Fatherland - Deutschland über alles

[Kanitatlan]

23:00 June 9th 1939

This is the accumulated naval losses for the recent period. The losses to aircraft at the top are the remnants of the Danish fleet being mopped up and then we see the results of all the recent naval battles. The more recent air losses are Casper’s raids on the channel entrance culminating in the sinking of the Hermes (CV I). This display is the only practical way of observing the success of the air missions as the battles yield no result event to put in a pop up.

The blank lines are interesting as strictly speaking these should all be self-inflicted losses (i.e. blue on blue). I am a little confused since the loss of the Nelson is recent and it should be a type IV battleship and the only ones seen are in the recent air sea battles at the mouth of the channel. I don’t see it could accidentally get sunk from friendly AA fire. Anyone have any insight on this issue?

Should Casper get the credit ?

23:00 June 9th 1939 b

Here is a report of ALL of the naval battles so far. The daily battles that have been occurring get combined into single battles so there are limited numbers of battles showing. Just to show a bit of background here is my take on all these battles.

1. Pentland Firth : Kenneth the Great winning a gold star and then cautiously retiring. Called an allied victory but takes some imagination to really believe that
2. 3 time mouth of the tames in Blaues Emu providing a red herring (its all about coloured creatures). The last battle could legitimately be called an allied victory.
3. The battle of Store Bält was my transport fleet successfully evading the Danish fleet (reflagged as British). This is therefore really a German victory
4. There are then 2 battles in the mouth of the Thames during the early part of the France campaign where the main fleet made another cautious withdrawal. Again the sensible view is both are German victories.
5. All the attacks on Rotterdam and Ghent and British carrier strikes to no useful effect. They call them German losses but as far as I am concerned they were all draws since the raids where “unsuccessful”.
6. Blaues Emu running from the French in the Wash. Again fulfilling the assigned role of distraction and reconnaissance. Not a real loss.
7. Multiday battle in the Mouth of the Thames with the new expanded main fleet (i.e 10 CVs) being sufficiently successful to fight of all comers without loss.

Continuing naval strategy will involve withdrawal from battle to avoid loss so there may be more battles rated as loss rather than win. The win/lose column only matters in specific circumstances such as trying to execute or disrupt and amphibious landing. For now the battle is about inflicting losses without taking them. I have some damaged ships but I am only going to withdraw ships with substantial damage.

The biggest lesson from the recent naval battles is that the enemy is not going to force me to retreat to preserve the fleet and that I can therefore carry out amphibious landings as and when I wish. I am not ready yet but unless there is some fundamental change we will be moving to the landing stage of operations against the UK in the coming weeks.

 

[unmerged(47162)]

wow the RN is losing capital ships left and right...excellent!

 

[unmerged(53911)]

A toast: To the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine paving the way for the glorious assault of the Wermacht on the Britischer beaches!!

 

[GrimReaper]

I'm having an easy time? I better have!

Three CV's sunk; good going, keep it up!

 

[Profane]

when a fleet engages another one heavily damaged ships are sometimes instantly lost (before action begins) i have lost a carrier to 2 destroyers this way.... But this is the reason for the loss of the Nelson.

 

[unmerged(24320)]

Kanitatlan: ..I am a little confused since the loss of the Nelson is recent and it should be a type IV battleship and the only ones seen are in the recent air sea battles at the mouth of the channel. I don’t see it could accidentally get sunk from friendly AA fire. Anyone have any insight on this issue?

does the blank line preclude the sinking being done by German ships? to me, that is part of the criteria as to who gets credit for the sinking of the ship...

a fair way to assign credit for enemy ship losses is to credit air only if no German naval assets are present. same for presence of German naval assets only.

when you have both German air and naval assets present in a battle, then you should credit the losses between both branches of service. for this reason: that ship could have been dodging an aircraft attack, and ran into the path of an ship torpedo. alternatively, that ship could have been dodging a sea attack, and ran into the path of an airplane torpedo and/or bomb... thus, the percentage of air assets vis-a-vis naval assets gives you the probability of who gets credit for blank line sinkings. other thoughts?

excellent updates! !

 

[Kanitatlan]

09:00 June 10th 1939

The next naval battle is extremely successful with the British losing all 4 major capital ships remaining in their home fleet. This leaves this fleet relatively ineffective as its only remaining capital ship is a damaged heavy cruiser..

The battleships are both Royal Sovereign class – launched in 1916 with the classic 8 x 15” armament. Major refurbishment in the 1930s brought them up to BB II standard. The 8 x 15” WWI battleships are the mainstay of the British battleship fleet.

The names in use for the carriers are rather telling. IRL HMS Formidable was commissioned November 1940 and HMS Unicorn was commissioned March 1943. The British have therefore built sufficient carriers to match their real builds up to early 1943 suggesting a significant number of carriers unaccounted for. This may be an incorrect analysis bearing in mind I am assuming the game files list all the carrier names in the right order.

Guns 2

The imperial war museum in London is going to have some difficulty with its post war display of guns. These are two 15” guns from Royal Sovereign class battleships and I have a suspicion this may involve extensive diving. The only one I don’t remember sinking is the Ramillies and I’m sure that will be gone soon enough (if not already). [A quick check back shows that I sank it in the previous battle]

 

[Kanitatlan]

13:00 June 10th

With significant accumulated damage to various ships and the completion of repairs at Amsterdam I have redeployed the entire fleet to be based there. Repairs to the reserve fleet mean I can put some ships back on active operations whilst returning some to port for repairs. I am looking to have the whole fleet operational for the actual invasion of the UK.

08:00 June 11th 1939

Meanwhile something really weird is happening at Ghent. The British home fleet, which no longer has any aircraft carriers (or battleships), is carrying out a carrier port strike mission on my transport fleet. This is a rather annoying little flaw in the game system and I suspect they will continue doing this. It is difficult to understand. The only explanation I can think of is that the fleet was given port strike orders a long time ago and these have never been cancelled despite this fleet being defeated in several battles and, of course, losing all its carriers. Rather annoyingly they are still effective and do damage to the port. I didn’t record this for this strike but later there will be a port strike image with the resulting damage report.

 

[Kanitatlan]

22:00 June 11th 1939

The reorganised Kriegsmarine has returned to patrol and encounters the British fleet. The mix of ships clearly identifies this fleet as the one bombed at the other end of the channel rather than the home fleet. If this fleet was already of a port strike mission then it has not been defeated since it had a carrier (HMS Hermes sunk by Casper’s naval air patrols, this fleets only loss to air attack).

This nighttime interception is going to be ineffective and the British fleet escapes by morning.

The size of the port strike fleet clearly indicates that it was in fact this one and therefore there is no evidence to support the suggestion that defeat doesn’t reset the AI orders for a unit.

 

[Kanitatlan]

09:00 June 12th 1939

A passing transport fleet is detected at extreme range but the Kriegsmarine is able to close sufficiently to strike and sink them before they escape. This indicates a closing speed of around 15-20 kph = 10-12 knots (has to close in 3 hours maximum to allow 1 hour for the attack), which is actual practical against slow transports. It is odd that you only have 4 hours to close with them before the speed up and escape. I suspect that if I followed the battle my fleet probably closed 60 km in the first hour. The lack of control on the rate of range variation and the lack of influence from ship speed is a little odd but the naval rules seem to work well enough.

 

[Kanitatlan]

09:00 June 12th 1939 b

It is now time for some more interesting things to start happening on land. This is a political view of Spain and shows the rather odd situation with respect to the Spanish civil war. I stopped watching several years ago since the Republicans had obviously won. As has been seen before they seem to have failed to convert their total superiority into actual victory with the Fascists still holding onto 1 VP and all the colonies. This has no practical impact on what I want to do since I don’t want any allies.

The Spanish republican force remain fairly primitive although every man at least has his own gun.

09:00 June 12th 1939 c

The invasion of Spain starts as a very simple operation with the massive invasion force simply marching across the undefended border. The defenders are all preoccupied with the Nationalists and I presume the majority of the defenders will be clustered around Barcelona. This does mean that there will be major forces immediately on my eastern flank up in the mountains and therefore the key operation is simply getting to Bilbao before they do.

 

[Kanitatlan]

10:00 June 12th 1939

To the east I am launching a simultaneous invasion of Hungary. The coordination of the two operations is principally from waiting for all strategic movement to cease as the few forces moving that way have a significant impact on TC and therefore there is a major gain waiting for them to finish. The invasion of Hungary is a relatively simple affair simply aimed at taking all the VPs with encirclement operations being entirely incidental to this task.

Hungarian troops parade before the commencement of hostilities

 

[unmerged(47162)]

and down goes hungary and the iberian peninsular!

 

[Kanitatlan]

14:00 June 12th 1939

Lt General DCP’s ambush at Brest (single armoured division like Cherbourg) has finally drawn some attention with the resulting destruction of obsolete Canadian bombers and escort fighters. As can be seen the Canadian air force is taking very substantial losses in these operation. As long as Allied bomber forces turn up without real fighters they are going to take very high losses. The absence of allied fighter support indicates that this kind of defensive operation will contribute nothing to the battle of Britain except to guarantee the safety of my airfields.

 

[Kanitatlan]

05:00 June 13th 1939

Zwei Koetz is leading the fast armoured strike through central Hungary. His forces is composed entirely of armour and therefore is not being slowed down by motorised infantry like the other groups following on behind. This battle may look good for the defenders at first sight but will soon be won by our forces. Just consider, the attackers are hard targets faced by 1936 technology which will probably average an effective firepower of 3.5 versus my 6 units which probably average a fire power of about 15. Factor in leadership advantages and this starts to look like a 6:1 advantage.

The low org of the attacking force is due to the fact that they haven’t stopped moving and attacking since the war began. All units have had relatively short periods for org recovery and this is particularly true of forces moved to the Hungarian borders. At some point I will be forced to allow units to regain org but this process is most efficient if done all at once starting from a very low point. Therefore the war will keep going for the foreseeable future. Levels of force engagement will become partial and some forces will be allowed to rest.

10:00 June 13th 1939

Five hours later shows victory immanent and follow up forces launch an overwhelming attack on Debrecen. This attack is commanded by HobotnicaJoe, one of our very best Generals and a Hungarian émigré. See A Magyar Királyság újjászületése (Revival of the Kingdom of Hungary) - a Hungarian AAR http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=224022 . In this game he is part of the German army but will soon be commanding Hungarians recruited to the flag (currently we are on 27% recruitment on foreign manpower)[ 10% base in misc.txt file, ministers: +10% foreign, +10% all, +25% all ]. This should give HobotnicaJoe a small Hungarian army to command within a year or so.

FT-17

Hungarian medium armour model I but properly classed as a light tank. These tanks may be bullet proof and were state of the art in WWI but they are sadly irrelevant to modern warfare and offer little help to the Hungarian forces.

11:00 June 13th 1939

A nice but unnecessary combat event for HobotnicaJoe. This is pretty irrelevant to the battle but I am looking for some of my leaders to acquire additional combat skills. No such luck on this occasion but there is plenty of time yet. I am a little disappointed with the fact that none whatsoever have been acquired yet. This has to be a consequence of the very low levels of engagement that my operations generate. I don’t like long battles as I lose precious German manpower and therefore I try to win with as little combat as possible.

 

[Kanitatlan]

11:00 June 14th 1939

Another stray British force wanders into the Kriegsmarine and is punished for its error. I suspect the second light cruiser is left barely afloat since they have experience 4 hours of sustained day light good weather attack.

 

[Kanitatlan]

15:00 June 14th 1939

The final attack of the initial invasion involves General Hannibals panzer corps which is heavy on motorised infantry. This is a rather weaker attack due to high motorised content but 15% combined arms bonus, skill 5 panzer leader with offensive doctrine and trickster does kind of add up. The defenders are also already badly depleted so Hannibal soon wins.

18:00 June 15th 1939

With all the battles one the German forces complete their movements to encircle Budapest before launching the final assault.

Hungarian troops retreating in good order.

 

[Kanitatlan]

19:00 June 15th 1939

Air operations in the west have now been expanded to provide air cover over east of England and the channel. The idea is that air patrols will intercept most enemy operations before they enter my territory so loss of resident air defences over key European locations will not be an issue. For some reason air operations remain entirely based on minor allied nations, in this case South Africa. These nations all field fairly obsolete air forces and therefore pose little challenge. The AI cheats with escort fighters (the AI gets free brigades) and therefore gets reasonable technology escorts but twinned with hopelessly obsolete tactical bombers. Air Marshall Milch is in command of this group. The heavy losses on the first squadron are, I believe, a relic of the air battle over the Mouth of the Thames just before the invasion of France. I suspect this air battle may be the cause of the non-appearance of British fighters if they haven’t properly recovered either.

Notice the level of air units across the visible air bases. In just the limited visible zone there appears to be 52 allied squadrons based. These are three level 10 airfields but are still massively over capacity.

 

[Kanitatlan]

04:00 June 16th 1939

This is classic weird AI behaviour with the transfer of the Hungarian air units to the UK as if their presence in Hungary is less important than protecting the UK. It may be that they are afraid of being overrun in Budapest but I haven’t even attacked it yet so their fear is somewhat unfounded. This level of interception is extremely bad new for them and is likely to result in extreme casualties. This would be nice if it wasn’t for the fact that they will soon surrender to me anyway.

06:00 June 16th 1939

This is a nice interception by Air Marshall Felmy. I spent some considerable effort trying to avoid being badly treated by these naval bombers and some heavy losses inflicted will be a great boost to the safety of naval operations. Currently I am afraid to move north of the Channel as this seems to be what triggered Naval bomber attacks in the past. These aircraft have no escort fighters so should go down in higher numbers than equivalent tactical bombers (but only a bit).

 

[Kanitatlan]

07:00 June 16th 1939

The first daring arrival in Bilbao is a lone HQ threatened by massive counter-attack. The HQ has not been involved in any combat and therefore can be retreated immediately but for some reason the Spanish counter-attack is immediately cancelled. The reconnaissance is useful showing the Spanish very strongly concentrated to the east as expected.