Sicily to Brenner Pass Revised

[larryfulkerson]

I left one RR engineer unit on Sicily building good rail from Gala to Messina just in case I get some of those expected reinforcements
in Gala or somewhere along the rail. It's something to do.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how much of Sardinia has been cleared. Corsica is completely clear as is Elba. Progress is being made.

[larryfulkerson]

Well, well, well. It seems that there's a trickle of supply starting to reach near the action site on the West coast. It's not nearly enough
to fuel anybody yet but it's a good sign. I've switched all the RR engineers to the westbound rail line and it's already starting to show.
Good deal. I can't wait to see what it is next turn.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the West coast in T33. I've managed to surround some more of the German units. They are going to counterattack me soon
I'm guessing. At any rate I've got the people there to defend myself properly. Now if I only had some supply for these people.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the East coast now. I'm running into more and more resistance and overcoming it is becoming more problematic because the
German units are more hefty. Not your regular mear roadblock. This is a front line dude. He's probably the leading element of several
of these things. Or a formation of which he belongs. Elmer likes to move his units as formations as I recall. So this one is probably not
alone.

[larryfulkerson]

The 104 PzGr Rgmt turned yellow and so I thought I'd do one one-dot attack and see what happens. I have the people there to swap
out those that go yellow / orange and tired. But arty is ify at best. I'm thinking that I might have two shots left in the arty and then it's
all got to go back south for refit.

[larryfulkerson]

I have discovered a problem with my supply plan. The dedicated RR engineers are non-motorized and can go into mountain-type
hexes to repair rail but the other engineer units are motorized and therefore can't help out in the mountain hexes because they
can't enter the hex. And there's a boat-load of mountain hexes between where they are and where they are trying to go. D'oh.
So I'll have to reroute the supply channel somehow so it doesn't have a mountain problem somehow.

[larryfulkerson]

Ok. I've studied the map and I've found a route that doesn't involve the mountains and most of the route has to be built sometime anyway
so I'm going to cease and desist the red line and swap over to the yellow line. I've decided that the rail from Gala to Messina is going to
be the blue line. There's no rail on Corsica or Sardinia or Elba but if there were I'd make one of the the green line. That's all the colors
that I remember from my Washington D.C. days of riding on the rail to and from work.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the results of my attacking the 104th PzGr Rgmt. It just sort of dissappeared. I'm guessing that's the games way of simulating
those Germans surrendering after suffering some losses to make it look good to the higher ups.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the strategic situation in T34. You can see how the paratroop drops on the East coast really propelled the progress of that
axis of advance. The lack of supply has hampered the West coast folks and it doesn't look like it's going to get much better very fast
so I'm really going to have to move some people into the "middle".....the mountainous part of the advance that doesn't have very many
units in it. The Germans could move through there very easily. That's a problem for me.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey, I finally got some P-47's. I've parked them as close as I can in a place that's in supply and their short range makes them less handy
than might otherwise be. I'll use them on close local CS I suppose.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the strategic situation in T35. Also, superimposed over the map is the crop circle for the range of the P-47 in the previous
panel. Not all that impressive. I'm going to use the P-47's manually a lot.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how much of Sardinia is cleared now. Not a whole lot left to do.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the East side in T37. I'm pressing some New Zealand elements north on the West side of the site of action in order to get a
surround started so we can destroy those Germans and get the advance moving again.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the West side in T38. The active spot is still out of supply but there's another confrontation further north that DOES have a
trickle of supply. So there's hope that some day there will be some supply at the southern spot. I'm thinking about swapping the RR
engineers to the westbound line again to get some more supply up to these people.

[larryfulkerson]

I've stopped the Axis turn just so I could grab this screenshot. As you can see the Germans have only a handfull of planes assigned to a
squadron. The other types have some planes in the pool but there's no unit to assign them to. I've shot them all down or destroyed
them on the ground. So Axis air power is a largely a thing of the past.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the Allied aircraft losses:

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the East side in T39. The supply level is just on the edge of not being enough for combat. I'm making it work by shuttling units
back and forth from high supply areas to refit.

[larryfulkerson]

The Free French cleared the island of Sardinia so now they are vacating except for that one unit that's supposed to stay, what's his
name......you know, that one guy. It'll come to me in a minute.

EDIT: Frilui Combat Group as I recall.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the West coast in T40. I push the units out to the limit of their range into the out of supply area and they sit there blocking, just
waiting for the supply level to improve. Meanwhile units to the NE of these are pushing north trying to outflank the Germans.