Cuirassier

Tero, Actually there was a huge difference between the Western Allies and the Soviets. The Western Allies didn't lose 20 000 tanks per year, like the Soviets did, for example. And the allies weren't screwed up tactically. They had some problems, but these were sorted out and they were well within the German league of tactical proficiency ( arguably the Americans were even ahead, since US armored divisions and TD's routinely spanked their German counterparts). The Germans were not way ahead of everyone tactically, despite what many histories attempt to make us believe. Nearly every German armored counterattack that occurred in the west was a fiasco that just caused heavy losses in tanks and panzergrenadiers for the Germans. With Falaise included, the Western Allies had a superior kill/loss ratio during the Normandy campaign, and at best, the Germans only exchanged evenly in armor terms.

It was the German army after all. They weren't pushovers, and it took actual fighting to retake Europe. And how do you define long? The Western Allied performance was quite good overall, particularly from Overlord to the pursuit that last until September. The Allies advanced further and faster than the Soviets did, at considerably less cost. It was the unanticipated breakdown of logistics and the German decision to pull out the manpower stops, send new armor to the west, etc that let them stand at the west wall. First hand accounts say how tough it was because they are first hand accounts. Such accounts always go on an on about how hard war is, how higher ups never understand anything, and how they persevered and did it anyway. This occurs on anyside. As for the difficult, attrition portion of the fighting in NOrmandy, there are a couple reasons. First of all, the Western Allies never had the odds superiority (initially at least) that the Soviets enjoyed. They did have absolute superiority in the air (though this was not as decisive as often claimed, read Zetterling, loss reports on the German side, etc). They also had ungodly artillery. But the infantry and armor odds were not much above parity. More importantly, Normandy provided the Germans with excellent defensive terrain. The US had to contend with the Bocage, which allowed relatively meager and immobile infantry/airborne formations to fight much more evenly than they might have. THis is because bocage creates all sorts of combined arms coordination problems for the attacker, and even successful attacks are very difficult to exploit (limited road net, choke points, limited deployment space, etc). In the British sector, the terrain was more open. But in this sector the German committed most of their armor, particularly the heavies, and often stood on the defensive. This multiplied the effectiveness of the German armored force. British tactics were also poor at times, especially during the attack, which showed with poor infantry-armor cooperation, sometimes ineffective use of artillery and overly aggressive tactical employment. Nevertheless, the British did get better at it and were not complete stuff ups. They were constantly attacking and attriting the Germans.

I just checked the library today and noticed Glantz's new book on Stalingrad on the shelves. Anyone read it yet? I am itching to give it a read but have too much on my plate as of now.

Drager, There are fixed values of LOS for each terrain type. If you experiment enough, you can memorize them all. I don't know the winter values, but quick tests could easily find them out. For example, when there isn't snow on the ground, woods are 26m, scattered trees 54m and tall pines 36m (I'm pretty sure these values are correct. I know they are fixed in any case). The AI can't cheat with LOS. It follows the same rules as the player. When units "hide", as you say, the aren't necessarily out of LOS. It just means that your unit can no longer make them out, which may mean the enemy has taken cover in a trench, hidden in the trees, or your men are too suppressed to spot well enough.

If it is not winter, then I think it is 26m.

Yep, there are a lot of articles in there. I've tried to focus so far just on infantry-tank cooperation and tank-artillery cooperation articles so far, but even that is a lot to get through. But there is some fairly enlightening stuff in there if your willing to dive in.

50mm mortars tend to work best in pairs, as part of a heavy weapons group. The group normally also contains a couple HMGs, maybe a sniper, FO etc. In a couple minutes they will pin the targeted unit in which you want to take advantage and close. In tight terrain, it pays off to parcel them out to platoons, since they move quickly and have a small minimum range.

I don't recommend Mosier as a source. His take on the Russo-German campaign is frankly insane, imo.

Thanks John. That is plenty to get me started.

Unfortunately there isn't. Weapons teams always come under command of the nearest HQ.

Thanks for the links. There is sure a lot of useful material in there to keep me busy for a while. I'm still surprised how difficult it is to find these types of documents for the British forces.

Are there any lessons learned documents or staff studies RE: tactics for the American, British and Commonwealth forces in the ETO? I've been reading some Soviet general staff studies lately and was wondering if the Western Allies had anything similar. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks.

Will there be a Rambo campaignÉ

Forget CM:Afghanistan and the NATO module. We want CM:Normandy (well I do at least).

Just to add to what I wrote above: The Russians did get better tactically as the war went on. By Uranus and Saturn, they had a decent idea on how to use combined arms and how to use divisional sized tank and mech formations in deep operations. But during the decisive battles of the war (fall 1942 to winter 1944) the Russians were still well behind the Germans at the tactical level. The Russian trump card was superior operational direction, which meant the superior use of reserves that a mobilized economy could generate. So, in 1942, when the Germans send a large part of their force uselessly into the Caucasus and impale themselves upon Stalingrad, Vasilevsky is building a gigantic mech lead reaserve opposite the German flanks. They only need to punch through the Rumanians, Italians and Hungarians, which they readily do, despite numerous tactical 'stuff-ups.' As a result, 6th Army dies along with most of the Allied armies, while other German units are severely mauled (2nd Army). Kursk is similar. The Germans attack the heavily defended salient of Kursk, nearly exhaust themselves, then the Russians release their waiting and ready Army Group scaled reserves and weak parts of the German front, and threaten the entire defensive integrity of the German Eastern Front. This time, the Russians are facing German armies across the board and the German panzer formations are still 30 to 50% strength, so naturally they have a harder go at it than they did at Stalingrad. But it still works and the Germans lose Orel, parts of the Dnepr, etc. After these key events, the Russians use their odds advantage and launch offensives everywhere, in staggered fashion, always having one ready to go by withdrawing previously exhausted formations into reserve and refitting them. This main effort happens in the south up until the Spring of 1944. Then with all German eyes on the south during the Summer of 1944, the Russians hit Army Group Center, achieving their greatest victory. So as JasonC says, the tactical level was simply not that important. One had to be competent obviously, but that was clearly good enough considering the disparity between Russian and German operational play. 'Good enough' is all the Russians needed when they were throwing entire Army Groups spearheaded by Tank Armies against overextended infantry corps with limited tank reserves.

The Germans were out-thought consistently by the Russians from the Fall of 1942 on (Vatutin's overextended run to the Dnepr early 1943 excepted). Uranus and Saturn actually played out similarly to Kursk and Kutuzov. In the former, the Russians relied on German overextension and their Caucasus adventure to smash their front. Naturally, the Germans achieved some substantial victories before becoming overextended. At Kursk, the Russians massed reserves in the right area (not being surprised as they were when Blau kicked off) and, more importantly, used their armored formations in a massed, operationally defensive operation. Thus, the Russians managed to exhaust the Germans without having to rely on logistical overextension. But in any case, Russian operational play was clearly superior from fall 1942 on, except during some small incidences here and there. A big part of that was undoubtedly the result of firing Halder.

Well, at least judging by the abstract, the paper has a sane thesis. Much better than the accounts that argue the Germans actually won Kursk, or at least they would have if Manstein could have done things his way. Regarding the Lucy Ring, I don't think that needed to doom it. Despite being well dug in, the German PK's were still eating RC's in two days. The north was of course harder, but the Germans also had a lot of depth there. They just couldn't use it all because of Kutuzov. And the prep fire by most accounts wasn't very effective. It caused delay for some hours, but the losses were trivial. What really saved the Soviets, and was quite revolutionary for the time, was keeping huge formations, especially armored ones, in reserve without frontage and then committing them against the most successful enemy formations throughout his advance. This stopped the southern drive. The northern one was stopped by Kutuzov obviously.

Though I have only read the abstract so far, it seems that the author is not arguing anything that much different from David Glantz. There are a couple of things that the author either puts too much focus on, or not enough, judging from the abstract. First, Manstein did get his operational freedom. It was called Operation Roland iirc, and resulted in the severe mauling of 5th Guards Tank Army. Second, Sicily wasn't all that important to the result of Citadel. Yes, it was the reason Hitler called it off, but the offensive had already shot its bolt by then, and more importantly Kutuzov kicked off in the north. Besides, iirc, Sicily only resulted in the departure of 1 SS and II SS headquarters. Totenkopf and Das Reich were initially going to go to the Med as well, but the Soviet Mius offensive resulted in these two divisions being retained by Army Group South. Citadel failed because the Soviets simply did better at the operational level than the Germans. Kutuzov, the Mius offensive and the herculean efforts to rebuild 1st and 5th Guards Tank Armies simply ran the German panzer reserves ragged.

The German army was far from motorized. Nevertheless, horses have little place in a CM battlefield. They were used to move supplies and guns around far behind the front lines.

You, sir, speak nonsense. Nonsense I say!

"Wouldnt it be better than to rewrite the code of the Tac AI so that every squad, regardless of it's nationality, tries to use its automatic weapon again as quickly as possible ?" Really that should be the case. The British and Commonwealth armies, for example, emphasized the importance of keeping the Bren gun firing regardless of casualties.

"I don't know what would happen if one side has simple uniforms but good tanks though." You lose catastrophically. Eg Soviets 1941.

I don't know. Wellington's red coats dressed quite nicely. Then again, siding with the ugly uniformed Austrians and Russians probably carried the day.

"Hi Deadmeat. Better for knocking out armour, but short barrels have their advantages: cheaper to produce and can be manufactured in a relatively basic machine shop, a ballistic arc to place shells behind or over terrain, smaller propellant charge so more ammo in your vehicle. And weight, of course, as you noted, so you can use a lighter (i.e. more mobile) vehicle." Add to that longer barrel life. And the shells could use a thinner shell casing, allowing one to fit more HE in there. Thus, short barreled gun were used initially has HE chuckers. Armies switched to higher-velocity, dual purpose guns later because multi-role function of tanks was important and vehicles often did not last long enough to wear out the barrel anyway.

But they are Russians. Why would they care at all about NATO symbols?