Part 39: Turn 36: February 19, 1942

No reinforcements this turn but the guards are coming in at a steady clip. There are 2 turns of blizzard left so we're going to continue shifting over to a defensive footing wherever we need to. Of note is that the 10th Guards Cavalry corps is in the 1st Shock army, so now the only unit in the 1st shock that isn't a guard is the tank brigade.



The current extent of our rail network. Working rails are in green, destroyed rails are red, rails under repair are orange and green rails with a white slash through them are working rails that are disconnected from the rest of the network. This is part of the reason I'm having so much trouble getting troops into my frontline divisions. As either the Germans push us back a little or we finish repairing these lines our supply situation across the front will slowly improve. Repairing these is taking forever since I have to rely on AI controlled RR repair units for now, once I get RR units I can control myself we'll be much more capable at sustaining an offensive. Unfortunately the first on map Soviet repair units won't appear until September of this year, so we're going to be waiting awhile.




More good commanders getting promoted!



And then a miracle happened, we have araments points in the pool. I'm pretty sure this has held steady at 0 since the mud hit. Now that we're building up the pool again we'll be able to respond to sudden losses and refit divisions faster, assuming the units are in good supply.




With the pocket liquidated it's time to start forming a reasonable line of battle here. As it stands there's way too many troops to be effective so I'm going to be pulling off some armies and shipping them to other fronts as the Volkhov front takes over their positions up here. The only other thing I'd really like to do up here is take a little more ground around Leningrad, right now the city is only 20 miles from being cut off again and I'd like to have more of a buffer. More space will also make it easier to keep the city in supply once Lake Ladoga starts to thaw and supplies switch to the overland route.



The forces around Leningrad take a little ground. I'm shifting another army over here to help keep the city from being cut off again.



The Volkhov front continues to move into position on the line while my shock armies walk to the nearest rail to catch a ride out of this front.



Either the Finns are too strong or the 7th army is too weak but we can't launch any attacks on the cut off Finnish units. If I still have them pocketed next turn we might be able to capture them.




We're doing a little better here this turn, slowing down the rate of attacks has really helped us maintain a steadier pace.



Same old same old, there's a lot of 1=1 German divisions on this front which is surprising this late into the blizzard.




The German line is startlingly thin here, I wonder if my planes just aren't picking up another line of refitting Germans?



I'm pulling the 41st cavalry off the line for a few turns, their cavalry corps are beat to all hell and there's no point in exausting their infantry support if the cavalry aren't there to do the heavy lifting.



Running down to the tail end of the front we shatter another Romanian division, poor guys are not having a good time.




Those are huge goddamn holes in that line. There are probably Germans just out of sight but even so, that is not a healthly looking line.



Yup there's Germans back there but they're in awful shape, I actually manage to force one to rout while I'm laying waste to all these Romanians.



A thing of beauty.



The Transcaucasus front continues the drive for Odessa and cuts off a security division. I'm still seeing Panzers off in the fog down here but I haven't seen any in combat yet so I'm not sure what those divisions are hiding out there.




The Germans are pulling back up here and shortening the line which makes sense, they don't have the troops up here to support a longer line right now.



We launched 57 attacks this turn with 49 succeeding. This is a pretty large drop in the number of attacks because I'm prioritizing maintaining the quality of my own forces over doing damage to Germans right now. I still take attacks wherever I can but I'm no longer driving units to the point of them being useless in combat just to get another battle in.

Soviet losses break 3 million men and our armament pool continues to grow.