Ju-87/G Stuka tankbuster info (cross post fm CMAK)

[Tero]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

Yes we know that casualties from hte Battle of berlin were understated, but to then apply that to the whole war is pure supposition.

From the über-Finnish POV, it is no mere supposition and gross generalization. When you look at the "official" Red Army casualty figures at various points in time. The first official set was most definitely understated, the second wildly overstated and the most recent admitted corresponding with the Finnish estimates made right after the war. The figure as of current research made in the Soviet archives should be close to the actual figure. Then again....

It is apparent that the official and actual loss figures coincide only when it was politically convenient. The propaganda figure was (and is) maintained when it was preferable (for whatever reason) to publishing the real figure.

What is more, AFAIK the habbit of keeping dead men on the roster for resupply purposes was common in the Red Army during WWII. Just as was the supposed post war habbit in air bases in Estonia of pouring to ground aviation fuel so the consumption would correspond with the logged quota flight hours.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

Yes we know that casualties from hte Battle of berlin were understated, but to then apply that to the whole war is pure supposition.

From the über-Finnish POV, it is no mere supposition and gross generalization. When you look at the "official" Red Army casualty figures at various points in time. The first official set was most definitely understated, the second wildly overstated and the most recent admitted corresponding with the Finnish estimates made right after the war. The figure as of current research made in the Soviet archives should be close to the actual figure. Then again....

It is apparent that the official and actual loss figures coincide only when it was politically convenient. The propaganda figure was (and is) maintained when it was preferable (for whatever reason) to publishing the real figure.

What is more, AFAIK the habbit of keeping dead men on the roster for resupply purposes was common in the Red Army during WWII. Just as was the supposed post war habbit in air bases in Estonia of pouring to ground aviation fuel so the consumption would correspond with the logged quota flight hours.

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

So, where are the other 2-400,000 dead tanks the Germans claim supposed to have come from? Were they made by pixies?

I'll hazard a guess: at least some were killed more than once.

http://www.winterwar.com/Tactics/FINatTactics.htm#losses

The Finnish estimate for killed tanks was ~2000. The actual write off figure (for the Isthmus front alone mind you) was 368. The actual combat loss figure was 1904. Grand total with technical failures is 3179.

Which is the correct figure for killed tanks: 368 or 1904 (of which at least some were killed more than once) or 3179 ?

It is totally realistic to say that the Finns killed 1904 tanks while the Red Army lost 368 tanks. Neither figure is downplaying or inflating the losses. It is just a matter of what is considered to be a kill. For the defender a kill is any tank which is rendered combat ineffective through combat operations. For the attacker the killed vehicle is any vehicle not returned to the motor pool as a combat ready unit at the end of the campaign/war.

The point being, Russian staff reports of own side losses are clinically accurate. Their claims are not believable, the propaganda memoires of the generals are not believable, but nobody relies on such things for own side losses.

So why such discrepencies in loss figures ? They had to either puff up the enemy losses or down play their own losses to make themselves look good.

JK - you still aren't getting it as to order of magnitude. Not even 0.33, but 0.2, is the order of magnitude of full tank kills per sorties actually achieved by A-10s firing guided missiles under optimal conditions. When German pilots with 12 rounds of 37mm report a higher figure than A-10s firing guided missiles actually achieve, it is a sure sign they are wrong. There is no reason to be surprised at this - own side air to ground kill claims are always wrong, always high, and before modern precision weapons, always by large amounts.

You are in a sense comparing Roman Legions to modern infantry squads. A legionaire could not possibly have dispatched dozens of enemy warriors in a single battle because a modern infatryman seldom makes more than a few kills during a war.

3 - never admitting having missed i.e. if he engages a target of type X, he claims kills of target type X. This would account for the parallel (actually, his higher by up to a factor fo 2) between his claims and actual performance of A-10s etc.

He was not flying an A-10 against modern tanks in a relatively target poor environment, was he ?

There is one possibility that can be dismissed out of hand as patently absurd - that he actually killed 500 tanks by achieving twice the effectiveness of an A-10 with guided missiles, because he ate his wheaties.

He flew some 2500 missions and claimed some 1400 tanks and vehicles killed (but of course you knew this). That adds up to slightly under 1 kill every second mission. Given the Red Army loss rates I would not say that is overly optimistic, even at face value. Especially since his missions span over the period of 4 years.

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

So, where are the other 2-400,000 dead tanks the Germans claim supposed to have come from? Were they made by pixies?

I'll hazard a guess: at least some were killed more than once.

http://www.winterwar.com/Tactics/FINatTactics.htm#losses

The Finnish estimate for killed tanks was ~2000. The actual write off figure (for the Isthmus front alone mind you) was 368. The actual combat loss figure was 1904. Grand total with technical failures is 3179.

Which is the correct figure for killed tanks: 368 or 1904 (of which at least some were killed more than once) or 3179 ?

It is totally realistic to say that the Finns killed 1904 tanks while the Red Army lost 368 tanks. Neither figure is downplaying or inflating the losses. It is just a matter of what is considered to be a kill. For the defender a kill is any tank which is rendered combat ineffective through combat operations. For the attacker the killed vehicle is any vehicle not returned to the motor pool as a combat ready unit at the end of the campaign/war.

The point being, Russian staff reports of own side losses are clinically accurate. Their claims are not believable, the propaganda memoires of the generals are not believable, but nobody relies on such things for own side losses.

So why such discrepencies in loss figures ? They had to either puff up the enemy losses or down play their own losses to make themselves look good.

JK - you still aren't getting it as to order of magnitude. Not even 0.33, but 0.2, is the order of magnitude of full tank kills per sorties actually achieved by A-10s firing guided missiles under optimal conditions. When German pilots with 12 rounds of 37mm report a higher figure than A-10s firing guided missiles actually achieve, it is a sure sign they are wrong. There is no reason to be surprised at this - own side air to ground kill claims are always wrong, always high, and before modern precision weapons, always by large amounts.

You are in a sense comparing Roman Legions to modern infantry squads. A legionaire could not possibly have dispatched dozens of enemy warriors in a single battle because a modern infatryman seldom makes more than a few kills during a war.

3 - never admitting having missed i.e. if he engages a target of type X, he claims kills of target type X. This would account for the parallel (actually, his higher by up to a factor fo 2) between his claims and actual performance of A-10s etc.

He was not flying an A-10 against modern tanks in a relatively target poor environment, was he ?

There is one possibility that can be dismissed out of hand as patently absurd - that he actually killed 500 tanks by achieving twice the effectiveness of an A-10 with guided missiles, because he ate his wheaties.

He flew some 2500 missions and claimed some 1400 tanks and vehicles killed (but of course you knew this). That adds up to slightly under 1 kill every second mission. Given the Red Army loss rates I would not say that is overly optimistic, even at face value. Especially since his missions span over the period of 4 years.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Mad Russian:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

I find it most interesting that anybody that believes any German combat report at all is a fanboy.

I would find that interesting too, if that were what was being said. </font>

[JonS]

Originally posted by Mad Russian:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

I find it most interesting that anybody that believes any German combat report at all is a fanboy.

I would find that interesting too, if that were what was being said. </font>

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

I find it most interesting that anybody that believes any German combat report at all is a fanboy.

I would find that interesting too, if that were what was being said. </font>

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

I find it most interesting that anybody that believes any German combat report at all is a fanboy.

I would find that interesting too, if that were what was being said. </font>

[JasonC]

Mad Russian - the sound principle is to believe staff reports of own side losses, and not to believe claims of losses inflicted on the other side. You can use the latter - cautiously, as indictative only - only if you give them a "haircut" whose size is set by the cross check of acknowledged losses reported by losing side staff.

These principles are obvious and most people know and abide by them. But there is a significant exception. Far too many people will accept own side claims if and only if they show a national allegiance or reinforce a myth about the war or relative prowess, in which those people are invested. And easily the largest body of offenders in this respect, are those I am calling "fanboys".

Which means a person who uncritically and preferentially accepts specifically German claims about losses inflicted on others, with accompanying "gosh golly gee willikers those guys were good", gushing spin. And without any attempt to verify or cross check them with losing side reports made at the time. Typically, any controlling source or analysis is instead dismissed with reciprocal charges of nationalist bias. The principle wanted is that one can believe German propaganda if one wants to, and that only other propaganda exists opposite, not clearly verifiable realities.

This results in a sergeant rock comic book view of the war as a whole, which basically winds up fitting the picture of it presented in Signal magazine during. But which hopelessly falsifies the war and the tactical relationships that governed its actual course. Frankly it leaves unexplain the outcome itself, or leaves it to unstated ideas about overall odds that do not withstand scrutiny.

You can find similar silliness in period-piece Russian stuff about heroic shock workers etc, though frankly even those tend to glorify own-side losses rather than downplaying them. Or in Ambrose style revisionism wrapped in a flag. Or in officer memoires, all sides, whose major purpose is typically self aggrandizement or excuse making about failures. Or, worst of all, in frankly fictional fantasies passing themselves off as breathless first hand "We was thar!" accounts.

But nobody seriously defends such things. People do seriously defend fanboyism, and engage in it not simply as a bit of ignorance or a lapse from normal critical awareness, but on principle as an actual ideological commitment. An aggressive, in your face, I can think it if I want to, one, that plays smash-mouth with any critics who dare to point it out.

And I'll dare to point it out until doomsday, because they are hopeless fools, terminally silly, and exploding their nonsense is the most amusing possible sport.

[JasonC]

Mad Russian - the sound principle is to believe staff reports of own side losses, and not to believe claims of losses inflicted on the other side. You can use the latter - cautiously, as indictative only - only if you give them a "haircut" whose size is set by the cross check of acknowledged losses reported by losing side staff.

These principles are obvious and most people know and abide by them. But there is a significant exception. Far too many people will accept own side claims if and only if they show a national allegiance or reinforce a myth about the war or relative prowess, in which those people are invested. And easily the largest body of offenders in this respect, are those I am calling "fanboys".

Which means a person who uncritically and preferentially accepts specifically German claims about losses inflicted on others, with accompanying "gosh golly gee willikers those guys were good", gushing spin. And without any attempt to verify or cross check them with losing side reports made at the time. Typically, any controlling source or analysis is instead dismissed with reciprocal charges of nationalist bias. The principle wanted is that one can believe German propaganda if one wants to, and that only other propaganda exists opposite, not clearly verifiable realities.

This results in a sergeant rock comic book view of the war as a whole, which basically winds up fitting the picture of it presented in Signal magazine during. But which hopelessly falsifies the war and the tactical relationships that governed its actual course. Frankly it leaves unexplain the outcome itself, or leaves it to unstated ideas about overall odds that do not withstand scrutiny.

You can find similar silliness in period-piece Russian stuff about heroic shock workers etc, though frankly even those tend to glorify own-side losses rather than downplaying them. Or in Ambrose style revisionism wrapped in a flag. Or in officer memoires, all sides, whose major purpose is typically self aggrandizement or excuse making about failures. Or, worst of all, in frankly fictional fantasies passing themselves off as breathless first hand "We was thar!" accounts.

But nobody seriously defends such things. People do seriously defend fanboyism, and engage in it not simply as a bit of ignorance or a lapse from normal critical awareness, but on principle as an actual ideological commitment. An aggressive, in your face, I can think it if I want to, one, that plays smash-mouth with any critics who dare to point it out.

And I'll dare to point it out until doomsday, because they are hopeless fools, terminally silly, and exploding their nonsense is the most amusing possible sport.

[JonS]

In addition to what Jason said, and to respond to this question:

Originally posted by Mad Russian:

Show me where it is applied to anything other than a German report or a German soldier in any post on this site.

It happens to Allied CAS all the time, and that is only the most obvious example.

Edit: Specific examples:

1) Jason casts doubt on USAF claims about effectiveness of a-10 in Kuwait/Iraq, 1991.

2) Most fun thread evah!. (Includes a diversion into CAS).

[ February 24, 2007, 10:25 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[JonS]

In addition to what Jason said, and to respond to this question:

Originally posted by Mad Russian:

Show me where it is applied to anything other than a German report or a German soldier in any post on this site.

It happens to Allied CAS all the time, and that is only the most obvious example.

Edit: Specific examples:

1) Jason casts doubt on USAF claims about effectiveness of a-10 in Kuwait/Iraq, 1991.

2) Most fun thread evah!. (Includes a diversion into CAS).

[ February 24, 2007, 10:25 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[Bigduke6]

I am reading Nash's Hell's Gate right now, and I think the book is an excellent example of how insidious "fanboyism" - or, perhaps more properly from an academic point of view "popular historical literature" - can be, and how a goofy account with little pretenses to figuring out the historical reality, can masquerade as a solid work that just happens to document what studs the Wehrmacht were, especially when up against the Red Army.

The book for those of you who haven't read it is a long, dense, and heavily-pictured account of the Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket (Soviet: Korshun-Shevchenkovsky operations), which took place from Jan-Feb1944 and during which a pair of German Korps were encircled, and then eventually broke out. The Germans cut off suffered about 35 per cent personnel and close to 100 per cent major weapons casualties. And there are a ton, and I mean a ton, of pictures.

So far so good, right? So why does the book basically (IMO anyway) suck, as a legitimate piece of historical work?

Well, my starting point is that the author, a US Army officer at least formerly, starts out his book saying he wants to describe the ordeal of the German AND the Soviet soldiers.

Then, he spends the entire book talking about the Germans in great and personalized detail, while referring to the Soviets - who also were living, breathing men (and women), after all - in almost wholly Cold War terms. The book was published in 2002. That's more than ten years after the Soviet Union broke up.

Yet, Nash's sources are one-sided. He does not read Russian, nor does he make any pretension of doing so. He does apparently read German, and so his research on the German side appears thorough: he has gone through the 8th Army archives, ditto v. Manstein's XXXXVII Panzer Korps. He has tracked down veterans groups including participating panzer formations, infantry units, and even Walloons, and besides these primary accounts he even with one of the veterans physically visited the museum the Soviets built in Korsun to the battle, and walked some of the ground. (Albeit in July not January, which as any one living in Ukraine's Dniepr River basin will tell you is a very different thing.)

He has added to that the standard German works, Spaeter and v. Manstein, and apparently dredged up pretty much every pertinant German division history. This is not so hard of course, during the 1950s - 70s there was a good market in Germany for accounts by Wehrmacht (and SS) general officers, and so for pretty much every major formation you can find something. Spaeter is the guy for Grossdeutschland, for instance.

And the Soviets? Well, Nash says he is writing two-sided history, but since he reads no Russian nor makes no effort to find some one who does, his Soviet sources are US military translations of the Soviet Military-Historical journal, plus what Soviet general officers he can find in English, for instance Zhukov, or Glantz's translations of the Soviet general staff surveys.

He also cite's Loza's account, and halfway through the book that's the one single source I have seen from an actual Soviet soldier participating in the battle, against what must be more than a hundred German officers and soldiers he has dredged up for the German side of the history. That is not responsible history.

It is appalling the amount of available information out there Nash has neglected. Russian battlefield is in English even. But that's not even close to all, Russian historians have been at work since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and if nothing else much of the field and general officer accounts the Soviets put out during the Cold War, are now readily available via the web. For instance, 5th Guards Tank Army (Rotimistrov) took part in this operation, and I am fairly sure that besides Rotimistrov's extensive and I would say useful memoirs it would be possible to find accounts by all his Corps commanders, and quite possibly some of the commanders of the spiffier tank brigades.

This is before going to the Russian military archive, as any proper East Front historian writing operationally should, and digging up the reports and archives which, in the case of the Tank Armies, exist down to regimental level. This operation took place in 1944, Barbarossa was history, and the Red Army loved paper and statistics. It is work to go to the Russian national archive and find stuff, but the data exists and it can be found and others have done so.

Heck, for about $400 you can get some one to do it for you, there are Russian researchers that earn a living digging through archives for Western historians.

All of that is absent from Nash's book. As a result, this dense and overtly well-researched book repeats whopper after whopper. It is nothing less than shameful, after all this is the history of the Soviet people who defeated the Wehrmacht that we're talking about. Yet Nash clearly could care less. His agenda, though he lies about it, is to repeat the old "heroic Westerners against the Commie horde" song.

There are pictures of Soviet peasants posing for German photographers, and Nash points out how the Soviets appear well-fed and clad. About the millions of Soviets carted off into slave labor - that's no exageration - not a word. About the hundreds of thousands murdered - nothing.

If the battle goes badly and villagers attack a German military unit, does Nash perhaps give the villagers credit for wanting to attack people who were occupying their country, where if you were lucky you became a slave laborer? He does not. His take: The Soviet commissars put the villagers up to it. The idea that people living in the land of Ukraine could hate Germans for invading their country, and attack them when they could, does not occur to him.

The battlefield accounts are the same schlock. Repeatedly, at face value, he repeats stories of a platoon of StuGs wiping out whole battalions of Soviets reinforced with T-34s. Panthers engage, and T-34s burn by the half-dozen. The Soviets attack, encircle a pair of German Korps, overrun the German rear area, and ultimately destroy or capture practically every German vehicle in the pocket. Nash's take? The Soviets failed in their goal to destroy the German force, after all two-thirds of the Germans got out, thanks to indominatble German fighting spirit, and oh by the way if Hitler hadn't made trouble the result would have been far better.

Nash is a writer who lacks the energy to track down many Soviet sources, but nevertheless is prepared to attack one of the few he does - Loza - because Loza the tanker at one point reports his Sherman platoon engaged Tigers. Nash pounces on Loza - who is after all a WW2 combat veteran - and like a true fanboy points out that according to German records, the Schwere Panzerabteilung hadn't arrived in sector yet. Nash therefore indicts Loza as a liar, and worse than that a political liar: man lying to make the Soviet regime seem better.

This despite the fact that by the time Loza wrote his account, the Soviet Union never existed. And without taking into account the standard Allied tanker response to pretty much any panzer, which was it's a Tiger until proved otherwise.

At another point, Grossdeutschland's Panther battalion shows up, and in two days is reduced from about 60 Panthers to 17 Panthers. How did this happen? Does Nash wonder, as I and probably most people reading this, how the premier division in the the entire Wehrmacht managed to gut its best panzer formation, in 48 hours, in terrain with nice open fields of fire and inferior Soviet armor? Aside from noting the Panthers hit AT guns at one point, Nash does not. Rather, the losses are mentioned in passing, sort of like they came with the bad weather. There is no reference to Soviet skill, or even active Soviet effort to combat the Panther battalion, whatsoever.

It is fanboy denial, pure and simple. There is a market out there for people in love with the ideal of the noble and racially-superior Western warrior in battle with the Eastern horde.

Real military history tries to get to the bottom of how battles and wars go. It does not assume one man is inherently better than another, and in reconstructing events, it uses as many sources as possible, to get closer to the truth.

Nash's book of course does not. It just masturbates the myth.

Of course, his book is in its second printing. Obviously, lots of people are interested in the kind of books Nash write, that masquerade as military history.

[Bigduke6]

I am reading Nash's Hell's Gate right now, and I think the book is an excellent example of how insidious "fanboyism" - or, perhaps more properly from an academic point of view "popular historical literature" - can be, and how a goofy account with little pretenses to figuring out the historical reality, can masquerade as a solid work that just happens to document what studs the Wehrmacht were, especially when up against the Red Army.

The book for those of you who haven't read it is a long, dense, and heavily-pictured account of the Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket (Soviet: Korshun-Shevchenkovsky operations), which took place from Jan-Feb1944 and during which a pair of German Korps were encircled, and then eventually broke out. The Germans cut off suffered about 35 per cent personnel and close to 100 per cent major weapons casualties. And there are a ton, and I mean a ton, of pictures.

So far so good, right? So why does the book basically (IMO anyway) suck, as a legitimate piece of historical work?

Well, my starting point is that the author, a US Army officer at least formerly, starts out his book saying he wants to describe the ordeal of the German AND the Soviet soldiers.

Then, he spends the entire book talking about the Germans in great and personalized detail, while referring to the Soviets - who also were living, breathing men (and women), after all - in almost wholly Cold War terms. The book was published in 2002. That's more than ten years after the Soviet Union broke up.

Yet, Nash's sources are one-sided. He does not read Russian, nor does he make any pretension of doing so. He does apparently read German, and so his research on the German side appears thorough: he has gone through the 8th Army archives, ditto v. Manstein's XXXXVII Panzer Korps. He has tracked down veterans groups including participating panzer formations, infantry units, and even Walloons, and besides these primary accounts he even with one of the veterans physically visited the museum the Soviets built in Korsun to the battle, and walked some of the ground. (Albeit in July not January, which as any one living in Ukraine's Dniepr River basin will tell you is a very different thing.)

He has added to that the standard German works, Spaeter and v. Manstein, and apparently dredged up pretty much every pertinant German division history. This is not so hard of course, during the 1950s - 70s there was a good market in Germany for accounts by Wehrmacht (and SS) general officers, and so for pretty much every major formation you can find something. Spaeter is the guy for Grossdeutschland, for instance.

And the Soviets? Well, Nash says he is writing two-sided history, but since he reads no Russian nor makes no effort to find some one who does, his Soviet sources are US military translations of the Soviet Military-Historical journal, plus what Soviet general officers he can find in English, for instance Zhukov, or Glantz's translations of the Soviet general staff surveys.

He also cite's Loza's account, and halfway through the book that's the one single source I have seen from an actual Soviet soldier participating in the battle, against what must be more than a hundred German officers and soldiers he has dredged up for the German side of the history. That is not responsible history.

It is appalling the amount of available information out there Nash has neglected. Russian battlefield is in English even. But that's not even close to all, Russian historians have been at work since the break-up of the Soviet Union, and if nothing else much of the field and general officer accounts the Soviets put out during the Cold War, are now readily available via the web. For instance, 5th Guards Tank Army (Rotimistrov) took part in this operation, and I am fairly sure that besides Rotimistrov's extensive and I would say useful memoirs it would be possible to find accounts by all his Corps commanders, and quite possibly some of the commanders of the spiffier tank brigades.

This is before going to the Russian military archive, as any proper East Front historian writing operationally should, and digging up the reports and archives which, in the case of the Tank Armies, exist down to regimental level. This operation took place in 1944, Barbarossa was history, and the Red Army loved paper and statistics. It is work to go to the Russian national archive and find stuff, but the data exists and it can be found and others have done so.

Heck, for about $400 you can get some one to do it for you, there are Russian researchers that earn a living digging through archives for Western historians.

All of that is absent from Nash's book. As a result, this dense and overtly well-researched book repeats whopper after whopper. It is nothing less than shameful, after all this is the history of the Soviet people who defeated the Wehrmacht that we're talking about. Yet Nash clearly could care less. His agenda, though he lies about it, is to repeat the old "heroic Westerners against the Commie horde" song.

There are pictures of Soviet peasants posing for German photographers, and Nash points out how the Soviets appear well-fed and clad. About the millions of Soviets carted off into slave labor - that's no exageration - not a word. About the hundreds of thousands murdered - nothing.

If the battle goes badly and villagers attack a German military unit, does Nash perhaps give the villagers credit for wanting to attack people who were occupying their country, where if you were lucky you became a slave laborer? He does not. His take: The Soviet commissars put the villagers up to it. The idea that people living in the land of Ukraine could hate Germans for invading their country, and attack them when they could, does not occur to him.

The battlefield accounts are the same schlock. Repeatedly, at face value, he repeats stories of a platoon of StuGs wiping out whole battalions of Soviets reinforced with T-34s. Panthers engage, and T-34s burn by the half-dozen. The Soviets attack, encircle a pair of German Korps, overrun the German rear area, and ultimately destroy or capture practically every German vehicle in the pocket. Nash's take? The Soviets failed in their goal to destroy the German force, after all two-thirds of the Germans got out, thanks to indominatble German fighting spirit, and oh by the way if Hitler hadn't made trouble the result would have been far better.

Nash is a writer who lacks the energy to track down many Soviet sources, but nevertheless is prepared to attack one of the few he does - Loza - because Loza the tanker at one point reports his Sherman platoon engaged Tigers. Nash pounces on Loza - who is after all a WW2 combat veteran - and like a true fanboy points out that according to German records, the Schwere Panzerabteilung hadn't arrived in sector yet. Nash therefore indicts Loza as a liar, and worse than that a political liar: man lying to make the Soviet regime seem better.

This despite the fact that by the time Loza wrote his account, the Soviet Union never existed. And without taking into account the standard Allied tanker response to pretty much any panzer, which was it's a Tiger until proved otherwise.

At another point, Grossdeutschland's Panther battalion shows up, and in two days is reduced from about 60 Panthers to 17 Panthers. How did this happen? Does Nash wonder, as I and probably most people reading this, how the premier division in the the entire Wehrmacht managed to gut its best panzer formation, in 48 hours, in terrain with nice open fields of fire and inferior Soviet armor? Aside from noting the Panthers hit AT guns at one point, Nash does not. Rather, the losses are mentioned in passing, sort of like they came with the bad weather. There is no reference to Soviet skill, or even active Soviet effort to combat the Panther battalion, whatsoever.

It is fanboy denial, pure and simple. There is a market out there for people in love with the ideal of the noble and racially-superior Western warrior in battle with the Eastern horde.

Real military history tries to get to the bottom of how battles and wars go. It does not assume one man is inherently better than another, and in reconstructing events, it uses as many sources as possible, to get closer to the truth.

Nash's book of course does not. It just masturbates the myth.

Of course, his book is in its second printing. Obviously, lots of people are interested in the kind of books Nash write, that masquerade as military history.

[PFMM]

And there is the rub. We want to be lied too. We imagine ourselves gloriously and heriocally overcoming the impossible odds. It's what the side of the box the game came in promised us.

Why do you think you see all the complaints here? It's not that Combat Mission fails to match any proposal of reality. It fails to live up to the lie.

Either that or the Germans had more style. I mean, olive drab is just so, drab.

[PFMM]

And there is the rub. We want to be lied too. We imagine ourselves gloriously and heriocally overcoming the impossible odds. It's what the side of the box the game came in promised us.

Why do you think you see all the complaints here? It's not that Combat Mission fails to match any proposal of reality. It fails to live up to the lie.

Either that or the Germans had more style. I mean, olive drab is just so, drab.

[John Kettler]

JonS,

I just added to 2) in your post. Have solved the mystery of the phrase "PNP tagged" at last!

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

JonS,

I just added to 2) in your post. Have solved the mystery of the phrase "PNP tagged" at last!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by JonS:

In addition to what Jason said, and to respond to this question:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

Show me where it is applied to anything other than a German report or a German soldier in any post on this site.

It happens to Allied CAS all the time, and that is only the most obvious example.

Edit: Specific examples:

1) Jason casts doubt on USAF claims about effectiveness of a-10 in Kuwait/Iraq, 1991.

2) Most fun thread evah!. (Includes a diversion into CAS). </font>

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by JonS:

In addition to what Jason said, and to respond to this question:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

Show me where it is applied to anything other than a German report or a German soldier in any post on this site.

It happens to Allied CAS all the time, and that is only the most obvious example.

Edit: Specific examples:

1) Jason casts doubt on USAF claims about effectiveness of a-10 in Kuwait/Iraq, 1991.

2) Most fun thread evah!. (Includes a diversion into CAS). </font>

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by JonS:

In addition to what Jason said, and to respond to this question:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

Show me where it is applied to anything other than a German report or a German soldier in any post on this site.

It happens to Allied CAS all the time, and that is only the most obvious example.

Edit: Specific examples:

1) Jason casts doubt on USAF claims about effectiveness of a-10 in Kuwait/Iraq, 1991.

2) Most fun thread evah!. (Includes a diversion into CAS). </font>

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by JonS:

In addition to what Jason said, and to respond to this question:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mad Russian:

Show me where it is applied to anything other than a German report or a German soldier in any post on this site.

It happens to Allied CAS all the time, and that is only the most obvious example.

Edit: Specific examples:

1) Jason casts doubt on USAF claims about effectiveness of a-10 in Kuwait/Iraq, 1991.

2) Most fun thread evah!. (Includes a diversion into CAS). </font>

[JonS]

Originally posted by Mad Russian:

So instead of jamming me about it, why are you defending those that use the term?

Ah. I didn't realise you were so hung up about a particular word. If I was overly concerned about that particular word I would have looked for examples. But I'm not. So I didn't.

I thought you wanted examples of Allied overclaiming being challenged or bagged, so that's what I did a superficial search for.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Mad Russian:

So instead of jamming me about it, why are you defending those that use the term?

Ah. I didn't realise you were so hung up about a particular word. If I was overly concerned about that particular word I would have looked for examples. But I'm not. So I didn't.

I thought you wanted examples of Allied overclaiming being challenged or bagged, so that's what I did a superficial search for.

[JasonC]

Fanboy means people whose eyes water when they hear or imagine the panzer song. That is simply what the term means. No, simply citing a German source does not mean one is a fanboy, I do it all the time. German sources are the right sources for German losses, and fine for what German unit went where, when, under what orders or with what intent. But no, German sources are not adequate or believable for allied losses, and anybody citing them for such is making a mistake.

That alone is still not being a fanboy. The determining mark is that after this is pointed out, they never stop, they never say "oh, I see" and look for allied loss reports or otherwise try to get to the bottom of the question. Instead it is all "I still believe the German propaganda, and anyone who doesn't is biased" (or mean, unfair, whatever - they whine more than puppies).

Active brazen defense of knowable false statistics to grind a pro-German ax is fanboyism, and it is rife. Whole bookshelves are full of it, box covers too. It is absurb and mildly obscene, and does not deserve any defense. But just watch - people will defend it anyway, or play smash mouth indirection games (trying to make it a crime to point out they are stupid and biased) to defend it in practice without having to defend it in theory.

And they never stop. No degree of reason, no degree of certainty of argument, no compelling evidence they are missing something, will have the slightest effect. Because the truth is not wanted, not when it gets in the way of the ideology.