LongLeftFlank
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Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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Before we dismiss the entire "tank buster" efforts of both sides entirely as myth, I'd like to note that there are a number of vehicles (including AFVs) between pure soft-skinned trucks and tanks that could be quite vulnerable to aerial attack. The distinction between "tank" and "other AFV" was not as crystal clear even in 1944 as it is in the modern era of the MBT.
I can readily imagine an Allied pilot brewing up a Marder with rockets or cannon fire, for example, or any other open-topped SP gun and sincerely claiming it as a "tank" kill. Or a halftrack, whether APC or gun carrier. And some of the German armoured cars were OT too.
For Rudel and his merry men, pickings are thinner -- the only OT Soviet AFVs I can think of are the SU-76 and various scout cars and halftracks. But you get the idea.
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Oh, I didn't say it would likely do anything either. I just said MG would be more likely to actually hit a WWII era medium tank, and if I was very lucky knock some bits off. An open-topped AFV is of course another kind of beast entirely.
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Can't wait to see the CM equivalent of
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I think there's a saying that says basically the same thing a little more crudely....
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Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, who were good little dogfaces, went down the lane to gather blackberries, but Tube Guy®, who was very naughty, ran straight away to M. MacGregor's garden....
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Yes, if I want to set a medium tank on fire, I suspect I'd have a better chance spraying its exhaust system and engine louvers from behind and above with 8 x .50cal than with a single shot of 37mm.
Plus a P-47 is one hell of a lot more rugged than a Stuka.
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**shrugs**
Anything is possible when you're a brain in jar of Steve-concocted nutrients...
They make gooooood stuff in Vermont. Whenever we visit, we always come home loaded down with maple- cheese- and pig-derived products. And there's the King Arthur flour.... mmmmmm.
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To Magpie,
This quote from Overlord by Max Hastings (Location 2804 of 7724 Kindle), after explaining of rigidity of allied attacks.
I woudn't write something without backing.
Great quotes, very insightful. I haven't read this book - must pick it up since I've already plowed through my reread of Keegan and some of the old Green Books. After 3 years on the mean streets of Ramadi, I must say I am getting really reenergized about WWII.
And has anyone else noticed that the calibre (scholarliness, grogginess, whatever) of the discussion has really ramped up in the last 3 months (although there was some outstanding discussion on the CMSF boards, don't get me wrong).
I think a lot of the spirit of the old community is Baaaaaaaaaaaaack......
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So in CMBN, I'd expect the BAR is one of the most prolific shooters in a US squad, just as the SAWs shoot more than average in a CMSF squad.
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The BAR used the same cartridge as the M1, which would seem a plus for airborne troops. And while heavy, it's definitely lighter than the M1919 and a lot easier to fire on the move (although MG gunner Sergeant Lopez seems to have done all right with his -- killing 100 Germans).
On the other hand, in spite of the high cyclic ROF, its 20 round box meant it really couldn't deliver the sustained fire volume of a squad LMG -- needed to create beaten zones, fire lanes, etc. In spite of that, US squads did regularly use it to create a squad "base of fire" and the BAR was generally assigned to one of the most reliable fighters in the squad. There are many anecdotes of BAR gunners single-handedly holding off enemy attacks for as long as their ammo held out.
SLA Marshall hypothesized that its disproportionate contribution to US squad firepower was also due to its distinctive sound; if the gunner failed to fire, everyone knew it. But I don't know that I buy that reasoning.
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Good point not yet brought up -- especially after July 20 it was even more hazardous to your health to question orders or betray any form of defeatism, including failure.
So for mid-1944 German "motivators" of desperation and delusion we may add fear.
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So if you were trying to design a scenario as "realistic" as possible and wanted to select a "typical" infantry forces (lets forget panzers for the moment), your general sense is that the Germans should be Veterans and the GIs (non-Airborne) should be Regulars? And if that made things unbalanced, one could make the German infantry 20% understrength.
I'd personally make the German 81mm mortar support dirt cheap too.
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You'd have thought the BAR would have been a natural for the Airborne, but perhaps it's too long to jump with or sumfink? I know they were issued to the Glider Infantry.
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That thing still sells for hundreds of dollars; I couldn't believe it.
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Fair points. Of course in the May 1940 campaign you also have to factor in the complete uselessness of the Frogs and the willingness of Lord Gort (the Brit Commander) to re-fight 1914-1918 rather than the war he was in. None the less your last sentence says it, "and the myth is born".
Don't be too hard on the French. Their fatal weaknesses lay in the command structure, not so much in the army per se. The poilus were comparably well equipped to the Germans and British, and not lacking in fighting spirit at least until the shock of the German breakthroughs set in (not inexcusably: remember, the best fighting forces of the French army were cut off and largely destroyed in Belgium within two weeks. The Brits were in quite a funk after Dunkirk. Similar reverses at Stalingrad shocked the Germans into near paralysis too for about a week, although Manstein and others kept their heads).
The fatal weakness of the French command structure was neither defeatism, corruption nor incompetence, but inflexibility; they overthought and overplanned everything with the utmost rigour, but were then at a near total loss to adapt when their plans did not survive contact with the enemy. The French pedagogical method is very similar: you don't set pen to paper until you have outlined and composed your thesis in full -- editing on the typewriter is an Anglo-Saxon vice.
The Maginot Line was indeed a marvel of military technology, and achieved its main objective -- to deny the Germans an opportunity to break into Alsace-Lorraine and force them to attack through Belgium again, which was thought to be favourable country for defense (and would also allow the expected multi-year slugout to take place mainly off French soil).
Which is why the deployment plans called for the bulk of the French armies to be railed quickly to the Meuse. The British signed off on that strategy, which indeed made sense in light of the understanding of the time. But it also allowed the Germans to defeat the Allied armies irremediably within 2 weeks before they even broke into Metropolitan France.
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The question is, did anyone say the opposite ?
Well, my original question was: if you playtested CMBN with US and German forces in a specific tactical situation like a combined arms meeting engagement where the odds were about even and then swapped in Allied forces for German, and vice versa, would you expect the Germans to perform about the same or slightly better on average? Or a lot better because, you know, Nazis are badass....
And what would be likely reasons for the disparity, in a general way? -- the specific answers (e.g. "better machine guns" or "more riflemen per squad") will be strictly situation dependent of course.
We'll know more once we get our mitts on the actual game and I look forward to testing it.
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This thread is a powderkeg imo, but hey it's a valid question by the OP.
I was just getting sick of reading all the "you know, the Germans would have kicked butt except for the ________." comments. Sure, they retained some qualitative advantages in 1944, but no longer across the board.
My contention is that Allied forces were capable of fairly comparable performance in comparable situations.
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You are absolutely right, and I'd be surprised if this wasn't corrected. Good for you for sticking to your guns!
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It's not that the Germans didn't try to rely on their artillery - they did, and it was all that saved them in the East - it's that it was totally outmatched in the West.
I mainly agree with your post above, but would qualify this part. IIRC, the German weapons that had the most devastating battlefield effect on the Allied grunts were, in order:
1. The MG34/MG42.... "All those damn machine guns".
2. The 81mm mortar, the universal company-level support weapon. Simple to set up and operate, with a high rate of fire and a variety of ammo types. Combine that with a first class German ability to quickly identify and register the most likely enemy axes of advance and cover so that within moments of their troops going to ground a lethal and demoralizing rain of death is coming down on their heads. Even if their OPs are down, the Germans can still accurately guess where the enemy is.
At the larger scales (tube artillery), (a) the qualitative differences between German and Allied artillery were probably nonexistent by mid 1944, (
they simply didn't have nearly as many tubes or shells, and © they and their support trains had to worry constantly about air attack (and counterbattery fire, which I recall the Brits were getting particularly good at, having honed their skills in Italy). -
In WWI, the British and Canadians took that regionalization down to the battalion and company level (most notably in the Kitchener "Pals" battalions), for similar reasons. Result: entire towns and villages bereft of their young men in a single afternoon.
By WWII, the regimental formations certainly kept their regional orientation (which would extend to the peacetime cadres mostly living in and around the garrison), but the levies would be drawn from all over the region. Am I remembering correctly?
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The ones I point out are just some examples.
To use your own analogy which football team won the premiership in 1945 ?
Will I win
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Great post here, Gromit. Some of this stuff could appear almost unchanged in Peter Drucker's works on management.
As I mentioned above, I live this in my company every day -- we are an asset-intensive business and there's a constant tug of war between established "doctrine" (which creates a tendency to want to gold plate everything using shareholder monies) and "change agents" (whose ideas may well be half-baked or worse, an unconscionable bleeding of cash from the business to achieve short term market metrics).
Returning to history, don't underestimate the interplay between the intellectual heritage of the Prussian Generalstabs and that of the Nazis. But as you say, it's equally easy -- and misleading -- to caricature the "German mind" (too easy in fact when philosophers like Nietszche write piles of bizarre essays and aphorisms).
they simply didn't have nearly as many tubes or shells, and © they and their support trains had to worry constantly about air attack (and counterbattery fire, which I recall the Brits were getting particularly good at, having honed their skills in Italy).
So are German forces "better" on average?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
There was probably a good bit of that too, especially in the SS and FJ units who viewed themselves as "crack" but were really composed mainly of young kids around a core of veterans who either encouraged them or kept quiet.
And the clumsy performance of some of the Allied forces in attack probably fed this idea at first; it's easier on defence, especially when you can sit in prepared positions and shoot and shell the enemy and watch his first and second waves break, laughing in relief at his discomfiture. Of course, once the Allied artillery starts plastering you, since the failed attempts have now revealed your MLR, the laughter rapidly dies away.