Panzers, rückwärts! Gunnulf (GHC) vs QBall (WA)

[John B.]

I continue to enjoy this AAR thank you for the effort you put into it. And, it sounds to me like you are doing much better than historical. It's August 1944 and you still hold Paris, Antwerp and Rome! From the look of things you may hold Italy until the end. Any chance of a bulge offensive to retake Naples?

[Gunnulf]

I have made a couple of efforts to break through and overrun the Foggia airfields but never been able to break that line so far. You are right though, a Bulge type counter-attack if we have spare troops might be interesting. Italian winter mud might make it difficult. I'm definately going to bear the thought it mind though...
That said while Italy does look relatively secure he clearly withdrew a TF here for some nefarious reason and I suspect its not the last invasion we'll see and he might yet force us to retire to the Gothic line (or beyond...) before the war ends. We'll no doubt find out before too long. Not sure where he'll find the troops for a big effort though.

In France we deliberate a while as 162 Turkoman Div has trouble keeping up due to Zoc blocking. Its a 68 Exp division so we are loathed to abandon them but after much reflection we decide on a clean break. Its not us, its him. QBall often puts a premium on going for zoc blocks. This time I decide to abandon, but up north its generally meant I have retired much slower in order to save units. Without these zoc-lock tactics likely we'd actually be fighting on the doorstep of Antwerp rather than Lille. Pros and cons I guess but sometimes I think its worth encouraging/allowing the enemy to run maybe.

Anyway, the centre and south have broken contact and are pretty much where we intend to resist a little, up north we edge back and will break contact if we get a chance.

[Gunnulf]

Turn 61 - 26 August 44

Still close fighting in the Lille area but we just about maintain enough mobility to break contact without leaving any units behind and draw back to a temporary position just in front of Antwerp. The fighting will reach there the first week of september (historically fell 4 Sept) and Paris just fell (historically 25 Aug) so kudos to the designers and play testers. After thousands of decisions on mine and QBalls parts (ok, mostly his, I'm just reacting) and millions of calculations we are pretty much bang on the money timescale wise. I was pretty sure it would go worse for me after the second landings particularly but we are just about holding it together. Breaking contact for a moment is not before time as after months of fighting and relentless air attack 9 SS Pz breaks and routs, now sent back depleted with just 10 tanks to refit (Arnhem sounds a nice peaceful spot...). Of course battle will join up immediately as Qball closes up again but for the first time in a long time we can see the whole line start to form up on ground of our choosing. Lets see how that plays out...

Of note in the screenshot you will see Festung Walcheren is nearly dug in with 3 divisions. We expect an assault from the sea before too long, no doubt a successful one but no sense in making it too easy for him. Antwerp too is a level 4 fort we prepared last year on a whim but its not to much benefit really as not easy to form a contigious line, the Albert canal isnt going to cut it even if we spent 24ap fortifying the rest of it. Maybe we'll try that another time if we are feeling flush. Better to expend effort on blocking access to the river for as long as possible I think.
The Maas line is taking shape and should be ready to do some heavy lifting by the time the fight reaches it. And so there is the the tour of the northern flank.

[Gunnulf]

On the subject of Paris, it took 6 divisions and a medley of multi-national brigades with over 2K guns two assaults to reduce the 343 ID we left behind (plus as you see, randomly an Italian Marine battalion attached while this division was down south).
162 ID we were forced to ditch on the the retreat is set upon like army ants on a henchman in an indiana jones movie. But it will slow a few units another week to deal with them, though in this case I'd rather have the division than that slight delay. At least Paris was denying him the ability to put a depot at that critical junction.

Otherwise you can see that 5 Pz Army (orange) and 19 Army (tan) are now formed up in relatively good order on ground of our choosing. Still a delaying action before the Rhine but we can keep him west a little bit longer hopefully on this line. We receive our first batches of Volksgrenadier IDs and Pz Bdes which we start to plug into the ORBAT. A critical point is likely to be the Belfort gap no doubt and that will be tough to hold against determined attack but no points to spare for forts. What is good news is the Pz Bdes and decent terrain allows us to send a few mech divisions to rear depots to refit for a week or two at least. A rare luxury indeed.

Finally of brief note as expected Marseille falls on the second week to an even larger attack of 160k men and 2.8k guns though they extract some further Allied loses. Not too bad an effort for a regiment of security troops and a schnelle bicycle brigade. We partly regret not using a full division but 2 weeks delay is good enough and Toulon is still outstanding, but Marseille and its level 9 port is clearly the jewel in the crown.
We continue to run naval patrols off the coast but now he is paying attention the best we can do is contest rather than isolate the sea route to his beaches and before long it won't matter when Marseille starts to accept ships.

[Gunnulf]

Turn 62 - 2 Sep 44

1st Army slides into position around Antwerp and the Albert canal. Just a temporary blocking position to delay the Allies reaching the Maas line too early. The only real fighting across the whole front are the assaults on Boulogne and Calais. Dunkirk is no doubt next. Actually also for the first time since May the skies are clear of allied fighter-bombers. Mixed emotions about this as clearly he is doing a bit rest & relocate prior to a next phase onslaught! We take our own opportunity to send the battered Panzer divisions to depots to refit.

15th Army completes its move into the forward line of the Ardennes forest. No doubt this will be a quiet sector as everybody knows you can't attack through here...

Down south 5th Pz & 19th Army remain where we last saw then, aside from a bit of a re-org incorporating a few shiny new VG divisions. The only problem is as he has not closed up yet we can't see where the next blow might fall so next turn we need to start getting more active with recon flights. This turn we establish 6 bases along the front to begin these ops.

[GeneralfeldmarschallWalterModel]

Logistics look to be a real issue with War in The West.

Have you played War in The East?
If so how does it compare in your opinion?

Nice report.

[Gunnulf]

Logistics certainly key for both sides, quite rightly so, and we are starting to see a squeeze of vehicles take effect. Not so much of an issue for the mechanised divisions when we were crawling backwards a couple of hexes per turn, but now we have rested them and need then to counterattack the lack of vehicles is hampering mobility. More on this later.

I played my fair share of WITE and of course they are very familiar in many ways mechanically. The air war in WITW is a huge improvement, if the old WITE air mechanics was just bolted on it clearly wouldn't have worked. Its functional, easy to understand and efficient in dealing with the detail if you want, or the AI directives do a decent job if you let them, though almost certainly most will enjoy tinkering. In terms of scope and replay-ability there are plenty of angles for the allies to take. 3 PBEMs as the Axis has seen each game take a quite different direction. But of course unlike WITE you don't get the same ebb and flow of the GC. As the Axis you are on the strategic defence and even tactical offensives are very limited. That said you could argue that most WITE games are quite binary unless you get a autovictory then as the axis you are always going to be on offense, then switch to defense though of course its much less linear with the soviet winter offensive of 41. But WITE covers a much longer period. If WITE covered the same time period of July 43 to the end then the Soviets would be exclusively on the offense too. Both games are great for sure, when this first came out I wasn't able to put much time in so sat on the shelf for a while but certainly enjoying it now.

[Gunnulf]

Turn 64 - 16 Sep 44

Last week not much action and was working hard so not much update but this week the allies, well rested and replened leap into action. In the northern sector they break into the defensive lines in 2 places; As expected east of Antwerp the line on the Albert canal is too weak to hold against determined assault and the Canadians get across. This is our signal to leave, except a garrison will hold out in Antwerp for another week to cause a nuisance, partly as they can't move anyway so that makes our decision for us. Another reminder to budding Allied commanders - sometimes it pays to leave a door open to escape and actually makes life easier

But also in the forest in 15th Army sector a massive attack involving 3 US armoured divisions breaks the line, but disturbingly 2 further armoured divisions pile in to push deep into the rear, too strong for us to dislodge so we will have to reconstitute the line. Hopefully we can attrit the allies here a bit at least as we retire back to the Seigfried line.

[Gunnulf]

In the centre of the front the Free-French break into the line at the bottom of 15th Armies forest bastion, and in 5 Pz army sector the 11th Br Arm and 2nd FF Arm Divs follow up on a breakthough to get over the river. In both cases we launch a local counterattack causing 500-1000 casualties but ultimately with the allies holding to their gains. The former incursion we might be able to contain a little while, the latter certainly not. However for a quite long front line we can be relatively happen to have only lost 5 hexes. So far...
We continue to run recce to try to keep an eye on large buildup behind the lines but the main effort still seems to be the northern sector which is the only one that receives any air support.

[Gunnulf]

In the French-Italian Alps there has been a bit of a scramble for position as we try to occupy the forts before the allies reach them. Luckily we had already identified and allocated a number of divisions and security regiments for the task but it takes time to jockey them into position and due to a mistake on my part QBall was actually able to reach and destroy the fort in the pass before I re-occupied it, luckily without the movement left to occupy the spot and I had a division and panzer brigade close by to seal the line there. Otherwise that might have changed the dynamic of the whole line. While without a rail line he would struggle to get supplies through long term I'm sure it would have been enough to threaten to turn out the defenders to the south. As it is now I think (touch wood) that we have enough allocated to hold the line until such time as other events might force us to leave.

[Gunnulf]

Turn 65 - 23 Sep 44

Headline news this week is a long awaited Allied landing in central Italy, in the bay above Civitavecchio, slightly south of my best guess for where he would come. The first wave is 1st & 5th Br infantry coming off the ramps, with 1st Airborne Div and 2nd Airborne Bde. The latter lands on 1/362 Regt with a flak battalion and is defeated but everybody else gets ashore. Plans found in a wrecked glider lead us to expect 1 Br Arm Div & 78 Br Inf Div in the second wave, but the edge of the map is a bit charred and there of course might be more.
I know he knows we are stretched and probably expects this will lead us to evacuate the Gustav line back to the Gothic. He's probably right but in the immediate term we can probably box this in to avert disaster. On email QBall comments that he doesn't expect we have a Panzer Korps in the Rome area but in fact we do have 15 & 90 PzGn Divs to the north and east, and 3 PzGn Bdes around Rome with 4 Infantry divisions spare. These perhaps should be on the Seigfried line but I felt confident being stubborn here would force him to divert forces back to Italy. Our other logic was the Gothic line is 9 hexes long and easy to defend while the Gothic line is 13 hexes wide and maybe not so easy to hold. We'll pull back before long but if we resist a little longer he might have to put more forces over that beach that he originally hoped.
OR...it could be a complete disaster for us obviously! Time will tell...

[Gunnulf]

While we are down in the Med the other news is we began a bombing campaign against Marseille. We have plenty of well trained bomber crews so they might as well earn their beer money. QBall has about 80 fighters on duty but looks like while half of them missed the port and hit the city on day 2, and couldn't find Marseille at all on day 4 they did a reasonable job on day 6. Recce at the end of the week puts the damage at 58%, whether thats true or not we'll never know but last turn damage reported was 14% so seems likely this is progress. its not going to win us the war, but maybe it will have a small impact on the chain somewhere. Toulon and Nice also remain in our hands so far, the former he can take anytime he can muster the troops, the latter is probably secure so long as we hold the Gothic line.

[Gunnulf]

On the northern flank we are on the Maas line now, although he has yet to put in an assault on Antwerp, likely as its looking pretty strong with about 58 defensive cv so maybe the time invested in that fort paid off in the end. Once he can spare 100k troops no doubt its toast but i guess the Allies are plenty busy and until he can clear the island approaches he can't use the port anyway.
Further downstream the Allies do force a crossing and a bridgehead is formed but only 2 armoured brigades and a cavalry group are on the far bank and I think we can dislodge them on this occasion so we throw in XXV Corps. Nervous reports come in about massive allied ground support missions but ultimately the 3 battlegroups from 3 different allied corps put up a rather disorganized hasty defense and are pushed back with heavy losses. Whether we can hold this sector a further week remains to be seen. Some bad weather wouldn't hurt the cause.

[Gunnulf]

Its clear that the centre of the line has become the Allied main effort, its now receiving much more share of the air power (up from nothing) and that makes sense as it looks the weakest spot. Further south the Belfort gap is looking relatively secure since the very fresh 4 FJ div turned up from the Italian front.
However 5 Pz Army is looking shaky, and the SS Pz divs are looking particularly impotent. I had a couple of them on refit for 2 weeks in a good depot but they didnt draw any vehicles and in one case they have about 5% vehicle ToE and correspondingly lack the mobility to launch deliberate attacks. I think we need to pull these right back lest we lose them unable to retreat. In the meantime the infantry and fresh panzer brigades will have to stem the tide until we reach the main defense line and every re-inforcement will plug in here.

[Gunnulf]

Going full circle this is where we are left at the beachhead once everybody has moved. He is boxed in for the moment but it obviously all depends on what shows up in the second wave whether I leave the Gustav line immediately. You will notice though 1 US Arm Div on the southern flank, eagerly waiting with sabres drawn to ruthlessly cut down poor retreating German infantry so we do need to put some thought into the evacuation plan here if/when we execute it. The troops at the beachhead should be able to delay for a little while at least but its a long march and getting clean away to a railhead will be tricky for sure. I need to have a condor moment overnight before we hit end turn...

[Gunnulf]

Turn 66 - 30 Sep 44

Things looking reasonable stable on the beaches (Allies 1 x Arm Div, 4 x Inf Div, 1 x Abn Div, 1 x Abn Regt versus 3 x PzGn Div, 1 x Mtn Div, 4 x Inf Div, 3 x PzGn Bde) so we take a momentary pause on the Casino line, probably just temporary but it doesn't seem like a necessity to run full-pelt for the hills just yet. The mountains and swamps are not quite so secure as the previous fortified line, but the Allies are not exactly in overwhelming numbers either. Maybe he'll halt, maybe he'll fight and lose troops, either way is a bit of a win so long as we don't fall apart but everybody is pretty fresh. Cautiously we might hold out to the winter mud...or not. No real benefit as Rome not so important now, but more to see if we can, and of course to frustrate QBall a little bit.

[Gunnulf]

The northern sector is relatively stable now as the Allies schwerpunkt is well and truly shifted to the centre, aside from and assault and capture of Antwerp that doesn’t put up too much resistance in the end. But festung Walchern is looking fairly secure so far so the port remains useless. In other news the Allies cross the Maas SW of Aachen again and this time 15th Army misses out on pushing them back across, as expended though its relatively close run thing.

[Gunnulf]

Otherwise the main action is in the centre where 5Pz Army again takes the brunt of the assault with 42 Jaeger div left cut off. A favourite move of QBall but it doesn’t come cheap as we had the flanks here fairly well loaded in anticipation. Overall this turn, including the routed 2 Abn Bde in Italy losses are heavy with -12 US losses and -23 Other Loss VPs for overall -16VP. If we can do even half that regularly we’d be happy. This series of assaults does see us pull back behind the Moselle river, aside from a single outpost, and the Ardennes to the north. No doubt he will cross of course but for a while we get some reasonable defensive terrain the length of the line and still some depth before the seigfried line and the Rhine. But also there are still 43 more turns to hold out which seems like an awfully long time obviously

Elsewhere Marseille gets bombed again and recce suggests damage at 58% so maybe we are damaging the port as fast as he can repair it. Or intel is wrong. The Belfort gap looks solid, as does the Franco-Italian alps.

[Gunnulf]

Turn 68 - 14 Oct 44

The Allies continue to eat into the German lines but on a relatively narrow front around the Ardennes. Of course wherever they choose to focus the air power and the tip of the spear there is not too much to be done to stop this but at least the advance is still relatively limited. I have to still wonder whether supplies are a minor or major constraint. As per my previous reckoning he has considerably less port capacity than historical while at the same time operating a significant number of divisions diverted from the Med theatre. Looking at the big picture in Brittany he chose St Nazaire (4) over Brest (6), but is also missing out on Cherbourg (5), Bordeaux (7), Toulon (5), Nice (5) and while he has Marseille (9) my recce after last bombing suggest 68% damage so its almost certainly operating at half capacity. All told thats about 425k tons less than historical capacity per week, certainly not insignificant. But if it was seriously constraining him surely he would put some resources into taking an extra port somewhere? Antwerp (9) is his but until Walcheren is cleared its blocked obviously and there are 3 divisions here dug into level 3 in polder terrain generating some very high defensive CV values. He can take it but it won't be cheap.

A brief look at the air situation, the bombing of the Reich continues but generating less VPs than before due to modifiers. The bombing tends to be more focused and likewise we tend to run 6 AS directives over key cities rather than intercepts. This keeps our losses lower from stray interceptors wandering everywhere but of course we miss some bombers too. We do have 1500 german day fighters left, and 300 axis allies, and fuel levels look ok so no indication that things will fall off a cliff just yet. Famous last words... Damage to HI/Oil/Fuel is about 33% and manpower pools are at 32K. Not huge but something to draw upon. What is low is vehicles in mechanised divisions. While damage to factories is a modest 19% then plenty of divisions have just 5% of their needs which rather sucks. We have been careful throughout to ensure depots cover the front within 3 hexes, even if this means setting one up for 1 or 2 turns, then clearly vehicles is the pain point and not sure there was much else I could do about this, as clearly by design its meant to hurt.

[Gunnulf]

Down south the Allies continue to probe in the Franco-Italian alps and have taken out a couple of forts. We need to throw more troops in here to avoid a drama. I had allocated troops to cover this but antipated he would shield rather than attack due to supply problems. It will be winter soon but so far he is inching forward and we need to respond.

Otherwise also he looks in danger of breaking out of the beachhead before too long. I had hoped we might hold until the winter mud but looks like we should play it safe and plan to get out of dodge while we still can. Still, by holding Rome 5 months longer than historical and forcing him to bring back a couple of Corps to achieve this breakthrough thats about as good as we can hope for, especially given that on page 1 of this AAR we were seriously concerned we would lose Rome in september 43 and already be fighting on the Gothic line.

So, the big question is; Should I stay or should I go now? If I go there will be trouble. And if I stay it will be double... Sheer stubborn mischief is the main thing keeping me around Casino really and a dangerous sense of curiosity. Its very possible just a single brigade landing unravels everything.