Adventures in Italy

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the supply situation is right now. Time to redistribute the RR engineers,
one more for the American side and leave the rest on the British side. I'd rather make
the progress mostly on the British side because I'm almost thro Ian's MLR on that side.
The west side is between a rock and a hard place. I'm having to use three-dot attacks
to make a dent in the Germans...they must have some arty backing them up or something.
I'm thinking of abandoning the American side and concentrate on the British side for
a while.

[sPzAbt653]

To replicate the historical removal of major Allied landing craft for Anvil and Overlord, the Allies are not allowed to invade any beaches on the Italian mainland north of the Salerno [sic, Anzio] region.

This is what the briefing says, and to me it is not absolutely clear. It seems to me that we could change the wording to:

To replicate the historical removal of major Allied landing craft for Anvil and Overlord, the Allies are not allowed to land embarked units after August 15, 1944 unless at a friendly port. 'Friendly Port' is defined as a hexside that contains both an anchorage and an Allied Supply point.

I'll have to research the date to see if it can be determined when landing craft were removed from Italian operations to focus on Southern France. Certainly it was before Aug. 15th. Anybody see any issues with the clarity, wording or effects ?

[larryfulkerson]

Overlord was in June and August 15th is AFTER that. Wouldn't the landing craft
be withdrawn for Overlord BEFORE Aug?

[devoncop]

That makes sense. No reason at all Allies couldn't ferry troops between friendly ports...troopships rather than landing craft were not in particular short supply so would seem fair to allow that.

[hingram]

ORIGINAL: devoncop

To add insult to injury.....the scenario notes restrict invasions to nothing north of Salerno...so technically that was illegal[:D] [:D]

That would depend on the definition of "north".
Rules. Bah!
I looked at my situation at turn 50 and threw in the towel. I want back to Turn 21 and decided that trains were a good way to move things along.

[devoncop]

That's the beauty of playing Elmer....he won't mind

He also won't mind if you decide to ignore the geographic restriction either of course

[larryfulkerson]

It's Feb. 1, 1944 and I'm still stuck in the toe of Italy. Time for an invasion.
I thought maybe if I add some firepower to the Germans in the port hex that I might
be able to push them over. So the Free French volunteered to do an amphibious
assault. The weather calls for cloudy conditions so that might mitigate the CS I'm
assigning to the attack. If I had some naval support I would use them here. As it is
there's four squadrons of bombers assigned and that's about it. This attack in T60 is
the third invasion of the game but this time I don't have very many paratroopers and
I don't want to spend them on this. Something really important might come up when I'll
need them worse than this situation. Besides, I'm not sure I'll ever see any more
paratroopers. I'll have to take a look at the expected reinforcements and see. I'll
give you a full report.

[MikeJ19]

Hi All,

Very interesting discussions. The slugfest nature of the battle in Italy would frustrate me, that is for sure.

[larryfulkerson]

The 3rd Karpaaackich Division was parked on a port and weren't doing anything special
so I thought maybe they ought to invade somewhere. So I floated them to the far right
edge and went north and now they are almost out of MP's but they are ready next turn
to walk ashore and capture an airfield. There's a supply point in Taranto but I'll
have to fight for it. Foggia isn't too far from here.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
Hi All,

Very interesting discussions. The slugfest nature of the battle in Italy would frustrate me, that is for sure.

Hey there Mike dude. Thanks for posting. And you're right about the frustration factor.
I'm so frustrated I'm actually going to try to invade somewhere. I'm actually moving divisions
to ports for follow up flotilla's. I've got some recon bombardment missions scheduled for the
various ports, just to see what kind of German equipment is there and to see if it's a pushover
or not. I'm wondering if two invasion attempts might get some people ashore. The attacks on
the same German units from one turn to the next, with the application of some CS direct missions.
The first one would likely fail, but the second assault might get ashore. I'll have to try that.

[larryfulkerson]

One of my bridge busting missions busted a bridge just north of Napoli near the west
coast. Ian will have an engineer on the case before too long. I'll just have to
keep busing it.

[MikeJ19]

Larry,

Good luck. I hope you get at least one successful assault.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a list of the stuff at Taranto in T60. Pretty impressive. He really wants
to hang onto the port at Taranto. I may have to skip this one for now. It cost
me 3 B-25's for this information.

[larryfulkerson]

Just for grins I thought I'd take a look at Napoli just for a comparison. It's a
pushover there. Too bad I can't invade there.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's at Salerno. I'm going to have to bomb those guys to see if I can't
disentrench them just before the assault(s) and maybe give them some disruption.
This port is borderline doable. It needs some bombardment to soften it up for sure.
I'm wondering if the one-two punch might work here.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's at one of the ports near Salerno but a little south. It looks to
be ripe for an invasion but there's the sticky wicket about capturing the supply
point within a turn or two. I'm not sure that's possible depending on what else
Ian has there to defend. It might turn out to be one of those situations where
I can get everybody ashore but I don't have any supply for any of them. I might
have to use three or more divisions to make this one work.

[larryfulkerson]

The amphibious assault got ashore but the units are decimated and not combat ready
any more. I'll see if I can't remedy that somehow. Rotate out the tired ones and
replace them with fresh ones.

[sPzAbt653]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
Overlord was in June and August 15th is AFTER that. Wouldn't the landing craft be withdrawn for Overlord BEFORE Aug?

Funny thing is that I got the feeling that I had something wrong there so I read what I typed a couple times but still missed the point. Thanks [&o]

[devoncop]

1st Feb 1944

So Larry's audacious invasion gets ashore SE of Senise...The defenders comprised of 9th Panzer Grenadier regiment of the 26th Panzer Division along with a scratch battalion of Kampfgruppe Baumunk reserve panzer Grenadiers who aquitted themselves admirably against overwhelming odds and unopposed air bombardment.

for the loss of 43 rifle squads, 7 heavy guns and 4 anti tank guns the Algerian Free French lost 177 rifle squads , 9 tanks and 56 heavy guns.

It wasn't enough however...now I had not only the landing force (still 80% of its original strength) but large numbers of fresh troops still embarked offshore.

What I needed was a few rounds of concentrated artillery fire from the nearby units with artillery capability and the unlocking of nearby SS units to throw in a counter attack. The confusion caused by the Allied invasion meant I got neither.......

After one round of desultory bombardment inflicting another 10% casualties on the Algerians I failed a proficiency test... !!

This could be a crucial point in the fight for Southern Italy...I have troops unprepared and out of position....

Over to Larry........

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the front lines look like just before I ended the turn. I've got the
port near the fighting on the east side now so I can launch invasions from there.
I'm using three-dot attacks to get some traction. The losses are heavy but at
least they move back sometimes when I attack. I'm running low on fresh units, green
units. So the advance might have to halt for a turn or two.