Operation Sledgehammer ’43

[TankBushido]

Turn 96:
Leipzig falls and Berlin is pressured from three sides. Those strong German reinforcements that were surround last turn are eliminated.

[TankBushido]

Turn 97:
Here’s balance of forces before Turn 97. 1.5 million ready Germans in the field with 1300 afvs. Allied combined have 4.5 million ready troops with 13500 afvs.

[TankBushido]

I think this is the saddest screenshot in the entire AAR. The Germans declare Berlin an open city and don’t even defend it. There is no last stand. Allied troops walk into the city unopposed. VE Day exactly coincides with history, only it's the Western Allies taking Berlin, not the Soviets.

[TankBushido]

The final victory point tally. Chalk this one up as an Allied Minor Victory. The AI running air operations probably cost me at least 300 points, so I’m fairly certain this game would have been a Major Victory if I had run air operations as well. I wasn’t playing for points so I’m happy with the result. Great fun for my first campaign game. I probably spent more than 100 hours on this game over a four month period.

[TankBushido]

I’m going to take a break for awhile, but might do another AAR in the future; I have a couple of alternative history concepts to try and will take input on what you’d like to see.

Choose one of the following that you’d like to see. Each takes a different approach to how the Allies could have strategically approached the war.

1) Operation Roundup ‘43. US commanders convince FDR to not get entangled in the Med. Operation Husky is cancelled and all forces are concentrated for a cross channel attack between Boulogne and Le Harve.

2) Churchill’s Soft Underbelly - Churchill convinces FDR that a cross channel invasion is too risky so all forces are massed in the Med to strike at the soft underbelly of Europe. Overlord is postponed until 1945. This AAR would heavily focus on the strategic bombing campaign.

I’m going to throw this one on my signature as it’s quite an accomplishment to do the entire playthrough. Signing off for now.

[John B.]

Thanks for a very interesting AAR! I'd be curious to see Operation Roundup in your future reports.

[bomccarthy]

This was a very interesting AAR, and one of the few where a player let the AI handle the air war. Comparing these results to those of my last campaign game against the German AI (addl Air HQs, no East Front box), the Allied AI did a better job keeping the U-Boats suppressed (-73 vs -106), but a worse job against the V-Weapons (-407 vs. -169). Bombing points are hard to compare (586 vs. 471) because I switched 8th AF and Bomber Command to targeting railyards by the late summer of 1944 and my game ended on the Feb 17, 1945 turn with an early capture of Berlin (fewer turns of strategic bombing).

Would really be interested to see the air losses for the game - I recall from one or two early posts in this AAR that losses were very high, initially.

I played one early game with the East Front box turned on - the German AI didn't do a great job of allocating forces, because the Soviets captured Berlin a month earlier than IRL. It looks like the tweaks that were made since then solved this problem.

[CaptBeefheart]

Well played. Very interesting AAR. I'd like to see your Roundup scenario.

One thing I'm wondering about is how did Devers end up leading SHAEF and what is "AFHQ?"

Cheers,
CB

[TankBushido]

Air losses were horrendous (see image). I did emphasize oil targets at various points in the game, so I probably had some heavy losses bombing the Romanian oil fields. Also, as I mentioned in the AAR, there was either a bug in my game or a bug in general that was preventing the AI from targeting V-weapon factories and sites. When I told my strategic air forces to bomb only those targets they would literally create no air directives, so I just gave up and let the negative victory points rack up for v-weapons.

AFHQ is the initial Allied Forces HQ in North Africa. Devers was the commander assigned to SHAEF when it was created. I changed none of the commander assignments in this game and was just rolling with what the game gave me.

[bomccarthy]

Thanks for sharing this screen. It provides a good picture on the AI's performance. Your level bomber losses were horrendous (21k+ vs. 5,439 in my game) while your fighter bomber losses were close (9,598 vs 8,140). Air combat losses were interesting (Ger- 9,538 / WA- 14,137 vs Ger- 14,358 / WA- 5,402); this shows that there is a lot an active air player can do to refine the Allied strategic air campaign. On the other hand, your game shows that the AI does a fair job of helping the ground campaign advance.