LongLeftFlank
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Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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Animals vill be bred und ZLAUGHTERED!
(btw, did you ever notice that this film includes one of the more realistic ground combat scenes ever fictionalized in cinema. Except the Gen Ripper stuff with the .30 cal on the desk)
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Another "limitation" with houses is that there obviously are no blind spots when shooting from high buildings straight down a street. This also goes vice versa. For that to happen in real life, you need to free handly hold your weapon out of the window and shoot blindly at what´s below. No good.
Well it would seem possible to spray blind with a MP40, grease gun or Sten. But a grenade or two might be better
One of the neat things about having buildings in high walled courtyards is that units have limited entry points (bad) but some shelter from fire inside the building (storeys 1-2 anyway). As anyone who's walked the mean streets of my Ramadi map knows very well.
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I agree... Foxholes should be harder, not easier, to spot. The reason the opposite is true in game is because fortifications are low profile non-moving vehicles, and it seems all vehicles are by definition easier to spot than infantry. I hope BFC considers tweaking this in a future patch. The only workaround seems to be to deploy lots of empty holes as dummies.
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Le Carillon is also in a different location on modern maps than it was in period maps. The 1944 maps mark a location that is called Les Buteaux today
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Nope, unless the accounts I have are confused (they do err in other places), St Gilles was a separate position, several hundred meters behind the church. "Chateau" could also be any fancy stone house.
Part of the difficulty is establishing for certain the exact location of La Meauffe. The period maps mark it as the area around the railway station, but as I Google the modern day streets in 3d the older structures look more like a bunch of dairy farms called le Germainerie and Fors. The modern day La Meauffe (including the town hall which I think was a distillery before) is between the church and St Gilles. Which as I think about it starts to make more sense.... For example, the regimental CO took a bullet in the face early in the attack, at 0715 and I believe it came from the church (inconsistent with a fierce fight to the east). So some revision of my map may be im order. Hmm....
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Well I'd settle for a village church that takes more than a dozen 105mm rounds to demolish. The cathedral tower is ugly but fit for use.
Some of the exact action locations -- e.g. The Gestapo HQ aka "Purple Heart Corner" are still conjectural at this point; there is no sign of a "chateau enclosed in 7 foot granite walls" in the immediate vicinity of La Meauffe. Also conjectural is the first German MLR -- the only "small road connecting highway 3 to the Vire Canal (River) is behind the fortified church, which doesn't fit the chronology. I stuck it in a tactically sensible place overlooking a small streambed and utilizing the dairy complex at the north end of town. However a better tactical map would be helpful.
Also, the Green Book maps show a line of departure running through the center of town, which seems odd given that the front hadn't moved since the 29th ID arrived on June 18. Seems like a long time to sit in close quarters Stalingrad-style (one side or the other -- likely the Germans who couldn't afford attrition -- would presumably have withdrawn)
The 137th regimental history isn't online but in the West Point library. I'll see if I can get a look at it one way or another.
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Here is the rebuilt Eglise St-Martin; the original was fortified by the Germans and took a day and a half for the 1/137th to reduce with the help of TD direct fire. Take a close look at the older crypts in the foreground to get an idea of what went down here.
Here's the original after the battle
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Brief update for those interested in this project: the attached graphic summarizes the attacks of the 137th Infantry from July 11-14th between the east bank of the Vire River and the higher ground anchored by the (famous) fortified German positions around Le Carillon. It draws on multiple sources, from the Green Books through divisional, regimental and battalion histories as well as some individual accounts. In some cases these sources conflict -- the daily stop/start lines shown on the Green Book map are particularly suspect....
Crudely, the chronology starts in the northeast corner and then reads in both directions to the southwest corner.
This material will form the basis for the actions to be covered in the proposed campaign.
ERRATA: We established in another thread that the German 897th and 899th regiments were "Grenadiere" not "Panzergrenadiere". By this point, KG Kentner (Kempner?) and the former parent 266th Division no longer really existed as a formation except in name (having been consumed in the wetland fighting further north) and its remnants were attached to the 352nd Division, itself battered and hard-pressed.
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I would strongly doubt that's the case; I suspect there's a uniform map-wide modifier for light/darkness.
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Not a lot of time for gaming right now, although I generally have a few minutes to read the forums. I have a CMBN map project going, but after that I'll be back to Ramadi. Timetable unknown.
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My trusty 303 SMLE fired at 100m or so once penetrated a first 2 foot diameter white oak then a second slightly smaller trunk about 5m beyond that. After that I lost track. And that was with soft-nosed sporting ammo.
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No one here has suggested differently, although in an ambush situation folks will get behind anything they can, as much for concealment as for cover. The best impromptu cover in a forest is the earth itself, and secondarily boulders. The disadvantage of those, of course, is that they're, well, on the ground and LOS is blocked by every last fern.
I'd venture that the vast preponderance of combat in forest interiors is a series of brief, violent short-range ambushes. It's relatively simple for either side to either break contact or to flank and close assault enemy positions after the first bump, so the soundest tactic might be to fall back and set the next ambush. The thicketed margins of the forest, as opposed to the interiors, would seem to offer more meaningful tactical possibilities, and fields of fire.
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As I noted in the other thread, in populated areas like Normandy, except for a few dedicated game preserves, the only reason most forest exists is because the underlying ground is unsuitable for farming (too uneven and/or wet). So RockinHarry is quite right to recommend building in irregularities.
Also, the thicker the tree canopy the lower the ground vegetation will be underneath; only pine forests are normally so dense that the forest floor is bare (needles). But densely spaced stands of mature deciduous trees will have ferns etc. growing up to knee- or waist-height, while less dense stands will allow taller bushes and saplings to grow up to man-height or taller, with corresponding LOS effects.
As to non-tree sources of hard cover, fallen tree trunks and stumps would be major. There's also boulders (in farm fields these have been cleared but not in forests). But as RockinHarry suggests, the major source of decent cover is irregularities in the ground itself.
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Aside from a few game preserves (dating from medieval times), the vast majority of "forest" terrain in 1944 Normandy is not going to be large kilometer-sized swathes of unbroken forest canopy, but smaller patches marking locations where the ground is either too wet or too uneven to be cleared for farmland. For the latter, the most tactically significant part is going to be the edge, whose dense thickets of young trees and bushes effectively mask the interior from the exterior but which provide little in the way of substantial cover.
See this thread for more information.
As I work with the Editor (yes, I'm working on my La Meauffe-Le Carillon monster map again after a long absence), I continue to believe that the most critical terrain tile that remains absent is a "thicket", which is to say a dense stand of young trees, tall bushes and shrubbery (*nee!*) that, at least in summertime:(a) is useless from a cover standpoint, and
(
creates little hindrance to infantry or vehicle movement, BUT© provides excellent concealment to both men and vehicles and -- most important --
(d) is tall enough to largely mask the interior of a forest or wooded area from the adjacent open ground (field, road) for spotting purposes, and vice versa
At present, the deciduous woodlands on nearly all maps look like Central Park, which is to say, some busy soul has been pruning away the new growth that would normally crowd the margin between forest shade and (sunny) open ground. In reality, that labour is only undertaken in parks and orchards -- certainly not on the margin of farm fields where farmers want as full a windbreak as possible shielding their crops and pastures. In a combat situation, a lot of cleared underbrush should be a dead giveaway that someone has created a field of fire for his weapons.
Thickets are very important tactically, as they effectively (~90% in summer) separate units in forests visually from units outside them, even when they are in quite close proximity. They are also tall enough to hide AFVs (ever wonder why those StuGs in period photos are all covered with brush? -- btw it would be super cool to get a underbrush "over-skin" layer for StuGs and PzIVs analogous to the Stryker "slat cage" in CMSF, with no game effects)
Pine or mixed forests are a little different -- thickets are still present on the margin but they tend to present more gaps into the interior, but that isn't what we are mainly dealing with in Normandy.
Anyway, rather than (only) whine and plead for a new terrain tile, I figured I'd play around a little to see if I could approximate a reasonably dense forest margin using the tools available. The following is what I came up with, with a couple of StuGs sitting in ambush for colour:
Head-on view (5 8x8m tiles across)
Side (cutaway) view:
From left to right, here is the terrain I used:
Tiles 1 and 2: Big deciduous trees (type A and C) alternating x3 and x2, with "heavy forest" undergrowth (I don't want tanks going back there)
Tile 3: Small deciduous trees (orchard type D) x 3, with "light forest"
Tile 4: My ersatz thicket, which is a combination of:
(a) the tallest bushes type C x 3
(
"gapped" hedge tiles alternating between diagonal and straight-across angles so as to look random and not man-made.© "light forest" undergrowth.
Tile 5. Weeds or tall grass.
I also tried adding "brush" to the thicket, but it looks like a straight carryover from CMSF desert scrub and doesn't seem to provide much incremental concealment, at least visually. But if there's a game advantage, perhaps it should be added -- let me know SVP.
I also like RockinHarry's suggestions for varying the terrain mesh in the interior -- after all, a flat dry expanse would probably have been cleared for farmland.
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For the record, I hated the CMSF "trenches" -- far too wide to furnish decent cover (prefab mass graves)
-- I much prefer the CMBN object solution. Just trying to think of ways to make them more (historically) inconspicuous.
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Direction of infiltration operations is less a question of large-scale elaborate planning than of practical instruction and reminder.... It is an essential duty of the staff planning the operation to put everyone down to the lowest ranking commanders completely in the picture. An attack of this nature achieves no far-distant objective but proceeds only by small stages, night after night.. Amen
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It could be both of course: German doctrine, unlike that of most other "technically advanced" WWII armies, embraced and codified the concept, and baked it into tactical training down to the subunit level. The Russian experience would only solidify their commitment.
Infiltration is a standard tactic for a "low tech" (defined here as "at a disadvantage in a ranged firefight") force, and is as old as warfare itself, requiring only stealth and men willing to close with and kill the enemy. So the leading users of the technique were Russians, Japanese, partisans a few elite Allied light infantry formations (Rangers, Chindits) ....and the late war Germans.
I've noted before that infiltration tactics seem pretty hard to represent in CMBN, and this was also true in CMBO/BB/AK. Partly because sending your troops in SLOW crawl for a full hour (rest time included) to spot and envelop enemy positions isn't most players' idea of a fun game. But it also seems a little too easy for SLOW moving units to be spotted IMHO, even in cover / in darkness and at range.
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Just a bump of this very insightful thread.
Looks as though the engine treats foxholes (like bunkers) as a type of super low-profile immobile OT vehicle. Which explains how they're so easily spotted compared to infantry. Also explains why you can't put them in locations where you can't place vehicles (e.g. in bocage).
So as a workaround, is there any way for BFC to provide some "camouflage" overlay objects or wireframe (maybe something like the Stryker slat cage) that make the underlying vehicle or fortification harder to spot when stationary? Maybe something to think about for the Bulge family.
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Link to site containing 1947 aerial imagery
The French 1947 aerial views are not in Google Earth -- they're on a different site. But once you download the French photos and convert them to standard JPEGs, you can import them into Google Earth as an overlay. Then you can play with the transparency and scaling sliders to match the 1947 terrain exactly with today's Google Earth.Here's the link for the French site:
http://loisirs.ign.fr/accueilPVA.do
And here's how to use it, step by step. It's a little complicated, but really not too difficult once you walk through it.
On the main page, in the "Commune recherchee" search field, just type in the city or town you want to look at (e.g, Saint-Lo, and be sure to include the hyphen).
You'll get a list of matches. Scroll to and double-click on the correct one one: Saint-Lo (Manche).
Now you'll be in a map view.
On the right-hand side of your screen you'll see a scale ("echelle") setting. Place it about halfway between "Dept." and "Ville."
On the left side, under "Catalogue," scroll down until you see the items starting with "1947." Place your cursor over any one of them, and you'll get a pop-up window that says which scale it is (1:10000 or 1:25000) and be sure to select one that says "Telechargement gratuite" -- these are the only ones that you can download for free.
Once you've selected your photo, put your cursor over the map window and "drag" the map around a bit by holding down your left mouse button. Look for some little bright green "crosshair" symbols on the map that look something like this: [+]
Each of those crosshairs is a link to a specific aerial photo. So find the crosshair that's closest to the area you want to examine, and double-click it. A box will pop up, asking if you want to order the download. Click "annuler" (cancel) for now. You'll see a green box on the map, outlining the area covered by that photo. Now if you like that area, go back and select the crosshair and download the photo.
Beware -- these are HUGE files and they are in a special format called JP2.
To view them or use them for most purposes, or to be able to place them in a Google Earth overlay, you will want to convert them into regular JPEG format. To do this, go to
http://www.avs4you.com/AVS-Image-Converter.aspxand download the free AVS image converter software. It's pretty easy to use.
Once you have a JPEG image, you can study the terrain in terrific detail.
Link to site containing French topographical maps and modern day imagery
Hi
Perhaps could help
you could print map and pics, usefull
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Good insights here, guys. I'm learning a lot I didn't know before.
That's what I found exceptional about this paper; it gives rich perspectives on the challenges faced by both sides at this specific point in time all along the chain of command from Army Group HQ down to the foxhole.
Too many modern histories start with Hitler and Eisenhower at one end then rapidly devolve down to gritty but anecdotal foxhole stories with a few Mellinthin/Zetterling/Bayerlein etc. quotes tossed in (the Ambrose method).
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The example of Sept 1944 Metz in the original post. Ther 462nd Volks Grenadiers who engaged the 137IR were not a typical VG. They were formed from what was left of the Wehrmacht 462nd Infantrie Division, which was refit into a Volks Grenadier Division. Although now a reserve unit, they were considered a preferenced formation and were augmented by regular Wehrmacht veterans. The battlebook in the link does not mention the 462nd which I find odd since their AO linked with the 19thVG and both were engaged against the 137IR and other elements of the 35thID at this time.
What you had were seasoned soldiers in a defensive position free to launch fighting patrols in familiar territory.
Hmm. You clearly know a lot more about this than I do (my knowledge of the Lorraine campaign is cursory). The map on pdf page 112 might be of help.
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I don't really want to instantly send this thread into the swamp of arguing about who had better individual motivation, will and moral fiber, and why. As far as I'm concerned, the GIs showed plenty of that when the chips were down, especially in the Bulge.
I am more interested in what lets the Germans get so much tactical flexibility out of their infantry at the company level! Your comparison of the cadre system vs the "repple depple" stuff is definitely part of it though.
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Also, some interesting stuff on panzer general Hermann Balck that is absent from his Wikipedia bio....
Rundstedt and other high-ranking German officers in the West looked upon Balck with disfavor, probably because he was an ardent Nazi and a favorite of Hitler's.... Balck, as-of 21 September the commander of Army Group G, was much less creative than Guderian [?] had been in the north. Although at times he correctly husbanded armor forces, for the most part they were dispersed and ineffective. To his credit, he saw to it that counterattacks [demanded by Hitler] were made; but the reinforcements he allocated were insufficient and were transferred piecemeal.
For a panzer general, Balck seems to have had far sounder ideas on defense than on attack:
Militarily, the forts surrounding Metz were antiquated by 1944, but the psychological benefits of the fortified position to the retreating German troops allowed Balck to evolve his defense around this position.
Due to the weak forces and poor equipment at his disposal, Balck immediately opted for the tactic of mobile or "elastic" defense on the Army Group G front. Imitating the late First World War German trench defense schemes, Balck planned to keep his front lines almost denuded of troops. As a result, the terrific initial American artillery barrage and air bombardments would be hitting virtually nothing of importance. If an armored or
infantry assault followed up, the forward German positions would be easily overrun. However, the attack would soon meet the main bodies of German infantry in secondary defensive lines, almost untouched by the air strikes and bombardment.
Taking this tactic-one step further, Balck told Rundstedt that he intended to counterattack any American breakthrough "on the spot" with mobile formations left behind the front line just for this purpose.
In order to slow down the initial American penetrations through the weak front lines of his mobile defense, Balck employed field fortifications in Lorraine that came as close to
First World War battlefield conditions as anything the Americans had yet seen in France. In particular, Balck was lavish in his employment of minefields. Afterwards, Balck wrote, "From Army Group Level, I directed the layout of minefields.
The minefields consisted of a few real mines and lots of dummy ones. Once you've forced the enemy to work his way slowly into a minefield, you know exactly where his point of main effort is. Then you can envelop him with your mobile reserves. With that tactic, I had great success against the Russians in Galicia, as well as against the Americans on the Western Front."
The VG Divisions ... were initially organized in the summer of 1944. Their personnel [were] in good shape, only their mobility was limited....the infantry formations were... relatively untried units; both were somewhat under regulation strength. [Although,] the officers and noncoms were young, (they were] able veterans of the Eastern Front.
Also: Many of the rounds fired by German artillery were duds. This was reported to be-as high as 30 to 40 percent of the total rounds fired. Examination of shell fragments proved them to be of an inferior cast steel construction rather than forged steel.
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My research on the 35th Division and 137th IR led me further east to the September battles around Metz and I ran across this study on the Division's fierce seesaw fight for the Foret de Gremercy at the end of the Sept 1944.
A terrific online read, especially noteworthy for its description of German infiltration tactics, where understrength and inexperienced Volksgrenadier units nonetheless took full advantage of what must be called appalingly slipshod performance by veteran US forces. And these tactics (not their reckless and wasteful panzer attacks) would have forced a US tactical withdrawal but for the direct intervention of General Patton. Highlights below:
Enemy patrolling and infiltration proved to be tactics that kept the Americans off-balance and constantly reacting to unanticipated threats to their lines... the Germans devised a competent battle plan even though their personnel lacked the training and material resources to be effective. The Americans, accustomed to maneuver warfare, were now heavily committed to a static defensive battle over a relatively wide sector with limited POL and thus limited ability to grasp the initiative through maneuver.
German patrolling constantly harassed the Americans and frequently found American lines weakly held. Information on American weaknesses would pass up the chain of command rapidly. The German seized every opportunity to conduct local attacks and counterattacks on weakly defended areas of the American sector.
German infiltration, even in large numbers was successful because of the large sectors occupied by each American unit [the 35th Infantry Division occupied the edge of the Foret de Gremecey with two regiments, and their front extended twelve miles; following the edge of the forest, the American line bent sharply (almost a right angle) in the northeast corner of the woods.], the relative lack of good observation or conversely the availability to the Germans of good cover and concealment. Lack of attentiveness by the Americans also contributed to the German success at infiltration. German infiltration-caused disruption to American rear elements and isolated key terrain features.
Liaison efforts were poorest in the [American] infantry units. This problem approached non-cooperation in some cases when flank units failed to provide expected support during attacks.... There was a tendency for forces to occupy the high ground in order to retain long range visibility. This tended-to cluster defenders in the woods where they had poor fields of fire and poor mutual support.
The combined effects of the weather and climate reduced the combat effectiveness of the soldier; the early morning ground fog prevented observation of enemy attacks. However, the ground fog usually burned off by late morning and enemy movements could be observed from defensive positions.
The Germans continued to cause the Americans to assume a reactive posture. Vital defensive lessons were not grasped by the Americans. Germans patrolling, infiltrating, and combined arms assaults surfaced as common German tactics. The American response to these tactics was to use heavy concentrations of artillery and air strikes. American tank destroying capability and defensive fighting ability required vast improvement....
Sometimes the innovativeness and flexibility typical of American leadership worked to a slight disadvantage. Troops were given many changes to orders resulting in unnecessary waste of energy in movement and added to the lack of firm understanding of what was going on.
By noon a strong German patrol had infiltrated behind the Command Post of the 3rd Battalion of the 137th and captured the Battalion motor pool. With the Command Post and the right flank of the battalion endangered, the Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Albert M. Butler, Hastings, Nebraska, committed his headquarters and all available men....
THE SITUATION NE OF GREMECEY IS CRITICAL DUE TO INFILTRATION OF LARGE BODIES OF GERMAN TROOPS. SOME ESTIMATES PLACE THIS NUMBER AS HIGH AS 1500. THERE IS NO CONFIRMATION.
By 0830 [Company L was] completely surrounded. Fighting like tigers [they] tore through the encirclement of German forces and freed themselves from the trap.... Lieutenant Malmed, who was no stranger to the ways of the Germans, not only talked his captors into releasing him, but brought twelve of them back to his own lines as prisoners....
The 137th Infantry had endured a day of confused and hard fighting, but had wiped out most of the Germans who had infiltrated to its rear and had reorganized and tied in the battalions in the forward positions. Nonetheless the enemy had finally succeeded in getting a foothold in this part of the forest. When the action waned the German and American foxholes lines lay hardly two hundred yard apart.
German infantry attacked at other points in the 3rd Battalion area, and continued their tactics of infiltrating and surrounding our troops. This menace reached serious proportions during the day when Co K lost and entire platoon, and over a hundred men in the 3rd Battalion as a whole [were] believed captured.
....Each [35th ID battalion commander] was of the opinion that the front was too wide and the American troops far too extended to prevent enemy infiltration. Furthermore, the woods were so dense, the trails so few, and the enemy knowledge of the forest so accurate that linear defense could hardly be successful. The only solution was to locate the infiltrating detachments and root them out of the woods.... the infiltrations which were causing so much difficulty could only be stopped by attacking to push forward, take the edge of the woods, and then clear out the infiltrators.
The attack began, but progress was slow. The 2nd Battalion received heavy mortar fire, and at 1000 their left flank was being infiltrated and they began to drop back to their original positions. Continuing their infiltration and encircling tactics, the Germans moved in behind Company E and opened up, cutting off one entire platoon. With the left flank open and a 700-yard gap between companies, the 2nd Battalion's defenses were in grave danger. The Germans, throwing a barrage of mortar and machine gun fire in front of them, poured through the gap on the left flank of Company E, and moved toward Gremecey. At this point the 133rd Engineer Battalion was rushed from Pettincourt and committed to halt the advance.
Another "battle of the C.P." developed in Company K. German soldiers had come through the opening in L Company and moved through the woods all the way to K Company's C.P. without encountering any of that company's front line troops. LT Edward Kennedy of Pennsylvania, company executive officer, quickly organized his few headquarters men for the defense; he manned a machine gun mounted on a jeep.
More penetrations by infiltrating German forces worried the XII Corps commander, General Eddy, to the point that he ordered a withdrawal behind the Seille River. Eddy polled each of the regimental commanders present; they seem to have agreed that further German infiltration could not be halted.
[When Patton was told, he was furious. He] told all three generals, Eddy, Baade, and Grow, that "I was disgusted with them." He also ordered the generals involved to lead their troops personally "to make up for their shortcomings." Baade was to go to the front. Grow was to retake the woods "or not come back."
"Eddy was very manly in assuming full responsibility for the withdrawal order, but I cannot understand his frame of mind. He worries too much. I will do all the worrying necessary. the Corps commanders must fight. I would get rid of him but I do not know of any other any better except possibly Harmon, now commanding the 2nd Armored Division. One explanation of Eddy's emotional failure may be that earlier in the afternoon, he, Gaffey, and Grow were all nearly killed by shell fire, and Gaffey's aide and Grow's aide were hit. This may, unknown to them, have shattered their nerves. "After I got through cussing them out, I told them the same thing I told Truscott in Sicily, namely, 'Now I will go home as I know you will win.' I feel they will. If I stayed, it would show lack of confidence. We must remember that the German is not a superman..."[!] Patton could not have been more correct; his decision to attack coincided with the German decision to withdraw.
Cripes, even after running their butts out of France, Patton still felt the need to remind himself of that?!
And here is a damning snip from a XII Corps G-2 report:
"Our troops are unskilled in, and do not practice, the extremely profitable trick of infiltration. They are easily disorganized by German infiltrations, and will not advance when a small enemy force is in their rear or on their flank.
"German PW's seem to have the utmost respect for our superior material -- artillery, tanks, airforce -- but are openly contemptuous of our infantry; claiming that they are timid, unskilled, and unresourceful.
"Commanders state that the Stars and Stripes has done immeasureable harm in playing up demobilization. Men believing that the war will be finished in a week or two are unwilling to take the chances incident to aggressive combat."
creates little hindrance to infantry or vehicle movement, BUT
So I have to ask.
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
He's Fighting For Your BUTTER TARTS