QB's close to useless in North Africa.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by redwolf:

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

This only applies when firing HE, not when firing AP at an armored target. [...]

This is not quite correct. It is not the kind of ammunition you fire but the kind of target.

</font>

[Andreas]

On the specific issue raised here about how 88s perform.

I just tried a number of setups with 15 Crusaders attacking 4 88s on a reasonable frontage (1200m) starting 1700-1900m out. Regardless of whether they approach 'fast' or 'move', it is not even a contest. The result is always 15 dead Crusaders, not a single casualty amongst the gun crews.

It is different with HE armed tanks. With Grants, if they have no ammo, they die just like the Crusaders, and hits are being scored reasonably easy out to 1900+ meters. Once you arm them, it gets ugly for the 88s. In that one case, the result was 3 dead Grants out of 15, for all 4 88s.

With Stuarts, again the same result. Then I tried it with Lees - first time round (just charging) it was a massacre, not of the 88s. Second time round I used tactics, and managed to bring three out of 15 Lees through, killing three out of four 88s.

I have not played 'Flakfront', but on the face of it, what I just tried seems reasonable to me.

[Michael Emrys]

CMplayer and redwolf,

Here's what I saw. I positioned myself behind one of my 'zook teams as it targetted a tank moving from right to left and fired. The red targetting line stayed on the tank until after the round landed. The round landed in the precise place where the tank was when the 'zook fired. Perhaps the engine treats HC rounds as if they are HE rounds. I don't know. I just have this one single instance as verification, so I am reluctant to try to draw any firm conclusions from it. I think I have seen AT guns and AT firing vehicles experience the same problem, which is why I brought it up...I'm just not as certain.

Michael

[Redwolf]

Interesting, I was just doing a similar test. [EDIT: this is a response to Andreas]

The 88s only spot the tanks (as opposed to their dust clouds) only at about 1720m, although there is LOS much bejond that (I checked the Crusader's LOS in hotseat). Display hit probability 2-6% for the 4 guns.

Conditions: veteran 88s, North Africa, hot very dry, tanks on "hunt". The guns look directly at the tanks and are not on hide.

Why can somebody not spot a moving tank anywhere in LOS? Also, why is the distance to even spot them more than historical combat distance?

[more edited out]

[EDIT: this test also verified that a Crusader on hunt does not allow any zeroing in whatsoever on part of the 88s]

%%

Michael: the CM engine computes whether it is a miss or hit before the round goes off and then chooses a random place for the round to land. The landing place of "off" rounds is pretty far from the target and is offers no conflusions why the shot was not a hit.

[ December 13, 2003, 06:27 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Andreas]

Redwolf - you are looking at the heat haze effect there. For my test, I had chosen cool conditions, not very hot, because in that case they will not spot the tanks, although they do have LOS.

It appears that the heat haze effect is really messing things up for the gunners. How historical that is I don't know, I have not done a lot of reading on Africa.

If you redo this scenario, or want to have a look at what I did, you will see that the 88s have no problem at all with tearing the enemy apart.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Andreas:

It appears that the heat haze effect is really messing things up for the gunners. How historical that is I don't know, I have not done a lot of reading on Africa.

If it's midday and hot or very hot, that's realistic. What you would see looking through a telescopic sight or binoculars is a black spot that somewhat resembles a tank dancing and jumping and wavering all over the sight field. Almost impossible to get a good sight until it closes within 500-750 meters or less.

I think what people are griping about is that the tanks don't seem to be suffering this effect as much as the guns, or at least it doesn't matter as much to them since long range shots are not their forte anyway.

Michael

[JasonC]

Mr Spkr - at Halfaya pass the Germans had an entire battalion of 88s in stone sangers. One source adds "with only their muzzles visible". The British tanks had no HE. They were mixed Cruisers and Matildas. The unit practically wiped out by 88s was C squadron, 4 RTR. That is a company, people, against a dozen 88s in entrenchments. And it had 2 tanks left. In the same battle 7 RTR captured Fort Capuzzio, losing only 5 tanks in the process.

They simply did not have to kill hordes of tanks to be effective. In gun front fighting in the desert, the towed guns were not heavily outnumbered by the tanks opposite. Part of the shock of 88s at Halfaya was that the unit hit by them had Matildas, which up until then had been invulnerable to all fielded AT weapons. They used tactics that treated their heavy tanks as invincible. They weren't.

Mr. Spkr thinks it just doesn't "smell right". But he does not consider the possibility that his own expectations may be the culprit. If you read lots of tall Tiger tales you will expect every one to kill 10-15 tanks per outing. We know they did no better than that over their entire service life, on average.

To my statement that all an 88 needs to do to be effective is kill beyond range of reply, he says that is true of any weapon. Um, but any weapon is not going to kill beyond range of effective reply. A pistol won't. An 88 will. And no, hit chances do not need to rise exponentially with each round. A 10% chance of a hit with a round is perfectly adequate to slaughter tanks at range. There is a reason ammo is hundreds of times more common than the items it is fired at.

Suppose a hit is a kill 80% of the time. An 88 can easily fire 6 times a minute, so a battery throws 25 rounds per minute. With a 10% hit chance it is killing 2 tanks per minute. You can't afford to lose 2 tanks per minute for any length of time. That is a lethal range. A unit placed in that kind of danger will not remain effective for even half a hour.

Over its whole ammo load each 88 will kill 4 tanks on average, with accuracy no higher than that. Per shot hit probabilities simply do not have to reach 50% levels to be dangerous. You aren't limited to 2-3 rounds per enemy tank. If you look at AP ammo (only) for each 88 PAK produced (the late war 88L71), it comes to 566 rounds per gun. Think each of 3500 of those killed 56 allied tanks? (Hint - that'd kill every dead Russian AFV twice).

Ranged fire is effective if it can kill when it hits, and the accuracy is high enough to get even a few percent hits. Time to fire is not scarce at long ranges. It takes long periods of time to appreciably change the range. In those long periods of time, rapidly firing guns can throw all the ammo they are likely to have, if they want to. The danger comes from throwing your expensive tanks against his cheap ammo. Unless you are going to get it over with quickly, before he can fire all the ammo he wants, by killing him with your own replies, it is a losing proposition.

[Redwolf]

Anreas, you are right.

I changed:

- ground is dirt

- all the ground that the tanks advance over is open ground (in the previous test most died in rocky ground)

- Dry ground (was very dry)

- cool (was hot)

The Crusaders are now spotted at scenario start (2700m). I open fire at 2200-2300m (hit probability 4-6%).

So the Crusaders are much faster now but the 88s have better firing conditions.

They all die a horrible death 1500-2100m in front of the guns. The guns have 4-7 AP rounds left.

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by Andreas:

On the specific issue raised here about how 88s perform.

I just tried a number of setups with 15 Crusaders attacking 4 88s on a reasonable frontage (1200m) starting 1700-1900m out. Regardless of whether they approach 'fast' or 'move', it is not even a contest. The result is always 15 dead Crusaders, not a single casualty amongst the gun crews.

It is different with HE armed tanks. With Grants, if they have no ammo, they die just like the Crusaders, and hits are being scored reasonably easy out to 1900+ meters. Once you arm them, it gets ugly for the 88s. In that one case, the result was 3 dead Grants out of 15, for all 4 88s.

With Stuarts, again the same result. Then I tried it with Lees - first time round (just charging) it was a massacre, not of the 88s. Second time round I used tactics, and managed to bring three out of 15 Lees through, killing three out of four 88s.

I have not played 'Flakfront', but on the face of it, what I just tried seems reasonable to me.

Were you charging straight for the guns? Was the ground perfectly level, or did it have a few undulations?

Try playing FlakFront! and see what you think.

SPOILER

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Try setting up your 88s on the central ridge near the flag dead center of the board, and along the other slight ridge just north of that line. (Actually, I put the first group of 88s there, then the rest dead center).

Ranges will vary between 900m and 1500m. And you will not be able to hit squat. Meanwhile, the Stuarts and Lees will blow you to shreads from range, doing to the 88s exactly what the 88s did to them in the real war.

Steve

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Redwolf - you are looking at the heat haze effect there. For my test, I had chosen cool conditions, not very hot, because in that case they will not spot the tanks, although they do have LOS.

It appears that the heat haze effect is really messing things up for the gunners. How historical that is I don't know, I have not done a lot of reading on Africa.

If you redo this scenario, or want to have a look at what I did, you will see that the 88s have no problem at all with tearing the enemy apart.

Andreas, you may be right on this -- and it may be a product of Borg spotting.

SPOILER

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In the FlakFront! scenario, it is HOT, and I have infantry in rocks a couple of hundred meters from the enemy tanks -- but about 750m+ in front of the 88s.

Will have to study this a bit more.

Steve

[Bastables]

FlaK regt 33 "killed" 92 AFV including 82 tanks at Halfaya pass and pt 208 defending vs Operation Battleaxe.

In scoring these numbers they fired 1,680 8,8cm shells meaning 20rds per kill at engagements of 2000m to 1600m and 800m to 500m. (1998 Jentz).

[Andreas]

Originally posted by MrSpkr:

Were you charging straight for the guns? Was the ground perfectly level, or did it have a few undulations?

I started with a shooting range, then moved on to a billiard table, and finally to fairly realistic looking terrain (brush, rocky, dips and undulations). The shooting range made me think something was wrong, but then on the real maps it works as advertised.

Basty - gut feeling is those are the numbers I saw, maybe a bit better.

[Bastables]

Posted before, but deja vu eh.

"The report of I.Abtelung/FlaK Regiment 33 indicated that this unit played an important role in the victory. Its guns opened up on the tanks at 2000 metres at 0500, knocking out one cruiser tank; they held fire until the opposing tank force approached to within 300 metres where dust did not obscure the target, and bagged 9 infantry tanks. The FlaK thus eliminated 14 of the 20 attacking tanks." (1998 Jentz)

[Ron]

Originally posted by Bastables:

Posted before, but deja vu eh.

"The report of I.Abtelung/FlaK Regiment 33 indicated that this unit played an important role in the victory. Its guns opened up on the tanks at 2000 metres at 0500, knocking out one cruiser tank; they held fire until the opposing tank force approached to within 300 metres where dust did not obscure the target, and bagged 9 infantry tanks. The FlaK thus eliminated 14 of the 20 attacking tanks." (1998 Jentz)

Very interesting, then the problem lays not with the supposed 88 Flak accuracy but their survivability. As it stands now they have got the short end of the stick.

Ron

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Ron:

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

Posted before, but deja vu eh.

"The report of I.Abtelung/FlaK Regiment 33 indicated that this unit played an important role in the victory. Its guns opened up on the tanks at 2000 metres at 0500, knocking out one cruiser tank; they held fire until the opposing tank force approached to within 300 metres where dust did not obscure the target, and bagged 9 infantry tanks. The FlaK thus eliminated 14 of the 20 attacking tanks." (1998 Jentz)

Very interesting, then the problem lays not with the supposed 88 Flak accuracy but their survivability. As it stands now they have got the short end of the stick.

Ron </font>

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Ron:

Very interesting, then the problem lays not with the supposed 88 Flak accuracy but their survivability. As it stands now they have got the short end of the stick.

Ron

No they have not. I tried this, and when using Stuarts they get to within 150-200m of the 88s, but they do not manage a single casualty, and they all die horribly.

As Basty says, the problem for the 88s is when the British turn up with 75mm HE (37mm) does not cut it if the 88s are protected (I have them in sandbag emplacements). Even then you need to use tactics, just relying on speed and suppression will get the M3s killed.

There is a reason that most of these Flakfront tales occur when the British had no HE for their guns, or at least no HE worth its name. Once the Lee appears in numbers, it is game over. But so it was historically.

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by Bastables:

FlaK regt 33 "killed" 92 AFV including 82 tanks at Halfaya pass and pt 208 defending vs Operation Battleaxe.

In scoring these numbers they fired 1,680 8,8cm shells meaning 20rds per kill at engagements of 2000m to 1600m and 800m to 500m. (1998 Jentz).

Quick question... of those 1,680 rounds, was that all AP against tanks, or where they firing against soft targets as well?

[Bastables]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Mr Spkr - at Halfaya pass the Germans had an entire battalion of 88s in stone sangers. One source adds "with only their muzzles visible". The British tanks had no HE. They were mixed Cruisers and Matildas. The unit practically wiped out by 88s was C squadron, 4 RTR. That is a company, people, against a dozen 88s in entrenchments. And it had 2 tanks left. In the same battle 7 RTR captured Fort Capuzzio, losing only 5 tanks in the process.

Errrr no, the number of 8,8cm was not "battalion." And the number of 8,8cm guns at Halfya was a third of a coy, a single batterie of them not including other guns.

Sollum-Halfya Pass gruppe consisted of 4 Stuetzpunket.

Stuetzpunket Halfya= 4x 8,8cmFlaK, 8x 2cmFlaK and 8x 100/17 Italian howitzers.

Stuetzpunket Qalala= 4x 100/17 howitzers

Stuetzpunket 208= 4x 8,8cmFlaK, 2x 2cmFLaK, 1x 5cm PaK and 3x 3,7cm PaK.

Stuetzpunket 206= 8x 10,5cm leFH, 3x 3,7cm PaK, 3x 5cm PaK and 2x 2cm FlaK

3 backstop positions

Stuetzpunket Cappazo= 2x 37/45 anti-tank and 1 2cm AA.

Stuetzpunket Musaid= 4x 47/32 anti-tank.

Stuetzpunket Ober Sollum= 4x 47/32 anti-tank.

The infantry mobile gruppe contained 4x 10,5cm leFH and 9x 2cm FlaK

Panzer Mobile gruppe contained one kompanie from PzJadg abteilung 33, 4x 8,8cm FlaK and 8x 2cm FlaK.

Halfya ground was too hard to dig in (bedrock was less than 3cm from the surface in places), so the FlaKs, PaKs and LeFH were heavily sandbagged.(1998 Jentz)

[ December 14, 2003, 07:22 PM: Message edited by: Bastables ]

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Berlichtingen:

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

FlaK regt 33 "killed" 92 AFV including 82 tanks at Halfaya pass and pt 208 defending vs Operation Battleaxe.

In scoring these numbers they fired 1,680 8,8cm shells meaning 20rds per kill at engagements of 2000m to 1600m and 800m to 500m. (1998 Jentz).

Quick question... of those 1,680 rounds, was that all AP against tanks, or where they firing against soft targets as well? </font>

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Originally posted by CMplayer:

This only applies when firing HE, not when firing AP at an armored target.

When firing at an armored target, the engine calculates a probability for a hit, then it just decides whether you hit or not. The time taken for the shell to arrive doesn't matter, and even if the target drives behind a LOF block, such as a building, then path of the shell will still be drawn to show a hit. There were a bunch of threads about this a while back. So you're misinterpreting what you're seeing.

You are right though, that when firing HE at a moving target, the tac AI fails to lead the target. The difference is probably that in this case the 'target' is actually a patch of ground, rather than a unit. So even if it gets a 'hit' on the right patch of ground, it misses the target which has moved away.

Isn't that basically what I said in my immediate response to Mr Emrys initial post????

Michael, I agree that the game engine doesn't alow for leading the target when firing H.E. but when firing AP at an AFV it definitely does as otherwise, how would it ever hit? Mind you, there is still a fair amount of abstraction going on even then as I'm sure you've seen numerous times an AFV being hit "moments" after it's already disappeared behind a building or some other structure and theoretically out of LOS.

Regards

Jim R.

:confused:

Regards

Jim R.

[Redwolf]

I have dust clouds in a blizzard right now :cool:

[Ron]

Thanks for the insights Bastables & Andreas, that would explain the anecdotes and sounds reasonable re the lack of HE. It's funny how one's impression is shaped through selected reading, reading not altogether critical at that!

Ron

[JasonC]

Halfya 4, 208 4, Mobile 4, equals 12, is a battalion.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Halfya 4, 208 4, Mobile 4, equals 12, is a battalion.

Not a battalion of 8,8s, 12 8,8cm is a company and only 4 of them, a battrie were at the Halfya position.

A battalion of 88s would be +36/48 guns (Sorry FlaK battalions were made up out of 5 battries = 20 guns), three detached battries all in different positions and sandbagged or trundling along with Panzers is not reflected in any way your previous assertion of a battalion of 88s in concrete sangers.

[ December 14, 2003, 10:31 PM: Message edited by: Bastables ]

[JasonC]

Company and battery are synonymous terms. The 4th and (when present) 5th batteries of German flak battalions were light flak, not additional 88s. TOE of a German heavy flak battalion was 12 88s, not 36. These are really quite elementary things it is easy to check in a hundred places.

As for stone emplacements, right or wrong it is the testimony of the British side in the fight. "As dawn broke the right hand column approached Halfaya Pass, over the top of the escarpment, but things started to go seriously wrong. 'C' Squadron, 4th RTR, supporting 2nd Cameron Highlanders came up against 88mm's entrenched in stone sangers, with only their muzzles visible. By 10:00 hrs 'C' Squadron was reduced to one Matilda and one Light tank, having been "torn apart by the 88mm's" and the Camerons were forced to withdraw by infantry counter attacks, suffering great casualties in the process."

From a British history, here - http://www.btinternet.com/%7Eian.a.paterson/battles1941.htm#Battleaxe

[ December 15, 2003, 01:21 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]