fortified port cities

[daj]

I am having trouble attacking fortified port cities that have 2 or 3 German divisions. I have them surrounded and cut off supply while causing 100% bomb damage to city port and manpower. I have tried to intercept air transport but don't know if that works. I would think that after a couple of turns it should run low on ammo and supplies but that is not the case. The best I can do is knock the fort level down to 3 but the next turn it is back up to 4 again. Bombing doesn't seem to cause much damage to units or fort level.

[cfulbright]

Are you putting Allied TF's next to the port to isolate it from naval supply? Plus the TF's add their gunfire support to your attack.

Cary

[daj]

Gary,

Thank you for the response and suggestion. At this point that option isn't available. Briefly I invaded South France just east of Toulon using two US TF's. Newly arriving units from Africa allowed me to take Toulon in 3 turns on the same turn I invaded North France from England. On that same turn both TF's disappeared. I don't know what happened, they don't show up as destroyed units and were not scheduled for withdrawal. I did not think it mattered and that I could capture Marseille from land after surrounding it. I also thought that bombing the port (100%) would prevent naval supply. Is that wrong? I guess I must be wrong because the German units still seem to be supplied.

I may just have to go back to the invasion turn and try to save those TF's somehow and replay from there.

Just so that I am clear parking a TF outside a port will block naval supply and, even if it is not assign to invade the port, it will participate with land units attacking the port city?

Thanks,

dean

[loki100]

several bits to this. You can move TFs around in the turn and they will contribute naval artillery support to suitable attacks (at the very least these cause massive disruption) and then return to port (to carry on building up PP) or to offshore to protect a temp harbour. So in N France you can add a massive amount of firepower to coastal actions and still have your fleet in position.

If you want to block naval supply the best route is a combination of an off-shore TF (but not adjacent*) and naval air.

* why not adjacent you ask? Well if a TF is adjacent to an enemy held port while it inflicts some attrition, it takes a lot too and can be badly weakened/at worse even sunk. If I recall you need +3 on the naval interdiction scores to isolate, so one sat at sea will tend to produce the interdiction you need (& be a lot safer)

more strategy than tactics. As you've found out, its not a great idea to combine N France and S France at the same time. Ignoring TFs this is going to stress your pool of supply ships (esp as S France is hard to protect the sea lanes) and you want as much supply flowing to N France as you can. Depending on how the Italian campaign has gone, you can sometimes land in S France before N but I'm not sure there is a great value to this. The gain from S France is a repaired Marseilles and the rails up the Rhone (which really help with supply on the German border), and it undermines any German attempt to hold the Seine, you are best not having to fight here if you can help it.

Other quirk, mulberries can usually survive a turn with no offshore TF - which may give you more flexibility in using the TFs for combat support and interdiction generation --- but this is a gamble

edit: other bit,depots in ports can build up a lot of supplies so isolated units stay in supply for a while. A slightly gamey solution is to run GA attacks over the hex(es), that'll force them to fire (ie use up their supplies). I've done this a few times with a hard to reduce pocket (this sometimes happens in the mountains in Italy) or to encourage a port to weaken. other trick is a 2 division attack, this'll probably fail early (so few losses) but again its burnt off a block of their supplies.

[daj]

Thanks! Great advice and help.