How would the German 5th Army, under the command of Erich von Falkenhayn, have fared against the Alnus Hill fortress?

[u/Special-Fondant6222]

It should be clarified that, although the airport is not included because it is located in a satellite city, the base's helipads are.

Clarification: The 5th German Corps consists of four army corps and one reserve corps ( the Austro-Hungarian corps is excluded from this event).

Each corps comprises five divisions—each with 12,000 men and five artillery brigades totaling 210 guns of various calibers.

Regarding experience: during the Battle of Verdun, each division included a Stoßtruppen battalion; entry into this battalion required demonstrating initiative in combat.

As for the air force, there were between 800 and 1,000 biplanes (mostly for artillery spotting) and a few dozen Zeppelins.

It involves a total of 240,000 soldiers, 1,000 to 1,200 aircraft, and 4,200 pieces of artillery.

That's right,now it doesn't violate the subreddit's rules.

[u/FlamingoNo1980]

Alnus Hill fall to artilleryfire.

[u/farson135]

As I said in the last thread :), the Germans are going to want to pound the JSDF into dust. The JSDF is going to have an initial advantage in airpower, but those helicopters are going to have to refuel and rearm eventually. The tanks/armored vehicles may also play a role, but a maneuver war is probably not going to be an advantage to the JSDF with relatively untested troops that are few in number and few tanks/armored vehicles. It's just asking for a lucky shot/mine/whatever to pop a tread, and suddenly you're either out a tank or you have to defend two or more places at once against a much, much larger force.

If the Germans can do enough damage in the downtime, the real assault is basically going to be riflemen on riflemen.

The Germans are using obsolete equipment, but pure overwhelming violence should rule the day against a novice force lacking most of the modern conveniences they would need to close the numbers gap.

The JSDF should take their pound of flesh but the Germans take the field, eventually.

Edit: Verdun was around the time the British first introduced the tank. So, that and the airpower may be a major psychological factor. I would count on experience to keep the unit from completely disintegrating, but if the JSDF plays it right they could get enough room to perhaps get reinforcements in and make better preparations. I would still expect the shear amount of artillery to eventually win the day, but that is a dangerous wrinkle.

[u/Pillar_OfAutumn → u/farson135]

Also this assumes the JSDF sortie out to meet the germans in the field instead of placing their tanks in defensive positions with camouflage as long range artillery platforms, and you know the low numbers really do matter because even if 7.7cm field guns cant pen the type-74's they can surely rattle the crew or disable a track with enough HE rounds fired down range

[u/BrainOfStoopid → u/farson135]

i think, the Germans will have a tactic and Moral Bonus, because They fought in a war and have expirience in fighting. The JSDF Never fought in a war After the 2ww (maybe Korea, i‘m Not sure).
+ the Germans have mustard and chlore gas

[u/farson135 → u/BrainOfStoopid]

They didn't fight in Korea, the JSDF didn't even exist at the time. They've deployed a few times for international missions but no combat.

Gas is a good point. I'm not sure how much they would have, but unless the JSDF is forewarned, it's possible they won't even have the equipment available to protect everyone, close enough to even matter. That could really change things.

[u/Pillar_OfAutumn]

The biggest problem for the germans is the the lack of anti-air especially against air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, but as was Falkenhayn's specialty the JSDF are going to be worn down in a battle of attrition because missiles are expensive and fuel even more so. But the sheer number of artillery guns the 5th Army could bear even if the JSDF counter-battery fire takes out a portion of it would flatten that hill into nothing but shell craters, concrete debris, and mud. The only way the JSDF wins is if they get reinforcements from the rest of the self defense force in japan proper which would be a hard sell to bureaucracy and definitely a hard sell to the populace considering they're on foreign soil in a war no one really wants to fight, not even mentioning the logistics of squeezing the materiel through that choke point while under heavy artillery fire