Turn 1 part A:
Looking at each Front, here is how things start:
Northwest Front is mangled, and the Germans have taken Riga and the entire Courland coast. Only one isolated RD is left hiding in the woods 50 miles northwest of Sialiaui. Two panzer divisions are across the Daugava around Riga; a couple more are east of Kaunas but didn’t quite reach Daugavpils. Northwest Front HQ was overrun and replacement staff units have to be railed up from the Urals. 1 RD pocketed.
Western Front allowed the Germans to advance up to 200 miles, with panzers adjacent to Minsk and Slutsk along the main rail lines. Both Kaunas and Vilnius have fallen. Any smaller pockets have already been erased. Only one pocket centered on Bialystok remains. Some panzer units and their headquarters are far advanced, right up at the front line, 21 hexes from Axis supply. They won’t be getting much restocked. My side has 7 divisions, 3 HQ, and one air base pocketed.
Southwestern Front has no units pocketed (technically, anyway). Panzers swept south past Lvov and almost made it to Rumania but didn’t quite manage to close the gap. Most of the units near the Carpathians will still be lost, but I should be able to get out the airbases and probably isolate a panzer or two to slow them down a bit. On the SW Front northern wing, Kovno was lost but Rovno is still held. 14 divisions, 5 HQ, and one airbase are in dire straits south of Lvov and west of Chernovtsy.
Southern Front has been activated since the Germans almost reached their positions, so Cherevichenko will prepare for the inevitable Rumanian advance.
Axis Rail Repair made it to 50,44 (towards Riga); 54,49 (southwest of Kaunas); 52,68 (east of Brest); and 50,82 (northwest of Lvov).
Northwest Front, Northwest Air Command, and 26th Army entrain in the Urals and begin moving back west. That uses up about 3k of 17k rail available for unit moves. Looking at Event Log, Rail haul capacity is at 104k free, 207k needed for 50% efficiency, and vehicles are 81k free, 123k needed for 65%. No more moves, even rail, are done right now. Time for massive cleanup and reorganization.
Vehicle Pool: 44k (60k needed). Yuck. Mobilization will give me 90k more total in the next three turns so relief will come soon.
Production screen shows Reserved Rail (for units) at 10%, and I’ll leave it set there for now. I think it’ll need a bump up to 15% or more but let’s see how supply production goes in Turn 2 before I tweak this. Soviet Rail is cut in half during June turns so this may fix itself.
Manpower-3742, Port-156, Railyard-299, Vehicle-150, HInd-236, Oil-128, Fuel-149, Resource-196, Armament-370.
Reorganization is going to be somewhat haphazard. I’ve got a lot of notes about things to check and do, but my Soviet grand scheme is not as refined as my Axis campaign start notes. So I’ll be taking copious notes here not only for this AAR but for my future campaigns as well.
I’ll start at the top. Shaposhnikov isn’t bad as a general, but STAVKA needs a high morale rating leader, and his Admin rating isn’t very useful in the High Command. I want to replace him with Timoshenko, who has a 7 morale rating. Only Zhukov has higher, and there are better things to do with him. That will cost 6 AP. Cherevichenko in Southern Front and Pavlov in Western are other good ones to replace but that may happen for free due to battle losses. I’ll use my AP for reassignments and disbands first, then fix STAVKA at end of turn if I still have 6 AP left.
A couple of HQs have command point problems: SW Front -63, 9th Army (SF) -17, 6th Army (SWF) -11. Unit losses and disbands should fix these, so I won’t spend AP now.
STAVKA and all Front and M.D. HQs are set to 92% ToeM, so they will have over 90% support squads and no penalty. Support levels started as locked but I change STAVKA to 9, Front and Moscow to 4, and other M.D.s to 0 to filter SUs up to the top. Then around turns 2/3/4 I can assign back down and manually lock them again.
All Army HQs are also set to 92% ToeM, and SupL set to 1. Corps HQs get 92%ToeM and SupL 0. Air HQ get 92% ToeM and SupL is left locked. I’ll filter down AA units to the Air Army HQ as they become available. Air Corps HQ will be disbanded later for the most part.
Next I check cities within 5 hexes of the invaders. PVO AA Regiments are sent to the rear - these cost nearly 1000 Arma points if they have to be rebuilt. Each one sent to safety costs an AP. Minsk-2, Drogobych (48,87)-1, Stanislav-1. That’s only 4 AP used, so I can go back and get up to another 20+ PVO AA battalions later if I have the AP.
All air groups under 45 morale are sent to NR, plus low exp, high reserve, and high damaged. All battalions (10 plane) to NR. That only leaves 109 air groups, about 3000 planes, in active air bases.
Air Doctrine %fly 5, GrdSpt 100-100, GrdAtk 100-100, AirAtk 160-120, IntAtk 80-80, CityAtk 200-100, FtrInt 80, NgtInt 40, GS-on, Rcn-off
Let’s look at some unit disbands now, starting with airbases. I like to have about 120 planes/base, and there are just under 8000 undamaged planes. If 2000 of those are in reserve or locked Districts, then I only need about 50 airbases. I have 80, so I can easily disband 15-20, saving thousands of trucks and men. Three that were overrun and recreated in the Urals - 10, 60, and 7 AB - are disbanded. The Naval Air ones start getting whacked - they have too many initials, right? All five bases under Baltic Fleet command have planes moved out and are disbanded. The command itself can’t be disbanded so is moved east and parked. The same is done with Black Sea Fleet Command. That takes care of 12, now for a few more...Looking in Commander Report shows SW Air Cmd. has eleven airbases - about 5 too many. A BAD is removed in Western AC. An IAD in Long Range is cut as well, getting me down to 50 active air bases, and also from 44k to 50k trucks available in vehicle pool.
That leaves me with 27 AP left to use. FortRegions and AT brigades are the least useful. ATbrig at least move and have ZOC so I’ll keep them for a while - um, still need to turn down ToeM on those and other ground units. Forts on the Rumanian border need review. There’s only four of them between Chernovtsy and the mouth of the Danube. They aren’t anything other than speedbumps on Turn 2 so they are all disbanded. At around 2k men, 40 art, 60 AT, and 100 MG each saved for the future, it is worth the AP. I’ll be building some up north in a few turns anyway.
Now to set ground unit ToeM. Security Rgt are set to 55%. FortReg-95%, Airbn-100%, Cav-100%, ATBg75%.
Tank and Mot Divisions get 100% ToeM if Morale 45+, 80% if Morale 35-44, and 60% if under Morale 35 (if they aren’t frozen).
Rifle Div are set to a similar scheme using ToeM 90-75-60%, though a few green divisions with high current Toe are set higher.
For SUs, settings made of TankBn-100, MotorcycleRgt-60, AT-90, AA-90, Art-90, Eng Const Mort Rckt MG 100. Airbase 100
Looking at available SUs, there are about 175 AA in cities (that’ll go down).
HQs have roughly: 45 AA, 125 Art, 2 tank, 25 motorcycle, 90 sapper, 12 construction, 14 mortar, 0 rocket and 0 MG.
That gives me an idea of what I can spread out to HQs when I redistribute SUs. Construction and AT units will be my first build priorities for new SUs. We are not going to build any this turn.
Movement starts with two RifleDiv railed north of Leningrad to make a line at Lake Janissaries (sp) north of Ladoga. The front is only three hexes here, and 6 to 7 RifleDiv can make a stand here, possibly even hold forever if fortification levels can be built up once units unlock. We’ll see how it goes.
Southern Front pulls back from the border, making two screen lines about 3 and 6 hexes to the rear. Most of the Dnestr forts are manned but there are still holes. I considered advancing into the Danube delta to harass the Rumanians but two divisions and two regiments isn’t going to accomplish much. Supply limits will leash Axis advance in a couple of turns so there isn’t much point in throwing away troops now.
