Andreas

I guess that one should not confuse the weapon and the training. When the Commonwealth forces got round to kicking German rear, quality standards had dropped considerably already. So assume that a badly trained squad is not going to be rescued by its SAW, regardless of wether it is belt-fed or not, while a well-trained squad can overcome the drawbacks of its weaponry through leadership, competence, and tactics. That could explain a lot, couldn't it? And it would work nicely with first-hand accounts such as Jary who had a lot of respect for the MG42, but very little for most of its users, IIRC. There is no law that says you have to blaze away indiscriminately with a belt-fed weapon, but it encourages badly trained squaddies to do that. Guns don't waste ammo, German conscripts do.

Jentz has some info on German tank strength in Italy at various dates, that is total strength, half it for operational if you feel generous : 21. January 1944 Pz III 105 (14 Fl; 46 50L60; 45 75L24) Pz IV 171 (11kz; 160lg) Tiger 8 PzBef 6 Stug 138 Total 428 15 March 45: Stug 67 IVlg 131 Flakpz 21 Panther 26 Tiger 36 Total 281 On 31st December on the eastern front: Total 2,053 (operational 1,043) On 31st May 1,370 total plus 176 Stugs. 15th March 45 Stug 545 IVlg 603 PzIV/70 357 Flakpz 97 Panther 776 Tiger 212 Total 2,590 On 10th June 1944 in the west (excl. Italy) Pz III 39 Pz IV 758 Pz V 655 Tiger 102 Stug 158 Captured 179 Total 1,891 On 31st May 1,355 (excl. Stugs) 15th March 45 Stug 126 IVlg 59 PzIV/70 77 Flakpz 41 Panther 152 Tiger 28 Total 483 I could not find the numbers for the Ersatzheer.

Working from memory here. Volksgrenadierdivisionen were raised in two ways. One was rebuilding of shattered Grenadierdivisionen/Infanteriedivisionen - those are generally speaking the lower numbered ones. E.g. 12. VGD was built out of 12.ID. The higher numbered ones (in the 500s) were newly raised divisions that were established in summer 1944. Some of these were briefly named Grenadier or Infanterie before becoming Volksgrenadier. The manpower for the divisions was apparently far from scraping bottom of the barrel. There were a lot of capable protected men working in German industry as specialists in 1944 still. The raising of these divisions put an end to the protection of many of them. The problem was that these units were not well trained, and that their equipment was often somewhat sub-standard in many respects, especially in the artillery arm, where they were sometimes issued Feldkanonen instead of Haubitzen in the leichte Abteilungen (copying the Soviet 7.62, in effect, with a bad knockoff), to increase divisional AT capabilities. But that of course did nothing to their artillery arm. I also have my doubts about how many SP pieces of artillery they really did receive. Vokssturm was scraping the barrel, and had nothing to do with Voksgrenadier.

The 8. and 157. Gebirgsdivision (there was no 57.) are the same unit. The 157. was raised in Jan 44 from 157. Reserve Infanteriedivision and renamed 8. Gebirgsdivision in 1945.

Probably because someone figured it was nicer to do engine repairs while standing in the sun, sipping Chianti and flirting with Grazia who just brought you some pasta Bolgnese, instead of doing engine repairs in knee-deep mud, driving sleet, and eating Borschtsch served by Olga. Makes sense to me. Not that there is anything wrong with Borschtsch, if you lost your tastebuds already.

Thanks a lot Wicky, that is very helpful. How about performance in OSX - did it deliver what you expected? All the best andreas

But Chuikov would bring 62nd Army, while Eraserhead would bring David Lynch. Case closed.

I read this as a 'Der Kessel - more please' thread

BTW - low mechanisation does not automatically translate into lower manpower requirements. Veterinary surgeons, horse handlers, etc.pp. are also non-combat personnel (there were almost 5,000 horses in the 1. Welle divisons). If you then have an even small motor pool on top of that, you can add the mechanics for that as well.

Here you go - not all of them, but enough to understand this Gliederungsbild, I hope.

Interesting picture of the rounds. Unfortunately it does not identify the German round (there were three types including the practice round), so it does not tell us anything. Weight of the Soviet round ~16kg Weight of the German round - 15.8kg Source: 'Lexikon der Wehrmacht' Paul - I can not get your link to work in Safari. Is that a Safari problem? I can dig for and if I find it, scan a table with symbol explanations later.

Steve - interesting, but what exactly is a 'fighting man'? The Germans had various strength categories (Gefechtsstaerke and Grabenstaerke are probably the two most relevant here), and I am not sure you can compare those easily to US or Soviet, or whatever other countries' figures and concepts. I would be surprised about a 1:1 ratio (unless you talk 1945 doomsday formations). In 1944 you regularly see infantry divisions with very low numbers of 'fighting men', yet still strong in total numbers (the normal ratio seems to have been 1:3 before Bagration, going from memory, depending on how you count). That was a real problem for the Germans.

Well, testament to its qualities as a weapon could be that it is still in service today with the Bundeswehr and presumably other armies as well. The Wehrmacht version was a straight copy of the Soviet design by the way, and both fired the same ammunition, either German produced, or captured.

John A Gliederungsbild like the one below is giving you an idealised state of the divisional organisation at a certain point in time. It is not an official establishment, as anyone with a passing acquaintance will notice upon studying the one below. The official tables are the KStN (or however you capitalise it) that Dandelion referred to. This is a Gliederungsbild of 1. Gebirgsdivision during the Uman encirclement battle. It was drawn up by its 1a, who wrote three books about the battles of the Armeekorps to which it belonged at the time after the war. As you can see, the division organised itself in a way suited to a highly mobile pursuit battle. The Gliederungsbild shows this, but not the official organisation of the division. So the Gliederungsbild of 272.ID may well have shown an individual organisation adapted to the specific battle, but not authorised as permanent under KStN. And for David I: if you can understand the German in this table, you are all set for a massive research project on German combat organisation in WW 2.

Ah yes, the famous 21m mortar... So, you never heard of it? Can there be any doubt that the Germans had the mortars? Anyway, I think you are probably right in your analysis. [speculation]The other possibility would be to give the IGs to the battalions, and keep the mortars at regimental level. The IGs have lower range, the IG18 at least are easier to move, and can also engage in direct fire, so they maybe more useful to a battalion than a 12cm GrW)[/speculation].

John Thanks for digging. The online database that JasonC referred to underlies the Zetterling book, I believe, so it is hardly surprising they match. Could those 'heavy mortars' in 272.ID also be of the 21m variety? But even if that was not so, they may also have kept them in a separate battalion, or divided into very strong 13. Kompanien, or God knows what. Interesting stuff. Sturmbatallione had all sorts of weird and wonderful TO&Es. I would not bat an eyelid if you mentioned a platoon of Tigers in their field kitchen detachment.

Rumor time: I recall reading in a source I don't recall but tended to take as reliable that by Normandy the 120 had begun to replace the 81 in the heavy weapons companies. Now whether he meant in plain vanilla Heer battalions, SS, or FJ I do not know. I take it you are definitively gainsaying that? Michael </font>

Dale, let me correct my statement slightly. What I am talking about is the TO&E of the regiment. Actual tactical control of the 120s could well have been with battalions in cases - especially in the east, where a regiment may have had a 10km frontage, it may have been better to split and give the 120s (or the IGs) to the two battalions, because they would not be able to cover the frontage from a central position anyway. So tactical control (and I presume that is what you are mostly interested in simulating with the miniatures) is different from TO&E and where the weapon sat in the overall structure.

They were, in the regimental gun companies There would have been a number of the 120s by 1943, mainly captured ones. But you have to substract the very high losses during the constant retreats in the east in 1943/4 from the production number. At any given time there probably won't have been many of them in service, despite the 8,000 produced, and maybe thousands captured. German TO&Es are easy to understand, since they mostly work with symbols. You need little more German than you need for a CM game. I am not aware of many translations into English, and could not point you towards one at the moment. Thanks for the info on SPI.

So if I were running a miniature game that calls for a German battalion HW company to have an MG platoon, an 81mm mortar platoon, and a 120mm mortar platoon, I should remove all three batalion level 120mm mortar platoons and place one 120mm mortar platoon in the regimental weapons company (with the IGs and ATGs?) -dale </font>

Not much, since the Wehrmacht would just plunder stuff from the natives Seriously though, I think that in a combat situation like that, delivering your supplies by carrier is a bit marginal - you do not know if it can go where your infantry is beforehand. The terrain may not be suitable, the environment maybe too hostile for a lightly armoured vehicle. In reality I do not think there would have been big differences BTW, because Commonwealth BNs were not short of high-level support. I am interested in the thinking behind the differences in design, not in the differences in outcome.

So, since there is no real evidence that the 12cm GrW made it to battalions, let's put that to rest. Now about the HMGs. AIU the Leavenworth paper, Storm Battalions were non-standard formations. Something quite similar to their configuration had however become standard by the mid-1930s at the latest. A long time ago (probably in the running with HMGs thread), it was stated that the advantage of the German air-coold HMG design was mobility, allowing the heavy weapons to keep up with the advance. Greiner & Degener confirm that aim. Since technically the Vickers is not as mobile without recourse to e.g. carriers (which has its own restrictions), this would indicate that the standard German infantry battalion (all other things being equal) was capable of somewhat more independent action in the offense than its Commonwealth counterpart. How much of a difference would that have made IRL™?

You're so much better at that than me. I shall endeavour to do better. </font>

Well, might be an idea. I am still playing one, and it does not work. So that does not bode well

Which one was that?