked
like, and a plethora of other information. They found
out two cordons of Ugandan troops had encircled Old
Terminal, one just outside the building, and another
forming an outer perimeter. Floodlights illuminated
the tarmac in front of the structure.
About an hour before 2:00 p.m., Saturday, the time
limit for the imprisoned terrorists’ release, the hijackers
extended the deadline to 11:00 a.m., Sunday. At that
time Israel used the French ambassador in Kampala,
Pierre Renard, to tell the terrorists Rabin’s administration
was willing to come to terms. That bought more
time.
On the morning of 1 July, Mossad officers visited
the Israeli firm that had built Entebbe Airport and
picked up blueprints, maps and photos of the facility.
Other agents fanned out in search of even the most
obscure facts concerning the target. The Israelis were
making the most of the limited time available.
At 2:30 a.m., Friday, 2 July, Rabin summoned Gen.
Zeevi to his office for a mutual briefing on the situation.
As dawn broke over Tel Aviv, the soldiers in the
general staff building still worked feverishly. Col.
Avner Ram pointed out a crucial flaw shared by every
rescue plan proffered so far: “For the time being all of
them are crazy. They all deal with hitting the terrorists
in Entebbe without evacuating the hostages.”
An evacuation plan was quickly formulated, and,
as evening began, there seemed to be just one technical
dilemma remaining—how would the Hercules
transports be refueled for the long flight home?
That evening Lt. Col. Jonathan Netaniahu, commanding
the rescue team, assembled his men for
some quick and dirty training. The commandoes were
recruited from the elite Golani Brigade and the paratroopers
and Sayeret Matkal (the elite Israeli special
operations force), though the actual identities are still
classified. After meticulously briefing his officers,
he dismissed them at 3:00 a.m. to take naps while he
stayed up until dawn preparing supply lists for each
detachment. He later told his men the mission would
be “like a needle plunging into a body, and we are the
needle.”

thunderball
The rescue mission was code-named Operation
Thunderball (in some sources, Thunderbolt),
and on the morning of 2 July several young Israeli
men rented a couple of twin-engine planes
at Wilson Airport outside Nairobi, Kenya. Their
specified destination was the Kenyan coastal
city of Kisumu, but instead they headed for Entebbe.
They circled the airport and nearby Lake
Victoria, exposing multiple rolls of film as they
photographed the runways and all buildings and
the roads leading to them. After the youthful
spies shot every frame they had, they flew on to
Kisumu, then back to Nairobi, from where they
hastily departed. No one in Entebbe noticed the
aviators winging overhead that morning. Thunderball
was beginning. Netaniahu used their photographs
to enhance the training of his men using
mock-ups of the Entebbe terminal.
During the three days since the rescue plan
had been proposed, the IDF had learned there
were three doors into Old Terminal; terrorists
were standing guard in twos and threes (mostly
by the doors); terrorists not on guard were resting
in a side room; Ugandan soldiers were stationed
on the Old Terminal’s second floor, and the control
tower was roughly the height of a four-story
building, commanding a view of the entire area.
Using that data, Netaniahu had his men build a
sandbag rampart, complete with openings, to the
dimensions of the wall encircling Old Terminal.
Playing the parts of rescuers, terrorists and hostages,
the commandoes tirelessly practiced their
upcoming mission.
The commandoes also purchased an old white
Mercedes at a used car lot and drove it to the assembly
area, where it was meticulously serviced
and painted black so as to look like Amin’s favorite
vehicle. When the action started, that car
would be a centerpiece of the Israeli tactics.
Meanwhile, Radio Israel was repeating the
claim its government would be bargaining with
the terrorists momentarily, shattering the country’s
morale while lulling the hijackers into believing
they had won. The PFLP was demanding
the terrorists whose release it sought be brought
to Entebbe before the hostages would be freed.
The long-distance exchange would give the Israelis
an excuse to take even longer to “comply,”
and the time was being well spent.
As the rescue mission prepared to kick off,
disturbing intelligence reports began arriving
from Uganda—the terrorists were not so much
interested in freeing their imprisoned comrades as
they were in humiliating Israel before the whole
world. More details out of Entebbe pointed to the
hijackers planning to hang on to the captives af-
the terrorists
At the time of the Entebbe affair, Dr. Wadia
Hadad (a dentist) was the most dangerous man on
Israel’s most-wanted list. Forsaking dentistry for
terrorism, he took his new calling seriously. Unlike
other terror paladins, he was virtually never seen
in public and was careful not to allow himself to
be photographed. After narrowly escaping death in
a 1970 Katyusha rocket attack on his Beirut apartment,
Hadad was terrified of assassination, staying
hidden and constantly on the move. A photograph
allegedly of him printed in newspapers worldwide
following the Entebbe hijacking was a fake.
In the 1950s Hadad had joined forces with an
optician by the name of George Habash. Opening
a joint medical practice, they also founded
the Kaumion el-Arab (Arab Nationalism Movement).
Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Hadad
changed his organization’s name to the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and
began directing international terror attacks, attempting
to assassinate Israeli founding father
David Ben-Gurion He later received 5 million
dollars in exchange for the release of a hijacked
Lufthansa airliner.
Part of that ransom was used to pay the
Japanese Red Army to send some of their men
to fight as mercenaries for the PFLP and attack
travelers in Israel’s Lod Airport in 1972. With
a keen mind for finances, Hadad realized huge
sums of money were essential to establish an international
terror infrastructure, with himself as
commander. Apart from ransom and widespread
robberies of banks (mostly in Lebanon), there
were enormous contributions from oil-rich Libya,
Iraq and South Yemen. Additional income
came from smuggling stolen automobiles from
Europe into the Middle East. The man Hadad
placed in charge of the massive car theft ring
was Faiz Jaaber, who would later participate in
(and be killed during) the Entebbe operation.
Hadad and his subordinates also invested in
Arab financial houses that provided steady, dependable
profits. The huge volume of money supported
terror cells and sanctuaries throughout the
Mideast and Europe.
Hadad eventually became too radical for Habash,
and the two parted ways after the Lod attack,
which Habash had not sanctioned. Late in
June 1976, Hadad arrived in Mogadishu, Somalia,
to direct his latest offensive against Israel.
The top prisoner whose release he would demand
was Greek Catholic Bishop Hilarion Capucci, who
then resided in an Israeli prison. Capucci was serving a 12-year sentence
for smuggling hand grenades, submachineguns, detonators, pistols, carbines,
magazines and explosives into Israel for use by terrorist organizations.
The next-most-significant terror figure on the list was 29-year-old Japanese
Kozo Okamoto. A former member of the Japanese Red Army, he had
hired on with the PFLP. On 30 May 1972, he and two comrades had opened
fire on an unarmed crowd in Israel’s Lod Airport, killing 24 persons and
wounding another 72. His two fellow gunmen were killed in the attack, but
Okamoto surrendered and became a terrorist hero.
strategy & tactics 45

46 #232
ter the deal was completed, and make even more demands.
From Uganda, Renard reported to Paris: “This
business will never end.”
On the morning of 2 July, Gur presented the completed
rescue plan to Rabin. That evening, Peled
briefed the pilots who would fly the C-130s. The airmen
were astounded by their new mission. In a testament
to the project’s cloak of secrecy, they had known
nothing of the developing operation.
As the soldiers assembled for departure, Rabin’s
gravest concern was a telephoned statement made by
Amin shortly before. The dictator had remarked to
Col. Baruch Bar Lev, former head of Israel’s military
mission to Uganda: “I want to tell you in the name of
the Palestinians that if there is any aircraft noise over
the airfield other than at the times set by us, they’ll
blow up the terminal!”
Netaniahu and his superiors were already convinced
casualties would be high among the hostages
and commandoes, but considering the situation they
had no choice but to accept that possibility.
Just before 10:00 p.m., 2 July, Rabin headed for
his office to confer with his military advisors. His secretary,
Froike Poran, handed him a reassuring report
meticulously addressing the unanswered questions
that had plagued the prime minister the previous day.
The especially critical problem of how the transports
were to refuel for the return trip was solved by planning
to have them top off their tanks from the Entebbe
airport’s fuel stores.
At 11:15, Gur took over the discussion. Using
maps, photos, timetables, drawings and a detailed operational
plan, he carefully explained every aspect of
the proposal.
Following Gur’s presentation, Defense Minister
Shimon Peres pointed out the grave consequences of
submitting to terrorist blackmail:
The objective: Entebbe airport, Uganda.
“If we capitulate we will become a doormat.
Our image will be harmed as it never
has been before. So far we have never hesitated
to risk human lives when there was
a chance of saving others. We preached
to the whole world not to give in to extortion.
If we succeed, and I think we have
more than a fair chance of succeeding,
this nation will straighten its back, and
other nations will be encouraged to follow
the same path. Between the almost certain
rescue of 100 or more Israelis by military
action, and the danger to innocent people
in humiliating and doubtful negotiations,
there is no other way but to accept the first
alternative. That’s the way we have behaved
over all the years. The eyes of Israel
and the rest of the world are on us.”
Rabin sighed, rubbed his hands together and asked,
“When do the planes have to go?”
A buoyant Peres replied: “They have to take off
from central Israel for an airport in the south at 1:50
p.m.”
It was the IDF’s first-ever operation outside the
Mideast.
At 2:35 the following afternoon, Rabin, with Peres
at his side, addressed the Knesset—Israel’s Parliament.
He outlined the situation to his colleagues, dwelling on
the critical statement: “the list of prisoners demanded
from Israel is not final.”
By then the rescue aircraft were already en route,
but could have been recalled; however when the prime
minister called for a vote on whether to sanction the
rescue mission every one of the suddenly hopeful men
in attendance eagerly raised his hand.
into africa
Operation Thunderball was underway. Its objective
was to raid Entebbe International Airport and liberate
the 105 hostages taken from an Air France airliner.
The mission’s stages were:
A. Flight from Israel to Uganda (2,187 miles).
B. Land at Entebbe International Airport.
C. Raid Old Terminal, where terrorists are located.
D. Kill terrorists.
E. Transfer hostages to aircraft.
F. Refuel and take off.
The latest terrorist deadline was for 1:00 p.m. Israel
time the following day.
Back in Tel Aviv, Rabin awaited word of the commandoes’
arrival in hostile territory. Four C-130s were
flying through a storm front that had the pilots worried
about falling behind schedule. There were also two
Boeing 707s, one acting as an airborne command post,

the uganda Connection
In the late 1950s the new state of Israel needed to strengthen its diplomatic and economic ties with the outside world. Uganda, a nation
on the frontier of a hostile Arab and Muslim world, was a country whose friendship the Israelis thought worth cultivating. In April
1963, Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir signed a treaty of cooperation with newly independent Uganda. But the friendship would end
when Idi Amin seized control of the government in January 1971. Ironically, an Israeli firm had built Entebbe Airport during friendlier
times.
Amin had been chief of the Ugandan armed forces, and had initially come to power promising to restore the constitutional government
former President Milton Obote had usurped. Amin made himself dictator, however, and proceeded to establish a reputation for
torture and massacre. He gained some notoriety in the West for statements praising Hitler. Still, many Africans saw him as a shrewd
leader clearing the last vestiges of European colonialism from the continent.
In the summer of 1971 the Israelis inadvertently offended Amin. Four African heads of state flew to Israel as emissaries of the Organization
of African Unity to attempt to mediate peace in the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. Amin decided he wanted to attend, but the
Israeli government, aware he was not popular with the other African delegates, hinted a visit at that time might not be prudent. Amin’s
attempt to muscle into the African delegation was a failure. He blamed the Israelis.
Soon afterward, Amin requested a squadron of Israeli Phantom fighter jets attack neighboring Tanzania and Kenya so he could seize
tracts of land from those countries. When Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dyan refused to provide the aircraft, Amin threw in his lot
with oil-rich Libya and began virulent verbal attacks on Israel.
In March 1972, Amin began admitting student pilots from terrorist organizations into the Ugandan Air Force Academy. He also
began to compare himself to Hitler. That same month he gave Uganda’s sizable Israeli colony a few hours to get out of the country.
(Amin had perhaps another reason for his erratic policies. He had briefly visited Israel in order to be treated for syphilis, but proved a
most uncooperative patient.)
Gideon Gera, former senior officer in the Israeli military and an expert on Middle East affairs, speculated on why the terrorists had
struck in June 1976: “It seems the Palestinian question is no longer enjoying enthusiastic and growing support as it did a year ago when
it peaked with Arafat’s appearance at the U.N. The war in Lebanon, the terrible slaughter, has damaged the Palestinian organization’s
prestige, and detracted from their popularity even in the Arab world. The terror groups that thought up this hijacking wanted to prove
one thing—the war against Israel continues!”
A major policy of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was
that in negotiations with terrorists the main objective was to free
hostages rather than give in to demands to release prisoners from
Israeli jails. When a hijacking took place in a country friendly to
Israel, Rabin’s policy was that the responsibility for saving the
hostages lay with the host country. Uganda, however, was no longer
friendly to Israel, and the French (who owned the hijacked
airliner) showed little inclination to take the lead in resolving the
situation. When the Entebbe crisis broke, Rabin realized the Israelis
would have to take on the terrorists by themselves.
As for Idi Amin, he would later be overthrown following a
disastrous war with Tanzania. He fled to Saudi Arabia where he
died in 2003.
the other an airborne hospital. They were all escorted
by Israeli Air Force F4 Phantom fighters, the Phantoms
then having to turn back owing to fuel limitations.
The operation’s precise planning left no margin
for tardiness, but the weather was not severe enough to
significantly interfere. As the aircraft approached Entebbe,
the men within them strapped on equipment and
ammunition, checked their weapons, and prayed. Just
before 11:00 p.m., 3 July, a bell in the lead transport
signaled imminent landing.
on the Ground
A teen-aged soldier named Tzur Ben-Ami had been
chosen to drive the Mercedes and, as he cranked its
freshly tuned engine, Netaniahu and seven other commandoes
squeezed into the compact. More soldiers
climbed into two jeeps lashed into place behind the
Mercedes.
Ground view: hostages in front of the Entebbe terminal.
Fortunately, a passenger plane was scheduled to arrive at Entebbe
Airport at about the same time, and one runway’s landing
lights were burning, guiding in the Israelis. At 11:03, 30 seconds
behind schedule, the first Hercules touched down. Before the
plane came to a full stop, the Mercedes, closely followed by the
jeeps, was out and headed to the terminal.
More soldiers charged from the lead plane and headed for the
control tower to ensure there would be no interference from there
when the time came to leave. At that moment, the Mercedes was
approaching the terminal where the hostages were imprisoned.
The car was of a type the Israelis were not expecting to be challenged.
High-ranking Ugandan Army officers were issued black
Mercedes for their personal use, and the rescuers hoped the sen-
strategy & tactics 47

48 #232
tries would assume theirs contained at least one senior
officer. The Ugandan soldier on duty, however, signaled
the automobile and jeeps to stop. An Israeli automatic
pistol barked, and the guard fell wounded. Netaniahu
yelled at Ben-Ami: “Step on it!”
A second guard standing near the control tower fired
on the three vehicles. A paratroop sergeant in one of the
jeeps opened up with his machinegun and killed him.
Moments later the Mercedes and jeeps slid to a halt,
their occupants spilled out and charged into the terminal.
Wilfried Bose, the lead terrorist, had heard the commotion
and stepped outside to see what was happening.
A burst missed him and he ducked back inside. He
turned toward the room where his cohorts were sleeping,
bellowed, “Retreat!” and then aimed his carbine at
the huddling hostages an instant before being shot dead
by an Israeli commando
Halima hurled a hand grenade at the prisoners, but it
failed to explode. Seconds later she was gunned down
with two of her confederates. Netaniahu and his men
raced up the stairs, killed several Ugandan soldiers and
had the three-story building secure in about a minute.
Ugandans who did not resist were allowed to run
away, but there were a few in the not-yet-secured control
tower who had nowhere to go. One broke a window
and aimed his rifle at an Israeli soldier who had just
emerged from the terminal. It was Netaniahu, and the
nameless Ugandan shot him in the back.
In a few more minutes the control tower was neutralized
and the airport secured. Eighteen minutes had
elapsed since the Mercedes crossed the runway, and
the commandoes were escorting the former hostages
toward the waiting aircraft, but there were some missing.
Seventy-five-year-old Dora Bloch had become seriously
ill the previous night. The terrorists had allowed
her to be taken to a nearby hospital, and there was no
time to go after her.
Men in black cars: the Mercedes the Israelis commandos used.
Somewhere in the desert: Israeli paratroopers
pracice air assaults.
To assure there would be no aerial interception, the
Israelis blew up 11 Ugandan MiG jet interceptors on the
tarmac, while the Hercules crews hustled to refuel their
planes from the airport’s tanks. Time was running short,
however and Ugandan reinforcements were arriving.
The remaining Israelis piled into the aircraft; the pilots
cranked their engines and they all went thundering into
the stormy African sky. It was 11:43 p.m., 40 minutes
since the first plane had landed.
Homeward Bound
At Nairobi the C-130s landed and topped off their
fuel tanks. Early the next morning the transports landed
at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport to the cheers
of thousands. One of the hostages, Pasco Cohen, died of
a thigh wound suffered in the terminal from a wild burst
from one of the terrorists. Seventeen-year-old Jacques
Maimoni and elderly Ida Borowitz were two hostages
mortally wounded by terrorists during the raid.
Lt. Col. Netaniahu died moments after the planes
took off, and Israel’s government quickly changed
Thunderball’s name to Operation Jonathan in honor of
the fearless young martyr. Six of Wadia Hadad’s terrorists
were killed in the terminal, and the additional operatives
who had arrived after Air France 139 landed
survived only because they were not present during the
rescue operation. Twenty Ugandan soldiers were also
slain. Apart from Netaniahu, the only Israeli military
casualty was Sgt. Hershko Surin, killed in action.
On Amin’s direct orders four of his secret police operatives
went to the hospital and dragged Dora Bloch
from her sickbed and into a waiting car. They drove the
terrified old woman to a nearby sugar cane plantation
and shot her to death. She wasn’t the only one to feel
the Ugandan dictator’s wrath. Amin also executed some
200 of his own officers in a mass scapegoating. These
murders, of course, did nothing to change the outcome
of the Entebbe raid.
Rabin later announced, “We are steadfast in our
determination not to allow terror to harm us. We shall
strike at them in any place and at every opportunity.

the rescuers
With a distinguished military career already behind him, 30year-old
Lt. Col. Jonathan “Yoni” Netaniahu was chosen by the
general staff to command Operation Thunderball. At age 18, Netaniahu
had received his officer cadet school graduate pin from then-
Army Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, so the prime minister knew of
the young man and his abilities from way back.
Netaniahu was born in New York City in 1946, and later moved
to Israel. He joined the Israeli Army, volunteered for the paratroopers
and graduated from officer training school. He served during
the 1967 Six Day War, then briefly returned to the United States
to attend Harvard. He went back to Israel in order to engage in the
ongoing struggle against the Arabs. His brother Benjamin (who
would later go on to international fame as a counter-terrorism
expert) was a member of the top secret special operations force
called the Sayeret Matkal (known sometimes as “the Unit”). Jonathan
joined up and demonstrated his abilities in special operations,
quickly becoming the unit’s deputy commander.
In 1972 he led an Israeli commando team in a raid into Lebanon
that seized several high ranking Syrian officers to be exchanged
for Israeli pilots who had been captured. During the 1973 war he
and his men fought the Syrians on the Golan Heights. He briefly
transferred to command an armored brigade, but in June 1975 was
appointed commander of Sayeret Matkal. During the following
year he was involved with several special operations missions, all
of which have remained classified—except Entebbe.
…terror is a cancer in the body of the Free World, and Israel sees it
as her duty to lop off the malignant tentacles. It is to be hoped that
[Operation Jonathan’s] influence will not die away, that the terror
organizations will understand the capability that is the fist of the
Israeli Army.”
turning Point
The success of the Entebbe rescue mission was just what Israel
needed. Rabin and his ministers were relieved to see their country
revive from the dark mood which had blanketed the nation since the
1972 terrorist massacre of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, and
the Arabs’ battlefield successes early in the 1973 war.
The impression had been well made. Throughout the West and
even in parts of the Third World praise for the Israeli raid on Entebbe
left no doubt that there was widespread support for a new
offensive against terrorism. The IDF showed how counter-terrorist
operations could be executed even against seemingly impossible
odds. Good intelligence, thorough training and, most importantly, a
refusal to give in to demands were the winning combination.
References
Ben-Porat, Yeshayahu. Haber, Eitan. Schiff, Zeevi. Entebbe Rescue,
Dell Publishing, 1977.
Hastings, Max. Yoni: Hero of Entebbe, The Dial Press, 1979.
Kyemba, Henry. A State of Blood: The Inside Story of Idi Amin,
Ace Books, 1977.
Netaniahu, Jonathan. Self-Portrait of a Hero: The Letters of Jonathan
Netaniahu, Random House, 1980.
Lt. Col. Jonathan
Netaniahu
Route chosen for the raid.
strategy & tactics 49

Name
address
Game Scale
Units: Primarily brigade/divisional
1000 to 1500 men per strength point for
infantry, 450 to 900 men per strength
point of cavalry, 2 to 3 batteries per
strength point of artillery.
Time: Weekly turns composed of two to
three impulses.
Map: 5 miles per hex.
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50 #232
Cossacks are Coming $60.00
The Cossacks Are Coming! 2nd Edition is a brigade/division
level model of the Russian invasion of Germany in August and September
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S&H
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Kaiserschlacht 1918
This classic game covers the climactic campaigns of 1918
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The game includes the campaign scenario along with three
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Ships in its own mailing envelope. $85
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strategy & tactics 51

52 #232
Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645)
“The Legendary Swordsman”
by Lt. Col. Alistair Pope, psc (Retired)

The Early Years
In 1584, Miyamoto Musashi was born into a minor
branch of the samurai nobility. He was orphaned
at an early age and brought up by his uncle, a priest
and samurai. Little is known of his early years, but
Musashi himself has written he fought his first duel
when he was only 13 years old. Since he was the son
of a low ranked samurai, it is probable his uncle had
schooled him in kendo (or kenjutsu), sword-fighting
technique.
The duel is mentioned in the Introduction to
Musashi’s book on strategy and life, The Book of the
Five Rings, his great legacy to Japan. In it he sets out
the story of his life and the philosophy of his warrior
code: the way of the sword. The book was written
by Musashi late in life, as a series of letters to one
of his students, but was not compiled until long after
his death when his students collated the stories of his
duels and preserved his philosophy.
Musashi was an exceptional warrior who combined
the great natural abilities of a prodigy with thorough
training. His skill, courage and focused ruthlessness
made him a formidable warrior with his chosen weapon,
the sword. At 16 he fought and won another single-handed,
mortal-combat duel against a samurai. As
the samurai class lived and trained constantly for just
such professional duels, those two victories at such a
young age marked Musashi as having the potential to
be as a legendary swordsman. And such legends were
common in Japan. For example, there was Tsukahara
Bokuden who, a century before, had traveled the land
as a wandering ronin. The ronin were unattached samurai
without mentors or allegiances to specific lords.
They sometimes sought employment as teachers of
martial skills or mercenaries.
Soon after his second duel, Musashi began his own
pilgrimage as a ronin in search of enlightenment. For
the next three years his life was solely focused on developing
his martial skills and seeking enlightenment
through the way of the sword. His dedication was such
that he did not wash, was unkempt and wandered Japan
in poverty until he joined in the fight for the Shogunate
as a samurai in the pay of Hideyori, the son of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Japan in the Age of the Warlords
For many centuries Japan had been a land of constant
warfare among local warlords. Changing alliances,
assassination and a web of intrigue prevented
any single family or alliance of families from gaining
dominance. Each warlord feared if a rival, or even an
ally, became too powerful, his own power and position
would be lost. Between 1573 and 1582, the Shogun
Oda Nobunaga almost succeeded in uniting the
country before he too was assassinated. His successor,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, continued consolidating the
gains made and in the end succeeded. With Hideyo-
Spear fighting in the mountains from the Wars of the
Nambokucho period.
shi’s death in 1598, new wars of succession broke out,
ending with the defeat and death of Hideyoshi’s son
Hideyori at the decisive battle of Seki ga Hara in 1603.
Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun. He ushered in the
era of his Tokugawa clan, which maintained control
of the country well into the 19th century. Musashi, age
19, fought at Sekigahara on Hideyori’s side, and barely
escaped with his life from the merciless slaughter
that took place afterward.
The Tokugawas influenced every part of Japanese
society. They established rules of behaviour that affected
education, law and government, creating a rigid
structure of four classes: samurai (including the ruling
elite), farmers, artisans and merchants. Under the
Tokugawa dynasty’s laws, only a samurai could wear
the long sword.
strategy & tactics 53

54 #232
Musashi the Ronin
The warlords maintained large private armies of
samurai to defend their estates and extend their power
over weaker neighbours. By cleverly controlling the
movement of the warlords and by the use of spies and
assassins, the Tokugawas maintained their position.
Consequently, the need to maintain private armies declined
and many samurai found themselves without
work. They became ronin (“wave men”) and offered
their swords to fight as the opportunity arose. Many of
the warrior brotherhood gave up the struggle to maintain
their status and became artisans or merchants.
Those samurai who remained in service had little
to occupy them. Real or imagined insults frequently
resulted in duels and deadly combat, simply as tests of
skill. A ronin depended on his courage, skill and reputation
to precede him and make him a welcome guest
at the castles of local lords. With so many professional
warriors in the land, the martial arts flourished among
the nobility and was regarded as the highest form of
study.
It was within that context Musashi joined the ranks
of the ronin. Under the new class system he had been
granted high status but no means of support. So he
wandered throughout Japan, following the tide of fortune
and seeking enlightenment. Still, there were many
brave and skilled samurai who did not fear Musashi.
They too had no fear of death and were willing to test
their skill and courage by challenging him to duels—
duels from which Musashi inevitably emerged the victor.
In 1605, Musashi arrived in Kyoto and began a
vendetta against the powerful Yoshioka clan of fencing
instructors. It is unclear if the feud extended back
to his father, but it resulted in a series of duels between
Musashi and several of the Yoshiokas. The first fight
Kendo, Zen & Shinto
Japanese society developed a unique combination of religion and the
military arts. Kendo became an integral part of Japanese society and was
interwoven into religion. The ultimate enlightenment for a warrior was
to spiritually accept death in combat. For the samurai the abandonment
of life without regret was the goal. Killing an opponent or being killed in
combat were outcomes to be accepted with equanimity. That is why the
last chapter of Musashi’s book is called “Void” in which the understanding
of the student has reached such heights the knowledge of all things
reduces everything to nothing. The end becomes the beginning and everything
is simplicity.
Few samurai claimed to have ever achieved that state of consciousness.
To the Western mind it is an almost incomprehensible concept,
though Zen precepts are often quoted by Westerners as a way of providing
insight into the unknowable.
Shintoism is essentially a peaceful religion, but it also was preferred by
the samurai class. It recognized death as a transcendence from one state to
another and was therefore particularly appropriate for those who routinely
faced their own demise. For Musashi, it was no unattainable goal—it was
a life’s quest and one he claimed to have succeeded in achieving.
occurred because Musashi insulted Seijiro, head of the
Yoshioka clan. To add further insult, Musashi fought
Seijiro with a wooden sword while Seijiro used a
steel blade. Musashi defeated him easily and beat him
fiercely when he fell. Seijiro lost face and withdrew
from the samurai ranks. He had been defeated with
inferior weapons and had survived.
This insult to the clan could not go unanswered,
and Seijiro’s brother, Denshichiro, issued his own
challenge. In a few seconds of combat Musashi killed
his opponent with a blow to the head with his wooden
sword. On the third occasion the challenge came from
a boy who had no chance against Musashi, but it was
an ambush. Many heavily armed Yoshioka retainers
were present at the appointed site determined to kill the
famous swordsman, but it was Musashi who surprised
them. He rushed from hiding and in seconds fought his
way through the small army of warriors determined to
kill him. It was a ruthless, fanatically courageous and
impressive demonstration of his unparalleled martial
skills.
As a result of those duels Musashi’s fame spread
throughout Japan. Musashi found his reputation led
to more and more challenges. Not every duel was to
the death, but anyone crossing blades with him could
not be certain of that. In the Niten Ki, or Two Heavens
Chronicle, his followers recorded each of his contests.
In eight years he fought over 100 duels and won them
all, killing at least 60 of his opponents. Musashi’s opponents
used real swords, but he had become so convinced
of his own invincibility he usually preferred to
use a wooden practice sword. Even so, he carried his
long and short steel swords at all times. For instance,
when he killed Shishido Baikin with a knife during a
duel, Baikin’s followers attacked him and he had to
draw both his blades to fight them off.
Musashi continued to find employment as a mercenary
in several local wars, and continued to duel with
all-comers. In Edo, he once defeated another famous
samurai, Muso Gonosuke, with a willow sword. He
did not kill Gonosuke, who chivalrously accepted his
defeat as Musashi struck him with his willow while
avoiding the cut of Gonosuke’s sharp steel. After
further wanderings, Musashi visited Izumo province
where he defeated both Lord Matsudaira and his fencing
instructor in mock combat duels, though both his
opponents used real weapons. At Matsudaira’s invitation,
Musashi stayed on as his teacher.
Probably Musashi’s most famous fight—and the
one in which he probably came closest to losing—was
with Sasaki Kojiro in 1612. The duel was to be held
on an island near Ogura. Musashi arrived late by boat
and was particularly unkempt, even by his standards.
His weapon was a wooden sword fashioned from an
oar. Kojiro’s first slash cut the scarf from Musashi’s
head, narrowly missing him. Musashi’s riposte was
true and smashed into Kojiro’s skull, killing him. As

The Age of the Samurai
The geographic isolation of Japan guarded the islands from invasion by the Mongol and
Chinese Empires, and also shielded the Japanese from the influences of the wider world. As
a consequence, Japan developed a unique political and military culture.
Ancient Japanese society was theoretically based on the Confucian ideal of a central
government ruled by an emperor. Those in the army were essentially armed civil servants,
instruments of the state. In AD 684 a law was passed that made every peasant liable for
military service in the rmperor’s army when required; however, that system broke down
in periods of protected conflict. The Gempei War of the 12 th century, essentially a feud between
powerful military families, resulted in Mimanota Yoritomo declaring himself Shogun
(supreme barbarian-fighting general). In effect, the Shogun was military dictator.
For the next several centuries, the Shogunate dominated the military and political
spheres, with the emperor reduced to a shadowy figurehead. Under the Shogunate, troops
were increasingly provided by daimyos (local nobility) from their retainers. Those retainers
became the samurai military caste. In the latter part of the 16th century, Oda Nobunaga
and Toyotomi Hideyoshi unified Japan with the usual bloodbath. Hideyoshi would go on
to invade Korea and fight the Chinese in a pointless war. A brief civil war followed, with
Tokugawa Ieyasu finally coming out on top. By the mid-17th century, the power of the
Tokugawa Shogunate was such
that peace and unity reigned in
Japan until the coming of the
Americans in 1854.
Samurai Weapons & Tactics
“Samurai” literally means “one in service”, that
is, a soldier. The Samurai traditionally carried two swords, the long
(katana or tachi) and the short (wakizashi or tanto). Japanese blades were
constructed from multiple strips of iron and steel. The former gave the blade
flexibility, the latter its razor sharpness.
The longbow was also a samurai weapon, and much was made of the art of
skillfully drawing an arrow and firing. Interestingly, despite the length of the
weapon, the Japanese bow was short ranged. Consequently, the Japanese were
quick to take to the arquebus (an early musket) when they were introduced by
European merchants in the 16th century.
A wide array of spears and glaives, such as the naginata were also used.
The latter were frequently carried by peasant soldiers, or ashigaru. Japanese
cavalry were skilled in horse archery, though they frequently dismounted to
fight.
There is little evidence of military units such as European regiments in
samurai armies. Instead, samurai and ashigaru apparently fought as warbands
under the leadership of various daimyos.
The samurai made much of individual combat, even in pitched battle, and
the ideal was to fight the enemy’s champion. Nonetheless, skillful generals took
a more disciplined approach, and tactics such as arquebus volley fire and the
defense of field fortifications were common in Musashi’s era.
strategy & tactics 55

56 #232
Kojiro’s razor sharp sword fell from his dead hand,
it cut through the hem of Musashi’s skirt. Those two
near misses made that fight the closest he ever came to
being wounded or killed.
In 1614, Musashi joined his old foes, the Tokugawas,
as a mercenary and fought in the bloody siege of
Osaka Castle. He continued to wander for another 20
years plying his deadly trade until in 1634 he returned
to Ogura and stayed with Lord Churi in Kumamoto. In
1638, Musashi was present as an officer in the army
that fought against the southern lords and the Japanese
Christians who had risen in rebellion. The rebellion
was ruthlessly crushed. Following that campaign, the
Japanese closed their countries to foreigners for the
next two centuries. Musashi once again chose his own
course, and in 1643 at the age of 59 he sought solitude.
He became a recluse living in a mountain cave called
Reigendo.
Go Rin No Sho –The Book of the Five Rings
It was in Reigendo that Musashi dictated Go Rin
No Sho, the Book of the Five Rings, to his student Teruo
Nobuyuki as a series of letters. Go Rin No Sho is
one of those cryptic books in which meaning is to be
found in the interpretation of the reader. Beginners and
Warrior elite: Samurai in full armor with bow.
masters can read the same passage and find different
meanings. Musashi himself stated he did not reach a
full understanding of the Way until 1634, at the age of
50, and that despite years of training and experience.
Musashi wrote: “When you have attained the Way
of strategy there will not be one thing that you cannot
understand. You will see the Way in everything.”
Musashi commanded no great armies and never
sought power for himself. His dedication to his warrior
skills and his almost mystical seeking of the Way
has had influence on the psychology of the Japanese,
not unlike the impact the Medieval European quest
for the Holy Grail had on Western civilization (though
Musashi is much better documented historically than,
say, King Arthur). Indeed, the preface to every text
on Kendo acknowledges a debt to Go Rin No Sho.
Musashi had proved the Way was achievable. The enlightenment
it brought was the essence of Musashi’s
persona made him invincible in combat. To the Japanese
he is ranked among the few who have been given
the title of Kinsei, or Sword Saint, and even among
that group Musashi stands alone.
Musashi was not a brutal man, but his code meant
he was merciless. He did not fear death in combat and
expected no quarter from his opponents. By the same
token, he gave no mercy if the circumstances demanded
it. In his 30 years as a wandering ronin and mercenary,
Musashi probably killed more than 100 men in
combat, yet never suffered a single wound, no matter
how many opponents faced him.
In May 1645, shortly after dictating his last letter
on the concept of void, Musashi died. He left behind
no family and no Kendo school to carry on his work.
Yet his reputation was such that he was not forgotten,
and his book became the core text for those seeking to
follow the Way. Musashi had sought only personal enlightenment,
but his legacy for the Japanese is that he
set such a high standard and laid out a code of behaviour
many have sought to follow his example. None
has equaled his achievements to this day.
Bibliography
The Book of the Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi, Cassell Military Paperbacks,
First Published 1994, Reprinted 2001 (Great Britain).
A Book of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi, Translated by Victor Harris.
The Outlook Press, Petere Mayer Publishers Inc, Woodstock, New
York First Published 1974.
The Book of Five Rings for Executives: Musashi’s Classic Book of Competitive
Tactics – Donald G. Krause. W.S. Bookwell, Nicholas Brearley
Publishing, 1998. (This is a well known popular book which
mangles every idea Musashi championed to suit the business ideas
of the author.)
Musashi – Eiji Yoshikawa, translated by Charles Terry, ISBN 4-7700-
1957-2
Samurai Warfare – Dr. Stephen Turnbull. Arms and Armour Press (UK),
(1998).

Musashi writes
Strategy is the craft of the warrior. Commanders must enact the craft, and
troopers should know this. There is no warrior in the world today who
really understands the Way of strategy
In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both
in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm.
In my strategy, the training for killing enemies is by way of many contests,
fighting for survival, discovering the meaning of life and death, learning
the Way of the sword, judging the strength of attacks and understanding
the Way of the “edge and ridge” of the sword.
In strategy you must know the Ways of other schools.
What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included
in man’s knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things
that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void.
strategy & tactics 57

58 #232
mega feedback 232
Please take a few minutes to review the following game
proposals and select the ones you would like to see us publish.
Mail in the card found in this issue or e-mail your feedback with
your name and address to Doc at: ccummins@bak.rr.com. This
annual feedback is the most important source for determining
what games we will be working on for future issues of Strategy
& Tactics. In addition, we are seeking your input on other projects
we’re considering.
We also have a feature on our web site (decisiongames.com)
where you can pledge your support for future boxed games. As
the boxed games move up the rankings, they move forward into
design, development, artwork, printing and release. You can
also see the latest listing in the next Dispatch.
The game line-up for the next year will be:
S&T#233: Dagger Thrusts: Monty and Patton
S&T#234: Lest Darkness Fall: Rome
S&T#235: Cold War Battles: Budapest and Angola
S&T#236: They Died With Their Boots On: Custer & Quebec
S&T#237: No Prisoners!: WWI Middle East
S&T#238: Marlborough
S&T Games in development include:
Operation Winged Horse Holy Roman Empire
1066 SEALORDS
Ottomans Twilight Triple Alliance War
Boots 2: Pershing & Mad Anthony Manila ‘45
We need your help in ranking the current candidates for
Strategy & Tactics to determine our priorities. Remember to
rank each set from first (the one you would like to see published
sooner or have more interest in) to whatever number is in the set
(a set of five proposals for Ancient games would be marked 1,
the most preferred choice, to 5, the least preferred choice).
ancient/medieval/renaissance (to circa aD
1600; mark 1 to 5)
A1. Second Punic War. The epic conflict between the Roman
and Carthaginian republics, 219-202 BC, using the Charlemagne-Xenophon
system. Both the Roman and Carthaginian
players would have to face not only enemy forces in the field
but also shifting alliances, backstabbing stratagems and barbarian
invasions. The game would also include combat results
tables differentiating between the Roman, Carthaginian and
Hellenistic forms of warfare. Joseph Miranda.
A2. Caesar. The civil wars that wracked the Roman Empire
during the late republic, using the classic SPI Battle for Germany
system. Each player would control one faction in the
civil wars (Caesarian, Senatorial, Antonine, etc.) as well as one
“barbarian” faction (Gauls, Parthians, etc.). Players will have to
fight not only their Roman opponents, but also the barbarians
facing them across the frontiers of their particular section of the
Roman world. To win, players must seize control of the city of
Rome and gain public support, the latter measured by a popularity
index. High popularity provides recruits and income; low
popularity means troop desertions. Units will include historic
legions, plus auxiliaries, fleets and barbarian hordes. Joseph
Miranda.
A3. Julian. A strategic/operational-level game of the campaigns
of the 4th century AD Roman Emperor Flavius Claudius
Julianus, who led the later Roman Empire in several campaigns
of military glory, defeating the Germans on the Rhine and
then conducting an invasion of Persia.
A4. Great Medieval Battles. More battles using the system
from the SPI edition. Battles drawn from Crecy (the first
great triumph of the longbow over feudal knights), Hastings
(William the Conqueror versus King Harold), Manzikert (the
turning point of the Byzantine Empire), Leipzig (Mongols
versus Europe), and Arsouf (Richard the Lionhearted versus
Saladin), Battle of the Standard (English versuss Scots), The
Hidden Valley (Mongol Tuman versus The Pagan Empire of
Burma), Maldon (Vikings versus Saxons. The Great Medieval
Battles system uses different sized counters to represent
different troop formations. Rules include fire, melee, cavalry
charges, broken lances, morale, and leaders. Joseph Miranda,
Dick Vohlers, Heath Avery.
A5. Great Renaissance Battles. This will use a system similar
to Great Medieval Battles to simulate two decisive actions
of 1400-1600. The game will use variably sized counters to
show tactical formations: large squares for Spanish tercios
and Swiss phalanxes, rectangles for cavalry, small squares
for skirmishers, etc. Units will be rated for their weapons,
defense and morale, with rules to trace the improvements of
gunpowder weapons in this period. Historic leaders will be
included, and command rules will show the increasing professional
quality of the battlefield. Joseph Miranda.
Gunpowder (circa 1600 to 1900 a.D.;
mark 1 to 6)
B1. Sedan Sequel. We have two possible follow-up games
for Sedan, “On to Paris,” which covers the second half of the
Franco-Prussian War in which the Germans besieged Paris
and the French mounted desperate counteroffensives, and
“1866,” which covers the Austro-Prussian War. If they can
fit on one map and counter sheet we’ll publish both, otherwise
we’ll put the two up for a vote on the next round. Ty
Bomba and Joseph Miranda.
B2. Raj. The Asia Crossroads system recreates the British-
French struggle for control of the Indian sub-continent in the
18th century. Game map will use a square grid, and turns
will each represent four years of operations. Units will be
brigade-level, which can be built up into larger formations.
All major leaders will be shown, as well as naval forces.
Diplomacy will be critical as players must gain the support
of local Indian forces, including the powerful Maharattas.
Players will also be able to develop their economic base by
building trading posts and colonies. There will be several
scenarios, including the Indian part of the Seven Years War.
Joseph Miranda.
B3. War of the Austrian Succession (1741-45). This was
Frederick the Great’s first great campaign, in which he contested
Silesia with Maria Teresa of the Habsburg Empire
in a conflict that involved all the major European powers.
The game will use the S&T Seven Years War/On To Moscow
system to recreate the era of formal warfare. Units will be
infantry and cavalry brigades rated for their strength, morale
and movement. All major leaders will be included. The diplomatic
system will recreate the shifting alliances of the period,
and the balance of power index will let players keep an
eye on whoever is getting too far ahead. Joseph Miranda.
B4. Unknown Napoleonic Wars. This would include two
operational-level games of Napoleonic campaigns rarely
covered. Units will be brigade to division, with leaders and
depots. Campaigns will be drawn from: Beyond the Pyramids

(the French campaign in Egypt and Syria, 1798-1800); On to
Constantinople (Russia versus Turkey, 1806-07, a campaign
that saw, among other things, the citizenry of Constantinople
repulse a British fleet); Winter War (Russia invades Finland
and fights Sweden, 1808-09). Each side will have a morale
index that will give bonuses in combat and movement if you
are winning, and can lead to collapse if it goes too low—but
can also be used to obtain an armistice on favorable terms
even if you are losing. Joseph Miranda.
B5. Sun Never Sets II. This will be a sequel game to DG’s
Sun Never Sets, covering the wars of the British Empire in
the 19 th century. Units are battalions for “civilized” armies
and warbands for others. Each unit is rated for its weapons,
type, strength, morale and movement. A unique quasitactical
combat resolution system catches the spirit of the
era with everything from Gatling guns to bayonet charges.
There’s always the chance to break a British square, or rout a
superior enemy force. All major leaders are included, as well
as random events, supply, engineers and railroad building.
Game scale is operational, with the entire theater of operations
covered. Scenarios will be drawn from: Egypt 1882,
Second Afghan War, Asante War and Persia.Designer: Roger
Deal
B6. Thirty Years War Battles. More battles using the Thirty
Years War Quad system. Two battles would be drawn from:
Fleurus, Alte Veste, Wittstock, and Lens (others from the era
may be substituted). Joseph Miranda.
americana (circa 1700 to 1900 a.D.; mark 1
to 5)
C1. War in the Far West. A simulation of the American
Civil War in the southwest USA, Texas to California, 1861-
62. The historic campaign saw small Confederate and Union
armies maneuvering over vast territories in actions that contested
control of the American frontier and could have decided
the course of the entire war. The order of battle will
include regular infantry, cavalry, engineers, artillery, militia,
rangers and Indian scouts. All major leaders will be represented.
Also included will be supply depots (which can be
captured), forts, buffalo hunts, brevet ranks and the infamous
“mule mines.” Chuck Diamond.
C2. American Revolution. The game will have several scenarios,
representing different times in the war, as well as a
campaign scenario. Option cards will play off raising troops
against maintaining the loyalty of different colonies as well
as gaining or preventing French intervention. They will also
generate temporary objectives, such as the invasion of Canada.
Units will be different types of brigades (regulars, militia,
dragoons, light infantry) that can be built into “wings”
(divisions). Joseph Miranda.
C3. La Glorieta Pass. At the high tide of the Confederate
advance in the far west in March 1862, Gen. Sibley had captured
Sante Fe and was threatening to advance into Colorado.
Union forces were hastily gathered at Fort Union to
counter his advance. The advance guards of the two forces
clashed in Apache Canyon on 26 March, and the two main
forces fought near La Glorieta Pass two days later. The Confederates
were unable to break the Union forces, and lost
most of their supplies to a Union raid, thereby forcing their
retreat to Texas. The game would focus on the two battles
using the original Twilight’s Last Gleaming system. Chuck
Diamond.
C4. Battles of The Valley. Jackson’s campaign in the
Shenandoah Valley was one of the great sideshows of the
Civil War. He never commanded more than 18,000 troops,
yet managed to tie down over 60,000 Union troops, winning
several battles and inflicting disproportionate losses. The
game would use a system similar to Twilight’s Last Gleaming
and feature two or three battles drawn from Kernstown,
McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys, and Port
Royal. Chuck Diamond.
C5. Pea Ridge. In February 1862, Confederate Gen. Earl
Van Dorn launched his forces against the Union Army of
the Southwest. After a night march in a snowstorm, the exhausted
rebels nearly brought off a double envelopment of
the enemy. Except for the untimely death of three key officers,
Van Dorn might have cleared Missouri of Federals and
precluded Grant’s Donelson campaign. Pea Ridge will use
the Fateful Lightning system to recreate this critical battle.
Units are regiments and battalions. Leaders enhance combat
and movement, but only the key leaders are represented
in the game. Hexes are 250m across; turns are 30 minutes.
Both sides will have variable orders of battle, organization,
deployment and missions to add to the fog of war. Chris Perello.
early 20th century (circa 1898 to 1929 a.D.;
mark 1 to 6)
D1. First Battle of Britain. In World War I German zeppelins
and Gotha bombers intruded into the skies over Britain
in the first strategic air campaign. First Battle of Britain
would be a fast moving simulation of this campaign. Units
would represent individual zeppelins, aircraft squadrons, antiaircraft
emplacements and various types of targets. Victory
conditions would be a combination of military, economic
and psychological objectives. The British would have the
opportunity to strike back by launching raids against German
airdromes, and developing early aircraft carriers. Players
would have the opportunity to develop new technologies,
such as radio coordination and early warning systems. Pilot
quality would be a critical factor, and there would also be
several historical individuals represented. 22 x 34” map, 280
counters. To be designed by Joseph Miranda.
D2. The Kaiser’s War. At the end of 1917, the Kaiser’s
armies had triumphed in the Balkans, Italy and Russia,
and the Second Reich stretched from central France to the
Ukraine. A year later, that imperial edifice had come crashing
down in ruin. The Kaiser’s War would be a strategiclevel
wargame of the year 1918. The game map would cover
France, the Low Countries, northern Italy, central Europe,
the Balkans, Russia to the Volga, and the Ottoman Empire.
Units would be mostly armies along with “army detachment”
breakdowns. There would be special units such as
shock troops (of all nations, not just Germany), tanks, the
Asian Korps, Bolshevik Red Guards, etc. There would be
a simple air war system, and naval units would be shown at
fleet level, with the possibility of a sortie by the Austro-Hungarian
Fleet if the Italians are defeated. Joseph Miranda.
D3. First Blood Marne—Battles on the Marne, June-August
1918. Though previously involved in battle, American
troops were only blooded well and true for the first time in
the First World War at the important Battle of Chateau-Thierry
in June 1918. The green Yankees were committed at the
very nose of the still potent German penetration along the
Marne and not only stopped the enemy drive, but managed to
strategy & tactics 59

60 #232
mount their famous counterattack at Belleau Wood. A month
later, a combined US and French force mounted a smashing
attack on the German salient which still threatened Paris. In
three bloody weeks the Allies reduced the salient, drew off
Ludendorf’s reserves (until then earmarked for yet another
German offensive in Flanders) and permanently wrested the
strategic initiative from the Imperial German Army. This
game would simulate these summer battles along the Marne
at the regiment and brigade level, employing a variation of
the Lost Battalions game system. Ty Bomba.
D4. Plan 1919. Based on the premise World War I lasted another
year, using the Reinforce the Right system. The game
would include Gen. Fuller’s planned tank corps, strategic
bombing, railroad guns and even an Allied parachute division.
The Germans would also have elite Freikorps units that
can use storm tactics. Units would be corps, with divisional
breakdowns. American reinforcements for the Allies would
be critical, including US Marine Corps amphibious assaults.
There would also be an option for German tank fleets, which
will allow for mass tank-versus-tank battles. The map will
cover the Western Front from Paris to the Ruhr. Joseph Miranda.
D5. Soldiers 2: Mobile Tactical Combat in Europe, 1918.
An update of the SPI classic that covered the pre-trench warfare
of 1914-15. Scenarios would include historic and whatif
episodes from the western front, 21 March-11 November
1918. The system would be kept simple, but expanded to
cover heavy artillery, CW, air support, tanks, and infiltration
tactics. Ty Bomba.
D6. Operation Gericht—The Battle of Verdun, 1916. Turns
equal one week and are of two types: attrition, in which the
effects of a week’s shelling and contact are abstracted; and
assault, broken into daily impulses of fluid movement and
higher losses of major offensives. Artillery will be crucial.
Rules for pioneers, Brandenburgers, Moroccans, territorials,
melee, fortress reduction, isolation, morale, linear attack and
morale are included. Units represent infantry battalions and
regiments; artillery is designated abstractly by type. Large
hex map with small counters. Ty Bomba.
World War ii (circa 1930 to 1945 a.D.; mark
1 to 6)
E1. Barbarossa, 3rd ed. Army-level (with some corps) units
are used on both sides to allow to players to game WWII’s
entire eastern front, from Barbarossa to Berlin, in single evening.
One map, one counter sheet. Ty Bomba.
E2. Ty Bomba’s Kursk. The 1971 SPI flatbox edition of
Kursk battle game was redesigned, in a mechanically overdone
way, in 1979, as “Eric Goldberg’s Kursk.” This edition
would return it to a simpler level using a derivation of the
recent Drive on Stalingrad system, concentrate play on the
July scenario, while also allowing for Manstein’s options of
maximum reinforcements taken from all other fronts and attacking
the western face of the salient. Ty Bomba.
E3. Strike North: Japan Attacks the USSR. One of the
great “what-ifs” of World War II, a hypothetical Japanese
invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The assumption is the
Japanese decide to forego their offensive in the Pacific and
instead invade the USSR to support the Third Reich. Units
will be divisional and corps level, including air units. There
will be different CRTs demonstrating Japanese and Soviet
tactics. Joseph Miranda.
E4. USAAF. An update/remake of Flying Fortress, origi-
nally offered to Avalon Hill by the early SPI-crew. This
game takes an operational/strategic, effects-based approach
to modeling air operations in 1944, the decisive year in the
air war over Hitler’s Europe. There would be two 1944 scenarios,
one covering just US daylight efforts and a second,
“Grand Campaign Game,” that would also include RAF
night bombing. There will also be a one-month “mission
game,” covering the destruction of the Luftwaffe fighterarm
in March. Chrome would include: a full German FLAK
order of battle, airfield strafing, variable German aircraft
production (including exotic jet and rocket planes, with
the player being able to choose where to put the emphasis),
FLAK busting, P-47 drop tank problems, variable “critical”
German industrial sectors, plus all kinds of optional aircraft
to see the effects of faster R&D efforts on both sides. Additional
scenarios will include the 1943 strategic bombing
campaign, the pre-Overlord campaign, and alternative campaigns.
Bomba/Miranda.
E5. Salerno. The Victory in the West system moves on from
Sicily (S&T#89) to the landings on the mainland. Nathan
Kilgore.
E6. Rhineland. What if Britain and France confronted
Hitler when he reoccupied the Rhineland and did not back
down? World War II breaks out in 1936. Both sides would be
woefully unprepared, but there would have been some real
potential for a Spanish Civil War style conflict in which the
emerging military systems of armor and airpower would be
employed. There would also be the chance for Soviet and
US intervention. The game map would cover western and
central Europe. Units would be divisions and corps, as well
as airpower. Joseph Miranda.
modern (circa 1946 to present; mark 1 to 3)
F1. Air War 73. This would be a simulation of the 1973
Arab-Israeli air war. Units would be squadron level, differentiated
by aircraft type. The system would emphasize
command control, electronic warfare, suppression of air defenses,
and logistical planning. Players would have to trade
off aircraft losses versus requirements of the ground war.
Joseph Miranda.
F2. Angola. This will be a strategic-level game of the Angolan
civil war of 1976-1990s, using the S&T Holy War:
Afghanistan system. During the Cold War, Angola became
a major battleground of East versus West, which eventually
developed into some major mechanized clashes. Forces will
include the MPLA, Unita, FNLA, Cubans, South Africans,
and CIA mercenaries, as well as possible UN and Organization
of African Unity intervention forces. Units will be brigade-division
level, with some special operations battalions.
Units will be rated for their conventional military capability
and their insurgency value. The political aspect of the war
will be simulated via a chit picking system that will mobilize
various forces and allow for the vicissitudes of international
intervention. Turns will be yearly. The game will include
several short scenarios as well as one grand campaign of the
entire war. Joseph Miranda.
F3. Cold War Battles II. This would include two games
from the following: Pentomic (Soviet combined arms army
versus US divisions in 1960 Germany, with plenty of tactical
nukes);Kabul Strike (the initial Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan, which saw airborne, Spetsnaz and mechanized
forces seize control of the capital); Congo (mercenaries versus
rebels in the 1960s); Sandinista (Nicaragua 1979, the final
rebel offensive against Somoza’s National Guard). Game

system is based on Modern Battles, with battalions, air support
and simple command control. Joseph Miranda.
F4. Insurgency. Covers the first two years in Iraq following
the ground campaign as the American-led Coalition attempts
to rebuild infrastructure in the face of armed Iraqi resistance.
Features a strategem chit system for special events and assymetrical
advantages. George Carter.
annual Double-Sized Game (mark 1 to 6)
(Subject to positive results for question H1.)
G1. Cobra. This third edition represents a new version of
the original classic SPI/TSR D-Day to Cobra Allied Invasion
and Breakout from the Normandy peninsula in one
complete, expanded game. Results include the addition of
the previously missing 3rd Sturm-Flak Korps to the German
order of battle, appropriate terrain modifications to the map,
and historic airborne drop zones. The new edition allows for
more flexibility to the German invasion response and the
elimination of the previous editions’ Allied “stroll through
the Caumont Gap,” while retaining the flavor and excitement
of the original SPI magazine game. Randy Heller.
G2. Axis of Evil: North Korea. This two-map game examines
the possibilities inherent in the US attempting a “regime
change” war. The maps cover the Korean peninsula down to
Seoul at eight miles per hex. The system is from Back to Iraq,
allowing for solitaire play. Scenarios include a Chinese/US
offensive and a Coalition-only campaign. The North will go
down, but can they hold out long enough to score sufficient
“Media Perception Points” with their SAMs, SCUDs and
No-Dong-1 nuclear missiles. Bomba and Miranda.
G3. Brigade Combat Team. An intensive simulation of
modern Brigade Combat Team (BCT) operations. The player
controls a combined arms brigade in scenarios drawn from
1990 to the present and hypothetical situations in the future.
Units would be companies and platoons. Players deal with
a wide array of forces: combat, electronic warfare, various
types of fire support, logistics, and special operations. Command
control will be critical, as well as battlefield intelligence.
Opposition forces would include conventional forces,
terrorists, and urban warfare threats. Joseph Miranda.
G4. Drive on Moscow. If the Germans had driven on Moscow
in the summer of 1941 instead of turning south to encircle
the Soviet armies at Kiev, could the Axis have won
the war? Drive on Moscow allows you to explore this and
other possibilities. The game has three scenarios: the first
showing a hypothetical German concentration on Moscow
in September of 1941; the second showing the historical
German campaign, beginning in October; and a December
scenario showing the Soviet counterattack. Game system is
operational level, with divisions, airpower, allocation of logistics
resources, and a unique multi-impulse system which
models differences in German and Soviet mobile doctrines.
Joseph Miranda.
G5. Famous Divisions. Follow the exploits of the Gross
Deutschland division against opponents at four battles of
WWII. Company and platoon sized units and a command
driven system. Scenarios include: Kursk, Mischurin Rog,
Akhtyrka and Lutchessa Valley. John Schettler.
G6. Chosin/Gauntlet. Chosin/Gauntlet covers the initial
Chinese offensive in late 1950. Gauntlet was previously
published in S&T and covers the fighting on the western side
of the north Korean peninsula. Chosin was planned for S&T
but could not meet the parameters for publication. It covers
the fighting on the eastern side of Korea, including the epic
US Marine fighting withdrawal from the Chosin resevoir.
With this new format, the campaign can be shown across the
entire front in one game. It’s a unique situation with the mobile
Chinese infantry army versus the mechanized UN force.
Units are regiments and some battalions, with plenty of infantry,
armor and even rear area units that can be thrown into
the fray. Rules cover air and naval power. Joseph Miranda.
other Questions
Please circle the letter of the response that most represents
your interest or reaction.
H1. S&T is considering adding an annual special issue with
a double-sized game (7 issues per year), or two more regular
issues (8 issues per year). Would you prefer:
a) a double-sized game once a year;
b) two more issues a year;
c) something else (please specify).
H2. S&T is considering starting a new version of the magazine
with a computer game in each issue. These games
would include iconic or animated symbols for the counters,
options to see the historic battle or campaign played
out by the computer, and options for AI, or the ability to
play by e-mail or hot seat. Cost is expected to be about
the same as the board game edition (about $23 per issue,
or $100 for a 6-issue sub). Game topics would initially
be drawn from the vast reserve of DG/SPI titles and then
expand into new designs. The magazine would continue
to be one printing with two feature articles, one for the
board game and one for the computer game, plus two
additional articles.
a) Sign me up now!
b) Tell me more and then I’m in (what do you need to
know?) _______________________ .
c) I’ll pick up a few issues when it’s out and then decide
whether to subscribe.
d) I’ll buy an occasional issue if it interests me.
e) I’m a board wargamer and would never consider playing
computer games.
f) Other response: ___________________________ .
H3. S&T is considering publishing card games for some issue
games (something like our Lightning series). If there is
favorable interest, we will run some proposals in the next
Mega-Feedback.
a) More variety in game presentation sounds great. Let’s
see the proposals.
b) No, I’m a counters and map wargamer and would never
consider playing a card game.
c) Other response: ______________________.
H4. We are working on a new line of military history books.
Many of the books would expand on topics found in S&T,
going into greater depth. What topics would you like to see
in future books? (Please list as many as you would like to
see.)
H5. What is your favorite wargame snack?
Please use the enclosed Feedback card or a sheet
of paper and mail to Decision Games.
strategy & tactics 61

TiTle
QTY Price TOTAl
Shipping Charges
1st item Adt’l Units Type of Service
$8 $2 UPS Ground/US Mail Domestic Priority
15(20) 4 UPS 2nd Day Air (Metro AK & HI)
14(10) 2(7) Canada, Mexico (Express)
17(25) 7(10) Europe (Express)
62
20(25)
#232
9(10) Asia, Africa, Australia (Express)
A Place to Start
Seven Days Battles
Seven Days Battles covers the American Civil War battles before Richmond. The Confederates attempt to drive
the Union away from their capital and deliver decisive blows at Seven Pines, Gaines Mills, and Frayser’s
Farm. Finally, the Union makes a dramatic stand at Malvern Hill. The game also includes a scenario that
brings the whole campaign together.
Components: 400 counters, (2) 22” x 34” mapsheets, 16-page rule book. $28. 00
Blue & Gray
Refight five of the crucial battles of the American Civil War: First Bull Run (new),
Shiloh, Second Bull Run (new), Cemetery Hill, and Chickamauga. Brigades
and divisions slug it out—brother against brother. Players maneuver the counters
representing the infantry, cavalry and artillery units that actually fought at
each battle. This updated edition of the SPI classic makes for an enjoyable set of
games for an afternoon or evening of fun.
Components: 360 counters, 8-page rule book, (4) 22” x 17” maps, 1 die. $35. 00
Battles of the Ancient World, Complete set
Includes Volumes I, II & III A Total of 14 battles in one box!
Volume I has four decisive battles—Arbela, Cannae, Pharsalus and Teutoburger Wald—presented
in easy, quick-playing wargames for each volume. The average playing time is
30 minutes to two hours. Each game utilizes short standard rules which are divided into
introductory, basic and advanced to provide a span of simplicity and detail for every experience
level. Components: 400 counters, (4) 17” x 22” mapsheets, rule book. Volume
Two adds more battles to the popular Ancient World series. Scenarios include: Issus,
Metaurus, Carrhae and Idivisto. Components: 8 page rulebooklet, 4 22” x 17” Maps, 420
die-cut counters. Volume Three rounds out this collection with the following scenarios: Megiddo, Qadesh,
Lake Trasimene, Munda, Boudicca, and Adrianople. Components: 520 die-cut counters,
three 22 x 34” mapsheets, rules/scenario booklet and player aid card. $69. 95
SUB To Ta l
TaX (Ca. RES.)
$
S&H
$
ToTal oRDER
$
PO Box 21598, Bakersfield CA 93390-1598
• (661) 587-9633 •fax 661/587-5031
www.decisiongames.com

An Evening of Fun!
NUTS!
NUTS!: The Battle of the Bulge is a card game for two, three, or four players. Each player
has a hand of cards, from which he may play cards each turn, and a draw deck, from
which he may bring new cards into his hand. The cards include combat units, events,
and significant pieces of terrain. Combat units are rated for Infantry, Armor, and Artillery
combat strengths, leg or mechanized movement, and cohesion. Events are the situations
from the actual battle. Terrain cards represent the significant geography of the battle (e.g.
Bastogne, Meuse River, and Ellsborne Ridge) that was used to speed or slow the Germans
attack. NUTS! comes in two 150-card sets (North & South). Each set is complete
and can be played on its own, or the two sets can be played together.
Components: Rulebook, 300 full color cards (North & South sets). $40. 00
Operation Kremlin
Operation Kremlin, designed by Ty Bomba, uses the corps-army level
units that were historically available for this campaign. The orders of
battle are extrapolated from both sides’ historic organizational charts
of mid to late 1942. Each hex represents approximately 10 miles (16.2
kilometers) from side to side. Airpower is represented abstractly,
representing the effects of one side or the other having local air superiority.
Each full game turn represents one week. Operation Kremlin gives wargamers the opportunity to
discover what would have happened had the Germans struck for Moscow in 1942.
Components: One 34 x 22 inch mapsheet, rulesbook, 176 die cut counters, storage bags and 1 die. $35. 00
XXXX
1
2-2-5
1
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1
2-1-8
4
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2
+2-0-10
3
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6
XXX
3-6-5
6-6-7
Beyond the Urals
Beyond the Urals is a two-player strategic-level simulation of a campaign that might-have-been in Russia during
World War II. Each hexagon on the map represents approximately 20 miles (32.4 kilometers) from side
to opposite side. The Soviet units are armies, while all German units
are corps. Air power is represented abstractly, with two counters representing
the effects of German tactical air superiority. Each full game
turn represents one week.
Components: One 34 x 22 inch mapsheet, rulesbook, 176 die cut counters,
storage bags and 1 die (ziplock). $25. 00
XXX
XXX
4-2-10 2-4-6
XXXX
XXXX
4-2-5 2-4-5
Name
address
City, state Zip
phoNe email
Visa/mC (oNly)#
expiratioN date
sigNature
5
59
3
1g
3sh
40
2
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strategy & tactics 63

Each issue is packed full of:
64 #232
• In-depth analysis
• Detailed maps
• Orders of Battle
Future issues will feature articles on:
montgomery & patton
Airland battle of the bulge
South Africa vs. Cubans
battle of breitenfeld
Catherine the Great
German paratroopers
Conquest of Florida
and much, much more!
PO Box 21598, Bakersfield CA 93390-1598
(661) 587-9633 •fax 661/587-5031
www.decisiongames.com
The premier military history
magazine!
Visit our website for more
information and subscription rates.