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Well...it all began on a lonely summer morning way back in July. Invasion plans already drawn up and handed to me to execute.

After a spectacular race across the island of Sicily, with Patton/Bradley taking Palermo, and Monty taking Messina (in your face, Patton!), I found myself wondering...what's next?

So I consulted the tome of wisdom. Specifically, the section dealing with Victory.

There are a number of ways to gain victory points...and quite a few ways for me to lose them. The biggest loss by far (and this is important) is for failing to invade mainland France, Northern Europe or Italy by February 1st.

But invading Italy is difficult. Sicily is just a bit too far away....and there is all those mountains. Not many ports. And I am Acrophobic with a touch of Italiophobia.

But where, or where on the map is the land flat. In range of lots of airbases. With nice big ports.

Why lookie here. Netherlands. It has Rotterdam (level 7), Amsterdam (level 5 ), The Hague (level 4 ), Harlaam (level 4) and Den Helder (level 3). And 6 non port hexes in between to invade and put my level 2's.

And all those major rivers to cover my flanks.


But Netherlands can be a country to far. I cannot recon the country for fear of alerting my enemy to his danger. But I can route the 8th airforce over the country as I continually bomb Essen. I never see a unit in Rotterdam, although I usually see one in The Hague/Amsterdam/Haarlam.

SO after I invade Sicily I transfer every division except the French to England. All the Amphibs. I keep a large airforce in the Med to keep appearences up...make it seem like I will invade either Sardinia or Naples.

But all that is in the past. The date is Oct 23rd, 1943. Turn 17. And I have just hit the button to invade with 12 divisions by sea and two by air.

The goal is to take Rotterdam by coup-de-main. Drop to the south of the city and invade the other two I need for the port to connect to the ocean.

Invade all the non port hexes up the coast to Den Helder.


If it fails miserably, I will take full responsibility as the man in charge who ordered the invasion. If this invasion works, then of course, Monty will take all the credit.

Looking forward to the results!
Are you concerned with followup troop transports given such a large commitment of amphib to the invasion?

Here is the planning map I have spent the last couple weeks staring at while waiting for the prep points to build on my amphibs.

Pros: It gives me a water barrier that I can fortify and sit behind over the winter. I can build a lot of airfields to base my mid range fighters on that can reach Northern Germany (and the Ruhr)

Cons: It frees up a lot of Garrisons. Although it leads to...

Pros: I am only in one Garrison zone, so he still has to garrison France/Italy. About 180 CV worth of units. And I can run to Berlin.

Cons: That water barrier that is going to protect me over the winter...is going to be a pain to cross in the spring.

Pros: I suspect (and wish and pray) that his biggest baddest units are deep down in Italy. And will take two turns to transfer up. Ditto for his vaunted naval air.

Cons: It's a short ocean between England and Netherlands that won't take a lot of bombers for him to get interdiction...however, without flying a single naval mission, I get 7's everywhere, so I will at least be contested. And short is good for less interdiction.

Cons: I wont be invading Italy anytime soon...although I suspect Italy will still surrender when enough Germans leave. June 1944 I may invade around Rome. Who knows. I might be in Berlin by then.

I have lost hardly any troop transports up until now. I think it was 25. I had close to 300 when I launched this. and 2000 cargo ships.

Here is the last log report on losses:

Cargo Ships Available 1996
Cargo Ships Used 258

Troop Ships Available 290
Troop Ships Used 0

Amphib Troop Ships Lost 5 (total 26)
Amphib Cargo Ships Lost 5 (total 207)

Interesting strategy, what's the weather like on your invasion turn?

This could work, because you should be able to secure 3 sizable ports even without Amsterdam and Rotterdam, allowing you to pull the amphipbs eventually

Weather was rain with light mud. I wanted to invade earlier but it was heavy rain so no paradrop. I would have settled for cold though.

I'll be interested to see how this works out. All those major rivers and ferries are going to be hard to crack. I've wanted to try this area with a human, but haven't yet. Good luck.

Worst case, if he gets permanently stuck there, which is a very strong possibility, then it's not all bad.

He'll get some VPs depending on the number of cities he takes

He can still pull the amphibs, if he takes enough ports, which he should

Most importantly, once all the AFs are built, about 1000 short-range fighters can range pretty deep into Germany

Yeah I have been thinking about this spot as well.

Will be interesting to see how the air war goes over the beachhead.

Have you thought about staying in just the one garrison area?

I think that was his plan, to stay just in the one garrison zone. Very smart move.

If this works no one will land in Italy! [:)]

Landing in Italy is like a toothache. You want to get rid of it, but you know it's going to hurt!

Why is everyone so afraid of Italy? A great chance to start grinding down the german army that is close to your airbases.

ORIGINAL: Baelfiin

Why is everyone so afraid of Italy? A great chance to start grinding down the german army that is close to your airbases.

Because the terrain and geography favors the defender? And there is a VP penalty for ground losses for the attacker? So you naturally try to do as little attacking as possible? And if you do attack you want to do it in a place that is as unfavorable as possible for the defender?

[;)]

It's the start of your VP blackhole![:D] It's easy to get into Italy, but the amount of casualties versus VP's you will have taking those VP's, is not. That's my only concern with going into Italy for now. It's a good place to blood your troops, but when I do invade Italy, my only goals are Naples, Rome, and Florence. Fighting thru the mountains will cause a great deal of negative vp's.

J.F.C. Fuller famously divided the Italian campaign into three phases:

1. The strategic: the advance to the Foggia airfields;

2. The political: the advance to Rome; and

3. The daft: everything after Rome.

I guess I want to start killing Germans on the ground sooner. I think that if you leave them untouched until sometime in '44 then they will be able to keep you out of berlin that much longer. It is nice to have pelton to try all of these things on 8)

Oh, I'm invading in 43. German's will die. I want the manpower crunch to hit sooner than 45, but that may be a pipe dream. Although my new and improved, strategic air campaign should net some results in about 6 months (I hope).

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

If this works no one will land in Italy! [:)]

Under the current rule set why would anyone waste there time invading Italy?

1. Take Sicily for airbases to bomb oil fields - because of a bug which is getting over looked even though it was reported long ago.
Germany can not do priority repairs on oil field.

2. Until about turn 20 Germany ground forses with EF box not check are amazing weak. So in future games I will have EF Box checked unless the invading Holland or France exploit is nerfed.

3. If you invade during summer of 43 LW will be completely trashed by Jan 44.

4. WA's have zero to gain by invading Italy as has been proven out in all but 1 of my games and that only worked because of my screws pushing the engine to see what limits are.

and 5. This Europe 43 invasion vs the EFB checked would be a disaster.

From Pelton's reaction, sounds like this is going to work, at least to build an unassailable bridgehead.

Looked at in a historical context, it's not fair that the Germans are going to be tied-down to garrison France, when Allies are unloading 60 air miles from Germany. This will happen as long as Liquid Sky sticks to Holland, which is the plan.

Italy was invaded for many political reasons, maybe there should be a political cost for skipping it.