Cuirassier

The battle for the Tartar ditch began what would become the Crimean campaign. Manstein, 11 Army commander, attacked with with Hansen's 54 Korps, consisting of 73 ID, 46 ID, a regimental KG from 22 ID, the SS LAH Aufklarung battalion, an army engineer regiment and a StuG battalion. So no Romanian units, just German. The rest of Manstein's force (2 Korps) was northeast, facing other Soviet forces. The Germans also had lots of artillery. In addition to the divisional artillery and an army artillery regiment, they also had a battery of 240mm guns and a battery of 305mm mortars. Opposing 56 Korps was Kuznetzov's 51 Independent Army. Kuznetzov had previously commanded the Northwestern Front during its disastrous border battles. 51 Army defended with 7 divisions (5 Rifle, 2 Cavalry) and an independent tank regiment. Two Rifle Divisions and the Tank Regiment defended the first belt of fortifications and another RD and a Cavalry Division defended in second echelon. In the far rear, around Ishun, defended two more RD's and another Cavalry division. The terrain was a wide open, flat salt steppe, devoid of cover. The Soviets had fortified the the first echelon defensives extensively and made use of the Tartar ditch, which was about 50 feet deep and wide, and extended across the entire isthmus. Overall, the Soviet defensive position was 10 km deep and and 5km wide at its narrowest point. It was not, however, fortified throughout its entire depth. The Germans attacked on 24 September, 1941, after a preliminary recon in force, which cleared the approaches to the Tartar ditch. They pounded against the line for 3 days, 73 and 46 ID's carrying the weight of the attack, driving to the Ishun area. Here the Soviets counterattacked with two Cavalry divisions and their remaining armor, but were shot to pieces in the attempt. However, of 26 September, two Soviet armies attacked Manstein's forces in the Melitopol area, forcing him to divert his Mountain Korps to the crisis area. The Mountain Korps had been intended to form a second echelon for 11 Army's attack into the Crimea, but could no longer fulfill this task. Furthermore, the German attacking units were becoming increasingly exhausted from the assault. Manstein therefore called off the attack by 29 September. 56 Korps suffered 2641 casualties. I don't know Soviet casualty figures, but Manstein claims 10 000 prisoners and 112 and 135 captured tanks and guns respectively. Descriptions of this battle are short on tactical analysis. However, the Germans likely achieved the success they did due to their coordinated use of infantry and heavy artillery. The terrain was suited to the use of heavy artillery given that it was flat and open, allowing for good observation. Conversely, Soviet forces were generally of poor quality and had trouble coordinating artillery, tanks and infantry etc at this point in the war. These two factors allowed the Germans to attack successfully and also made any Soviet counterattack attempts ruinous. But keep in mind that it was certainly no cakewalk, as German casualty figures show. And they didn't breakthrough on the first attempt either.

June 1, AGC has 480 StuG III and 73 tanks (29 of which were Tigers). Apparently the Germans have 4740 afv's assigned to the eastern front at the time, though this wouldn't be an operational number--maybe more like half that figure. FWIW. The Germans kept the bulk of their armor with AGNU because they thought all six Soviet Tank Armies were in the Ukraine and tank armies traditionally led the Soviet main efforts, not individual tank or mech corps. The Germans also believed that the Soviets would use these tank armies in a curving thrust to the baltic sea or employ them against Romania and the Balkans, hence the German central positioning of reserves between the two potential sectors for Soviet offensives. Of course, they overlooked the possibility of a major offensive against AGC along the Minsk axis.

Several of the US greenbooks are good (they can be found online), as is this article: http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/resources/csi/doubler/doubler.asp#30 Here is a small AAR of the Hill 192 attack during the St. Lo campaign: http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/p124201coll2&CISOPTR=429 Here is also a great source about small unit actions: http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/smallunit/smallunit-fm.htm Here is some stuff about 9 RTR during the campaign in the west: http://www.royaltankregiment.com/9_RTR/tech/War%20diary/War%20Diary%20Jun%2044%20to%20Jun%2045.htm The lone sentry website also has some interesting tactical articles about German forces too, if you want something else. In any case, they are all online and therefore very accessible. If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of German tactics and organization, I suggest looking at this site:http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/avenue/vy75/data.htm Click on the German narratives; these narratives give the detailed daily orders, reports and actions of the German divisions that launched the southern drive of Citadel. Its a lot of info, but it really shows how the Kampfgruppe system worked. As for books, I have repeatedly heard that Agar Hamilton's Sidi Rezegh battles is among the best for describing tactical combat, though I haven't read it myself yet. Very hard to find in libraries and quite expensive to buy, though. Jentz's two volumes "Panzertruppen" give some decent tactical accounts, lessons learned etc. Stephen Newton also has some decent books. I also found Ian Daglish (he has a number of books covering Brit forces in Normandy) that give some pretty good tactical detail. His book on Epsom is superb, as it includes detailed maps and actual photographs of the terrain. Needless to say, a great resource for making CM battles. There are a number of divisional histories out there as well that will give you tactical detail, though it of course varies from history to history. Hope this helps.

All sounds good except I would prefer not to play a meeting engagement. Would an attack or an assault work for you? Do you have messenger or hamachi?

I'm looking to play a small (company sized) TCP/IP game of CMBB sometime this week. I am in the mountain time zone. Any takers?

Gothkrieger, I think your expectations regarding own-side losses are overly high. Sure, if you call down a well placed prep-barrage or if the enemy has a poor defence layout that allows your infantry to overrun his AT guns then you might take them out before he has a chance to shoot at your tanks. But against competent play this rarely happens and it is dangerous to assume that it could be the expectation. Instead, you must be willing to trade armor for AT guns. The attacker will generally have more tanks than the defender has AT guns; that is why he has the initiative and is attacking. So you trade a couple of tanks for his hidden AT guns along a given route. If you are exchanging 1:1, the end result will usually be that the defender runs out of AT guns on the chosen route while you still have one or two tanks left. That is often enough to shoot your infantry into the defence (provided your tanks are decent HE chuckers like T-34's, Pz. IV's, etc) Thus, you need to accept that the ATG vs tank match up is generally an exchange, rather than a lopsided duel going to one side or the other. And as for the fact that ATG's generally pull triggers first, well that is entirely realistic. In a tactical environment, first shot almost always goes to the stationary, hidden guy with his finger on the trigger. Read any tactical AAR's from the real war if your doubt this. There are also some basics that help you exchange through an enemies ATG network more efficiently. First of all, attack with armor concentrated along routes where the defence can't have its LOS entirely integrated. This allows the tanks to gang up on segments of the defence in sequence, rather than fighting it all at once. This often leaves some ATG's out of position, since a defence is often forced to cover multiple routes. Use mortars as your primary ATG killers, once they are spotted. Firing from defilade, mortars are the perfect counters to ATG's; a single 8 cm type can KO an ATG in 1-2 minutes typically without being spotted in return. When you have serious armor (eg a company or more), stay concentrated and use bounding overwatch. The idea is that you will always have at least a platoon of tanks stationary and that your entire company (because it is concentrated) has los to all the same areas. The defender can open up with the ATG or two he has on your chosen route, but will be rapidly suppressed since all of your tanks will be in LOS with at least half of them sitting still looking for spots and ready to return fire. When you only have small amounts of armor, or it is thin and/or and SPG, you need to be more careful. Keep it well within the infantry main body and keyhole so it can only see one enemy at a time. Fire HE at the target and then back away once the task is done. You want the tank to live as long as possible to deliver its fire against good targets. Caution, keyholing, showing only a frontal facing for a limited duration, etc increase the odds of this happening. Finally, uber armor is also an option. Thick plate AFV's like the KV in 41 and the Tiger in 43 are impervious to most ATG's, making them much more survivable and rendering the enemy's ATG network not nearly as effective.

It depends what weapons the squad has. Demo charges, panzerwurfmines, panzerfausts and Soviet RPG's (thrown, these aren't the rockets) are all really effective. They hit most of the time and often kill when they do. Grenade bundles are not as effective, but still get M-kills often. Regular hand grenades are only marginally effective and molotov cocktails are practically useless. Tactics also increase odds. For example, a pioneer squad in good cover and in command 30 m from a buttoned tank will be much more effective than a tank hunter team charging across open ground against a tank that sees him.

"a real eye opener is Tooze's "wages of destruction". anyone interested in WW2 should read that excellent book." I remember flipping through this book at the library not too long ago but haven't taken the time to actually read it yet. Care to elaborate as to why it was an eye-opener?

jaeger8888, "The T-34's 76.2mm regularly penetrates the late mode STG IIIs 80mm armor at 470 meters." Umm, what? Not in my game.

Remember too that attacking formations could often be just as weak, or almost. Once the Soviet tank and mech corps went deep, the number of operational runners reduced drastically, with any given corps commonly having only 25-50 AFV's running any given day. Furthermore, late war, one rarely sees a seriously reduced PD stopping much of anything. For example, look at 5th PD during Bagration. It arrived on the scene once the Soviet's had already broken through and was full strength having a battalion of Panthers and one of Pz. IV's. A battalion of Tiger's also fought with them. They fought 5GTA along the Minsk axis and certainly got their share of kills. But by the end the formation was gutted and the Soviets closed the pocket anyway. Most of the claims of seriously understrength PD's stopping major offensives or even causing serious delay is propaganda that seeks to glorify the skill of the Panzertruppen. In reality it took full strength panzer corps arriving on scene with fresh PD's to stop anything major. When understrength PD's did actually stop something, it was because the attacker was just as exhausted and understrength as the defending Germans, or even more so. The third battle of Kharkov is a good example of this. Group Popov was only a tank army sized formation in name only. When they were counterattacked they had fewer than 50 tanks, iirc.

Oh, much of Zetterling's analysis can be found online for free too, if you don't have access to his book. http://w1.183.telia.com/~u18313395/normandy/

As for sources, I would recommend Zetterling's Normandy book. It goes into quite a bit of detail regarding the daily strengths of the German divisions involved. Obviously there are some gaps in the research, due to missing or destroyed reports, but there is enough for one to get the overall idea. I don't have the book on hand right now, but there are a few major points that I recall. First, AFV strengths probably see the biggest strength reductions in prolonged fighting, even if the frontline isn't moving that much. They are an important weapon system and serious clashes between armor tend to result in high attrition on both sides. They also take time to repair and are difficult to replace (for the Germans at this time, given production rates not high enough, some difficulty due to tac air, though often overstated). Small arms and HMG losses should be roughly proportional to the manpower losses needed to man them. Maybe somewhat higher on occasion (eg MG team panics and runs away, leaving the weapon behind). What you don't see though are men later combing the battlefield to recover every possible lost rifle or MG. There simply weren't shortages of these things and they were easy to ship out and supply to units. I have never read of small arms or serious MG shortages except during the darkest days for the SU on the eastern front. Generally production and the transportation network was sufficient to keep these in supply. Ammunition, on the other hand, was something that was much harder to keep in constant supply. Understand, a MG like the HMG-42 can throw ammo arbitrarily high; over 1000 rounds a minute. Units could not remotely afford to keep their fingers on the trigger indefinitely. Heavier weapons such as AT and Inf guns were probably similar. A few knocked out here or there by arty or direct fire. Losses of course go up during major efforts when such weapons are overrun. Artillery and mortars are a different case. In a static frontline, these weapons do not suffer very high attrition. By employing roving guns, multiple positions, digging in, etc, arty proved to be quite resilient to counterbattery fire. An attacker may be able to suppress the guns for a short time, but rarely destroyed many of them in this fashion. Like MG's, the big bottleneck here was ammo supply, not # of tubes or losses. Guns can throw lots of ammo during a short amount of time; more than any army could realistically supply, included the lavishly equipped western armies. However, arty attrition rates change significantly once the front is cracked open. Why? German and Soviet infantry divisions used horse drawn artillery and supplied it the same way. Once off the rail net, such formations were quite primitive in their ability to resupply and move (static units in Normandy especially). Thus, these weapons were always to slow to get away once the fighting went mobile. As for CM, attrition rates tend to be much higher than the real deal. Unsustainably high. Players tend to use direct fire guns a lot more too than they were used historically, resulting in higher losses. I hope this helps with your question. I definitely recommend Zetterling's book though, if you want to do a more detailed analysis. I also think there is a book floating around on the internet regarding US logistics in the ETO campaign, though I don't recall if it examines specific divisional formations.

Since the game is completely fictional anyway, why not just make up your own plot? You could even give some crazy reason for why Blue botched the invasion and have Syria launch a counteroffensive into Iraq or something.

This thread should be useful: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=516721&highlight=withdrawl#post516721 Given the limited description you have given above, I would say you withdrew too late. Sometimes poor terrain may prevent you from withdrawing altogether. However, if you are trying to retreat when you are already *outflanked* and *outgunned*, then you are doing it much too late.

I just finished playing it as the Soviets against the AI. *Spoilers below* * * * * * * * * * ** * * * I left all of my units in the same positions that they were in during the setup phase. I waited for the entire Pz. IV platoon to crest and move 30m or so over the LOS break. MGs and mortars buttoned the tanks and then I let fly with the 2 7.62cm AT guns. The platoon was wiped out in a couple of minutes and the AT guns went back into hiding. At 800m distance vet AT guns are quite deadly in trenches. The AI then pushed a platoon of infantry over the hill along with some halftracks. The ATGs opened up on the halftracks since the AI did not have any overwatch set up. Maxims forced his infantry to clump up in the brush and my 8 inch spotter called fire on the nearest TRP and then adjusted fire to on top of the platoon. Maxims and 82mm mortars kept the platoon hemmed in the brush. A single salvo from the 8 inch guns sent the platoon running and brewed an unfortunate halftrack nearby. Two Pz IIIs showed up on my left flank with another panzergrenadier platoon a few minutes into the game. The panzers were readily knocked out by the 7.62cm ATGs; those 50 mm guns are just too dinky and one AI Pz III thought it was smart do drive length ways along the crest, resulting in the tank getting brewed after a flank penetration. The panzergrenadier platoon pushed on and came down the reverse slope into the firesack formed by my Rifle platoon in the gully. An HQ and one squad were eliminated outright, while the other two squads wormed their way into cover. Conveniently some crack recon guys showed up at this time and eliminated the pinned men with a quick counterattack. Meanwhile I continued to drop 8 inch shells on the enemy's side of the hill, since that is where he seemed to be gathering reinforcements. After a couple minutes of fun slaughter, I exited the game. Overall it was fun but easy against the AI. But that is expected; the AI does not know how to attack. Either way though the Soviet defense is certainly powerful. Nothing the Germans have can afford to stand still in plain view for long.

No problem. We got the scenario, though I am not sure what version it is. Personally I prefer the earlier variant because it makes the options for German strategy more interesting (eg if you lean too much on the infantry, you might run out, too much on the Stug's, might run out of those etc).

Yeah if you could email them to us that would be great.

No problem. Maybe Jason will be along shortly to email it to us.

Does anyone have a copy of JasonC's Ponyri Campaign (series of scenarios) that they would be willing to send me? I lost my copy when my computer crashed awhile back and AFAIK he did not post the campaign on any scenario websites. Thanks.

FWIW, Glantz in When Titans Clashed cites Soviet irrevocable losses as 11 285 057 and sanitary losses as 18 344 148, making the total 29 629 205.

Joachim, So the the guns are forced to open up at distance for fear that they may just get knocked out during the prep-bombardment without getting any shots off? I guess this would require some good recon since the attacker would have to map out the defense to a degree, to know where to put his fires (though having tons of shells of course alleviates that concern a bit). Molotov Billy, The US Army Green books have some pretty low-level tactical stuff in them. It also helps to read operational histories covering the North African or Northwestern Europe campaigns in general, as these tend to cover actions at a lower level than an Eastern Front history. Divisional and regimental histories also tend to have some decent information in them. You can also read field manuals and lessons learned documents (there is a good one from the Soviet General Staff covering the Moscow fighting).

Right here: http://motionempire.com/Browse_TV-Shows__The_Pacific_Season_01__71322.html

I understand the holding fire/opening up dilemma for defending infantry, but not the PAK one so much. What threat keeps the PAK from refusing to fire except at close range? Can the artillery prep bombardment suppress the PAK so much that the tanks gain a sighting differential and therefore gain an edge in dueling the guns? Also, was German artillery used primarily in prep shoots, or did they keep the 105's and 150's reactive, hitting batteries as they appeared? I ask because I have not read Hamilton's book (not in my library and too expensive for me to afford at the moment). It also is difficult to replicate in CM, since attackers rarely have so much off-map artillery, time or long initial LOS distances.

It could have been Guderian, who was Chief of the OKH from July 1944 until March 1945. But that is just based on my memory, which very well could be incorrect. I'm just curious, what is your interest in this quote?

For most vehicles, it just means reduced situational awareness (down a man and tank is now always buttoned). The tank will still be functional, but since the crew now has a higher workload and cannot unbutton, target acquisition will suffer accordingly. One man turreted tanks (eg T-70) will no longer be able to use their weaponry, since there is no one in the turret to use it.