Well, it was anything but the desperately hoped for quiet winter of 1948-49. The US Army found itself instead having to repel numerous enemy counter thrusts aimed at re-taking the lost German puppet of Trans-ural Republic. Cleverly the enemy slipped in first non-threatening Garrisons at key northern locations… and then followed this with a nearly unnoticed build up of infantry and mobile divisions. Using the good ESE Germany has at Archangel, the enemy embedded about 50 divisions in the swamp provinces to the east – importantly Mezen and Kotlas. It became too great a threat to our northern flank, and a plan was devised to have two large corps of armor thrust thru Moscow and on towards Archangel with an Airborne division to seize Mezen to so cut the German supply; and with about 3 dozen infantry divisions from our now many puppets, eliminate the large enemy pocket.
But fighting in swamps when frozen – and in Arctic and sub-Arctic climates is the greatest of difficulties – compounded further by the dearth of good puppet leaders. We thank the 82nd Airborne “All American” division for having brought a successful closure to the operation eventually. But manpower losses were high… and Washington had to further eliminate most everything in the build queue and disband the last of our militia (and other things) just to keep us able to continue reinforcing. Lost air battles accounted for a major part of the huge reinforcements needed; and the USAAF has been “realigned” so that 12-16 wings (8-12 bombers and 4 FTR) fly from same airport to protect against the most experienced Luftwaffe decimating individual stacks flying a separate different route to target. This strategy has greatly stopped unwanted encounters with the enemy fighters that are now showing up in greater strength basing themselves on the excellent airports in the Baltic/Poland region. But they only "hang around" our flight paths - not having the strength to tackle such a formidable target as a "4 stack USA bomber stream".
Finally we got a silent front… and focused on creating more puppets. USA now has 35.
But when the first province stopped being muddy on May 10th, 1949 we were rudely reminded by a new German counter-offensive that wartime was here again. Our response was to commit a full frontal attack along our whole line, and in a month we had annexed the Ukraine and Byelorussia. Now – June 23rd – our spearheads are very close to taking Warsaw, Konigsberg and Riga.
Our northern flank is locked on Leningrad, and 16 wings of STR-IV are systematically destroying Finland – the Finns having decided to pull all their army into their capital. .. and not contest Field Marshall Patton’s forces in nearby Leningrad. We have no intention of invading Finland, and believe we can effectively take it out of the war using only strategic bombing and a few divisions guarding their border.
Our southern flank is up against Romania where we hold the hills in Bessarabia, and Lvov – the latter guarded by a 10-division Chinese contingent that can’t decide if the regular or brigaded infantry stack should get their only offensive leader. So we consider that juxtaposition an acceptable defensive lock down while the US mobiles race to exploit the center… and grab the air bases to drive back the most dangerous Luftwaffe.
With our 2 allies - Canada and UK (and the 35 USA puppets) the Allies now total 135 INF, 37 MOT, 16 MECH, 57 ARM, 9 MAR, 2 PARA, 9 HQ, and 25 GAR. Meanwhile the Axis (9 countries and the puppet Norway remaining) seem to have 335 infantry and 8 ARM. But it appears that it is the German Luftwaffe (79 fighter squadrons) versus the Allied success in avoiding them (to so let us exploit our huge bomber arm) that mostly makes the difference between advancing the front… or needing to hold a defensive line. When an enemy stack in combat gets hit with 12 TAC-7 wings on interdiction, its org bar plummets faster than a car tire goes flat.
The two USA paratrooper divisions are invaluable. While the 82nd in Asia/Europe gets most of the credit for capturing enemy airbases, the 101st “Screaming Eagles” operating in Africa were invaluable for overcoming superior forces and speeding conquest of the interior jungle areas. But it seems to be the only airborne division that can claim – all by itself – to be responsible for ability to liberate a nation – Egypt. Because Italy is very much not annexed, taking North Africa left the inaccessible Great Sand Sea in enemy ownership. But ,deftly, the Screaming Eagles flew into that hell hole, and with a new air base placed, got extracted quickly. And now liberating Egypt is a possible choice.
However, the greatest interest in this war must be the nukes – with Germany having achieved a Dirty Bomb in spite of several severe setbacks caused by our espionage. But – fortunately – they never used the 2 nukes in their arsenal which our spies have now destroyed (but there might be more). While the largest target we have undoubtedly is the 10 Chinese divisions in Lvov, Patton with 9 armor divisions might be a better choice!
Meanwhile, we have now stockpiled 2 more nukes (having used our first 2 nukes to save us getting over-run back when the frontline was at Karachi last year). We carefully tracked when new nukes appeared because we are hoping to be able to estimate new arrivals of this powerful weapon:
- Nuke #3 appeared December 22, 1948
- We finished the 10th level of our reactor February 6th, 1949.
- Nuke #4 appeared June 8th 1949.
We have Early Nuclear Power achieved to get a 50% Effectivity Bonus, but not the 1951 tech Basic Nuclear Power which gives another bonus. Anyway, it seems our next nuke might arrive in ~5 months.
We are wondering if we should proceed now and nuke those 32-34 divisions hunkered down on Bermuda as we would still have a spare nuke should we find ourselves again getting over-run somewhere. It sure would be nice to get that annoyance out of our rear since we have constantly had to patrol the Atlantic to repel numerous German attempts to send transports to try to extract some of that huge force, and also have taken pains to mission all our local puppets’ air forces and navies (Cuba and Central America) to insure no amphibious sneak attack could possibly reach our unprotected Caribbean shore (where we could not stop an enemy division racing to destroy our reactor at Los Alamos).
The Kriegsmarine last failed attempt resulted in their two brand new CV-6 being sunk by Halsey’s most experienced CTF comprised of three older CV-5. In fact, given the doctrine differences, the Kriegsmarine has very little chance and has only been successful (embarrassingly so) against our fairly inept ally of Great Britain. Not only has the Kriegsmarine sunk almost the entire RN, but the Luftwaffe seems capable of downing the entire RAF (28 wings just counting the INT-7 and FTR-5) anytime it wants to. Meanwhile the RCN kept reorganizing their fleets into fewer but larger fleets, and now just one fleet of 12 ships remaining.. ... ... but is no match for German fleets of several CL-6 or small wolf packs of SS-6; and has been doing a lot of repairing in the port of Quebec City. But, unfortunately, rarely can any of the four American CTFs in the Atlantic patrol to protect our allies as we simply can’t take the added TC overload when our army in Euro-Asia is on the move. Likewise, after disbanding 2/3s of our submarine force for a pittance of returned MP, we just have given up doing convoy raiding as even subs add to the TC overload.
The “TC problem” really seems to be the ~40 bomber wings operating nearly daily. As such we peak at 1690/1462 which results in land combat that runs longer than a couple days reaching about -3.00 modifier for Lack of Supply. Basically, the American commanders need to better learn how to stop using their whole army and air force all together, but the heat of battle seems to prevent any gentler destruction of the enemy.
If only their AIs would stop attacking us we would have a very quiet frontline… because the USA would rather stop conquest as it simply cannot tolerate these MP losses. We are building nearly nothing, but after this thrust to take out Ukraine and Byelorussia, we again need 25 MP in reinforcements, but only have 17 MP… and don’t know what next to disband. I suppose all our infantry because – if all the bombers ever all stopped together – the true scale of our needed MP overdraft would probably be quite shocking.
Finally, we are 56% towards achieving the Hydrogen Bomb, and were sort of waiting to develop that to insure death to most of the enemy on Bermuda as we would dread any follow up amphibious operation running in serious surviving resistance as that would further strain our MP. But maybe a Miniaturized Fission Bomb like we have in stock will, basically, destroy 30 divisions as they are on Plains terrain? Decisions, decisions!
But fighting in swamps when frozen – and in Arctic and sub-Arctic climates is the greatest of difficulties – compounded further by the dearth of good puppet leaders. We thank the 82nd Airborne “All American” division for having brought a successful closure to the operation eventually. But manpower losses were high… and Washington had to further eliminate most everything in the build queue and disband the last of our militia (and other things) just to keep us able to continue reinforcing. Lost air battles accounted for a major part of the huge reinforcements needed; and the USAAF has been “realigned” so that 12-16 wings (8-12 bombers and 4 FTR) fly from same airport to protect against the most experienced Luftwaffe decimating individual stacks flying a separate different route to target. This strategy has greatly stopped unwanted encounters with the enemy fighters that are now showing up in greater strength basing themselves on the excellent airports in the Baltic/Poland region. But they only "hang around" our flight paths - not having the strength to tackle such a formidable target as a "4 stack USA bomber stream".
Finally we got a silent front… and focused on creating more puppets. USA now has 35.
But when the first province stopped being muddy on May 10th, 1949 we were rudely reminded by a new German counter-offensive that wartime was here again. Our response was to commit a full frontal attack along our whole line, and in a month we had annexed the Ukraine and Byelorussia. Now – June 23rd – our spearheads are very close to taking Warsaw, Konigsberg and Riga.
Our northern flank is locked on Leningrad, and 16 wings of STR-IV are systematically destroying Finland – the Finns having decided to pull all their army into their capital. .. and not contest Field Marshall Patton’s forces in nearby Leningrad. We have no intention of invading Finland, and believe we can effectively take it out of the war using only strategic bombing and a few divisions guarding their border.
Our southern flank is up against Romania where we hold the hills in Bessarabia, and Lvov – the latter guarded by a 10-division Chinese contingent that can’t decide if the regular or brigaded infantry stack should get their only offensive leader. So we consider that juxtaposition an acceptable defensive lock down while the US mobiles race to exploit the center… and grab the air bases to drive back the most dangerous Luftwaffe.
With our 2 allies - Canada and UK (and the 35 USA puppets) the Allies now total 135 INF, 37 MOT, 16 MECH, 57 ARM, 9 MAR, 2 PARA, 9 HQ, and 25 GAR. Meanwhile the Axis (9 countries and the puppet Norway remaining) seem to have 335 infantry and 8 ARM. But it appears that it is the German Luftwaffe (79 fighter squadrons) versus the Allied success in avoiding them (to so let us exploit our huge bomber arm) that mostly makes the difference between advancing the front… or needing to hold a defensive line. When an enemy stack in combat gets hit with 12 TAC-7 wings on interdiction, its org bar plummets faster than a car tire goes flat.
The two USA paratrooper divisions are invaluable. While the 82nd in Asia/Europe gets most of the credit for capturing enemy airbases, the 101st “Screaming Eagles” operating in Africa were invaluable for overcoming superior forces and speeding conquest of the interior jungle areas. But it seems to be the only airborne division that can claim – all by itself – to be responsible for ability to liberate a nation – Egypt. Because Italy is very much not annexed, taking North Africa left the inaccessible Great Sand Sea in enemy ownership. But ,deftly, the Screaming Eagles flew into that hell hole, and with a new air base placed, got extracted quickly. And now liberating Egypt is a possible choice.
However, the greatest interest in this war must be the nukes – with Germany having achieved a Dirty Bomb in spite of several severe setbacks caused by our espionage. But – fortunately – they never used the 2 nukes in their arsenal which our spies have now destroyed (but there might be more). While the largest target we have undoubtedly is the 10 Chinese divisions in Lvov, Patton with 9 armor divisions might be a better choice!
Meanwhile, we have now stockpiled 2 more nukes (having used our first 2 nukes to save us getting over-run back when the frontline was at Karachi last year). We carefully tracked when new nukes appeared because we are hoping to be able to estimate new arrivals of this powerful weapon:
- Nuke #3 appeared December 22, 1948
- We finished the 10th level of our reactor February 6th, 1949.
- Nuke #4 appeared June 8th 1949.
We have Early Nuclear Power achieved to get a 50% Effectivity Bonus, but not the 1951 tech Basic Nuclear Power which gives another bonus. Anyway, it seems our next nuke might arrive in ~5 months.
We are wondering if we should proceed now and nuke those 32-34 divisions hunkered down on Bermuda as we would still have a spare nuke should we find ourselves again getting over-run somewhere. It sure would be nice to get that annoyance out of our rear since we have constantly had to patrol the Atlantic to repel numerous German attempts to send transports to try to extract some of that huge force, and also have taken pains to mission all our local puppets’ air forces and navies (Cuba and Central America) to insure no amphibious sneak attack could possibly reach our unprotected Caribbean shore (where we could not stop an enemy division racing to destroy our reactor at Los Alamos).
The Kriegsmarine last failed attempt resulted in their two brand new CV-6 being sunk by Halsey’s most experienced CTF comprised of three older CV-5. In fact, given the doctrine differences, the Kriegsmarine has very little chance and has only been successful (embarrassingly so) against our fairly inept ally of Great Britain. Not only has the Kriegsmarine sunk almost the entire RN, but the Luftwaffe seems capable of downing the entire RAF (28 wings just counting the INT-7 and FTR-5) anytime it wants to. Meanwhile the RCN kept reorganizing their fleets into fewer but larger fleets, and now just one fleet of 12 ships remaining.. ... ... but is no match for German fleets of several CL-6 or small wolf packs of SS-6; and has been doing a lot of repairing in the port of Quebec City. But, unfortunately, rarely can any of the four American CTFs in the Atlantic patrol to protect our allies as we simply can’t take the added TC overload when our army in Euro-Asia is on the move. Likewise, after disbanding 2/3s of our submarine force for a pittance of returned MP, we just have given up doing convoy raiding as even subs add to the TC overload.
The “TC problem” really seems to be the ~40 bomber wings operating nearly daily. As such we peak at 1690/1462 which results in land combat that runs longer than a couple days reaching about -3.00 modifier for Lack of Supply. Basically, the American commanders need to better learn how to stop using their whole army and air force all together, but the heat of battle seems to prevent any gentler destruction of the enemy.
If only their AIs would stop attacking us we would have a very quiet frontline… because the USA would rather stop conquest as it simply cannot tolerate these MP losses. We are building nearly nothing, but after this thrust to take out Ukraine and Byelorussia, we again need 25 MP in reinforcements, but only have 17 MP… and don’t know what next to disband. I suppose all our infantry because – if all the bombers ever all stopped together – the true scale of our needed MP overdraft would probably be quite shocking.
Finally, we are 56% towards achieving the Hydrogen Bomb, and were sort of waiting to develop that to insure death to most of the enemy on Bermuda as we would dread any follow up amphibious operation running in serious surviving resistance as that would further strain our MP. But maybe a Miniaturized Fission Bomb like we have in stock will, basically, destroy 30 divisions as they are on Plains terrain? Decisions, decisions!
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