All in all, not a terrible week. Heavy losses, but that is to be expected, when defending and not running away. Two large successful counterattacks (and one failed). Mostly we are rearranging to slow down the German panzers, which push in certain key sectors.
There is some Light Rain falling around Leningrad city this week, with Low Pressure Fronts over the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Maybe some early fall weather is moving in?
The Finland Theatre Box has lost Action Points and Victory Points more than one week. What to do about this?
STAVKA discloses the formation of a Strategical Reserve. So far it consists of +800 pieces of 203 mm artillery.
There are a handful of regular infantry divisions refitting in cities away from the front, but they are more of a tactical reserve to plug gaps, than a major force.
After this turn I felt rather confident, but things will get worse before they get better.
Turn Summary
Losing Artillery and planes.
Trucks
Transportation looks good.
Freight
My best guess is that freight operates at at least average efficiency.
New Events
We get a free leader upgrade, much appreciated!
Army Strength and losses
We havent talked a lot about the two armies, so here it is.
The red army is at 3.8m men on map and 5.7m total forces.
The Axis forces are at nearly 4.5m men in the East and more than 7.7m men in total.
The Red army is outnumbered still, but is slowly getting stronger.
Ground Losses
Considering the enormous losses the first couple of weeks, we expect the loss ratios to improve in the future. But how much is the question.
Air losses
The situation in the air war doesn´t look great. But we are inflicting some losses. Since we lack fighters, we are forced to withdraw almost all air units from the map this week.
Considering how many air losses we have taken, the South-Western Front, is now the only Front with air support. All other air units have been withdrawn. This is a low point of the Soviet air force.
As you can see the VVS has taken some rather horrific air losses, and it will not get better with time any time soon.
Overview
The German offensive continues almost along the entire front. Here you can see what cities have fallen so far. Only Orel holds out on the frontline.
This week we will present an overview of all sections of the front. In the future there might not be reports of these parts, because nothing really changed, so if you need a reference, this is the post to get it.
The Northern Sector
From Leningrad to Orel, the Germans have three Schwerpunkts with panzer formations.
Leningrad has over 10 units, pushing towards the shore of Lake Ladoga to isolation Leningrad.
Smolensk has only 3 panzer divisions, and can be handled, even if they keep pushing eastwards.
The Orel Panzer-gruppe outflanked Bryansk, and neccessitated abandoning it, and is now repeating this manouver at Orel. Thanks to large efforts to reinforce in front of this threat, no breakthroughs have occured yet.
Leningrad Front
The Eastern part of the Leningrad defenses are weakly held for now. The plan is to slowly fall back to the fortifications outside the City itself.
Here we can see that the German Panzers have broken through out attempt at establishing a line between Leningrad and Novgorod. This means we are constantly throwing fresh divisions into the fray to slow down the advanced. The terrain is in the defenders advantage, but the intensity of combat (we play with normal retreat rules) means losing most battles, wear down the local forces, almost faster than they can be reinforced (local refit and reinforcement is absolutely not enough.
At this stage I believe that if I keep prioritizing Leningrad over all other sectors, I should be able to stop the Germans before the cut of the city. At this stage I am still building supply depots to stock up on Freight, in case I am going to get cut off.
What do you think will happen?
The Panzers of the North
Here you can see the concentration of force in the North. And the amount of costly combat each week. I am content with the three Held Results, but the losses of five lost battles are still very painful.
We are forced to plug the gaps.
North-Western Front
This is one of the few sectors of the entire front that has become more or less frozen. And I am grateful for this.
Over the coming weeks I will make minor adjustments here, like removing high quality formations, replacing them with suitable garrison units instead, etc. We will not return to this sector for a very long time.
I believe this is the last week we see a concentrated push in this area.
Our defenses at the end of the week.
Western Front
Smolensk is lost, but no encirclements. And the pressure in the center towards Moscow has mostly let off. It is clear that a direct approach to Moscow is no longer the main priority for the OKH. We held this sector for a long time, and saved the capital!
From having being one, if not the strongest sectors of the front, defensive combat, along with a lack of reinforcements, have downgraded this Front to a rather lackluster formation. It is enough to slow down the enemies pushes, but not more.
Further South-East the Armies north of Bryansk are now even weaker, since we anticipate little enemy activity here.
General Purkaevs strong (Orange colour) 4th Combined Army has shifted eastward to cover Orel instead of Bryansk. Hopefully its heroic tank commanders can prevent a breakthrough in the coming weeks.
Here you can see the fighting around Orel. Note our two counterattacks, we give back when we can, which isnt often.
Bryansk Counterattack
Krusk Counterattack
Southern Sector
In the South we have around a Panzer-korps, that outflanked and threathened Kursk, forcing us to bandon the city or become surrounded. We fell back without major losses here.
The main threat is the strong Panzer-Gruppe facing our Stalino armies. We are frantically building up the "Stalino Line" as fast as we can, hoping to halt the invaders at this river line.
Kharkov defences are fairly strong, and we hope to be able to disassemble our T-34 factories here, before being pushed out of the city.
We fail a counterattack outside Kharkov. Clearly three Elite Soviet Mechanized Divisions shouldnt be able to move a single German infantry division in the open! Statistics looked good, combat result was bad. You live and you learn.
A closer look at the Stalino defenses. We now have five fortified zones behind the river preparing level 3 forts.
The Kerch defenses are strong. This week we abandoned the entire Melitipol area.The 24th Army is taken over by General Malinovsky around Perekop, and Rokossovsky´s Combined 4th Army is covering the Northern entrancess. We are awaiting the arrival of the 11th German Army from Odessa.
"Yes, I am the henchman of the Devil but my services are primarily ceremonial..."
