AAR: "Enjoy the War."

[Wiking]

Finally into July now. The fighting around Smolensk has been quite tough, mostly due to some AFV losses suffered during the fighting in Eastern Poland. None of the Panzer companies are heavily depleted but October and Operation Typhoon are a long way off. Smolensk and Kiev will greatly wear down my forces even if I do well, so I'll have to carefully husband my elites and veterans.

So far only a single KV-2 has been encountered, of the dreaded KV and T-34 families. It was mostly ineffective and withdrew after fierce fighting around Bialystok. Frankly I don't consider them a very grave threat, as they tend to fire on the move and this is horribly inaccurate. Either I plot artillery or close assault with infantry and move on.

Artillery has time and again been the key to breaking the Russian, and while we have not made use of rolling bombardments like the British, we do believe in maximum concentration of fire. The artillery regiment has been supplemented for the Smolensk campaign with some of the new Nebelwerfers. They've proven quite effective against enemy gun crews, and I think that's the utility I finally needed for them. Infantry or dug in units tend to need repeated hits, even in the open. But exposed gun crews that are strewn around an area are quite susceptible to a sudden and devastating rocket bombardment. Previously I'd been rather disappointed with the vaunted screaming mimi's so this is a welcome discovery.

So I found a new way to bleed points for the enemy: trucks! I employ a Kfz 70 Horch motorised battalion and each one costs about 12 points. Through careless maneuvering I let a T-26 shoot up several of them and when I realized the cost I suddenly felt a bit silly for letting a support unit die when it didn't need to! I never used to care much when trucks died but now I think I may have to care a little more, since some of these battles can get pretty close in points...

The Panzer II has found a new lease on life with me also. Previously whenever I used them they'd just die incessantly. Well, they still die more than I'd like, but I find that hanging just behind the infantry lets them shoot up enemy infantry and careless BT-7's that don't respect the fast-firing 2cm Kwk. I do intend to replace each light panzer platoon in the battalion with a full medium panzer platoon by July 1943, probably even before that.