Soviet doctrine and buttoned up tanks

[Amedeo]

How will CMBB keep into account the fact that the soviet tankers were expected to fight buttoned up according to their combat regulations?

I still had no occasion to observe the units' behaviour in very deep detail playing the demo, but it seems that it's vital for soviet crews to remain unbuttoned as long as possible, mainly for C&C reasons. Isn't there the risk that current game mechanics will force players to use unistorical tactics just to be able to move their tanks?

Comments are welcome.

Amedeo

[Amedeo]

A few additional considerations:

The soviet regulations for tank units stated that the AFVs should be in the maximum combat readiness state (that includes all hatches closed) at a distance between 1 to 3km from the enemy first line (the actual distance depends on the terrain and the strenght of the enemy defences).

This would imply that soviet AFVs should remain buttoned up in 90% of the typical CM situations.

For AFVs not provided with radio receivers signals were provided from command vehicles in the form of flags and/or flares.

Soviet tank hatches were typically ill suited to be used for battlefield observations. In fact this is true not only for 1940 vintage T-34 but also for modern MBTs.

Summing up I think that a couple of changes to the game engines could be useful to better simulate the above factors:

1. Soviet TCs should change from buttoned/unbuttoned only after express gamer's command (as it was in CMBO). The AI should keep all soviet tanks permanently buttoned up (save for command tanks).

2. The ability of non-command tanks to follow orders should be function not, mainly, of _their_ un-buttoned status, but of the buttoned status of their command tank (after all it was the commander that needed to occasionally pop up to use flags or flares, the subordinate units were expected to observe this while being buttoned up)

Regards,

Amedeo

[Andreas]

1. I have read memoirs indicating that these regulations were not observed, and tanks were unbuttoned right until they went out to attack, not 1-3km from the frontline.

2. It already does. If your command tank buttons, but the other tanks are unbuttoned, the command is still lost.

[rune]

Andreas is correct [and it pains me to admit that]. Several veterans mention that they went unbuttoned as much as possible, especially early war when radios were very rare. Hard to see or give flag signals when buttoned.

Rune

[Andreas]

Well, it pains me to play your 'Pride of the Luftwaffe' game too, Rune. Berli has stuff that blows up my recce assets, and machine-guns to keep my Heroes of the Working Class from liberating the Dvina bridges, as is their wont. It is just not cricket anymore.

What have you got to answer to that, eh?

[rune]

I have an answer to that, once I get home from work, I will be sending you another historical battle, a German Bridgehead 2km deep but only 400 meters wide. You get to be assaulted from all sides. Enjoy it....[insert evil laugh here]

Rune

[TSword]

Amedeo,

So close your hatches if you like !!! Nobody hinders you to act according to the regulations.

But you will face command penalties which are more then substantiated by the facts. How do you expect to receive commandos by your platoon leader otherwise when no radio is installed ? Have you ever been in a tank ?

Try out WWII-Online with a buddy, there you can learn how difficult it is to be in coordination with some tanks by view alone (Don't use the chatbuffer or Roger Wilco). Maybe you can then understand that experienced Russian tankers tended to stay buttoned up as long as possible. Regulations are just that and not necessarily always the wisest tactical choices....

Btw, View out of the early T-34 buttoned was extremely poor (The ones without a cuppola).

Greets

Daniel

[MikeyD]

One thing that influences the 'button/unbutton' question is the odd T34 layout, namely the Commander/Gunner combo. Either there's someone sitting in the gunner's seat or perched in the hatch, but never both! If you also factor-in the limited vision in the T34 while buttoned and lack of radio oftentimes, that makes for a very challenging vehicle to control (especially as a platoon!).

As to regulations, I'm reminded of a photo of a German Leopard II during a press demonstation in the late '80. Explosions to the right of him... explosions to the left of him... but the commander's head still peeking out of the hatch! apparently, it may have been suicidal to go into battle unbuttoned but it was equally suicidal to go into battle buttoned.

[Amedeo]

Originally posted by TSword:

Amedeo,

So close your hatches if you like !!! Nobody hinders you to act according to the regulations.

But you will face command penalties which are more then substantiated by the facts.

<cut>

As I said the point is that now your tank might decide autonomosly to unbutton if they think opportune... so my digital soldiers will hinder me to play according to the regulations

I do not dispute the fact that command and spotting penalties for buttoned up tanks are more than substantiated by the fact. I was only wondering whether the current systems can model in a realistic manner the way soviet tankers fought.

Regards,

Amedeo

P.S. I do know for sure that there were some points in the regulations that were normally disregarded, but I still wonder whether we can assume that fighting unbuttoned was so common for _soviet_ crews. The fact is that the majority of combat photos or footage I've seen shows buttoned up tanks. Moreover both the 1944 new regulations and the postwar ones, continued to stress the importance of fighting with the crew buttoned up. Likewise crew training was (and is, AFAIK) in conducted in that sense. So, if the vetetarns learned to fight in this way, and it was considered 'better', why didn't the postwar regulations, training and vehicle design take this into account as it was done for a lot of other 'lessons learned' of the war period?

[WWB]

Originally posted by rune:

I have an answer to that, once I get home from work, I will be sending you another historical battle, a German Bridgehead 2km deep but only 400 meters wide. You get to be assaulted from all sides. Enjoy it....[insert evil laugh here]

Rune

ARgh. More nightmares . . .

WWB

[rune]

Look here:

http://www.battlefield.ru/is2_2.html

Just look at the IS2, see the tanks in combat and see the TC's unbuttoned. Notice the DSK machine gun was used against infantry, hard to do that if buttoned. Look at some of the other in action photos and tanks, see the TC's unbuttoned.

Photos, and veteran's telling how they fought unbuttoned, and memoirs are more then enough proof for me.

Thanks to Valera and his wonderful site!

Rune

[Guest Mike]

visibiliy has ALWAYS been important - in the middle ages there are royal edicts to knights to keep their visors closed, which shows how many problems commanders have always had keeping their expensive armoured assets heads in one piece!! lol

[Chad Harrison]

I was very surprised to see my men unbutton themselves without my order. Thats nice when I forget about them and they are firing on their own from a long range, but when they are under 100m from enemy small arms fire, and they unbutton on their own???????? Did they just need some fresh air or somefink? It is more realistic (maybe looking for orders from the command tank), but the germans pinged one of my men when he was dumb enough to do that.

Chad

[Foreigner]

Regarding Amedeo's second post...

It is quite possible that the 1km button-up range comes from pre- or early-war regulations, but I distinctly remember reading in Soviet war memoirs that fairly early on tankers were officially and specifically instructed (by high-rank order - Army commander? can't remeber now) to stay UNbuttoned until "direct fire contact".

Also, a SOP of early Soviet tank tactics was the "Do as I do!" (Delai kak ya! ) order/signal, in which the subordinate vehicles were supposed to follow the actions of the HQ tank. AFAIK it is not modelled in the game (though a possible "Follow the leader" was one of the most popular requests), though to some extent can be replicated by the player by giving simulataneous movement orders to the whole platoon (while unbuttoned). It would alleviate the huge movement orders delay problem with buttoned-up early Soviet tanks within LOS of a HQ tank (it doesn't take much communication to follow a fairly big diesel-exhaust-smoke-belching, dirt-kicking chunk of metal around).

Of course, with such tactics, if the command tank was KOed, problems arose (in fact, the "herd mentality" of this approached helped more experienced gunners identify the HQ tanks and make them priority targets). There were SOPs for such eventuality (unless specifically designated, Tank # 1 took command of the platoon, etc.), but one could not replace the regular commander's experience.

Finally, while the T-34s retained the 2-man turret until the T34/85 version (1944?), they started getting a radio each way earlier. I am sure some grog can provide the details.

[MikeyD]

Two things:

First, believe it or not even the initial production T34/85 was just a 2 man turret with a commander/gunner (perhaps only for gorky-produced tanks?)! You can see the VERY early T34-85s mount their commanders cupolas farther forward than standard production types.

Second, I believe in CMBB if your tanks go into combat unbuttoned they will button and unbutton as the opportunity permits. But if you specificaly ORDER them to button up they should stay buttoned til you tell them otherwise... I think.

[Foreigner]

Dear MikeyD,

This is what I remember about the design history of T-34/85...

The first T-34s equipped with a 85mm gun (model D-5T, used also in the KV-85 and IS-1 tanks), produced in the "Krasnoe Sormovo" works (Gorkiy? Not sure, maybe, but definitely not Nizhniy Tagil) indeed had 2-man turrets, but some estimates say less than 300 of those were produced (compared to a total of about 22 000 T-34/85s during the war years only, which makes it what, 1.5%?). Some authors actually argue that, since there was no official designation of these tanks as T34/85s, "they don't count", but that's probably nitpicking. What is true, though, they were definitely a stop-gap measure, abondoned precisely because of the 2-man turret limitation. The D-5T was a gun design ready, tested and running well before the onset of 1944, but it could not fit well enough into the 3-man turret being developed at the time, so the usually hasty wartime Soviet designers took an extra couple of months to complete a new 85mm gun (ZIS S-53) that didn't have this problem. As soon as this new gun was ready, even the factories producing the version with the D-5T gun started switching to the new design. All in all, the initial version of the upgunned T-34 enjoyed a full production run for only a couple of months (Jan - Mar 1944).

For more details you can visit a number of different sites, probably the most complete one being The Russian Battlefield site.

Edited: in first draft erroneously assigned "Krasnoe Sormovo" to Leningrad/Sankt-Peterburg, as that city was still de facto encirled in 1943 and defintely could not develop and test a new gun

[ September 05, 2002, 06:53 PM: Message edited by: Foreigner ]

[leakyD]

Orientation in *any* buttoned AFV is VERY difficult.

I had a chance to TC a Bradley IFV whilst I was in the US Army. These vehicles have excellent vision blocks, sights, and communications.

I still had to unbutton continually in order to keep the vehicle oriented along the line of attack. Once the dust and smoke start flying, it become quite difficult to see anything out of the vision blocks, or the sights for that matter!

This is especially true while advancing on/over an objective. Vehicles and men get mixed up (attempted-controlled chaos is a good way to describe it), and it gets increasingly hard to discern friend from foe.

I could never imagine having to advance on target looking out of those puny vision slits on soviet tanks.

While playing the demo, my Russian tanks kept unbuttoning as I was sweeping the objective, and I got livid! I then remembered how I had to do it (back in the day), and realized another gem in this game.

I guess the trick will be to see if russian crews unbutton more than german ones. Now *that* would be pretty neat.

[Amedeo]

Foreigner,

the regulations I was talking about were the 1944 ones. BTW the 1-3km figure varied because it should take into account the peculiarities of the local enemy defences, so it could not be, after all, in contradiction with the veterans' accounts you were referring to.

My point was, however, that this, wasn't done in a so widespread and efficient manner to suggest that in CMBB the modelling of buttoning/unbuttoning could be realistically the same for both Soviet and German AFVs.

For what concernes the 'memorial' evidence, I also read some memories that implicitly or explicitly referred to the habit of having the TC unbutton in some instances, for better visibility and coordination during combat, and this was done by Soviet crews as early as the Spanish Civil War. But in the same memories, e.g. by D. Loza, you'll also find that in closed terrain they always fought not only buttoned up, but also with hatches locked. BTW I also remember having read (sorry, couldn't find the exact reference at the moment) that in the end stages of the war it became common to fight with hatches closed but not locked, supposedly to compensate the overpressure effect that hollow charges warhead (one of the most common threats from infantry in the 44-45 period) would create in the crew compatment in case of a penetration, and also to allow friendly soldiers to rescue wounded crewmen that would otherwise be condemned to a slow death, being severely wounded in a burning tank and unable to unlock the hatches from the inside.

For what concernes the pictorial evidence, I never claimed that AAMGs were not intended to be used by an unbuttoned TC, nor that they were not expediently used also againt ground targets (BTW AAMGs were comparatively rare on Red Army tanks, save for some late war AFVs and Lend Lease vehicles). But for each such photo, one can find ten photos showing soviet tanks in combat situations (i.e. non clearly in the assembly area, or road march or anyway with people calmly strolling around) moving to contact completely buttoned up.

Finally, one should also consider that, as I previously said, technical improvements (both war and postwar) never seriously tried address the situational awarness of the TC assuming that it would have to fight unbuttoned. After the Spanish experience, in which the poor vision devices of Soviet made tanks, often made tankes combat unbuttoned, taking heavy casualties in the process, the problems were, supposedly, resolved introducing new all around vision periscopes. Tanks like T-26, T-28 etc. had special 'signal' ports to allow commanders to use flags and flares without unbuttoning (with abysmally bad results, I presume). Turret hatches were almost always designed to provide cover when dismounting rather than to improve and facilitate forward or all-around visibility. There are several references in Zaloga's works about the practical impossibility for an early T-34 TC to lead his tank with his head out, the way the Germans did: you have to nearly sit on the turret roof to be able to clearly see forward, extremly exposing yourself to enemy fire and, perhaps having also to unplug the internal communication device jack to avoid being strangled in the process, not to mention that this operation should have benn very time consuiming to do, not allowing a quick pop-up, pop-down when in combat.

Regards to everyone,

Amedeo