Another Barbarossa AAR

[golden delicious]

Little changed on turn 33. AGC, which was pushing forward slowly on a broad front up to two turns ago, is now extricating itself from the few Soviet units which were in contact and pulling back, to Tula as seen here and also to Orel just to the southeast of the screenshot (note 5. Panzer in reserve at Ryazan). The reduction of Moscow is paused to give the remaining Soviet troops there a chance to starve to death while my troops rest, but AGN has little choice but to continue the elimination of the Volkhov pocket, as it blocks the main LOC for significant forces which need to be pulled back.

I'm also on the offensive in the Kerch peninsula, which I hope to clear quickly and then evacuate much of this force back to Odessa (which is on the rail net) by sea. The first units have already left the Crimea.

[golden delicious]

More of the same on turn 34. AGN continues to work on liquidating the Volkhov pocket. Note that, for the first time since the fall of Odessa, the railhead is approaching one of the fighting fronts, here advanced to just short of Kirishi, thanks to AGN being somewhat behind its objectives compared to the other Axis forces. It should allow AGN to recover relatively rapidly from the mud phase and perhaps even make up some ground before the full winter, but the southern half of AGN is still mired in a supply desert, struggling to get back to the rail.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

More of the same on turn 34. AGN continues to work on liquidating the Volkhov pocket. Note that, for the first time since the fall of Odessa, the railhead is approaching one of the fighting fronts, here advanced to just short of Kirishi, thanks to AGN being somewhat behind its objectives compared to the other Axis forces. It should allow AGN to recover relatively rapidly from the mud phase and perhaps even make up some ground before the full winter, but the southern half of AGN is still mired in a supply desert, struggling to get back to the rail.

What's the Supply Radius?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

What's the Supply Radius?

2

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

What's the Supply Radius?

2

very short! Is that just for the mud phase? Or long term?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

very short! Is that just for the mud phase? Or long term?

On turn 31 (last pre-mud turn), supply radius was 6. After the mud it rises back up but only to 4 (at least at first)

[golden delicious]

Turn 35 and the drain continues. From a level of 34k Heavy Rifle Squads assigned on turn 31, I've reached a low of just 26.5k from just four turns of mud effects. The good news is that the almost complete cessation of combat has led to more HRS accumulating in the "on hand" pool than have been lost from units; when the mud phase ends and my units recover their strength, I can hope to have an aggregate HRS strength 3-4k higher than when it started, plus a bit more from units scheduled to arrive as reinforcements in that time.

With forces pulling back along most of the frontline, the Soviets have had some chance to recover from the battering they received in the first part of the campaign and are beginning to probe forward in places, such as here east of Kharkov. A number of German and Hungarian divisions which are in good supply state are pushing east again in a race to preserve the strategic depth already obtained, and to screen the withdrawal of rearguards left behind which are now withering without supply.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

very short! Is that just for the mud phase? Or long term?

On turn 31 (last pre-mud turn), supply radius was 6. After the mud it rises back up but only to 4 (at least at first)

I'll just say that's far below the numbers I use. But, maybe this has more liberal rail repair to compensate?

(This is a topic I like to harp upon, because so many designers don't give the Supply Radius much thought and its effect is enormous).

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I'll just say that's far below the numbers I use. But, maybe this has more liberal rail repair to compensate?

(This is a topic I like to harp upon, because so many designers don't give the Supply Radius much thought and its effect is enormous).

Rail repair is pretty bad too. The net effect seems about right to me: Axis units which are a long way from the railhead really don't get the supplies they need, which is quite correct for this campaign. There are however a significant number of supply units available which allow this condition to be improved in certain sectors.

[Lobster]

There were 48 Railroad Pioneer companies (Eisenbahn-pionier Kompanien) in the east in 1941. These guys were the elite rail repair engineers. Each company could regauge about 5km of rail per day and were trained to work independently in company sized units and typically did. They sometimes worked very close to the front lines. Then there were the Railroad Engineer Construction companies (16) and battalions (6). Less skilled and used guys from the Reich Rail Authority but mainly from the Reich Labor Service and the Todt Organization (named after Fritz Todt). These guys were less specialized and had less heavy equipment so relied more on muscle power. They were mostly pulled back at the end of August to work on rail lines and infrastructure that needed more specialized labor.

There were also 10 Switching companies who took care of rail communications, switch construction, rail traffic management and anything else required to keep the rail network running efficiently on the regauged tracks.

The rail repair guys that come in as reinforcements and the ones from minor Axis nations are less skilled, same as the second type of German rail troops mentioned above. But all in all the Axis brought a good number of rail repair troops to the party.

The Soviets did a fair job of destroying infrastructure like water, fuel, switching, rolling stock and traffic control. Didn't have the time to do the same damage to tracks early on but they did get some done. A bit of irony, Germany was one of the nations that had helped the Soviets modernize their rail system before Hitler took over as dictator.

Just some factoids. [:D]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

There were 48 Railroad Pioneer companies (Eisenbahn-pionier Kompanien) in the east in 1941. These guys were the elite rail repair engineers. Each company could regauge about 5km of rail per day and were trained to work independently in company sized units and typically did.

My understanding is that the regauging work is actually a red herring, since all it meant was detaching one of the rails, moving it inward on the sleeper, then reattaching it in the new position.

What I heard was that, due to the huge distances involved, Soviet trains were equipped to travel significantly further between coaling and watering stops, and so the Soviet network duly had these much further spaced than in the rest of Europe. As such, the Germans had to add extra coaling and watering stations across the whole network before they could run their own stock on it.

[Lobster]

Aye, that too. [;)]

[golden delicious]

I'm breezing through these turns so quickly, now there's no fighting, that I don't even have a save from turn 36, so we'll go straight to turn 37. My assigned HRS are still slowly trickling away, now at 25.8, but large numbers of divisions are now resting at my various forward supply points and railheads. Combat has all but ceased with the Kerch peninsula cleared and the Volkhov pocket eliminated. This turn, however, saw a final push to eliminate the shattered remnants of the Moscow Front: Stalin's emaciated body was discovered face down in a suburban cellar, with a bullet wound in the back of his skull.

[golden delicious]

Turn 38 and the southern half of AGN is really visibly suffering from the supply conditions. The nearest railhead for this force is at Novgorod so they get nothing, and must crawl through the mud to reach it. Note SS Polizei- which was already in the rear when the mud phase started- moving towards Bologoye to relieve some of the ruined divisions here. Further north, the picture is quite different, as the rail has almost reached the front and, with the Volkhov pocket eliminated, the whole force is resting, drawing a princely 13 supply each turn, while the Finns move northeast with a view to closing up to their planned stopline running south from Lake Onega once the mud freezes.

[golden delicious]

On turn 39 the Soviets finally start to move back up towards Moscow, in doing so threatening an immobile supply unit just north of Dimitrov. They're pretty weak here and I resolve to clear them away, but the mechanised divisions I have locally are all still too low on supply to act effectively. Instead, I commit my strategic reserve, 7. Flieger (less one regiment which is currently employed clearing the Estonian islands). I drop this around and in front of the lead Soviet units and, together with 20. Motorised and some supporting infantry which has a little supply, I'm able to isolate and then eliminate the most threatening units. I'll want to get this valuable division back to reserve as soon as possible in case it's needed again.

With the majority of my force now resting in supplied hexes, the drain has finally reversed and I'm back up over 27k HRS assigned. There are another 10k left in the pool which will need to make their way back into units over the next few turns before I'm at full strength ready for the winter.

[golden delicious]

Turn 40 and the Soviets are starting to creep forward from the Don. A number of rested units have painstakingly been brought forward and it should not be a problem to prevent any further advance here, ideally destroying these exposed forces once the freeze arrives. Note that the large stack southwest of Rossosh consists of nine Fortified Regions.

Almost the entire OOB is now out of contact with Soviet forces and either resting or moving back to the rail

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Turn 40 and the Soviets are starting to creep forward from the Don. A number of rested units have painstakingly been brought forward and it should not be a problem to prevent any further advance here, ideally destroying these exposed forces once the freeze arrives. Note that the large stack southwest of Rossosh consists of nine Fortified Regions.

Almost the entire OOB is now out of contact with Soviet forces and either resting or moving back to the rail

I take it that the DON RIVER is off image to the NE? It's a good thing that your forces aren't in contact with them because that will boost the supply transfer process as the units soak up supply. Ideally, adjacent to some kind of HQ unit, I suppose. And also parked on a rail or at least a road, perferably in an Urban hex maybe. It's really too bad that TOAW4 doesn't have a "supply transport" mission for our bombers because as I understand it Von Palous ( spelling? ) needed supplies really badly at Stalingrad and precious little was carried by bomber aircraft in that supply push. It's my understanding that part of the reason the Germans capitulated was that they were never really supplied adequately. ever. And the head of the Lufftwafe ( Gobbels ? ) was on Hitler's shitlist for a while after that event. You yourself could use such a function of your bombers now that the weather is turning so poor that strike missions would be a waste of AVgas. And they didn't have the good stuff that the Allies had, that 115 octane gas. The Germans has to do with something that approached 87 on a good day. And then they started using something called "synthetic" gas. Some kind of manmade gas of some kind. They were running out of things to try toward the end of the war. What say you?

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

. . . a waste of AVgas.

1940 my dad was in Wyoming training with the early B-17 squadrons. Some of the guys would sneak out a few gallons of aviation gas for their cars . . . burned up a few pistons.

Regards

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I take it that the DON RIVER is off image to the NE?

It's the super river shown in the upper right portion of the screenshot.

It's a good thing that your forces aren't in contact with them because that will boost the supply transfer process as the units soak up supply. Ideally, adjacent to some kind of HQ unit, I suppose. And also parked on a rail or at least a road, perferably in an Urban hex maybe.

In that screenshot, every hex more than about five hexes out from Kharkov ( on the left hand side of the screenshot) has zero supply, which means being on the road or adjacent to an HQ doesn't help. That's why all my beaten up units are headed to the city. Fortunately, the mud phase is about to end and then the situation should improve.

It's really too bad that TOAW4 doesn't have a "supply transport" mission for our bombers because as I understand it Von Palous ( spelling? ) needed supplies really badly at Stalingrad and precious little was carried by bomber aircraft in that supply push. It's my understanding that part of the reason the Germans capitulated was that they were never really supplied adequately. ever. And the head of the Lufftwafe ( Gobbels ? ) was on Hitler's shitlist for a while after that event. You yourself could use such a function of your bombers now that the weather is turning so poor that strike missions would be a waste of AVgas. And they didn't have the good stuff that the Allies had, that 115 octane gas. The Germans has to do with something that approached 87 on a good day. And then they started using something called "synthetic" gas. Some kind of manmade gas of some kind. They were running out of things to try toward the end of the war. What say you?

In this scenario, there are a lot of forward supply points and all of them are located at airfields, so to some extent this is reflected. For example the supply point for Kharkov is in the airfield northeast of the city.

The problem here is that in TOAW supply is always a blanket level which is applied to all units in the hex, rather than being quantified. The Luftwaffe had great success in delivering supplies to the Demyansk pocket where a total of 100,000 men were trapped until they broke out. This gave Hitler and Goering the confidence to rely on air transport for Stalingrad as you say, but this pocket contained three times as many men, at a time when the Luftwaffe's air transport capacity was already depleted (in part by losses at Demyansk). In TOAW, a supply point that can support one division can support 100 divisions. In real life, one division thrives and 100 starve.

[golden delicious]

Turn 41 and the Pioneers have not been wasting their time during the mud phase: here, in AGN's sector, the railhead is now just one hex from the frontline near Nebolchi, and the majority of Panzer Group 4 is now resting along it. When the freeze begins, this force will attempt to dash to the Rybinsk reservoir. As well as securing a strong forward position to hold during the winter, it's my hope that significant Soviet forces can be trapped against the Volga and destroyed, as AGC can support this offensive by pushing north from their positions off the southeast corner of the screenshot.