Soviet gun and ammo

[Inola]

Caution! Not for Sigrun!

Some translations from russian about tiger.

Letter of military soviet of armored and mechanized forces of Red Army about results of testing German tank T-6.

4th may of 1943. Absolutely secret.

To the marshal of Soviet Union Comrade Stalin.

About fire tests at the period from 24 till 30 april this year on sciense-explorer battlefield GBTU KA. There were made tests of arty sistems of Red Army. Also 88mm gun was tested on T-34 and KV-1.

Results:

Side, rear and turret armor 82mm thick can be penetrated (at strate angle of projectile hit):

1. Tungsten projectile of 45mm AT gun model 1942 year -from 350 meters.

2. Tungsten projectile of 45mm tank gun model 1937 year -from 200 meters.

3. AP (solid) projectile of 57mm AT gun ZIS-2 - from 1000m.

4. AP projectile 85mm AA gun-from 1500m.

5. AP (solid) projectile of English 57mm tank gun -from 600m.

6. AP (solid) projectile of English 57mm AT gun -from 1000m.

7. AP (solid) projectile of American 75mm tank gun -from 600m.

Front armor of T-6 100mm thick can be penetrated with 85mm AA gun (AP projectile) from 1000m.

Fire from 76mm F-34 gun on T-6`s side (82mm) srom 200m showed AP projectiles of this caliber are brittle, and broke up from impact. Tungsten 76mm projectiles cant penetrate fron armor from 500m.

T-6`s 88mm gun can penetrate (AP ammo):

1. The thickiest part of T-34 (cast 140 mm bar), and front turret from 1500m.

2. The thickiest part of KV-1 105mm (75mm armor and 30mm screen) from 1500m.

(here follow a lot of requests about emprovements, hard to translate)

Member of Military Soviet, general-leutenant of armor forces, Korobkov.

Second commander (my dictionary has broken, I cant find correct word)

of armored and mechanized forces, general-leutenant Biriukov.

From author: those, who had done this test would have been shot if they had told "tiger is not a problem" rather than "tiger is big problem".

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Sigrun,

kill-loss ratios for Tigers (I & II) was below six. of course kill-loss ratios regarding actual engagements between Tigers and enemy tanks was a lot higher, but there's a lot more to a tanks lifespan than just taking part in tank duels. and a tank, especially a Tiger, can meet a sorry end in ways other than being KO by an enemy tank.

getting bogged in arguments based on intellectually dishonest use of statistics is waste of ones time. for example Finnish StuGs had a kill-ratio above 10:1 and by average their opponents (T-34/85, IS2) killed 0.01 tanks at the Finnish front. it doesn't mean that Finnish StuGs were literally 1000 times better than Soviet IS-2s or had 1000:1 kill ratio. what's more it absolutely does not mean that StuGs made a significant impact at the Finnish front or that IS-2 was a failed tank. the same applies to Tiger kill ratios - there is no contradiction between 15:1 and 5:1 ratios - they are just results of looking for different things at the same data.

[JasonC]

Let's labor it even further.

The source the Tiger talers like to cite was the 4th highest scoring Tiger driver. For those in Rio Linda, that means about 1345 other Tiger drivers did worse.

If 14 or 34 per outing was typical, how come the highest claims (let alone real after a claim to TWO haircut) run 150-170? Did they only go out driving 5-10 times over the whole war?

Taking my 5 per average figure and considering 1200 on the eastern front, ignoring western and Italy etc, one can fit a Pareto distribution (the known type when there is skill involved) to my 5 per average and the recorded ace claims. One gets k = 100 and alpha = 3.5, as one decent fit. If instead one first gives the claims a 50% haircut, you get a flatter skill curve, more like k = 25 and alpha = 0.25.

The former would mean that the top fifth of Tiger drivers got practically all the kills, and a large portion at the bottom were lost without getting any. The latter, flatter one, would have practically all getting at least 1, and over 500 getting 2 or more.

Truth is probably somewhere in between - some modest portion at the low end lost before getting any kills etc - but to me common sense suggests closer to the second. (Since the kill scores often involve well more than one "mount", that also follows common sense). If one just splits the difference one gets a pretty natural fit at alpha (the exponent part) equal to 1, k around 62. That puts the top 10 at 100-126 real, and has 250 scoring 5 or more, and a similar portion not scoring at all.

[Sigrun]

Jason, I have never before seen somebody applying such an utter load of theoretical tosh to a real-world scenario. Do you really think you can assess real-world WW2 kill ratios by the use of theoretical formulae?!

You threw a figure out there (5-1, probably less), so did I (10-1, probably more). You base your conclusions upon abstract formulae, I base mine upon the combat reports of those doing the killing.

And your comments re the Panther are so painfully spurious as to beggar belief. Did I specify T34 kills in regard to the "Panther did somewhat better than the Tiger"? Or should you have read "in general" between the lines? Considering the multiple inputs in this thread, from various people, concerning various aspects, it's not particularly easy to maintain a pure response.

I think I said it before, or something like it...put down the goggles and step away from the loud-hailer.

[Kineas]

I suggest a tactical withdrawal for you, Sigrun.

[Bigduke6]

Nah, this is entertaining, let him dig his grave deeper. Every time I think the guy can't top himself, he comes up with a new whopper.

Hey Sigrun, lemme ask you this, who had the best uniforms?

[JonS]

Meyer, wrap your warped mind around this simple concept:

The Russians produced a known amount of tanks, and lost a known proportion to them.

That's it. That's really all there is to Jasons analysis.

The rest of it - the statistical stuff you write off so glibly - is just a sound way of figuring out which German tanks types got what proportion of the Russian fleet that was KO'd. If one type in the German fleet gets more, then another type MUST get less, because at the end you can't have the Germans KOing more tanks than the Germans lost.

The Pareto analysis is a good way to figure out the expected range of individual results within each part of the fleet - in this case the Tiggers. A few Tigger drivers get the kind of scores that give you and your ilk wet dreams and woodies, a bunch of them get nothing, and the bulk only get a couple. It cannot be otherwise, else you have the Russians losing more tanks than they fielded. Which hopefully even you can see makes no sense.

The results might be unpaletable, especially to a good little goosestepper, but you really can't argue with them. You can quible about whether the average was 1.1 or 1.2, but the core argument is sound.

[AcePylut]

IMHO - the immobilization modelling is just fine. If you're worried about it, then don't buy tanks during setup.

Spending all your points on a Tiger, then claiming that the immobliizations are game-breaking because you spent all your cash on a Tiger and it broke down just doesn't fly. I call that bad money management.

It really seems from reading this thread, amongst others, that the players have forgotten the 'game' in favor of the 'numbers'.

Like someone said in this or another thread, how many Germans grab the StuG (if memory serves) during QB's in 1943 (or '42?) vs other more applicable German tanks, because it has that nice gun and frontal plate armor that the russians "can't beat"? You're playing the numbers not the game.

When such actions occur, that tells me that players aren't "'simulating' battle on the East Front", they are playing the game to boost their ladder standings. Ghey.

So that's why I pretty much only play CM against my older brother. We play it for fun, not for ladder points. We play it to "pretend" that we are back in 1941 nearing the gates of Moscow, or defending the banks of the Volga, or storming the Vistula, where equipment was not as reliable as we "think" it is, where Tigers and StuG's didn't roam the battlefield in the thousands 2 days after release from production, where the crappy T26 might be all you had... etc.

I thought about playing against other people, but then I read some "tactics" that say "put your guys back 26 yards in this type of woods, because at 27 yards you can't see out of the woods (numbers might be a couple yards long or short, you get the point). That in a nutshell is ultimately gamey crap that I don't like, but know that it can't be avoided after a game has been out this long. Put em in the woods or don't, but shees poring for hours over exactly where that "26yard" point is... time to take a step back!

Anyhow, immobilization happens. Sometimes they occur at the worst times. Sometimes I lose because my tank became immobilized. Sometimes my brother loses because it happens. But such occurances are rare, and usually the result of a desparation move because the battle is almost alreadly lost. It happens, worried about it then don't buy tanks, otherwise, get get over it and deal.

[Elementalism]

Originally posted by Inola:

Lets return to tigers. It was really good AFV, but dont forget-it was very hard to exploit. In reality, one day of usage requred nearly 2-3 days of tecknical support-it was often compared with Luftwaffe planes. And it requred a lot of fuel (gasoline, not exonomic diesel). There were ideas to unit each two tiger battalions-one would be in support, another could be in battle. Knikapf`s transmission was good, but two columns of wheels-one of the nightmares of German tecknical support service.

Going to take this a bit off topic. Things havent changed, except now it is their cars. As an owner of 2 Audi's and my sister owning a VW. I can say the above is true of their cars, nice when they work, but expect to spend lots of time repairing them.

btw this thread was interesting until Sig went into some political tirade and discredited himself.

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by Kineas:

I suggest a tactical withdrawal for you, Sigrun.

No, I don't think so. I've come across the "blind 'em with bull****" tactic more than once before, and Jason is a true master. Hats off to him, I actually admire him for it because he does it so incredibly well.

Unfortunately for him it counts for shinola against anyone who is capable of independant thought. It fools the chimps, nobody else. He needs to learn that, because the very people he clearly most wants to impress are the very same who are least likely to be taken in by it.

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by JonS:

Meyer, wrap your warped mind around this simple concept:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />The Russians produced a known amount of tanks, and lost a known proportion to them.

That's it. That's really all there is to Jasons analysis.

The rest of it - the statistical stuff you write off so glibly - is just a sound way of figuring out which German tanks types got what proportion of the Russian fleet that was KO'd. If one type in the German fleet gets more, then another type MUST get less, because at the end you can't have the Germans KOing more tanks than the Germans lost.

The Pareto analysis is a good way to figure out the expected range of individual results within each part of the fleet - in this case the Tiggers. A few Tigger drivers get the kind of scores that give you and your ilk wet dreams and woodies, a bunch of them get nothing, and the bulk only get a couple. It cannot be otherwise, else you have the Russians losing more tanks than they fielded. Which hopefully even you can see makes no sense.

The results might be unpaletable, especially to a good little goosestepper, but you really can't argue with them. You can quible about whether the average was 1.1 or 1.2, but the core argument is sound. </font>

[JonS]

Originally posted by Meyer:

Of course I know some had a bigger share than others, wasn't that taken as read, considering we're talking about averages?

Well, yes, except that you are starting at the other end. You are taking German AARs that say "We typically killed 10 Russian tanks each, every afternoon", and treating that as gospel, and treating it as average. But, just like Rudels claims, it's BS.

Jasons approach starts from the other end:

> The Russians fielded 100,000* tank-class vehs

> The Russians lost 60,000*

> The Germans fielded 60,000* AFVs with long 75mm or greater.

> The Germans lost their entire fleet

> Therefore, on average, each German tank scored one kill before it was itself KO'd (assuming that all German ATGs and inf-AT wpns collectively got a big fat zero)

and proceed from there.

No bronzed adonis' required. No self-serving AARs required. No leaps along the lines of "Carius said it, so it must be true and must be typical". No thinly disguised neo-nazi goosestepping BS required.

* Numbers made up for the purposes of this. Look earlier in the thread for the actual numbers.

[AcePylut]

That conclusion relies on the assumption that all those German tanks were knocked out by enemy action.

This assumption is not proven.

The conclusion drawn is not valid.

[Dogface]

In the same vein not all of the soviet tanks were knocked out by enemy action.

[Bigduke6]

C'mon Sigrun, don't be a coward. Be a man, answer the question.

You think those black German tanker uniforms are really spiffy, don't you?

Maybe even, you have one hanging in your closet?

You can tell us. Since we're so intellectually inferior to you, what harm could there be in sharing your little secret with us chimps?

[John Kettler]

Given the relatively small Tiger production quantitities and the German mania for record keeping, do we not have at least first order estimates of how many Tigers which were produced didn't even make it to the battlefield, but were instead lost en route via blown bridges, derailments, blasted train yards, and the like?

Seems to me that this would be a useful thing to know, given the swing it would produce in the statistics.

Years ago, I got to peruse at a friend's several of those gorgeous, expensive Fedorowicz Tiger books in which the most incredible minutiae of matters Tiger were recorded. One of the things which really stood out was how many of the these beasties were permanently lost because of mine damage which prevented evacuation during defensive mobile ops, mechanical failure (usually transmission), or simply running out of fuel. This was major strength loss and that was atop direct combat losses from tanks, ATGs, artillery, outright mine kills and other modalities. Talking Russian front here.

As I recall, the noncombat losses, when seen at the Kompanie and Abteilung levels, were some two to three times as bad as direct combat losses, and replacements were few and far between, especially once the tide shifted in the East and the Germans were doing the retreating.

Seems to me that by applying the appropriate reduction for Tigers which didn't make it to the battlefield at all, this would have the effect of increasing the average kills per Tiger which did see combat. In turn, this should give us a better sense of the Tiger's combat productivity per tank committed to battle. Of course, among those which did see combat, the bulk of the kills will still come from a small fraction of the force committed.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Andreas]

All this has been done by Wilbeck in 'Sledgehammers' (MSc thesis free download, book from Aberjona press, but don't bother with it even though it is cheap). With the massive flaw that he accepts German claims as fact, with no research in Allied archives to validate them, even where he could have done so easily.

But even so, he does not get better than 1:10 in combat, and 1:5 overall (factoring in non-combat losses), IIRC. Of course, he also counts as a non-combat loss a Tiger that is overrun at a repair depot after having been damaged in combat (your example of mine damage overrun in mobile operations) to the point that it needed to go into repair. Which is just more nonsense linked to the definition of repair states. By that definition thousands of Soviet tanks overrun in 1941 were non-combat losses.

All this means that reality was nowhere near 1:10, no matter what Carius or Nazi fanboys like to make us believe. Jason is right - anyone doubting it must have gone to Goosestepping class while he should have done math.

The Soviets lost probably 1/3rd of all the AFVs they would lose before the Tigers and Panthers even arrived. And out of the rest, Tigers got 1/3rd, with Panthers getting even more. That leaves another third to be distributed between mines, Mark IVs, Stugs, SPAT, towed AT, and all other causes. Right. Anyone seriously believing that needs to do learn how to do some simple arithmetic. 1+1 does not add up to 3, and no allowances are made for Nazi fanboys.

Ron Klages is in the process of creating a history for every Tiger tank, AFAIK. Massive undertaking, but should be doable.

End of story.

All the best

Andreas

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Given the relatively small Tiger production quantitities and the German mania for record keeping, do we not have at least first order estimates of how many Tigers which were produced didn't even make it to the battlefield, but were instead lost en route via blown bridges, derailments, blasted train yards, and the like?

Seems to me that this would be a useful thing to know, given the swing it would produce in the statistics.

Years ago, I got to peruse at a friend's several of those gorgeous, expensive Fedorowicz Tiger books in which the most incredible minutiae of matters Tiger were recorded. One of the things which really stood out was how many of the these beasties were permanently lost because of mine damage which prevented evacuation during defensive mobile ops, mechanical failure (usually transmission), or simply running out of fuel. This was major strength loss and that was atop direct combat losses from tanks, ATGs, artillery, outright mine kills and other modalities. Talking Russian front here.

As I recall, the noncombat losses, when seen at the Kompanie and Abteilung levels, were some two to three times as bad as direct combat losses, and replacements were few and far between, especially once the tide shifted in the East and the Germans were doing the retreating.

Seems to me that by applying the appropriate reduction for Tigers which didn't make it to the battlefield at all, this would have the effect of increasing the average kills per Tiger which did see combat. In turn, this should give us a better sense of the Tiger's combat productivity per tank committed to battle. Of course, among those which did see combat, the bulk of the kills will still come from a small fraction of the force committed.

Regards,

John Kettler

Finally, somebody objective who makes some sense. The rest of you, a bunch of resentful children making childish (and highly predictable) "He says the German panzers did well, he must be a goose-stepping nazi" comments. Grow up, you're making yourselves look pathetic. I despise the jew-murdering nazis as much as I despise the child-raping soviets, both as bad as each other.

John's post finally brings us back full circle in a way, to my original contention, that any Tiger was good for at least ten T34 kills, averaged out. Russia was prime tank country, in that it allowed huge fields of fire...and gee, guess what the Tiger had...a cannon capable of killing a T34 long before the T34 could get even within hitting range, never mind penetrating range. Tigers, operated by highly trained and highly motivated crews, against poorly designed, poorly made crates that were under-crewed by barely trained peasants.

And Jason would have us believe these were capable of holding a less-than 5-1 ratio. Puh-LEESE!!!

Ten to one...a highly conservative estimate. The Tigers slaughtered the T34s, wholesale, day in and day out. The soviets threw THOUSANDS of them into German defensive positions, and the Tigers destroyed THOUSANDS of them, with very few losses TO THE T34s in return (majority of Tiger losses were arty, assault guns, mines and break-downs).

Allied fan-boys...responsible for most of the axis-neutered, game-balanced a-historical crap we get foisted on us by most developers these days. And when somebody finally has the BALLS to do it right, my god how you bleat and whine!!!

Battlefront got this one BANG ON...deal with it, or bugger off and go play Red Orchestra, they have the soviet armor just the way you like it.

[Andreas]

Still batting 0 on the facts front.

But at least now it is just vapid, not offensive. Bets are being taken on how long that will last.

Regards

Andreas

[Hensworth]

Originally posted by Sigrun:

...that any Tiger was good for at least ten T34 kills, averaged out.

No, not any Tiger.

Any Tiger that got a chance to get into a turkey shoot with T-34s, yes. But the vast majority of Tigers never got that opportunity.

That's all there is to it.

As to whether CM got it right :

</font>

• In july 1943 a Tiger costs roughly 260 points. You can buy 2 T-34s for that. So if you consider 10 to 1 fair odds for T-34s against Tigers then CM is a long way off. And that's based on performance on the tactical battlefield, which is one aspect of the price. It clearly doesn't account for the fact that there were 50 times more T-34s than there were Tigers, give or take. As a Soviet player, I wouldn't have a problem with losing 10 tanks to a Tiger if I could avoid running into one around every corner.</font>
• The Soviet 76mm gun can't penetrate 80mm of armor at any range, which is debatable at least.</font>
• Take a Soviet T34 and a captured German one of the exact same type, both unbuttoned, and put them head to head. For some inexplicable reason the German tank will always acquire its target first. I assume some coding glitch is responsible for the quality of optics still playing a role in target acquisition even when unbuttoned. It does mean that in unbuttoned duels Soviet tanks are forever slower in acquiring their targets than German ones. Pretty annoying when you have to survive on manoeuvering into position and getting the first shot off.</font>
• Every tank in the game does about an equally good job of estimating its chances against a foe and deciding on fight or flight, except the IS-2, which will back out of every duel even when the opposition has only the minutest chance of killing it and there is a round in the tube.</font>
• While every thrown infantry AT weapon seems to be equipped with a homing device (have you ever seen a grenade bundle or wurfmine miss ?), it frequently looks like Soviet troops are trying to launch their molotov cocktails into orbit. Whether or not smashing a bottle of flammables on a tank was an effective means of taking it out is another discussion, but I don't see any reason why molotovs should miss so much more often than other thrown AT weapons.</font>

There are many features of the Soviet side in the game which are justified and where I won't even bother going into a discussion about whether the particular way in which BFC chose to portray them is correct. The fact that troops are one level of quality lower than you actually bought them in 1941, the response times for tanks without radios, the artillery delays, the crappy AT ammo. All OK. But with the above things I have issues.

[ September 20, 2006, 03:23 AM: Message edited by: Sgt_Kelly ]

[stikkypixie]

I think the reason why grenade bundles en mines rarely seem to miss is that they are placed on to tank during a close assault. Same goes for demo charges. Molotovs are actually thrown so there is a higher chance of missing.

[Wicky]

Originally posted by Sigrun:

"Gun emplacements and the shattered remnants of a tank seemed apparent to this writer, a former military analyst. One of the vehicles looked very much like a World War II German Panzer I, right down to its peculiar track work. Others seen in the vicinity looked like a World War I rhomboid tank and a U.S. M-48 of 1960s vintage."

I'll let you work out where Mr Objective saw these tanks and it wasn't a Russian battlefield LOL

[Kineas]

Originally posted by Sgt_Kelly:

</font>

• While every thrown infantry AT weapon seems to be equipped with a homing device (have you ever seen a grenade bundle or wurfmine miss ?), it frequently looks like Soviet troops are trying to launch their molotov cocktails into orbit. Whether or not smashing a bottle of flammables on a tank was an effective means of taking it out is another discussion, but I don't see any reason why molotovs should miss so much more often than other thrown AT weapons.</font>

Maybe the number of grenade bundles and the attacks are abstracted out? So one throwing would represent a complex action like in the case of the small arms fire. Just a guess.

But the numbers of the bundles per squad imply the nonabstracted version. And why would the molotovs be different?

What's with the panzerfausts? Are they simulated individually?

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Still batting 0 on the facts front.

But at least now it is just vapid, not offensive. Bets are being taken on how long that will last.

Regards

Andreas

Vapid is it? What, like your's and others' asinine assumption that every single one of the 1200 Tigers on the EF was deployed simultaneously, with it's own crew?

Tigers were deployed gradually, and most of the crews went from one to the next as the old ones were lost. So much for "A handful of extremely effective crews and a majority of pretty average ones". Most Tiger crews were hand picked as veterans from other types. Yes, and that's another reason why 10-1 is not at all unreasonable.

Still batting "0" am I Andreas? Au contraire mate, my facts are all over your revisionist allied-fan-boy BS.

Sgt Kelly, the captured T34 does better than the soviet T34 because the German crew is supposed (rightfully) to be superior to the Soviet crew.

I have to agree that the points system does seem somewhat at odds with the Soviet ability to field so many tanks. Was Soviet output (industrial resource) so much greater than Germany's? I thought both countries had roughly equal industrial output for most of the war (obviously not right at the end), so how is it that only two T34s are approx the same value as one Tiger?

Rough cost of a T34/85: 164,000 roubles.

Rough cost of a Tiger: 250,000 marks.

Can anyone translate those WW2 values into present day dollars? Then we'll be able to comment properly on CMBB's point values.

Wicky, I'm not sure what your link concerning John Kettler's site is supposed to prove, other than provide an interesting link concerning yet more possible criminal activity by the US government? There's certainly nothing at all outlandish about the possibility of an extinct civilisation upon Mars, and even less about the idea that the scum leading us would attempt to hide it.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Sigrun,

the problem is that no tank unit has massive tank duels every day. most of the tanks lifespan the tank is not fighting enemy tanks. often tanks are lost because of other things than enemy tanks. this is especially the case with Tigers.

for example Schewere Panzer Abteilung 508 had a kill-ratio below 2:1 in Italy. most of the Tigers were destroyed by the crews during withdrawals.

Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502, in which Otto Carius served, was an example of another end of the spectrum, as it had a total kill-loss ratio around 13:1.

the statistical average really is somewhere around 5:1 and 6:1.

this average is not the average of how Tiger Is performed against T-34/76s in tank duels. that average would of course be a lot higher, likely somewhere around 15:1 - 20:1. but it is not contradicted by the fact that by average a Tiger got to kill 5 enemy tanks before it was lost (not necessary lost to enemy tank fire).

you and Jason are arguing about two very different things and there isn't necessarily any contradiction between what you both are claiming. at least as long as neither of you are trying to apply statistics to something which they have nothing to do with.