New Year, New Headaches

 The Axis win initiative and get favourable rain weather instead of snow. Hitler moves the railgun towards Dnepetrovsk. He uses the last of his Offensive Points to send the subs out during a Land impulse and reorganise the Rommel HQ which flips over to reorganise the railgun. The two subs in Faroes Gap find convoys and cause carnage -  3 convoys are damaged and the ASW ship is sent back to port along with  both light cruisers and 3 convoys. One sub is damaged and the other is sent back to port. Hitler is extremely happy. 

South of Kaunas Hitler tries to destroy a large almost surrounded pocket of Soviet troops. He attacks the neck to completely surround the Soviets and sends in a large air force to support it but his fighter cover is sent back by Soviet fighters. The German bombers try to get through still but the Hs123 gets shot down so the rest abort.

The land attacks are no better. The  northern"neck" battle sees the Germans lose the Hungarian cavalry and a German infantry corps and the rest disorganised whilst the southern battle sees the Soviets lose an infantry army and the Germans a panzer division and the Germans all become disorganised. Churchill sends Stalin a congratulatory telegram after his heavy Faroes Gap losses but Stalin is more relieved he fought off a potential catastrophe. Italy chose a no-cost combined impulse and sent light cruisers out into position to defend convoys next Turn. Italian naval aircraft including the "Nazgul" Z511 fly into the West and East Med. The Nazgul misses its targets but in the East Med the Italians get into very favourable positions against Hurricane escorts for the convoys. Sadly for Mussolini the Italian aircraft get sent back to their airbase by the Hurricanes. Italy uses a treansport to return the marine corps back to Italy. Land forces in Libya conctinue to retreat. Japan starts moving forces towards the Malay border- Stalin notes that Japan does not seem to be getting ready to attack him.

The Royal Navy uses a naval impulse to send its convoy protection for this Turn and next out as well replacing convoys in the Faores Gap. The newly arrived Canadian motorised infantry corps is transported to the UK dodging the u-boats. The subs in the Italian coast damage the convoys there and send the two cruiser escorts back to port. The Italians in North Africa are now out of supply. A heavy bomber raid at night brushes past the Luftwaffe and causes a build point damage to the Paris factoris. The US seeing repeated carnage in the Faroes Gap sends a Catalina flying boat to Iceland ready to give it to the CW as Lend Lease. The Free French send convoy escorts to Central America, Brazil and the SE Atlantic. The Soviets swap a weak cavalry unit in Siberia for a militia army as it looks likely that Japan will go South not North towards Siberia. The Soviet counter attack on the Germans in the Pripiet marshes despite overhwelming forces only destroys one German infantry corps for the loss of engineers and a ski division and 3/4 of the Soviet forces being flipped over. Stalin shoots another general in frustration. Zhukov has returned from last Turn's pasting and is advancing towards the Front. China worries about launching an attack considering the failure of last Turn.

Snow weather dogs the European fronts and rain in the Med. Japan continues to move its forces south in preparation for a strike against the British and Dutch Empires using a Nabal impulse. Italy used a no-cost combined impulse to move convoys into the Italian seas and putting Libya back into supply then moving two air units to Sicily from Libya and the ground units in Libya further away from 8th Army. The Italian "Nazgul" swoops on the two remaining light cruisers in the West Med and damages them both. Hitler chooses a no-cost combined and in the US East coast a u-boat damages a US light cruiser and 3 Commonwealth tankers but gets damaged itself. The rail gun disorganises the garrison army in Zaporhyze. German infantry in France crush the French partisans without loss.

The Commonwealth worries that the Turn may either end after this or the next Impulse so call a no-cost combined impulse. It moves as many convoys and tankers it has spare to almost replaced the lost convoys and tankers from the Faroes Gap and US East Coast. The CommonWealth sends its naval Albacore aircraft into the West Med. It rolls well to find the Italians and instead of attacking the convoy uses the Beaufighter at advantage to dogfight the Italian "Nazgul" SB511. In a horror show for Mussolini the Italian plane gets shot down. Churchill for the first time this Turn lights a cigar in triumph. Suddenly all those lost convoys and tankers don't seem so bad. It took Mussolini a whole year to produce that plane. The Beaufort and Maryland swap places between Gibraltar and Malta. The US Catalina flying boat transfer from the Faroes to Scapa Flow and is Lend Leased to the Commonwealth. The Montgomery and Gort HQs reorganise the aborted convoys and light cruisers. The Chinese Communists launch a massive attack but with only 2:1 odds attack  a Japanese HQ and artillery division but only succeed in disorganising themselves and losing a weak infantry army. The Soviets launch an attack in Poland - the Germans use flexible withdrawal to try and kill the tank army but have to retreat with half the Soviets flipped over and no casualties on either side. The Soviets move the Timoshenko HQ into the Pripyet marshes confident that Japan won't attack in the Crimea.

The Turn then ends - short Turn! No Partisans appear. In the US Entry phase the Congress authorises an oil embargo against Japan and to increase production to 0.5 Production multiplier - double the previous amount! The Commonwealth prioritises anti submarine warfare and tankers and troops for Asia/ Pacific getting lucky with drawing militia units for Auckland and Rangoon and starting building the Mountbatten infantry HQ for India. Building a mechanised army to invade Italy or France takes a back seat. Italy rebuilds the Nazgul SB511(to take 4 Turns not 6 this time) and other units. Hitler can how upset Mussolini is over being left to fight in the Med alone sends him plentiful resources to feed their hungry factories. Hitler builds 3 militia units in case he needs to replace Italian units in France and Poland. The US repairs some Commonwealth convoys and a light cruiser, starts building the 3rd big carrier and 3 factories to take advantage of the plentiful resources available to the US now that they no longer provide resources to Japan. 

At this point I disocovered I had made a major error - Germany should be getting 3 resources out of the Soviet Union not 1 each Turn. Poor Germany! To compensate I gave them extra 8 oil and 4 build points. The Soviets I took 12 build points so apart from finishing off units on the Production circle they coukld only afford to build 2 Militia armies. Vichy France continues building warships. Japan prioritises starting new infanrry units and a couple of tankers to help transport oil from the Netherland East Indies which will be a target for Japan soon. 

Noticeably nobody has started building tank buster aircaft yet. Production has increased everywhere but the US is investing in increased production later but is light in armed forces now to make an impact. A major error was spotted over how many resources Germany should have taken from the Soviets.