Axis Player Turn

Weather roll is a 6, mud in zone D. Atlantic and other sea zones are calm.

Anticipating a surrender roll, Axis forces withdraw from the Italian heel and break contact in the toe, destroying what they can as they go. Axis forces on Corsica are retreating north as fast as Allied ZOCs and weather permit. 10 REs of Italians are exposed and easy kills, that’s 1 RE more than needed for a surrender roll. The remaining Italians are out of easy reach or stacked with Germans in anticipation of an Oct II surrender.

With mud in France Axis engineers can only repair a couple of airfield hits. The rail net is a mess and units arriving in Germany have to admin move across rail breaks along the border. Should Italy surrender the coast of Southern France is going to look very bare. The need to maintain a strong presence in the Bay of Biscay (Yeu is set up as an LC ferry) and the Channel coast (19 LC, several TF and 2+ airborne divisions in England) takes a lot of German troops. Normandy and Brittany are weakly held. Italian troops provide the vast majority of troops along the French Med coast and down to Roma.

Allied Player Turn.

An SAS Bn lands on the Italian heel adjacent to Galipoli in gliders, and a US 1-8 Mortar Bn slides onto the beach from an LC in the exploitation phase, along with some supplies. A British naval TF stands off the beach ready to provide NGS. (Using a 16 pt TF sounds a bit extreme, but the Allied navy has yet to fire a single shot, better to use it than lose it.)

On the Italian toe Commonwealth forces regain contact along the 33/34XX line, eliminating 6 Italian and 1 German REs. Allied fighters stage into newly built airbases within intercept range of their TF and beachhead on the heel. Allied air forces conduct more railway bombing to inhibit Axis movement in what is expected to be the surrender turn.

US forces on Corsica kill another 3 REs of Italian (2-3-2 Coastal XX in the mountains) and force the 44 HuD Inf XX to retreat. In the air over Corsica a Fw190A2 is aborted and a MC.202 is killed. AA gunners from the 44th HuD abort a B-26B and return enough other Allied aircraft to avoid a 7:1 attack, saving the division from a DH (6:1 -4, rolled a 6).

Allied naval forces pour back into the MTO (2 TF and many LC) along with a few special operations troops ( British 2-5 Para X and 1-8 Mar-Cdo II). The ETO still maintains a sizeable threat with 7x LC, 2x 16 point TF, 2+ Airborne XX, many Commando units and an LC ferry at Yeu. The Luftwaffe has given up challenging Allied fighter bombers attacking the French rail net, and has no where near enough engineer assets to keep the net open. All border crossings between France and Germany are blocked and the nets within range of England and the twin airbases at Belle/Yeu are a mess. In order to preserve some kind of strategic mobility the Germans may be forced to station fighters to cover the Franco-German border.

The end of October I 43 finds 51 Italian REs toward surrender. Combined with Allied owned Sicily this means a surrender roll will come in Oct II. Two potential Italian units could change sides. A 0-1-6 Construction III is alone in Ajaccio (it stayed behind to complete the destruction of the port) and a 1-3-6 Lt AA unit is alone in Galipoli (acting as rear guard). The Axis didn’t expect the Allies to drop into 26/3511.