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I was very interested to see Zovs' thoughts about the air war. The Soviets generally have less in the way of recon aircraft anyway, and I have generally refrained from doing recon missions except where I really expect an attack. I sent my recon planes out last turn to see if there were big stacks of armor forming up in the rear, and I did see some counters appear, but no really useful information. In WitE1, detection levels on units were a component of combat efficiency, I'm assuming it works the same way in this game.

He was correct in deducing that I'm using my older aircraft models at sea and where they are likely to encounter Axis Allied air instead of Germans. I've got piles of these I-153 and I-16 models, and while I can send a lot of them to the theater boxes, there are still plenty on the map. I hate to just park them. I've been manually assigning those planes to low experience air units back in reserves, and using the theater boxes as training grounds, but it is still more difficult in this game than in WitE1 to develop the experience level of the Soviet air force so it can fight the Luftwaffe on an equal footing. For now, I'm happy to be getting a 2:1 kill ratio.

I am not sure if I have shared my thoughts on the air war fully yet, but I think I have sprinkled them into the AARs.

Notes...

We are both now on patch (v 1.02.15 beta) and both running on Steam.

Turn 6 - 27-Jul-1941

New Events
Axis Ground setback in North Africa.
Soviet Partisans in Belorussia

Turn Summary & General Notes (previous Soviet turn)


Reinforcements
Five Ground reinforcements this turn. Four went to Finland and the 102nd Flammpanzer Battalion to Western Europe. Looks like KG 28 arrived as well.

Friendly Losses
Friendly losses show 10,452 men (down by 364), 15 guns (down by 11), 11 AFVs (up by 1) and 375 aircraft (up by 152).

Logistic Summary
Units logistics down by about 5,7k. Tons received down about 8,4k. Tons difference shows -73k

Combat Unit Alerts
Shows:
3 unready
1 low supply
3 understrength

Soviet Combat Activities from turn 5

Looks like the Soviets did 32 battles, broken down it looks like they are all various air missions:

Observed: 6 (Soviets losses 22, Axis 0)
Supplies: 6 (Soviet losses 49 (39 fighters, 10 utilities), Axis 14 (all fighters))
Air Combat: 4 (Soviet losses 111 (all fighters), Axis 57 (5 bombers))
Naval Attack: 16 (Soviet losses 6, Axis 0)

Gulf of Finland


Gulf of Odessa
Note this is both Axis and Soviet turn 5 AD.



Logistics Report

Freight

OKH down 163 tons, AGN down 248 tons, AGC down 333 tons, AGS down 294 tons.

1st Panzer up 642 (348 lost)
2nd Panzer down 614 (857 lost)
3rd Panzer down 500 (758 lost)
4th Panzer down 348 (389 lost)

Will need to look at wastage.

Ground Command Totals
Sup Need 25,572 (diff from last turn: down 620)
Sup Recd 22,205 (diff up from last turn: 998)
Sup Lost 8,230 (diff up from last turn: 1,334)
Diff (sup need - sup recd = 3,367 (down by 1,618 last turn)) or 87% difference? *

Air Command Totals
Sup Need 9,131
Sup Recd 4,032
Sup Lost 759
Diff (sup need - sup recd = 5,099) or 44% difference? *

* Note sure if I did the math correctly there (used the same formulas for the air losses below).

Trucks used 49,416 (up by 15,008)
Trucks lost in Freight 253 (up by 61)
Total freight losses 27,458 (down by 13,023)

Axis trucks captured 6
Soviet trucks captured 8,669

Arrivals


Supply
4,338 trucks have been lost during the campaign due to unit movement.
1,726 trucks were repaired and returned to the logistic pool.

Turn 6 - 27-Jul-1941 at Start

OOB At Turn Start


Air Phase:

Looking at the CR I see that I have 32 Air Groups in the Depleted status so I am sending all these into Reserve. Note that all of these were recon units.

I created 23 AD as follows:

Luftflotte 1
4x Recon
1x Grd Support (AGN)

Luftflotte 2
5x Recon
1x Grd Support (AGC)

Luftflotte 4
2x Recon
1x Air Superiority
2x Naval Patrol
2x Grd Support (AGS and 11th Army)

Hun.Air Cmd.
1x Recon
1x Grd Support (Mobile Hun. Corps)

Rum. Air Cmd.
1x Recon
1 Superiority
1x Grd Support (Army Grp. Anton)

Air Execution Phase Summary



Total sorties: 2,021 (down 295 from last turn)
Aircraft lost: 189 (down 66 from last turn)
Percent of sorties to losses: 9.35%.
Damaged: 51 (down 23 from last turn)
Enemy Aircraft lost in A2A: 15 (difference of 112 from last turn)
Damaged: 3

For Luftflotte 1: Lost 9 recon out of 98 (9.1%).

Luftflotte 2: Lost 18 recon out of 197 (9.1%) and 5 fighters out of 60 (8%).

Luftflotte 4: Lost 6 recon out of 119 (5%) and lost 2 fighter out of 40 (5%).

For the Superiority mission: lost 52 fighters out of 295 (17%) and the Soviets lost 62 out of 222 fighters (27%).


In the first Naval Patrol: lost 1 fighter out of 24 (4%), and 9 bombers out of 240 (3.75%). The Soviets lost 12 bombers out of 26 (46%).


In the second Naval Patrol: lost 5 bombers out of 168 (2%). The Soviets lost 9 fighters out of 18 (50%) and 29 bombers out of 38 (76%).


For the Hungarian Air Command Recon: lost a total of 3 out of 23 recon (13%).

For the Rumanian Recon mission: lost 1 out of 6 fighters (16%) and 2 out of 15 recon (13%).

The Rumanian Superiority missions: Need to break this down by Day first.

D1
Rumanians lost 88 out of 454 fighters (19%). Soviets lost 123 out of 205 fighters (60%) and 15 out of 169 bombers (8%).

D2
Rumanians lost 9 out of 127 fighters (7%). Soviets lost 40 out of 349 bombers (11%).


D4
Rumanians lost 18 out of 165 fighters (10%). Soviets lost 1 out of 24 fighters (4%) and 41 out of 289 bombers (14%).


D5
Rumanians lost 14 out of 149 fighters (9%). Soviets lost 2 out of 35 fighters (6%) and 43 out of 426 bombers (10%).


D7
Rumanians lost 72 out of 154 fighters (46%). Soviets lost 36 out of 180 fighers (20%) and 70 out of 601 bombers (11%).


Totals for that series of AS missions.

Rumanians lost: 201 out of 1,049 fighters (19%).
Soviets lost: 162 out of 444 fighters (36%) and 209 out of 1,834 bombers (11%).

Note the game crashed on me after this first result, I had to reset/adjust a few AD (as I did originally, i.e., repeating my initial start of turn AD) and then re-run the turn again. The numbers were different this time and I'll just point out a few things, the neat thing is the above numbers still how as far as statics goes.

New re-run of numbers


Total sorties: 2,100
Aircraft lost: 198 (up 10 from last run)
Percent of sorties to losses: 9.4%.
Axis Damaged: 55
Enemy Aircraft lost in A2A: 36 (or around 41% more then the first run)
Soviet Damaged: 2

Ground Phase

Ground Losses at the start of the turn

Men
Axis: 56,174 (difference of 10,755 from previous turn)
Soviets: 886,578 (difference of 42,644 from previous turn)

Gun
Axis: 611 (difference of 15 from previous turn)
Soviet: 15,608 (difference of 541 from previous turn)

AFV
Axis: 81 (difference of 13 from previous turn)
Soviet: 5,302 (difference of 40 from previous turn)

Air

Pilots KIA
Axis: 1,253 (difference of 220 from previous turn)
Soviets: 3,373 (difference of 716 from previous turn)

Total Losses:
Axis: 1,693 (difference of 317 from previous turn)
Soviet: 7,763 (difference of 922 from previous turn)

Air Losses this turn

Pilots KIA
Axis: 149
Soviet: 379



Weather Report

Rain pretty much everywhere. Lots of light mud as well.



Here is some examples of light mud:

AGN


AGC


AGS



TB Transfers
8th Hun. Border Guard Brigade, 444th Sec. Div. and 454th Sec. Div. to Soviet Union Garrison.

189th StuG battalion and 245th Construction Battalion to the map.

End of Turn Summary

Captured Vitebsk, Mogilev and Zhitomir this turn and isolated Odessa and Pskov.

Areas of Interest and end of turn map views.

AGN

General area.


Pskov Pocket.


AGC

Vitebsk area (note part of 16th Army is in the north - pink).


Mogilev area.


Gomel area.


AGS

Kiev area.


Zoomed in near Kiev.


Yuzhny bug and Odessa area.


Lyubashevka Pocket (almost, lol).


Odessa.


Here is a breakdown by Battle Result:

Total Battles: 101

Hasty: 4
Deliberate: 4

Retreated: 2
Surrendered: 4
Routed: 2

Observed: 31
Air Combat: 62
Naval Attack: 46

End of turn 6 losses

Ground Losses


My losses in particular the AFV are very low, but I am still just shy of 1 million Soviet losses. The good news is that out of the 929k lost 665k were captured (or 70% Soviet men lost have been captured).

Air Losses


I still have way too high losses (both Recon and Level Bombers taking the burden) the percent lost to Soviets is just about 24%. Looks like 37% of my air losses are A2A and 40% are Flak and 18% are Operational.

Destroyed

OKH Total Win/Loss for turn 5
189 to 1

Getting better at my ratio percent loss calculations, those really help to determine how much risk you want to take with the air war.

...to be continued...

Zovs (Axis) v Thedoctorking (Soviets) 41 GC No Early End
Turn 6 AAR

This turn saw the German armor finally make an appearance, cutting off a few of my advanced positions. In the north, they cut off Pskov and advanced a bit, though not as far as the Plyussa.

In the land bridge sector, they captured Vitebsk and pushed up to the gates of Smolensk. South of the Dnepr - and fulfilling my father’s bon mot that a battle is defined as a military event that takes place at the junction of two, or if possible four, maps - they struck from Mogliev towards Bryansk.

I still think of the Gomel-Chernigov sector as a critical region for my defense, but the Germans appear to be ignoring it in favor of the woods to the north. They haven’t even closed in to my lines along the middle Dnepr, and they let an armored division that has been wandering in the Pripyat Marshes for the last three turns escape intact.

German armored spearheads pushed up against the fortified approaches to Kiev this turn, while the infantry surrounded my outpost at Zhitomir.

In the southern sector, the unexpected arrival of some actual German armor – the XIV Motor Corps, I believe – allowed them to choke off several divisions on my front line.

Looking at those German armor that were next to my guys, I realized that most of them were short of fuel – red or orange at best. The exception was Manstein’s boys in the north, with at least a couple of divisions in green:

But in Bryansk, Guderian’s spearheads looked fragile, at least if not in combat power, at least in potential for a dramatic advance:

Around Kiev the same, as you can see from the earlier map, and in the south likewise:

So I decided to try attacking to choke supply or even cut off armored units and slow the fascist tide down for a turn or two. You can see on the previous map where I choked the northern pincer by driving back the Hungarians; the southern pincer was already ZoC’ed by that cavalry unit. In the Kiev sector, I was able to actually isolate two panzer divisions:

Things are sometimes not what they appear to be…

Finishing up turn 7 now with a few (hopefully) surprises.

And in the center, I contented myself with toughening up my lines and hoping the German attack runs out of gas before it gets to the “green fields beyond”. I probed the flanks of Guderian's spearhead and determined that he had covered enough to prevent my repeating the isolation I pulled off in the Kiev sector.

And in the land bridge sector as well, assigning the two new Front HQ's I received this turn to the central sector.

Little changed in the north, as I drew back a few hexes, leaving Pskov to its fate, and continued to dig enthusiastically on the approaches to Leningrad. Next turn will help me understand if the Germans are making a serious push for Leningrad – I suspect not; I’m thinking that their principal objective this year is Moscow. I built some fortifications around the city in hopes of standing off their last-ditch offensive.

In that battle to cut off the armored column near Kiev, four Soviet divisions attacked and drove back a German motorized infantry regiment. Over 400 planes participated in the combat, of which 175 were shot down. I have to say, this seems excessive. Not the kill ratio – 5:1 in favor of the Germans – but the number of planes committed. I can’t imagine that many planes even fitting into the airspace over the battle. Despite the overwhelming preponderance of kills for the Germans, this is a defeat for them – five or six more battles like this, and the Luftwaffe will be out of fighters, while the VVS will still have plenty.

I'm seeing lots of battles like this in my ongoing solo game against the AI, now in the spring of 1942. Battles with hundreds of planes involved, and vast proportions of those planes going down in flames. German air dominance is fine, but I can't see any air commander deciding to commit every single fighter in an entire air army to one battle, and seeing three quarters of those shot down, going out and doing the same thing the next week.

Just realized that for the last couple of turns I had not updated my version of the game properly, and so was running with 1.02.11. I don't know what difference this made in my turn execution, but we will see if those dramatic Axis plane losses continue now that I've reinstalled correctly. Oops, sorry Zovs.

It would be nice if a game gives a message "your game version (xx) is different than your opponent version (yy)" when you try to load your turn