Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hohenlohe

My reply is in red.

I think about playing a WITE game on Russian side like my last Sovjet campaign with WIR. If I assemble all existing Il-4 Bomber squadrons on the Crimea plus addittional MiG-3 and Lagg-1 fighters plus some decent FLAK and some infantry,pioneers and ARI. I could withhold any german attack long enough. But more important I am able to make bombing runs on the Ploesti and Bucarest refineries at every night early in 1941 as the Romanian airforce will be not able to intercept my attacks. There will be even no german nightfighters because they were mostly used in the Reich.
So I will be able to hamper the Axis oil production decisively and prevent any further advance of the German Panzers after the Barbarossa supply advantage ends.

First off, forget almost everything you know about the Eastern Front from WIR. Except for some broad strategic stuff like it is a good idea to capture Leningrad and Moscow, almost nothing learned from WIR is of value. Second the Crimea is way too close to the front to base your IL-4s in. The Luftwaffe will be bombing the hell out of you by about turn 4. Third, it will take weeks, if not months, for your bombers to be skilled enough to hit much of anything at night. As impressive as Russian long-range bombers look, they really can't accomplish much in the early going; their most effect use is flying supplies to partisans.

For my counter attacks I hope to deploy my Russian Paratroopers as this was not possible in WIR by some decent Air Assaults premature to my upcoming counteroffensive in Winter 1941/42. To make that happen I must rescue most of my armoured and mechanized forces to the east plus any available Pioneers and heavy Artillery and any Marines I can have.
I hope that the Russians will have enough Seatransport and Air Transport capacity to conduct some decent operations.
Imagine how you can hold Odessa and Kiev due to Axis oil problems.

Assuming you can muster the airlift capacity, you can certainly deploy airborne units but it is hard to find anything to attack worth the risk of the airdrop. The Germans are going to go through your armor like a hot knife through butter. The tank and motorizied divisions that manage to survive the initial German attack will have to be thrown into the line to stop the Germans from overrunning Western Russia in a matter of weeks. Come September the remaining tank divisions will start converting into tank brigades which are useful only as infantry support or rear guards. You won't likely have a credible armored force again until mid-1942. Amphibious operations are limited to the south (Black Sea/Sea of Azov) and face the same risk versus return problem of airborne operations. Fun to try but don't expect to change the course of the War with them. If you can hold Odessa and Kiev you are playing a grossly incompetent Axis player.

At the same time I assemble most my other other airforces near Leningrad and Volkhov to conduct air runs on Helsinki and nearby Finnish airfields and railways and troops. My more modern airforces will be in training mode near Moscau or Gorki reduced by some squadrons belonging to the Crimea. Sadly that the Russians will not have any long-range fighters sofar I know, so you cannot easily conduct some runs on the Reich.
In one of my two Sovjet campaigns in WIR I conducted a bomb run on Berlin with an Il-4 squadron from Riga before I transfered them back.

There is nothing much to bomb in Finland and the Finnish air force will cut you to pieces if you try.

Now I hope for possible Russian Air Assaults like the one the Sovjets did in their first winter offensive against the Germans. Historically they were not successful enough. The Sovjet armoured spearheads were isolated by the Germans and the paratroopers got lost in heavy fighting with some german elite forces.
I hope to circumvent this. I know that this could eventually easily happen against the Ai but not against a Human in a PBEM play. But Imagine if the Russians would have dealt the Axis oil production such a heavy blow early in the War, the whole Eastfront would have folded due to oil and fuel problems. In my last WIR sovjet game I was in Berlin in Fall 1943 and was able to shatter the Reich.

In this game you will find it is difficult to defeat your opponent by employing non-historical or hindsight optimized strategies. The game system is just too robust for "silver bullet" strategems to have much chance of success.


In an Axis Campaign I would prevent this as soon as possible.

Please give us players the possibility on both sides to conduct Air Assaults and Amphibian Assaults with some decent capacity.
For the Germans I would suggest some additional options to send one more Airborne Division eastern eventually added by an Italian paratrooper division "Folgore", so that the Germans will be able until Fall 1942 to conduct some better Airborne Operations in the East. Unitl that time the Germans should have some good seatransport capacity, but from 1943 on only half of that.
For the Russians I wish myself to get some decent airborne capacity from October 1941 onwards increasing until 1944.

You get what they got historically, nothing more, nothing less. The challenge is to be better than your historical counterpart not succeed because you are better equipped.