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June 6th

The Soviet production line rolls on and I get to deploy 13 new divisions. They are arriving in little bursts but the average rate is 1 per day and increasing as the gearing slowly goes up.

At 11.am there is 50% inf gone in Memel and the Bielsk HQ is at 95% loss. By nightfall the HQ is gone and there is a total of about 90+% inf div damage spread over 3 divisions in Memel. The southern group is bombing a big stack in Zamosc and it is impossible to distinguish the damage being done.

kdplbr.jpg


June 6th 1941

This raid on Memel is not being handled correctly as I have 18 air groups here and it should be limited to 16. Unfortunately there are range issues with reaching desirable targets and the only solution is to have the 2 fighter group withdraw from operations. Notice the HQ in Bielsk is being attack by 3 groups of 4 CAS and Zamosc is being attacked by 2 groups of 4 CAS.

I have started acquiring Spanish (remember them) TAC bombers flitting around my front line airfields but I haven’t seen them doing anything useful. I will be reporting on events in Spain somewhat later as I want to concentrate on the East front detail for now. Remember I haven’t military controlled them so they have been left to their own devices.
 
Wow... :eek:

Smart move :)
 
Thanks Kanitatlan for your insgiht into the the German perspective.

And thanks... Take note... It is just a game!!!!!!!

And many thanks - I had misinterpreted what you had written - failure not weakness - I will have to think some more on this

Well done so far! Kick those fascist bastards back to the Atlantic
 
June 7th
At 0am the Germans take Bialystock. They are starting to accumulate a full strip of provinces along the border but nowhere have they advanced more that 1 step. At the end of the first raid on Memel (at 9am) they have lost 1 infantry, a second is half gone and 1 has disappeared. This illustrates the difficulty of keeping track of things. Have my bombers destroyed it or has it been evacuated due to heavy damage.

At 16:00 Brest Litovsk is lost.
At 18:00 the Inf+mp in Bialystock is completely destroyed.

ke7olh.jpg


June 7th 1941

My CAS are doing a find job of keeping captured provinces cleared of enemy units. The biggest worry is at Memel where they can advance directly adjacent to Riga. When other targets are not available I am concentrating on clearing Memel. If I can do this then I can keep them from seeing the forces at Riga. So far it looks like they will only send single divisions as long as they cannot see any of my forces.

They have moved the majority of their front line troops to the south and it looks like in a few days more they will be in a position to attack. Their intent seems to be to move right down to Romania and then attack across the river. I can only speculate but I would imagine the move across the front will continue until they have a decent force in every province right up to the coast. One implication here is that the AI does not consider the target province to be adequately covered until forces get there and until then they may send far more than is needed. Presumably available forces are divided up between target provinces that it feels need more troops whilst ignoring those that don’t. It would potentially be possible to draw all their forces to the south and then advance an alternative force in the north. When this force arrives I could withdraw on the southern front by strategic movement (i.e. more forces suddenly disappear) and the AI would march everyone back north. I haven’t set up to do that and it does sound a little dangerous but all too plausible.
 
June 8th
At 3am German forces arrive in Lvov and begin outflanking my southern position. This is extremely slow progress and can only mean they did not consider Lvov to have any priority, if anything less priority than other empty provinces. This hesitation for moving across my line is an even more significant AI weakness.

At 4am the Inf AT in Memel is finished off and a just arrived garr-mp is targeted. At 10am there has been a 40% loss to an HQ in Bielsk. Seems to be a favourite spot for them.

By nightfall the garr-mp is an 85% loss, an inf-art in Lvov is a 20% loss and the HQ in Bielsk is a 60% loss.

At 19:00 they enter Grodno.

June 9th

At 5am the Memel garrison gone and I am no longer threatened by exposure in Riga. Really this was already achieved as the only unit in Memel was a Garrison division.

At 9am the Lvov inf-art is a 90% loss
At 10am the Bielsk HQ is gone (2nd one!!)
The northern attack groups are transferred to attacking Alytus and Grodno. This are also critical provinces since they are adjacent to Kaunas and hence threaten my forward air field.
 
June 10th

A dawn review of total air losses shows that the campaign is to all intents and purposes costing me nothing. So far I have been operating on zero reinforcements so that I can count the losses. I now want to start replacing these losses and therefore will not be able to properly verify losses in future

Sevastopol has lost 4 fighters
South group has lost 7 CAS
North group has 23 CAS and 10 fighters

At 18.00 the Grodno inf-at is at 90% loss but the Alytus one is unobserved. The Brest-Litovsk Inf-at is at 50%.
Finally a ground battle starts with German and Romanian forces attacking Ismail on the far southern flank. They are attacking with 38 divisions crossing a river against my 24. This starts 13:00 and by 19:00 it is blatantly obvious that defeat is approaching with org levels badly depleted. I break of and retreat as there is no point taking losses to no purpose. If I lose the battle it doesn't’even make any difference to how long it takes them to get there. I have taken 94 losses which will translate into – 4.7 manpower returned to the pool and 0.8x9.4 = 7.52 manpower required for replacements. This means I have lost 2.82 manpower or about a day and a half of recruitment. Clearly I could fight a lot of these battles without suffering any dire consequences. The IC replacement costs will be suitably low as well. Being pushed back to Chisinev is hardly a crisis especially for the first 10 days of the campaign (where should they have reached by now??)

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June 10th 1941
 
Well, you win a war by first destroying the enemy and then take the land, but still... :rolleyes:
 
Kanitatlan said:
...It would potentially be possible to draw all their forces to the south and then advance an alternative force in the north. When this force arrives I could withdraw on the southern front by strategic movement (i.e. more forces suddenly disappear) and the AI would march everyone back north. I haven’t set up to do that and it does sound a little dangerous but all too plausible.
Click to expand...
any chance of a test (on the side) of that theory? :D

excellent! ! ! ! :cool:
 
June 11th
At 5am the Grodno inf-at is eliminated.
At 8am the Alytus inf is eliminated
By nightfall the Konigsberg Inf-AC has a 50% loss.
My CAS flying over Konigsberg have seen stacks of Germans moving south in unobserved Polish & East Prussian provinces. There are clearly a lot of Germans moving just out of sight behind the frontline of captured provinces.

m8jxqa.jpg


June 11th 1941 - The air attack of doom

My air power converges on Alytus and Grodno. Both provinces potentially threaten Kaunas although it is impossible to determine exactly where they are heading.
 
June 12th
At 4am the Brest-Litovsk inf is gone (see June 10th image)
At 9am a new inf at Konigsberg has taken 55% losses (target switch between raids)
At Bielsk an Inf-AC takes 25% losses and by nightfall the Konigsberg Inf is at 95% losses.

June 13th
At 4am the Konigsberg inf is gone.
At 10am the Bielsk InfAC is at 75% losses.
My CAS started bombing a fully entrenched Garrison unit in Suwalki to absolutely no discernible effect proving the pointlessness of bombing dug in units. The reduced effect appeared to be out of proportion with the actual combat adjustment (-60%) that was being applied.

June 14th
At 7am the InfAC in Bielsk is gone

Evening review

Despite my comment for the 10th June the reinforcement slider was left off for a few more days so I can do another review of losses. I am now up to a total of 18 fighters and 40 CAS lost. This amount to approximately half a manpower, 103 IC days to reinforce the CAS and 89.8 IC days for the fighters. These IC reinforcement costs are calculated (40% of base cost of unit at current build costs for 100 aircraft). It does illustrate the cost of fighters as they are a much more significant part of the reinforcement cost than the CAS. This time the reinforcement slider has really been put on and further casualty reports will not be possible.
 
June 15th
The 3am bombing in East Prussia is now targeting 2 infantry with that dug in garrison but they get -24% for dug in penalty despite the fact that only the garrison is dug in. This is and interesting way to protect your units; dug in divisions in the same province give major protection to those passing through. It is difficult to see whether the apparent secondary effects are distributed. The issue of the precise effects of being dug in will need more research (and probably a separate AAR).

At 15:00 the mountain division in Lvov is destroyed. This is a valuable target as its IC cost is more than twice and infantry division and it takes 50% more manpower.

Finally the first German air intervention occurs and quite unpleasant it is too. An air superiority force of 3 Fw190 and1 me109G meet some of my CAS (a single 4 unit group) over Suwalki and shoot down 103 CAS for quite limited loss on their side. This is annoying but can’t really qualify as a disaster. The cost to me is not insignificant but also not serious (103 IC days for 40 CAS so about 260 IC days for 103). This is probably the first day of the war so far where ‘costs incurred’ are even close to my productive capacity. Note that this means that every single day I have been in profit for ICs and my force is getting stronger. This doesn’t sound dramatic until I emphasise the every single day aspect, you don’t expect to never lose material faster than it is being made.

m8kwmu.jpg


June 15th 1941 – Dog fight over Suwalki

Following this air combat I start taking a much more conservative approach with the CAS. Many fly to targets in the South and my fighters start flying patrols and the like to try to engage the German fighters.
 
excellent! ! ! :cool: it is always nice to observe a master at work! ! :D
 
Nahum said:
I saw that you manually triggered Barbarrossa...is there a manual trigger for Germany to DoW the US (as what happened historically)?
Click to expand...

The only existing events are for japan and SU. Your could write something, all you need as an event with no trigger for GER with the action as "type = war which = USA". This can hen be manually triggered but I don't really see the point. If you are the USA then you can get into war with Germany by joining the Allies, if you are Japan then you make and alliance with Germany.
 
Whoa! Finally some resistance by the mighty Luftwaffe :D
 
Kanitatlan said:
The only existing events are for japan and SU. Your could write something, all you need as an event with no trigger for GER with the action as "type = war which = USA". This can hen be manually triggered but I don't really see the point. If you are the USA then you can get into war with Germany by joining the Allies, if you are Japan then you make and alliance with Germany.
Click to expand...

I'm playing along with your AAR as the SU (brilliant AAR by the way). Japan is at war vs the US and Allies, and Germany is at war vs SU and the allies, but not the US. I thought maybe there was an event for Germany to go to war with the US.
 
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