he results of the logistical bombing missions especially - those supplies and fuel are of vital importance to the Germans. Hungarians, Bulgarians, Italians...
Logistical bombing is working better than expected, and with two regiments of TB-3s we'll do almost twice the damage. That will surely piss off the Germans, which is always nice. Maloryta went from province filled with nice roads and railways, to one where one has to use horse-drawn carriages to carry supplies along the remains of what was once a nice little transport network. All in about 10 days, it beautiful...
Italians are preoccupied with the North African adventure, I should think. In any case, both them and the Bulgarians need to move forces before they can start shooting, so that gives us some time. Hungarians, like the rest of this terrifying trio, are likely to have mostly second-rate troops available. Our troops shouldn't fare too badly against them. In fact, come to think of it, I doubt they have much in the way of AA in their units, our Assault Aviation Corps could wreak havoc on them... If we can get a couple more in the fight, that is.
I don't expect much from the Italians, they're bogged down in N Africa and the Med, and they haven't even dealt with the British Division in Athens.
The Hungarians are another matter, as you suggested, they don't seem to have the best equipment, but they do have a ton of AA, old AA, but still. In any case, priority goes to the toughest battles, and with the number of battles going on, the VVS can only just about manage. If there is a bit of a quiet spell, it's an opportunity to rebuild org and strength, not to go out and bomb some more. That said, I've had some decent success with bombing Hungarians, it does seem to work better than bombing, going by casualty numbers, than bombing Germans. They also have an Air Force, made mostly of Italian-built bi-planes.
Bulgaria could also make a tempting target for an amphibious operation, with short supply lines through the Black Sea, relatively difficult terrain that would make holding a bridgehead relatively easy, and with the Bulgarians likely to move most of their troops to the main front.
I'm not sure whether the Bulgarians are actually going to do anything, as the war is pretty far from their doorstep. Unless, of course, we land troops in Bulgaria. In any case, the first order of business in the context of naval operations is to give our fleets the freedom to move, so the follow-up to 'Thor' has to happen first, so we can bunch together our transports and possibly do something on a larger scale, be it in the Baltic, the Black Sea, or even the Mediterranean. For an operation in Bulgaria, we could use the Mountaineers who are currently on the Turkish border.
With regards to training garrison units to replace the rifle corps currently entrenched in urban areas, I support the idea. At least for the cities still further out from the front. A rifle corps can be rotated in if it becomes apparent that city will end up on the front line in the near future, and garrison units are better than nothing in the case of a surprise breakthrough, yet wouldn't tie down a full rifle corps that could be much better used on the front. Training at least a few garrison corps would be useful for the future, too; we intend to come out of this war holding territory, and tying down fully combat-capable rifle corps on occupation duty is a waste of valuable military resources. If needed, we can rotate the enlisted personnel in those units, replacing Soviet personnel with those recruited from the local populace, while keeping the trained and experienced officer and NCO cadre.
Yes to all those reasons, Garrisons can be built extremely quickly, build-time is 45 days. They are excellent on the defensive, and they need only 30% as many officers (though if you count HQ's it's more than that.). The problem is that there's just no space in the production queue right now. A lot of stuff will be delivered in July, so we should be able to make some soon. Also, upgrade costs remain massive, but the big ticket items like Inf Small arms are most of the way there, so there should be a pretty rapid drop in the coming month. Priority goes, off course to reinforcements and supplies for the units already in the field. And that's becoming pretty expensive pretty quick. Less than half of IC is going into production, and we're still only upgrading 70% of units that can be upgraded right now... Priority goes to the German front, of course. Even if we train too many Garrison units, we can always upgrade the more experienced ones at a later date and make them into regulars. It's win-win really.
I'm curious to see how well the Tank army will do it's job, once it gets to the front. The situation is turning bad, as the Germans keep pushing, using tanks and numerical superiority to their advantage, while our units are getting disorganised etc. We're winning strategically, but in the field, right now, the Germans are taking ground. The tide will have to be turned.
