"Herman Goering Division in Flames of War" Topic

I am toying with painting up a Fallschirmjaeger company for FoW.
However the Herman Goering division has always intrigued me too. If I am going to paint up Bad Guys, I may as well dedicate it to a blowhard…
I also liked using them in the Avalon Hill Anzio game, sadly long gone.

So, what, if anything, made it unique, in FoW terminology? Which "Afrika" compnies? What tanks should I get, what colors for the uniforms, and all that stuff.

I don't REMEMBER any specific language in "Afrika" re Herman, but it's entirely possible that I missed it.

HG in Afrika is fairly easy. 4th FJ regiment, PZ IIIs, some armored cars, attached German march battalions.

The FJs would have the normal attributes, but HG should not be considered elite (particularly not for the North AFrica/Sicily phrase – despite what George C Scott says in "Patton").

It was a well-equipped division for much of the war, but it never equalled the quality of the first rank formations (e.g. PZGD Div GD).

Well, a good place to begin is always with some reading; here's a start:

link

…with some corrections here:

link

This article:

link

…and its sequel:

link

…describe the experience of 5. FJ Regt. (-), which became 5. Jaeger Regt, Hermann Goering.

This thread suggests some alternatives, including Brigade Ramcke:

link

I don't think I'd use the RR Pz.Gr. figures for Africa; they are a variation of the RR Luftwaffe FD figures, and are in normal stahlhelm. They'd be suitable for the later organization in Sicily and Italy.

Battlefront's "battleworn" FJ would look good for the short period of time in which troops in FJ kit were under the command of the division.

Allen

And I say that not thoroughly convinced that once redesignated 5. Jaeger Regiment, the former FJ would have remained in FJ uniforms and kit. There's a niggling something, in addition to Evan's comment on the second FoW Forum thread, that makes me think they did not.

Here, do some more reading. It won't kill you:

link

link

link

So if dead set on FJ, you might look elsewhere, as suggested--including the FJ pioneer company offered up in "Afrika" as an interesting alternative. But then, only an extremely lazy man would have failed to look on page 55 of "Afrika" already to see what he's allowed to have in Tunisia.

Allen

aecurtis is correct on RRHG figs. I have them (nice figures, actually) and they are suitible for Anzio and late '44 Poland.

Yes, it was 5 FJR.

In the three books that I have on HG, it shows jaeger regiment troops kitted out as FJ. Ramcke brigade figures would work.

OK, that's good. John can have his ueber-elite FoW fighters *and* a formation named for a fat man. I didn't feel like digging through books last night for photos to confirm whether they'd be in FJ kit, or looking more like DAK panzergrenadiers.

Allen

From my experience they wore some form of a tropical version of the "spliter" FJ pattern of camo. With tan helmets and trousers.

There's no such thing as "Tropical spli*n*ter pattern of camo"

The troops of FJR5, in Tunisia, wore Luftwaffe issued tropical uniforms along with the usual types of jumpsmock in splinter camo or plain olive green. They were attached to the HG div. elements in Tunisia because, at the time, HG was still being rebuilt and only some of the divisions units were sent to Tunisia.They were essentially used to bring up the numbers and were a handy Luftwaffe owned unit.

Once Tunisia fell FJR5 reformed as a normal FJ unit and parted ways with the HG Division. In Tunisia and Sicily the troops of the HG div. wore the standard Luftwaffe tropical issue uniforms and also a smattering of W-SS camo smocks, around 10% of the HG troops were issued with them. They did not wear items of FJ uniform or helmets being closer to looking like the any of the Luftwaffe field divisions – the honorific title "FJ" wasn't bestowed on the Div until Jan 1944 anyway, and was only ever an honorific title and not a description of the formation.

aercr wrote:

[Snips] HG should not be considered elite
[Snips]
It was a well-equipped division for much of the war, but it never equalled the quality of the first rank formations (e.g. PZGD Div GD).

As it happens, the HG was one of the divisions rated by Dupuy in "Numbers, Predictions and War" in the table I just referred to inm the "were the Waffen-SS elite" thread, over there -->

Believe his "average weighted CEVs" or not, as you like, but he seems to think they come out quite well; the scores for the German Pz and PzGren divs are as follows:

1.49 HG
1.31 11 Pz
1.17 3 Pz Gren
1.12 15 Pz Gren
1.07 16 Pz
1.02 Pz Lehr
0.82 29 Pz

…indeed they have the highest score of any of the 24 Allied and German divisions for whom CEVs were calculated.

All the best,

John.

Everything's settled then? All contradictory references deconflicted? Great.

But then, only an extremely lazy man would have failed to look on page 55 of "Afrika" already to see what he's allowed to have in Tunisia.

No, I know what I am "allowed".
The trend with the fluff lately is to customize even more the various divisions, contrary to the wishes of Sesame Street wannabes.
The DAK is well fluffed out, the divisions in Tunisia, Sicily and Italy less so.

I was hoping that the HG division was not as competent as the more regular Germans. I am toying with Confident Trained, meaning that they think they know more than they really do.
I would also like o paint them up differently than the Huns I have been painting for friends.

What's a "weighted CEV"? It sounds like something from Strategy and Tactics gone mad.

Dupuy? Dunnigan? I don't see a connection…

Good luck with the winnowing.

"I was hoping that the HG division was not as competent as the more regular Germans.'

The HG division, and later HG PzKorps in Russia, was no less effective than any other Pz formation and better than some. It was formed from a prewar unit so had plenty of regimental esprit de corp to harness and was smart enough to employ experience Heer personnel as instructors when the armour arrived – many of those Heer pers. choose to stay on with the division.

Dupuy developed a formula, CEV or "Combat efficiency Value", for determining the combat effectiveness of any given unit based on certain factors. Some think it's perfect and some discredit it completely, and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle…as usual!

"What's a "weighted CEV"?" As above, it is Combat Effectiveness Value relative to norm of 1, so a unit with a CEV of 1.2 is 20% more effective than an 'average' one.

The CEV is derived from their combat performance (ground gained, casualties inflicted/lost etc) via complex model of combat.

Basically it is like rating unit counters in a boardgame.

His ratings for some reason have resulted in much ire being heaped upon him as they show division X was worse than division Y etc. In some quarters these are regarded as a national insult, much in the same way as SLA Marshalls results are. CEV differences are however the only explanation of some combat results and they map quite well onto a huge range of conflicts, the 1967 AiW being one of the more extreme examples with the IDF CEVs being in excess of 2 compared to the poor old Egyptians being .8 or something. In designing your wargame this means IDF armoured brigades get a '5' and Egyption tank regiments a '2'. The IDF then have a fighting chance of replicating their historical success, although it is still quite a tough fight for them. I've run the 1967 campaign a few times.

I have a FoW HGD Recon Co with PzIIIs L and one N for support.

They are 5wins and 3losses in FoW combat. I based and painted them for Sicily and Salerno. painted all the AFVs and AT guns dunkel gelb (Muster) except for the AAA tracks which are Pz gray…wanted somthing a little differnt.

The uniforms are a mix of khaki, Luftwaffe blue and Luftwaffe camo scheme.

I posted them on the FoW site last summer.

Good luck with the research and putting the army togeather.

SFC Retired

Where can I learn more about this CEV business and Dupoys studies? Did he write a book ?

Dupuy Institute here:

dupuyinstitute.org

with a full list of publications, some of them are downloadable PDFs or webpages. There is an interesting discussion on the calculation of CEVs in the TNDM newsletter.

Dupuys most famous book is 'Numbers, Predications and War' but he's written loads of others as well as selling combat simulation tools to the Army etc. NPW is oop but you can still pick up second hand copies.