"Alternate KG Peipers?" Topic

Purely out of curiosity. How many of us have done Kampfgruppe Peiper as some sort of mini-campaign or linked scenarios? How's it gone? And what got me to thinking about this, has anyone tried it with a different KG Peiper? Say by assigning it the Recon Battalion instead of the Tigers? Or just leaving the Tigers behind until the bridges were secure?

Call me crazy, but if someone told me to grab some units to run down dirt roads and seize some distinctly iffy bridges, the heaviest tanks in the inventory would not have been my first pick.

IIRC, Peiper tried to leave them behind, thinking they would slow him down too much. The famous series of photos showing German paratroopers riding on King Tigers were taken after he did leave them in the rear, and they were used for propaganda photos with the remains of the paratrooper unit that got held up at Lanzarath ridge by the Intelligence and recon platoon of the 394th Infantry. Later they were used to hold his supply line open against American counter-attacks.

Yes, the Tigers went to the back of the column where they stayed. Otherwise, it is a pretty standard primary Kampfgruppe – 1st SS Panzer Regiment+ the Armoured Panzergrenadier battalion. The Panzer Regiment was quite week (just four companies in one battalion iirc) which was why the Tigers were added.

Battleground did a campaign book called Key to the West. Germans get to choose what they start with using a point system and Americans get points on the start of each day.

If Wenkin & Dujardin "The Breakthrough of Kampfgruppe Peiper" are correct, the Tigers are at the end of the combat elements, but ahead of the supports--meaning fuel, medics and mechanics have to go on roads the Tigers have torn up, go no faster than the Tigers, and then get past the behemoths to do any good. (And if the lead elements go faster than the Tigers, a column that's already 24 Km long gets even more stretched out.)

I may be biased, but I can't shake the feeling that he'd have been better off leaving them for a follow-on force and trying to reach the Meuse with something weaker but faster and more nimble.

The Kampfgruppes from the Heer divisions were configured like this and performed better, although still not able to escape the problem of timely resupply as the fate of 2nd Panzer attests.

They would have come in handy against a US counterattack if they broke out.

Wolfhag

A number of tigers did make it all the way to La Gleize. With no fuel, they were spread out in defensive positions and became powerful pill boxes. In fact one of the massive tanks is still there in front of a small museum.

Stephen