The Laughable 8.8cm FlaK

[c3k]

Gents,

Through playing CMAK, I've discovered what a bunch of propagandistic hooey was behind the faked reputation of the German 88. It's obvious that these were crap guns, foisted on an unwilling military. Compared to the stubby 75 in the M3 tank, the German 88 had the accuracy of a blunderbuss.

The specifics: I'm playing a desert game, name withheld to protect the innocent, 1942, wide open vistas. The AI Tommies are using a horde of tanks against my many, many 88's. These tanks range from armored cars, Stuarts, Crusaders, to the M3.

The Brits are able, at 1,800 meters and more, from oft repositioning and pivoting tanks, to lay a deadly barrage of 75 fire. Sure, a lot miss, but enough hit to knock out a large section of 88's. In return, my 88's, using volley fire of 8-12 guns against a single tank at 1,200 meters, miss time after time.

My response? Obviously, conserve ammo and let the range get closer. It doesn't work. I tried "Hide". The guns just kept firing at targes over a mile away. (As an added bonus, the guns would fire one round at a target 1,800 meters away, switch to another target for one round and repeat that behavior all turn. Just great...)

Okay, "Hide" doesn't keep 'em from firing. I know! I used a cover arc command, restricting the max range to 1,000 meters. Nope, they ignored that as well.

Next up was ensuring there were no selected targets, "rotate" 180 degrees from the threat, then "Hide". That works about 1/3 of the time.

Meanwhile, my gunners happily fire off their ammo, missing shot after shot, while the M3's 75 pounds them into scrap. This while the M3 repositions and pivots. All done at ranges exceeding 1200 meters.

Two issues need to be addressed: the bizarre inaccuracy of the 88 compared to historical norms, and the inability to keep them from firing despite different combinations of orders.

Any comments?

Regards,

Ken

[Andreas]

Originally posted by c3k:

Any comments?

Regards,

Ken

Yes. I believe I tested something along these lines a while back and posted results here when someone raised similar complaints. I could not find anything wrong with the game, or the 88 for that matter. The results were fairly consistent. Lots of dead tanks, not so many or no dead 88s, IIRC.

Try a search with my username, and see if you can dig it up.

[Kingfish]

Try this: make a copy of the scenario in question (and I know which one you are referring to). Now go in and edit the copy so that the 88s are all on the map at setup, dug in and in command. Now toss out a couple of dozen TRPs, and make sure each gun has LOS to at least 3.

Now run the scenario and compare your miss/hit ratio with the previous game. If you get the same results as before then you got a legitimate beef. Otherwise you are arguing Apples (accuracy of dug-in and ranged 88s) vs Oranges (accuracy of 88s deploying under fire).

[Redwolf]

There are several things at work here.

First of all, hide and cover arc are ignored in your case probably because the tanks are firing at the 88s. If a unit gets fired on it always returns fire.

Then there is absoulte spotting. Once one tanks spots a gun, all tanks fire on it. Not realistic but not easy to fix. Obviously, if you have many tanks around this makes a huge difference.

The hit probability model is slightly distored due to various factors. First it is based on muzzle velocity only and doesn't give the 88L/56 anything extra, which for example Lorrin Bird does. Then the TRPs are much too small. In reality, if you zeroed in before the attack, you would have a whole line of terrain where your range estimation would be hugely improved, for example, a whole section of street, a whole ridge, the front of a village.

Last but not least the dynamic zeroing in in CM is for one tank with a very small area around it. If you target another tank and switch back it is lost. If you switch to another tank close by the first one you get no benefit, even if the same distance helper (ridge, road) applies to both. The zeroed in area is also so small that tanks at high speed can leave it between two shots, even if they go steady they are hard to hit for a CM shooter, each time restarting from scratch, where in reality a tank going high-speed and steady would certainly be progressivly easier to hit with each shot. In my opinion, these factors are the singlemost reason why defending high-quality shooters cannot realistically decimate attacking tanks (along with absolute spotting).

[Schoerner]

Excellent post redwolf, but i'd add another one: wrong behaviour of AT-crews - they hide like normal infantry, when they come under fire from vehicles, they should knock-out.

So instead that gun crews keep firing as fast as they can until the crew has unreplaceable losses, they hide and lose the important seconds that decide about success or defeat.

[c3k]

Excellent points, all.

I'm not concerned with the comparison of a dug-in, TRP laden 88 with one which set-up under fire. I'd hope the set-up gun has an advantage with the INITIAL rounds.

No, my "issue" is the relative inaccuracy of the 88 compared to the M3's stubby 75.

Other issues are the target swapping behavior being exhibited by the guns - autonomously.

Ignoring covered arcs also bothers me.

Targeting an armored car which has the lethal 20mm cannon at a range of 1900 meters but ignoring the deadly accurate M3 at 1200 meters (LOS to both).

Thanks,

Ken

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Schoerner:

Excellent post redwolf, but i'd add another one: wrong behaviour of AT-crews - they hide like normal infantry, when they come under fire from vehicles, they should knock-out.

So instead that gun crews keep firing as fast as they can until the crew has unreplaceable losses, they hide and lose the important seconds that decide about success or defeat.

Equally important they lose all the zeroing in when they go on hide and let go on the red target line.

Even if the gun was trimmed to the right height before they went down, when they come up again it is like the gun has never fired at shot at that target area.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by c3k:

No, my "issue" is the relative inaccuracy of the 88 compared to the M3's stubby 75.

I disagree. The effect on targat for a given distance of impact and the accuracy of HE fire of 50mm up looks pretty good to me in CM.

Your guns die because you have an unrealistic number of shooters due to absolute spotting and due to the fact that the gun cannot kill them at a realistic rate due to too limited zeroing in (and probably undermodeled burst rate of fire).

But each HE shot in isolation looks fine to me.

Other issues are the target swapping behavior being exhibited by the guns - autonomously.

It is possible the original target went out of LOS, possibly due to heat flimmer, dust or smoke?

Is the battle in hot weather?

But in any case, even a justified switch still causes all zeroing in to be lost, and you don't regain it by switching back. This behaviour, even when explainable by loss of LOS, still amplifies the zero in undermodeling.

Ignoring covered arcs also bothers me.

Did you read my earlier post?

Sorry but this is not a general CM problem. Only low-quality units outright ignore the covered arc.

For medium-and better quality units I only see the cover arc broken when somebody shoots at my unit, in which case it shoots back unconditionally.

Looks fine to me.

[MikeyD]

I believe (I may be wrong) your 'unnamed scenario' may have very hot weather conditions which limits long distance targetting - theoretically due to heat ripples. That would put a crimp in the 88 extreme range targetting. 75mm Grant return fire, on the other hand, is HE. And with HE, like the game of horseshoes, you score points for just coming close.

If it makes you feel better, when i played that 'unnamed scenario' as allies the distant 88s rather quickly ran my 75s out of ammo then proceeded to pick me off at their leisure.

[Moon]

Redwolf posted:

The hit probability model is slightly distored due to various factors. First it is based on muzzle velocity only...

Not quite true when stated in this general form: CM does track gun optics as well among other things.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by c3k:

(As an added bonus, the guns would fire one round at a target 1,800 meters away, switch to another target for one round and repeat that behavior all turn. Just great...)

Yeah, I find this especially irritating. To their credit, BFC spent a lot of time trying to fix this all the way back in CMBO days. Finding the right degree of "stickiness" to a target under all conditions turns out to be a non-trivial task in a computer program.

Michael

[c3k]

redwolf,

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I do not think I've found a bug, or problem with the code. What I'm trying to show is that the current implementation of the code is too inaccurate. It allows a moving gun (the M3 75mm) as much, or more shot accuracy as that of a fixed weapon, the 88.

I understand the limits of covered arc. However, even when ordered, by any imaginable series of commands, to ignore a target too far away, the guns continued to fire.

The target switching behavior can be explained by dust obscuration. It does not make it "correct" in a simulation sense.

As for too many tanks firing at few guns to explain the hits, no good. I used volley fire of 8 to 12 guns to fire at individual tanks. No hits. The tanks, moving and repositioning achieved hits. No more than 6 tanks involved. Bizarre.

I also just ran a test of emplaced vs. in-game setup guns. Counterintuitively, the guns which were towed into position during the game had better spotting capabilities than the dug-in guns. (My guess is that this is a function of the decreased height advantage when dug-in. Ranges were about 2000 meters against Crusaders. The dug-in guns COULD NOT SPOT THE TANKS unless they moved. No dust, no smoke. All guns were on a 5 meter tall bluff at 2000 meters range. The guns which were towed into position could spot stationary vehicles. All hit chances were equal.)

In sum, I think the accuracy of the 88 is grossly undermodelled. This is based on the repeated misses at ranges of 1000 to 1500 meters. (Entire ammo allotments of 6 guns wasted, no hits. This in counterpoise to receiving hits from the tanks, as explained above.)

Regards,

Ken

[Redwolf]

Yes, I forgot the optics and I think some guns get a hit probability penality, IIRC the 17pdr does, at least when shooting ADPS. Long ago, don't remember precisely.

But anyway, the optics hit probability benefit is absolutely minimal. Compare a captured Russian 76.2mm to its original. The captured one has German optics in the unit data. The difference is neglectable. There are other examples of guns with comparable muzzle velocity where the difference is a little better but I didn't see anything above 10 percent. That's 10 percent of the base probability, not percent points. That means 20% hit probability go up to 22%, but not 30%.

I once posted a list of comparisons, maybe somebody remembers the thread?

[MikeyD]

CM dry sandy weather/terrain also plays a factor. A big gun like an 88 kicks up enough dust to block LOS (an an appropriate problem, historically speaking). Rework the scenario so you've got wet ground with no dust and the 88s will be better able to keep locked on targets.

[ April 14, 2004, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[Andreas]

You really should do a search - we have had the hit discussion before. Also, you need to say what parameters you are using in the test, otherwise it is impossible to understand what is going on.

As I said, I could not find anything wrong with it, and I ran a number of tests when this first came up. My English tanks always died. Just fine.

[c3k]

Andreas,

I fear doing a test with your name as the search parameter would melt down my computer.

Agreed that dust in the desert will create LOS issues with short rounds. Umm, like ALL THE FRIGGIN' ROUNDS I'VE FIRED! Not that I'm bitter that on the 5th or 6th shot that my gun crews are still 100's of meters off. No, not bitter at all.

The suggestion of using wet ground to prevent dust from MikeyD is a good one, if somewhat hard to implement in a scenario. I briefly thought of running trucks full of infantry towards the tanks so that the blood from my wounded would ease the dust issue, but, alas, I realized I didn't have enough infantry. Perhaps BF.C could model water tank trucks?

What I will do is take any surviving gun crews from this scenario and save them for a special CMBB winter scenario I'll be designing....just for them.

Thanks,

Ken

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by c3k:

Perhaps BF.C could model water tank trucks?

Oil. The Afrika Korps gunners used to spread motor oil in front of their positions to hold down the dust from muzzle blast when they were emplaced in dug-in positions. Interestingly enough, I've also read a couple of accounts that described a wake of dust sucked up from the sand by the passage of their shot when close enough to the ground.

Michael

[Tank Ace]

uhhhhh considering its a game its not going to be 100% realistic. Why don't you ask the allied tankers that manned shermans and ask them if the 88mm gun was crappy.

[GoofyStance]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Oil. The Afrika Korps gunners used to spread motor oil in front of their positions to hold down the dust

In today's day and age, the gun crews would be roundly chastised by the divisional environmental officer for spreading a contaminant on the ground, and the news agencies would have a field day with this horrible, deliberate fouling of a delicate ecosystem ...

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by GoofyStance:

In today's day and age, the gun crews would be roundly chastised by the divisional environmental officer for spreading a contaminant on the ground, and the news agencies would have a field day with this horrible, deliberate fouling of a delicate ecosystem ...

If true I for one am glad to hear of it. During WW II that thought simply would not have occurred to anyone at all. To them, if the oil came out of the ground, what could be more natural than putting it back in? Besides, you had tens, if not hundreds of millions of men running around destroying half the world already. It was a binge of destruction unparalleled in human history. The torpedoing of a single tanker ship—and hundreds were in the various oceans of the world—unleashed more oil into the environment than all the oil spilled either accidentally or to a purpose on the sands of the Sahara. War is, after all, hell. No ****.

Michael

[John Kettler]

c3K and troops,

In no particular order....

Search would have to be done by member number, not member name. Staked down tarps were also used to minimize or eliminate dust thrown up by muzzle blast. The Germans were well aware of the muzzle blast from the 88's blocking LOS and interfering with sensing where the round went. The solution? Offset observer. Many pictures and much footage exist of such an approach being used. Am uncertain how well it's modeled in the various CM games, but 88s commonly had a man on a separate rangefinder in addition to the primary on mount gunsights. This should convey a major gunnery accuracy benefit when compared to foes fitted solely with telescopic sights. The Borg spotting problem is a huge contributor to the low survival chances for 88s in CM. The lack of modeling of German flashless powder is another contributor. In real life, it was much harder for the Alles to spot German weapons firing than the other way round. This is attested to by numerous period statements. In WEST OF ALAMEIN, Col. G.B. Jarrett (ordnance officer who served in North Africa and founded the APG Ordnance Museum) notes how difficult it was to spot the 88, especially when dug in, because of heat shimmer, but many of its targets essentially rose above the shimmer, allowing the 88 to see and shoot effectively while they could not. The Grant/Lee would seem to fall under that rubric, seeing as how the Germans called it the "steel skyscraper." The Grant/Lee, despite its tactical limitations via hull mounted main gun and considerable height, was a major thorn for the Germans, because prior to its arrival at the Gazala battles, the British were practically devoid of tank mounted HE capability. The capacity to fling real HE definitely hurt the 88's when compared to 2 pdr. and 6 pdr. tank cannon firing only AP shot. Big difference between needing a direct hit and a near miss!

Put your 88s under the best HQ you can find, with stealth, combat, and morale bonuses a priority. That way, the guns will be harder to find, more effective when shooting and more resilient under fire. If your HQ has a strong command rating that'll help, too, since you'll be able to disperse your guns more while still maintaining effective command. Also, always play with EFOW set. That'll postpone effective ID by the foe and the attendant counterfire.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Seanachai]

Originally posted by c3k:

In sum, I think the accuracy of the 88 is grossly undermodelled. This is based on the repeated misses at ranges of 1000 to 1500 meters. (Entire ammo allotments of 6 guns wasted, no hits. This in counterpoise to receiving hits from the tanks, as explained above.)

Regards,

Ken

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm misunderstanding you. As I read it right now from your above posts, you are basing this entire discussion on one play through of a single scenario?

I don't think the modeling can be scrapped or seriously questioned on the basis of one play through of a single scenario by a single player.

But perhaps I misunderstood you.

[GoofyStance]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

If true I for one am glad to hear of it. During WW II that thought simply would not have occurred to anyone at all. To them, if the oil came out of the ground, what could be more natural than putting it back in?

I agree. Having been involved in environmental damage mitigation in the past, I've assessed the seedier side of nature - Superfund Sites, oil spills, abandoned dumps, etc. Many of these "crimes against nature" were a result of plain ignorance or expedient reasoning ("Dumping these chemicals will save lives!") In the 1930s and 40s, chemical research was marked by leaps and bounds, spurred on by the catalysts of war and massive government funding. However, most of this research was geared towards winning the war, not protecting the environment. As a result, we now have extensive contamination of firing ranges (lead, copper, zinc, arsenic, tungsten, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, to name a few contaminants), and areas of the South Pacific are still recovering, 60 years later, from widespread use of DDT to combat malaria in GIs. The dumping at sea of waste oil and defective lead batteries by war ships, and the torpedoing of oil tankers (as Michael mentioned) were commonplace occurrences. Then there's the catastrophic damage to the environment as a result of the use of atomic bombs and testing these primitive WMD's. Back then, little was known about the environmental damage caused by the new-fangled means and methods of winning the war through chemical means, or else people were more concerned with other, seemingly more important considerations. The destruction of a few thousand birds or even the wholesale extermination of insect species were viewed as a small price to pay - or no price at all, given the apparent uselessness of these species in the world as perceived by the common man. Even in today's "enlightened" world, it's not unusual to run into people who still think this way, with the result that the almighty dollar takes precedence over preserving the environment where we still can.

But I digress. This is a forum for the discussion of CM products and related military issues, not an environmental platform. I will, however, leave you with this quote by Aldo Leopold:

The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: "What good is it?" (A Sand County Almanac, 1948)

[Bastables]

Or you can read the German report's such as those reproduced in Jentz about 8,8cm versus 2pdr tanks in 1941: Most of the kills/hits occured at 800 to 500 metres.

Think about it.

[c3k]

All,

Thanks for keeping this lively, on topic, and polite.

My gripe is not the _absolute_ accuracy or inaccuracy of the 88. What I'm questioning is the RELATIVE inaccuracy of the 88 compared to that of the advancing tanks.

Crusaders, armored cars, Stuarts, M3's, all moving forward. No more than 6 in LOS of my guns at any time. Usually just 2 or 3. Yet, with a dozen 88's available (more than half having LOS when not obscured by all the short rounds), the tanks score more hits. This is at ranges around 1800 meters.

Then, when I do everything I can to stop them from shooting, those trigger-happy FlaK gunners can't stop themselves.

My guns are in the command of good HQ's, some with double lightning ratings. No matter. The horrid little guns of the moving tanks are striking my 88's. The 75's of the M3 are wreaking havoc.

Now, I wasn't there. But, like you, I've always heard of the 88's accuracy. I've seen the sight picture of early US tank sights. Horrendous. Couple that with the odds against the tanks, their movement and the ranges involved, and I think the 88's in game accuracy is less than what it should be.....RELATIVE to the accuracy of the tanks.

Thanks,

Ken