Field Marshal von Fogger vs Comrade Marshal Fulkerson

[fogger]

I have been giving the Smolensk line so thought over the past couple of days and my solution will be Operation Thor. I am in the process of moving my reserve panzer and inf Div’s to the FUP. Stay tuned. (I am about half way through turn 10 and would like to get it away to Larry tonight)

John

[fogger]

I have just sent Larry turn 10 and thus can give everybody an update for the start of Larry's turn. My bridgehead on the Bug River is now secured. The lead units from the Panzer Div are only 2 hexes from making contact and from my side of hill there are no major units stopping the link up. The captured port and Cmdo drop have now given me 2 bridges over the South Bug and Ingul rivers. Within two turns I should have two panzer div's to drive north and thus deny the rivers as stop lines for Larry.

[fogger]

In the North Murmansk almost fell this turn. It is only being held by 1 Div following a heavy assault. Larry's defense will depend upon how many of the retreated units he can move back in. But as you can see from the picture I have two more Div's moving up.

[fogger]

To the south of Murmansk Larry is defending with 1 HQ 1 Tank Div 1 Inf Div and 1 Arty regt. Very early in the game I cut the bridge at 148 32 so these units should be running low on supplies. I have noticed that Larry is moving an Eng unit up so repair the bridge. But this area is of no value other than destroying the 4 units.

[fogger]

At present I am preparing for Operation Thor and Operation Shield. I have ? Panzer Div's in reserve and ?? Inf Div's in reserve. Because the rail network is down and the units are spread all over the map it will take a couple of turns to move the units into the FUP's. However having given this tip to Larry I will also have to do some dummy moves so that he does get wind of what I am trying to do. If I get time I will write up some orders and post them. No promises as my time is limited and I prefer to play.

Also Larry the only Intl that I have gained from your posts is that the guerilla units will appear every 5 turns. But I am not worried about them. They can not do too much damage and I have Inf div’s all over my rear areas resting.

The "bug" that I mentioned in an earlier post is, as Larry explained,
“I was going to let John explain it to you but I'm pretty sure that the Bug that John is refering to is the ignore losses bug. This is where, when you assign a unit to combat there is a check for RBC's and that check is skipped for ignore losses units. They actually stand their ground and defend to the last man.”

However it also appears that units in fortified hexes take losses very slowly. For example, I hit one of Larry’s fort units (which is a Regt) with 24 air units (approx 700 planes), the Arty from 6 HQ’s and 3 Arty Regts by three times in the one turn before I attacked with 2 Inf Div’s and got knocked back.

What I am now doing is using the Arty and air units to pound away for about 3 or 4 turns but then I am still taking so heavy losses when I attack with Inf.

[larryfulkerson]

Okie dokie....it's 06:22 on Tuesday morning and I've received some moves from John and I've watched the replay etc. and I was biting my nails during his attacks on Murmansk. I don't know why, since it's going to fall eventually anyway. This view is as of the beginning of
T10.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some more of the front lines. It's T10 already and I still have units near Riga. That's surprising. John is in no hurry in reducing
the city I guess. And his units are creaping up on Leningrad and my front lines aren't ready yet. I'm going to rail some people into the
AO to help block and buy me some time for more blockers to be railed into the area.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's some more of the front lines. This is the Orsha, Smolensk, Moscow area. I'm defending behind the River from Orsha going south
and I know that isn't going to hold John back very long so I need some more people in this area to defend the river crossings etc. John
is coming fast and my defensive lines aren't very credible yet. Great game so far.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a view of the Stalin Line now. John is hammering against the Stalin Line and making headway down south where he has invaded
across the river and is investing all my defenders. It looks like I need to pull back my Odessa area defenders to the east, well, NE and
see if I can't contain some of John's invaders at his port. I saw him ship two more divisions into that port so he's got a small army ready
there now. I need to rail some more people into this area to help block John. He's expanding outward and blocking all my river crossings
so I can't use them. D'oh.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how the air war has been going already

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the people I'll get in turn 11. Not enough but it'll have to do. Some of them aren't going to be combat ready and will need to rest
for a day or so. Well, actually I guess the turns are 1/2 weeks. So it'll need about a week or so to refit and replenish and train etc.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the condition of the aircraft. I put all the long range airplanes ( IL-4's ) into Interdiction missions and what-do-you-know they are
all in reorg this turn. I'm shocked. So I guess I can't do that with all of them all the time anymore. I must say that John is doing a really
good job w/ his bombers. Even though he doesn't have any strategic bombers he's using his Medium bombers pretty admire-ably.
He's doing pre-combat air strikes to soften up the arty and get them to unentrench etc. I like that.

[larryfulkerson]

The more anal retentive of my readers will have noticed that there's a squadron that has a range of 61 but which is on Air Supremacy
missions. So it appears that I'm setting a bomber squadron to do air combat. But if you look at the actual unit you see that most of the
equipment is fighters with only a token appearance from the different kinds of bombers. So I'm hoping that the Bombers will sit out all the
furballs that happen. Otherwise I'm going to lose some bombers for no good reason.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey.......I just had a good idea. Why don't I park my combat support squadrons so that they cover a sizeable portion of the front lines but
don't extend all that much into the German lines so that they have less chance of getting shot down. Anyway, that's the theory. I'm
trying to tune the range arcs of the squadrons so that they look like this one:

[larryfulkerson]

Some of my squadrons are equiped w/ the I-15 fighter. This is a biplane and is probably the worst fighter I have. But I'm using them at
the front. I try to park these squadrons where their range arc is over the Russian stuff only so that they are being used defensively only.
I don't want to just get them shot down for no good reason but I also need some defenders in the field so this is the compromise.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a close up of the south end of the Stalin Line. John is in mop up operations in parts and in attack mode in parts. He's multi-
tasking on steroids. I'm using the river as a defensive barrier but I know the river crossing guards aren't going to hold back anything
major so I still need more people in this area.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a view of Nikolaev, John's captured port. He's shipped some Panzers into this area so I've adopted a modified checkerboard
defense. It's mostly to slow him down, not to contain him. Because I don't know which direction he's going to send his armour columns.
Plus I don't have enough people in the area to build a proper front line yet. But I've been railing people into this area and pretty soon I'll
have a proper front line built somewhere. Then John will breech it.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a close up of the Leningrad area now. Since all the other avenues of attack are the equivalent of frontal attacks I'm thinking that
John may be tempted to come across the river. He's got some engineers and it's possible.......I don't know where his engineers are at
the moment. D'oh.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the Soviet stuff still at Riga. It looks like John is about to have Riga all to himself here shortly. All that Soviet equipment looks to
be on it's last legs.

[larryfulkerson]

Have I posted the Soviet losses lately? Here's some of the Soviet losses as of T10. I'm losing planes faster than I'm building them. But
on the other hand in the Rifle Squads row the on-hand and assigned numbers are both climbing pretty fast. I'm impressed.