1941 GC Zovs (Axis) vs. thedoctorking (Soviet)

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Is it even possible to have freight received > freight needed as an Axis in '42 for any army on the front without a super depot?

...

yes, if in 1942-43 you have redundancy in your rail net then:

[Erik Rutins]

I've pinned this AAR on the Steam forums as well since you all are playing with the Steam version and I figured some there would be interested in following along.

[Stamb]

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Is it even possible to have freight received > freight needed as an Axis in '42 for any army on the front without a super depot?

...

yes, if in 1942-43 you have redundancy in your rail net then:
...

1. Are you running supply priority 1 for infantry and 2 or 1 for panzers?
2. How much supply do you get in total in turn summary?

In my game vs AI i am running 2/3 for inf/panzers and i have all rail yards lvl 2 or higher connected with additional single rails repaired. And I have never enough supply.
Probably you know some dirty tricks with push / pull methods and so on

As i actually do not understand why setting some depot behind to #4 will have better effect then setting it to #2 or #1. If freight is out of SMP it should stay in the closest depot? And it is logical to think that #4 depot will take some freight that otherwise could go further (maybe even from a depot that are nearby but just on a lower priority, and if they are closer to a front - then freight will move into a wrong direction)

Lets say we have a grid (left is Berlin and other NSS - right is frontline, from Axis perspective)

0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4
0 1 1 2 4 3 3 4 4
- 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4

So in this example depot with priority #4 can draw from a #3 that is closer to a frontline, and to avoid such a case all depots to the right (once again from Axis point of view) should be set to 4?
We can move to some other topic to discuss this and not to flood here.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Stamb

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: Stamb

Is it even possible to have freight received > freight needed as an Axis in '42 for any army on the front without a super depot?

...

yes, if in 1942-43 you have redundancy in your rail net then:
...

1. Are you running supply priority 1 for infantry and 2 or 1 for panzers?
2. How much supply do you get in total in turn summary?

In my game vs AI i am running 2/3 for inf/panzers and i have all rail yards lvl 2 or higher connected with additional single rails repaired. And I have never enough supply.
Probably you know some dirty tricks with push / pull methods and so on

As i actually do not understand why setting some depot behind to #4 will have better effect then setting it to #2 or #1. If freight is out of SMP it should stay in the closest depot? And it is logical to think that #4 depot will take some freight that otherwise could go further (maybe even from a depot that are nearby but just on a lower priority, and if they are closer to a front - then freight will move into a wrong direction)

Lets say we have a grid (left is Berlin and other NSS - right is frontline, from Axis perspective)

0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4
0 1 1 2 4 3 3 4 4
- 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4

So in this example depot with priority #4 can draw from a #3 that is closer to a frontline, and to avoid such a case all depots to the right (once again from Axis point of view) should be set to 4?
We can move to some other topic to discuss this and not to flood here.

for that table, I've reverted to priority 3 for all formations

The main 'trick' I use is to set intermediate depots at places like Kiev and Minsk to #4, for a few turns, revert to 2 and then back to 4 - that substantially increases the freight in my front line depots over time

[marius1337]

ORIGINAL: loki100
The main 'trick' I use is to set intermediate depots at places like Kiev and Minsk to #4, for a few turns, revert to 2 and then back to 4 - that substantially increases the freight in my front line depots over time

So, this works because at 4 these big depots will store lots of supply, then when they revert to 2 they will send those out to the front line depots?

Thx for sharing!

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: marius1337

ORIGINAL: loki100
The main 'trick' I use is to set intermediate depots at places like Kiev and Minsk to #4, for a few turns, revert to 2 and then back to 4 - that substantially increases the freight in my front line depots over time

So, this works because at 4 these big depots will store lots of supply, then when they revert to 2 they will send those out to the front line depots?

Thx for sharing!

yes, its akin to how the super-depot process works but with a few differences. They do take a while longer to fill up (say 2-4 turns depending on the wider supply situation) but they don't then pin down a rare and valuable FBD. So you get more rail repaired and more depots closer to the front.

I basically let them fill up, and then when I want more supply at the front drop their priority. This can be because I'm in heavy combat, advancing or just every now and then as demand>local supplies

[thedoctorking]

Sorry this has been delayed by a big crush of work at the end of the term. I haven't give up quite yet!

41GC No Early End AAR
Thedoctorking (Soviets) versus Zovs (Axis)

Soviet turn 1:

Well, here’s my starting position. It’s a pretty standard Axis opening move. His infantry has squeezed in more on the pockets than I’ve seen in other games. This will probably work out well for him, since I have no hope of being able to either consolidate my position around airfields and send supplies by air or move to choke his supplies. He’s done this by breaking many – indeed most – of his units down to their component regiments. I’ve seen this a lot in AAR’s recently. The drawback, of course, is that he has to consolidate them at the beginning of his next move to reform them as divisions and get that three-hex wide conversion swath, or move them as regiments. Also, while a German regiment is plenty of force to take down the sleepy border guards on turn 1, Soviet divisions in heavy forest will prove a bigger challenge going forward.

Annoyingly, I got two “insufficient garrison” events on turn 1, decreasing my AP total by two. That probably means fewer engineer battalions built – I prioritize construction guys in the early going for Soviet builds, because I want to be able to assign them to the fortification units I’m also going to build to try to hold Leningrad and the Dnepr cities. I’ve got a lot of building to do – for some reason, the Soviet civilian airfields that were built during the 1930s to support the large civil aviation effort during the five-year plans do not appear on the map. I guess the civil aviation guys have enough clout with Stalin that the VVS aren’t allowed to use their fields. So I will have to build airfields for the air force back where I expect to finally be fighting.

[thedoctorking]

The air force has a lot of rebuilding to do, incidentally. Zovs’ carefully planned air attacks worked out a whole lot better than the AI’s or my clumsy efforts as the Axis in earlier games. He’s obviously a real student of how to use the Luftwaffe. A couple of things to note: he made a real effort to take out my naval air guys, presumably to prevent me from sending supplies into Odessa. Black Sea Fleet Air Command has zero bombers at the beginning of the first air phase. I will replace them with long-range bombers from Long Range Air Command. 4BAK Air Corps is right in the vicinity with 200 bombers. And I almost never seem to get any mileage out of the Long Range guys anyway. He did leave me most of the Black Sea fighters. Also, I’ve never been able to do much with holding Odessa anyway. If you cluster a bunch of infantry around the city on one turn so that they can enter the city fort on the next turn, the Romanians can cross the river and attack them and probably rout them out. If you defend the river, then the units aren’t adjacent to the town so they can’t enter the city fort. If you split your force so some can enter the city fort while others hold the river line, then both forces are weak and can be beaten. If the Axis really wants it, they can take Odessa pretty quickly, has been my experience.

Another thing was that he concentrated on my higher-quality fighters. He got 672 Mig-3’s, leaving me with 439 ready on-map. I’ve got 195 Yak-1’s left on the map, and everything else is a 1930’s model I-class (I have a total of 3,522 ready fighters on-map).

Axis air losses were surprisingly reasonably high for this activity. I’m guessing this is because he chose to strike at long range with unescorted bombers. Any time you get 49 Axis fighters in a turn, you’re ahead of the game. A total of 162 Axis aircraft losses, of which 75 were operational, suggesting the high pace of Axis air operations on the first turn. I’m not expecting that to continue, but a kernel of good news on this otherwise bleak turn.

And, thanks to our glorious leader, the NKVD shot that incompetent Pavlov and put Filipp Ivanovich Golikov in charge of Western Front. Since he was one, as chief of the GRU, who told us that the Germans would not attack, it’s only reasonable that he should be in charge of stopping them now that he’s been proven wrong.

[thedoctorking]

So, here’s my closing position. I was able to reopen the big northern pocket and get out a bunch of support units, which was gratifying. I was able to choke his supplies a bit, though not isolate his armored spearheads. I’m aware that this means less in WitE2 than it did in WitE1, but it should still have some impact going into turn 3 or 4 that he had to ship supply to those forward guys through several Russian ZoC’s. I noticed that he didn’t do any air resupply on turn one, or at least not that I could see looking over the battle reports. I guess he was concerned about my fighters.

I did my best to reorganize my forces such that no armies or fronts were overloaded. Western is still grossly overloaded, but most of it is inside the pockets and will probably die in the next couple of turns. Since the big pocket was broken, that situation won’t be resolved on turn 2, but by turn 4 or so, I imagine those guys currently in Volga M.D. or Moscow M.D. will be able to transition back to Western. I think turn 5 or 6 I get Bryansk Front, which will relieve the pressure on the southern end of the line, so that the guys down there now in North Caucasus or Kharkov M.D.’s will be able to be in a Front as well. Also, I hope to be able to get Koniev out of North Caucasus and give him a Front soon.

I sent most of the units that got broken up in the first turn’s fighting off to Soviet Reserves or to the other theater boxes to rest up. There were only a few guys in the Belarus/Land Bridge region that I elected to hold on the map as speed bumps.

[Zovs]

Turn 2 - 29-Jun-1941
Note I held onto the text write up for a while. So it's not quite as good as it could have been. Plus I got sick with Covid and have been out of it for a the last two weeks.


Turn Summary (for the end of Turn 1)

My friendly losses indicated that I lost 10,494 men, 320 artillery and 213 aircraft during turn 1.



Breaking this down I lost during the Axis action phase (my turn):
6,028 Men
311 Guns
3 AFV

The Soviets lost:
170,507 Men
5,087 Guns
588 AFV

Men Captured 108,464

During my logistics phase I lost:
4,311 Men
8 Guns
8 AFV

The Soviets lost:
4,896 Men
71 Guns

Men Captured 4,836

During the Soviet's Logistic Phase
The Soviets lost:
39,459 Men
353 Guns
229 AFV

Men Captured 1,028

During the Soviet action phase (of turn 1).

Axis lost:
155 Men
1 Guns
3 AFV

Soviets lost:
2,200 Men
Guns 40

Men Captured 1,901

Grand Total losses for the start of turn 2.



Things of note, I lost a cargo ship and 1,047 vehicles (trucks)

For the Air Losses for turn 2, the Axis lost 13 FB to 911 Soviet aircraft (the most being the LB at 791).
During the Soviet Air Phase they lost 117 LB, 56 FB and 3 Fighters.
During the Soviet Action Phase (i.e. turn 1) the Soviets lost 12 FB, 3 TB and 3 LB but the Axis lost 28 FB and 23 TB. What is interesting is (and I need to inspect this) that I lost 51 lost on the ground.

Here is the total Air Losses at the start of turn 2.



Air Phase:

I setup 25 AD as follows:

Luftflotte 1
GND Support 4th Pz Group
4x Recon missions

Luftflotte 2
GND Support 3rd and 4th Pz Group, plus 4th Army
6x Recon missions

Luftflotte 4
GND Support 1st Pz Group and 17th and 11th Army, plus the Slovakian Corps
7x Recon missions

Hungarian
GND Support Mobile Hungarian Corps

Romanian
GND Support 4th Romanian Army
2x Recon missions
1x Naval Patrol

Executing those AD resulted in:



I am not too happy about those 129 lost aircraft from Recon missions, especially since I set then 17,000. Will need to investigate and determine a better way to do recon or scrap the missions since it does not appear to be very productive.

The Naval Patrol attack was costly as well.



Ground Phase

At start actions

Looking over the Battle locations, there was not a lot of ground attacks by the Soviets but here is what is interesting.

Gulf of Riga


Riga was bombed 10 times by the VVS.

The eastern portion of the Minsk pocket was attacked but held.



The Soviets also attempted to breakout of the Sambor pocket but failed:



It looks like the Soviets opened up the 3rd Panzer Groups northern pocket by maneuver.



While not isolated, I'll be able to close up that hole and destroy most of the units trapped in that pocket.

Weather Report

Weather looks completely clear.

Logistic Reports

Nothing really too interesting to post. The only two items is Gen. Kuntzen admin rating improves to 6 and Gen. Reinhard political rating improves to 7.

Commanders Report

During the previous turn 1 the Soviets launched 42 battles. Of these 2 were land battles. 4 were recon, 10 were city bombing, 4 were supplies and 20 were Naval Attacks.

Turn Summary

Based on feedback from the community I used the CR to reset all SU to 100% max TOE. I also set all the Mountain units to 75% max TOE and all Cavalry units to 100% max TOE (I am an old cavalry soldier so I have a soft spot for the cav, lol). I also set the 900th Lehr Mot. Brigade, GD Mot. Regiment, L.A.H. SS Mot. Brigade, 2nd RFSS Mot. Brigade, 1st Slov. Mot. Brigade, 1st and 2nd Hun. Mot. Brigade to 100% max TOE. I also set all SS divisions to 75% max TOE.

I also spent about 3 hours moving all the SU to where I wanted them (last turn I sent the all up to OKH), I decided to go with a pretty even mix in all the infantry and motorized armies with SU. I'll move them down into the Corps when their missions dictate their usage.

I mopped up a lot of pockets held over from turn 1 and drove east mainly.

Total Losses for turn 2

Ground

Not doing too bad, captured 285,960 men and my AFV loss ratio is specular for the turn at 2 to 2,747 and current total ratio is 16 to 3,564. In two turns I have managed to take out over a half a million men, 11 thousand guns and 3,500+ AFV.



Air

Overall not doing too bad, with a Pilot KIA ratio of 188 to 1,575 and total airframes ratio of 357 to 5,448. The air combat losses this turn ratio is 10 to 129. And Pilot KIA ratio for the turn is 8 to 125.



Destroyed

During turn 1, I destroyed 140 units (mostly Fortified MG/Arty units, plus AA and construction units). During turn 2, I destroyed 87 units. So far 22 Infantry Divisions have been destroyed.



Pilot's data

Here is the list of the top pilot aces:



Click on the link if you'd like a zoomed in view: https://i.imgur.com/9Og8uIN.png

End of Turn 2 map positions



Click on the link if you'd like a zoomed in view: https://i.imgur.com/WnlCNSH.jpg


Total Battles

The CR shows a total of 118 battles this turn. With 48 being Hasty and 16 Deliberate attacks, 2 Naval Attacks, and 15 Supplies. Sorting by Attacker Results there is 62 (i.e., held, retreated, shattered, surrender, and routed).

Here is a breakdown by Battle Result:

Retreated:8 (6 from HA and 2 from DA)
Shattered: 6 (5 from HA and 1 from DA)
Surrendered: 33 (23 from HA and 10 from DA)
Routed: 14 (all from HA)
Held: 1 (from DA)

Victory Points

None gained this turn.

Turn Conclusions

Overall I thought turn 2 was pretty good.

AGN
Could not ask for a better turn, just about finished mopping up the Baltics and am across the Dvina and 4 hexes from Pskov.

AGC
So far so good. Mopped up most pockets of resistance. There are a few left over.

AGS
I don't think I have moved far enough with AGS yet. But I feel that AGS is in a good position to drive east now.

...to be continued...

[thedoctorking]

You have the skills to do a proper job with the AAR's, that's for sure. My contribution is going to pale in comparison.

I'm sorry you had COVID and I hope you feel better. I don't have that excuse, but the last two weeks were completely crazy. I'm doing a new gig as an online tutor for history students. It's interesting work, but a lot more high-pressure than teaching in the classroom. My students have no compunctions about texting me at 10 at night and wanting me to sit with them for an hour or two talking to them about their term papers. I kept up with some of my games, had no time for my usual weekend gaming sessions, and completely dropped the ball on this one. But I'm back now, with hopes of doing better. The pressure is off now because of the winter school break, and I imagine that the most needy students won't reappear until the last couple of weeks of the winter quarter. So I'm good until early March sometime...

[thedoctorking]

Yeah, so I made a big effort to keep the port of Riga closed as long as possible. It seems that the Axis can get a big supply advantage in the early going by hauling supplies up by sea to Riga and Odessa once they capture them. So since my bombers don't have much else to do, I assigned them to the navy and had them flying naval patrol missions. As long as I have that airbase in Estonia, I can escort the bombers so any Axis fighters at least have someone to shoot at. This should probably only last a couple of turns, but for now I have full control over the gulf of Riga.

[thedoctorking]

On the northern front, looks like he sent a few individual divisions forward to mark the trail for the remainder of the armored force, which was presumably sitting somewhere where it could build up supply and preparation points. I expect they'll be smashing into Pskov next turn. I tried to set up a defense there that will at least slow them down and permit my guys to escape. I also stuck a few guys over on the Estonian islands so Zovs will be forced to send some guys to rub them out. I have noticed that the AI tends to ignore those islands, and as long as you can hold Leningrad, you can have a few fighter squadrons over there and continue to interdict Axis shipping in the Baltic. I'm still not sure what effect that will have on the Axis offensive towards Leningrad, but it doesn't cost me much to find out. I also build the fortified line in front of Leningrad. I am still pretty much convinced that if the Axis wants Leningrad the first year, they can have it, but I want to at least make him put in the effort. Maybe he'll divert the panzer group from the south and I can hold in the center.

This is my closing position - I forgot to take a shot at the beginning, and since we're playing with the Multiplayer system instead of PBEM, I don't have a save game to go back to.

[thedoctorking]

In the center, I set up what I hope is a respectable defense of the Land Bridge sector and to the south as far as Gomel, while in the marshes we just ran as fast as we could. From what I can see, it looks like the Axis main effort is pointing southeast, towards Gomel and Chernigov. Maybe he hopes to pull off a big encirclement of Southwest Front as in the historical event.

[thedoctorking]

The big drive in Southwest Front's sector looks to be going down the Brest-Rovno-Kiev line. I put a good corps in Kiev in case he's planning to take it on the run in the next couple of turns. Farther to the south, the (temporary) Kharkov and North Caucasus sectors, he managed to nearly encircle the Kharkov guys and he did trap a Southern Front army. I expect that I'll lose most of those guys, though with luck he'll have to rout a few of them out to get at the main line of resistance behind.

At this point, I'm just trying to get as many units out alive as I can. I'm not worrying about holding ground, though I would like to put up a fight for the major cities. If I get to the first turn of blizzard and I still have two of Moscow, Leningrad, and Rostov and 3.5m+ troops, I'll feel pretty good about my chances.

[Zovs]

Notes, just got turn 4, wrote this up a few days ago.

Turn 3 - 6-Jul-1941

Note for this turn (since I and thedoctorking are beta testers) I have updated to to the soon to be released version 1.02.13 Beta, which corrects the Vienna Bug (Soviet units teleporting into Vienna), plus several tweaks to the combat routines (flak reduction in losses, reduced air to air and ops losses), some ground combat changes, some logistic changes (an undocumented feature), and some data and scenario changes. All this should be released to the public in January.

New Events

Eastward Evacuations by Soviets.

Turn Summary & General Notes (previous Soviet turn)



Reinforcements
I got the normal 7 ground reinforcements this turn.

Friendly Losses
Friendly losses show 12,478 men, 191 guns, 12 AFV's and 175 aircraft (will dig into this later).

Logistics
Logistics looks good (more on this later).

Combat Unit Alerts
Shows 3 units with low supply, 1 unit isolated and 4 unready (will delve into this below).

Looks like more Naval Patrols around Riga.



Naval Patrols around Odessa as well.



The Soviets did one attack on the 6th Rum. Cavalry Brigade.



The Rumanian losses were very low men and gun wise, air loses were also low but the Soviet air took it on the chin here. Looks like it might be the first encounter of the T-34's. The Soviets lost 7 of these. If I am reading the charts right (Ground Combat details), the best HPE was the 24 Rum. 149mm Howitzers (2.0) followed by 17x 88mm Flak gun (1.66). In aircraft losses for this battle, I lost 5 total to A2A, 1 to Flak and 8 to Ops. Out of the total 104 Soviet aircraft lost, 3 were Ops and the rest A2A. I had six squadrons intercepting and five escorting the 123 bombers. The Soviets had eight escorts squadrons and four intercepting squadrons.

All in all the Axis air decimated this ground attack.

My one isolated regiment was this motorized infantry unit.



Turn 3 - 6-Jul-1941

Air Phase:

First thing I did was to adjust the Recon altitude from 17,000 to 22,000. I also changed the Ground Attack target priorities to Airfield: Low, Unit: Normal and Interdict: High. Next, I transferred all JG's and Recon squadrons forward. I sent the remaining Me-110's to train as Fighters. I lastly cleared out all the Air Directives and reset the as follows.

I created 24 AD as:

Luftlotte 1:
4x Recon
1x Naval Patrol
1x GND Support AGN

Luftflotte 2:
5x Recon
1x GND Support AGC

Luftflotte 4:
3x Recon
1x Naval Patrol
1x GND Support AGS

Hun. Air Cmd.
1x Recon
1x GND Support Carpathian Hun. Army

Rumanian Air Cmd.
4x Recon
1x GND Support Army Grp. Anton

Air Execution Phase Summary



Total sorties: 3,350
Aircraft lost: 463
Damaged: 107
Enemy Aircraft lost in A2A: 21
Damaged: 4

Wow that was a total bust! I think I need to rebuild Recon from the ground up, as those AD for Recon was just way to costly. The problem was that I left all the Air Recon on auto and the AI did a horrid job of allocating and protecting my recon units. I went offline and ran some tests, first I setup the Recon AD to 22,000, and set escort to 25. I then let the AI setup the AD in this test to see what it would do. Instead of setting the missions to auto(auto) for Req AC(Esc) it actually was doing 12(4) and the results were way less costly, still the Recon losses where higher then you would expect, especially while fly >22k feet the flak losses are and were enormous. Personally I would think flying Recon would be a form of stealthy but that does not seem to be the case. In any event crying over spilt milk does no good. So for the next turn I'll rectify that. But it sucks wades to have almost 850 losses by turn 4 with 300+ from just the Recon missions.

Here are some of the higher Recon missions that got shredded.







The Naval patrol's also got hit hard.






Ground Phase

Looking over the OOB things for the Axis tend to look good. I have 3.5 million on map men, 36k guns, 4,144 AFV and 2,500 aircraft for Germany with a small percentage in reserve. The Axis Allies have 1.2 million men on map, with 10k guns and 409 AFV and 672 aircraft with nothing in reserve.

The report shows that the the Soviet Union has 2.3 million men on map, with almost half a million in reserve but a total of 4.3 million. I see 37k in guns, 8,975 in AFV and 4,995 in aircraft. Their reserves show 4k in guns, 1,200 in AFV and 2k in aircraft.

Bottom line is kill more Soviets.

At start losses show.

Ground
Axis losses in men is 22,997 verses 591,840 Soviets. Gun losses is 511 to 11,367. AFV losses is 27 Axis to 3,698. Looks like the captured Soviet men is 410,314.

Air
My total pilots KIA is now up to 586 with 857 aircraft lost. During the Axis air phase I lost 390 pilots KIA and 464 aircraft. The Soviets during that part of the turn only lost 87 KIA and 100 lost aircraft. So turn 3 Air Phase goes to the Soviets this turn. That was a major blunder on my part in allowing the AI to auto setup those Recon missions and it really cost me. So word to the wise here. Don't do auto(auto) it's a disaster.

In general though at start air losses is 596 Axis pilots KIA to the Soviets 1,761 and total airframe losses is 857 to 5,687. Hopefully I can intercept and kill off more Soviet pilots and aircraft over the next few turns, despite my mistake with Recon.

Weather Report

Weather is clear, except for some rain in the Hamburg-Mechlenbug-Berlin-Leipzig-Prague-Munich area, or Central Germany.

Logistic Reports

Things of interest.

The Air Execution Phase took 6 minutes and 6 seconds.

Freight

Generally looks pretty good. OKH totally was short about 60 tons, Hungarian HC received more than it needed. Rumanian HC was short 32 tons of need.

AGN was short 176 tons.
AGC was short 234 tons.
AGS was short 45 tons.
1st Panzer Group (AGS) was positive 584 tons.
2nd Panzer Group (AGC) was short 263 tons.
3rd Panzer Group (AGC) was short 565 tons.
4th Panzer Group (AGN) was short 236 tons.

Grand totals was:
Sup Need: 24,625
Sup Rec: 21,923
Diff: 2,702
Sup lost: 6,014
Air Command was positive 240 tons.

In general and my gut feeling is that freight movement and consumption as well as Depot management is going well. I'll need to make a few tweaks to Depots this turn.

Theater Box
Nothing specular of note.

Replacement
46 damaged AFV were returned to the pool and 8 damaged AFV were not repairable. Finland received some captured Soviet equipment.

Arrival
2nd Army, XXXV Corps, and Slovakian Corps are no longer frozen. The 60th Motorized Division, and five German Infantry Divisions have arrived.

Leader
GenL Kuntze initiative rating improved to 6.

Supply
779 trucks have been lost during the campaign due to unit movement and 596 trucks were repaired and returned to the logistics pool.

Commanders Report

I have a number (11 to be exact) of units whom are out of command range (DtHQ) that I need to rectify. I am usually pretty good at keeping units in command, so I'll investigate why this discrepancy exists and correct.

The highest Morale unit is the Grossdeutschland Motorized Regiment at 99. The most experienced unit is the 1/833rd Sieg Mortar Battery at 95, followed by the Grossdeutschland at 92 and then the L.A..H. SS Mot. Brigade at 92 and the Totenkopf SS Mot. Division and Das Reich Mot. Division both at 91. I have 20 units that are at fatigue levels 40-50% I'll need to rest soon.

OKH total win/loss count is at 148 to 1.

My top fighter ace is G.Huhn with 10 kills and 82 exp, flying in a Bf 109F-2.

Theater Boxes

All looking pretty good. For the Axis reserves both Stug battalions are flesh out and transferred these to the map.


End of Turn Summary

End of turn map.



Click on the link if you'd like a zoomed in view: https://i.imgur.com/dRibF1a.jpg

Areas of Interest

AGN


AGC




AGS



Here is a breakdown by Battle Result:

Total Battles: 29

Retreated: 3
Shattered: 3
Surrendered: 23
Routed: 2

End of turn 3 losses

Ground



Air


OKH win/loss totals for turn 3.
174 to 1

Soviet 3rd mechanized Corps commander Aleksei Kurkin has been killed in action.


...to be continued...

[thedoctorking]

41 GC No Early End AAR
Zovs (Axis) v Thedoctorking (Soviets)
Soviet turn 3

The first thing I noticed when I opened my file was the titanic German air losses. Most of them were on recon missions, it’s true, so they weren’t the crucial (and crucially limited numbers) of Ju87’s or Bf109’s. However, losing so many recon planes will limit the Axis ability to gain information about my deployments behind the lines or gain tactical intelligence that aids their units in combat. And given that I have been losing about 500 planes a week, this gave me a good feeling for one turn. I can be sure that Zovs will fix this mistake next time, so I can’t expect this to go on, but grateful for small blessings.

[thedoctorking]

Of course, in my air execution phase, I continued my policy of waging an active air war, and I gave those losses right back again and more besides. My goal was to continue to keep Riga closed as long as possible, keep Odessa open so that it can withstand siege and keep the Germans off the Crimean front for as long as possible, and interdict supplies and strategic movement where the Axis appears to be concentrating. I realize that German fighters have reached the front by now, meaning that these missions will be intercepted. I hope that I can kill something on the order of 50 German fighters a turn, starting an erosion of his air strength that might lead to air parity for me in the not to distant future. This was a policy I pursued with considerable success in WitE1; I understand that it is not so easy now but I thought I’d give it a shot against a human opponent and find out the hard way.

In the north, I did this:

[thedoctorking]

And in the south, similarly:

[thedoctorking]

The results met my low expectations – only 18 Axis fighters went down against almost 400 Soviet planes. Several very one-sided battles took place. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Either the Axis are just so much better in plane and pilot quality that I just shouldn’t be fighting them at all, or somehow I screwed up my mission doctrines. I tried setting my ground support altitude at 10000 feet, above the effective range of most Axis light AAA, and was rewarded by diminished flak losses, but the horrendous AtA losses – a loss ratio of more than 10:1 – more than made up for it. Of course, many of those losses are in obsolete bombers (SB-2’s: 182) and fighers (I-16’s: 45), so maybe not so crippling as all that.