I am bad at tank combat. I just am.

[Squallion]

How does one approach and destroy an enemy tank that's sitting in a defensive position?

It seems that no matter how you approach a defensive piece of armor, it will see you and shoot you first.

[simmox]

that"s the general idea

so,the obvious questions that will no doubt flood in will be.

what are you shooting at?

is it hull down?

what are you hunting it with?

but as a general tip,assuming you have the firepower to reasonably achieve the desired result.

Ignore it if you can and try to force it to change position by maneuvering elsewhere on the map.

if you must engage it,more assets you can direct to it the better,this includes small arms fire,mortars HMG,etc

using the pause function to time asset arrival is handy,use for

getting the enemy shooting at something else while you move to fire at it with your designated assets.

other than that,we'd need a screenshot or 2 of the position,if you want more indepth advice.

[umlaut]

It seems that no matter how you approach a defensive piece of armor, it will see you and shoot you first.

Well, that does seem pretty realistic, doesnt it?

Not knowing any more about the situation, Id suggest using a smoke screen to try to outflank it - or perhaps sneak in a team of tank hunters.

Cheers

[Combatintman]

You're probably not - the fact that it is sitting there is a partial win because it is not using its mobility to best effect.

There is no one solution I'm afraid because it will depend on the ground and the resources available but some things you can try are blinding it with smoke or suppressing it with direct and indirect fire. Then approach it from more than one axis.

The most important thing is the psychological thing. You have to accept that you may take a loss or two - if you don't then it is a bonus. The trick is to minimise them. Or you can try dislocation - make the tank irrelevant by attacking elsewhere.

[H1nd]

Bit unorthodox method but it sometimes works:

get some 150mm arty and try snipe it with point target indirect fire mission. Even a close hit might disable optics or tracks and direct hit will kill it. Smalle caliber arty is also able to kill tanks sitting still if they can get a hit on the roof. If nothing else you might force/scare him to move.

Other than that the good old smoke is your friend as well as flanking and having superior numbers to spare. Also tank hunter teams but it takes lot's of patience and skill to get your troopers within close enough range but it is ahh so satisfying when it succeeds.

Edit: and like people have already mentioned: often it is enough to know where the enemy tank is and where it can shoot. Then you just manuveur accordingly untill something changes the situation (tank moves or you flank it etc etc)

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Put other tanks onto an overwatch position such that they can observe likely enemy positions whether this be enemy armour or (and this should be your reall concern a this stage of the war) anti tank guns.

Consider sending your infantry inn ahead of your tanks which support them from overwatch. Use combined arms!

Use bounding overwatch

Are there ways you can outflank a position,perhaps employing covered approaches such as woods or gullies? Or, as has been suggested use smoke to make your own covered approach in the event one does not exist.

No one approach is foolproof and you may well need to combine two or more of the above solutions to achieve your aim at the lowest possible price.

Accept that you are going to take casualties. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs

[womble]

If you absolutely must "assault" the static armour directly, using your own tanks, you'll need to stack the deck in your favour.

• Unbutton your armour. You want to have the best chance of spotting your target, and that means TC sticking his head out. This might mean clearing out infantry assets that will do their best to ventilate your TCs.
  
• Wait until the tanks that are going to be doing the hunting have a "?" icon for their target, passed down the command chain. This should give your crews a spotting bonus.
  
• Bring 2 or more of your own vehicles into sight of the target simultaneously. That way, when your target fires on one, the other has a good chance of spotting it and getting a shot off before the target reloads and brings his gun to bear. You increase your chances of this situation pertaining if your armour is coming from widely separated bearings from the target.
  
• Plot their movement so that they are pointing their fronts at the target when they first enter LOS. If they have to turn while in LOS, they will probably not fire before they're destroyed. You might be able to use a TA to have the tube off-axis if you can't plot a wide curve to the intended shooting point, but that has its own risks; better to treat a hunting tank like it is an assault gun.
  
• Make alternating, one-shot popup attacks from widely separated positions. Give your armour a target area order while it's paused for 15-20 seconds at the firing point, then reverse out of sight. Even if your tanks don't spot the target, just firing HE at its general area might make it move in "self-preservation" or at least blind it by optics damage, smoke/dust or making the TC button. If you time the alternations right, the target's TacAI will be stuck swinging its barrel between former target locations and never get a shot off.
  

But dropping some medium or heavy HE on the location will probably get the TacAI to back off.

[Pandur]

there is a simple solution that works most of the time for the player. that is exploiting buttoned/unbuttoned state.

get a machinegun, or anything that can spray at the tank from a distance where it will not be spotted easy, so you dont lose the asset to a lucky hipshot from the tank.

this may take 10 to 30 seconds of fire, then the TC is dead or buttoned up most of the time.

then you bring out your unbuttoned tanks, best is 2 to 1 numerical advantage or more, still.

if you start the MG fire at the beginning of the turn, pause your tanks so they start to move at 30 seconds in the turn. this roughly gives them 20 to 25 seconds for looking for the enemy tank till you can input commands in case it did not work, that is if we calculate 5 to 10 seconds for moving from cover into position.

now if we calculate spotting cycles are up to 7 seconds or so, you have a good chance to drive a tank into the LOS of another tank, without the movement beeing any factor. when you make sure you are in a turret down position and can complete the move into hull down in less the 4 or 5 seconds, you have a chance to stay within this spotting cycle window, or at least exploit some seconds of spotting cycle protection

if you do all right, there is no "move into position" movement the defending tank could spot, and if there is a bit, the defending tank is buttoned up. after that it is easy setup, it is 2 unbuttoned vs 1 buttoned tank, that is a good chance to win even with bad luck, but what kills you most of the time is beeing spotted while casually moving into position beeing exposed much to long.

now there are limits to this, you need the firepower to achieve a frontal result, cause this method only may give you the first shot against a defending tank, if this shots have low chance to penetrate, it gets less and less usefull. better use other method if you have inferior gun. smoke may come in handy there to do other stuff.

[slysniper]

One additional thing to add.

If you have woods that you can move through or really any concealing terrain. use it.

I am amazed how often I can move a tank into place where I know I can or will be able to see the defending tank and get the first spot when I do it through woods. Make sure to look for spots that have no low ground cover that will be in front of your tank. That will help all crew members have a chance to spot.

But as many have pointed out, the options should be in this order of thought if you are going to take enemy armor on.

Can I get the advantage by somehow flanking it.

if not a option, then can I get a good enough advantage by bringing more guns to bear on it than it can defend and can I afford the losses it it take.

Can I conceal my approach with means that will allow my armor or guns to be stationary and prepared so that when the spotting war begins, at least I am on fair ground instead of being mobile and easier to spot.

One last thing to point out, if you are mobile for only a few yards in its sight to expose yourself and move into a hulldown position from behind a ridge or something like that.

There is not much of a disadvantage. It is a pretty good toss up as to who will spot who first.

War is always a game of numbers. Always seek for that advantage from the best direction possible and you will generally win. Really that is all tactics is.

Learning to do that consistantly and with good approaches is the only challenge

[c3k]

Try to put anti-tank weapons in position to cover its movement. Then smoke it or HE it out its current position. Your a-t weapons (tank, bazooka, whatever) then ambush it as it moves. Flanks are better.

[A Canadian Cat]

Good advice here. I will add one more thing: Do not forget it is probably not alone. You can pay a high price for focusing on the one tank while not paying attention to what friends it has with it. @slysniper just reminded me of that when I thought I could zip up behind one of his tanks only to find he had a friend covering his back. Damn, I thought I knew where all his buddies were but no I missed one.

So while you are planning to flank this guy pay attention to where other enemy units might be hiding out and try to figure out where they are before you expose your tanks.

[Erwin]

A stationary tank is relatively easy to kill with arty assuming you have larger than 81mm. It's very easy to degrade and/or immobilize it, which is almost as good. (Actually, I wonder if this reflects RL as this is so effective why wasn't this tactic used regularly in RL?)

(By comparison it seems relatively hard to kill an on-map arty piece with arty - esp if in foxhole.)

[YankeeDog]

A stationary tank is relatively easy to kill with arty assuming you have larger than 81mm. It's very easy to degrade and/or immobilize it, which is almost as good. (Actually, I wonder if this reflects RL as this is so effective why wasn't this tactic used regularly in RL?)

Because typically tank formations that find themselves under artillery fire of any significant intensity, move. When the armor didn't or couldn't move out from under the artillery for whatever reason, concentrated artillery was actually fairly good at degrading static armor formations. See, for example, Thala, Gela, and Elsenborn Ridge. Per-shell effect of even large bore indirect fire on armor is generally low, but if there's enough tubes available to throw enough shells, eventually there will be enough near misses and direct hits to destroy the armor's fighting ability.

I believe it was Guderian who said that a tank has two weapons: a gun and a motor.

[Squallion]

Thanks for all of the advice guys.

For those asking for a specific situation, I didn't mean a specific situation. I always end up losing many tanks while assaulting enemy defensive positions. I know that I lose too many due to incompetence.

I enjoyed the responses here. They should help. Thanks!

[StieliAlpha]

A completely different approach to your question: Keep on trying and work out the best strategy for you!

I remember the other day, you asked in a thread what you should do, when you were finished with CM.

Well, I am playing CM since 15 years now and THAT question never occured to me.

Be patient and find your own solutions. That's much more rewarding.

[A co]

Even if HE doesn't damage a tank, it can cause a pretty impressive suppression of the crew, and the dust raised by the shelling can effectively blind it. (You learn this by seeing it when it happens to your own tanks.) These effects can allow you to get your attacking tanks into position more safely.

Also you can sometimes get HE hits on a tank even if it is out of LOS, by firing at terrain where you are likely to get some overshots. HE hits sometimes seem more likely to make a tank retreat than AP hits do.

You can eventually strip away concealing foliage with HE too.

[Macisle]

Even if HE doesn't damage a tank, it can cause a pretty impressive suppression of the crew, and the dust raised by the shelling can effectively blind it. (You learn this by seeing it when it happens to your own tanks.) These effects can allow you to get your attacking tanks into position more safely.

Also you can sometimes get HE hits on a tank even if it is out of LOS, by firing at terrain where you are likely to get some overshots. HE hits sometimes seem more likely to make a tank retreat than AP hits do.

You can eventually strip away concealing foliage with HE too.

I'll second this. If you can get one of your tanks into a covered position where it is safe, but can put HE right next to the enemy tank, you have a good chance of causing the enemy tank to displace to a new position. That could be better (or worse!) for your chances to get it--or stop it from interdicting your forces from that position at least.

[MikeyD]

The game shines when combined arms is fully utilized. Of course that only happens in games where you have all the necessaries at your disposal. if you're playing a QB with no hvy artillery, no smoke, no infantry AT assets, and no reserves then the battle becomes little more than a wild west shootout. The guy who draws and fires first usually wins.

In my case, 'sacrificial units' often come in handy. If you can get enemy tank X to slew his turret to the right to target your racing BA-64 perhaps you'll be able to move your tank up on the left and get off a free shot or two before he knows you're there. This is where tank particulars become important. A T34-85 (early) and PzIV J lack turret drives. T-34-76 and T-34-85 (late), on the other hand, have blazingly fast turret drives

[Macisle]

A buttoned up T34-76 has pretty crappy spotting abilities, though!

Yeah...sacrificial units.

"Oh, you're green troops? Okay, you're on point!"

"And you're veterans. Okay, you'll be in reserve."

[gunnersman]

And Saint Attila raised the Scout up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this thy Scout, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats, and large chu...

[BLSTK]

Beware the Killer Rabbit.

[nik mond]

You know there is a tank there just waiting. But when you click on your tank he is just out of LOS. All you see is a sound contact. You know if you edge forward one tile more you will have line of sight, but then you have to play quick-draw with an AI tank in waiting. You will surely lose as he is the fastest gun in the East. There is one more gameyish thing you can do. You have area LOS very close to the enemy tank. So start firing area attack. In front, behind and each side, what ever you can barely target. Some of this HE you are throwing might actually make contact with the enemy, jar him, make him move. then you can hunt a few feet forward and sight him. Now comes the quick-draw......

[MikeyD]

This topic reminds me of an old 'down east' joke, and since BFC is based in Maine its not entirely inappropriate:

A tourist stops in front of a Maine farmer rocking on his porch and calls out "Can you tell me how to get to Bar Harbor?" "Yah want tah get tah Bah Habah?" the farmer replies in a heavy accent. He begins to direct the tourist to a route down the road - then he hesitates and begins to direct him to a route up the road. Then he stops, shrugs his shoulders and say "Yah can't get theyah from Heyah."

The point of this story is sometimes in a tactical situation you simply 'can't get there from here'. Its not a puzzle game with a right answer to discover.

[miller41]

it is even worse when you know it is a panther, in a great spot, you have only Shermans and you can't flank the SOB. Knowing your going to die makes for a pretty aggravating situation. Already lost 3 tanks to him and unless i find a nuclear warhead, I am stopped...

[Macisle]

it is even worse when you know it is a panther, in a great spot, you have only Shermans and you can't flank the SOB. Knowing your going to die makes for a pretty aggravating situation. Already lost 3 tanks to him and unless i find a nuclear warhead, I am stopped...

Smoke screen? Can you put some smoke ordnance on him from your Shermans before closing in for a knife-fight? Smoke from arty? Dust "smoke" from nearby HE rounds?

Point arty on top of him?

Getting him to displace by putting HE rounds very near him from a protected spot?

Are any of the above options doable with your current resources and map positions?