Magpie_Oz

That was just for a general idea wasn't it? could the gun actually be fired based on aiming with the vane ?

Maybe we should think too about whether it was a good idea to fire the AAMG. Even the one in front of the commanders hatch requires a fair bit of your bod outside the tank, akin to sticking your head over the top of a wall really, which is a good way to get it shot off. You are also 3 metres in the air so a fairly obvious target and an easy way to suppress/KO the tank. To use an ASL term, definitely "Hazardous Movement"

I gunna need to see some references on that, one of the prime roles of armour is to break through and kick the puss out of the supporting elements, top of the hit list is the enemy artillery emplacements. Arty direct firing on armour is a pretty good sign that things are not going as well as you might have hoped. Hitting a moving tank with an artillery piece, as distinct from a field gun is not an easy task, often since the person firing the gun isn't the person aiming the gun and you are all pretty exposed to enemy fire (no gun shield).

Not a bad site this one, shows lots of closes ups of the hatches and MG mounts etc http://www.strijdbewijs.nl/tanks/sherman/eng.htm

This article (again) talks about security elements assisting Tigers so presumably the same thing was done for SP and AT Guns. http://www.lonesentry.com/tigerflorence/index.html

I think this supports the notion that hits to the main gun/mantlet were highly likely. You might find that most tanks heaviest armour was the turret front/mantlet as this was the part of the tank most likely to be exposed. You wouldn't need to hit it optics dead on tho' a shot nearby at the very least will put the gunner off his aim and at best rattle the bejeezus out of the optics. I don't think any WW2 era tanks had the ability for the commander to lay and fire the main gun. The only one I know of is the PzIV which had a hull/turret reference indicator that allowed the commander to know the direction of the turret relative to the hull at a glance. I would think it would be almost impossible to aim the main gun using the tracks. They just aren't that sensitive and the gunner would have to be coaching the driver onto target, running away is a more likely option. In assault guns the gun was not fixed, merely in a limited traverse so the tracks where used to point in the general direction but the fine aiming was done by traversing and elevating the gun, much like an ATG.

So the simple answer is officially "A crap load" Are those figures "Landed in France" or "At the farm gate" ?

1. Bow Co-ax and AA are the correct terms. 2. Although there are 2 to 3 MG's on a WW2 tank the bow gun will generally be just a simple ball mount but the Co-ax is usually linked to the gunner sighting system and has a longer range and higher firepower. 3. As stated many AA MG's cannot really be used to attack ground targets and in some cases leave the firer very exposed if they do so. Not 100% sure but it does seem the AAMG on some German tanks is usually dismounted, (carried inside the tank?) as it is rare to see a picture with an MG on the cupola but most "technical" drawings show an MG.

It's not what you do it's why and where you do it. In Oz the "menial" labourers who worked on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme were considered nation builders and enjoyed a level of prestige above their peers, I think so to many of the workers of the world in similar situations. The fellow who operated the crane on the Barj Dubai is a national hero, for exploits both real and imagined. So cleaning the "Gents" at Mar Base Alpha is likely to attract more prestige than the surgeon who does another boring ol' heart transplant back here on Terra. OH YYEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!!! My bags are packed ! Magpie to enterprise 3 to beam up !

no, no correction just getting my facts straight. Actually total production is probably the better figure to consider anyway as "bums on seats" is really what we are looking at in terms of relative strengths. Any idea what the actual rate of supply was for AFV's? i.e. how many landed in France per month or what ever. It must have been substantial, I remember reading about the Poole fellow who was in action for only a short time, something like 3 months but went thru 3 tanks in that time.

No that was "Get thee hence" , your starlette trophy wife will be pining for your attentions. I know mine is but there is 8 hours of flying for me yet.

Good point, does the game model all the tank/ATG moving because of recoil, atmospheric changes, differences in propellant, barrel temperature, gunner scratching his bum on this shot, continental drift etc that cause each shot IRL to be different?

Yeh true enough, I would have thought that even the crackest of the cracked would "retire" if they took 6 hits from a hidden ATG. Even just the noise would be deafening. Check out this: http://www.lonesentry.com/tigerflorence/index.html For the results when Tigers are attacked by various things you would expect to hurt them. I love #3 BTW where the driver gets back in the tank and does the bolt and leaves his mates to leg it on their own.

"3 cheers for bocage ..... " hip hip hip hoorah! hip hip hip hoorah! hip hip hip hoorah ! Yay mounds of stuff with trees on top

we did sort of touch on this once before and it may be that things like the sights are being damaged as well, rendering the gun useless. I have no hard data but the gun, being mounted in the centre at the front and unable to be armoured is pretty vulnerable. I'd be more concerned from the game perspective that an AT is able to fire that many rounds at the tanks and they do not run away.

You are being punished for following the evil of WEGO

I think at this stage of the game it might be a bit of a reach to have our pixeltruppen respond in different ways to their level of suppression based on their situation, I mean the variables in each instance are going to be huge. Minefield Run or Freeze?, Tank approaching you foxhole run or freeze ?, Ambush run or freeze? etc there are pros and cons for each action in each case. Maybe this is one of those tricky areas where, as we are in the nexus between a generalised wargame and a individually modelled sim there has to be a few things that happen that may not be 100% accurate. I guess the next stage is to individually rate each soldier for morale, training, experience, bad news form home, sleepy, bit off colour this morning etc and have them respond as most likely for someone of those characteristics.

Their casualties came mainly from German counter attacks because they were outnumbered, very exposed and isolated from the rest of the invasion force. Point is tho' they weren't fighting in the hedgerows.

I would have thought they should kneel or prone while firing too, to minimise their exposure

You should be in bed, it's late

You'd think anyone would be able to help move the gun, a passing infantry squad or what ever.

I think the big thing with the bocage is that it was the first obstacle to the invasion of Europe and so it captured a special place in history, nothing could contrast quite so much with the open desert the Allies had been fighting in previously. As for tactical terrain the sands of the desert , the cactus hedges of Sicily, Mountains of Italy, the elevated roads of Holland, Flat Steppes of Russia and the Jungles of the Pacific are all I think terrains which presented their own unique challenges on a par with the Norman hedgerows. But that is just the thing the guns were emplaced on the cliff/point itself so you didn't need to go inland. If you look at photos of the point you can see the hedges are well back from the cliff, so an assault on Point Du Hoc wouldn't have encountered bocage, just a 100' cliff which is bad enough!

I thought the smouldering crewmen was mainly from the flash fire of the round that penetrated and that the round wouldn't have hit any ammo seeing it hit the mantlet, but yeh the 2nd or 3rd hit on the Panther definitely hits the bullseye Not wanting to dwell ghoulishly on this but looking at the photo of the poor driver chap I did wonder if it might have been simply the concussion of the round hitting at most a foot above his head. Just an idle thought, either way the poor bugger died so in the end it doesn't really matter I suppose.

While I have no doubt the Allies in general and the US in particular had an embaressment of riches when it came to equipment, 86k M4's does seem a little high, I think it was more around 50k of all variants and derivatives, over the life of production from 1941 - 1950something?

It wasn't that the Stugs were considered more important it was more that Stug were cheaper and easier to build and as the Pz IV had technically been replaced by the Pz V the manufacturing was directed towards the assault guns. The Pz IV was still very much a viable tank in 1944, as was the M4 and the T34. I often wonder if the Germans had not squandered resources on the Pz V and Tigers I and II whether they may have fared better.