Adventures in Italy

[larryfulkerson]

I broke some bridges in Northern Italy. I'm trying to stifle the flow of supplies
and troops. I have a lot more bridges I need to drop yet. I've been doing bridge
busting missions with the INT dedicated bombers so that the CS bombers will be
available for airstrikes on units near the front lines. I've got some of the better
fighters on a three-dot stance. All the planes are in the green except for one
fighter group that's in reorg. The 310th Bomb Group upgraded to the B-25H model.
They have a fabulous range and are fairly good at dropping bridges. They flew their
first combat with the new planes this turn. I tried a couple of attacks on the east
side and actually got the Germans to move back. We may be making some progress but
it's painfully slow.

[devoncop]

5th February 1944

Another turn of drama.

The Allies sent the balance of the 3rd Free French Division that did not land at the invasion point off up the East coast into the Adriatic scouting the coast...Despite the risk given overwhelming Allied air superiority it was decided that the NsGR9 unit of 38 Ju87's recently arrived, though not fully experienced would have to try and hit the convoy supported by two weak fighter units given the threat involved....amazingly the Stukas avoided Allied fighters and completely sank the troopships which carried 133 Rifle squads,62 Heavy Guns and 24 M5 Stuarts Tanks. Iron crosses are being handed out at the time of report !

The situation around the invasion site and up to Taranto is less promising. It seems Larry may be looking to come ashore again in the area and Axis defenders are having problems coping with Allied armour already. A few
rounds of bombardment helped but a breakthrough to Taranto looks imminent.

In other news engineers are racing to try and repair bridges blown across Italy...

[larryfulkerson]

I'm moving specific divisions to ports to I can launch them as invasions in some future turn.
Three convoys are afloat and one of them is just north of the German defenders on the west side.
The idea is that next turn they will disembark over the water and walk ashore behind the Germans
and surround them. Or at least cause some rucus.

I dropped the bridge at Florence and one other one on the east coast. Near the German engineer
so he won't have to go very far to repair it.

I did some attacks on both sides and gained a hex at each. Also the Free French pushed and
shoved and gained a hex in the mountains. Progress is being made.

[devoncop]

9th February 1944

The convoy Larry positioned on the coast SW of Taranto comprised Canadian 3rd Armoured Division and would have landed 3 hexes behind my creaking lines trying to cope with his last invasion. This would also have the effect of cutting off the embattled units from their supply at Taranto so desperate measures were called for. The strong Artillery Regiment of 1st FJ Division which had been trying to support those units was ordered to the coastline after the Canadians were spotted and ordered to open up with everything they had on the slow moving landing craft.
Meanwhile the weary JU87 Stuka pilots at Foggia were once again ordered into their cockpits along with a scratch squadron of JU88's that has somehow escaped repeated Allied bombing of the airbase.

Amazingly the Luftwaffe and Artillery did their job and over 90% of the Canadian Division were blown out of the water....it is likely the rest will abort any landing but we will see.

Lines at the front were thinned out and Panzer Grenadiers and HQ's units were pulled back to blow bridges ahead of the expected British breakthrough towards Taranto and along the line the shelling of the Americans in the central mountains and across in the West South West of Salerno continued. Two bridges were repaired though there are insufficient engineers to keep up with Larry's destruction.

One oddity to report....Larry has sent two small convoys way north up the Adriatic which now sit off Trieste.......given he cannot invade north of Salerno according to scenario rules this can only be an elaborate scouting exercise........but for what ?

High Command is puzzled.......

[larryfulkerson]

So the game takes another turn and I'm not much closer
to my goal. I did some attacks and gained a hex. I
seem to be averaging about two attacks per turn so far.
But I always burn more rounds than there are in the turn
and so I burn my turn and it's over. At least I busted
another bridge. If I get busy and bust bridges all over
the map Ian would just mobilize his engineers and fix
them. So that won't work. I need some throw away
paratroopers to drop the bridge and then stay there to
make sure it stays dropped. That's the theory.

[MikeJ19]

Larry and Ian,

This story has lots of twists and turns. As a Canadian, I hate seeing that the 3rd Canadian Armd Division took such a hit. Damn.

[hingram]

"given he cannot invade north of Salerno according to scenario rules this can only be an elaborate scouting exercise"

Interesting. No Anzio?

If a para division accidentally grabbed a port north of Salerno while trying to blow bridges, a player could transport by sea to that port and it technically wouldn't be an invasion. It would be more like a cruise destination....with Stukas.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: hingram

"given he cannot invade north of Salerno according to scenario rules this can only be an elaborate scouting exercise"

Interesting. No Anzio?

If a para division accidentally grabbed a port north of Salerno while trying to blow bridges, a player could transport by sea to that port and it technically wouldn't be an invasion. It would be more like a cruise destination....with Stukas.

Ah.....I see we have Professor Moriarty contributing to the thread...."a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a fox" (with apologies to Edmund Blackadder)[:)]

Not sure how realistic it would be but it probably would be technically legal !

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
This story has lots of twists and turns. As a Canadian, I hate seeing that the 3rd Canadian Armd Division took such a hit. Damn.

I hear you. I think maybe I share your feeling. I'm the one that sent them out of the harbor.
I'm the reason they are dead. If I had given half a second of thought to it I should have figured
out that parking them within arty range isn't such a good idea. I expected the Stukas and was
depending on my fighters to CAP for the operation allowing for slight losses as is usual for an
operation of this size and complexity. But to have them blown out of the water by shore-based
arty is something I should have forseen and that should have cancelled the operation before it
got started. If I had parked two stacks there thiking that perhaps one of them will get ashore
would just result in Ian bombarding them both. There's no easy way to invade it turns out. Just
pick your target port and just keep hitting it with invasion attempts until one of them gets
ashore I guess.

[700851McCall]

ORIGINAL: devoncop

ORIGINAL: hingram

"given he cannot invade north of Salerno according to scenario rules this can only be an elaborate scouting exercise"

Interesting. No Anzio?

If a para division accidentally grabbed a port north of Salerno while trying to blow bridges, a player could transport by sea to that port and it technically wouldn't be an invasion. It would be more like a cruise destination....with Stukas.

Ah.....I see we have Professor Moriarty contributing to the thread...."a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a fox" (with apologies to Edmund Blackadder)[:)]

''As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?''

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: devoncop

ORIGINAL: hingram
"given he cannot invade north of Salerno according to scenario rules this can only be an elaborate scouting exercise"

Interesting. No Anzio?

If a para division accidentally grabbed a port north of Salerno while trying to blow bridges, a player could transport by sea to that port and it technically wouldn't be an invasion. It would be more like a cruise destination....with Stukas.

Ah.....I see we have Professor Moriarty contributing to the thread...."a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a fox" (with apologies to Edmund Blackadder)[:)]

Not sure how realistic it would be but it probably would be technically legal !

I thought of that and wondered how Ian would accept it. Would it be considered "gamey" for me to drop
some paratroops on a port somewhere and just transport troops from friendly port to friendly port as
many as I have the lift for ( about three divisions ) and take over the place. Salerno comes to mind.
I probably COULD do it but is it legal according to Ian. There's a rule in FITE, FITE2, and D21
that you shouldn't drop paratroopers more than 10 hexes from the origination airfield and that
would be about 250km or so. I don't know how far up the map that would be but this isn't Russia, it's
later than 1942 and procedures have changed, and these aren't Axis troops. So does the rule even
apply to this scenario as well? I think maybe not but I'd like to hear Ian's opinion on this topic.

[devoncop]

Hi Larry

After this turn (see below!) you may have one less Division to send but the point is the same. I personally think that it wouldn't be particularly realistic to drop paras over 1000km (about 680 miles) behind enemy lines....in an enemy country (distance from Taranto to Trieste) but there doesn't seem anything in the scenario notes to disqualify it and I am no barrack room lawyer[:)]

If Larry wants to give the tactic a go then I won't complain about it.

[devoncop]

This turn saw horrendous airstrikes on Foggia
Airbase by Allied bombers, obliterating two already mauled fighter units alone with the flak units trying to defend them....the Stuka unit, now becoming something of a legend in the Reich was already airborne however having spotted the 3rd Free French (Algerian) Division remains steaming back from the scouting up near Trieste.

Every ship was sunk. The unit is unlikely to survive for long but their efforts will live longer in the memory !

On the front lines the Germans continue to give ground, particularly in the East and a strong regiment of Panzer Grenadiers is sent from South of Salerno to assist troops in the East.

[MikeJ19]

Hi Guys,

I agree with Ian, using paras that far in the rear was not feasible.

Wow, those Stukas are causing all sorts of pain...

[larryfulkerson]

In an event that should have happened twenty turns ago, I dropped some Rangers on
the bridge over the river north of the defending Germans on the west side. That's
one way supply can get to them. The only other way is a railroad that passes through
Battipaglia and I can drop that one using the bombers. And that combined with a
serious push from the Americans ought to perhaps make a hole in the German line. I've
got my fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, the rails are fixed on the British side so I'm going to rail the RR engineers
to the American side and fix it up to the front lines. And as soon as they are both
fixed I'll take a look at the rails on Messina. Unless the front lines change remarkably
soon the RR guys might be out of a job on the mainland in another 20 turns or so.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
Hi Guys,

I agree with Ian, using paras that far in the rear was not feasible.

Wow, those Stukas are causing all sorts of pain...

So as for the range of paradrops then, do we say that for a house rule for the
scenario that there shouldn't be any drops north of Rome, or somewhere to be
determined. How about that.

And as for the Stukas and their decimation of my ships: Where are my fighters?
I had fighters galore on AS and their range arc covered those ships. Bad weather
over all the airfields simultaneously? Which could happen I suppose but still
SOMEBODY should have responded.

In WITP-AE you can designate specific squadrons to do LRCAP over specific
targets. So in that game I could have given all the fighters within range the
mission of CAPing the convoys and they would have spent the turn above the convoy
protecting it from aerial assault. But in this game, I guess the fighters need to
be close enough to the object it's protecting to get there before the bombers do
and in this case they couldn't do that. If the Axis bombers and my fighters took
off simultaneously then the bombers would STILL arrive over the ships before the
fighters could stop them. Maybe that's what happened. At any rate I'm disappointed
that no fighters showed up at all the whole turn.

[devoncop]

Hi Larry

If you can give me until 2 turns to get some redeployment done then we can go with the Rome limit. Up to now I have deployed using the Salerno rule for allied invasions so I will need to adapt a bit. Would that be ok?I

In fact it will only have the effect of weakening my front so it may be to your advantage of I do redeploy so I have some head scratching to do

As for your CAP I think itches less to do with the weather and more with the distance the convoys were from Foggia (very close) . I had the stukas on the shortest range possible to get em back asap but I was surprised they weren't hit during the carnage at the airbase....they are very understrength now though.

[devoncop]

''As cunning as a fox who's just been appointed Professor of Cunning at Oxford University?''

[/quote]


Indeed so [:D]

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a little quick and dirty who's where kind of thing I put together for what
light it might shed. The air losses meter shows no losses by either side. I'm assuming
that means that the Axis isn't flying their planes. Or maybe they don't have any planss
to fly. Maybe all the groups are in reorg. Maybe MY planes didn't fly. I checked out
the range on the fighters and they are all set to max and I even thought to check because
I've been trimming the range of the bombers to just fit the country of Italy and not all
over Europe too. Some of the long-range P-38's needed to be trimmed until I figured out
that I could just base them differently. My fighters have no problem covering all of
Italy....I would have thought until my convoys were thrashed.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Hi Larry

If you can give me until 2 turns to get some redeployment done then we can
go with the Rome limit. Up to now I have deployed using the Salerno rule for allied
invasions so I will need to adapt a bit. Would that be ok?I

Hey Ian....instead of you having to redeploy why don't we just use the invasion range
for the paratroops too? Nothing north of Salerno. That's easier to remember for
the players. Some of which may be considerably inebriated. Considerably.