Fighter command rebuilt, stopped Georing, and forced the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion.
While still not even finished with the BoB, He turns on Stalin, and attacks east.
While Making great initial gains, and sweeping victories, his lines of supply, and the fact that he let up on GB, cause him to slowly bog down in Russia.
I find this statement questionable.
The supply lines were stretched out to their limit, and German advance was halted in a few key strategic locations by summer of 1942. In the fall and winter of 1942 the Soviet forces successfully organized the largest counter offensive of modern warfare in the history of mankind, and put a serious crack in the claims of "invincibility" of the Wehrmacht when Paulus's 6th were utterly annihilated in the most crushing defeat for the Third Reich until that point in history.
BoB was a monumental event, but just how much of German miitary might was actually decimated during 1940? Many pilots and aircraft were lost, but not a single infantry soldier landed and fought on English soil.
Operations in Africa no doubt played a certain role in keeping the Soviets in the game, but frankly the amount of actual pressure Great Britain had put against the Germans by the time the Whermacht had passed Smolensk and were marching to Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad, that would have had any kind of effect, was IMO minimal, if not negligible.
Leaving the British alone was indeed a fatal mistake when in 1943, the British isles became the very foundation of resurrecting "Western front" which was KIA at Dunkirk in 1940, but when the Soviets were fighting for their lives, I don't think Brits or the Americans were of any real help up to that point. (in terms of direct military involvement, ofcourse)
Wow, makes you wonder why the west even bothered fighting.
The West did what they were capable of, the East did theirs. The only thing is that it so happens the fights in the East was a lot bigger than the West.
In the end, it's just a matter of due recognition for both western and eastern allies alike. Whereas the Western front gets plenty of recognition and glory from enthusiasts, the jaw-dropping scope, scale, brutality, fierceness, and importance of the Eastern front is, paraphrasing a certain game product, unfortunately remains as
"forgotten battles" for many Americans.
The Pe-2 and Tu-2 (light, high speed, and dive bombing) certainly had similar numbers to the B-17's and B-24's heavy bombers that were produced. Just not the impact, beyond killing lots of German front line troops and tanks.
Oh they had plenty of impact. Even the IL-2 was regarded as perhaps the most brilliant attack plane ever designed by WW2 forces, and it played an absolutely remarkable role in Eastern front warfare. Consider the fact that after summer of 1944 the interdiction role became increasingly more important for fighter-bombers and attackers of the USAAF also.
It's a matter of how the war is played out, and when you actually have to start putting in infantry to advance, the tactical bomber/attacker role becomes everybit as important as the strategic bombers.
The problem in AH is, the basic systems concerning the ground warfare aspect isn't really independant at all. Its dynamics are still tied to the aerial warfare, and the many limitations concerning how GVs are used in the game has a lot to do with some of the lighter-loaded, tactical bomber/attack aircraft being treated as little more than uselss.
Let's hope HTC frees up the ground warfare, and somehow comes up with an entirely different ground war system that depicts the ebb and flow of fronts dynamically. I think if that is achieved, the lighter, smaller bomber/attack planes such as the A-20, Il-2, and the medium bombers like Ju-88 and Ki-67, would get lots of more roles to be played out.
