Adventures in Russia

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: MikeJ19
Larry,

You must be a great commander to have MPs volunteer to go behind enemy lines like that. I wish my troops respected me like that.

Good luck stopping the Soviet offensive.

I promised them that the survivors would be transfered to the West Front immediately. I had my choice
of the lot that volunteered. I chose 6 of them, the older, higher-ranking ones mostly, and the rest
is history.

[MikeJ19]

Larry,

Great idea! I wish I had that carrot to use with my troops in Normandy at the moment...

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: gliz2
What is really worring is that gap between you lines west and north of your bulge. You must reinforce it.

First try to orginze Pz Div withdrawal as a whole. This would neatly serve to cunter the threat in that gap. Split them Inf units and put them in the same hexes with Pz Divs units in contact with the enemy then try withdrawing them (it's a kind of game, they might fail to disengage).

Secondly use some of the leftovers from dividing to immediately cover that gap west of the bulge.

Thirdly put some unit(s) on that hex with the unit still in transport. It will be the last defence line and point of exit. Also very good chokehold to stop pursuing Soviet units.

I wish you luck and hope you'll be able to get out most of your troops

PS. Your defence in the bulge are quite strong. By taking 1/3 of them you increas a risk of them collapsimg but not by large. I cannot see the strenght of Soviets which are in immediate contact with your units but I wage they mostly will hold.

PS2. The withdrawal should be achieved in 1-2 turns. It has to be quick so you could reestablish your line of defence.

Hey Gliz2: Here's that same section of the front lines a couple of turns later. Nice and orderly, everything is alright. And the SWO is about halfway done...my shock is back at 100 and the Soviet shock is still 120 until T58 or so. Everything is holding tight right now, no problems reported and I'm optimistic about this winter.

[larryfulkerson]

I stopped the Soviet turn to get a peek at the losses so far and I can't tell if the
Soviets are doing well or if they are hurting. They have a lot of squads on hand
and there's lots of troops assigned so I guess they are doing just fine.

[larryfulkerson]

The supply net has collapsed in the south. I'm going to a policy of no-events down
there and I may have to pull everybody back depending on how severe the Soviet attacks
are. It might be a good idea to start pulling people back and leave a skeleton staff
in the bad supply area.

[larryfulkerson]

It looks like there's a supply drought for the areas east of Z-town and D-town and
the rail is being repaired in that direction, it just isn't very close yet. The
Rumanian RR engineers, both of them, are just now entering the bottleneck of the
Crimea and they intend to go to the Kerch Straits before heading east for the no
supply area. I may have to pull back a LOT of people if the Soviets go crazy.

[larryfulkerson]

It is planned that the big calibur RR guns will be used on the Soviet stacks in the
Kerch Strait to help break the logjam there and there will need to be a railroad to
the location for them to transit to their firing positions. That's phase I and
phase II is suppling those folks east of Z-town. Phase I is going to take a long
time yet so maybe the best answer is to bring down some more RR engineers from up
north. I'll do a survey of the different sections of the front lines to see who can
do without a RR engineer for a while.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the supply situation is up north and it looks like the Finns are in
a very low supply area, one in which they probably aren't getting any supply at
all and may have to retreat to the NW.

Around Leningrad the rail passes near there extending east to the river and leading
south from there so the supply levels are adequate almost, to okie dokie as you look
south.

Synopsis: This area could do without any RR engineers for a while, which is a good
thing because there aren't any up here.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the view a little bit south of the image above and there's still no RR
engineers here. I've discovered that the RR engineers are already positioned
south of here.

[larryfulkerson]

Directly west of Moscow I found e couple of RR engineers and I'm thinking of moving
them south to the rail line leading to the low-supply area. That might help some.

[700851McCall]

IIRC you can only repair maximum of three rail hexes a turn in the winter. Might be worth concentrating all of them on one route, get that done then move them all to another one. At 3 a round on 1 track you soon get where you are going. Spread them thin you risk getting nothing everywhere.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 700851McCall
IIRC you can only repair maximum of three rail hexes a turn in the winter. Might be worth concentrating all of them on one route, get that done then move them all to another one. At 3 a round on 1 track you soon get where you are going. Spread them thin you risk getting nothing everywhere.

You're absolutely right of course. I'll do it. Thanks for the heads up.

[700851McCall]

You can also move your Finnish engineers right back so that they are not using up any of the repair allotment. Unless you have big plans for the Arctic front of course.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 700851McCall
You can also move your Finnish engineers right back so that they are not using up any of the repair allotment. Unless you have big plans for the Arctic front of course.

I disbanded the Finn's RR engineers so that I wouldn't be tempted to try to repair
some rail somewhere instead of near Leningrad where I really needed it.

[700851McCall]

That's another way of doing it

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: 700851McCall
You can also move your Finnish engineers right back so that they are not using up any of the repair allotment. Unless you have big plans for the Arctic front of course.

Thank you ever so much for your comment...it gave an idea to stack 9 of the RR engineers in one hex
to see if it won't repair 10 hexes at a time or something. So there's a team of nine of them working
on the rail leading south into the low-supply area and a team of four of them heading NE to feed
another part of the front lines that's having supply trouble. I guess that's the best I can do at
the moment. I'm on turn 57 and the Soviet Winter Offensive is almost over and the Soviet shock
will return to "normal" instead of boosted to 120. When that happens the fire at will signal will
be broadcast to the units in the field and the war will be back in operation. I'm expecting the
supply levels to continue to rise slowly and that I will be able to tke the fight almost all the way
to Moscow. I expect to fall a bit short this year.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey Steve: All of the FJ Division was withdrawn except for one element therefrom. Is this an oversight? Is this
element supposed to be withdrawn too? I guess I should just park it at Leningrad and let it garrison the red light
district.

[TPOO]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Hey Steve: All of the FJ Division was withdrawn except for one element therefrom. Is this an oversight? Is this
element supposed to be withdrawn too? I guess I should just park it at Leningrad and let it garrison the red light
district.

It is not an oversight. That is what happened historically.

[larryfulkerson]

Oh. Okay then. Thanks Rick.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the T59 front lines before I have moved
anybody. The SWO is over and the shock levels
are slanted toward the Axis side and the killing
can comense.