River Battleships:
Scenario Preview, Part Four
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
November 2021
Panzer Grenadier: River Battleships is a game about riverine warships that actually existed, engaged in battles that, for the most part, did not take place. River monitors and gunboats engaged ground troops and even fought tanks, but they rarely encountered one another. Partly that’s because there just weren’t that many of them, but the river warships also became prime targets for enemy aircraft.
River Battleships takes place on the river (well, duh), in this case the Danube, Dnepr or Pinsk. Most monitor-involved actions were in support of ground forces, but I didn’t want to explode the game’s size with full-on contingents of troops and tanks and weapons and leaders. We get a few troops, Soviet and Romanian Marines, with some heavy weapons for the Soviets, but fighting between river monitors and tanks is going to have to wait for an expansion book.
The river rules are pretty extensive (about 10 pages, which some players aren’t going to think are extensive at all, but some will), and that’s on top of the standard Panzer Grenadier rules (large chunks of which, granted, will not come into use). But you will use those standard rules, so we’ve included a small intro scenario with just Soviet and Romanian ground units (form an actual June 1941 battle) so you can play with them before you set out on the river. Or if you know Panzer Grenadier (and it’s not a difficult system), you can get right to the good stuff.
The fourth chapter of River Battleships takes place during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, when the Polish flotilla tried to get to grips with the Soviets but was thwarted by low water. The fifth and final chapter is set in the last year of the war, when the Soviets drove up the Danube past Belgrade and eventually Budapest.
In each campaign, one side enjoyed near-total air superiority. And so in River Battleships, all of the fighting in these campaigns take place at night. Night combat brings the monitors into close range combat, which is an advantage for the huge Soviet armored monitors, and a definite disadvantage for the delicate Poles. Let’s have a look at the scenarios.
Chapter Four
Pinsk Flotillas
Scenario Thirteen
Waters of Pinsk
September 1939
The Polish Pinsk Flotilla struggled to get into the fight against the invading Soviets, hampered by the abnormally low water levels in the Pinsk River. Had the river flowed deeply enough to allow easy transit, they still would face the monitors and gunboats of the Soviet Pinsk Flotilla which had been formed precisely to oppose them.
Conclusion
The Polish flotilla tried to get into action to fight the Soviets. But low water on the Pinsk and its tributaries kept snagging the monitors as they advanced, and eventually the crews ended up scuttling their vessels and setting out on foot to fight the invaders. The Soviets would raise five of the six monitors and two gunboats for their own Pinsk flotilla. Most of the officers and many of the crewmen of the Riverine Flotilla were murdered in the Katyn Forest in 1940.
Notes
The Poles are trying to get a convoy of steamers past a small Soviet blocking force. Since we’re fighting this out on a river, there’s not a lot of avoidance possible here. The Poles are going to have to bop their way past, and the Soviets know that they’re coming.
Scenario Fourteen
Poland is Not Yet Lost
September 1939
While low water denied the Polish rivermen their desire to fight the Soviets, even with a deeper river they still would have needed the Soviet Pink Flotilla to come out to meet them. The Polish monitors were quite small even by river monitor standards, but they carried a heavy armament and would have been a deadly opponent for the Soviet river craft.
Conclusion
The battle-hungry Poles would have found the Soviet flotilla very much a match for them, thanks to reinforcements from the lower Dnepr. The Red Air Force did not dominate the skies of eastern Poland the way the German Air Force did in the west, which would have made any daylight movement by the Riverine Flotilla suicidal. But at this point, even a crushing Polish victory could not have saved Polish freedom.
Notes
This time we have a brawl between Polish and Soviet flotillas; the Soviets have slightly more staying power but the Poles are of course exceptionally brave. The goal here is pretty simple, to destroy or capture enemy craft.
Chapter Five
War’s End
Scenario Fifteen
Croatia’s Moment
November 1944
In late August 1944, Romania abandoned the Axis and joined the Allied side. The re-opened the Danube to the Soviets, who immediately seized the monitors of the Romanian flotilla and pressed them into their own service. The Croatian river fleet, with its reconditioned ex-Yugoslav monitors, had never expected to have to fight on the river.
Conclusion
The Croatian monitors never had to face opposing vessels, confining themselves to shelling partisan positions and protecting river convoys. The Soviets initially left the Romanian monitors under their new allies’ control, but later removed the crews, manned them with Soviets and assigned them to the Danube Flotilla’s First “Kerch” Red Banner Brigade of Ships.
Notes
This is only a small scenario, two monitors on each side (though they’re big ones, with armor and everything). These are all very old boats, but they still pack a lot of firepower.
Scenario Sixteen
South of Budapest
November 1944
The Hungarian Danube Flotilla committed its small gunboats to offer fire support to the defenders of Budapest, and the lone German river monitor joined them. The Soviets did not challenge them, but had they done so, the small Axis flotilla would have been at a serious disadvantage.
Conclusion
The German monitor Bechlaren would actually attack and sink two Soviet armored cutters in the war’s last weeks, but no large-scale fighting took place on the river. The Hungarian gunboat Debrecen was lost in late November in a shootout with Soviet T-34 tanks, but the Soviet monitors did not attempt to intervene at Budapest. They did appear at Vienna in 1945, providing fire support from the Danube during the Soviet capture of the Austrian capital.
Notes
That mob of Hungarian gunboats is back, this time facing a pair of Soviet monitors (ex-Romanian prizes) backed by a cluster of floating tanks. It’s a night-time brawl, made extra nasty, of course, by the river terrain – it’s a really big river, the Danube, but it still has banks within sight of each other. You can neither run nor hide.
And those are the scenarios of River Battleships.
You can order River Battleships right here.
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects.
He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his dog, Leopold. Leopold knows the number.
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