Minsk ´44 - The Long Left Hook

[Fhil]

DAY 1

Plan of Action

First of all, there must be a goal set up for the opening day. Shown below is my guess of what is achievable if the enemy won´t give up the first lines immediately, given the current ground conditions and the difficult terrain and of course, the enemy resistance. Marked in white are the divisional plans for the opening phase, the rest of the action will depend on the discovered enemy positions beyound the current visible range.



I doubt I´ll be able to seriously trap some German units, the other things is I will avoid those deadly minefields, I need my rifle batallions to be able to assault enemy positions, and we know that the Soviet riflemen tend to disrupt quite fast. The daily goal line is only 8 kms far from the front, but as I´ve said, even pure walking unopposed through that terrain in soft conditions will take much time. I would like to take that small upper terrain hex between

Dobrino and Mosoroto by the end of the day though.



43rd Army has to get through some special area as well in it´s sector (the left-most division belongs to the 6 Guards Army). It´s goal is the higher ground some 6 kms from the front line, but there are some lakes and streams and german bunkers in the way. These divisions will attack in a relatively small sector, so this density should achieve something I hope. I don´t want to bleed white in here though, so I will use all the engineers I´ll be able to assault those bunkers between the lakes.

Artillery Mission

The numerous artillery units will have the following priorities when selecting their targets:

1.- suppresive fire on the enemy positions that are to be assaulted during particular turn
2.- any units spotted in the open area or in T-mode
3.- the rest of the enemy positions in order to forbid any fatigue recovery to the enemy
4.- spotted enemy artillery positions

Air Cover

As the Air Limitation with the 2 hexes visibility limit´s the Russian available missions to 25% of those available (25% overall availability), there won´t be that much in the means of the supporting aviation I suppose.
Mission priorities for the day 1:

1. - direct support of the ground forces by bombarding the enemy fortified positions
2. - any enemy units catched in T-mode
3. - enemy units in the open terrain
4. - spotted enemy artillery positions

Now, the offensive can begin, I´ll be posting turns one by one, having both my actions and the enemy actions covered in one post.