JasonC
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Posts posted by JasonC
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Now, just to get things clear, what did I say about ROF? I said the howitzer size guns will do 3-4, the medium guns you load single piece with two hands can do about twice that, or 6-8, and the light ones you can load with one hand will do less than twice -that-, more like 1.5 times that, or 9-12.
So ASL vet for some reason gets his shorts in a knot about such a claim, and instead cites a source he likes, who says - what exactly?
"Wolfgang Fleisher and he has the following ROF:
152mm Tank Howitzer 1938/40: 2 RPM
122mm 1943 Tank Gun (D-25 T): 2-3 RPM"
Seperate loading howitzer sized ammo. Incidentally, the 1938/1940 model means the field gun. No tank mounted that caliber until several years later. The 152mm was the standard heavy Russian field piece, and the 122mm was the standard Russian medium - like 105s and 155s (or 150s) in other armies.
What about medium stuff that you load with two hands, but in one piece?
"76mm 1940 and 1942 Tank Gun (F-34): 5 RPM
76mm 1938/39 Tank Gun (L-10): 4-5 RPM
85mm 1944 Tank Gun (ZIS-S-53): 4-7 RPM"
Says ASL Vets prefered source. I said 6-8. The first two of those above, if fired from T-34s anyway, mean 2 man turrets, too, which might mean -1 round for the two-timing commander.
What about guns light enough to load with one hand? The only such on ASL Vets list was -
"45mm 1938 Tank Gun: 12 RPM"
Gee, what did I say? 9-12.
So, where exactly is this source violently disagreeing with any of my statements?
Oh, and he also cited the Tiger in CM firing 6 times a minute. Which, last I checked, is included in "6 to 8". And is included in "medium shell that loads in one piece, but with two hands".
So what is the sum total of the differences? About -1 rpm for two or three of the guns. In 2 man turrets, or for a field piece (where you don't exactly stack the shells 3 feet from the gun if you can help it).
His source sees the same relation between ROFs, but is a little more generous to the lightest guns - twice the howitzer rate for the tank gun size, and twice that again for the light tank gun size. 3 6 12 or 4 8 12, that is the sum of the range of opinion. And I said what? 3-4, 6-8, 9-12.
If one bothers to go to great lengths to violently disagree with somebody, it helps first if you pause and see if actually you do disagree with him at all.
There is no reason to expect large ROF differences between seperate loading howitzer style guns. Nor between tank sized medium guns (two hand one piece loaders). Nor between light one hand, one piece loading guns. The human beings are basically the same, the motions are the same, the weights all require the same hands on and the same muscle movements. Why on earth would people expect big differences, besides those couple items?
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No, I don't think all ROF need to be boosted. I think the tech grogs are too focused on imaginary differences between one big hulking rifle and the next one, whereas in reality practical ROF has more to do with very similar crews and human working speeds than they suspect. I think the ROF -range- is narrower, not the whole thing bumped higher.
Of course the guns with single-loading ammo have higher ROF, and ones with very light "one handed" shells (like 37mm and such) higher again. And the spread by crew quality might be a bit more, like +/- 25% for green or veteran compared to regular. But much of that is already in CM and I think close to correct.
Shell weight just doesn't matter very much, up to 155mm. There is a reason common field pieces stop around that size. The reason is that a 100 lb shell can be manhandled rapidly by one man, working hard to be sure, but working rapidly. Go up to 8 inch guns and the shells weigh 200 lbs and that is no longer true. As in Monty Python, "it is a simple question of weight ratios", shell to man.
Howitzer size weapons fire more slowly because of seperate loading ammunition, ramming of shells, and a more involved loading procedure overall. But that "slower" is on the order of 3-4 rounds per minute. Medium sized shells that it takes two hands to lift, but which load in one piece by a simpler procedure, can double that ROF, and there is precious little difference in firing time for one of them compared to another. Shells that can be handled in one hand and fired nearly like rifle cartridges in a bolt action, can add another 3-4 rounds per minute on top of that.
Until you get up to shells too heavy for a man to lift on the one hand, or down to semi-automatic loading on the other hand, there just isn't that much difference, because the human task just isn't that much different. Seperate loading is twice as long as the medium rate, and one handed is less than twice as fast as that medium rate, maybe half again as fast.
That is it. People want to read dramatic tech-dominance implications into tech-spec minutae beyond that, simply because they worship at the shrine of tech-spec minutae groghood, and it is in a manual somewhere. The human reality of loading and firing artillery pieces just doesn't vary that much, with liftable shells loading one at a time, that is.
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That would be great, S-B. Really. If I could focus on designing the contents of the scenarios when running a campaign, then I'd run them a lot more. It is the tedious work of adjusting each OOB to the dynamic force of each player, tweaking the set up accordingly, etc, that eats up the time, and without a payback of interest. Designing scenarios and setting up defenses also takes time, but it is fun.
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A 1km ranges and up, or shooting at targets actually moving 30 mph, it probably would be hard to hit, especially with first shots. But cross country tanks speeds in WW II are more like 10-15 mph, not 30. They only do 30 on flat roads, going straight, which incidentally makes the lead rather easier, since you can see the road and the speed is tolerably constant. And CM shots are generally at 500m or less, which is quite close for tank guns.
The shell arrives in half a second to one second at those sorts of ranges. And 10-15 mph is ~5 meters per second. The distance a tank traveling cross-country moves in the flight time of a high-velocity AT shell at close range, is thus 2-3 meters, which is less than the length of the tank itself. And if the direction of movement is diagonal to the direction of fire, the distance moved across is somewhat less, by a cosine. Not a lot of leading necessary.
A medium velocity gun at 1.5 km firing on a target traveling at ~20 mph, yeah the target could move 15-20 meters, or 10-15 across the shell path perhaps, and make accurate leads essential. And at that range, estimating target speed can be difficult.
The point is, you'd expect to see significant increases in the number of misses due to motion, out at longer ranges, with lower velocity guns, crossing at right angles, and moving fast, like at road speeds or recon light armor top speeds. Under 500 meters, tank guns, cross-country tank speeds, approaching angles - there would be relatively little impact from movement. Maybe 1/3rd of the shots aimed slightly off center of mass would miss that would have hit a stationary target - something like that.
I think a bigger problem exists in CM treating of firing -while- moving, which almost everyone says was impractical in reality. Machineguns could spray, but to hit anything with a tank gun, a short halt was necessary, gyro or no. The gyro helped lay the gun faster after such a halt, that was about it.
Whereas in CM, Stuarts and M-8s routinely hit targets 500 meters away while the shooters are moving, which is not in the least believable. The difference, of course, is the gun is pointing every which way as a vehicle bounces over uneven ground, so it is not just a question of distance moved, but direction pointed.
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I second Amedeo on the SU-76. It was the M-1942 ZiS-3, the divisional duel-purpose gun used in the artillery regiments and also used as an anti-tank gun. Which is an L54 piece, slightly longer than the German PAK 40 but basically the same size, for comparison. The same weapon was also used by the Germans on the 76.2mm Marders, using captured pieces. Indeed, an SU-76 is basically a Marder.
The primary change with the "M" model in summer of 1943 was standardizing the chassis and improving the engine layout. The gun was the same. Before then they were less reliable mechanically, and few were built because of it. The "M" model was based on the successful T-70 tank chassis and essentially had worked out the bugs, that is the main difference. It was thus mass produced on a scale of 10,000s, whereas only 1000 or so were made before the "M" model.
On the ISU-152, I can explain several issues in doubt about the layout and crew roles. The second loader was on the rear of the commander's, right side of the vehicle. His jobs were loading the powder behind the shell, ramming, and closing the breech. The first loader, on the left behind the gunner, opened the breech and loaded the actual shell ahead of the powder charge.
The ammo was on racks along the sides of the vehicle, two deep from the wall, five high. On the left there were two racks for the actual shells, 10 each. Generally one was AP and the other HE. All readily accessible. The gun is off-center toward the right side, and the space on the right is therefore more cramped. The commander is out of the way above the gun, basically, but the right side assistant loader has less room, with the recoil space of the gun taken into account, etc. Because of that, there was only one rack for powder charges on the right, 10 of them. Ten more charges were stored either under the gun position in a floor compartment, or a couple ahead of the powder rack on the wall benches where the assistant loader sat while traveling, then used first.
The powder charges were interchangeable for AP or HE of course. So the layout would allow ~12 shots rapidly, then a bit more time needed before the next 8. If the crew threw safety to the wind or when firing indirect as artillery, I'll bet they fished out the powder and stacked it on the floor, or piled it high on the bench on the right. We did similar things when stationary, firing "in battery", with the M-109s. You wouldn't want to do that when traveling, though, only in position.
I have also seen yet another source confirm that in practice the gun could be fired 3-4 times per minute, which is what I would expect when pushing. It is at a site covering the interior of this beastie, at this URL -
http://www.kithobbyist.com/AFVInteriors/isu152/isu152a.html
See the text accompanying picture 7. Incidentally, that breech looks just like the one on the M-109, in terms of the threaded breech-block, the way it swings clear, the lever handle to make moving the heavy breech mechanically easier, etc. The only possible difference is the M-109 spring-release to close the breech most of the way without manual effort. But this one would not be hard to operate.
As for ammo on the M-109, its ready racks are at the rear of the vehicle, and one loader fetches them all. In action, the shells are often placed on the floor at the left rear, and powder is often cut (and shells fused, an artillery complication) by crewmembers from the ammo vehicle and handed in the back of the vehicle. Shell prep therefore goes on in parallel with loading and firing, for more sustained shooting. For short "hip shoots" right after pulling into a position, it is all run out by the loader from what he has prepped in the ready racks. And the same 3-4 round ROF is easily achieved. Understand that in either case, one is talking about a peak ROF for a period of 2-4 minutes. Which is what would matter in close action, almost always, and is also the size of typical fire missions when acting as indirect artillery.
I think 2 rpm would be a "green" rate, with 4 possible for veterans, and 3 regular. I don't believe the 3 per 2 minute figure any more than I believe the field manual's 4 per 3 minutes for the M-109, which is after all the same number practically. For safety, done in a deliberate manner, or sustained, that figure is probably realistic. In action, or even just pushing to finish a mission fast in training, 3 rpm is easy, and would be with this layout too.
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Yes, I did add commander points for overall successes, but I hadn't really formalized it. After a few fights the players that had done best got one extra ability. They started, as I recall, with a platoon HQ with +1 morale, and after a while some of them earned +1 command, too. They were pretty basic Lts, no great shakes - LOL.
To formalize that sort of thing, I think I'd use some sort of progressive cost tied to total force x success, like for reinforcements. But track them seperately for HQs added later, so they don't get all of them. By "progressive" I mean something like the 1st command "point" costs 300, the 2nd 600, etc. By 3000 you have 4 "pips". If an HQ is wiped out, it starts over with nada. Add bonuses in a random field. Or, one might lower the numbers but raise only a random HQ's score. Some gain would happen more often; they'd accumulate over time in randomly scattered places, as long as players didn't get their HQs killed off regularly, or lose all the time.
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That is undoubtedly part of it. And I agree the issue of confidence is real. Late war, well equipped infantry in combined arms armies just did not melt. The 101st didn't at Bastogne, and the units of the 30th that closed the door behind Peiper didn't either. In fact, Peiper didn't have enough infantry either, even with the better panzer division layout and with following infantry and FJ units assigned to help, because his KG dispensed with most of them, and he soon got seperated from the panzer grenadier regiments. As one US commander put it at the time, eventually the "human equation" had to tell. By which he meant, Peiper had powerful tanks, but only a battalion or two of personnel, while he was surrounded by the better part of 2 divisions. Equipment only could not and did not confer invunerability. And gas trucks are not as armored as Panthers or King Tigers.
But to me there is a different moral in that story. The 4th AD did break through, did smash the 3rd Pz Gdr's local counterattack, did get clean into the rear. It is precisely at that point that the doctrinal dispute begins. How to use such success when attained? In other operational circumstances, with much more gas, depth and breadth of the attack, supporting arms fresh and alongside - sure, taking off east would have been the right answer. But only because the essential tasks to reap the reward of the breakthrough would -not-, in that better case, have been sacrificed to that more distant goal. Whereas around Nancy in September 1944, they were.
They wanted to shake themselves free and continue the dream pursuit, which had already carried them clear across France is a single month. They were blinded to unwelcome realities by a vision of success just out of the grasp. How did this play out? When CCA pushed into the rear, the mission was to raid and pursue, to free the rest of the division, and then push on. CCA gave practically no thought to destroying the garrison of Nancy. They posted a few light tanks and put a platoon of armored infantry at this crossroads or that. The bulk of the force was drawn up in a body east of the city, ready to punch again - into -air-, and without enough logistic reach to "touch" anything but air at the end of another swing of the armored fist.
But had they thought of the matter a little differently, at that moment the primary tactical reality was not that they now had an unexploitable hole in the German line and thus a road east - for 30 miles then a sputtering halt. The primary tactical reality was that they had a chance of destroying the entire 559 VG division for trivial loss, had they paid attention to that goal. They were thinking about terrain, and how far they could drive, and about avoiding strength to strike at weakness. Which are sensible enough things when you have enough gas, and enough follow-on forces can get across the limited river crossings to do everything else for you. But they didn't. And in the circumstances, they should have been thinking not about ground but men, not about punching into air but about annihilating the 559th VG.
If they had done so, and had successfully prevented the withdrawl of the 559 VG intact, the subsequent history of the campaign over the next two weeks would have been rather different. Without that division, the Germans would probably have had to defend with the available mobile troops, not counterattack. If they had gone ahead with the counterattacks, the defeat of those would have left the Germans nothing adequate to stop 3rd army in the sector. CCB would not have been burnt out. The 35th division would not have been mauled. The logistics situation would still have been grim, and therefore decisive advances would still have been out of reach. But broad front advance would have been possible, because the Germans would not have had enough to stop 4 divisions, in only the shells of the 3rd and 15th Pz Gdr, less than a division's worth between them.
Destroying enemy forces makes subsequent tasks easier. It also avoid subsequent high losses to one's own forces, if enemy forces are destroyed on the most advantageous terms. Withdrawing in small groups of infantry through an unrestricted armored force, should have been such an opportunity. In the actual logistic situation, it was unrealistic to expect more than the passage of the river, capture of the city, and destruction of its garrison from the breakthrough achieved. They sacrificed the last of those by focusing on a mirage of greater success that was not real. And CCB and the 35th Infantry division paid for it.
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Some perspective on the ROF of such large guns, rated and actual. They are two different things. The gun on this thing is essentially the same as on the M-109 self-propelled 155mm howitzer used in the US army today - the standard SP artillery piece.
I've used those, and can provide some details. The shell weighs almost 100 lbs, and the powder loads in seperate bags. The shell has to be rammed home with a hydraulic press that swings down from the ceiling. The breach closes with a screw-type seal, but is forced most of the way closed by a powerful spring-release - you just have to finish closing it with a lever. The shell is primed by a seperate cartridge loaded behind the breach, and the mechanism there slides over to shut the "touchhole" effectively.
All of this is done by one loader standing in a confined space, bending to reach the shells out of the ammo holder, etc. Somebody else has already fused the shells, though, so that step was done well before firing. There is a long sequence prescribed for the whole loading and firing process. And the rated ROF of the M-109 in the manuals, is 4 every 3 minutes, or 45 seconds per shell.
I'm not any good at it particularly, never was, and spend most of my time on a different piece, the M110 8", which is open topped, uses more hydraulics to do everything because the shell is twice as heavy, etc. But I could still fire an M-109 in 15-20 seconds, or 3-4 rounds per minute, which is 2-3 times the rated ROF. Was I being careful, doing that? No. Was it tiring? Yes. But it was no great feat - most experienced gunners could.
You've got a 6 or 8 round mission and you get them through. Then you rest. Things you have done enough just do not take much time. The slowest part was the ramming, because it depended on the speed of the machinery and could not be pumped faster by sheer adrenline. Everything else could be and was.
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Well, we were trying to do it with ten players at once. We did a game a week at first, more like one every two weeks later on. The two biggest time sinks were #1 waiting for all the files to trickle in and #2 (hardest for me) tweaking each of the freshly designed scenarios for each player's force situation.
For one person it would be a snap, no longer really than designing new scenarios. Three or four at once and it will be a little bit of work, but probably manageable. I don't recommend more than that - 10 was way too much to handle at once. It did make for some interesting AARs and lessons learned, though, because you could compare things people tried and see how well they worked.
It also took time to write up the briefings and "lessons learned" files, and sometimes I wrote lengthy responses to somebody's AAR for a particular fight. Mostly not, though (there are ~60 AARs LOL). I hope to get all of the AARs and performances made available on the web sometimes, and I've had a volunteer to do the hmtl work. I just haven't gotten my act together to send him what he needs yet.
Yes, it would be useful to have a text file with units and their state, what happened to them in the game. I wasn't using a system that differentiated experience based on what that particular unit did, expect for the snipers. And there I relied on the AARs, not anything the program gave me. But someone might well come up with a way of extending the system to show greater unit-by-unit variation, especially in the case of tank aces and such-like.
As for the system I describe, it is trivial for a "GM" to do it for a small number of games. It could easily be automated, I'd think. Perhaps settings could be provided for operations designers, or scenario-sequence designers.
For example, operations designers now get settings like "night falls when?" One could provide such a setting for when replacements are received. Operations have reserve force slots that get released on some trigger. One might provide reinforcement slots triggered by combined score-time-opposition totals racked up so far. (E.g. reach score time enemy size 1000 and get a second company. Reach 3000 and get a tank platoon. Or whatever). And the experience system could function as I outlined, with perhaps tweakable levels for how hard it is to gain levels. So getting to regular from green might cost 2x, 3x, or 4x unit cost after replacements, depending on how long term and representative the campaign is supposed to be - set by the campaign designer.
The idea would be to have a "campaign" type, different from an operations type, that linked a series of scenarios on different maps instead of the same one. With the force and experience triggers occuring between. So someone might put together a campaign that tracks an infantry battalion through its fights in Army Group South or something. With the player starting with only a company, and perhaps commanding the battalion by the end of it.
The BTS people would need to provide the type and some variable settings, and to be sure it works they'd probably want to make a couple themselves. Others would make more and could change the parameters, e.g. if they thought units should gain experience less rapidly, or fewer additional forces should be available, or replacements should be more frequent. Dump all of that into the campaign designer's lap - LOL.
Of course, people will try it even without any additional tools from BTS. It is just such a natural. With what we've got now, it is perfectly doable if you've got a GM willing to design a lot of scenarios on a production-line basis, and spend a little time tweaking them. And if you keep it small, both in scenario sizes and in number of people playing at once, under one GM.
The games are even faster than PBEM, because the AI can command the enemy side. The scenarios don't have to be too balanced, and in fact they should not be "even" fights most of the time, or the causalties will run so high they will burn out the core units very rapidly.
The auto-generated maps are the essential tool, and CM already lets designers use them. You generate a few to get the right basic idea, then tweak it for the particular elements needed for the plot of the scenario. You do not have to lay down each tile. You do have to design the defenses, but that can be fun in itself. Getting the AI to give a tactical challenge while outnumbered, is itself an interesting tactical problem - LOL.
I heartily encourage BTS to provide more, but whether they do or not, I also encourage more scenario designers to try a spell of GM work. But for 4 players or less, and keeping the scenarios small, I strongly advise. And the GM needs some free time, too. If you plan only 4-8 scenarios all told, that will also work better than an endless campaign, simply because the time commitment will be self-limiting - about a month or two. And if a player is unreliable or not prompt, you just have to say "sorry" and go on without him. Usually players are great about it, because it is fun and they are getting it for nothing - LOL.
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Nancy-Arracourt and the Infantry
One of the most famous operations of WW II was the seizure of Nancy and subsequent German counteract along the Moselle river in September, 1944. This period saw the pursuit operations across France come to an end, with the German front stabilized in Lorraine. The reasons for the focus on the period are various, but chief among them are the personalities involved on the US side, maneuver doctrine advocates, and the large-scale clash of armor later on. Creighton Abrams, who went on to be U.S. chief of staff and before that ran US armor tactics schools, commanded one of the armor battalions that figured prominently in affair, and was spearheading Patton's 3rd Army. Both are maneuver doctrine icons in the US military, and certainly both by any measure were outstanding commanders. And of course there is the inherent interest in the clash of armor, the decisive arms of WW II. Note that sometimes, in general treatments of the war, the whole thing is obscured by Market-Garden, which was going on at the same time essentially. But in military circles it is at least as heavily studied as M-G.
But just because flashy commanders are on the scene, and armor was the decisive arm in the whole war, does not mean what the flashy commanders were doing with their armor was the decisive issue, in any given affair of arms. Operational studies of the period do properly emphasize the importance of the fuel shortage on both sides, and given certain particular opportunities, this was especially important on the US side. Maneuverists can generally be persuaded - eventually - that as tanks burn gas, after all gas must be of some importance in armored warfare. Even this much is sometimes grudging. There was one particular passage after the breakout over the Moselle, where a US corps commander has been routinely abused for not sending the tanks streaking east. The fact that they would have run about 30 miles then sputtered to a halt is often ignored. But this aspect of the affair has usually be treated reasonably well.
There is another issue I have noticed that it seems to me was far more critical in the whole campaign, and is often overlooked, or if mentioned only in the briefest and most cursory way. It is the subject of this post. The basic question is, what events led to the US 4th armored division pulling back 5 miles on 25 September, about a week after the first German armored counterattacks by the 111th and 113th Panzer brigades? While almost every aspect of the actual armor fight around Arracourt has been analysed to death, I believe the true answer to this question has been missed. It has been missed because the reason was not the one expected by those following the flashy and dramatic clashes of the maneuvering rival armor forces.
First, though, some background is essential if this post is to be understood. It is especially important to look at things from the German side, and below the level of the army commander, and outside of the Panzer forces. The amount of analysis I've seen that meets all of those requirements is rather low. The primary point of my entire assertion, however, is that the historical military importance of something, and the amount of analysis of it offered later, are two different things. And often have little to do with one another.
The Germans initially had three formations fighting in the Nancy area, trying to prevent a passage of the Moselle river. The 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier divisions had arrived from Italy, and held the areas north and south of the city respectively. Each was understrength, but these were veteran divisions. Many of the men had fought at Cassino; they were a tough bunch. In the city itself a newly organized 559th Volksgrenadier division held the center. In addition to its usual 2 regiments, where the manpower was not of the best quality, it had an ad-hoc third composed of recently switched Luftwaffe personel - in fine shape but green.
Later on, the German counterattack added to the above the 111th and 113th Panzer brigades, entirely new and green formations, but well equipped with new tanks, and the shell of the 11th Panzer division, a veteran but burnt-out unit with no tanks left to speak of, but some artillery weight left, supply trains and staffs, etc. Estimating formation strength, the above probably amount to one infantry and one panzer grenadier division initially, then about the strength of one panzer division later for the counterattack.
On the US side, the main units were the 4th Armored division, which made the actual breakthrough, and two infantry divisions, the 80th on the left or north, the 35th on the right or south. Each was responsible for making crossings of the river itself to give the armor room to run. Each had trouble with the Panzergrenadier divisions, and was repulsed once but tried again. When they did get across, the bridgeheads were often constricted by counterattack and harassed by artillery.
But eventually, on 13 September, CCA 4th Armored (Abrams unit) got across in the 80th division sector - opposite 3rd Panzergrenadier - defeated a battalion-strength combined arms counterattack in a rapid, head-on meeting engagement, and broke through into the German rear. CCB was at that point across the Moselle in the south in the 35th division sector, but had been stopped at the last of several canals running parallel to the Moselle on that side of the city. CCA then cut across the rear of the Germans in the city - the 559th VG division - and recon elements of CCA reached CCB's position on the canal. So far, textbook breakthrough stuff.
Some items are often overlooked in the accolades such an affair brings. When CCA went east of Nancy, it did not keep its rear communications in the 80th division sector open. The whole combat command was riding warm-place for leather into the German rear, and then trying to link up with CCB. The 559th VG rapidly pulled out of the city - there was no nonsense about holding at all costs. It retreated north and northeast, across the line CCA had penetrated along, at right angles to that advance. Small parties were captured by armored infantry elements of CCA stationed at road junctions, and light tanks and armored cars tried to patrol the flanks of the penetration. But there is no question that the bulk of 559 VG withdrew in good order, intact, straight across the line CCA had penetrated.
The breakthrough succeeded in levering the infantry out of the city, without requiring a frontal house-to-house slugfest. All good, all gain. But 559 VG got clean away, and its subsequent role over the next two weeks will form much of the story of this post. As the 559 VG pulled out, the 35th US infantry division took the city from the south and west, clearing it on 15 September. The 559 VG linked with the 3rd Panzergrenadier on its north or right flank, and refused its left. It occupied high ground just east of the Moselle, and anchored its refused left in villages north of Arracourt. As CCB reunited with CCA and the whole 4th Armored faced east, the 559 VG was thus along the left or northern flank of its penetration. Meanwhile on the south flank, so far there were only remaining forces of the 15th Panzergrenadier division, doing little more than screening the portion of 4th Armored's right or southern flank that was closest to the Moselle. East, for the moment there was nothing whatever.
It is at this point that maneuverist historians, with an eye on the gap in the German side of the operations map but without many questions about gasoline supplies, suggest that 4th Armored should have raced due east into open space, with only enough gas to run 30 miles or so. Such recommendations have little to do with military realities. They are more an act of maneuverist piety than serious proposals, which serve merely to smear as stick in the muds whoever points out the ridiculous folly of such an attempt.
On later occasions when some rather famous Kampgruppen did such things, the roads behind them were predictably cut and in a matter of days they predictably ran out of gas, leading to total loss of the vehicles and only remnants getting back out on foot. But such lessons are never mentioned by maneuverists. The bypassed are supposed to surrender in shock, or some infantry something is supposed to occur and make all that stuff go away. Half the point of this post is that the 559th VG did not go away.
What the corps commander actually ordered, to the brickbats of the maneuverists, was for CCB to shift to the north flank and try to press back the 559th, while CCA sent its recon elements a ways east and held all other points of the compass within range of its self-propelled guns with armor and armored infantry task forces, in roughly company strength. Then they waited for gas, and for the infantry to come up and shorten their lines.
While they were about it, the Germans counterattacked along the southern and eastern sides of the breakthrough salient, with the fresh formations, 111th and 113th Panzer brigades. The counterattack had been planned some time ago, but the forces for it were still assembling when 4th Armored got across the river. The attack was effectively triggered prematurely, and went in piecemeal over almost a week. The most concentrated attempt was the first on September 19th, against the southern face of CCA. This involved 50 tanks, a high portion of them Panthers, which struck a portion of the line initially held by a single tank company. This attack was launched in morning fog to neutralize American tac air. The Germans found, however, that thick fog also neutralized the advantages of the Panther in range and front armor, and the green crews of the brigades proved unequal to the tankers and TD crews they faced. Some penetrated to the location of CCA headquarters, but the intruders were all destroyed in the fog. The Germans then faced local armored counterattacks of their counterattack, and a see-saw melee of armor followed over the next several days. Which usually gets all of the attention.
What gets less attention is that CCB, off on the north flank, attempted to drive 559 VG back to widen the salient, and failed. It borrowed an infantry battalion from one of the infantry divisions, and failed again. At this time, the 35 and 80 on right and left were facing what remained of the 15th and 3rd Panzergrenadier divisions. They had also lent out some battalions to the armor, and had incurred losses in the earlier crossing attempts. The engineers, a source of additional infantry manpower in a pinch on other occasions, were fully engaged in building pontoon bridges over the Moselle or repairing facilities captured in Nancy, and the like. CCB itself had fought over several successive canals and minor streams after getting over the Moselle, against 15th Panzergrenadier.
If you just look at the infantry forces available, it is likely that CCB only had about 4 companies worth of infantry left standing by the 3rd week in September, counting attachments from the infantry divisions. The low infantry strength of the US armored division model is notorious, and throughout the Lorraine campaign it led to cross attachments of additional infantry battalions to make up the deficiency. The problem with little infantry in the force mix is sustaining battle causalties for any period of time, since those fall disproportionately on the infantry battalions, and on the rifle strength of those in particular.
Everyone gets bothered about comparing one steel beastie to another in purely technical terms, then focuses on the clash of armor, which in this case was transpiring in on the south face of the salient. But this organizational issue gets decidely less coverage. And its consequences, I maintain, were in the process of playing themselves out on the -north- face of the salient. Where the 559 VG, having lost perhaps a battalion's worth of effectives in its retreat and with a somewhat longer frontage, could probably dispose 4 at-strength infantry battalions opposite about 4 infantry companies of CCB.
Now, fog neutralizes airplanes and it makes range and front armor plates less important, but those are not its only tactical effects. Schrecks and fausts become rather more deadly weapons against light armor and even Shermans, when the visibility is 100 yards than when it is unlimited. VG pattern automatic-weapon infantry also becomes more effective as the visibility falls. A dozen tanks and a score of halftracks may help one infantry company hold against 3 times its numbers if the MGs can light up anything that moves at 500 yards. When the visibility is 100 yards, they are instead relying on that outnumbered infantry to protect -them-. Fog also tends to neutralize an advantage in artillery, simply because targets cannot be seen until they are so close a barrage will hit both sides. So much is theory.
Historical records states that on the 24th of September the character of the Arracourt battle was changed materially, when the 559th VG stopped defending, and instead attacked CCB from the north, from three directions (probably a battalion each). By this time the attacks of the Panzer brigades from east and south had failed repeatedly for 5 days (CCA lost 32 tanks or TDs in that period), with heavy losses in tanks. It says further that CCB was almost overwhelmed by 559 VG's attack, and was only 'saved' by late afternoon massive tac air support (after fog had burned off). The following day it was raining. The division commander ordered 4th Armored to fall back 5 miles to a shorter and more defensible line. And the day after that, the 35th infantry division relieved CCB opposite the 559 VG.
So, on its face, what really happened that nobody talks about, is the green 559th VG clobbered a battle-worn CCB that was understrength in infantry, and sent the whole 4th Armored, which withstood everything 111th and 113th Panzer brigades could throw at them successfully, back 5 miles, asking for help. Everyone focuses on the armor clash. And certainly that pressure prevented CCA from aiding CCB. But it was the VG that landed the punch, and did so because it was directed at the real weakness of US armored division circa 1944. Which had nothing to do with zippos and glacis plates, and everything to do with not enough infantry to sustain high intensity combat.
Nor is that the end of the story. On the 25th as the 4th Armored pulled back, the Panzer brigades ceased their attacks. But the 559 VG did not. Over the next 5 days, it mauled the 35 infantry division in and around the Gremecey forest. SMGs in the woods, and over ground still studded with leftover WW I fortifications. After 3 days of this, the 35th was getting beat badly enough that the corps commander ordered them to withdraw too - but Patton countermanded the order. The 6th Armored division came up, and launched flanking attacks around the forest, which again forced the 559 VG to withdraw.
The 559th VG was not a crack formation. 1/3rd of its infantry were Luftwaffe ground personnel recently inducted into the infantry. The others were not the highest quality manpower, meaning they had portions of youngsters, middle aged men, some with minor health problems. It had no tanks, certainly not scores of Panthers like the 111th and 113th Panzer brigades had. It was cut off inside Nancy, its tactical HQ overrun by CCA's first penetration. About a battalion's worth of men were captured retreating from the city, while making their way toward the new German lines in small groups. In maneuverist cartoon versions of military theory, they were supposed to be beaten because somebody drove around them.
They walked back, set up new defenses, held off repeated armored attacks, bled the attackers dry of infantry because they didn't have enough to start with. Then at le moment juste, they counterattacked, infantry against armor, in poor visibility conditions. They beat 3rd Army's finest tankers and set them back on their heels. Then they took on the relief infantry sent to deal with them, and beat them too. The third division they faced, fresh and fully armored, forced them to retreat again. The 111th and 113th Panzer brigades were stopped cold by one combat command, about 3 battalions. The 559 VG wasn't stopped until three -divisions- were thrown at it in sequence.
Glamour and the realities of military performance, are two different things. And the unglamorous truth, in my opinion, is that the retirement of the 4th Armored in late September was brought about by the main operational weakness of the US armored division at that time. Which was not thin front armor on the medium tanks, nor seperate open-topped vehicles carrying the best anti-tank guns, nor a commitment to exploitation rather than tank dueling, nor an insufficient commitment to maneuverist gospel. The armored divisions just didn't have enough infantry.
I hope this is interesting.
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I can give a little insight on unit upgrades through action, based on my 6-battle mini series with 10 players, set in Normandy. They started green, and for some commanders stayed green throughout. Others had reached regular status for fair portions of their force by the end of the series.
The way I tracked it was pretty simply. I counted total forces defeated and multipled that by the victory total over 100. That gave a measure of combat success. For each squad worth of replacements taken, I deducted the point cost of a squad from this success total, as "dilution" by new greens. Then partial upgrades were awarded to surviving units on the basis of a "cost" to upgrade from green to regular of 3 times the point cost of the unit. If I had used conscripts, I would have allowed them to increase to "green" for 1 times cost - and I planned on veterans "costing" 10 times cost. I did not envision increases beyond veteran, except perhaps for snipers.
What I found with the above system was that players needed to win fights economically to increase skill levels at all. Winning ugly left the dilution cost eating up almost all the points awarded, with at best only very slow progess towards regular status, for one platoon. But players that totally defeated enemy forces roughly their own size, for little loss, rapidly progressed from green to regular - first for a portion of their force, later for more, etc.
If victory score did not reach the level needed to cover replacements, then the force size would shrink. In addition, because of the natural of my campaign, replacements were not available after each battle, but often waited until some later trigger event - like finishing the fights at one location.
I also had reinforcements, add on units rather than upgrades to or replacements for the core force. I allowed those to be earned purely from victory level times enemy force sized faced, without any adjustment for losses. This meant that a successful commander, in the sense just of winning the battles, would continue to receive new reinforcements to further his mission. But if his wins were expensive, his force stayed pegged at "green" quality. Economy in losses without mission success would tend to maintain force quality but not earn reinforcements. Disaster would shrink the force and lower quality.
Since I was running the system as I was making it up, I didn't need to follow too-rigid rules in any of the above. But the initial system I hit on for earning upgrades worked well, and I encountered no reason to revise it.
As an example, a player takes on a 500 point enemy defense and gets an 80-20 score at the end. He thus earns 400 points - 80/100 times 500. But he lost a green platoon worth of causalties, which subtracts ~100, its point cost. The remaining 300 are 3 times 100, enough to upgrade one surviving green platoon to regular status.
His force will be down the platoon lost until replacements can be taken. One platoon becomes regular for the next fight. When he can take replacements, he will replace the lost platoon as greens, and keep the one regular platoon.
Now, imagine that instead he still won the same fight, but with only a 60-40 score, and with a loss of 2 platoons. Then he earns 60/100 times 500 = 300 points, but spends 200 for replacements. He only has 100 left, which would only upgrade one squad to regular. It will take three such performances to move just one platoon to regular status. Also, of course, until he can take replacements he is short 2 platoons, which may lead to defeat in the next fight.
For applying the points to survivors to upgrade them, I followed a simple rule. Oldest surviving hands upgrade first to a given level, then next. Nobody bumps to the one higher up (veteran e.g.) until the rest has earn its way up to regular.
I made an exception for snipers, however. They counted as one skill level below their rating for increases in skill, so they would generally tend to be 1 skill level above the rest of their force. This also made it easy for any green sniper that the owner didn't get killed to make it to regular and thus do something.
Notice also that earning vet status is pretty tough with the above system. Losses taken in battle are a constant drag. Occasional lost battles drop the points built up so far. New forces entering the force are always green, and have to be "earned up" to regular, for progress toward veteran status for older elements to resume.
An all-regular force that won a battle against a force of equal size with a perfect 100-0 score, without any losses, would upgrade just 10% of the force to veteran. It would take 10 such perfect games in a row to make a uniform veteran force - one reason I discounted the possibility of skills above veteran by combat experience gained in a few battles, alone.
It seemed to work. In any event, it is not rocket science to work out a decent system.
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Look for After Action Reports. The pages may be different in different versions of the manual I suppose. There is not a heck of a lot of info, but each source of victory points is mentioned, right before the ratio of them needed for a given victory level. In my version anyway.
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I have a wild stab of a guess about a possible cause for this bug, based merely on the reports about it.
This is not based on testing and I haven't seen it myself, so take it with salt. It is meant as a suggestion to the BTS people for something to look at. It is based more on bug-hunting instincts past, than any direct knowledge here.
Some report prisoners associated with the bug, some prisoners on both sides. MM's workaround that seems to be working, relies on both players having given all orders before hitting "go". The bug doesn't seem to always happen - if it did it would have been found a while ago. Putting them together I get the following guess.
Prisoners change the ownership assignment of units. Meaning -which- player gives them orders. Suppose one part of the code "thinks" unit assignments are -fixed-, while most of it properly accounts for unit assignments varying. I imagine the units, internally, are like data structures, and are probably accessed by pointers. Change the scheme of assignment in one part of the code, when a prisoner is taken. A pointer elsewhere is trying to change a data item on a unit, and it points outside of the new range of the data array for that side's units after the reassignment. A stray pointer can point at anything. It flips something where it wasn't supposed to, and down she goes.
Why the fix? Because the assignment of units is probably easy enough and correct when all units are "accounted for", is a guess. Maybe there is a bit of code assuring the assignments of units are right, that does not get called yet if both sets of orders aren't in?
Just a place to look. The guys that programmed it may be able to tell right away if it is at all sensible, or possible.
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The short answer is see page 101 of the manual.
The long answer is that your 3 extra lost tanks certainly made the difference. A small objective is worth 100 points, about the same as 1 infantry platoon or 1 plain vanilla tank. The 10 extra causalties might have been worth ~50 points for you, perhaps less, depending on who they were on each side.
So, you got 1 dead tank worth of objective, and half a dead tank worth of additional infantry kills, perhaps a bit less. Or even only 1 tank worth if it was an improved model.
Large flags are worth losing a tank or an infantry platoon for - 2 really. Small ones aren't, or at best you break even doing that. Small ones are good if you can take them cheaply - or more common, if you can give as good as you get and still get the flag into the bargain.
If you think the cost of the tanks is high, look at it this way. On a front of up to 300 map widths, advancing 300 map lengths, if you lose 1 tank per map, then the combined Western Allies run out of AFVs about the Rhine river. All types, everything made in the whole war.
Now, of course advances are often made more narrowly, and not all fights are as intense as CM tactical battles. On the other hand, sometimes the enemy comes your way, and often the losses on one map's area are much higher. It just illustrates that one can't trade tanks for distance over and over, and expect to make it the whole way.
Defeating the enemy and preserving your force is the basic mission most of the time. When it isn't, there will be a far higher concentration of flags on the map than normal, and large ones. There is one exception that is a little complicated, which I will cover last. This is the long answer after all.
The exception is exit victory conditions. Conceptually, when there are exit victory conditions the fight on your map matters for how it will effect more decisive events elsewhere, rather than for anything on the map itself. And exit victory conditions are not a "bonus" to the ordinary ones. A player with forces to exit will lose decisively if he does not manage to do so. The "should" in "should exit for points" is not a sugggestion.
The way exit VCs work is an exiting player earns several times the value of the piece for exiting it, while the opponent earns if it does not exit. Exiting on the one hand, and dying on the other (including failure to exit of course), balance each other. If half the exiter's force exits alive, and the other half stays and dies, then those units will have no net effect. Victory tends to turn on the -portion- of the exiters, that do exit. With "alive but still on the map" as an intermediate condition.
Scenario designers should keep the above in mind when trying to impliment and play-balance exit VCs. Only require exit of the whole force if you expect competent play by the attacker to get the majority of them through and alive.
Scenario designers can "tune" the level of importance of the exit VCs, by not requiring exit of everything. E.g. require only exit of tanks, which often find it easier to push through. Or one task force. This also allows the exiter to leave something on the map to hold open his route, and to retain objectives on the map.
That is the long answer. I hope some of it helps.
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Looking spiffy. Should be great.
One suggestion on content, though. A number of the scenarios have titles "The XYZ" or The PDQ", and right now you've got all of those listed under "T", for "The". Um, 40 of them. I think it might be better to spread those out, by listing them under the first letter of the next word after "The". I for one would looked for a scenario like "The Mad Minute" under "M", or "The Clearing" under "C". You could put a "XYZ, The" at the end to avoid confusion about the scenario meant, if you like.
Obviously, your call - it is just a suggestion.
Also for others on this thread, anyone know where I ought to submit a new scenario these days, so that people see it? Here obviously, once that feature is up. Where else? I've got a new one called "Race Across France" ready, looking for playtesters.
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LOL.
That is even funnier than when the effect is involuntary...
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Here is one real world military lesson, that also applies in CM though somewhat less so. When you need cover, the only kind of cover worth a darn is the kind that means he can't see you at all.
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The first "turn" of the game is the set up phase, not yet the movement phase. There is an outlined colored-border box on the map. You can pick up your units and reposition them anywhere inside that box - by clicking on them to select, then selecting a new location and hitting "P". This happens before the game begins. You can also rotate the units, hide them, and split squads.
Once you have positioned everyone, the first time you hit "go" you will simply transition to the first game turn. You can then give your first orders. The first turn itself is not processes until the -2nd- time you hit go. Attackers get to reposition at set-up too, but they get only a long, thin set-up box along their edge, while defenders can get 1/3 (probes) to 1/2 (attacks) of the map.
Between the set-up phase and the first turn, every defending gun or infantry unit not on pavement or inside a house, will dig a foxhole at its current location. They show up the moment you hit "go" the first time. A neat trick here is, if you split squads before the first turn, then at the begining have the two squad-halves move back to within around 10 yards of each other, the squads will quickly recombined - but you will have an extra set of foxholes for a fall-back position. If you integrate some positions in buildings, where you don't need foxholes, you can get more than 2 lines of defense some places too - or extra foxholes for HQs and teams, etc.
I hope this helps. Also see page 31 of the manual, explaining all the details of the set-up phase.
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The point about Fireflies in Cromwell platoons is new to me, and well taken. I thought the recon-oriented armor formations did not have them. Was it only the 7th AD, or was it a general practice to mix Firefly Shermans with Cromwell?
If so, then the Cromwell table might have a "Sherman Firefly" entry for a die-roll of "10", and leave the Comet roll just a "9".
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First, every battalion did not have 6 20mm FLAK. Nothing remotely like it. Some infantry divisions had no FLAK assets at all, beyond their MGs anyway. When a division did have an AA battalion, the common load-out was 12 20mm FLAK and 2 20mm Quad FLAK - or 9 37mm FLAK - in a light AA company, and 12 88mm FLAK in a heavy one. Some divisions had only 1 light company in their divisional anti-tank battalion - common for infantry divisions.
Panzer divisions generally had a FLAK battalion with 2 companies of 88s and 1 of the light guns. The two Panzer battalions of the Panzer regiment each had 4 FLAK panzer at well. 20mm AA were pushed down to the regimental weapons companies, or the heavy weapons companies of battalions, sometimes. Often they were mounted on halftracks for direct fire (like the SPW-250 w/ 20mm in CM).
The amount you'd expect in a low-level front line fight would be 2 or 4. 6 would be rare. 2 guns were a "section", and were quite commonly used at the front. 4 were a battery, for most of the war anyway. In the infantry - not Panzergrenadiers - you'd also expect 2 75mm infantry guns in a company position, and up to 6 in a battalion position - or a 75mm FO. You might see 2-4 50mm or 75mm PAK, but not both types. Heavier PAK or FLAK (88) was rare compared to the 75mm, but 2 or 4 are possible. Then a company usually had 2 81mm mortars as well.
So, an infantry position could build up quite a large number of light guns, but not by having dozens of one item. Instead, they'd have 4 HMG, 2 81mm, 2 75mm, 2 20mm FLAK, 3 75mm PAK, say. Giving excellent anti-infantry firepower at long range - the main purpose of all these items pushed forward - and decent light AT ability as a by product. With some heavy AT ability, and some AA ability, plus some ability to lob shells at high angles over terrain, etc. The mix was flexible. Sometimes one of those "2s" would be "4", while another type was missing.
On the light armor problem, I would not discount fausts and schrecks so easily. Faust 30s aren't going to help much. But with the others, you can materially improve the chances of getting hits, even against fast vehicles, by using ambush markers. The fausts can use an ambush marker set by their platoon HQ. It helps if they can see the vehicle coming, and then fire later.
Notice also that without ambush markers, both will tend to fire at long ranges where the hit chance is low. The ambush markers will induce them to hold their fire until the range is good, and the hit chance high. I find 80 meters or less works best for schreck ambushes, and for fausts you want 30 or 40 meter range for faust 60 and 100 respectively. It also helps if the line of fire is free of intervening trees, which degrade the hit chance significantly even with a blue LOS line. From behind a wall is the best, clearest shot. You are invisible while hidden and the shot is clean once the ambush marker is hit. From the very edge of woods, or inside buildings, are decent - though the former is fairly vunerable to reply fire and the second pins the shooter.
A good fire plan should cover some areas with overlapping half-ranges of fausts or schrecks, for some passages through terrain vehicles can't get through - and cover all others with the LOS of a couple of light guns. Preferably not including your heavy PAK, so you can keep those hidden to shoot tanks with. Set up the ambush markers and have everyone facing his assigned spot, so time is not lost on rotation. If nobody comes one way, reassign new ambush markers to cover other zones - the new one will take effect and the old will disappear quickly.
I hope this helps.
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Tanks die. One Firefly per platoon was indeed TOE. But if a Firefly in 2nd platoon bites it, another one does not magically appear when a lamp is rubbed to keep the force mix at TOE. And if 3 vanilla tanks bite it, then the survivors will have more then their share of Fireflies. Dice are in my opinion actually more realistic than a one-size historical TOE pattern.
As for one Challenger per platoon of Cromwells, there weren't enough of them built to provide that, even if they were immortal, which they weren't. My settings do allow a "most likely" upgunned AFV in a late war Cromwell platoon - but only once the Comets have arrived. Before then, it was only Challengers, and there just weren't enough of those to go 'round.
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It is a good idea. Other things to be aware of for such "puzzle-lesson" scenarios are -
1. Keep them small. Brigade command through combat mission is not a tactical puzzle. Stay under 1500 points for the attacking side. One company and attachments or less.
2. Keep them short. People will be very interested in challenges they can play through in an hour or three, less so in major time commitments. 30 turns is an absolute ceiling, and 15 turns to 25 turns will generally work better. It is more time than you think. A side effect is choosing the wrong way to solve a puzzle will have consequences in that period.
3. Keep them simple. The VCs should turn on accomplishing one or two things. Get to here, exit those, stop the enemy from either, destroy whats in front of you, etc.
4. Despite all the above, flavor them, and not vanilla. There should be some one thing about the situation that is unusual. An enemy force type, a tactical terrain feature, what one has to work with, the nature of the mission. Not "blah".
5. Don't write a script. Let the players command their forces and find their own way of accomplishing the mission. Meaning, avoid a situation in which there is only -one- right answer, or where the outcome turns on a "door number two" 3-card monty choice (of direction, point of attack, etc).
I hope this helps, and I encourage the effort. More such scenarios would be great.
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Um, no. Blown down trees are artificially produced by engineers with explosives when they want to block roads. Also, driving on the moon, one tends to slide around the various gaping chasms of craters. And the earth about 10 feet down has a tendency to be made of clay-like mud.
Enough artillery fire impacting an area does not make it into an asphalt level parking lot. It makes it into a moon-scape of mud, through which practically nothing can move. With men walking on duckboard planking as they lay it down, typically making the fastest going.
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One other nit or refinement. For the US TD types, add +1 to the dice for fights set in 1945. That will make the M-10 and M-36 about equally common, with the M-18s the middle, common type in 1945.
Since another fellow asked about chances in those tables, I will explain a few. For the Brits, they will have the Sherman mix half the time, and the Cromwell Brit-built types a quarter of the time. Around one eighth of the time the tank destroyers, with the remainder split between Churchills on the high end and SPA on the low end.
The Firefly chance is a bit over one out of four, which means the chance of getting at least one with four tanks bought is around 3/4. The chance of Cromwells getting a Challenger early on is considerably less, more like 1/4 for a typical platoon. Late, with Comets available too, the chance of an upgunned tank in the platoon is the same as for Fireflies.
The Americans will get Shermans nearly two thirds of the time, and TDs about a quarter of the time. One chance in twelve of only light stuff. The chance of an upgunned Sherman for each one bought is one in four, while the chance of an uparmored one is one in six. After they are out, of course. So a typical platoon can easily wind up with one armored "point" tank" - but probably W+ not Jumbo - and one or two upgunned "shooter" tanks. Half of the tanks bought will be vanilla 75mm, on average. The remaining one in twelve is a 105mm.
Here are some sample, random 5-tank Sherman platoons (US), that I just rolled using the table -
Jumbo, 2xW+ armor, 2xplain 75mm - very good armor but only 75mm guns in this one. Great for dealing with PAK or pillboxes.
76mm, 3xplain 75mm, 105mm - all thin armor, two different speciality guns. Flexible, but not very robust.
76mm, 4xplain 75mm - Not great, but at least it has one AT shooter tank.
W+ armor, 2x76mm, 2xplain 75mm - a nice mix for anti-tank fighting, still flexible. An uparmored point tank, and two pairs of AT shooter and "wingman".
W+ armor, 1x76mm, 3xplain 75mm - A point tank and a single AT shooter. Also the same as the average for the 5 sets rolled, incidentally.
Just to give an idea of the sort of thing you get from using the system...
Steve (BTS): ROF of ISU-152
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
Good point about the KV-2, which I overlooked. I bet that was slower than other mounts, in action, for other reasons. E.g. the turret was super slow, and so heavy that it couldn't be tranversed if on a modest slope.
I agree also with the point about hashing things out. The difference between 2 and 4 might well be important, so why not split the difference and make it 3 rpm? LOL. I think that is a likely "regular" figure anyway. Greens might be somewhat slower.