8MP Team Game - The Axis team

[Telemecus]

Turn 51 10-Jun-1942 South - A look back at Soviet turn 50

The small pocket of Soviet units remains intact, and to their north units are barely able to escape through the mud. A large number of Soviet units are found to be railing in to the area.

[Telemecus]

Turn 51 10-Jun-1942 South

17th army shuts the claws around the units trying to escape through the mud to the North. Another frontline on the road to Stalingrad finds itself surrounded.

[Telemecus]

Turn 52 17-Jun-1942 South

Soviet forces pull back to the Chir and Tsmila rivers and mud delays the ongoing southern advance. The remaining pockets are liquidated.

[Telemecus]

Turn 52+ South - "Do Not Let Them Do a Brian"

Ocassionally the AAR of another game can have a dramatic effect on the course of another. And in this case it was the AAR of BrianG v Smokindave34 tm.asp?m=4449422&mpage=20&key= which caused many on the Axis team to pause and think. At roughly the same time in the game as we were at the Soviet side in the Brian game won after an encirclement of the German centre. The next turn to arrive to us saw the 8MP Soviet team seemingly attempt to do the same with attacks from the Oka river and Voronezh. The reaction of the centre has already been described including the decision to secure the flanks of the Oka. But the team mantra of do not let the Soviet team "Do a Brian" also caused our Southern commander to change course. In the past few turns the South had encircled a succession of parallel frontlines by puncturing minor river defences and surging through the gaps in between. With summer yet to start we are now a dozen hexes away from Stalingrad - and yet our flanks at Rostov and Boguchar are dangerously exposed with only Rumanian armies to defend them. Not a good portent.

So the planning for south's "Do not let them do a Brian" is to change course from the main attack to Stalingrad and instead secure the flank near Rostov. Our units will be repositioned to force a crossing of the Don using the same army which has just been railed in after capturing Sevastopol. The hope is an exploitation could leave
i) Rostov encircled
ii) the western rail line into the Caucasus cut (railing units to the Caucasus could then only be done along the Caspian coast taking more than one turn - and the Caucasus are very short of Soviet units)
iii) Open a new route to Stalingrad without having to force the major river closer to it.

[Crackaces]

I think this shows the risks and benefits of the strategy EvK documents as "PacMan". The South chomped on multiple lines and made great progress, but as time advanced the positions incurred more risk requiring an intervention.

Certainly, the South had not encountered layers of Guards like the center .. but it would not take much to rail a layer in and counterattack.

[Telemecus]

Turn 53 24-Jun-1942 South

As expected the Soviet side is continually attaking the Rumanian armies flanking our advance to Stalingrad - perhaps trying to re-emulate history. Soviet lines on the Chir and Tsmila rivers have been abandoned without a fight.

Our own surprise change of course is locked and loaded - but the weather says no. 11th army replete with pioneers and heavy artillery waits to cross the lower Don, with Model and our best generals in charge. 1st Panzer Army waits behind them to exploit any breakthrough. But with mud they must all wait, rest and refit.



Das Reich, in its last turn before withdrawing, feints a continued advance direct to Stalingrad.

[EwaldvonKleist]

This video, made with Niedowidek's map generator (tm.asp?m=4591702&mpage=1&key=&#4606169), shows an animation of the frontline from T1 to T54. Now we have WitE movies too!

[TunganNinja]

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Holy smokes that's cool!

[Crackaces]

Turn 54 gets pretty exciting and the tension mounts as spring comes “and the dawn is surely coming ..”
I will document the game as soon as turn 57 comes back..It is worth mentioning that M60 is putting up a very scrappy defense. With 5.5M it is tough and the Germans stretch the line further .. of course in 15 more turns the winter will mean a huge scramble ..

[Telemecus]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

This video, made with Niedowidek's map generator (tm.asp?m=4591702&mpage=1&key=�), shows an animation of the frontline from T1 to T54. Now we have WitE movies too!

Spent ages looking at it and looking at it again. Which means either it is very brilliant or I have a very sad life! [:D]

[Telemecus]

Turn 54 01-Jul-1942 South

Clear weather allows finally for the trigger to be pulled. 11th army storms the lower Don. Surprisingly the 4th Panzer army was able to capture the port of Azov leaving the units in Rostov isolated. We had assumed they would remain in port supply but with very limited transport capacity, under aerial interdiction, through the Azov sea. However the objective of cutting the only rail line into the West Caucasus was not accomplished. Reconnaisance has found little to no Soviet units in the Caucasus. If we are not going to be allowed simply to walk in and capture large parts of it unimpeded the Soviet side will have to rail in many units. Going through the only other rail line on the East side of the Caucasus would have taken more than one turn and effectively doubled the rail capacity to do it. As the rail line on the West side is still open, for now, there is a window still for the Soviet team to scramble some sort of defence in.

[M60A3TTS]

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

This video, made with Niedowidek's map generator (tm.asp?m=4591702&mpage=1&key=�), shows an animation of the frontline from T1 to T54. Now we have WitE movies too!

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist

This video, made with Niedowidek's map generator (tm.asp?m=4591702&mpage=1&key=�), shows an animation of the frontline from T1 to T54. Now we have WitE movies too!

Just remember Brian G vs Sillyflower.. and no German quitting when fortunes reverse!

[Telemecus]

The Crimea Defence Plan

Our Soviet opponents had amply built up their defences of the Kerch straits so we knew there was no profitable prospect of trying to make an assault crossing to the Kuban. So the sole task our remaining forces was the defence of the Crimea.

A corps of the 1st Rumanian army guarded the straits themselves. But what else was needed to prevent the Soviet side from reestablishing themselves in the Crimea by using naval invasions?

Ultimately any naval invasion would be isolated and could easily be repelled by units railed in on future turns unless
i) a port was captured and held for long enough until it repaired - only Sevastopol could be repaired quickly enough for this to even be a prospect.
Or
ii) the naval invasion could lead to the defeat of the troops holding the straits by isolating them to reduce their effectiveness against cross-straits attacks

Our aim was to prevent this happening, but to do so with the minimum number of units so as not to divert them from the fighting on the main frontline. The team went through many versions of where combat units should be stationed in Crimea or where forts should be built. But after game playing all the possible scenarios we came to the surprising conclusion that nothing else was needed so long as the size 1 port of Temryuk in the Azov sea a few hexes from Kerch was bombed to give it a few points damage.

The picture below illustrates our Crimea defence plan. The red highlighted areas show the only hexes the Soviet team could launch an amphibious invasion on once Sevastopol was repaired and while Temryuk was too damaged to operate.



The nearest they could land to Sevastopol would be six hexes away - and that would be if they walked over mountains. As we will always have units garrisoning Nikolaev and other cities near by, generally combat units needing refit from the front, there will always be units we can rail in the same turn as any naval invasion to intercept them. A turn later and many more units in an emergency could be railed in from other garrisons and the frontlines. Not only could a naval invasion not hold on to Sevastopol until it repaired, it would be intercepted before even getting there. The units isolated from any port would be easy for even allies to defeat.

However the Soviet team could counter this by a seperate naval invasion on the Azov sea coast to cut the rail line on a coastal hex, or 1 hex away from the coast by flipping control through a ZOC. This would only be possible if Temryuk remained a working port - and as a size one port only a small amount of damage would keep it from working. The remaining Soviet ports on the Azov sea of Eysk and Azov itself are too far away to allow an invasion east of Ak-Manay and the Kerch peninsula. So long as Temryuk was bombed to stop it working, no invasion further to the west was possible and units could always be railed in to the peninsula in time to defend Sevastopol.

Our remaining worry was that naval invasions could leave the units defending the Kerch straits isolated by cutting off the land route. It seemed also that a supply route to the port of Kerch through the Black Sea was blocked by the much bigger ports the Soviet side had on the Black sea coast nearby. Full credit needs to be given to timmyab for finding out that the port of Kerch in Axis hands would continue to be supplied from other Axis ports in the Azov sea. Not only did timmyab test this to show it was true, timmyab was the first to even suggest it was possible. Given that the Axis side will always have zero shipping capacity in the Azov sea, however much of the world it conquers, it is surprising that it can still trace supply over the sea.

[Telemecus]

Where next for South?

[Telemecus]

Turn 50 03-Jun-1942 Air

Absolutely no air activity during the Soviet go - including no ground support or even recon.

During our turn even more curiously we find the same five clusters of Soviet airbases as last turn full of bombers and recon planes - but absolutely no fighters anywhere. They are all in easy range for our bombers - they almost seem to be laid out deliberately to lose as many aircraft as possible to unintercepted airbase bombing. As a team we even waited a day before starting the turn to discuss what this new Soviet tactic was. The best we could come up with was that, given how the Soviet team have protested that the bombing of their fighter factories made no difference and they did not even need all the things the factories made, this was their attempt to prove the point. So our response should be to maximise the airbase bombing and destroy as many Soviet aircraft as possible to make the point that they really did need fighters. So I spent the next day kabuki dancing all of the airgroups and airfields to maximise the effect of the airbase bombing. I was doing lots of screenshots showing hundreds of Soviet aircraft being destroyed on the ground with absolutely no Soviet fighter interception - and was looking forward to uploading these glories here in this AAR post ...

But on the second day a message arrived from the Soviet supreme commander saying they had made a mistake and forgotten to send all the aircraft to national reserve - and asked to take the ended turn again to do so. All the Axis team readily agreed to allow this. My big disappointment though is that I can now not show those wonderful glorious screenshots of the wholesale destruction of the Soviet air force on the ground.

Instead for this turn the air war was a sleepy affair - and the glories of what was going to be will only ever be known to me. Sigh.



On later reflection though the real curiosity is why no one in the Axis team, for even one minute, thought the first Soviet air deployment was a mistake. For anyone else that might have been my first thought and I would have asked. But for the 8MP Soviet team we were utterly sure it was intentional - and that was the scariest lesson this turn.

[Telemecus]

Turn 51 10-Jun-1942 Air

No Soviet air activity during the Soviet turn - and only a few Soviet airgroups have returned to the map in one cluster of airbases to the East of Stalingrad. With most of the front under mud there is little opportunity for ground support or bombing either. So apart from the usual start bombing there is no air war this turn. In stead the opportunity is taken to rotate airgroups through NR and set up more level bomber airgroups to auto upgrade to 1942 level bomber models in the logistics phase. Around one third of our airbases are no assigned to our best FliegerKorps commander von Richtofen, who in turn is assigned together with 8 other airbases to Leftflotte 6. Kesselring returned to an air command with the arrival of Luftflotte 6 and now has two thirds of all German airbase under their command, and usually almost all the airgroups on the map are assigne to those airbases. The relative calm also allows for a reorganisation of the Finnish fighter air force with the best air groups being swapped to longer range models such as the super longer range Brewsters, while the worst groups instead get the biplanes and very short range G50s.

Meanwhile after testing some recently captured Soviet aircraft converted for use by the Axis, the Luftwaffe deems them to be below the standards requisite for being flown by any of their pilots.

[Telemecus]

Turn 52 17-Jun-1942 Air

The Soviet air force is now starting to return to the map in strength again. In their turn they even dared to send recon to 5 hexes. As usual few of their recon planes actually returned from their missions. Most of the interceptions of the Soviet recon are being carried out by the Rumanian air force right up to the Oka. In the 8MP Axis team the southern axis no move line has long ceased to be a barrier for the southern allies air forces.



The 1942 air war is starting to shape up on different lines. 1941 had seen Soviet fighter air bases not mutually supporting, Soviet fighter groups intercepting at different ranges so that even fighters on the same fighter base were not mutually supporting and the airgroups with so few ready aircraft that they were soon below their air doctrine requirements and not flying at all. As a result the Soviet air force was decimated in detail. The 1942 deployments have been different with airbases mutually supporting each other in defence, intercept ranges for each airgroup set to coincide so that they overlap each other completely and fighter groups on the map having a healthy margin of ready aircraft over the air doctrine required number. It is no longer possible to send a few fighter sweeps to stop any Soviet fighters flying at all and then freely bomb their airfields.

The lesson on turn 48 was that turning our entire combat air force onto some of the clusters of airbases would still overwhelm even these strong dispositions. In effect we can now use the sledgehammer even if we can no longer use the scalpel. But having stopped the Soviet fighter force flying on turn 48, we did not have a reserve of bombers to continue the attacks to turn the "win" for the Axis air forces into a disaster for the Soviet air forces. With that lesson learned instead of attacking the returning Soviet air force this turn we are calling every bomber and combat aircraft out of reserve for THE big air battle next turn. In effect next turn will be Operation Adlertag for the War in the East.

[Telemecus]

Turn 53 24-Jun-1942 Air - A look back at Soviet turn 52

Having had so many easy victories and no Soviet air presence to speak of it came as quite a shock to find suddenly close to 100 German fighters and fighters bombers destroyed in the Soviet turn.



But the Red Army has gone where the Red Air Force fears to tread - and breaks its way through two rows of German lines to rout some airbases. Easy times led to too much carelessness!

[Telemecus]

Turn 53 24-Jun-1942 Air

Operation Adlertag for the East postponed - at least for this turn. The sledgehammer has been put away for the scalpel once more. This was the turn, like turn 48, when we were set for an all out attack with the whole air force on a cluster of Soviet airbases - but this time with a reserve force of bombers to pick up the goodies once the soviet fighters stopped flying again. But with weaknesses in the Soviet air deployment it is worth working on the fault lines for one more turn.

Recon finds all enemy aircraft deployed in airbases in three clusters - at Stalingrad, near Saratov and near Saransk. The first of these has three fighter bases and the latter two only two. Reconnaisance also finds their fighter aircraft have their maximum range capped at only one hex away. These areas of interception from fighter airbases are shown by red hexagons on the map.

We know from earlier exchanges in this thread that our opponents have been anxious to avoid spam recon and see reducing the maximum range that fighters can fly as a way to reduce the total area which they can be made to intercept recon on. But by reducing it to such an extreme they are no longer able to provide fighter cover for the same cluster of airbases. At Stalingrad and near Saransk fighter airbases are two hexes apart meaning one will not defend the other if attacked. The whole point of clustering airbases into geographical areas is that they can be mutually supporting. With a maximum air range of 1 hex for their interceptors any airbases 2 hexes away may as well be 100 hexes away.

Our opponents no longer place fighter airbases in swamps like they used to - but this turn they have started putting a fighter base in an urban hex - so we also know the middle fighter airbase hex in Stalingrad will not fly at all.

In effect the deployment of Soviet air forces has left the effectiveness of the fighter cover over Saransk halved and over Stalingrad divided by three. So this turn we exploited these weaknesses by concentrating our attacks on just one side of these clusters of airbases which the other side would not help.