D21 yet again. A tribute to the community as my thanks

[larryfulkerson]

It's still T54 round 1 and this is what it looks like east of Rostov right now. I've got ONE intact river crossing and have put some units across the river in a little foothold with a light screen everywhere instead of a proper front line. I'm not sure I should be doing this and I'm wondering if I should withdraw everybody back to the north side of the river because more and more Soviet units are showing up every turn. I have no idea where I would get the warm bodies from to reinforce this AO at this time.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T55 round 2 and this is what it looks like north of Moscow right now. The Soviets have blown a hole in my front lines and they are getting into my backfield without hindrance so I'm going to have to start a general pullback to see how many of my units I can save. I think I'll have to pull back to the blue line and stop up the crossings.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T55 round 2 and this is what it looks like south of Moscow right now. The Soviets have blown a hole in my lines and they are making it really difficult to move my units to the east to escape their envelopment. It's looking like the fate of my units south of the river is sealed. It doesn't look like any of them are going to get away before they get destroyed. That means I'll have to find troops from somewhere else to shore up the river line to the west of this part of the battle. I have no idea where they will come from. This may be the start of a general rout.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T55 round 2 and this is what it looks like near Stalingrad right now. All the bridges over the crossings that I own are intact and I'll soon have the rail repaired as well. I've made more progress in the south half of my lines and I plan on advancing toward the port along the rails that impinge on the port from multiple directions. It's for this reason that I need to own the city, all the rails that pass through there. I'll need those to feed supply to my troops for advancing to the north and south from here in future turns.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T55 round 2 and this is what it looks like near Voronez right now. The Soviets have managed to assemble a fairly serviceable front line in this AO and my progress here has slowed to a crawl even though the current Axis supply situation is good relatively speaking. I'm not after the objectives that might be had near here as much as I'm trying to destroy as many Soviet units as possible complicated by the shock difference between our LCU's. However the weather has improved quite a bit albiet cold. It's only 2/10 partly cloudy with only one snowstorm on the entire map. The rivers aren't frozen over yet this far south but I expect that to change in some future turn. I notice that I need to advance the fighters closer to the front line. I've destroyed about a dozen Soviet bridges in their far east backfield. It's hampered the Soviets a little bit as the routes the Soviet must now use the scenic route to arrive at their destination. I have no clue what the dropped bridges does to the Soviet supply situation. I'll have to look into that.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T56 round 1 and I missed one or more hexes when I was converting hexes and at least one Soviet unit has spawned in my backfield but fortunately I had a spare division that spawned just now in Kiev and I've used them to contest the Soviet Rifle Rgt before it ruins any more of my repaired rails. I'll have to use some Corps HQ unit to repair this rail patch now. I just now opened this turn and these are the only units I have moved so far. I usually dig in OKH and save my game before I do anything else and then deploy the aircraft to the appropriate spots to provide some top cover and escort for the bombers. I've been using the first combat phase to try to drop about half a dozen different bridges and I usually drop one or two each combat phase. I have 18.0K HRS's assigned and 34 HRS's on hand. The Soviets are kicking my ass although about half a dozen Soviet units evaporate each combat phase as a result of their ground attacks. As far as I can tell they are pushing east everywhere on the map.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T56 round 1 and this is what happened during the Soviet turn near Tula and you can see where the Soviets have destroyed my defenders making a huge hole in my lines and the are in the process of surrounding a lot of my troops and I've already started railing warm bodies to this AO to try to stem the flow of infection. About 20% of my LCU's are in reorg.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T58 round 1 and this is me doing a general pull back all over the map. This is from Yaroslavl down to Kalinin righ now. I've been disbanding those units that are going to be killed by the Soviets just before they are destroyed. But there are plenty of units that are in reorg or are already surrounded by the Soviets and there's no way for them to escape their fate and I'd rather disband them than let them get destroyed. I'm dropping bridges as I cross them for the last time.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T60 round 1 and this is me doing a general pull back up north. It looks like I made a clean getaway with no problems but that's because I sacrificed about a dozen units to allow these to get away without a problem. I have since disbanded the brave units that made the ultimate digital sacrifice. There were about 8 units that were out of supply and couldn't be disbanded and they were destroyed by the Soviet army. You can see on the mini-map another of these convoys escaping to the east of Pskov and there will be another of these convoys down south moving to the west as fast as they can go dropping bridges as the last unit passes over it.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T60 round 1 and this is the attempt to withdraw down south. You can see the units that are attempting to hold the Soviets back so that the rest of them can get away cleanly. I move as many units via rail as I can so that at least my rail cap. points aren't wasted. I've railed a lot of Corps HQ units to the places where we're going to establish a proper MLR to repair what rail needs it. I'm also sending some engineer units there to start the digging of slit trenches and latrines.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T61 round 1 and here's a report on the aircraft losses. Like the annotation says: Late model Me-109 in another 27 turns. No longer making any early model Ju-87's but late model Ju-87's start to arrive in another 14[?b] turns. I don't get any FW-190's until T141. Production of the Me-110 stops in T296 however the Me-410 starts to arrive in T140 to replace it. I've got to park the Do-17's somewhere safe to preserve the few that are left. I can use them as recon, or transport, or trainers, or as museum pieces.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T62 round 1 and here's what's going on near Rostov right now. I've been able to hold the Soviets back so far but they will break through my lines sometime soon. Most of the units I wanted to escape have done so and so it's not a crisis if the Soviets DO make a hole somewhere but I would like to see how many of the defenders can get away as well. I have 18.4K HRS's and 290 HRS's on hand. I've lost 50.7K HRS's so far.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T63 round 1 and here's the weather on Jan. 25, 1942 just north of Riga. I'm clearing out the islands of Soviet units because I don't want the Soviets to be able to use sea movement to threaten my ports on the west edge of my territory. The weather is "storms" for the second turn in a row. Lots of T-storms and snow flurries all over the map. The rivers are frozen over in this AO and will be for several game-turn weeks.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T63 round 1 and here's me attempting to form a proper front line in the area just east of Leningrad. I need to keep in mind that the rivers in this AO are frozen over and therefore I'll need a solid line to protect each hex to prevent gaps that Ivan could slip through. I have 18.9K HRS's assigned and 136 HRS's on hand. The Soviets have captured the Petsamo nickel mines just west of Murmansk so now instead of 428 HRS's each turn I'm building only 407 HRS's per turn.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T64 round 1 and here's me clearing out the islands north of Riga in operation "Clear The Islands" and I've got just two Soviet CD gun emplacements to defeat to finish the task, which I anticipate will occur this turn hopefully in the first two combat phases. There's been terrible storms all this week and the forcast is for more of the same. At least all the rails I've repaired has given excellent supply levels at the new MRL I'm building. I'll give you a tour of what's going on where.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T64 round 1 and to the SE of Minsk a lead element of the Soviet advance has arrived at my MLR such as it is in this area. If the main body of the Soviet probe is not far behind then I should consider my units outflanked and needing to be repositioned. I notice that the health of the 60th GD Rifle Division of the 34th GD Rifle Corps is only 43% which a clue that either this unit has been on the move for several days and it's tired and low on ammo, or that the supply levels for the Soviet side aren't all that great just now, or both could be true. I need to keep in mind that all the rivers are frozen over and therefore I have gaps in my lines that Ivan could slip through.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T64 round 1 and this is what's going on near Staraya Russa right now. The Soviets have caught up to where I'm attempting to build a proper MLR and it looks like I don't have nearly enough troops here defending the river line. The rivers are frozen over and don't prevent the Soviets from advancing into my backfield. I'm going to have to rail some more warm bodies here to man the line.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T65 round 1 and this is what's going on east of Leningrad right now. The Soviets are appearing at my front lines a unit at a time and are therefore easy to defeat. The Soviet unit under attack SE of Lyuban has a health of 20% and is a deep cherry red so I'm thinking that the supply levels for the Soviets must be miserable. Like no supply at all or very low at best. Plus Elmer isn't fixing any of the dropped bridges. Or at least I haven't caught him doing that so far in this game.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's now T67 round 1 and this is what's going on north of Rostov right now. The Soviets don't seem to be in a hurry to approach the Donets River so I've dropped some bridges and kept moving west. The main conflict seems to be over the city of Rostov. The Soviets have gained the river hexes by pushing me off of them. My supply level at the skurmish line is down to 4 now that I've dropped a lot of the bridges that would supply my guys. I've debating with myself whether or not to try to pull everybody to the northwest to see how many I can escape with to save them from certain destruction. However, since there's no pressing reason coming at me from the north I'm not particularly in a big hurry. It's going to be a long winter.

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[larryfulkerson]

It's still T67 round 1 and the 515th Pionier engineer unit is the last unit to be making it's way to friendly lines. He's the last to arrive because he's been busy dropping bridges and there are perhaps a dozen broken bridges in his wake. It appears that there's just one more bridge he needs to drop before heading for one of the crossings over the river.

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