Andreas

According to Jentz, the Abt. was converted to Panzer III/IVlg in March 1944, so this is what they would have had at Florence. They also had Stugs in the division in 1945 at surrender. All the best Andreas

dis link is broke </font>

John It would, but my cleaning lady has killed the power supply on my CM capable G4, so not until that has been fixed (can be a few weeks). Or maybe, between that and the Der Kessel shutdown, Mars is trying to send me a message. All the best Andreas

A point we can all agree on. </font>

I know you are up to it mate! Jochen has moved away from Monnem and has not been in touch for a while. Happy destruction of the alcoholoic beverages! Andreas

Rioting is for poor people in the Banlieues. The rioters would not only not dare to come anywhere near the district I live in, they would not even think of it. Well, and if they did, the nice gentlemen in the Ecole Militaire would probably shoot on sight. Monnem leider erst wieder im neuen Jahr, unsicher wann genau. Alles Gute Andreas

Hmmm... cognac... I have this rather nice stuff here. Can as well give it a try... Gnam Andreas

How about you get off your German lardback and make a trip to Paris? Since you already missed the event of the year in Rome... Alles Gute Andreas

Hi Greg Those are 155 rounds however, I don't think anyone here has an argument with them being able to destroy or seriously damage armour. Not sure what PD fuzes are, but M-13 did not have VT fuzes either. All the best Andreas

Some further tests. 38(t) - can be killed by near misses Stugs - can be killed by top penetration (rare) and very near misses Panzer IVG (scratch the F in my previous posts, always G) - can be killed by very near misses (explosion crater under vehicle at full magnification) Tigers - can be killed by top penetrations. All are susceptible to gun damage and immobilisation. Of course, all are susceptible to shocked commanders. I tried two different approaches. One: spread three FOOs over 800m frontage to cover an advance of two tank platoons in a Kette formation; two: concentrate the three FOOs to really hammer the centre of the advance. There appears to be little in terms of actual tank damage to choose from either of these, except that repeat hits on the same vehicle lead to bailing, and these are more easily achieved with dense barrages. In terms of shocked commanders, you do better with the spread-out pattern though, so that's what I would choose for game purposes based on this very limited test. Conclusion - at one FOO density, all vehicles tested against are susceptible to incapacitating damage or full kills from 132mm rickets. There appears to be not much difference if you increase the density to three FOOs on the same spot (one division according to rum's post above). Rumours of Katyusha's inability to kill any German vehicle up to Tiger in CMBB are greatly exaggerated. They die just fine, it is just less likely the heavier the vehicle gets, and it is pretty unlikely in the first case. All the best Andreas

Yeah, the crew goes down with their ship so we're going to commit a ritual mass suicide. Bye bye! P.S. Berli, do I take this capsule with water, or can it be vodka? </font>

Yes - what if you try it with one/two/three FOOs? I think it is essentially random, and that with the heavy dispersion you get declining returns. But the damage is what I would expect in terms of the potential threat the Katyusha warhead poses to a Tiger. Maybe gun-damage as well. John Basically it is like this. You are assuming something about the quality of the Soviet data. Unless you can show me that the incidents quoted are in fact derived from high-quality reports, I take leave to not assume the same thing you do. I have however seen things like the Kursk general staff study, and some of the nonsense that is advanced in it (Grossdeutschland an SS division, news to me, but if the high-level, serious STAVKA study on Kursk says so, and IIRC it does, it must be true then). Because of that I take leave to doubt that all Soviet studies were reliable, including the serious ones. Your mileage obviously varies. But if you can show the sources for this book you cite, I may change my mind. When it comes to enemy damage estimation however, there is not a lot of room for discussion for me. Estimates of the side inflicting the damage are almost always going to be worth less than reported losses of the side that suffered the losses of the same incident. The nationality of the sides does not even enter this - the statement holds true for everybody. And that is not 'cavalier' dismissal either. I have looked at the reports, I don't like what I see with regard to German losses in Soviet reports. That is not anymore cavalier than your apparent willingness to take them at face value. All the best Andreas

But John - what you have there are not necessarily combat reports. They are snippets collected by what probably was an MA student 30 years after the event, and they could be anything, ranging from combat reports, to eye-witness accounts, to memoirs written years after, to stories told to the MA student by a bloke down at the Soviet equivalent of a pub. I have a bookshelf full of this stuff and do enjoy reading it. It makes nice reading, some of it is very valuable but rational analysis of enemy combat systems and losses it ain't. That's my point - based on your quotes, anything is possible. Even if they were combat reports, they would not be reliable sources for enemy losses, or indeed weapons systems. Remember - every tank a Tiger, every gun an 88? To address them in more detail: p.99 - 1941 = German light tanks are quite likely the object of this passage. Could be anything except 35(t), which were not near Smolensk at this time. Most likely early IIIs, with early IVs, IIs, or 38(t) also possible. Haven't run a test with these in CMBB, but I suspect it would be devastating for the lighter tanks to be fired at by M-13 rockets. Loza - note this is a German defensive position. It is 1943, so Marders are a possibility. Well... That would be the same reports that refer to any SP gun as 'Ferdinand', because that had become the nickname for Stugs and other German SPGs in the Red Army? Or the same reports such as the official general staff study on Kursk that AIUI pretty much swallows the Rotmistrov myth of what happened at Prokhorovka hook, line, and sinker? http://stonebooks.com/archives/980505.shtml I read a lot of the stuff - and I don't agree. You are assuming that these are high-quality reports on which the original book is based. Why? Don't think I assert that anywhere, but the attack formation could contain older IIIs quite easily. Well yes, but I would have thought that if after crossing the Don a whole attacking formation of the Germans had been wiped out in a rocket attack, someone on the German side would have noticed and mentioned it. It should be easy to find a reference to it somewhere. All the best Andreas

Regarding comms damage, vision slits, periscopes, I guess one can argue that CMBB does simulate this to some degree by the high incidence of killed TCs in a rocket strike. They do not button until the rockets impact (which is probably quite unrealistic), so a lot of them get taken out, leading to command delays, reduced spotting ability, etc. (which is probably quite realistic). All the best Andreas

10.67cm, actually. I meant in terms of HE load etc. All the best Andreas

Medium are 4.5" or 5" guns at this stage of the war, probably the latter. Field guns would be 25pdrs. Shame they do not define 'suitable' - 10, 100, 1,000 rounds? Sensible move. Crew panics (they don't like it up 'em), but no M-Kill. 4.2" = 120mm mortar? http://www.lonesentry.com/tigerflorence/ All the best Andreas

Small treeless Steppe map (800m), 9 each Stug III, Panzer IIIJ, Panzer IVG. Formation in a narrow Keil (too narrow, too much density). Each formation gets one Katyusha FOO dropping its load. Result: 1 IIIJ immob 1 Stug immob 1 Stug abandoned 2 IIIJ gun damaged Repeat attack with three 158mm Nebelwerfer FOO on the same formation, same aimpoints, expend 72 rockets instead of 64 for the Katyushas per spotter. 1 IIIJ gun damaged 1 Stug immob Repeat Katyusha test with three FOO firing on a Kette of Panzer IV spaced at 80-100m across the Steppe. 1 IVG gun-damaged 1 IVG immob FWIW. BTW. The 'tanks' described in those accounts could well be Marders, Hornisse, etc.pp. All the best Andreas [ November 16, 2005, 12:41 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

But would you be able to get 5-10 of them into a 10m box, other than by accident? They were not rated highly for their accuracy, IIRC. I may well be very wrong, but I would be surprised if the Tiger was not designed to withstand 10.5cm and below howitzer and mortar fire raining on it. Withstand in the sense of surviving and unless unlucky staying mobile. Not necessarily staying combat capable. Absolutely - just the sort of serious damage is not something that is simulated in CMBB, while the damage that is simulated would be much rarer. Is my speculation. All the best Andreas

Well, what the Germans have to say about Katyushas is well known. It was terrifying when they first encountered them. But later they were no big deal. You heard them coming, stuck to the ground really hard, and prayed there would be no direct hit on your personal space (which was seen as unlikely due to the rockets being horribly inaccurate in the view of the German describing this). Then you got up, dusted off the uniform, (presumably changed pants), and soldiered on. Veteran recollection. Clearly skewed, since he survived. With that out of the way - Quote 4: 27 Aug 1943 is not so long after Kursk. Six weeks. I doubt all the IIIs that were still present at Kursk somehow vanished into nothingness in the meantime. And they would not just be late IIIs. 12.PD still had 50L42 IIIs in its inventory in August 1943, fighting in the Orel salient. And not just a few either. Quote 3: clear in its meaning, yes. I also remember Soviet sources talking of 300 destroyed German tanks at Prokhorovka. Very clear in its meaning, unfortunately about as related to reality as my claim to being a Chinese jet pilot would be. So, unless there are German AAR records for this stating the losses, I take the Soviet claim with a lump of salt. In June 43 you are not talking about 'a smattering' of Tigers and Panthers. It was a war, not a CMBB quick battle. If there were Tigers, there would be lots of them, in formation. There were no Panthers in June, and if you encountered them in July, you would encounter a Brigade, or none. Quote 1: well, the typical Soviet heroic stuff. I have read more of that in my collection of Red Army officer memoirs than I have had hot lunches. 'Wiped out the attacking troops'. Well of course, that's why they never arrived at Stalingrad. Oh wait... Maybe this is just as the Germans wiped out the Russian human waves again and again, winning every tactical engagement from 22 June 1941 to 8 May 1945. Obviously, so did the Soviets. No wonder it took so long to settle it, with everyone winning all the time. Show me the German AAR and the Soviet AAR of the battle, and let's compare them. Heroic nonsense from secondary sources (be they Soviet or German) does not quite cut it for me. Effectiveness of light/medium artillery fire on tanks (from Ritgen 'Western Front 1944'): serious danger to comms equipment, periscopes, vision slits, possibility of temporary M-kill. Serious enough to maneuver to avoid arty fire of any kind. Ritgen is making these observations related to a VICTOR target (from British and US artillery up to Corps level) on his battalion near Villers, IIRC. They did not lose vehicles IIRC (will dig it out tonight), contrary to British claims that his formation was wiped out by the strike, but the planned attack did not happen, because they lost all comms, and other damage as described above occured. CMBB unfortunately does not model this sort of minor, yet incapacitating damage. Edit to add that Ritgen does not give losses, other than 'the battalions was by no means destroyed'. All the best Andreas [ November 16, 2005, 12:06 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Quote number one does not necessarily refer to tanks. Could be HT borne troops. Quote number two, it should be possible to find confirmation of this in German records. Quote number three, see quote number two. The Katyusha, and generally artillery fire, was certainly a threat, in that it could muck up comms gear, and destroy/damage exposed parts of the tank. But this is to some degree modelled. Please also note that it just says 'tanks'. Not Mark IV or Tiger. Have you tested the Katyusha against e.g. Panzer III/Panzer II, Panzer 38(t) in CMBB? I disagree with your notion that a close explosion of a 132mm Katyusha warhead should cause serious damage to a Tiger. All the best Andreas

From Slaughterhouse, projectile weights (no further info what they refer to): 82mm M-8 1.4lbs 132mm M-13 10.8lbs 132mm M-20 40.5lbs 150mm Nebelwerfer 75.3lbs Shell weight 120mm mortar 35.2lbs 122mm M-30 Howitzer 47.7lbs 150mm sFH/152mm ML-20 gun howitzer 95.7lbs All the best Andreas

I seem to remember reading the rocket weighed 42.5kg, as stated above. All the best Andreas

Well, we were talking about HE charges until you brought warheads into it without clarifying what you meant by it. In any case, the point I was making still stands then - a 132mm rocket warhead at 22kg is not going to have a comparable impact to a 43kg 150mm howitzer round, since it is roughly half the weight. It may have a bigger impact than a 120mm mortar warhead at 16kg, but I guess that also depends on HE load, which maybe higher than 25% in the mortar warhead. Or maybe not. All the best Andreas

I do not think 22kg is a credible HE load for a rocket weighing 42.5kg, but I am not a rocket designer. FWIW - www.Panzerlexikon.de has the following HE loads: 82mm M-8 = 0.5kg 132mm M-13 = 4.9kg HE 300mm M30 = 29kg All the best Andreas

I rather doubt that they were comparable in effectiveness to a 152mm Howitzer. AFAICT the round of a 15cm sFH18 weighed somewhere around 43kg, and that of the Soviet howitzer was comparable. I would guess a lot more than 4.9kg of that is HE. The Nebelwerfer round weighed 34kg, of which 2.4kg was HE. But this was in the back of the round, meaning it produced an airburst with high effect of metal splinters. I believe this is rather different from the Katyusha as far as design goes? All the best Andreas