tss

CMplayer wrote: Is that a portable Victory Flag he's holding? Sure. That's the secret why British soldiers won every battle they fought in: they kept changing the victory conditions. - Tommi

Here's some further data on crew losses, this time for German-made vehicles. I went through my sources on Stug-IIIGs in Finnish use and their losses and compiled a list. As is the usual case for Finnish examples, the sample size is pretty small so if you want to do generalizations, do it at your own risk. During Summer 1944 thirteen Finnish Stugs were hit a total of 17 times by enemy guns firing AP [including one unspecified hit but not including times when Soviets hit already KO vehicles]. Five of the targets were knocked out, one immobilized and had to be abandoned under fire, and the rest were only damaged. The vehicles that were knocked out or immobilized lost a total of 3 KIA, 1 MIA, and 10 WIA either directly from the hits, during bailing out, or immediately afterwards. This would imply that a vehicle loss caused 2.3 casualties on average (out of crew of four). However, there are two things that make counting the average more difficult: a) two of the WIA were only slightly wounded and wouldn't be counted as casualties in CM, dropping the average to 2.0. The loss of artillery FO vehicle (531-21) caused 6 of the casualties (2 KIA, 4 WIA). Discounting the two extra men (that won't be present in CM) drops the average to 1.67. Two vehicles lost (5, 21) their whole crews (but not all were KIA) and three vehicles (3, 17, 29) escaped without any severe crew losses at all. Note that the Finnish sources usually don't list Stugs 7 and 21 among lost vehicles since both of them were recovered. However, they didn't participate in further combats so I think they should be listed as losses. The remaining damaging AP hits caused a total of 2 KIA and 5 WIA to the average of 0.64 CM casualties per hit. A surprisingly large number of Stug crewmen were wounded or killed while outside their vehicles during combat. I haven't compiled a list of those casualties, but at least as many men were lost that way as were lost inside. And here's a detailed list of combat damage to Finnish Stugs (The numbers given are numbers of the Stugs): 1: Immobilized by a HE near miss (14.6.) and destroyed by own sappers. Two of the crew were outside when the shell landed and were killed. 2: Immobilized by own AT mine (27.6.) and forced to abandon. No casualties. 3: a) Gun hit by a T-34-85 (14.6.). No casualties. Knocked out by a T-34-85 (27.6.). No casualties. 4: Track hit by a T-34-85 (25.6.). No casualties. 5: a) Damaged by a T-34-85 (27.6.). 1 WIA. Knocked out either by an AT gun or a T-34-85 (11.7.). The KO hit caused 2 WIA, next hit killed one of the WIA and wounded one more man. One panicked and run to enemy. Total losses: 1 KIA, 1 MIA, 2 WIA. 6: a) Damaged by a T-34-85 (14.6.). 1 KIA, no wounded. Damaged by a T-34-85 (27.6.). No casualties. 7: Knocked out by a T-34-85 (14.6.). Hit caused no casualties, but 2 were WIA while bailing out. 11: Damaged by an AT gun (14.6.). One man bailed out and was wounded outside. 16: Damaged by an unspecified hit (11.7.). No casualties. 17: Immobilized in an AT gun ambush (14.6.). The crew bailed out and ignited self-destruct charges. Two men were slightly wounded. 19: Optics damaged by infantry hand-grenades (26.6.). No casualties. 20: Damaged twice by an AT gun (both on 14.6.). No casualties. 21: Knocked out by a T-34-85 while acting as an artillery FO tank (25.6.). 2 KIA, 4 WIA. 23: Abandoned intact (14.6.). No casualties. 24: Damaged by an AT gun (14.6.), 1 WIA. Later immobilized on a pile of rocks and destroyed by a hand grenade. No further casualties. 25: Gun hit by an ATR (27.6.). No casualties. 27: a) Damaged by an AT gun (14.6.). 1 KIA, no wounded. Track hit by an ATR (27.6.). No casualties. 29: Knocked out by direct fire (14.6.) (probably T-34-85). No casualties. Sources: "Marskin rynnäkkötykit", "Rynnäkkötykit isänmaamme puolustajina". - Tommi

tero wrote: Since your knowledge of the Finnish WWII military is so extensive why don't you present comparative facts that clearly show the US artillery was superior in every aspect to the Finnish artillery ? I would like to point out that even after rereading all Slapdragon's posts in this thread I couldn't find any claim that "the US artillery was superior in every aspect to anything". In fact, there's a direct quote to the opposite: "This was called the 'British System' and had advantages and disadvantages over the the 'US system'". What he has said is that he considers the US system to be the best. To me the argument sounds as: 'when one compares different artillery systems the US one comes out the best even though other artillery systems had some advantages over it on some subjects.' Now, whether this claim holds or not, I can't say. Most of my knowledge on the subject is about Finnish artillery, and I don't know enough of Western Allied practices to really comment on it on a direction or other. In general, Finnish artillery was very accurate and flexible, but was it more accurate and flexible than the US one? Beats me. In the battles of summer '44 it was quite common for a junior Finnish FO to call fire of up to 7 artillery batallions (84 guns) of different caliberes at the same target as a TOT barrage without any spotting rounds. [There was no technical upper limit for the number of firing batallions. However, in practice the fire was usually allocated in 5-7 batallion "fire groups"]. There was one nine-batallion barrage (118 guns) called in by an infantry major. But there is one important aspect where the US artillery was clearly better than Finnish: radio communications. There was a chronic shortage of radios in Finnish army and far too often FO posts had to rely on field phones or even flare guns or messangers. - Tommi

I have a question for those who know about organization of Western Allied forces: Were there any independent companies in either US or Commonwealth armies? By independent I mean here a company that doesn't belong to any batallion but is directly attached to a higher level HQ, either regimental or divisional. An example could be a regimental recon company. I would guess that a commander of such a company (or batallion) would be generally more independent than one commanding a regular company. However, even his independence would be limited and I've read of a case where a divisional HQ meddled with affairs of an independent batallion to the level of assigning attack directions to individual platoons. - Tommi

Nabla wrote: Occupy and Clear seem to assume absense of enemy (contact battalion if enemy found). I'd say that Occupy assumes the absense of significant enemy forces. Unorganized remains of previously shattered enemy units could be expected in some cases. I'm not certain of precise meanings of American military terms, but I'd think that Clear could also include a situation where enemy has occupied some position along your communication routes and you might have to perform an actual attack to dislodge it. I agree with Rifle1860 in that a commander of a delaying force would most likely have a quite free choice over actions. Also, a company guarding the flanks of an advance could have more choices than one at point, at least if there were problems with communication. - Tommi

*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* That damned horse doesn't seem to want to move. Maybe if I give it one more gently prod. *Sput* No effect. Maybe I have to admit that it's dead and it is time to bury it and let it rest in peace. This will be my last post on this thread. I don't have really anything new to say and just add this response to point out few interesting features of Jason's answer to my post. There's nothing left here but a flamewar and I'm not interested in participating in those. Jason, you don't have to bother to reply to this. I won't be even reading it. And after I have time to migrate my UBB-killfile code to Mozilla, I won't be reading any of your future posts, which is in a way a pity since you do often post highly informative posts. However, it is better for my blood pressure to stop reading them altogether. JasonC wrote: Numerical analysis can indeed be a useful tool, but to use it properly you have to put in numbers or ranges for unknowns, that you actually believe possible, which is just what tss did not do. Translation: "I can take numbers out of thin air so that they will to get conclusions I like. If you do that, you are a liar". At least that is the message I get here. How do you know that your reasonable sounding assumptions lead to a reasonable conclusion? That first one of my datasets led to an unreasonable conclusion even though the individual variables were, at least to me, quite reasonable. He thus admits he knows his other lines are off by a factor of 2 to 8 at least, in cumulative effect, but he does not bother his head about that. You see, I'm not a psychic. If I don't have enough data to get a reliable average for the ammo ratio, I don't pretend I can do it. No, once more, for the final time: the whole point of the formula and two sets of values was to show that without knowing the real values of parameters the result is meaningless. Because he is not honestly applying the method, he is just stuffing in things he doesn't believe and noting he doesn't believe what pops out the other end. So, apparently, if I honestly believe that my estimates are correct, they are correct even if I have no way of knowing the actual values. that reflects not on the general method, but only the purposefully unrealistic assumptions about 95% targeting of bushes and only 10% deliveries to the front. And I assume you have some sort of magical oracle that tells to you that your assumptions are realistic. This shows they too are arguing for an ulterior purpose, or rhetorically, instead of saying what they actually think. By my count this is the third time you accuse me of being a liar. But then again, how could I count accurately when I'm just a stupid engineer who couldn't even win a debate against a piece of a railway track. Peddling out recon by AP to suit an accuracy boost, then refusing the resulting phantom targets, is transparently a desire to have more fire effect per round expended than one believes the actual participants had. Thank you for telling me that. It is always enlightening to find out what I really think. Which again is simply not honest. Third time in the same post. ... combined with no willingness to see infantry without loads of automatic weapons, or availability of one's favorite rare tank or gun, where the supply chain is supposed to work perfectly to get everything into the hands of the ubertroops. Well, after that paragraph I'm pretty certain there's no danger of any birds invading this thread; that number of strawmen could frighten away a flock of angry ostriches. I think your argument would be a little more convincing if you would rebut what I wrote and not what you think I wrote. Hint: I haven't called for preferential treatment for "übertroops" during this argument. In fact, the only thing that could be interpreted that way (and then only if one really wanted to do so) is that I've mentioned that Finnish artillery doctrine called for batallion-strength one-minute long strikes fired with intesive fire (120 rounds in a minute for 75 or 76 mm guns). And I hadn't mentioned that in this thread before this. And a lack of the honesty about one's own estimates needed to engage in any sort of modeling of real historical processes. So, it is not honest to admit that one doesn't know real figures? ... and the imaginary immediate response artillery... followed by: Instances of long ranged fire from hidden PAK, never spotted despite minutes of fire, are quite common in the histories. And instances of artillery fire called on noticed AT assets are not? By the way, I noticed that you didn't answer that one direct question I asked from you. OK, that's enough. I'll go have some sleep. - Tommi

Wreck wrote: Tactical difference. I see no tactical difference, do you? 40 shots fired, one kill. Actually, I do. Suppose that an enemy tank pops out to view and you start shooting at it. It makes a significant difference whether you hit it with your third round or sixth, since in the time those three extra shots take the target may get back to cover again. So, in this example, if wasted shots are not factored in accuracy, there's a dead enemy tank. If not, there's a live enemy tank. I agree that strategically there's no big difference, but tactically there is. If the effect is really as great as some here seem to suggest, then leaving it out of CM is a mistake. I don't know how large effect it was. I don't have enough data to determine that. If most of what tanks historically did shoot at was bushes, then they should do so in CM. Well, it could also be said that since infantry often (with a suitable value of "often") stopped for 15-30 minutes while the platoon leader tried to get some picture of what was happening around, they should do so in CM. This is not that hard to do. Just make the tac AI target "unidentified vehicle" markers, and then change the engine to generate lots of fake ones. That would be actually a neat thing to have, also with infantry units. It would certainly add a factor of uncertainty to attacking. You make them able to kill 40 times their number, when in reality they would only be likely to be able to kill 2. On the other hand, the number of possible kills in a scenario is bounded from above by the number of enemy tanks present in the battle so the situation is not quite that severe. One thing could be that tanks started the battle without a full ammo load. Though, I'm not certain whether that would really be a good idea. All this tells me is that in your heart, you don't think that the amount of bush-shooting that went on in tactical combat was all that large. Neither do I. I would like if I could give a reasonable estimate on the size of the effect, but I can't. As far as I know, it might have been that 90% as in my above-mentioned example. Or it might have been as low as 5%. Or something between them. Or something outside the range. My gut feeling is that the effect was significant but it wouldn't be the first time that my intuition gives an incorrect answer. - Tommi

First, I would like to apologize Jason for the overly insulting tone of my yesterday's post. I should have let my head cool before posting. JasonC wrote: (which is usually known as lying, but here passes for rhetorical argument). I see that we have a different definition for lying, then. When you have to assume strictly unbelievable things to make a conclusion consistent with the model, the conclusion is strictly unbelievable. Umm... My conclusion was that by choosing the unknown parameters suitably you can get any figure between 2-150 to the number of rounds / kill. His numbers actually exclude the intermediate hypotheses he proposed. What intermediate hypotheses? I wasn't aware I had any. He also used redundant categories, probably without realizing it. While realizing it. I just thought it to be a good idea to explicitly show the kinds of things that are there. But most revealing was the last part of the 2.3 forced conclusion, where he needed 19 out of 20 rounds fired at anything but their intended targets in order to justify the ending number he wanted for rhetorical purposes. I suppose that you have some concrete figure based on first-hand sources to substitute there, then. I think I made it quite clear that any connections between numbers in my post and reality were strictly coincidental. Though, I have to admit, that I think the same holds for your figures. Surely it makes no tactical difference to him whether the Tac AI fires 35 rounds at empty space and hits one tank with the next 5, or fires 40 to hit one tank. If those two cases don't make any difference to you, then I have to conclude we have to agree to disagree here as continuing this discussion would be pointless to the extreme. Note that I'm not demanding that CM tanks should fire at non-existing targets. While being arguably more realistic, it would be a mistake from playability viewpoint. However, arguing that those rounds that would have been wasted in a real combat should be factored in by lowering general accuracy, would be in my opinion quite strange. Where lo, they will perform the exact same tactical role as misses, because misses by any other name is what they are. Now, let me ask this one straight question: Do you think that CM should artificially lower the accuracy of targeted shots so that the average ratio of shots/kill is close to whole-war average? My viewpoint is that in tactical combat it is more important to get the accuracy of correctly targeted shots correct. Your mileage may vary. Or are tanks to develop the tightest supposedly ahistorical fire discipline magically, because a human has assumed command? Given that the game currently has extremely unrealistic modeling of chain of command, I don't see any trouble with unrealistic fire discipline. I have more trouble with adhering to some unknown average values. No one has yet told me any reason a tanker should not have fired at ranges with 3-5% hit probability. Here's two: 1) You may reveal the position of your main line of resistance too soon so that the enemy has time to call artillery and air attacks. This is not so serious with tanks, but with AT guns too early commitment just causes unnecessary deaths. 2) If you wait, the enemy may get closer and you have better changes inflicting heavy casualties before they have time to react. Now, before these get turned into strawmen, I'd like to explicitly point out that after the combat has begun there's much less reasons to hold low-probability shots. In practice, it can -falsify- some claims made about average accuracies, by providing bounds, much more readily than it can establish real average figures within any narrow range. But in this case you can get an upper bound of ~150 shots/kill with figures that are still plausible. Should we expect that in CM a 6-vehicle StuG battery that fires all its AP ammo gets on average only one effective hit? You expect a signficant amount of "acedom" without any actual ace effect causing it. Just from randomness. True, and a good point. - Tommi

rexford wrote: Tanks that are destroyed or knocked out and lost also cost ammunition. I knew that I had forgotten some important factor. It is possible that a few tanks did most of the killing and the rest stood around and fired off a few rounds to seem as if they in the thick of things. That seems plausible. Risking to rise Jason's ire, I just checked that 5 highest-scoring Finnish StuG gunners got little less than 50% (42/87) of credited tank kills. Since there were approximately 30 StuGs that participated in combat (I haven't compiled a full list, yet), it means that roughly 16% of vehicles got 50% of kills. Once again, this situation is not likely to be very good example for the general case. The active combat period was quite short, only a little over month and there wasn't time for large performance gaps to develop. In total, 19 gunners got a Tank-Destroyer's Badge, with the kills ranging from 1 to 11. - Tommi

Wreck wrote: In your case, even by picking rather extreme numbers in your second example, you still end up with 2.3 shots fired per kill. I think that my first example is actually more relevant than that one since the numbers there are individually more plausible. (But I want to emphasize that any connection between them and reality is purely coincidental). I could accept each of them individually, but together they give a ridiculously poor shot/kill ratio. I personally have no trouble with the claim that in long range battles AT guns had to use on average 6-12, or even more, rounds per kill. I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be closer to 20. I just don't think that you can really justify accuracy claims based on ammo production, because there are too many unknown holes there. And it is a worst-case lower bound, and in fact, not credible. Like I mentioned above, in this case the upper bound causes a more serious problem since the figures in it all seem credible at the first sight so it isn't even really the least upper bound. So, of the 400 shells produced per gun, your assumptions are equivalent to the assertion that only 45 shells reached each weapon. Only if we assume that all guns reached the front. And that all guns had time to fire even once their ammo alotment. However, I don't want to try to defend that estimate since I just wanted to throw in some plausible figures (where "plausible" means here "not completely impossible"). So we can show, even without knowing precisely which one of the variables is set wrong, that in toto they are wrong. Yup. But you can still easily get differences of one order of magnitude using only plausible values. obviously the average for long ranged fire, being less accurate than short, will be worse. Obviously. - Tommi

I thought that I should elaborate my comment about the number of unknown variables. I'll do it by an example: Let's start by designing a mathematical formula for AP ammo usage, so that things will look neat and there's an illusion of respectability: R = N * D * T * S * C * W / K Where - R = Ratio of rounds used per killed tank. - N = Number of AT rounds produced - D = Proportion of rounds left in depots - S = Proportion of rounds lost in supply chain - T = Proportion of rounds used in training - C = Proportion of rounds captured by enemy or destroyed to prevent capture - W = Proportion of rounds wasted by firing them at non-vehicular or already KO targets - K = Number of tanks knocked out. [To be exact, all those terms corresponding to the proportions should be of the form (1 - X) but it looks nicer the way it is above, I'll just turn the proportions the other way round.] Let's use Jason's figure of 400 produced rounds per AT weapon and a wild guess that each gun destroyed one enemy AFV to simplify the calculation (we can then throw K out and use N=400). We have now to assign some concrete figures to remaining five parameters. First, consider D. Germans were certainly quite efficient, so a guess that 90% of the shells left the depots sounds reasonable and we can set D = 0.9. Similarily, it sounds reasonable to say that at most one shell in twenty was lost on way to front, so S = 0.95. Though training was important, the live ammo usage there was much smaller than at front. Perhaps 5% is quite close, so T = 0.95. Because of German setbacks of 1944 and -45 the number of rounds lost to enemy was quite big, at least one third. So, let's use C = 0.67. Now we have to estimate the last free variable. Again, it is safe to assume that about 1/3 of ammo was wasted on invalid targets and W = 0.67. Plugging these figures in we get: R = 400 * 0.9 * 0.95 * 0.95 * 0.67 * 0.67 = 145.8 Now we can conclude that a gun fired on average 146 rounds at an enemy tank for a kill so CM's guns are way too accurate. On second thoughts, that seems to be a little excessive so let's adjust the parameters slightly. Certainly, by late 1944 German transportation system was having serious troubles and since German production increased in the latter part of the war, we can estimate that perhaps as high proportion as 1/3 total AP ammo production never left the main depots and factories, so D = 0.67. Also, thinking about it, partisans certainly inflicted a heavy toll on German supply trains and Allied aircraft interdiction sent many supply trucks to heaven, so maybe as much as 1/2 of rounds got lost on way and S = 0.5. Germans trained their troops pretty well, so guessing that T = 0.85 doesn't sound too unreasonable to me. In 1944 Germans had to blow up lots of their great supply centers because of Allied advances on all fronts and a number were captured intact. It may be that as much as 60% of remaining ammo was lost this way, and C = 0.4. Finally, lots and lots of rounds were wasted by shooting at supposed targets because gunners thought that better safe than sorry. It is not impossible that 95% of rounds were fired this way, and W = 0.05. Using these improved figures we get: R = 400 * 0.67 * 0.5 * 0.85 * 0.4 * 0.05 = 2.3 So, we can conclude now that on average each tank kill required only 2.3 shots. At this point one might start to question the validity of these two results. After all, changes in the parameters caused a difference of two orders of magnitude to the result. And all figures that were used could be justified by some argument (though in most case by quite weak argument). I don't know the correct values of any of the seven parameters. I strongly suspect that no-one knows the correct value of any of the parameters (except possibly N and T, if records survived the war). Now, what is the moral of this post? By choosing the parameters in a suitable way, you can get get out any value you want for R. This is why I think that the whole reasoning process is flawed. - Tommi

JasonC wrote: As for the typical uber finn distraction, there are several problems with it. Yes, there are. First, it suggests that a significant number of AP rounds may have been fired at targets that actually weren't enemy tanks. This has the problem that it disturbs the average of the number of rounds spent firing at real targets and thus casts doubts on validity of using AP production data to draw conclusions on gun accuracy. I agree that it is a serious problem. First, 200m firefights are not the subject under discussion, long range accuracy is. I may have misunderstood your argument, but I thought that at some point you stated that tank gun accuracy had to be lower than usually assumed because the difference between the numbers of manufactured rounds and destroyed tanks. In this context, the number of shots expended on other targets than tanks is, in my highly egoistical opinion, relevant. Earlier, you wrote: A few might have been fired at buildings or bunkers. So, I dug up one particular case where ~9/10 of AP ammo was fired at non-vehicular targets. I don't know how good representative this is for an average battle, probably quite poor for the reasons I mentioned in the earlier post. However, neither do you. Or, if you do, I have missed the post where you presented it. What happens to your calculations if you throw that one order of magnitude in somewhere? Second, the terrain was woods, not open enough for ranged fire in the first place. It doesn't matter where an individual round is fired. Even if those rounds were fired in the Moon, they would still show up in the total figure of produced 75mm AP ammo that you have been using to support your argument. Third, the actual AP rounds expended per target engaged was actually around 6, as is shown by the AFV being out. Once more, the Stug (531-24) saw three enemy tanks during the combat [though, to be precise, the TC did a scout trip on foot at one phase and saw ~20 behind a ridge but that hardly matters here]. The gunner fired a total of 3 AP and 1 HE round against those three tanks. All rounds hit the targets. So, on average, the gunner expended 1.33 rounds per target engaged, if you factor that mistaken HE in. The rest of the AP rounds were fired in the combat, but at targets that were not tanks, assault guns, trucks, bunkers, or any other usual AP targets. Factoring them into rounds per armored target engaged gives highly misleading results. The gunner's account specifies that once he fired an AP to clear the barrel for a HE round. Twice he fired a reactionary fire at AT guns that had opened fire at them [first hit and internal armor flaking wounded the loader]. In the first case he had time to notice that the target was an AT gun, but he still fired the round that was in the barrel at the moment [either HE or AP, two accounts differ on this which is quite natural since, after all, the vehicle was hit a moment ago and the situation was quite confused]. In the second case the gunner fired at the muzzle flash of enemy gun before figuring out whether it was a tank or gun. Fourth, the statement that only 2-4 were fired at each AFV is pure speculation by the poster, not anything in the actual report, Pray tell me, where have you managed to find an English translation of panssarimies Vuorela's account? I thought that only place where it is published in its entirety is Leppänen's "Rynnäkkötykit isänmaamme puolustajina", that was, at least when I last looked at it, in Finnish. [OK, I admit, it may have been also published in some old issue of "Kansa Taisteli - Miehet Kertovat" magazine.] Yes, in my first post the figure of 2-4 was a speculation. Then, reading the account again I found out that 2 was the correct figure. based on nothing more than his inability to believe 6 were fired per target engaged. No, based on the account of the gunner who actually pressed the trigger and fired the shots. Fifth, the actual hits are obviously what are reported in the "1 AP vs. this" "1 HE vs. that". I think that you use a different definition for "obviously" than I do. This is typical of AARs - the effect of fire is the focus of the reporting, not accounting for every round. Let's go into the accounts with a little (but just little) more detail: - First T-34-85. Vuorela knocked it out by a flank hit before it had time to turn its turret towards their Stug. I don't have data on T-34's turret rotation speed, but I'd be quite surprised if the Stug got six rounds off in that time. - Second T-34-85. At this point, the Stug had a grand total of 5 HE and 2 AP rounds left [they had tried to obtain ammo resupply but failed], so it would have been quite strange for them to use six rounds here. - The KV-I (or IS-II). When it crested the ridge, there were 2 HE and 1 AP round left. Again, I fail to see how they could expand six rounds to it. Sixth, it is still just one report of one fight at short range in a particular theater with high crew qualities on one side, etc, and hardly merits conclusions about hundreds of thousands of other engagements over whole continents for whole years. Sure, as I said in the post. 6 shots per reported target at 200m with uber-Finn crews hardly supports the idea that all kills took only a couple of shots. Agreed. But I fail to see how the ratio of all produced rounds per all destroyed tanks supports the idea that all kills took dozens of shots. There's an interesting table in the end of "Marskin panssarintorjujat" but, of course, that doesn't apply because the figures are Finnish. The table lists all AT gun tank kills of Panssaridivisioona (in 1944), along with ammo usages. I don't have it available right now [so here be inaccurate recollections], but the trend was that 75 mm Paks used around 4-10 shots per kill while 50 mm Paks used 20-30 (with some cases in high 40s). The ranges were relatively short, 400-700 meters. The caveat here is that the figures are available only for engagements that ended in a tank kill. Draws and those won by tanks are not listed. What nobody else seems to have accepted, however, is that high hit % per round is simply unnecessary in order for range AT fire to be effective. I accept that. However, I don't accept your argumentation based on production figures since there are too many unknown variables along the way. - Tommi [ 10-03-2001: Message edited by: tss ]

Correcting myself: The vehicle had 54 rounds of ammo, 6 of whom were HEATs and the rest mix of HE and AP, the exact ratio not known. Actually, there were 70 rounds since the crew loaded extra ammo. The gunner's account identifies the targets of 5 or 6 AP rounds: - 1 AP into a barn (it was, after all, the same vehicle and not a different one to do the "barn thing") - 1 AP or HE at an AT gun (The gunner says it was an AP, the TC that it was a HE). - 1 AP at another AT gun. - 1 AP knocked out a T-34-85. - 1 AP knocked out another T-34-85 - 1 AP knocked out KV-I (or IS-II). Note that only three rounds were aimed at tanks (though at the moment of firing that one sure AP round against the second AT gun, the gunner didn't know the identity of his target, yet). All three hit and knocked out the targets (it has to be remembered that the ranges were extremely short). That leaves 30-40 AP (or HEAT) rounds that weren't fired at enemy vehicles. So, in that particular case, less than 1/10 of AP rounds were used as intended. I once again emphasize that Kuuterselkä was not exactly the average tank battle so it is not certain how well that figure generalizes. The initial part of the battle was basically a meeting engagement fought along a forest road with poor visibility both due the trees and dusk. - Tommi

JonS wrote: two categories for the 'lost' shells could be "used in training", and "lost in the supply chain". One more catagory: shots fired at targets that were supposed to be enemy tanks but were actually something roughly tank-shaped. Many an innocent barn or pile of logs got a cruel AP shell through it. Not very common occurrence while defending in open steppes but quite prevalent while attacking in covered terrain. One data point: Finnish Stug-IIIG no 531-24 at Kuuterselkä. The vehicle had 54 rounds of ammo, 6 of whom were HEATs and the rest mix of HE and AP, the exact ratio not known. It knocked out three enemy tanks (2 x T-34-85, 1 x KV-1 (or possibly IS-II)). I can't remember how many shots the T-34s demanded, but I'd guess that 2-4, on total. (It was practically a melee, the ranges were so short (15-200m) that a vehicle missing two shots could be considered dead). The KV needed two hits, one HE (fired by mistake) and one AP. Now, the interesting thing is that the AP round that knocked it out was the last round left in the Sturm. So, in the battle, 531-24 (Halonen, Vuorela) fired somewhere around 30 AP and HEAT shots, and at most 5-6 of them were actually aimed at enemy tanks. Where did rest of the rounds go? I don't know, but I'd guess that there were roughly 20 tank-shaped objects with big holes in them along their route. There's also the possibility that many AP rounds were wasted because a HE shell was needed and the quickest way to clear the barrel was to fire the AP way. [One confirmed case of the latter: Ps.531-6 (or -19, I'm not sure) fired an AP round into a barn filled by Soviet infantry and followed it by few HE rounds]. One of my friends served his military term as a T-72 driver. They had once a lecture given by one of the Stug gunners who had participated in the Kuuterselkä battle (probably Olof Lagus, I don't know for certain). The old veteran confirmed that the basic response to any threatening shape was to shoot first, investigate later. - Tommi

This evening I continued going systematically through combats of Finnish Stugs and I found a second occasion where a Soviet tank column panicked. This happened on night between 25-26 June. Finnish counter attack had taken back Leitimojärvi fields and Stugs were positioned in a forested hill. The Soviets sent a 12-tank company to reinforce the defenders. Apparently Soviet tankers had no clear picture of the situation, since they advanced on single column. Finns let the column close until the nearest tank was ~200 meters away. Then, a Panzerschreck destroyed the sixth tank, cutting the column in two. At the same moment, the Stugs hit two lead tanks. The crews of the three T-34-85s that were captured between KO vehicles bailed out and their tanks were captured intact. The six last tanks turned and sped away, showing their weak rear armor. At least two of them were destroyed. In the whole battle, no Soviet tank fired back. Now, so that I will not be accused of überFennoism, I will add a short summary of the Stug attack to Talinmylly, on 27 June: Soviets stopped the attack, 2 Stugs were unrecoverably lost, 2 seriously damaged, and only one escaped unharmed. Soviet losses were one knocked out but probably repairable T-34-85 and one AT gun. That particular battle is nicely on-topic to this thread since Finns would most probably have lost it even if the Stugs had been replaced by King Tigers. The Soviets had 25 dug-in T-34-85 and JS-II tanks in the area in a hedgehog defence as well as a lot of accurate artillery. The attackers would have had to expose vulnerable flanks to at least some of them. Michael Dorosh wrote: I am starting to wish there were some good references in English on the Finnish Army, this is quite interesting. Pretty much the all that I've seen are about Winter War. So, unfortunately, English references about Finnish armor are in very short supply. Makes me wonder what the Mannerheim Cross was - is this on a par to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross? The highest military award in Finland. It could be awarded both to officers and enlisted men. A total of 191 were awarded. And how would a tank driver win one? Heinos citation (no. 123, 21.11.1943) gives the following reasons: - Skilled and brave tank driver - Repaired an immobilized T-34 in no-man's land and drove it back to own forces. - As the driver of the said T-34 contributed significantly to capture of Karhumäki town. In particular, he drove over a gun battery [actually two: one 45mm AT and one 76mm field gun] that was firing at T-34 all the time. - On many occasions he joined recovery crews to evacuate damaged tanks from no-man's land. Heino participated in recoveries of almost all heavy tanks that were captured in 1941-44 (2 x T-34-76 (out of a total of 4), 3 x T-34-85 (out of 7), 2 x KV-IE, 1 x ISU-152 (out of 2)). The capture of that first T-34 was particularly impressive, since it was also the first T-34 he ever saw and he still managed to fix its damaged gearbox and drive it away. - Tommi

Michael Dorosh wrote: We might consider, to further Tero's example, the morale of Finn StuG crews vs. Soviet tank crew morale. Tero, what say you on this? Did fighting on Finnish soil impart any advantages on Finn tank/SPG crews? That's very difficult to quantify. However, there were two cases where Finnish Sturms and Soviet T-34-85s met in quite identical, but reversed situations: 1) On 25 June 1944 at Portinhoikka crossroads Finnish Stugs had retreated to North towards Ihantala while the main body of Soviet armor proceeded to West towards Juustila. The Stugs regrouped and moved to take a firing position to the crossroads. They noticed six T-34-85s that were crossing a soft field, and at least few of them were bogged. Three of the tanks were quickly knocked out (two by Janhunen's Ps.531-2, gunner Anttila, one by Roukkula's Ps.531-5, gunner Leppänen) and rest Soviet crews bailed out, leaving their vehicles intact in the field. [i believe that these three tanks were the ones that Finnish recovery crews tried to get moving for several hours without any success until Lauri Heino, the only Finnish tank driver to get Mannerheim's Cross, came to the scene and got all three tanks moving with first tries]. 2) On July 1944 (I don't remember exact date and my sources are at home) a Finnish Sturm column that advanced to counter attack at Vuosalmi was ambushed by a T-34-85 platoon at a flanking position. One Stug was knocked out, but the rest quickly returned fire and knocked the T-34s out. What conclusions can be drawn here? Not much, the sample size is way too small. There were also few cases where the presence of Stugs was enough to keep Soviet tankers away. This happened at least at Pertjärvi and Roukkulanjoki. At Pertjärvi the first T-34-85 was blown up by a simultaneous hits by two Stugs and at Roukkulanjoki one near miss was enough to discourage Soviet tankers. In both places Soviet infantry then attacked Finnish delaying positions without armored support and got thrown back with heavy casualties. What did Soviet tankers feel about fighting in winter in a country that seemed unimportant to them (or did it?) Actually, all battles involving Stugs happened in Summer 1944. - Tommi

tero wrote: But you do agree that the Stugs were being used as regular gun tanks. Basically, yes. But they did take part in actions side by side. Few times. Most notable was the counter attack from Portinhoikka to Leitimojärvi, on evening 25.6.1944. 89-8. I checked my sources again and it turned out that 87 was the correct number for credited kills. However, there were probably 3-4 more that went uncredited. Were these 87 KO'd tanks out of the loop for long enough to matter and influence the outcome at the operational level ? I don't know. My sources don't mention that. However, by that criterion Finnish Stug losses were (at least) 9 vehicles, since Ps. 531-7 was so badly damaged at Kuuterselkä that it spent rest of the war in repairs. (Note that the gunner of -7, Lauri Leppänen, lists it among Kuuterselkä losses along with the 5 vehicles that couldn't be recovered). Wether they were write offs or not does not pertain to this particular debate as such. The kill-loss ratio of Finnish Stugs does pertain to this debate. Yesterday I started to go through my both sources on Finnish Sturms (Käkelä's "Marskin rynnäkkötykit", Leppänen's "Rynnäkkötykit isänmaan puolustajina") trying to find the number of Stugs that were knocked out but later evacuated so that they are not listed among the 8 losses. This far I've found only the above-mentioned number 7, though it is possible that one or two Stugs of 3.K at Kuuterselkä were also removed from combat. This is difficult to say since neither of my sources mentions, for example, the number of kers. Rastas's Sturm that was damaged by an AT gun. [i've gone through battles of Kuuterselkä (14-15.6.), Pertjärvi (16.6), Rokkalanjoki (18-19.6), Viipuri (21.6.), and the first battle of Portinhoikka (25.6.)] Can the (Finnish) Stugs be considered technically superior to T-34's, IS-2's and ISU-152's ? That comes back to difficulties comparing armored vehicles. Certainly, IS-2 and ISU-152 had better armor and gun, but Sturms knocked out several of them without losing own vehicles. One IS-2 was knocked out from front when the gunner hit an open driver's hatch (at range ~20m, IIRC), the others probably by side hits. Also, Stugs had problems on knocking out ISU-152s from front. For example, vänr. Jauhiainen's vehicle (Ps.531-2, gunner Anttila) hit an ISU once or twice with no effect. The ISU was then immobilized by a track hit (Ps.531-4, Nertamo, Piiroinen) and ~10 hours later finished by a side shot (Ps.531-25, Halonen, Vuorela). The credit went to Piiroinen. How much do tactics and doctrine affect the equation ? A lot, but in a way that is difficut to quantify. What about the contribution of other battlefield assets ? A lot, certainly. We also know that after stand off infantry AT weapons became available the Red Army tactics changed. As witnessed by first battles of Ihantala on late June. Soviets lost ~50 tanks to Panzershrecks on first two days, and afterwards they kept far away from infantry positions. There is a comprehensive list of the write offs in Laguksen Rynnäkkötykit Yes, but unfortunately it doesn't list all vehicles that participated in battles (though it lists most of them). There's also some confusion about battle damages. For example, Ps. 531-19 (Sartio and Haapamäki (?), Lagus) is reported as having been damaged by a hand grenade at Rokkalanjoki (commander's periscope was blown off), while Lagus's account in Leppänen's book mentions it happened at Portinhoikka. - Tommi

JasonC wrote: As for Michael's comment (the only recent one on the actual subject of the thread), all that firing was definitely directed at enemies. [Warning! Following lines will contain semantic argumentation that is not really relevant to anything, so feel free to skip to the next post.] First, I would leave that "definitely" out since it could be argued that a lot of fire wasn't actually directed at anything. I'd categorize firing into the following classes: <ul>[*]A shot aimed at a visible enemy target (rifleman aiming at a particular soldier, AT gun firing at a tank, FO calling fire on a location he knows has enemies, ...) [*]A shot aimed for surpression or interdiction. (infantryman firing at the general direction of enemy, MG firing sporadic burst along a road, ...) [*]A harrasment shot (MG firing a short burst at enemy trench, FO calling few rounds to road intersection at random times...) [*]A training shot (men examining new equipment, ...) [*]A comforting shot where a man fires his weapon because it gives him a feeling of security or because he thinks it is expected of him with no real knowledge about enemy locations. [*]A mistaken shot (man thinks to see an enemy but doesn't, includes friendly fire) I might come up with more but I'm hungry and not motivated enough. Now, which of these classes should be counted in the total number of rounds fired against enemy? Certainly not training shots, but what about others. Then again, how would we count the number of casualties? Do we include only those killed directly by enemy fire? What about friendly fire? Accidents with the weapons? Traffic accidents? Traffic accidents while in combat? The original poster asked about killing someone in combat. Are the millions of artillery shells that were shot far to the enemy rear areas really relevant to that? Now, what is my point? Not much. Simply that I have my suspicions on the well-definiteness of whole concept of "average number of rounds to cause a casualty". They weren't celebrating New Years. Except, of course, on New Years. [Another warning. Those sick of my examples should definitely skip to the next post] One Finnish sapper company lost 34 killed in Winter War. Of those, 28 died on the same day. Now, what makes this relevant to the topic? Maybe that at least 22 of them died in the same explosion (6 are classified as MIAs so they probably were not in the same place). And it wasn't a Soviet shell or bomb that got them, but their own mistake: they were being transported on a truck to construct an AT minefield and someone had made the decision (against regulations) to carry the mines armed. The exact reason of the explosion was never determined, but apparently one of the mines blew off. So, here we have an unit where 2/3 of KIAs were not caused by enemy. Sure, accidents of this scale were rare in any army, but how rare and how will they affect the averages? - Tommi

Michael Dorosh wrote: tss - I am having trouble navigating the Finnish on the site - what is the direct link to your great uncle's page? Enter "Voltti" on the box labeled "sukunimi". Then click on "hae". He's the only one with that surname in the database. Though, the record is also in Finnish. The most important lines are "joukko-osasto" (unit), "sotilasarvo" (rank), "kuolinaika" (date of death), "kuolinpaikka" (place of death), and "menehtymisluokka" (classification. In his case it is "kaatui, siunattu ja haudattu" meaning KIA and buried with Christian rites). Two of my other great uncles are also there: Toivo Syrjänen, MIA 13.2.1940 at Summa [their sapper company was sent in to plug Soviet breakthrough.] and Heikki Syrjänen, WIA 11.3.1940, died of wounds on the next day [a squad-mate fumbled with an AT mine, my grandfather was wounded by the same explosion as were all other men of their squad. There was also a fourth brother in the same company, he survived without wounds]. - Tommi

JonS wrote: I bet it took more to kill a Finn. A perfect cue... There were two verified cases (and I've seen photos of both) where a Finn survived a direct hit of a 40 mm mortar. And I really mean direct, as in the actual round hit the actual man. In both cases the round ended up in lower back just above hip. Both rounds were duds. In one case there was some scrap of debris between the firing pin and detonator. I don't know about the other. And for those doubting Finnish mortality: the link http://tietokannat.mil.fi/menehtyneet/index.php3 leads to an online database of Finnish military KIAs. The database is not necesserily complete and there are errors in it. (Though, they seem to have corrected my great uncle's record; Esko Voltti, KIA 19.7.1941 at Särkisyrjä, Ruskeala). - Tommi

See http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=014526 for an analysis of Finnish Stugs in one particular battle. - Tommi

tero wrote: The Finnish army used both Stugs and captured T-34's (both /76 and /85). Both the Stugs and the T-34's were used the same way as they were in the same formation. Umm. No. At least that part of being in the same formation. Stugs were in rynnäkkötykkipataljoona (Assault Gun Batallion) and T-34s were in panssaripataljoonas (Armored Batallions). Both assault gun and armored batallions belonged to the Panssaridivisioona (Armored Division). There was also difference in crew backgrounds. Many Stug crews had originally been artillerymen who were transferred to assault guns when the batallion was formed in 1943. Stug (30-50 vehicles available) vs latest Soviet armour including IS-2's and ISU-152's: 80+ kills vs 8 losses in the favour of the Stug. The figure usually given is either 87:8 or 89:8 (I can't remember whether that 87 include those two Soviet tanks that went uncredited during war). However, that is comparing apples to oranges: the Finnish figure includes only total losses, not damaged vehicles. It is not know how many of the 87 KO Soviet vehicles could be later repaired. In theory, a tank kill was only a tank kill if it burned, but in practice non-burning KOs were often also counted. Though, this depended on the military branch. Persons assessing kills by infantry and AT guns were usually more strict, and those assessing kills by tanks or assault guns more lenient. For some time I've been planning to go through my sources to compile a list of total Finnish Stug losses, including mission-kills, but I haven't had time to do it, yet. - Tommi

tero wrote: Just goes to show how important proper tools are. And the sappers thought that they had proper tools. After all, 4kg demolition charges and Molotov coctails had worked reasonably well before. I wonder if there will be a possibility in CMBB during the game to have sappers/engineers use such makeshift deviced made out of the assests they have at hand ? Actually, that particular combat took hours of real time. I don't remember exactly, but the KVs waited for their infantry to catch for ~3 hours before they decided to retreat back. BTW: can you tell when did the "37mm AT round through the KV's drivers visor" incident take place ? The rounds went through BMG mount. It happened during summer '44, I can't remember exact date or location. The event is mentioned in the first of Käkelä's books ("Laguksen miehet"). However, given the accuracy of Finnish reports about attacking tanks, it may have been any heavy tank with a BMG. (Soviets had also Churchills in the area as well as IS tanks). For those who haven't already heard about the occasion: a Finnish 37 mm ATG (Bofors, I think but am not certain) opened fire against an enemy heavy tank, and the first round hit the BMG mount knocking it loose. Apparently it also stunned the crew since the tank stopped. Then, the gunner fired one or two more shots through the opening, destroying the tank. - Tommi

rexford wrote: Odd things happen in real life that don't occur in calculations, as we have been shown many times. Once again my canonical example on this: A Finnish 75mm Pak40 team fired at own tank at range of 15 meters and missed. Then reloaded, fired again, and hit, blowing the venerable T-26 to pieces. At no point did they stop to wonder why the tank had a big blue swastika on it or why the tank commander kept shouting to them to hold fire in clear Finnish. - Tommi

Jarmo wrote: Later when soviet tanks stopped roaming around alone during the nights, killing them became almost impossible. And thats against T-26's and other weaklings, with proper satchel charges. I've posted before two examples of Finnish infantry close assaults against KV-I tanks (in 1941-2), but I couldn't now find the threads with the search engine. Anyway, in the first case a platoon of KV-Is broke through Finnish front line and advanced along a road to rear where they encountered a sapper platoon. In the resulting combat that lasted for several hours, Finns lost a light AT gun, one ATR, and several men. Soviet losses are not known but two tank crews probably had trouble with their hearing for several days afterwards. Those tanks got two direct hits from demolition charges (exploded on the deck), several near misses, and also few Molotov coctail hits. All managed to retreat to safety. Note that for a while a KV fought alone, buttoned-up, in covered terrain, and with no infantry support against veteran sappers, and survived. In the other case the KVs were advancing along a power line. When the tanks couldn't be destroyed by demolition charges, sappers then mined the line behind the tanks by improvised "super-mines" where several demolition charges were put together and hidden in snow. With these they managed to destroy two KVs and stop third from escaping. That last KV was then captured intact. - Tommi