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Using Anti-Tank Rifles and Snipers


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ATR is only useful vs lightly armored vehicles.  I don't think they are much good vs unarmored vehicles like trucks.  They may suppress inf.  I don't recall getting inf kills with an ATR.

Snipers are good used at longer ranges (500m+) vs exposed AFV commanders and inf.  One can use em for scouting, but given their specialist ability I would prefer to lose a dedicated scout team or inf scout team rather than a sniper team.

Snipers are particularly useful with higher experience levels (Crack or Elite).

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An ATR can can penetrate the side or rear of StuG's and Pz IV's and similar vehicles, if the the range is not too great. That can mean crew casualties, morale effects, etc.  I've seen a StuG crew bail out after their vehicle suffered one side penetration by an ATR. 

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Another thing to consider as you play more scenarios or campaigns. Both ATRs and snipers have different roles to play depending on whether your are attacking or defending as the Russians. One way to learn how to use, or not use them, is to pay attention to what they do when you are playing as the Germans. 

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When not needed for anti-vehicle work, ATR teams can be employed for infantry suppression fire support. 2-3 ATRs firing on the same building location can add noticeable suppression. And, while certainly not every shot will cause a casuality, an ATR round will score one reasonably often (better than 3-4 rifles, I think), with the occasional double-kill (usually the leader plus a "red shirt").

I remember reading somewhere that the Soviets often liked to use them to rattle German infantry. Even if a hit was unlikely, those big rounds going through one wall, across the room and out the other wall would certainly add some stress to those in the location under fire.

Seems a little less noticeable outside, but multiple ATRs firing on one location would probably still be worth doing if they are not needed elsewhere.

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  • 2 months later...
On 05/11/2016 at 11:37 PM, DMS said:

Snipers are good for long, low intensive combat. One can make 5-10 kills. Often he makes most of platoon kills. Use them in platoon lines, slight behind. ATR platoons are good for screening flank. :) And save you when your enemy is armored inf.

Yea make sure your sniper has supports as DMS notes

Keep in your line

If a unit is engaging another unit a sniper will usually tip the balance in your favour and adds to suppression

Get the sniper in movies idea out of your head cause its more about suppression

You will get kills here and there but they are not uber units and often die quickly if alone or two far foward

 

 

 

 

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mdoolittle,

Welcome aboard!

Here's a great article on the PTRS and PTRD in battle. Expect you'll find it quite informative. Don;t know what CMRT shows, but the basic load was 200 rounds!

http://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/wwii-weapons-the-ptrs-and-ptrd-russian-anti-tank-rifles/

(Fair Use)

When not shooting at tanks and other AFVs, the ATR could be against infantry weapons, artillery and a varity of transport. Left out the AA use.

“If no tanks and armored vehicles are present, on orders of the antitank rifle squad leader the antitank rifles can take under fire enemy machine guns, artillery and the firing slits of bunkers and forts at a range out to 800 meters and aircraft at a range of up to 500 meters.”

Private Vassily Kovtun of the 902nd Rifle Regiment was given credit for destroying four tanks, two armored personnel carriers, and two armored cars. The big antitank rifles were also handy for reaching enemy soldiers behind cover in house-to-house street fighting. Antitank rifle ace Ivan Knjazev of the 310th Guards Rifle Regiment was credited in a Soviet report with “67 AFVs, MGs, guns and mortars.” Kovtun was also credited with knocking out 20 German machine-gun nests.

“The Ideal Weapon For Partisans”

When the U.S. Department of the Army, using interviews with German veterans of the Eastern Front, published Russian Combat Methods in WWII at the beginning of the Cold War, the report said of the antitank rifle: “It was to be found even where no German tank attacks might be expected…. If the small gun, always excellently camouflaged, was not needed for antitank defense, its flat trajectory and great accuracy were put to good use in infantry combat.”

Antitank rifles were also extremely popular weapons to air-drop to Red partisans operating far behind enemy lines to give them a powerful yet portable weapon to use against German supply lines and support units. Rear-area German security forces usually had only light armored cars or tankettes, often captured enemy models, to utilize for patrols and reaction forces. These lightly armored vehicles and supply trucks could be easily defeated by the powerful 14.5mm weapons.

One partisan said of the PTR dropped to his troops, “It was the ideal weapon for partisans. Its accuracy was amazing, and a trained PTR crew could hit the boiler of a railway at 800 meters. This enabled us to ambush German trains in daylight, shooting them up from a safe distance.”

Regards,

John Kettler

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  • 2 months later...

I did a test last night, enough Anti Tank Rifle Companies to the value of roughly 1,000 men vs 1 King Tiger (maximum experience, leadership etc) and after about 30 minutes the King tiger had only an Engine, the Main Gun 88mm, the Coaxl Machine Gun and had lost everything else. The ground around the Tiger Tank was burning from all the rounds bouncing off of it. 

So if you have enough Anti Tank Rifles then it can shut down even the heaviest of tanks, although in this case the king tiger continued to fire killing 300 of my Anti tank horde. 

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Sniper teams are great, especially since you get so many with the Red Army. Apart from using them as scouts or marksmen directly cooperating with their platoons, I also like pooling several teams together to safeguard critical areas not quite critical/large enough to call for/fit an infantry platoon. In the video below I found I could completely shut off a bottleneck left flank by pairing some sniper teams up with one or two Su-76 SPGs; The snipers with their optics could easily spot approaching German infantry from further out than an infantry platoon ever could have, and where far harder to spot in turn. Anytime the snipers were spotted and engaged, the ease with which they could communicate with the SPG crews through their open fighting compartment expedited the target acquisition progress of said German infantry by the SPG crews greatly, causing them to plaster them with HE, teaching them that the sniper pairs weren't necessarily the biggest threat, or the most prudent one to engage.

(Ignore the DP gunner in the background, that's a sniper pair No. 2 who fancied himself clever picking it up from a casualty.)

 

 

 

Edited by Anthony P.
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Maybe it is unconventional, but I use my Snipers with MMG teams, since MMG teams are set up in some of the best positions I find the sniper can then take good distance shots at pinned enemies. 

Im sure there is a better use for them, but it's less time consuming to pair the 2 up depending on the game size. They often get a fair amount of kills. 

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42 minutes ago, Erwin said:

My concern with placing sniper near any other units that may fire, is that firing will attract attention to the sniper's location as well.  

Yeah, I don't do that. MGs get he delivered ASAP. If the sniper team is there to sign for it that's bad :) I like my sniper teams off on their own with good concealment.

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7 hours ago, IanL said:

Yeah, I don't do that. MGs get he delivered ASAP. If the sniper team is there to sign for it that's bad :) I like my sniper teams off on their own with good concealment.

The AI has never targeted anything specific, the pattern is clear, they target seemingly set locations if you have units in them or not. 

I suppose vs Human players it's a concern. 

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8 minutes ago, Swastakowey said:

The AI has never targeted anything specific, the pattern is clear, they target seemingly set locations if you have units in them or not. 

I suppose vs Human players it's a concern. 

Well in my experience A.I. will specifically target mg's and other assets with mortars and does so to me regularly, twice in my last game. I'm fairly sure it wasn't pre-planned fire of any kind and was specifically targeting assets which had only recently deployed in those locations and started to give trouble.

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^^^ Correct. The AI is targeting threats and it does have a way to asses priority - even comparing the threat to our orders. The recent v4 engine introduced the ability for the AI to area target locations on the map it is directed to. Before that there was no area targeting by the AI. So, what ever you think you saw @Swastakowey it was not targeting of fixed locations - it was spotting your guys and targeting them as it saw the threat.

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  • 1 month later...

General Melchid,

BFC is short 180 rounds on the ATRs, for the load is a whopping 200 rounds per two-man team. Page 125 of Panzer Killers by Artem Drabkin, in an account by a gunner in a PTRS-41 team, is explicit on this matter: " forty five-round clips", with a total weight of 28 kg. The PTRS-41 weighed 22 kg. As far as I'm concerned, his statement is dispositive, for he trained on the weapon and used it in combat, not to mention had to help carry all that.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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