How effective were...

[Clavicula_Nox]

...US rifle grenades against German armour? In-game they seem to be very effective, sometimes more so than bazookas, against the common mid-war German armour, but I am wondering if this is how it actually was.

[JasonC]

It is not.

Bazookas were marginal due to range, but effective from ambush in close enough terrain. Everything else combined in the way of infantry AT would have been lucky to score out of double digits over the whole war.

[Clavicula_Nox]

That's basically what I figured. What I have seen is consistent kills made against halftracks and Stug IIIs by US rifle squads.

Enough so that I very fearfully have them engage infantry at close range, and try to keep their range at 150+m.

[DavidFields]

As a case of general doctrine, best to keep armor +150 away from infantry in any case, whatever the game modeling.

Yet there is that temptation to move the armor forward............

[Clavicula_Nox]

Well, I'll admit that I have no idea what to do with tanks. I've spent my entire military service fighting amongst the Airborne and light infantry. Using tanks is a completely foreign idea to me.

[JasonC]

Tanks are simple. Move your line of sight, not the physical tank, over enemy held locations. Shoot the heck out of anything you see and half of what you don't see (recon by fire with the coaxial MG etc). Scouts out, ahead of them, on foot. If scouts draw fire, tanks kill the enemy shooters. Repeat as necessary.

[Clavicula_Nox]

How do you deal with static AT guns? Supporting infantry flank and assault?

[ChrisND]

Originally posted by Clavicula_Nox:

How do you deal with static AT guns? Supporting infantry flank and assault?

My favorite cure for them is 60mm mortars when available.

[Clavicula_Nox]

Yeah, I agree, mortars for everything. I'm playing an operation called Rush of Jousts as Axis, and I have a ton of artillery assets in the first battle, but very limited after that.

No mortars.

They have tons of AT guns, a platoon or so of M10s, a platoon or so of Shermans, and a battalion of infantry.

Their infantry are nothing, in the first battle, they lose most of A company, around 1/4 of B Company, and some casualties in C. My infantry prove themselves as veterans of the Eastern front and all that mess.

My tanks just get slaughtered, i have them pop out from cover to deal with a pesky Sherman, and then 5 AT guns pop out of nowhere and execute the entire tank platoon.

I think we should just nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

[DavidFields]

Originally posted by JasonC:

(recon by fire with the coaxial MG etc).

I think this is a nice tactic.

Since very few people (or even the AI) like to be even tickled with MG fire, the result can be getting an unseen unit to either be supressed, or to move--in the latter case possibly getting spotted. Enemy attacks can thus be disrupted, or cause to be prematurely launched, making you look like a magician, just by peppering obvious gathering points.

Since running out of co-axial ammo is seldom an issue for an AFV, I think it is a low cost gamble, though it can be hard to get oneself to potentially "waste" fire on apparently empty terrain.

Tux, if you wander in here from your AAR, you might consider this.

Two questions:

Does such a tactic correspond to WW2 doctrine?

(CM simulation question) How much does using the coaxial MG slow the acquisition for the main gun, should a hard target come into view?

[ April 18, 2008, 10:29 AM: Message edited by: Rankorian ]

[MOS was 71331]

As I recall my training exposure to rifle grenades in the 60s, you put the grenade on the end of the rifle barrel and a special cartridge in the rifle chamber. You put the butt of the rifle on the ground with the grenade up in the air, tilt the rifle in what looks like the appropriate direction, and pull the trigger. I'd guess the odds of getting the grenade into the back of a half-track might be as high as ten percent -- if you'd fired half a dozen or so in training. Getting one into an open tank hatch would pure luck. But if it's the only AT weapon I had and I didn't have to expose myself too much to use it, I'd fire away.

[Aco4bn187inf]

Clavicula- Your artillery assets will still be around for subsequent battles, as long as the spotters survive. Or do you mean the operation gives you poor ammo resupply?

Youur arty should give the open-topped M10's a lot to worry about, if not the Shermans...

[Clavicula_Nox]

Yeah, the ammo supply is set to Scarce. The observers have, I believe, a full supply in the beginning. Available are 2 rocket observers of different sizes, 1 81mm mortar, 105mm (i think), and another set of tubes, the size of which I cannot remember.

So far, my artillery has only ever been useful on destroying infantry strongholds. The rockets scatter way too much to be effective, the tube artillery is maybe too effective, and firing them on Turn 1 commits them for the entirety of the battle.

So far, the best thing I've been doing for their M10s and AT guns is simply advancing my infantry through their infantry, then flank and assault. I'm a whiz with the infantrymen, I just don't know what to do with those metal deathboxes. I have the same problem in Shock Force, anything bigger than humvees and I'm wondering what i should do with them (and humvees are near useless in-game anyways).

As it is now, I have 2 slaughtered companies of panzergrenadiers taking my left flank, a company of fallschirmjaegers on my right flank, and 3 companies of grenadiers going up the center. The fallschirmjaegers, so far, are the big killers and have saved the attack on many occasions.

[JasonC]

A German late war fight in which the Germans get no mortars is simply a busted scenario design from a designer who doesn't understand combined arms or the German force mix.

They put in an 81mm FO and think that is how they were used. Completely wrong.

Every company had 2, plus 4-6 more at battalion. The latter could double any company's mortars or be fired from battery.

But the company's were meant for precisely such directed fire on individual firing points holding up an advance. In CM terms, anti-gun and anti-MG uses.

If the ATGs are 57mm and you have Panthers, you can also just avoid giving them flank shots, by "keyholing" the overwatching Panthers and keeping them 400 meters or so behind the lead infantry scouts. If you only have Panzer IVs, that won't work. If they have 17 pdrs or US 76mm with tungsten, it won't work.

As for M-10s, schrecks in the scouting wave can help. So can just keeping a few reserve tanks out of sight and running them forward unexpectedly to catch a defending AFV, then back into full cover, etc.

[JasonC]

MOS - the rifle grenades are short range and horribly inaccurate. But they don't need to literally go through a hatch. They are HEAT grenades, with a warhead sufficient to penetrate around 60mm or armor - enough for the sides and rears of anything under Tiger size. As with other low velocity HEAT, though, the angle of the hit influences the penetration of the explosion, and the wobbly flight of rifle grenades isn't very good at producing a flat hit. Certainly they were in every respect inferior to bazookas, which were not scarce. As a result, almost all infantry AT kills actually made, were made by bazookas.

[JasonC]

Rank - recon by fire with the coaxial was certainly a standard tactic in WW II. There are scores of AARs describing approaching tank attacks as spraying every hedge, treeline, and bush along the route, especially in tight country otherwise good for infantry ambush (e.g. hedgerow country, the Ardennes, etc).

[Clavicula_Nox]

StugIII's are the best I have, in fact, that's all I have besides 2 Marder IIIs and some (now dead) halftracks.

[John Kettler]

Clavicula_Nox,

This suggests that the situation wasn't quite as bad as JasonC painted it.

http://www.amazon.com/review/RA7KYOHT4WW26

Here's a terrific discussion of rifle grenades going back to WW I and addressing what the writer perceives as a serious shortfall in U.s. squad combat power.

http://www.combatreform.com/riflehandgrenades.htm

Here's how it's done. Firing from the shoulder wasn't recommended. Nasty recoil!

http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/rifle_grenade.htm

Combat use, including firing from the shoulder. Note also the substantial armor penetration of the M9A1 100mm at normal. FWIW, I've killed a Tiger 1 in CMBO with a turret side hit.

http://www.ww2f.com/weapons-wwii/12343-rifle-grenades-any-use.html

Another good thread. Note the very high production numbers for a supposedly "useless" weapon.

http://www.ww2f.com/weapons-wwii/19976-rifle-grenades.html

THE WEAPONS OF PATTON'S ARMIES rates the M9A1 AT rifle grenade as the most important type of rifle grenade the U.S. produced during the war.

http://tinyurl.com/5ft9zk

Tank kill with hand thrown AT rifle grenade!

http://tinyurl.com/5tc8fr

Marine use

http://www.ww2gyrene.org/weapons_m7.htm

Tech data and color pics

http://users.skynet.be/jeeper/page69.html

U.S. Airborne apparently found the M9A1 quite valuable.

http://tinyurl.com/3ppcq5

Scale of issue certainly indicates the grenade launcher was useful.

http://tinyurl.com/6clafw

Regards,

John Kettler

[ April 19, 2008, 10:11 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[JasonC]

JK - sorry, not a single one is about combat use against any vehicles. The sole MOH citation mentioning rifle grenades is about use of them against infantry - there are literally a hundred about bazookas being used against tanks. I've no doubt rifle grenades were used and used liberally, but against buildings and field fortifications, as a poor man's mortar at the squad rather than company level.

The only exception to the above statement is one of your links to an online forum includes a single case on a fish story anecdote about a rifle grenade into a tank hatch (second shot), supposedly in North Africa, the target being a Vichy Somua. It is an online anecdote, misunderstands what they needed to kill anything, etc. It is also consistent with my statement that they would have been lucky to kill 100 over the whole war.

On scale of issue, the US issued over 500 bazookas per division at TOE and many more beyond TOE whenever there was actual German armor around. The limitation on their use was first trained men who had passed the bazooka course, even though many more took them than were assigned the weapon normally, and many others used them in combat without the training, when desparate enough - and second, the relatively low demand for heroic suicide.

But bazookas actually killed tanks. Enough to appear in the after action reports, to be of tactical significance (infantry in terrain stops armor by using them), to appear routinely in medal citations, hundreds of first hand accounts, etc. You won't find anything similar to be true of AT rifle grenades because it wasn't. That is why nearly every source you found is a weapon type compendium going through the equipment and describing theoretical capabilities, and not reports of use in action describing what was actually done with them at time X and place Y.

I also note that some of your sources extend to later dedicated grenade launchers like the M79 or slung attachments like the M203, and also that some of the online amateur ones contain glaring errors of the typical ignorant nationality biased variety - like the claim that the US was so much better equipped against tanks because they had AT rifle grenades and bazookas, while Brits and *Germans* supposedly had to take out tanks with crowbars and cans of gasoline.

Um, the Germans had infantry AT weapons far superior the US, as well as their own AT rifle grenades that nobody much cares about for the same reasons as the US ones, and the can of gasoline method is much more common in US infantry anecdote than anyone else's - OK, maybe Russians trying to use molotovs in the early war. Ad hoc gas methods presuppose lots of gasoline lying around, which means motorized, which most other people's infantries weren't.

Incidentally, you will also find scads of anecdotal reports of Americans using willy pete on both tanks and infantry, delivered by hand and by mortar and by full artillery fire mission. But not HEAT rifle grenades stopping the big tank attack. It didn't happen.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

The second excerpt in the book review should prove of interest. Besides, it's our own Harry Yeide's book! The target was unambiguously a German tank.

Judging from the reviewer's comments, a Tiger and maybe even a King Tiger.

http://sonic.net/~bstone/archives/070903.shtml

This is to show you that the U.S. troops also made use of field expedient AT weapons.

The 1st Battalion refused to panic and set to work with bazookas against the flanks of the blinded tanks. One of the panzers was crippled, but the crew compartment proved impervious to bazooka rounds (perhaps this was a Tiger). So Cpl. Charles Roberts (Company D) and Sgt. Otis Bone (Company drained some gasoline from an abandoned vehicle, doused the tank, and lit the whole with thermite grenades.

From here.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_6.htm

Here's the proof not every act of military significance comes with an MOH. Pity the other medals don't have online databases. Tank kill with a rifle grenade (DSC awarded)! Page 110 of above source.

Back at Krinkelt three German tanks with infantry clinging to their decks got into the eastern streets: with this foothold won more Germans appeared as the night went on. The fight for Krinkelt surged back and forth, building to building, hedgerow to hedgerow. Men on both sides were captured and recaptured as the tide of battle turned. A German attempt to seize the heavy-walled church on the northern edge of the village was beaten off by the reconnaissance company of the 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had lost a platoon at Büllingen during the morning. The communications officer of the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry, 1st Lt. Jesse Morrow, knocked out a tank with only a rifle grenade. (Morrow later was awarded the DSC.) The situation in Krinkelt was further confused by retreating troops from the 99th Division, intermixed as they were with the infiltrating enemy. One German, using a captured American to give the password, got past two outposts, but a sentry finally killed both men. At midnight a column of 99th Infantry vehicles started pouring through the town and continued the rest of the night.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ April 19, 2008, 03:10 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[John Kettler]

MOS was 17331,

Here's a perfect example of what JasonC's talking about regarding using a tank to hose down an area.

Source is below, p. 44.

http://www.history.army.mil/documents/WWII/Lock/lock.htm

The tanks moved out slowly, not through caution, but because the infantry advance was tedious, the men having to foot their way gingerly over the uneven ground next the hedgerow embankments. Together, they went forward at about two miles per hour. But the movement was as positive as it was slow. The tanks remained unbottoned and their example gave the infantry fresh confidence. The hedgerows forward were sprayed from end to end, this constant fire by the tanks being augmented by the fire of BALLARD'S riflemen. Momentarily, the tankers halted to shell the machine gun positions. The extent of their contribution can be measured best in ammunition. Before the advance was over they had expended per tank 10 rounds of 75 mm fire against the indicated strong points and buildings and 15 boxes of machine gun ammunition against the hedgerow lines.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Clavicula_Nox]

Well, if rifle grenades only accounted for around 100 tank kills, most of those kills can be accredited to my forces....

[John Kettler]

Clavicula_Nox,

The M9A1 AT rifle grenade was a slower, shorter ranged version of the bazooka projectile, with an effective range of 100 yards. I think it doesn't matter that it wasn't a great tank killer, for by D-Day, it wasn't really a primary antitank weapon anyway. Rather, it was an adjunct to the bazooka

but was organic to the squad, whereas the bazooka wasn't. In some of the material I read, the shortage of grenade launchers in infantry facing German combined arms attack was a matter of serious concern. I can also tell you that some roadblocks put out by the Airborne had only AT rifle grnades as ranged AT capability. At Stavelot, the engineers came awfully close to facing down a King Tiger column with a single such grenade launcher, but were moved elsewhere before the shooting started. I should also tell you that I found an account by a collector who actually fired a full weight AT practice grenade just as the live round would've been fired. He said its recoil was worse than his 10 gauge shotgun firing slugs but was quite doable. As for my Tiger 1 kill, I think I got the "weak spot" hit , doubtless on the pistol port.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

Going to work with bazookas against the flanks of blinded - being the operative words. As for the gas can incident, it is easily the most reported of the war. But the target was already immobilized by 155mm artillery fire. Overall in that fighting, US SP TDs, 155mm artillery firing indirect, bazookas, and anti tank mines, all proved effective. Shermans got a few but lost at least as many themselves. Towed ATGs, several at the ridge behind a few days later, largely ineffective before then. Overall the Germans lost over 100 AFVs over a few days. A single case in all of that, is trivial. If the ratio held throughout, it would mean fewer than 40 German AFVs in the whole war.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

Depends on what that tank was doing/about to do when killed! Finding this stuff isn't easy, since most of the source docs aren't yet online. I suspect more such examples exist, but I don't have the unit AARs sitting on my shelf waiting to be gone through.

You'll be interested to know that the same account with Rocherath and Krinkelt in it specifically comments on how good the 155 was at breaking tracks and damaging sprockets, leaving the Panzers immobilized to be dealt with by TDs, tanks, etc.

Regards,

John Kettler