JasonC
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Posts posted by JasonC
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The 428,000 figure is for those who went through the six month sniper training course, which emphasized marksmenship and the use of the scoped rifle, along with basic fieldcraft. There were 50,000 women who went through that course in 1942 alone; it was not a small thruput operation. There was a smaller elite of about 9500 who attended further advanced training courses after already acting as successful snipers in the field, to learn advanced fieldcraft skills and the like (they didn't need marksmenship skills, they already had them).
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As a PS, here is a sample of what 308 at 50 yards does after penetrating about 8 inches of wood, when it hits a soaking wet phone book behind it -
http://www.civiliandefenseforce.com/308penetrationtest.html
If "log bunkers" were just 8 inches of wood, they wouldn't protect worth a damn, against full rifle rounds...
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Rokko - that is too small an action to form an opinion from, in my estimation.
On the wooden bunker (which may be a related matter since you say you didn't notice where the sniper got his 6), a few logs will not stop a 7.62x54 round (or a Mauser 7.92, or a 30-06 etc - any full caliber rifle round). But real log bunkers are not a pile of wood, and the game underrates them if it treats them that way, which it sounds like is happening.
In a real military log bunker, the logs are building material that is used to contain the actual protective walls. Which are not wood, but sandbags or rammed earth. The process is that a trench like hole is first dug to put the men below ground level with a planned firing slit at or not far above ground level (depending mostly on lines of sight, elevation of the terrain and such - they need to be able to see). The exterior of the hole is lined with two layers of logs, one forming an outer wall (which below ground serves to hold back the earth sides to e.g. prevent collapse from artillery fire nearby), and the second, an inner wall, with typically a 2 foot gap between them (sometimes only 18 inches if the logs themselves are stout enough etc). That gap is then filled in with rammed earth or sandbags, all the way around the bunker. A ceiling of logs is next constructed, and then topped off with another 2 feet of earth (typically), which serve as camo as well as protection from overhead hits.
The armies of all the major combatants knew what was required to protect such a shelter from a direct hit by a 105mm HE shell, and that was the standard typically applied. Heavier artillery 150mm and up could KO with a direct hit but only with a direct hit, and the most common weapons - small arms, HMG fire, light and medium mortars, light and medium field artillery - it was meant to be and generally was proof against. Heavy armor piercing fire could penetrate such a bunker, but normally with little in the way of "behind wall effect".
It is not remotely a pile of logs, which would not serve as cover against anything but pistols, SMGs, and light splinters from shell misses...
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Sorry Rokko, not nearly enough information in that comment. Are your platoons getting 6-8 kills and the sniper 2 of them? Are your platoons getting 30 kills and the sniper 10 of them?
What losses are they taking themselves? What were their engagement ranges? What enemies did they face?
I find that squad infantry can vary from the lead platoon in the heaviest action inflicting 30 casualties, to every other platoon on the field, only lightly engaged, getting only about 5.
But range makes all the difference, for that result. Ordinary infantry inflicts its heaviest losses at under 100 yards. If a platoon never gets that close, if will be in single digits at the end of the engagement.
Snipers are much longer range weapons. They are effective to 400 yards and quite effective inside about 250. They don't want 100 yard engagement ranges - it gets them spotted and killed.
I would consider it perfectly normal for my scoped rifles and my HMG teams to account for the majority of the casualties I inflict with infantry, if the enemy stayed at 250 yards or farther throughout the engagement. Not even 1/4, more like 3/4 (but counting the MGs). The total would also be low for the whole platoon.
If on the other hand a platoon wades in to 100 yards then assaults through an occupied enemy infantry position, after suppressing them enough to close to point blank, then I expect that platoon to wrack up 20 plus kills and maybe twice that. A lot of them fleeing or cowering enemies already defeated in the knife balance firefight portion, to be sure.
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Scoped rifles are effective weapons. Scoped riflemen told off to just pay attention to enemy exposure and pick shots where they can get them are much more effective than iron sights riflemen ordered about by their sergeant and carrying stuff and running messages and ... The average rifleman is a target. The average scoped rifleman with nothing else to do along with full machineguns, mortars, and off map artillery belong instead to the category of above average weapon systems that routinely inflicted more than they took. Which is much rarer than you might suppose...
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What do think are big differences about it?
You wheel the gun into the desired position. You drop its trails - two rails out the back for the 155, hinged arms to the sides for the 88. The 88 should first be lowered on its jacks, about the only difference there. Then the ends of the trails are hammered into the ground to provide extra stability. The gun is taken out of travel lock - lowering a brace that attaches to the tube ahead of the mount while towing, to avoid bumps bending the barrel due to whip. You are ready to traverse the gun to a desired deflection. If you need an indirect fire position reference, that adds another step - aiming posts or a surveyor's tool set out some distance from the gun, and azimuths measured to those points and to a battery reference (FDC aiming post or his surveyor's tool). The battery then plots the intersect point of those lines and the gun is laid.
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It doesn't take that long. In the US artillery, we had unit training goals to perform various actions in 2 minutes or less, and that was a test cut off for whether the crew was good enough or had to try it again to get faster. But the best crews could in fact get some of those operations done in as little as 35 seconds. We weren't on 88 FLAK of course, but the principles of laying a towed gun don't vary much from piece to piece, and we sometimes laid a 155mm howitzer in under 2 minutes, including the process of registering the gun's position for indirect fire. Which you wouldn't need for direct fire at a visible target etc. A more routine time from "march order" (hitched and towing) to "gun ready" was more like 4 minutes, including positioning, setting up the gun, and laying it / registering its position for indirect fire.
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Reiter - don't use slow. You aren't trying to spot him *while* you are moving, you are trying to get the movement itself completely over and done with as soon as possible. All the real action happens after you halt.
On covered arcs, yes they have to be wide enough. The enemy will move, and if he is outside of the arc when you halt, you will ignore him until he drills you. Still can't do without them, however. Armored arc is needed to avoid distraction by nearer infantry targets before you have LOS to the enemy tank. They also let you "train" the turret to the desired bearing without restricting your tank to driving straight in that direction - which would set up no side angle (worse protection) and generally require more fiddly tank rotation (and thus delay) before the movement. You want the movement itself to be in a completely straight line that makes sense on your local terrain, to be clean and fast and involve no slow rotation movements. The desired effect is just - he physically can't see anything, he physically can't see anything, then you are clear into LOS moving briskly and already halting, you have stopped a split second later, unbuttoned, and turret trained directly at him. That still won't *ensure* you get first shot. But especially if he is pointed elsewhere, has any other targets to look at, or is buttoned - it maximizes your chances.
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Baneman - no, in CMSF, not old CMBB. It wasn't with a Panther vs an IS-2, it was with a StuG facing a T-34/85. But it happened and more than once. I don't trust "hunt".
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In my experience, "hunt" is very unreliable in these situations. The Panther can "cower" when it actually re-establishes LOS, and try to reverse away instead of firing. It can also be slow to fire.
Unbuttoned to get a spot quickly; other units that can see the IS-2; a short fast move to a halting position you have selected that will have LOS but isn't a long way into LOS; an armored covered arc over the target with some width to spare. Doesn't mean the enemy won't shoot first - and for later model IS-2s, the Panther round can bounce off it is hit the front hull (a turret hit will go in). But it maximizes your chances.
One man's experiences...
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My experience is that ATRs are entirely effective against SPWs and SPWs carried infantry. Yes you want lots of them, and yes they need to fire for minute after minute. But they have the ammo for that and they have the stealth, and the things should not be scarce on the ground. 2 ATRs firing for 3 minutes will put enough holes in the things that they will be abandoned. One ATR will not take out several, as a heavy ATG could.
It does make a difference what angle you can hit them from. The sides of the German SPWs (and later PSW models, as well) are considerably thinner than the angled front - 8mm flat is a lot thinner than 15mm angled. Penetrations that overmatch the armor are more likely to have a behind armor effect than shots that just barely get in.
Just keep firing, is my advice. The hits will add up; each doesn't need to be effective for the long run cumulative effect to be so.
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I am "allowed" to area fire. But unless I have a hard contact previously and lost it, I generally don't. It just isn't that effective.
If I had a full spot there a minute ago but it has gone away and I suspect that is just the men going heads down, area fire at the old spot is perfectly reasonable.
It is also effective enough, often enough, that I will spend the ammo to do it, though generally only for a minute, not for extended periods. Ammo is too useful to blow on a possibly dead target.
Recon by fire is something I only use when there is quite limited enemy side cover and I think I can deduce where they have to be. Sometimes high ammo weapons like "target light" from a tank to use its MGs only, about it.
As for runners, no I don't "simulate" them. The troops are hard enough to corral without such additional work. Sometimes I still find I have to run HQ teams hither and yon to get spots or put forces in command etc. Works.
As for the brittleness of infantry, if they go stationary and rally whenever shot at, and someone else moves off, they can absorb plenty of punishment in my experience. It helps to have steppe terrain / high grass to hide in, and undulating ground and such, to be sure. It works because the enemy will lose the spot and shift fire to still moving units. Then the previously hit units get a few minutes of respite, to rally. The enemy rarely has enough firepower to kill a whole company at range. To scare it sure, or to kill it close enough. But by then spots happen and I can fire back. As long as I spread around who is moving and don't push faster than the men rally = want to go, a couple of HMGs can't hold off a whole company of infantry in the long range envelope.
Good stealthy defenses can supplement a few HMGs with other weapons, though. Mortars firing from defilade at units that go to ground; light FOs dropping artillery fire on any sizable group, snipers on top of the HMGs (even harder to see etc). And if all of it is meant to draw the tanks forward to give ATGs side shots, sometimes tanks ahead won't solve the whole problem. But just a couple of entrenched MGs vs a supported rifle company, no problem. It is a standard drill one needs to learn, without needing to rely on great cover to get close.
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Start with the infantry in a formation with one platoon leading, two platoons in line behind them and to the sides, weapons and HQ in the middle of that line directly behind the lead platoon.
Tanks initially in the middle of that line and trailing it slightly. Everyone well spread out to avoid giving good artillery targets etc.
Leading platoon steps off on move to contact until it draws fire. Goes to ground when it does so.
With the lead platoon 100 yards ahead, all the rest of the infantry, plus the tanks, advances at a walking pace, on line.
As soon as enemy fire halts the infantry, tanks advance through the infantry to 200 meters from the sound contacts firing at said infantry.
The infantry are on their bellies, using every fold of ground as cover, hiding in the grass etc. No job but to rally. HQs, ATRs, MGs with binocs are eyes up but stationary, rest can hide.
Occasionally a single squad at a time advances 50 meters and hits the deck again, "walking" gradually closer to the enemy if not fired upon sufficiently. There is no rush whatever, you have all day.
If the enemy MGs "go quiet" to avoid being spotted by the tanks, then the squad infantry begins advancing. Roughly half are moving at any given time, the others on their bellies.
They switch off who is moving, moving only every other minute and for less than the full minute. Perhaps 1/3rd of total elapsed "clock time" is spent moving.
This is meant to present a poor target for a defender's "mad minute", meaning opening up with all MGs and squads. Such an attempt would only pin half the attacking infantry.
The other half and the tanks would be untouched and the tanks instantly replying.
Meanwhile, if the defenders stay quiet, the tanks remain out of infantry AT range, and the whole company crawls closer in a staggered fashion.
Once the infantry are within good rifle range - 250 yards, say - all their heavy weapons stop moving closer, MGs set up, etc.
Then one platoon, only, advances to 200 yards and goes stationary there. Then a second. Then one advances to 150 yards and goes stationary there.
When you have a whole line of rifles and MGs even with the tanks ready to blow apart any enemy who opens fire in less than a minute, send a half squad to the nearest old sound contact.
Minimal risked force in any movement that close. They only need to trigger fire, and should get within grenade and good SMG range if they don't draw any.
Whenever they like in the above process, the defenders are invited to challenge the approaching infantry company. The tanks then murder them, supplemented by the non-moving, in-range portions of the infantry company. The moving, fired-upon portions of the infantry company just hit the deck and remain stationary, with no mission but to hide and rally. They count on their friends getting the shooters off of them. Other squads may move out to draw the fire in the meantime.
All it takes. A defensive position, even in the open and with entrenchments, needs ranged tank killing weapons to stop such an advance. If it doesn't have them, or enough artillery to break up the infantry company without revealing any infantry firing positions, then it is toast. It just takes time.
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Again, you only give firing range numbers. The same analysis predicts that every rifle shot kills a man. This is not observed. On the average range in western Europe being 800-900 yards, agreed. Notice, that is not 1800 yards. If by the 2nd or 3rd shot every shot had a 59% chance to hit even vs a moving target - or even a 30% chance to hit - nobody spotted long range would ever live to ranges that close. It takes about 30 seconds to get to a kill that way.
As for the advice on Tiger engagement ranges, again it is based on relative lethality and does not remotely require a high hit chance per round. If the enemy can't hurt you back, a 10% chance it hit is perfectly sufficient to decimate whole formations, because Tigers don't hunt alone and carry scores of AP shells apiece.
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Put the AI on defense. It is much sounder in that role than it is attacking, and it is particularly bad at "puzzle solving" attacks, where just the right weapon must be used to deal with each successive defensive position. It doesn't do tool box combined arms. It does throw everything at em and hope something sticks. Also, the bigger the forces scale and the higher the ratio of force to space, the worse it will do. Keeping intervals and not bunching up and reinforcing success while starving failure are not in its lexicon.
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Vanir - I agree with the quote entirely, but not that it supports high shot accuracy. The side shooting first also finds the range first, gets more hits early, scares the other side's crews, and persuades many of them to haul ass instead of sticking around to try their luck. That outcome you will be assured of getting as long as the second round hit probability is meaningfully higher than the first, and the third than the second. All it takes.
Meanwhile, we know that tank duels in flat western desert terrain were usually not decided until 500 yards range, to 700 at the most. Not the first shots, the last ones. Because it was hard to hit moving targets, especially at poorly estimated range, range estimation gets hard in featureless country, plus the usual dust and such. But tanks did not routinely kill each other at extreme range there, because just moving already made it hard to hit them at long range.
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Note all the qualifiers - stationary target, ideal conditions, maximum, assumed amount of range estimation error (that in turn has no change or allowance for target motion).
Also notice that at 2000 meters it appears to be around 3% not 6%. To be fair, it is for a lower muzzle velocity gun, so perhaps its 1500 meter line is more relevant as being about 2 seconds flight time. The range error generally also grows with range, rather than staying 25% at all ranges etc. But those may be minor issues compared to the "stationary ideal conditions" which means a firing range. I never miss with bolt rifle on a firing range, either. Doesn't mean no one does in combat.
I'd actually buy that chart as about right for follow up shots (sometimes only by the third, not the second) at stationary targets, actually. That is, as the level at which the probability of a hit tops out after you've had enough ranging misses, when the target is sitting still. I wouldn't buy it as shots at moving ones, or as first shots in real combat rather than on a range.
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Vanir - yeah I get all that, but those numbers are simply far too high to reflect actual combat performance, rather than firing range performance. The initial shots are already too high (I will substantiate that below), and over 50% for a 2nd shot at 1.8 km is just crazy, even for a stationary target let alone a moving one.
Firing opportunities in real combat are not scarce and the duels are not over in 15 seconds. They last minutes at a time, between entire firing companies. The rounds actually fired in such engagements hit the low triple digits. The tanks KOed stay in the single digits. Even with some repeated hitting to make sure, the average AP round fired only hits roughly 10% of the time. That can and does include shots with a significantly higher chance to hit, and those may account for a majority of the actual kills. But in the nature of averages, if some shots are 30 and 50% to hit, then others are down in the single digits and the low single digits at that. And lots of them.
The idea that single digit achieved accuracy only ever applies to the first shot in falsified by that data. There are not enough first shots in the whole population of shots to pull the averages back down to the observed shot to killed ratio. Ergo, there must be shots after the first that have a low chance to hit. There are only a few other significant factors that can cause low chances to hit on follow on shots - and long range and target movement are the main such factors. (Crew panic is the only other one that could theoretically make the cut).
We know from detailed battlefield OR that there isn't a large ratio of hits to kills when the target is an Allied tank and the shooter is a Panther or Tiger. Those German tanks have powerful enough guns that they rarely needed second and almost never needed 3rd or 4th hits to achieve knock outs. The average hits per kill observed is well under 2, basically. Combined with known facts on the order of magnitude difference between shots fired and tanks killed this puts very strict limits on average achieved accuracy.
Take your first set of numbers above and trace this through. With 6% first and 30% subsequent hit chances and 1.5 hits per kill, what is the predicted ratio of shots fired to tanks killed? The answer is "under 6". With 13% and 59%, the answer is "under 4". With mixed movements, those figures thus predict a shot to kill ratio of 5 to 1 *at ranges of 1.8 kilometers*. We know the average engagement takes place closer than that, so it winds up forming an upper bound for shots to kills.
These figures predict that when a tank goes out in the morning with a full ammo load and comes back nearly empty, it will have killed during one day in action far more tanks than we know each was actually able to account for over their entire operational lives. Worse, for all but the most front-invulnerable heavies, it predicts that all tanks on each side will die 5 times over or more in each day in action.
Tanks almost certainly don't achieve 13 and 59 against stationary targets inside 1 km, in real combat. Let alone vs moving ones at 1.8 km. They probably do achieve 6 and 30 vs stationary targets inside 1 km, even in real combat. But motion alone is likely enough to cut the gain on second and following shots to half that improvement (15% not 30%), and at range you can cut those in half again.
Tactical thinkers and range firing leave the impression that only shots nearing 50% chance to hit are effective, but this is not remotely the case. A tank company in 5 minutes can send 500 shots downrange if it has continually exposed targets. Even 10% average accuracy and 3 hits per kill suffice to destroy a formation of equal size with that much firing time available.
What more commonly happens is that the hottest and best placed shooter gets effect like that to a couple times that at most, and the rest of the firing formation gets a fraction of what that best shooter gets (because they don't all see the enemy for the whole time, etc). The enemy then breaks off, mauled but rarely completely wiped out.
The bit of that tactical games get wrong is they don't realize that even a very modest hit change per shot suffices between the whole units; they model that hit chance too high and give duels that end too quickly with too few shots fired as a result. (Which in part stems from excessive focus on one vs one dueling etc).
Again, firing opportunities are not that scarce in combat; we know that because the shots are actually fired, and from the AARs we know how long the actions take.
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Agree with Amizauer's comments.
I have another wrinkle to add. If supposedly shooting at moving targets at ranges over 1.5 kilometers isn't all that hard and it only takes 3-4 shots to get a hit, um, just exactly when did they miss? Because significantly harder targets are to come by. And we know with certainty that they actually missed a whole heck of a lot. (How? Simple, there aren't enough dead tanks to go around, and we know how much AP ammo they were firing off. At what, supposedly, if hit chances vs. such hard targets are 25% and up, after the first round? Where did all the misses go?)
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Oddball E8 - at short range all that is true. At long range is it not - motion makes it hard for the last reason you gave, even with the target moving toward you. When the flight time of the shell is 2 full seconds, it arcs 16 feet in the air above the target and back down again. If between one shot and the next, enemy movement changes the range by 100 yards, you can easily send false signals to the over and under range homing routine and keep getting the range wrong, shot after shot. It is not like you can tell by how much over or under the shot was at such distances. And you aren't "bowling" - only need to get the deflection correct. You are "golfing" - a wrong range estimate sends the shot clear over or too low for the target.
The longer the range, the faster the shot is falling from its apex (Y component of the shell velocity), and the shorter the "correct enough" range window is. At 2 seconds flight time, that range window is only about 160 meters long along the axis of flight. If the target is moving 80 meters between each shot (which is a 12 second shot spacing if the target is moving 15 mph), half the "good enough" range window just scooted out from under you before you pulled the trigger the second time. That's harder - quite significantly harder than stationary. Even moving straight along the axis of fire. Notice, this isn't a matter of the *lead* - the change in the range in the 2 seconds between trigger pull and shell arrival. It is a matter of the range *estimate* - the change in the range since the last time you saw whether the previous shot went over or went under. (A longer period of time, and a bigger change in the range).
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A perfect position is turret down, until someone else - who can hide well - tells you there is something to hunt. Standing in view of the enemy without a target to engage yet is asking to get whacked.
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Vanir - while I agree the Panthers could find the range in a modest number of shots if the targets were stationary, hitting a rapidly moving target that far away is quite a different matter. There is a reason most kills happened well inside 1000 yards. The homing effect of subsequent shots should decrease markedly when the target moves, especially so when it moves fast. Range matters in that because an accurate range estimate is not essential for near, flat trajectory shots. But at 1.8 kilometers it most certainly is, even for a high velocity gun like the 75L70.
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Why is that is because you have failed to do your homework, as as a result you continue to believe and relate manifest untruths about a serious historical work you have not read, written by a man who knows far more about the subject than you do. For inability to learn and unwillingness to work at it, you get a failing grade. Warning everyone not to take a word you say on any historical subject seriously, ever, until your attitude and actions change.
Those who know, know because they worked at it, not because they have ideologically approved prejudices or can regurgitate ignorant snark off an Amazon review. Go do your homework. And in the meantime, here is a big glass of STFU.
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Yes, you need to. Currently your history grade is an F.
Are Soviet platoon/company snipers to effective?
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted · Edited by JasonC
Rokko - a definitive answer, no. But we can ballpark it. Since most infantry casualties were caused by shell fire from artillery (mortars rockets and tank shells included), and the most effective small arms were the full MGs, we already know to a certainty that the average infantryman with his personal weapon never hit a damn thing, over the entire war. (Proof - some made it home alive. Do the math).
We can ballpark that as saying that if an average scoped rifleman hit one man, ever, he was already outperforming the average infantryman by at least a factor of 7 and probably more like a factor of 10. (I repeat, hard as it is for many to accept, the brutal reality of combat is that the average infantryman is a *target* and not much else. They call them the poor bloody infantry for a reason). Claims aren't kills, of course, but the claim numbers for the leaders are above 400. A truly gifted sniper is not a few times better than an average rifleman, he is something like 2-3 orders of magnitude more effective than an average rifleman. Sure there is a steep fall off from the best to the run of the mill...