by Kevin Peltz
Two units, out of the many hundreds that appear in Normandy '44, have drawn some
special interest lately over at the Blitzkrieg Panzer Campaign forum recently (see topic "Unit Data Error?" stated by Peter Common). These units are depicted in the game by a graphic of a Panzer I tank, have no attack or defense value, but have a substantial assault value. What the hell are these things? They are FKL ("Funklenk" or radio control) companies that use a modified Panzer I chassis, filled with explosives. These vehicles were driven by remote control from a command vehicle, and were intended to be driven into a minefield or up against heavy fortifications, and either drop a large explosive charge, or be exploded directly- clearing a hole in the minefield, or wrecking the fortification. They also had some success in destroying enemy vehicles, and notable accounts of all the above actions occurred at Sevastopol, Kursk, and apparently Normandy, where records indicate some 18 Allied vehicles were destroyed by FKL units. Click on the image at the left to load a larger image in a new window. Research on the radio controlled panzer concept started back in 1940, when the Waffenamt was looking for methods of quickly clearing a lane through enemy minefields, and the original tests were done using Panzer I chassis (thus the game graphic). Results of these tests ultimately yielded the "Goliath" vehicle, and the larger follow-on, which by the time of D-Day, was called "Borgward IV" (this explains the "B IV" nomenclature in the unit data). The command vehicles were various types as time went on, but in N'44, they are represented by a platoon of StuG IIIg. Tiger I's and even King Tigers were supposed to have eventually been used, but sources are a bit confusing as to how many, if any, of the StuG's were replaced. I suppose for historical fidelity, a house rule for anyone using the FKL units could possibly be that the BIV unit may not stray further than 1 hex from it's parent StuG unit, as the range of the radio command signal was only good out to about 1,000 metres. FKL 301 appears around Turn 7 as a reinforcement (85,85) in Scenario #29 "Stalemate." The other unit, FKL 316, belongs to the Panzer Lehr Division. In the following picture, I have shown the entrance of FKL 301 in that scenario, with the original game .bmp and the actual .bmp of the vehicle included as well. These are obviously not going to make or break a scenario, but they are interesting units, that in my case at least, were over-shadowed by their Goliath little brothers... Click on the Image at the right or here to download the ZIP for your game Thanks to Corey Peltz for his diligent research that pointed me to the info, and for making the new .bmp file for the game.
it is only a tiny download file and if you unzip it to the Normandy Game folder it will find the correct directory. This Image will be part of Volcano's next Portrait Pack upgrade.