Vergeltungswaffe

This is Part 2 of a short series giving a summary and overview of the tactical fundamentals and principles behind WWII German and Soviet armoured unit tactical drills and combat formations commonly used in 1944 using examples from Combat Mission Red Thunder to illustrate key points. 
Part 2 Covers how tank formations helped German panzer commanders control their units, stay aware of potential threats, and use their firepower effectively. It follows on from from:
Part 1 which covered the difference between formations, drills, principles and tactics?
 

I like this game... especially the scenario editor.

I will soon be the proud owner of an RAF aerial recon photo from May 1940. Should I put it in a frame by my bedside?
The scenario presses nicely forward. The book "The Flames of Calais" should be here Monday. It has about 8 pages describing this action. I will examine every word.
Meanwhile, my German aufklarungs gruppe takes shape from my imagination.

 
 

You're welcome to your opinion, but not wanting it to be easy to create fake pictures that could easily be perceived as real doesn't make us cowards.
There are horrible things awaiting down that slippery slope.

I'd be willing to bet there are more than you realize. 😉

Some more impressions from WIP:

For the dirty half-dozen who follow my half-baked efforts, I report that I just had a damn fun time acting out the "Green Jacket's Bridge" scenario using CMRT. I played it hot seat versus myself. It had an awesome BEF1940 vibe to it. A few Russian voices leaked in and I figured out that I have that Red Orchestra R.O. enhanced Russian voice pack in my z. I had moved it up front in my z thinking it would be overwritten as my bef1940 mod loaded but I guess R.O. probably has more file numbers. Lesson learned. 
I again used an "SMG filter" exit zone to drain off my SMG's from the Allied side. I think I ended up with just one Thompson SMG on the allied OOB held by the Troop Commander 2nd Lieutenant Barr. Uhhh, let's see. The officer won it in a poker game? Uhhh, he found it at the loading dock at Lester-sheister-sister-shire? Some semi-plausible reason.  The Brens were firing away and a Vickers as well. The 2 Boys and Girls ATR's didn't nail any of the German AFV's in my test. The 2" mortars were firing away nicely. 
I will continue with the mods associated with this project and also continue polishing the scenario. Maybe next is a play against a buddy in PBEM. If I ever do an AI plan it would just be for the German attack I guess.
I have asked for a quote from the UK air recon website out of Edinburgh for an aerial photo from May of 1940 that covers Les Attaques. My current CM map is based on GE google earth and old photos and just looking in GE to see what looks newer and would not be there in 1940. I also found a cheap used book about the battle. It is on the way. The guy who wrote it survived the battle but was assassinated by the IRA years later. Not a political comment, just a sad fact.
 
 
 

Yes. MOUT is amazing in SF2 and the primary draw of the game for me. It simulates the action well enough given the engine's limitations w/ urban elements. 
I actually think getting good at SF2 will make you much, much better at the other games. It wasn't until I nailed down the MOUT-elements in Shock Force did I realize how lackadaisical my tactics were in the WWII ones.

The other option would be to break down the campaign into scenarios with uncam and then you could replace the units in each scenario.
It wouldn't be a campaign, you'd have to manually enter the remaining forces from each scenario into the next one.

Incredible! Just incredible work!
Yesterday I completed all but the flavor objects for my Bénouville-Ranville master map. It now includes Blainville-sur-Orne, Bénouville, Le Port, Ranville, Le Bas de Ranville, Le Haut de Ranville, Longueville, Hérouvillette, le Lieu Haras, Le Home, Le Mariquet and the ring contour. That will allow me to attempt to recreated the situations of the British Oxf & Bucks 6th Airlanding Bde as well as those of the 7th, 12th and 13th Para Bns, 5th Parachute Bde.  It does not go south far enough to capture the action of the Ulster Rifles who on D+1 moved beyond the ring contour to Longueval (note the difference LongueVILLE vs LongueVAL) and got engaged with the Germans to the SE in St. Honorine. While this would make very intersting game play, it would mean expanding the map even more and right now my computer can barely manage my current map before even adding any troops.
Likewise the area and operations to the north that involved the British 3rd Para Bde and the Canadian 1st Para Bn (sorry boys) are not covered.'
With Kohlenklau's creation of the Horsa glider for my project, this is now a collaborative project by the two authors, 'WimO and Kohlenklau'.. Three cheers.
In the meantime I have added another Benouville building skin - the 1909 building.

Going to upload two versions of the my expanded Tonga master map today. One is without any flavour objects except cemetery gravestones in the two church yards. The other includes thousands of flavour objects and thousands more Rommel's asparagus. In fact, I stopped placing the latter imagining that Todt had a work in progress. The map is very tasking on my computer with a few minutes to load. The map without flavor objects should be a quicker load and will allow you, the user, to cut it up in the Scenario Editor to make smaller maps without the crazy random redeployment of flavour objects.
When I started the Operation Tonga Map I intended only to improve the historical accuracy of three existing CM scenarios and focus solely on the British Airlanding assault on the Bénouville bridge. Almost immediately it grew to include both bridges of Operation Deadstick, the Bénouville bridge across the Canal de Caen and the "pont tournant" across the Orne.
When I researched the historical events, I decided that this was not going to be a very interesting scenario due to the overwhelming force that the Brits were able to bring to bear (5:1 + surprise). Most of the under-strength German platoon were asleep and its commander was at a dinner party in Ranville.
Only one active MMG was encountered and a second captured fully supplied but unmanned as was also the old French A/Tk gun in the Tobruk. At the pont tournant, there was only brief resistance by a single German with a Schmeiser. Others were seen to be running away. Again, not much of a game.
Having already spent too much time on the map I thought that perhaps a short campaign might create some interest since there was a game-worthy small action in the south edge of Bénouville involving 7th Para. Apart from that there was only minor skirmishing and sniping around the buildings near the Bénouville bridge and in Le Port.
I found that the Brit. 12th Para Bn had a busier time in and around Le Bas de Ranville and the ring contour, sufficient to create another scenario or two. This required extending the map further south and east and that would also bring in the Brit. 13th para. This would also bring into play another small action.
The largest actions were fought in areas off-map. One to south-east in Longueval and Ste. Honorine started on D+1 that involved the Royal Ulster Rifles who had moved up from Sword Beach the night before and not any airborne elements. The most intense battles occurred north-west when the Germans attempted to punch through and  the Brits and Canadians to close, the Bréville gap.
Overall the situation does not lend itself very well to a campaign format for a variety of reasons; the size of the area, the large number of battalions crammed into the space and diverse actions all over the map in all directions. I think maybe a series of individual scenarios captures it best. Maybe two very short (two scenario) campaigns. The situation is too large for CMBN and breaking it into pieces just does not tell the coherent story. Taking a pause to read and think.

I would have to agree with Vergeltungswaffe on this...If we within a few years will be unable to trust pictures, video and recorded speech things could turn really ugly when it comes to things like legal and political matters...
 

That and the constant push to attack whenever any significant panzer forces were built up, instead of using them in defense and making it much harder for the allies to advance without prohibitive casualties.

Yes, I'm an old fart.
A "homemade WW2 picture" is nothing but a fake. I don't intend to go into that.

The other option would be to break down the campaign into scenarios with uncam and then you could replace the units in each scenario.
It wouldn't be a campaign, you'd have to manually enter the remaining forces from each scenario into the next one.

Just in time for the anniversary of „Operation Bagration“ here comes a short update for the WIP:
@Phantom Captain is still fighting bravely through the „Tiger-Trail“ Campaign and until now it seems as if the missions work fine 🙏🏻
The „Into Hell“Campaign also runs playtesting.
“Five Bridges“ and „Partisans Land“ will start with further test rounds soon.
For the „Our Father“ Campaign I am creating 4 maps of the town of Mogilew, based on historical maps/pictures - what proves to be more time consuming than expected because most of the city lay in ruins 😱
 
So, what‘s the next step?
In 3-4 weeks I will need a playtester for a special and huge Mission which is a defense action against a main Soviet Breakthrough Attempt on 22nd June 1944. 
That for now. More news to come.
 
Regards
Mr.X

 
 

Some new impressions from the Campaign "Our Father":

You can only edit posts for a short on this forum.
BFC believes in "only post it if you're sure you want to say it" and I'm good with that.

I'm curious as to why you consider Goose Green or Wireless Ridge specifically to not be examples of flanking.



For Goose Green, A company is fixing the main positions on Darwin Hill, with D and B using the dead ground around Boca House (what little there is in the area) to flank the Argentinian position.



For Wireless Ridge, you have a similar story, at a higher level, with a two axis attack.

Now, the Falklands is pretty barren, so you're not going to get the kind of density of terrain seen in Normandy, or even West Germany, because everything has to adapt to terrain.
So... I'm not sure where this idea comes from. Clausewitz has a lot to say about flanking, and the general thrust of the thing is that there's nothing particularly magical about being on a flank, it's only relevant in the context of the enemy. This is true for all levels - you don't have to have an approach route that's a convenient line of trees to allow your assault element to close... you just need a safe route to get as close as you can, regardless of what that looks like or how close that actually is.
The basic principles - attacking from two directions, with as much angular separation as you can manage between them - are as sound today as they've ever been, and even in extremely unsupportive terrain like the Falklands, it was still important enough to try to do in any way possible. It's certainly true that battlefield conditions won't match the textbook diagrams, but the purpose of that kind of thing is to teach you the core concepts, so you can apply them to rather more complex real-world situations later. You can't write a novel until you have a proper grasp of the alphabet. This definitely doesn't make the doctrinal manuals pointless or "just a guideline" - they're foundational, and foundations are what you build on.

Now, a broader question that is the subject of rather more discussion is whether the manoeuvreist approach to warfare that's dominated western military thinking for decades is actually a sound one. As a theoretical basis, there are certainly more voices recently that have argued that this kind of thinking doesn't match practical experience, and instead something rather more attritional is more effective... but regardless of the evidence for that, it won't apply to the tactical level, on a CM-relevant scale. 

If you do some testing, the speed difference is very significant, especially with the heavier guns.

It means that the correct SOP is to unlimber behind a slope, then set up and push it 1-2 action spots forward into position. The time not to do this is if you don't have the terrain to conceal the carrier vehicle nearby.

This is Part 1 of a short series giving a summary and overview of the tactical fundamentals and principles behind WWII German and Soviet armoured unit tactical drills and combat formations commonly used in 1944 using examples from Combat Mission Red Thunder to illustrate key points.
Part 1: What is the difference between formations, drills, principles and tactics?
This video defines these terms and may also help the viewer differentiate between a potentially bewildering array of terms and puts them into context with German armoured doctrine.

EDIT
Thanks to @Monty's Mighty Moustache who picked up a briefing error in TTP No2. This has been amended and the attached zip file below has the updated file.
This series of three missions is very loosely based on several of the ‘Tank Battle Problems’ detailed in the Nafziger publication ‘the German Tank Platoon in WWII: Its Training and Employment in battle’.
Whilst the series of ‘problems’ outlined in the book appear to be pre/early war I have updated the fundamental concepts to a later period in the war i.e. 1944.
The key intent of these tank tactical problems is to give the player new to using German armour an opportunity to use them in a more doctrinally ‘correct’ manner within the limitations of the Combat Mission game engine.
This series complements the German halftrack (SPW)/panzergrenadier training lessons in the CMRT Battlepack 1 where the main focus is on using SPW in Combat Mission.
For the tactical problem series the German player uses Panzer IVs. This tank was used in significant numbers during the war and though starting to become outclassed by 1944 by the Soviet T-34/85 was still a significant part of the tank strength of most panzer divisions. Though Panthers were slowly starting to form the main panzer strength in the panzer regiments. The player cannot rely on superior armour/armament to bully through this series as the Panzer IV’s armour is comparatively speaking, inadequate. 
All the missions are best played as German Vs Soviet AI. 
There are NO German AI plan. 
Each tactical problem has a ‘Tactical Top Tips’ at the end of each briefing (under ‘notes’) which may help the player new to using tanks in Combat Mission get the most out of them.

Plan is when done to convert them to Soviet versions so players can contrast.

If you get a chance to give em a whirl I'd appreciate any and all feedback thank you.



You download  https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-red-thunder/cm-red-thunder-add-ons-scenarios/cmrt-german-tank-tactical-problems/
 
 

If you've played BF2:RP then you're probably familiar with this map, as it was my inspiration for the creation.
An American combined force trying to capture a harbor. Only the Russian AI has been completed so far (only one plan), so play BLUE only!
 

Pavlovsk Bay_Std.btt

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