Wargame SITREP 24-39 ~ The other Patton’s Way with Arracourt 1944 and Patton’s Vanguard: The Battle of Arracourt, 1944 (Michael Rinella, Revolution Games, 2017)

For my military book read this week this week I am reading Patton’s Way: A Radical Theory of War by James Kelly Morningstar from Naval Institute Press (2017). Morningstar identifies four key principles of Patton’s unique way of war: “targeting the enemy’s moral through shock; utilizing highly practiced combined arms mechanized columns; relying on mission tactics and flexible command and control; and employing multilayered and synthesized intelligence systems to identify enemy capabilities and weak spots” (Patton’s Way dust jacket).

After reading the book I was so excited to explore Patton’s way of war in a wargame that I reached for my shelves for a very Patton-esque title. The one that came first to my mind—and incidentally is the only “Patton” title I own—was Patton’s Vanguard: The Battle of Arracourt, 1944 by Michael Rinella from Revolution Games in 2017.

“Perfect!”, I thought. Both book and wargame were published around the same time; maybe I will get lucky and see Rinella’s interpretation of Morningstar.

I quickly discovered, however, that Patton’s Vanguard and Patton’s Way are two very opposite views of Patton’s fame. In Patton’s Way, Morningstar traces the evolution of Patton’s doctrinal way of war from the earliest days of Patton’s life up to his death in December 1945. The Battle of Arracourt, however, does not appear in Patton’s Way.

I was confused. Arracourt is a very important battle and often called one of Patton’s greatest victories. In the words of the publisher of Arracourt 1944: Triumph of American Armor by Mike Guardia (Casemate Publishers, 2022):

The battle of Arracourt was the US Army’s largest tank battle until the Ardennes Offensive in December 1944. It helped pave the way for the final Allied assault into Germany, and showed how tactical ingenuity and adaptive leadership can overcome an enemy’s superior size or technological strength.

Arracourt 1944, publisher’s blurb

The references to “tactical ingenuity” and “adaptive leadership” sound like they came from Patton’s Way. Intrigued, I ordered Guardia’s book hoping to fill in the gaps Morningstar left.

Battle of Arracourt

This is how the back cover of Arracourt 1944 sets the stage of the battle:

September 1944: With the Allies closing in on the Rhine, Adolf Hitler orders a counterattack on General Patton’s Third Army in France. Near the small French town of Arracourt, elements of the US 4th Armored Division meet the grizzled veterans of the 5th Panzer Army in combat. Atop their M4 Shermans, American tank crews square off against the technologically superior Mark V Panther tanks of the Wehrmacht. Yet through a combination of superior tactics, leadership, teamwork, and small-unit initiative, the outnumbered American forces win a decisive victory against the 5th Panzer Army.
 
Indeed, of the 262 tanks and mobile assault guns fielded by German forces at Arracourt, 200 were damaged or destroyed by enemy fire. The Americans, by contrast, lost only 48 tanks. Following the collapse of the German counterattack, Patton’s Third Army found itself within striking distance of the Third Reich’s borderlands.

Arracourt 1944, back cover

Immediately I realized that Morningstar in Patton’s War focuses on the offensive; in particular Patton in the breakout from Normandy. Using the Battle of Arracourt, alternatively, Rinella in Patton’s Vanguard and Guardia in Arracourt 1944 focus on Patton on the defensive.

Vanguard at Arracourt

So how well does Rinella’s Patton’s Vanguard wargame depict the four principles from Morningstar’s Patton’s Way?

Principle 1: “Targeting the enemy’s moral through shock” – NOT DEPICTED. The possible combat results (see 11.5.4 Computing Results) are Repulse, Stalemate, Success, and Overrun. Each result is based on attrition of the combatants; there is no morale factor in Patton’s Vanguard.

Principle 2: “Utilizing highly practiced combined arms mechanized columns” – DEPICTED. Attack Value modifier 11.5.2.C. awards a +1 modifier “when any three types of units participate in the same attack: armor, infantry, engineer, and/or artillery.”

Principle 3: “Relying on mission tactics and flexible command and control” – DEPICTED? Though not directly stated in the rule book, one could make the argument that the combination of Tactical Superiority, Leadership, and The Advantage loosely represents mission tactics and flexible command and control. Rule 17.6 Tactical Superiority grants “flexibility” to conduct actions when they otherwise would not be allowed. Additionally, Attack Value modifier 11.5.2.E. adds the value of the Leader Marker (+1 or +2) to the computation of the Attack Value (interestingly, the Leader Marker value is NOT added to Defense Value (DV)). Finally, The Advantage provides an element of “luck” that appears ever so fleetingly on the battlefield.

Principle 4: “Employing multilayered and synthesized intelligence systems to identify enemy capabilities and weak spots” – NOT DEPICTED. There is no reconnaissance or other “intelligence” phase in Patton’s Vanguard. Nor is there any hidden information; per rule 7.1 Stacking, “A player may freely examine stacks of enemy units at any time.”

Arracourt a la Guardia

Guardia in Arracourt 1944 states the battle featured “tactical ingenuity” and “adaptive leadership.” A close reading of the book, however, shows Guardia focuses more on a comparison of the equipment of the two combatants and how the machines drove tactical innovation, not generals like Patton. When factors such as leadership and training are addressed, it is placed subordinate to pure force-on-force metrics:

But what the Sherman lacked in pure metrics, the crews compensated for with superior metaphysics. For example, there can be little question that, by 1944, the American tank units had better training and better crew synchronicity that their counterparts in the Wehrmacht. The ailing logistics and lack of time had taken their toll on the panzer crews’ combat effectiveness. American tactics also helped mitigate the German’s armored advantage. The Americans had devised a number of innovative tactics to overcome the Panther’s brute strength.

Guardia, p. 84

Guardia also praises the M18 Hellcat tank destroyer for reasons beyond guns and armor:

Despite noting several areas for improvement, the [704th Tank Destroyer] [B]attalion remarked th vehicle had been “superlative” in its performance. The field tests also proved that teamwork, tight communication, and low-level initiative were essential to the tank destroyer’s success. This in turn wold precipitate a new, flexible command structure that allowed vehicle crews and sections to be more adaptive and responsive to changes on the battlefield.

Guardia, p. 43

In Patton’s Vanguard, Rinella rates the American armor units as superior to the Germans in terms of both Attack and Defense Values as well as speed:

When I first saw the ratings my gut reaction was, “That can’t be right. Everybody just KNOWS the Panther is superior to Shermans, eh?” Rinella apparently doesn’t think so—if you can get past all the force-on-force metrics in Arracourt 1944 one might discover that Guardia and Rinella are not actually that far apart when it comes to rating the opposing forces.

Attrition of ideas

Patton’s Vanguard does not reflect the principles of Patton’s Way in part because it is built upon an attritional combat model. As Morningstar explains attritional warfare was the antithesis of Patton’s way of war:

U.S. Army doctrine embraced increasingly industrial models of established methods of attritional warfare built on well-planned and controlled operations. Capstone interwar regulations directed that all military operations should aim to create battles designed to destroy the enemy’s forces. Before World War II, Eisenhower, Bradley, and even Marshall had only commanded tactical infantry units in peacetime with which they practiced official doctrine, using maneuver to bring destructive firepower on the enemy. Patton, having commanded a tank brigade in combat in World War I, held different ideas. He decided it was best to avoid battle—to go around and behind the enemy. He rejected doctrine targeting enemy forces and instead took aim at the enemy’s will. Patton developed a new calculus of war: fire to enable maneuver; maneuver to create shock; shock to frustrate enemy decisonmaking; frustrate decisonmaking to destroy enemy morale; and destroy morale to collapse the enemy’s will. To his more conventional peers, it was not a calculus that added up to victory.

Morningstar, pp. 3-4

In their post-battle analysis of the Battle of Arracourt, Guardia focuses on those hard kill attritional metrics with only a small nod to tactics and leadership:

Examining the battle from a tactical and technical perspective, one sees a glaring difference in the training, crew proficiency, and comparative combat power between the U.S. Army and the Wehrmacht. To be fair, the Panther tank unit had a technological edge over the Sherman in terms of armored protection and punching power, but a combination of poor maintenance and crew training eroded much of the Panther’s advantages. In fact, German tanks in the ETO [European Theater of Operations] performed better against American armor when operating from defensive positions. Most tanks have a natural advantage when operating from the defense; and the kill scored from these defensive postures may have contributed to the ongoing myth of German armor’s unilateral superiority. When reviewing the engagement data, however, one sees that American tanks also produced more kills when operating from defensive postures. During offensive operations, however, when both American and German armor were maneuvering against each other, German kill ratios fell precipitously. In these instances, it was clear that American tactics won the day even though the Panthers had superior metrics in armor and firepower.

Guardia, p. 124

Not finding Patton’s Way with Patton’s Vanguard

Coming back to the book I started with, Patton’s Way, I now see that Patton’s Vanguard is the wrong game to use to explore Patton’s uniquely radical way of war. The addition of Arracourt 1944 to this week’s readings further shows the difficulties designers face when depicting battles. The game design Rinella uses in Patton’s Vanguard is built almost exclusively on the attritional, force-on-force model of combat and all-but-ignores other factors in combat such as morale, mission tactics and command and control, and intelligence that are key principles in Patton’s way of war. Rinella, in fact, seemingly has to bend the hard metrics of Attack and Defense Values and overrate American tank units as compared to the German Panther to achieve “historical” combat results in Patton’s Vanguard.

References

• Guardia, M. (2022) Arracourt 1944: Triumph of American Armor. Casemate Publishers.
• Morningstar, J.K. (2017) Patton’s Way: A Radical Theory. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
• Rinella, M. (2017) Patton’s Vanguard: The Battle of Arracourt, 1944. Take Aim Designs: Revolution Games.

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Feature image courtesy RMN

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