Adventures in Italy

[hingram]

I wonder if you could crack the bridge, scoot over to one of the airfields at Foggia, take an airstrip and then fly out from it.
I torture the rules too much.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: hingram
I wonder if you could crack the bridge, scoot over to one of the airfields at Foggia, take an airstrip and then fly out from it.
I torture the rules too much.

Yeah, I thought about that but decided that Ian had some defenders there at Foggia that would kill
my last Brigade of Rangers and I have a feeling I'm going to need those Rangers for some game
changing event sometime in the near future and need to be careful where I send them. I flew them
first into the airfield furtherest from Taranto looking east in the peninsula thinking that he probably
has pulled everybody out of that area because that's what I would have done. I could be wrong at any
step of my plans of course. That's why it's so much fun to launch them.

And your idea about running them into Foggia and then flying out of there to safety....I'll just
HAVE to try that. It'll make for a better game. Also, I think I read somewhere or other that the
loss of Foggia to the Allies means that all the German fighters and bombers are withdrawn to the
West front to defend the homeland. And that just leaves some Italian cast-offs. I think I would
probably defend Foggia if I were the Axis player.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

ORIGINAL: hingram
I wonder if you could crack the bridge, scoot over to one of the airfields at Foggia, take an airstrip and then fly out from it.
I torture the rules too much.

Yeah, I thought about that but decided that Ian had some defenders there at Foggia that would kill
my last Brigade of Rangers and I have a feeling I'm going to need those Rangers for some game
changing event sometime in the near future and need to be careful where I send them. I flew them
first into the airfield furtherest from Taranto looking east in the peninsula thinking that he probably
has pulled everybody out of that area because that's what I would have done. I could be wrong at any
step of my plans of course. That's why it's so much fun to launch them.

And your idea about running them into Foggia and then flying out of there to safety....I'll just
HAVE to try that. It'll make for a better game. Also, I think I read somewhere or other that the
loss of Foggia to the Allies means that all the German fighters and bombers are withdrawn to the
West front to defend the homeland. And that just leaves some Italian cast-offs. I think I would
probably defend Foggia if I were the Axis player.

Given what is happening this turn...

This is a very prescient conversation

[&o][&o][&o]

[devoncop]

15th March 1944

278th Infantry Division under Lt Gen Hoppe ,who form part of part of Foggia's garrison get an early morning alarm call as parachutes are spotted 20km south east with reports from a nearby Panzer Grenadier battalion (sent there to recuperate) that the river road and rail bridges have been seized by US Rangers. The 278th is told to destroy the paras without delay and then reinforce the front line against advancing Canadians

Heavy fighting continues south east of Salerno with the Panzer Corps artillery inflicting heavy losses of over 25% on the forward 19th Brigade of 8th Indian Division.

In the East south of where the Rangers have been dropped further artillery fire causes moderate damage to the Canadian 11th Brigade of the Canadian 5th armoured Division which is trying to link up with the Rangers....

My engineers put down their Bratwurst long enough to sullenly repair a single bridge from 4 attempts.



PS......As a hopefully interesting example of how fate and luck can be crucial in war I will admit the only reason the 278th are "spare" at Foggia is because their trip from the far north had been impeded by blown bridges and interdiction so rather than sending them to the Salerno front as I originally intended, they were marching to the closer front north of Taranto and had reached Foggia as the paratroops dropped ! Official records will show nothing of the sort and that it was a decision of tactical genius. I will let you decide

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the supply situation at the front lines on the east side, the British side.
Almost enough for operations but no donut. I'm going to put all the RR engrs on
this case except for rail maint. on the west side, two or three units, and the
rest to the east side to work on this supply situation. It's important for the
war effort. The advance can't advance without it.

Also, I'm wondering how to get more supply into the mountain passes, the mountain
roads. I can't think of a single thing. I'll just have to rotate units in and
out of the low supply areas or something.

One of my Spitfire IX squadrons is in reorg but it's not missing any planes and it's
supply is good and the proficiency is normal. I'm stumped why it's in reorg.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the situation with the Rangers. They dropped last turn and immediately
went into reorg and now they are overextended and surrounded by Germans and the
question is can I rescur them before they get killed and I'm depending on the CS
boys to babysit this situation and save those Rangers. I'm thinking about doing
direct CS attacks on the German units surrounding them just for whatever good it
might do.

[hingram]

The supply seems to do what it was intended to do; slow the attacker. You may have lots of wide open space but it will kill you to use it. If you are going to go cross country, you better dump the formal wear out of your suitcase and fill it with Beanie Weanies. Holding a division in reserve at a supply point really pays off as does loading a depleted division on a train and spending a few days sunning at a supply beach somewhere. The supply situation in Rome is horrible, even with a supply point at Anzio. You have to knock those Germans off the rails.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: hingram
The supply seems to do what it was intended to do; slow the attacker. You may have lots of wide open space but it will kill you to use it. If you are going to go cross country, you better dump the formal wear out of your suitcase and fill it with Beanie Weanies.

I hear you and I think you're right. I'm using the red green yellow rule and that almost makes
manditory the sticking to roads and rails. As it is in the mountainous areas where the supply
level is low most of the time I can get only one attack from the Free French before they turn
yellow and need to rest again.

ORIGINAL: hingram
Holding a division in reserve at a supply point really pays off as does loading a depleted division on a train and spending a few days sunning at a supply beach somewhere.

I like those ideas a lot. That's what I'll do...develope a rest camp for the tired ones. It would
have to have a rail line to get there quickly and I'd like to have a supply point nearby but that's
not set in concrete if the supply level is good. I like the idea of doing R&R at a sunny beach.
And there should be an HQ stationed there to accellerate the refit.

ORIGINAL: hingram
The supply situation in Rome is horrible, even with a supply point at Anzio.

Is this because of all the rail breaks further north or it's just naturally lousy?

Y

ORIGINAL: hingram
ou have to knock those Germans off the rails.

That's a good idea actually. That's what I'm trying to do on the east coast road....push them out of
the way, bypass them and let the follow on forces deal with the remnants. Zoom past them with
everybody else. I like that idea. Thanks for posting all these good ideas and I especially
like the way you think....you're aggressive.

[MikeJ19]

The interesting discussions continue. Ian, what a great idea to have the 278th in the right place. Well done.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19

The interesting discussions continue. Ian, what a great idea to have the 278th in the right place. Well done.

I will take any compliment however undeserved (see above for why they were there!) [:)]

[devoncop]

19th March 1944

The Canadians in the East have pushed me back to Barletta whilst the 278th were involved in a furious fight with the US Rangers, forcing them back off the rail line but incurring only light casualties due to the intervention of over 400 P38's and P40's and over 200 fighters...artillery support will arrive next turn which should help but by then the Canadians may even have relieved them.

Two bridges were repaired in the west on the route to Naples though reinforcements are few and far between at present and those that are arriving are very weak.

Over in the West the US and Indian Divisions continue to force their way forwards, mauling the Panzers of KG Baumer as they go. They are now within 5Km of Salerno with little in their way. Although Bari in the East and Salerno in the West (roughly the line Larry is at right now) fell historically in September 1943 this is very misleading. I feel my German defence resembles an easter egg with a supposedly hard exterior but give it a firm tap and the whole structure collapses [:)]

The only stable portion of the front at present is the central mountainous area where it has reached a stalemate though my artillery units in the supporting HQ's are doing some damage still.

We will see. The only positives are Larry's supply problems and the fact at least some of his forward units seem to be a bit fatigued.

[larryfulkerson]

I loaded the moves and this screen showed up before the playback starts and you can
check out the battles before you watch a movie that shows them in action. I like that
a lot. The furball is the Allies shooting down an entire Axis squadron, again. There's
usually at least one furball in these battle reports, sometimes two.

I'm checking out the land attacks by the Axis and I see one that bit my a$$ and that was
the 31% losses for my side. I'll have to rotate the units for sure now. I like to
rotate the tired ones to the rear and move the fresh ones up to take their place. It
helps to keep the green ones at the front and the line one hex to the rear of the front
and let the tired ones rest on the roads and rails.

It seems that the Germans have been shooting back almost every turn so far. At least arty
raids. I haven't been doing any arty raids, bombarding his troops, because I need the arty
to stay green for me so that they are constantly on-line and so I've been running them pretty
close to 100% in supply all the time. Most of the units are in the 60's for supply but I
don't mind if they are still green.

I expect this turn to be more bridge busting, pushing and shoving at the frnot lines and me
moving a lot of units to various places. Maybe I can make a breakthrough somewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the condition of the air fleet and you can see that a lot of them are based
around the Taranto area. I'm focused on Foggia now. The British might have a
chance to grab it before too much longer. First supply has to allow it to happen
because without supply nothing much can happen. That's why I've been dropping his
bridges around the Foggia area: to make it harder for him to get defenders into
that area and to collapse his supply levels.

The air losses meter says I have 30 AS and the Axis side has 0 and that leads me
to believe that I can safely switch some of these fighters to CS missions to help
out on the ground. All I need to do is find out which ones are suitable and switch
them. I'll take a look at the candidates and give you a full report.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the report on using some of the fighters on CS. The only other thing I can
do is switch the P-40E/N's to CS and then monitor them because there's only 17 on hand.
So as soon as those 17 are gone the whole fleet of P-40's needs to be grounded like
the Baltimores. To allow the units to fill back up to maximum capacity and get some
planes on hand. Continuning to use them in combat would whittle away the strength of
the unit and losses would increase.

There's 64 early model P-38's in the inventory that aren't assigned to a unit. So I'm
guessing that when the upgrade took place there was no provision to include the early
models in the units so none are assigned and rusting on the tarmac. In WITP-AE I
would assign those planes to their own squadron for training and give them about 100
trainees to teach and maybe an experienced pilot or two for accelleration in the
training, give them a range of 0 and crank the training up to 100%, no sleeping, no eating,
nothing but training and watch their proficiency climb slowly. A range of 0 means they
don't leave the airdrome airspace. They stay in traffic over the airport. It causes the
pilots to not be fatigued, or disordered, and the 100% training maximizes the time they
spend in the squadron before being reassigned to the regular Reserve to be given an assignment
to an operational squadron, hopefully doing something similar to what they have been doing.
You CAN switch bomber pilots to fighters but they get a drop in their skill levels and you
sometimes have to give them supplemental training to bring them up to combat standards,
which is 75% skill levels or above for every skill important to their mission. You COULD
use spotter plane pilots as fighter pilots but it's not reccommended.

[larryfulkerson]

When the Rangers landed on the bridge hex they went into reorg and it wasn't possible
to drop the bridge. And then the Germans forced him off the bridge hex and he hasn't
the power to cause the bridge hex to be vacant by any means so it looks like he failed
to blow the bridge....the mission is a failure. Let's save them anyway. I think I
can drop that bridge by air strikes.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought this might be the right time to try to get ashore near Salerno to try to
get behind the German defenders and cut off their supply and cause the collapse
of the German MLR. Also to grab Salerno. This is the 10th Indian Division and
I'm not sure whether or not I've used them in combat yet in this game but they are
going to give it that old vocational college try. I could really use some naval
support but it IS supported by 4 bomber squadrons, who are assigned directly to
this attack. It might not work. I've got my fingers crossed. I was thinking
that Ian has probably moved all but the essential personnel to the front lines
and has left a minor unit or two to cover the port.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the east side right now. I've got attacks scheduled and there's a bridge
dropping mission set up and the rail is getting slowly repaired and each turn
inches closer to the front. It's actully advantageous that the front linss are
stalled so frequently....so the rails can catch up. This is going to be problem
the rest of the war.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I thought this might be the right time to try to get ashore near Salerno to try to
get behind the German defenders and cut off their supply and cause the collapse
of the German MLR. Also to grab Salerno. This is the 10th Indian Division and
I'm not sure whether or not I've used them in combat yet in this game but they are
going to give it that old vocational college try. I could really use some naval
support but it IS supported by 4 bomber squadrons, who are assigned directly to
this attack. It might not work. I've got my fingers crossed. I was thinking
that Ian has probably moved all but the essential personnel to the front lines
and has left a minor unit or two to cover the port.

Oh boy...this is trouble !

Cleverly Larry chooses the turn after he furballs my remaining Stukas so even if he fails to get ashore (Very unlikely[:(]) He will be safe back in the landing craft.

[larryfulkerson]

The amphibious assault didn't get ashore and lost about 1/4 of it's equipment and
it looks like they are stuck in the water until at least next turn. None of them
are rioting and none of them went into reorg so I think I'll get control of them
alright next turn. Intell said that the Stukas were a thing of the past and besides
I've got all the fighters in the Italian theater based near Taranto, right across
the peninsula and well within range of the water-borne event. Spitfire IX's and
P-47's, although they are on CS missions right now. I need some P-51's to cap off
a good game. And maybe a B-29 so I can bomb Berlin.

[larryfulkerson]

Curious about the P-51's I looked in the inventory and it turns out that I'm going
to start taking receipt of the D model in another eleven turns or so. That bad
boy can do it all. Not to bad in the air and combat support not so much but still
respectable. They are water cooled and when performing CS frequently you have to
fly within range of enemy guns and just one tiny hole from AA fire, one tmy leak,
can eventually make the engine seize up and make a bail-out almost manditory. I
suppose if it happened over your airfield you could just feather the prop and glide
it down to a safe landing depending on how much altitude you have in the bank. But
I've never heard of that happening. Most of the time the pilot just steps out of
the plane and they assign him a brand new shiney one.