How do I kill Ferdinand/Elephant in CM

[killmore]

From my memories of CC3 I recall having tremendous problems with Ferninants. No AT gun seem tough enough to kill it.

If this vehicle will be in CM what do you recommend I use to kill it?

Can any Allied armour kill it by hitting its frontal armour? (without critical hit)

Or maybe CC Ferdinands were over powered?

[Guest Big Time Software]

Easy! First boot up a copy of CM2, then whack it in the front hull or sides with something like a T34/85, KV1, or anything bigger. Seriously...

The Ferdinand only saw service in the Eastern Front, the Elephant only in Italy (maybe a little in the East in late 43, but I don't think so).

The vehicle in prepared hull down position, with adequate flank cover, was a nasty bastard. On the move it was pretty easy pickings in a CM type engagement, especially before the modifications to add the MG (Elephant).

Steve

[Mattias]

Kill,

1. The Ferdinand will not be in CM1 as none served in the west.

2. No allied tanks can kill it frontally, you hit the 80mm sides and rear

The situation is no different than the one faced when going up against a lot of other German tanks and TD´s though.

Riding your standard issue Sherman will require the same type of agile tactics when facing most German late war designs.

Your strongest weapon will be your brain most of the time. If you are smart 200mm of armour won’t help him, if you are stupid it doesn’t matter what gun you are touting.

M.

[Mattias]

The subject has been up before...

In short:

The Ferdinand saw combat through operation Citadel and later the summer of 43.

It was withdrawn and upgraded (Elefant)during the winter and then returned to fight in Italy the spring of 44 and in Russia the same summer.

It fought on to the bitter end with the last engagement recorded in April 1945.

M.

[Stoffel]

Most of these vehicles were destroyed by infantryteams armed with mines and grenades

Since they lacked a machinegun soldiers sneaked up on them and simply trown a grenade over the hull.

that's all

[Mattias]

I guess everything is relative

The Ferdinands that were destroyed by Soviet infantry at Kursk was so because the German infantry was unable to follow the advance of the armour through the mine fields and artillery.

The lack of machineguns was a weakness but hardly a decisive one considering the already absurd situation of a super heavy turretless vehicle operating "alone" in the middle of a extremely well dug in enemy.

The main cause of Ferdinand losses at Kursk was due to artillery though, not infantry close assaults.

Browsing the sources I see that ASL (yup, a source) claims that Elefants saw combat vs. the 4th Arm. Div. south of Bastogne in December 44. Can’t confirm that anywhere else though, anyone know anything about this?

M.

[Mike Oberly]

The Ferdinand was just a flat bad design-any vehicle that could only move at 12mph on a good road had two strikes against it.Let alone the restricted gun and lack of machine guns.Porche's folly.

[Fionn]

Now now, leave super-heavy German Jagdpanzers alone. You know how I like them.

I went through a stage of thinking the Ferdinand was a terrible vehicle but THEN I saw that the Ferdinands, once committed, had OVER an 8 to 1 exchange rate vis a vis Soviet vehicles.

Admittedly it was insane to send Ferdinands out in the first wave of the attack at Kursk BUT, this does prove that when utilised in a tactically effective manner on the defence and with support against infantry attack the Ferdinand was an awesome killing machine.

If anyone doubts this I'll take 4 Ferdinands, 1 company of German infantry (complete with 2 HMG42s and a couple of mortars) vs a Soviet tank Bn (30 to 40 tanks... make 'em a mix of T34/85s and 76cs)and a company of Soviet infantry (leg ONLY) and wipe them out. Soviets must attack. I won't place mines etc etc but will just set up and defend. Goal is destruction of enemy units and NOT any VLs etc.

When CM2 comes out I'll happily take anyone up on this and show them how good the Ferd is when defending .

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fionn:

I went through a stage of thinking the Ferdinand was a terrible vehicle but THEN I saw that the Ferdinands, once committed, had OVER an 8 to 1 exchange rate vis a vis Soviet vehicles.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But I guess it comes down to the old point of squandering scarce resources. So 1:8 for the Ferdinand, but how many Soviet tanks could have been had if the resources put into one Ferdinand had been used to produce X vehicles of a run-of-the-mill design, e.g. late Panzer IV or any Panther. Think opportunity costs. Sorry, but inside me is an economist trying to break out, sometimes I lose

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Andreas

[killmore]

And I thought that Porshes have good acceleration. 0-12 miles in 20 seconds just does not cut it.

By the way In CC3 I managed finally to kill it with flame thrower...

But when I played as German it lasted until the very end of the war.

[killmore]

By the way how do I join Beta Testers for CM2?

[Fionn]

Ah, I liked Economics. I got an A1 in it in the final high School exams . Shocked the hell out of my teacher since I never paid attention in class.

Anyways, I've looked into the whole opportunity cost thing and done some thinking about it over the course of many months and books and come to the conclusion that Germany WOULD have been best to abandon the Pz IV in 1943 and concentrate on Panthers, Tigers and other heavy tanks. Certainly it takes more effort to create 1 big tank BUT, often, one will find that it takes less effort to create one 60 ton tank than two 30 ton tanks.

Fuel consumption as a ratio of combat effectiveness is BETTER with the heavy tanks (I'll include Panther in the definition of a heavy tank here) and thus, given Germany's crippling fuel shortages, it would have made MORE sense to stick with fewer but more effective heavy combat vehicles.

Consumption of scarce resources and alloys would have been reduced both due to decreased production levels AND decreased losses. Maintenance and supply problems would have been eased in many cases.

Now, if only I could get a proper, realistic WW2 Grand Strategy game with realistic production imperatives I could test this all out.

[Lorak]

OK, I'm not a Grog.. but didn't Germany,(even with allied bombing), mantian their production figures late in the war? I thought that even mantaining output they couldn't keep up with losses in the field on three fronts. This is why they were low on equipment. Well and lack of fuel with caused them to abandon a lot of equipment.

Just wondering..

Lorak

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This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. Without my rifle I am useless. Without me, my rifle is useless...

http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/combatmissionclub

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Fionn:

Now, if only I could get a proper, realistic WW2 Grand Strategy game with realistic production imperatives I could test this all out.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I guess you have to program that yourself - you can always play Axis & Allies though I think I would agree that the Panzer IV would not have been such a good idea, but instead of having all types of heavy tanks, concentrating on the Panther would have gone a long way, it would also have reduced the strain on logistics, with regard to spares and ammo supply. It would also have made life easier for Steve and Charles and made CM more boring

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Andreas

[Lee]

I certainly wouldn't want to have to go up against one of these

beasts. Seems like suicide to me.

[Guest Big Time Software]

I think there was at least a good idea that wasn't fully developed with the Ferdinand/Elephant. The portable AT bunker. If they had manged to build a lot more (they only built 90 or so) similar type vehicles I could have seen them doing some real damage. The evidence? Once the Germans learned how to use them (i.e. not the way it went during the first bit of Kursk) they managed to retain most of them for the next year, losing a few every so often to breakdowns and enemy fire. They fought right up until the end from what I know. In contrast the Germans built over 1300 Tigers and yet only 70 Tigers *AND* King Tigers were left intact by the end of the war. Obviously a direct comparison is hard to make, but it is clear that once the Elephants were deployed "correctly" the did rather well inspite of all their design problems.

Mattias, ASL is wrong. Every source I have ever read states that they were issued to one unit, and that one unit was in Italy during the Bulge.

Steve

[Guest Seimerst]

Lorak,

Here is something that amazed me. Hitler never put his economy on a full war footing. Despite the Allied bombing campaign, the prodcution statistics for nearly every major piece of equipment, planes, tanks, artillery, continued to increase throughout the war. The monthly production graphs would make any modern CEO proud. I wonder how it would have been had he followed the Russian production model in 1938 and fully mobilized his economy to support the war effort.

[Fionn]

Hitler never even considered a full wartime economy as we understand it nowadays until 1943 or so.

Germany still had nannies minding kids for stay-at-home housewives in 42 and 43. All of these women would have been working in factories in England and Russia freeing non-essential men for the front lines.

"Inside the Third Reich" by Speer is a great read for a little insight into the Third Reich's war machine in later years and how production efficiency was increased.

I don't think anyone would disagree if I say that German war production during 1939 to 1943 was perhaps at only 1/3rd of the level it could have been if everything had been done to institute a wartime economy ( I forget exact figures but this is probably a pretty accurate figure).

The real limiting factor on production in 1944 was no longer the lack of a wartime economy but the low levels of certain essential metals etc... It is partially because of the lack of certain metals essential to tank engines etc that I would have favoured the "few big tanks" approach since it maximised the combat potential per unit of scarce metals used, minimised the fuel consumption requirements, minimised the crew training requirements etc etc.

One thing which has always impressed me about the Ferdinand is that those which survived Kursk and were refitted in September 1943 (about half of the original 90 made) had a VERY good chance of surviving the entire war...

IIRC 43 Elefants were converted in September 1943 and 2 or 3 were left in working condition by the time of the Battle for Berlin.

Ferdinands were continuously engaged in Italy from September 1943 until the end of the war.. Over the course of 19 or 20 months some 40 Ferdinands were lost to ALL causes. That is roughly 2 a month.

Any vehicle with that kind of survivability deserves recognition. One reason so few were lost was that breakthroughs and mass retreats were uncommon in Italy and so you didn't end up with hundreds or thousands of abandoned AFVs like you did in Russia or Europe. Again, fewer but heavier vehicles actually means a REDUCTION in overall fuel consumption and spare parts consumption meaning that, with fewer but heavier vehicles, it is likely that a smaller % of these vehicles would have been abandoned during the mass retreats.

Lastly, the KT is a development of the Ferdinand. Sure it has a turret etc and so isn't a TD BUT the KT's design philosophy is the same.

The German designers said "Let's build a massively armoured vehicle with the most effective gun we have. Speed is irrelevant since this vehicle will simply be a slightly mobile AT pillbox. It will move to a location, stop, and then destroy all enemy AFVs in sight whilst remaining impervious to their fire."

Same design philosophy for both these tanks.

[Stoffel]

I have a nice books on Tigertanks and in it was a small section about the Ferdinand.

The vehicle itself was never to be produced.

The undercarriage was build by Porsche for the Tiger I tank because Porsche never thought he would loose the battle for a contract with Henschell.I think the main reasons for that idea were the facts that he was a personal friend of Hitler and the fact that his design was technological much better than Henschel's.And since materials were scarce in 43 the Germans just added a hull on this chassis with a gun on it and so the Ferdinand was born.

And as you all might know later in the war the same thing happened again with the Kingtiger.There were two types one of them had a Porsche turret.

By the way this book is one of a great series that handles about all military vehicles the Germans fielded in the war.It is published by a German firm called Walter J.Spielberger.

A must for all of you who wants to know all about a specific vehicle.

[s bakker]

Do you have an URL-link to this publisher? Sounds interesting.

[Stoffel]

No sorry I don't have an url I don't even know if they have a webpage.I couldn"t find it anyway.

Your name sounds Dutch if you are living in Holland than you can see it just send me an email an we can arrange that.

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h.s.

[Stoffel]

this message is for S. Bakker

I looked it up and found out you can buy the whole range at amazon.com.

The publisher by the way is Motorbuch Verlag in Stuttgart and spielberger is just the writer.

[freelancal]

OK, you caught my interest. Upon further exploration I found this link:

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/8662/tankdestroy2.htm#ferdi

Sorry I don't know how to set a link.

[Guest Kettle Black]

As weapons, Panther, Tiger, Ferdinand asf were great. In a CM scenario they are great killers. But wasn't the big problem actually getting these machines TO the battle? A T-34 could be driven out from its factory in the Urals then drive all the way to Moscow and engage. From what I've read, the problem with the King Tiger (for example) was that it bogged down easily, no fuel economy whatsoever and broke down after a few miles(relatively speaking).

Hence a couple of Panzer IV's who could be used in the battle were better than hunks of lethal metal standing by the roadside far behind the lines.

The VG had most of the VD's (don't joke)problems fixed IIRC, but when was that? And was the IV models more reliable?

How reliable were the German tanks in the CM time span? Say I am in a situation where I have to choose to send 1 of the following as reinforcements to a critical sector:

1. 3 King Tigers

2. 4 Panther VG

3. 9 Pz IV(latest model)

Terrain is mud/gravel road, hilly terrain, conditions are wet and lots of mist (no jabos out). Distance is 70% of King Tiger fuel endurance.

Any thoughts?

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Kettle Black

"The End? With practically everyone still on their feet? Over my dead body!"

The Player, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead"

[Fionn]

Ahem, average survival time of the transmission in a T-34... 13 hours with good driving (less with bad drivers (which most were ) ).

T34s were transported to the front by rail just like all other tanks. The "driving forever myth is just a myth".

The KT had poor fuel economy but used less fuel to move a given distance than the 3 Pz IVs it might replace thus better overall fuel economy. As to breakdowns... Teething problems AND a shortage of spare parts led to this... By producing fewer you could make enough spares.

70% of KT fuel endurance is over 100 Km away. I seriously doubt it'd be that far ...