Barbaross II
We now enter a new phase of the war with the commencement of the second Russian campaign. The Russians have sought to take advantage of the outbreak of global war and now they must pay the price. The great mass of the army and substantial air forces are deployed against them concentrated in the zone east of the Volga.
Elsewhere we have a static defensive front in Persia with, hopefully, adequate forces to discourage any allied activity. They have substantial air support located in Persia and Oman providing good land and naval support along with enough interceptors to keep enemy air activity suppressed (aaah, optimism).
In Africa further German forces are operating on a broad front stretching all the way from the Horn of Africa to the far west coast. The German troops are sparse, lacking in air support and mostly with heavily depleted organisation. The offensive will continue but only until we meet significant opposition.
Against Russia the strategy is fairly simple but it requires a terrain map rather than political map to reveal the key factors and even then the swamp terrain is hard to make out. The larger part of our mobile forces are to pass eastwards south of the Urals and then spread out penetrating Russian territory in depth and exploiting the tactical situations that should arise to destroy Russian forces. The complete lack of Russian forces in Guriev (north Caspian coast) is due to an earlier attack supplemented by intense bombing. I have about 20 TAC squadrons and 12 CAS squadrons in theatre with another 16 TACs in Baku able to supplement the battle when there are enough active combat zones.
Substantial infantry forces are heading directly for the southern Urals to anchor our position against counter-attack from the north and crush all Russian forces congregating in the Urals. Forces passing to the east should be able to turn north and ultimately isolate the Urals allowing the Russian forces there to be encircled and destroyed.
The final strike is by mobile forces skirting the western edge of the Urals and attempting to isolate the northern half of the Russian front line. There are very limited German forces currently opposing these Russians and hence the Russians are able to advance north of the Volga and have even started a penetration in the centre. When it comes down to it they have no chance of achieving anything but a bit more room in the pocket they are going to form.
Beyond these initial attacks the campaign will have to develop in a opportunistic fashion as there are no great strategic opportunities to be had. We simply destroy their army and then plough on eastwards taking what we can as quick as we can.
Intelligence reports indicate the Russians have 204 infantry and 12 armoured divisions, 15 fighter squadrons and 4 bomber squadrons. This is significantly weaker than prior to the winter campaigns and indicates that our air attacks and the insanity around Murmansk have actually had a significant impact on Russian strength. More concerning is their current production levels which are running at 696 effective IC from 205 actual. This is a higher production level than Germany (currently 621) and could signal the creation of new divisions at a dramatic rate. They have also already researched Improved Infantry and are researching further improved grade units. This is an ominous warning for this summer suggesting that Germany is losing its technology lead in combat units and that major enemy powers will begin deploying equivalent forces.
An air interception over Persia illustrates the loss of technical lead with numerous US aircraft now being as advanced as ours. This particular batch is no immediate threat as they are passing by at low organisation levels but we should be expecting significant increases in aircraft losses. This encounter is probably a symptom of the increased air activity normally experienced just after a reload.
Allied ground forces adjacent to our frontline are beginning to build up and all provinces have dug in level that make routine bombing fairly pointless.
This air battle is definitely caused by the reload with what looks like the entire Russian air force having a pitched battle with 800 German interceptors. The Russian units are not all up to date but the two fighters are. Even so the enemy suffers much worse than we do and further Russian air activity is minimal.
In East Africa we have isolated a British division in Bathurst. In this theatre the destruction of one or two enemy divisions is a significant success and even though it contributes little to overall force levels it does allow further advances. These forces must, however, stay in the vicinity of Dakar until further security forces are brought forward as their supply lines remain extremely vulnerable.
To supplement the offensive to the north my Persian defence force is launching an attack on the Russian presence in Babol. The Russians are not particularly strong and the 16 TACs supporting more than make up for the mountainous terrain. This attack is part of operations to rapidly capture the nearer parts of Russian Central Asia.
The British immediately provide us with a tremendous opportunity for destroying another allied capital ship but rather amazingly it gets away whilst still afloat. Four hours combat in prime conditions with highly experienced crews and an expert leader and despite this 14 fleet carriers cannot sink a single battleship. Seems a bit rubbish to me.
We now have an air attack on three provinces on the far side of the Caspian. This offers no tremendous tactical advantage but they are the only provinces in range of my air base at Baku so it seemed like the Fallschirmjäger might as well do something useful to pass the time. Kasakka’s corps has some opposition to fight but they are no real challenge to our experienced troops and soon collapse when the air support arrives.
This does leave a pocket of German forces with no immediate supply source so the air transports are placed on supply drop duty round the clock. This proves amazingly ineffective to be does supply some residual level of supplies minimising the longer-term consequences. Unfortunately the advance in the south looks like taking forever.
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