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CMRT - BETA AAR - Soviet Side


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So are you using the whole of 4th Company for Scouting or just a Platoons worth?

I'm interested in this cause I'm trying to get some Learning done on Scouting with actual Infantry Fighting Formations instead of specialized Recon Teams ^^

I'm going to have a platoon (two squads) scouting KT3 and eventually another platoon (two squads) scouting KT2. Both from 4th Company. What they discover will determine which AOA I eventually concentrate on. The third squad from each of those platoons will follow up and be ready to participate in a platoon attack drill if the opportunity presents itself.

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Got a question for you Bil: why this situation doesn't warrant applying your proposed battle drill (interleaving move and hunt)? I can't appreciate how well covered is the route from the screenshot.

Miquel, in this case with the makeup of the squad I want to emphasize the strengths of each team... which means I want the Lead Team forward with its SMGs, and also because it contains the Squad Leader.. if I am going to run into an enemy unit I want my best unit forward so it will have (hopefully) some staying power. With the other two teams I am worried that if they are out front and have to go toe to toe with an enemy unit ahead of the other teams, that they will have morale problems that could be costly.

I am moving almost all fast on this particular movement because the movement is masked from any enemy observation except directly to the front (up to where the Hunt order starts).. and that area is covered by my LMG team (and rifle team a little closer). I am alternating fast and hunt with my teams in the open.

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KT1 appears to be clear, 3rd Sq/2 Platoon will be taking a left and clearing the left end of KT1 while 3rd Squad 1 Platoon will be entering KT2.. it is highly likely that I will encounter enemy units in KT2 so before I get too far into it I want to bring up the rest of 1st Platoon so I have support close at hand.

2nd Squad/2 Platoon continues to advance towards KT3... the SMG team should reach the trees there next turn.

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I plan on bringing the final Platoon from 4th Company on line inside KT1 so they can react either right or left depending on how the situation develops.

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Quick comment: P-39s and P-63s were almost exclusively used as standard, air-to-air combat fighters so would be inappropriate as CAS aircraft in CM.

That's my understanding as well. The idea of P-39s being used as ground attack FBs seems to be a myth cooked up by over imaginative writers in the West.

Incidentally, I don't think P-63s would have been operational at the time of Bagration and I also seem to remember that it was explicitly agreed that the Soviets would not employ them against the Germans. Kingcobras were therefore Asian-front only aircraft.

That seems odd. Not that I am disagreeing with you as this is the first that I have heard of the matter. But why the agreement, and with whom exactly?

This mildly annoys me, in terms of CM's depiction of CAS. Almost all CAS missions flown on all sides involved several aircraft fighting as a unit, not one pilot signing his own death warrant by flying repeated, low-level attack runs over a single target-area. I would far rather CM modelled CAS by having at least 4-8 aircraft turn up at once, strike the map in one or maybe two turns' worth of attacks and then vacate the area before AAA is fully awake and/or they're spotted by an enemy fighter patrol. Think 30 seconds of a hellish cacophony of pistons, gunfire and ordnance and then the fast diminishing sound of pilots jinking their way to safer airspace.

I couldn't agree more. The way it is currently set up is distinctly a-historical. Use of airpower on this level should be very rare and it should be an all-or-nothing kind of thing. If it appears, it should be as you say, at least four at a time. Single aircraft in games annoy me as much as single armored vehicles, which also tended to be grouped in platoons. If you saw a single one alone, it was because its parent unit had suffered heavy attrition that day and there hadn't been time to attach it to another unit.

Michael

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Steve and Michael Emrys

Point taken and discussion continued, to an extent, in John Kettler's new thread. To clarify, I'm not actually arguing for more realistic CAS because I understand that it doesn't really have a place in CM at all and so I don't use it! :). I'm perfectly happy for you to continue your fine work on the real priorities!

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Miquel, in this case with the makeup of the squad I want to emphasize the strengths of each team... which means I want the Lead Team forward with its SMGs, and also because it contains the Squad Leader.. if I am going to run into an enemy unit I want my best unit forward so it will have (hopefully) some staying power. With the other two teams I am worried that if they are out front and have to go toe to toe with an enemy unit ahead of the other teams, that they will have morale problems that could be costly.

I am moving almost all fast on this particular movement because the movement is masked from any enemy observation except directly to the front (up to where the Hunt order starts).. and that area is covered by my LMG team (and rifle team a little closer). I am alternating fast and hunt with my teams in the open.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Bil :)

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Note for whomever's designing Russian scenarios. The scouts (whose use Bil should hold a seminar on, given his mastery) in any given Russian formation will be the best quality men, because everything depends on the quality of their work, and because they'll use that very rare Russian comedy, initiative. The next best will be the organic formation constituting the CO's reserve. Thereafter, troop quality will be best in the Number 1 formation, decreasing thereafter. It's quite different than the way we do things, but that's how things are done in the Russian Army, where trained manpower is scarce and the ground forces are on the far end of the line, after all the branches requiring smarts, such as (during the Cold War): the Strategic Missile Forces, the Air Force, the Navy and so on get the men with brains and academic training. This from Suvorov/Rezun, who commanded a Tank Company, a Motor Rifle Company and was in Spetsnaz, so would seem to be qualified.

Also, he reports that because part of the goal of military service was to Russify troops from nonRussian areas where their native languages were used almost exclusively, communications were quite difficult, as in the infantry of his Motor Rifle Company knowing only a handful of commands in Russian: Advance, Retreat, Go Left, Go right and Urra! Tankers were better because their work was much more demanding and technical. Penalty Strike records similar problems, but nowhere nearly as bad because the Penal Company, part of a Penal Battalion, was composed of disgraced officers, who were as high as lieutenant colonel, therefore pretty well educated. I shudder to think what it was like in the Independent Penal Companies, for there were the conscripts, enlisted men and NCOs who'd fallen from grace, together with a generous portion of dangerous prisoners.

f

As noted before the Russians are still doing things much the way they did during WW II: linear battery deployments, red flags for commanding mortar and artillery batteries, etc. The Russian Army, for all its technological wizardry (some more advanced and widely proliferated than ours) is, like many armies, conservative and sticks to what works. That's why Russian AFVs still carry signal flags.

A word on normal Russian initiative, straight out of the official Cold War journal (forget which one, but want to say Krasnaya Zveda--Red Star): "Initiative consists of strict adherence to the commander's plan." This is why the best men are the scouts. Their initiative, which is very rare and generally frowned upon, is about as close to our standard definition as the Russian Army gets. The scouts therefore exert a lot of leverage in the Russian combat equation.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Sorry guys its taking a long time to maneuver on this map... I've burned through a couple turns with little progress from my last report. I have a toe hold in KT3 and KT2... KT1 will be totally secure next turn.

... one thing of interest.. the visibility in the woods is horrible.. so I am going to keep to my original plan and skirt along the edges of the woods and try to get some sound contacts. Hopefully I will start to see/hear the enemy in the next turn or so.

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Steve,

I think there's a simpler explanation. Bil's gotten hot intel that KT 1-3 each has a King Tiger guarding it. This has put a bit of a crimp in his offensive plan and is forcing him to regroup. For his next battle, he'll be naming such zones (NP--Nothing Present-- Namby Pamby), in order to avoid such martial inconvenience!

Regards,

John Kettler

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Sorry guys its taking a long time to maneuver on this map... I've burned through a couple turns with little progress from my last report. I have a toe hold in KT3 and KT2... KT1 will be totally secure next turn.

... one thing of interest.. the visibility in the woods is horrible.. so I am going to keep to my original plan and skirt along the edges of the woods and try to get some sound contacts. Hopefully I will start to see/hear the enemy in the next turn or so.

That's how it went in RL too I think. Lots of nothing going on for a long time and then BAM! After which of about one minute into BAM thing you are wishing that you were back to doing nothing. I for one am enjoying the setting up and prepping portion. Recon is not something to be rushed. :o

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I'm going to have a platoon (two squads) scouting KT3 and eventually another platoon (two squads) scouting KT2. Both from 4th Company. What they discover will determine which AOA I eventually concentrate on. The third squad from each of those platoons will follow up and be ready to participate in a platoon attack drill if the opportunity presents itself.

I'm a little surprised you didn't take the opportunity of playing as the Soviets to try command push. Then again, seeing how Soviet units do while using "western" tactics is also interesting.

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Bil,

Will you operating tanks buttoned, which was per the regs then and is still practiced to this day by the Russian Army? The regs specified this be done as soon as tank formations transitioned from road march. If you look at the famous picture of the T-34/85s rolling across the gently descending plain, you'll notice that all the tanks are buttoned. Not a TC in sight.

Regards,

John Kettler

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I'm a little surprised you didn't take the opportunity of playing as the Soviets to try command push. Then again, seeing how Soviet units do while using "western" tactics is also interesting.

This comment of yours made me think about to what degree commander's personalities were able to impose themselves over doctrine. I'm reading at the moment George Nipe's "Decision in the Ukraine: German Panzer Operations in the Eastern Front, Summer 1943" and I just came across the discussion of the Totenköpf SS division "personality":

In Russia, Eicke’s division exhibited this same hard-driving aggressiveness, but it had been tempered by experience. Eicke became an adequate commander. He benefited greatly by the assignment of several outstanding men to the position of division Ia, although his simplistic, heavy-handed tactics were not admired by army officers.

....

Eicke’s— and, by extension, Totenkopf’s—military philosophy is aptly described by Sydnor as

. . . concentrating all available mass and firepower in the forward units, and by reckless, zealous pursuit of the attack until the enemy surrendered or was annihilated. In the more complex and sophisticated theories of motorized operations, Eicke had neither the learning nor the slightest interest. In his blunt and impatient mind the rules were fixed plainly enough : concentrate every soldier, weapon and vehicle in the front line, then smash away at the enemy with relentless fury until he crumbled.

The book is discussing the performance of this division, and this particular section title is "3. SS Panzer Regiment Death Ride".

That's quite an example of "eastern" tactics applied by guys on the other side of the fence.

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I'm a little surprised you didn't take the opportunity of playing as the Soviets to try command push. Then again, seeing how Soviet units do while using "western" tactics is also interesting.

I wanted to address this one... it is taking so long to traverse this map that I have decided to do just that.

I want my forces in position to act quickly... I can't do that if I scout out the optimal routes only then deciding how to move. By the time I would be able to act any opportunity might be lost.

So what I am going to do is the following.. I am not going up Axis Red.. the open nature of that side of the map makes me nervous.. I could lose my entire tank force and never see the shooter. I want any armor he has in close and personal, to take away its stand-off advantage.

I am going to aggressively scout both of the Blue AOAs to keep Elvis's forces interested and spread out... I don't want him concentrating on my main effort, which is going to be Axis Yellow. My OT-34 will participate in this and hopefully draw away some defenders from the KT5 - KT6 route.

I plan on using 4th Company to fulfill the scouting role as they currently are doing... then 5th Company will follow up through KT2 then KT5 and ultimately through KT6.

My Tank riders with 5 of my 6 tanks will take a central position so they can react in case of emergency, but the intent is for them to be the spearhead for any breakthrough opportunity.

I do not intend to take them into the town... clearing that hamlet will be costly if its defended. Point is I want to make a demonstration down Blue-1 and Blue-2. Then I intend on pushing with as much as I can muster through KT5 and then through KT6 towards Obj. Yellow (Gelb).

I have three mortars on the line currently supporting my recon effort, they will continue that role.. 3 HMGs are following them, and moving very slowly... their speed,or lack of it, is a problem.

My trucks loaded with Pioneers (two squads) and half of my support weapons (3 HMGs and 3 mortars) will follow the tank riders and support any action as required.

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