yvesp
Posts: 2083
Joined: 9/12/2008
Status: offline
|
At the beginning of July, Vasilievski entered in Stalin's office, exultant. “The nazis are leaving their defense slowly, but surely ; we might very soon be attacking!” It was still a little optimistic, but it was true that the Germans were having trouble manning their huge front. Joseph did not meet such problems: troops and planes were coming out of the factories at a steady pace ; certainly more than the Germans did, especially considering that the news from the west were not good for the Germans, or so it was told in the news, and confirmed by the NKVD. That was Adolph's main concern : all planes flew west.
In Hitler's office, similar scene was happening with Keitel: “mein Führer”, he began, “we are inviting the Russians to attack us and our reconnaissance planes have detected some... intriguing moves. Do we want war with the Soviets ?” Hitler paused, breathed heavily, then said: “I know, I know. We must throw the Americans back into the sea as fast as possible. This situation is giving bad dreams to the bear. We need peace in the West to skin him. We need peace in the east to defend against the imperialists, as Joseph calls them.” He paused again. “We will send reinforcements to the East. Lets hope that we will have enough in the west.” Keitel replied “Our best units mein Führer, most notably the XXIV Panzer and 1st SS, and some other matching infantry and mechanized infantry corps. But we still have to bring them into position. And at least, our Ju88 have managed to pin down Montgomery in Nantes: we should not have too many bad news from that side” There was a new pause. “And Manstein ? Do we have news about his holidays in Cagliari ?” “Yes, mein Führer, the Italians have managed to bring him in La Spezia ; and the LXXI will be shortly rejoining the war if we manage to pass the BV222 past the US presence. We have an opportunity because the American carriers have gone refueling to Gibraltar.”
There was indeed a lot of troop shuffling on the east, both sides preparing themselves for the conflagration,the Germans trying to bring back more troops to retard the seemingly inevitable. They knew that past summer, a Russian assault would be severely blunted by bad weather which came early in the east. In the west, the allies had boarded reinforcements and unloaded them on the coast. There was no way to easily counter that. Germans troops were still moving to put themselves in position, but the South-West of France had been left very vulnerable by the loss of Von Bock. Sure, Mödel was descending from Germany and Manstein coming east from Italy. But they would arrive too late for troops to be able to secure the area.
Meanwhile, a Gabbiano wrecked havoc on the British east Mediterranean convoy, putting Wavell and Eisenhower out of supply. Now, the allies would understand what it was to be in Lybia! In the west Mediterranean, a new large aerial raid fails again to find the allied reinforcements. It is instead found by their air cover, among which Corsairs, and have to flee to avoid serious losses.
On the other side of the planet, the Japanese managed to reopen the supply lines to their army, and brought much needed reinforcement against the Russians. Holding the Russians had deep consequences! It left the German more leeway to maneuver against the west allies, who themselves then were more limited in their ability to be a nuisance against the Japanese themselves! So it could be argued that a good defense against Russia was akin to a good defense against the USA!
After having gathered a sufficient force around Nantes, which was the lock to the British position, the Germans decided it was time to repel the invaders. Holding Nantes was the key, a pivotal position that would be the demise of the British if it could be captured. Some of the best, the XXIV armor and the Hermann Göring mechanized corps were engaged, in addition to two infantry corps, an engineer division and a mechanized division. Together, their force was estimated to be much larger than the British one, even discounting the fact that Montgomery had been badly beaten by a previous air raid: The conditions were not perfect, but they could hardly be better. There was little to do of course against the supporting battleships, the Howe, the Repulse, the King Georges V and the Conqueror, whose shells were raining like rain. There was also not much that could be done against the two Lancaster squadron that dropped bombs to no end, despite the heroic defense by the last squadron of available fighters, an old Bf109F1. As a result, the city was not captured, and the British suffered few casualties. German casualties were acceptable, but there was a loss of pride at this defeat. Wasn't this the first severe defeat of the war ? It just proved that Germany was not invulnerable! And in the Rhone valley, the 1SS armored corps advance was stopped by a squadron of B25G. This was rather annoying, as this was to be the spearhead for repulsing the US troops out of France!
Having somewhat reinforced their initial landing positions the allies took some time to bring yet more reinforcements and comforting their current position. A new invasion was prepared in the Atlantic, but now it was easy to guess that it would land somewhere near Bordeaux! The USA long considered sortieing again against the Japanese who patrolled the China sea, but renounced. Their four carriers would be at high risks against the eight Japanese carriers which held good planes. Two carriers were coming back to San Diego to load new planes to replace the lost ones. And the current weather was favorable: under the current monsoon, no surprise attack would ever come from the skies on Manilla!The British fleet was moved in the Mediterranean to protect the transports. This was not sufficient when the axis bombers finally found the trailing transports: a British one, loaded with an armored corps was sunk, while an amphibious transport coming back from France was damage. Other reinforcements were forced to return to Algier. The air combat that occurred was of a rare violence, and most US carriers lost their plane squadron. They would be useless for some time, but they had done most of their job: Enough troops were on land, and now holding the Western Mediterranean area did not look as critical. While that air battle was fought over the sea, a large land offensive was developing on land. Elite marines, coming directly from New York, had landed south-west of Bordeaux, and the XVIII airborne corps, coming from Oran jumped south east of Bordeaux. They were first transported to Algier were a long range C-47 was expecting them. In the South, an attack by Bradley in the direction of the North was a semi-success: it succeeded in breaking the German armored corps that was blocking their advance, but the fighting was heavy and the troops were tired. However, this put three corps at risk of being surrounded! More importantly in the North, the British took the opportunity to counter-attack on Saint Malo, using the 1st airborne corps stationed in Coventry. The attack was a complete surprise to the German, and the under supplied Garrison there was disintegrated. The armored and mechanized corps that had participated advanced dangerously fast along the coast.
In China, while nothing was really happening, the removal of the Japanese troops in favor of the defense of Manchurian was beginning to be felt: Chinese units found large holes to infiltrate themselves, and Nanyang was recaptured by a cavalry division. Once more, this risked putting Yamashita out of supply, and retreating again was a necessity. The situation was worse in the South: the Chinese had managed to to run around the Lake Tungting to recapture Chngsha. This did indeed cut the whole Southern army from the north, with the railways now unusable. But with Wuhan and Nachang well garrisoned, there was little risk that the situation would degenerate. At some point, the south army group would have to reorganize itself ; but it was still suffering from the lack of oil and more generally the supply cut that had happened the previous months. And with the monsoon, little could be done anyway. Still, their were good news: The home air defense was now deterring bomber attacks, and the presence of carriers had been beneficial in Manchuria where other bombers had been repelled. And the first Russian attack on Munkden had failed. There was one small worry: a lone Russia cavalry corps was running wild in Manchuria, and sooner or later, it would cut the railways lines between Mukden and Peking,and this would completely isolate the Manchurian army group. Not forgetting the reason why they were putting so much effort in the defense of Mandchuria, the Japanese mustered enough troops to attack, with the support of the fleet, the mountains in the north of Port Arthur. This was where the railway to Pusan passed. The railway was not completely recovered, but half of the job was done!
It was not obvious, but this was to be the last summer action in the far east and if troops would still reposition themselves, there would not be any serious military action. This was clearly not the case in Europe. The British took the opportunity offered by the failed German assault on Nantes to attempt to surround the German from the north. Simultaneously, they assaulted Brest while the Americans assaulted Bordeaux. Both attacks succeeded. This would obviously now make the Mediterranean a secondary theater of war, now that the US could draw supplies in France directly through the large Bordeaux port. It was no help for the Germans, but at the very least, this would let them bring back their fighters who were in heavy demand! The Luftwaffe was indeed unable to face the waves of airplanes flying from Britain,where there seemed to be no end of them. The British northern attack having succeeded, Germany hesitated long to counterattack with the few troops it had. It was preferred to wait, especially now that Manstein was reaching the theater of war. His presence would reinvigorate the troops! The US advance in the south west could not be stopped and German troops had to withdraw ; the objective now was to roughly create a straight defense line running from the Italian border to about Saint Malo. The British were of course not wanting to have any of this and had plans of their own. They attempted a daring attack that would let them close their pincer, isolating two elite German corps and would open the road to Paris. But the attack failed and the German counter-attack was severe!
Italy was not idle. During several weeks, it tried to intercept the reinforcing transports, and to cut the supplies of the allies in Libya. They finally succeeded in both, severely damaging the British fleet that was guarding Egypt, to the point of disintegrating it. And in the west, they also caught some transports,but not enough to prevent most of them from safely reaching the beaches.
|
Printable Version
RE: Global War Solitaire - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread