Soviet Antitank Rifle Tactics

[John Kettler]

Military History Visualized (a German military historian) dissected the Soviet manual on them and came up with all sort of useful stuff, including the surprising to me revelation there was a 500 meter range advantage for the PTRS (1500 meters) over the PTRD (1000). The reason, considering they're practically identical save in the action, is that they have two different kinds of sight. With the cruder single shot PTRD lacking the slider type sight commonly found on military rifles. This is the first time I ever heard of this 50% range advantage for the more complex and expensive, higher ROF PTRS. Turns out the Soviet manual is also wrong about the internal layout of the Panzer III in the aimpoint diagram. Bizarrely, there's no diagram for frontal engagements. Since the manual goes into the dos and don'ts of positioning, open fire ranges and such (ideal range, an oh so exciting 50-100 meters) and such, that is highly relevant to using these weapons in CM, though obviously game engine limitations will constrain things a bit. As a bonus, there's some excellent footage of a Panzer III lang and, I believe, a Panzer IVG. 
 

Regards,

John Kettler

[DerKommissar]

Love this guy's content!

I've had only minor successes with AT-rifles in Red Thunder. They can reliably penetrate lighter AFVs like Marders, half-tracks and armoured cars. However, it takes a good couple of rounds to put them out of action. Nowhere as much "stopping power" as a shaped charge, giving the ambushed vehicle time to inflict casualties. Maybe they were more relevant in the early war, but in RT -- they are a desperate last resort.

[Xorg_Xalargsky]

It's a shame that CM TAC-AI aims only for the center-mass, being able to target specific areas (for example, Theatre of War allows you to target low, center, and high areas on vehicles) would be a great help for weaker AT weapons.

[Erwin]

My impression is that in RL, ATR's were used en mass, not singly or maybe in a pair which is what we see in CM2 as the scenarios tend to be small.  

To get a more accurate impression of the usefulness of ATR's one should probably have 4 to 6+ ATR teams coordinating.

[John Kettler]

As I've many times pointed out, an entire Tiger Company was rendered combat incapable at Kursk as a result of having so many vision  blocks shot out the tanks were not only unfightable, but Company and Battalion stocks of same were exhausted, causing a delay of some two weeks to get them from Regiment. There were numerous eye casualties among the TCs, some serious, and a case in which several weeks of hospitalization were required for a TC who had his face smashed by the entire vision block assembly torn loose and driven into it. ATR units were indeed deployed in large formations, sometimes entire Regiments on primary axes of approach. Some idea of the volume of ATR fire may be seen in Tiger 216 which had hundreds of hits from ATRs. 227, in fact, so many the hit breakdown made it into the Tigerfibel. 

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/articles/tiger-panzer-vi-combat-and-operational-evaluation-1-252-hits-taken-in-combat-ww2-by-rob-schafer.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[SimpleSimon]

The whole reason the Germans broke out those shurzen armor plate kits for their tanks wasn't because of the bazooka as the Americans believed, but because the PTRD and PTRS were inflicting casualties on tank crews. Trouble is plates of spaced armor added yet more weight to the badly over-burdened Panzer IV chassis. The H model was actually slower than the Tiger in a road cruise and probably many maintenance failures from burnt out transmissions and sheared track pins caused vehicles to miss those important curtain calls that could affect whole battles. That's the sort of circumstantial history that western historians laughing off the Boys Rifle would miss about the PTRD/RS.