Chapter Thirty-Nine - RAID!
So, Canada has a somewhat worn down army, no Manpower to replenish our losses, and a need to keep in the war. What can we do which will affect the progress of WW2 without trashing our already limited number of troops? Why, a raid, of course! Hit and run, make the AI overreact to our presence to allow other AI to take advantage of the missing troops. Starting a second front in Europe in late 1942 is all well and good, but as Canada? No, not yet. If we try to hold a line anywhere we'll be annihilated. Fighting with all the advantages of the Straits of Messina has been effective, but make that a stand up fight across a land border and we'd have lost Sicily ages ago. Even now fighting Italy one on one seems like a bad idea.
So, having rescued the brave critics trapped on Malta, and scouted out future locations for Game of Thrones, we've decided to see what we can do to help the Rooskies make some progress in the Balkans. But first, we say "wait for it", and hide our ships from the Italians before taking our Maltese troops back to Sicily. No sense fighting a naval battle when we don't have to.
I did that already. Twice.
As you can see from the overview, the Brits have pretty well cleared Vichy from Central Africa. Diana led the men a merry chase and by the time she stopped to rest, the entire area was theirs.
Also, we're in good shape in terms of resources. I don't expect to worry much about them for the rest of the war. In fact, I haven't given much though to resources in years. If Canada had manpower she'd be a very serious player, more than a match for Italy. Speaking of which, our Manpower is negative 25.6 <sad face>
In terms of VPs, we restored Malta's three victory points to the Allied Side, and I notice that the cities we took in our North African campaign have qualified the Allies for one of the three Victory Conditions we've fulfilled: Operation Torch (the Axis have one and the Comintern two, though I can't see their lists, apparently).
Here's the look at the Balkans I had before I picked my "Raid!" targets. The Soviets are in Greece, though Bulgaria is only "aligning" Axis. You'd think the Bulgarians would be able to see which way the wind is blowing when they're surrounded by communist armies. Still, my object isn't Bulgaria, it's Greece and the rest of the Balkan area which is currently Axis-occupied. I want to help the Russians advance by landing behind enemy lines, then run away before I take too many losses. Inflicting losses would be nice, but although in this part of the world, there's about to be two
Steamrollers. I'm going to let the other one do the real work.
FYI - in Scandanavia, recall that the Russians overran Finland, and that the Germans never touched Norway, so that's pretty much settled.
We decided to let some time roll by to try to recover. Five transports and an escort later, we made an advance in the Tech that matters, getting more guys! Here's a look at the eastern front. Not very meaningful, I suppose, by which I mean it looks normal to me.
Arguably the Germans have made poor progress, Crimea is Soviet, for example, but there's not been a massive pushback by the Comintern forces, yet.
Well, we've let a month go by, and the Soviet advance into Greece seems to be at a standstill. Unless I missed something, this is the same map.
In fact, a week later the Axis took a formerly Soviet province. Let's see if we can't turn things around!
We decide to use four Divisions. Two Canadian Panzer Divisions consisting of two infantry brigades and one Armored Car brigade, and two standard infantry divisions with two infantry and one artillery. We're not fighting off the boat. We'll land somewhere we don't expect to find enemies and go from there.
Hey, look, we found the British Navy! I wonder if they're going to do anything useful? Give me those ships and I'd chase Italy into port for good.
Still, we do what we can, so Canada looks for a salty piece of land.
Darn, occupado.
So we head ashore into the Italian co-prosperity sphere. Hey, Italy, it's bad when you do it!
There's three possibilities. The most likely is that the port is held only by airforce. I think we win that fight. I could see the German troops, and hope I'd see Italians, too. The second is that the defenders are easily brushed aside, though I'm using normal infantry and even some armor (Ed - armor isn't the exact right word, more "armor-ish"). The third is that we get bounced back and have to try elsewhere. Even this is a low risk, all it costs me is time as I have no intention of allowing any battle I don't win quickly to go on for long.
That's the long version of why I'm doing this.
We're ashore. I send the Canadian Panzer Divisions out to take territory and make as much noise as possible. We'll gun our engines, honk our horns, and shout the names of the enemy's girlfriends. That ought to get their attention. So long as we avoid enemy HQ units we should be ok. I also send my ships home. We're up the Adriatic, and if you can't count on the Brits while you're sitting in Malta, I'm pretty sure the Dalmatian Coast is not in their bailiwick (or did I not go up far enough to hit Dalmatia?). In any event, our ships go to safety, and we leave two divisions to hold the port.
The two attacking divisions will stay in contiguous provinces to the port. Why? Well I'm chicken. We're playing with 30,000 or so men, and that's one-fifth of our entire army. One thing worse than not having our divisions build up to full power is losing them entirely screwing around. There's probably things in between those two situations, but having four divisions go poof like so many of the enemy divisions have done would be very bad. So I want the security which comes from insta-boarding ships in port. Hmm, is that turned off mid-combat? I hope not.
Aaahh!!! Real HQ Units
Well, on the attack HQ units are no better than armored cars. So no worries. And then it begins!
The bombings will continue until morale improves...
Of course, the next thing to worry about is the lack of supply. However, we just captured this thing, so all enemy supply what was there is now ours, and it's a port, so we're okay in that department. It'll be enemy soldiers not lack of supply which makes us run away in the end.
Hey, we have two more Victory Points, for now. Hmm, I was going to take that province, jerks!
I'll say this for our raid progress so far. First, it's low risk. I should be able to run away whenever I want. Second, it may well also be low reward, but we're right near the front, you can see the province the Axis took from the Russians right there: Giannitsa. So if we draw off enemy forces, it's reasonable to think that we're helping.
In fact, we decide to expand our Raid by taking a second port. It looks to me as though the Italians are bombing the locals. Let's investigate!