The first turn is already complete. Given my perception that he is a canny and aggressive opponent I have opted to concentrate my efforts on Sicily and avoid the temptation to divide my command. There is definately good logic to diverting a couple of TFs to Sardinia as QBall did against me I am aiming to try to complete the liberation of a single island as fast as possible for the potential goal of persuading the Italians to abandon the Axis. We'll see, I suspect Liquidsky will have a strong garrison in North Italy to minimise the chance of this surrender but you never know...
So here is the turn at the beginning of turn 2. I opted to utilise my Middle Eastern airforces to fully protect the invasion routes against counter-attack and attrition. Until I can get bases established closer interdiction is of only of limited nuisance effect and exposed to fighter interception, and in the first turn at least the local ports are fairly well suppressed. Once we can get ashore properly we can switch targets properly.
I shifted several Beaufighter and a few Liberator squadrons from the UK in order to pick up some of these naval patrol tasks going forward as the Western approaches are more than adequately protected. On the flipside the P38 Squadrons from the Med will head north to 8th Air Force to given better escort protection, while in Tunisia a few P40 squadrons receive shiny new P47s which should be enough in the short term to protect the missions I envisage for Strategic Air command, at least until we can secure the Foggia airfield complex.
Up in the North West Europe theatre, nothing too outrageous. We re-organise fighter commands dispositions and send 3 air superiority missions over France to try to do a bit of damage before he inevitably pulls everything out of Allied fighter range, and 8th Air Force sends 4 groups hunting over the Netherlands too. Good results on both efforts, not devastating but effective enough for starters. Bomber command switches out its obsolete Stirling Is and those Wellingtons that will switch to Lancasters. Everybody else has a crack at the Ruhr before Liquidsky turns it into a complete hornets-nest of flak. However we do also send a few squadrons to attack the U-boat factories around Bremerhaven with apparent good success. 8th Air Force splits in two and takes a wide sweep north across Denmark and hits the U-boats at Danzig and the fuel at Stettin with recce reporting good success and low losses on both efforts, partly thanks to the remaining 2 P47 groups escorting at least accross the north sea leg.
SO, anyway, we are (relatively) safely ashore, the second wave ready to disembark. No sign of a determined Panzer counter-attack (not that we expected one quite yet..) and just a screen of Italians trying to slow our expansion slightly. Time to sit down and work out what on earth to do next...!
