CM 2 - Operations

[Guest Captitalistdoginchina]

Just to get some ideas for BTS before work starts in earnest for CM 2.

In Operations i think that any abandoned vehicles and guns could be slavaged for the advancing side. At the moment you can reuse your own vehicles after repair, but on the eastern front it was common for the opposition to capture and use this equipment. Imagine the Russians repairing a few Tigers and 88mm guns and then using them in the next battle against the germans? It would add a new twist to the game.

Any thoughts?

CDIC

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"Death solves all problems - no man no problem"

J.V.Stalin, 1918

[Maximus]

Sounds like a great idea. It was also very common for the Germans to use captured T-34s.

Except that I would suspect that "captured" vehicles will be listed in the purchase screens. At least they should be.

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--"We want information."

--"Information."

--"Information."

--"Who are you?"

--"The new Number 2."

--"Who is Number 1?"

--"You are Number 6."

--"I am not a number, I am a free man!"

--"Hahahahahahahaha."

[Bil Hardenberger]

Nice idea... only one problem.. rarely was a tank abandoned where it could be fired up and driven into battle that quickly... if it could, the original owner would have driven it away instead of leaving it...

No, often these captured vehicles were sent to the rear... where, if needed, they would be repaired and issued to a unit, or sent back further for tests... they would not be used by the tactical unit that captured them.

It is true that both sides used captured equipment. These, I agree, should be represented... but, using captured equipment in an operation? I have to say I think not, outside the scope of CM.

Bil

[Bruno Weiss]

Nah, now I'm sure someone is gonna jump up and point out that in some far flung corner of the Ostfront, a Finnish unit of some sort or other did just that, and therefore CM2 should be all about that...

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)

[Guest wwb_99]

Also, one must remeber that training would have been required. Could the average Russian soldier read German, or even make sense of the latin alphabet (or read at all for that matter)?

Ivan, what does that switch do?

I dunno?

Well hit it and find out.

<BOOOM!>

SERGI! You idiot! You just fired the main gun and blew up Dimitri! Its the Gulag for both of us!

WWB

[Lordfluffers]

The Russians did not use German equipment very often, especially newly captured equipment. Russian soldiers simply did not have the expertise or knowledge to rebuild damaged tanks. The German mechanics/soldiers were much better trained- generally, and it was widely accepted the T34 was a superior tank. Russian tankers also had a tendancy to panic and leave healthy tanks behind, particularly early on. The Germans could, and did employ many captured T34's. I'm not sure, but I believe a Russian suggesting to use a German tank might have been considered defeatist and traitorous (implies German equipment is better) and thus the Russians did not end up using captured Tigers etc, (if they actually found a reparable one! I could be wrong so feel free to rebuke my idea.

[tss]

Bruno Weiss wrote:

Nah, now I'm sure someone is gonna jump up and point out that in some far flung corner of the Ostfront, a Finnish unit of some sort or other did just that, and therefore CM2 should be all about that...

No, I was going to jump out and point that it was so rare that even Finnish army did it, for my knowledge, only twice. I use word 'even' because throughout the war most tanks in Finnish service were captured from Soviets so Finnish tankers would have, on the average, much better knowledge on Soviet equipment than German tankers.

The first occasion happened in Fall 1941 when one infantry division (ok, all Finnish divisions were infantry divisions at the time) captured 2 T-28 tanks intact with full fuel tanks and ammo racks. I don't know the details of this capture so I don't have any idea why Soviets didn't drive them away, or at least into the nearest swamp (swamps being the just about only natural resource that is abundant in both Finland and Karelia).

There were few men who had driven bulldozers before the war who tried to get the tanks moving and to their surprise they succeeded in it. The tanks were then allocated to the Jääkäri company of the division that was commanded by Lauri Törni (who later served in U.S. rangers under the name of Larry Thorne and was killed in Vietnam) who filled the rest of the crew positions with men who had never even seen a tank from inside. The tanks rolled along the Finnish advance until they run out of fuel. At that point they were abandoned to be later recovered by real tankers.

The crews of the tanks were so inexperienced that they had severe difficulties to even stay on road (T-28 was a beast to steer because it was so long) and they wouldn't have been able to do anything even remotely effective in a combat, had they been used in one.

The other occurrence was on June 26 1944 at Portinhoikka. One Soviet ISU-152 had been immobilized on a small hillock. Sergeant Lauri Heino, a tank-driver and Mannerheim's Cross winner, organized a small band and they smoked the crew out with smoke grenades. Heino then managed to repair the assault gun and drive it away. It was used in combat the next day but it was lost almost immediately. I don't remember what destroyed it.

Heino was a pretty interesting character. He also captured the first Finnish T-34, the first KV-I, and a host of lighter tanks, pretty much all in the same way.

The story of the T-34 is quite amusing: in October 1941 the Soviets received their first T-34s at the River Svir front. Convinced that they were now invulnerable a group of tankers decided to go on joyriding through Finnish lines near the Svir power plan. They drove through Finnish lines, and they were, indeed, invulnerable. One Finnish 37 mm AT gun got some 10-20 hits on them and all bounced off. The Soviets didn't even bother to fire at the gun.

However, when they were returning to their own lines one driver managed to get his tank stuck on a large tree-stump. At that point they were few dozens of meters away from Finnish positions so the tank crew exited in quite a hurry and run to their own lines.

At that point Finnish Panssaripataljoona (armored batallion, the only Finnish tank unit at the time) was stationed nearby and Heino heard of the occurrence. He then immediately went to see the tank and he noticed that the stump had forced the tank to be in such an angle that the gear box didn't work correctly. He then blew the stump off with explosives, managed to fix the gear box and drove away. The tank was used for the first time during the Karhumäki operation almost a month later.

That particular T-34 was later twice under water, first at Poventsa when Soviets blew up locks of Stalin's Canal and later in June 1944 when it fell into Saimaa Canal at Juustila when a bridge broke under it. Last Summer I met an old sapper who was one of the men who fished the tank up the second time. It too was an interesting story, since during the work Soviets were only few kilometers away.

I don't know what happened to the original Soviet crew of the tank but I think that their superiors were not amused.

But, to return to the topic: the general rule was that captured tanks would be sent to back to be repaired, refitted, and most importantly, painted with correct markings. I for sure wouldn't like to drive around in a tank with enemy's markings.

- Tommi

[Bruno Weiss]

Hehe, yeah, lard knows we owe so much to so few...

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)

[Gregory Deych]

The Russians did use captured vehicles fairly widely, especially in the period up until 1943/44. Valera Potapov's site, history.vif2.ru has a number of pictures of captured German vehicles being used by Soviet troops, including Pz III, PzIVs and StuGs. I've also seen pictures of Russian troops operating a captured King Tiger! A number of Russian infantry divisions used captured artillery as a part of their regimental artillery (usually at a battery/battalion strength). Obviously, this was not a common phenomenon but neither was it vanishingly rare. Perhaps 1-3% of equipment might have been captured, at the higher end for things like small arms and trucks, less for major items like tanks.

[Jeff Heidman]

You see a lot more Germans using captured Russian equipment simply because the Germans in the first year surrounded and captured vast stores of Soviet equipment that was not even necessarily in the obsession of a combat unit.

The Germans captured so many Soviet 76.2mm AT guns that they began producing their own ammunition for them.

The Germans never got caught so far off guard as to let storehouses of military equipment fall into Soviet hands. Generally the only German equipment that made its way into Soviet hands was that which was captured during battle.

I cannot see any reasonable justification for one side using equipment captured during an operation, with the exception of light weapons like machine guns and such. But, since CM does not model at the level of detail, the point is moot.

Jeff Heidman