SleeStak

I think this really starts to get to the crux of the matter of the Sherman's rep. I think we give the impact the specific weapons system have in a fight, way too much emphasis. We ask, "what was the best tank?" instead of "what was the best armored doctrine?" and the Sherman takes the heat for an entire force that was a little green and hadn't put together the best approach for dealing with opponents armor. Echoing some of what Steve said, I think American armored doctrine was flawed and not helped by the lack of a really effective infantry anti-armor weapon. The Bazooka was good for what it was but really wasn't going to dominate German armor, the 57mm wasn't really powerful enough to provide the inf real protection from German armor. This issue was masked by the lack of German armor facing the American in Normandy until the bulge, of course. I read recently that the British offered the US the opportunities to deploy Fireflys. The US decided to study if they were better than our planned 90mm armed tank but its too bad we didn't take them up on that offer. The Germans would have been facing Uber-Civil-War-Generals instead of the Allies facing Uber-Cats.

I'm clearly missing something about the armor penetration and the results of your AAR. Based on the 75L48 penetration numbers I've seen (CMAK has the gun penetrating 131 mm at 500 meters at zero degrees, My Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two has Pzgr39 penetrating 96 mm at 500 m at 30degrees and Pzgr40 penetration 120 mm at 500 m at 30degrees), the gun had the power to penetrate the Shermans at the ranges engaged. The upper hull plate of the M4A3 is 64mm of armor at 47 degrees (again from CMAK) which should give it the protective equivalent to roughly 94 mm of armor. That seems penetrable at 500m for the 75L48. I'm all for giving the Shermans the correct amount of survivability that their armor conveys, but the figures I've seen seem to indicate that they are too strong in your match. Clearly, I'm missing something. Are the PzIVs firing from a position giving them too large a horizontal angle (thus increasing the armor's protection)? Are the numbers I'm listing inaccurate or different that CMBN's numbers? I'm a latecomer to reading your excellent AAR and maybe I missed something in the reading that accounts for these results. I'm perplexed

Wow! That is almost operational in scope. Well, maybe just operational but certainly satisfies a two battalion assault against a single battalion each backup up by some armor. Great news

I'm curious, in your testing do you recall what gave the Shermans the edge? Were the Shermans able to take a couple of the PzIV's shots, did the Sherman's rate of fire tell, where the Sherman's more accurate or was it something else? My Shermans seem to get waxed by the 75L48 gun if they're hit but can kill the PzIV's if they hit first. My experience has been that its a question of how many shells each side puts in the air and who hits first. Maybe I'm engaging with my Sherman at too short a distance and they would gain some survivability engaging from greater distances. I went in game to check the penetration values and found that Michael was right in his post where he stated that the numbers for the 76mm gun and 75L48 were more or less equal. I had remembered the 76mm gun penetrating more poorly that it does, at least in game. Their numbers are roughly the same. With that said, the 75L48 seems to penetrate the Sherman reliably under 1000 yards if you keep the shooting angles low. The lower hull of the Sherman is the only part able to provide reliable protection. Obviously, if I'm seeing different outcomes, I must be doing something different to the disadvantage of my digital Sherman crewmen. When I played CMAK, CMBB and CMBO, I tended to play bigger QB battles and tried to use Battalions of Infantry with Platoons of Tanks. Those kind of fights held the most interest for me. I'm interested to see how CMBN translates into fights with a couple of battalions of Inf backed up by an understrength tank company and some artillery support. Modelling each soldier is going to make that a difficult task to manage but I have faith Battlefront will pull it off.

I love the Marder, when you kill something with that tank, you feel like your tactical brilliance really added something to the mix. Anyone can kill a Sherman with a Panther but you have to be clever to accomplish the same thing with a Marder. Also, I remeber the advice 'Don't put your PzIV's in hull down' too from the forum but I can't remember who suggested it. Hopefully the new engine will change that. I haven't played CMSF but it will be interesting to see if the smaller scope of battles with its cooresponding reduction in the number of combat elements impacts the ability of the players to take advantage of all arms cooperation. The advantages of tanks like the Marder, Sherman, PzIV ultimately is that you can get alot more of them in a QB battle than you can get of the Panthers, Tigers, etc. and then use your numbers advantage to get more guns firing on target. In short, taking advantage of that qualitative advantage Stalin claimed numbers provided. In CMAK and CMBB it was pretty easy to put a re-enforced battalion with armored support into a QB. If you were fortunate on the rarity of the 57mm or Pak your could suppliment with gun support. Stugs or M10s gives you reasonably cheap, mobile guns that, when working with a couple of batteries of at guns, provides a pretty effective defense. I'm sure I've read that the focus in CMBN will be on combat at a smaller scope. That will almost certainly impact the players ability to use their forces as a team (It will be hard to use two tanks like you'd use five because, if one bogs, you lose half your anti armor force). I'm somewhat trepidatious of the impact of the scope of CMBN and its ability to simulate CMAK's and CMBB scale of combat. I'm sure the smaller scope of combat will bring their own kind of joy and CMBN may well handle re-enforced battalion level combat just fine. I hope so.

While its been awhile since I've played CMAK, the Sherman/PzIV match up seemed to go to who hit who first under 1000 meters. I always felt that if I could control that with the PzIV, I'd win the armor fight. Maybe I wasn't using my Shermans to their utmost effectiveness. With that said, the PzIv's turret armor is anemic and its hard to understand why the rest of the tank was up armored but the turret remained 50mm. It really does seem an oversight. The point I was trying to make in my original post was that, despite its weaker armor (and Peregrine identified its Achillies heel, or turret in this case), its gun makes it a useful tank in tank versus tank combat from the introduction of the G model until the end of the war. I think that as long as you handle the tank as you'd handle a M10, you can do pretty well against the Shermans and the rest of the western Allied tank force for the most part. The heavily armored Churchills (mk VII I think) and the M4 jumbo are a little too much but the rest of the western arsenal can be destroyed. I should probably dust off CMAK and give the Cintheaux scenerio a shot. I'm a sucker for the underdog and the PzIV really is the underdog of the German armored forces.

Yeah, when i wrote that, I meant to include that it beat the Sherman up til the end of 1944. The 17 lber was a better weapon and the 3" roughly equal though its penetration numbers are lower than the 75l48. Not enough to really impact the matchup between the Sherman and the PzIV though. The l48 gives it enough punch to be useful through the war and the tank can contend with most of the allied mediums if its not suprised, but it fights the Russians at a disadvantage later in the war.

The PzIV didn't have the same level of protection that the Panthers or the Tigers posessed but it did have a better gun than the Shermans and early T-34's. Well managed, the PzIV can take just about any allied tank except for the Russian heavies or maybe the late war churchills. In CMBB or CMAK, i tried to use them like US tank destroyers.

I think history is often too tough on people/countries that fail in war. I think the historical judgement on France in 1940 is probably too harsh and its hard to imagine a nation that could have resisted a German invasion if they had faced the same circumstances as the French. What's more, the French army gave a good account of itself in local actions. After Dunkirk, had the French mustered the political will to fight it out with the Germans, they might have remained an independent political force in Europe and siginificantly changed the course of the war. The german material margin wasn't huge. Of course, the war could have developed in to an attritional struggle with the Germans that would have depleted a generation, something the French might have found worse than surrender. For me, fascinating 'what ifs'.

I don't think the Germans really wanted to fight the western powers either. I suspect Hitler was stunned when England and France actually declared war over Poland and thought that each military success would lead to a diplomatic deal ending the war in the west so that the Germans could prepare to go after the USSR.

German margins were so close early summer of 1940. Had the French held on til the Germans had to overhaul their tanks in large numbers and German logistics began to fall apart, the French could have made it to the fall. Then no Western French ports for the German Navy, no battle of Britian and Stalin just watching with relish. It would have been a very different war. Of course, the French would have had to figure out how to handle those pesky Panzers in division and corps strength.

It says something about the pre-release cruelity of this community that I knew this topic was a ruse as soon I saw it. Of course, I still checked to make sure.

Wow, I didn't realize the first preview was so soon. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that the previews weren't for another month. Regrettably, I won't be able to attend one but I can't wait to hear the reactions from them. I'd still love to see another AAR though.

I really like the idea of bringing in a CM1 veteran against a CM2 tester. I, like I suspect lots of folks out there, really enjoyed the classic CM series but never really got into CMSF. I'd love to read the reactions to different facets of the game from someone like-minded. With that said, I'm sure doing an AAR thats comparable to JonS and Elvis's fine piece would take a great deal of time and energy. But that AAR really took me back to the heyday of CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK. I'd love to see another one while we wait for the previews.

Elvis and JonS's fine AAR generated an enormous amount of interest on this board and was extremely entertaining, both for me personally and for the community at large (if the views are any kind of measure). For the first time in years I found myself checking out BattleFront.Com a couple of times a day and enjoying not only the AAR, but the discussion about WWII military tactics from so many well informed amateur and profession historians. I'd like to humbly request BFC commission another AAR. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to find two people willing to volunteer to fight it out if Elvis and/or JonS aren't interested in doing another one and using a later build will allow more features to be divulged. How about it Steve?

I don't know that you'd have to create the entire generator with AI support in one bite. A simple import/export function would allow people to come up with ways of resolving the operational level stuff. That you could do with an excel spreadsheet and dice, another application using google maps and a db, a pad of paper, pencil and flipping a coin, whatever. I remember a talented programmer put together a campaign for cmbb with a map built around von Manstein's invasion of the Crimea. He only finished one or two maps but was held back by the inability to link the outcomes of one battle to another. The ability to import/export units and their current states would open up so many possibilities. I do data work and this doesn't seem like it would require an enormous amount of resources to make happen. Of course, everything always looks easier to code before the coding begins. Also BFC would have to actually want to do what I'm advocating and at least one poster suggested that they don't want to go this route. Alas!

I followed Campaigns with great interest and I think that Wrath may be on to something. While I'm sure we won't see a campaign generator, it doesn't seem too far fetched to think CM:BN could provide a function to allow the import of Units and a map to a quick battle. The remaining units along with their ammo states, casualties, etc could then be exported at the end of the battle with some simple map data to establish who owns the terrain. With a simple import/export routine, programmers could take a stab at creating a campaign generator to either create an individual campaign or support a large, referee managed campaign. It seems that Battlefront would only have to create the import/export routine and allow the community to fill a need that has been pretty regularly expressed, but is not on Battlefront's todo list. At some point, some genius will figure out how to best exploit the whole thing, write a great campaign generator and then we will all be richer. Plus, Battlefront will get a major game element for a little development or support effort. With that said, I'm sure the effort necessary to create the import/export routine is not trivial and obviously, the good people at Battlefront haven't seen fit to do this yet. I'd love to see it.