undead reindeer cavalry
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Posts posted by undead reindeer cavalry
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Sigrun makes it clear he is talking about averages. he also says that Tigers killed lot's of T-34s while had very few losses to T-34s as majority of Tiger losses were arty, assault guns, mines and break-downs. he says this in his second last post so i am not confused by some ambivalent first posts.Originally posted by Andreas:Sigrun stated that in his view each Tiger in the east (conservatively) killed ten T34. He may have been ambivalent at first, which leads to your wild goose chase about tank-on-tank engagements, but he then is very clear about what he says, and you prefer to ignore it.
to me it looks like he is talking about averages and specifically about tank vs tank battles.
no offence intended, but perhaps you yourself haven't read the last posts very well?
i think i have made myself clear that my only objection to "5:1" is that it should not made to imply tank-to-tank ratios. i talk about claims and usage of statistics, not about persons.As I told you before, that is what I am debating. It has to do with an interest in combat effectiveness of a weapons system and type of formation, and in stupid legends cropping up time and again. If you want to debate something else, no matter how irrelevant it is, feel free to do so. But you are not free to tell me that I said things I did not say, or that things I read in the clear mean something completely different from what they say.perhaps the implication of responding to "10:1 tank vs tank ratio" with "5:1 overall kill-loss ratio" was not a conscious one and i regret i haven't made it clearer that i am not addressing you specificially but the "5:1" claim itself. i have also consciously tried to be clear that i am not putting words into other people's mouths and only talk about what is implied by the "5:1" response.
certainly and i applaud your interests, for they by coincidence are very similar to mine.I am interested in the rate of over-claiming, and in the comparison with other formations, e.g. independent Stug units, or Nashorn Panzerjägerabteilungen. I am also interested in the operational impact of these formations. I am decidedly not interested in the tank-on-tank performance, or in how many Tigers can dance on a pin, or silly legends such as 'every Tiger killed >10 T34s.'Is that clearer now?
for what it's worth, and perhaps it's not worth too damn much, but i highly value your posts and attitude.
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if people are discussing wether Tigers scored 5:1 or 10:1 against enemy tanks, then counting direct tank losses is damn spot on the point. counting tanks lost during road marches etc is what is totally pointless.Originally posted by Andreas:The whole idea of only counting direct tank losses is pointless because all it does show is that the Tiger was a better tank (when all sorts of things like logistics, mobility etc. are ignored) once it got to the battlefield than the Allied tanks. It had better armour, and a better gun. Ergo, once it got there it had a higher kill ratio. Well, knock me over with a feather.
i totally agree. it becomes illogical only when results of such analysis are implied to show how Tigers scored against enemy tanks.That you don't agree with my point does not make it 'illogical', by the way. I can assure you that it is perfectly logical that if you want to look at the performance of heavy tank battalions, analysing their combat record is the right way to go. Damage inflicted is one aspect of this, and within that, tank kills are a sub-aspect. This you put into relation to the assets you lost while doing the killing, for whatever reason.
it starts with Sigrun saying that Tigers scored more like 10:1, instead of 5:1, against T-34. in his reply JasonC repeats that 10:1 or 5:1 debate refers to how Tigers scored against tanks. then JasonC goes to statistic to prove that 10:1 is impossible. we can see the same use of statistics on this thread.I also have no idea why you insist that in the original thread tank-on-tank engagements were the matter of dispute. It appears to me you need to re-read it, since you have obviously no idea of what the thread was about.
of course Sigrun is wrong with that 12,000 figure. he doesn't see a typical Tiger's lifespan and only thinks about tank battles.12,000 T34s destroyed, BTW, is over 20% above actual Tiger claims for all types of tanks on all fronts according to Alan Hamby.So, you were saying?
him being wrong doesn't make the 5:1 right.
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in reference to the Tiger thread, here's some use of the statistics given in your link:Originally posted by Andreas:It took five Shermans to take out a Panther - not
US losses Jun-Sep: 1500
UK losses Jun-Sep: 1500
Panther losses Jun-Sep: 649
3000:650 = 4.6
for every lost Panther the allies lost 4.6 tanks.
furthermore, of 1845 lost German tanks 393 were lost to AP shot. that 21% of 650 Panthers is 137.
allies lost 22 tanks (3000:137) for every Panther destroyed by allied tank or AT-gun.
isn't silly use of statistics fun?
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first of all i am not personally interested in tank duels and in my opinion Tiger was a failure. personally i am interested in the operational level of actions and what comes to tanks i am a fan of economical and functional designs like T-34. but that is irrelevant for this discussion.
as usual i do not disagree with what JasonC posts. my disagreement comes from what he does not post and what he thus implies with his posts that contain only a part of the picture.
Tigers lost to AT-guns, mines, bombers, lack of logistics etc have zero relevance to how Tigers did against enemy tanks in actual combat engagements. implying a 5:1 kill-ratio for those engagements is counterfactual, likely consciously dishonest and at best mistaken, nonsense.
of course not all enemy tanks lost in action were total write-offs and kill claims are higher than actual kills. i am not suggesting that the ratio should be 50:1, 75:1 or 200:0. it was just a ratio i got for a period of war from the source Andreas was using as a reference.
what i am suggesting is that the original claim, which got the shock-horror-hysteria response from you two in the original thread, of 10:1 is not unrealistic. in my opinion the ratio is likely to be around 20:1. whatever it is, the point is that the way you two come at a 5:1 ratio is illogical. it is OK as a total kill-loss figure, but it is nonsense what comes to tank engagements.
if you want to say that talk about kill-loss ratio for tank engagements is pointless then just say so (yeah, i know Andreas did it now) instead of implying the ratio would be 5:1 (like done previously).
if you are going for some sort of all arms ratio, please have some basic consistency. if you don't count other than total write-offs as kills, why should you count others than total write-offs as losses either? if you include other arms aspects like minefields or lack of fuel against Tigers, why don't you include other arms aspects like recovery and repair for Tigers? it doesn't make sense to outclude salvaged allied tanks from kills and include salvaged Tigers in losses. it doesn't make sense to include Tigers lost for combat service failures and outclude Tigers salvaged by combat service successes.
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ofcourse it is. you are being silly.Originally posted by Andreas:No it is not.
the subject is not how combined arms force A did against combined arms force B. it certainly is not things like how logistics of nation X worked at front Y.These were combined arms battles, not 'Shoot-out at the O.K. Corral' duels.
what part about those points raised by Jason has something to do with that 75:1 count for Tunisia?Also, note what Jason points out about German stats.
So the 1:75 count for Tunisia is just a pointless number, even if you recalculated it for actual losses, as opposed to claims.
it doesn't make me happy. i am not personally interested in this subject, i am just annoyed by the antilogic used in these threads.But hey, if it makes you happy. -
it's extemely essential for any discussion about how Tigers did in battles with enemy tanks. and that's what the discussion was about (earlier, not this thread).Originally posted by Andreas:Why on earth would anyone want to count Tigers killed directly by enemy tanks? That has to rank high up with the most pointless stats that I can think of.
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ok, i just downloaded Wilbeck's thesis. i skipped the first two chapters because they don't talk about actual use of Tigers.
the first tank kill number is those of 502nd battalion near Leningrad from 12th Jan to 31 March 1943. according to Wilbeck they destroyed 160 Soviet tanks while three Tigers were lost to enemy action and three others were destroyed by Tiger crews (two got stuck, one had a mechanical failure). it doesn't tell how many of those three were destroyed by enemy tanks, but if all three were it would give 53:1 killed enemy tanks for every Tiger lost to enemy tanks.
next Wilbeck talks about 501st battalion in North Africa. according to him the Tigers killed more than 150 Allied tanks. at maximum three Tigers were lost to enemy tanks (one more to artillery, and seven were lost to minefields). so at least 50:1 ratio.
next Wilbeck talks about 504th in North Africa. according to him Tigers killed more than 150 Allied tanks. at maximum two Tigers were lost to enemy tanks. at least 75:1 ratio.
i won't continue reading the thesis further, but i expect the ratio to fall down as the war progresses. still, i would be surprised if average ratio ever falls below 20:1.
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why on earth would anyone want to include Tigers killed by mines etc when one is talking about Tigers killed by enemy tanks? :confused:Originally posted by Andreas:So unless you want to exclude Tigers killed by mines and other weapons, I think you'll have a hard time making it to 20:1.
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in hot situations, or with more units, players will just have to:
1. hit pause.
2. check the situation of the first unit while game is paused.
3. unpause and issue the command(s) for the unit as fast as possible.
4. pause the game as fast as possible.
5. navigate to another unit and check its situation.
6. unpause and issue the command(s) for the unit as fast as possible.
7. pause the game again as fast as possible.
8. go back to number 5 and repeat until there are no more units that need change of orders - you can now let the game run free for at least 15-30 seconds.
sounds like fun!
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that's the same one from Mosul that i had in mind. i think there was another one in Fallujah, but it was more like a top hit if i recall correctly.Originally posted by Thermopylae:Flamingknives: From what I've heard is that an RPG, type unknown, went through number one skirt of an abrams, missed the roadwheels, penetrated at a weak point and pierced one of the aux fuel tanks, which obviosuly was bad. It was more of an oblique strike on the flank, but fired from the front. I haven't heard of any other frontal RPG kills, but I could be hideosuly wrong.
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the 5:1 kill-ratio has nothing to do with how many enemy tanks a Tiger killed for every Tiger that was killed by an enemy tank.
if you wonder why i point out something that obvious, it's because that's what was implied in the closed thread.
the tank-for-tank kill-ratio was likely to be up to 20:1. for early period likely well above 50:1.
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also disabled frontally with RPG-7.Originally posted by flamingknives:Abrams certainly isn't impervious to RPG-7. A number of them have been disabled by flank, top or rear shots with RPG-7 in Iraq.
rear shots with 23mm AA gun were proven to be effective in Iraq.
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the two rounds at the top are regular HE rounds like Steve pointed out. the second one looks a bit weird, but i guess it's just rust or dirt.Originally posted by MikeyD:Our mystery round in the photo looks rather like the second round down in the screenshot, which nobody's identified yet.
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red arrows are pointing at Chinese Type 69 bounding anti-personnel rounds. common both in Iraq & Afghanistan.
those HEAT rounds too look pretty Chinese to me, though they appear so old they could well be ancient & primitive Soviet ones.
[ September 29, 2006, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: undead reindeer cavalry ]
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the heroic battle for Hango is my favorite. would be even better if there actually had been a battle for it and it would not have been given to Soviets AFTER the war. though who knows, perhaps the Soviet troops in error battled each other there. wouldn't have been the first time.
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in fall 2004 i was still following Iraqi events very closely. the game was already lost before that second siege of Fallujah. at that point the resistance had already reached a level in which they could outmatch and outplay the operational tempo and strength of the occupation forces. the failure of the second Fallujah operation was of course something previously unseen, a resistance operation at a strategical level, the total collapse of an entire region's security organ in a couple of hours, but the outplayed occupation forces had obviously failed already long before those events actually took place.Originally posted by Bigduke6:If indeed there ever was a window. The article makes an excellent point about the implications of assaulting Falluja, but the Americans were in trouble either way: if you don't trash the town the insurgents have a safe haven, if you do trash the town you create a whole lot more insurgents.
i don't think there ever was a window. i don't think it matters if there had been twice the number of boots on the ground. if something, it would just have accelerated the process. the failure was caused by cultural values.
today Iraq is still a mess, but it could be saved, but i fear the failure will again be caused by cultural values. the tragedy of empires is that they can afford corrupt incompetence. the tragedy of luxury is that it creates weak minds.
except of course that Germans paid great attention to history and consciously formed a strategy different to the historical ones (e.g. no two fronts, no dependence on railroads, no going for political goals instead of focusing on enemy military bodies etc).In this sense the U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are comparable to the German failure in the Soviet Union: they were so dazzled by their wonderful high-tech military's ability to win battles, they decided they could ignore history.
the basic mentality of manifest destiny, lebensraum, thousand-year-empire, innate superiority etc is very similar i admit.
[ September 26, 2006, 06:05 AM: Message edited by: undead reindeer cavalry ]
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sorry, nothing detailed. it's from the counterattack of 2nd SS against the Poles on August 20th. apparently that Panther knocked out 5 Shermans before it got wasted. yeah, the other wreck is a German halftrack.Originally posted by John Kettler:At first glance, it looks like the Sherman is simply driving past the dead Panther (and halftrack?), but a second glance reveals the gun on the Sherman looks a bit limp, as in likely dead. Do you have the story behind the picture?
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from the story of the day:
He began fighting in 1940 against the Finns and took part in the famous landing at Hango. The Finns had machine guns and the Russians only had rifles. But Russian marines are different from anyone else because they do not fear anyone anywhere. They took Hango and soaked the Finns in blood.
if i didn't know any better i'd take that site as a joke or a parody. it's saddening that our dear neighbours still today live at the depths of some parallel universe out of the Twilight Zone.Every time I visit Karelia I remember my grandfather: had he and his comrades been less courageous and brave, we would not have seen this beauty. Russians forever discouraged Finns from venturing into what was originally Russian land. -
another close encounter:
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Sigrun,
the problem is that no tank unit has massive tank duels every day. most of the tanks lifespan the tank is not fighting enemy tanks. often tanks are lost because of other things than enemy tanks. this is especially the case with Tigers.
for example Schewere Panzer Abteilung 508 had a kill-ratio below 2:1 in Italy. most of the Tigers were destroyed by the crews during withdrawals.
Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502, in which Otto Carius served, was an example of another end of the spectrum, as it had a total kill-loss ratio around 13:1.
the statistical average really is somewhere around 5:1 and 6:1.
this average is not the average of how Tiger Is performed against T-34/76s in tank duels. that average would of course be a lot higher, likely somewhere around 15:1 - 20:1. but it is not contradicted by the fact that by average a Tiger got to kill 5 enemy tanks before it was lost (not necessary lost to enemy tank fire).
you and Jason are arguing about two very different things and there isn't necessarily any contradiction between what you both are claiming. at least as long as neither of you are trying to apply statistics to something which they have nothing to do with.
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it's even more frustrating that IS-2 does the same silly reverse-of-death - and even when it actually has better changes of winning than the panzer it is fleeing away from.Originally posted by Bannon DC:The most frustrating thing about the Russian tin cans in CM is that they instantly hit reverse when sighting almost all German armor.
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Sigrun,
kill-loss ratios for Tigers (I & II) was below six. of course kill-loss ratios regarding actual engagements between Tigers and enemy tanks was a lot higher, but there's a lot more to a tanks lifespan than just taking part in tank duels. and a tank, especially a Tiger, can meet a sorry end in ways other than being KO by an enemy tank.
getting bogged in arguments based on intellectually dishonest use of statistics is waste of ones time. for example Finnish StuGs had a kill-ratio above 10:1 and by average their opponents (T-34/85, IS2) killed 0.01 tanks at the Finnish front. it doesn't mean that Finnish StuGs were literally 1000 times better than Soviet IS-2s or had 1000:1 kill ratio. what's more it absolutely does not mean that StuGs made a significant impact at the Finnish front or that IS-2 was a failed tank. the same applies to Tiger kill ratios - there is no contradiction between 15:1 and 5:1 ratios - they are just results of looking for different things at the same data.
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CMx1 line games are extremely good games, definately the best there are of the subject. they are much better than could realistically be expected from a commercial product.
it's just that there's always room for improvement great to hear that suppression is getting better in CMx2.
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Finns have had desert operations for half a century now (Africa, mideast, Afghanistan...) and every time the first task is to build a sauna, for no matter where you are it's never hot enoughOriginally posted by J Ruddy:D'oh. Finns in the desert... At least they're going to wait until it cools off a litte...
the Finnish blue berets are in a mission of love, not war
(in reality the flower penetrates 900mm rha after ERA)
(Steve, note the desert camo so that you get it right in the CMSF "Finnish blue berets and EU battle groups" module
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it's just that there's always room for improvement
Small Bone
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted