jacobs_ladder2

Right. I should have thought of that. The Arab-Isaeli wars are something I don't know nearly enough about. I don't know. CM is cool, but it is too small. I wish the boys at BFC would get around to making something on a larger scale that would take into account some of the other things happening in war. I think CM was fine for WWII because a lot of the "other stuff" was still fairly cursory to the real show (the ground troops). I don't think that would be as true when you start getting into the 70s and later. I guess it depends on what aspects of the whole thing interest you the most. Have you played any other games like Point of Attack II, Armored Task Force or Flashpoint: Germany? They are definitely worth a look. PoA II has a hyper-realistic engine that can cover everything from B2s to terrorist cells. Cheers Paul

It's not different from CMx1. I don't need to define modern warfare. I don't care where the line is. Awesome. A counter-argument requires an argument first be presented. I am not disagreeing with you. You are firing away at me and I, for the life of me, don't know why. What I am saying, for the last time, is that the game would be as good and as bad as CM was at representing warfare in its time. CM was a very good stab at small unit tactical actions in WWII as CM: Cold War would be for its era. Unfortunately, at the tactical scale, you miss out on so many aspects of war that you are left with only small snapshots of a much bigger picture. If that is what you want than great. I personally would like to see the scope of the game widened somewhat as I found the CM battlefield to be far too isolated. Summing up, CM: Cold War is not a bad idea. I see no problem with it except that it should, I believe, have a much larger battlefield. Cheers Paul [ May 18, 2005, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: jacobs_ladder2 ]

And those were introduced when? ISTR that by the end of the cold war missiles were just turning to fire and forget, while in the 1970s you had wire-guided as standard ATGW. Milan has a range fo 2km - further than standard engagement range in WW2 but not radically outside CM's limits. HOT has 4,000m, but you still needed to guide it by LOS from the launcher in the 1980s. Not healthy, not outside what CM can do on the battlefield. There are lots of places where you can operate at long range with your helo anywhere in the world. I explicitly talked about tanks and infantry weapons though. Your point about countermeasures applies to CM already - counter-battery affected artillery support. AA and fighter screens affected air support, in WW2. It is up to the scenario designer to decide what made it through to the battlefield. </font>

That's what I thought. Sure. Why not. OK. Fascinating. OK. Well, you know your stuff. So essentially what you're saying is that all of these factors can be safely ommitted from a game without limiting overmuch the realism of the engine. In the end, you would still have a pretty good tactical level wargame with a few simplified larger theatre features. I agree. In fact, I never said any different. If you were less intent upon arguing with someone you would have noticed that. What I said, twice, was that you could do so and it would be fantastic, but that you would find the engine less and less adequate for your needs as time goes on. Or rather, the engine which is sufficient for modelling WWII tactical warfare would not require major changes to effectively make the jump into the 50s or 60s, but that it would start to be fairly silly when you get into the modern era. Now, the game that you are describing is fairly limited in scope and does not really tap into any of the things that make modern warfare what it is, but it would be more than adequate for smaller unit actions. Coolio. If that's your bag. Do you disagree with this? Cheers Paul

"Colossus Reborn" by David Glantz is an excellent book. It deals with the rebirth of the Soviet Army. Just came out a few months ago. He also has two books called "Before Stalingrad" and "When Titans Clashed" which I enjoyed quite a bit. I think the best total history of the war in the east comes from "The Russo-German War 1941-45" by Albert Seaton. A more generalized version of the conflict (a bit antiquated but still good) is "Barbarossa: The Russo-German Conflict 1941-45" by Alan Clark. Also, for a bit of the Russian point of view, "The Road to Stalingrad" and "The Road to Berlin" by John Erickson, are great. And the classic "Lost Victories", by Erich von Manstein. For starters. Cheers Paul

Lots of them. Put me in something with rotors or wings and I will show you limitless places in Germany (or anywhere else) where I don't care if I have cover or not and can zap an enemy tank that will never know I was there until it is debris. Missiles are the really nasty part of modern warfare. They are much faster than rounds, can penetrate any armour, hit accurately at any point within their range and be quided to their target by any number of means. In CM terms, the role of airpower in a modern engagement can be an ATGM fired from behind a hill several kilometres from the edge of the map, guided to the target by infantry or another aircraft (even farther from the edge of the map) vapourizing your tank without you ever having a chance to fight against it. What about my own helos? What about SAMs? What about countermeasures? What about fighters? True enough you do have several options open to you, but the battle is now fought and won by forces not even on your map. The fate of your ground troops is now determined by the clash of much more powerful platforms fighting at tens or hundreds of kilometres. Cheers Paul

So, the usual argument then? What was my point? I believe I said that a tactical level wargame based on modern warfare would be quite possible, but that it would be difficult to accurately include the vast majority of modern advancements in a realistic way on a tactical scale. Extremely difficult, but not impossible. Basically what I was describing was the isolated battlefield, which we also see in CM, on a modern scale. Perfectly acceptable as a game. However, a perfectly acceptable game that becomes more and more insufficient as you get closer and closer to modern weapon systems. In order to capture the finer points of modern warfare, something new would be required (that would not necessarily exclude WWII scenarios). Not sure I understand your point about the constraints of terrain, but helos are a giant leap, period. Not just attack helos. As far as the M18 is concerned, speed is nothing. How long would the M18 last in 1980? Modern AFVs are faster, over longer ranges, under more diverse conditions than their WWII counterparts. They are certainly much more reliable (not to mention deadly). I wouldn't be so fast to write these weapons off as simply strategic in nature. Many are distinctly tactical in nature. If we acknowledge the vastly increased size of the modern battlefield, we must also acknowledge there is sufficient room for smaller warheads to effect only a part of the battlefield. In fact, it would not be a stretch at all to have the firing platform launch a warhead at another part of the map and be completely uneffected by its own weapon. I was referring to laser guided weapons. Also, I should have said that the flow of information to the troops on the ground now comes from many more places and in a more timely fashion than in WWII. The UAV is a very modern occurrence, true enough, but the modern battlefield is heavily influenced by information gleaned from platforms deployed many hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. Simply put, the isolation which was possible to argue as credible in WWII is much more dificult to defend in the modern era. Also, no matter how you view this, civilians have often been able to come up with amazingly close "guesses". I would think information of this type could be obtained or construed. Satellites are definitely strategic in nature but are capable of being used in a tactical nature. Nevertheless, generally speaking, I agree with you. Modern artillery could be ported to a CM style game in a fairly realistic way (including precision ammunitions). Agreed. I do not see modern artillery as being any kind of a hindrance to a modern era CM style game. Significantly different from what? Just to be safe I will sum up my arguments. A CM style game set in the modern era would require much larger battlefields that are not nearly as isolated as their WWII couterparts. I see this as possible, but with the chief problem being the inclusion of modern weapon systems and their effects on tactical engagements. Any attempt to isolate the small-scale tactical battle would become increasingly ludicrous over time. However, if you were able to come up with a decent enough system that maintained terrain details at both large and small scales, it could easily handle even a large WWII engagement(and what a game it would be!). Cheers Paul

Hello I see no reason not to make a game based on cold war or more modern weapon systems and warfare. Granted, making a game that would be a faithful predictor of the possible outcomes of a Fulda Gap scenario would be a little on the difficult side, but hell, why not try? The challenge would be to come up with an engine that would be able to model modern weapon systems to a somewhat realistic degree. Any engine capable of doing so would be able to handle WWII scenarios without even breaking a sweat. Something to the scale of CM would be woefully inadequate. Modern AFVs and helicopters are capable of some pretty high speeds (not to mention the ranges of even modest infantry weapons). The battlefields would have to be much larger. I'm thinking something in the order of 100s of square kilometres, depending on a number of factors. Airpower and offmap artillery can hit the battlefield in much the same way as it does in CM. These weapons would never be more than abstracted, but they can be made to be a part of the battle in a loosely realistic manner. Modern additions to the battlefield become increasingly difficult to model at the tactical level. Bombers, fighters and the like are light years beyond WWII era platforms. Nukes and chemical munitions are a mixed bag that can be a whole topic unto themselves. Lasers and EW are extremely unpredictable depending on any number of conditions. Extremely long-range weapons, pilotless reconnaissance craft, laser quided munitions, satellites, etc. would play a huge role on the modern battlefield, but would be extremely difficult to model at the ground level. My point is that it could be done, but that you would have to simplify and abstract so many aspects of modern warfare that it would no longer be a game based on modern warfare.The 50s and 60s, even Vietnam and a bit later, sure, but modern warfare in all its glory is a tall order. Micheal Emrys's point about it not just being a question of "WWII at longer ranges" is accurate. If you want a game that is basically CM with more advanced toys, I say go for it. But it would be pure fantasy (which is cool if that's your bag). If you wanted to do for modern warfare what games like CM did for WWII era warfare, you would have to make a quantum leap in game design. Think about how a small change in tactics and equipment produced an entirely unpredictable state of affairs in WWII. Now consider another 60 years of technology at an unprecedented rate. Modern conflict is as far from WWII as the latter was from the 19th century (maybe even farther). Cheers Paul

That last one is great, eh. I found the site a long time ago, but never noticed the KStNs. Someone just pointed them out to me today. Also, the Bundesarchiv will apparently sell documents. I haven't figured out how to do it yet, but I'll look into it. Imagine getting your hands on what they have. I've been working on some OoBs for some of the units we've been discussing. If you have any questions, please email them to me and I will help if I can. Cheers Paul

Good point. I hadn't considered that. I think the reason I found it so odd was that scientists of all types could be useful in certain situations, but that the German Army chose geologists above all. I found it hard to figure out of what specific use a geologist could be that would merit having a section of them officially assigned to every panzer division. I guessed some of the uses, but, I don't know, it just seemed like overkill. You know? Anyways. I appreciate the posts, guys. Cheers Paul

Bridges? :confused: Not sure about this. Seems to me the engineers would know what they were doing enough to get through without geologists. I mean, geologists would be nice to have along, but were they so important that they had to be part of EVERY panzer division? Cheers Paul

That makes sense. The 5th Light Division (later the 21st Panzer Division) had a sizeable number of geologists along for the ride when it arrived in N. Africa. Interesting article. Thanks. Cheers Paul

You nut.

Great source. Thanks. I had forgotten about this one. Cheers Paul

Hey I just picked up a couple of books from Leo Niehorster and was looking at the KStNs for panzer divisions. Anyone have any idea what a Motorized Military Geologist Section (KStN 2082) was responsible for? According to Niehorster, it was part of the established HQ for a panzer division. The HQ also included a Motorized Divisional Mapping Detachment and Printing Platoon, but these probably had fairly predictable roles. What a bunch of geologists were doing I have absolutely no idea. Cheers Paul

I think there is a book in the Charles C. Sharp series dedicated to the airborne forces. Vol 4 - "Red Guards", Soviet Guards Rifle and Parachute Infantry Units, 1941-45 Look for it on the George Nafziger website here . Cheers Paul

At what point did I make this assertion? I don't think we have understood each other very well. I have gone out of my way to avoid leaving this impression. I think both of us are well aware of the groundless nature of the "German superiority" argument. I agree with you, as I have several times. The equipment and men, all thing being equal, were the equivalent or better of their German opponents. My entire point has been that all things were not equal due to years upon years of purges and neglect. What you do not understand is that I am not disagreeing with you. Well, I have disagreed with you. The "stupid" argument, I thought, was a bit, well, stupid. But all in all I think you are right. My input has been to give a bit of background on how the state of affairs you detailed came to be. As far as the ultimate cause of the 1941 disaster, I disagree with you. I think that the purges left the RKKA hobbled while you believe they were still capable of an earlier victory. Let's leave it at that. I most definitely agree with you on the importance of CSS and the role it played. Cheers Paul

Also, for German KStNs (TO&Es) for the period there are several good sources, but among them are three outstanding ones, IMO. Not meaning to ignore Tessin and Jentz, but for us English speakers, look at Leo Niehorster's site here, George Nafziger's books here or this awesome site (look at the KStNs). I just picked up two of Dr. Niehorster's books and they are fantastic (despite a few odd typos). Cheers Paul

David Glantz is the best source, but you will have a hell of a time nailing down anything. Unless you read Russian or are very patient with a translator, you will find it hard to get any decent info on the details of the battles themselves. The study of 1941 in Russia is simply not that far along yet. The Battle of Smolensk involved a forerunner known as the Battle of Lepel. Here the Russian 5th and 7th Mech Corps met the German 3rd Panzer Group head on just west of the Dnepr River between Vitebsk and Orsha. JasonC has already mentioned Dubno, but truthfully I do not know much about that one. Army Group South had a few good battles. Do some research and you will find a list of good candidates. During the first week of Barbarossa the 7th Panzer Division ran straight into an entire Mech Corps west of Minsk it did not know was there. But you have to remember that these battle were fought under conditions that would be difficult to model with any exisiting game engine I am aware of. KVs without ammo were ordered to run over German tanks, entire platoons breaking down left and right, Soviet tanks arriving on the battlefield and realizing they had not been boresighted, German pioneers destroying dozens of immobilized KVs (with turrets frozen in place from the shells of 37mm guns if you can believe that), etc. Doing research on 1941 is a difficult thing to do, but luckily, is getting easier as time goes on. Start with David Glantz and Peter J. Zaloga. They are the best sources. For OoBs and Shtat (TO&Es) go to a series of books by Charles C. Sharp. Look for them on the George Nafziger website. Just google these names and you'll hit something. Good luck. Cheers Paul

Oh, that's what I thought. Well, I think you are quite mistaken, but you are entitled to your opinion. There are several points which I think should be stressed. 1. The mech corps fell apart disastrously, almost in their entirety, in two weeks. Not three months. By the second week in July they were a memory. In all of my reading and research I have never heard a single author, even Suvorov, suggest this could have been avoided once Germany invaded. Then again, maybe they all missed something in their twenty of thirty years of in depth study. 2. The few tank divisions and corps which survived the early slaughter only did so because they were positioned farther from the front. By the time they arrived they were facing a German army operating several hundred kilometres from their railheads. Yet, still, they were decimated in a few days of fighting. In some cases, they effectively ceased to be a presence after a single battle. They had time to prepare. What happened? Did they all choose exactly the worst tactics imaginable at exactly the wrong time? Maybe it was a case of bad luck? 3. Considering the size of the Red Army, the size of the German Army and the scale of the front, I find it interesting that 29 corps went the way of the dodo in exactly the same manner in a matter of weeks. Does anyone truly appreciate the magnitude of this disaster? 4. The infantry did collapse. Entirely. Reserve armies fought the battles after the front armies were eaten up and entirely new armies were mobilized to take their place when they were gone. The Red Army that started the war was destroyed. A new one had to be drafted to replace it. 5. There are several reasons for the lull in the fighting in October that have nothing to do with the Russians suddenly learning to shine on the battlefield. Cheers Paul

Deny what? The Russian mech corps are not still running around in August. They are mostly vapour by the second week of July. The Lepel counterattack was over by July 10th and the last remnants of the participating corps (5th and 7th) were encircled and destroyed two weeks later. Hard to imagine what could have been done to produce a markedly different outcome. It's not like they "almost" won except for a few tactical blunders. They were wiped out. Look at the combat histories and find where the mistakes were made. They were ordered to go to Smolensk, they went, they attacked, they lost half their tanks in one battle and then lost the rest trying to save Vitebsk. There was no "turning point" or "close calls". They went into battle blind and unprepared and got smacked. I think you are trying to make the argument that the Russian mech corps were strong enough to make a stand, but due to a widespread epidemic of idiocy (that apparently left no survivors) they were unable to. You are entitled to your opinion but you are running against a great deal of evidence. The anemic tank corps of 1940-41, except for a very few exceptions, were about as effective as Patton's wooden army in 1944. They did inflict considerable losses (most notably on the 7th Panzer Division), but were unable to sustain themselves in combat. Your position seems to be that they could have somehow rectified all of the mistakes made over ten years of purges in a month of combat. They could have somehow overcome everything that had been done to them and still managed a draw by August or September. With all due respect, this view is incomprehensible to me. If we accept that the mech corps greatest failings were in command and control and support units then I wonder how they got as bad as they were. And if they were bad enough to produce the failure of the entire Red Army (in addition to the 200 or so rifle divisions) how could they possibly have been fixed in a matter of weeks? If you are maintaining that things could have been different I would like to hear how you propose the mech corps could have been utilized. Should they have ignored their orders and not counterrattacked? How would they have overcome their gigantic CSS problems to be able to draw by August or September? Who would have been the men to perform this miracle? The mech corps were paper only. They did cause some grief but in the end were a blink. They played a minor role in the early part of the war and had little or nothing to do with what happened later. In fact, if we really want to understand what happened in 1941 we need to look at the forces that actually participated in stopping the Germans. Namely, the rifle forces. This entire discussion is fascinating, but it is almost, I repeat, almost irrelevant to the question posed by the title of this thread. The Battle of Smolensk was never winnable. To say different is to be unaware of what happened there. I'm not sure what you mean when you point out the Dvina River but I am aware of no close battle fought on the Dvina until much later in the war. As far as the south is concerned, it is the same story as everywhere else. The Russians made life difficult for the Germans, but winning would have required counterattacking, and doing that with a realistic expectation of success was simply impossible. Cheers Paul

Of course there was stupidity. There always is. On all sides. But how would things have been different with brilliance? It wouldn't have been is the answer. The mech corps would have crumbled in perhaps a slightly longer timeframe. These were crippled hollow formations manned by men who had little or no idea how to control them receiving orders (two or three contradictory ones a day in some cases) from higher up the ladder. The few massed counterattacks you refer to are perfect examples of the Stavka screaming for a decisive counterattack when one is not possible or advisable. The men had little or no say in the matter. Stalin had killed or arrested tens of thousands in pursuit of absolute obedience and he got it. Unfortunately, when the ludicrous orders started coming down, there was no one either willing or capable to stop the madness. The few corps able to pull together large numbers of tanks were sent tearing into battle with little or no support. Predictably they were destroyed. Where is the stupidity? These men fought to the best of their ability. They simply had no idea what they were doing or, if they did, were so badly hobbled that it didn't matter anyway. No, the stupidity, if it ever existed, was concentrated before the war either before, during or after the purges. The men that allowed the RKKA to be gutted and left for dead are the ones guilty of idiocy. Even Stalin can be accused of stupidity. Depends on how you view his actions. The point is that the RKKA, in its entirety, was in a dismal state of readiness when the Germans invaded. This is the reason it was destroyed. How did it get that way? The purges and poor leadership. The men who fought and died in the first months of Barbarossa, stupid or not, never had a chance. Cheers Paul

Yikes. That is really high. This is across dry open ground right? So how about roads? Would be interesting to run a few tests on dirt roads to see how often it happens. Cheers Paul

I agree with almost all of your points, Jason, but I would like to offer an addendum to the well-stated "galactically stupid" theory. I believe the purges played a massive role. The problem may be far less one of intelligence and more one of fear and intimidation. The Russians, despite killing most of their talented commanders, still had a few competent and creative people (Timoshenko or Rokossovsky) or, at the very least, a few men with the will to get things done no matter the cost(Zhukov). Yet these men had their hands tied through most of the 30s. The fateful decisions were made before the war when Stalin was busy undoing all of the improvements made by the men he was purging. Some of these decisions led to, amongst other things, the late arrival of a decent anti-tank rifle, the later arrival of ammunition for that decent anti-tank rifle, the delayed arrival of the PPd SMG, the failure to produce an effective infantry AT weapon, the abolition of the original mechanized corps and the failure to improve officer training programs during the expansion of the 1930s. In the twilight land of Moscow these decisions were useful and necessary. For Stalin, the threat from the west was still not serious. The German successes in Poland and especially France changed everything. Suddenly not even Moscow could ignore the truth. This is when we start to see the end of the purges and the first examples of military men being allowed to make wholesale changes. Starting with the Timoshenko reforms the poor decisions of the purges are reversed one by one. The situation is not unlike the Japanese gambit. Theose who know, know how bad things really are, but are limited by politics, resources and time in what they can accomplish. Attacking the United States postpones inevitable defeat just as reforming the Soviet mech corps in 1940 was far too late. Those who had the power to change things were given authority to do so but in too limited a way and without the necessary time or materials. In fact, there is evidence supporting this. Several high-profile members of the military attempted to alert Moscow to the state of the Red Army. All of them were removed, arrested or shot. Some of them would survive and be rehabilitated during the war. Some of those would become extremely effective commanders. Faced with destruction, all was forgiven. The men Stalin had ruined became some of his best soldiers. You see, the smart men were there. They were just not calling the shots. It took the Germans rampaging all over Europe for Stalin to realize how deep a hole he had dug himself. His actions after that point are pure desperation or lunacy or both. Basically, if there was colossal stupidity, then it was at the highest levels of Soviet government, not necessarily in the RKKA. One can hardly blame the soldier or even his officer. Neither played a role in destroying the Red Army and neither had any training, ability or freedom to save it. No, IMO, ultimate responsibility lays with Stalin and very few, if any, others. Cheers Paul

I don't buy it either as a prime factor. I do think the poor deployment of the corps played an important role, but it was not critical. Good commanders could probably still have gotten it together in time for battle. Unfortunately there were not many of those. Poor distribution mixed with worse command and control did prevent effective concentration of tank forces. In most cases, not all, the Germans managed local superiority in both men and machines. Once again, not a critical factor, but one which played a part. I just wanted to add a little depth to the numbers and to highlight how poorly equipped the vast majority of mech corps actually were. True enough. The 1940 corps seemed to be somewhat more resilient but they eventually folded as well (usually after a single large scale engagement). Even the ones brought in from Moscow for the Battle of Smolensk were chopped up in short order. I know what you mean here and agree with you, but the statement is misleading. The weakest, and there were many of them, after everything is taken into account, are hollow at best. They do not even compare to a panzer division, or if they do, only do so in numbers of tanks. In fact, this was my point. The numbers are misleading. Despite the large quantities of tanks, the Russians really only had a handful of effective formations. These were indeed huge, but they were not many. Also, the numbers of these large formations with sufficient support is even smaller. Bad distribution of tanks was not only present at the corps level but also at the divisional and even regimental level. Inside corps, tanks and equipment would be massed in a single division at the expense of the other two. Not always, but more often than not. This lead, along with other factors, to the oft-quoted "piecemeal" deployment of tanks. That is my opinion as well. In fact, I think you've basically summed up the current general consensus. Both German and Russian reports seem to agree on what happened if not the scale of what happened. I think it is difficult to nail down a single, or even two or three, critical factors which spelled out the fate of the mech corps once war began. It is a complicated question. I like to point to the effect of near absolute German air superiority (namely in air reconnaissance) but I know many will disagree with me. A more important factor would likely have been numerous conflicting orders or horrible logistics, but I just can't get past the fact that the Russians were operating almost blindly while the Germans knew where their enemy was at all times. The 5th and 7th Mech Corps, for example, were bombed from the moment they arrived at Smolensk even though the Germans previously had no idea they existed. Most of what I have added to this discussion has been in the interest of looking at how the RKKA was arranged before the war and how that lead to 1941. It is a great topic. I definitely agree with you there. Like I said before, I would really like to get into the personalities of the major players and try to see who these men were and what made them tick, but I don't have a clue where to start. Cheers Paul