Fatherland - Deutschland über alles

[Kanitatlan]

02:00 April 25th 1941​

The landing at Cork has been increased to 3 divisions but it seems to me that they need better odds than this to be successful especially against a division with such high organisation. I have a small technology advantage but they have significant supplementary artillery.

At this point I am confident that my defences are well able to defeat the enemy landings but if anything else is thrown in (or they become competent) than an actual landing is possible. The AI has sent in these landings without proper leadership and without any naval bombardment in support which has made them much weaker than they should be. Clearly the AI still has coordination problems but delivering simultaneous landings from 12 divisions transported from the far side of the world is somewhat impressive as a start. If this had happened a couple of months sooner then they would have got ashore and created considerable difficulties. In fact that many divisions landing might easily have been too many for the local air forces to clear and resulted in loss of the island.

I now have a permanent commitment of 5 divisions include one panzer division simply to hold onto this island. I cannot afford too many commitments on this scale.

06:00 April 25th 1941​

With the arrival of the armour and on going destruction of the invasion fleet this landing is clearly already defeated so I guess the panic is now over. This is the closest to a successful opposed landing the AI has ever thrown against me but I guess that is mostly because I don’t tend to oppose landings.

03:00 April 26th 1941​

Another nice naval operation in the Indian Ocean reveals the wild mixture of enemy units. Whilst the ships are officially British the name of the sunken unit clearly indicates foreign origin.

08:00 April 26th 1941​

The chain of battles in the Indian Ocean all involve relatively small enemy fleets and are quite successful leading to the navy acquiring some additional kills. To even things out I am periodically reorganising the order of the carriers in each fleet since losses are primarily attributed to the earlier ones in each fleet.

By this point where the fleets are patrolling the Indian Ocean the fleet make up has been adjusted as follows

14 CV, 7 CL, 11 DD
14 CV, 16 DD
10 CA, 8 CL, 8 DD

All the older ships that would result in fleets moving more slowly have been put in a reserve fleet for transport escort. I am still, however, deploying some relatively short ranged CLs and DDs in the main fleets.

11:00 April 26th 1941​

The surface action group gets their first fleet action against a small South African transport group. They have been assigned the “safest” patrol area close in to the African coast as they could easily come off really badly if they engage a major allied surface fleet but the whole area does seem fairly safe. They are inflicting disappointing levels of damage but I suppose I shouldn’t expect them to be that good.

05:00 April 27th 1941​

The first operation for the strategic bombing force is carpet bombing of the small group of Russian divisions that has escaped to Petsamo. They are already badly depleted by hunger and carpet bombing is not very effective. My ground forces have already reoccupied Murmansk and this force in Petsamo can be eliminated any time that I like but I felt the strategic bombers needed the opportunity for a quick fight. Their experience gain appears to be stunningly slow so I guess this is all rather pointless.

15:00 April 27th 1941​

Further action by the gunfire group remains rather disappointing. I had hoped they would be really good at sinking enemy ships but enemy forces still appear well able to escape just like the get away from my carrier groups.

18:00 April 27th 1941​

Slightly weird stuff is happening in central Africa. I have some rather minimalist forces advancing and instantly overcoming the Vichy defenders. Unfortunately I missed the battle so I didn’t see the state of the defenders. The only reasonable conclusion is that they are still out of supply and hence the 9 divisions I can see here are rendered completely ineffective and liable to vanish. I could correct this by, for example, setting up a merger of Vichy into another country along the lines of the Chinese warlord events but this would require some rather extensive juggling of save file settings which was bad enough setting up the Petal Throne. As it is I will simply take advantage of the situation and extend my presence while I can.

19:00 April 27th 1941​

The surface action group finally gets some credits and the heavy cruiser Timpino can begin to build up its history of ships sunk and try to catch up to the experience levels of the carriers.

 

[unmerged(62857)]

I am beginning to wonder if there is any theatre where the AI will have any ability to take the initiative and utilize its numerical advantage, or have the US and Petal throne set up monster towers of troops on various pacific islands with no strategic or victory point value? Perhaps the Soviets have joined them in that endeavor... :wacko:

Basically, I wanna see the super skyscrapers of troops across a broad front. Come AI, lets go!

Bah... the defense of my nation has come to this... Cheering on an algorithm.

Meh.

 

[Lord E]

Interesting to see troops from the Petal throne in Ireland, they sure are a long way from home, but with their strength in resources and manpower I can understand that they are sending forces against you. Kind of interesting choice of theatre though, I think Ireland might become even more threatened in the future and should the island force you to increase your forces even more that will have an unwanted effect on the offensive power and the clearing of other regions. But as long as the AI isn’t able to send better attack I think the current level of forces should be able to defeat anything the AI can send against you…

 

[Kanitatlan]

Bafflegab It's nice to see a representative of the enemy downhearted but I suspect the AI will look a lot better if it picks somewhere else to invade (which is now a distinct possibility)

Lord E I'm hoping you are correct about Ireland but I am much more concerned about the AI realising it can ivade elsewhere. Strictly speaking the range changes I have made would allow AI invasions anywhere from Murmansk to Dakar which leaves an awful lot of unguarded coast.

 

[Kanitatlan]

07:00 April 28th 1941​

We are having another non-trivial battle on the West African front. This time we have a river crossing but although the start is before dawn most of the combat is in daylight. I would normally not be keen on 9 hour battles as I have previously set myself the objective of trying to limit every enemy division to 4 hours fighting before being destroyed. In this rather sparsely occupied theatre that is rather difficult but at least the use of armoured divisions will severely limit the losses the enemy can inflict.

04:00 April 29th 1941​

As you can see our naval patrols extend all the way across the area defined by the southern tip of India westwards to Africa and all the area to the north. With total dominance of this area I can prevent all allied amphibious operations against the exposed coasts of Arabia and Africa and leave myself free to execute amphibious operations of my own. There is little prospect of any such operations in the near future but if when the time comes the invasion of India could be executed via major amphibious action.

06:00 April 29th 1941​

Weather conditions in Russia have ameliorated slightly with frost giving way to a sea of mud but this is still completely useless for ground operations so we must wait further. We are rapidly approaching the anniversary of the original Barbarossa attack.

10:00 April 30th 1941​

This is an interesting demonstration that the British still retain significant air assets despite being reduced to their eastern colonial holdings. If only the allied air forces were sensibly managed they could dominate the skies over Persia. Probably their biggest problem is that the AI does not build airfields.

19:00 April 30th 1941​

This overview of Africa reveals the extent of our further progress. It has to be said that most forces are either stalled recovering org or will be once they arrive in their next province. The advance into Nigeria should be about to stall and will require substantial time before the divisions involved can move on and start occupying all the rest of West Africa. Once the Russian front reactivates this front is going to look very static with probably nothing significant happening in the whole duration of the new Russian campaign. There is some temptation to supplement operations with some amphibious landings to tidy up the allied control islands off the coast although, since I won’t be defending them, this may be rather pointless if the navy then moves away to richer hunting grounds.

 

[Kanitatlan]

00:00 May 2nd 1941​

This is yet further reinforcement of the idea that Canada has some special quality as an intelligence target. I now have several air doctrine blueprints for the next wave of interceptor org increases.

13:00 May 2nd 1941​

Amazingly enough the Russians have finally launched their first attack on the Volga line and it is just beyond the limit of my force build up. I have launched an attempted flanking attack but it is a forlorn hope with everything including the weather against me. The only possible response is to abandon Ulyanovsk and allow the Russians to stick their heads in the noose (well you didn’t think it would do them any good did you?)

04:00 May 4th 1941​

Another appearance by the now clearly defeated US strategic bombers suggests that very soon they won’t have these ones anymore. Another round of medals for our interceptor pilots. Notice the ground attack bombing going in at Chandahar. I have a full ground attack group operating in the area whenever suitable targets can be found. There has been something of a build up of air power stretching from Oman northwards as far as Moscow providing heavy air support in every area. This has come about due to the release of all the air units supporting the Mediterranean campaign plus the passage of enough time to restore decent org levels.

08:00 May 4th 1941​

Having captured Dakar I can’t help moving on to one more operation despite beginning to be a little exposed since capturing Tambacounda isolates Bathurst and will allow me to destroy at least one British division and I rather suspect the marines are retreating there as well. One concern is that I am fairly sure the Vichy motorised division in the top right is retreating to Dakar so I cannot afford to actually vacate the province. Guderian has also used the experience to gain another trait making him one of our most highly rated officers although he doesn’t yet have the high skill levels of some of our “new” leaders.

13:00 May 4th 1941​

This naval battle is a great success for the navy, again, and suggests that the Australians are sending troops to the Basrah area. If I withdraw the navy then I will need intense air-naval operations in the Persian Gulf and strong beach defences.

18:00 May 4th 1941​

Another battle and KMS Timpino is starting to build up a list of enemy losses.

02:00 May 5th 1941​

Finally the weather in Russia is beginning to clear. This level of mud is still too high but there is no rain showing and I suspect the campaign start is now imminent.

 

[Kanitatlan]

13:00 May 5th 1941​

The Murmansk theatre has finally been closed down (again) but I am too nervous to move the troops away this time. I know that the Russians no longer have any real chance for another landing but it seems appropriate to paranoid this time.

03:00 May 8th 1941​

Finally the weather has cleared and as dawn breaks ………

Review​

At this point I have spent some time on reviewing my existing policies so there useful analysis to present.

I have reviewed the possibilities for ahead of time ground force research which shows that whilst the cost is elevated it isn’t outrageous. However, the benefit from most of them is quite limited and I have picked out 1943 Infantry as the one worth pursuing. This will take about 100 days to research instead of about 60 if I wait. It yields a 14% increase in infantry division firepower but more importantly an effective double upgrade for my garrison divisions and introduces 1943 Militia which is an excellent defensive unit. The real reason for going for it is so that I can begin building these 1943 Militia divisions as defensive cover in Western Europe.

I have given some serious consideration to researching Mechanised divisions ready to expand my mobile forces but for the time being I want to devote available manpower to building a large militia force. The two mechanised techs will take about 50 days each and I will need to research them at some point.

Note that most infantry technologies now have a rocket component that is enormously accelerated by my rocket base.

Other ground troop opportunities are: advanced medium armour, advanced artillery and improved SP artillery. Researching this offers much less increase in combat power and I have decided to not bother with them. I will continue to consider the Improved SP Art as this also offers a 4% casualty reduction for the armoured divisions.

Improved Electronic Computer (1943) takes research from 125% to 130% and therefore yields a 4% research speed improvement. Researched 2 years early yields a gain of 144 additional team days of research. The cost for early research will be something like 60 days (guesstimate) so this is worth doing.

The current Naval doctrine position is weak as I have in date doctrines with significant affect that have not been researched. The key one is Deep Operations but this has high difficulty and I have very poor skill matches for it. I estimate it will cost 200 days to research and am loath to research without a blueprint. In all likelihood Japan has and US might have this doctrine already and therefore I am going to delay it whilst stealing more doctrines. This is a bit of a risk as advanced naval doctrines are the key to making my carrier task forces truly supreme at sea.

Other research remains as before with current immediate targets being better CAGs, better air transports and CVLs.

The short-term operational objectives are to consolidate progress in Africa and launch a massive attack on the Russians whilst defending in Persia. Following this I will be looking to advance further in Africa and potentially support this with amphibious operations down the east coast where I seem to have excellent naval superiority.

Longer-term there is the issue of what to do in Asia. The immediate objectives are western Siberia followed by the central Asian Russia. This will eliminate a great deal of existing Russian industrial capacity. I will continue to fight through the Irkutsk area with the objective of eliminating Tannu Tuva and possibly Mongolia. Advancing on that front will ultimately meet very strong counter action from the Petal Throne and it is attractive to hold back a bit. In parallel forces will break into Afghanistan, Eastern China and then northern Tibet from the Russian Central Asian area. The front is going to be almost continuous from the far north down into India and therefore there is limited opportunity for properly inactive fronts. The poor territory means that I will have to proceed on a wide front and it will be difficult to decide where to stop.

Ultimately I need to abandon the concentration to the north and look to a major offensive in India. India is a much better theatre for mobile warfare and I cannot afford to allow my forces to be bogged down to the north. Once I am engaged with the Petal Throne then destruction of their forces needs to be the primary objective rather than taking territory. There seems no realistic prospect of actually annexing Russia so on their front the issue is where to draw the finish line for the main offensive. Whilst it would be nice to leave a layer of Russian territory between myself and the Petal Throne forces but this will only delay the beginning of destroying their forces.

I would ask for suggestions but I don’t believe I can realistic present sufficient information for competent analysis so I suspect there is little point.

 

[Kanitatlan]

IC and manpower cost considerations​

It seems judicious to carry out some analysis of potential forces to be constructed for defending the European coast. There aren’t that many options and it does seems appropriate to evaluate them on the basis of BWA (Battle Winning Capability). For the purposes of this I will only take into account soft attack and total org although it would be appropriate to make some sort of allowance for defensiveness. Unfortunately defensiveness evaluation is dependent on the enemies attacking strength so I will simply assume an adequate defence has sufficient defensiveness. This isn’t really true and there should be a slight disadvantage to unit types with lower individual defensiveness. I will however allow a +10% bonus for the 1943 Garrison unit type as a representation of the average benefit of its 85% softness.

The following data is units type followed by days to build x per day cost = total IC days

Coastal fort 60x4 = 240
Infantry division 43x3.59 = 154.37 (10 manpower)
Artillery 31*3.3 = 102.3 (2 manpower)
Radar 108x2 = 216
Naval base 108x5 = 540
Garrison 29x3 = 87 (8 Manpower)
Militia 24x2.4 = 57.6 but will be 27x2.4 = 64.8 (5 manpower)

TAC 84x10.3 = 865.2 (2 manpower)

As you can see my slider and minister settings provide seriously cheap units so that IC cost isn’t really a consideration. With IC at 621 and manpower income at 2.97 I can muster much more IC than manpower towards most unit types. For example dedicating 100% of manpower to 1943 Militia will only use about 6% of my IC capacity and infantry divisions only about 7%. Therefore the real issue is how to get a decent beach defence plus some counterattack capability for the least manpower. Here are a few combinations (all assuming 1943 infantry has been researched)

3 x militia = 3x6 SA times 3x99 org => 5346
1 x militia + 1 x Inf = 6+16 SA times 2x99 org => 4356
1 x Inf Art = 22 times 110 => 2420 (but 3 less manpower)
2 x garrison = 2x16 times 2x99 +10% = > 6970 (but 1 extra manpower)
1 x garrison + 1 x militia + Art = 16+6+6 times 99+110 +5%= 6144

In all cases except the last the defensive force is balanced so all units will fail around the same time. In the last case the garrison will survive longer and true defensive capability might be even higher. The analysis is quite interesting as it reveals the garrison divisions as being extremely effective for static beach defence but rather vulnerable to be defeated and destroyed whereas all the rest will survive their battles. One of the key criteria is being able to deploy units in the right size quantities to hold a beach against expected levels of attack as economically as possible. In all cases it seems garrisons have an advantage so I need to consider using them.

After further (unpublished) analysis I have drawn the following conclusions

1 garrison with artillery is adequate to defend against all of the invasions offered up by the enemy so far. Such a defence will only fail if the AI becomes seriously better organised with shore bombardment support and the use of Marines with brigade attachments. The alternative is 2 Militias which unfortunately yields 10% less BWA but does proved a mobile force. I suspect that I will use a mixture of the two force build-ups with a scattering of infantry divisions for a counter-attack force. An interesting question is how effective is a coastal cordon of 2 militia per province with defensive support orders as this may make a significant difference to the overall best force.

We will deploy garrisons with artillery onto key provinces for static defence with the majority of the rest made up of militia. There are some arguments for the use of Militia with attached artillery. This provides a fairly decent unit for the cost of 7 manpower rather than 8 for a garrison but it has less firepower and less BWA. Nonetheless I may deploy some of these as well. The final consideration has to be that all garrison or militia based forces are useless for attack and therefore there will need to be sufficient regular infantry to deal with enemy incursions supported by local air power. I may deploy some mobile troops as well but they are genuinely expensive on IC and TC which makes them only desirable if they offer a significant economy in total forces present.

 

[unmerged(52973)]

Don' t you have a fleet guarding the UK-Islands, since its my experience that they are the most targetted places for amphibious landings by allied forces. A small fleet battlefleet is enough since most landings are not protected by most advanced ships.

But I really like this AAR, especially the analyses from which I learn alot(like militia vs garrisons, although I always use garrisons with police brigades with infantry and HQ-support nearby (like in Paris and you can use those low ranked high commanders like Von Bohm-Ermoli) for emergency situations)


Keep it up!!

 

[unmerged(40779)]

Could there be any sense in building coastal fortifications? I've never tried building them, and am unaware of their cost-effectiveness, but one could imagine that now when you have well enough IC but a lack of MP those could become handy.

 

[unmerged(72831)]

First of all, I want to say that this AAR is great, so great that the first thing when I start my PC on work is to open it and see if there are any updates.
I truly admire your gaming skills.
I would suggest the same as Kasakka. In my games as Germany I build a lot of coastal forts and defend the beaches with Militia+Art. It was enough , and is for me the most MP saving resolution of the problem. Building coastal defenses has some benefits - saves your MP, TC, supply and oil consumption as you use less units to defend. If you add some air cover IMHO you will be fine with 1 Mil+Art on every beach. With some mobile reserve ofcourse.

 

[Petrarca]

Where the hell is the Imperial Fleet!? Why aren't our carriers scouring the Indian Ocean against threats to the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere!

The long and short of it is that I'm concerned that the Petal Throne AI is busy building up Pacific fortresses and conducting patrols out to Midway rather than searching for the German flattops. A problem of the file, I suppose.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Burgundy Currently there is no fleet in European waters. The theory that it need not be big is rather dependent on the game running to normal parameters. I suspect the huge AI IC boost will result in some fairly big AI fleets turing up in the European theatre especially if I give them a target. My current strategy is based entirely on air power as a defence and has been working quite well so far. You may be right about having a defensive fleet but I dislike having units idle and want to devote everything I have got to constant fighting and destruction of enemy forces.

Kasakka, DNG The coastal fortress idea is worth some consideration but there are 53 exposed beaches in Europe and this would require huge IC expenditure to fortify throughout. Obviously I could consentrate on core areas but even so the cost is dramatic. Just consider the following.

Each fort level is a -9% penalty (additive) to the enemy and therefore can be argued to be equivalent to a 9% increase in the BWA (battle winning ability) of the defenders. This is not the same as a 9% force increase since that would contribute both firepower and organisation. Therefore we could consider the following comparisson.

If a force has size N then substituting a force of size M with a fortress to provide the same BWA gives the following formula

N^2 = M^2 / (1-(Fort x 9%))

This gives the following force reductions for different fort levels to maintain the same BWA

1 -4.6%
2 -9.5%
3 -14.5%
4 -20%
5 -26%
6 -32%
7 -39%
8 -47%
9 -56%
10 -68%

As you can see we need a lot of fort levels to achieve a dramatic improvement in the required force levels. Obviously we could use forts to fine tune the defensive force to achieve the minimum adequate defence but if 2 divisions is an adequate defence then we need 8 fort levels to reduce it to 1. This is an extremely poor return and is due to the fact that forts contribute no organisation improvement.

BUT note that forts will improve the effectiveness of the defenders defense scores and so the benefit may be very slightly better than illustrated.

Coastal forts are also completely useless once the enemy has landed.

Looking at the economics, if I build a level 8 fort in every exposed European beach then it will cost around 100,000 IC days or about eight months disposal IC income (currently about 150K per year). This is a fantastically expensive measure for reducing the defence requirements of European beaches and quite frankly not worth it.

Overall the expense against the return provided is appalling and this is why I never build coastal forts (actually I never build any forts). As an alterantive defence I could build over 100 Tactical Bomber squadrons. Whilst these would use up significant supplies, oil and TC they would do a dramatically better job of destroying any invasion. In the end the wide choice of landing locations available to the AI means that fortifications are a completely impractical option.

Petrarca I'm sorry to say but the imperial fleet is pretty much nowhere to be found. You are probably right that they are focusing on defending the seas further east although I rather expected them to pay some attention to the Arabian Gulf.

The whole issue of having it easy because the enemy navy is elsewhere is something of a double edged sword. Whilst it makes my current operations easier it also means that I am not depleting those fleets and they are rapidaly building up so I will be faced with something much worse later.

 

[TheExecuter]

Yeah...eventually he will have to commence operations in the China Sea or in the Western Atlantic...


...though I think when he does, those massive fleets will be out of supply!

I'm interested to see how long it takes for the ai to reorient their forces to meet you in the Arabian Sea. This is sort of an experiment for me...does the AI orient its fleets like their air force (i.e. concentrate where the human player concentrates, generally) or if the AI directs its fleets towards supporting its amphibuous operations (ought to see a concentration in Irish Sea waters then) or something else?

Keep up the good work conqueror! My ships are waiting, and waiting...and waiting...come back here and fight!

TheExecuter

 

[unmerged(41995)]

Burgundy In the end the wide choice of landing locations available to the AI means that fortifications are a completely impractical option.

I concur. Historically, the Brits invested more in rapid response forces than static defences.

The Germans could afford to fortify Normandy and other stretches because they were obvious choices.

If you knew where the AI was going to attack, then you could build forts there. But I think any form of defense in this scenario is a stop gap measure. We all know Kanitatlan that you are the mighty aggressor and we all know the best form of defence is to attack!

 

[Brad1]

I don't think that any defensive forces should be built. You should use defense in depth and mobile forces. I don't see using the hundreds of manpower you are going to need to build the forces to be as good a use as mechanized divisions. A division is pretty much a waste of TC and supplies unless it is actively engaging the enemy. How many of these divisions do you think will actually defend beaches from a direct assault?

 

[unmerged(53911)]

I believe it was Nostradamus who said: "Beware the Asian Horde!" The Petal Throne is coming (and they really want to visit Ireland - and take lots of photos! -- sorry, bad stereotypical joke --); I also wonder how bad those transport ships stank after that long trip around the Cape (or even through the Panama Canal)!

I like the idea of an interspersed defense allowing for additional mobility. While I understand Brad's comment regarding Defense by Land (a tactic that you have used successfully in the past), I don't agree that it would be a good choice vis-a-vis protecting Fortress Europe as the logistics of recalling the size force necessary to repel an established (and expanded) beachhead would be a nightmare! I can't even begin to calculate the effect on TC (although I trust that you could and have - ).

BTW, I am glad to see the Luftwaffe earning another round of medals! Go Flyboys!!

 

[unmerged(72831)]

Kasakka, DNG
As an alterantive defence I could build over 100 Tactical Bomber squadrons. Whilst these would use up significant supplies, oil and TC they would do a dramatically better job of destroying any invasion. In the end the wide choice of landing locations available to the AI means that fortifications are a completely impractical option.

I was going to propose this, as they will be useful elsewhere, but I don't know how this will affect your TC. From your previous review of the resources situation I believe the oil and supply consumption won't be a problem, but I don't know what your TC situation is at the moment.
Effect of having bombers sinking enemy fleets will be better than just defending beaches. If you sink the ships they won't return again, the troops loaded also will go down. They will make nice decoration of the beaches though

 

[gagenater]

I would think that no more than tripwire defenses on the beaches would be sufficient - a single division on each. Back them up with more substantial mobile forces, with the objective of repulsing small invasions, or allowing large ones to land and then be crushed. If the AI lands with 1-2 divisions they will be repulsed at the beach. If they make a larger invasion, let them get some more divisions ashore, give yourself time to concentrate air and naval assets, and then try to take them all out - land forces, naval transports, etc. alltogether. After all maximum destruction of enemy assets is required to whittle them down and keep them from coming back.

 

[Kanitatlan]

TheExecuter I'm sorry but currently if you want a fight you will have to come over here ....

Everyone else the defence of Europe clearly needs further discussion so here goes

The Defence of Europe​

My analysis so far has looked at some of the details but hasn't really expressed any doctrine or decisions for the defence of Europe. One area that hasn't been discussed is the influence of strategic geography. This is raises a small group of clear cut issues. It is worth remembereing that I have put the invasion target list in the hands of the forum and currently (because I haven't looked up the provinces) I have no idea what is on the list. This means that US alndings may occur in unusual places rather than the typical HOI2 locations.

1) Kiel is part of the list of vulnerable beaches and I do not believe that an allied landing in Kiel can be allowed.

2) Secondary locations like Denmark and the Netherlands are too close to germany. An allied landing can be permitted but must be contained by regional forces already available in theatre.

3) More distant locations like northern France expose the homeland to some risk and require the consideration of a balance between rapid response and cost.

4) Airfields used as bases for anti-naval operations must be subject to basic security. They must have some defence so that air units can escape but if garrisons are involved it must also be sufficient to prevent an enemy landing so the unit is not lost.

5) Distant areas such as Scandinavia can be defended by the traditional empty space and long-term response.

This leaves us with a mixture of needs and some significant questions about how to address them. Some airfields are in high partisan areas (Portugal) and are best defended by garrisons giving question

a) what is an adequate garrison based defence?

b) what is an adeqaute defence for Kiel?

c) what level of forces is appropriate to the Netherlands / Denmark regions?

d) Should I have additional forces for northern france or rely on the units in the Netherlands area? What if the USA makes two landings?

e) To what extent is air power an adequate replacement for ground units?

f) Do I need a fleet in this area and is a major fleet on continuous patrol of the north sea a good substitute for land security in the bordering coastline.

Note that I have ignored the British mainland and Ireland as I believe the current occupation forces are sufficient to my needs. On the British mainland their scale is dictated by partisan activity and whilst they are inadequate to secure the island its temporary partial loss is no real threat. The existence of these island areas does dictate the need for a naval transport capability in the area but I am currently basing this on the concept of a channel dash covered by intense air activity.

This simply leaves a range of questions rather than answers. This isn't because I can't answer them but I don't feel like decision making tonight so I will let you discuss them a bit.