OOB request

[Parabola]

Does anyone know the exact strengths of 9th Army for Nov-Dec 42? Thanks!

[JasonC]

Exact, no. Glantz doesn't give a German OOB for Mars, unfortunately.

But here is a partial one, from operational narratives -

IDs - 78, 83*, 86, 95, 102, 110, 206, 246, 253

* (Veli Luki front, might not consider part of same op)

PDs - 1st, 5th, 9th

Motorized - Gross Deutschland, 14th

Later reinforcement from AG Center reserves, used in counterattacks -

PDs - 12th, 19th, 20th

Total AFVs start to finish, once all PDs arrived - approximately 1200.

All the above units fought on the active sectors. Units in quiet ones between the points of Russian attack may be missing from the OOB.

FWIW...

[JasonC]

A wee bit more ---

39 "panzer" corps - 102, 337, 78 IDs, 5th Panzer in reserve

9th Panzer in army reserve behind them.

27 corps - 256, 87, 129, 254, 72, 95 IDs. 14th motorized in reserve behind corps front.

23 corps - 110, 253, 206 IDs, GD motorized in reserve behind them.

41 "panzer" corps - 2nd Luftwaffe field, 246, 86 IDs, SS cavalry division behind them.

1st Panzer in army reserve at base of the salient.

Velikie Luki defended by Gruppe Chevallerie (an army detachment) with 2nd Luftwaffe field corps, 2nd and 3rd Luftwaffe field divisions, plus 6th corps with 7th Luftwaffe field plus 205, 330 IDs.

12th Panzer, 19th Panzer, 20th Panzer in AG Center reserve, released to 9th Army for the counterattack, as previously stated.

[Parabola]

Thank you JasonC

[RCHRD]

Where do you come up with 1200 Panzers? GD-30, 1st-55 pz, 5th-61 pz,etc, etc. Army group center didn't have 1200 Panzers.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

AFV's =/= Panzers.

[JasonC]

I am perfectly willing to be corrected on it, it is based on a single Russian-side source on Mars, RKKA in WW II. Obviously it is not just "panzers" in the sense of turreted tanks, but would include StuGs and Marders etc. But if you have unit by unit details for the whole OOB above, by all means share them with us.

[JasonC]

German total tank strength by that point in the war was around 5000. Of the best armed, long 75 vehicles built to date, 2/3rds were Marder or StuG, 1/3rd were Panzer IV longs.

Tanks were still more common that SP guns, though, as Panzer III production was still mostly making turreted tanks. The long 75 portion was itself maybe a quarter of the fleet, with short 75 and long 50 each another quarter, and the last quarter older 50L42 and a few remaining Czech 37 etc.

[JasonC]

Crickets chirp...

[Renaud]

Operational tanks and stugs on the Eastern front Nov 42: 1907. Dec 42: 1723. This doesn't include all AFV's, just stugs and turreted tanks, not marders and such. Between 700-1000 were out of action but repairable. (Jentz)

Here's the strength of the 1st, 5th and 9th panzer on Nov 18th:

1st: 3 pzII, 7 pz38t, 16 pzIIIkz, 8 pzIIIlg, 6 pzIII75kz, 5 pzIVkz, 6 pzIVlg, 4 command tanks

5th: 15 pzII, 23 pzIIIkz, 10 pzIIIlg, 7 pzIII75, 10 pzIVkz, 6 pzIVlg, 7 cmd tanks

9th: 26 pzII, 30 pzIIIkz, 32 pzIIIlg, 7 pzIVkz, 5 pzIVlg, 2 cmd tanks

source as above

[Renaud]

Panzer Divisions, 12th, 19th and 20th strength 18 november 42:

12th: 1 pzII, 24 pzIIIkz, 17 pzIIIlg, 2 pzIVkz, 18 pzIVlg, 1 cmd tank

19th: 7 pzII, 37 pz38t (woohoo!!!), 8 pzIIIkz, 3 pzIVkz, 9 pzIVlg, 2 cmd tanks

20th: 4 pzII, 22 pz38t (woohoo again), 14 pzIIIkz, 11 pzIVkz, 5 pzIVlg, 6 cmd tanks

GrossDeutchland Nov 42: 7 pzII, 1 pzIIIkz, 7 pzIVkz, 12 pzIVlg, 3 cmd tanks.

[Guest Guest]

deleted per user request

[JasonC]

I'd suspect not - probably another 25% or so, maybe enough to bring the number up to 600 but probably still shy of it, or half what the Russian source claimed. My guess is the Russian source was basing estimates on TOEs, without any haircuts.

I'd expect the SP guns to add significantly (order 90 maybe) to the long 75 weapons, split between Marders and long StuGs, and modestly to the short 75 weapons (maybe half that) - which are still in the upper half of the weapon distribution, looks like. The dividing line looks like half 50L42 or below, and half 50L60 or above. With roughly a quarter the truly useful long 75, and an equal quarter the light 20mm and 37mm varieties.

The Russians had a portion as high as 40% in their relatively useless lights too, T-60s and T-70s. But their T-34 portion, besides being far more numerous, would also be far better armed than the average German vehicle opposite. Looks like the number of German AFVs actually superior to them would be 100 or less, even counting SP guns.

[JasonC]

What I actually find more shocking, barely believable, is the discrepancy between total German fleet strength as of that date, and the strength with the actual army fighting the only fight that mattered, in the east.

Germany didn't have a mere 2000 tanks in late 1942. It had 5000 at least - we know the production and we know the losses to date. So where were the rest?

The whole African theater was lucky to see 200 at absolute peaks. The Germans were not actually engaged anywhere else. Yes there were formations in the west, some for defense there and others refitting in their time out of the front before being sent back east.

But a huge portion of the available armor would appear to be in the rear doing nothing - in the replacement army or units in Germany or factory to front etc. At the peak of the crisis of the war. Why?

Ah I see your 700 to 1000 "in repair" are actually in the east and not included in the 1900 operational total. That helps - those are probably in churn and a portion back in action any given week. It still leaves half the panzer force elsewhere.

[costard]

JasonC -could the discrepancy be seen in light of air attacks on rail, centres and viaducts (thinking of a Tall-boy dropped by 617 squadron). Production centres still putting out the units, big parks of vehicles going nowhere for lack of transport?

Or a lack of trained crews and a strategic allowance for losses of hulls? I must confess ignorance of the stats for employment of able bodied men in the Reich, but I suspect the maximum number were being sent to the mill, otherwise, at some point, there would have been no numerical advantage accruing to the Soviets.

[Renaud]

Yes, there weren't a whole lot of stugs in late 42 yet...they didn't get put into Panzer TOE's but remained in sturmartillie until later. I'd agree with the 25% number though. There were lots of marders and other makeshifts.

Here's the exact numbers for Nov and Dec 42, Panzer Strength on the Eastern Front, Jentz vol2, pg43. These #'s include only MBT's and stugs, but in practice there were no stugs organic to panzer units at this time so it mostly or completely tanks (therefore you should add stugs and other SP guns to this figure):

Nov 42: 1907 Operational; 169 Total Losses; 770 Repairable; 245 Replacements received.

Dec 42: 1723 Operational; 159 Total Losses; 1035 Repairable; 196 Replacements received

Note that Nov 42 is actually the high point in operational panzer strength between July42-Mar42.

In Feb 43 there were massive losses reported: 1105 and panzers operational dipped to 902 in Mar 43.

The figures above come from actual reports by field commanders. I'd guess reported tank strength is very different from factory production minus losses. The reality is that many tanks probably were in transit, in training, being deployed, in lager or otherwise unavailable to the field commanders and therefore not reported in the daily strength reports.

[Renaud]

I love the RKKA in WW II site...a great job of making Soviet WWII era documents available in english. I trust it mostly for the russian strengths and the battle maps, because the tank #'s come from Russian strength reports. I don't use it for german figures because those are at best guestimates from Russian intelligence at the time, at worst simply made up by examining german divisional TOE.

[JasonC]

Renaud - it is not just them, but it is more striking in the German case than in any other I've seen.

On the high losses reported in February 1943, that undoubtedly reflects the final write off of tanks inside the Stalingrad pocket, that were in fact lost in every real sense much earlier, but never went through the "total write off" category, until then.

Similar timing of loss issue arise in the west in September 1944, when tanks knocked out of "operational" during the June and (especially) July attrition fighting in Normandy, are finally written off en masse, as it becomes clear they didn't make it out of Normandy.

If you look at total US tank strength in all units and add losses, you get a miniscule fraction of the actual tanks produced. Throw in lend lease (especially to Britain) and you account for maybe half. In that case, there were actual transport difficulties from limited shipping (u-boats may have destroyed more Shermans than the German army, quite seriously), and the US (unlike Germany) was trained-crew constrained, not tanks-built constrained, in deployed armor formations. But it still means a huge portion of the built strength was sitting in depots, with replacement and training formations, etc.

In the case of Germany, transport difficulty is an implausible explanation. They had an efficient rail system that readily picked up entire panzer corps and reployed them from Russia to France or vice versa on a 1-2 week time scale, counting time to disengaged and march from railhead to new combat zone etc.

But the German replacement army was notoriously bloated clear until mid 1944. It was the favorite place for men to park themselves to stay away from the front on the one hand, and a recruiting sergeant on the other.

As for the Russians, their total tank strength routinely runs up to figures like 20,000 for all tanks in being, but the fronts report more like 6,000 running. The balance to "half" might be repair cases, but again a huge portion at any given time have to be in the rear area depot system, effectively awaiting their turn to be used and consumed.

This may also address the discrepancy between the mean time to loss in a global sense, and that reported by units in combat. The latter is much higher. Tank production and losses and fleet strength all show, at the macro level, that the average lifetime of a WW II tanks was around one year. But in combat, you routinely see the running strength drop by half in a single week of intense combat. The rate of decline then slows as returns from repair categories balance the rate of new losses, and it can take a month or so for the runners to decline by half, again - at which point there are as many in repair as running, typically.

That points to a half life of a typical tank actually committed to action, of more like a month or two.

The only ways available to reconcile a tank living only a month or two in combat and a tank living a year overall, are (1) either the tank "lives more than once" - some churn out of longer term repair etc and (2) the tank not spending its operatonal life actually in combat.

The latter has to be the larger factor. One, because the 1-2 month figure, as opposed to 1-2 weeks, already contains such re-use as was actually achieved. And two, because it isn't a large enough factor to span the difference in lifetimes, anyway.

The portion of a tank's life not spent in combat, in turn, would appear to have two components - at the front in a unit, but in a quiet sector of the front, not facing serious combat, or only used in lopsided fighting etc - on the one hand - and simply not being at the front, on the other.

The latter appears to be a much bigger factor than I would have assumed. If the time snapshots are not misleading, a tank might have spent 1/2 to 2/3rds of its "service life" (from production to write off I mean) not with a unit. Obviously only the front portion is evaporating. If the level present there is half the fleet, the evaporation rate of the whole fleet is effectively half theirs. If they are spending only half their time at the front in active sectors, in addition, the two combined might span the unit loss rate to overall loss rate gap.

It would raise the issue, though, why make such little use of the available fleet? Presumably to keep some armor alive in the face of high loss rates per unit time once actually in combat. Could be a false economy - the loss rate at the front might be higher when the relative strength is lower. But it could help explain a "long line" on the depot and replacement "conveyor belt" to the units. Dribble them forward on a long line only as fast as you can make new ones and feed those into the depot pool, and you'd moderate the loss rate that way, in other words.

As for StuGs and Marders at the time of Mars, my guesstimate comes from counting mobile formations and assuming there would be that many Marder companies (some 2, some missing 1) and about half that many StuG brigades with the infantry, independent, attached to the motorized, etc. Which comes to about 240 AFVs at TOE. Then give them a roughly 50% haircut for not being at TOE, since we see the tanks clearly weren't. That puts the overall AFV fleet at 550-600, or half the (presumably TOE based) rkka guess. Does up the long 75 portion considerably, though, to maybe 175-200 or a third.

Still, the Russians were able to put mech corps with 200 tanks, up to 120 of them T-34s, opposite each sector they attacked in Mars. (That they basically didn't have tank army concentrations, only single mobile corps levels, was largely due to Zhukov's excessive division of effort, and was a primary cause of their defeat). The Germans would still be facing 4-5:1 odds in long 75 vs. T-34 numbers, and 2-3:1 overall, even after all reserves arrive.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by JasonC:

What I actually find more shocking, barely believable, is the discrepancy between total German fleet strength as of that date, and the strength with the actual army fighting the only fight that mattered, in the east.

Germany didn't have a mere 2000 tanks in late 1942. It had 5000 at least - we know the production and we know the losses to date. So where were the rest?

The whole African theater was lucky to see 200 at absolute peaks. The Germans were not actually engaged anywhere else. Yes there were formations in the west, some for defense there and others refitting in their time out of the front before being sent back east.

But a huge portion of the available armor would appear to be in the rear doing nothing - in the replacement army or units in Germany or factory to front etc. At the peak of the crisis of the war. Why?

Ah I see your 700 to 1000 "in repair" are actually in the east and not included in the 1900 operational total. That helps - those are probably in churn and a portion back in action any given week. It still leaves half the panzer force elsewhere.

Panzerarmee Africa had about 300 German tanks operational (May 42). They also constantly lost tanks in transit. In late 42 (before Alamein, it was probably similar.

A good number of tanks were in units rebuilding (6.PD) or converting (SS Panzerkorps). Those would probably account for 6-700 right there, if not more. In late 42 they were also busy committing 10.PD to North Africa, a full strength division with two battalions of III and IV long, another 200+.

How many of the 5,000 were actually combat-worthy (i.e. at least 50L42 equipped Panzer III)?

All the best

Andreas

[Renaud]

Parabola you are getting more than you bargained for! hehe.

A large proportion of the tanks I listed for the divisions above for Nov-Dec are in fact pzII, pz38t or pzIIIkz, or pzIV-III 75shorts...looks like only about 130 50l60 and 75l43 gun-armed tanks are operational in the above 6 divisions. If you look at tank kill #'s for this period, most of the heavy lifting was done by 50l60/75l43. 50l42 got many fewer kills than 50l60 for obvious reasons. Of course the Russians were attacking and would presumably face a lot of AT/AA guns from the infantry divisions.

[Andreas]

There were also some Stugs, which may have been L43 at least, and which would in any case have been good enough to deal death to lighter Soviet tanks, using hollow-charge ammo. IIRC the Stug unit attached to 78.ID claimed over 160 Soviet tanks in the battle. While the claim is probably nonsense, it gives you an idea of the performance of the weapons.

All the best

Andreas

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

For the Russians at least, part of the solution may well lie in the fact that any major repair required the tank to be returned to the factory for rebuild. If it couldn't be fixed in the field (new gun, new tracks, roadwheel replacement), it was hauled to a railhead, placed on a flatcar and shipped back to the Urals.

This was true even during the Cold War, per Suvorov and a number of other veterans of the Red Army. The reason? Insufficient technical specialists, who in the Russian military were mostly officers anyway. This was a direct consequence of the low level of motorization and industrialization in what was still very much a rural country. The most efficient way to get the repairs done properly was to send the tank hulks to where the experts, the parts and the heavy equipment needed were all to be found--the factories. What wasn't repairable was melted down to make more weapons. Recycling--Russian style!

By contrast, the Germans, by far more technically savvy as a group, could and did do a lot of major repair in forward zones, but even they sent major cases clear back to Germany for repair or rebuild. See, for example, what was done with Dr. Porsche's Ferdinands after Kursk. Their rebuild and MG mount upgrade took weeks. See also some of the accounting games played by one of the German commanders at Arnhem with his readiness numbers by removing certain components (tracks and gunsights) from his already entrained for Germany AFVs and for a time, keeping him out of the fight. Later, he was forced to bust hump, put them back on and rush into the battle.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

JK - perhaps part of it, but after Kursk as an example, Vatutin's front got itself back into shape for the counteroffensive in the south, less than a month later, exclusively by salvaging tanks field KOed in the Kursk fighting. Without any trips back to the factory. So it might be a rule of thumb but it isn't literally true always.

As for the Germans, they also just had this constitutional inability to write off a wreck, no matter how wrecked, and waited until the front moved on them to admit the thing was gone. This was especially true of the heavier, more valuable vehicles. Their TWOs really aren't comparable with other people's TWOs as a result, unless you include the next big shift of the front in the time period involved.

Any period with the front static, they are going to underreport their own effectively permanent losses by a factor of 2-3 times. "Effectively permanent loss" being defined as the date a tank leaves operational status for the *last* time, no matter how long it lingers in "repair" categories before final write off.

For Renaud and Andreas, short 75s were certainly effective by this date. They weren't in 1941, but by 1942 they had plenty of HEAT ammo for them and its quality had improved enough, that they were effective T-34 killers with it. The muzzle velocity obviously isn't great, and that matters in open steppe fighting in the south. But in a forested region, a 500 meter effective range really isn't any big deal, and 75L24 firing HEAT would be perfectly effective.

Also, remember the Russians are themselves 40% light tanks at this date - T-60s, T-70s, some smaller lend lease. The lower end of the weight mix is comparable. Also, this is the specific era in which the heavier weapons are disproportionately on the "non-tank" SP guns, with Marders and long StuGs between them outnumbering long 75 Pz IVs by about a factor of 2.

The Germans probably had on the order of 300 effective T-34 killers, therefore, not half that. Of course, they also had a prepared defense with PAK etc.

I still consider Russian stuff ups in Mars underexplained. Blaming fog for poor arty coordination e.g. (as Glantz does) would apply equally to Uranus, where it undoubtedly hurt the arty prep some but helped the infantry. There was serious division of effort up at the operational scale, and the Germans did have mobile division reaction reserves, which they lacked in the south. The Germans undoubtedly had a better defense system and certainly coordinated the artillery fires better etc. But the Russians still managed to "blow" some pretty awesome local armor and total odds advantages, on the axes of attack. That remains largely unexplained, in my opinion.