Panzers vs The Bear: A WitE2 MP AAR (Axis Perspective)

[821Bobo]

Not many attacks by Soviets this week. I did some tactical retreats to protect most exposed units. Like in previous weeks, most land have been voluntarily abandoned in the Orel - Kursk - Kharkov area. Everywhere else I am able to limit Soviet advance.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

You should not be able to invade in bad weather, right?

you can, but you take awful naval attrition. 24.7.2 hints at the issues but we removed all the detailed formula that were in the WiTW manual as;

a) we did have to save some space
b) its far more a niche activity than it was in WiTW
c) no-one actually understood the formulas in any case [8D]

But if you want to see them, the WiTW Living Manual has them (& I don't think its been adjusted)

[821Bobo]

Turn 34, 8.2.1942

With Leningrad captured, I am slowly starting to pull out 4th Panzer Group from that area. Eventually losing hex or two is now not a concern.
Most Soviet efforts were in the Vyzma direction. There is only one month of harsh weather left and my main focus will be to hold all the vital supply points like Vyazma, Bryansk(most of reinforcements are heading here), then Stalino and Kharkov(city is still not connected to rail network but work in progress).

[821Bobo]

The southern part of front is without Blizzard but I decided to retreat. Only Stalino needs to be held for all cost and if possible Taganrog. Donbas is now deep in Soviet rear and that can give some nice opportunities in summer.

[821Bobo]

Turn 35, 15.2.1942

Moscow sector remains the only area with sustaining Soviet pressure. They managed to achieve kind of breakthrough but luckily good defensive terrain and bad weather doesn't allow exploiting it. Lot of cavalry and mobile units are spotted, it would be really unfortunate if they manage to cut off the Vyazma(and Rzev) depot.

[821Bobo]

The weakest part of my lines. Enemy is probably not aware about these gaps otherwise I can't imagine why Tim didn't try to exploit it. Also many infantry divisions in this sector are down to 3000-4000 men.
This week I used some mobile units to flip few hexes back to make it harder detecting how weak is the line. In this case Blizzard plays in my favor because Soviets have no air recon too.

[Speedysteve]

As has been noted in Glorious Ruse's AAR I have conceded this game.

There were 2 factors leading to 1 main consequence that led me to concede.

These were:

1.) The Axis seemingly attacked very aggressively to achieve as much 'victory' as possible.

2.) Supply/logistics situation - it was less than optimal (in my opinion).

The consequence of these was the depleted state of the Heer. The factors are totally interlinked to exacerbate the consequence. The last nail in the coffin, for my decision, was due to the state of the Heer and the operational situation going into Winter the Soviets launched a devastating counter-attack against over extended Axis units in mixed supply = a mass detrition of the Heer. You'll see in the situation map the Soviet breakout towards Kiev. This is a prime example of the Axis situation. There were too few Ready Axis to prevent or stop this. To give you an idea of the Logistics challenge here too the nearest functioning railhead/depot is Kremenchug. There's no functioning Railhead or Depot available between Bryansk and Kremenchug. Now. Of course the Axis would have recovered the ground lost in the Kharkov breakout towards Kiev BUT it would have taken a couple of months to do that alone.

The last contributing factor to my concession is the ability to recover the Heer to mount even a moderate Summer 42 offensive. In short I don't think it would be possible. It's a snowball effect of the above factors. The Panzers are utterly depleted, too high a percentage of the Infantry are understrength and depleted = I'm not able to pull enough out of line to refit and recover as there's too many units needing this = units will remain weak and the Soviets can continue to attack worsening the situation = repeat ad infinitum

Last thing to note is these are just my observations of the current state of the Axis. Nothing to do with gameplay or choices made prior. Going for broke and an aggressive Axis campaign is a totally viable option. It's just that if it doesn't work the Axis will be over-extended with a potentially shaky logistics network to cope with.

[Speedysteve]

The OOB:

[Speedysteve]

The Panzers:

[Speedysteve]

The lowest CV's German units are below. To give you a bigger picture 51.71% of Axis units are understrength, unready or depleted.

[Speedysteve]

Last bit of info from me for now (please feel free to ask if there's any other information or detail you'd like) is with regard to panzers and not being able to mount a viable 42 offensive.

There's currently 1,305 tanks in the German Panzer divisions. To be at maximum capacity they would be at 4,641 operational tanks. Assuming an Axis offensive start date in 2 months time and taking into account the unused Panzer Replacement Bn's and production there would be 2,824 tanks in the divisions. As a percentage it means the Panzers would be at 60.84% operational tank TOE. Assuming there’s no further tank losses that is!

[M60A3TTS]

As you took the game over from Bobo, you get a lot of leeway here. If you kick the tires, take it for a test drive and decide she's not for you, so be it.

In terms of numbers, if things aren't to your liking, there's not much to be done about that.

But... maybe a little perspective here wouldn't hurt.


For Blau, the entire operation was only including two of the four panzer armies, Hoth's 4th and Kleist's 1st. 2nd and 3rd were parked further north and were no doubt stripped down somewhat in order to reinforce their other two panzer armies. So to say that you would only have 60% of the operational TO&E without losses doesn't seem that far removed from what the Germans really were facing. And Blau actually kicked off in late June which would have given you even more stuff.

The infantry at 2.9 million may not look great to you, but what's in the manpower pool? How much more of the disabled soldiers will be coming back? It just doesn't seem as though the situation here was any worse than what the Axis forces were historically facing. And you are really fighting over the lower half of the map with Leningrad already under control and not actually needing Moscow or Kalinin.

That's my $.02. Again, if after 4 turns you decided the hand you had been dealt made this a fight you didn't feel was worth continuing, then fine. At least you made an effort and thanks for that.

[Speedysteve]

Thanks

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

...

The infantry at 2.9 million may not look great to you, but what's in the manpower pool? How much more of the disabled soldiers will be coming back? It just doesn't seem as though the situation here was any worse than what the Axis forces were historically facing. And you are really fighting over the lower half of the map with Leningrad already under control and not actually needing Moscow or Kalinin.

That's my $.02. Again, if after 4 turns you decided the hand you had been dealt made this a fight you didn't feel was worth continuing, then fine. At least you made an effort and thanks for that.

think the problem is the number of extremely warn down formations. So yes the replacements prob are back in Berlin but you have to get something like 20 infantry divisions out of the line and back on depots to repair. You can't do this steadily as they are now unready and are at risk of a shatter.

So its not can you rebuild for something in the summer? The answer is yes, its will the Soviets let you.

In my current game with Steve, I am managing this rotation obsessively, basically as the divisions from the West arrive, I release the worst battered to refit, and so on. The result (more or less where this game is) is that I've few <50% TOE and those are mostly now being pulled out.

[821Bobo]

To explain my sudden silence. Some 3 weeks ago I started to have health issues and last 12 days I spent in hospital.

Speedysteve decided to take over the game but it seems I have 'successfully' wrecked the Heer. [:D]