Part 15: Turn 12: September 4, 1941

Shitloads of new units this turn, especially tank brigades.



The Northern Front is renamed to the Leningrad Front. Unfortunately we don't get the huge infusion of Admin points we get when a Military District reforms as a Front, this is effectively cosmetic.



And the big change this turn, all our tank divisions are going to start converting into tank brigades. Coverting into brigades has actually been going on for some time, all the shattered/surrendered divisions are coming back as brigade shells instead of divisions and every time a tank division routed before this there was a chance it would leave the map instead of rallying and reform as a brigade. Now however it's official and over the next few weeks all our tank divisions will convert to brigades and send their spare tanks back into the pool.

This is a huge drop in the number of men in the formation (from nearly 11,000 men to less than 2,000) but represents an actually attainable ToE since it doesn't call for over 350 tanks per division. While it'll be nice to actually have some tanks in all of our tank formations I've been making good use out of the tank divisions that have scrounged up some of the T-34s their ToE calls for. With only 2000 men in the brigade these formations are now basically incapable of independent operations, they rely on other units to make holes for the tanks to roll through. Funnily enough even an 80% reduction in size isn't enough for us to fill out the ToE on all of these things and they're going to be downsized again next month.



I don't mean to imply this isn't a really good idea though. Most of our tank division's armor looks like this, a lot of them have even less medium/heavy tanks than this one does.




We're running out of room fast here!



Not much I can do but draw the lines in tighter. Most of these formations are in kind of shitty shape and won't put up much of a fight even with level 2 forts.



We're 10 miles short of having a continuous line running from Leningrad to the Crimea.




Here we've got a ton of well equipped troops and good fortifications. We're losing ground but they're paying for every foot and more importantly they're gaining slowly.



What is going on here is mysterious until you turn on the battle reports.




The Germans broke through my line up near Vyshny Volochek and sent a motorized... something through the gap. Then they tried to break through at Kalinin to complete the encirclement and failed.



This won't hold but it would sure piss me off if I was the Germans.



A wall of men defends Moscow.



Tula employs the same defense.



Down by Kursk the Bryansk front is stretched so thin it can barely cover the line, a reserve army will be railed in from STAVKA next turn to reinforce this section. That's assuming there isn't a crisis somewhere else that calls for our reserve armies.



In the east the empty shells continue to stream in, waiting for men and guns.




What a pretty front. With that pocket liquidated we're going to have to fall back a little to straighten out our line.



Unable to attack we simply fall back a few miles. The 18th army pulls off the line and starts entrenching a river behind the front as a fallback position. Most of these units are in pretty poor shape after the last few weeks. They're tired from the long retreat, near pocket and then fighting their way free. Most of them are also understrength, the vast numbers of empty shells in refit mode are sucking up replacements and some units are suffering for it.



The Southern front pulls across the Dnepr and start to dig, the North Caucasus M.D. continues its slow retreat towards Dnepropetrovsk.



I don't think I've taken a close up shot of the Crimea before and since we're getting close here it is. We're trying to fortify the the landbridges onto the peninsula and failing that Svestapol is about as strong as it can possibly be with a level 5 fort in the city proper and 2 level 4s flanking it.





There's a shitload of huge armament factories down here in the south. Stalino east of here has 35 of the goddamn things. Luckily we're keeping just ahead of the Germans in evacuating cities and we've only lost a handful of factories so far. Most of our losses at this point have been Heavy industry factories, and I'm not convinced they're actually very useful. I'll certainly grab them when I've got a chance but they're 10,000 rail cap each so bleh.




The Germans really want to be in Leningrad.



North of Moscow a large section of our line is routed, allowing a large armored force to breakthrough to our rear. Not a huge deal, this is exactly why we keep armies in reserve.



The grind towards Moscow continues, one hex at a time.



A large armored offensive aimed towards Tula. I'm really glad I deployed that white STAVKA army here this turn, goddamn.



Army Group South seems to be on vacation, I don't blame them.



This isn't terribly pretty, we might lose a few of these divisions.



The Germans are beating up the weak parts of our lines, we'll just rail in more armies and make them not weak. Leningrad isn't doing too hot though.

I'll post a comparison map soonish.