Andreas

If you put a fully trained up professional US Marines squad with bolt-action rifles against a bunch of yobs with Kalashnikov's, whose main proficiency is in firing in the air to celebrate their leader, who is going to win? The simple fact is that combat effectiveness is not dependent on the weapon alone. Michael has that exactly right.

That is fine out to, say, 500-750m. But beyond that I guess it will be pretty in-effective, while a round from the main gun would still be quite well on target.

" Whereas self-propelled tank destroyers scored the most kills, towed battalions suffered the heavier losses ..." </font>

Heh - the Italians are out in force today Thanks for that. Audace already emailed me on it. Corrected the name of the Savoy wannabe king. The 'Fernando' was explained to me as referring to the large number of Fernandos in the Kingdom of the two Sicilys. Maybe my ears had not cleared yet though.

All true to form then. Sounds a bit like the explanation why the Germans lost in the east. According to some schools, it appears the Red Army had little to do with it - those Uebergermans did it all by themselves

My motorised crackstormtroopers of doom are currently preparing to fighting the North-Minehead By-election. Historically, Taunton has been a part of Minehead. I therefore suggest to MTJS to give up already, or I will start biting babies in the head.

I own the history of Stug Brigade 276 (at least I think I do), and I had a quick glance through it earlier when we discussed this. The Brigade was formed late, and there does not appear to be the detail needed to distinguish the T34-76 from the 85 version. One account of a knife-edge fight early on in the history of the Brigade mentions a frontal penetration at what appears to be point blank range where the author says that it penetrated because it hit a weak spot near the mantlet. It does not say what type of Stug it was, although we can assume it was a late 80mm armoured one, or what kind of T34 hit it, IIRC. These sort of combat reports are not very helpful.

A little "Boy's Own", don't you think? </font>

A rough search indicates that the 2-pdr would penetrate the M13 frontally beyond 1,000m range. Googling found that M13 frontal armour ranges from 30mm@30 to 30mm@12. Salt's Snippets indicates that the 2-pdr penetrated 40mm@30 at 1,000m (or yards). The 2-pdr was contrary to folklore a perfectly good gun, that only became outdated later in 1941/early 1942 with the appearance of German bolt-on armour, increasing standard frontal armour from 50 to 50+20. These fairy-tales about it being outdated in 1939 are just rubbish. I once believed that too, but it just has no basis in reality. According to Salt's Snippets again, it should be comparable to the German 50L42, and superior to anything less than that, and the 75L24 KWK37. It certainly outperformed the PAK35 quite easily in the AT role. The problem was that the ammo had no HE burster, meaning that whether penetration had occurred or not was hard to assess, and post-penetration damage was much less. I have also heard that the tracer had a habit of breaking off on impact and ricochetting, even if the round penetrated, leading the gunners to believe their round had struck and ricochetted as a whole. No idea if the latter is correct. The other problem was of course that there was no HE for the 2-pdr in the western desert, meaning that engaging anything but tanks was a bit of a bother.

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Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't you comparing total German losses caused by all TDs (SP and towed) throughout the campaign against US SP TD losses in the first week? Or am I missing something very obvious?

That is not the question at all. The question was 'would equipping the Germans with Stug44s have helped them perform better operationally or strategically?' The answer is no, simple as that. In the case of your question - if having a bolt action means I have say, double the ammo for the SAW, why not. If my riflemen are absolutely crappily trained, it also won't make a difference whether they have pointy sticks, rocket launchers, Stug44s or a bad attitude. Or does anyone here think that the Iraquis would have performed worse if they had been equipped with Lee-Enfield rifles instead of Chinese Kalashnikovs?

For the second time, the first use of the 88 in the AT role was in Spain. </font>

Hostilities about to open. I came back home last night with 2.5 pints of Whitstable Bay in me tummy, and decided not to chance giving orders. Soon, my Heroic Harbingers of Hunnish Hilterism will make the jelly shudder. Since we all agreed that it would not be much fun in Stalingrad, we are fighting over a nice quiet village, where they may have the odd guesthouse or two. I have enclosed a picture of my staff during the planning session. Ha ha, the fun we have!

I can imagine two situations where this weapon may have made a difference. One is in forests, the other is in citys, probably less there. In forests, the Germans wiped the floor with the US Army in the Huertgenwald, regardless of what weaponry they had. In cities, combined arms would beat good small arms. Whether the idea that you let your artillery do the killing or not is American is neither here nor there. The Germans could have counter-attacked all they wanted with their shiny Stug44s. A nice MIKE target would still have wiped them off the objective. To think that equipping your troops with a better rifle would make an operational, let alone a strategic difference, indicates to me a failure to understand what really matters in modern warfare. BTW - the successes of the Finns could also just indicate desperate cluelessness on the part of their Soviet opponents.

Nice find Jon.

That's the one, thanks for doing the digging (no pun intended) and typing.

Sydney Jary in '18 Platoon' tells of the theory one of his section commanders had, that the Germans lost the war because of their profligate use of small-arms ammunition in their MG42. The German tendency to just pour out fire, especially at night even when there are no targets, is also commented on by Soviet officers in their memoirs. I think that the only effect from having an infantry weapon that goes on full auto would have been two-fold: 1) it would have increased the logistical problems in an already severely strained system, as Gyrene correctly points out. 2) it would have necessitated an adaptation of German infantry tactics away from the heavy reliance on the section MG, because the ammo load carried for the automatic individual weapon would have come straight out of the load carried by the same guy for the section MG. Point 2) in particular is an issue, because it would mean that you rely more on the fighting ability of individuals in an army where the quality of the replacements went from not particularly good to worse to useless from 1942 onwards. If you want every individual to contribute to fighting, instead of just lug ammo, you need to train them better. You also need to train their leaders better, and while there is some evidence that German junior officer training did decline in quality throughout the war, I am not sure about NCO training, which would have been more important in the Wehrmacht, compared to the Allied armies. All in all, the effects would probably have been negative, rather than positive.

Mike, I don't have any problems with making things a bit bigger, although 2,000 points can be quite a lot of units, if you work with pre-battle losses and low experience. But a bit of flexibility in that department is problably worth it. I do think that given the 'non-hero' modelling of CMBB it is better to have increased turn-length though. 25+ is awfully short to undertake a battle, when a single, well-placed MG can hold up your whole advance.

Indeed -there are plenty of battles where the heavy stuff faces off. Byte Battles should not be like this - they are short sharp actions, close combat, and they are supposed to be tank heavy in the first place.

Don't knock burnt cork. That is what I was given during basic training in 1988 in the Bundeswehr. Plus ca change. I just thought it was interesting that here we have a report from fighting the western allies mentioning their superiority in fieldcraft, and one from the east, mentioning the Soviet's superiority in fieldcraft. He just commented about it, linking it to some racial attribute, AFAICR, something along the lines of Russians being closer to nature. Oh, and those mud-brown uniforms. So yes, he was admiring it, and thought it caused the Germans no end of trouble. I don't think that either of the two reports really stands as a comment on bravery. The only time I have seen any German complaint about not fighting fairly was with regard to Allied artillery in Normandy, I think that was in an AAR on the Hill 112 battles by 10.SS PD. I did not even think of this bravery aspect WRT these quotes.

I am still digesting it, much as I am still digesting 25 pizzas from Naples. Very nice find Mike. I liked the official use of the word 'Indianerkrieg'. If the Germans did not even have a proper word that does not conjur up children's games, no wonder they consider their opponents better at it. Anyone else reminded of von Mellenthin's remarks about how the Soviet soldier was much better at individual camouflage and digging in? Sounds like this could have been a weakness on the German side. The bit on artillery observation is very interesting. Use of OPs forward of own lines is not something that I have seen in any of the German maps of OP/LP systems that I have seen, but I have not studied the ones for Italy/Africa.

Not according to the Soviets, it wasn't.

I would also like to take an extra post to thank James (SailorMalaan) for being a very sporting and persevering opponent. I hope that neither the game nor the consistent and tasteless taunting have put him off PBEMing in the future.

Well, this just in: What can I say but celebrate this maginificent victory of Soviet arms over Germaninvaderhyenafasciststoogesofcapitalism with a trip to Naples. So I did. Let this game be another incontrovertable proof of the brimful cup of superiority that Comrade Joseph offers his soldiers before going into battle. Now, if CMBB had a decent campaign structure, where my chaps could go from private to Marshal of the soviet-union based on the results of half a PBEM, I am sure that Comrades Ershakov and Primakov would be first in line to become Marshals of the Armoured Forces. Although I have to have a word about Comrade Ershakov's handling of the transmission. His immobilisation has nothing whatsoever to do with the grenade bundle that was thrown in cowardly fashion by the aforementioned Germaninvaderhyenafasciststoogesofcapitalismtankhunterteam. Can I be a Marshal too for those 28 casualties? Only if you do not do racing starts with that T34, Comrade. If you see this and your membership application to the communist party has failed, you are in trouble. 16 Germans did learn the hard way. Setup is on the way to Grumpy.