START OF SOVIET TURN 4
It should go without saying that there was a lot more Lufttwaffe bombing of all sorts of railyards all over the place, as well as some naval interdiction and a bit of airfield bombing. There were 109 such raids, which did varying damage, but also cost Axis bombers (and in some cases fighter escorts):
This bombing was pretty expensive for Axis, with the loss of 458 Axis planes, including 150 fighter bombers, 46 tac bombers, 191 level bombers, and 63 recon planes.
Here are the particular planes lost - mostly German (particularly BF-110s and JU-88s):
Due to the losses, the total number of Axis planes has started to go down, so they can't keep this up forever:
As far as effects on our supply go, Velikie Luki for example received 3355 freight despite the railyard being 81 percent damaged. All of that freight was sent out. There was also 9000 freight sitting unused in Toropets.
Overall we seem to have generally received sufficient supply despite the bombing, although possibly in some local areas some particular units may have received less than without the bombing (but who knows how much?):
In any case, the impact of the bombing does not seem to be large enough to force us to feel a need to do anything particular to try to counteract it right now. But maybe it has more of a cumulative effect over time. If so we will maybe start to feel it in subsequent turns, I guess we will find out if it keeps up.
In the north, XRAM unleashed a flurry of attacks which un-isolated all the German units - though only by a one-hex wide corridor (which was held by a Totenkopf regiment).
IGB's reaction to this:
In the center, Panzer_Freak continued to advance with the most caution of any of the 3 Axis ground commanders. He also was the only Axis player who was mostly avoiding using regiments for his Panzers/motorized. However, he was advancing here on somewhat of a narrow front (only 1 hex wide on the northern part, and only 1-3 hexes wide on the southern part) which would give Bread an opportunity to potentially cut off some AGC units.
Meanwhile in the south, disaster struck. Intelligent managed to encircle a large grouping of fracas' units, most of which had been used the previous turn to counterattack. In total, 96,067 men, 1,039 guns, 858 AFVs, and quite a few trucks were inside the pocket in the south.
However, this pocket had some crucial weaknesses:
First of all, it was held entirely by regiments. Of all the German mobile units in the south, not a single one that we could see was a full division. Regiments are much more vulnerable to counterattack than divisions.
Secondly, the pocket was not tight. The units inside could move around freely without running into German zones of control.
Thirdly, in some places (particularly the north-east and north-west sides) the pocket was only 1-deep. And those 1-deep sides were held by regiments.
Because the pocket was held by regiments and the wall was only 1 hex wide, we were quite sure at the start of the turn that fracas could at least break the pocket. What was less clear was how many units, if any, could actually escape from it being re-sealed next turn. Our tank/mechanized units in the pocket all had between 18 and 25 movement points, so if the pocket could be broken in a 2 or 3 wide breach, there was potential for at least some of them to escape. So the situation here was bad, but all was not necessarily lost.
Back to the center, General Bread reacted as follows to the sight of German Panzer divisions approaching Smolensk:
It seemed that Bread believed that his rested, well supplied 11 CV tank division with 400+ AFVs was more powerful than a fatigued, poorly supplied Panzer division - despite the fact that Panzer_Freak had been relatively the most careful and paced in his advance thus far in comparison to AGN and AGS.
Would Bread be proven correct, or was he guilty of underestimating the enemy, a crime which would carry the penalty of prison time? Tune in next week to your favorite show,
For the Infallible Koba to find out!
