Adventures in Italy

[devoncop]

Hey larry.

If you are happy...I am happy.[:)]

I expect parachutes on Salerno imminently

[sPzAbt653]

I thought we had changed that rule 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 May 1, 1944 unless at a friendly port. 'Friendly Port' is defined as a hexside that contains both an anchorage and an Allied
Supply point.

I changed the date from Aug. to May tentatively, until I can find some statement as to when landing craft were moved to England for Overlord.

As far as silly paradrops, maybe there should be a distance rule, from a friendly airfield. But there aren't any ports north of Rome that are actually portrayed in this scenario for these reasons, so is it really an issue ?

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply map for the AO and as you can see the rails are extended fairly
well and when they are flush with the front, a condition I'd like to maintain, then
I'll move a lot of the RR engrs to Sicily to repair the rail line over there for
all the good that will do. Sardinia could use a good rail system because it's got
but a single supply point for the whole island and the supply levels are really low
in the northern end of the island. I've got planes stationed there so it's relevant
for my operations. So far the planes have been able to maintain their green state
but if they start to run yellow a lot then I'll start rotating the tired one out
and a fresh one in like is supposed to happen.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

I thought we had changed that rule 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 May 1, 1944 unless at a friendly port. 'Friendly Port' is defined as a hexside that contains both an anchorage and an Allied
Supply point.

I changed the date from Aug. to May tentatively, until I can find some statement as to when landing craft were moved to England for Overlord.

As far as silly paradrops, maybe there should be a distance rule, from a friendly airfield. But there aren't any ports north of Rome that are actually portrayed in this scenario for these reasons, so is it really an issue ?

My mistake...I thought Trieste was shown as a port...if not then there is no issue really, you are right.

[hingram]

Note: Moving paras around is a good way to find your opponent's AA units. BTDT. Ports and airfields seem to be popular destinations for them. Those 88's and 90's can really ruin your day
The game has a good feature. You can load a single unit on a ship or plane and recon your destination before committing fully to it. It's better then Yelp.

[devoncop]

15th February 1944
This turn the 1st and 2nd Regiments of 26th Panzer Division counter attacked a a unit of Royal Tank Regiment and drove it back to the supporting 46th Division units SE of Senise but this is a temporary respite. German units are now trying to withdraw in relative order from Senise area which is untenable, back towards Taranto and into the mountains north.

Bridges are being blown to try and hamper Allied supply.

Situation remains remarkably stable for now in the US sector in the West with minor artillery duels only.

Interdiction remains very heavy.

[larryfulkerson]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've only just gotten thro watching the combat replay and haven't scooped out a lot
of the situation yet but I've scheduled a bridge busting mission, it usually takes
all the INT planes to bring down a reluctant bridge;

The Free French have done some recon and discovered some more German troops to take
care of in the mountain passes. The American units recovered their green so I'm
attacking with them again.

I moved a couple of British bridge repair engineers forward and repaired the closest
one but the furtherest one is still broken despite their best effort.

The Rangers ( I dropped them on the German rail line just north of the West Side
Germans ) have come under assault and have suffered crippling losses from determined
German attacks. They can't hold out long, which is another reason to try to break
thru the west side MLR.

The rails are repaired up to the front lines on both sides so I'm shipping the engineers
off to Sicily for practice repairing rail lines. There's not much use for them on the
mainland any longer so I can leave a skeleton staff and the rest can sail away to further
adventures.

I've got about 7 planes on INT and about 5 on CS and about two dozen fighters on AS and
that's been working so far. I'm tempted to go to three-dots for all the planes to see
what kind of performance I can get out of them. They are all green and hardlyy ever
turn yellow so I'm not pushing them hard enough.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought I'd saturate his defensive system with a lot of attacks at the same time.
This time I took the British 1st Inf Div and the British 4th Inf Div and sailed them
into Taranto's harbor and separated out the recon and AT and HQ's to make one stack
and into the other went 9 infantry and supporting units to assault the port. It
may not get ashore, in which case they will probably get sunk by the Stukas.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a quick peek at the aircraft losses so far. This is before all the attacks
for this turn. I have 3 more Baltimores on hand and I'm only making one per turn
so I'm thinking I need to retire that squadron for about a month or so to get more
in the inventory. I'm already taking receipt of the P-47's which is a mixed gift
because it's short range cripples it in terms of utility. They are good at point
defense maybe but it's short range is it's weakest point. It's good at CS.

[devoncop]

22nd February 1944

The Rangers were discovered by accident during routine redeployment of a Panzer battalion responding to advances by the Free French in the mountains East of Salerno. Evidently the Italian population had "forgotten" to inform their German protectors of their presence...local reserves have been rushed in to clear the supply lines.

In the East the situation is more serious with the long-standing MLR around and South of Senise now having effectively disintegrated and the remnants about to be encircled and destroyed in detail.

There is now a decision to be made about Taranto and the forces in and around it. Whilst it is a pity to hand the port and it's supply point over to the Allies there are relatively substantial forces there that really cannot afford to be cut off on the Eastern peninsular. In any case Larry has repaired the rails up to the front line so his supply is decent anyway....

I have newly arrived units constructing a new MLR between the Adriatic coast and the mountains further North so it may be the Taranto forces along with the garrison at Foggia need to be used there.....

The reason Larry's planes are in such rude health by the way is basically because apart from the odd escort mission for Stukas my fighters....such as they are have been grounded since the invasion of the mainland. I have less than half a dozen units of them compared to the 24 units Larry is using on AS so it would be futile.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's how the amphibious assault went. Nobody got ashore and it wasn't even close.
Ian has some serious defensive equipment there. I'm going to have to find another
place to land.

[larryfulkerson]

The Rangers were discovered by accident during routine redeployment of a Panzer battalion responding to advances by the Free French in the mountains East of Salerno. Evidently the Italian population had "forgotten" to inform their German protectors of their presence...

Did the playback of my turn not show you my landing of paratroops there? Maybe I should have said something.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what it looked like just before I pulled the trigger to resolve the 2nd
combat round battles. I expect to get turn burn. I always have before on the
second combat resolution.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

The Rangers were discovered by accident during routine redeployment of a Panzer battalion responding to advances by the Free French in the mountains East of Salerno. Evidently the Italian population had "forgotten" to inform their German protectors of their presence...

Did the playback of my turn not show you my landing of paratroops there? Maybe I should have said something.

It may well have done and the idiotic fools at Military Intelligence (ie...me) failed to pick up on the air drop (as is the way with these things though....bosses don't do blame so I shall blame Allied sympathisers among the Italian peasantry) [:)]

[devoncop]

22nd February 1944

"The Good the Bad and the Ugly" to coin a phrase.

First the "Good"....My Stukas took a lot of damage having so few fighters protecting them but a few got through and peppered the landing craft of 1st and 4th British Division's off Taranto causing over 40% losses aided by a few JU88's. Stuka losses amounted to 11 out of 33 remaining planes.

"The Bad"...continuing assaults in both East and West have fractured both defence lines and Larry's progress is about to markedly accelerate. As a result I have ordered a phased pullback from Taranto and these troops together with 91st Infantry Division arriving from the north are forming what should be a line with some resilience south of Bari.
In more bad news the Special Forces which were attacked with artillery and the Panzer Grenadiers and Panzers held on well with the aid of heavy combat support missions by Allied fighter bombers.

"The Ugly".....The troops including a previously fixed SS Panzer Regt which have been cut off by Free French and British pincer are doomed and will be crushed in the next turn or so. Had the SS Divn not been fixed I could have had them sat in the scenic lines near Bari...."Regrets....I've had a few"

Over to Larry's steamroller..........

[larryfulkerson]

I've moved about 2/3 of the units so far and this is what I have to show for it.
There's some attacks scheduled and the configuration will change a bit. I don't
expect to break thro anywhere anytime soon. The stacks of units just offshore at
Taranto will be driven to a port and they will go into refit mode. I'm using the
Free French in the mountains because they have some mountaineering units but they
don't have much punch so I'm using them as blocking units pr\marily. I repaired
the other broken bridge on the British side using some engineers and I thought I'd
try to repair the rail while I was there repairing things. The first shipment of
engineers sailed to Sicily and they are moving to the railhead to begin work. The
340th Bomb Group upgraded to B-25H's and I flew them from Tunisia to the mainland
to an airfield near the toe of the boot. They can reach anything on the map. I
trimmed the range back from 285 ( or whatever it is at max ) to 190 to just fit the
country of Italy. I haven't decided which bridges to drop this turn. I'm thinking
of somewhere way up north.

[devoncop]

26th February 1944

For anyone reading this AAR you are going to get some new areas of Italy to look at !

This turn Taranto has been effectively abandoned leaving just a token rearguard whilst the two fresh Infantry battalions of the port garrison were able to rail out North to join the new MLR South of Bari along with the Nebelwerfer battalion that had been supplying support for the port.

In addition the MLR on the West coast has been thinned out and a new temporary line drawn up South East of Salerno and artillery moved to help destroy the Free French Special Forces unit to avoid allied air intervention. This was effective with the unit suffering 28% losses.

Recently repaired rails allowed two powerful units, the 91st Infantry Division and an anti tank regiment full of much needed Elefant Tank destroyers to make rapid progress South and both are now South of the Gustav Line. The good news is that expected reinforcements are scheduled to arrive in and around Naples rather than in the North . I was lucky that only 2 interdiction strikes were suffered this turn compared to the usual 10+ despite all the train journeys.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's an overview of what's happening on the west side of the country....an
amphibious assault on Pastum, the port there was successful in that I own the port
now but it's only got a single infantry brigade in it right now and needs more than
that to hold onto it. I'm going to find another division and ship them up here as
well. The German MLR is starting to crumble and the troops on the east side have
found a pathway through the mountains that leads to the west side and I've got troops
clearing the road as we speak. I've made landings at Taranto and captured the port
there.

[hingram]

I don't know what the programming was but I found I sometimes couldn't Group Move into a Port but I could Single Unit Move every unit.

[devoncop]

March 1st 1944

Huge drama again.

Really bold moves by Larry again as he throws the kitchen sink at me. I have a Polish Division landing at Taranto, the British 78th Division partially ashore at Paestum and a failed attempt to storm Salerno port itself by a US Division....not much to worry about then ? [:(]


First things first........ the remnants of the Stukas get mobilised for a last hurrah against the British Division just rebuffed off Paestrum and somehow squeeze through with only a dozen fighters as escort to cause 28% losses and sink a complete Brigade.Only 9 of 30 Stukas returned.

The Free French Special Forces are finally overrun to clear a possible path of retreat for any German units I can get out of the pincer caused by the landing at Paestrum and the original advance from the south. Remaining units in Taranto are successfully railed out north and the mountain passes in the centre blocked from what I anticipate will be the continued northbound move of the Free French.

In truth the East, which was my biggest concern is now much less so given the line south of Bari is now established. Ot is in the West where the additional landings have upped the ante as far as not only Salerno but also Naples and Rome are concerned....

We are in March 1944 and the scenario runs until May 1945....Larry has plenty of time yet...