Grand Campaign --- Q-Ball vs Sertorius21

[Sertorius21]

But of course the nice thing with a Russian army at 7m+ on the map is that there is no let-up. The LW tried to give a sense of where the next blow would come, and almost failed miserably at establishing any abnormal concentration of forces. Such was the case until a second round in and near Novgorod brought information back of 3 units per hex in a couple of places. So reserves were rushed near a line of woods that would be easier to tackle than marsh or forest terrain.

Q-Ball told me that seeing slightly beefed up defences after the air recon lead him to launch his attack early. Only one hex was assaulted, with Guards Cav and a tank corps exploiting in the narrow gap. The LW division entrenched in the forest behind the front was pushed. Having reserves available enabled to throw the intruders out, without attempting to reoccupy the line. The Russians advanced again, with two corps and an infantry division. Again they were counterattacked, and this time I was not surprised by the costly outcome. The defenders lost very little in their retreat but at least several units had been defeated and would need time to become attacking assets again. As Guards corps came in the breach, all attempts at counter attacking were put on hold.




When looking at the losses, I realise that I had quoted the wrong figure for the difficult attack near Kiev. Whilst higher than those of the Germans, Russian losses were rather balanced.

All this was taking place while the steamroller continued to dismantle my army in the Pripet. More positively, any move in open terrain near Poltava or Dnepropetrovsk carried a hefty cost as the retreating army retained a lot of clout. The Axis was pretty stretched though. As there is no way the Germans can successfully hold onto a position that the Russians want, my objective is to cause as many losses as possible and hope that the Red Army will cease to grow or even start to decline. So far, I have the feeling of "vider l'océan à la petite cuillère" (empty the ocean with a tea spoon), and this is only the beginning of 1943!

[Q-Ball]

March 7, 1943

Yes, those counterattacks certainly annoying; this is a few from the March 7 turn. When Soviet units rout, it gets ugly in terms of losses; obviously the Commisars not doing their job in instilling the proper love of Motherland. I think we'll have to shoot some people to sort this out, or build some NKVD blocking detachments:

3-7-43GermanAttacks.jpg (651.56 KiB) Viewed 352 times

Several of those; here are the losses sorted to AXIS ACTION phase; that's a 100 to 7 loss ratio.....not good!

3-7-43Losses.jpg (78.11 KiB) Viewed 352 times

I pointed this out before; at the risk of OPS SEC leaks here, we are still struggling in the GUNS category; we have plenty of LIGHT ARTILLERY and ROCKETS, and enough Field Guns; everything else is short.

The solution to this shortage is several fold IMO:

1. I am not building many ARTILLERY DIVISIONS
2. Using more ROCKET units as Artillery SUs; so I'm builidng Heavy Rocket Bn and Light Rocket Regt. These units are not amazing in a vacuum, but they are better than nothing, and better than having an empty slot
3. Using more TANK SUs: I also seem to have plenty of guns when the gun has tracks and an armored box around it. So we're going to use/deploy more of these aggressively.

I'm doing OK on Vehicles; not a huge pool, but enough for active units. Vehicle numbers are growing each month, so by 1944 I should be pretty mobile without an issue.

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[Sertorius21]

We are now mid-July 1943 and the Russian army on the map is 7.5m strong, a dauting challenge for very stretched German forces. Anyway here is a snapshot of what happened after a few mud turns.

In essence, most of the action was business as usual with pretty strong assaults against positions that usually were held by one strong German division and one Hungarian one, under German HQ. The first two under Grechko are part of the massive wedge being driven through the Pripet marshes, along an axis straight west of Chernigov. You can see that Q-Ball has no issue bringing a fair degree of concentration of his heavy hitters. Even well entrenched troops in excellent defensive terrain are ejected each time.

The third attack against von Buneau took place NW of Kiev.




What I do not really understand is how, for instance on the last attack, the 25th Guards Corps can contribute 651 points. It should suffer from the concentration rules whereby an attack with more than 28 points of "staking" leads to some elements not firing. Even without this aspect, a 65 points CV is more than what I have ever been able to field, the best I ever achieved with GD being 55 (down from a printed 73). Also I would have expected tank units to be penalised when attacking swamps, so was amazed at such an outcome. Anyone with explanations is welcome.

[Sertorius21]

When you think you have seen the worst from the Russians, they manage to pull off one more rabbit. The next week, they throw back another stack from the swamp with nearly 350,000 men, well over 6,000 guns and a few tanks as well.




Obviously I try to find ways to slow down this juggernaut but cannot find any solution apart from inflicting as many casualties as possible elsewhere. The withdrawal behind the Dniepr had not been completed totally by early May, which still brought the odd opportunity to strike. Sometimes I was lucky in finding unsupported divisions, such as these two that depended on Stavka, hence lost a lot through lack of support and very heavy odds.




The Panzer generally tried to avoid any target defended by Guards, in particular airborne units that tend to withdraw with no or low additional losses. In this instance, there was an opportunity to strike 4 Guards Cav at decent odds and follow up against one of the units that had retreated only one hex.

Nevertheless the time had come to withdraw behind the great river barrier of the Dniepr.

[Sertorius21]

The week of May 9th did not really bring any relief for the Germans in the Centre and the Hungarians fighting with them. Nearly 370,000 men surged forward, 6,600 guns and about 700 tanks. Eibl did really well in providing support but this was insufficient in this instance as in the next attack.




Balck or Rommel are not the only ones pushing back as hard as they can. What matters more is to find units in the open and then the wealth of strong leaders, coupled with adequate (or lucky!) positioning of a few rapid units, helps to launch a couple of highly targeted attacks. Weiss is a strong leader from the get go and, with experience, improved his rating. He is one of those leaders I would certainly not want to lose.

[Sertorius21]

At that point, I was expecting a Russian move in strength against the marsh zone in the southward bend of the Dnepr. Any hex won can then be occupied by strong cavalry units that are difficult to dislodge. So I tried to protect this avenue, and had to accept that another Russian wedge crashed onto the Melitopol line. I probably did not position my defense adequately, which helped Q-Ball take out two hexes in the same turn. Mackensen counter attacked at expected odds of over 4:1, with the Guards corps low on CPPs and high on fatigue, this being offset by a level 1 fort.

The outcome was not entirely satisfactory but at least some Soviet units were repulsed.



From a pure losses perspective, this exchange is in the German's favour, but the defensive line was eroded faster than expected.

[Sertorius21]

The following turn saw another successful Russian attack, followed by a counter attack with strictly the same expected odds as the previous week. But whether the level 1 fort had been ignored in the initial battle odds or the composition of the Russian stack played a large role, the outcome was this time more favourable. I had to commit GD though. While the weather was rainy, there was a bit of dry ground from which the Pz could launch their attack, hence not be penalised by light mud.




Meanwhile, the LW spotted large Russian concentrations between Vitebsk and Smolensk and near Velikyie Luki. One hint was given by 8 Guards Corps, which came out of the line in the marshes north of VL and was visible near this town two turns later. So in all likelihood, another set of artillery barrages was about to begin. I think it was around this period that the massive wedge in the centre did pause for one week.

[Sertorius21]

As expected, the storm broke near Vitebsk, although initially only from the direction of Smolensk. For a couple of turns, the Velikiye Luki area remained abnormally quiet. A counterattack punished some of the ordinary infantry that advanced alongside the Guards corps. This was nevertheless a good start for the Russians, even if the wins at low odds were costly.




I do not remember if things moved much in the centre on that turn, nor around Melitopol.

[Sertorius21]

The last week of May was far more active, with heavy action around Velikiye Luki and 6 Russian attacks altogether. I didn't know exactly what forces had been amassed near VL and did not try to second guess where the blow would land, so concentrated on giving strong air cover and adequate artillery to 9 Army in charge of the area. This air cover also helped the XXXXII corps near Vitebsk, although not sufficiently to stop the attack there.




Further south, Henrici's talent and resources were insufficient to prevent two more defeats. I had hoped that, by bringing my best leader for this type of action in the area and giving him ample resource, he may have been able to stop an attack from time to time, but this proved totally insufficient. You will notice that 3 Guards corps was able to contribute nearly 800 points to an attack in the swamps. Quite a performance.




Rommel was no more successful near Melitopol, despite support from Mackensen's III PzK who was in charge of the Rumanian division. Sadly I couldn't disband the fort earlier as it was still level 2 at the beginning of my turn.

[Sertorius21]

We are now entering August, which is historically when the major Russian offensive started, with the Germans suddenly discovering that they had a much bigger issue than they thought. Given that I have lost track of at least 15 Guards infantry corps and Q-Ball carried zero attack last week and only one this week, I may open the next turn with a massive onslaught in a couple of places, not an enjoyable prospect. Anyway let's stick to the action as it unfolded in June.

While pressure increased markedly in three segments of the line, the Axis was looking for ways to create a bit of trouble elsewhere, as reserves lay idle. Since such reserves would be unlikely to be shifted in any significant numbers and given that the Soviet line would not advance in the open, the only way to deploy them was to hit relatively weak parts of the front. Air reconnaissance played a key part in assessing the risk of large Russian concentrations suddenly surging forward.

A first attack SE of Novgorod involved two infantry divisions and a brigade against single, weak division. Although in a level 3 fortification, this unit was not well supported and lost heavily in the process. The next move would be NE of Kiev, in a zone that had remained extremely quiet since the vast Russian winter offensive that had broken through the mixed German and Hungarian front. A few forays further to the East had been repulsed with heavy losses to the troops caught in the open, then all became quiet again. It also became clear that the best Russian units had been transferred elsewhere.

So Reinhardt was tasked with a reconnaissance in force mission. All being well, it could recapture a couple of airfields and destroy depots, possibly even catch weak units in the open. The action took place over 3/4 weeks and caused a level of losses as well as boost the morale of some German divisions. One of them had a starting point of 62 and went up to 68 in the process. It says a lot about the drop in quality of the Heer.




The airfield north of the Rumanian division was taken but the tally of planes destroyed on the ground proved minimal. Another airfield was captured at the end of May, a disappointing operation. The defense had been estimated at 10 CVs for a couple of weeks and turned out to be almost twice stronger. There was no point in carrying further action without letting troops rest and regain CPPs, by which time the 2 Army and 17 Army had been ordered to withdraw gradually behind the Dnepr, hence to strike at ennemies advancing in the open, if any.




The primary objectives of causing a bit of trouble and improving the experience levels of a few units was achieved though.