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AT Guns: Problems and How to Solve Them?


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As someone has already pointed out some of the movement strangeness comes from being limited to 'normal' speed. This speed is the same for all units over all terrain. So the guns will have the same speed on a road and in forest.

It's a compromise of course but the best choice of the available movement modes.

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AT Guns are severely "gimped", "handicapped" and "unfit for purpose" as a viable option because of the completely UNREALISTIC limitations in movement speed, deployment speed, ability to move while deployed, ability to mount & dismount and concealment.

Again with the overstatement. They're "a bit" gimped. And they're still almost as viable an 'option' in the game as they were in real life. Which wasn't very. The weapon system was close to obsolete by the end of the war, due to the increasing weight of gun needed to defeat the armour faced. ATG were used because there wasn't anything better, and anything is better than nothing. So when they're an option, even if they had every bell and whistle you're asking for, they'd still not be a "viable" one in all circumstances.

Your reenactor videos don't impress me near as much as they impress you. How many rounds are they shifting with the gun? They're doing it on lawns. I'll repeat myself: Sure it would be "more" realistic, and realistic would be good, but the effect on game play and the viability of the weapon system would be marginal. If you deploy them in the situations where they would historcially have been used.

Specifically: if your ATG is having to rotate to engage, you already screwed up/have been screwed by your opponent. They should be keyholed in a location where targets can't appear outside the slew angle of the barrel, or where another gun will cover anything popping up "off bore".

The single biggest handicap the weapon system suffers is its vulnerability to the player's God's Eye view. Even if you could scram the crew off the gun into an 81mm-proof bunker, the gun would be a twisted wreck by the time they got back to it, half the time, either because the mortars broke it, or because a tank rolled up in the absence of crew and DF HE'ed it to death. And the other half the time your crew would get nailed by the follow on shoot whose spotting rounds got hidden in the first bombardment, or the tank that's waiting to area fire them when they try and return.

Remember, these things are "cheap as chips". You can get 2.5 PaK38/PaK40 for the price of a PzIII/PzIV respectively, which in the right terrain (or if you're not allowed any tanks) would be well worth considering. If you're on open fields with no concealment for the guns, take the tank, if you can.

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They're "a bit" gimped.

Sure womble, they're 'a bit' gimped, whatever you like.

Let's move on to arguing over if they're 'somewhat, unfit for purpose' in your next message ok????

Your reenactor videos don't impress me near as much as they impress you.

It's not about being impressed, it's about providing evidence which supports a viewpoint.

You may have better evidence, if so, share it, if not we use the evidence available.

The weapon system was close to obsolete by the end of the war, due to.......

Who cares????

They weren't obsolete because they couldn't be moved after they were deployed, or because they took four minutes to move ten meters down the road and about face.

Specifically: if your ATG is having to rotate to engage, you already screwed up/have been screwed by your opponent......... They should be keyholed in a location where

Of course proper use will effect their survivability. But that's never been in question, and doesn't have anything to do with the limitations I've outlined. As far as I can tell, it's completely irrelevant to the issues I've raised.

The fact that it's 'poor form' to allow your AT asset to be attacked from the flank, has nothing to do with how well the gun mimics real life capability when it happens.

You shouldn't let your Sherman be attacked from the flank either. Does that mean it's ok to unrealistically limit it's ability to respond?

We're talking about a group of tasks that ATGs were able to perform effectively in real life, which they currently can't in the game. Those limitations significantly effect their performance, survivability and usefulness.

The single biggest handicap the weapon system suffers is its vulnerability to the player's God's Eye view.

You're right, the Gods Eye has many and varied impacts in game.

But the fact that it currently seems to have a particularly problematic effect on ATGs is an argument FOR fixing their current inflexibility and limitations, not against.

Even if you could scram the crew off the gun into an 81mm-proof bunker, the gun would be a twisted wreck by the time they got back to it, half the time,

Absolutely right, knocking out the asset should be, and I believe is, modeled. That doesn't mean the squishies shouldn't be able to be elsewhere while it happens, or that being able to decrew doesn't increase their overall survivability. Something they desperately need.

Perhaps being able to move while deployed would be enough, who knows.

What I do know is that ATGs need some love.

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It may well be the case that reworking AT Guns are't worth the man hours it would take to fix them, that's BattleFronts call.

That doesn't mean they're not 'broken'.

And by 'broken' I mean, severely hampered in ways that make them a poor choice, and dysfunctional compared to their real world counterparts.

I merely outlined the issues in hope that they might be addressed, the same way other obvious problems have been addressed after the community clamoured for change.

You think I'm crazy to think that fixing ATGs (ie, making them more closely reflect the functionality of the real thing) will substantially improve their effectiveness?

I think you're a ****** idiot if you don't think improving the key aspects outlined in the original post will make them more effective, functional and realistic.

Just expressing my support for WynnterGreen here.

It's a good issue to be excited about.

On the bright side, at least this is an area where CMx1 wasn't clearly better (except the cover issue).

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While I agree that especially for the lighter guns, whether they be ATG or IG, that the mobility is ridiculously hampered, I think the real problem, and this goes for all guns except the really large ones, 88mm and similar, their rotation rates are for me the main issue... these guns, up to 76mm or so could easily be picked up my the trails by two or three guys and rotated in seconds, where now it takes a looong time to perform that maneuver. I have seen it done with a modern 105mm towed howitzer.

So improvement could be made for sure.. but really we are talking using the ATGs at very close range where these issues really come to light and are noticed... and if that is where they are then they deserve their fate... excepting for the very small guns (37mm-50mm) these guns should be placed as far away from any enemy unit as possible (as they were intended to be)... then these factors will not be as apparent. I'm with you guys though, there is certainly room for improvement.

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Bil,

Are you aware that at Kursk the Russian antitank guns were instructed to hold fire until the targets were 300 meters away?

Source: Clark, Battle of the Tanks, p. 294

Antitank Warfare, by Biryukov and Melnikov (both heavy hitters in Cold War Soviet military circles) is a must read on Russian WW II antitank practices. I can confirm the open fire range in Clark is wholly consistent with what I read there. The idea was to open sudden, highly accurate fire on the Panzers and smother them before they could react. A towed antitank gun has a significant ROF advantage over a tank, since there's more room to work the gun.

The Germans did much the same, as detailed here.

"German antitank guns are disposed in depth, with some well forward. They often are dug in and carefully concealed to prevent the enemy from discovering the location and strength of the antitank defenses prior to attack. In emplacing antitank guns, the Germans prefer positions in enfilade or on reverse slopes. They normally employ two to three antitank guns in each position, protecting them from infantry attacks with light machine guns. Ranges at which the Germans open fire upon hostile tanks vary according to the caliber of the gun and it's position. Although single antitank guns sometimes engage enemy tanks at ranges up to 1,000 yards, main antitank defenses usually hold their fire until the range is reduced to about 150 to 300 yards."

Source: Extract from TME-30-451 Handbook on German Military Forces (1945), Section V DEFENSIVE 2.f. Antimechanized Defense

In both the Russian and the German cases, the basic idea is to get the foe so close in that it's theoretically "can't miss" range. Rather than open fire at longer range and lower Ph, thus giving the presumably numerous attackers time to halt and engage the now unmasked guns, Ph is maximized, and the reaction time delta generates a lot of leverage for the defense. Restated, devastating fire can be delivered on the attacking tanks before they can start to react. If you check, you'll find similar short range open fire practices were used for the PTRS/PTRD on the Russian side and the Panzerschreck on the German side. Further, it recently emerged that Patton ordered that bazooka fire not be initiated sooner than 30 yards, so as to produce a decent hit probability and not get the bazooka team gunned down through premature exposure.

In every case above, surprise opening of fire is clearly a must.

Artilleryman Eugenii Monyushko served in an IPTAP (antitank regiment) at Sandomierz in 1944. His unit had 76.2mm ZIS-3s. What he has to say fully confirms what I've said above.

ttp://english.iremember.ru/artillerymen/8-eugenii-monyushko.html?q=%2Fartillerymen%2F8-eugenii-monyushko.html&start=6

"Of course, not only artillery participated in the fighting for the bridgehead, and representatives of other branches of military service, other military specializations, saw everything that went on differently, from different points of view. To me and, as I can judge from converstaions with comrades, to the soldiers of my regiment the scheme of the fighting was the following: After short but powerful artillery raids the Germans would attack with their armor. Heavy AFVs, Tigers and Ferdinands, ascended hills deep inside the German positions and stopped 1-1.5 kilometers from our own positions. The lighter and more maneuverable Pz.IV's continued to advance together with small numbers of infantry. It made little sense for us to fire at the AFVs deployed in the rear. Even in case of a direct hit the shell couldn't cause serious damage at such range. But German tankers waited until our anti-tank battery was forced to open fire at the tanks advancing in the front. A gun that opened fire, exposed itself, immediately fell victim to a well aimed shot from the stationary heavy AFVs. It must be noted that Tigers had very precise sights and very accurate 88mm guns. This explains the advice that I received about not opening fire until the last moment. When opening fire from a "pistol shot range" you could expect to hit with the first or, in an extreme case, the second shell, and then, even if the gun was destroyed, you could still get an "exchange of figures" disadvantageous to the Germans - a tank for a light gun. But if you exposed your position prematurely the gun most probably would've been lost in vain."

Regards,

John Kettler

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John, great post.

I had mentioned in another thread in the CMFI forum this problem (but without any resonance). If an ATG opens fire, it better makes sure to hit.

Currently CM has the problem, that ATGs IMO are way too easily to spot if they should be perfectly camouflaged and concealed, but they are too hard to spot once they have opened fire. To me this seems because blaze and smoke - depending on the individual type of the gun - and sometimes dust from ground in dry and dusty conditions is not modelled.

IMO that imbalance is the reason, why in CM single on field mortars are still the best gamey weapon of choice against ATGs, because of their sniper accuracy and tanks under fire simply don't spot them fast enough, no matter how good their optics are.

This does not mean there were not outstanding successes possible with single guns and CM should ofcourse allow for 3-or-higher-sigma events. One I know about is the one of Otto Riehs, which earned him the Knight's Cross. He knocked out 10 (ten!) T34 in twelve minutes with his gun, although being positioned on a forward slope and although - IIRC - the gunner had lost his nerves and the frist two shots had missed.

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Could be AT guns modelled like this in CM?

This is from another Battlefront game: Theatre of war,that I used to play a lot time ago.What's more,the guns could be "dismounted" and be remaned again.This allows the crew to look for cover when they are shelled and take back the gun again.In that game the mobility of the guns is better though the one of the vehicles isn't.

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What's more,the guns could be "dismounted" and be remaned again.This allows the crew to look for cover when they are shelled and take back the gun again.

As understandable this is from a player's perspective (even more because of the sniper mortar problem in the game), I somehow have doubts it would be realistic to allow leaving the gun.

Although there surely were differences between the armies, but in general crews are never ever allowed that a functioning gun falls into the hands of the enemy (the crew leader is liable with his head).

Since artillery usually is the indication of a following attack, or is taking place already during the attack, I have difficulties to imagine, that leaving the weapon was allowed doctrine.

Nobody knows how long the artillery will fire and once the weapon is left, nobody can say, if a remanning would even be possible.

But not only from the tactical point of view it seems unrealistic to me, also from the psychological implications:

In all armies desertion is threatened by death. Why is that?

That's necessary, because every soldier must know, that he has a chance to survive if he fights, but that he is doomed, if he doesn't.

This psychological framework would be extremely in danger, if it was allowed that crews leave their weapons when under fire. It's against everything the military training tries to achieve: suppress the natural instinct and make the soldier stay at his weapon and shoot back.

Once crews were allowed to leave their weapons, they would not get back to them, when the enemy was even closer and more dangerous.

And it also is against the standard procedure when coming under artillery fire: immediately eat dirt (and pray).

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Since artillery usually is the indication of a following attack, or is taking place already during the attack, I have difficulties to imagine, that leaving the weapon was allowed doctrine.

Agreed. Penalties were even more draconian during the Napoleonic era. One wrinkle that BF may consider introducing is panicked abandonment by crew members, notably those with low morale and dodgy motivation. Unless that exists already.

Re: spotting. Does German flashless powder modify the concealment factors of AT guns?

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I'm fairly sure that national differences in propellent are not modeled in the game. Everyone essentially uses "smokeless" powder. At least I certainly have seen no evidence in the game of the difficulties US 76mm tanks had in seeing their shot fall because of the smoke from their own guns, and the visual representation is greatly understated compared to real life.

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"A towed antitank gun has a significant ROF advantage over a tank, since there's more room to work the gun."

Having worked both personally, I can tell you that this is a myth. There is no difference on that score. The ATG's edge is just that it can be concealed and that may confer first shot, and it may take the tank a second or three to pick it up (much longer at long range) and for the gunner to get his sight aligned and the turret over etc. The physical working of the gun by the gunner, there is no space problem and there is no difference, the loading sequences are the same, and neither extra room nor extra hands help. It is a sequential process and each step ahead has to be finished correctly before the next can begin.

On the further comment that "you could still get an "exchange of figures" disadvantageous to the Germans - a tank for a light gun" - while that was doubtless the motivation for holding fire down to close range, the Russians certainly did not achieve any such even exchange in practice. In part because guns were neutralized by artillery before they got a chance to fire, no doubt, but also because the tanks usually outnumbered them on a given piece of frontage that had attacking tanks (they had a higher concentration across the front), and because they were favored in the duels themselves once both sides were firing. The actual achieved exchange ratio was more like 1 tank for 10 guns, if that. In CM, ratios that we would consider just horrible, in other words, were the rule in the actual war. The best outlier successes occasionally might kill more tanks than ATGs lost or reach an even exchange, but that is outlier success territory. The average performance was abysmally worse.

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I have difficulties to imagine, that leaving the weapon was allowed doctrine. But not only from the tactical point of view it seems unrealistic to me, also from the psychological implications:

So if an AT Gun is set up in a hedgerow next to an old stone building, you think it's more realistic that the guns commander would insist that his crew sit out in the open while mortars fall, rather than move five meters inside the building to wait out the barrage???

Personally I find it exceeding difficult to believe that either doctrine or sanity prescribe sitting in the open when hard cover is close by.

An AT crew panicking and abandoning their gun against your wishes is already modeled in Combat Mission.

You can also order your AT Gunners to abandon their gun.

However, you can't order your team away from the gun to take shelter, then have them recrew it some short time later.

There may be excellent coding and technical reasons why this is the case, but does it make 'game play' sense? Not at all.

(even more because of the sniper mortar problem in the game)

The problem with AT Guns and Mortars isn't the Mortars accuracy.

It's two compounding problems.

The first is the players 'Gods Eye' View.

When an AT asset is identified, the player instantly has the capability to direct any on map mortars or Forward Observers into positions where they can target the gun.

The player can spend as much time as they need in the WEGO environment scanning the terrain for a perfect location and then instantly (in game time) direct the mortar team to the most advantageous position.

This instant ability to react clashes directly with the second problem.

The AT Guns inability to move while deployed, and unrealistically slow movement while relocating.

A Pak40 is literally pinned in place for four minutes and fourty seconds while it packs up.

Then, when it is packed, it moves with glacial slowness compared to its real world counterpart.

The gun could potentially be saved from death by mortar by rolling it a mere action square or two back into the forest behind it's deployment position, something small and medium guns should DEFINITELY be able to do.

However, due to their current unrealistic immobility, they're just a juicy static target.

John Kettler provided an excellent link to U.S. doctrinal employment of ATGs earlier in the thread.

It describes guns having several prepared positions that they should / could be relocated to, given certain circumstances.

Currently, these real world tactics are impossible because of the artificial constraints imposed on ATGs.

And because of those limitations, survivability and usefulness is greatly reduced.

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So if an AT Gun is set up in a hedgerow next to an old stone building, you think it's more realistic that the guns commander would insist that his crew sit out in the open while mortars fall, rather than move five meters inside the building to wait out the barrage???

Absolutely.

The weapon must be manned and protected at all times, especially when the enemy comes and the enemy usually comes when artillery is shooting.

Put yourself into the position: You are held liable for the gun not falling into the enemy's hands intact, liable for executing your orders, responsible for your crew and the other comrades that need you fulfilling your duty with your weapon.

And when the enemy is about to come, which means artillery is falling down, you would order your men to jump up and run around, away from the weapon?

What if a grenade hits your crew while running away?

If you would have the luck to survive running around under a barrage, and if your crew would be lucky to get back (decided by what?!) to the gun unspotted and also lucky enough to survive the ongoing attack, then you probably wouldn't suvive the martial court afterwards. You are not allowed to leave your place of duty. Every deserter and coward would act that way and would have thousand excuses why it was not possible to stay at the weapon.

What do you think the fighting power of any army would be, if soldiers were allowed leaving their (heavy!) weapons just like they want, if they come under fire and recognize a few meters further back it was more safe? :eek:

With that said I do not mean that ATGs should not be improved. You mentioned a few aspects that really should be looked at. But leaving the weapon would be no solution for these problems. :D

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HistoryLover,

Thanks, and you're welcome!

Vanir Ausf B,

Speaking as someone who's pushed hard on modeling the historical German advantage from smokeless, flashless powder, if everyone's modeled as having it, then this is blatantly incorrect. Statements lamenting the lack of such in the U.S. Army have been repeatedly presented, with examples ranging from the MG-42 blazing away at 200m range while a bunch of people looked for it through binos up to gripes from our tankers about how hard it was to spot German tanks and ATGs because of the lack of muzzle flash and smoke. I'd further note that military advantage on this score goes all the way back to field reports from some guy named Teddy Roosevelt talking about how hard it was to spot Spanish Mauser fire for the same reason as above: no easily perceptible flash or smoke, in sharp contrast to the enormously smoky and flash emitting U.S. Krags.

JasonC,

Cool. What weapons,how many rounds, how long continued and at what pace, any particular stress (WX, sleep, water and food issues) over and above normal military demands? Range firing, live fire on open range or combat?

Depending on the interior design of the particular AFV, space to work the piece is a real constraint. No, I'm not talking about a relatively cavernous modern Western tank. I'm talking about something altogether more crowded from WW II.

I've been in the turret of a Sherman 76mm recently; it wasn't combat loaded, I wasn't in coveralls, a tanker's helmet and such, I hadn't been jounced and slammed about inside, and I wasn't under fire, but the notion of fighting the tank from such a confined space with two others in the turret, gun cracking, hot brass coming out and all that was daunting. I've seen combat footage, too, and the relatively roomy Sherman turret interior is crowded, very hot and smoky. Alamein, I think, broad daylight.

There is general agreement, I take it, that fighting the T-34/76, especially the early ones, with two men in the turret is a lot more difficult than a ZIS-3 with full crew doing the same combat task? The reports on fighting the Grant make interesting reading, too. But if you really think AFV installation makes no difference over a towed weapon of the same caliber and performance, then may I commend to you a look at fighting a Hetzer? Target obscuration for the TC, poor visibility and horrendous ergonomics, such as loading over the deflector screen, the gun moving away from the loader, acrobatic skills to empty and reload, various intrusions into the fighting compartment, etc.

Armin Sohn commanded a Hetzer, so he'd know. If I've got to fight tanks from a static position, and the sky's not raining HE and steel, I'll take the PaK 40 any time.

http://www.pzfahrer.net/armin.html

I just got through perusing some designer comments on weapon modeling in AH's Tobruk. Tobruk was the brainchild of a military systems analyst named Hal Hock and represented the fruits of years of painstaking research. The game covers the grueling Gazala fight in 1942. His notes indicate that part of the ROF advantage for the ATGs came from not having to deal with dust and obscuration the way the tanks did, because it was presumed that oil, tarps, wetting down using water were used, with ATGs in prepared positions, to prevent this from being an issue. That it could be and was an issue for the tanks is shown by the hurried introduction of a muzzle brake for the Sherman 76mm after it was found the muzzle blast dust cloud was so severe it made it hard to spot the fall of the shot! The Sherman Firefly had a similar issue--with a muzzle brake! What Tobruk didn't even attempt to model was were effects of smoke inside the fighting compartment, issues serving the tank gun in protracted combat (such as loading heavy rounds while atop shifting cartridge brass, for one) and especially the effects of thermal stress on both crew performance and fatigue levels, vis-a-vis the equivalent towed weapon.

Every summer here in the States, pets and infants are "left for a few minutes" in shut off (no AC) autos and SUVs whose windows are rolled up, and the usual result is a death, absent someone who notices and acts promptly. The inevitable TV response is to demonstrate that interior car temperatures can reach 140 degrees. So, my question to you is, "Do you think that the ATG crew in the gun pit, from which cartridge brass can be easily chucked and whose camo net provides some shade, a crew which isn't generally choking on cordite and is, say, 20 degrees F cooler than their armored brethren won't have a militarily worthwhile edge over the men in the tanks?" There's also that little matter of knowing the range to the target for an ATG in position more than a brief period. Walking the ground and putting down inconspicuous range marks, or simply pacing off distances to objects in the field of fire.

Maybe, we need to start thinking about putting enclosed AFV crews under heat stress and reflect it in additional Fatigue points? Bet that would have a real in-game effectiveness impact.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Absolutely.

The weapon must be manned and protected at all times,

My historical knowledge on the subject isn't in depth enough to know the reality and details.

Can I get confirmation from others that crews of weapons of this type were expected to stay at their gun rather than seek the protection of obvious adjacent shelter when artillery is falling, or clearly imminent?

Was it doctrine to do so, even if it was unessessarily endangering the crew to keep them in position?

Was it doctrine, but not followed strictly in practice due to the realities of combat as opposed to training?

Was the gun really the first consideration on the line? Or staying alive???

I'm interested to hear more.

I imagine reality was quite unlike doctrine or training manuals, and that crews regularly took shelter in positions other than directly at their Guns to avoid artillery.

Educate me.

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JasonC,

If you look at Clark, p 204, you'll find a long block quote by antitank gunner (45mm ATG) Nikolai Litvin in which he details the gun crew size and man-by-man combat tasks for all concerned. Are you really going to claim that eight men (one the gun CO) working in well-oiled harmony in a gun pit can't significantly beat the ROF of, say, the T-70 light tank with its one man turret? Same gun. Ridiculous on the face of it! Similarly, by what logic do you assert that that three men in the turret of a Panzer III/J can keep up with a Pak-38, with a crew of five? I can do this exercise, if you like, for many other cases.

On a cheerier note, believe you'll find this HERO study, The Value of Field Fortifications in Modern Warfare, to be right down your alley, not least because it breaks down the daily casualty rates for both attacker and defender at Kursk, Nikopol, Seelowe Heights, Anzio and four more. From July 4-8, the Germans were suffering an 0.98% manpower casualty rate per day, while the Russians were suffering 3.14%. Table 3-1.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a129095.pdf

WynnterGreen,

Prepared positions have crew shelters. If you search under "German Field Fortifications on the Eastern Front, allworldwars" you'll find a translation of a Russian combat engineering study of German field fortifications. Lots of crew shelters, and not just for antitank guns! Also, sometimes the Germans built garages for their ATGs. When the barrage lifted, the guns were rolled up the corduroy log slope muzzle first, into battery, and commenced firing.

In his Kursk experience, Nikolai Litvin says the ATRs and ATGs were manned and that the infantry sheltered until the German infantry was close enough to engage. The reasoning was to minimize targets for German fire directed against the Russian antitank weapons. This doesn't mean that the guns were necessarily manned during the bombardment preceding the Panzer attack, only that the antitank weapons were manned and firing well before the Russian infantry proper entered the fray.

This thread discusses and shows how the Russians did their field fortifications.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=82804

TM 30-430 Handbook on USSR Military Forces devotes 42 pages to Russian Fortifications. This book's the U.S. WW II compendium on the Russian military. Xenophon International Group has it in several formats.

Overall conclusion? There's a world of difference among a direct order from the gun commander "Take shelter, an order "Destroy gun" and a precipitate abandoning of the gun. I see no fundamental reason why a gun couldn't be temporarily decrewed, while still under friendly control, then recrewed after enemy artillery fire lifted. In the first case, the usual drill, I believe, was to take the sights into shelter, too. Some guns had substantial steel boxes which were fitted over the sights to protect them during bombardment. In this excerpt from Tankova Brigada (The Tank Brigade) which covers a ferocious battle (key terrain changed possession 20 times) for a Hill 534 near Dukla, Czechoslovakia, you can quite clearly see the guns don't have crews on them until the prep fire lifts, at which time all the guns get almost instantly manned by crews emerging from shelters. Loads of real war toys in this film, which was made a mere decade after WW II ended. Try not to cry over the PaK 40!

There's a war movie called "The Immortal Battalion or The Way Ahead," starring David Niven. Niven was a second lieutenant (Sandhurst grad) as a Commando during the war and later served with an OPDEC unit and then a British film unit. The film was made with full cooperation of the War Office. According to Rotten Tomatoes, The Way Ahead (The Immortal Battalion) (1944) started out a a wartime British training film (The New Lot), which Churchill personally requested Niven to turn into a full film. In the film, Niven and one other guy dash out into the street, pull dead crew off a 6 pr, pick it up by the trails, haul it across the street and down the way a bit, open the trails and bring it into action. The ammunition number is in shelter and dashes from cover when a round is needed. The 6pr fun starts at around 1 hr and 40 minutes.

https://archive.org/details/TheWayAhead

And here's a rendering based on a wartime sketch, where the entrance for a crew shelter for a ZIS-3 is prominent in the left side of the image. Note also that he talks about "the pocket," an 8-meter long trench in which the gun is sheltered before being brought into action.

http://english.iremember.ru/artillerymen/8-eugenii-monyushko.html?q=%2Fartillerymen%2F8-eugenii-monyushko.html&start=6

Regards,

John Kettler

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JK - just hopeless nonsense and reaching for extremes. More men can help keep the ammo operation going, that is all. There is nothing else for them to do, once you have one loader and one man on the sight physically aiming the gun. A one man turret doesn't count, the time lost comes from not having a gunner and a tank commander and time spent on their jobs, not any space limits for loading. Any gun with a normal loader is just as fast no matter where it is installed. You are basically pretending that 8 men can shoot a single M-1 Garand faster than one man can - it is just ignorant nonsense. You clearly just have never done it.

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WynnterGreen,

The U.S. also built crew shelters for its ATGs when time permitted. This is clearly shown in Figure 44, p 97 of FM 18-21 Tank Destroyer Platoon Towed

http://tankdestroyer.net/images/stories/ManualPDFs/FM18-21%20Tank%20Destroyer%20Towed%20Gun%20Platoon.pdf

JasonC,

Simple thought model. Consider two guns, one in which the loader must also pull ammo before loading it and another in which the ammunition is ready to go the instant the breech opens. Which one's going to have the higher ROF?

You can accuse me of reaching for extremes all you want, but your example of what you asserted I was saying, as applied by you to the M1 Garand, is simply ridiculous, not least because you know full well a typical WW II ATG, while semiautomatic, required each round to be loaded individually. An entirely different problem, at least until ammo exhaustion.

You deftly sidestepped every issue I presented, while conveniently telescoping your side of the argument down to an unsubstantiated assertion which boils down to "All gun installations with a normal loader are equally fast." And that is demonstrably false, as you'd know if you'd read Armin Sohn's personal statement about fighting the Hetzer. In it he explicitly states there IS a space issue regarding working the gun, not to mention the breech configuration in which the open side of the breech is away from the loader! A single exception disproves the rule, and that's but one of many I could've presented.

To argue that ergonomics, ventilation, efficient layout and other things don't matter when it comes to fighting effectiveness is just plain silly, at best, and doesn't make you look good. It's true I've not fired either a tank cannon or an antitank gun, but I do have a brain, and I have been in a few tanks, to include an almost claustrophobic, full of dangerous metal objects, T-62. If I have to operate a big high velocity gun, from an ergonomic standpoint, with both guns firing the same direction and only manual traversing in use, I'll take a towed version over the tank any day. Even if you can match ROF in the short term (still waiting to hear what you shot and the details), I guarantee you that over a long engagement, my towed ATG with its larger crew and better overall operating conditions will far exceed what the same gun mounted on a tank turret with two whole people actually operating it can generate in terms of ROF. Even rudimentary human factor analysis makes this obvious. Where are the Gilbreths when you need them?

Nor is my argument confined to WW II tech, for if you read the accounts, they're quite clear about the hellish conditions inside ironclads in battle: enormous temperatures, choking clouds of powder smoke, low overheads in which to work heavy guns, etc. Here's a cutaway model of the CSS RICHMOND, in which you can clearly see how tight the quarters are in which a Brooke muzzle loading naval rifle (88 of its day) must be worked.

Now, if ROF is the metric, would you rather be in the RICHMOND, under the appalling conditions listed above or in this nice open air fighting position? To me, the answer's obvious, as it's equally obvious which gun crew will win the ROF sweepstakes, holding all other factors equal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BrookeRifle.jpg

Regards,

John Kettler

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John Kettler,

in this Communist propaganda movie the gun IMO is placed Hollywood like: directly at the trenches, where the most bullets and grenades are flying and not behind them. It is placed in the open and on the top to be seen clearly from everyone far, far away. :D

It is also only shown the crew manning the gun (and obviously nt knowing what they are doing :D), and not running away for cover to come back later.

Crews using foxholes close to the gun is one thing, but giving the player the freedom to move gun crews around freely?

If the gun was not spotted, then artillery fire is spread in a random way in an area, while the gun crew doesn't know where this area begins or will end, if it will be shifting or not. To make sure to escape it, the crew would need to move a long distance away from the gun and would know much more than it knows.

And if the gun was spotted and it was under fire, then the gun is in combat and running away is not recommended. :D

I never had been under artillery fire, but I guess you only know where it is going down, WHEN it is already happening.

If players would have the ability to move the crews away from guns, everyone would run his gun crews hundred meters or more away.

I would keep my crews a few hundred meters away and would use other units for spotting. Then I would wait or provoke the opponent until he has shelled the area and wasted his artillery. Afterwards I would walk my crews up and reman the guns.

Effective but awfully gamey and it would be not one forward, but two steps back IMO.

If instead guns could be placed slightly below earth level to simulate being dugged in well and if their camouflage levels could optionally be increased, with the already available foxholes for the crew I think the result would be much more realistic than giving the players the possibility to run their crews around.

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JK,

If you think JasonC's M1 Garand example was ridiculous, let's turn in a different direction to get to the same point.

Your primary arguments are that ATG should have a meaningful/significant ROF advantage over a turret mounted gun because A.) the crew is larger and B.) the space is more open / less constrained. But, conceding that these are factors to consider, surely you see a point of diminishing returns.

If a crew of 5 is better than a crew of 2, would a crew of 15 be even better? A crew of 30? If a working area the size of a kitchen is better than a working area the size of a closet, would a working area the size of a basketball court be even better? A working area the size of Silesia? (Yes, being deliberately ridiculous.)

So Jason's point is, in the case of a turret mounted gun, the number of crew members is large enough and the amount of space is large enough. Adding more crew and more space isn't going to alter the equation in a meaningful way.

Here's a picture showing multiple ATG crew members handling ammo at once...

Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-024-3543-09%2C_Ostfront%2C_Soldaten_an_7%2C5cm_Pak.jpg

...but I don't think a staged photograph settles much. The crew will either have to bucket brigade the rounds forward or shuffle in and out of the position closest to the breech. In either case, would that be faster than a tank loader already in position by the breech picking up a round from the ammo rack?

Do we know if the game models the ROF of, say, a Pak 40 and KwK 40 identically?

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Migo441 has understood me. My claim is that "loader" is a one man job description, and that additional men do not help. Yes you can get a lower ROF if you physically put the loader in a sardine can. I think the Hetzer is the only example of that in WW II. Yes you can get a lower ROF if you give the same man the loader job and 2 others, as in some French 1 man turrets in 1940. The tank commander and gunner jobs (gunner aims the sight and traverses the gun to align his bubbles) are distinct from the loader job.

But no, four men doing the loader job do not help, any more than four hands pulling an M-1s trigger would help. No, it doesn't matter if you pick the round out of a ready rack or receive it as a handoff from another man in a fire brigade or off a stack of prepped shells beside the gun. The ready rack is just as fast - it is a *ready* rack, not a "not ready" rack.

Other men for a towed gun do things like prep shells by fuzing them, schlep them from ammo prep area to right beside the gun, clear away empty shell casings. They can relieve the loader simply to spare his arm muscles if we are talking about indirect fire kept up for hours, every 20 or 30 minutes. Those are the only reasons to have a larger ammo team. All of them are unneeded if you have already fuzed ready shells in the ready racks right beside the gun, and firing for any of the time spans that matter in direct fire.

If two or three men try to make the loading process faster beyond that by doing the remaining loader tasks in parallel, they will just get them out of sequence and screw it up. It doesn't help to lift the shell before the breech is opened to receive it. You can't seat the shell before you lift it. You can't ram it, if it needs a ram (larger calibers only) before it is seated. You can't close the breech before the shell is fully seated. You can't prime the piece before the breechblock is fully closed and locked (very dangerous, you'd be ready to kill everyone in the tank on a premature firing of the primer). Once it is primed it is a split second to fire it when the gunner or TC gives you the "fire" command.

Four men trying to prime and ram and load and seat and open and close and lock - out of sequence - won't make it faster - they will just make it fail. Each operation needs to happen after the other is finished, and one man can do them as fast as they can physically be done. None of them needs 10 feet of space to perform; none of them gets any easier with 10 feet of unused space. If the gun can be loaded, it can be loaded by one man.

The only exception to this is guns so large that the shell has to be physically carried in a cradle by 2 men because of its weight - which starts at 200 pound shells for 8 inch howitzers, pretty much. It takes hydraulics to manipulate the shell after that - again one man. But even with e.g. separate loading 155mm howitzers with 100 pound shells and separate powder bags, the only gain from a second loader is to have the ammo fully prepped without the loader needing to do any of those tasks. A second physical loader, even for those, just gets in the way. And I say that as someone who has personally done it and has personally fired 4 rounds a minute out of 155s, way above the rate the game thinks possible. I didn't need 3 helpers to do it and neither would anyone else trained enough to do it fast.

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HistoryLover,

I fully realize it's a propaganda piece, but I used it to make the point that the guns, while under prep fire, are unmanned, with the crews in shelters (at this stage, lost forever in CMx2), but when the prep ends, in the film and in real combat, the crews emerge from their shelters and rush to their guns. Also, I think gun siting in the film is less about propaganda than cinematic convenience, in that it makes the establishing shot easier to shoot, what with the German guns 20mm through 88mm and the infantry trenches all tidily arrayed in one shot. Is this any more ridiculous than, say, the film depiction of a Star Trek space battle in which starships parsecs apart all happen to be shown, in a single frame, so close that collision is a very real danger?

When others and myself are talking about deliberately decrewing a gun temporarily in the interest of crew survival enhancement under, say, threat of prep fires preceding an assault, we're not talking about gadding about willy nilly. Besides, that's military suicide. The gun is there to help keep everybody/most alive by stopping/repelling/perhaps destroying a mortal threat.

AFVs can dismount the crew if desired, but more commonly the TC and someone else, to recon a route or firing position before exposing the AFV. ATGs can't do that. Nor can an ATG's crew leave the gun under fire, then return when calmed down. This isn't merely theoretically possible, but I've seen it done myself. A Sherman got whanged by a PaK 40, yet survived, then out popped the temporarily freaked out crew. A few turns later, the now calmed down crew came back to the tank, remounted and continued the fight. Try that with an ATG.

It's always possible to conjure up extreme possibilities, but as has been repeatedly noted by both BFC and many a rueful player, CM ruthlessly punishes bad decisions, and having an ATG crew swanning about for no good reason and potentially exposed to avoidable small arms fire, mortars and artillery fire is the very definition of the term. If the swanning crew is hit hard enough while away from the gun to render the crew militarily useless, then the owning player has de facto lost the gun. There are no provisions in the game, recall, for the standard GI,PBI, Landser to take over and operate it. Contrariwise, if the crew's on the gun or can take cover close by, then there's redundancy to fight the gun, while presumably less exposed to enemy action than those dolts who went wandering off.

Migo441,

Great pic. Obviously not, but consider this. If the tank takes a red loader casualty, the combat effectiveness of the tank is going to drop dramatically while various acrobatics are executed to remove the franged loader and replace him.

If the loader eats it in the pic above, the man behind him yanks him off the gun, takes over his slot, and the engagement continues. Disruption time for the ATG? Seconds. Considerably longer for the tank acrobats. You ought to see, for example, what it takes for the T-62 driver to get out of his cramped space and back into the turret area. The bigger crew, until we get to your extremes wherein the crew's so large it makes a juicy target unto itself, provides redundancy. I refer you to Eugenii Monyushko's description of the two-foxhole system used on Russian ATGs in prepared positions. The gunner and the loader each have a foxhole in the appropriate position to fight the gun. Only one round at a time other than what's up the spout is ever at the gun. The rest of the crew and ammo are nearby, ready to a) bring up ammo as needed and B) replace either the gunner or the loader as a result of incapacitation. Monyushko says this (strange to us) practice was adopted because the Russians decided, from bitter combat experience, that losing a gun and the entire crew at a stroke was unnecessary and ill advised. Thus, this was an Economy of Force measure by the Russians to preserve increasingly scarce trained manpower. What the big crews provide is combat redundancy, which the tanks simply don't have. Also, you didn't quite get what I said about the advantage of the ATG. It's not merely more space, it's about the very significant environmental factors which can, and do, have a material effect on combat performance. If you do even rudimentary digging, you can find pics of early Panzer IIIs and IVs operating in the summer with their turret doors wide open, despite the risks, inter alia, from shell fragments and bullets. This is because it's so hellishly hot and miserable inside that the crew is willing to trade the risk of being hurt by enemy action against the certitude of dire results if some relief from the terrible heat and choking cordite fumes isn't obtained. Now.

Regards,

John Kettler

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