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You are allowed to miss my Shermans, you know!


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I don't mind loosing. Infact, I'm quite good at it. I practice. But I just had my most un-enjoyable CM game by far.

It was a quickbattle in Italy with what turned out to be 4 Tiger and a Panther (crack) pitted to my 3 platoons of Sherman Vs (regular). May I en passant mention I noticed a preference for the AI to pick Tigers. It'll pick Panthers and Stugs (42s mostly) but hardly ever a MkIV.

My Shermans see a Tiger and wee themselves in fear, most then reverse. The Tiger shoots and hits. A kill, but the Tiger doesn't mind, pumping two or three rounds into the luckless Sherman. It gets bored and shoots another Sherman as it forgets it's orders to fast move towards cover in an effort to flank the beast. It hits and kills. But hey, let's fire another shell into it for kicks. While doing so it get's rudely interrupted by two other Shermans saying "Shoot me! Shoot me!" after they add moisture to their already stained trousers as they glimpse the Tiger whilst moving from cover to cover. They die. The Tiger doesn't pump extra rounds into their hulks, why should it? They burned nicely at the first go. My other Sherman platoons sandwich the Tiger but can't get a proper aim in between weeing themselves and backing up and end up missing about 75% of shots with the rest bouncing. Finally a Sherman forgets himself and parks his Sherman to the rear wher it takes carefull aim and.... explodes, as a shot from 1200m or so from another Tiger hit's it in the turret side. I think, bugger tactics, let's mob the sucker. And yes, the Tiger takes down another Sherm at the approach, naturally. My Sherms park at 50m or less and continually fire at rear or flank. And about half the shots miss. Three shots out of a dozen hits penetrate, the turret stops swinging over towards it's intended victim. Hah, got you, mein Herr! NOT! Turret swings the other way and blasts another Sherman before it finally falls to the relentless fire of the clutter of Shermans.

My gaggle of Shermans race across town trying to find the other Tigr. Bumping into each other as the little blighters are prone to do when navigating anything other then a straight line I find the Tiger. After kindly drawing attention by pinging a few rounds against it's rear hull it blast another Sherman who should have been 150m away, not rubbing hull with his platoon mate. Not wanting to get embarrased again I race my Sherms past large buildings and end up with all my tanks rounding the corner and all getting flank or rear shots at 50m or under. All fire a shot with the last round to be fired actually hitting it, setting the Tiger on fire. I then try and rush another Tiger but get sandwiched between it and a Panther. The Panther falls to the Shermans but another Tiger chips in and in a confused mess all but my last Sherman die as they fail to score any hits in between panicking from one end of a block of buildings to the other and back again. The last surviving Sherman heroically got stuck out of harms way, where it get's auto surrender upon.

In this story you'll find that I relate a lot about my Shermans missing, but not about at all about the Germans missing. They didn't. Not at 50m, not at 500m, not at 1000m. In the thirty odd rounds needed to take down my Sherman Vs they did not miss. Not once. That's impressive, even for crack troops. Was Salkin helping them with their aim or somefink? Meanwhile my troops seem to have been ON crack! At ranges of 10-50m they still missed about two thirds of the time! At that distance I could do better with chewed paper balls and a straw! I know, I know, I was on the far side of a probability curve. Well I don't bloody well care! I had to step away from my desk to avoid battering my monitor to pieces with my keyboard.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel a bit better now.

[ January 02, 2005, 12:08 PM: Message edited by: Elmar Bijlsma ]

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I feel your pain, Elmar. I had a very similar experience in CMBB. It was in an operation called FMR Tank Warning.

WARNING SPOILER TO FOLLOW!!!!!

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It involved 2 Tigers against at least a battalion and a half of T34-43s. I suck at writing so I won't try to go into heavy detail. Let's just say at the end of the battle, the kill ratio was at least 15 to 1 in the Tiger's favor. It must have taken 12 T34s firing simultainiously from all directions to finally kill the big cats off. I won the op, but with heavy losses, mostly from those two bloody cats.

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Sorry, but it is very nice to know that others experience the Tiger induced ridiculous response syndrome. It begins with ignored orders and deteriorates from there.

But it is kind of endearing, oooh look, theres a Tiger. Now it is going to take him about ten minutes to rotate his turret this way so lets play silly buggers in the meantime. No don't get behind that building, drive right out into the open where he can get a good look at your nice new shiny Sherman...............

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Heh heh. This thread should be teamed up with the 'Tiger inaccurate shooting' thread elsewhere on this board, just for the contrast. If you want (under 500m) revenge on the Tiger borrow a couple 6 pdr Valentine X's from the Brits. Nasty little vehicle that's blind when buttoned and got a horrible fate-of-fire, but its tungsten rounds will cut through the turret front of a Tiger good enough.

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One of the most entertaining AARs I've ever read, thanks a lot Elmar Bijlsma !!!

These quotes seem to describe your situatian pretty well:

British 'optimism' Normandy 1944:

"Our commanders have decided on a new tactic. If the Germans send a Tiger tank we will send out 8 shermans to meet it & we expect to lose 7 of them."
Canadian M4 Crewman's report Normandy 1944:

"We sighted two Tiger tanks of the Das Reich division at a range of 600 yards. We fired 4 shells which all bounced off. The Tigers subsequently turned around & headed straight for us. We pulled back after losing 6 shermans. One of our Firefly tanks managed to score a direct hit on the left flank of one of the Tigers before it too was destroyed by the surviving Tiger. We saw the crew escape from the crippled Tiger & climb onto it's comrade before the tank retreated. There were no survivors from our tanks which simply burst into flames......"
British Armoured Battalion Captain's report Normandy 1944:

"Our scouts reported an enemy column consisting of a single Panzer mk6 Tiger & two Panzer 4 tanks moving Northwest. Our commander decided to pull back & discuss tactics. It was agreed to call in air support to deal with the threat rather than risk losing any of our own tanks.... "
( source: Tiger Phobia<--- Dead link now, sorry.)

Regards, Sven

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The posts are all over the place today. Compare this thread to the 'Sherman always wins vs PzIII' post. ;)

One gauge of how feared the Tiger was is the late-war U.S. tanker habit of riding around with a smoke round up the spout. Not HE, not AP, but smoke. Firing 75mm AP against a Tiger on a distant ridge was about as useful as blowing kisses at it. German tankers came to really despise the 'American Smoke' round, and in my opinion its just about your only hope against a Tiger in the game if you're in a 75mm gun Sherman (it was AWFUL fighting without a proper smoke round in T34s in CMBB)

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Originally posted by fridericus:

you shouldnt forget the most important fact: the sherman were build to fight the german inf, but never to fight german tanks.

Well, perhaps not entirely. At the time the Sherman was designed and put into production, the known German tanks were the Mk. III 50L/42 and Mk. IV 75L/24, and the Sherman was superior in most ways to either of them.

Michael

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Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

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

you shouldnt forget the most important fact: the sherman were build to fight the german inf, but never to fight german tanks.

Well, perhaps not entirely. At the time the Sherman was designed and put into production, the known German tanks were the Mk. III 50L/42 and Mk. IV 75L/24, and the Sherman was superior in most ways to either of them.

Michael </font>

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