Tank crewman roles and importance

[Wreck]

I have been toying with the idea of an armor campaign. Now I realize I might track experience for tank crews as a whole. And it might be nice to do a campaign with only, say, four units to track. But I think it might be interesting to track individual crewmen, in particular because it is my suspicion that certain of the crewmen (commander and gunner) are far more important to the effectiveness of the tank than other crewmen are.

But I am not really sure of that. So one question I should like to throw out to the grogs is: how much did tank effectiveness vary based on the loss of individuals? Could the loss of one important man (probably gunner or commander) turn a "crack" tank to "green"?

Also, I got curious as to what the 5th crewman in some tanks does. I know he sometimes mans the bow MG; is that all he does? If another man is hurt can he fill in? Certainly for the loader or driver, I should think. But what about the gunner and the commander? Were all tankers trained to do all roles? Did they do roles other than their trained one outside of emergencies? Or when a crewman got hurt were there specificly trained replacement gunners, loaders, drivers, etc? Or would you just get a "tanker" who would then the assigned a role? Did crews sometimes switch around roles?

American. British. German. Russian even. Discuss.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Wreck:

I have been toying with the idea of an armor campaign. Now I realize I might track experience for tank crews as a whole. And it might be nice to do a campaign with only, say, four units to track. But I think it might be interesting to track individual crewmen, in particular because it is my suspicion that certain of the crewmen (commander and gunner) are far more important to the effectiveness of the tank than other crewmen are.

But I am not really sure of that. So one question I should like to throw out to the grogs is: how much did tank effectiveness vary based on the loss of individuals? Could the loss of one important man (probably gunner or commander) turn a "crack" tank to "green"?

Also, I got curious as to what the 5th crewman in some tanks does. I know he sometimes mans the bow MG; is that all he does? If another man is hurt can he fill in? Certainly for the loader or driver, I should think. But what about the gunner and the commander? Were all tankers trained to do all roles? Did they do roles other than their trained one outside of emergencies? Or when a crewman got hurt were there specificly trained replacement gunners, loaders, drivers, etc? Or would you just get a "tanker" who would then the assigned a role? Did crews sometimes switch around roles?

American. British. German. Russian even. Discuss.

The fifth man operated the wireless set.

[Andrew H.]

There's a new book out by, I think, John Irwin. I've forgotten the exact title, but it's something like "Just another river." I remember the subtitle, though; it's "Diary of a teenaged tank gunner."

I've only looked at it in stores, but it looks pretty good, and it might help answer your question. It has a lot of anecdotes relating to the operation of the tank and the importance of the different roles. For example, the driver in the tank is always drunk, which does not have good consequences: at one point, the driver backs into a building and gets the tank stuck, whereupon everyone bails out. After eyeballing the tank, a sober guy gets into the driver's seat and gets the tank unstuck. I think that the driver and the BMG guy trade jobs some. They do when the driver is drunk, anyway.

The commander of the tank is much more important than the gunner or anyone else in the tank - he is the one who sees the enemy and tells everyone else what to do, including the gunner and the driver. Although if the driver is drunk, the gunner can't hit, and the radioman can't work the radio, the commander is going to be much less effective.

There are a lot of interesting approaches you could use to track this. You might count the commander's experience as being equal to the experience of the rest of the crew members added together - so if the TC were crack and the other crew added together came out as regular, the tank as a whole would be vet.

I suppose you could even use individual points for each of the crew positions to help with the math. I.e., 1 = conscript, 2 = green, up to ... 6 = elite.

You might want to say that a tank is never more experienced than the commander, though; it doesn't matter how good the gunner is, if the commander tells him the wrong range, or tells him to fire at a bad target, or doesn't see a threat, or tells him to fire AP at infantry.

[gunnergoz]

I recall reading that a lot of US Sherman crews had inexperienced fellows take the bow gunner position until they could make themselves useful. The bow gunner could be the gopher and assistant mechanic for the tank, doing the scut jobs like greasing and filling up. He might also be detailed to post guard while the others ate or rested.

Sometimes, there weren't enough crewmen to fill the fifth position and it just went vacant. The radios got moved to the turret bustle and there was little for the bow gun to shoot at when the hull was boarded up with concrete and spare track links to help fend off the panzerfausts!

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Wreck:

[snips]

But I am not really sure of that. So one question I should like to throw out to the grogs is: how much did tank effectiveness vary based on the loss of individuals? Could the loss of one important man (probably gunner or commander) turn a "crack" tank to "green"?

Also, I got curious as to what the 5th crewman in some tanks does. I know he sometimes mans the bow MG; is that all he does? [snips]

American. British. German. Russian even. Discuss.

Though I doubt it contains anything new to most readers of the forum, I thought the following mught be of interest, taken from "The First and the Last: The story of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, 1939--1945", by Maj. J D P Stirling (Art & Educational Publishers, 1946; reprint edition DP&G, Doncaster, 2000).

"The Sherman has a crew of five: the Commander, who stands in the turret all the time, gives orders to the crew over the “inter-comm” wireless set, gives or receives orders over the Squadron wireless set, reads the map, looks for targets through his glasses and when he finds one, speaks in tones of urgent entreaty to: the Gunner, who sits all day on a small seat, peering through a small periscope about 6 ins. by 2 ins. He moves the gun on to the target by means of two handwheels, fires it with a foot-pedal, and waits for it to be reloaded by: the Loader-Operator who spends the time-when he is not ramming shells into the breech or struggling with a jammed machine-gun-in operating and answering on the wireless set.

These three are all in the turret. Down below is: the Driver, who also looks after the engine and the tank in general; he is assisted by the fifth member of the crew: the Co-Driver, who sits beside him-except on the 17-pounder tank, where the ammunition takes up so much space that there is only room for a crew of four-and is usually appointed cook as he has least to do.

This is the crew. They live, eat, sleep and fight together. Their tank is their home, and each tank is more or less self-contained; food, water, petrol-cooker, bedding, kit and bivouac tent are all stowed away on it.

In the morning they move out on the day's work ; all day they fight, or, which is just as tiring, sit watching and waiting; after nightfall when they are released by the Infantry, they rally back with the rest of the Squadron to a chosen “harbour” where they can cook a meal, replenish the tanks, and get a little sleep before the next day starts. If the enemy artillery is active they either sleep in the tank, or else, if they have time, dig a pit, drive the tank on top of it, and sleep underneath."

Ken Tout's "To Hell with tanks!" (Robert Hale, 1992) includes a first-person description of what it feels like to be each of the crewmen in a British Sherman, interspersed with the main text.

Macksey & Batchelor's "Tank: A history of the armoured fighting vehicle" (Military Book Society, 1970) shows on page 121 all five of the possoble crew layouts used during WW2. For the five-man crew, it says that the co-driver "was just that, fired the bow gun and made the tea". It also states that Russian, German and French practice was to put the radio in the hull.

In the British Army at least it has always been a principle that every crewman should be able to do every job, but obviously the specialist does the job better. I think it is John Foley's excellent "Mailed Fist" (1956ish I think, copy not to hand) that mentions exercising a "general post exchange", where everyone tries to do someone else's job; the results seemed a touch chaotic.

I don't think it makes much sense to try to rank the contributions of individual crew positions to the overall effectiveness of the tank (except, perhaps, to say that the co-driver or lap gunner, if not operating the radio, is pretty much a "spare"). If you have ever heard of Meredith-Belbin's research on management styles, or used a software development technique such as RAD or Fagan inspections that rely on people taking on well-defined roles, you'll know that the performance of a group of people collaborating in specialist roles is much more than the sum of its parts. I would expect a similar effect to apply to the performance of tank crews.

All the best,

John.

[Michael Dorosh]

I also fail to see the utility in tracking (or pretending to track, rather) individual performance. Even if you could come up with a realistic way of advancing individual crew members in skill (ie gunner gets performance points for every kill (a rare enough occurence in most games - track an AFV crew through a few average scenarios and you will see what I mean), what sort of matrix would you have to have wherein the entire crew of the tank advances in terms of quality? I think this is why BTS shied away from such a system.

How would you rate drivers, loaders or wireless operators? Aside from number of engagements, what qualitative measurements could there possibly be (short of using a stopwatch to time each reload (FUN!)) The only real qualitative means of measuring crew performance in CM are number of engagements and number of enemy kills (AFV/softskin/support weapon/men). These are primarily commander and gunner functions.

You could probably come up with something fun in terms of the entire crew - think of the old Armour Leader rules from Cross of Iron and ASL. The only way for it to be simple and fun would be to rate the entire crew. One exception would be teh influx of replacements in the event of a crew suffering casualties; the next game the crew should be back to full strength, but with the possibility of a skill penalty imposed to reflect not just new crew members and their state of experience/training, but their lack of familiarization with other members of the crew.

[ August 13, 2002, 10:43 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Firefly]

To back up what John says, Ken Tout, in Tank describes how he took over as Tank Commander after the TC had his leg broken by being thrown against the edge of the cupola by the shock of an artillery shell. Prior to this he had been the the loader, but had been the TC of a light tank before switching to mediums. It seems that the loader, who would assist the TC in spotting when not in combat, was considered the deputy commander. This appears to have been reflected in rank in the British Army, where ideally the TC was a corporal, the loader a lance-corporal and the rest of the crew privates. Of course the troop sergeant and the lieutenant were also TCs.

[Gpig]

Ok. Enough talk.

Make the campaign rules already!

Gpig

P.S. I love your solo campaign rules, even though I have not tried them out yet. heh heh.

[Wreck]

Firefly relates an incident where a TC is injured and a crewman (who was a former TC) takes over. What would happen in the general case with tank commander casualties? Would a crewman step up and a replacement for him be gotten? Or would a new trained TC replacement be assigned?

Were replacements generally trained in tanks, or were they already specialized to a role? Were commanders differently trained than the other positions in a tank?

[Wreck]

As for rating individuals, Michael is right that there is not that much to go on. Probably all the crew except TC/gunner would steadily gain experience, if modelled separately. But that does not mean they are indistinguishable, for they may be killed individually and therefore their experience can diverge. However, what that does mean is that they should be best modelled as a group, since their average experience is what will matter for the purposes of modelling the tank as some specific quality level.

At this point I am thinking of a system which models the TC separately from the crewmen. So two units per tank. The TC can be injured specifically and also (at least in my model) will disproportionately affect the overall quality of the tank. This gives eight modelled units per platoon, which seems about right to me. It also gives me a commander embodiment, for that optional rule.

[Jwirry]

From my experience in the tanks, TC is the most important, followed by the gunner. I don't know in WWII tanks if the TC can fire the main gun or not. But in the event of the TC being injured another member would take the spot. Since I don't know about WWII SOP's I can't say for sure who it would be, I would guess either the loader or gunner.

As for replacements, in Belton Cooper's book "Death Traps", the SOP was to keep crews together as much as possible. In the case of one crew member being killed there were individual replacements but generally looked to promote within the crew first and then fill up the less important position with an individual replacement.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Wreck:

As for rating individuals, Michael is right that there is not that much to go on. Probably all the crew except TC/gunner would steadily gain experience, if modelled separately. But that does not mean they are indistinguishable, for they may be killed individually and therefore their experience can diverge. However, what that does mean is that they should be best modelled as a group, since their average experience is what will matter for the purposes of modelling the tank as some specific quality level.

At this point I am thinking of a system which models the TC separately from the crewmen. So two units per tank. The TC can be injured specifically and also (at least in my model) will disproportionately affect the overall quality of the tank. This gives eight modelled units per platoon, which seems about right to me. It also gives me a commander embodiment, for that optional rule.

This seems about right to me, too.

[ August 13, 2002, 05:03 PM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[JonS]

Referring to Tout, the impression I got was that crews were generally kept together, but due to casualties, sickness, leave, etc, specific assignments weren't really adherred to. I.e. individuals rotated around assignments fairly regularly.

From the limited amount I've picked up about Wittman and his cohorts in Normandy, the same seems to have applied to them.

As an example, IIRC, the British gunner who finally killed Wittman was generally considered very good at that role, but for one reason and another never fired a shot after that day.

So, my point? Tracking individual skills may be mildly diverting and amusing, but from a realism/historical point of view, probably not worth the effort.

Regards

JonS

Edit: spelling & clarity.

[ August 13, 2002, 10:58 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]