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The Fulda Gap 1989: The Battle for the Center

The Fulda Gap 1989: The Battle for the Center is a simulation conversion modification project for WARNO the project scope aims to provide a campaign series for the simulation of a hypothetical conflict between WARSAW and NATO forces. The dynamic campaign includes multiplayer simulation game mode customizations that can be adjusted to the preference of the player, changes to gameplay elements of this simulation modification are unit, deck, timeline, and availability modifications to accurately represent each country’s military capability.

Each country’s Battle Group Deck is modified to represent a division or Brigade Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E), Multiplayer games represent Corp or Army Operational Level engagements. The numerical values of unit packs are modeled using military reference sources to model as accurately the warfighting capability of the respective armies. ARMY (SHAPE) planning doctrine documentation and its assessment of the threat the WARSAW forces posed to NATO has been used to model the combat effectiveness of WARSAW forces.

The campaign simulation timer begins in 1975, the year most likely the Russians would have decided to launch an attack against NATO forces in Europe. Due to their estimates of low US morale and numerical troop strength in Europe after the Vietnam war. The simulation models the political scenario in which STAVKA is given permission to begin planning an attack against the NATO force in West Germany in 1975, the chance of a Russian attack across the Fulda gap diminishes every year by approximately seven percent (~7.143%) until 1989 when a general withdrawal of Soviet forces in east Germany is announced and the reunification of Germany begins.

The named locations listed represent peacetime barracks positions. Prior to hostilities, all units would deploy according to their wartime General Defense Plan (GDP). There were three wartime scenarios that affect settings for multiplayer or campaign games. The first was a Warsaw Pact attack directly out of their barracks locations with only a few days of preparation, depending on strategic surprise, NATO would have had about 48 to 72 hours' warning. This was the scenario NATO feared the most. The second, and most likely, was a 7 to10 day warning with REFORGER units moving into place and the Soviets mobilizing for 2 to 3 weeks. The last scenario models a full deployment for both sides. With a nuclear exchange being a high probability in the 11th and 13th pre-generated campaign scenarios.

There are other game simulation modifications elements, which affect the general disposition of forces and their deployments, the campaign simulation models the engagement scenario where the soviets are launching an assault with no warning from their station areas through the Erfurt-Eisenach region, this corridor, which begins at the gap between to mountain basins opens into a wide grassy region of farmland that crosses the Border into the Phillipstal-Rasdorf sector (the sector of the American 11th Armored Calvary Regiment and the 2nd Panzer Grenadier Division). From there it runs west to the gap between the Vogelsberg and the highlands north of the Autobahn.

The broad corridor that begins at that gap and runs astride the autobahn all the way to Frankfurt and the Rhine is known specifically as the Wetterau Corridor. When you reflect on the last month of World War II you will recognize that the Wetterau Corridor and what we now know as the Fulda Gap served as the main avenue for the drive of the Third U.S. Army from its Rhine bridgehead near Frankfurt onward to Leipzig and the heart of Germany. (At one point in April 1945 Third Army HQ was in Hersfeld.).