killmore

I agree that "reverse R" is childish. Not that I care much...

I agree "reverse R" is kinda childish And I still think that solder on CC3 cover looks like US cowboy in soviet uniform Neither of these is important...

This is off topic and should be posted in general forum?

But wait Fionn ! Don't the 90% of German accounts mention that they lost because Soviet sub-human waves made them simply run out of ammo? I think same guys blaim Hitler for every failure... Germany seem to have two cover stories: 1) Soviets had just too many people and they could not killed them all in time. 2) Hitler was a cause for 100% of tactical/operational failures. Germans seem to win propaganda war - lost of people tend to believe in endless Soviet human waves. On the other hand Soviets did't mind that people thought they had poor strategy... It made them look weaker then they were.

Regarding Effectivness of Soviet 76mm. Picture from Russian Battlefield (http://www.battlefield.ru/) seems to show that 76mm was much worse then US 75mm. It that True? (Sorry for posting direct link to the picture page but it is rather hard to find) http://www.battlefield.ru/library/archives/weapons/weapons6.html If you believe that picture then Soviet 76mm was much worse than British 57mm [ May 08, 2002, 12:21 AM: Message edited by: killmore ]

1) (Little pro Soviet in my opinion) "Barbarossa The Russian-German conflict, 1941-1945" Alan Clark 2) (Strongly pro-german in my opinion) "The Russo-German War 1941-1945" Albert Seaton - I didn't like it it but it made some good points like poor Soviet performance at sea. If my memory is correct it spent like 20 pages talking about abuse of German civilians but only mentioned slaughter of 18 million of Soviet civilians. (and 6 million Poles)

Was Battle of the Bulge a draw? What I would consider a draw: Offensive gained small territory but was quickly stopped. Attacker was able to hold that small territory without large cost. Axis was not able to hold the gained territory therefore they lost. I would put it a loss (not a minor loss) because they lost large amount of newest toughest tanks they had that were better than soviet ones. If you look at just first couple of days I would make it a draw. After that it became a loss. Now if you want to discuss the battle in terms of number of killed as reported by Axis - you might call it a minor victory. If you look at Soviet number the story is different.

I want to apologize to Fionn. I have posted his comments about AT-Rifles without his permission. In the future I will ask permission first. Instead I just emailed to Fionn AFTER I already posted his comments about AT-Rifles. With apologies - killmore

I certainly hope so - ATR would would someone not kill everyone. Expect more "Abandoned" then "Knocked out"

One of the pattern used for deploying them was Chess pattern. Something like shown below: X_X_X_X_ _X_X_X_X_ X_X_X_X_ [ April 10, 2002, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: killmore ]

Reloads - Very fast - one of them had 5 round magazine I believe Chinese made sniper rifle based on WWII soviet AT-Rifle. Soviet AT-Rifles were design to shoot at vision slits. These rifles had a long barrel - so I believe they were quite accurate. Remember Soviet produced hundreds of thousands of them.

In the CM games I am playing Tanks get within 100 meters very frequently. (Of course CM games are not representative of real engagements) Thus AT-Rifles might be a big threat! [ April 10, 2002, 08:07 PM: Message edited by: killmore ]

Ok this is a message I got from Fionn: (By the way JasonC did you call Fionn "paranoid schizophrenic"? ) As far as I am aware some AT rifles at extremely short ( suicidal) ranges could penetrate up to 50mm. You have to remember that this was against armours which didn't benefit from an utrageously high T/D ratio. OTOH were shots at this range common and did penetrations at these ranges result in the knocking out of the offending tank. No and no. An ATR doesn't do enough damage to really knock out tanks reliably. About the best you can hope for from an ATR is to have the projectile pass through a crewman or, possibly, touch off a round in the turret. In and of itself the ATR projectile isn't really all that powerful. I would point out that for AT rifles all of the tests assume perfect firing conditions ( stationary target, at right angles, no sloping of armour etc) so, in real life, I would expect 30 to 40mm of steel to protect me from AT rifles since I would make it my business to ensure I didn't let Soviet ATR teams get within 100 metres of me. In reality Soviet ATR units were trained to fire at enemy tank roadwheels, periscopes and sighting systems. In such a way they could still disable enemy tanks even if their guns couldn't actually penetrate the enemy armour. It should be noted that the Germans lost many TCs to ATR fire through viewing blocks and this is one of the reasons they developed sighting periscopes ( so that the TC or driver's head wasn't directly behind the viewing block such that a Soviet ATR team which hit the viewing block could rely on their bullet also hitting the German's head as he looked through it).

What is the release date for "Offical Release Date"?

After looking at all of this data/discussion I keep seeing that AT Rifle was "capable of defeating" or "could penetrate" X milimeters of armor. I am starting to wonder whether this means in rare cases like 10%. Maybe AT rifle info is not up to par with penetrations listed for AT guns where penetration means over 50% of the time. Even consistant penetration of 40mm of the armor seems like a lot. I wonder if Fionn answers email any more so I could ask him whether he has reliable source.

Something!

I believe Fionn gave the source when he wrote that - unfortunatly current "search" does not let me search that far back... Another statement was made at the time: AT rifles were not penetrating armour - instead they would just punch a small hole in it. If the bullet itself got inside tank it would rarely have enough energy to hurt anyone inside. But second bullet going through the same hole is another story. If you plug in these numbers into equation from http://www.onlineconversion.com/armor.htm you do get 50mm - that is not a reliable source in any way. Interesting that AT rifle seems to gain ability to penetrate much faster than 20mm flak. Flak was able to penetrate 24mm at 500m and only 32 at 100m. AT rifles are at 35-40mm at 300 meters already. Regarding 50mm armour on PzIV - only very early models had 50mm armour - the ones in CM all have over 70mm. I bet all PzIVs after mid-1942 would be immune to frontal shots from AT-Rifles. Also remember this is at 0 degrees. It is extremly rare to get exactly 0 degree shot.

I am sorry but do you have a source for these figures? They are the highest I have heard mentioned so far and would like to be able to see them in print somewhere. You mentioned a book giving the ATR's 35mm @ 90 degrees at 500 meters, what book is that? -- M.[/QB]

I agree somewhat. CM tends to become a chess game against humans. - But you can fix this. Just give them only 5 min to set up and 1 minute after every turn. Unfortunatly this leads to speed-clicking...

(Sorry I posted it elsewhere too) Soviets has also AT granades. RPG-40 penetrates 20mm (1940) RPG-41 penetrates 25mm (1941) RPG-43 penetrates 75mm (1943) RPG-6 penetrates 120mm (yes 120mm!) october 1943 Throwing range 15-20 meters. Had special stabilization system and worked similarly to Panzerfaust. Sounds like german tanks had other things to worry about than AT rifles. These had to be deadly to german tanks if you could get close enough Source: "Weapons of Red Army" B.H. Shunkov 1999

I have couple of sources that list its armour penetration at 16mm at 500m. Both the http://world.guns.ru/machine/mg03-r.htm and "Weapons of Red Army" claim this is a better than M2 .50 (I can't remember what penetration was for .50 - 14mm?) There were 2000 of them available in 1941. 720 in Jan 1942 and 8440 in Jan 1944. (numbers in use - not total produced. So can I expect soviets to have a better Armored car killer than Americans had?

Correction: PTRS and PTRD both 25mm at 500 meters, 37mm at 300m. So it has to be better at closer distances. I do recall strongly 50mm at very close distance like 30-60 meters.

RPG-40 penetrates 20mm (1940) RPG-41 penetrates 25mm (1941) RPG-43 penetrates 75mm (1943) RPG-6 penetrates 120mm (yes 120mm!) october 1943 Throwing range 15-20 meters. Had special stabilization system and worked similarly to Panzerfaust. Sounds like german tanks had other things to worry about than AT rifles. These had to be deadly to german tanks if you could get close enough Source: "Weapons of Red Army" B.H. Shunkov 1999

That used to be a page with WWII tanks, pictures of destroyed German tanks, penetrations of soviet WWII guns - ect. It had IS-3 tank on the front page. Where is all that stuff?

The numbers came from discussion long ago - I believe FIONN posted them. My book lists them at 35mm vertical at 500m. No mention of closer ranges