Damage Repair

[wadepm]

With the advent of the pin cushion kill, I was wondering what happened to these tanks. If they had one or two partial hull penetrations were they repaired in the field, stripped and used for parts or sent back to the factory - still under warranty I imagine. If they were repaired in the field was the repair as good as the original? I imagine not, and if not.....will the weak point be modelled in CMBB?

[MikeyD]

I recall Shermans were patched and repaired constantly on the Western Front (often just welding a patch over the hole), Tigers certainly suffered multiple large caliber hits and great pains were taken to patch and repair them. They were simply too valuable to discard.

I'm not so sure about Russian tanks, I always got the feeling that they were more disposable due to the combination of production of large numbers of replacement armor, limited recovery assets, and general short service life anyway due to poor workmanship. Others may disagree.

I don't think this is specifically modeled in CM, though now that you mention it that could account for the maddenly high proportion of "Penetration at weak point" hits in good old CMBO! The CMBB Beta seems to have comparatively fewer "Penetration at weak point" incidents, though that may just reflect my preference for playing mostly early war light armor where that message would naturally be less common.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

I'm not so sure about Russian tanks, I always got the feeling that they were more disposable due to the combination of production of large numbers of replacement armor, limited recovery assets, and general short service life anyway due to poor workmanship. Others may disagree.

I once believed this as well, but what I have read recently lets me think that Soviet tank recovery was of a very high standard. I am still hoping to get the memoirs of a tank recovery unit leader in the Red Army. No luck so far though

[Liebchen]

I've seen photos of the Russian recovery units in action. They're T-34 hulls without the turret and with large tow-hitches on the ends.

Given the high risk of Russian tankers bailing from punctured tanks, I would imagine that there were many recoverable and operable T-34s out there. Just look at the German usage, for example...