Kill a KV !?

[Zanekin]

Maybe a beginner question !

My situation: barbarossa time, axis assault on fortified position, mech forces + pionnier

My bad surprise: an immediate counter-attack by 3 KV1 on my wing where 3 Stug III and a pionner Cie advance under poor cover (trees, small woods).

My question: Am i dead ? Can i hope something ? A perfect fire ? A flamethrower action ? Smoke and retreat ?

PS: If my opponent read this, please don't answer!

[Ex Bellator]

You are dead.

I have managed to kill precisely one KV-1 in 1941 which was driven by a novice PBEm opponent straight into my Grenade Bundle throwing infantry. If you opponent is a fairly competent player he will stay away from your infantry (and especially Pioneers). KV's eat armour alive so don't even think about it with your Stug IIIBs. You didn't happen to have an 88mm gun with you by any chance?

You really have two choices, either avoid the KV-1s as far as possible, ie. attack where they aren't. Or somehow sneak your Pioneers within satchel charge range (30m) of them.

Finally, I will say that I'm heartily fed up with people buying KVs (especially in groups) in 1941 PBEm games. Booooring.

[Redwolf]

It is tough. Realistically you can hope that a decent scenario has the KVs set to conscript quality.

The best chance of knockout is a headquarter with hand grenades.

However, you should seek to destroy as much of the defenses as you can while avoiding the KVs. This is extremly tough, too, much tougher than Soviets in their trouble timeframes because the Soviet tanks are much swifter than the Germans.

The extremly slow turn rates of CMBB StuGs don't help either.

[YankeeDog]

Oh man, you're screwed. . .

Just kidding. You do have a rather tricky problem on your hands, though. Depending on the terrain, there might be a way out, but you'll probably need some luck and some help from your opponent.

First of all, I assume by "Barbarossa Time", you mean the Summer/Fall of 1941. Assuming this is correct, then your StuGs must be either IIIB or IIIEs, with the 75mm/L24 gun.

These details are important. Your chances of damaging a KV-1 with 75mm "kurz" gun are very slim no matter what the range or angle. Basically, you have to hope for a lucky gun or weak point hit. In contrast, the KV-1 m1940's 76.2mm/L31 has at least a reasonable chance of KOing a StuG IIB or E out to over 1000m. If you were facing only one KV-1, you might be able to try the 'hail fire' approach, and have all three of your StuGs fire at a single KV in an attempt to break it's morale, but with 3-on-3 odds, this tactic would be suicide.

Your Pioneer squads, on the other hand, can certainly take out a KV-1 if they can get close enough. Either the Flamethrowers or Demo Charges can be quite effective against heavy tanks, but you need to get within about 30m of a tank to use either.

The first thing I would do in your situation is ask myself whether I really need to engage the KV-1s. If you're on the attack in a QB and your opponent has bought 3 KV-1s, those tanks must represent a relatively large proportion of his points. This means that his defense is likely to be weak elsewhere. KV-1s, while powerful, are slow. If possible, avoidance might be your best bet. To me, there are few things more satisfying than tricking my opponent into maneuvering a powerful armored asset into a position where it can have no real effect on the outcome of the battle!

If the tactical situation is such that you are going to have to engage those KV-1s, you need to be ready to take losses. In 1941, a KV-1 can take out any German AFV on the field, and they are also nasty against infantry - on top of their having multiple MGs and a good HE shell, they also usually carry a fair number of Canister shells, which will *destroy* infantry closer than 100m in light to medium cover.

While KV-1s are really tough opponents in the early war, they do have some weaknesses. Like all early-war Russian tanks, they lack a command cupola, meaning that their spotting ablility once buttoned is *awful*. They can't hit what they can't see. Like other Russian tanks, they also lack the German Tanks' quality optics, meaning that while they can penetrate your StuGs at long range, it's likely going to take them quite a few shots to score a hit. They also have a very slow turret, meaning that it will take them a few seconds to bring their gun to bear on targets not directly in front of them.

So the first thing I would try to do in your situation is get those KVs buttoned up. A sharpshooter would be the ideal thing to use for this, but an HMG firing from long range, or even an infantry squad firing at 400-500m could also do the trick. At longer ranges like this, the KVs are unlikely to get anything more than a "Sound Contact" to your infantry before they're buttoned up. Watch out that your opponent doesn't have infantry of some other unit close enough to spot your units, though, as this will generally result in your shooters getting pounded by the KV's HE from long range.

The next thing to do is make sure those KV-1s don't have any additional help. If they've got infantry supporting them, you have little chance of getting close enough to close assault them. You will need to first 'strip' any infantry away from them using Artillery or MG fire.

Next, it's time to maneuver your Pioneer Squads and Flamthrowers close enough for an assault. Exactly how to do this depends on the details of the tactical situation. Ideally, you want to set up an ambush and have the KV-1s come to you. If your opponent is being very aggressive and counterattacking strongly, you may be able to pull this off. You might be able to 'encourage' him to come forward into your ambushes by showing him an attractive target, like your StuGs. So long as it's at long range, you can probably afford to allow the KVs to get a single shot off at your StuGs, as they are unlikely to hit. Just don't let them get multiple shots off and zero in the range. Your StuGs are good bait, but they have almost no chance of taking out the KVs, so there's no point in leaving them out there to slug it out.

If waiting for the KVs to come to you isn't an option, you may need to use an artillery smoke screen to mask your infantry's approach. You need to get to within about 60m of the KVs without being spotted to have any chance of a successful close assault - any farther away and your infantry will be cut down on the way in. An infantry assault on the KVs is likely to be costly in terms of casualties, but each of those KVs is worth at least 3-4 infantry squads in point terms, so you can afford to take some casualties as long as you are ultimately sucessful in taking them out. If at all possible, try to isolate the KVs one at a time and overwhelm them with infantry squads assaulting from multiple angles.

If nothing else, is sounds like your game is going to give you a healthy appreciation for why the Germans found it so difficult to deal with the KV-1 early in the war. . .

Hope this helps,

YD

[JasonC]

The pioneer infantry have the best chance. Use the StuGs as bait, avoiding long LOS lines to the KVs by staying behind woods, hills, or buildings. If they advance trying to get LOS, have infantry waiting for them.

They have to come very close to the infantry for it to bag them (like 30m), and humans will not do so if they know the infantry is there. You will not live long enough to do it if you have to run into the open to get that close.

The actual mechanism can be thrown demo charge, flamethrower, or grenade bundle. The story with all of them is the same - 25-30m and unsuppressed, you can do it; farther or pinned, you can't.

You cannot do it successfully without cover, so the immediate need is to break contact and get someplace more survivable. A smoke mission might help with that.

It is possible to wreck a KV with the StuGs, by just hitting it so often you luck into a gun damage or immobilization. But at even odds, there is no chance of that. You need a 3 on 1, with the hits coming so fast each one stuns the KV a bit.

50L42 can sometimes get partial penetrations on the turret side or rear at point blank range, but 75L24 is pretty well hopeless, other than gun damage and track hit results. About 20 hits will get one of those, though.

So, get the StuGs out of LOS of the KVs. If they can all hit one spot the first may advance to, before its buddies come up to help, you can try "hail fire". Besides that, they need to stay away from the group, but if possible sneak "keyhole" LOS to other Russians, to make him want to come get you. Pioneers can wait for him if he does.

Forget about pressing home your attack. It is pointless to try with unsuppressable MGs covering the open ground, and 76mm HE hitting small bits of cover your men can run to. Get large cover areas (behind a ridge, or rear portions of a large wood) and do what damage you can from long range.

[CombinedArms]

Good advice, JasonC. Now what does an Axis commander do if it's pure armor?

After badly losing my first Pure Armor battle vs. the AI (me having T-34/85s vs. the AI's PzIVs and Panthers, late '44) I was feeling vengeful and when the random date generator set the next battle for Sept 1941, in a 1250 point Pure Armor battle, I didn't care about fairness. I chose 6 KV-1's (3 platoons) 3 T-34's (one platoon) and a t-26 w/ the leftover points(all regular +/-).

This time the poor AI didn't stand a chance. A whole lot of AI controlled short PzIIIs and PzIVs, plus a bunch of PzIIs, just got themselves killed while bouncing innumerable shots off my armor fronts. The T-26 was shocked and retreated to cover, and I lost one other TC and had two tanks immoblized, but those were my only losses, while the AI lost every single tank and autosurrendered. Final score, 98-2.

I'm also in an early war PBEM where a handful of my KV-1s and a lone T-34 are dominating the battlefield (I'm staying well out of reach of grenade bundles) and there seems to be very little my highly skilled opponent can do. I've also been on the receiving end when commanding Axis tanks in late '41.

Is there anything the Axis can do to win against KV-1's and T-34's when it's armor vs. armor. It seems like in this time-frame the Axis simply overmatched in a pure-armor battle.

[JasonC]

If you use the "pure armor" QB type, you are effectively banning the 88. So it makes sense to ban the KVs as well. If you want KVs to be legal, use the "armor" force type rather than "pure armor". That way the Germans can still take towed guns, pioneers, aircraft - their whole combined arms toolbox for dealing with KVs. They are tough enough as it is, that way.

In the real deal, the Germans used 88s, and 100mm guns (not 105s, but higher velocity pieces not in CMBB. An 88 is the nearest thing), either of which could penetrate them. They also used 50mm PAK and 105mm howitzers in such "gun fronts", which can KO T-34s, and add to the immobilizing or gun damage "hail". As Stuka will kill one if the bombs get lucky, but that is rare.

Meanwhile the armor went for many on fews, using "hail fire" again. Which works fine if you have higher echelon odds and upward, but is suicide at typical QB odds if everyone is engaged. To create hail fire opportunities when the enemy has many KVs, you need to engage them piecemeal e.g. by getting the lead one as it crossed a crest or rounds a bend, before others can help.

So, the drill was - gun front on a crest, tanks bait it then go back to the reverse slope. They hail anything that crosses. Infantry lines near side of the crest too, to close assault things. The guns may be taken out at range, but can fight back at least. Everything else can hurt any tanks that make it into the defense.

But it was a defense. You don't try to attack numerous KVs without odds - like, full companies of ~15 tanks vs. pairs of KVs. Operationally, if such local odds weren't available they just stood on the defense in front of them using the above "gun front" tactics, and attacked elsewhere.

That gave the Russians the choice of putting a few KVs in lots of places piecemeal and then getting overwhelmed by "hail fire" odds, or putting a lot of them in a few places, getting only local stalemate out of those, and then getting attacked without KVs around to help elsewhere.

Their 1941 doctrine and TOEs mostly pushed them to the "piecemeal" horn of that dilemma. By 1942 they had enough T-34s to make better operational use of their good tanks, but they aren't KVs, and by then the Germans fielded better guns as well. Though for quite a while, the towed ones were more potent than the ones in the tanks, so "armor only" rather than "armor force type" shortchanges the Germans, really until the start of 1943.

[Zanekin]

First of all, thanks a lot.

I'm really amazed by all the quick and precious reply. First time i used this forum, not the last !!!

Well, by the far, the best advice is to avoid these monster. Yes, they're the entire armor force of my opponent !!! And my other wing have already bypass their frontage. In fact, a huge hill occupie the space between !!!

I will try to use my pioneer if he want to push farther.

Aftermath soon

Sorry for my poor (frenchy touch) language.

[demoss]

If it's Pure Armor, shouldn't the PzJg I be available? It's not much, but I believe it has a chance.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by demoss:

If it's Pure Armor, shouldn't the PzJg I be available? It's not much, but I believe it has a chance.

In a recent Pure Armour ME:

My platoon of Pz-III's and PzJgr's

v.s.

AI hordes of BT's and a KV-2

AAR: I killed all the BT's except two with gun hits. Then the KV-2 destroyed all my tanks. I tried maneuvering around it, but the terrain limited my approaches and it could kill my PzJgr's even if it missed! So, Panzerjäger-I is not the best option IMHO.

[demoss]

AAR: I killed all the BT's except two with gun hits. Then the KV-2 destroyed all my tanks. I tried maneuvering around it, but the terrain limited my approaches and it could kill my PzJgr's even if it missed! So, Panzerjäger-I is not the best option IMHO.

While you have certainly demonstrated that the PzJg I isn't a GOOD option (note that I didn't say it was ), I still think it's the best punch the Germans have if you're limited to armor. Pretty much anything else vehicle-mounted has to hope for a gun or track hit.

Of course, under the right circumstances, even an ATR can "knock out" a KV-2 with a gun hit. (NB: I've only seen this done with a Solothurn, and I'm not about to waste hours trying to reproduce it with a PzB 39.) Gun hit, followed by panic, followed by reversing into scattered trees, bogging, immobilizing, and bailing out. Kids, don't try this at home.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by demoss:

While you have certainly demonstrated that the PzJg I isn't a GOOD option (note that I didn't say it was ), I still think it's the best punch the Germans have if you're limited to armor. Pretty much anything else vehicle-mounted has to hope for a gun or track hit.

Yes, I agree, but just that the thing is not completely armoured, leaving it vulnerable to all that shrapnel from near misses of 152mm howitzer, and that it has no turret, making it hard to get flank shots.

Hmm, I guess the best tactic would be to send some Somua to make a madman's dash into the middle of Soviet infantry. Either the KV-2 kills all of it's own guys, or then it refuses to harm the human shield.

[Sergei]

Update:

I set a QB with two KV-2 against 2 Pz-IIIH, 2 Pz-IV, 2 PzJg-I, 1 StuGIII and 1 150mm SPG. The computer deployed the tanks to different parts of the map, so I could approach them separately. Okay, firstly, PzIIIH, not surprisingly, didn't do anything good. Bye bye. PzIV's got killed as well - they even refused to use their AP against those behemoths, prefering smoke. I had an Elite StuG, but it didn't have a chance as it got killed from flank while trying to maneuver to a good position. The SPG avoided death and got several shots towards one KV, but just couldn't hit the damn thing. Probably wouldn't have had any effect, anyway.

My Panzerjägers were the best bet, but only one of them had four Tungsten shells. In my last game, they didn't even have Tungsten. Also, I was unable to maneuver any closer to get to flanks or rear, so I did some sniping from behind a crest. Only one of the Tungsten shots hit the KV, and it didn't kill anyone inside. And while two Panzerjägers can together have a good ROF compared to KV-2, they just didn't have any effect on it. Then one 152mm shell landed within 2 metres of one of the Panzerjägers, knocking it out and making the other one panic.

[xerxes]

While I was testing an operation, a KV2 appeared on the ai side. The axis has some PzIVs and Pz38s. Certainly nothing that could penetrate and kill the KV2. I distracted the KV by engaging at range from one direction and then moved roughly 10 afvs to within 300m. The afvs wouldn't auto-target the KV2 but the next turn I forced them to target the monster. It only took about 20 seconds to immobilize the beast and 15 seconds later the crew bailed. Rounds were bouncing off the KV at the rate of about 1 a second.

A tribute to CMBB is that "Hail Fire" works in the game just like in the real thing.

[JasonC]

Yep, hail fire is the way Panzers kill KVs. I tried a variant of the "lone KV-2 monster with BT horde" someone else mentioned. I didn't bother with Pz Jgr Is and hopes of tungsten penetrations. 800 points armor only meeting engagement, the AI Russians had -

1 green KV-2

15 green BT-7s

I took -

4 veteran Pz III H

4 regular Pz III H

1 veteran Pz II C

Terrain was central sector, farmland, moderate trees, small hills. Fine July summer weather. The map was not large and some LOS lines stretched clear across it, but there were slopes, bodies of trees, occasional farmhouses to hide behind.

I lost 1 Pz III at set up to the first round kill by the KV-2 at ~800m. Wouldn't really have been there without "fast move", but those are the breaks. I then got everyone to the right spots, meaning LOS to parts of the BT horde and no LOS to the KV.

I had one Pz III platoon on each side of the map, operating in pairs or pairs. The Pz II lead one pair on the right - that platoon was the regulars (with a plus morale tank commander) and was supposed to grab a hill over on that side about half way across the map. The vet platoon fired from behind some woods on the left, diagonally to their right front.

The KV was directly ahead of them in the left corner, in a wheatfield, so they avoided straight ahead LOS. They also had a depression ahead of them, the lip lined with some trees, that one pair planned to use, but that was the pair that lost a tank at set up. The other in that pair went forward to that depression as planned.

The plan worked fine. It took about 5 minutes to kill all the BTs (one ran off the map after several partials from the Pz II). The Pz II found itself hiding behind some trees from the KV, with a marginal LOS. It drew some of its ammo and held its attention that way, I thought reasonably safely. But at the end of the BT engagement, the KV got lucky and hit it through the trees, KOing it of course.

I spent the next minute getting all of the Pz IIIs out of sight - about 3 had moved into spots with LOS to the KV - and preparing for the mad minutes of hail fire. That worked fine. Then everyone went to re-establish LOS at the same time, at distances from 400 to 700 meters, and in an arc about 90 degrees around the monster.

As it happened, one of the tanks didn't get LOS, because there were more trees in the way than I had thought. It had to fast move the following minute to get back in the game. Another that was close drew the KVs first attentions. A near miss KOed the tank - big 152mm crater right under the resulting wreck, must have been a 2-4m miss. The breaks.

Everyone else banged on the KV. I got several tracks hits, but no gun hit yet. Ricochets like crazy, naturally. The following minute the KV was backing up (so obviously not immobilized, but not great morale either, it is likely). The one Pz III it had targeted reversed out of LOS, as the guy that missed the first part of the party came back into LOS. The other 4 held their positions firing.

It never got another shot off. Lost the Pz III it had targeted befor managing another shot, to the reversing. The other 5 Pz IIIs bounced a dozens of rounds off of it, including 1-2 gun hits and scads of track hits, one of which showed "immobilized" afterward. The crew then bailed.

Total German losses - 2 Pz IIIs, 1 Pz II, 8 casualties. Total Russian losses - 14 BT-7s, 1 KV-2 - one BT-7 ran away.

That's the drill. Works just fine.

[Finnish solider]

Originally posted by Rex_Bellator:

Hey rex you can kill easly a kv 1 with a 50mm allso(attleast i have killed 3 kv with a 50mm and onse with a 37 mm bofors gun)

[xerxes]

I wonder if "hail fire" would work just with the 20mm autocannons? I haven't tried it but I'm imagine the high ROF of 6-8 autocannons would have the KV panicing pretty quickly.

Of course, "hail fire" works much better with realistic green crews in the KV. A KV with a vet crew was really rare in '41. The problem with KVs in QBs is that players will (naturally) purchase unrealistically good crews.

[Dschugaschwili]

You can try the hail fire approach yourself. Just play "Iron Roadblock" as the Germans.

Spoiler ahead:

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I used all guns and tanks (except the reinforcements of course) to shell the KV from within the scattered trees in the German setup zone. It took me almost all AP ammo and 8 gun hits until the KV stopped firing, but it worked while only losing one tank (a Pz38t I think).

Dschugaschwili

[whizbang]

If you were to read the AAR in the training section of Boots'n'Tracks http://www.militarygameronline.com/boots_tracks/index.php?page=training on the Iron Roadblock playing the Axis you would discover that that is just how it should be done. Mostly you will damage the gun, occasionally you will immobilize it and once the crew just panicked (too much noise) and just abandoned it.