JasonC

First on John's numbers - if you examine the chart I think you will find the "25 pdr equivalents" measure is tracking not weight, but the square root of the ratio of filler to that in the 25 pdr shell. Thus the US 75 with essentially the same filler weight is rated as 25 pdr equivalent. Shells with 1.1 lbs of filler get 1.1/1.75 ^ .5 = .79 x 25 = ~20 lbs rating. It tracks for all of the rest, pretty closely, until you get to the largest aircraft bombs, where it remains within a factor of 2.

CM blast values, on the other hand, do not reflect filler weight differences. Any correction for those differences is second order and minor; the basic determinant of CM blast is simply shell weight. Thus 7 lb 81mm mortar rounds have half the blast of 75mm gun HE, when the filler weight is essentially the same for the two rounds. In CMBO, the 4.5 inch gun, which had very low HE filler weight to shell weight, and in fact had no more filler than a 105, still has much higher blast than a 105, tracking its higher shell weight.

This simplification tends to favor the low filler and low quality filler shells, and the heavier tube artillery shells, while penalizing the high filler and high quality filler shells, and mortar bombs. Mortar bombs have more HE to weight because their low velocity allows much thinner casings (the same is true of aircraft bombs).

US shells tended to have higher HE loads to weight, particular the US 75, 105, and 155. And US shell, to a lesser extend also UK, had higher quality filler - much more likely to be pure TNT when most German filler by mid to late war was 60/40 amatol (due to nitrate shortages in Germany). The quite common Russian 120mm mortar is also quite strong looked at in pure HE filler terms.

As for the relative importance of splinters to blast, testing vs. exposed targets always shows splinters as the essential element. But WW I experience was that shrapnel rounds (with less HE filler, and balls carried inside the round like shotgun pellets) was singularly ineffective against men with any cover.

This was unexpected. On examination two things were found. One was that the size a splinter needed to be was much smaller than expected. Even quite small ones were lethal or could cause disabling wounds, if moving fast enough. There was little point in bringing along sizable "bullets" when tiny fragments of the casing served adequately as secondary projectile. More HE drove fragments at higher velocities and was more than sufficient compensation for no pre-made shrapnel ball, against men in the open.

The other finding was that blast is what mattered against men in cover. Men actually in the open are so vulnerable to arty fire that increased efficiency against them is quite secondary to increased overall lethality. Those truly in the open get whacked regardless. But cover has enourmous effects on arty effectiveness. Even lying prone reduces lethality not by a few tens of percent, but by a full factor of 10.

The men it is hard to hurt are those protected by earth from the direct path of fragments. Earth stops fragments very effectively. But it transmits blast more effectively than air does. The universal experience of WW I was that arty effectiveness depended on HE delivered, and the obvious reason is that the fragment component of the threat is typically "saturated", while continued additional increments of effect remain available via increased blast.

This fits with the notion of calculating 25 pdr equivalents by square root of HE filler weight, as shown in the British planning table. (It was, incidentally, a planning table based on such analysis, not an independent measurement of actual results seen).

The reason for the square root is simply to account for more numerous smaller shells having a smaller "closest distance" than the same weight in fewer, larger shells. That is, the impact of any one shell is assumed to track its HE filler weight. But 4 x 1.7 lb filler will also put the nearest shell half the distance to be expected from 1 x 6.8 filler.

It is possible this estimate, which the Brits used for planning, is overly kind to many-small vs. few-large barrages. Because practical experience against dug in troops was that the heavier the caliber used, the greater the expected effect. The better coverage of many-small might be as useful as the Brit analysis thought against men in the open, I suppose.

Note also that the Brits were using quite a small round for their standard div arty, in HE filler terms, compared to other powers. The Russian 76 and the Brit 25 pdr are both quite limited in HE load, compared to a German 105 even corrected for its 60/40 amatol, let alone compared to a US 105 (14% HE by weight) with 100% TNT.

Reiter - don't use slow.  You aren't trying to spot him *while* you are moving, you are trying to get the movement itself completely over and done with as soon as possible.  All the real action happens after you halt.
 
On covered arcs, yes they have to be wide enough.  The enemy will move, and if he is outside of the arc when you halt, you will ignore him until he drills you.  Still can't do without them, however.  Armored arc is needed to avoid distraction by nearer infantry targets before you have LOS to the enemy tank.  They also let you "train" the turret to the desired bearing without restricting your tank to driving straight in that direction - which would set up no side angle (worse protection) and generally require more fiddly tank rotation (and thus delay) before the movement.  You want the movement itself to be in a completely straight line that makes sense on your local terrain, to be clean and fast and involve no slow rotation movements.  The desired effect is just - he physically can't see anything, he physically can't see anything, then you are clear into LOS moving briskly and already halting, you have stopped a split second later, unbuttoned, and turret trained directly at him.  That still won't *ensure* you get first shot.  But especially if he is pointed elsewhere, has any other targets to look at, or is buttoned - it maximizes your chances.

Rokko - that is too small an action to form an opinion from, in my estimation.  
 
On the wooden bunker (which may be a related matter since you say you didn't notice where the sniper got his 6), a few logs will not stop a 7.62x54 round (or a Mauser 7.92, or a 30-06 etc - any full caliber rifle round).  But real log bunkers are not a pile of wood, and the game underrates them if it treats them that way, which it sounds like is happening.
 
In a real military log bunker, the logs are building material that is used to contain the actual protective walls.  Which are not wood, but sandbags or rammed earth.  The process is that a trench like hole is first dug to put the men below ground level with a planned firing slit at or not far above ground level (depending mostly on lines of sight, elevation of the terrain and such - they need to be able to see).  The exterior of the hole is lined with two layers of logs, one forming an outer wall (which below ground serves to hold back the earth sides to e.g. prevent collapse from artillery fire nearby), and the second, an inner wall, with typically a 2 foot gap between them (sometimes only 18 inches if the logs themselves are stout enough etc).  That gap is then filled in with rammed earth or sandbags, all the way around the bunker.  A ceiling of logs is next constructed, and then topped off with another 2 feet of earth (typically), which serve as camo as well as protection from overhead hits.
 
The armies of all the major combatants knew what was required to protect such a shelter from a direct hit by a 105mm HE shell, and that was the standard typically applied.  Heavier artillery 150mm and up could KO with a direct hit but only with a direct hit, and the most common weapons - small arms, HMG fire, light and medium mortars, light and medium field artillery - it was meant to be and generally was proof against.  Heavy armor piercing fire could penetrate such a bunker, but normally with little in the way of "behind wall effect".
 
It is not remotely a pile of logs, which would not serve as cover against anything but pistols, SMGs, and light splinters from shell misses...

Sorry Rokko, not nearly enough information in that comment.  Are your platoons getting 6-8 kills and the sniper 2 of them?  Are your platoons getting 30 kills and the sniper 10 of them?
What losses are they taking themselves?  What were their engagement ranges?  What enemies did they face?
 
I find that squad infantry can vary from the lead platoon in the heaviest action inflicting 30 casualties, to every other platoon on the field, only lightly engaged, getting only about 5.
But range makes all the difference, for that result.  Ordinary infantry inflicts its heaviest losses at under 100 yards.  If a platoon never gets that close, if will be in single digits at the end of the engagement.
 
Snipers are much longer range weapons.  They are effective to 400 yards and quite effective inside about 250.  They don't want 100 yard engagement ranges - it gets them spotted and killed.
 
I would consider it perfectly normal for my scoped rifles and my HMG teams to account for the majority of the casualties I inflict with infantry, if the enemy stayed at 250 yards or farther throughout the engagement.  Not even 1/4, more like 3/4 (but counting the MGs).  The total would also be low for the whole platoon.
 
If on the other hand a platoon wades in to 100 yards then assaults through an occupied enemy infantry position, after suppressing them enough to close to point blank, then I expect that platoon to wrack up 20 plus kills and maybe twice that.  A lot of them fleeing or cowering enemies already defeated in the knife balance firefight portion, to be sure.

Reiter - don't use slow.  You aren't trying to spot him *while* you are moving, you are trying to get the movement itself completely over and done with as soon as possible.  All the real action happens after you halt.
 
On covered arcs, yes they have to be wide enough.  The enemy will move, and if he is outside of the arc when you halt, you will ignore him until he drills you.  Still can't do without them, however.  Armored arc is needed to avoid distraction by nearer infantry targets before you have LOS to the enemy tank.  They also let you "train" the turret to the desired bearing without restricting your tank to driving straight in that direction - which would set up no side angle (worse protection) and generally require more fiddly tank rotation (and thus delay) before the movement.  You want the movement itself to be in a completely straight line that makes sense on your local terrain, to be clean and fast and involve no slow rotation movements.  The desired effect is just - he physically can't see anything, he physically can't see anything, then you are clear into LOS moving briskly and already halting, you have stopped a split second later, unbuttoned, and turret trained directly at him.  That still won't *ensure* you get first shot.  But especially if he is pointed elsewhere, has any other targets to look at, or is buttoned - it maximizes your chances.

No, fights against the AI aren't very representative. And losses aren't taken by only one side. But that aside, with SPWs and 2 MG42s per squad, what portion of those 200 infantry caused enemy losses do you honestly think were inflicted by the plain riflemen with their K98s? Because the infantry part of that force sports well over 100 full machineguns, between the dismounts of 4 companies (72 LMGs at 2 per squad, plus up to 16 HMGs at 4 per company) - each of which averaged less than 2 kills. There are something like 290 K98s, plus around 50 MP40s.

We aren't discussing the effectiveness of bullets, but of ordinary riflemen. Most of the losses from bullets - themselves only half in your example and lower than that whole war, due to artillery causing more than their share outside CM like settings - are coming from the full MGs. When the infantry is Russian instead of MG42s, the share of full MG hits may be lower - but the share of PPsH hits will be higher. Again, not ordinary riflemen. In your example, I would guess 2/3rds to 3/4ths came from the MGs and the MPs - and that leaves only a third to a quarter - of the infantry 45% or so - for the rifles. Meaning 40 or 50, being generous - with 290 trying. Meaning in your AI buthchering wipe out win, your riflemen might have gotten one sixth or one seventh of one hit, each.

And the riflemen you were wiping out, I'll wager, got practically nothing. Because you run up kill totals that high in one fight with a firce that size only in lopsided victories. But both sides can't be above average in that fashion. So those one sixth to one seventh successes must be averaged in with all those ordinary riflemen clay pidgeons you are tallying. Giving an average performance of a mere rifleman in your battle right around one hit for every 13 present - with a 50% chance of getting shot trying (lol). Expected lifetime hits per engaged rifleman, from the time the balloon goes up to the time a shell or bullet chain saw cuts him in half, 1 over 7.

Riflemen are mostly just targets. The math is entirely unforgiving. You don't get to walk onto a battlefield full of vastly superior weapons and pull your own weight, since one side limps off at least half alive, and it is the superior weapons, not the poor bloody private with his dinky bolt gun, doing the slaughtering.

Snipers are in the superior hunting weapon class in that unforgiving analysis, ordinary riflemen are on the receiving end of all of it. If having a scope and hunting by stealth from cover lets the scoped sharpshooter bag one dude before he snuffs it, it raised his effectiveness 7 fold. Maybe 10, in fact, because the above is still low balling the role of the artillery.

The way the US Army puts it in training, bluntly enough, is that armor does the fighting, artillery does the killing, and infantry does the dying...

Baneman - no, in CMSF, not old CMBB.  It wasn't with a Panther vs an IS-2, it was with a StuG facing a T-34/85.  But it happened and more than once.  I don't trust "hunt".

"the Ju-87G was rather "experimental""

Definitely. They made 5700 Stukas and all of 174 of them were purpose built G-2 models. There were more with 37mm than that, because some Ds were converted (the G-1), but the whole gun force was a twentieth the size of the fleet that dropped bombs.

As for the HS-129s, a tad under 1200 of those were produced, dwarfing the number of 37mm Stukas. They also just dropped bombs half the time. The 30mm they carried had 4 times the ammo load and more than twice the rate of fire.

But this still wasn't the route the Germans actually went with ground attack. The bulk of their ground attack planes over the war as whole were F and G model Fw-190s, with well over 5000 built, some sources say over 6000. Think 4 high performance FBs using bombs and 20mm cannons plus 4 Stukas dropping bombs, for each attack plane using bombs and 1 30mm cannon - and four of those for each modified dive bomber using 2 37mm.

Rudel flew bomb only Ju87s, the earliest Gs, then switched to FW-190 ground attack versions, and reverted to flying the Gs later. His unit was the only one still flying the G model Stukas in late 1944. The bomb carrying ones had moved over to night missions only and daylight ground support was pretty much all Fw-190 by then.

His claims are never specific enough as to time place units numbers etc to allow anything like the breakdown you want. He was also hardly a credible man in any other respect, but that is another matter. (Hitler youth to unrepentent post war Nazi etc).

"what was the most "effective" tank hunter/FB version with regard to armament?"

The F4U Corsair carrying napalm. Didn't have many tanks to go after until Korea, though, and not all that many then. Napalm is easily 10 times as effective as anything else available in the era, as an anti-armor weapon.

At the time, the allied pilots thought their rockets were the most effective anti armor weapons. But OR simply fails to back up their claims. This persisted even when there werer better weapons - in Korea, 80% of pilot kill claims were ascribed by the pilot to rocket or cannon, but 80% of the actual dead tanks had been hit by napalm.

The pilot tends to think he has hit the target with rockets if the rocket blast obscures it, and thinks his cannons have destroyed the target if the fire stream walks across it with visible hits. When neither is true.

A few cannon hits were common enough but generally ineffective, while the rockets and bombs got near misses, but it essentially took a contact hit and a clean one in the case of the rockets, to actually KO. And they were quite rare. Napalm works because the near misses become effective - over 50% of tanks within 25m of the strike point are typically burned out.

"How much of that is implemented in Combat Mission?"

In CM, the strafing is ridiculously over modeled and absurdly effective. The bombs are somewhat overmodeled as large HE. They are marginally more accurate than they should be (compare the number of hits SBDs got on aircraft carrier sized targets with the typical distance from aim point you see in CM - CM is very generous), but the real issue is all very high blast ratings in CM have too extreme an effect in the inner half or so of their blast radius. The rockets are about right in effectiveness, which is to say, not very. They readily bracket a target but typically have to significant effect. They are probably a bit too effective against light armor.

In CM, the greatest effect comes from cannon armed planes that get a high number of passes, especially if they have good chances of penetrating the armor of what they attack.

The single biggest benefitor of the overmodeling is the standard model IL-2s with twin 23mm guns. They can fire twice per pass on up to 6 strafing passes. Those have a very high chance of damaging any vehicle with 30mm or thinner armor. Tigers they won't hurt too much, though they can immobilize with track hits, and 12 shots makes 1-2 of those rather likely.

In CM, it is entirely typical for a single IL-2 strikes to kill or disable 2-3 armored vehicles, in a single sortie. In reality, the Russians fielded something like 40,000 of the things, flew them for 25 missions apiece in midwar and more like 40-50 late, and probably didn't KO a 4000 armored vehicles (probably not a 2000, in fact, unless you count the halftracks and such) using them. So the real KO chance per sortie was a fraction of 1%. Not all of them arrived on target, many went after things other than armor, obviously. That'll get you from one in five thousand to one in a hundred maybe, but not to 2 or 3 each.

JU-87s on the other hand, are somewhat limited by having only 3 passes (still generous, 2 is more likely), very high hit chance per pass (when in reality there are very few rounds being fired, making a clean miss overwhelmingly likely). They typically get one each, damaged or killed. Cost a lot less too. But the IL-2s with twice the passes and 2 shots per pass and bombs and rockets too, are vastly more effective.

As for the cheap FBs, types with multiple passes with cannon armament, and a decent bomb or two, are also effective. They tend to be incapable of hurting real tanks (20mm guns etc), but hurt light armor readily. The bombs hit or miss, and are usually aimed at something other than infantry. But their main effect is usually on infantry nearby. A lot spottier coverage than a fire mission, though. 100 point FBs pay for themselves, when they do, by KOing light armor. If the bomb is effective, that is an upside bonus but not something you can count on.

Incidentally, besides the large bombs having large effective, the bomb loads are also overstated, particularly for the allied AC. They represent maximum loads rather than typical ones. P-47s practically never actually carried 2 such heavy bombs, for example. A single 500 lb bomb was a much more common load. 4000 lbs is more like the bomb load a B-24 carried into Germany.

JK - no subject is full of such sustained romantic mendacity as air to ground tank killing.

The most famous air strike at Kursk is often described as 68 Hs-129s with 30mm guns attacking a brigade or more of Russian tanks, and destroying 50 of them within an hour, turning back the Russian attack by air power alone.

But what actually happened is it is pretty much made up, as to scale of effect anyway. At least the attack actually happened.

There were 68 such planes in the area. Only 53 sorties were flown by them on the day, however. There was a Russian tank brigade attack. It had about 25 T-34s and about 15 T-70s. It was turned back - but at least as much due to running into a panzer regiment on the ground, as the intervention of the planes. There was a large scale air attack by the Hs-129s. But total Russian tank losses in that formation for that day, all causes, were 4 T-34s and 3 T-70s.

Probably the 30mm hail KOed a couple of the T-70s. Maybe it damaged one of the T-34s to the point of abandonment, but though that seems doubtful. The overclaiming is at a minimum 7 to one and probably more like 17-25 to 1. And this was the biggest outlier success on record.

As for Stuka Gs at Kursk, there were all of 8 in the entire theater. There is no sign they flew a single combat mission until August. The only claim anywhere that they did, is the solitary word of Rudel in his own memoire, which claims that he took off in one of them (assigned to a different squadron, his still had Ds) and knocked out 12 tanks. 12 is suspiciously the ammo load. It is not credible in the slightest, in any respect. There is no specificity as to date, place, units, etc. It has all the markings of a typical Baron Munchausen story. The only thing missing is a claim to have returned riding a Russian 152mm howitzer shell.

As for overall air effect, the Germans flew 27000 sorties all types in support of the battle of Kursk. The ground attack varieties flew over 5000 in a shorter period (to July 12). Theirs might have reached 9000 by the end. Call it 7000 and leave an error bar.

Air as a cause of loss typically runs single digit percent even under much heavier tac air. Estimates range from 2% to 5% in the west for Germans in Normandy and the Bulge, for example. It is extremely unlikely Russian rates of loss to air exceeded those figures, since they were not subject to thousands of FBs with full air supremacy etc, while they were subject to superior enemy PAK and tank guns, while the Germans for whom those figures are known, did not.

3.5% to 5% may therefore be considered a very generous upper bound to all Russian tank losses to air. Most of them will be to bombs, not dedicated cannon equipped types. Russian tank losses in Kursk defensive were 1614. That means the upper bound comes in at 55-80 tanks to air attack. Against the 7000 sorties, that puts the tank kills per ground attack sortie at around 0.01 - and it is an upper bound, because it is based on a rate of loss achieved elsewhere by more intense tac air. The real figure could easily be only half that.

There is every reason to believe modern smart weapons are at least an order of magnitude more effective than WW II dumb ones, and the real relation could be as much as 50 times as effective.

Tero - utterly clueless, still. If the Germans actually achieved 100 to 1 exchange ratios between 37mm stukas and Russian tanks, they would simply have made and fielded 1000 37mm gun stukas and won the war. If they had actually routinely achieved anything like Rudel's claims even with the size fleet they had, all Russian tank losses in 1943-4 would have been accounted for by the Luftwaffe. Instead losses to air were a handful of percent, all types.

The US destroyed thousands of tanks in the space of 40 days using approximately 200 aircraft for dedicated tank killing missions. The operational effect was total paralysis and entire tank armies evaporating. The Germans had a tank busting force of comparable size (within a factor of two at any one time, easily) and easily 10-20 times the time period to run up sorties. If they had routinely achieved kill rates even with a factor of 2 of US ones with smart weapons, even that tiny air arm would have KOed at least as many Russian tanks as Tigers and Panthers did.

This is falsified directly by the entire operational history of the war. The eastern front did not consist in the Luftwaffe working over the Russian tank force in a sustain air campaign leaving little for their ground forces to fight. It readily would have, if Rudel scale claims were readily achieved by tank busting aircraft.

They simply were not. It is not a matter that can be rendered doubtful by spin. The explanation is simple - the claimed kill rates per sortie simply did not happen.

Now here is a little OR reality check on air to ground with armor, under the most favorable possible conditions and with modern smart weapons.

In Desert Storm, the Iraqis lost an estimated 4000 tanks and 2500 more lightly armored vehicles. A solid half of these were lost to ground action or abandoned. Air killed maybe half of it, or 3750 vehicles, certainly a very significant number. What was used to do it?

4 principle means, in which air to ground cannon fire hardly even rates.

Method one in importance was Maverick missiles, mostly fired by A-10s. 5400 of these were expended, 90% of them fired by A-10s. Roughly a third were TV guided models used in daylight, two thirds were IR and used at night.

Method two was 500 lb laser guided bombs, GBU-12s, mostly dropped by F-111s at night, using FLIR to scan for targets standing out by their heat retention in the cooler night air. 4500 of these were expended, over half by the F-111s.

Method three was Hellfire and TOW missiles from army and Marine helos. I've found the marine subtotal and it is around 500 expended. Far higher for the army of course. Low thousands the right order of magnitude.

Method four was duel purpose ICM cluster bombs, dropped in 1000 lb units. 10000 of these were expended on all types of targets, by F-15E, F-16, F-18, and A-10.

There were other weapons used against other target types primarily - acres of dumb bombs dropped by B-52s for example, also heavy 2000 lb laser guided bombs used mostly on infrastructure and C3I targets. But we can safely leave those out, and probably allocated 80-90% of the cluster bombs to non-tank targets. They probably did account for a portion of the lighter armor, though.

Simple math says the numerical average kill chance of the above weapons was under one in four.

Own side claims for the A-10s are 3000 armored vehicles. For the F-111s, 1000 to 1500 depending on the source. These are both undoubtedly high, as the Apaches also clearly scored, the CBUs etc less so but some, and losses to the air war were only on the order of half of overall Iraqi losses.

The claims deserve at least a 1/3rd haircut by the above math, and might deserve a conventional 1/2 haircut. This means

3000 or more 500 lb laser guided bombs KOed 500-1000 armored vehicles, or a specific kill chance of 1/6 to 1/3. The average F-111 expended 30-35 LBU-12s and may have accounted for 5-10 tanks.

5000 A-10 fired mavericks KOd 1500-2000 armored vehicles in the A-10 total includes nothing for guns or cluster munitions, or a specific kill chance upper bound of 0.3 to 0.4. The average A-10 fired 35 mavericks and may have accounted for 10-15 tanks.

If 1/3rd of A-10 kills came from guns and cluster munitions combined, maverick kills might be as low as 1000 and the specific kill chance as low as 1/5 or 1/4. If guns got 80% of the remainder (unlikely) that would mean 400-500, and it took over 8000 sorties to get to that figure.

It is more likely that mavericks account for 80-90% of A-10 armor kills, specific kill chance in the 1/4 to 1/3 range, and that the A-10 kill chance per sortie with the gun was single digit percent. This mostly reflects not engaging that way at all.

Note that the A-10s flew nearly 60 sorties per aircraft in theater, and took heavy ground fire. The head of the air campaign restricted their target areas and attack profiles because damage was so heavy. Basically, it was a bad idea to expose an A-10 to light flak in sustained low level attacks, if the loss or damage rate was going to hit even 1.5% per sortie doing so. Especially since they were far more valuable delivering mavericks from medium altitude or at night.

Although an A-10 can readily carry 4 mavericks per mission, mixed loads with only 2 were more typical (carried some CBUs etc). Since they flew 60 sorties each and expended only 35 mavericks each, they often went out without mavericks, or did not deliver them.

A plane that can carry 2-4 smart weapons each with a 1/4 to 1/3 chance of a clean vehicle kill (operational - on a test range mavericks kill 90-95% of the time), still only managed an average of 0.2 to 0.25 armor KOs per sortie. And that made it the most effective tank killer in the force. In the most successful air to ground armor killing campaign of all time. Using space age weaponry.

It is silly to pretend a few dozen pilots with 37mm flak guns under their wings were doing the like without the benefit of guided missiles with HEAT warheads sufficient to destroy anything they hit.

Side by side, let's compare

An A-10 in Desert Storm has A, a JU87 in Russia has B

A complete air supremacy B enemy fighters everywhere
A total networked C3I B a radio
A J-Stars spotting targets B mark I eyeball
A night vision and IR B dawn patrol
A stationary dumb targets B the Russian front
A tightly packed target area B the Russian front
A desert terrain B some steppe, lots of forest
A guided missiles B deflection shooting
A HEAT warheads B plain AP
A cluster bombs B 37mm or dumb frag bomb
A 1000 rounds cannon B 12 rounds cannon
A 70 rounds per second B 2 rounds per second

A claim 0.25 tanks per sortie B claim 0.2 tanks per sortie
A actually got 0.1 to 0.15 B actually got jack

I am "allowed" to area fire.  But unless I have a hard contact previously and lost it, I generally don't.  It just isn't that effective.
If I had a full spot there a minute ago but it has gone away and I suspect that is just the men going heads down, area fire at the old spot is perfectly reasonable.  
It is also effective enough, often enough, that I will spend the ammo to do it, though generally only for a minute, not for extended periods.  Ammo is too useful to blow on a possibly dead target.
 
Recon by fire is something I only use when there is quite limited enemy side cover and I think I can deduce where they have to be.  Sometimes high ammo weapons like "target light" from a tank to use its MGs only, about it.
 
As for runners, no I don't "simulate" them.  The troops are hard enough to corral without such additional work.  Sometimes I still find I have to run HQ teams hither and yon to get spots or put forces in command etc.  Works.
 
As for the brittleness of infantry, if they go stationary and rally whenever shot at, and someone else moves off, they can absorb plenty of punishment in my experience.  It helps to have steppe terrain / high grass to hide in, and undulating ground and such, to be sure.  It works because the enemy will lose the spot and shift fire to still moving units.  Then the previously hit units get a few minutes of respite, to rally. The enemy rarely has enough firepower to kill a whole company at range.  To scare it sure, or to kill it close enough.  But by then spots happen and I can fire back.  As long as I spread around who is moving and don't push faster than the men rally = want to go, a couple of HMGs can't hold off a whole company of infantry in the long range envelope.
 
Good stealthy defenses can supplement a few HMGs with other weapons, though.  Mortars firing from defilade at units that go to ground; light FOs dropping artillery fire on any sizable group, snipers on top of the HMGs (even harder to see etc).  And if all of it is meant to draw the tanks forward to give ATGs side shots, sometimes tanks ahead won't solve the whole problem.  But just a couple of entrenched MGs vs a supported rifle company, no problem.  It is a standard drill one needs to learn, without needing to rely on great cover to get close.

I am "allowed" to area fire.  But unless I have a hard contact previously and lost it, I generally don't.  It just isn't that effective.
If I had a full spot there a minute ago but it has gone away and I suspect that is just the men going heads down, area fire at the old spot is perfectly reasonable.  
It is also effective enough, often enough, that I will spend the ammo to do it, though generally only for a minute, not for extended periods.  Ammo is too useful to blow on a possibly dead target.
 
Recon by fire is something I only use when there is quite limited enemy side cover and I think I can deduce where they have to be.  Sometimes high ammo weapons like "target light" from a tank to use its MGs only, about it.
 
As for runners, no I don't "simulate" them.  The troops are hard enough to corral without such additional work.  Sometimes I still find I have to run HQ teams hither and yon to get spots or put forces in command etc.  Works.
 
As for the brittleness of infantry, if they go stationary and rally whenever shot at, and someone else moves off, they can absorb plenty of punishment in my experience.  It helps to have steppe terrain / high grass to hide in, and undulating ground and such, to be sure.  It works because the enemy will lose the spot and shift fire to still moving units.  Then the previously hit units get a few minutes of respite, to rally. The enemy rarely has enough firepower to kill a whole company at range.  To scare it sure, or to kill it close enough.  But by then spots happen and I can fire back.  As long as I spread around who is moving and don't push faster than the men rally = want to go, a couple of HMGs can't hold off a whole company of infantry in the long range envelope.
 
Good stealthy defenses can supplement a few HMGs with other weapons, though.  Mortars firing from defilade at units that go to ground; light FOs dropping artillery fire on any sizable group, snipers on top of the HMGs (even harder to see etc).  And if all of it is meant to draw the tanks forward to give ATGs side shots, sometimes tanks ahead won't solve the whole problem.  But just a couple of entrenched MGs vs a supported rifle company, no problem.  It is a standard drill one needs to learn, without needing to rely on great cover to get close.

I am "allowed" to area fire.  But unless I have a hard contact previously and lost it, I generally don't.  It just isn't that effective.
If I had a full spot there a minute ago but it has gone away and I suspect that is just the men going heads down, area fire at the old spot is perfectly reasonable.  
It is also effective enough, often enough, that I will spend the ammo to do it, though generally only for a minute, not for extended periods.  Ammo is too useful to blow on a possibly dead target.
 
Recon by fire is something I only use when there is quite limited enemy side cover and I think I can deduce where they have to be.  Sometimes high ammo weapons like "target light" from a tank to use its MGs only, about it.
 
As for runners, no I don't "simulate" them.  The troops are hard enough to corral without such additional work.  Sometimes I still find I have to run HQ teams hither and yon to get spots or put forces in command etc.  Works.
 
As for the brittleness of infantry, if they go stationary and rally whenever shot at, and someone else moves off, they can absorb plenty of punishment in my experience.  It helps to have steppe terrain / high grass to hide in, and undulating ground and such, to be sure.  It works because the enemy will lose the spot and shift fire to still moving units.  Then the previously hit units get a few minutes of respite, to rally. The enemy rarely has enough firepower to kill a whole company at range.  To scare it sure, or to kill it close enough.  But by then spots happen and I can fire back.  As long as I spread around who is moving and don't push faster than the men rally = want to go, a couple of HMGs can't hold off a whole company of infantry in the long range envelope.
 
Good stealthy defenses can supplement a few HMGs with other weapons, though.  Mortars firing from defilade at units that go to ground; light FOs dropping artillery fire on any sizable group, snipers on top of the HMGs (even harder to see etc).  And if all of it is meant to draw the tanks forward to give ATGs side shots, sometimes tanks ahead won't solve the whole problem.  But just a couple of entrenched MGs vs a supported rifle company, no problem.  It is a standard drill one needs to learn, without needing to rely on great cover to get close.

Start with the infantry in a formation with one platoon leading, two platoons in line behind them and to the sides, weapons and HQ in the middle of that line directly behind the lead platoon.
Tanks initially in the middle of that line and trailing it slightly.  Everyone well spread out to avoid giving good artillery targets etc.
 
Leading platoon steps off on move to contact until it draws fire.  Goes to ground when it does so.
With the lead platoon 100 yards ahead, all the rest of the infantry, plus the tanks, advances at a walking pace, on line.
 
As soon as enemy fire halts the infantry, tanks advance through the infantry to 200 meters from the sound contacts firing at said infantry.
The infantry are on their bellies, using every fold of ground as cover, hiding in the grass etc.  No job but to rally.  HQs, ATRs, MGs with binocs are eyes up but stationary, rest can hide.
Occasionally a single squad at a time advances 50 meters and hits the deck again, "walking" gradually closer to the enemy if not fired upon sufficiently.  There is no rush whatever, you have all day.
 
If the enemy MGs "go quiet" to avoid being spotted by the tanks, then the squad infantry begins advancing.  Roughly half are moving at any given time, the others on their bellies.
They switch off who is moving, moving only every other minute and for less than the full minute.  Perhaps 1/3rd of total elapsed "clock time" is spent moving.  
This is meant to present a poor target for a defender's "mad minute", meaning opening up with all MGs and squads.  Such an attempt would only pin half the attacking infantry.
The other half and the tanks would be untouched and the tanks instantly replying.
 
Meanwhile, if the defenders stay quiet, the tanks remain out of infantry AT range, and the whole company crawls closer in a staggered fashion.
Once the infantry are within good rifle range - 250 yards, say - all their heavy weapons stop moving closer, MGs set up, etc.
Then one platoon, only, advances to 200 yards and goes stationary there.  Then a second.  Then one advances to 150 yards and goes stationary there.
 
When you have a whole line of rifles and MGs even with the tanks ready to blow apart any enemy who opens fire in less than a minute, send a half squad to the nearest old sound contact.
Minimal risked force in any movement that close.  They only need to trigger fire, and should get within grenade and good SMG range if they don't draw any.
 
Whenever they like in the above process, the defenders are invited to challenge the approaching infantry company.  The tanks then murder them, supplemented by the non-moving, in-range portions of the infantry company.  The moving, fired-upon portions of the infantry company just hit the deck and remain stationary, with no mission but to hide and rally.  They count on their friends getting the shooters off of them.  Other squads may move out to draw the fire in the meantime.
 
All it takes.  A defensive position, even in the open and with entrenchments, needs ranged tank killing weapons to stop such an advance.  If it doesn't have them, or enough artillery to break up the infantry company without revealing any infantry firing positions, then it is toast.  It just takes time.

Start with the infantry in a formation with one platoon leading, two platoons in line behind them and to the sides, weapons and HQ in the middle of that line directly behind the lead platoon.
Tanks initially in the middle of that line and trailing it slightly.  Everyone well spread out to avoid giving good artillery targets etc.
 
Leading platoon steps off on move to contact until it draws fire.  Goes to ground when it does so.
With the lead platoon 100 yards ahead, all the rest of the infantry, plus the tanks, advances at a walking pace, on line.
 
As soon as enemy fire halts the infantry, tanks advance through the infantry to 200 meters from the sound contacts firing at said infantry.
The infantry are on their bellies, using every fold of ground as cover, hiding in the grass etc.  No job but to rally.  HQs, ATRs, MGs with binocs are eyes up but stationary, rest can hide.
Occasionally a single squad at a time advances 50 meters and hits the deck again, "walking" gradually closer to the enemy if not fired upon sufficiently.  There is no rush whatever, you have all day.
 
If the enemy MGs "go quiet" to avoid being spotted by the tanks, then the squad infantry begins advancing.  Roughly half are moving at any given time, the others on their bellies.
They switch off who is moving, moving only every other minute and for less than the full minute.  Perhaps 1/3rd of total elapsed "clock time" is spent moving.  
This is meant to present a poor target for a defender's "mad minute", meaning opening up with all MGs and squads.  Such an attempt would only pin half the attacking infantry.
The other half and the tanks would be untouched and the tanks instantly replying.
 
Meanwhile, if the defenders stay quiet, the tanks remain out of infantry AT range, and the whole company crawls closer in a staggered fashion.
Once the infantry are within good rifle range - 250 yards, say - all their heavy weapons stop moving closer, MGs set up, etc.
Then one platoon, only, advances to 200 yards and goes stationary there.  Then a second.  Then one advances to 150 yards and goes stationary there.
 
When you have a whole line of rifles and MGs even with the tanks ready to blow apart any enemy who opens fire in less than a minute, send a half squad to the nearest old sound contact.
Minimal risked force in any movement that close.  They only need to trigger fire, and should get within grenade and good SMG range if they don't draw any.
 
Whenever they like in the above process, the defenders are invited to challenge the approaching infantry company.  The tanks then murder them, supplemented by the non-moving, in-range portions of the infantry company.  The moving, fired-upon portions of the infantry company just hit the deck and remain stationary, with no mission but to hide and rally.  They count on their friends getting the shooters off of them.  Other squads may move out to draw the fire in the meantime.
 
All it takes.  A defensive position, even in the open and with entrenchments, needs ranged tank killing weapons to stop such an advance.  If it doesn't have them, or enough artillery to break up the infantry company without revealing any infantry firing positions, then it is toast.  It just takes time.

Vanir - yeah I get all that, but those numbers are simply far too high to reflect actual combat performance, rather than firing range performance. The initial shots are already too high (I will substantiate that below), and over 50% for a 2nd shot at 1.8 km is just crazy, even for a stationary target let alone a moving one.

Firing opportunities in real combat are not scarce and the duels are not over in 15 seconds. They last minutes at a time, between entire firing companies. The rounds actually fired in such engagements hit the low triple digits. The tanks KOed stay in the single digits. Even with some repeated hitting to make sure, the average AP round fired only hits roughly 10% of the time. That can and does include shots with a significantly higher chance to hit, and those may account for a majority of the actual kills. But in the nature of averages, if some shots are 30 and 50% to hit, then others are down in the single digits and the low single digits at that. And lots of them.

The idea that single digit achieved accuracy only ever applies to the first shot in falsified by that data. There are not enough first shots in the whole population of shots to pull the averages back down to the observed shot to killed ratio. Ergo, there must be shots after the first that have a low chance to hit. There are only a few other significant factors that can cause low chances to hit on follow on shots - and long range and target movement are the main such factors. (Crew panic is the only other one that could theoretically make the cut).

We know from detailed battlefield OR that there isn't a large ratio of hits to kills when the target is an Allied tank and the shooter is a Panther or Tiger. Those German tanks have powerful enough guns that they rarely needed second and almost never needed 3rd or 4th hits to achieve knock outs. The average hits per kill observed is well under 2, basically. Combined with known facts on the order of magnitude difference between shots fired and tanks killed this puts very strict limits on average achieved accuracy.

Take your first set of numbers above and trace this through. With 6% first and 30% subsequent hit chances and 1.5 hits per kill, what is the predicted ratio of shots fired to tanks killed? The answer is "under 6". With 13% and 59%, the answer is "under 4". With mixed movements, those figures thus predict a shot to kill ratio of 5 to 1 *at ranges of 1.8 kilometers*. We know the average engagement takes place closer than that, so it winds up forming an upper bound for shots to kills.

These figures predict that when a tank goes out in the morning with a full ammo load and comes back nearly empty, it will have killed during one day in action far more tanks than we know each was actually able to account for over their entire operational lives. Worse, for all but the most front-invulnerable heavies, it predicts that all tanks on each side will die 5 times over or more in each day in action.

Tanks almost certainly don't achieve 13 and 59 against stationary targets inside 1 km, in real combat. Let alone vs moving ones at 1.8 km. They probably do achieve 6 and 30 vs stationary targets inside 1 km, even in real combat. But motion alone is likely enough to cut the gain on second and following shots to half that improvement (15% not 30%), and at range you can cut those in half again.

Tactical thinkers and range firing leave the impression that only shots nearing 50% chance to hit are effective, but this is not remotely the case. A tank company in 5 minutes can send 500 shots downrange if it has continually exposed targets. Even 10% average accuracy and 3 hits per kill suffice to destroy a formation of equal size with that much firing time available.

What more commonly happens is that the hottest and best placed shooter gets effect like that to a couple times that at most, and the rest of the firing formation gets a fraction of what that best shooter gets (because they don't all see the enemy for the whole time, etc). The enemy then breaks off, mauled but rarely completely wiped out.

The bit of that tactical games get wrong is they don't realize that even a very modest hit change per shot suffices between the whole units; they model that hit chance too high and give duels that end too quickly with too few shots fired as a result. (Which in part stems from excessive focus on one vs one dueling etc).

Again, firing opportunities are not that scarce in combat; we know that because the shots are actually fired, and from the AARs we know how long the actions take.

Oddball E8 - at short range all that is true. At long range is it not - motion makes it hard for the last reason you gave, even with the target moving toward you. When the flight time of the shell is 2 full seconds, it arcs 16 feet in the air above the target and back down again. If between one shot and the next, enemy movement changes the range by 100 yards, you can easily send false signals to the over and under range homing routine and keep getting the range wrong, shot after shot. It is not like you can tell by how much over or under the shot was at such distances. And you aren't "bowling" - only need to get the deflection correct. You are "golfing" - a wrong range estimate sends the shot clear over or too low for the target.

The longer the range, the faster the shot is falling from its apex (Y component of the shell velocity), and the shorter the "correct enough" range window is. At 2 seconds flight time, that range window is only about 160 meters long along the axis of flight. If the target is moving 80 meters between each shot (which is a 12 second shot spacing if the target is moving 15 mph), half the "good enough" range window just scooted out from under you before you pulled the trigger the second time. That's harder - quite significantly harder than stationary. Even moving straight along the axis of fire. Notice, this isn't a matter of the *lead* - the change in the range in the 2 seconds between trigger pull and shell arrival. It is a matter of the range *estimate* - the change in the range since the last time you saw whether the previous shot went over or went under. (A longer period of time, and a bigger change in the range).

People unclear on the concept --- a million rounds fired. Over 12 hours. No, they didn't catch anyone by surprise in hour 2, or 4, or 12. Or after the first ten minutes. Even that long would only matter if people were trying to get out of the area hit. On how unclear on the concept JonS is, ammo actually is scarce, and firing it on one occasion actually does mean not firing it on other occasions. The mission described probably saved the lives of about 1000 German soldiers. There is such a thing as being epically stupid in the misuse of weapons, and no, just using every possible tool any way you can think of to secure command goal X is not command or intelligence.

But this is exactly the same sort of thing that gave use 3 million shell prep fires lasting a week that just ensured the enemy had plenty of reserves behind the threatened sector - while throwing away the shells, which would have cut the defenders in half if fired anytime *except* when they were all deep in their dugouts. Dumb commanders force their tools to obey The Plan, without any regard to whether those tools are actually any good at it or The Plan makes the slightest sense. Smart ones make their plans in the first place in a manner that lets their tools operate under their best conditions, to maximum effect.

It is the difference between just demanding that things happen and knowing what actually brings them about...

Higher ROF does not do what you think it does. It does not conjure bullets from the vasty deep. It does not make them any lighter or easier to get to a forward position, to fire them at the enemy. It does not make each more accurate - it does the reverse, in fact.

It does let you concentrate you volume of fire (which is unchanged, see previous) into narrower time windows, at a cost in lower per round accuracy. Whether that trade off is worth it depends entirely on the *time profile of target exposure*, assuming you manage to exploit said ROF perfectly, to shift your available volume into the narrow time slices with highest target exposure.

When it won't help one lick is whenever the target is continuously exposed, for as long or longer than any alternative weapon needs to fire the equivalent ammo. Higher ROF is completely useless in that case. And may detract from total delivered firepower, due to lower accuracy per round.

To see how obvious this is, ignore machineguns and compete with one rifleman. The MG fires off 5000 at peak cyclic ROF at a continually exposed target. The target remains there for four days, anyway. One rifleman takes 5000 aimed single shots. It doesn't matter how long that takes him because the target is sitting there, completely exposed for days, and he can certainly fire his aimed shots within that time. Which weapon gets more hits? Speed has nothing to do with the answer. Only accuracy per shot influences that answer. And the accuracy per shot is clearly higher with the singles, each individually aimed, for rifle.

Faster is not straighter. Faster is not more. If there isn't a sea change in target exposure, that the fast shooting can exploit and the slow shooting cannot, faster isn't worth diddly.