SimpleSimon

Well right off the bat you're sort of highlighting the importance of a mythbusting effort with "a famously static war at least in the west" because you're setting up a known premise here but not really addressing it. Why is the First World War known for being a static conflict? 
Discussion about fighting in the First World War rapidly tends to degenerate into visions of either the static siege lines of the western front or of the more conventional maneuver warfare in the East, but neither of these interpretations ever proved strictly true. The highly mobile Battle of the Marne happened in France and the Kerensky Offensive looked conspicuously like the worst days of the Somme. The issue is that much of the war's history was written by British historians and those historians were mostly pre-occupied with the British sector of the front which was characterized by some of its infamously imprudent and disappointing offensives that often failed to deliver results that matched their hype.
Officers in 1916 were perfectly capable of appreciating the importance of the tank and the airplane, but would frequently find their optimism crushed by the grave limitations both of those weapon systems faced not only because of infancy of the combustion engine as a technology, but also because the circumstances for their employment were not universal, and not always ideal. The point is to understand that it's important to avoid stereotypes and understand the transient nature of all tactics and strategy throughout history as being independent from the story of the war happening around them, which was largely defined by news media and politicians for their own ends. It's why I take issue with the whole "trench warfare" stereotype for instance. Trenches were not a recent invention in 1915. Nor even was their existence limited to prevalence of firearms on the battlefield. What happened in 1916 was a siege plain and simple, it's just that up until then sieges had generally been things that only happened to cities and forts, not whole countries. With that in mind, why is World War 1 frequently described as "trench warfare" when the definition for that as often described would have to include many wars before and after the First World War?
If what we're getting at is the emergence of modern tactics, more or less definable as "infiltration tactics", it's important to understand that the scope of these questions could easily widen beyond the First World War and require parsing of details and sources that aren't necessarily "in" that conflict. Like how much fighting in the Second World War could in many places, surprisingly resemble the fighting at Verdun or look even worse than that. That is: artillery/infantry slugging matches in which the usefullness of tanks and airplanes could vary anywhere from useless to absolutely decisive all at the same time regardless of the year being 1916 or 1943. 
SO 
Before anyone can answer your questions (which are good questions) we need to find and have concrete examples and details of the fighting and avoid trying to shoehorn those examples into fitting melodramatic stereotypes while trying to spot real correlations between the examples. It would be useful for people to highlight or show us stories of battles that happened in concrete terms during The First World War and then perhaps comparing what was happening to similar battles before and after that conflict to establish a frame of reference. 
One handy way to do this is to have a source, a "textbook" for our course which ideally we would all have access to somehow. We need a text that we can all see and discuss so we can see how our differences of perspective lead to the emergence of the lessons and rules that we refer to as...well...tactics. I suggest Infantry Attacks not only because Rommel's recollections of his actions in World War 1 are frequently very lucid, but also because of the audience's familiarity with him. His career exploits are well known, as are his potential pitfalls as a source. I don't have access to my copy right now due to the pandemic, but if anyone else has it or wants to jump ill grab a digital copy off Amazon and for a read along.
So if anyone does, I suggest that they get a source with lucid details of fighting, and just come here and talk about what they read. Get some impressions, make some observations! I will participate in discussions as much as I can using examples. 

Which is sort of a wider issue all around with the scenario designing to me. Not so much the forces involved, but the awfully harsh mechanisms for scoring the player's performance. You're compelled to instigate total bloodbaths in most CM scenarios and campaigns in a way that could lead to a medal in very few Armies, dismissal in most, mutiny in all. 

The German defense headcount in Crossing the River is just under 300ish men to your 600. This is an immediate and open violation of the well understood precept of base 3:1 odds against a identical defender in the post Flanders world of modern war. 
Attack check either on the grounds of game of history should fail here, but ok let's be unreasonable and just say that we're going to force the attack because Stalin or because incompetence or because miscommunication etc.
The defenders are dug in, extensively. Most of their command staff and a good number of their troops are in bunkers with over-head cover immune to mortars and difficult for the SU-76s to see or hit beyond around 300 meters or so. The forests are extensively and comprehensively rigged with mines, bombs, barbed wire all of which is under the over watch of local German infantry who have snipers and machine guns able to cross-fire over these defenses. All told these features really abstract the defender to a 1:1 match against your force thanks to the enormous preparation of his untouched defense. 
Attack check should fail here. But let's keep being unreasonable and push ahead because we're really going for that Hero of the Soviet Union medal and are totally unscrupulous and ruthless in our desire to look nice in post-war photos in our Moscow flat.
The defenders have twice as much artillery support as you do by weight of fire alone, it's pre-sighted onto TRPs all of which totally cover the valid terrain movement tiles. You literally cannot move a Company, in open sprint, through these tiles ignoring counter fire from the defenders in time to avoid having them caught in a bombardment. Moving them through the forest causes them to leave behind the SU-76s, sacrificing the only tool of your heavy firepower other than than the 6 82mm mortars which are literally useless against the Germans in bunkers throughout the map. 
Attack check should again fail here. You're not scared of being assassinated by your men though because you're the player and you're an omniscient god playing a video game so who cares what SimpleSimon and countless others on the forum have advised about play  of this scenario doing nothing to obscure how openly ridiculous it is on grounds of game design. You want to play through it.
Many sections of the map are arbitrary non-movement areas. The game literally does not allow you to move men through them because screw it, forcing you to confront the defender-plan via a painstakingly slow surgical deconstruction that we can succeed at without save-scumming 100% of the time (just 93% of the time) thanks to other ways the game allows us to cheat via player super-awareness and omniscience and the TARGET HEAVY/LIGHT commands which take effect instantaneously and precisely.
By this point we're not playing for any kind of historic credibility here it's just solving the scenario for the sake of solving the scenario, completely gaming it, completely cheesing it right?  This is the point where if your perspective on the game is just different from mine that's totally valid you can play this way if you want.  But I just want to ask....
Why are you playing Combat Mission? 

Bingo. Cheesing map edges enabled you to win in the first round. That's a way to play, but it's not doctrinal or in spirit of the game. If you had tried to play doctrinally as many would be inclined to the mission was going to be murderous and this is the first mission in the campaign. Can't ask the player to think out-of-the-box before they've had a chance to even see the box. Can't run before you walk, etc. Simpler explanation to me is just that the scenario designer just didn't know what he was doing, and based his scenario design on an ugly Cold War stereotype. 
You might be able to achieve victory in the scenario by pooling your machine guns and SU-76s together....but this force is extremely fragile and its fire supremacy could easily be lost to any single one of the threats it's facing on the map. You're virtually bound to lose half of the assault guns to bogging and mines they can't avoid. If you leave them behind to skirt the forests then they're out of play entirely. One of map's three entrenched Pak 40s could stop every one of them and the Pak40s can see most of the map. This attack is just insanely fragile to me that it's totally not doctrinal for the Red Army and completely out of character. If it's not a serious attack then you'd have far more modest objectives, and the engineers and assault guns wouldn't be present at all. They'd be supporting the main attack somewhere else. The briefing and objectives are clear that this is an assault and you are expected to achieve your assignment but you're given a fraction of the tools necessary to achieve this. Your force resembles a Task Force or a Combat Command not the Red Army. The attack just doesn't make sense to me, it looks like it was planned by...well...an American. 
I personally like modding the scenario with tons of artillery, more assault guns etc because that's me. I want to be the star of the show and I want my attack to be the real one. There's a credible way to mod this scenario without turning it into a major offensive that is completely doctrinal for the Red Army though. Make objective line 1, the line immediately across the river a Victory objective. All you're doing is pressuring the German defense then. Tying down 200 men with your 600 is not efficient but the Red Army has no shortage of men the Germans do so just by getting your force across the river intact you've achieved your objective. You're contributing a lot to the People's Victory by simply pressuring the German defense. Slap that cease fire and move on to the next scenario.
If you're really plucky and don't care much for the importance of following orders in the Red Army you can press onwards for that Total Victory you want by reaching the touch-lines on the rest of the map. This is risky, you're not following orders now and don't have a lot of support. If it was me i'd dispense with most of my force and concentrate on getting platoon size groups between weaker sections of the German defense. Unlike the original scenario you are penalized for losing the Motherland's valuable manpower resources however, so the risks are quite high and the overall reward is just a better victory endorsement ya know? You can do it but your superiors would be less pleased than you might think. If you get bitten next time trust the briefing, execute your tasks as assigned from now on Comrade. 
He was on odd guy. I don't think he was banned per se? He just sort of left. Everything he got sounds conspicuously to me like it came from Zaloga's Red Army Handbook which is available digitally on Amazon. Some other stuff came from the Osprey series books. He might have some texts or such in his man-cave that haven't been digitized or are out-of-print...but most of the best stuff on the Red Army is recent. Much of the 1970s texts and earlier are not usually in good faith, and frequently anchor their entire narrative on...German accounts.
One thing I agree with him about though? Commanders who justify attacks by excusing heavy casualties as "planned" are in fact excusing their own ineptitude. They wouldn't last long at the front. They'd be removed and given an administrative position before long...if they didn't mysteriously turn up dead in a ditch somewhere first. By 1945 the only men in the world who associated victory with lots of their own troops being dead were the Nazis and Japanese Empire. 
 
 

I agree. Don't get me wrong, there was precisely no phase where a confrontation with the Warsaw Pact wouldn't have been a very frightening thing for NATO even if nukes aren't considered in the equation.  Groups Soviet Forces was just huge, whoever happened to be right where the hammer was going to fall was truly unfortunate regardless of what NATO could equip them with. I just think that up until around the 1980s it was likely if not certain that Paris would fall, leaving western leaders with no alternative but a nuclear exchange unfortunately. 
Indeed. Deep Battle didn't lose much value in the years between 1945-89 overall. The way the Red Army was equipped they were poised to execute a tank offensive of the kind Guderian, Liddell Hart, and Tukhachevsky could've only dreamt of in their time. The issue I see is simply the enormous expense facing Soviet leaders over maintaining this force and its readiness, which crucially they were cognizant of. Red Army Commanders were also fully conscious of the lack of initiative and independence in field leaders, and were trying to encourage those concepts in the men. This proved rather difficult though considering the high turnover rate of Officers. Soviet leaders weren't blind though, they were fully aware of the challenges facing them.
The lack of a strong computer industry in the Soviet Union however left its forces with a new disadvantage as they crested the 80s. It was one for which they didn't end up coming up with a good solution for before the Wall fell and it became a moot point. 
On the technical side the BMP alone was a major shock to western observers. Nothing NATO had matched it or the T-62/64, and it turned out after years of confusion that the T-80 would have been a dangerous opponent for any western tank up to and including the Abrams and it for sure would've been tip of the spear. 
Years ago I used to really love World in Conflict but it was a multiplayer action game and there isn't much life in it anymore sadly. Wargame wasn't really the same, although it was often billed as a spiritual sequel. I had mixed feelings about the whole Wargame series games though. Those games at least weren't reliant on multiplayer. 

Bingo. Cheesing map edges enabled you to win in the first round. That's a way to play, but it's not doctrinal or in spirit of the game. If you had tried to play doctrinally as many would be inclined to the mission was going to be murderous and this is the first mission in the campaign. Can't ask the player to think out-of-the-box before they've had a chance to even see the box. Can't run before you walk, etc. Simpler explanation to me is just that the scenario designer just didn't know what he was doing, and based his scenario design on an ugly Cold War stereotype. 
You might be able to achieve victory in the scenario by pooling your machine guns and SU-76s together....but this force is extremely fragile and its fire supremacy could easily be lost to any single one of the threats it's facing on the map. You're virtually bound to lose half of the assault guns to bogging and mines they can't avoid. If you leave them behind to skirt the forests then they're out of play entirely. One of map's three entrenched Pak 40s could stop every one of them and the Pak40s can see most of the map. This attack is just insanely fragile to me that it's totally not doctrinal for the Red Army and completely out of character. If it's not a serious attack then you'd have far more modest objectives, and the engineers and assault guns wouldn't be present at all. They'd be supporting the main attack somewhere else. The briefing and objectives are clear that this is an assault and you are expected to achieve your assignment but you're given a fraction of the tools necessary to achieve this. Your force resembles a Task Force or a Combat Command not the Red Army. The attack just doesn't make sense to me, it looks like it was planned by...well...an American. 
I personally like modding the scenario with tons of artillery, more assault guns etc because that's me. I want to be the star of the show and I want my attack to be the real one. There's a credible way to mod this scenario without turning it into a major offensive that is completely doctrinal for the Red Army though. Make objective line 1, the line immediately across the river a Victory objective. All you're doing is pressuring the German defense then. Tying down 200 men with your 600 is not efficient but the Red Army has no shortage of men the Germans do so just by getting your force across the river intact you've achieved your objective. You're contributing a lot to the People's Victory by simply pressuring the German defense. Slap that cease fire and move on to the next scenario.
If you're really plucky and don't care much for the importance of following orders in the Red Army you can press onwards for that Total Victory you want by reaching the touch-lines on the rest of the map. This is risky, you're not following orders now and don't have a lot of support. If it was me i'd dispense with most of my force and concentrate on getting platoon size groups between weaker sections of the German defense. Unlike the original scenario you are penalized for losing the Motherland's valuable manpower resources however, so the risks are quite high and the overall reward is just a better victory endorsement ya know? You can do it but your superiors would be less pleased than you might think. If you get bitten next time trust the briefing, execute your tasks as assigned from now on Comrade. 
He was on odd guy. I don't think he was banned per se? He just sort of left. Everything he got sounds conspicuously to me like it came from Zaloga's Red Army Handbook which is available digitally on Amazon. Some other stuff came from the Osprey series books. He might have some texts or such in his man-cave that haven't been digitized or are out-of-print...but most of the best stuff on the Red Army is recent. Much of the 1970s texts and earlier are not usually in good faith, and frequently anchor their entire narrative on...German accounts.
One thing I agree with him about though? Commanders who justify attacks by excusing heavy casualties as "planned" are in fact excusing their own ineptitude. They wouldn't last long at the front. They'd be removed and given an administrative position before long...if they didn't mysteriously turn up dead in a ditch somewhere first. By 1945 the only men in the world who associated victory with lots of their own troops being dead were the Nazis and Japanese Empire. 
 
 

This. The games lend their scenarios to melodrama, and one of the war's most dramatic events was invariably CLASH OF ARMOR type stuff. So the designers like to throw in tanks, lots of tanks, lots of the heaviest tanks, a lot. I don't blame them I mean the toys are cool and certainly one of the reasons why I signed up for the game but like on top of what Hapless here is saying I also think it's worth pointing out that the excessive reliance on the heaviest hardware in the games leads to many scenarios suffering from a sort of "Panzer Fatigue". I realized the effect this was having on my own method of play years ago in that it was making me excessively cautious and meticulous in ways that most certainly would've led to my relief from the front for "nerve shattered" or "lack of moral fiber" etc. Because I expected to run into a Tiger behind every freaking hedgerow, and the way campaigns were designed I actually would. 
Tanks lead to bloody battles period and they will invariably inflict many casualties and mission kills on each other when they encounter other tanks. This is why im getting a bit miffed when people suggest new ways to nerf tanks in the game when it seems to me like they're teetering on over-nerfed. The trouble is they're around too much and too many of the scenario are reliant on them either in support or as the set-piece. 

This. The games lend their scenarios to melodrama, and one of the war's most dramatic events was invariably CLASH OF ARMOR type stuff. So the designers like to throw in tanks, lots of tanks, lots of the heaviest tanks, a lot. I don't blame them I mean the toys are cool and certainly one of the reasons why I signed up for the game but like on top of what Hapless here is saying I also think it's worth pointing out that the excessive reliance on the heaviest hardware in the games leads to many scenarios suffering from a sort of "Panzer Fatigue". I realized the effect this was having on my own method of play years ago in that it was making me excessively cautious and meticulous in ways that most certainly would've led to my relief from the front for "nerve shattered" or "lack of moral fiber" etc. Because I expected to run into a Tiger behind every freaking hedgerow, and the way campaigns were designed I actually would. 
Tanks lead to bloody battles period and they will invariably inflict many casualties and mission kills on each other when they encounter other tanks. This is why im getting a bit miffed when people suggest new ways to nerf tanks in the game when it seems to me like they're teetering on over-nerfed. The trouble is they're around too much and too many of the scenario are reliant on them either in support or as the set-piece. 

It might just be a perspective problem.
Looking at it sideways- how many times do US players run up against Tigers in Combat Mission? A lot, right? Because Tigers are cool and popular. But its shockingly unrealistic. That Pershing-Tiger engagement there is 1/3 of all the times the US Army fought Tiger Is in Western Europe. The Americans basically never fought Tiger 1s in the entire period covered by CMBN and CMFB up to the end of the war. It's a historically negligible event. But in games, of course, it happens all the time.

Leaving aside the fact that we've already seen enough photos spread out around the threads to show that gun barrel damage is more common than US-Tiger engagements in the historical record, it stands to reason that any reliance on "it seems like a rare event in real life" is about as effective an argument as "my panzer's mighty armour should let me do whatever I want with it."

The bottom line is that the enemy has to be shooting at you to damage your gun barrel. If you've put your tanks in a position where they're getting shot at, either accept the risk or work out where everything went wrong.

Some of the Osprey books have been written by Zaloga or Robert Forczyk. The trouble with those books is that their overall quality sort of runs the gamut and your mileage will vary considerably with a lot of them. I suspect JasonC had a trove of sources "in the man cave" etc many of which are out of print. Crucial thing to me is that he generally went beyond rote spouting of knowledge and would come to understandings of subjects. Hence the "macroeconomic mind" or abstract thinking. His posts are quality overall, thorny side notwithstanding. 
For those curious though Beevor, Glantz, Forczyk, Zaloga, Tooze, Shigeru Mizuki, and Lizzie Collingham are usually the authors "behind" my understanding of the history.
To a slightly lesser extent Norman Friedman (naval subjects not directly applicable to CM) William L Shirer (journalist who wrote a comprehensive but weakly researched single volume account of Nazi Germany's history) and Erwin Rommel (Lucid as an author but problematic as he likes to embellish his experiences a lot. Guderian's accounts have the same problem.). 
Ya know Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is an interesting book nowadays. It was written by a journalist not an academic, and as a result it's more like a novel or a drama than a history. It is rather comprehensive and Shirer lived in the time and sort of captures the "spirit" of the years in his work in a way a technocrat certainly won't or will even deliberately try to avoid. It's colorful and emotive ya know? Which is probably why it still finds circulation in spite of its bad research and questionable assertions. Some of Shirer's views on race and homophobia though are hmmm more than a little problematic.
 His second book Collapse of the Third Republic was actually way better though and Forczyk pointed out that prior to his own book it was the only English-text in the west that made any effort to present a narrative of the Battle of France after the Dunkerque evacuation. I found it's opening third summarizing the history of the Third Republic very important for contextualizing pre-war France in a way that changed my understanding of the whole country. It didn't go enough into the First World War, but that would've considerably widened the scope of that book and probably ended up being a big distraction. It's still a bit of a melodrama but zeitgeist is a thing easily lost to purely technical analysis of things like Army doctrine and Krupp Face-Hardened Armor ya know. Just...mind the homophobia. 
Hell...what was this topic about again? 😬

But by your own admission you're not playing for these reasons. There's nothing tactical about the way the way you play thus the whole notion of it being a war game to you is inconsistent with you just saying you want to play it for the sake of playing it. Correct me? 
Wow ya got me i'm off by 100 helmets. Never mind all the other points I tried to highlight here or you just flat out not reading my post about the SU-76's not being proper armor support. Christ sake there's more anti-tank mines and obstacles on the map than the player has SU-76s! Ain't even got to the 3 entrenched Pak 40s in mutually supporting positions yet. I'm surprised your tactical sensibility isn't picking up on the problem with all of this. 
Well that's a shame because now i'll have to just expound on my own question without your input. Think i'd rather not have it you won't read any of my post though. Otherwise whats the point of "haha you see I could deconstruct your point line by line but...I shant!" lmao whatever. Calm down before posting in the future.  
Hammer's Flank cannot be won in a single save, first time playthrough. Want to play through it to play through it? Fine. I personally don't understand why you don't just go play Sudoku and save the money. It's been had out already that it's historic credibility is zero and the designer admitted that his research was inadequate. So if the only reasoning left to justify a play through is that Crossing the River is an attack gone bad and an example of an event beyond the player's control you can surely play it on those grounds but...why bother? 
But Crossing the River actually wants you to win. It wants you to achieve its extremely over ambitious victory condition or it viciously fails you. Which means the designer expects you to solve it and there's no way you can do so without cheating. It's badly designed. That it's "playable" is completely tangential. There will never be a scenario in any of the games that can't be won absolutely flawlessly with zero player casualties as long as the player is willing to discard every possible notion of realism or simulation. But a scenario designed around forcing you to do this is a waste of your time, or mischievous, and shouldn't be in a campaign. Yeah it's playable but...who wants to play this way? 
Some people say it's winnable in a single save first time playthrough and that they've done it. Also i'm a Scottish Lord.   
 

Understandings of the "Way of the Red Army" are clouded by decades of Cold War recalcitrance by the Russian Archives in sharing information and experience from the war and lack of English accounts in the west except those written by the Germans. German accounts have plenty of problems though racism being among them.
Two up and one back or its inverse of one up and two back is a US Army concept. That's how Regimental or Battalion Officers thought out attacks in the US Army. A typical attack by a Rifle Division troop or Guards Rifles would be straight on. All three Companies in line with each other pushing through the same narrow slice of map, ignoring the rest of the map and in doing so making the defense of those sections irrelevant. This is why Hammer's Flank is badly designed because the 2nd objective-line is an occupy line and it's a huge slice of the map you have to totally clean the Germans out of the objective area. In fact all 3 objective lines should be touch objectives, completed on reach. Red Army commanders don't care about the parts of the German defense not in their way.
Through this description it's also easy to misunderstand what actually happened in an attack. Nobody in the Red Army was honestly expected to just suicide rush an enemy defense, Penal Battalions maybe but they were convicts. It's a simple fire-and-advance maneuver mostly unlike western notions of fix-and-flank. You put the German defenders into a bind by forcing them to either open fire too soon or too late. This requires you to have more firepower than the Germans, not everywhere but definitely the slice of map you plan on advancing your force through. If the Germans try to shoot your men down as assault teams advance, they should face the wrath of God for doing so. You're doing well if your men can get within grenade range of the Germans without having suffered many casualties or much wear for it. 
The trouble with Hammer's Flank is that the base support you need to conduct the attack doesn't materialize. The defense has more firepower than you everywhere and they're too dense to simply penetrate at any point via maneuver. If the attack had been intended merely as a feint than the objectives should be changed entirely. 

The German defense headcount in Crossing the River is just under 300ish men to your 600. This is an immediate and open violation of the well understood precept of base 3:1 odds against a identical defender in the post Flanders world of modern war. 
Attack check either on the grounds of game of history should fail here, but ok let's be unreasonable and just say that we're going to force the attack because Stalin or because incompetence or because miscommunication etc.
The defenders are dug in, extensively. Most of their command staff and a good number of their troops are in bunkers with over-head cover immune to mortars and difficult for the SU-76s to see or hit beyond around 300 meters or so. The forests are extensively and comprehensively rigged with mines, bombs, barbed wire all of which is under the over watch of local German infantry who have snipers and machine guns able to cross-fire over these defenses. All told these features really abstract the defender to a 1:1 match against your force thanks to the enormous preparation of his untouched defense. 
Attack check should fail here. But let's keep being unreasonable and push ahead because we're really going for that Hero of the Soviet Union medal and are totally unscrupulous and ruthless in our desire to look nice in post-war photos in our Moscow flat.
The defenders have twice as much artillery support as you do by weight of fire alone, it's pre-sighted onto TRPs all of which totally cover the valid terrain movement tiles. You literally cannot move a Company, in open sprint, through these tiles ignoring counter fire from the defenders in time to avoid having them caught in a bombardment. Moving them through the forest causes them to leave behind the SU-76s, sacrificing the only tool of your heavy firepower other than than the 6 82mm mortars which are literally useless against the Germans in bunkers throughout the map. 
Attack check should again fail here. You're not scared of being assassinated by your men though because you're the player and you're an omniscient god playing a video game so who cares what SimpleSimon and countless others on the forum have advised about play  of this scenario doing nothing to obscure how openly ridiculous it is on grounds of game design. You want to play through it.
Many sections of the map are arbitrary non-movement areas. The game literally does not allow you to move men through them because screw it, forcing you to confront the defender-plan via a painstakingly slow surgical deconstruction that we can succeed at without save-scumming 100% of the time (just 93% of the time) thanks to other ways the game allows us to cheat via player super-awareness and omniscience and the TARGET HEAVY/LIGHT commands which take effect instantaneously and precisely.
By this point we're not playing for any kind of historic credibility here it's just solving the scenario for the sake of solving the scenario, completely gaming it, completely cheesing it right?  This is the point where if your perspective on the game is just different from mine that's totally valid you can play this way if you want.  But I just want to ask....
Why are you playing Combat Mission? 

But by your own admission you're not playing for these reasons. There's nothing tactical about the way the way you play thus the whole notion of it being a war game to you is inconsistent with you just saying you want to play it for the sake of playing it. Correct me? 
Wow ya got me i'm off by 100 helmets. Never mind all the other points I tried to highlight here or you just flat out not reading my post about the SU-76's not being proper armor support. Christ sake there's more anti-tank mines and obstacles on the map than the player has SU-76s! Ain't even got to the 3 entrenched Pak 40s in mutually supporting positions yet. I'm surprised your tactical sensibility isn't picking up on the problem with all of this. 
Well that's a shame because now i'll have to just expound on my own question without your input. Think i'd rather not have it you won't read any of my post though. Otherwise whats the point of "haha you see I could deconstruct your point line by line but...I shant!" lmao whatever. Calm down before posting in the future.  
Hammer's Flank cannot be won in a single save, first time playthrough. Want to play through it to play through it? Fine. I personally don't understand why you don't just go play Sudoku and save the money. It's been had out already that it's historic credibility is zero and the designer admitted that his research was inadequate. So if the only reasoning left to justify a play through is that Crossing the River is an attack gone bad and an example of an event beyond the player's control you can surely play it on those grounds but...why bother? 
But Crossing the River actually wants you to win. It wants you to achieve its extremely over ambitious victory condition or it viciously fails you. Which means the designer expects you to solve it and there's no way you can do so without cheating. It's badly designed. That it's "playable" is completely tangential. There will never be a scenario in any of the games that can't be won absolutely flawlessly with zero player casualties as long as the player is willing to discard every possible notion of realism or simulation. But a scenario designed around forcing you to do this is a waste of your time, or mischievous, and shouldn't be in a campaign. Yeah it's playable but...who wants to play this way? 
Some people say it's winnable in a single save first time playthrough and that they've done it. Also i'm a Scottish Lord.   
 

The German defense headcount in Crossing the River is just under 300ish men to your 600. This is an immediate and open violation of the well understood precept of base 3:1 odds against a identical defender in the post Flanders world of modern war. 
Attack check either on the grounds of game of history should fail here, but ok let's be unreasonable and just say that we're going to force the attack because Stalin or because incompetence or because miscommunication etc.
The defenders are dug in, extensively. Most of their command staff and a good number of their troops are in bunkers with over-head cover immune to mortars and difficult for the SU-76s to see or hit beyond around 300 meters or so. The forests are extensively and comprehensively rigged with mines, bombs, barbed wire all of which is under the over watch of local German infantry who have snipers and machine guns able to cross-fire over these defenses. All told these features really abstract the defender to a 1:1 match against your force thanks to the enormous preparation of his untouched defense. 
Attack check should fail here. But let's keep being unreasonable and push ahead because we're really going for that Hero of the Soviet Union medal and are totally unscrupulous and ruthless in our desire to look nice in post-war photos in our Moscow flat.
The defenders have twice as much artillery support as you do by weight of fire alone, it's pre-sighted onto TRPs all of which totally cover the valid terrain movement tiles. You literally cannot move a Company, in open sprint, through these tiles ignoring counter fire from the defenders in time to avoid having them caught in a bombardment. Moving them through the forest causes them to leave behind the SU-76s, sacrificing the only tool of your heavy firepower other than than the 6 82mm mortars which are literally useless against the Germans in bunkers throughout the map. 
Attack check should again fail here. You're not scared of being assassinated by your men though because you're the player and you're an omniscient god playing a video game so who cares what SimpleSimon and countless others on the forum have advised about play  of this scenario doing nothing to obscure how openly ridiculous it is on grounds of game design. You want to play through it.
Many sections of the map are arbitrary non-movement areas. The game literally does not allow you to move men through them because screw it, forcing you to confront the defender-plan via a painstakingly slow surgical deconstruction that we can succeed at without save-scumming 100% of the time (just 93% of the time) thanks to other ways the game allows us to cheat via player super-awareness and omniscience and the TARGET HEAVY/LIGHT commands which take effect instantaneously and precisely.
By this point we're not playing for any kind of historic credibility here it's just solving the scenario for the sake of solving the scenario, completely gaming it, completely cheesing it right?  This is the point where if your perspective on the game is just different from mine that's totally valid you can play this way if you want.  But I just want to ask....
Why are you playing Combat Mission? 

The German defense headcount in Crossing the River is just under 300ish men to your 600. This is an immediate and open violation of the well understood precept of base 3:1 odds against a identical defender in the post Flanders world of modern war. 
Attack check either on the grounds of game of history should fail here, but ok let's be unreasonable and just say that we're going to force the attack because Stalin or because incompetence or because miscommunication etc.
The defenders are dug in, extensively. Most of their command staff and a good number of their troops are in bunkers with over-head cover immune to mortars and difficult for the SU-76s to see or hit beyond around 300 meters or so. The forests are extensively and comprehensively rigged with mines, bombs, barbed wire all of which is under the over watch of local German infantry who have snipers and machine guns able to cross-fire over these defenses. All told these features really abstract the defender to a 1:1 match against your force thanks to the enormous preparation of his untouched defense. 
Attack check should fail here. But let's keep being unreasonable and push ahead because we're really going for that Hero of the Soviet Union medal and are totally unscrupulous and ruthless in our desire to look nice in post-war photos in our Moscow flat.
The defenders have twice as much artillery support as you do by weight of fire alone, it's pre-sighted onto TRPs all of which totally cover the valid terrain movement tiles. You literally cannot move a Company, in open sprint, through these tiles ignoring counter fire from the defenders in time to avoid having them caught in a bombardment. Moving them through the forest causes them to leave behind the SU-76s, sacrificing the only tool of your heavy firepower other than than the 6 82mm mortars which are literally useless against the Germans in bunkers throughout the map. 
Attack check should again fail here. You're not scared of being assassinated by your men though because you're the player and you're an omniscient god playing a video game so who cares what SimpleSimon and countless others on the forum have advised about play  of this scenario doing nothing to obscure how openly ridiculous it is on grounds of game design. You want to play through it.
Many sections of the map are arbitrary non-movement areas. The game literally does not allow you to move men through them because screw it, forcing you to confront the defender-plan via a painstakingly slow surgical deconstruction that we can succeed at without save-scumming 100% of the time (just 93% of the time) thanks to other ways the game allows us to cheat via player super-awareness and omniscience and the TARGET HEAVY/LIGHT commands which take effect instantaneously and precisely.
By this point we're not playing for any kind of historic credibility here it's just solving the scenario for the sake of solving the scenario, completely gaming it, completely cheesing it right?  This is the point where if your perspective on the game is just different from mine that's totally valid you can play this way if you want.  But I just want to ask....
Why are you playing Combat Mission? 

Understandings of the "Way of the Red Army" are clouded by decades of Cold War recalcitrance by the Russian Archives in sharing information and experience from the war and lack of English accounts in the west except those written by the Germans. German accounts have plenty of problems though racism being among them.
Two up and one back or its inverse of one up and two back is a US Army concept. That's how Regimental or Battalion Officers thought out attacks in the US Army. A typical attack by a Rifle Division troop or Guards Rifles would be straight on. All three Companies in line with each other pushing through the same narrow slice of map, ignoring the rest of the map and in doing so making the defense of those sections irrelevant. This is why Hammer's Flank is badly designed because the 2nd objective-line is an occupy line and it's a huge slice of the map you have to totally clean the Germans out of the objective area. In fact all 3 objective lines should be touch objectives, completed on reach. Red Army commanders don't care about the parts of the German defense not in their way.
Through this description it's also easy to misunderstand what actually happened in an attack. Nobody in the Red Army was honestly expected to just suicide rush an enemy defense, Penal Battalions maybe but they were convicts. It's a simple fire-and-advance maneuver mostly unlike western notions of fix-and-flank. You put the German defenders into a bind by forcing them to either open fire too soon or too late. This requires you to have more firepower than the Germans, not everywhere but definitely the slice of map you plan on advancing your force through. If the Germans try to shoot your men down as assault teams advance, they should face the wrath of God for doing so. You're doing well if your men can get within grenade range of the Germans without having suffered many casualties or much wear for it. 
The trouble with Hammer's Flank is that the base support you need to conduct the attack doesn't materialize. The defense has more firepower than you everywhere and they're too dense to simply penetrate at any point via maneuver. If the attack had been intended merely as a feint than the objectives should be changed entirely. 

It's not really that's it's unrealistic, it's that it's a bad scenario. It's the player's first go with the Red Army in an assault and the scenario is designed to thwart you or make you play out of doctrine. It would've made sense for a final scenario or independent scenario but it's oddly placed in the intro of Hammer's Flank. 
The 3rd mission, the attack on Osintorf however, again depicts an attack on an unmolested German defense of the town which has every advantage over the player yet again. There is a dearth of suitable terrain to maneuver with and the SU-76s do not possess the firepower necessary to overpower any section of the defense on their own. Both scenarios place way too much reliance on the SU-76, which the designer seems to have thought of as a tank and a major advantage to the player somehow. It's neither under the circumstances. 
This is out-of-doctrine play for the Red Army though, and it's too easily thwarted by the depth and headcounts of the German defense on their side of the river. The player only gets two batteries of mortars it's just completely inadequate. That some guys get lucky occasionally and solve Hammer's Flank without racking up a huge body count does nothing for me. 90% of the time you will not be able to achieve this without save scumming ie: cheating.
My advice on Hammer's Flank is that it's an unfortunate bad campaign that slid through the cracks of quality control and needs to be redesigned at numerous points. It should not be played base. Grab the campaign unpacker, lay out the scenarios in the editor and tailor them. 

CM:Fulda Gap.

These are problems yes but can you name a game with AI that does any of these things? Everything listed here is an example of abstract thinking the sort of which no machine in existence is capable of doing yet or presumably the world would be a very different place right now. What you may think of as examples of games which can do the above concepts probably don't do anything like evaluation involving the sort of abstract thinking only a human mind can do. Any video game you've played that can do these things is in fact obscuring its inability to actually perform these concepts through the rest of the game's tools. 
Video game developers use all sorts of tricks to create compelling and intriguing challenges especially when the opponent is a human who possesses the insurmountable advantage of his human brain. For instance lots of games give the artificial intelligence huge stat buffs like a big health pool, damage buffs, borg communications, spawning enemies out of the player's line of sight, spawning enemies endlessly (ie: "clown car'ing"), granting them knowledge of player dispositions and stats, +2 on every dice roll etc. Basically the favorite method in many games is to build cheats into the AI. In Combat Mission this tends to lead to the infamous cases of overpacked maps with huge, in fact ridiculous defender headcounts vs the human attacker. While there is a time and a place for this and it's not necessarily a bad thing it is none the less a rather crude and inelegant solution to the AI's deficiencies. There are other ways to create challenge and intrigue.  
So no the AI cannot conduct self assessments, but you can use tools in the games to emulate that. You can restrict some plans to semi-completion, or have some other plans exist to implement what is describable as a "sub optimal" solution to the other side's plan. If you use the tools presented by the game successfully, it won't be necessary to think of such highly granular concepts like situational awareness or the limited AI plans available. Think of the game's many facets, like how the scenario is scored, how the terrain of the map influences each side's thinking, how the ToEs and tools available to each side can influence the computer's plan vs a player's plan. I'm not trying to suggest that there is any ideal or "right" way to go about designing scenarios but it's a bit much to expect BFC to make the Combat Mission games and also make us Skynet. 

Totally agree that the tactical AI is often sold short. A lot comes from the sort of vague feedback the AI gives scenario designers about its intent on plan execution which can lead to wildly unintended outcomes. On the other hand a lot of people expect an enormous amount of granularity in plan execution on the AI's part which is mostly unnecessary. "Force A moves to point B and shoots whatever it sees" is seriously 90% of Combat Mission and the AI just so happens to be able to execute movement and fire plans...so what more do you need? Certainly some stuff like the AI re-engaging historic contacts would be nice and a way to see AI movement paths in the scenario editor would be a great time saver for testing plans. Overall the biggest problem with the AI is the enormous amount of work involved in making plans for it because of the User-Interface feedback issues mentioned. This leads scenario designers naturally down the path of making simplistic and repetitive AI plans which then leads players to believe "the AI is bad" when it isn't really.
A lot of what Freyburg is saying here is really important for scenario designers. In order to fully wield the AI you have to use multiple plans, and think very abstractly about what the AI can do to upset the player's movements and pose a challenge. For instance in literally every scenario i've designed for myself... i've always set up at least one attack plan for the AI that is very, almost recklessly aggressive. The likelihood of this plan's execution is dependent upon many factors (I increase the likelihood if the AI is Waffen SS for instance) but I always feature it because if the player never has to expect spoiling attacks of any kind, he's not really under any pressure except for that given by the scenario's time limits. Time limits are a good way to make scenarios tense but you don't want to become over-reliant upon the scenario timer either because it can unfairly handicap the player by restricting his movements to only sections of the map his force can realistically reach in the time allotted. Easy solution? The potential, not the guarantee, the potential of an active defense instead of a passive one regardless of how illogical or irrational it may seem. 
The other basic item is randomized deployment rights for the AI when it's both attacking or defending. You can abstract the quantity of the AI's deployment "rights" by considering (or featuring on map even) your own side's reconnaissance quality vs the enemy's. You shouldn't be too perturbed by sort of baffling or seemingly illogical deployments either because tbh a lot of that is a perspective thing and scenario designers often make their scenarios less interesting by trying to police the AI down to every individual square it can use on deployment because "that's not what I would do this is what I would do if I was running this show!" - The confusion here extends from an unclear objective on the scenario designer's part leading to an imbalance in the pursuit of challenge and intrigue. You should consider both of those things when making a scenario.
A company of Panzer Grenadiers deploying in the middle of a forest hex around zero objectives doesn't make much sense no but that's only if the scenario designer is thinking about that in terms of a linear script. What if you open enough of the map up the player could potentially maneuver through that forest? What if they don't deploy there every time? What if you substitute a minefield instead sometimes? Every square on your map needs the potential for context. It doesn't necessarily need to be held or be dead, it just needs to be potentially something. 
Crucially when the AI is attacking its own fire support is going to be the biggest source of the scenario's ability to generate random outcomes. Lots of the scenario designers seem to avoid use of the AI fire support plans though, or make them too restrictive by using only one plan. One thing I always do with AI fire plans is include a heavy "rear area" bombardment to discourage the player from just pooling his force is a small area near the objectives. Remember that artillery was the solution to heavy force density and if the player can reliably concentrate his forces on areas of the map he expects to be safe the AI attacker's job will be predictably harder every time. I redesigned Hot Mustard in CMFI with a squadron of FW-190s in ground support and split their "missions" between attacks on my frontline or bomb runs on the train station the American commander is using as his HQ. If this squadron had existed at the battle it would've been perfectly reasonable to expect them to bomb and strafe the train station as a suspected HQ even if their mission had called for direct support of the German's attack. Usually they will not do this, but it could happen. So maybe pooling your whole Battalion for a dense and interlocking defense at the train station would not be the path to victory or an optimal defense every time hmm? What if there's a plan for a cancelled attack? Seriously what if you just put a plan in there where the AI executes a completely different set of objectives from what the player sees wherein just capturing the front half of the map was "good enough" for them in an "own objective" sort of way? 
It's important not to cripple the player I think, and give them enough assets to face setbacks and still reasonably be able to affect the scenario's outcome. Most of the scenario designers are thinking too much in terms of scripting though, and this makes their AI plans very limited or simplistic. Defense is easy enough, and randomized deployment is very basic. You've really made it though when you can construct compelling offense from the AI that doesn't rely excessively on any single constraint upon the player. 

Totally agree that the tactical AI is often sold short. A lot comes from the sort of vague feedback the AI gives scenario designers about its intent on plan execution which can lead to wildly unintended outcomes. On the other hand a lot of people expect an enormous amount of granularity in plan execution on the AI's part which is mostly unnecessary. "Force A moves to point B and shoots whatever it sees" is seriously 90% of Combat Mission and the AI just so happens to be able to execute movement and fire plans...so what more do you need? Certainly some stuff like the AI re-engaging historic contacts would be nice and a way to see AI movement paths in the scenario editor would be a great time saver for testing plans. Overall the biggest problem with the AI is the enormous amount of work involved in making plans for it because of the User-Interface feedback issues mentioned. This leads scenario designers naturally down the path of making simplistic and repetitive AI plans which then leads players to believe "the AI is bad" when it isn't really.
A lot of what Freyburg is saying here is really important for scenario designers. In order to fully wield the AI you have to use multiple plans, and think very abstractly about what the AI can do to upset the player's movements and pose a challenge. For instance in literally every scenario i've designed for myself... i've always set up at least one attack plan for the AI that is very, almost recklessly aggressive. The likelihood of this plan's execution is dependent upon many factors (I increase the likelihood if the AI is Waffen SS for instance) but I always feature it because if the player never has to expect spoiling attacks of any kind, he's not really under any pressure except for that given by the scenario's time limits. Time limits are a good way to make scenarios tense but you don't want to become over-reliant upon the scenario timer either because it can unfairly handicap the player by restricting his movements to only sections of the map his force can realistically reach in the time allotted. Easy solution? The potential, not the guarantee, the potential of an active defense instead of a passive one regardless of how illogical or irrational it may seem. 
The other basic item is randomized deployment rights for the AI when it's both attacking or defending. You can abstract the quantity of the AI's deployment "rights" by considering (or featuring on map even) your own side's reconnaissance quality vs the enemy's. You shouldn't be too perturbed by sort of baffling or seemingly illogical deployments either because tbh a lot of that is a perspective thing and scenario designers often make their scenarios less interesting by trying to police the AI down to every individual square it can use on deployment because "that's not what I would do this is what I would do if I was running this show!" - The confusion here extends from an unclear objective on the scenario designer's part leading to an imbalance in the pursuit of challenge and intrigue. You should consider both of those things when making a scenario.
A company of Panzer Grenadiers deploying in the middle of a forest hex around zero objectives doesn't make much sense no but that's only if the scenario designer is thinking about that in terms of a linear script. What if you open enough of the map up the player could potentially maneuver through that forest? What if they don't deploy there every time? What if you substitute a minefield instead sometimes? Every square on your map needs the potential for context. It doesn't necessarily need to be held or be dead, it just needs to be potentially something. 
Crucially when the AI is attacking its own fire support is going to be the biggest source of the scenario's ability to generate random outcomes. Lots of the scenario designers seem to avoid use of the AI fire support plans though, or make them too restrictive by using only one plan. One thing I always do with AI fire plans is include a heavy "rear area" bombardment to discourage the player from just pooling his force is a small area near the objectives. Remember that artillery was the solution to heavy force density and if the player can reliably concentrate his forces on areas of the map he expects to be safe the AI attacker's job will be predictably harder every time. I redesigned Hot Mustard in CMFI with a squadron of FW-190s in ground support and split their "missions" between attacks on my frontline or bomb runs on the train station the American commander is using as his HQ. If this squadron had existed at the battle it would've been perfectly reasonable to expect them to bomb and strafe the train station as a suspected HQ even if their mission had called for direct support of the German's attack. Usually they will not do this, but it could happen. So maybe pooling your whole Battalion for a dense and interlocking defense at the train station would not be the path to victory or an optimal defense every time hmm? What if there's a plan for a cancelled attack? Seriously what if you just put a plan in there where the AI executes a completely different set of objectives from what the player sees wherein just capturing the front half of the map was "good enough" for them in an "own objective" sort of way? 
It's important not to cripple the player I think, and give them enough assets to face setbacks and still reasonably be able to affect the scenario's outcome. Most of the scenario designers are thinking too much in terms of scripting though, and this makes their AI plans very limited or simplistic. Defense is easy enough, and randomized deployment is very basic. You've really made it though when you can construct compelling offense from the AI that doesn't rely excessively on any single constraint upon the player. 

I've been doing a lot of playing around with the AI recently, and I thought I'd bore you all, and insult the developers, by describing what aspects of the AI I think work well, and what could be done to improve it.
A: Static defence
Firstly, in certain respects, the AI works extremely well.
For example, the simplest way to set up an AI plan in an attack/defend QB situation (Probe, Attack or Assault), which is the type of game I play the most (and therefore the type I am most interested in learning how to produce), is to set up several AI groups, and for each one paint the entire defender setup zone (or a big part of it), and then select a different behaviour for each group...
For example:
- group 1, ambush 1000m;
- group 2, ambush 300m
- group 3, cautious
- group 4, normal ...and so on
In an attack-defend scenario, this will give you a very good static defence, and with a suitable map, will give you a fun and challenging Quick Battle. The AI will allocate the groups very intelligently and will create an integrated network of defensive positions, there may be interlocked fields of fire, AT guns will be well sited, avenues of approach will be covered, and it may place units as bait. It seems to have an excellent 'understanding' of the relationship between terrain, objectives and setup zones.
It's incredibly easy for the map designer and works very well. As a map designer, it will also surprise you. Since all you're doing is painting big swathes of the map and inputting the full range of behaviours, you can happily play QBs on your own maps without any foreknowledge of what the AI is likely to do. Marvellous.
For years I avoided using the AI, because I thought the map designer had to think out all the strategies and (a) I wasn't confident in my strategic skills, and (b), what point would there have been when I wouldn't be able to enjoy the maps myself, knowing in advance what was going to happen?
But I was quite mistaken about just how sophisticated the AI is, and how easy it is to use.
If you do something as simple as this:

...you'll get a really good defence from the AI, but it will be a static defence.
 
B: Responsiveness
Planning an active defence, with displacement or counterattacks, or a realistic attack, is far harder. With QB maps, I've seldom seen either one work well. Occasionally they're quite fun and somewhat challenging, but most of the time - with QBs at least - an attack plan or active defence is a turkey shoot.
The reason for this, and the area where I would like to see improvements is in the AI response, or lack of response, to the actions of its opponent.
I have read comments over the years that programming a truly responsive AI is a Holy Grail that is more or less impossible, but (and this is the point at which I insult the developers), I wonder perhaps if that is true.
I can see the reason why it is so hard...
Imagine a map of 2000m2 - that's 62,500 action squares (250 x 250).

To calculate, at the level of the action square, what was happening on such a map (lines of sight, lines of fires, enemy presence and so on) would involve around 62,0002 or nearly 4 billion combinations of action squares - once a minute or more often.
But if the AI were to react in a more general way - say perhaps it 'observed' enemy movement on the level of 5 x 5 action squares...

A 2000 m2 map would comprise of 2,500 such 'AI action acres', which would mean around 6 million combinations to calculate approximate LOS and LOF.
Given that the AI does such a fabulous job on static defence with the under-the-hood algorithms it has, if the AI were just to react in a general way to the presence of enemy troops on an 'action acre', in a similar fashion to the way it incorporates objective zones and terrain in a static defence (seeking to mass fire on the enemy for units designated 'active', or backing away from massed enemy for troops designated 'cautious, perhaps), you would get a fantastic responsive AI.
The AI already has the capability to produce interlocking fire, keyholes and so on, but it would then be orienting these towards the player's units. Major movements would still be provided as an AI plan by the designer, but the AI would no longer be operating blindly or by clockwork.
In fact, seeing how well the AI produces an integrated static defence with the simplest of designer plans, it only needs to respond fairly generally to the presence of enemy units - anything more would be too much. If the AI were to continuously respond to enemy movements down to the level of the action square with the sophistication it uses to produce static defence, the game would become too difficult to play.
 

I think the trouble with the Soviet early war armored cars was that they just didn't quite fit into the sort of All-or-Nothing thinking that permeated the Red Army and its procurement. The BA-10/11 might well be a great armored car but comrade we can only afford to have a few chassis taking up production lines at a time. It was probably seen as neither light enough or subtle enough to make a good scout but also insufficiently protected and armed to make a good tank either. "Any job we'd use the BA-10 for we'd prefer to use either a BA-64 or a Valentine." 
The chassis it was based on was a modified version of the GAZ-AAA's chassis...which means it probably wasn't standard with that truck anymore and the Soviets would've axed its production in 1941 on those grounds. Can't show that this is what happened for sure, just that it's a theory. As usual any that happened to survive on the front were welcome to stay in service for as long as they survived and the vehicle probably wasn't so different from the GAZ-AAA that it couldn't share some parts with it. 
Also I think it weighed quite a bit for a wheeled vehicle and that was never good when conducting operations in Russia the Land of the Mud Rivers. 

Whatsa matta you don't like the Nagant EBR?? The helpful thing that can be said about a polymer stock is that at least it won't catch fire rapid firing the gun the way the wooden stock of the Czar's finest rifles would. If you can rapid fire it that is. I'm not sure how guys managed to work the bolt on the M1938 that fast because no matter what condition the gun is in you either need some seriously strong hands or a crowbar to work that damn handle. 
They did get around to fixing the sight issue with the M1C and just redesignated the rifle the M1D. Course I think the even more ridiculous case of defective American WW2 small arms was the M1903A4. The US Army somehow managed to break a perfectly fine bolt action rifle just by removing a single groove in the rifling to produce a "sniper" rifle that was despised by snipers and marksmen alike. The Marines of course, never ones to go home when they can go big, stuck with their own M1903A3 sniper mods that all came with an attached Hubble Space Telescope for shooting the Captain off a moving Japanese Destroyer cruising through Iron Bottom Sound...from Oahu.