Eighty years on. 25th August 1940

Preamble. Coincident with my falling behind with the blog and deciding to radically change the way the game element is played, I had PC issues too. Anyway, here we go again…

Historical

Mist in the morning gave way to a clear, warm day over southern England but there was little German aerial activity.  In the late afternoon German raids approached the South coast.  The RAF airfield at Warmwell, near Weymouth, was damaged and Dover was also bombed.  The Czech pilot Count Manfred Czernin, flying for RAF in a Hurricane of 17 Squadron, shot down three Bf110s in one minute.

Overnight the Luftwaffe bombed South Wales, Bristol, Birmingham and other cities in the Midlands. German losses for the day were 38 Messerschmitt fighters and 8 bombers shot down by the RAF and 6 aircraft downed by anti-aircraft fire.  The RAF lost 16 fighters and 2 Blenheim bombers.

Overnight, 81 Handley Page Hampden bombers of British Bomber Command attacked Berlin in reprisal for  the previous day’s bombing of London, shocking Göring who has claimed this was impossible.

U-37 sank the British steamer Blairmore in mid-Atlantic 500 miles West of Ireland and went on to sink the British steamer Yewcrest just before midnight.  U-100 sank the British banana boat Jamaica Pioneer, West of Ireland.

Convoy HX-65 from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Liverpool suffered continuous U-boat attacks.  U-48 sank the steamer Empire Merlin, carrying 6,830 tons of sulphur, and the tanker Athelcrest,  carrying oil from Aruba, north of the Outer Hebrides.  U-57 sank the tanker Pecten, with 9,546 tons of fuel oil, north of Ireland.   U-124 sank the British steamers Harpalyce, with 8,000 tons of steel, and Fircrest, with 7,900 tons of iron ore, and damaging the SS Stakesby, which caught fire.

The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithiuania and Estonia were formally incorporated into the Soviet Union.

Game day 362. Week 52.  France.

France was a tricky set of calculations. The army was limited by the armistice terms to 100,000 men which I placed in three divisions.  There were additional troops in the colonies that were allocated to whichever side the colony had voted for.           

The merchant fleet at the start of the war was almost 3,000,000 tons, and I allowed Vichy France and the French Colonies to retain half, allocated according to population around the world, as well as just over half the naval fleet to Vichy France as the Metropolitan Fleet (after allowing for damage in the recent conflict with the British Royal navy).  The remaining naval units were in Algeria, now in the game fighting with the free French.  Likewise I gave Vichy France one third of the population and food supplies of Metropolitan France, but left the industrial facilities in the hands of the German occupiers in the north.

To allow for the losses in the naval battle against the royal navy I rolled a die for each ship and eliminated it on a roll of one.  This left Vichy France with 1 aircraft carrier, 4 battleships, 9 cruisers, 31 destroyers and 32 submarines. For the time being I lumped all these together as the fleet sailing from Marseilles, although destroyers and submarines may be reallocated at a later date to other locations.     

The air force remained in control of Vichy France, who historically had offered its use to the Germans.

The Merchant ships were for the time being placed in Bordeaux, Marseilles, Cameroon and Libreville.  More detailed dispositions will emerge according to shipment needs.