JasonC
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Posts posted by JasonC
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Dsf - you need to read David Murphy's "What Stalin Knew". The particulars on Russian intel efforts before the attack, assessed by a professional US intelligence analyst, with chapter and verse on every channel and source warning of the attack beforehand, and Stalin's reaction to every scrap of it.
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First, let's be clear. They are not "Suvorov's claims", they are Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbel's claims. The claim that Russia was about to attack Germany originates in Hitler's speech announcing the invasion of Russia by Germany, to the German public. It remained a staple of German propaganda throughout the war. Suvorov invented nothing, he just sided with German wartime propaganda in an excess of dislike for Stalin. The reality is the claim whitewashes Stalin in another respect, because Stalin never saw the German attack coming, and it was the greatest strategic blunder of his life. Stalin who trusted no one, trusted Hitler; Hitler who deserved no rational man's trust, was trusted fully by Stalin.
We know this because we know all the successful Russian intelligence that tried to tell Stalin that Germany was about to attack. We know the western intelligence that also understood this and tried to convey it to Stalin. We know the wall of distrust, as supposedly British misinformation and provocation, that Stalin showed to all such reports, extending to violently calling for everyone telling him such things to be arrested, tortured and killed. More, even after the invasion when Stalin learned he had been completely wrong in his estimates of German intentions and all these intelligence sources had been right, he still actively sought the deaths of those who had told him so ahead of time. Because they knew how badly he had blown it, because they had told him so, he sought their destruction to silence them.
Trains carrying important industrial supplies and food continued to roll across the border from Russia into Germany right up until the day of the invasion. Stalin not only forbade Russian military aviation from scouting the German build up, he forced them to ignore and allow deep German reconnaissance flights into Russian territory. He relieved of command aviation officers who so much as reported such incursions.
Stalin convinced himself in 1939 that the Ribbentrop Molotov Pact was a diplomatic masterstroke on his part. He believed he had successfully deflected Germany west, into a war against the capitalist status quo powers. He expected that war to last a long time, and to weaken both parties. His military ambitions westward were all contingent on the possibility of a German defeat in that war. He was perfectly willing to contemplate and prepare for conquering Europe in the wake of a German collapse, but he had no intention of fighting heavily to cause that collapse himself.
He further thought it was unthinkable for Germany to attack him because he thought it would be a blunder on Germany's part. He thought they would never leave Britain unconquered in their rear to take on a two front war. He readily believed the German misinformation campaign that told him that all rumors of war preparation in Germany directed at Russia were British provocations, stemming from Britain's desperation and need for a continental ally to do their fighting and bleeding for them.
He wasn't wrong that it was reckless and a blunder for Germany to attack him. He was hopelessly naive in his estimate of Hitler's (entirely imaginary) rationality and risk aversion.
Molotov's reaction to the declaration of war was to complain to the Germans themselves that "surely we have not deserved this" - a moral complaint of one capo to another that they had done everything to keep faith. Stalin was worse - he locked himself away for days and refused to see anyone. They were deeply ashamed of how stupid they had been.
Compared to that reality, the image of deep scheming planners is more flattering and a whitewash. It is also untrue. On the German side, of course it was all meant just as a moral justification to the German people of a new and desperate war that the regime had recklessly and freely chosen. It was a conscious lie on the part of the regime, an entirely cynical one. We know this with certainty because we have the private statements of the same parties, to each other and to Mussolini, declaring their actual reasons for the invasion, and fear that Russia would attack them itself appears nowhere in those statements. The closest it gets is Hitler telling Mussolini that Britain hopes to win through an alliance with America or Russia, and that he (Hitler) can't get at America, but he can sure deal with Russia and means to do so.
All the historians looking for ways to salvage conscious lies that excuse the mistakes of tyrants melt into insignificance when you look at the direct evidence of the actions and private explanations and reasoning of those tyrants themselves. There is no mystery in it, we know exactly why they actually did what they did. Later revisionism can't change that.
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To liberate means to bring people liberty. If you take over their government and rule them by external force, that's conquest. You might be better than the last pack of thugs who conquered them, or there might not be a dime's worth of difference between you - irrelevant to the question. Unless they are freely in charge of their own destiny afterward, including free to tell you to go home (or to some warmer place slightly lower down), they aren't liberated because liberated implies "has liberty afterward".
That anyone alive today defends in any respect either of the two most murderous tyrannies in human history is a disgrace to the entire race of mankind, but especially to those who do so.
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The standard was still 4 gun batteries, but the front line units never had enough tubes and very often used 3 gun batteries because of it, by mid 1944. When you don't have enough ammo to need all 4 to fire it off anyway, that can seem a reasonable expedient. If you are rationing ammo to 25 rounds per day per gun, why not equip a third more units with artillery tubes and make the ration 33 per day per gun? It it not like you won't have time to fire each gun 33 times. It wasn't always that bad, but it illustrates the point.
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On optics, DMS is right. I love the folks who go on about the supposedly crappy Russian optical glass compared to the great German Zeiss stuff. They don't seem to know that all the Russian state optics factories were designed and built in the early 1930s by --- the Zeiss corporation. (Just as all the tank factories that set the production records during the war were designed, also in the 1930s, by US auto industry engineers from Detroit...)
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Not this crap again...
Fires in early Shermans (and lots of other types, for that matter) were not due to fuel at all. They were due to ammo. Apparently there is simply some mental monkey brain level association between fire and fuel that no amount of factual information can penetrate.
A medium tank carries 50 to 100 rounds of large caliber ammuntion, every one of them containing a large propellent charge of rapid burning gunpowder. The inside of a medium tank is an powder shed. Just as improperly designed British battlecruisers in WWI flat blew up as soon as a single heavy shell penetrated to their vitals, because their magazines had not been properly compartmentalized to contain a cordite flash fire, medium tanks that are penetrated by million joule plus heavy antitank ammunition are very likely to see some of that propellent set off. And some of it burning will ignite the rest, unless all of it is stowed and laid out extremely carefully. If you think gas is flamable, try gunpowder - it will reset your scale and frame of reference (if you live through it).
In fact, a tank duel basically consists in the stored chemical energy of powder propellant inside one tank trying to light and set off the stored chemical energy in the powder propellent in the other, with the gun just a light match used to transfer some of that energy across the intervening kilometer or so of open air, in kinetic energy form.
Fuel has flat nothing to do with any of it. Never has.
As soon as Shermans were redesigned with wet stowage of seperated ammunition, stored slightly more sensibly than in a ring around the whole turret, the above average rate of brew ups of the type, disappeared. They didn't touch the fuel system. They didn't need to - it was never involved in the first place.
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Asking conquered and subjugated and misruled for decades Bulgarians to regard it as equally sacred, especially in the most ludicrous socialist realism aesthetic, is perhaps a bit much.
Romanian joke. A Romanian peasant woman is walking along the shores of the Black sea when you finds a beat up old oil lamp. Taking it home she happens to rub it, and of course a genie pops out and offers her 3 wishes. "I want the Chinese to invade my country". "OK", says the genie, "it shall be done. What is your second wish?". "I want the Chinese to invade my country". "You may not realize how this works, but your first wish is already gone, and certain to happen. What is your second wish, now?" "I told you - for the Chinese to invade my country - again!" "OK, done, foolish peasant woman. Now be careful, this is your last wish. What do you want for yourself? Riches, youth, a long and healthy life?" She thinks hard, then says "I want the Chinese to invade my country." "OK it is done, all your wishes are wasted. Now tell me, foolish woman, why on earth do you want the Chinese to invade Romania 3 times?"
"Because to invade Romania 3 times, the Chinese will have to cross Russia, *five* times!"
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I say get RT. Russians, the real war, all that...
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JK - what 76mm said. I've read every AAR I can get my hands on of WWII combat for over 30 years, and I have never once encountered any actual tactical account of MGs taking out full tanks by lighting them on fire, just by aiming at fuel areas. I've seen manuals telling ATR gunners to aim low at fuel cell areas on German tanks, especially types too thick to penetrate the turret (preferred target if the gun can penetrate). I've heard a few non specific remarks from German sides targeted about fuel leaks (not fires) caused that way - but unspecific about whether the hits were from full ATGs (like 45mm), rather than ATRs. The only targeted side accounts of trouble from such light caliber AT rounds talk about vision and sight hits blinding tanks, or very occasionally gun damage from actual hits along the gun tube, and lots of them. All as hail fire by non penetrating AT, not the results of MG fire.
There isn't a single report of a tank taken out by MG fire causing a fuel fire, including 50 cal HMG fire, in all of the Congressional Medal of Honor citations for the entire war, all fronts. There is a case of the bad ass who got a full kill on a full tank with just his Thompson submachinegun, but he did it by whacking the crew-exposed driver while the tank was in motion and crossing a bridge. He induced a crash by killing the driver at an opportune moment, and the tank crashed off the bridge it was crossing and fell into the river below, for a full kill.
That is how rare a bad ass heroic action can be and make the dispatches. But no tanks set on fire by MGs appear, from one end of the war to the other. My verdict - it did not happen.
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Actually, Russian attacks in 1943 had quite good support and combined arms, generally. Yes they got even more in 44-45 and could rely on capital and major weapon systems more (armor, artillery weight etc). But the unsupported riflemen attacks really happened in 1941-42, through the fall of 42 really. The local counterattacks ordered in desperation and the like. Late 1942 and during 1943 was precisely when the Russians got tons better at all that. Beyond that, I don't think there was any offensive failure at all, in 1943. They won the war that year. Nor is there any evidence whatsoever that the sectors where they didn't attack as heavily in 1943 - the north - got harder to attack as a result of delay. Those areas crumbled readily in 1944, and didn't fight as well as the southern areas did. So much for time and fortification - the reality is, mobile forces and reserves and command attention do more to hold an area than time or the spade.
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CaptHawkeye - armor formations have many times as many trucks as they have tanks. They don't need their tanks as mere automotive lift. They do get farther forward into combat areas more readily, which is why they carry infantrymen, and tools used by the tankers themselves, and the like. But the logistic thruput to support the tanks in combat comes from a thousands of truck for a hundred or so tanks, not the other way around.
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The whole gas thing is utter hoakum.
There are a few cases of M-60s in Jordanian service in the 6 day war, forced to withdraw (not KOed) because of external fuel tank fires - set off by shell fire, not MGs. Nearest it gets...
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Cuirasser - indeed. GD's attack sector for those 350 tanks was only 3 kilometers wide. One regiment of the infantry attacked with a single battalion up (the rest in column behind it) with 250 tanks in its sector. This certainly ensured there was no density of defending ATGs that could possibly stop the whole armored force, but it multiplied the effective impact of every mine and every obstacle in that narrow sector to an absurd degree. And the armor to infantry ratio was just certifiable. In the first wave, there were more men inside the tanks than outside, in the attack sector. And yet, once the leading Panthers got stuck in a bog and had to wait for pioneers to create a route for them, the infantry actually wound up attacking without effective armor support. The rest of the panzers were blocked by the stalled Panthers ahead of them; the infantry pushed on ahead with just artillery support. So you had ridiculous armor to infantry before the bog bottleneck, then none to very limited infantry beyond that bottleneck.
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76mm - so much the worse for "their eyes", which are the standard of precisely nothing...
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I do have respect for what they accomplished. I also have disrespect for some of their callousness about losses and unwillingness to learn tactical skills that might have saved many lives of their men, and similar. But none of that means I cheerlead for Russians the way Nazi fanboys cheerlead for the Germans. Also, there is no political component in my judgment of their military skills or weaknesses (I have utter contempt for the politics of both regimes). Nazi fanboys can't all say that (without lying, at least) - alas.
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wadepm - it is metaphysically possible, but at least outside of Putin's Russia I think the set is empty.
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It is not worth debating Nazi fanboys. Just smack them so hard their noses bleed buttermilk. Works every time it is tried.
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"the nearly 350 tanks under his command became hopelessly tangled in swampy terrain and Soviet minefields, and then were then badly shot up by Soviet defences"
First point to notice - there is a direct connection between trying to use 350 tanks on a single divisions frontage and becoming "hopelessly tangled".
Second point to notice - the supposedly "swampy terrain" is not swamp on any map. It just happened to have rained the night before the attack. *All* low lying areas were muddy, as a direct result. *Every* ditch became a mud and sometimes a water obstacle.
Third point to notice - the Russians had in fact constructed an intelligent anti tank defense. That is why there were substantial water obstacles, and anti tank ditches between the water obstacles (which themselves filled with water in the rainstorm, had muddy sides etc), and why every route that wasn't blocked by such obstacles was mined.
Fourth point to notice - higher local odds don't do diddly squat against mines and terrain obstacles. Local firepower doesn't remove a mine, or allow a 45 ton tank to cross a ditch with weak, muddy sides without it caving in under the tank.
Fifth point to notice - while the bypassed commander blames it all on his rival, that rival was a perfectly capable armor commander in all other circumstances. In addition, the Tiger battalion spearheading AD Kempf's attack in an entirely different sector *also* lost 2/3rds of its entire strength on the first day, by getting stuck in another minefield.
Sixth point to notice - in addition to all of the obstacle based problems, the Russians had an AT network of capable ATGs firing from widely separated position. They had layer after layer of them. They had T-34 formations backing them up. And when all those were penetrated successfully anyway - which by the way they always were, everywhere - the Russians had new layers of rifle divisions and anti tank regiments to create new layers of ATG network as fast as the old ones were penetrated. They also had reserve formations of tanks larger than the entire attacking force available to slide in front of each heavy point.
Seventh point to notice - at the climax of the battle days later, no appreciable portion of the vaunted heavies were still running. And the Russians still had 25 rifle divisions in theater reserve behind all of the threatened sectors. They were not running out, and there was no prospect of their running out.
Eighth point to notice - within a week, a massive Russian counteroffensive as big as the entire Citadel operation was launched by the Russians against the entirely parallel Orel salient north of their own Kursk salient. That counteroffensive forced the abandonment of the northern prong of the planned pincer in less than 24 hours. And the southern prong on its own never had the slightest operational point. With no one to meet up with to cut off anything, it was a drive into space and a straight ahead brawl with the Russian reserves, as dumb as any other frontal attack in military history.
Ninth point to notice - unlike either prong of the German's own Citadel, the Russian Orel offensive achieved an operational breakthrough on its northern face drive within 48 hours, and pushed an entire tank corps into the German operational depth, destroying 2 German infantry divisions in the process, to make the hole. Despite rapidly arriving German mobile reinforcements, pulled from the northern Citadel drive, the Germans never stopped the Russian 11th Guards Army that first achieved that breakthrough. They slowed it, but it relentlessly oozed south until it cut the roads and railroads out of the salient, forcing its evacuation.
Tenth point to notice - none of the German side narratives of the actual course of the fighting or the reasons for the failure of the operation focus on its true cause, the superior Russian performance in their own similar attack a week later. They talk of Sicily or the Muis river area or failures of will or blame Model for not breaking through in the north more rapidly or local mishandling of armor, or --- anything, really, except the clear reality that the Russian Orel offensive was better conceived, planned and executed than Citadel was.
And the reason is clear. To admit that Kutuzov outright trumped Citadel was to admit that the Russian generals were superior commanders to the German ones, and that is the only thing that must never be admitted or even hinted at, under any conceivable circumstance.
But reality is not mocked.
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At Kursk the divisions with Tigers only had 1 company of them apiece. That was the 1 2 and 3 SS, and GD. AD Kempf had a full battalion, and so did Model up in AG Center on the north face, both as army level assets. (The AD Kempf one lost 2/3rds of its strength to a minefield on the first day, incidentally). The Panthers were all in one formation with 200 tanks, attached to GD. They had only about a quarter of those running by the end of the 2nd day, many having failed mechanically from the outset, and others hitting water and mine obstacles.
The other heavy armor were the Elephants on the north face, and a similar formation of Brummbars up there. Overall, the heavy armor was split between 3 categories - Tigers, Panthers, and assault guns. The Tigers were the most effective; the overall effectiveness of the whole group of them should be considered together, however, including the less successful formations (including Kempf's Tigers) etc.
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Raptor - you are full of crap.
I am a highly experience CM gamer. If I am having trouble with this, so are lots of other people, even if they are less vocal about it, or less demanding. They are settling and putting up with crappy behavior, and the designers need to know that they have a problem. Telling me they don't is just a useless lie.
I am happy to take tips on how to handle the building LOS issues the game clearly has, to get past them as much as possible, and get back to playing the game. But when a 10 year veteran can't play your game for a week without assistance - fact - you have a problem. And no amount of smash mouth BS can change that.
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It is not higher fidelity. It is more MM for no gain in anything. The tac AI is too stupid to position the men correctly - not progress. In my rowhouse example, the men couldn't use the brick upper window outcroppings the way they actually would in real life - not progress. Attempting to get every detail of every man's position of every weapon right, down to every 15 second increment, is certainly more ambitious if you like, but it is only realism if you actually do. And the game doesn't get there, not with 8 meter action spots and crazy stacking up behaviors and overly concentrated positions and complete lack of tactics or intelligence on the part of the men you pretend you are individually modeling, but in fact cannot individually control, etc.
Not remotely sold that any of this is an improvement. And on the playability side, a week ago I wanted to start this QB with a friend, and he still doesn't have a set up, despite helpful comments here by several people more experienced with the game than I am. Anyone who pretends this is a win, is whistling dixie.
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Thanks guys, I have also received an offer from a playtester to look at a file, in which I position some of my teams in locations I've tried and explain some of the issues I see. Just busy with work this week, but hope to get to that by this weekend.
To Vanir specifically, yes you are seeing many of the same things I am seeing. By my mark I eyeball, that left window looks like it should be able to fully do the tactical job I described in my previous post, above. But after scouting it with the LOS tool, I have no confidence that it can actually do that job. Since for command reasons if I put an HMG back there and build the defense around it, I will rely on the position heavily, and must find others physically near it for additional forces, I am very reluctant at this point.
And this was about the best position I found on the map, for the tasks I need my defense scheme to accomplish. I am just finding it much harder, requiring much more MM work and "fiddly", to pick positions and to assess them reliably, that I am used to. I haven't had this degree of difficulty with non-urban CMRT terrain (some gauging the right depth into treelines, some details of grazing / reverse slope behaviors, but not this hard), and of course I had no problems like this at all in CMx1.
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First, yes that is tbe right map and the right house. Second, as I already stated, yes I can get a LOS to the ford area after using the tips first provided to msnipulate the MG position within the house.
Now scan with the LOS tool the whole area of open ground up at street level on the near side of the ford. I find very narrow coverage. I find the LOS blocked just right of where you have the line, for instance. Similarly, scan the full open area on the far side of the river, from that wooden house down to the ford. The full garden area around that house, all the open approaches to the ford, the ford proper..
From the positions where that leftmost window is visible, I exoect to be able to cover that whole area. Not just some bits of it, all of it. A Russian should not be abke to get to the ford without being shot. If there, should not be able to get out of the ford without being shot. In the low ground, if they are heads down, the fire should be over their heads, but that should be the only spot not covered. The tactical role is not accomplished by overhead fire scaring someone in the ford. Nor is it accomplished if there are some select routes to the ford or out of it that cpukd draw HMG fire. Instead, the test question is, can the HMG see every man entering the ford, and every man leaving it?
If the answer is yes, that the role is accomplished, and I am abke to translate what I see and saw in selecting the position. If the answer is no, then an unsuppressed HMG in that house at that window does not "hold the ford". Which is what the envisioned defense needs it to do. If I get that, I can focus other assets (other MGs, a TRP for mortars etc) on making it hard for the attackers to get that suppression, and to give me targets when the enemy tries to position his forces to attempt it.
Clear enough?
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SeinfieldRules wrote - "as soon as you give a targeting order that they will reshuffle and place themselves in a position where both can fire at the target."
Bollocks.
Continued - "The 4 story house you mentioned in your second example, I placed a PzGren squad in one, and though the LMGs both started in the middle of the top floor with no physical LOF, I had good LOS with the rest of the squad out the windows (with blind spots on the sides with no windows), and the LMGs immediately moved to the windows as soon as I gave a targeting order."
Bollocks.
CoolBreeze - spotting is mostly what you see is what you get.
Bollocks.
Continued - "if you have come up with a defence scheme that looks good as far as WYSIWYG, but doesn't seems good via the targetting line, it MIGHT still be good."
Bollocks.
You guys are selling me the line of utter horsefeathers that there is nothing wrong here. And I am not buying one word of it. I will believe my own lying eyes, thank you very much.
New Books on Eastern Front
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted
Dsf - you transparently haven't read a word of it. Check back after doing your homework.