Heading East into the Soviet Union

[carlkay58]

Game Options:

carlkay58 as Axis (100) vs Soviet AI (110)
No theater box control or AI Air Assist
FOW is on as is Locked HQs

A note on locked HQs. This can be reset to anything you wish for your side in the Commander's Report. The advantage for starting with HQs Locked is for the second player whose Logistics Phase happens before they have any control over what happens with their SU assignments.

[carlkay58]

Air Phase Preparation:

First off is to delete ALL current air directives.

Second is to change the Air Doctrines to the following:

Bomb City change to Night, fly D3 and D6, change the target priorities.
Ground Attack change to fly D2, D4, and D6.
Recon change altitude to 17000, to fly D1 and D7, change Mission AC Pct to 25, change Escort AC Pct to 0.
Superiority change altitude to 12000.
Naval Patrol change to fly D1, D3, D5, and D7.

Propagate this to all Air Commands.

I set up Ground Support for each of the air commands assigning only the fighters. This will prevent my bombers going beyond fighter cover while my fighters will be able to provide air cover for the ground forces.

I then set up Ground Attack directives that are only within fighter support concentrating on the airfields.

[carlkay58]

Air Phase:

I lost 150 aircraft during the air phase while the Soviets have lost 2,274. The Soviets flew 121 sorties and lost 92 aircraft to Air-to-Air combat. Less than one of four VVS aircraft survived.

[carlkay58]

T01 AGN:

18th Army clears the coastal area using a mech infantry regiment to help capture the ports. 4th PG takes the Dvina River line from Daugavpils to Riga. 16th Army takes Kaunas and is position to start cleaning up the pocket north of it next turn. I use air transport to ship supplies to Daugavpils.

[carlkay58]

T01 AGC:

3rd PG takes the Dvina River line from Daugavpils to Polotsk and south to Minsk. 2nd PG sweeps the southern edge of the Bialystok pocket to Minsk while also advancing towards the Dnepr River to the east of Minsk. 9th Army forms the northern edge of the Bialystok pocket. 4th Army starts to form the southern line of the Bialystok pocket. I fly more supplies into Minsk, although I captured a large amount of supplies from the Soviets (10,026 Stores and 9,790 Fuel).

[carlkay58]

T01 AGS:

6th Army advances forming some pockets with the help of the panzers. 17th Army forms a few pockets and takes Lvov. 1st PG is careful not to activate the Southern Front (by avoiding any hex with either coordinate > 187) but does nearly cut off the border defenses while also working to form the pockets beyond 6th Army.

[carlkay58]

T01 Air Movement and Reserves:

This is the portion of the turn to make sure you transfer AOGs to where you want them for the next turn (so they can receive supplies during the next logistics phase and be ready to fly). You also have to remember the Reserve Theater Box as this is the primary source of reinforcements for the Soviets and most SUs arrive for the Axis through here.

I transfer Koluft 18 and JG 54 to Riga and Koluft 4 PGr goes to Daugavpils. Koluft 9 goes to Vilnus. JG 27 and Koluft 3 PGr to Minsk. Koluft 4 to Brest Litovsk. Koluft 2 PGr to Kobrin. JG 2 moves to Lvov.

[carlkay58]

T01 Ground Losses:

The Axis lose 11K men while the Soviets have lost 168K - almost 100K of that are captured. A good start.

[carlkay58]

T01 Air Losses:

The Axis lost 214 planes while the Soviets lost 2,666 - 2,194 on the ground.

[carlkay58]

T01 Air Losses - Axis Action Phase:

I only assigned fighters to the Ground Support role. This gave my fighters an opportunity to wear down the VVS. The Axis lost 64 aircraft (43 of them operational losses) against the Soviet loss of 392 (331 to air-to-air combat). While the LW can not sustain this for long, it does put a real dent in the Soviet forces.

[carlkay58]

T01 Files:

The attached files are all of the files for turn 1. Feel free to download them, check out the details of my air doctrines and directives, etc.

Okay, never mind as this forum does not accept zip files.

[budd]

I believe you can change the file extension to one the forum accepts, then after downloading the file the user can change it back to zip extension.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: carlkay58
Okay, never mind as this forum does not accept zip files.

I'll update the forum to add that capability, just a min.

[56ajax]

@carlkay58 - this is excellent. Thx

[carlkay58]

T01 Files:

I suggest if you have any questions about my game, if you think I should have done x instead of y, or you want to play the Soviets with a human opening rather than the canned one, or any other thing under the sun, download these files and play around with them. Later turns will also have Air Directives set up that are pre-defined and I will just move them each turn to do what I need them to do.

Thanks Erik!

[carlkay58]

T02 Supply Net North:

An almost start of the game supply net as the rail heads and new depots are not really up and running yet.

[carlkay58]

T02 Supply Net South:

Pretty much the same here as the Hungarians and Rumanian fronts now activate.

[carlkay58]

T02 Air Phase:

I delete all of the Ground Attack directives from last turn. I leave the Ground Support directives the same - still relying on just the fighters to provide air cover. I then set up Recon directives. Each Koluft will have its own directive supposedly cooperating with its appropriate combat HQ. You can see the large amounts of Recon directives in the Air Phase Summary.

[carlkay58]

T02 AGN:

18th Army continues to clean up the coastal areas up past Riga. 16th Army is busy reducing the main pocket north of Kaunus. 4th PG advances towards Pskov.

[carlkay58]

T02 AGC:

4th Army works to reduce the Bialystok pocket with some help from 2nd Army elements. 9th Army is driving towards the Dvina River. 3rd PG starts to push forward towards Vitebsk and the land bridge. 4th PG is advancing on the Dnepr River line from Mogilev and south to Zhlobin.