Part 4: Anti-Climax part 4
May 1: I send 1st Bomber group to crater the runway at Bitburg. It will also give us an idea of the airpower they’re massing, and hopefully it won’t get too shot up by German fighters.
May 2: The Germans have taken Luxembourg already. This wasn’t exactly unexpected.
May 3: German troops keep moving north. They’re probably going to attack the Netherlands next.
May 8: Germany declares war on both the Netherlands and Belgium. The units that I had sitting in Belgium were out of supply, but once we’re allies against Germany, the Belgians supply our troops too.
May 9: My troops are in position to be deployed for the experimental defense strategy. I have 7A Corps in Brugge. They, along with the 3A Corps (at Kortrijk, and who have been temporarily attached to the 7th Army) are going to be the drawstring of a bag we’re going to let the Germans come into. Our infantry corps, 71, 72, 31 and 31 will engage the germans near the French/Belgian border, and try to keep them in place. We will then use the armour to encircle them and keep them from taking the ports along the Channel. If we are able to, we will push our armour from the 1A Corps at Metz through Luxembourg, which, at the moment is only being defended by 1 division. I will not make any movements on that line (unless it’s to attack along the Maginot Line as a distraction) in order to lull the Germans into thinking that that flank is secure. I have sent 7A Corps to Den Haag to extend the drawstring a little more. Another strategy that I’m using is to let the Germans tire themselves out fighting the Belgians and the Dutch. This strategy will allow us to get them when they’re not at their best. I’ll be using the new fortifications at Longuyon and Monmedi as help for my infantry.
May 11: With the German Luftwaffe no longer maintaining air cover over Metz, I send my bombers for another run over Bitburg. This time, there are only 3 fighters providing cover (rather than the 6 there were last time).
May 13: I’ve sent the 3A division to Middleburg, and covered the port at Brugge with 2 infantry divisions from 71 Corps. I don’t want to mass my infantry too much; I may deploy some forward to deliberately get chewed up by the Germans. Again, the goal is to make the Germans commit as many of their divisions into the pocket as possible, then close it up with the Armour and Marines. On the bright side, the RAF has shown up, flying fighter cover over Nijmegen. The Germans are quickly making progress, already taking Eindhoven.
One hint for setting up defenses. Always make sure to carefully examine the borders so you don’t leave any gaps, as small as they might be, open. If you look at the map, you might think that Philippeville only borders France at Hirson and Montmedi, but Reims actually has a 1 unit border that can be attacked. Therefore, I’ve made sure to have 2 infantry divisions in Rheims defending. If you look at the card for the province of Reims, you can see that it’s bordered on 5 sides by river, which means it’s going to be much easier to defend.
May 14: Excellent, you can see the Belgians setting up their defense against the Germans. They should hold for a little while. Also, if you look, we don’t see a huge concentration of units on the attack, nor do we see a lot of armour. You can also compare the Belgian infantry with ours. If you look at the counter, you can see that the Belgians have stats of “2-3,” which are their attack and defend ratings. If you see ours, it’s “4-5,” which means one of our infantry divisions is worth almost two of the Belgians.
May 15: The Germans are almost at Amsterdam, and usually the Dutch can hang on a little while there. We’re not going to come to Amsterdam’s aid – we need the Germans to come further south so that we can cut them off. I send our new Close Air Support (CAS) squadron to do an Interdiction attack at Maastricht. I believe that Interdiction looks for moving units, but I also think that it attacks organization. Excellent. There are 2 divisions there, and there was no German fighter intervention. A good sign that the British have slapped them down a peg or two. The Germans have broken through to Bastogne. I’m going to send our Tactical Bombers on a Logistical Bombing run, which will help destroy supply lines for the German advance.
Here’s a word on the effect that supply lines have on troops. If units are out of supply, two things happen. The first is that they lose organization… fast! They also can’t recover their organization. The other effect is that there’s a major combat penalty for units being out of supply. Once the germans enter our pocket, and if we can disrupt their supply lines enough, they’ll be easy pickings once we close the encirclement. This is another major reason why encirclements are so valuable. By cutting off any supply lines to the surrounded units, you gain the ability to beat them faster. However, this can be delayed by using transport aircraft to resupply the units. But in order to do that, you need transport aircraft (very expensive in IC), and you need to have air superiority so that the transports don't get chewed up by enemy fighters.
May 17th: I keep bombing. We tried a run over Luxembourg, but the German fighters, while not doing much damage, are enough to deter us. I want to keep our bombers fresh for when we really need them. I do, however, send our CAS over Bastogne and we were unopposed. If you look at the interface in the upper right, you can actually scroll down to bombings (while they’re active). I’m also using the Air Mapmode, where you can see friendly (green) and enemy (red) bombings in the last week. If you mouse over a province with an icon, it will give you a little more information about what’s been going on there lately.
May 18: I send our CAS to Rotterdam, where you can see the Germans are close to Den Haag, where we have our tank division. Hopefully, they’ll be significantly deterred from attacking the massive amount of firepower we have there. However, one problem that can occur is that the Germans attack us there and tie us down. That’s one reason why we’re using our Marines as a failsafe. We can deploy them behind enemly lines to free up our armour if they’re attacked.
May 19: You can see here that the British have landed an expeditionary force at Brugge. You can also see that our infantry is still more powerful than theirs. This is good. More screens to tire out the Germans before come into our trap.
May 20: I start some logistical bombing of Rotterdam. By now, the Germans have taken Arlon, but there’s not much to fear – there’s only 1 German division there. I send our CAS on a “recon” bombing mission (another good reason for fighters and bombers – they’ll give you intelligence on what they’re attacking and what they fly over) and see that the German infantry division is a “triangle” (3 brigade) division with just infantry. Our artillery will rip them to shreds if they decide to test their luck, and our defenses. I’m also sending our 1 interceptor squadron to provide some air superiority over Arlon. I don’t really foresee German attacks here though. The British are probably keeping them busy.
May 21: Another way of comparing how two divisions stack up is their organization. Doctrine techs as well as commander skill level, and overall officer percentage are the three biggest determining factors. When a unit runs out of organization, they exit the battle. If you compare the organization with the Germans in Arlon, ours is 70.619, and theirs is 54.5.
May 24: Nothing changed yet. The British are rushing to the Belgians’ aid. The Germans haven’t even tried to attack us at Den Haag, or anywhere else. Amsterdam has yet to fall. It also looks as if the Germans are taking units from the Maginot line to help out. If they get down to just one division per province, We’ll make an attempt to break through again and sweep up to make our encirclement even bigger. This is a “wait and see” strategy, but it’s definitely on the drawing board.
May 25: I’m going to change our CAS from attacking Arlon to attacking the German Armoured division at Roosendaal. CAS is much better at “Hard Attack”, or attacking tanks, than Tactical Bombers, which are much better at attacking “soft” targets.
May 26: We have another infantry division to deploy – the 314 Infantry Division, attacked to the 31 Corps, which was under strength at just 3 divisions.
May 28: The Germans take Liege, with the Belgians retreating. It does look like some of the Maginot line is being cannibalized to help the offensive in Belgium and Holland. Not enough for us to do anything yet. What the Germans don’t understand is that every province they take, and the further south they get, the closer to our trap they get….
May 29th: There are now 2 divisions in Rotterdam, except one is retreating and of no threat to us.
May 31: In bombing Roosendaal, we’re joining the British who are using 2 strategic bombers and a Carrier Air Group (CAG).
