T110-The long road to Berlin - hooooper welcome

[rmonical]

T114 - Crimea region is collapsing. From an apparently dire situation, the axis look like they are going to get behind the Dnepr in good order. 3.PzArmee gives up XXXX.PzK to the newly arrived 8th Army.

[rmonical]

North of the Great Dnepr bend, the situation is equally dire with the Soviets making multi-hex advances. They have penetrated the fort line and threaten to surround part of 17th Army. 1.PzArmee is in position to respond and another mobile battle ensues. Net result is high casualties on both sides and the Soviets are 30 miles closer to Kiev. Elsewhere I have talked about about how I think the casualties when routed out of ephemeral pockets are too low. This is another example.

[rmonical]

Further north, the Soviets make good progress from the Dnepr north to the Valdai.

[rmonical]

T114 stats

As the summer progresses, the Axis are in the same situation as summer of 42 - no armament points and a growing manpower reserve driven by sub-optimum production management by the replacement AI. This will hopefully be fixed in .14. Rifle squad counts and division CVs are falling just like they did in 42. In 43, as in 42, cavalry squads are the largest single consumer of armaments devoted to A unit production.

The 75mm AT gun situation is particularly disappointing. It is caused by the swap bug- uh - feature. That mechanism will not be changed in .14, but I proposed a scenario change that will let the 75 MMs get into play. German AT gun strength is plummeting because the swap logic will not let the Replacement AI build guns and the 37 and 50 MM guns are slowly dwindling. There should be over 3000 75MM anti-tank guns in play by now. Between the reduced AFV count and the missing 75MM AT guns the Germans are running at less than 50% of the 75 MM and above AT tubes they had historically. I am surprised they have hung in there as well as they have.

The astute observer will note that the Soviet Air Force has broken 20,000. This despite having already lost 47,000. The justification for not letting the Germans use the thousands of aircraft sitting in their pool is pilot shortage. It appears the Soviets have no such problem. Even with .14, I wonder how the late game can be playable with these types of imbalances building up. The Germans are able to deploy roughly 500 fighters while having 2000 sitting in the pool. Another thousand fighters on the map would go a long way to offsetting the Soviet 200% of historical air force. I don't if the WITW air system will address this huge imbalance. The huge disparity in air forces has allowed and reduced LB production has allowed the Soviets to eviscerate the tactical and bomber pools so those are down from 2500 to a few hundred.

Add the lack of AT and air disparity to the fact the Axis are supposed to get their butts kicked and I see a sudden and spectacular collapse in the future.

[Disgruntled Veteran]

Thanks for the insight RMonical. Very enjoyable AAR nonetheless. Let's hope some of these issues get ironed out for WITW

[M60A3TTS]

I've seen the bugaboo of the big bad Soviet airforce before. It's overstated and I'll list several reasons why.

The Soviet OOB includes all aircraft in the National Reserve. There may be thousands of aircraft there, and while they sit they do nothing to influence the air war.

Airbases, that these aircraft sit on, are support-heavy. It takes 5,000 men to support an airbase that at best consist of 40 pilots with planes. That is an awful low tooth-to-tail ratio. It is a rifle brigade or 40% thereabouts of a rifle division. Now if the Soviets have a wealth of manpower reserves, then you can do both, but it's still 5,000 less riflemen on the battlefield.

The airbase can hold 9 regiments max. The more the Soviets add to that base, the higher the operational losses go, and pilot experience becomes diluted. Soviets probably can peak at about 5 regiments before op losses start growing. I've found keeping that number of planes on a base perform just as well as 9. So what I say here is you can cut the Soviet air force down, but it won't necessarily change the air results.

Bases of an air command or air army have to be assigned to a front to be effective for that front. That gets added against the cap of units assigned to a front and may force an overload with a lot of bases.

Support cost can be enormous in terms of trucks. This applies particularly to level bombers. These same trucks are needed to support the Red Army, mech, tank corps and all. Just like with the 5,000 riflemen choice, there's an opportunity cost. So until the Red Army can keep its truck fleet in shape, which is often a challenge until mid-43 the Soviets shouldn't want a huge airforce deployed.

Having played the Soviets exclusively, at the end I spent a lot of time disbanding air regiments just to keep top airframes in ready supply for my experienced pilots. Bottom line whatever most people do with a Soviet airforce of 20,000 planes, I can do much the same with half that.

[rmonical]

I've seen the bugaboo of the big bad Soviet airforce before. It's overstated and I'll list several reasons why.

]

I have not been Soviets in 43 so I do not have a feel for what is reasonable in a CG.
1. National reserve: Even if half are in NR, this many aircraft lets him constantly rotate aircraft into NR to rest and refit.The ones in NR are not contributing to the remaining issues you mention.
2. Manpower --> Hooooper mentioned he cannot get all of his manpower into the game.
3. Airbase limits: I'm not sure when new airbases stop arriving if ever. I was getting one per week in 1942.
4. Front assignment: This is important for GS. Every other mission the bases can be assigned to air HQ attached to STAVKA with little or no loss of effectiveness.. If the air HQ were not disbanded as many do.
5. Trucks: I suspect Hooooper had a truck problem. As you say, it is mid-43 and it is probably much better now.

[rmonical]

T115 - no sooner do I mention the Valdai is holding and it isn't. Hopefully von Schweppenburg with XXIV can rescue XXXV corps. There were a couple of other pockets and near pockets that were cleared. One section of front is down to a few infantry regiments and a rump Panzer division in reserve. Continued deterioration in all strength categories. Seven more Soviet turns until mud.

[rmonical]

T116 - the Valdai situation continues to deteriorate. This is the type of combat result that should be expected when the production gods decline to provide AT guns to an infantry division.

[rmonical]

T116 - my plan to get a respite behind the Dnepr is not looking good.

[rmonical]

The casualty reports are grim.

[rmonical]

The situation with the German Tacair. The units that are short will get one per turn until the pool is over 100. Unless I spend AP to change type. This dynamic is apparently fixed in WITW and thus in WITE2.

[Disgruntled Veteran]

Once you start losing a 1k guns+ a turn your armament situation starts to deteriorate quickly. I remember burning a 600k armament stockpile in the space of 4 months. After they were gone the German army quickly evaporated.

[rmonical]

ORIGINAL: Disgruntled Veteran
Once you start losing a 1k guns+ a turn your armament situation starts to deteriorate quickly. I remember burning a 600k armament stockpile in the space of 4 months. After they were gone the German army quickly evaporated.

The good news is I'll hold put long enough to look at the takeup of the '43 rifles squads with the panzershrecks. Another swap problem.

[rmonical]

This is the example of a combat result where I think the defender casualties are too low. Even without the rout, retreating across a major river should be expensive, especially in guns.

[rmonical]

And the pother three retreats across the Dnepr. 1942 of 2100 guns and 700 of 966 AFV make the retrograde crossing successfully.

As a side note, 1.PzArmee came down from 100 miles north and XXXX.Pz.Korps came from 100 miles south to deal with this incursion. In addition to frozen rivers making the response moot, increased movement costs in the winter greatly degrade the Wehrmacht's ability to respond in this way.

[rmonical]

With the best of 1.PzArmee moving south, there was not much left to clear this pocket. However, 6.Armee still has a fight with support from the remaining mobile divisions in the area. Compare these casualties to those for the units retreating across the Dnepr.

[rmonical]

T116 - the 14PG is pulled out of the line to be demotorized. In the meantime it is sucking up a ton of armament points and AFVs so it can be rebuilt to come back next week as a weaker infantry division with a total drop of 11 morale points (86 to 75). Only in WITE where fidelity to the historical OOB trumps reason.

[rmonical]

T116 - anatomy of the coming collapse. My manpower pool has hit 150,000. A big jump. I think a large part of it was caused by excess support squads flowing back into the pool. A lot of my divisions are still OK because they are in relatively quiet areas (other than AT which is weak everywhere). This is a good snapshot of a division that has seen a few combats in the past couple of months. The TOE is shown for information. AT strength is nearly zero. A single 37mm gun prevents the 75mm from getting deployed. Once the 75mm AT gun is in a division, AT strength tracks with gun strength. Since the division was attacked last Soviet turn, support is running high. Rifle squad strength is proportionately low because of the production algorithm (to be fixed in .14). AT strength is low for the reasons indicated earlier. This is similar to the no armaments situation in '42 except for the AT gun situation and the Soviet army is much more capable. In addition, the Soviet tank units got a 5 point bump in national moral this week. So with 6 more Soviet turns until mud, this could get very grim.

[rmonical]

T116 - battles