Duckman
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Posts posted by Duckman
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Panzerfausts had terrible range but it could destroy any allied tank. They were very difficult to hit close targets on the move and at still targets at ranges even over 40 meters away.
They were really limited and could of course never replace AT guns. However much of the late war fighting was clearing town after town after town, and in those circumstances there will always be opportunities even for a raw recruit. The Russians took to plastering every cellar window, for good reason.
It's somewhat comparable to today's conflicts, where the concrete landscape is as a force multiplier and gives amateur RPG shooters odds they would not enjoy in a more organized setting. Of course more skilled troops can make handheld weapons work in other environments as well, but it's more difficult.
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Like others have said, almost all of the German stuff was new production which means there was less exotica than in Normandy. On the Allied side it was probably more varied since some units had e.g. 75 mm Shermans that were still running.
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Omigawd! And Aachen too!
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Hasn't the claim that Prokhorovka was the largest tank battle in history been documented as false by various modern studies?
How does Kursk as a whole stack up as the largest tank battle if you include German 9th Army, 4th Pz Army, AD Kempf and the three Soviet fronts?
I think Niklas Zetterling and a few others killed off Prochorovka ten years ago. There's probably still some work to be done on the Soviet side, but there was enough in the German archives to bury it.
I don't know where Kursk and Prochorovka currently sit in the pantheon of Great Tank Battles, but the leader is likely still Chinese Farm . Depending on how you count I imagine Desert Storm could perhaps stake a claim, but for sheer constriction it's hard to beat the Arab-Israeli wars. Goodwood may actually have been the biggest tank battle of WWII if you limit it to a reasonable definition of "single engagement", i.e. "battle" in a more old-fashioned and commonsensical way.
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I recall TD crew training was much more in-depth than mere tankers during the war.
I also get the impression that they were.....perhaps not elite, but kind of special. They were supposed to go out there and win the battle with speed and dazzling maneuver. Of course reality turned out a bit different, but they still have some advantages compared to "mere" tankers and I like to think that stuff like better visibility and optics (?) are modelled in the game.
I've probably had the most success with US TDs in semi-covered overwatch positions quite far back where they can use their long range skillz. If the enemy is doing something else you have a good chance of spotting first and getting side shots. A semi-concealed position that lets you shoot through a gap between trees, the saddle of a hill, or something like that is good.
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December 16th of course.
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Ok. Thanks for the reply.
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Ok, getting an error message now (it took a while):
DiFOLobbyClient.exe - Common Language Runtime Debugging Services
Application has generated an exception that could not be handled.
Process id=0x16a8 (5800), Thread id=0xdac (350).
Click OK to terminate the application.
Click CANCEL to debug the application.
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Not a lot of action in here, but I'll give it a shot:
I just developed an interest in this game, a little but late you could say, and figured it would be a nice laptop game. I have an Asus Ultrabook running Win 10. Tried downloading the demo to see if it would run, and it installed fine but will not start. No messages or anything either.
What's the deal? Is it just a demo issue, or is the game pre-Vista?
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Though of course end of war Germany isnt simply just one battle in urban sprawl after another.
True, although the urban density of Western and Central Europe almost has to be seen to be believed (I assume it surprises even many Americans) and has dictated military strategy for centuries..
You do feel for the poor Western Allies who had to slog through that. If you factor in rivers, woods, canals, and other obstacles as well there is probably a potential defensive position every 500 metres or so. No wonder the Ardennes was such an attractive idea.
Theres still lots that could be done and hopefully in the future engine updates can be fitted back onto the Berlin game...
Definitely. You also have big urban battles like Aachen and Cherbourg on the Western Front.
Yeah Duckman on the one hand I could make a strong case why there would be Romanians, they did Italians and if a game covers fighting in their home country how could you not model say arrowcross units. OTOH Steve has mentioned before that as much as he liked doing the whole East Front and all the minor nations it was a big marketing mistake. fwiw.
Didn't he even say it almost killed them? As for the Romanians, there is an interesting clue in that they included the Renault R35 in Fortress Italy. While the Italians did use about 125 of them, it was one of the main tanks of the Romanian army (along with the Skoda tanks) for a lot of the war. So while the R35 most obviously points to France 1940, it could also point to the Romanians (at least if one indulges a little wishful thinking).
The Eastern Axis minors didn't really have that much unique heavy equipment. They mostly used the Skoda tanks, also used by the Germans as Pz 35 and 38(t) of course and necessary for Barbarossa, and after that second-hand Pz III/IV and StuGs. The only really unique vehicles were the Hungarian Toldi and some tank destroyer conversions similar to the Marder. The R35 and the L3 tankette (used by Hungary and Bulgaria) are already in Fortress Italy.
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Well there are several major offensives that take place at different times or locations (against different forces) that to my mind would be obvious choices for modules. Without checking on the all the names of things, you've got the offensives in the south in Ukraine (the Lvov-Sandomierz offensive) slightly earlier than Bagration , followed on by the fighting in Romania in the autumn and winter. This would let you bring in Romanian forces, new Soviet stuff (e.g. the KV-85), and I don't know what extra German branches.
As a huge Axis minors fan I would love Romania, but I think that will be a bit too much (and perhaps not marketable enough) for a module. The Romanians had different uniforms and a lot of unique equipment, so they would require quite a bit of work.
...don't forget that the first Normandy module was Commonwealth forces, which didn't change the time or place, but just added the various British and Canadian forces, plus more Germans.
I think Bagration as well pretty much followed from Normandy. I doubt they would have chosen that battle as the first Eastern module otherwise.
However they originally did say RT would goto end of war, that was mever said for BN. So BN ended in September 44 but if they keep the current target for RT to cover end of war and dont want to do like 5-6 modules each module by necessity will have to add at least 3-4 mnths.
It's probably a case of another late-war East Front base game not being commercially viable, as opposed to the very marketable Bulge.
Personally Hungary really appeals to me, the Courland, but really even when RT first came out my eyes were always on the prize of the Berlin module. End of war Germany combat has always had a special appeal to me for whatever reason. Back in the BO beta and gold demo I used to replay Riesberg endlessly to allow my kamaraden more time to flee the Red Hordes and to feel closer to the Ost Front game I truly desired.
I'd absolutely love Hungary as well (see above), but as for Berlin (or any other big city battle, e.g. Budapest or Aachen) I don't think that's doable without a major engine update focused on the features required to support that. Think ASL with its umpteen kinds of rubble and burned out buildings. The only battle I see that could support that kind of investment would be Stalingrad.
Im interested to see how they handle huge offensives like Barbarossa. Bagrations one thing Barbarossas another. i almost think itll have to be Barbarossa Ag Center then North or South etc though perhaps much more likely is Barbarossa till Aug, etc.
I'm reading Robert Forczyk's Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front 1941-42 right now and the Barbarossa battles certainly can make for a good game. Operationally and strategically the Russians didn't have much of a chance, mainly because of command and logistics issues, but tactically it was a lot more even and you have plenty of battles where small-gunned panzers and panzerjägers faced T-34s and KVs, and human player could of course make matchups like the T-26 vs Pz 35(t) or Pz III a lot more even than they were historically.
And for a Barbarossa game there is of course a logical module in the battle of Moscow, one of the most famous and decisive battles in world history.
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What I find intriguing is that there is no obvious candidate for a Red Thunder module. This is unlike e.g. Kursk where Korsun would be the odds-on favourite, Barbarossa where you have the battle of Moscow, or 1942 where you have the endgame in Stalingrad including the relief effort as well as Manstein's counterattack.
So far the modules have also been rather famous battles, like Market-Garden and the Gustav Line (Cassino). Of course you could argue that Bagration itself isn't very well known outside history buff circles, making it a mute point...
We'll see, I guess. Would love a bone though. :-)
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Ok, that takes Korsun out of the picture then. Hopefully it shows up at a later date since there is potential for some really good scenarios and campaigns.
The Luftwaffe field divisions were turned over to the Heer in 1943, and thenceforth known as Feld-Divisionen (L). From browsing the list here:
http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/FelddivisionenL/Gliederung.htm
it seems a lot of them were in Kurland, and besides they were technically Heer troops by then, The Fallschirmjäger were never a big presence in the East (in 1944 they went to France, Holland and then the Ruhr pocket), so my money goes to (drumroll) Poland/Vistula and the Hermann Göring parapanzers!
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The now-locked road map thread had a little info about the future in the East:
We will also soon start work on the first Module for Red Thunder. The details of this are a little fuzzy at present, though it is safe to say that it will be packed full of fun. Think winter combat and the inclusion of Waffen SS and LW forces not seen in Red Thunder.
Anyone want to guess scenarios? Korsun seems to fit the bill (well known, plenty of SS), with the only problems being that it would mean going backwards from Bagration and that I can't find any Luftwaffe units in the OOB. It mostly lists divisions though, so there may have been some smaller units.
Winter battles after Bagration include the Baltic offensive, which is quite interesting as well as under-represented but also seems to lack Luftwaffers and has troublesome (from a game perspective) Estonians. We also have the Budapest offensive, which again has Axis minors. Finally there are the battles in Poland in autumn and winter 1944/45, which feature the high-profile Hermann Göring division among others (and plenty of SS).
Guesses? Preferences? More candidates?
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Ditto on formations, it would make larger battles more manageable.
My main wish would be more work on cover and concealment. I'd love good looking foxholes of different types, camouflaged AT guns, tanks in haystacks.....that kind of stuff.
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Time for a broom mod?
Zaloga is excellent, as always. A proper historian, using a proper historian's tools, putting the Panzer Myth in perspective. A lot of it really comes down to who writes books and not.
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I've read Zetterling and Koschorrek. Both are good, but they are totally different genres which makes it hard to recommend one over the other. Koschorrek is a grunt memoir, with not much combat but what appears to be honest and not overly redacted recollections. Some of the characters are quite interesting, e.g. the religious guy in his unit that doesn't want to kill (and in the end gets killed). There is also blatant fraternizing.
Zetterling is a rather dry operational study, with lots of mythbusting and statistics just like in his books on Normandy and Kursk. There are some personal narratives sprinkled throughout, but they're more flavouring than main course.
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Napoleon was not defeated at Waterloo. He was not feeling well that day and it was Ney who was in command and lost the battle and that was only due to sheer numbers. The French Army retreated in good order and it was only political betrayal that forced Napoleon from power! The French soldier had no equal and was never truly defeated. If it wasn't for the superior coalition air power arrayed against them France never would have lost.
Hahaha, too accurate! It's funny how lost causing seems to be a basic and unchanging trait of human psychology.I bet there were propagandists crying over the great lost cause and missed opportunities of Chieftain Mighty Nosebone in 5000 BC.
The Waterloo griping, fingerpointing and plain fantasising started right after the battle (or perhaps even while it was still in progress), with memorable inventions like Victor Hugo's "ravine" (acrually a small roadside ditch) that caused the French cavalry attacks to fail. Then of course there is always Ney and Grouchy.
On the Allied side we have the great Anglo-German glory stealing and coverup, as chronicled by Peter Hofschröer in his books. La Belle Alliance was anything but.
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Good posts. The German fall in quality from Normandy to the Bulge was pronounced, caused by the replacement machine finally not being able to keep up after the double blows of Summer 44.
When you read accounts from Normandy German small unit tactics are widely praised, and often seen as superior (this was of course exacerbated by Allied inexperience in quite a few cases). However in the Bulge there seems to be a general consensus that German small unit tactics were generally poor (frontal assault instead of infiltration, etc), which is quite the opposite to Normandy were good small unit performance could often save poor tactical and even operational situations (e.g. Caen).
Allied units had also picked up more automatic weapons, some via TOE and others unofficially, which helped close the infantry firepower gap you sometimes get in Normandy accounts. Ideally this will show in the game, with veteran units having more stuff.
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So if all paths after Barbarossa lead to Germany's eventual demise, wargaming battles and operations on the east front and west front afterwards is largely irrelevant I suppose.
It of course depends on what you mean by irrelevant, but I agree that after Barbarossa failed it was basically pick your poison for Germany. Any scenario where they win the war after December 1941 is of the banana peel variety.
In poker terms you could say that Germany had two possible "outs" (ways to win): a negotiated peace after the Fall of France, and a military victory (most likely requiring a Soviet political collapse) during Barbarossa. After that the element of strategic surprise is gone, and the force levels are simply not there.
It's interesting that the Allies had far more outs, i.e. ways to win before 1945, but they don't get discussed nearly as much as the German what-ifs. If the events surrounding the Italian surrender or the Hungarian near-defection had been more fortunate (and the German response less energetic) it might have shortened the war substantially, for example. The same can be said if the Soviets had managed to encircle Army Group A in the Caucasus in late 1942 (they came close), if the strategic bombing campaign had targeted German fuel production earlier, or (perhaps most tantalizingly) if the invasion of France had happened in 1943 as the Americans wanted. Lots of quite realistic possibilities there.
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If you want to have a real good modelling of time and space in combat and want to scream at the monitor because your attacking Bn has again bogged down then there is a other game i cant mention here...
Can you at least drop a hint for those of us not privy to the secret handshake?
If you want to point the finger at high casualty levels in Combat Mission you would be better off looking towards artillery and mortars, which are too precise by far and at least in the WW2 titles too flexible.
Oh, and another major factor that people are completely overlooking: spotting. Infantry in CM are, in general, much easier to spot than in reality. This is a deliberate design decision so that scenarios don't last 12 hours.
Ditto on both. While CM has far less Borg spotting than other games it still has better C3 than Reality , and especially compared to the WWII variety where communication was often via runners and broken down radios, using maps that were not exactly state of the art. The effect is that we still can coordinate fires much better than a real WWII commander.
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This is from British Lend-Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, June 1941 - June 1942 by Alexander Hill, published in The Journal of Military History, Volume 71, Number 3, July 2007:
Whilst the Soviet Union had developed tanks far superior to those in service in Britain and the United States, and indeed of such effectiveness as to drive Germany to produce the overcomplicated Panther in response to the T-34 and KV-1, the Soviets not only did not have the planned quantities of these types, but were barely able to maintain force levels in the face of horrendous losses. According to Krivosheev, the Soviet Union lost 20,500 tanks between 22 June and 31 December 1941, of which 3,200 were either heavy or medium, with an initial stock of such types of 1,400. Only 5,600 tanks were received during the same period, of which, as noted above, only 3,200 were medium or heavy tanks including imports.48 By the end of 1941, out of 750 promised tanks, Britain had delivered 466, of which 259 were Valentines and 187 Matildas, the remainder apparently Tetrarch. Of these, 216 Valentines and 145 Matildas had been supplied to the Red Army.49 With total Red Army tank stocks, as of 31 December, consequently being in the region of 7,700 according to Krivosheev (or 6,347 on 1 December according to Suprun), of which only 1,400 were medium or heavy models, then British deliveries to date represented in the region of only 6.5 percent of total Red Army tank strength, but over 33 percent of medium and heavy tanks, with British vehicles actually in Red Army hands representing about 25 percent of medium and heavy tanks in service. ...
Whilst by late 1942 Soviet production made British tank supplies increasingly less significant, aircraft deliveries, the importance of which arguably exceeded that of tanks during the First Moscow Protocol period, remained significant into 1943. Soviet combat aircraft production from the end of June 1941 to the end of June 1942 was in the region of the figure of 16,468 aircraft given by Mark Harrison. By the end of June 1942 the United Kingdom had delivered 1,323 fighter aircraft, or about 8 percent of Soviet production from the start of the war. Given that Soviet combat aircraft losses for this period at best approached domestic supply, and were especially severe for the first six months of the war, then British deliveries alone are of some significance, particularly when taking into account the extremely high Soviet losses of the first weeks of the war, which depleted prewar stocks.
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Early war Lend-Lease is still a bit of touchy and underexplored subject. British Lend-Lease tanks were present in significant numbers during the battle of Moscow, for example.
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Terrain analysis, which identifies key terrain, fields of fire, potential kill sacks, potential support weapon positions, and danger areas occurs before a battle. We do not have access to an S2 shop nor do we have overlays for our maps which identifies key terrain, obstacles, etc... so we have to do it in the game while we play. A little common sense would be nice.
You have a point, but I think the other advantages the player has compared to a real commander (God view, better C3, etc) balances that out.
Suggested reads for Bulge / Ardennes??
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted · Edited by Duckman
As a fellow Swede I feel I should chime in om Bergström. He is an amateur historian, albeit a well regarded one, and it shows sometimes. While his books are original and readable (possibly byproducts of him being an amateur) they are also quite full of sweeping, sometimes over the top statements and conclusions that a professional historian would avoid. For instance, in the Bulge book he claims that the Me 262 was "unquestionably the best fighter aircraft of the war" which is in fact a highly questionable statement (best in what way? etc). And this from a renowned aircraft historian!
The Bulge book seems to latch onto a recent historical, and quite predictable, trend where Wacht am Rhein has gone from "close run thing", to "crazy and doomed Hitler project", and now back to "gamble but perhaps not impossible". This is of course the natural pendulum swing of revisionism and counter-revisionism, but Bergström doesn't seem to fully realize this and fails to contextualize it (a mistake a professional historian, for all his other potential faults, would not make).
So is Bergström a Wehrmacht cultist? There are traces of it, probably unwittingly, but his Black Cross, Red Star books do not lean in direction (in fact they engage in some much-needed Luftwaffe myth busting) and I think he has probably just tagged along the revisionist train out of general excitement. Read his books for the original research and the wonderful photos, not as the last or most balanced word on the subject.
(As for claims on general antiamericanism, I think that's mostly personal politics. The pro-Palestinian views he seems to espouse are very common in Sweden and especially, dare I say, among people of his generation. His criticism of the US Army in the book appears well sourced, if a bit unbalanced at times, and he's hardly the first author that has highlighted serious problems with e.g. the US Army's replacement system or Allied strategic decisions post-Normandy.)