Hooooooraaa!!!

[Sublime]

Very interesting the Soviets weren't interested and the Germans were and copied it. Maybe the Soviets felt they just had enough 'up front' AT capability? Seems strange to me, but of course it's hindsight and I wasn't there.

[YankeeDog]

So just use area fire in close proximity rather than blast?

Do not issue an area fire order or a blast order -- if anything, these will cause the infantry to use the demo charge on the ground or on a nearby structure like a wall, which is unlikely to significantly damage an AFV.

Just try to get the infantry with demo charges within about 20m of the AFV, and leave them do their thing. If the infantry is in reasonably good order, and you're lucky, they'll "throw" a demo charge at the tank, just like infantry without demo charges throws grenades at armor.

IME, if you can actually get infantry close enough to armor to use them, demo charges are highly effective. It's the getting close that's the hard part.

[JasonC]

Sublime - my guess is (1) they considered the range inadequate (2) the test troops missed a lot, and they thought it toy-like inaccurate. They were undoubtedly overly impressed with their own ATRs, and probably thought the point blank window was covered with lower tech weapons (demo charges, AT grenades, etc).

Late war, the front line guys did use all the Panzerfausts they could get their hands on. But then a faust has much, much more penetration than a bazooka...

[Apocal]

Well, I don't really want to start a new, semi-O/T thread just for this one question so I'll ask it here:

What is up with the Soviet "Guards"? I understand it was a distinction given to units that had proved themselves them under fire and soldiers in Guards units received more pay, but why did they have a separate TOE? How does this tie in with some units receiving locations as part of their unit name?

Also, was there a real distinction made between Guards units and regular units at the tactical level, i.e. "we have to perform an opposed river crossing, regular troops won't do, call up the Guard!" or otherwise?

[JasonC]

Apocal - basically, no. Units won the guards designation by performing well in a previous operation, pretty much. This means they were effectively "selected" for more competent commanders and staff and all the lower levels, and would generally have an experienced cadre of veteran NCOs, and some portion of the line privates. Not remotely all, however, because losses in every operation were high enough that replacements had to be fed into any formation to keep it anywhere near TOE.

Would commanders sometimes rely more heavily on guards formations, counting on that quick approximation of "mixed veterans and regulars, but not greens", experience level, in CM terms? Sure. Especially at the rifle army level, a guards army might have significantly more combat capability than a regular rifle army. It would likely also get extra attachments, more army level artillery formations, mortar formations, AA formations, and the like. Any rifle army given an attack role would likely get attached tank brigades in an infantry support role, or even a full tank corps as a breakthrough force and first level exploitation force. But those would be attachments, and often would not share the designation of the parent (a non guards tank corps under a guards rifle army, e.g., would be perfectly normal).

There are also a few cases in which "guards" in the unit designation is an actual operational difference it the unit type, not a title. A guards mortar regiment means rocket artillery, for example, not a 120mm mortar formation with experienced personnel.

I hope that helps.

[Sublime]

What about 'Shock' Armies? Was that a designation for a type of operational concept?

[JasonC]

Yes. Shock in Russian is pretty much the same word as "assault" in western languages. Shock armies were ordinary rifle armies that had been topped off with every available kind of support for attack roles. This usually meant an artillery corps or at least division at army level, extra army level heavy mortar or rocket formations, independent tank brigades for infantry support, the the line rifle divisions topped off with replacements, up to TOE, and sometimes a double helping of rifle divisions (meaning up to 12 in the army, as opposed to the usual poor man's 6 per army).

But that is really only how they would look right before a major offensive. In action, they would get ground down like any other force, and the component rifle divisions reduced to 4-5000 men, etc. The artillery would not be lost, but might easily be distanced, out of range and unable to keep up (most of it being horse drawn, and its ammo dumps moved that way too). But that is the idea behind a shock army.

[Apocal]

JasonC, that is very helpful, as always. Thank you.

[Sublime]

Now that I've thoroughly hijacked this thread I have more questions Jason -

Did the Soviets rebuild units in the German manner (well, under ideal conditions) of experienced cadres, units training together and being kept together, OR did they use a kind of 'repple depple' US system?

Did the Soviet Air Force have a mission goal (e.g. 25 missions, etc) or did they fly till serious injury/death?

[Fenris]

Did the Soviet Air Force have a mission goal (e.g. 25 missions, etc) or did they fly till serious injury/death?

I believe they were fight on until either the job was finished or you were.

-F

[Sublime]

thx. havent seen you around in years how are ya

[Fenris]

Good thanks, hope the same with you. I lurk here all the time. Just don't post that often.

[JasonC]

Sublime - if the whole unit wasn't destroyed by being surrounded when annihilated (happened a lot in the first year and a half), then they rebuilt them under less than ideal conditions by just stuffing them with replacements inducted all at once, when the unit was in a quiet part of the line and those replacements were available for it. (In the late war, these were often drafts from the regions just liberated by the previous offensive, making war support war, so to speak).

But there was nothing like repple depple. Individual soldiers were not first trained in a military specialty and then assigned to a unit that had a shortage to TOE in that specialty. Instead, they drafted a bunch of people usually from the same district because that is how they were all roped together, so to speak. They were given training as a unit if they formed a new major formation (rifle brigade or division, I mean), but it might be pretty cursory, with the rest expect to happen at the front after reaching their unit, if they were a top-off to an existing formation, instead.

As for pilots, some would be rotated to training duties but many didn't last terribly long. 70% of tactical strike aircraft and 65% of the bombers were lost over the course of the war, with losses per sortie running 1.6% on average for the former and 1% per sorties for the latter. Nearly half of those losses were non combat causes (everything from crashes to maintenance write offs, the latter often reflecting accumuated combat damage, though the plane made it home etc), with the rest split about 50-50 between fighters and flak.

The practice in the Soviet air force was normally to award Hero of the Soviet Union medals for completing 100 missions, but IL-2 pilots got them at 10. It is estimated that the average IL-2 only managed 100 combat flying hours before being written off due to battle damage. They came back with damage at a rate of close to 50% per mission.

[John Kettler]

Sublime and Michael Emrys,

The Russians did receive bazookas via Lend Lease, and they were used in combat, but apparently only by specialist recon troops. In the official Battle of Berlin doc, you can see them when the guys pull the camouflage branches off their amphibious jeeps, cross the Oder (?), then jump out on the far side. I had to watch it carefully, but once seen and recognized, never forgotten. Here's the thread I did on that amazing doc.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=39426

Lend Lease to the USSR--bazookas!

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/LL-Ship-3A.html

Ordnance--General Supplies Page 4, Line 1

Launcher, Rocket, 2.36", M1 & M9 3,000

Unfortunately, I have no idea what the scale of issue was for ammo for these, nor can I find a 2.36 inch rocket entry on the ordnance list.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

If the Il-2 was so tough (see famous Herr Major story "One does not bite a porcupine..."), then why did they die like flies? Rudel talks about watching 2cm fire bounce off the underside, and I've read the aerial aimpoint of choice was the oil cooler. Somewhere something seems disconnected here.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sublime]

They were tough by airplane standards. However they're still airplanes. Airplanes can't have it both ways, you can't make a true flying tank.

Add to that their use- tactical support for the biggest, bloodiest, ground war in history, add in commanders and government who are anything but casualty averse, and I can see why they took such heavy casualties.

[Michael Emrys]

...you can't make a true flying tank.

Not...precisely...true.

Michael

[Apocal]

JasonC,

If the Il-2 was so tough (see famous Herr Major story "One does not bite a porcupine..."), then why did they die like flies? Rudel talks about watching 2cm fire bounce off the underside, and I've read the aerial aimpoint of choice was the oil cooler. Somewhere something seems disconnected here.

Regards,

John Kettler

Confirmation bias: the pilots and gunners who died screaming in their burning aircraft aren't around in the post war to write books and give interviews. It is the same reason practically every aircraft of WW2 bar the Japanese models has some anecdote about how tough it was.

[Sublime]

True Apocal but still there are certain aircraft that have a tough reputation that is truly well deserved and I've seen definite evidence to prove it. The IL2 would be one, more by reputation though than by actual visual evidence I've seen. However, I have seen all sorts of pictures of B17s that should not have made it back to England that did. That plane really could take a beating. P47s also were famed for it.

A10s are well known for survivability too. In fact, on the opposite end of the spectrum, nearly all P51D mustang pilots noted that while they loved the plane IT COULD NOT take a beating very well, and was especially vulnerable to ground fire if low enough.

[JasonC]

Half of all the IL-2s taking hits on a typical mission, but only 1.6% of them failing to return, it pretty good evidence they were very tough as airplanes went. But also that they were taking a ton of fire.

That comes from being a slow ground attack aircraft, outclassed in air to air combat terms by pretty much every fighter the Germans had, and routinely being used at low altitude against armed, front line targets.

I think everyone vastly underestimates the average effectiveness of ground fire, especially dedicated light flak pieces, and overestimates the average effectiveness of ground attack missions and the aircraft performing them. The ground attack aircraft is moving faster, it has the initiative in the engagement, it chooses its target, it fires with seeming impunity and is gone in a flash, before most on the ground can react effectively. All those convey an illusion of power and prowess that is intimidating.

But the reality is they frequently flat-out miss, because they are flying fast and trying to hit small targets that are difficult to pick out of the background countryside, without any guidance systems, by dead reckoning and crude deflection sights.

Meawhile the light flak on the ground are stable, stationary firing platforms. They spend only ammunition, which is cheap (in wartime anyway, these days is another story lol). They usually miss too, but if they hit anything they are trading ammo costing a few dollars for planes worth 100,000 times as much, or more. And you can field more of them for less cost than you can planes, and have them lying around wherever when said planes obligingly spend the fuel and effort to come calling.

Ground fire accounts for half the Russian planes shot down, and an even higher portion of western Allied planes shot down in the late war, because the Luftwaffe in the west lost most of its teeth by the late spring of 1944.

The typical IL-2 may have accounted for a few trucks and men on the ground before it was lost. They didn't remotely account for a tank apiece - less than one in six ever took out a tank, over their entire service lives. We can tell because there aren't enough German tanks killed by air attack, and there are acres of IL-2s lost attacking them (and everything else, to be sure). If every lost IL-2 took out even one tank, they would alone suffice to kill off half of all German tanks lost in the east. The reality is more like one tenth of that.

Ground attack is a very expensive way of delivering firepower to front line targets. Artillery is much more efficient at that job, and does it with much greater safety to the arm doing the delivery. Guns also have vastly higher "loiter time" and "sortie rates". Hitting less defended rear area targets is somewhat more effective, but only transportation links are thick enough on the ground, vulnerable to such attack, and accessible in range terms, to make a decent target set for that use of tac air.

This doesn't change until the advent of smart air to ground munitions, pretty much in the early 1970s. Until then, tac air is a rich man's way of getting some firepower to widely varied targets flexibly, but without much attention to how economical it is as a means of delivery, or as an exchange of resources.

FWIW...

[massive1974]

Hiya all. so this is the EF thread. Good.

I like Eastern Front cause nobody took no prisoners.

[Sublime]

Nobody took prisoners? You're joking right?

[massive1974]

LOL.

Yes, I'm joking. That was just my dramatic entrance.

But I have to say that my preference for this front of all the the CM fronts stems from this knowledge that I bring in from my readings: that it was a pretty tough environment to be in, as tough as the Pacific, I mean tougher. With all the racist ideology and ****. This was an ideological war of annihilation unlike the one in the West. But I'm only repeating common knowledge so...

[Michael Emrys]

P47s also were famed for it.

Indeed. I have seen a photograph of a Jug that managed to glide back to a landing at an English air strip after its engine had fallen off due to battle damage over the English Channel.

:eek:

Michael

[Sublime]

LOL.

Yes, I'm joking. That was just my dramatic entrance.

But I have to say that my preference for this front of all the the CM fronts stems from this knowledge that I bring in from my readings: that it was a pretty tough environment to be in, as tough as the Pacific, I mean tougher. With all the racist ideology and ****. This was an ideological war of annihilation unlike the one in the West. But I'm only repeating common knowledge so...

I don't think you can really say it was 'tougher' or not than the Pacific. I guess I'd agree with the comparison to the West, but it's really iffy. Actually, if prisoners are your yardstick the Pacific was WAY tougher. And while the total number of casualties in the East was way higher,(vs. US/Japanese casualties, not including the Chinese campaign) that doesn't really matter to any of the dead in the Pacific, or the West, or anywhere for that matter. In fact, since the Pacific war was really lost by naval battles, the argument could also be made it was tougher because each island garrison battle was a foregone conclusion and yet the Japanese fought nearly universally to the death every single time, knowing full well the situation was hopeless. While there was indeed extremely bitter fighting and holdouts like this in the East, nothing on the scale percentage wise where 99% of a force is killed or incapacitated, like in the Pacific. Nearly every time the situation became obviously hopeless the troops in the East eventually surrendered, even if after a desperate defense. The Germans at Stalingrad, in Berlin, Festung Konigsberg, etc. One is tempted to say if these had been battles in the Pacific they would only have ended with the final killing/suicide of German defenders, not surrenders. So what Hitler wanted to happen, instead of what usually actually happened.