Part of the the issue is you are trying to find a solution for a problem that shouldn't be in the game at all. Air lift of fuel for even a single division sized unit for offensive operations DID NOT HAPPEN in the war, let alone a week of operations. Last time we talked about this, someone pointed out that there probably was a week or two of operations by a mech brigade in Burma supported by air, and someone else pointed out that an armor brigade was supported by air in 73 iirc. But not on the Eastern Front. It just didn't happen. The whole idea of using airlift as a form of HQBU, which is itself a flawed game construct, is just completely fantasy. Front line HQs should not be drawing supplies from airdrops ever if they are able to draw supplies overland. I looked at the amount of verifiable air supply and found that, for example, the total lift of supplies during Fall Blau amounted to something like 20k tons, the majority was personnel transfer. That is enough to support a single division for about 3 weeks of fighting....
I know people have read about air dropped supplies feeding the spearhead, but you have to understand the difference between dropping a few tons of bullets so that an Aufklärung bn can clear the village ahead, and dropping 1000 tons of fuel so an entire division can rumble 150 miles through the russian countryside.
There were 2 major supply airlift attempts, both of which used nearly ALL available airlift for the front, Demyansk and Stalingrad. Both used established airbases, ie concrete runways. Neither was able to deliver 400 tons a day, and averaged closer to 200 per day. The total fuel delivered to Stalingrad was about 880 tons, for the entire airlift. At Demyansk, there were about 64k tons of supplies delivered, but this took more than 32k sorties and the period from early Feb to 5 May. Interestingly, the airlift used 42k tons of fuel and 3k tons of lubricants.
There is a good discussion here
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=43495
with some great photos, especially the ones of them unloading fuel barrels. Imagine how long it would take to unload enough barrels to fill up an entire panzer division for even one day of operations.
