Royal Carnage
Chapter XIV - A Trio of Operations
Human Players: Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, USA, Soviet, Canada*
*An oldie when it comes to strategy board games but noob when it comes to HoI has joined in
Recap: Operation Legion has send European Axis reeling. The Operation, and warring in the pacific, has likewise taxed the Americans very hard. UK will focus on a couple of smaller operations while making some larger strategical reorganizations of army and fleet - preparing for the biggie.
Operation Itch
February 23rd, 1941
An army consisting of a single army corps with five divisions was used for Operation Itch; Three regular infantry divisions, 1 motorized and 1 marine division. Three ports were taken to make sure supply was ample. The initial resistance was close to zero.
March 11th, 1941
Three weeks into Operation Itch and Adis Abeba, the capital (and only VP), was under attack. Haile Selassie made a brave stand with the few men he had at hand.
March 21st, 1941
The battle of Adis Abeba took ten days. It was ten days of search and ‘scare’ tactics. The Ethiopians had little of actual resistance to offer the well drilled Brits. Not a single British soldier was killed in combat - and the majority of Ethiopians surrendered – not really wanting do die in the name of fascism.
With this, Ethiopia crumbled and their armies melted away. The British leadership left two divisions to retake lands outside Ethiopia, now belonging to Italy, while the other three returned to the Red Sea to be picked up by transports. They had other missions awaiting them. Operation Itch had been a quite expected success.
Entire Africa now either belonged to the Allies or was neutral.
Operation Archer
March 2nd-3rd, 1941
Bowhill’s naval bombers fell out of the sky with no forewarning. The lone battle cruiser lay at the same time as before, which was hardly surprising as the port was under siege. The mighty ship had, however been repaired almost totally and was fully organized. Den Haag had no anti-aircraft and as no immediate Luftwaffe showed up, the naval bombers could swarm around the battle cruisers, dropping bombs and torpedoes at it. Its AA was quite heavy and few planes came close enough to drop very accurate salvos. Still, a few hit and suddenly flames shone bright at its aft.
During the second attack, Luftwaffe intercepted the naval bombers which quickly retreated, their mission not finished. Instead, Portal lead his Hurricanes to engage the enemy fighters. Initially, they got the initiative but the German leadership sent new fighters and it turned into a deadly cat and mouse hunt where Germany wanted to avoid dog fights but tried to intercept the bombing runs, which was reinitiated when the Hurricanes over Den Haag did not meet resistance.
March, 1941
During the Operation Archer, the main part of Kriegsmarine, being under siege in the port of Amsterdam, made several sorties trying to break free. Royal Navy held them back but at a terrible price. The British leadership was completely taken aback with the severe losses against an already crippled Kriegsmarine which did not even have enough screens to protect their fearsome capitals.
One of the reasons may have been that the bulk of Royal Navy left around the British Isles consisted of older ships - but not to an extent were losses like this was acceptable. With Operation Viking about to be launched, it was crucial to keep the Kriegsmarine in Amsterdam.
As a slightly desperate maneuver, the only remaining Mediterranean task force left its duty of keeping the remaining Regia Marina (mostly consisting of their battle ships) to instead deal with the Kriegsmarine. This meant that the Regia Marine was free to roam the Med, but the leadership hoped they would not dare that.
Late March, 1941
After a long airborne struggle, leaving almost entire RAF in a sorry state, the Gneisenau was sunk in the port of Den Haag. The ship wreck was surrounded with a ridiculous amount of crashed fighters and bombers. With that, as Operation Archer had met its objective, it was considered a success. If it in reality was a meaningful operation is another matter.
In any case, the outcome of Operation Archer was dwarfed by the intensive naval clashed in the Coast of Holland. Royal navy had lost 9 ships of which two was capitals. Until the last clash, the Germans had only lost a light cruiser.
In the end, meeting the Mediterranean Task Force, the weakened Kriegsmarine met its doom. They lost their remaining screens and the battle cruiser Schlesien without sinking any British ships. The remaining Kriegsmarine, only consisting of its most fearsome capitals – Bismarck, Tirpitz and the Graf Zeppelin – would have huge trouble to operate without reinforcements.
This also meant Operation Viking could be initiated…
Operation Viking
April 2nd, 1941
Transport task forces and a quite weak escort task force (no naval resistance was expected) on their way to their specific locations carrying an army consisting of three full army corps.
April 6th, 1941
Operation Viking is in full swing. With the airfield in Fredrikshavn in Allied possession they could try to give the ground forces back up. The response from Luftwaffe was fearsome and RAF was already weakened from Operation Archer and had not completely recovered. They needed fighters from USAF to aid them, but still, very few allied bombs fell over the Germans. Instead, the army corps in charge of taking Copenhagen received quite some loads from German bombers.
April 13th, 1941
About two weeks into Operation Viking and things seem to unfold according to plans. The Germans seem not to have forces available to threat mainland Denmark. Kriegsmarine, as expected, had nothing with which to aid their troops and they did not drop any paras either. Even if being extremely bloody, the battle of Copenhagen was slowly tipping to the British favor.
April 16th, 1941
Two and a half weeks into Operation Viking and the German defenders of Copenhagen gave up after turning the Danish capital into rubble. The Brits losses were a lot higher than reported due to the quite continuous German bombings. With this, the objectives were met and the majority of the British attack-force was pulled back to UK as the Royal Navy would have no problem to guard the Danish Isles and thus refusing them to the Heer.
With the Baltic Sea open, the entire German north coast was under threat. The British leadership wanted them to reinforce it as they had no plans to attack from this direction. They hoped the German leadership saw Operation Viking as s logic step before a larger attack on Berlin in the same manner as Operation Legion – and that Wehrmacht would act accordingly. If they did, that would serve the Allied plans greatly.
Pacific
February 15th, 1941
At this date, entire Indonesia (all ports and valuable provinces) was back under Allied control. With Japan re-conquering Taiwan and now attacking Philippines, they had no resources to threat Allied movement in this area, except sinking a few convoys. It was important to keep valuable oil and rare materials from them.
February 23rd, 1941
After taking some painful naval losses when the Japs initiated the attack on the Philippines, the American navy had started to take back a little of the initiative. Still, the Imperial Japanese Navy had a mighty arsenal which the Americans had severe problems dealing with themselves.
For this reason, the British leadership had left a powerful task force in the Pacific, under the competent leadership of Admiral Sommerville. He had already clashed with the Japs a number of times and sunk a lot more than he had lost. Still, he had lost the last battle and was eager for revenge.
As it turned out, he got what he wanted in the Sibuyan Sea. Still, the cunning admiral Yamamoto managed to sneak away with his damaged fleet without losing any ships. Slightly disappointed, Admiral Sommerville had to return to port for repairs even if rather few ships had been damaged. HMS Effingham had been seriously damaged and needed a dry dock. Fortunately, recently repaired ships were waiting to take Effingham’s place in the task force. The IJN would soon get the Royal Navy patrolling the Philippines again.
March 16th, 1941
British and American admirals made a mistake in their communications, and two of their task forces navigated very close to each others. Suddenly a huge Japanese fleet was upon them, but it seemed like also the Jap had made a mistake in their navigation and their two task forces were far from in proper order.
The Allies managed better than the IJN to keep a fairly good positioning and the Jap got to suffer for it. It came as a slight shock to the Allies when a brand new super heavy battle ship, the Yamato, opened fire with a tremendous barrage. HMS Prince of Wales was hit but thereafter the Allied battle ship targeted the behemoth. The USS Arizona managed a lucky shot which blew off the entire bridge of the Yamato. When the super heavy battle ship started to drift it became an easy prey.
The IJN pulled back after what must be received as a terrible disaster for them.
March 24th, 1941
After the costly naval defeats, the IJN pulled back from the Philippines. As the US managed to get reinforcements to the island, the balance soon tipped over to the Americans. It also seemed the Allied convoy war had been successful as the remaining Japanese infantry divisions lacked supply. Philippines would soon be rid of the Japanese troops. Japan has obviously lost their ability to be on the offensive.
Authors note: Japan and USA have sunk a quite awesome amount of ships from each other and with the Royal Navy prowling about, the Jap leadership must realize they have inferior naval forces. They won’t to much more claiming…
.......................
During this spring, Japanese effort against the Bears tail lessened. On the other hand, as Germany did not realocate much ground forces towards the small British operations, Soviet resieved an even stronger pressure than before and retreated at a steady pace. They have not lost anything significant when it comes to troops, but with the speed the Wehrmacht push forwards, they might see Moscow before Christmas.
In next chapter however, the new British Army Corps of tanks will be put into use... for better or for worse.