Web Extra! Until recently, ACG readers had to wait two issues to find out the solution to our popular You Command Combat Decision Games. Now we are posting the historical outcome and analysis at armchairgeneral.com shortly after the respective due date for submissions of Reader Solutions. Here is the outcome for You Command CDG #31, “German Glider Assault, Crete, 1941,” March 2009 issue.

GERMAN GLIDER ASSAULT
CRETE, 1941
The March 2009 issue of Armchair General® presented the Combat Decision Game “German Glider Assault on Crete, 1941.” This CDG placed readers in the role of Major Walter Koch, commander of the 1st Battalion, 1st Stürm Regiment, XI Flieger Korps. Koch’s mission was to lead his glider-borne troops in “an assault from the sky” to capture a vital airfield at Maleme on the British-occupied island of Crete.

The German high command’s plan was to use 14,000 parachute and glider troops supported by an air armada of nearly 500 planes in the initial attack to secure key points along the northern half of the island. The most important of these were Crete’s three airfields, which the Germans needed so they could land heavily armed follow-on ground forces to reinforce the lightly armed airborne troops. If the airfields, particularly the main one at Maleme, were not captured early on, the airborne operation – World War II’s largest to date – risked becoming a costly failure.

HISTORICAL OUTCOME

The German invasion of Crete, known as Operation Mercury, began at 8 a.m. on May 20, 1941, when thousands of German fallschirmjaegers, supported by the “flying artillery” of Luftwaffe fighters, bombers and dive-bombers, descended by parachute and glider. Although the commander of the British and Commonwealth forces on Crete, General Bernard Freyberg of New Zealand, had been warned of the impending attack through information gleaned from ULTRA code intercepts, Freyberg’s approximately 40,000 British, Commonwealth and Greek army defenders operated under severe handicaps. The majority of them recently had been evacuated from Greece in a “mini-Dunkirk,” but they left behind most of their heavy weapons and transport.

Thousands of Freyberg’s men were support troops ill trained for combat operations, while thousands more possessed no weapons at all. Yet the defenders’ 85 artillery pieces, numerous mortars, 20 mm anti-aircraft battery and about two dozen tanks posed formidable challenges to the German airborne attackers who were equipped almost exclusively with small arms and light machine guns.

Realizing that the airfields would be the Germans’ prime objectives, Freyberg concentrated his defenders there. Thus the battle for Crete essentially became a fight for control of these key locations.

Koch determined that his men could not gain control of the Maleme airfield without first overtaking the three defensive positions surrounding it. Therefore he decided to land each of the three companies in his battalion near one of these objectives (CDG Course of Action Two).

Lieutenant von Plessen’s 13 gliders landed in the northern portion of the Tavronitis riverbed, near the enemy anti-aircraft guns. Although his men sustained some casualties due to glider crashes, they were still able to employ surprise and speed to launch an immediate assault against the gun positions. As the Luftwaffe’s suppressive attacks lifted, the anti-aircraft gunners attempted to bring their weapons to bear against the advancing Germans, but before the New Zealanders could wreak havoc, the attackers made it to the gun pits and began fighting hand to hand with the gun crews. Plessen’s troops captured the anti-aircraft guns one by one and soon secured their objective, although Plessen himself fell during the fighting. A determined counterattack by the New Zealanders then prevented Plessen’s men from assisting the battalion’s other assaults.

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