edward cameron

In "Death of the Leaping Horseman" (Jason Mark) about the 24 th Panzer Division at Stalingrad, it is stated that: "There was a lack of telescopic signts and sniper rifles in the division. When they were available they were put to good use and it was noted many times that when camouflaged snipers covered the advance of the rifleman, picking off any enemy soldier who showed himself, casualities amongst 24 Panzer Divisions infantry were reduced." In addition to this, I once read an article about a marine sniper group (sniper and spotter) on Iwo Jima who were used to take out a concrete pill box by firing through the external opening at a distance of 500 yards and killing the gunner and loader. My question is, how effective could snipers be in supporting infantry assaults?

I thought some of you may appreciate this reference from "From Normandy to the Ruhr - with the 116th Panzer Division. By Heinz Guderian. Page 429" Hauptmann Adam, who led the 1st Battalion of the Panzer Regiment, reported the following after the war: Four Storm Tigers were subordinated ... to me... Since, due to the rocket propulsion, the projectiles left a long, meteor like smoke trail behind them and thereby gave away the firing position, the position had to be changed after every round. We had a good view of the fork in the road north of Kirchhellen and observed that strong American combat units were assembled there and had come to a standstill. With all four Storm Tigers, a salvo was fired. The effect was hard to comprehend in those days. Vehicles flew through the air, and tanks flipped over like cardboard boxes. Of course, we had to immediately leave our position, but it took hours for the enemy to recover.

Dear Michael Dorosh I was a bit confused about your question on the 24th Panzer division with respect to the Barrikady gun factory. According to Jason Mark's research, the 24th was fighting to the west and the north of Barrikady from the 15th to the 20th of October and were not involved in any direct assaults on the factory. They were then involved in mainly defensive actions and support until their move to the Red October steel works. It is difficult for me to describe what was happening at the time in such a short paragraph. I would strongly recommend you buy the book. It is full of aerial photographs and detailed maps and does such a good job of describing what the division was doing.

The units which were posted to southern area of Krasny Oktyabr on the 1st of November were the II/Panzergrenadier Regiment 21, II/Panzergrenadier Regiment 26, and Kradschutzen-Abteilung 4. Thanks to Jason Mark for this information. Regarding my comments on casualty levels suffered by the 24th Panzer division, no offence was intended. It was just that I had no real perception of how many casualties a Panzer division would suffer as a result of an assault on a suburban area. The only thing I had to compare it with was what I had observed in playing CM BB. This made me reflect on the fact that perhaps I was being a bit to remote to the suffering of my digital troops.

I just finished this excellent book by Jason Mark on the 24th Panzer Division in Stalingrad, up until 20th Nov 1942. I think this book would be of great interest to players of CM BB. It provides detailed information on each day of the divisions activities, including casualties, as they fought through Stalingrad. I was particularly impressed with the divisional tactical summary on how a Panzer division should approach street fighting. I was also impressed by their comparitively low casualty rates. For example, during a full divisional assault on 27/9 into the suburbs, they lost 37 men killed with 212 wounded. When playing CMBB with much smaller units, I seem to suffer similar losses in men killed. The book is available through the "Death of the Leaping Horseman" web site.

The story of Pavlov's House in Stalingrad has always intrigued me. I could never quite understand how this small group of soldiers could hold out against so many large scale assaults for so long. So it was with great interest that I played the scenario in CMBB. I really enjoyed it, but I was left wondering that perhaps it was a bit too easy to for the Germans to capture the house. I re-read some the accounts of the battle, and I noted how the original Pavlov's house was 4 stories high. Apparently, when ever the Germans turned up with tanks, the Russian soldiers would scatter to either the basement (to man the anti-tank rifles) or to the attic where they would man the machine guns. It is claimed that the german tanks could not elevate their guns enough to bother the soldies in the attic, who would then lay done fire on the advancing german troops. In addition, they had good support from mortar and artillary batteries, because the spotters in the attic had such a commanding view of the battlefield. This level of reality difficult to simulate in CMBB, but I was interested to know other members thoughts on how best to assault this building.

I had a dear friend called Hans Feldhorst. He was a tank driver in the 16th Panzer Division. He managed to get to the Volga but was injured in September in 42 norht of the Tractor factory and was evacuated to a hospital further back. He managed to survive the collapse of the southern front. He ended up as a tank driver in the reformed 116th Panzer Division and spent time in both the Panzer regiment and the Panzerjaeger unit. His favourite vehicle was the Jadgpanther. He died 7 years ago.

In his book "Panzertactic" by Wolfgang Schneider, he claims that one of the real advantages of having panzergrenadiers located in halftracks is that they could fight from these vehicles and did not necessarilly have to dismount. However, I note that in Combat Mission the panzergrenadiers are not aloud to fire from the halftracks. Does this impact on the offensive capabilities of the panzergrenadier units. ------------------