I just got the same thing, but with Total Germany (so only an hour or two of lost play...)
I was submerged with two planes 5.5km away from me 'stuck' like the destroyers get, circling at that range and following my progress. I saved and reloaded to clear that little problem and now both my autosave_in_game and this save CTD when I try to reload... I tried 'progressing' the save by using ACS but it still crashed. Oh well.
