Tactics for defeating Soviet AT gun defense.

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[JasonC]

No, the only thing light armor is needed for is to allow infantry to do its job, scouting for the overwatch. Your "MGs shut up" hypothetical just means the attacking infantry has no problem at all closing up. If the infantry can do all the scouting to the point where the defender has to show his positions to the full firepower of the attacker, then there is no difficulty whatever.

What it seems to me you are describing is an inability simply to outshoot the defense, even with all attacker weapons working on all cylinders. There is no excuse for that whatever. The attacker has odds. Ergo, the attacker has superior firepower. If he also uses each weapon for the proper sort of target for that weapon type, the defender is going to run out of live defenders very rapidly.

Might you move only a small portion of the attack force, with insufficent overwatch, into LOS of the entire defending force at once? Sure, that is called walking into a kill sack, and can lose you the element that does so. But the whole attacking force with all weapons at the ready, can always shoot down the defense, or they didn't have the odds to have any business attacking in the first place.

The original post described a specific problem, of an "up", ranged defense, based on large caliber ATGs and MGs, with an infantry shield aheead of them in cover, holding its fire until walked on top of. The whole idea of that defense is for the ATGs to prevent armor from helping the attacking infantry. The defending infantry is meant to face attacking infantry with even odds and better cover, and at worst exchange off.

Mortars can draw the gun "teeth" if they fire. If they don't fire and all attacking weapons do, then the attacker has firepower dominance over everything. If the guns open up at infantry closing in (as the AI did in my case), then mortars draw the guns like trump, and attacking armor is then unleashed.

If the guns stay hidden, where is the defender supposed to get superior firepower from? You say his squads alone. Sorry, I don't see it, remotely. Only if I try to run an infantry main body right on top of him through open ground, would his squad firepower matter. He can't fire 150 meters into cover and just shoot down the entire attacking infantry.

The attacking infantry will rally through fire in cover, while the attacking overwatch blows up the foremost platoon. Defending squads have the ammo to firefight approaching infantry at best two or three different times before running dry, and the amount each time is enough to pin attackers but not to kill them.

Unsupported squad infantry has very little ability to hurt the attack. It is only deadly against infantry trying to move on top of them, before the defenders are ragged out by overwatch. Otherwise, all it can do is hold its ground against infantry, without either side dying. The attacking infantry simple does not leave cover or move within SMG range of the defenders.

MGs are a critical part of defenses for two reasons. They have stealth at range, and they have sufficient ammo depth to fire nearly the entire length of the battle. Squad infantry can't do either. It can't afford to fire at long range, because doing so will rapidly run it low on ammo without defeating the attack. Attackers with 40 shots each facing defenders with 5 or 10 will beat them, regardless of the cover differential.

Infantry fighting is chicken played with guns, and firing too soon at range is "flinching". Firing too soon also leads to unstealthy full squads being spotted rapidly, out to 400 meters or more, and that calls down overwatch heavy weapons (and FO) hellfire.

If you fire at an approaching half squad with only a half squad, you won't remotely kill it. But you will be killed by the reply. If you fire with enough to kill it rapidly before it reacts, then you will also expose a platoon or something close to it. Which can hold off enemy infantry in cover, but not kill it.

If the defender triggers his entire firepower at once, he will find much of it at ranges too long to appreciably hurt the portions of the attack in decent cover and 100m or more from even the nearest defenders, much farther from the deeper or flanking ones. He thereby sacrifices efficient use of his ammo as to range and timing, in return for keeping the firefight many on many instead of many on few.

If instead the defender fires with only the nearest units with good ranges, he keeps much of his defense hidden and alive and ammo strong - but the cost is, the overwatch can readily devour the portion that did reveal itself, with little risk to the bulk of the attack. At worst, the attacker has to pace his ammo expenditure to last for the depth of the defense. Which just means he has to fire at appropriate targets and ranges, instead of inappropriate ones.

This is elementary attacking doctrine, and not specific to the type of defense described earlier in the thread.

I can see only one sense in which the concern might fit the specific case under discussion. If the bulk of the attacker's overwatch firepower consists on AFVs, and those not thick enough to stand in front of hidden guns - and if, in addition, the defender holds his guns "in suspense", as it were - then it might seem that the attacker has an AFV-exposure dilemma that has no good solution.

That is, if he does expose his AFVs, the guns will reveal themselves to kill said AFVs. If he doesn't, then he will lack the firepower to smash the discovered defending infantry positions. Or that would be the claim. For this to be true, though, the attack has to lack any meaningful overwatch firepower, other than in AFV form. (In addition, he has to be unable to "keyhole" those AFVs, etc).

But no sensible attack has all of its overwatch firepower in thin front but not expendable AFVs. I mean, take my sample force. The 81mm, the 50mms, the HMGs, and the PSWs (the last because they are supposedly not worth revealing a gun) - all can supplement the infantry, without supposedly being worth using a gun against them. That is 200 points worth of firepower, in a 400 point scenario. The Russians are by hypothesis holding out 100 points of their guns.

leIGs, sIGs, FOs, meat choppers, aircraft - all alternatives or additional weapons for the 1941 German facing this sort of defense, up on a 1000 point scale say - are likewise all able to intervene to smash the foremost infantry position the German infantry encounters, without exposing any of the real armor to still silent guns. In the case of the on map guns, they might count as worth revealing a gun to fire back against - but then they have even chances in resulting gun duel, about.

I really don't see the difficulty. You speak as though you think it is just too hard for an attack to shoot to pieces a defense it has already closed up with, positioned overwatch to hit, and can see. To me, getting all that set up is the only problem attackers have. If I already have all of that, the execution of the demolition operation is just assigning weapons to their proper targets and pulling triggers.

No defense can stand up to the attacker's full firepower, employed exactly as the attacker desires. Having enough firepower for that to be true, is what makes the attacker "the attacker" in the first place.

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[JasonC]

I am not remotely afraid of what his guns can do to my infantry. If he wants to waste his guns shooting at my infantry, great. The infantry will "skulk", and all overwatch guns, FOs, and mortars will annihilate every gun. (If I want to kill half of them at once, I can always smoke the other half in the meantime - they don't move around). Then the infantry will rally, as the guns shut up and they break local LOS etc. Then the armor comes up and leads the infantry into the now gun-less defense.

I am only worried about his guns killing my armor. My infantry can take care of itself, as long as it is in cover and not in close combat with equal infantry (the latter will exchange it down). It is the most resilient part of the whole attack, and if my armor is left free to kill infantry without any gun opposition left, I won't even need much of it to finish them off.

The only sort of HE weapon I worry about killing infantry in large numbers outright, is the truly heavy caliber stuff. For on map guns, that means the German sIG, exclusively. (105mm howitzers aren't much fun either, direct). For the Russians, those calibers only come in assault guns, not towed form. I also worry some about TRPed big caliber FOs, but mostly that is just a matter of not bunching up too much. It can always still kill people, but if you don't overstack, only in proportion to its cost to the defense, pretty much.

[JasonC]

If you have enough HE, especially FOs in high calibers or the sort of tanks with very large HE loads, that can work, sure. The Germans in 1941 usually don't, really. I mean, you can walk a 150mm module ahead of the advance, I suppose. (That is a lot of your force in a 1000 point game, though, and will ruin you if you drop most of it on empty location).

The 1941 AFVs top out at 75mm caliber, and 25-30 rounds each, which will only pay for themselves being used on IDed point targets. (Unlike say T-34s or Shermans with 60+ HE rounds apiece).

You could also use a sIG on map I suppose, or a pair of 105mm howitzers. You'd probably trigger gun duels but that's OK.

You are still going to kill a heck of a lot more with IDs than without.

[Cuirassier]

Perhaps an AAR will make both sides more clear

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