Skipper
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Posts posted by Skipper
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> I disagree. For the average front line
> troops they were the most effective ways
> to combat tanks.
Last ditch measure - that's all.
> Not many but they [roads] were decent
> (allthough mined)
Hmm... I daresay you don't know what "decent" or "enough" means in that particular case and context. Road network density in central Russia was considerably higher, and quality better, yet it was still considered by germans "too few, too bad". In 1941-44, as soon as they were stopped, germans did not even bother to mount operations in that part of the front.
> Actually no. Our troops could hide but the
> trees did not stop the heavy artillery
> barrages from falling.
But they could certainly stop forward observer from overwatching big areas and testing TRP solutions quickly. I've spent enough time travelling around Karelia to know the terrain there. If given a choice, any sound-minded officer would want to advance around it, not through it.
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> Must be why Soviet forces used the
> Panzerfaust 150 (modifdied) under the
> title RPG-2 post war and continued
> production of the Panzerfaust 100 post war
> aka RPG-1.
Keyword AFTER THE WAR. Who were they preparing to fight after the war? Hint: not germans.
I am well aware that in 1950s Soviet infantry was literally flooded with handheld RPGs and other light AT weapons.
> Never mind the wholehearted use of
> captured Panzerschreck and Panzerfausts by
> Soviet forces during the war, in
> preference to the lead-lease USA Bazooka.
First time I hear about "wholehearted use". Surely enough, if you come across such a neat toy, you'll pick it up and use it. But it was neither produced, nor issued to the troops officially, as far as I can say. Morale: they didn't need it all that much.
Bazookas - there were not nearly as many around, as there were panzerfausts, and they were not issued as a standard squad weapon, anyway.
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> I would not consider Guderian's or
> Manstein's memoirs very credible sources
> on anything unless they are backed up by
> an independent source.
LOL At least there is something we can agree on. For that matter, I would not consider any memoirs as a credible source per se - they are all full of "killing 30 tanks with a penknife" type of stories, shifting blame around, other deliberate or subconscious memory aberrations and all such things. It's memoirs PLUS operational documents of the period (or later statistical analysis thereof) PLUS books PLUS a heavy doze of critical thinking that gives you at least some understanding of past events. Even then, there are no two guys whose understanding is the same.
To all the guys who think that, for example, soviet commanders were generally dumb or inflexible because of "military purges": consider that it's not your own understanding, but somebody else's explanation which you have simply bought at par. Big historic events can never be understood through a simple and rational explanation.
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Yup. Like when your 120mm mortar lands a test shot EXACTLY on the roof of your Jumbo Sherman, some 350 meters off the fire mission target.
Ah, yes, forgot to mention: there was an MG1919 and a Platoon HQ riding that Jumbo.
R.I.P.
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>Don't take my word for it. Check out
Ahh, so you were also counting mobility kills, breakdowns and such. In that case the total doesn't strike me as odd.
Good URL, by the way, thanks. So it was, (1)-(7) artillery, (8) mines etc. Well, my impression was based on the account by a heavy tanker (tester of prototype KV, actually) - for them the poicture might be different. So, okay, never mind, grenades and molotovs are still the reason Number 10.
> (1) mines
> number of mines you need to produce a kill
> as being 2000 mines statistically speaking.
Yup. And finns had enough time to put scores of mines in preparation. Besides producing, according to the table, about 15% of the combat kills, their abundance was also responsible for severely penalising mobility and morale of red troops. In other words, they were a major factor.
>(9) boulders under snow
> Not that effective since they were UNDER
> the snow
Look, that's exactly what makes them dangerous for a machine. Cause you don't see them, or cant tell a snowpile from a boulder.
Out of those 2000 "breakdowns", I am 100% sure, tremendous lot were caused by the "antitank terrain".
>and swamps under ice
> frozen and thus no problem to the tanks as
> the ice could carry them.
At times could, at other times could not. Since lake surface was the only place that was not mined, they used it a lot to move around. Result: 100 tanks sunk, 5% of "combat" losses.
> actually close quarters fighting in the
> dense forest was preferred.
Speaking of dense forrest, you will surely agree that it made soviet advantage in heavy weapons and artillery less of a factor simply by limiting an average LOS distance.
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Looks like what all this comes down to is that American and Brit troops did not see too many german tanks at all throughout the war. Even more rare were german tanks rolling across their trenches.
When they saw german tanks, however, they would normally have their own heavy weapons around. Besides, there were not many enough veterans with reallife antitank experience to drive it into every recruit head that when you see a tank attack rolling, it is usually too late to run away.
Which was not the case for germans throughout the war and for RKKA in 1941-43.
That's why you see many astonishing german accounts of infantry stopping tanks, many astonishing soviet accounts of the same (the latter mainly related to 1941-42), but not quite as many in the way of brits or americans doing that.
Speaking of german infantry having no fear for tanks. Give me a break, please. They were as scared by tanks as everybody else (ie, horribly scared). You don't read about this in many memoirs, let alone official unit histories (pffff, now that's one good source of "killing 30 tanks with a penknife" sort of stories). That was not something anybody would want to remember. However, believe me, there are multiple soviet accounts of german units leaving their trenches and running from a tank attack.
By the way, scarcity of german armor and abundance of heavy AT weapons in allied forces, I would imagine, were also the reason why neither west allies nor in fact USSR put a great research or production emphasis on RPGs to be issued to each and every squad. After all, panzerfaust was not a terribly complicated piece of kit to simply re-engineer - as long as noone was concerned about patents and copyrights.
But they did not bother. Why? Because probability of an armored attack was small to start with, and because they were able to assign proper AT weapons wherever such an attack could be anticipated.
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Oops. I did include a caveat not to try it yourself, didnt I?
Gasoil = diesel oil.
Gasoline is american english.
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Early model Sherman, I'd say. But the general benchmark is right - these are the same class of tanks with similar production costs.
It is another story, that some german tanks are much cheaper in CM than they were in reallife , IMO.
[This message has been edited by Skipper (edited 02-08-2001).]
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> troops disembark immediately from the
> vechile
See above. When the vehickle is not stopped at the beginning opf the turn (ie, continues to execute the previous turn orders) infantry will wait until the vehicle stops. Or you may tell the vehicle to pause (to have imfantry disembark there and then).
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As a related note, when giving long movement orders to a unit, I plot 1-2 waypoints abt 30 and 60 m before destination, plus anothr two abt 30 and 60 m after destination, plus another couple in different direction (alternative cover, back behind the hill or something like that). Since you can shift waypoints on the next turn, and/or change them from fast move to hunt or reverse, and all this without command delay. That's not gamey, by the way, that's unit CO exercising discretion to choose best position upon reaching ordered destination.
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Why not simply look into organisational charts. Newly formed frontline infantry squads generally had what was prescribed (unless they were hastily formed, like narodnoe opolchenie or volksturm). After some combat (and losses) percentage of SMGs increased, because this weapon improved the chances of personal survival (although not necessarily combat effectiveness of the bearer - not in each and every situation, at least).
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Vyshe golovu, tovarisch! We have nowhere to withdraw, Moscow is behind us.
[This message has been edited by Skipper (edited 02-08-2001).]
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While bollocking early model T34 for its mechanical failures, you may want to check similar figures for german or american tanks.
Say 150 hours before a capital overhaul was pretty standard for that time. Modern figures are several times better - mainly due to metallurgy advances.
100 hours is A LOT MORE than 10-11 days of operation, on the average. It is rather like a couple of months of active combat service. Tanks very rarely travel 500 km a day, you know. Changing transmission is not a terribly difficult task, provided you have a spare one, plus some time. Certainly does not constitute an "army level depot repair".
It is worth remembering that a tank has its differences from a '97 model Honda.
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Three thousand??? 15% of what they had at the time??? Hmm... sounds a wee bit too many.
Anyway, there were many tanks lost for sure. Primary 10 causes (from my impression):
(1) mines
(2) mines
(3) mines
...
(7) mines
(8) 37 mm AT guns, AT rifles, mortars - both very effective against a T-26 or BT-5
(9) boulders under snow and swamps under ice, what was called an "anti-tank terrain"
(10) grenades and molotovs
[This message has been edited by Skipper (edited 02-08-2001).]
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Miracles happen. Such as the well known encounter at Dubosekovo - November 41, 28 people with 2 AT rifles and 2 Degtyarevs held for a full day a batallion strength combined arms attack, destroying in the process (according to german sources) 10 tanks and 6 APCs. By the end of the day, they were all either dead or POW.
I don't remember names or details, but for sure there were infantrymen who destroyed more than one german tank in RKKA. Not many...
The "need for the road" I mentioned means that most neat tricks in the manual are ambush tricks. Ie, you have to anticipate that an AFV will be going through a certain place, and position yourself in that spot well in advance.
Btw, I think it was kerosene, not gasoline (?) Gasoline (diesel fuel oil) does not ignite very well. If you know what you are doing, you can extinguish a match by dropping it in a barrel of gasoline. DONT TRY THAT, PLSE!!!
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Aint know about US Army, in Russia SOP now is to use flags and/or light signals to command march column. The reason is radio silence.
In 40-s they did not use flags in active combat, either. I believe the SOP on attack was basically: platoon CO gives "assume formation" and "charge" orders from the hatch, buttons up and - off we go!
By the way, modern russian tanker SOPs require staying in unbuttoned position in many situations where a US tanker would button up already.
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Did the same vehicle have a bow mg as well? Ie, which vehicel was it?
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Oops, my fault. Telermine-telemine. Didn't get what you were talking about.
There was a soviet equivalent. If memory serves, it was not magnetic, but stuck to the tank armor with some sort of goo.
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Soviets and Germans were the only two nations on european theater who regularly had to face tanks without friendly heavy weapons support. Most of the tricks were originally devised in the trenches, by the very guys for whom it was a matter of survival (this sort of situation makes you think very hard, you know).
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> Unless you were German...
... uber-race argument again?
Telemine is not the scenario I was talking about. Basically, it fully qualifies as AT weapon (or field fortification element, at least).
As well as half the other ways the manual you refer to describes. Requires a road by which an unsuspecting tank will travel to some sort of destination.
Soviet infantrymen used a lot of funny tricks to kill tanks, too, with an effect. After all, somebody, somehow prevented them from entering Moscow and Leningrad in 1941. The point is that when the tank has successfully reached a squad position and is rolling over the trench, and you have no aces under your sleeve, you are almost surely dead. If you are VERY LUCKY, it will pass you unspotted and you can cut the following infanrty out.
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Speaking of IS. Although I'm comin across as "satalinist" - pun intended - I am not. Give me an example of WWII country leader who you can surely say is smarter than Uncle Joe.
Oh, he was not russian, by the way, he was georgian. Megrel, iirc. There is a big distinction to make. When you call soviet troops russians, you forget about other USSR nationalities. That's not fair - they comprised 25-30% of RKKA I'd say, not like in Germany, where the vast majority were germans. Hence, soviet is the correct name.
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Mad idea: make two holes on the map - sewer exits. Have a squad enter it on turn X and reappear on the other end on Turn X+N. Something like that. Gamey perhaps, but better than nothing (?) A raw idea, for sure.
Tunnel fighting (as opposed to tunnel travelling) was rare.
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In real life, infantry without AT weapons support did not have a lot of chances against tanks either. To quote a veteran WWII grunt, who survived seven tank attacks himself and obviously discussed it a lot with fellow soldiers, if attacking infantry had tanks and you had no AT gun (or AT rifle, at least) around, you were caput - whether you stay or run. If you had even a couple of sorokapyatkas, you could normally hold. Something like that. The chances to kill a tank with grenades, molotovs and other such tricks were rare and were only occurring by mistake of the tank crew. At the moment a nearby infantryman had to act immediately, in the knowledge that his chances for success are quite slim, and for survival - even worse than that.
It's not like you land a limonka on a roof and the tank explodes in flames. Far from that.
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By the way, that history.vif2.ru is a good link indeed.
game favors armor way too much
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
Bastable:
1. According to soviet doctrine of the time, tanks were not anti-tank tools. Tanks make great value for money when they are wreaking havoc in enemy's backyard. When you have to use tanks in AT role, it means you made a mistake. Germans were forced to use tanks in that role extensively, and it was not good for them. So, when you compare strictly tanks to tanks, you are misleading yourself. You should compare combination of tanks, SP guns, AT guns, strike a/c and artillery.
2. I honestly have no idea when, where and to whom those PFs were first issued en masse in Soviet Army. So, cannot discuss it. I know for sure that they were not in the rifle squad TOE anytime during WWII. Although they could be there, at a price. Somehow, people thought that making several million air bombs (or whatever else) was better than making several million PFs. Somehow, germans decided otherwise. Both sides have reasons for these choices.
3. Heavy weapons ratio of USSR/Western allies in Europe in 1945-48 was not nearly so drastic as Germany/USSR in late 1944-45.