Combat Mission Fortress Italy - Shocking the Livorno

Another great scenario in Combat Mission Fortress Italy, "Butera Station".

One battalion of the Italian Livorno Division pushing towards the beach head at Gela. A reinforced company-sized patrol of the 3rd US Infantry Division deploys quickly and tries to block the Italians. In this scenario, my poor planning resulted in a nail-biting finale.

A late battle birds eye view of the battlefield. The Italians (gray icons), desperate to break through our hastily assembled defense (green icons).

A platoon of US infantry, which was moving to reinforce their beleaguered brothers down in the villa, collides with Italian infantry.

A few minutes later, and totally devoid of cover, the US infantry rushes the Italians back into an irrigation ditch. For my men, there was no other way but forward.

What won the battle was the sudden appearance of two US Sherman tanks on the right flank of the Italians. The two tanks made their way to the villa and stabilized the situation. The Italian infantry in the open didn't stand a chance.

The exceptional mobility of the US tanks allowed a continuous shuffle of machine gun and HE shells firepower all along the extended line of the Italians.

I should have taken advantage of the AT guns and mortars (I had the means of moving them from the hill in the west towards the village). But it was too late by the time I embarked in such endeavor: the Italians were opening their deployment and started rushing forward in a wide line. I cut them just a few meters short of the villa objective.

Nonetheless, I secured a major victory.

But anyway, speaking of "shock". Combat Mission has a built-in AI behavior which you can see when an under-armored AFV sees a tank (the AFV pulls back and covers its move with smoke). To a certain extent, infantry does something similar (hitting the dirt or just cowering in the worst cases). So, there is this simulated "shock" in the coded brains of crews and soldiers.

It would be great that the "shock" behavior would be higher if a unit experiences an overwhelming threat in one of its flanks, like it happened to many of the Italians suddenly showing their chops to a couple of Sherman tanks.

Cheers,