STUGGED UP AGAIN

[manchildstein (ii)]

i don't have the game handy at the moment but is it possible to buy a separate, heavy weapons company? or even better yet, an antitank company?

it seems as though, in a motorized or armored formation the antitank company would have 3 50, 8 37, and 6 lmg... in a '1st wave' infantry division it would probably have 2 50, 9 37, and 4 lmg (attached to an infantry battalion)... or 12 37 and 6 lmg (company from the divisional antitank battales)...

then in the motorized formations there is the heavy weapons company attached to battalion... 3 37 (+1 lmg), pioneer platon, 2 75mm ig...

if memory serves, in cmbb the heavy weapons companies are there when you purchase an entire battalion...

but you were probably addressing the ability to purchase AT batteries through the support weapons 'table'... no?

as for people like wittmann whose stug crews were able to hit the t34 turret ring at will, why not model this for the elite crews?... i still think that '6 of 18 t34 knocked out' ... that those were really bt tanks... grin...

[JasonC]

http://www.battlefield.ru/outlines/t34_47.gif

That is a picture of the 1940 model. Measuring things out with a ruler, by 16ths of a inch, I get the following admittedly rough estimates of different areas, from head on. I counted 741 square 16ths of an inch all told, as follows -

Tracks - 196 / 741 = 26.5%

Driver hatch - 32 / 741 = 4.3%

MG Ball - 18 / 741 = 2.4%

Vision slit - 3 / 741 = 0.4%

Rest of front hull - 308 / 741 = 41.6%

Turret ring - 24 / 741 = 3.2%

Gun - 8 / 741 = 1.1%

Mantlet - 34 / 741 = 4.6%

Rest of front turret - 118 / 741 = 15.9%

Roughly 25% turret area, 25% tracks, 50% hull. Some areas of the mantlet would likely result in gun damage, some might be weak points or flat hits. Most of the turret ring would also be weakpoint or flat hits. Of the hull hits, the vision slit is certainly a weak point, while the driver hatch and MG ball are weak, but not as weak.

If you count all vision and portions of the other hull points as "weak", you might expect 3% of the front hull to be weak point hits. If you count turret ring and a portion of the mantlet as "flat" hits, then you might expect 25-33% of the turret area hits (themselves 1/4 of the total) to be particularly "flat" hits, while 5-10% of the turret area hits would be "gun" hits (gun and a portion of the mantlet).

My suggested "round" model gives a 15% chance of an angle of 30 degrees or less at medium range with a regular shooter. Those would wind up penetrations. Better shooters or closer shots would increase the chance. If the shot is close enough to penetrate 40 degrees of slope, 30% qualify without good "mods".

But 2/3rds of turret hits would not hit weak or particularly flat points. The behavior I saw in my tests was instead that 2/3rds penetrate.

So, that is how I explain a statement that some hits on the gun mantle penetrate - it is a weak point report, about a small area of the tank - like the MG ball or turret ring, a few percent of the overall area. How do you explain statements that the 5 cm KwK is only effective from close range side and rear, that Pz IIIs should use an elaborate closing procedure, etc?

[Andreas]

Let's take a very simple, two-line AAR:

From Niepold's divisional history of 12.PD, translation by me:

East of Senno, at Podberitza, PR 29 succeeds bigtime on July 10th. It succeeds in destroying 75 of the heavy and heaviest Soviet tanks. Another 25 tanks are destroyed by other units of the division.

PR 29 was equipped with 38(t), Panzer II, Panzer IV 75L24.

The statement is not very detailed, so I would be interested to hear if somebody has a detailed AAR for this seemingly very interesting battle.

Questions abound. How did they manage to destroy them. What does 'destroy' mean? Which 'other units'.

It does point though, together with a statement by (IIRC) an officer of 7.PD in Glantz 'The early period of war' (7. PD was equipped with Panzer 35(t), Panzer II and Panzer IV 75L24) towards a possibility that early Barbarossa German tanks could handle Soviet heavies. IIRC the 7.PD chap says something like 'Yeah we figured it out how to kill them the first time, so we never developed the tank-fright.' Or somefink, just come back from drinks, and can't be bothered to dig around for the correct quote, but you get the picture.

On the other hand, 13.PD has problems handling Soviet mediums and heavies and can only achieve kills by using 75L24 HE against the add-on fuel tanks on the back of the Soviet tanks. That is at long range though.

Bottomline is, I am not convinced at this stage that German tankers were completely helpless against the Soviet mediums and heavies in early Barbarossa. 75 tanks is not just small change.

[SgtMuhammed]

Obviously they figured out how to kill them or the whole thing would have been over in '41. It is interesting to contrast these reports with those of only being able to kill 34s with shots to the engine covers from above. Makes one wonder.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by JasonC:

[so, that is how I explain a statement that some hits on the gun mantle penetrate - it is a weak point report, about a small area of the tank - like the MG ball or turret ring, a few percent of the overall area. How do you explain statements that the 5 cm KwK is only effective from close range side and rear, that Pz IIIs should use an elaborate closing procedure, etc?[/QB]

Good gracious, it does not list weak point penetrable areas in the entire report: It does not mention for the gunners to aim for the Drivers hatch nor the hull MG location. It does mention that the Side Hull/Turret can be penetrated the turret ring is susceptible to jamming to even MG bullets and that the Front turret will be penetrated and the mantlet welds will catastrophically fail due to penetration.

Why should the PIII attempt to gain side shots? Simple as the Soviet T-34 crews found during 43 attempting to close the range on tanks that can hit and kill you at 1500meters, head on is a suicidal move. Look at the gutting that the mostly T-34 5th Tank guard received when charging the PIV lang heavy units of II SS Pz Korps at Kursk. Funny but the “General” of “fast troops” did not want to lose Panzers and Panzer truppen to wasteful “Banzai” charges during 1942 and descirbed a safer route for taking them out.

[JasonC]

To Andreas - yes, the report is too short to draw any conclusions from. I can easily account for it, though. First an unlikely quibble - it does not say what types of Russian tanks they were, for starters - remember this early there are as many T-28s running around as KVs. But I discount that, and assume "heavy and heaviest" means they encountered T-34s and KVs.

The problem is, T-34s and KVs did not come in 75s or 100s, sans accompaniment, at this point in the war. They came in single companies, one each, in some battalions, with the rest lights. And if you follow that through, it fits the report perfectly, without any implication that 37mm pop guns - or 75L24 - routinely KOed KVs (it says "heaviest" right? Presumably no one is quite prepared to maintain that implication).

If they encountered an independent tank brigade with two battalions of the usual mix, you'd expect 60-70 lights, around 20 T-34s, and 10-15 KVs. Suppose "other units of the division" means gun front tactics - the panzers drawn them onto the gun front and then turn to attack once the Russians are engaged by said gun front.

It would then be perfectly believable they totalled such Russian formation, with the guns getting the "heaviest" - which surely any explanation of the report needs, to explain the dead KVs - while the tanks got the lights. Perhaps some of the T-34s too, of course, by hail fire, the Pz IVs, etc.

Then the unit truthfully reports - "we encountered heavy tanks, including the heaviest. The Pz Rgt killed 75 tanks and supporting units (guns) killed 25 more. We succeeded completely." But it does not mean they encountered 75 T-34s and 25 KVs, and KOed scores of T-34s with 37mm and 20mm guns. To get me to think that, you'd need a report that explicitly says the enemy tank types and what weapons took them out, etc.

As for the other fellow's comment that they must have learned how to handle them or "it all would have been over in 1941", it doesn't follow. First, because there weren't all that many yet, and second because the Russians did not know how to handle them yet, themselves. Guderian closed the Minsk, Smolensk, Kiev, and Bryansk pockets, which netted millions of men and thousands of tanks, without seeing a T-34 until October, more than 3 months into the campaign, on the road to Tula. He was hitting were they weren't, not where they were.

They did figure out how to handle them, however. They used the gun front, and they used hail fire, and they hit where the Russian tanks weren't when possible. Until the Russians learned how to handle their armor better, operationally, and also had the numbers to put T-34s everywhere there was armor instead of at a few places, those were quite sufficient.

By the time the Russians had learned and accomplished such things, the Germans had better tanks. But they started losing anyway, because the lessons the Russians were learning, backed by those kind of numbers, were more important than gun-armor tank specs.

As for Bastables explanation for the training document, oh now I see the light. It is not that no contemporary report says T-34s can routinely be killed from the front at 500-800 yards as long as you hit the turret, only a wargame made 60 years later does. No, the head of Panzer tactics training urged his men to close to a position 150 meters from the side and then use Pz Gr 40 because that is -easier- than closing to a position 500-800 meters from the front and then using Pz Gr 39. So, since it is easier and much simpler and safer, you and others won't mind having to do it, after "curved" is tweaked to mean "45 degrees, most of the time".

As for the direct statement in the same document that all of this is "since" the 5 cm KwK is only effective against the T-34 from the side or rear at close range, Bastables can simply ignore this statement because he has the evidence a wargame made 60 years later. And a report from Pz Rgt 203 that fully corroborates the statement made in the Panzer force training document can safely be ignored, because again he has the evidence of a wargame made 60 years later.

What it really comes down to is some people can't imagine how they did it, because they can't imagine succeeding in doing it themselves. So they tweak what "round" means until it means something they can do, and just ignore the obvious evidence that the men who actually did it never had it so good.

Tech gun and armor specs never dominated the operational war outcomes, as I have argued at great length on many other occasions. But continued belief in tank tech-spec dominance stubbornly remains, and cannot understand how other factors mattered more.

[GRUMLIN]

If I'd known how my request for an explanation as to how my STUG died like a dog would threadcreep into a slugging match between two heavyweight treadheads I never would have started it.

Heres another one for ya -

Have a BA70 (think its called that) haring down a dead straight road at FAST when it is targetted by an nme AT gun at 2 o'clock 1000m away. The BA throws itself into reverse JUST before it was about to enter the safe lee of a hill (as I planned) out of LOS from the gun, and gets SPLATTERED. Why do that?

G :mad:

[SgtMuhammed]

I don't think the AI really knows where it is going but only pays attention to where it is. You know what I mean?

[Bastables]

Originally posted by JasonC:

As for the direct statement in the same document that all of this is "since" the 5 cm KwK is only effective against the T-34 from the side or rear at close range, Bastables can simply ignore this statement because he has the evidence a wargame made 60 years later. And a report from Pz Rgt 203 that fully corroborates the statement made in the Panzer force training document can safely be ignored, because again he has the evidence of a wargame made 60 years later.

Pathetic, My argument is that Pz regt combat reports support the “Report” that only refers to ability for Penetrations to the side Hull/turret armour, front turret and the susceptibility of turret jamming due to hits on the ring even buy MG fire. The “Report” does not refer to “weak points” such as drivers hatch, engine cover or MG mount at all. Conclusion, the report means exactly that hits on the front turret at sub 500m penetrate and cause catastrophic weld failures. Pz regt 203 report is a firing trials table that has enemy tank hulks placed at a 30 deg firing angle and leads to pessimistic conclusions such as Tigers only able to penetrate Sherman’s at sub 1500m and PIV’s Lang penetrating shermans/T-34 at sub 800m. Pz regt 203 “combat trial” engagement ranges are completely at odds with Pz regt 33 reports that 5cm KwK penetrates T34 Hull/turret side armour at 400m and turret front at 400m.

But instead of keeping to the debate you start rabbiting that my basis of understanding is based merely on the game, which is odd since I’ve not referred to the game at all in this thread nor used it as a source. Again this sort of baseless accusation along with your tangential “operational” proof does not reflect well on you at all. I’m still amazed at the idiocy of your 38t argument, was it an attempt to bury me with factious scattergun approach? (I especially like the "You must be scared to accept my reasoning because the game will be harder", again pathetic).

[Berkut]

Originally posted by GRUMLIN:

If I'd known how my request for an explanation as to how my STUG died like a dog would threadcreep into a slugging match between two heavyweight treadheads I never would have started it.

welcome to the forums GRUMLIN, whenever you touch on a subject like this, it is very much like lighting the blue touch paper and retiring;)

Your initial problem has already been addressed by BTS themselves. It's the AI

No computer wargame can reflect reality 100% The game is well designed (thats why we play it)but it does have it's problems.

Vehicles will behave erratically, they won't use tungsten or HC, even if that round was clearly the best in a given situation. They will reverse when spotted rather than go forward into cover that was closer. They will "forget" the enemy if they lose LOS from one round to the next. It has been well covered in the CMBO forums believe me.

As for the other subjects dealing with russian heavy armour?

Hail of fire will work on the heavy tanks, but it really needs to be a hail of fire...not a light drizzle. The quality of the crew is also a factor in how useful this tactic is.

As for getting into a better position? Think of the comment made by Jason about Guderian. He simply attacked were the enemy armour was not concentrated.

Taking this doctrine to CMBB means trying to avoid hitting him where his armour is stongest and hitting on the flanks or in the rear.

If you know your tank guns are not up to the job at certain ranges, you will try to close that range if you can. Either by flanking them or pretending to withdraw and letting them close with you into an ambush(a tactic that was used to good effect against the British in North Afrika)

Thats why you find many Tank vets describe tank combat as if it were sea warfare.

When you have a situation like this it will often come down to things like using terrain and the skill of your crews and how they use their equipment...radios, optics, smoke..whatever.

I am sure the Germans were shocked when they first saw KV1s, but they did develop tactics and weapons that allowed them to deal with these russian heavies. As did the Russians, later in the war learn to deal with Germans heavy tanks.

When we come to what a tankgun could or could not do, we do tend to forget the biggest variable of all in penetration, and that is armor quality.

I am not a 100% sure on this subject, I am not a metallurgist. Of the books I have read that discuss this subject I recall one that said that

Buckling failures only occur when tanks are hit by large-caliber artillery shells, sizable bombs, or are exposed to similar conditions.

The common failure mode when impacted by a conventional AP shell, one of the

solid-slug shells or a shaped-charge device was small-area penetration, or sometimes non penetration but high-velocity spalling of metal inside the tank.

CM gives all armour a rating on quality. But how is that figure derived at? The countries involved did use different methods of producing and shaping steel for tank production. As the war continued quality would vary.

Early russian armour has been described as very poor and quite brittle.

I have not tested for this but how effective is CM in handling situations were armour is hit by heavy HE rounds. Apart from panicking the crew and giving them tinnitus, wrecking the main gun or the tanks mobilty...can the sheer force of a large calibre HE round overwhelm the tanks armour?

Apart from a bomb impacting on the turret, I suspect it would not work. Which means we come back to the comment I made earlier about the accuracy of any computer wargame.

In the end, despite what history tells us, the game code no matter how skilled the progammer is, may not be able to deliver everything we know to be true about how things "really" were back then.

[manchildstein (ii)]

now to be fair to the ai, i believe that sometimes it will fire that tungsten round, and sometimes it will continue forward into cover... so it isn't 100% wrong...

one thing i've noticed... and i'm not sure it was in cmbo... is that sometimes a tank will take off like a veritable rocket on the attack... maybe that's just fanaticism...

by the way has anyone tested a single elite stug B against 18 conscript-green-regular t34s yet?

[JasonC]

Lo, a fact is mentioned! You say your understanding is based on Pz Rgt 33 reports. First I have heard you mention it. So, produce them please. Then we will have something to compare with CMBB, and see which is more generous to the 5 cm.

No, the Panzer command training document doesn't say anything about "at 500 meters or less" - range is not mentioned at all in the sentence about front turret gun mantlet and weld seams. In fact, it never says "at 500 meters or less" anywhere in the entire document. If it does in some other document, produce it. Methinks in CMBB it is more like 800 meters, incidentally, but we can always test it.

As for the supposed silliness of mentioning Pz 38ts, actually others brought it up, and they were the only reason I discussed them. But since you seem to come back to it over and over, perhaps it is worth recalling the experience I am sure many have had by now, in "a warm place to sleep", of Pz 38ts "cracking the egg" with 37mm in CMBB. I can't wait to hear which panzer regiment's report is going to explain that one. Is it, perchance, going to be 12 PDs 2 lines?

Here is a scenario for those who don't grok gun front tactics to try. Make the Russians attack with 14 T-26S, 1939 model (3 platoons, 1 short one tank), 6 T-34s, 1941 model, and one count 'em one Motor Rifle Platoon as tank riders (the 4 squad, A type, 11 man jobbers).

Give the "defending" Germans partial platoons of 2 Pz IIC and 2 Pz IVE, plus 8 Pz 38t in two platoons of 4. But no, it is not a pure tank battle.

The Germans also get 2 platoons of a motorized infantry company (Pz type), minus their 50mm mortars, the company HQ and MG section, a Panzer pioneer platoon with 3 tank hunter teams added, a 150mm 4-gun FO with radio, a Stuka, 2 88mm FLAK, 4 105mm Howitzers, and 6 37mm towed PAK. It is a gun front defense. The Panzers are just bait. To let the Russians be about as coordinated as most of them were in 1941, let the AI command them.

Will the Germans only win if the 2 Pz IVs can penetrate the T-34 turret front from 500-800 yards? Noooo. "But that is 2 to 1 point odds". Operational success means never having to fight fair. Superior combined arms doctrine means not having to face a fully coordinated enemy force. By the time the Russians were beyond penny packet attacks and had combined arms, things did change. But the Germans had better weapons by then, too.

The Russians have almost twice as many tanks and better ones at the top end in this match up, but no combined arms. The Germans are split about 1/3 armor points, 1/3 support points (mostly guns), and 1/3 divided between infantry and arty-air support. They have a balanced 12 tanks, 12 guns, and 12 squads, plus powerful fire support. The Russians have 20 tanks, 4 squads, and no guns.

The Russians aren't going to get anywhere. Even if the 37mms can't hurt the T-34s at all. If you take the 2 Pz IVEs out of the scenario, it won't make the slightest difference in the outcome.

The Germans had hundreds of 88s. Each panzer division had a small battery of 100mm guns, high velocity long range pieces meant for counterbattery work. Both proved able to kill KV tanks. Every German division had numerous 105mm and 150mm howitzers. All could kill T-34s with direct fire, and immobilize KVs with track hits. Hundreds of 50mm PAK had been fielded. The German guns capable of dealing with the Russian heavies fully matched those heavies in numbers available. They just weren't in tanks.

[Hortlund]

If you look at the turret front of the T-34/76 m40 (welded), you will note that the bottom half of the turret creates a horrible shot trap.

Combine the curved armour with that shot trap, and it is easy to see that any round hitting the lower half of the turret front has a relatively good chance of penetrating either the turret front, or the hull top. Either the round hits the curved armour at close to 0 degrees, or the shot is deflected down onto the hull top armour.

OK, add to that the known flaw in the CMBB engine

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=002699

My guess is that those two factors combined are the reason why we are seeing ahistorical results in the game. Tanks with a vulnerable turret front are handicapped by the game engine because it is too easy to score a hit on the vulnerable area.

CMBB uses the same geometrical model for all tanks - turret hit probability is exactly the same for all tanks as is front turret hit probability. Or in other words, BFC does not model turrets using the actual turret size, instead every tank has a generic (something like 30%) turret size. Some tanks had very small turret fronts compared to normal tanks. Still, they have the same change to be hit on the turret as any other tank. If the tank has a turret which is weaker than the hull, this leads to ahistorcial results.

Compare the silhouette of a KV-2 and a T-34m40 (extreme example) and you will see why this is somewhat strange.

[ January 13, 2003, 05:32 AM: Message edited by: Leutnant Hortlund ]

[White Phosphorus]

Does it really matter if t-34 had a bad turret. If players have to use ahistoric tactics to defeat them (as was mentioned on second page where the best way is to get the enemy go hull down!? and attack from the front). Something needs to be changed or abstracted.

One can learn a lot about CMBB tactics just by reading an infantry manual from that time. However there is no use to read early German armor manuals that detail the t-34 because the game system provides a very different solution to the tactical problem.

[manchildstein (ii)]

Originally posted by White Phosphorus:

...However there is no use to read early German armor manuals that detail the t-34 because the game system provides a very different solution to the tactical problem.

i find that i throw the kitchen sink at t34s... shoot every available gun, combined with moving units up for close range and flank shots.... so it seems fairly 'hystorical' to me, even with the - i would consider reasonably minor - flaws listed in this thread...

perhaps in the current game engine, the idea of giving t34s a bit better 'defensive angle' on their turrets is not a bad one though...

i suppose that in the engine rewrite 'all' of the turret surfaces and sizes will be modelled, so it will be even more 'realistic' than it is now... but for now it appears to be a pretty good 'abstraction'...

[Panzer76]

Here is just a quote from a russian tank commander which makes a small comment on this:

"There was nothing they could do because those were Pz.III, Pz.IV tanks, and I was in a T-34 whose frontal armor they couldn't penetrate.

- A.D. But did they hit you?

Yes, of course they did."

Of cource, just a personal opinion, but still, this guy had experience too.

From : http://www.iremember.ru/tankers/bodnar/bodnar.htm

[Crazy]

Don't forget that germans had total air superiority, and more than 70% of russiam 34's, kv's there destroyed by planes.German planes were chasing single trucks and soldiers.What to talk about advansing/moving armor.

Same thing was for usa/britain in late war years, german Tigers and Panthers were taken out by planes.It wasn't hard to take out a tiger with a Hurricane for excample.

[Soddball]

Originally posted by Crazy:

Same thing was for usa/britain in late war years, german Tigers and Panthers were taken out by planes.It wasn't hard to take out a tiger with a Hurricane for excample.

Assuming you were in a ground-attack Hurricane with 30mm cannon, I'll agree. 8 .303 machine guns aren't going to do alot against a Tiger

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Crazy:

Same thing was for usa/britain in late war years, german Tigers and Panthers were taken out by planes.It wasn't hard to take out a tiger with a Hurricane for excample.

Excuse me?

It would be interesting to see you list the number of Tiger tanks destroyed by cannon fire from aircraft.

The Brits did a study on all Panther tank wrecks they came across from Normandy to the Bulge, want to guess how many of those wrecks were taken out by aircraft?

[Crazy]

I meant ground attack planet (Hurricane was just as excample)

[Hortlund]

My statement still stands. It would be interesting to see any figures you can quote about Tigers being killed by ground attack aircraft. I'm gonna dig up the numbers I have for the Panther tanks, but off the top of my head, allied airpower counted for something like 5% of German Panther losses in 44-45.

[Hortlund]

Found it.

Many use the battles in Normandy as examples of how devastating airpower is against ground units. In fact, many people will say that the only reason the allies won in Normandy was because of their airpower. While this may be true or not, airpower had an almost neglectable effect on combat damage in Normandy.

Let me give an example:

Often the German attack at Mortain is used as an example to show the effectiveness of the fighter-bombers as tank killers. But in fact this engagement is rather an example of vastly exaggerated claims. The British 2nd TAF claimed to have destroyed or damaged 140 German tanks in the Mortain area 7 - 10 August, while 9th US Air Force claimed 112. This actually exceeded the number of German tanks employed in the operation. In fact no more than 46 tanks were lost in the operation and of these only nine had been hit by air weapons. That is 9 out of 178 tanks actually used in the area. It is also interesting to see the claims. British and American pilots claimed 252 German tanks destroyed or damaged, the real number was 9...

It seems that very few German tank were lost due to hits from weapons carried by aircraft. Probably no more than about 100 tanks were lost due to hits from air weapons during the entire Normandy campaign. Rather it seems that air attacks on tank formation protected by AA units were more dangerous to the aircraft than to the tanks. Allied losses of aircraft were considerable, the 2nd TAF (including elements of Air Defence of Britain that took part in the Normandy campaign) lost 829 aircraft, while US 9th Air Force lost 897

The main reason for the poor results of air attack on tanks was lack of suitable armament. Machine guns and cannons had sufficient accuracy, but lacked the power necessary to produce more than superficial damage. Heavy bombs could destroy a tank, but it took a direct hit, which was very difficult to achieve. The vaunted rockets had sufficient penetration capabilities. Trials against captured German Panther tanks showed that the rockets could penetrate the armour except on the front of the tank. The accuracy of the rockets was however alarmingly low, even when fired in salvos of eight. At trials on training ground in England the probability of achieving a hit on a tank was at most 4 %. On operations, when the aircraft was subjected to AA fire and the targets not stationary on an open field, hit rates must have been even lower.

Mortain is not an example of unusually low efficiency for the allied air forces either. It is interesting to see the causes for losses of Panther tanks. Three British studies of captured Panther tanks (or wrecks of Panther tanks), two of them during Normandy and one during the Ardennes battle gave the following results:

6 June - 7 August 1944

AP shot: 36

Hollow charge projectile: 7

HE shell: 7

Aircraft rockets: 7

Aircraft cannon: 2

Destroyed by crew: 6

Abandoned: 3

Unknown: 13

8 Aug - 31 Aug 1944

AP Shot: 11

Hollow charge projectile: 1

HE Shell: 1

Aircraft rocket: 2

Aircraft cannon: 1

Destroyed by crew: 44

Abandoned: 30

Unknown: 6

17 Dec - 16 Jan 1945

AP Shot: 16

Hollow charge projectile: 0

HE Shell: 3

Aircraft rocket: 3

Aircraft cannon: 0

Destroyed by crew: 10

Abandoned: 10

Unknown: 5

Evidently two of the main causes for losing Panthers were abandonment and destruction by the crews. These two categories accounted for nearly half the Panthers lost and during the period in August they constituted 80 % of all the Panthers lost. Air power only accounted for about 6 % of all the lost Panthers investigated.

Those investigations showed above also included other types of tanks. Of 40 Tigers only one was hit by air weapons, of 121 Pz IV's nine were hit by air weapons. Evidently allied air power was not really capable of destroying large numbers of German tanks.

[Crazy]

Came Leutnant Hortlund and everything started to make sence.

I sad it was EASY and it happened, i didn't stop to count them.It is easier to take a Tiger with ok bombs/rockets than to attack it with shermans, and if you have air superiority, "you" probably still gona attack tigers with shermans.

So all allied bombers/ground attack planes bombem/atacked a halftruck, i don't care, all i'm saying that if one force has that superiority (air) it'll use it.So did Germans in Russia especialy in early years.And it playd a big roll in german operations.

[Redwolf]

The post-mortem count is party unfair to the flyboys.

Damage by aircraft would usually be repairable because of small caliber. And/or the damage would happen behind own lines. So in both cases the tank would not be left behind for the count when the Allies sweep the region. Still the damage would have disabled the tank for that day and may (r may not) have prevented its use against Allied forces, or at least would have prevented it from reaching its destination.

Also, tanks are by nature hard to damage with small caliber guns or by blast except for direct hit. But that doesn't help the tank much if its fuel and ammo supply is being shot up and the accompanying infantry has to walk or crouch.

[Crazy]

If it's still a mistory i used Tiger just as excample (the same about a Hurricane),it was the first thing witch came to my head.