jasoncawley@ameritech.net

Rude-lover - Nope, the force is totally mechanized. 81mm mortars are teams. You can cram two of the suckers into one halftrack. I think that sounds like a fun blocking action indeed. You've got the gun and MGs on the Stug, plus 2 MG nests on the 'tracks, all armored and mobile. That can slow people down crossing open areas. When they cluster at some woods near a spot of open ground before crossing it, the mortars hit them for 2-3 minutes and then those are done, ammo expended. Send a 'track back to pick them up and exit to the rear. Can even drop them at the edge and come back, if you need the MG and the situation hasn't completely collapsed. The AT gun waits in an AT ambush, which you channel somebody to with the minefields and roadblocks. The one hidden AT minefield can also be part of that. You bag a tank or two. The StuG then covers the same area (newly revealed AT mine helps do that too), long enough to hitch the AT gun and evacuate it with the other track. (If the AT ambush happens first, the mortars can help this difficult operation with their handful of smoke rounds, too). The StuG is crawling in reverse before the onrushing hordes as the scene closes - LOL. Set yourself a challenge like getting all the men off and bagging so-and-so much material (casualties or vehicles). In VP terms, the other guy will probably win from objectives, but there is no reason you couldn't come out ahead in pure casualty terms. It is a pure "ambush and fall-back" defense...

I buy cheap things but look for bargains. I generally use regulars, but if I can one vet platoon, sometimes for tank-killer vehicles, and snipers are vets if I take them. If QBs let you mix green and regulars I'd probably use more greens too, but it doesn't, and all green is just too brittle morale wise, in my experience. It is, incidentally, silly that forces can be mix vet and regular but not mixed regular and green. Arguably the latter mix was more common in the real war. This is only so in quick battles, but I play those a lot. The reason lower qualities work fine for infantry is that suppression is the dominant question in infantry fighting. A regular squad that no one is shooting at performs very well, better than a vet being shot at, in my experience. For the same cost, he can't shoot them all. Command delays I find entirely liveable with regulars. With greens they get noticeable "sticky" once shot at, with long delay times if you try to tell them to do anything useful once they are "cautious" or worse, in particular. A mixed green and regular force can still work, but all greens can't perform jobs like "point" well enough for me. For guns on defense, the cheap ones are a bargain in my opinion, as regulars. You can buy a battery of the things for the price of a single veteran tank. The TDs are more reasonably priced armor in both armies. If I am going to spend more on armor, a gun that kills anything or armor that defeats most enemy weapons are the only things worth more than extra tanks, including experience. A regular Tiger I is much more capable than a veteran Pz IV, but the costs are not far apart. A vet Sherman 76(+) is not appreciably better in tank duels than a regular Jackson TD, but it costs nearly twice as much. In the last case, the good Sherman handles infantry, and suppressing arty fire, better, sure. But that is probably not why you'd consider paying for the 76 gun, the + armor, and the vet crew. And if springing for them does not get you armor that will stop Tiger and Panther rounds, nor a gun that can reliably kill them at range, then the points are just not worth it. I also like anything fast with an MG and light armor, and many of these are very cheap (as regulars). U.S. M-20s don't cost much more than Jeeps, and Brit MMG Carriers are at least as good. The Germans have to pay more to get such an item, but they have many gun-armed halftracks for reasonable prices. Anything above "regular" in artillery I consider a waste. It is only a crutch against poor planning, because the time saved is very small. It doesn't matter at all if you planned your artillery use reasonable well. I hope this is useful.

Well, I tried it, but I found it unplayable. It is simply too big. The terrain is beautiful indeed, a splendid job. But there are daunting practical difficulties. My system did not have trouble crunching the numbers and such (although the first turn was slow, not too slow to play though). The problem is that one cannot see enough of what is going on, no matter where one puts the camera, no matter how large the zoom out. Oh, from view 8 you can see 2/3rds of the map and get a basic idea. But you really get no clear sense of the "fronts" at all. Only the bridges attract the attention. To give you an example of what I mean, it took me 20 minutes just to figure out what the defending force was. Not where its elements were deployed, but what units. I do not mean 20 game turns as the Allied attacker. I mean it took me 20 minutes real time to figure out what I had on my side. (The briefing said nothing about this really). To have actually redone the set-up in a defense scheme that made some sense, I would have had to work from an entirely seperate and smaller map, on a larger scale, and then transfer the results to the game map. It would have been practically impossible to decide where every obstacle and squad goes in CM, with any tactical insight anyway. Inside of a week. Also, the terrain is amazing, but certainly shows why the battle is hypothetical. Only a madman would attack that ground. They'd just dump artillery all over it and bypass. And if they did decide to attack, it would be a job for the *navy*, not the army - LOL. Also, I want to say this without giving too much away, but the defenders are not believable, in the least. Very silly. Some of them belong there (meaning, defending any such fixed "fortress" position), and others just do not. I have the sense that you wanted to show what an impregnable fortress could be sited on this river loop, if over-defended as well by forces that would never have any business there. Well, that just does not add up to a playable game in my humble opinion. Now, if you wanted to do something like this in CM, I can think of ways to make it work. Break the map up into parts, and make an "operation" out of the battle for the place, with different fights occuring for different parts of it. With fewer forces in each, like 1/4 as many. And without some of the silly stuff that would not really be there. Instead of a commander in control of the forces according to his own plan and ideas, I felt like I was not playing a game over which I had any control at all, but was instead just supposed to hit "next turn" and watch a movie you were directing. Movie directing is not game design. Games have to put the player in charge, not the scenario designer, and give him control of real decisions that matter. I am sorry I can't give it more of an endorsement. The terrain is beautiful. I think you should definitely use pieces of it. But all at once, it is a little too far into "monster" size overkill.

You supporting fly boy is, at his closest, 1000 feet in the air and going 400 miles per hour. He hasn't the faintest idea what make of tank that is. You are lucky he IDed it as German at all. And he does not know its condition. If he sees a big column of smoke, he will assume it is knocked out, otherwise he will hit it with everything he has got, and hope something KOs it or immobilize it or something.

To get the V, just move the vehicle after the men dismount, parallel to the tree line or slightly toward it. You don't want to get as close as faust range if you can avoid it, but if you dropped the passengers at any distance from the trees, it should work.

No, 4.4 million fausts issued, not returned for defects, and *not* still on hand by March 1945 (3 million were), plus 1.9 million Shreck rounds, plus 750,000 mag or thrown AT mines, plus millions of AT rifle grenades, plus if you like 20 million planted AT mines. And an average of 150-350 tank kills per month by all infantry combined (or 1-3 per division per month at the utmost), in return, over the whole period from Barbarossa to collapse.

I assume that "assume" was actually "awesome"...

Well, I do not mind boxing as an analogy at all. There are recognizable different styles in boxing, and nobody pretends that one of them cannot win a fight and the other one always does. But this is exactly my problem with manuever gurus - they equate attrition strategy with absence of strategy or of thought, or with defense, or with failure. They would be like a boxing coach telling Joe Foreman to learn to dance or begone, because only Sugar Ray Leonard ever *really* boxed (said hautily with nose at 45 degree angle into air), and Joe might as well become an auto mechanic (said with lingering sneer and suppressed giggle). Now, it seems you recognize that two distinct and workable military strategies exist (at least). I wish you'd bother to tell them that. They certainly don't show it by their arguments, which either make everything manuever (end of distinct) or only manuever workable or successful (end of workable), or at the very least insinuate that it will be "cheap" and the other "wasteful", with a decided implication that it is criminal to tolerate anyone with a kind word for attrition within 50 miles of a command. Now, I like your common sense analogy so much, I will explain what it is I am asking or after, with a rival version. In this situation, conditions are not as ideal as they are in a boxing ring. Instead, you are on a tropical island in extreme heat wearing long trousers and shirt, and as you look down you notice that your left leg is caught in the barbed wire of a double-apron. Just after this shocking discovery, you see a crazed and determined looking Japanese man in excellent physical condition charging straight at you out of the jungle wielding a freaking sword and yelling at the top of his lungs. Meanwhile, from a log bunker 150 yards away, another man fires a burst of MG fire from a bipod light MG that cleanly cuts a large branch off of a tree directly over your head. Presumably, one is not in this situation admonished to keep ones right hand up, circle continually to the right, and keep throwing left jabs. The techniques of boxing, except by vague analogies, are not immediately relevant to this particular situation. One would, in fact, find it quite maddening, to be repeatedly told to do each of the above, over and over, in this distressing emergency. One would find it not terribly relevant. One might even let vent a "tirade" or two. The point of which would probably be "that is all well in good in a boxing ring, but, I do not at present possess the prior conditions for the successful application of your exact formulas." If your would-be coach insisted that the principle of sound boxing always apply to all situations, you would at least be inclined to ask him to prove it, by supplying such an application is this particular distressingly un-ring-like case. Now, I can further explain the difference I see by imagining further resolutions of this little hypothetical. Naive me, with my silly attritionist mindset, I go about it like this. First, being an attritionist, and therefore a firm believer in the welcome advantage afforded by superior firepower in any situation, I bring up the Thompson to cover the charging Samuri and let fly. Next, I inartfully fall over sideways to the left, cutting my leg and tearing my pants, but largely succeeding in extricating myself from the wire, and doing so before the MG gunner gets a better bead. The branch then lands on top of me. I grunt and throw in off with my now bruised right arm. After another MG burst goes wide right, I manage to get up into a crouch, and limpingly run off into the jungle to the left, obliquely away from the machinegun. At the next clearing I survey my new wounds, look at the camera, and in my best John Wayne declare - "life it is tough... here on.. Guad-al-ca-nal." Fade. The manueverist then critiques my performance. You moved! See, manuever is the essence of warfare. When I mention my Thompson's role in the performance, he says that only shows how inartful I was, needing an SMG against a sword. When I demur with a reference to the MG, he waves that off with "fixed positions! The defensive is never decisive", and informs me that I only succeeded in escaping the engagement because of my superior "odds". Another one then chimes in to notice that the MG next is still there, and this proves my tactics were indecisive. Others praise it as the only sound thing I did, avoiding the enemy strength, and offer it as another proof that all useful things in war are manuever. Still another critiques the role of wire in the enemy plan, the inability of the falling branch to neutralize me, and other alleged failings of my antagonists, summarizing with the remark that masters of the art would never have enable a tactical poltroon like myself to escape. Fine, I say. What would you have had me do instead? I hope for something a little more detailed and applicable than "keep your right up, circle to the right, keep throwing left jabs". One of them does not disappoint me, and offers to explain how it is correctly done by demonstrating. He starts by making a face of that on-no, not again variety, then bends neatly at the waist, and pulls the wire away from his pants with his left hand, his right helping to remove and then brush down the pant-leg. In this delicate posture, he looks up to see the Samuri almost upon him. With a quick "uh-oh" grunt, he moves his leg inward and releases the wire, then executes a perfect back-flip through the air, landing on his feet clear of the wire. The Samuri predictably trips on the wire and pratfalls toward him. His left foot is instantly on the outstretched sword-blade, his right elevated and bent back at the knee. Without moving a muscle beyond the leg, he kicks the fallen man once in the face. Uttering a low "sorry" and slightly bowing his head, he then lifts the now-released sword handle upward with his right foot, flipping it into his left hand. His right hand comes across and grabs the pommel farther down. He then raises the sword over his head, angled to the upper left in a "Conan at the Beach" pose, artfully parrying the still descending tree branch. Next he runs off to the left, a single burst of MG fire arriving where he just was. In the next field he climbs into a hidden ultralight flyer and, with a squad of soldiers in tan uniforms rushing toward him in the distance-shot, ascends into the air. But he banks right and descends again two fields on to pick up the dame, remembers to smile as she runs to the aircraft, explains bashfully that "something came up" when she asked what took him so long. Last, he flies southwest across a blazing sunset. Cut to the scene in Sydney. I instantly recognize that it is Jackie Chan. The manueverists are of course full of his praises, and jibe me with "now, why couldn't you have done that?" Besides blank staring incredulity, I can only offer that my conditions were actually less favorable - I did not have a choreographer assigned to my HQ. Also, nobody told me about the dame. In other words, what I am asking for is a manueverist who recognizes less than ideal circumstances for the application of his principles of war, who recognizes limits to manueverist approaches, and in naive terms, keeps his feet on the ground. I'd like the muddy version, please, not the action hero version. I want to know when the whole thing is going to go south from the opening minute. I want to know when to not even try it. I want someone to address the prior conditions that successful offensive maneuver requires in order to work in anything like the tabloid-headline advertising-copy way the gurus are always preaching and predicting. You know, the stuff about how the Gulf was a relative failure because it could have been done better. That kinda reminds me of the Jackie Chan standard of tactical analysis. I suggest, for instance, some limiting factors like this. When is the "cult of the offensive" as dumb as a pile of bricks? (Hint - the French believed in decisive manuever on the offensive at the outset of WW I. The result is usually called in the histories "the battle of the frontiers". Guess who lost). When is a belief in the importance of offensive breakthrough plus a faith in the indecisive nature of mere artillery fire (since it does not "occupy ground"), positively criminal? (Hint - certain armies in the same war). When do you stop dancing and plant your feet?

#1 don't send the infantry in at the same "angle" as the overwatching vehicles will have to fire. Come in, in a "V" pattern not an "I", if that makes it easier to see what I mean. #2 give the vehicles "hide" orders, aka tell them to hold their fire. Trying to support infantry in cover at night with ranged fire while in close contact is extremely risky, as you saw. It should only be done when you can't help it (everybody picking targets in a firefight) or when the guys you are trying to support are going to be overrun without it. Realize that at night, the men are thinking more of areas of cover as friendly or hostile - and they will even get that wrong - rather than actually being able to see, let alone distinguish, your men. Think of targeting as "shoot those woods" or "shoot that building" not "shoot that unit". Stuff will still happen. But I hope this helps.

"This would seem on the face of it to decrease the rate at which the gun could be fired, though I believe a standard crew was 5 or 6 men" Actually, that is pretty standard for arty. In fact, larger guns use seperate-loading ammunition, the shell itself and then a powder bag behind it (155mm and up). The U.S. 105mm was semi-seperate, meaning the powder comes in seperate cans, and goes into the back of the round, with the projectile part screwed back on before firing. Sounds like the 25 lber was too. This is not done by the gunner, but by the same ammo handling team that fuses the shells. The shells, powder, and fuses all come seperate. The amount of powder to use varies with the range of the fire mission. The fuse varies with the target and ammo type fired. So what happens is, the ammo handling team preps all the shells for the mission - unscrewing things, "cutting" the powder to the right amount (how many bags of which type), setting the fuses, screwing everything together. Then they hump the shells up to the gun. The loader on the gun operates the piece, while the gunner just aims it. On an SP version, there is supposed to be an ammo vehicle - often just a truck - for the ammo handler operation and to carry extra shells and the whole mix of supplies. But the gun itself will run with a number of shells already "made up" / assembled, in its on-board ammo racks. These will be standard types and direct fire types, like maximum powder charge quick-fuse HE or delay fuse HE (those two you can switch with just a screwdriver in a matter of seconds on fuses these days; don't know about then but I doubt it was all that different). When Sexton's or Priests are being used for support, direct-fire style, they'd have loads of the rounds made up. It doesn't matter what powder charge you use in direct fire, because you don't have to figure out how far it is going to "carry" when it is going to intersect the target on a flat trajectory real soon. (Think about bowling vs. golf - in bowling, you don't care very much about getting the range "just right"). Just so your ranges are set for the charge you have (maximum powder, usually),so your gunsight will work, "flat". For what it is worth...

Ok. That is still high by 7000 on the kill figure, using the lowest estimate, right? (28 vs. 35 actual). And my point about the estimated infantry kills was what? That 7000 and shared awards fits the German early 1944 data to a Tee, while the 14000 (and no sharing awards) data seemed high, and would require quite a ramp-up in infantry tank kills in the last year of the war. There was some ramp, certainly. Well, the difference in the two infantry loss figures, and the difference in the kill estimate vs. the produced + initial - kills = end estimate, is bang on 7000 tanks. Is this just a coincidence? It could be. Or it could be the 14,000 infantry medals represent only 7000 dead tanks killed by infantry, and zip there goes the difference in the loss vs. production figures, and there goes the discrepency between your source's overall infantry-kill estimate, and the German early 1944 data I cited. It doesn't settle it one way or another. But the right number of allied AFVs killed by infantry is pretty well "bracketed" by the different estimates. At most, it is going to be ~16,000 AFVs (one other fellow's cited figure), and at least it is going to be ~7,000 AFVs. The truth is somewhere in that range. Over the 46 months from Barbarossa to collapse, that works out to 150 to 350 per month average. It was around 150 per month in early 1944. It was presumably lower before then, from fewer means available and more alternatives, and higher at the end with the reverse. But however you slice it, it is going to be 1-2 per division per month, or around that. At the end of the war, maybe as high as 1 per regiment per week. And the rates for the different weapons remain. One guy suggested many were lost in supply convoys. Well, I think many were probably lost in Bagration and Cobra, sure, which is hardly just "in supply convoys" but means "abandoned" rather than fired. Fine. How many? Half? Fine by me. I don't think anyone would argue it is 3/4ths; half seems quite generous. We are down to 1 out of 285 deployed fausts killing a tank. Another suggestion is overkill. Fine, so a platoon fires more than one. How many, six? How about half the time it is six, and half the time it is 2? Then the average is four fausts. I am down to 1/71 fausts "bunches" being used. Ok, some are used against infantry for legitimate reasons, not just to get rid of them to eliminate the danger they represent to the bearer. How many? 2/3rds? We are already pretty far from the supposed doctrinal employment aren't we? We still have only 1 out of 24 of the "bunchs" that are used, being used against enemy armor. But OK, they miss sometimes, even firing in bunches. How often? 25% engagement ranges for each? With so many fired, that works out to a 63% kill chance for the "bunch". We've still got only 1 out of 15 "bunches" being used. And remember, I already got rid of all the 3 million left in stocks in March of 1945, back when I started. 14 out of 15 faust bunches have still just vanished, without destroying allied AFVs, *after* all of the concessions above. They simply were not all being used exclusively in their doctrinal roles of destruction of enemy armor, nothing remotely like it. There is no other conclusion. You are not going to find 15 times as many dead tanks, or 15 times as large a portion overrun, or 15 times as many misses at 40 yards range. I've already got a factor in their of only 1/3rd used against armor. If you find 2 more factors of two in the remaining links, you've still got a factor of four left, to suggest only 1/12 was used against enemy armor, or they were fired at 3-5% hit ranges, or some combination of both. As I have said repeatedly, the major effect of the deployment of massive numbers of effective HEAT-rocket AT weapons into the hands of the regular infantry, was its impact on tactics. It allowed infantry to control their immediate area, so they had to be fought as a group rather than split up. And it made attackers send infantry first and stand off with the tanks. Which in turn gave the infantry useful options like artillery and MGs stripping the infantry off of the tanks and thus making them ineffective. All of that is highly useful, but it is not destroying large amounts of the enemy armor. 1-3 kills in a month in an infantry division simply does not qualify as "large amounts". The truth is that infantry only acquired an ability to truly attrite armor, or to break large bodies of it with decisive battlefield impact, when they got weapons that were #1 able to kill just about any tank at range and at any angle and #2 that had ranges on the same order of magnitude as those for tank guns, not those figures divided by 10 or 20 as in WW II, and #3 that were accurate and reliable and portable by infantry without vehicular help, under battlefield conditions. That did not happen until the deployment of ATGMs. Fausts (or RPGs or AT-4s today for that matter) are nothing like in the same league, no matter how many million of them you deploy. Which is not a reason not to deploy such weapons, as ought to go without saying. The effects mentioned above were valuable and often life-saving for the infantry, and the weapons were cheap. But a good short range rocket, even in mass quantity, and "training not to be afraid of tanks" was no substitute for heavy PAK/AT guns, TDs, and tanks. [This message has been edited by jasoncawley@ameritech.net (edited 02-09-2001).]

Its the upper hull that has that beautiful slope. The lower hull isn't quite so strong. And 25-lb HEAT is nothing to sneeze at...

First, there is something to this and I would like to see the following two changes - #1 reduce the price of everything listed as "fortification" to 2/3rds of the present price. That means MG log bunkers aren't much more expensive than HMG teams, and wire and AP mines can be had ~200 yards wide for about the cost of an infantry platoon, making obstacles a realistic option in a defensive set-up. #2 increase the size of the defender's set up area, to about 2/3rds of the map in attacks and more like 5/6ths of the map in assaults. (And half for probes). This gives the defender more choice of terrain, allows obstacle belts and TRPs to be located forward of the main defensive positions, and such-like. I think this would give a much more realistic model of defensive fighting. And in the case of small assaults, they would feel more like assaults, as in occasions where the battle begins with going "over the top", rather than long empty approach marches to contact. No man's land was not that much wider in many WW II occasions than in many WW I occasions, and at least the "assault" battle type ought to be able to reflect this. Incidentally, here is another change I would like to see for QBs. Right now, the "intermediate" skill level is set as regular and veteran. I'd prefer to see regular and green as one setting. This isn't about defenses, and it s quibble, but I am tired of endless veterans and I consider it boring as spit and unrealistic. The command-delay feature in CM is one of its best, and it is minimized by over-qualified troops. But, it is perfectly possible to win as the defender in CM. Against the AI (which is pretty clumsy), if you understand defensive principles and construct a sound defensive plan, you should be able to win decisively most of the time. I detailed a number of the factors involved in an article in the "tips" section, called "German infantry in the closed defense". That explains the logic behind "reverse slope" defender set-ups, meant to reduce the effect of the attacker's edge in firepower, and to isolate his forward units from support by the rest of his force, at the moment of the decisive firefights. One fellow spoke about how easy it is for the attacker to just concentrate and beat the scattered defenders that way. There is some truth to this, but you have to understand the defender's "counters" to that approach. The most important of these is artillery fire used to hit bunched-up attackers. Minefields are another weapon that does not care how many attackers there are in a given area, and multiplies its effects with their density. And last, the defender can concentrate as well, and does not need to try to defend all places by the physical presence of his troops. Instead, you can use a mix of strong point, fire plan, and obstacle. Meaning, some areas you plan to defend by being densely deployed right on them with infantry in whole platoons and in mutually supporting positions, as bunched up as attackers can afford to be, given your mortar support or whatever it it. Those are called "strong points", and you use them to hold important places and as "linch pins" that you can manuever around, draw on for infantry reserves to meet a threat, etc. Fire plan, on the other hand, means an area of mostly open ground that you cover not be presence of infantry directly behind it, but by LOS from MGs and guns or tanks. One MG does not do it, nor LMGs. 2+ HMGs (or Bunker w/ MG), a 20mm FLAK, and a heavier PAK or tank, though, can make an area of open ground quite hard for an enemy to cross. And you do not have to "spend" all those defenders on that one spot. They just need to be able to see it, along with whatever else they can see - while hopefully not being visible to the entire map, since that will mean getting knocked out rapidly by an attacker's "overwatch" shooters. Another example of "fire plan" is covering one wooded area with just a TRP, and calling down mortar fire on anyone approaching through that spot. Fire plan areas aren't as well defended as strong-points, but they enable the strongpoint to be, well, stronger, than dissipating the defenders trying to cover everything would leave them. And last, you can use obstacle belts. 1-2 items are not going to do anything. You need at least 5, and preferably 8-10, of the same type, wire or AP mine. (AT mines along one road, fine, but they are too expensive to try to create whole fields with). You can put these right in front of strongpoints to create a very strong "block". Or you can put them in areas covered only by fire. They are most effective when you place them in ways that deny access to the only spots of cover in a wider area, but still in continuous belts. E.g. say there are two "tiles" of brush or scattered trees in this field, between a body of woods you aren't going to defend, and the houses you are. Then put the mines right in the cover, and in the gap between them. A plus is anybody who panics in the open field may wind up running there, with unpleasant consequences for them. Take some sort of arty support because otherwise dense attackers will steamroll you, but just light mortars (3 inch or 81mm) is fine there. And do *not* waste all your arty ammo trying to "attrite" the approaching attacker at long range. You want your limited number of fire missions to break whole enemy platoons that are *in contact* or about to be. Artillery breaks more than it kills, and its strongest effects *pass* with time. But in contact, your infantry can clean up afterward, or force the broken targets to retreat a long way. Just making a few squads "take cover" and inflicting a handful of casualties, a long way away, is by comparison an indecisive waste. Save your last fire mission for "final protective fire", when you are in your holes or stone buildings and the attack isn't, and call it close in when he rushes. You may hit some of your guys, but you will be in better cover than him. Attacking arty is most dangerous to defenders when it hits their main infantry positions. You can afford to lose a single seperated gun, MG, or bunker. But you donot have the depth for casualties that attackers do, and if his guns kill half your infantry the remaining infantry odds can become 3-4:1, too steep to handle. The way you have to handle this is #1 set up in cover that is hard for the attackers to see, is good cover against off-board arty, or both, and #2 if you aren't in the best off-board arty cover, then have *alternate positions* and *run* to them the instant a barrage starts coming down. In stone buildings you can ride out barrages. In foxholes in the woods, you *can't*, do not try, skedaddle. If you split squads when setting up, and use your HQ foxholes too, you can get enough secondary fighting positions to be able to fall back according to a plan and into prepared cover, not haphazardly into light cover. To try to get the hang of defender's tactics, I recommend fighting against the AI is small to medium attacks, and taking the *infantry* force type. Take some supporting arty as mentioned - just off-map mortars will do. (Don't just take on-map ones, they are not enough to break whole attacking infantry companies, in sheer ammo terms). Take enough infantry, don't skimp, and be willing to buy regulars to get the numbers you need, and support them with some crew-served guns. Defender's cannot afford veteran everything. Spend what is left on obstacles. When learned to fight defensively, concentrate on whether you kept most of your defensive force intact, not whether you held the objectives. Then focus next on inflicting losses on the attackers. Only when you can do both reliably, worry about holding or retaking objectives too. Usually, solving the first will have a strong effect on the second, and getting good at inflicting losses on the attackers will mostly solve the last. Trying to do them in the reverse order will not work. You do not want to be making last ditch stands for flags on the map and getting all your guys killed in the process. That is the kind of defense attacker's want, because it is predictable and feeds the limited defender's into the attacker's firepower meatgrinder in reliable ways. Also, be prepared to be flexible, to mix it up, and to move. No defensive scheme is going to operate just as set up with no adaptations. If part of your force is going to get out-shot if they stay where they are, then get them the heck out of there. If the attacker isn't sending anyone up the right flank, then pull out those troops and use them as a reserve. One measure that can increase the flexibility of your defense considerable is keeping a reserve and intelligent use of your commanders. Leave one whole infantry platoon, without detachments and led by your *best* platoon leader, in whatever your main position is, but able to move in any direction to meet multiple threats. It also helps if this platoon has one AT team attached, especially for the Allies (since they lack fausts in the "line" infantry). You'd be surprised how often this one simple measure can make the difference. The reason is that a front-line platoon cannot out-shoot a company with only the advantage of foxholes to rely on. But two platoons, one of them arriving in an unexpected spot and well led, often can. You can get an extra ad hoc "platoon" that is in command by assigned one squad from other platoons, as well as an MG team or whatever, to a company HQ. Do not stay split into teams; they rout to easily. A few "OPs" to see the enemy coming and run to the rear is fine, and you want the extra foxholes at set-up, but get back into full squads right after the start. And stay in at least weak platoons, with some kind of commander. Scattered single squads "defend" nothing, because they can't even defend themselves. It also helps to understand how much firepower it is going to take to really cover an area against enemy infantry. To deny ground or break men passing through it often, you need either - an artillery strike an AP minefield a platoon of infantry at <100 yards range 2-3 HMGs with LOS to the same *open* ground a tank Thinner forces are not going to do anything but get themselves killed. Cover the places you do cover, that well or better. "But I can't cover everything that thick". Then don't cover everything. I hope this is useful.

First, understand the capabilities of the weapons. Then move to general tactics. Last some specific tricks you can try. The Panther can defeat the standard 75mm from the front at most ranges. The Tiger can do the same, and in addition can defeat 75mm from side angles that are somewhat steep, meaning not "broadside" shots but angled ones. The Panther can't do the second of those - the side armor is thin, and if you can hit it from that direction, the angle doesn't matter very much. In addition, some Shermans have 76mm guns, which have better penetration. They are dangerous to the Tiger from the flank angles, and sometimes to either type from the front (but only close, and not with any certainty). In addition, 76mm Shermans and tank destroyers, sometimes carry special AP ammo - tungsten rounds - that can hole either type from any angle. The problem is this ammo is rare, and the tankers are reluctant to use it unless #1 a previous shot has already hit and bounced and #2 they think the chance of a hit with the next shot is high. It also depends on how much of the stuff they've got, the more they have, the more likely their are to use it. Both types can be clobbered from the rear facing by any U.S. tank gun, 75mm is fine. Meanwhile, they can hole your tanks from any angle, including head on and half the map away. So dueling them from the front is suicide. They can kill you, and you can't kill them (with the tungsten iffy exception noted above). But the Tigers are slow-moving, and their turrets rotate slowly. The Panthers are faster and their turret OK, but still not as fast as yours, and in addition those, as I already said, can be holed from any side-armor shot, practically. For the same ground speed, the closer you are to an enemy tank and the nearer the angle of your motion is to a right angle from the line to the enemy tank, the faster he has to turn to track you. See, if you move 140 yards, and you are a mile away, he turns his turret a few degrees and he is still tracking you. Or if you are moving straight at him, he doesn't have to turn his turret at all. But if you were only 100 yards away, by the time you move 140 yards of at an angle "around" him, he has to turn 90 degrees, cause you are clear over on his side by then. Closer, and an angle near 90 degrees, means his turret has to run fast to one side to catch up with you. If you are still running, he is still turning. When you stop, his turret gets a chance to catch up, and it will catch you. But if you stopped behind a building, what good does that do him? So that is point #1. They are vunerable to rapid moves to their sides, at right angles, because of slow tracking speed. Point number two is to use *teamwork*, and this is the most important single item. One on one, it is not hard for him to keep his front armor facing you, and what's to track? He was pointed in the right direction already, and you are sunk. But he can't track two that way, and he can't face his front armor toward two tanks that are seperated around him at a steep enough angle. "But what if he has 2-3?" Helps him on the tracking some, and makes it harder sure. But each tank cannot face all of you with its front armor. Shoot the ones with their side armor toward you, and trust the rest of the team to get the ones with their front armor facing you. The team can *always* get a side shot somewhere, if they are just seperated enough but still have LOS to the same enemy tank location. But you do not want to find out where those locations are, with your tanks. Because you will lose some of them, to little or no purpose. Find them with the infantry. The infantry are your *eyes*. Stay behind woods or buildings or rises of ground, seperated to do the team thing, advancing behind the infantry - until the infantry spots an enemy tank. Then pop out to get firing angles at that tank from *two directions* at once. Whichever of those is closer to the directon he is pointing, have run at high speed at a right angle, toward some piece of cover farther ahead. Your turret will stay tracking him. He will try to track you, but the angle will be steep. Then you duck behind the cover and he has lost you. (No cover? Make some, with smoke rounds). Meanwhile, the other team member looks at his side, and sees his turret turning the wrong way to track the other team member. It gets a nice clear shot at the flank, and the flat side of the turret to boot, without reply. If you don't get him in the first minute, have the "shooter" back up in the next turn. Have the "runner" pause 30 seconds, then pop out around whatever cover it hid behind, on "hunt". Your shooter fires during its command delay, then backs out of sight. The enemy tank tries to traverse back to hit him, as the only threat now in view. He turns, and turns. By the time he has turned, your previous "shooter" is out of view, backed up - no shot for him. And your previous runner has become the new "shooter" from the other side. It is a tag-team fade-away-jab fest. You are the dancing boxer, he is the head down inside puncher. The angle at which a boxer moves to launch a fade-away-jab is just the same, that same circling side-step. He does it to get a "side angle" around the other guy's glove, but the idea is the same. But you can run this closer by bounds, too. From point-blank, your guns are reasonable dangerous to him, and it is real easy to get on a side, and sometimes even to get one tank behind him, if the terrain lets you get that close. For example, in a village, hiding behind houses and having one tank run up behind him, while another runs across his front. Think "infantry eyes", "distract & use cover", "fade-away jabs", "close rear sides", above all "teamwork". I hope this helps, and good luck.

Fighting mounted means shooting with the 'tracks MG(s), and other heavy weapons (more on those below). And keeping moving. If the morale of the occupants of individual 'tracks is raised by firing bullets at wild arcs through the air, and they have the ammo to waste, feel free, but it adds nothing. As for how common the SPWs were, they were actually over TOE in a number of cases, which is rare for late war German weapons types. (It also, incidentally, suggests a fair amount of dismounted fighting, thus less losses in combat than planned by doctrine, etc). For example, the TOE in late war Panzer divisions was to have just one battalion out of four in the division, mounted in SPWs, along with 1 company of engineers, and 2 companys in the recon battalion. (Which is already more than 1/4th BTW - counting engineers and recon, there are really 6 infantry-type battalion units and 1/3rd are SPW in the TOE layout). But in reality, the armored cars for the recon guys were in very short supply, and SPWs weren't, so there are a lot more SPWs in the recon battalions in reality, than in the TOE. You see the little ones, the 250 series, there in large numbers in several cases, for example. (The 251 series, full squad size, were in higher "demand" from the PzGdrs). Thus in Normandy one Pz Div. recon battalion was authorized to have 42 armored cars, 42 SPW 251, and one company on motorcycles. But it actually had 14 armored cars of two types, 7 captured French light tanks, 35 SPW 251 plus 2 mortar carriers, and a whopping 56 SPW 250s (which were obviously being counted as "1/2 a vehicle"). The motorcycle company was on bicycles, by the way. Now, that is 91 armored halftracks sporting MGs, in a recon battalion. You bet their "mounted" fire would matter, even as just that many MGs (let alone that times two) with nothing else added in. I find several other formations above TOE for SPWs in Normandy. It was common for 1 battalion per regiment, instead of in the whole division, to be so mounted - one finds this in the SS formations and in 1 of the army formations. And in Panzer Lehr, probably the most over-stuffed formation in the German army in WW II (it was the "training" division), all four PzGdr battalions and all the enginners were in SPWs. In addition, they PzGgr units have other assets besides the infantry-carrying halftracks and their MGs. A regiment had an infantry gun company that carried 6 75mm infantry howitzer, but carried them mounted on 'tracks. And 9 37mm flak likewise (earlier in the war, 20mm was more common). 150mm SiG on tracked chassis also existed in some cases, and 81mm mortars were HT mounted in many. When they talk about the PzGdr "fighting mounted", then, they are not talking about the privates with the rifles - who the heck cares? They are talking about the MGs and the gun-armed halftracks. They are suppressing infantry and crew-served weapons with MG fire, yes. They are also dumping 81mm mortar rounds on them, calling in divisional artillery fire from 105mms or 150mms, pasting buildings with 75mm howitzer, spraying unarmored vehicles with 20mm or 37mm FLAK. In all of which, Ludwig v. Studly mit his MP 40 is a passive cheering bystander (if he can see anything, which is doubtful). The privates matter when the fighting is dismounted and there are casualties to take. The heavy weapons, MGs and up, are the serious ranged firepower of the whole organization, and "fighting mounted" just means "use the heavy weapons only, and keep moving". "But the training manuals..." - Don't want to tell Ludwig v. Studly what a fifth wheel he is until the time comes get killed rooting strong defenders out of cover - on the ground. But he'll find that out soon enough.

20mm or 37mm FLAK for light armor, 75mm or 88mm PAK for heavy armor. As for "on the other end of the map", well, you need a better fire plan then. You want to cover all open areas with both. The FLAK will also hit infantry for you. The 20mm is cheaper, but has less of a punch against armor. Still enough for all the halftracks and scout cars of the world, but not always up to scratching the light tanks. 50mm ATs are also cheap for the Germans. They kill tanks from the side and anything else from any angle. Personally I like the 20mm as the Germans, and it is more realistic to use those too. 2 or 4 of them in a company or battalion position. For the Allies, the 57mm ATG can do lights, or 40mm FLAK. I found the original article quite useful. Especially the point about ranges for AT teams. You really do want to fire at 50 yards, and beyond 100 yards is a complete waste. Don't believe anything about the listed "maximum range". For panzerfausts, the right range is about half the rated distance, or 20-40 meters generally speaking. That is the next "tile" over, or two tiles for the late war version at most. While you don't fire the panzerfausts (the AI does it for you automatically), knowing the right range for their use is tactically important. E.g. when you use an HQ unit to set a platoon ambush, or when you are deciding how many squads are really needed to cover this and that gap between woods. One other item about the choice between AT types, is the terrain. The tighter the terrain, the better the infantry teams look compared to the guns. The guns work best with long lanes of fire, but without being seen by everybody. They don't work in woods with clearings here and there. The teams can shift from one side of an obstacle to cover one area, back to the other side to cover another area, much more easily than guns can. In open terrain, the guns cover more because of their range, and because AT teams have a real short life expectancy running around in open ground while in contact.

It may also be an effect of calling for fighters from both sides. They might be too busy dogfighting up there, and burning all their fuel in the meantime, dumping their bombs blind to lighten up to manuever better, etc. I do not know if CM models this, but the chances of *both* sides getting air support over the same location in the same narrow space of time, was pretty darn low, and if planes did meet over a target, they'd probably be more worried about getting shot down by each other, than about helping you. Try calling a couple of planes from just one side. Oh yeah, and make sure the weather is clear, too.

Most full-sized tanks have a crew of five men. They are the tank commander, the gunner, the loader, the driver, and a hull machinegunner / assistant driver. The last two are in the forward part of the hull, left and right side for driver and MG, the first three are in the turret, with the commander in a raised seat high up in the turret, from which standing he can see out and operate the turret-top machinegun when there is one. The gunner and loader are standing on the turret floor, which is farther down inside the tank than you might think. The gunner aims the gunsight, traverses and elevates the gun, and fires it. The loader preps the ammo and loads the gun, all the operations that involves. Ammo is stowed in the back of the turret and around its edges. The rear compartment, down in the hull and behind the turret area, is where the engine is, and the gas tank and such. Some lighter vehicles will only have a crew of 3 or 4, with typically the commander having to fire the gun or the gunner having to load it. The second of those works much better, because a commander who can see what is going on is more important than loading a little faster. They can't take the extra man out of the hull instead, because it is the turret area that has the least space. In the case of three man crews, there is only one driver too. And yes, the inside of the turret of a tank, especially a light tank, is a cramped place. So much so that many U.S. tankers disconnected their expensive and high-tech gyrostabilizers. Why? Because those were designed to keep the gun pointing in the same direction over dips and bumps in the ground, but guns have backsides too. The backside of a gun is a part inside the turret called the "breech block", a big safe-like hunk of metal designed to prevent the shock of firing from blowing open the place you put the shell it. Well, the gyros made the breechblock move around inside the tank as it went over bumps. And being hit by a moving breech-block can break your arm like that (snap). So they said to heck with it and just disconnected them, in many cases. It is just an example of how cramped things are inside a tank.

A fantastic site, thanks for the link. You are right, it is much more ad hoc and scrambled than I could have possibly imagined - LOL. Half the artillery is Russian and all kinds of ersatz substitutions are being made in organization charts that aren't sitting still in the first place. Here are some examples of the heavy weapons of various divisions. First I should explain one of the figures. They have tracked the number of MGs per battalion. That varies from 40 per battalions up to 63 per battalion, with middle to lower figures more common. Engineers are lower, 11 per company (2 HMG and 9 squad level LMG). 5 different infantry divisions I examined didn't have a single 120mm mortar between them. They also had a sum total of 4 150mm SiG combined. But they had 45, 76, 72, 54, and 67 81mm mortars respectively. Div. arty, the long range tube stuff, was a hodge-podge, like this - 77th division - 16x105mm Not much, but simple 85th division - 12x105mm + 4x150mm, +12x150mm later in exchange for 12x88mm PAK And have we got a deal for you! 91st division - started with 105mm mountain guns that took a different type of 105mm round. No resupply after the initial load. The guns were sent to the rear and replaced with whatever came to hand. 12x122mm (Russian), 7x125mm (unknown, French?), 9x155mm (has to be French; Germans used 150mm not 155mm). When you can find ammo for French 125mm (if that is even what they were) more easily than German 105mm, that's confusion. But in a perverse way it makes sense - the rear echelon thought all German 105mm worked in all German 105mm howitzers and sent the wrong stuff. Tell them you are using captured French stuff and they don't try sending you the stuff that doesn't work. 243 division - 24x76mm Russian (plus they used 18 more of those in place of regimental infantry guns), 16x122mm Russian (4 Gun, 12 howitzer) 16 LW Field (taken over by army) - 16x76mm (Russian), 12x122mm (Russian) And here are the other heavy weapons for the same five - 77 - 40 MG/Batt, 8x75mm IG, 6x50mm PAK, 12x75mm PAK, 12x88mm PAK, 6xflamethrower 85 - 63 MG/Batt, 4x150mm SiG, 12x75mm IG, 18x75mm PAK, 12x88mm PAK until traded for 12x150mm howitzer (and a major to be named later), 12xflamethrower, and 72xSchrecks (4 / inf company, or 1/platoon including the weapons platoons). Was supposed to get 12x37mm FLAK during the Normandy fighting but nobody knows if they actually got them. 91 - (MG ratio not listed) 10x75mm PAK, 21xStuG III, 8x88mm PAK, 2x88mm FLAK, 2x37mm FLAK, 7x20mm FLAK 243 - 44 MG/ Batt, as mentioned 18x76mm Russian howitzer used as infantry guns, 9 75mm PAK, 14 Marder, 10 StuG, 12x20mm FLAK 16 LW Field - 56 MG/Batt, 12x75mm PAK, 15x50mm PAK, 21x20mm FLAK (figures), 2xStuG, later 8xStuG more to complete the company, 54xSchreck (1/platoon with their organization), 6xflamethrower Wow. Talk about "ersatz"... [This message has been edited by jasoncawley@ameritech.net (edited 02-08-2001).]

Replaced more often does not jibe with 14 times the ammo. If the tubes were being lost regularly, each one would fire fewer rounds before a new one was needed. But the 81s are firing half again as many rounds per tube over their service life, as the 120s. They just didn't always have the 120s at the regimental level. That is the obvious conclusion. When they didn't have them, they may have used 81s, or they may have used Nebelwerfers, or they may have gone without. But they did not have 2 120mm mortars for every 3 81mm mortars, or anything remotely close to it, in the regular infantry divisions. That number of those guns simply did not exist, nor did the ammo for them exist. You do not make 14 times the rounds for a weapon you are going to deploy only twice as many of. And they made 9 times as many of the 81s, not twice as many. Can you find 216 81mm mortars in a line infanry division? No. Then they didn't have TOE of the 120s. I'll bet what they did, is around the time of the changeover to the 2 regiment model, they made the 120mm mortar battalions a substitute for artillery battalions, and the forces then got one or the other. If the division was to have 3, or 4, artillery battalions, then they'd have no 120mm mortars and 4, or 1 battalion of 120mm mortars and 3, or 1 battalion of 120mm mortars per regiment - as the TOE has it - and then only 2 of regular tube artillery in the artillery regiment. Or some such substitution. Assigning support to regiments, effectively, but arty -or- heavy mortar. Notice, when fighting the division with regiments side by side, each in 2 up, 1 back formation (as reserves), that gives one battalion-sized unit of supporting "medium" artillery, to each front-line infantry battalion. That kind of "tasking" makes sense to me. Its the kind of thing they'd do, on a "kampgruppe" basis, that would turn into an organic attachment in all but name. So the "defacto" TOE would really be ~48 medium field pieces per division, and whether they were 105mm howitzer or 120mm mortar would vary from unit to unit. Then they'd fire as battalions in support of front line battalions, which would also have their organic 81mms and 75mm infantry guns. A front line battalion could have - infantry battalion light FLAK battery 3 TDs and/or 2-4 PAK 81mm mortar support (organic) 75mm infantry gun support (organic) 105mm howitzer -*or*- 120mm mortar support And in reserve there would be a company+ behind each battalion position, which might have a sIG assault gun (the regimental 150mm infantry howitzers, mounted), and with a TD company to spearhead a counterattack somewhere when needed. Makes sense of it to me. Comments?

Incidentally, for those who agree with Barbie that "math is hard", or those in Palm Beach, I will put some human terms on these stale statistical figures. On the highest numbers presented for tanks killed by infantry, there might be 1-3 people in your infantry *division* that bagged a single tank in a given *month*. You'd hear about Lars, who bagged one 8 months ago, and was the only man in your company to have done so in the past *year*. If you happened to be the in the same platoon he was in, you'd notice that he was the only person in the platoon, counting all the replacements that had come and gone, who had ever done the deed, in the entire war. That's on average. On the *highest* figures cited, when their is reason to believe the true number could be lower by a factor of 2 or 3. This, despite as many AT rockets issued as men in uniform. The picture you get from CM, particularly against the vehicle-clumsy AI, is completely out of proportion to the mainstream experience of a typically WW II infantryman. It reflects particularly *stubborn* stands in particularly *close range* combat (and, against the AI, particularly reckless handling of enemy tanks). Which were regular occurances to be sure, but nothing like daily ones, let alone hourly ones, for a WW II infantryman.

Your Russian destroyed tanks figure will come as startling news to the economic historians. The Russians only built 102,500 tanks. Is your source saying they only had 6000 tanks at the end of the war? I don't think so.

ASL Vet said - "Defense and attrition go hand in hand" I found these comments useful. I don't agree with them, but I found them useful - LOL. First, the Russians followed up the blunting of the German spearheads with a huge counteroffensive of their own, which among other things featured massive armor spearheads launched at the (far) flanks of the German concentration opposite Kursk (from around Orel on the one hand, and the Kharkov area on the other). The Germans did not have mobile reserves sufficient to meet these attacks, which subsequently broke through the German lines. The Germans reformed thin lines ahead of the Dnepr and Kiev, but none held until behind the Dnepr river line, which was still crossed in places. This counteroffensive lasted throughout the fall months, pausing for the autumn rains and the subsequent mud period on the steppe. I quite agree that the Germans failed at Kursk, and that at least some of them thought they were fighting a battle of manuever, and that the high command agreed with your statement that "nothing decisive" could be expected from "defensive" action, which is why Manstein's recommendations were ignored. In other words, they equated decisiveness with offense, and offense with manuever, and conceived defensive manuever to be a sort of contradiction in terms. I happen to think they were quite wrong in just about all of the above, and I see ASL Veteran as repeating many of the same mistakes in his analysis of the events, though not in his recommendations perhaps. The Russians, on the other hand, viewed the overall situation as one in which only attrition could prepare the conditions suitable for breakthrough, and where the "manuevers" in a perhaps over-broad sense of the term, that were called for, had everything to do with such attrition-thought topics as reserves and wearing out etc. But I do not think the Russians connected this with the defensive per se, and I think they were right not to. The Russians thought they could not achieve a breakthrough until the Germans had committed their armored reserves to battle, and had worn them out. They thought that if they still had armored reserves *left*, and *fresh*, for breakthrough fighting, *after* the German armor reserves had been drawn into battle and "attrited" - whether offensively or defensively - that they could attempt breakthroughs. I think they were basically right on those topics. Manstein thought that it was a mistake to commit the armored reserves to battle, essentially because of the same process of thought as the Russians. But he also thought that the Russians would attack if the Germans stood on the defensive, and that in doing so the Russians would wear out their armor reserves. He also thought that no breakthrough the Russians might achieve would actually be dangerous to the German army, if the Germans kept the bulk of their armor in reserve. In particular, the success of his Kharkov counterattack in February of 1943, had convinced him that destroying Russian penetrations would be relatively easy to accomplish, with adequate armor in reserve. Part of this had to do with existing weaknesses in Russian armor doctrine, not yet corrected. The Russians were still using massed tanks more or less alone, with little in the way of combined arms cooperation. Fighting at a front or defensively, this doctrinal weakness was masked, because units were intermingled by the front. In Russian breakthroughs, though, it came to the fore, as Russian armor tended to outstrip everything else, not cooperate with anybody, and push recklessly into the German rear. What Manstein had learned in February, was that these penetrations - devastating enough in the Stalingrad campaign when unprepared for them - could be destroyed relatively easily by combined arms counterattacks. He had found, in other words, that the easiest place to destroy massed Russian armor formations, was inside the German rear areas. This required adequate combined arms reserves, handled according to tenets of manuever strategy, such as many-of-few engagements in sequence, momentum, etc. Manstein had achieved the defensive synthesis of manuever applied to mobile warfare in a way the inventors of the blitzkrieg had not themselves envisioned. The target he sought was the mass of the enemy armor, and in seeking its destruction he was certainly thinking in the staff manner with its somewhat "attritionist" focus, or at least its decisive battle focus. Whatever you choose to call it, the maxims that counciled closing the Kiev Pocket in 1941, counciled Manstein in 1943 to seek the destruction of the Russian armor. And the way to destroy it was what Manstein termed "the backhand". In some respects this was an adaptation from the old defense-in-depth scheme. That had planned on local strongpoints and local instant counterattacks. Manstein applied similar manuever ideas about concentration and shock to these counterattacks. He envisioned delaying them, but collecting them, and at the proper moment launching an armored force across the axis of an intruding enemy spear head, turning up its length, and seeking many-of-few engagments in rapid succession. He had basically turned these ideas into an operational plan in the Kharkov counterattack in February and had seen it work. Manstein did not expect the Russians to apply the same reasoning, but realised that the mere presence of a defense in depth with adequate armor reserves would bring about many of the same effects without needed his full-blown doctrinal add ons, about how to handle the counterattacking reserves and their proper composition. He therefore thought the attack at Kursk would prove unpromising, but that the chances to destroy the Russian armor if it attacked first, and was almost "let through" before being hit by the German reserves, were excellent. These views were roundly rejected by most of the German command. They did not like or understand the divorcing of the offensive from manuever ideas that it involved. They associated manuever ideas (many on one engagements in sequence e.g.) with the possession of the initiative, and sometimes flat conflated the two. There is an interesting parallel in the thought process of Manstein and the thought processes of the Russians. The Russians frankly thought in attrition terms, but they were seeking conditions for breakthrough. They recognized that such conditions did not exist. They had seen how their spearheads had been wiped off the map for little loss in a single month in February, when overextended and facing German mobile reserves. They did not believe, therefore, that conditions favorable to breakthrough existed, and they thought the German armor must be defeated first. And Manstein thought substantially the same thing. First, that the Russians would not be able to achieve breakthrough as long as the German armor was intact and available in reserve - they would just be open to his "backhand". And second, that the Germans themselves could not *risk* an attack themselves, which would not break through anyway against the deep Russian reserves, *and* which would remove their defense against Russian breakthrough by wearing out their armor. Was this attritionist thinking his part? I think that it was, in terms of the overall strategy, but not in terms of how he wanted to impliment it. He wanted to use a mobile defense, and thought that "force multipliers" were available from manuever ideas when doing so. But he put all of that in an attrition-logic framework, based on force to space and depth of reserves, that told him that offensive moves would not work, that husbanding (armored) reserves mattered most, and that the immediate battle "logic" if I may call it that, was that the balance would tip to the side with the last uncommitted armor reserve. I think that entire analysis was substantially correct. And it has definite implications for manuever doctrine. First, manuver and the offensive are not synonomous, both because attritionist or broad-front strategies do exist on the attack, but also because, as Manstein has seen, manuever ideas had useful operational or grand-tactical applications on the defensive. But there is another implication. It is, that when force to space ratios are high, defenses are in depth, doctrines on both sides are not completely dumb, large mobile reserves are kept, and the overall force ratios are reasonably close - in the 3:2 range or so - a defense dominance exists even in mobile warfare, and an essentially attritionist logic is in force. The last reserve, and the destruction of enemy armor, are the decisive variables, and not who concentrates where or who strikes first. I hope this is interesting.

I might be willing to believe the figure of 14,000 total Allied tanks killed by the infantry, all means combined. But it is way above the figures cited in that 4-month periods, by a factor of about two, averaged from the time of Barbarossa to the end of the war. And the rate was certainly lower in the earlier years, with at best rifle grenades to work with. See, in the period above on the eastern front the average rate for infantry means is about 165 tanks per month. But 14,000 over the 46 months from Barbarossa to April 45 and effective collapse, is 304 per month. For that figure to be true, the many long months with ~165 per month or less (by the above figures) before the late-war period, have to be outweighed by a sharp pick-up in the late war period. Is it not also possible, that sometimes a team received a decoration for destroying a tank? If 2-4 men shared credit for a "kill", then there is essentially no conflict with the figures cited above, but the conclusion is more like 4000-7000 total Allied tanks destroyed by infantry. Furthermore, take any of the three figures for total tanks KO'ed by the infantry. Call them "low" - 4k, middle 7k, high 14k. Now try to parcel it out among the infantry AT weapon types issued, and the time, and see what rates of effectiveness you come up with. Pretty darn low. If we date large scale fighting from June 1941 and continue it until April 45 we get 46 months, means the average rate is 304 per month. 152 with the 7k figure, and 87 with the 4k figure. If you look at the figures I cited, the Russians lost to all causes, the highest infantry figure, in about 4 1/2 months at the early 1944 rate. Which means the portion of tanks KO'd by infantry is 10% tops (by your awards figure), with 3-5% quite possible (if men could share an award, my cited figures are accurate, etc). That parcels out the infantry portion, which should be lower in the first part of the period and higher toward the end, as tanks and ATGs get more scarce and fausts with better ranges get more common. Now try to break out the infantry kills by type. Did even 2% of the issued infantry ATMs and "sticky" mines kill a tank? No, or that would have been the entire infantry total. How about schreck rounds, the best range in the lot and a sufficient warhead. For each launcher, there were 6-7 rounds produced. Did even 5% of these launchers kill an Allied tank with its whole ammo load, less than 1% for each round? No, or that would have been the entire infantry "bag". How about the fausts? Well, we know quite a few weren't used through March '45 because they were still on hand. But 4.4 million had been issued and weren't on hand anymore. Did even 1/300 of these kill an Allied tank? No, or that would have been the entire infantry "bag". There were also millions of AT rifle grenades, which where the best they had until mid war, had better range but less lethality than the magnetic mines, and were present through the end of '43 is much larger numbers than Schrecks or early Fausts. That is nearly 2/3rds of the available *time* to rack up kills. The rate may have been lower, but it may still have amounted to ~3-4000 tanks on the highest figure for total KO'ed. Which gives only on the order of 1/2500-1/3300 effectiveness to each AT rifle grenade. My impression from the unit histories is that the fausts were the most successful of the lot (probably because they were lighter and used from closer ranges too), followed the the Schreck, then the ATMs which were way behind because of how hard they were to use. Ad hoc means like grenade bundles and molotovs were even lower. That also matches the figures I cited, more or less. Suppose we assume 11,000 after the newer items are out, and break those out 70%, 25%, 5% for faust, schreck, and mag-mines. Then 7700 tanks are taken out by 4.4 million fausts, 1/570 effectiveness. A Schreck averages 1/105 effectiveness with its whole service life, more like 1/690 per round. The mag-mines get 1/1365, and the rifle grenades get 1/3300. Those figures give a platoon of infantry with a schreck and 6 fausts (2/squad, and not every platoon actually had a schreck incidentally), about a 1.8% chance of taking out a single Allied AFV, or a ~5.3% chance per company. If squads are carrying only 1 faust each and the whole company has a schreck, then you get more like ~2.3% per company. Why such low figures with so many weapons? After all, a single brush close enough to use a faust might generate one shot in the 30-50% to hit range, with hits equal to kills essentially. Well, they usually just didn't get that close, that is the primary explanation. The number of fausts remaining might have been lower because of use of them against infantry targets - something that also happened with the schreck rounds incidentally, with the better range making it a more useful tactic. But the figures are quite merciless to the image of the fearless tank hunter, I assure you. On the largest figure for tanks killed by infantry, assuming proper doctrinal use of the weapons at close ranges at armor targets, is simply incompatible with the idea that any more than a tiny fraction of the weapons was used. You can't get 1/500-600 effectiveness for an issued faust, with a 40% to-kill chance for one actually fired in the proper setting, unless they are not being fired (at all or) in the proper setting. The primary effects of issuing so many effective short-range AT weapons to the infantry, was just to enable the infantry to hold their immediate areas as "their own" on a battlefield. Tanks stood off, and infantry went first in tight terrain, because of their presence. That helped the infantry enourmously, because it allowed the use of tactics to strip the infantry off the tanks (e.g. barrages and MG cross-fires), after which caution and lack of intel would render the tanks that did penetrate a line, ineffective. What it did not do, is kill the Allied armor. No weapon with such limited range and so dangerous to its user, could do so. I hope this is interesting.

To PAK 40 - I was in the USAR (reserve) artillery. I'm also just an old gamer though - LOL. (I playtested Terrible Swift Sword at an origins convention in the 1970s as a young man, if that gives you an idea. I am sure there are lots of old gamers here). And I study political science and history. I do have some corrections on my CEP figures though. I'm not sure if I believe this source on this subject, but he seems to have a wealth of info in other respects. http://www.geocities.com/Augusta/8172/panzerfaust10.htm He gives the standard error for German 50mm mortars as 35 meters, and for the 81mm mortar he gives 65 meters. Those seem somewhat high to me (they might be meant for targets at maximum range). He doesn't have one for 120mm mortars, but those are fired from off map in CM anyway. But 25 meters for the typical light in CM (like the U.S. 60mm mortar and the British 2"), and more like 50 meters for the 81mm mortar, seems believeable. Incidentally, the same source has a number of interesting facts on how common various German infantry weapons were in the whole war, just from their production-run figures. Some of the likely deviations from TOEs can be read out of the figures. For example, the TOE of late war German infantry, had 2 81mm mortars per company or 6 per battalion, with a battalion of 12 120mm mortars at the regimental level. That suggests a ratio of the two types of 3:2. But the production figures have a ratio between the two types of 9 to 1, in favor of the lighter 81mm, and the ammo runs favor the 81mm by 14 to 1. So one can be pretty sure the 120mm mortars were not always present at TOE. If only the tube ratio was off, you might think it was just that the 81mms, with their shorter range, were lost more often, while the 120mm versions survived. But with the 81mm mortar ammo far more common, that explanation fails. You make the ammo for the guns you still have, not for the ones you lost. Another interesting state is the number of mortar rounds. It is a huge 74 million for the 81mm. There is an implicit comment on their accuracy in that figure, either that or there was a lot of blind fire at empty locations going on, or both. Far more 81mm mortar rounds were fired at Allied infantrymen, than there were Allied infantrymen to shoot them at, and most of the latter lived. Ergo, most of the rounds missed. There were around 80,000 81mm mortars made, plus captured Russian 82mm versions. That means 81mm mortars were twice as common as all German AFVs put together (~45,000). Down until 1943, the Germans still used their light 50mm mortar (twin of the British 2" one, essentially), but the 81s were 3 times as common overall (maybe 4 times with the captured Russian stuff thrown in). German light/medium mortars generally have 900 rounds made for each tube, while the heavier 120mms had ~600 made for each tube. Obviously, some would be destroyed before they fired that many, and others would shoot more, but it gives a sense of their service life and the frequency with which they could fire them off. In CM terms, that means roughly 35-50 "FOs" or firing modules from each mortar battery, over its entire service life. Not "every half hour", certainly. Probably more like "once a week" for the average unit, and perhaps once a day in action hot enough for CM coverage, at best. If the 120mm's lasted longer, they didn't fire more mission because of it, in CM "FO" terms - 50 FOs of 50 rounds each for 4 mortars, is their war-long or service-life average ammo limit. Other items of interest - the small arms mix obviously moved from mostly rifle plus some MGs to more automatic-weapon heavy at the end of the war. But rifles are the rule all the way through, they have to be. Here are the total war figures, approximate and adding in similar types - rifles - 12 million MGs - 1 million MP40s - 900,000 MP44s - 425,000 Sniper mods for rifles - 175,000 So the whole-war average equipment for a company would be something like - 2 sniper rifles, 4 MP44s, 9 MP40s, 10 MGs, and 120 other Rifles. So you are looking at squads with 1 MG, 1 MP (NCO), the rest Rifles, and with the weapons company HMGs included only 2/3rds of the squads even have 1 MG, though there is an MP44 to fill in in the other ones. (Not that that is how the MP44s were used, mind). In the early years, they probably had 1 LMG per platoon, not per squad. Still, 1.3 million SMGs and 1 million MGs is a lot of automatic weapons. They were not uncommon, in late war in particular. Sniper rifles were, but 1-3 in a company is perfectly believable. It is interesting to classify items by how common they were, to give a sense of what the Allies faced. Total mortar rounds, all types - around 100 million (! these woods are not friendly) Rifles 12 million, and rifle grenades 24 million (! - sure it is a round, and for years of the war. But 24 million is a lot of rifle grenades). AT mines - 19 million. (Gingerly down the road...) 7.4 million fausts + 1.9 million schreck rounds + .75 million infantry AT mines, mag or sticky/thrown varities - 10 million infantry AT weapons, on top of and more effective than the rifle grenades, and almost all for the late-war period. Hundred of the things per Allied tank. Do not get too close to these fellas. As mentioned, 1.33 million SMG and 1 million MGs. Not as common as rifles, but a lot of automatic weapons certainly. That is about 4 MGs and 5 SMGs for each Allied, and more like 20 MGs and 30 SMGs for every German, tank or TD. We think of items like flamethrowers as much more rare, but in fact the Germans made and issued 1.5 flamethrowers for every tank they had (65,000 all told). The number is on the order of 1 per company compared to the other weapons, but they were used by the pioneers of course, not distributed to everyone. It is really the German tanks and TDs that are rare. Just some trivia gleaned from the site with the URL above...