James Crowley

The last deal I did with a bunny, I was screwed over for a bag of carrots. What's up with that Doc?

Indeed, the silly old sod didn't even bring the game, so he can bugger off back to Greenland or Lapland or wherever........

Yes, given the total destruction of 17 divisions and the shattering of a further 50, in five weeks, it is difficult to envisage historically based scenarios wherein the Germans will have much scope for victory, other than on the smallest level. However, my knowledge of Bagration is very limited so I'm prepared to be surprised.

This is still happening in 1.12. Also, at least in the case of the Marder II, the gunners left arm protrudes through the hull and appears above the left track. Both the driver and gunner appear to be completely out of alignment within the vehicle.

That may well have been a factor but the turret was identical to the one used in the little Sd Kfz222 AC and the Chamberlain, Doyle, Jentz source gives the ammo for that as 180 rounds. There is not a great deal of difference in the size, or one would imagine, the carrying capacity of the two vehicles and they had the same number of crew.

As does Terry Gander in 'Military Vehicles in Detail SdKfz 250/1 to 250/12' All those sources also list the 250/10, which has the larger 3.7cm PaK, carrying 216 rounds. Seems odd that the /10 carried over twice as much ammo that was, round for round, twice the size of the 20mm shell. Something to do with the 20mm being issued in 10 round magazines? Seems unlikely.

Charles B MacDonald's book 'The Battle Of The Bulge' makes reference to a 2d Lt Charles Powers, who, in a Sherman knocked out a Panther near Stoumont Station in exactly this manner; " his shot ricocheted off the gun mantlet and penetrated downwards into the drivers compartment, setting the tank on fire" Funny how you can remember reading stuff like that but can't recall what you had for breakfast. This action is also mentioned in 'BotB Then and Now' p170.

I'm pretty certain that is not true in the majority of main battle tanks of the era. But you got me to thinking and now I'm looking at diagrams of the Sherman, at least, that clearly show hatch locking handles in the turret cupola. Again, I think most vision ports had some form of bullet-proof triplex glass fitted. The Tiger scene in Saving Private Ryan where a Thompson (I think) was fired into a vision port was a big faux-pas and has a lot to answer for.

Fully agree, there must be a lot of information sloshing around on the forum that should be scooped up and put into the manual or a separate document. Must be very confusing for newbies; hell, a lot still puzzles me and I've been around CM since the CMBO alpha.

A single element, agreed but a platoon can be split up into, what 12 sub-units including HQ's so you could have all of them acting as AT hunters in the right environment. How many specific AT assets that are not in the platoons inventory are they supposed to have access to? And surely BFC are striving very hard to get away from abstractions and get closer to WYSIWYG. Why on earth, on that basis, wouldn't they want to improve that sub-system in the engine, providing the 'cost' in time and resources is not too high. CMBB, which was pretty high on abstractions, still managed to include multiple types of AT ordnance and I'm pretty sure most of the teams that used them didn't last more than a single encounter either.

You may well be right, I don't know. It isn't mentioned in any documentation that I am aware of. Knocking out a tank at the tactical level is a big deal, whatever does the job. A close assault, by it's very nature, is a really big deal. So surely any information pertaining to what weapons can be used to carry out that task needs to be documented? A lot of posters are espousing on how close assaults work but I have yet to see any link or reference as to where this 'information' is coming from. I'm not trying to be a doubting Thomas but it's not unknown for some posters on these forums to get their 'this is how it all works' facts befuddled.

Not at all irrelevant. I have done very similar myself in various parts of the UK. Where I live in West Sussex there are some areas that have very bocage like terrain, in small measure, and, no, you certainly wouldn't want to try and get through in civvy clothing and would likely have bare areas of skin ripped to shreds and suffer a real danger of putting an eye out. Probably not much fun in battle fatigues either. But as has been forcefully pointed out to me in the 'grenades v tanks' thread, the bocage was very far from being uniform in structure and was certainly permeable more easily in some parts. I know this can be, to a limited extent, replicated by inserting gaps but that is a rather mechanical solution, IMO. Rather better to have permeability built in but with long and random time delays and automatic pinning for infantry. Vehicles are more problematic, I will admit but I think the various Cullin and Rhino attachments were to save tanks going over 'belly up' rather than because (at least some of them) they couldn't get over at all. On an unrelated note would it be possible to discreetly ask if you are, or plan to, update your Scottish Corridor campaign - pretty please!

Seems the consensus is that the 'close assault' abstraction involves ordnance not listed in the inventory, which may include various AT grenades, mines, cans of petrol, crowbars or whatever, with 'grenades' arbitrarily representing any or all of those things. So, if a squad or section has 8 grenades listed, each of those could, in theory, be one of those aforementioned items. The problem with that abstraction is that it gives an infantry section far more AT capability than it ever had in reality. I essence the eight grenades become dual purpose; all eight could be used as AT grenades or all as anti infantry; or any combination thereof. While there almost certainly was odd AT grenades and the like assigned to some units, it is unrealistic for a any section to have potential access to so many. The Paras in the battle for Arnhem certainly had some Gammon bombs - there is an account in Martin Middlebrooks book where one is thrown out of a window but it hits a railing instead of an SP - but, as far as I can see, no record of one actually killing an AFV there. Lots of recorded PIAT and 6 lb'er action but almost no mention of close assault type kills. And there were was plenty of opportunity! In fact there seems to be very little evidence of tank kills from close assaults in the West in 44/45. Both sides seemed to rely on their respective AT projectors, which could be very successful. The notion that tanks were vulnerable to infantry attack stems more from, I think, the danger of those types of weapon than from the notion of close assault with grenades. Surely it would be better to, say, assign one or two 'grenades' as generic 'AT grenades' to some, but by no means all, sections. In that way there is a realistic limitation as to how much AT activity that sections can get involved in. In CMBB there was not only a variety of close range AT weapons but a 'follow' command so that tank hunter units, armed with those devices, could actually hunt tanks. That type of AT behaviour is well documented on the Eastern front in 1941-43 but I cannot recall seeing anything remotely like that level of close assault activity on the Western front from '44 onwards. It's pretty much all about piats, fausts schrecks and bazookas and, very very occasionally, satchel charges.

The whole 'impenetrable' bocage issue has been raised previously by myself and others, to no avail. As it stands it is, in effect, a force field that you can see and shoot through, but never move through, under any circumstances. Unless you are 'close assaulting' a tank. In which case, it seems, your men can abstractly get through the bocage, attack the tank and get back through the bocage in a few seconds. Once the tank has moved away or been knocked out, your men can longer pass through the same section of bocage. I still think that, for all it's faults, CMBO handled bocage more realistically. You could get through it but it could take several turns to do so.

I'm not hung up on the use of grenades at all, just as to their AT effectiveness. And yes, I do believe that if other weapons were available they would be in the inventory; there is nothing in the manual, AFAIK, to suggest otherwise. Assuming that you are including the PIAT in your list, I would agree. These were the weapons developed by their respective nations as viable man portable AT weapons and have a known track record of being able to do the job fairly often. They are also referenced as equipment that was issued, on a regular basis, to front line units from June 1944 onwards. Crowbars, bits of string, sticky bombs and the sergeants dirty underwear weren't and, as such, I am discounting them. I believe that there well may have been odd bits of kit floating around but, compared to standard issue, they would have been scarce to say the least. If you believe that they have been abstracted into the inventory, then every single squad, section and sub-section is, by definition, equipped with them and has the ability to take out a tank. And yet, for instance, a British platoon is only be equipped with one or perhaps two PIATs. If they were that common, I believe BFC would have put them in as inventory items (as were grenade bundles and AT mines in CMBB - and that game was, by BFC own admission, abstraction personified). BFC have indeed stated that close assault has been abstracted but my understanding of that statement was that the necessary animations of troop climbing on vehicles would not be shown. Which is why we don't have tank riders. I cannot recall them mentioning that such an assault used any other ordinance than that listed in the inventory. I can happily accept troops assaulting buttoned tanks with grenades provided they are actually close to the vehicle; that the vehicle is stationary or travelling very slowly and that the possible end results are immobilisation or evacuation. Anything beyond that is, IMO, not a accurate abstraction.

Against a buttoned tank, with just grenades, I would agree. Some small possibility exists to immobilise it or to cause the crew to bail, but not to actually destroy it, IMO. There was simply not enough HE charge to do any real damage. However with demo charges, i.e. ordnance with considerably more than a few ounces of explosive, close assault should definitely be possible. As would the use of grenades, or even bullets, against an unbuttoned or open topped vehicle.

Posted in wrong thread

Good points but in CMBO, at least, it was possible to traverse bocage, albeit very slowly. In CMBN bocage is, in effect, a force field. So the abstraction is that; at any point where a vehicle is present behind bocage, soldiers can somehow worm their way through to close assault it (armed it seems with little more than ingenuity and a few grenades) but the same soldiers can't figure out how to get through bocage anywhere else, at any time, other than through a physical gap? And, having done that they can do more damage with a few ounces of explosive than can usually be achieved with a direct hit by a 75mm HE shell travelling at a vastly higher velocity and packed with a 10x plus explosive? Hmmm.....great abstraction. I would be really interested to see if anyone can point to a real life example, from June '44 onwards, of anyone KO'ing a buttoned AFV (not open topped) with hand grenades alone.

Was the Stug buttoned-up and was it KO'ed? If it wasn't buttoned there would certainly be a chance to get a grenade into an open hatch. But, in that case, it seems hardly likely that the crew would survive. If it was buttoned and the crew panicked and bailed, fair enough. But if the Stug was buttoned and is shown as KO'ed, I would be interested to know how a few ounces of blank fire powder managed to achieve such a feat. An abstraction is fine if it reflects at least a level of reality but, it seems to me that having a man near a tank with a few grenades too easily spells doom to the AFV. Fine in a Sgt Rock comic but not, IMO, representative of the reality of the situation.

I can't see that. Surely to close-assault a tank, in the manner that has been suggested, would require being able to touch the tank. If bocage, as modelled in CM, is impossible for infantry to penetrate, then how can they possibly get their munitions through? Unless they chuck them over the top, which takes us right back to the beginning. Can ordinary grenades KO a buttoned tank? And I believe that they are ordinary grenades. I cannot recall BFC ever saying that soldiers carried other, unspecified equipment such as specialised AT mines; only that close assault is an abstraction of troops closing on a tank and placing demo charges and/or grenades into favourable locations on the vehicle. Having a detailed list of equipment and ammunition, down to the last bullet, would be essentially pointless if there were other items also available but not listed. The abstraction, as I understand it, is in not actually having the drawn figures shown climbing onto or being on the tank, not, as some seem to be interpreting it, the use of a mishmash of unlisted ordinance which, even if it were the case, would require intimate contact with the tank. And, if they are indeed ordinary grenades, then their ability to KO a tank should be zero - cause the crew to bail, fine. Maybe cause a immobilisation as an outlier. But no way a KO unless the tank is unbuttoned. I agree that this is an anomalous situation brought about by the 'action point' and that, as Jack Tamson described it, a functional defect in the abstraction. Given the high incidence of bocage in CMBN and thus the potential for that defect to occur many times, surely it is worthy of another look.

Sounds as if you are a gamer who needs to win. I prefer realism; to each their own. Just because it is a 'feature' that has been around awhile doesn't mean that it shouldn't be discussed. That is how many facets of the game have been polished and improved over time. But you carry on winning and let those who have more of a care for realism do their thing.

Not sure if they were still using these in Normandy. I certainly can't recall any reference to them in my reading. The PIAT had become the primary infantry AT weapon by then, the other AT grenades, only ever issued in very small numbers, 73 Thermos, 74 Sticky and 75 Hawkins were largely deemed ineffective. The Hawkins was more usually deployed as a laid mine and even then was only effective against lighter AFV's.

Extreme? In a game largely dominated by bocage, as CMBN/CW is? Hardly. As for the trouble in coding a solution, I really wouldn't know, in common with the majority of posters, I suspect.

I was playing the Brits, so not my tank.

British infantry sections did not have these and they would be listed under their equipment if they did. This was not a close assault because the infantry had no direct access to the tank because of the bocage.