ASL Veteran

I found a couple of Japanese accounts so I figured I would post those. I could probably post a different account every day for the next couple of months, but I think I'll just put these Japanese ones up and leave it at that. These Japanese ones can probably be characterized as extreme behavior relative to what could be expected from tank crews for most armies. Here is another one and one more Not really sure what this piano wire stuff is. Apparently it was used by either the Mongolian or Soviet troops and it doesn't seem to be like normal barbed wire. Piano wire is the only way they describe it in the book "Nomonhan" so (shrug)

Here are a few Tigers rampaging through a British battalion position who end up getting immobilized - one with a non penetrating hit from a PIAT and the other just running into the first one and getting stuck. All crews bail out and surrender

So here is a Soviet account So obviously I wasn't there so maybe everything happened exactly as described but I have my doubts. Was the tank hit by fire and did he bail out? More than likely. Did he spend several minutes inside a burning tank gathering extra SMG ammo, first aid kits, camouflage cloaks, and removing a machine gun? Unlikely. Did they spend time hiding under a burning tank? Unlikely. Did he make his way back to friendly lines - more than likely. Did he encounter a German sentry and get past him by using the 'Fascist salute' (I guess clicking his heels, raising his arm, and saying Heil Hitler?) Seriously? That's almost like it was pulled from a comic book. So anyway, take it for what it's worth. Like I said though - there are some good Soviet accounts, but I think the best are probably not from prominent 'Heroes of the Soviet Union' or perhaps stuff written after the 1980s.

So the diagram shows what the suspension would look like with the wooden skid. Now I'm not an expert in tank suspension, but from what I can tell there were six road wheels arranged in pairs on each side. I guess each pair of road wheels would be a bogey? So the picture shows two road wheels from a pair and there is a smaller center round thing between the two road wheels that he has identified as the 'Rollenwagen / Idler Arm'. I'm guessing that what he is referring to as the Idler Arm is the part that attaches each bogey to the body of the Elephant and upon which the bogey is centered. Actually scratch that - because it shows the part that attaches the wheel to the center round part behind the roadwheel, so I think that is what is the idler arm although I'm not certain (one half of the bogey). It shows the front roadwheel as still mounted to the 'idler arm' or 'bogey' not sure which and then the road wheel behind that is removed. It shows 'free hub' where the missing roadwheel would have been and attached to the free hub is a wooden skid with a notch in it where the free hub 'Freie Nabe' sets. So looking at your sketch for Fig 1 - I think the center round part would be 15 (or III). I think the idler arm might be 13. I don't see 16 in the diagram, but it might be there and he just didn't draw it (don't know). It seems like 16 would be the likely part to have bent, but I don't know. The Free Hub would be number 5 in figure 1 so that's the wheel that would have been removed.

IIRC they actually have a diagram of what they are doing in the source material so I may pull it out and look at it later to see if maybe there are some terms that didn't translate in the way you are reading it or something.

I decided to go ahead and post a typical account for you guys. I might look for the Japanese accounts for comparison, but I would have to look for them as I don't seem to have that document handy anymore and I would have to retype the accounts from the source book again. This is just one account of many.

I actually have collected numerous first hand accounts of what tank crews do when the tank is hit and typed them into a word document for these kinds of discussions. In the case of an immobilized vehicle it's probably around 50/50 as to whether the crew bails or not (in general). If the crew knows or suspects that there is a gun capable of destroying their vehicle they will bail out of it as soon as it's immobilized because an immobilized tank is a sitting duck. If the tank is in a relatively safe environment or they don't think they are in immediate danger they tend to remain mounted. The only case I have ever read where a tank crew will remain in a burning / immobilized vehicle under all circumstances are accounts of Japanese tank crews who, needless to say, would take things well beyond what most would consider rational behavior. On the opposite side of the spectrum there are accounts of Soviet crews that bailed from a moving vehicle when taking hits from guns that didn't penetrate, but there is no way to know what experience level those crews were - not sure if any 'booty' Ukrainians were used as tank crews or not, but if they were their motivation levels would certainly be suspect. I also seem to recall something with an American tank crew bailing after a rifle grenade hit. When reading first hand accounts of tank crews you have to read a lot of them before you get any sort of a decent picture of what may have happened on average. Some of the Soviet accounts that I've read come across as a little suspect relative to what I have read from other armies (which tend to paint a similar picture), although certainly not all of the Soviet accounts fall into that category. I would just recommend branching out beyond just Soviet accounts if you want a fuller picture. I have made numerous suggestions to BFC at various times about how I think tank crews should act, but I'm pretty sure players would not look upon more realistic tank crew behavior as an improvement to their gaming experience.

I found this YouTube video about what it is to be British courtesy of the Spiffing Brit Complete guide to Britain

Happened across this - just showed up on the main YouTube page when I went to it. I figured I would post it even though we've moved on from the Flak Tower stuff. There are also a lot of videos on YouTube about Flak Towers where people go and tour them. Apparently they were too difficult to destroy after the war and many still stand today being used as retail space. Imagine Hitler's reaction if he knew that nightclubs and music stores would be in his Flak Towers one day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jgvkzD8d3k

I don't care about QB point values in the slightest, but what is baffling to me is how anyone could think that anything hand crafted would be cheaper than anything mass produced. The element that's missing in your ... analysis ... is time. Let's say that two different manufacturers are producing toenail clippers. Let's assume that each version of toenail clippers uses the same amount of steel per unit. If company A produces one toenail clipper per minute and company B produces one toenail clipper per day well then the cost of company B's toenail clipper is higher even though the objectively measurable input of steel is the same on a per unit basis. Granted, company A would be acquiring more steel because they are producing more toenail clippers, but if the manufacturing process is efficient enough then that cost isn't going to have a significant enough impact on a per unit basis since company A is producing so many more clippers than company B. That's pretty basic manufacturing knowledge and it comes down to efficiency. Unionized workers only cost more if two manufacturing processes are similarly efficient. The slave labor thing is probably a little overstated in your comments as there would still have been specialists involved. However slave labor is notoriously inefficient since there is a distinct lack of motivation for the 'worker' to do anything beyond the absolute minimum to stay alive and in the case of German manufacturing how many times would the same part have to be reproduced because of sabotage or inattention to detail? A slave isn't going to be working as fast and as efficiently as he or she could in order to support the war effort. Maybe the slaves themselves aren't being paid a 'wage', but the guards and infrastructure that is created to support your slave laborers isn't free. You still have to feed them something and you still have to house them somewhere. At least with unionized workers they can pay for their own transportation, living arrangements, and food out of the wages that are paid to them by the company. With a slave the state has to pay for all the guards, housing /camps, food, and transport for moving the slaves between camps and various work sites. You also have to power the manufacturing site and run all the machinery and if that machinery is being powered such that you are making the same part over and over again because your slave labor can't make it right the first time or is taking an extra hour to do the same thing a union guy is making well then how efficient can you be? So no, simply measuring inputs isn't necessarily safer - at least not in the way being suggested. Without accounting for waste then perhaps more aggregate inputs would suggest greater aggregate outputs since more materials are probably being used in the manufacturing process, but then that would be reflected in the per unit cost basis as already suggested by using the Swedish currency. In other words, the difference in the consumption of material inputs within the manufacturing process would be reflected by the difference in the cost basis through the use of a third party currency. Measuring material inputs would not put Germany on an equal footing with America in WW2. It would only reinforce the discrepancy in manufacturing efficiency between the two. Sorry for the interruption - you may all get back to your regularly scheduled QB points discussion

For the curious the first quote came from 'With our Backs to Berlin' and the second quote is from "Berlin Dance of Death"

Here is another account - wherever he is referring to shelters or bunkers he is referring the Zoo Flak Tower

I decided to try and dig up my first hand accounts - here is part of one

It's entirely possible there were steel shutters - I'm not exactly sure since I'm going from memory of the account. I seem to recall that the accounts would also relate that when the guns on the roof fired it would send a concussive shock down into the tower that was very uncomfortable to everyone huddled inside.

I have read a first hand account or two of what it was like in the towers during the battle for Berlin. From what I can tell it was utter chaos in and around them IIRC. The towers had no windows and all the levels below the roof were filled with civilians and soldiers in various states of combat worthiness. Wounded were all over the place mixed in with crying babies and a lack of food and water etcetera. Just going from memory though.

Yes.

As I recall BFC stated that it was intentionally done that way as a way for the player to have more visual stimulation of something 'happening' when the tank fires or something along those lines. Anyway, it's not an oversight but rather a deliberate thing included in the game.

I get this when I try the new link - I suppose I could just ignore the warning and go through, but there it is

Binkov Battlefields did a decent overview of this hypothetical - at least this one was much more reasonable and well thought out than any of the others I found.

You seem to be suggesting that BFC games are some sort of 'open beta' games or something. That's not the case. Bug tracking is not chaos for BFC. Actual software that is designed for bug tracking is used by the company in order to get the appropriate information to the appropriate individuals and the beta testers are charged with providing the appropriate information through the use of that bug tracking software. While it is appreciated when players find things in the game that may need to be addressed the gaming public has no obligations of any kind in terms of bug tracking. Customers play the games and enjoy them if they like playing them or stomp around angrily if they don't like the games. Players can report things or not report things as they desire. Customers will know that a bug has been addressed when a patch gets released and the patch log is published. Bug tracking, reporting, and fixing is the obligation of BFC to the customers who buy the game. There is no obligation by those who play the game to track, report, and fix bugs. If something gets reported on a public forum more than once or even not at all then it really makes no difference because the public forums are not where the bug tracking is done. Describing BFC bug tracking as chaos is wildly misinformed. It may be different than what some are used to, but that doesn't mean that it's chaos. Leave the bug tracking to BFC. Perhaps if you get invited to the Beta team some day then you can participate in all the bug tracking and reporting that you would ever want, but for now just go and play the game and enjoy yourself.

BFC has bug tracking software internally. The bugs that are reported aren't tracked on the public forums.

If it were that easy it would have been done

I personally don't know exactly what the leadership bonus does with regard to firepower. All I know is that when making Custer's Stand I had a platoon of German Volksgrenadiers encountering a platoon of American infantry in the town (the south part of town if you are curious - the Americans were on the south objective). When the German platoon leader's leadership bonus was +2 the American squads were absolutely wiped out (they were in modular buildings for cover). It was so ridiculous that I felt the need to adjust something because if I left it as is the Americans would just get annihilated. The first thing I tried was to reduce the platoon leader's modifier from +2 to +1 and that made the firefights play out a lot more fairly. The Americans could go toe to toe with the German squads for an extended period of time - which was what I wanted. Before I made the modification the Americans were broken and sobbing literally in just a few minutes - like literally in two or three minutes the entire American platoon was dead, wounded, and running for their lives. The Germans immediately gained fire superiority with their Assault Rifles and LMGs and maintained fire superiority throughout. What the exact effect was I can't tell you, but the effect was real and it affected scenario balance so take it for what it's worth. It was the only time I ever noticed anything different with leadership modifiers in all the time I've been making scenarios so maybe it was some sort of a perfect storm of soft factors.