Carnage al Dente
Chapter XXIII - The Regia Marina is sailing out
Players: Players: UK, 0.5 USA, 1.5 USSR, GER, ITA, JAP, HUN(2nd half of this session)
Recap: During the autumn of 1941, Axis hopes of a quick victory was crushed. Instead, the previous successes was more or less stopped on all fronts. Italy saw this with growing frustration and quickly planned an Operation to stab at the back of the Brits.
The plan
The plan was fairly simple. RN was believed to have their main strength guarding the retreat-route of the landing force in France. A Task Force with battle ships had been spotted in the Med, but Il Duce was more eager to comfront it than he was afraid. He did not have troops available for a major landing operation, and his hope of actually holding any taken ground from a determined British counter-attack was close to zero. Strategically target like Gibraltar or Suez was out of the question. Instead, the target was Tobruk. It was lightly defended (if any) but close enough to Suez to force the Brit to act. The main objectives were:
1. Take Tobruk and crush any defenders.
2. Engage any Royal Navy ships
3. Tugg at the British attention - easing the pressure on France
4. Return with everything to Italy before UK can respond accordingly.
December 14th, 1941
The Italian naval bombers made an attack on the port of Malta, mostly as reconnaissance. They found the Battle Ship Task Force that had prowled the Med for years. It did not seem to have as powerful screen as earlier, though. If the Royal Navy wanted to face Regia Marina with this – it was more than ok by the Italian leadership.
The Italians did not have many fighters, as they were tied up in France, but it was believed that most of RAF was there as well. There had been plenty of CAGs seen in several of the battles. As the Regia Marina sailed out in force on their mission, they encountered some Soviet submarines which were sunk with Italy’s new ASW-technology.
December 17th, 1941
During the dawn of the 17th of December, da Zara’s task force was attacked by a swarm of British swordfish planes. It was obviously a major miscalculation that the British CAGs were not based closer to France or in other ways occupied or on repairs. Although the Italians had support of ground based fighters and naval bombers, it was all for naught. The reports are a bit shady, but apparently none of the Italian ships ever saw any of the British but was all the same under a maddening attack from CAGs.
In some kind of panic, da Zara retreated from the hell he had ended up in and managed to retreat without losing a single ship. Most ships were however damaged in some way or another. The old fool did, however, not seek shelter to the port of Taranto but chose to flee out to the open ocean...
December 17th, 1941
Afterwards, da Zara could not really explain why he had fled out to sea. It was a small thing for the British fleet to chase him down and engage him again. This time, ships started to sink. As he saw the Heavy Cruiser, wearing his name, sink in front of his eyes he went mad with anger and called in reinforcements from a Task Force further north.
December 18th, 1941
The second Italian task force did not manage to lock the Brits in the Easter Ionian Sea, but instead the British Carrier Task Force managed to hit both Italian Task Forces. The Italian ships still managed a better positioning than their counterparts but they were still unable to significantly hurt or even reach the enemy. Instead, they were completely crushed by the CAGs. This time, da Zara made the extraordinary stupid decision to flee to the worst port in Italy. Not only was Tirana undefended – it was also unsupplied.
An airborne supply-bridge was immediately created and fighters managed to chase away the British CAGs after a while. Still, the shattered fleet had received a few hours of bombings in the port.
That was not the worst thing. As the port was undefended and the Brits guarded the water, the Brits would surely bring in troops to flush out the fleet. German paras were called for…
December 22nd, 1941
The German paras had been far away and needed to change base. The order had been given but it took too much time to organize the jump. The Brits got there first. Da Zara had to sail out to the hostile fleet just waiting for him. It was pure suicide.
Authors note: This was more or less expected. A German jump had probably just delayed the inevitable as Zid could bring in more troops while Axis could not.
December 22nd, 1941
Authors note: A citation from the beautiful movie “Aliens”. “It’s game over man”.
I have never endured so much pain during a HoI-game. Some of the pain come from the feeling of “injustice”
(comments regarding game mechanics in seperate thread. DONT comment game mechanics in the AAR) , which is an almost a funny word in the middle of a war. It was a bad call to sail out, and Zid made the right call to give me a royal beating…
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have charged in with my second fleet, but the plan was to lock the Brits in combat in the southern sea-zone while my battered fleet could escape.
What pains me most is probably that I put a lot of resources in this fleet and then lost it in one swift stroke. Also, the fact that I never really manage to fight any of the naval battles the way I had planned them, with good fighter cover and backed with naval bombers. Except the battle were I sunk a Battle Cruiser, Zid have managed to surprise me or in any way hit me when my fleet was not in proper order. I’m a bit annoyed with myself for that. Playing a careful game with the Italians is bad for my nerves and has caused me to do rash moves… and Italy just can’t handle any such mistakes. Also, not to forget; a big hand for Zid. He has really excelled as UK. His multitasking skills and foreseeing* naval maneuvers is just scaring.
* Much later I found out that this partcular battle was not forseeing. He was on hos way to the Red Sea and more or less passed by. Talk about timing.
A small luck in all the horror. The Royal Navy did not persue the last remnants of the Regia Marina which limped northwards to the ports in Venice. But it was not much of a fleet.
December 10th, 1941
More than a week before the disaster of the Regia Marina, the Brits started to fall back in France. A German paradrop robbed them of a potential escape route – but the Axis pressure was still not powerful enough to be of any deep concern for the Brits.
December 25th-27th, 1941
During Christmas, there were some fierce battles in Parthenay. The Italians became victorious with quite severe losses on the British side. As the Brits retreated behind the river, the Third British Offensive on France had come to an end. The Brits managed to retreat without losing any division, although they lost quite a few men.
December 30th, 1941
The Brits ended the year with yet another victory – by chasing away the government the Japanese had installed in Iraq.
With the raising threat of a US entry in the war, the Japs did not want to be stuck deep into Iraq and Persia. Retreating was not, however, an easy task.
Authors note: With Germany still locked up deep into Soviet, and Japan starting to prepare for the US entry, it seemed as United Kingdom was about to defeat Axis by themselves. Il Duce, who lacked the strength to punish them, had fits of frustration.
December 24th, 1941
On Christmas, the Wehrmacht had pushed the Red Army even further back, and thus left Moscow far behind. With the high dissent within their own ranks, it was not believed that the Soviet production could be anything significant. Their troops still needed to be neutralized, and the Wehrmacht had great difficulty doing it during the winter conditions, especially with all the British attention. The war seemed to drag on and would not be finished anytime soon. The spirit of the Axis which was so great with the death of Stalin had now become significantly bleaker.
January 1st, 1942
The first day of the New Year rewarded the Wehrmacht with a successful encirclement in the south, trapping and destroying two enemy infantry divisions. Although no huge victory, it was well needed and boosted the Axis morale.
January 3rd, 1942
The United States of America was not far away from joining the world war now – that much was clear. The Axis dreaded this. With the Red Army very much alive, the Axis would soon end up in a land of great pain.
Authors note: The Italian leadership thought that Japan would be the first target of the Allies. With KM and RM badly decimated, and IJN not as strong as it once was, Japan could not hope to resist an Allied push very long. With Japan gone and fragments of the Red Army still alive, UK and USA could really start hurting Germany and Italy.
Still, we must not forget Victory Conditions. Axis has 9. At this point in the game, the Axis leaders hadn’t realized you only need 12 to win (for the simple reason that no game of ours has ever been even close to be determined by VCs). This answers why we haven’t been targeting VCs like we should have.
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Awfully silent here. Anyways... new post coming shortly.
