Nach Moskau und zurück - Gunnulf (A) AtAtack (S) GC-No early end

[Gunnulf]

T57 Stalingrad Sector

Decisively across the river now but this doesn't necessarily put us in a position to seriously threaten the city. Too many rifle corps now to make a proper breakthrough. But every Soviet here fighting in open terrain is a better fight for us that elsewhere on the front and we want to keep applying the pressure to focus hearts and minds, while hopefully avoiding disaster ourselves.

[Gunnulf]

T58 Stalingrad Sector

Now were are across the last major barrier in front of Stalingrad some success has been possible with a Tank corps, rifle corps and a couple of extra rifle divisions pocketed, probably inescapably. Not a critical breakthough but still we'll take the progress as elsewhere there are some holds. Also 17 Armee on the north flank is receiving some incoming pressure with the initial positions lost and regained by counterattack.
On the eastern flank some probably inconsequential skirmishing continues, it spreads his defences but ultimately can't hope to break across the river this side anytime soon.

[Gunnulf]

T58 Tambov Sector

Good news from AGC as not only does Tambov fall to 6th Armee (technically AG Anton at the moment...) but also 2 Panzer's reconnaissance in force ends up securing Ryazan as well. This maybe changes the planning equation for what we hoped to try to contest in winter 43, but the jury is still out on this one. Still gives the Soviets a headache that they need to solve as we sit firmly astride the main railtrack from Moscow to the SW. There are alternate routes of course but sub-optimal and a bottleneck for both freight and troops and certainly doesn't help the Soviet cause. How sustainable for how long this position is remains to be seen but the answer probably is not very and not very. I feel like neither of these cities needed to fall for the Soviets if more resources had been allocated to them, but clearly the bulk has been deployed to Stalingrad, and no doubt 9 and 4 Armee's pressure on Moscow has sucked in reserves too.

[Gunnulf]

T58 Caucasus - start

Less good news from the south as last weeks probes by Red Tanks corps return with friends. I guess this further explains the lack of troops around Tambov and Ryazan! While the Italians are temporarily isolated though no major disasters yet unfold, just a bit scary to look at.

[Gunnulf]

T57 Caucasus - end

All the Soviets get returned to their start lines again, unsupported Tanks corps being unable to hold up to serious counterattacks right now. But again this provides impetus to bring some more units down from AGN to help plug the gaps as no doubt pressure will continue to grow. Overall though another 100K losses for the Soviets as a fairly favourable ratio. Still very dangerous looking Soviet overall numbers though. On the supply side 11 Armee could definately use more supplies coming through but at least its getting some of what it needs plus replacements. Likewise 1 and 4 Panzer are not receiving anywhere close to what the rails are capable of delivering but both are supplemented by airfreight a little. Overall we have AGN on priority 1, they are well supplied, dug in, with depots in the rear and get everything they need. AGC on Priority 2, they are intermittently fighting but again have good supplies on hand and get everything they need and more. 1 PZ 4 PZ are on priority 4, while 11 and 17 Armee's are on priority 3. We can't improve the rails and railyards any further, all the way back to Poland AGS has 3 routes working north and south of the main MSR. HQ's are in the right place. SO unless I am missing a trick I think we have to accept we are at the end of a very long supply snake and its not going to deliver everything. However maybe clearing the Kerch ferry might help a little of course.

Overall though the latest gains push the Axis HWM to 785 VPs. Pretty happy with that, not too relevant yet and would be even happier with a city or 2 more, but they are not essential to overall victory perhaps, more a challenge and added pressure to keep the Soviets ultimately at bay

[Gunnulf]

T59 Moscow Sector

AGC continues to grind forward towards Moscow, with no expectation of taking it, but there is the prize of a beneficial line of heavy woodland that if we can secure it while we still have a qualitive and quantative local advantage here it will make the Soviets job much harder in the future. 5 more hexes and we can firm up this defensive line.

[Gunnulf]

T59 Stalingrad

A nice little pocket takes 50k Reds out of the fight, but plenty more will take their place as this continues to clearly be the Soviet number one priority sector. Again not much real hope of securing the city but we can at least make him fight in the open and hopefully get the better of most exchanges. We are having great trouble encouraging enough supplies to fully utilise the railroads here and need to tread carefully to particularly keep our east flank secure from disasters. However its actually the west flank in the river bend that is currently receiving the attention of counterattacks and 17 Armee is feeling the pressure a little.

[Gunnulf]

T60 Army Group B

The newly formed Army Group B sector. Still pretty thinly held and stretched out and we plan to give it a bit more manpower now the C&C situation is a bit more conducive. Novorssiysk, and the whole line of ports has been blockaded for a few turns and we plan to start turning the screw now and create some pressure. Partly to shorten the defensive line, partly to give us a port for supplies and a secure route to the Kerch ferry should we need to retreat in the future without relying on Rostov. 4 Romanian Army has a solid German corps under command, and 2 corps from 11 Armee should be enough to move forward now.

[Gunnulf]

T61 Stalingrad

Definitely getting more kinetic here with a lot of Soviet attacks coming in on both flanks and the centre, with many of them successful when he gets to choose his points. Thankfully our counter-attacks are still for the most part successful too but still an ominous sign of things to come... That said still across the whole front there is only a single Guards unit created, a by product of limited offensive action in late 41 through 42. The Axis have been in the driving seat allowing us to mostly pick the battles that we know we can win and starve the Soviets of the holds and victories they need to create more Guards.

[Gunnulf]

T62 Stalingrad

Once again we are forced to counter-attack to retake lost ground. Tempting to retire to a river line to mount a more effective defence but ever the optimist we go on the offensive and actually reach the outskirts of Stalingrad for the first time. No points for being able to see the city though and taking it remains a pipe-dream really. Thats what we thought about Leningrad though of course....

[Gunnulf]

T63 Stalingrad, & beyond

Continuing the drive in south of Stalingrad the Panzers capitalise on the last weeks push and manage to pocket 2 rifle corps and an extra division. Possibly a nice bag if we can hold them in but the depth positions look pretty potent.
In other news the Italian (& Slovak) LRSG (LongRangeSteppeGroup) embrace tricks learnt in the desert and push deep to cut the Astrakan railroad. Not more than a nuisance I'm sure, but all elements of the disruption and distraction campaign to focus his attentions. We need to pull right back though to avoid getting cut off and go back to their main task of patrolling no-mans land.

[Gunnulf]

T63 Krasnodar & Maikop Sector

Objective 1 to secure the Kerch ferry route is achieved, and likely the port will fall next week. That this is largely being achieved by 4 Romanian army adds weight to the idea that the naval patrols have been doing their job leaving the only supply route to be a single long road through rough terrain.
In other news the Italian Alpine corps secures good positions in their natural environment astride the pass to Sukhumi, but without the CV to go any further themselves.

[Stamb]

what patch is it?

[Gunnulf]

currently on v1.02.11

[Gunnulf]

T64 Stalingrad

The pocket is broken and one of the Rifle corps manages to slip the net, but still 4 divisions-worth trapped and will hopefully hold this time. Otherwise the soviets continue to probe the flanks and we need to get a bit more serious about shoring these up a bit.

[Gunnulf]

T66 Caucasus

Elements of 11 Armee continue to apply pressure on the Kuban coastal salient and threaten to cut it off completely. That last hex will be problematic but even so I suspect the remaining units will pull out to avoid annihilation dramatically shortening and strengthening our future front line here.

With this in mind and in anticipation of being able to redeploy most of the rest of 11 Armee in the next couple of weeks we restart the offensive on the eastern wing. Potentially a reconnaissance in force but with a tentative objective of trying to secure the railyard at Ordzhonikidze. If we can at least achieve this it will certainly help pull in supplies better in advance of winter. Currently despite holding Maikop and in theory trains from this railyard helping push supplies out to 30 hexes which should be getting more supplies to this eastern tip, in reality this rail branch is carrying barely a trickle despite 11 Armee being the only one at priority 4 right now. We get enough to keep the units doing ok, especially with these being priority for air resupply, but certainly not accumulating fuel and supplies up close to max like I would hope. If we can get Ordzhonikidze and turn it into a superdepot I am hoping this will work better to pull supplies than Maikop is doing to push string.

Anything beyond this objective is a pipedream unless we get the railyward working, but either way it should serve as a useful distraction to his almost inevitable preparations for some sort of Operation Uranus type evil counter-offensive that is no doubt cooking right now.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: Gunnulf

T66 Caucasus

... Currently despite holding Maikop and in theory trains from this railyard helping push supplies out to 30 hexes which should be getting more supplies to this eastern tip, in reality this rail branch is carrying barely a trickle despite 11 Armee being the only one at priority 4 right now. We get enough to keep the units doing ok, especially with these being priority for air resupply, but certainly not accumulating fuel and supplies up close to max like I would hope. If we can get Ordzhonikidze and turn it into a superdepot I am hoping this will work better to pull supplies than Maikop is doing to push string.
...

Just a small quibble that may have some bearing on your (impressive) operational goals.

If a depot is going to send freight by rail to another depot it pulls in the 'trains' (for lack of a better word) from level 2 railyards up to a 30 hex (by rail) radius. There are only a few in this region probably just Maikop and Krasnodar. Once entrained, that freight has 200 SMP (and all the stuff about SMP/hex, congestion etc). Key is trains are only used for depot-depot transfer.

depot-unit is trucks (or horses), and again there is a 30 hex max range for this draw. Also unit priority doesn't really affect what supply is sent to a given depot, the depot priority does. Clearly there is an interaction but its not cause-effect, more consequence-effect

I agree this is a good choice for a super-depot, I'd actually do that at Maikop now, you need that extra pull from the wider logistics system.

You may be doing this, but I'd put Rostov and Stalino to pri 4 depots too. That will grab and build up supplies, once there is a decent stock there, drop them to pri 1/2 and - esp linked to a super depot - that should poke a decent one off bonus allocation down into this region

[Gunnulf]

I have a super-depot at Maikop last couple turns which is helping pull in supplies there, but subsequently they seem to be then mostly going onward to the eastern tip by truck rather than increasing the traffic on the main line east which shows freight mostly below 1000 and usually much less. I am hoping Ordzhonikidze can be the missing link here with another super depot, but not sure if they will then compete. As the rail network east and northeast of Kiev/Minsk is near as damnit completly repaired I have a surplus of FDBs at the moment really too play around with. I have no doubt my depot set up is not optimal, but also the depots in the Rostov bend are feeding the Stalingrad sector and the Caucasus (with extra from Kerch/black sea now too though). Seems like both the rails to Stalingrad and to the eastern Caucasus flank never get much above 500. I will try the build up though in Stalino/Rostov ready to release. I maybe need to rework alot more around AGN and AGC too. These have excellent supplies both in front line and stored in depots. Maybe if I set these to 3 and make those only on the South-east sector to be 4 then they wont lose the supply dumps up north while focusing the supply-minds on these lines where I really need it.
On the plus side the under-utilised rails here make it easy to start shipping and switching out full strength divisions for the battered ones in Stalingrad to refit in France or the quiet north which is a process we are starting to implement ahead of winter. Stalingrad itself is ground to a halt. I can get 3 angles on S.Stalingrad and throw alot of manpower at these 2 rifle corps in the city hex here, but even if I do then to what end as the actually main Stalingrad urban hex will only have 2 angles and be nigh on impregnable. So I am taking 4 Panzerarmee off assault and sending the spare Panzerkorps that doesnt fit the CP south to support the drive here. Everything thing else in front of Stalingrad will dig in now, assuming it can ship in enough shovels and wire to build up defenses!

[Gunnulf]

T67 Caucasus

The late offensive starts to take shape exploiting the initial breakthrough. As planned we re-inforce success by railing in a new Panzerkorps from 4 PanzerArmee now its reduced its CPP from Assault status, and also bring down the newly expanded Grossdeutchland division from the currently quiet Ryazan sector. Might regret that later of course but there are still numerous motorised units sitting in reserve up there. With XI corps coming in from Maikop too this should give us the extra punch to secure our objective and maybe even try our luck with Grozny. It is quite late in the season though and the weather will turn soon.

[Gunnulf]

T69 Caucasus

Light mud arrives turn 68 so took a turn to rest, assimilate the new troops, let XI corps catch up and then continue the drive east. So long as light mud is as bad as it gets we can progress. Still 20 miles from Ordzhonikidze but while the troops ahead are stacked up they seem to be a mix of rifle divisions and brigades and understrength tank corps so likely caught the Soviets unprepared with this push. All the rifle corps are milling around Stalingrad looking menacing, but aside from a single failed attack that sector in a lull right now.

Overall Axis casualties passed the 1 million mark a couple of turns ago but subsequently Soviets are above 6.2 million so keeping a good ratio while maintaining the Axis troop numbers up. AFV losses also a reasonably healthy 6-1, with this turn being quite brutal as the Tank corps got hammered.