Message: 5
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 19:29:34 +0200
From: Mattias Román <mattias.roman@nacka.mail.telia.com>
Subject: GR: Vasastan in Flames I, 1945
Location: Vasastan, Stockholm, Sweden
Campaign: World in Flames Global War
Players: Mattias Román (axis) v.
Nicklas Román (allies) & Michael
Norrving
(USSR/France through 1940)
Game start: 04-01-14
Game end: 04-05-20
Rules: WIF Classic + SiF, RAW7, no
factory destruction, no DSB, no
CAP,
1-die CRT, variable reorg, no
Jap/USSR peace, house oil & victory
Victory: Axis marginal victory +3
Summary
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
1939: Germany
takes out Poland, Denmark and the Netherlands. Italy goes to war and invades Algeria. Japan blows out China.
1940: Belgium
falls but France
holds. Italy
goes nowhere but receives lots of German toys. Japan mops up the Chinese
Nationalists and goes to war with the CW in S/O.
1941: France
falls and Germany
rails east. Russia
holds garrison in S/O but Barbarossa is on in N/D. The German minors are joined
and the Finns take Leningrad..
The US
goes to war with the Euroaxis in J/A but can do little in the theatre. Italy takes control of the Med with more German
toys, collapses Vichy, conquers Algeria and tries to isolate Gibraltar
with aircraft. The Italians fail to take Malta although the island is
isolated for almost the entire year. Japan
mops up the Chinese Communists, takes the parimeter but not Australia from the CW, destroys the CW Pacific
fleet and goes to war with the US
in S/O. The Japanese Hawaiian offensive is called off after the US navy wins the first major battle in the Marshalls.
1942: Germany
reaches the Dnieper in the north but not in
the south. The Russians hold Kiev.
The Germans attack Yugoslavia
but fail to conquer it and the Allies reinforce the Yugoslavian ports. Italy goes for Gibraltar
by invasion but fails. The Allies regain control of the Med and kick the
Italians out of their forward positions in Algeria. Italy starts preparing for
invasion. Japan is forced on
the defensive and intense but inconclusive naval combats are fought in the
Bismarck Sea and the Marianas. The US goes for
Truk but fails several invasion attempts. The Japanese conquer Ceylon and Madagascar
and go to war with the USSR
in M/J but fail to capture Vladivostok.
1943: Heavy attrition combat on the
East front makes the German line collapse and the Russians reach Pskov and the Dvina in the north and enter Rumania and Poland in the south.. The Germans
conquer Yugoslavia.
The Allies start landing on the continent in J/A but take heavy losses and gain
little ground. Allied bombardment of German production intensifies. The Allies
invade Italy in M/J with
troops from Yugoslavia and
take Taranto,
but the invasion becomes a stranded whale after that. The BoA intensifies and
achieves results. Japan
gives up the Marianas but contests the Bismarck Sea.
The Allies take Rabaul and Truk anyway, albeit with heavy losses, and start
attacking the China and South China
Seas in force. The
Japanese capture Vladivostok while the Russians
take Harbin and break through in Manchuria.
1944: The German East front is
initially pushed back to Pskov, the Neman, Lvov and Bucharest,
but the Russians overextend themselves in the effort. The Germans completely
destroy the Russian army in the summer and capture Moscow,
Kiev, Kharkov and
Rostov before
the Russians can reinforce. Germany
evacuates France
at the start of the summer but can not prevent the Allies from entering German
soil anyway. The Allies liberate France,
Belgium and the Netherlands, easily cross the Rhine and capture
the Ruhr before the Germans can form a line.
The BoA is abandoned. Italy
regains parity in the Med after the Allies divert resources to France and the Italians improve their position
around Taranto.
Japan gives up the Bismarck
Sea and later in the year the South China Sea as well, but still contests the China Sea. The Allies liberate the NEI and enter Malaya
and the Philippines.
Oil becomes scarce for Japan.
The Russians conquer Manchuria but are stopped
at the Chinese and Korean borders.
Germany: When reports came in
announcing the return of Field Marshal Zhukov to the front, Rommel decided to
follow the maxim of ”better safe than sorry”and withdrew from the forward
positions around Kursk and Kharkov. Only days later Zhukov unleashed his
offensive from Kharkov,
but failed to break our line. The Russians advanced somewhat and did recapture Rostov from our isolated
forces there. Rundstedt took care of some partisans near Moscow before moving his forces south,
threatening Zhukov’s flank.
Lord Gort took charge of the Allied
winter offensive, but he too failed to make significant progress against our
stalwart defenders, as Nuremberg and Hannover held against the Allied assaults. Our factories
were bombed.
Italy: We sent swarms of naval bombers
and submarines into the Western Med and to Cape St.
Vincent as usual. Some Allied convoys were sunk but no conclusive
results were achieved. There was no action in our home country.
Japan: The Allies picked up the pace and
launched attacks on Kwajalein, Singapore and Manila in early January. Only Kwajalein could hold out against this assault, but the
island fell the following week anyway, to American marines. Another American
marine corps was rebased to Menado after assaulting Manila, from where it invaded and captured
Columbo. The US Navy must have extraordinary transport capacity to keep the
land forces in such constant action. In the China Sea,
the Nihon Kaigun chased off the first USN task force sighted and managed to
avoid the primary American force for the rest of the period, allowing us to
bring in our Chinese resources. Our oil convoys on the South
China Sea gauntlet were destroyed and no oil reached the
refineries this period.
Germany: Zhukov started the spring with
another major offensive from Kharkov.
Russian Sturmoviks disrupted a large part of our line, but Zhukov failed to
break Rommel’s left flank, where the attack was concentrated. Rommel then
expended stockpiles to get his men into fighting order again and made a failed
pre-emptive attack on the Russian spearhead. The Russians took advantage of
this by destroying a panzer corps, but did not advance as they could not
protect their northern flank from Rundstedt’s forces.
Montgomery started the spring with a major
offensive along the entire front.
Hannover and Nuremberg fell to overwhelming Allied power
as Allied aircraft disrupted our forces everywhere. In April the storms
returned for a while,
providing cover from the devastating
Allied air raids. On the last of April, after the storms receded, the Allies
took Bremen
and some open terrain in the central Reich. An American paratroop corps was
sent on a suicide mission to land in Berlin,
where Stuka bombers made their task impossible and the paratroopers were all
captured.
Italy: We sent swarms of naval bombers
and submarines into the Western Med and to Cape St.
Vincent as usual. No conclusive results were achieved.
There was no action in our home
country.
Japan: In the China
Sea, the first blow was struck by US Navy, sinking the Hiei and
our convoys. The Nihon Kaigun struck back with thousands of aircraft, sinking
the BH Richard and the Oklahoma.
This did not deter
the
Americans from sending landing craft
into the area however, and General Blamey captured Shanghai
while the Americans landed on Formosa.
Blamey quickly moved his forces west from Shanghai,
clearly aiming to liberate the Chinese capital of Chungking.
The USN at full strength is now more than the Nihon Kaigun can handle,
especially since the American anti-aircraft batteries have reached unimagined
efficiency. In a surface action close to our coastline we lost the Kaga and the
Akagi for minor American losses. General Clark then launched Operation Olympic,
invading Tokyo and Nagoya against stiff opposition. The
defenders held Tokyo, but Nagoya
fell to American marines who could destroy hundreds of our aircraft on the
ground.Clark himself was captured near Tokyo
and Allied command passed on to Mountbatten. USN submarines briefly cut supply
to Yamamoto’s army in Korea,
but the convoys returned later. Timoshenko desperately attacked in the Korean
mountains all the same, but Yamamoto was well prepared to receive him and
Russian casualties were high for no gain. The kamikaze sailors at Canton
brought oil from Balikpapan to the refineries, but we are
unable to fuel all our replacement ships and aircraft anyway.
Germany: In the beginning of May, Rundstedt
finally saw an opening in the flank of Zhukov’s army and quickly seized the
initiative. Yeremenko’s HQ was
overrun by the 1st SS panzer and one
Russian armoured and two mechanized corps were destroyed and another armour
corps encircled at Kursk.
This spelled the end of Zhukov’s ambitions in the south. The Russians
desperately broke out of containment, but the effort left them exhausted.
Rommel could then easily capture Stalino and destroy another armoured corps.
The Allied juggernaut continued on
in the west. Montgomery and Eisenhower forced our line back, captured Magdeburg and reached the gates of Munich and
Prague. Hamburg held against the Allied assault
though.
Italy: We sent swarms of naval bombers
and submarines into the Western Med and to Cape St.
Vincent as usual. In the Western Med the Regia Aeronautica proved
superior, sinking the Ark Royal and preventing Allied supply from getting
through for the entire period. Late in June, the Regia Marina sortied into the
Western Med as well and sunk the Wasp in a surface action.
The subs lay low. The two unsupplied
British corps at Bari
were disrupted by air and captured to the last man. Our mountain border to France was garrisoned as the Allies captured Marseilles. Some Allied
troops crossed the border near Nice but were easily prevented from advancing
further.
Japan: The US Navy ruled the China Sea
for the period and we were unable to stop the Allied ships from bringing
supplies to their land forces in China and the home country. Our own
supply convoys were sunk, and the Aso and the Essex also went down in the fray.
The Allies captured Tokyo, Osaka and Taihoku with low losses. Blamey
marched his army across China
and captured Chunking from our unsupplied forces. Koniev set up his new HQ in Khabarovsk and put the
Russian offensive in motion again. Yamamoto’s HQ was destoyed and the Russians
approached Vladivostok
from the northeast.
Germany: Lots of new fighter aircraft
arrived from the factories in July, in particular the Me-262 jet fighter was
useful in evening the odds in the air war over the Reich. Repeated bomb waves
were sent to disrupt Allied HQ and spearheads with varying success. Was good
not just being on the receiving end of the bombs in any event. Montgomery
gained some more grund in July but failed assaults on Hamburg
and Munich. Leipzig fell a few days
later but our line was still intact. Eisenhower crossed the Elbe west of Berlin in August while assaults on Dresden
and Munich
failed with large Allied losses.
The Allies then dicided they had had
enough of this, and peace talks were initiated...
Zhukov obviously received orders
directly from Stalin in July, for there can be no other explanation for the
insane behavior of the Russian army in these two months. July started off with
Vatutin’s capture of Bryansk
and the destuction of a panzer corps there. Then began the insanity, as all the
Russians abandoned the south, giving up their supply and oil base in a wild
dash for Moscow.
Our forces followed of course, and captured Kharkov
and Voronezh.
Zhukov then took Tula
and destroyed another two panzer corps in the fighting, but that was the last
breath for the Russians. Our forces being the more mobile, Zhukov’s entire army
was encircled from the south and completely cut off from their supply bases in
the Urals and by the Caspian Sea and able to maintain their offensive only by
means of a tenous line to Kursk.
This allowed them to reach the gates of Moscow,
but then Model captured Kursk,
destroying Vatutin’s HQ, and that was the end of it. Marshal Zhukov signed the
formal surrender in late August...
Italy: We sent swarms of naval bombers
and submarines into the Western Med and to Cape St.
Vincent as usual, while the Regia Marina protected our coast. The
Allies made one last attempt to get Bradley supplied, but to no avail. The
Malaya and the North Carolina was sunk near Taranto for the loss of
the Caio Duilio and all remaining Allied ships were chased off. The French
tried to break through the mountains from the west, with no success and
horrific losses. That was the last battle before the peace talks began...
Japan: In a last heroic effort, the Nihon
Kaigun cut Allied supply through the China Sea
for a short period, slowing down the collapse of the empire. The fleet also
pulled off a daring plan, as they sneaked past the immensely powerful US Navy
to invade Shanghai
with great success. When the USN caught up with us, the Amagi, Ikoma, Seiki and
Musashi were all sunk and all our supply efforts frustrated. After Allied
supply to China was
re-established, Blamey marched his army back from Chungking and recaptured Shanghai from our
disrupted forces. Vladivostok
was attacked ferociously throughout the period, first by the Russians, then the
Americans and then again by the Russians. The city fell to the last Russian
assault, when they were able to attack from two directions at once. The Fuso
was sunk trying to maintain supply through the Sea of
Japan. An American force of one carrier, three Iowa-class
battleships and two marine corps with fast landing craft
were sent on a one-shot attempt at
taking Diego Suarez. The American plan worked like a charm and our disrupted
forces could not put up a real fight. In the home country, the Allies did not
attempt to push further but only protected Tokyo. There was no need however, as we were
about to surrender anyway...
Germany holds the western line of the Elbe
(except the hex west of Berlin) Dresden, the mountains NW and SW of Prague and the Danube
(except the two hexes west of Munich)
with a largely intact infantry army and the good fighters. There is no line in
the east, Russia went all
out for Moscow
in the last turn and got the whole army pocketed OOS. Almost all of the German
armour and bombers are in the east along with the worse fighters.
Fortress Italy
is intact except for Taranto
and the mountains east of Nice. Italy
has all its infantry (except for the specialty units and one INF that was lost
in the last turn), all its naval bombers and most of its fighters in play. Italy still holds Sardinia, Tripoli and Addis Abeba because the Allies
stopped caring after a certain point.
Japan has Kyoto, Hiroshima, Fukuoka
and Sapporo left before conquest, and holds interesting places like Tricomalee,
Balikpapan, Saigon, Lan-chow,
Blagovyachensk, Eniwetok and Port Vila. The navy and
airforce are all but gone, compromising a total of four BB, one CA, four TRS,
two SUB, some CONV,
one NAV, one FTR and one LND. Most of
the infantry is still in play, but hopelessly positioned.
The Axis hold 16 objectives at the
end of the game for a +3 marginal Axis victory. Japan
holds Lan-chow, Italy
holds Rome and Milan
and Germany holds the
remaining 13 objectives: Berlin, Munich, Kiel, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade, Warsaw, Helsinki, Leningrad, Kiev and Moscow.
The game was obviosuly lost by the Russians in 1944, when they overextended and
allowed the Germans to pocket and destroy large chunks of their army with a few
strokes. It was a spectacular collapse, presumably not something we will see
often. The Western Allies pushed hard on their front, but once inside the Reich
it’s slow going, something like two hexes per offensive chit. They ended with
two hexes on Munich and one on Berlin
and Prague. The
Allied invasion of Italy
was simply a disaster, not being properly supported by control of the Med. The
Allies had it for a while but allowed Italy to rebuild the airforce, lost
it and didn’t really try after that. Allied weakness in the Med probably had a
lot to do with the damage Japan
inflicted in the Pacific. The Americans diverted lots of assets to deal with
the Japs, who put up a good fight for as long as they could. For Japan in ’45,
it was just a matter of placing out the land units and watching the Allies
smack them. There was no way to compete with the USN then. But, as previously
stated, it was Russia
that lost the game. The Russians were in Poland
in late ’43 and lost Moscow
in the summer of ’44. Not good.
Mattias Román
"Statesmen are not called upon
to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the
balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity
for world-saving decisions presents itself."
--W. Churchill, "The Second
World War (vol.1)"
