How can deal with KV-2 in 1941?

[Yuen]

How to destroy it by Stug3 or Pzkw3/4 in 600-800m range in 1941 operation ? :confused:

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Lots of shoot and scoot, preferably from two directions to keep it from tracking any particular target. Keep hitting it, and eventually the crew will decide things are unhealthy and pull back or bail.

If you have to move in LOS to it, haul ass to your next covered position.

[MeatEtr]

How can deal with KV-2 in 1941?

A wing and a prayer!

[Soddball]

You will almost certainly not be able to penetrate its armour. I would suggest that you cover it with smoke and close with infantry.

[MikeyD]

Any chance you can acquire a couple Stukas?

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by Vergeltungswaffe:

Lots of shoot and scoot, preferably from two directions to keep it from tracking any particular target. Keep hitting it, and eventually the crew will decide things are unhealthy and pull back or bail.

If you have to move in LOS to it, haul ass to your next covered position.

I know this tactic works well in CM, this can even be accomplished with a 2cm Flak gun vs a green crew. But how realistic is it? I mean if I'm in a KV and a Pz II is playing scoot and shoot with me I'm not going to bail out just because the Pz keeps pinging me.

To answer the question, just shoot the KV a lot from multiple angles and you might immobilize it, damage its gun, or have the crew abandon it. Worst case scenerio is that the KV detroys all your armor and rolls up slowly on you with Soviet submachine gun platoons supporting it. Hope you got some woods to hide in.

[Zebulon Pleasure Beast]

The only time I ever used a KV-2 it had it's gun disabled by a mortar round before it even saw the enemy.

:mad:

[MeatEtr]

Originally posted by oneirogen:

The only time I ever used a KV-2 it had it's gun disabled by a mortar round before it even saw the enemy.

:mad:

Wow, now thats a bummer, extreme bad luck. That sounds like me. Your somebody i need to be playing against, someone who can at least match my own horrible luck. :mad:

[DBaron]

Don't have KV-2's have a horrid rate of fire?

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by MeatEtr:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by oneirogen:

The only time I ever used a KV-2 it had it's gun disabled by a mortar round before it even saw the enemy.

:mad:

Wow, now thats a bummer, extreme bad luck. That sounds like me. Your somebody i need to be playing against, someone who can at least match my own horrible luck. :mad: </font>

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Originally posted by FM Paul Heinrik:

I know this tactic works well in CM, this can even be accomplished with a 2cm Flak gun vs a green crew. But how realistic is it? I mean if I'm in a KV and a Pz II is playing scoot and shoot with me I'm not going to bail out just because the Pz keeps pinging me.

Well, this has been debated before, and I come down on the side of, yes this is not totally unlikely in real combat.

First of all, you are in a vehicle with highly limited visibility, so you are not sure about everything going on around you.

Second, if that vehicle is getting hit, you are not feeling happy about that, even if you are aware of the penetration capability of whatever is shooting at you (which the average WWII tanker really was not). They are not thinking, "Man am I glad to be in a KV-2, nobody can touch me".

Third, if you are being hit, the enemy knows you're there, and you never know what might hit you next. They may be thinking the shooting is a distraction from the pioneers that just tossed a grenade bundle under the hull. So, you are really feeling like you should pull back to a less exposed position, or if you take a hit to the traverse mechanism, the tracks, the optics, or the gun, maybe you're thinking, hmm, lets get the hell out of this thing, and see about not getting killed.

So, while it is certainly a compromise, I don't think troops abandoning an AFV in the face of inferior AFV's is unrealistic at all.

One last thing, that most of the posters failed to address, is that he wants to kill it with a StuG III or Pzkw III or IV's at 600-800m. 50mm and 75mm rounds hitting your tank are certainly not trivial and could break the morale of many a crew.

[Peterk]

They are so slow and usually manned by really bad crews. Just gang up on it from all sides, the crew often ails without even any penetration hits.

I've yet to see one of these guys alone really prove to be a threat. A whole pltoon of themacting in concert might be another story.

[Mad Russian]

Also, the KV's were so new that most soldiers in the Red Army hadn't seen one before the war started. There are several documented cases where the KV's scared their own infantry into leaving the field.

The crews weren't sure how good the tanks were and often had only hours of familiarization in them before going to war in them.

So I can see if they are getting hits from several different directions that they may bail.

I just played a scenario that had two KV-2's and I had no armor. I killed one with grenade bundles and was about to get the other one when the game ended.

Good Hunting.

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Vergeltungswaffe: Good explanation. I forget that "we" have hingsight and detailed armor books while in WW2 most tankers didn't know what the heck was going on.

Could tank crews tell the difference between getting hit by a 20mm vs a 50mm shell or a grenade ect. Obviously they will know something big hit them if they see day light threw a 5" hole in the hull but does smaller shells make less noise hitting the hull vs bigger shells?

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by Panther Commander:

Also, the KV's were so new that most soldiers in the Red Army hadn't seen one before the war started. There are several documented cases where the KV's scared their own infantry into leaving the field.

That's funny.

Soviet infantry: "Comrade the Facist has flanked us with a new monstrous tank, lets get out of here!" KV tank crew: "Why are all our infantry running away? We better get out of here too, lets bail out and run!"

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Originally posted by FM Paul Heinrik:

Obviously they will know something big hit them if they see day light threw a 5" hole in the hull but does smaller shells make less noise hitting the hull vs bigger shells?

As I understand it, the difference in concussion and sound between a 20mm and a 75mm would generally be fairly noticeable, but even a 50mm shell would have enough kinetic energy to make quite a bang, and a stream of 20mm's would be like someone swinging a sledge hammer quickly against the vehicle, which would also be fairly disconcerting.

I have a great picture in my mind from your description of the KV-2 misidentification fiasco.

[Dennis Grant]

and a stream of 20mm's would be like someone swinging a sledge hammer quickly against the vehicle

I gots a story about that.

My unit went to Ft Knox to use the Yank tank simulators there, and we were practicing in the simulator. My troop was in Bradleys (Recce forever!) while the rest of the Regiment was in M1s.

We had gotten to the part of the battle where the sabre squadrons had advanced through Recce lines and was beating the hell out of the enemy. This was an opportunity to take a bit of a breather (the point where sabre moves through Recce is always a little nerve-wracking, because the gunners in the tanks don't always take their AFV Rec vary seriously and fratricide is a very real problem). Normally Recce moves to the flanks for flank surveillance at this point, but I had been told I could leave them there so we just sat tight.

Then I get a contact report over the radio on a grid square a good deal closer to me than expected. I plotted all contacts as a matter of course, and this one was right in front of me, in a wooded area.

The software at the time represented woods with a kinda domed structure with a wooded texture mapped onto it. When you drove into woods, it was like driving into a big tent - you couldn't see in or out of it. So it was entirely possible that somebody had slipped through and had been seen driving into that wooded area.

Normal SOP was to smoke hell out of the woods with arty - Recce only uses its integral weapons in "holy ****!" moments - but the battle was winding down, and I've got this 25mm chain gun....

So what the hell. I called in "60 Engaging" and started firing 25mm into the woods semi-indirect.

Now unbeknownst to me, with the battle winding down the BC had decided to prank the DCO, and had called in the contact on the DCO's command tank. I was thus busy engaging the DCO - remember, all I can see is the "woods" tent thingy.

Well, the simulator speaker system makes no distiction between getting hit with 125mm or 25mm. There's a great big honkin' subwoofer deal in the sim, and getting hit sets off a hell of a "boom!" But the ROF of 25mm is a LOT higher than 125mm, and it turns out my blind-fire was a lot more accurate than one could reasonably expect.

The hammering noise in the DCO's sim was so bad that the crew bailed out in order to get away from the noise.

So I guess we have a real-world example.

DG

[Amedeo]

In one of his books on Soviet armour S. Zaloge describes an action near Borisov in 1941: "[...]the light tanks were quickly knocked out for the loss of one PzKpfw III. The T-34 was flanked, and a carefully placed shot blew away a track link disabling it. The crew leapt from the relative security of their armour and were mown down by machinegun fire. The KV-2 was repeatedly struck but not damaged by the German tank fire, but under the frightening pounding of the PzKpfw IV's HE rounds the crew panicked and baled out, only to suffer the same fate."

A report from Gen. Eremenko about KV tanks clearly states that: "Hadled by brave men KV tanks can do wonders [...] Often our tanks went out of action due to the hesitant and unsure conduct of their crews rather than direct hits. For this reason we subsequently manned the KV tanks with hand-picked crews."

Summing up: what one sees in CMBB is not too far from reality.

[K_Tiger]

Sure, those things happend, but a vet or an experienced crew would not leave an "untouched" Tank. Not to mention, that you get shot by your own Men for deserting.

I mean, what can be saver on a Battlefield like a Tank?? If you bail out, you are then not only a Traget for the ennemy Tank, no, you are then also a Target for anything that can shot at you, including Arty. And the terrain around a Tank is mostly open and not the best to give you cover.

I say, if the Tank is able to move, no one would leave him without a emergency situation.

[Guest Mike]

20mm won't make a KV evacuate - you will need to get a gun or track hit, and 20mm's dont' do those in big tanks!!

37mm will tho!

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by Mike:

20mm won't make a KV evacuate - you will need to get a gun or track hit, and 20mm's dont' do those in big tanks!!

37mm will tho!

I think I've seen it done. 2cm Flak in woods about 700 m away a KV1 comes into sight and is heading straight towards the Flak. KV closes to about 400 m, obviously doesn't see the Flak yet. I'm worried that it will get close enough to discover the Flak so I order it to open up at 300m. Flak hits, KV crew buttons up and starts to do the panic dance (driving forward and backwards) all the while the 2cm is just pounding the KV. The Flak doesn't damage tank or anything but on the 3rd turn crew pops out and starts running. I say I think I've seen this because after so many games of CM I tend to mix up memories, might have been a 3.7 cm Flak instead.

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by K_Tiger:

Sure, those things happend, but a vet or an experienced crew would not leave an "untouched" Tank. Not to mention, that you get shot by your own Men for deserting.

I mean, what can be saver on a Battlefield like a Tank?? If you bail out, you are then not only a Traget for the ennemy Tank, no, you are then also a Target for anything that can shot at you, including Arty. And the terrain around a Tank is mostly open and not the best to give you cover.

I say, if the Tank is able to move, no one would leave him without a emergency situation.

Problem is that in the first six months there were no experienced and veteran tank crews for the KV's.

Tanks are the least safe place on a battlefield. A foxhole is much safer and infantry units often didn't want tanks parked near them because of the amount of fire that they draw. A tank is the biggest threat on a battlefield so that makes it the biggest target.

Good Hunting.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Originally posted by Dennis Grant:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> and a stream of 20mm's would be like someone swinging a sledge hammer quickly against the vehicle

I gots a story about that.

My unit went to Ft Knox to use the Yank tank simulators there, and we were practicing in the simulator. My troop was in Bradleys (Recce forever!) while the rest of the Regiment was in M1s.

We had gotten to the part of the battle where the sabre squadrons had advanced through Recce lines and was beating the hell out of the enemy. This was an opportunity to take a bit of a breather (the point where sabre moves through Recce is always a little nerve-wracking, because the gunners in the tanks don't always take their AFV Rec vary seriously and fratricide is a very real problem). Normally Recce moves to the flanks for flank surveillance at this point, but I had been told I could leave them there so we just sat tight.

Then I get a contact report over the radio on a grid square a good deal closer to me than expected. I plotted all contacts as a matter of course, and this one was right in front of me, in a wooded area.

The software at the time represented woods with a kinda domed structure with a wooded texture mapped onto it. When you drove into woods, it was like driving into a big tent - you couldn't see in or out of it. So it was entirely possible that somebody had slipped through and had been seen driving into that wooded area.

Normal SOP was to smoke hell out of the woods with arty - Recce only uses its integral weapons in "holy ****!" moments - but the battle was winding down, and I've got this 25mm chain gun....

So what the hell. I called in "60 Engaging" and started firing 25mm into the woods semi-indirect.

Now unbeknownst to me, with the battle winding down the BC had decided to prank the DCO, and had called in the contact on the DCO's command tank. I was thus busy engaging the DCO - remember, all I can see is the "woods" tent thingy.

Well, the simulator speaker system makes no distiction between getting hit with 125mm or 25mm. There's a great big honkin' subwoofer deal in the sim, and getting hit sets off a hell of a "boom!" But the ROF of 25mm is a LOT higher than 125mm, and it turns out my blind-fire was a lot more accurate than one could reasonably expect.

The hammering noise in the DCO's sim was so bad that the crew bailed out in order to get away from the noise.

So I guess we have a real-world example.

DG </font>

[Alech]

Originally posted by Mike:

20mm won't make a KV evacuate - you will need to get a gun or track hit, and 20mm's dont' do those in big tanks!!

37mm will tho!

I set up 10 Quad 20mm's to fire on one Elite KV-1S in the open, and after about 30 seconds it was immobilized and after about 50 seconds the crew bailed.

-Alech

[Vixen]

This thread inspired me to use some KV-2s in a QB last night. I picked them with regular crew just to toughen up their morale a bit (along with some BT-7s, Infantry company, and other assorted untis). The Germans had a mix of Crack/Veteran 38t(a), IVc, IIc and PSW 222 and some crack infanty. Within 2 turns after the AI Germans made contact, one of the KV-2's had it's gun damaged. Within 5 turns the other had its gun damaged and was imobilized quickly followed by the imobilization of the other. Both crews bailed out. Engagement range was 400-600M with the Germans firing mostly from the KV2 frontal arcs. The KV-2 accounted for a total of 3 German tanks/PSW222 and a few infantry.