wokelly

They should probably be more inaccurate for the attacker rather than rarer. Lots of attacks for the British/CW had calculated "TRPs" around objectives to aid in repelling counter attacks. Problem is that predicted fire tended to be pretty inaccurate (5% of rounds within 100 yards by 100 yards) in real life.

Just followed the link on Wiki to the actual article. Very interesting read: http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/1081/1/Engen_Robert_C_200803_MA.pdf Quite interesting stuff about the observations of weapons (Page 99). A bunch of it contradicts post war views on certain weapons: Usually the PIAT is indicated at being a total POS. I do wonder if it is a case of the weapon being effective because it is actually good, or being effective because it was all that was available? Would the bazooka have ranked higher had the men had experience with both? The Sten was the most hated weapon with some 25% of officers claiming it was ineffective and only a handful indicated it was outstandingly effective. Interesting I have seen some forum debates that have attempted to rehabilitate the Sten or only claim it was earlier models that were ineffective and unreliable. Seems like it had a pretty lousy reputation even during 1944-45 when this data was compiled. Also interesting noting the killing power issue. Some interesting fodder for MP40 vs Thompson debates, as soldiers who used both 9mm SMGs and .45 cal SMGs seemed to prefer the bigger round despite the Thompson being less accurate/less controllable than 9mm guns (Have shot all three in automatic, Sten is a much easier gun to control than the Thompson). If it was just reliability it would seem picking up the MP40 would not be a bad idea given the 9mm would still be easier to acquire than .45 cal in NW Europe for the Canadians. Seems to be a mix of both poor reliability and poor killing power that damned the Sten. Ultimately it seems the Officers were generally content with their weapons, which is interesting because you always hear about Allied weapons being inferior or not able to generate enough firepower. Apparently the officers though their small arms were generally good enough for the job they had to do, though they did have a healthy respect for German MGs and Mortars.

Nothing wrong with the name. Like a number of other names for scenario's (ie Breaking the Panzers - Really good book) it is a reference to one of the big works written on 21st Army Group. In this case it is a reference to Colossal Cracks by Stephen Hart, which is a term coined by Monty that Hart uses to define 21st Army Group battle doctrine.

I wish, only have seen 4 gun batteries so far. Was one mission in Scottish Corridor where you get a 8 gun Battery of Priests with 500 rounds. That was pretty sweet.

Brits didn't have many men left by 1944, not so much because of losses but because of commitment across the globe and their out of proportional sized airforce which employed as many men as the Army did, plus their navy. The biggest problem was not so much armour heavy, infantry poor. By 1944 the British War office designed their divisions with specific tasks in mind. The Infantry Divisions with attached Armour Brigades (literally armour divisions minus infantry/artillery) would punch a hole, the Armour Divisions would exploit. That is why the Brit Armour divisions had such little infantry, to remain mobile and flexible. An infantry division with attached Armour assests was a very well balanced formation, with adequate infantry for the number of tanks. Monty however had a universal concept, he disliked designations and inflexible units. He wanted a universal tank and a universal type of Infantry and Armour unit. He tended to treat units the same despite their inherent differences, as did the Corp commanders. This is why you see Armour Divs being used to spearhead attacks despite the fact they were not built for such, or why Monty used Churchill equipped Tank Brigades like he used Sherman equipped Armour brigades, besides the fact one was much better suited for leading the attack than the other. Monty did do a lot right as head of 21st AG, but he really did not understand what the War office had done, or he simply did not care and decided to do things how he felt they should be done. While Monty was right in theory (Universal tank concept was pretty revolutionary), in reality it was not setup like he wanted but yet he followed his theoretical views. This played a role in the uneven British performance in Normandy (though there were other reasons for the issues as well).

^^^^ Agreed. On the WWIIOL forum there was a very knowledgeable member who contributed recently declassified WWII data (usually because he pushed for their declassification though the bureaucracy) who worked at the US archives. He was very knowledgable on the aspects of HE shells and fragmentation. According to what he has read from various sources, British APDS was not inherently inaccurate, the problem was the British contracted APDS to many companies and some frankly made poor APDS. The big initial issue was petals failing to separate at the same time, which threw off the accuracy of the round. Or issues with the muzzle break which had to be modified a bit. These problems were fixed later and the round itself was quite accurate. The biggest issue, was really the lack of markings on gun sights for APDS ammo.

I have never modded this game before, but I would like to change one aspect in the CW module. I have read a lot on the CW forces during WWII and everything I have read about Normandy suggests to me the Brits need a little more automatic firepower at this point, mainly an extra sten gun. Frankly I have no interest in arguing this with the Devs, it is only an impression I get but I do not have hard values. Still for the purposes of my own play experience I would like to modify the Squad TOE ever so slightly. I do not however have any clue where to start. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Again, huh? Is the above source not reliable?

Off the top of my head: Apperently Panzer Lehr. Side armour is smashed which looks like poor quality, nothing the Allies had was quite that big and a naval shell would have annihilated the tank. Staged photo but a KOed panther during Epsom with a hole in the front. Few others scattered about, they were rare but happened. In reality nothing the Allies had should have theoretically been able to penetrate the glacis plate.

Must have been before my time. Huh?

Doesn't specify, it is actually a summary of a bunch of reports rather than the actual documents themselves. Should post the link, it is really interesting stuff. Just stumbled upon it recently. The above data is on page 22. http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/ww2eff2.pdf I'd rather the actual documents but this is better than the nothing I have found.

I don't think the Bren average was 60. "WO 291/474 Rate of fire of the LMG. In trials held in 1944, the average time of Bren gunners needed to re-aim in between bursts was measured as 2.3 seconds; to change mag and re-aim, 3.8 seconds. These figures are not fast enough to maintain the official "rapid rate" of 112 rds/min, which would need 1.8 and 3.3 seconds respectively." Doing some quick calculations the average Bren gunner was roughly 80-86% (reaiming and reaim + mag change respectively) as effective as he theoretically needed to be (say mean of 83%). That means he could practically on average get 93 rounds down range per minute, somewhat less when he needed to change the barrel (roughly 150-200 rounds per barrel so every two minutes or so). I also get the impression, but have no proof, that the Bren was operated by one man. If so the reload speed should be somewhat better and the gunner closer to 114rpm, though probably not 114 given the loader does not help reaming. The entire test mainly focuses on the advantages of the German guns over the Brits, and largely concluded it was the belt feed that made them more effective, not the Rate of Fire. That kinda makes sense to me, most modern GPMs and SAWs are belt fed but not near the 1200-1500 rpm of the MG42 (most are around 850rpm which is closer to the MG34's Rof). Most of the test is theoretical though, the Bren reloading and remaiming being the only actual timed aspect.

I also have found the Panther to be somewhat hard to kill with penetrations. For starters it is a nightmere to kill with the PIAT even with penetrations. I have one that took penetrating hits 3-4 times from the rear and not die. The PIAT round was not the best thing but it was a large round (almost 90mm) and should be fairly lethal once it penetrations, at least similar to the Panzershrek in post-penetration lethality (both rounds are roughly the same size). Even with tank rounds I find the Panther is hard. In one Scottish corridor mission, one veteran mission has me facing two panthers with Churchills. I was able to flank them both, but the 75mm even with side and rear penetrations took 2-4 shots on average to bring down. In the mission described above the 17 pdr seemed reasonably lethal, the hull is generally impervious but the mantlet is the weak spot frontally. The British did some examinations of KOed panthers and did not find one with a penetrated frontal hull except for a lucky 6pdr round to the hull MG port. The concluded all future British tanks should have similar frontal hulls (angle and thickness). On the other hand I have seen several Normandy pictures of Panthers with holed Glacis plates so it certainly did happen, but was probably armour quality issues.

Yeah well the Enfield having double the firepower of the Kar was probably over the top. I do think the Brits need a second Sten though at this point. It is hard to track down Sten numbers is the problem, the official TOE was rather vague on the numbers. I did read British and CW divs kept a surplus of Stens to issue out when extra close range firepower was needed. As always the game is based on official TOEs as much as possible when in reality it may have been much different. Most units tended to have more automatics than they were suppose to have. But modeling that brings in guess work that is impossible to prove one way or another.

My only issues really are sometimes the Brit artillery seems a bit lacking compared to what I read, and also in past CM's the Brit squads tended to have 2 stens by this point. A second sten would probably help things quite a bit. Also in past CM's the Enfield was a bigger advantage. It gave off a 10 in firepower compared to a 5 for the Kar (M1 was like a 15). The Enfield seems to operate just about the same as the Kar in game so that advantage is totally gone.

I'd honestly expect the British Anti-tank guns to have binoculars at least. I mean the British were able to issue a radio to every platoon, their tanks had optical eye pieces for the hull gunners, and their vickers had optical indirect fire sights. I don't see why supplying binoculars would have been hard.

Wow. Can you just please leave the forum and never come back. Honestly if you don't like the time limits, just freaking chance it yourself. If you educated yourself on the game you would know it is not hard to do.

I could have sworn when I split off a scout team with the Brits the team had Binoculars. I dunno it may have been the PIAT team I send along with them and I got the two groups mixed up.

I own all those books but one (flanethrower, but it is on my list to get), I do not recall seeing any info on phone boxes on British tanks, the prevalence of them or when units adopted them. I can find lots of stuff on US tanks in this regard, but little on the British.

The US units in Normandy did not originally have phones on their tanks that connected to the commander. That came around a few months later and some independent armor battalions did not get them until 1945. Phone communication was more common in Italy where combat experience and experimentation had occurred for awhile before but these lessons did not make their way to the ETO and the US tankers learned from trial and error in Europe (I get the impression the Allies failed more often then not to take lessons from Italy and distribute them to the troops embarked for the invasion of France). In short it is a bit of a crap shoot. I have read a lot more about the communications aspect on US tanks due to Harry Yeide's excellent work (Infantry's Armor) on the subject of separate tank battalions, as well as Michael D. Doubler's work (Closing with the enemy) which detailed it in some depth. It was irregular at best. No US unit (Armored Div or Independent Battalion) had phones on their tanks at the start of Overlord, a good number had them by the end of Normandy (in August), and most had them by 1945 but still not all. Even then not all tanks had them, often the Troop (British term) or platoon (equivalent US term I think) commander (leader of 3-4 tank groups) got them first. Data could be relayed to them from the outside, then passed to the individual tank able to best deal with it. Some units were pretty well equipped with almost every tank having one. There are no good works on the British that cover this that I have found. I get the impression they were not as quick as the American's in adding these phones. The author of the Irish Horse Regiment Churchill unit in Italy said he remembers this system only showing up on his units Churchills in 1945 in time for the Spring offensive. The Americans for example were beginning to retrofit these to their units in Italy as early as late 1943 (though not all units did this at the same time). I believe later marks of the Churchill came built with phones on the back (I remember Fetcher's book on the Churchill showed the Mark VII with a phone on the back in a manual drawing), but how the retrofitting of existing tanks occurred I have found nothing, especially with Cromwells and Lend Lease Sherman's. As far as the Germans, I don't believe they ever thought of adding phones. In general they had better combined arms training prior to first combat (for most of the war) so maybe never saw the need for phones. From what I read even Allied tank units (with no phones) that had trained together in Britain with infantry units (not common but did happen), when paired with them in action, often worked well together. Also it is entirely possible the Germans had the foresight to had infantry radios that could communicate with their respective tanks (I have no idea if they did). In the Allied case the infantry radios could not communicate with the tanks, and even the US tank destroyer's radios could not communicate with Shermans via Radio (which caused all kinds of problems). I know quite a bit on the US in regards to these phones, a bit on the Brits (all on Churchills) and nothing about the Germans.

I have had annoying issues with the chest high "bocage" stopping AP rounds from hitting tanks on the other side. Also HE and bullets. I don't have a problem with the really tall stuff so much as the check high stuff blocking things. I need to move my tanks right to the bocage to reliably get guys on the other side.

QB TOE is a bit different than the campaign. In QB setup, no extra bren per platoon, and the PIAT is attached to one of the squads (much like the Bazooka is in the US campaigns). The PIAT is there, it is just in one of the 3 squads per platoon. Not sure why the TOE between the campaign and QB is so different though.

Brits and Poles had Cromwell, Canadians went completely with the Sherman. Not entirely sure why it worked out like that. Otherwise they had very similar TOE's.

I dislike the time limits as well but I don't think it is wrong they exist. Epson was a breakthrough attempt with a timeline for when objectives had to be taken. Having your companies take their time on objectives would slow the advance. Sometimes you need to take more casualties initially to suffer less in the long haul, that means rushing things due to time constraints which happened often.

What are your tactics when using the British in the Brit campaign. I'll start off with my own. 1) At the beginning of every mission I give each of my Platoons Bren teams (2 man bren detachment) an extra 500 rounds from the Bren Carriers which brings up their ammo count to 750 rounds. Makes them much more useful for laying down suppressive fire since they don't burn out so quickly. 2) If issued an extra 3 Bren teams from the support company, ditto to the above in regards to ammo (add some additional 9mm for the detachment commander and you got a decent assault unit), issue out the teams as seen fit to each company or even platoon if one is tackling a particularly rough objective. 3) Use spare soft skinned vehicle drivers to be gunners in my Bren Carriers. Each company HQ unit has a few spare soft skinned vehicles usually. The drivers don't do much so I stick them in the Bren carriers as the gunner since on default the vehicle only has a driver. 4) Do not stick 2 or 3 man teams in Brens and use them offensively, the guy in the back does not have much cover and gets hit fairly often. That said the guys in the back CAN fire from inside the vehicle but I don't find the reward outways the risk of extra casualties. If the Bren Carrier carries a Bren team, dismount them, they are more useful on the ground. 5) Use these Bren Carriers as mobile Bren guns. To be honest the Bren carriers are BLIND as a bat even when unbuttoned which I think must be a bug or a hold over from nerfing the tank commanders. That said they can still be useful for suppression (blind firing at squares where enemies are). They got over 1k worth of ammo and two Bren carriers can generally suppress a German squad in cover. 6) Use any spare Bren carriers (with no gunners) to act a bullet magnets. The AI like to shoot at Bren carriers because while bullet resistant they are not bullet proof and can be knocked out. Still the majority of the time the bullets do no harm but they do allow me to identify German HMG positions by drawing fire. 7)Keep the platoons together. The Brits do not have a lot of firepower (I do think they need another SMG, CMx1 gave the Brits 2 SMGs at this time period, not sure why they don't have a second in this one), so I tend to maneuver my platoons as a single unit. In this campaign the Germans tend to be outnumbered, so focus each platoon on each German unit you encounter and you will tend to prevail with few if any casualties. 8) Keep the Bren in action. The squad firepower drops dramatically when the Bren gunner goes down. Buddy aid that Bren back into your squad's TOE ASAP. 9) Use your 6 pounders aggressively. In a few scenario's you get 6pdrs, but the Brits issued them with HE where as the US didn't have any. They are pretty good for knocking down enemy inf in buildings (especially on the upper floors) and with the Loyd carriers they can move around with some protection. Use them aggressively, find good overwatch sites for objectives and use them to blast out enemy inf in buildings. 10) Keep your 2 inch mortars up at the front. They are not great at range and frankly their smoke is often more useful than their HE. You need to keep them close to your squads for the best effect. The HE has knocked out a few German squads hounding me at times so it can be useful. 11) Keep your PIAT teams up front. They are pretty good for blowing the Germans out of buildings. Plus almost always your company HQ truck and one Bren Carrier has spare PIAT ammo (12-16 additional rounds in total between them). If you have 6 pdrs, one loyd carrier often carries another 6 rounds of PIAT. If one objective looks hard, you will often have a spare PIAT or even two in Bren/Lyod carriers depending on what the support company sent you, detach the AT unit from your squad and give them the spare PIAT and ammo for a more hard hitting squad. 12) Be careful with husbanding you ammo though. You often have to go through a few missions before your men and carriers/jeeps/trucks get resupplied. You have a bit of spare hardware you can utilize but keep in mind what you may face in the next mission before you do anything. Those are a few of my own. What are other people tactics.