Russian Tank Destroyer Question

[DTrill]

Been doing some reading and came across a mention of a Russian Tank Destroyer Regiment in 1941. Did not think much of it and assumed it contained various SU-types. Then remembered that in cmbb there are no SU-types available in '41, so what did a tank destroyer regiment consist of in '41 ? Was it nothing more then some towed AT guns ? If someone could enlighten me it would be much appreciated.

[Andreas]

Towed AT guns. That was what the TD regiments consisted of throughout the war. The SPG formations were AFAICR not called tank destroyer, but assault gun.

All the best

Andreas

[JasonC]

There were also apparently some "destroyer" formations that weren't even ATG equipped, but instead had scads of ATRs and infantry close assault teams - "tank hunters" in CM terms. There were ATR formations with designations as high as brigade by 1943, though battalion is seen more frequently.

A "destroyer division" type also existed, ATG and ATR equipped and meant to conduct antitank defense. Here is a 1943 TOE for those -

total manpower approximately 4000 men.

2 destroyer brigades plus HQ, signals, supply etc

each brigade one tank battalion (3 T-34 companies), 2 ATR battalions, antitank gun regiment with 4 batteries of 76mm gun, 3 batteries of 45mm gun, 1 37mm AA battery, 1 pioneer battalion, 1 mortar battalion with 1 battery of 120mm and 2 batteries of 82mm mortars.

To create an AT defense barrier, the T-34s would typically be dug in, and were not always present. The pioneers laid AT minefields - they might also use demo charges or prepare AT ditches, but prelaid AT mines were their main weapon. The ATR battalions included not only the ATR crews but tommy gunner support (THs in CM terms). ATG composition varied, with some having all 76mm and the number of batteries ranging from 5 to 10 per brigade - the numbers above are not fast but one example value. The mortars were not considered AT weapons in their own right but gave the formation some organic artillery support and the ability to strip infantry off the tanks.

What is noteworthy about it is that even antitank guns were considered only one leg of general AT tactics, which spanned stripping operations, obstacles, close assault tactics, and a blizzard of ATR fire.

These did not have independent assigned frontages but supported the rifle divisions of the line, typically at the brigade level or the assigned battalions, or mixed teams smaller than that (such a brigade supporting a corps e.g., with the "division" an army level assignment).

[DTrill]

Thanks for the response guys, I still find myself amazed at the Russians commitment to the AT Rifle, specially the manpower that they committed to those weapons. You would think that after they watched the shots fail to penetrate everything but folded tissue they would have dropped the AT Rifle like a hot potato. I would imagine the pucker-power was way up there when you got handed one of those in training ...

[Andreas]

They were cheap, and maybe of higher utility than Moisin Nagant rifles.

All the best

Andreas

[Sergei]

At least it got the Germans to install armoured skirts to their tanks, thus feminizing them.

[76mm]

I read the book PANZER ACES a year ago or so (not sure about its accuracy as a source) and was surprised that Russian ATRs featured in most of the accounts. I was also suprised that the panzer crews seem to worry about them (if not fear them).

While the ATRs probably weren't capable of knocking out a tank outright, with enough of them firing at a tank they could start doing damage to sights, road-wheels, machine guns, etc. so that they could degrade your combat power enough so that the tanks were vulnerable to bigger Soviet weapons.

[rum]

Originally posted by DTrill:

[QB] Thanks for the response guys, I still find myself amazed at the Russians commitment to the AT Rifle

This would discussed several times, may be you'd want to check the archives.

The wide usage of ATRs in Red Army in the early/mid war was a forced measure. Due to losses of industrial infrastructure of lots of real anti-tank assets and mechanized transportatation, soviet economy had to give troops some cheap substitution.

ATR had way relaxed requirements to produce, didnt required trucks/horses to transport, and were giving Red Army some AT abilities and some morale boost in case of being attacked by tanks.

[rum]

Originally posted by 76mm:

While the ATRs probably weren't capable of knocking out a tank outright, with enough of them firing at a tank they could start doing damage to sights, road-wheels, machine guns, etc. so that they could degrade your combat power enough so that the tanks were vulnerable to bigger Soviet weapons.

Yes, and sometimes Theory of Probability doing unexpecting things.

As it was with one of the Ferdinant under the Kursk, which only damage was a barrel shot-through with the 14.5mm ATR.

Crew decided to bail after lossing the firepower...

[LongLeftFlank]

Originally posted by DTrill:

Thanks for the response guys, I still find myself amazed at the Russians commitment to the AT Rifle, specially the manpower that they committed to those weapons. You would think that after they watched the shots fail to penetrate everything but folded tissue they would have dropped the AT Rifle like a hot potato.

And then be forced to go back and get it....

--What are you?

--We are PTR-riflemen.

--Where is your PTR then?

--We left it there.

--Go back and get it!

This should tell you much of what you want to know about what life was like for Russian ATR riflemen. Iremember.ru - V Zimakov, PTR gunner

[Corvidae]

the AT rifle was and is a nusance weapon,

it does minor but still very real dammage ,,

[John Kettler]

76mm,

Somewhere out there is a combat readiness report for a Tiger I company which fought at Kursk. The entire company was rendered hors de combat for weeks because ATR fire at the cupolas (per Russian doctrine) had destroyed so many vision blocks

that unit stocks were exhausted, ditto battalion stocks, forcing a delay to get them from regiment. The tanks were simply unfightable buttoned. Worse, many TCs had eye injuries from fragments, and some had serious injuries from having the vision blocks and brackets driven into their faces, requiring weeks in the hospital. Saw the report and downloaded it during my PE days, but didn't bookmark it and can't find the printout.

Anything which can disable a Tiger company is no joke in my book. BTW, the Pak 40's shield is constructed that way specifically to defeat the ATR. Seems that bad things were happening to gunners behind monobloc shields.

Regards,

John Kettler

[DTrill]

I would imagine that it was quite hard on the nerves to sit inside any buttoned tank and have 1/2 dozen of these guys plinking away at you.

[JasonC]

Guys, it isn't the endlessly repeated Tiger story. The German army did not consist of endless seas of Tiger tanks.

CM gives the impression that if a projectile passes inside a tank, it starts to bleed or something. That anything that doesn't get inside does nothing and anything that does (pretty much) will do lots. Well, actually, to be fair, it correctly shows that lots of rounds that penetrate don't do all that much, but that impression is typically temporary - hits coming in bunches when tactically possible.

The reality is a tank is a mechanical not a biological object and its functioning parts are not all in the inner sanctum. And that you need to actually physically break a number of them to significantly impair its functioning. What you don't see all that much of in CM is progressive damage, because it only has a few categories to work with and has to map everything into them. Abandoned or not, immobilized or not.

But there is a more basic problem with the impression of ATR uselessness created by CM. They are undermodeled, and things like skirts are too common and overmodeled. Above all, players cherry pick armor to a ridiculous degree.

Consider the Kursk era.

Three quarters of the German army were infantry divisions, most of which had no armor at all. An ATR will put a hole in a man or a gunshield at 1000 yards, no problem. If they had vehicles that weren't pulled by horses, they were probably trucks. An ATR will put holes in an engine, wheels, fuel system at 1000 yards, no problem.

OK, trivial stuff, other items will do it, and sometimes the German IDs did have armor. OK, what kind? A few Marders or StuGs in their divisional Panzerjaeger battalion, or as an attached brigade at corps or army level. An ATR will hole the early model Marders from the front at 200 yards. It will hole them from the side or rear at long range. It will hole a StuG from the side or rear at 200 yards - not that you'd easily get that impression from CM, but the penetration is there.

200 yards is as long as the "get a hit this side of heaven" range for any other nation's infantry AT weapons.

What does it mean that it will actually penetrate the side armor? How much is it going to do? Well, if can punch holes in the fuel cells along the lower hull, which will make fire more likely and immobilize the vehicle in time. Hits in the right part of the crew compartment will kill or wound the crew. Hit to the final drive or sprocket wheel will immobilize it, if not with one hit than with several.

Some infantry AT weapons only work at 30m range, but were still found useful to defend infantry from AFVs and to keep them out of friendly occupied terrain. If you have a weapon that can penetrate the sides reliably at point blank range, you can punch multiple holes in a stationary vehicle. Or it can be finished off with AT grenades, demo charges, or molotovs (which were considerable more effective in reality than in CM, particularly if they started an oil fire after an engine deck hit).

OK fine but that is just the IDs. The Germans attack with PDs. Yes they do, but 3/4 of the force of any PD is not armored at all. Half of its armored vehicles are light armor not full AFVs - PSWs in its recce battalion, SPWs in the recce battalion and one battalion of the Panzergrenadier regiment, gun armed SPWs in the heavy companies of both. Plus there are things like Grills in the regimental cannon companies, Marders in the Panzerjaegers, Wespes and Hummels in the artillery regiment's first battalion. Fully half of the armored vehicles are straightforwardly penetrable by an ATR at medium range. Containing them is clearly useful, since if they were not contained, every one of them could act as an assault gun or unkillable MG nest locally.

OK, but major attacks will use the full AFVs. Sure. What model full AFVs? A uniform sea of Tigers? No. About one sixth of the Kursk era AFV fleet had thicker armor. Fully a third were older model IIIs and short IVs, penetrable from the side at closer ranges, just like the StuGs. Half were either StuGs or Panzer IV longs, the workhorses, which deadly firepower against T-34s and armor thick enough to make frontal tackling difficult for all Russian weapons - but with sides penetrable by an ATR at close range.

If your CM games aren't giving you that impression of the German army around the time of Kursk, maybe the problem isn't with the ATR, but with how much cherry picking "uberarmor all the time" you or your opponents typically engage in.

Then there are skirts. In CM, III and IV model vanilla Panzers and StuGs - the bulk of the midwar fleet - become pretty much ATR proof. Now, there weren't any before 1943. Half the fleet were older models without them through midyear. And one thing you never see in CM, they didn't exactly last all that long in actual combat. One 76mm HE hit and they'd be gone on a whole side of the tank. One AP hit from any gun and the local panel would be gone, at least.

So there were a lot more penetration chances in the real deal. In addition to the point already made, that even exterior damage can and does add up. Others have spoken of vision related hits, but definitely the most common were drive related hits. Broken track links, fractured road wheels, punctured hydraulics, leaking fuel cells - all add up to limping Panzers. The Russian manuals on infantry AT work give a division of labor - ATRs stop the thing, close assault finishes it.

Obviously, infantry AT as a whole is marginal compared to the main AT weapons, towed guns and other tanks. But along with minefields, they restrict and channel armor employment, requiring it to happen in large chunks to be effective, for example, and to have support of all arms. Which soft firepower from artillery MGs infantry etc can work on breaking up, etc.

[lucero1148]

Jason

I was just about to ask what the skirts were for on the Mk III and IV's and you gave the answer. I had always thought the skirts was to prevent bazooka rounds from penetrating, but that didn't make sense since the Russians didn't have anything like a panzerfaust until they had some lend lease bazooka's which aren't model in cmbb. At least I don't recall.

Put a post at TPG on your Hunt Vasili.

all best

Patrick