Why I like playing the underdogs (Commonwealth, Free French, etc.)

[Freyberg]

You're right that the British infantry squad is not designed for urban warfare - their bolt action rifles are OK at a distance, but they are at a distinct disadvantage in many settings. All the Commonwealth nations have HMG companies or similar - which are a must to support the infantry, whatever the setting.

In the late war, the Brits have Crocodiles and Wasps, which a deliciously useful in urban combat.

The Canadians have one of the best urban warfare vehicles - the little Fox armoured car, which has a .50 cal MG in a closed turret, which counters the main problem all other .50 cal armed vehicles have - the vulnerability of the gunner.

[SergeantSqook]

Do my eyes deceive me? Are people really comparing "kills per minute" in some hyper sterile lab test to actually argue whether or not a weapon of suppression is better than a different weapon of suppression? In a combined-arms game where individual weaponry is basically irrelevant unless you exclusively play tiny scenarios? Has anyone here actually gotten into combat and just sat completely stationary with a Bren and an MG42 firing at each other and just waited to see who would win? 

 

The Syrians aren't underdogs because the RPK is probably worse than the M249 or something and the Italians aren't underdogs because the Carcano is worse than a Garand, they're underdogs because they're basically at least a full generation behind at every level and can't even split squads

 

Do people here actually play this game, or do they just post about it?

[danfrodo]

I am guessing the MG42 would win?  I keep hearing that bren was great but I seem to have a very hard time suppressing MG42 w whole squad including bren gun

3 hours ago, SergeantSqook said:

Do my eyes deceive me? Are people really comparing "kills per minute" in some hyper sterile lab test to actually argue whether or not a weapon of suppression is better than a different weapon of suppression? In a combined-arms game where individual weaponry is basically irrelevant unless you exclusively play tiny scenarios? Has anyone here actually gotten into combat and just sat completely stationary with a Bren and an MG42 firing at each other and just waited to see who would win? 

 

The Syrians aren't underdogs because the RPK is probably worse than the M249 or something and the Italians aren't underdogs because the Carcano is worse than a Garand, they're underdogs because they're basically at least a full generation behind at every level and can't even split squads

 

Do people here actually play this game, or do they just post about it?

 

[chuckdyke]

2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

MG42 would win? 

In enfilade the MG 42 is the better weapon in defilade the Bren as it is a more accurate weapon. The Bren can function as a normal semi-automatic rifle aided by its bipod. The MG 42 is an all-purpose machinegun and more an area denial weapon. It is really a case of comparing apples and oranges. Grazing fire plunging fire we just can't mention the contrasting functions of a machine-gun. The Vickers was in my view the superior HMG the Bren the superior LMG compared with the MG 42. The MG 42 could function in both roles. 

[chuckdyke]

9 hours ago, Freyberg said:

You're right that the British infantry squad is not designed for urban warfare

But they had the Churchill infantry tank a bunker on tracks. They should have put in their trucks I should say lorries a bucket load of stens for urban combat. The Lee-Enfield had an adaptor for their hand grenades, so they could lob a grenade inside a building from normal hand grenade range.  

[Bulletpoint]

12 hours ago, SergeantSqook said:

Do my eyes deceive me?

 

No, you're just not paying attention.

[Freyberg]

10 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

But they had the Churchill infantry tank a bunker on tracks. They should have put in their trucks I should say lorries a bucket load of stens for urban combat. The Lee-Enfield had an adaptor for their hand grenades, so they could lob a grenade inside a building from normal hand grenade range.  

The other thing with the British is that their style of war was 'slow and careful and don't get too many men killed'. The standard infantry company is not really intended for aggressive close assault.

Having said that, they have some very varied formations with different capabilities, some of them quite useful in urban settings - every scout section of 9 men has 3 Bren guns and 3 Thompsons; every MG Company section of 9 men has 3 Thompsons; and the Airborne sections have so many SMGs it's actually annoying.

[chuckdyke]

7 hours ago, Freyberg said:

The other thing with the British is that their style of war was 'slow and careful and don't get too many men killed'. The standard infantry company is not really intended for aggressive close assault.

Hate him or love him, Montgomery was the father of command and control as we play it in a simpler form. Apart from the Bren and the Sten the squad was very much WW 1. He took the lessons of WW 1 too there were whole mining communities wiped out in that conflict. He didn't fight that war, looked after his troops (The Full Monty) and had the British cabinet looking over his shoulder to finish the war by Christmas 1944. Hollywood and the American press are what people take for the Gospel. 

[John1966]

On 3/22/2021 at 7:29 PM, Erwin said:

Of course smashing your oppo with HE is not fun, so designs try and make the match-ups a "fun challenge"

Can be quite fun though.

[John1966]

On 3/22/2021 at 4:52 PM, mjkerner said:

German removal by tank is Tight!

It was either that or take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. While it was the only way to be sure it seemed a bit ahistorical.

Actually, thinking about it, that would be a good way of doing urban assaults with the Brits. It'd only be slightly ahistorical. 

[Freyberg]

"Then they came to me and they said, 'Do you want the town of Cleves taken out?' "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleve#History

[Bulletpoint]

7 hours ago, Freyberg said:

"Then they came to me and they said, 'Do you want the town of Cleves taken out?' "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleve#History

Funny how the British justification to destroy the town of Cleves sounds a lot like the German justification for bombing Guernica:

"At the time of the raid, Guernica represented a focal strategic point for the Republican forces. It stood between the Nationalists and capture of Bilbao. Bilbao was seen as key to bringing the war to a conclusion in the north of Spain. Guernica also was the path of retreat for the Republicans from the northeast of Biscay".

"A terrible decision you’ve got to take. But... everything depended on getting a high piece of ground at Materborn. The German reserves would have to come through Cleves, and we would have to breach the Siegfried Line and get there".

[kohlenklau]

...underdogs like the Romanians?

Please give the new mod a test drive. Though this teaser scenario doesn't quite have them YET on the short end of the stick. Future scenarios will see them bearing the brunt of the bear along the Don. Pak38's against T-34's.

OK, that will make a good scenario title "Brunt of the Bear"!

[Freyberg]

9 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Funny how the British justification to destroy the town of Cleves sounds a lot like the German justification for bombing Guernica

I get your point, but I wasn't trying to participate in a moral debate - I just meant to suggest that 'nuking the whole place from orbit' (so to speak) was in fact a part of British urban warfare doctrine.

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, Freyberg said:

I get your point, but I wasn't trying to participate in a moral debate - I just meant to suggest that 'nuking the whole place from orbit' (so to speak) was in fact a part of British urban warfare doctrine.

Yes, and it's been part of the doctrine of all armies ever since they got this ability. I don't envy the guy for making that choice at all. But I find I'm always on the civilians' side in these cases. He feels like a murderer because he is in fact a murderer. If he likes it or not.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Bulletpoint

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

He feels like a murderer because he is in fact a murderer.

Nobody is a murderer unless convicted in a court of law. That people get killed is unfortunately incidental in war. But here it is a hobby where we simulate warfare.  

[Freyberg]

9 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Nobody is a murderer unless convicted in a court of law. That people get killed is unfortunately incidental in war. But here it is a hobby where we simulate warfare.  

I think the topic of the morality of war is one I could only discuss with someone reasonably conversant with military history, face to face, while drunk...

[chuckdyke]

12 minutes ago, Freyberg said:

I think the topic of the morality of war is one I could only discuss with someone reasonably conversant with military history, face to face, while drunk...

Armed robbery on a national scale and the victim fights back.

[BornGinger]

A lot of discussion about the MG42 vs the Bren gun in this thread. I quite recently read a book about Scandinavian Waffen-SS soldiers and it seems that although the MG42 could be quite effective some soldiers weren't too happy about that maching gun.

One veteran's opinion of the MG42:

Quote

I was lying in the middle of the group… To my right was a heavy MG42… it shot as many as 1200 to 1800 rounds a minute, but this meant we constantly had to fetch ammunition for it… gunner number two who was supposed to reload the ammo belts and be ready with a spare barrel when the one on the machine-gun was overheated - that happened a lot because of its high rate of fire. Then I had four riflemen; two on each side of the machine-gun, and they were at the same time allocated to bring fresh ammo to the MG. That was always the problem with the 42; we had to constantly change the barrels as they overheated, and it just used up ammunition at a terrible rate. All we seemed to do was to feed it ammo, again and again, belt after belt.

Another veteran says:

Quote

We were issued MG42s, you know the heavy machine-guns. We didn't like them. We much preferred the old MG34s. On the 42, as soon as you pressed the trigger, just like that, brrrŕrrrrrr, that was it, fifty rounds gone right there… We were always having to carry ammunition up to it… we were always running back to the frontline ammo dump, and that was always a few hundred metres back, picking up more and running forward with it again. We would have eight men at a time just serving one MG42.

Even if the MG42 was an effective weapon, as many write here, it seems a whole lot of time went to feeding it with new ammunition and to swap the barrels every so often. So with that added to the discussion, the question could be which machine gun was actually the most effective one? One with a very high rate of fire or one which had a barrel that didn't get as hot and that maybe didn't require the soldier to feed it with new ammunition as often?

Edited November 4, 2021 by BornGinger

[chuckdyke]

2 hours ago, BornGinger said:

the question could be which machine gun was actually the most effective one?

The MG3 the modern version is back to around 600RPM. 

[Erwin]

Also, on the Eastern Front where the Germans were facing wave attacks by hordes, perhaps they needed that high rate of fire.  No one was forcing the guy to fire 1200-1800 round/min for no reason.  It may have been necessary.  These days see a far less dense battlefield, so precision is more important.

[chuckdyke]

50 minutes ago, Erwin said:

wave attacks by hordes

The reason the Claymore mine was invented. 

[holoween]

11 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

The MG3 the modern version is back to around 600RPM. 

That is simply wrong. Mg3 has 1200RPM.

[chuckdyke]

19 minutes ago, holoween said:

That is simply wrong. Mg3 has 1200RPM.

On MG 3 machine guns, two types of bolts are available, with standard weight (about 650 g (22.93 oz)) for the standard 1,000–1,300 rounds per minute cyclic rate of fire and with extra weight (about 900 g (31.75 oz)) for a slower 800–950 rounds per minute cyclic rate of fire. Those bolts also are used along with different return springs. Not completely right not completely wrong the machine gunner has the final word of how many rounds he shoots. After 150 rounds of rapid fire the gunner changes the barrel. In the tripod mounted medium machine gun role MG 3 users are trained to fire short bursts and bursts of 20 to 30 rounds and strive to optimize their aim between bursts fired in succession. After around 150 rounds of rapid fire, the gun operator will replace the hot barrel with a new, cooler one. In practical terms the estimate of 600 rpm is not unreasonable. 

[womble]

I'm not sure why a veteran would be complaining at having to spend their time out of the line of fire fetching ammo, when, in essence, that was the design concept around which the squad was built. Without the MG42 spraying lead for them, they'd have to poke their heads up and fire their own small arms. Not so much lugging heavy ammo around, but more likelihood of getting dead, or having to lug heavy casualties around.

Apart from the fact that veterans are veterans at complaining, too