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This will be an informational AAR from the Western Allies perspective. We've agreed to a 3 player game where goodbyebluesky will play the Axis vs the WA which are split with dlazov playing the USA and myself playing the Commonwealth (CW). We are all fairly inexperienced with WitW but have significant WitE/WitE2 experience.

This mostly means I'll be controlling the RAF air force which primarily does night bombing in the Ruhr and the CW ground units while dlazov will control the US 8th AF which does day bombing in Germany and the US ground units. We will split control of the Mediterranean Air Commands as they have a mix of CW and US air groups to support all ground units invading Italy.

I'll mostly just be posting screenshots with brief commentary. Hopefully its useful for newer players as there aren't as many WA AARs here. I'll also try to include some "tips" sections to summarize what we learned as we played through various turns. Questions and input are welcome!

And so it begins...

Turn 1 - July 3, 1943

Overview

So for inexperienced players, WA turn 1 is quite overwhelming and long. I highly recommend practicing it a few times vs the AI for new players. Besides the normal tasks, you need to:
1. Re-organize all your air forces as they start all over the place (I guess its historical but from a gameplay standpoint its really messy and illogical). You can spend endless hours on this between rebasing air groups, moving them to a different command, setting loadouts, manually swapping/upgrading to different plane types, and setting up all your air directives (ADs).
2. Determine if you want to stick with the standard 6 Amphib HQ (TF) invasion of Sicily or retarget some of these TFs to other areas

Air

We do a lot of air group rebasing and switching them between HQs to start off. There are some good AARs that explain T1 air re-organization much better than I can which I suggest reading:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 7&t=345040
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 7&t=282200

Eventually we set up some bombing runs in Germany primarily targeting u-boats and the Ruhr (all not shown here): And set up coverage for our landings in Sicily:

Air Results

European Theater of Operations (ETO)
- Great night raid on Duisburg by Bomber Command (BC)!
- Raid on Hamburg was supposed to go after U-Boats but they failed and hit manpower and nothing on the second raid. Lost 9% of B-17s.
- Raid on Bremen did much better knocking out 45% of the U-Boat factories, lost 6.5% of B-17s.
- Raid on Braunschweig lost 5.46% of the B-17s and 17% of P-47s and took out 14% of the German fighters. But the manpower damage was only a net of +2 and the +5 for for the second mission with no losses.
- Raid on Misburg (Fuel) lost only 3% of my B-17s but lost 72% of my P-47s, but took out 47% of the fuel production and the German fighters lost was only 5.15%.
- Both raids on the U-Boat facilities at Danzig were very successful! The first raid only lost 5.4% of the B-24s and did 14% damage, and the second raid lost 5.31% of the B-24s and did 61% damage to the U-Boat facilities!
- The US 8th Air Superiority (AS) went pretty well. The first a ratio of 1 to 3, the second was about 1 to 4, but the last was the reverse.

Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO)
- Malta Air Command (MAC) - 2 AS: missions only one of which took. We lost 8.57 of our Fighters and 4% of our bombers while the Axis lost 31.25% of their fighters, so overall great results here.
- Strategic Air Command (SAC) - GA: we took minor losses but it seems the Axis took it worse.
- Tactical Air Command (TAC) - GA: we had minor losses and okay damage/effects (average was +3 to +9, highest was +39).
- Coastal Air Command (CAC) - NP: Minor losses, effects: NP#1 (+159 to +578), NP#2 (+745 to +1341), NP#3 (+201 to +543).

Overall Results

Ground

After lots of discussion, we decide to just stick with the standard 6 TF invasion of Sicily as we aren't experienced enough or confident enough to invade with less. From reading other AARs and gaining a bit more experience, I'm fairly certain retargeting a few of the TFs is definitely a more optimal opening.

Invasion and Amphib HQ (TF) Tips
- TFs need at least 50 prep pts to launch, units need 30 prep pts
- Prep pts are gained based on port size and units with the TF: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... ?p=3628485
- Retargeting TFs loses 2/3 of prep points (except can retarget on T1 to 49 pts), attaching SU to a CU results in -10 prep pts loss
- Commando/ranger attached to TF can provide bonus to invasion
- TFs support all adjacent temp ports and provide significant naval gun support to any battles in adjacent hexes
- Invasion creates temp lvl 2 port (if no port in the hex), lvl 2 airbase, and depot
- Temp ports provide "hold at all costs" CV defense x4 multipler but cause additional losses if needed

So we launch all our TFs and pray that they land without too many losses...

Turn 2 - July 10, 1943

Overview

The invasions seemed to go alright with fairly low casualties. Not much action from the Axis air or ground units. First look at the VP screen where we start with a chunk of ground losses which causes most of the negative VPs.

Screenshots:

Air

We continue trying to sort out the air mess and send some shorter range air groups from ETO to MTO. We decide to roughly organize MTO as follows:
1. SAF - 4 & 2 engine LBs + TAC/FBs w/large bombs + longer range fighters, can use this to bomb infra, units, and GS
2. TAF - TAC/FBs w/small bombs & rockets + short range fighters, use this for ground interdiction
3. Malta - short range fighters, use for air superiority (could possibly combine this with TAF if that makes things easier to manage)
4. Coastal - naval patrol

ETO is pretty similar to last turn targeting uboats and Ruhr.

For MTO, we set up ADs across Sicily with TAF doing interdiction and SAF doing unit bombing and GS:

Air Results

Overall a pretty solid turn with about even losses on both sides though a lot of Italians for the Axis. Only significant things to note are:
1. We had some pretty nice AS battles over Sicily crushing the Italian fighters
2. Many Italian fighters surprisingly stayed in western Sicily and intercepted some of our naval patrols which was unexpected
3. The Italians do have at least 1 good fighter aircraft the C.205V Veltro which got many of their kills

Screenshots:

Ground

Just a few minor battles in Sicily as we push forward from the beaches. We send back 3 TFs as 2 invasions hit ports so don't need them to support them and 2 of the other temp ports are adjacent to the same sea hex so can be supported by a single TF. We decide to target the next invasion on the toe of Italy in order to trap any units that would still remain in Sicily and to force Italian surrender in August. It will take around 6 turns to prep the invasion with divisions.

Invasion Planning Tips
- With a division in a larger port it takes about 6 turns to prep
- Once you land anywhere in mainland Italy then they will usually quickly surrender once it hits August (T6) or later
- Safer to invade in places you think you'll have air control over
- Lots of different locations to consider in Italy and this thread has a good overview: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6#p3713806

Screenshots:

Turn 3 - July 17, 1943

Overview and Air

Rain and mud in both ETO and MTO... surprised to see it so early as I think its fairly unlikely though I don't fully understand how weather works. Given that, we will look to be more conservative with air as bombing will be less effective. VPs are positive this turn with bombing up to 6 and uboat at -3 so still some work to do there but tough with the weather. I did decide last turn to put most of the air groups on auto upgrade to see how it does and the result was really disappointing as the auto upgrade routine appears to love using hurricanes as fighters which is sad. We get decent air results killing around 80 German pilots mostly fighters in ETO while loosing some fighters and LBs of our own.

Weather Tips
- Changes before Allies turn to simulate them having better forecasting
- Separate air and ground conditions
- Poor ground weather makes ground units move slower, attack less effectively, and invasions more costly
- Poor air weather makes air is less effective with more losses and paradrops have higher casualties

Screenshots:

Ground

We slowly push forward and the CW captures the port of Catania in the east after clearing a weak Italian division. It appears the Italians will defend western Sicily while the Germans defend northeast Sicily. Ground losses look good but is pretty much all Italians which don't really matter since they surrender soon anyways. We decide to send back another TF and target it for <top secret>.

Screenshots:

I hope this AAR continues!
I’m sure a three player game takes a while to run.

Are the Americans in charge overall of the ground effort, or are you splitting ground operations by nationality/command chain?

Looking forward to seeing how aggressively the Axis contest the Med.

Good luck, and good weather!