KV-1s in 1942. What should a nice German boy do?

[Lt. Kije]

I've finally gotten around to playing QBs in the year 1942 (against computer AI controlled Russians). Anyone who has been here before me will be nodding their heads already.

What's a good German to do when the computer keeps choosing three or so KV-1s, then running them out where they can dominate the lanes of advance? If I let the computer choose my forces it gives me those cute little short barrelled MKIV panzers and a bunch of regular infantry with handgrenades. The MKIVs usually won't even shoot at the KV-1s, even with a side shot, and the infantry has almost no chance to succeed at close assault even if it can get optimal positioning and happens to have enough smoke to prevent widely scattered supporting Russian MGs from puncturing their peritoneal cavities.

Any advice out there?

And a second question, if my time is not up yet: Were KV-1s common to run into? The production numbers I've found in my library of Our Friend Mr. Tank! reference books (touch the tank and it makes sounds! grrrrrgrrrr! boom!) suggest that not that many KV-1s were around in 1942. And if there were a lot of KV-1s around, how did any Germans anywhere on the Eastern Front get anywhere?

If the real life German experience in 1942 were like mine, they would have simply stayed put in their foxholes until Tigers and Panthers finally showed up.

I've even run off-line test trials. One KV-1 boxed into a 100 meter by 100 meter arena, surrounded by trees filled with German infantry. Bear baiting. One guy over on the left runs out into the open, then back into the trees. Another guy fires a few rounds to button the KV-1. Now, as the KV-1 turns its attention to the guy running around, an entire platoon of German infantry tries to pull off a close assault, approaching from the 'blind' right side of the KV. Like a family of weasels trying to bring down a water buffalo. ("Git 'im by the nose, Cletus! That's it! That's it! That's....oooooooooooh..... OK, Billy Bob, you go for his fetlock. Ma and the twins'll sneak through the high grass, try to get at his underbelly.")

Vary your infantry types (Pioneer vs. Panzergrenadier, for example). Vary your platoon leader's qualities. Vary your approach methods (sneak? advance? assault?). With smoke, without it.

One conclusion I think I can offer: a buttoned KV (no cupola) in CMBB is far from blind. Even sneaking infantry get detected at least some of the time, even when they approach from the side.

And in a real game, this problem is far, far worse. I just got well and truly macerated trying this in an ongoing QB, even with a lot of smoke, an outstanding leader, and a very short distance from the treeline to the (immobilized) KV. Probably Borg-spotting, right?

Help! What should I be doing to deal with these guys if they are positioned so as to dominate the avenues of approach? Just surrendering and starting a new QB?

-- Lt. Kije

I've got a hole in my dermis, Dear Liza, Dear Liza.

[Lars]

Call in a Stuka.

[Wretch]

Got me stumped there, for sure. I can barely conduct an ambush against a tank, never mind take out three KV-1s.

[White Phosphorus]

Bring a Tiger.

[lcm1947]

Well, not all is lost. The damn thing is bound to run out of ammo sometime. In the meantime your guys will just have to bring in more troops until it surrenders. Just a matter of time just hold on. Now kidding aside. I've not purchased

CMBB yet so am not seeing this problem and hope I don't have to. Hell, I have enough problems in CMBO with those impossible to kill HMG's the German's have.

[Cpl Carrot]

Try playing with rarity on. Makes all the difference - of course now that I have said that it will be cheap

[Tripps]

I've had success with Infantry against KV's, but alas, not when the Soviet had infantry supporting them..

Had a platoon headquarter unit disable one with a standard grenade too

But, no tigers available, apart from 88's you just have to part them from their supporting Infantry and disable them with your Infantry.

Aircraft are good, but I wouldnt be waiting for the KV's to run out of ammo, the loadout is considerable!

cheers

[ November 13, 2002, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: Tripps ]

[demoss]

At close range, even a PaK 38 can do the job. Demo charges work nicely as well.

[MrNoobie]

i just finished a QB playing as russians and i had two KV-1, the Germans had 1 stug III and took out both my KV's

[G-Dawg]

Isn't/wasn't there an MG mounted on the backside of the KV-1's turret? I could swear I saw a picture of that somewhere...and even if it ain't so, I like it as an excuse for why I also get rapidly de-infantried against the beasts.

Hmmm...are vehicles' spotting capabilities somehow dependent on the number and location of gun ports?

Answering questions with questions is a tactic I learned from my wife. Irritating, isn't it?

[MikeyD]

I thought I was sitting pretty in one game, my impenetrable KV-1 vs a horde of 37mm pop-gun German tanks. I rounded the crest of the hill and to my great surprise I was struck with such a storm of non-penetrating hits from every tank, my damned crew paniced and eventually abandoned the vehicle! Ouch!

KV-1 in 1942 reflects what the Germans were up against. You could try buying 150mm infantry guns. You probably won't get any penetrations but you could damage the gun, shock the crew, get a mobility kill. There's also that French 75mm anti-tank gun on the 50mm gun chassis. 75mm Pak95 or something like that?

[Silvio Manuel]

Flamethrowers, tank hunters w/ PW-Mines, aircraft, 20mm to damage the gun or immobilize (at range they should be kinda hard to spot), etc. Now in a computer-buys-units game, hopefully its tendency to buy Pioneers means that you might get the 3 FT's, but aside from that it may not buy many tank hunters, planes, or 20mm. Gulp. Alt-U works pretty well

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by Lt. Kije:

And a second question, if my time is not up yet: Were KV-1s common to run into? The production numbers I've found in my library of Our Friend Mr. Tank! reference books (touch the tank and it makes sounds! grrrrrgrrrr! boom!) suggest that not that many KV-1s were around in 1942. And if there were a lot of KV-1s around, how did any Germans anywhere on the Eastern Front get anywhere?

Hard to tell exactly how many there were, but two KV platoons per brigade and two brigades per Corps gives about a dozen KVs per tank unit.

Add to that a number of 'special' Corps where one Brigade was all heavy (20-30 tanks IIRC..) so they seem to have been pretty common. And certainly when tanks were around KVs were there.

That is if they hadn't broken down, fallen through a bridge, lost contact with the rest of the tanks or bogged - which partly answers your last question I guess.

The other reasons the Germans could get anywhere was by avoiding combat with them, or by using the weaknesses (bad situational awareness, slow movement and vulnerable spots).

[Seanachai]

Bugger, eh? A game in which yer only choice is sometimes to do what they did historically.

That is: Lay down and die.

Funny old thing, History. It's nowhere near as balanced as folks who want to win all the time would have it. I find that reassuring in a game. Keeps the crows of hubris and stupid posturing from becoming too fat and lethargic.

Perhaps someone will come up with some...er, wossname...'cheat codes' or some such?

[Robohn]

As a player of Russian forces primarily, I'll atest that the 150mm (105mm can even get the job done sometimes) infantry gun can be quite damaging to a KV-1. Close infantry assaults can get kills as well, even with grenade bundles. Stukas are always frightening as well, that bomb can get mobility kills and blow tank commanders heads off over a wide radius.

Robohn

[P5]

I played one IP battle with rarity on and computer picked the troops. Year 1941.

I was excited as I saw that I had lots of tanks. Three Stugs, four PzIII and many PzII. The map was really open, but I wasn't that concerned. My tanks can handle the situation...

Can they?

When the game started and I could see to the other side of the map...I knew that I don't have a chance. Four KV-1 and one T-34 was sitting there + some T-26.

At the end of the game, I had only one PzIII and one Stug with a broken gun remaining. The T-26 were blown away immediatly when the game started, but not a chance of harming KV-1 or T-34 when the range was over 700 meters.

Just made me wonder how it must have felt in real life to be in this kind of situation...

[TSword]

Long barelled PzIIIs (starting J IIRC) should be able with Tungstenrounds head-on, and with standard shot from the side and rear.

Throw smoke in front of them and charge with 4 : 1 numerical superiority (Expensive and risky). Distract them with infantry, mortars, artillery (Shoot at them with everything you have).

Buy a Heap (1 Platoon per KV-1) of cheapest tanks (38(t) for instance) and take them under concentrated fire, after some time chance for a gunhit and/or panicking the crew will rise and rise.

If they are dispersed on controling spots far behind the lines it will remain hard until mid 1942 when the long barelled 7.5cm KwK arrived (first in the StuGs, later for PzIV F(2) too).

Greets

Daniel

[Lt. Kije]

Hey, guys, thanks for all the tips!

I see two chokepoints in this whole business.

1. Getting German armor to engage. Any tactical plan based on German armor assets depends on the German armor being willing to engage. My observation is that commonly available 1942 German armor will fire smoke and retreat upon sighting a KV-1 under Hunt orders and will often do the same even when in LOS and directly ordered to Target the KV. I suspect higher experience tank commanders may be more compliant in this regard, but fire smoke/retreat is the default order of the day. I feel gamey choosing Crack or Elite tanks.

2. Getting German infantry adjacent to the KV. Any tactical plan based on German infantry close assault has to deal with

-- good situational awareness of even a buttoned KV,

-- plenty of speed if the KV decides to split,

-- Borg spotting, and

-- the terrible indeterminacy of smoke coverage. (You think you are deep in a smoke cloud, only to find one or more enemy MGs or even guns have LOS to you.)

And remember -- all this discussion is predicated on a situation (I see it a lot) where the computer runs out its KVs and positions them so they see right down the avenues of approach. To get within 500 yards of the KVs, you first have to pass over ground they dominate, unless you happen to have a river of woods that runs right up to the KVs. (They don't tend to position themselves that conveniently.)

I continue to run trial scenarios. At the moment I'm investigating (thanks to Silvio Manuel's suggestion) whether German AT guns can either kill 'em or make the crews bail, crazed. (You would need to be lucky/clever enough to pre-position the guns just right so they have good LOS to places the KVs will run out to. On many maps this will not be possible and you would need to drive embarked guns out to emplacing locations, a dicey propostion.) AT guns, after all, cannot fire smoke and retreat, n'est c'est pas? Plus, they should be harder for the KVs to spot, and even Borg spotting will be slower to kick in. And many thanks for the suggestion (MikeyD,Robohn) about using the 150mm infantry gun for sheer shock value. I'm trying it.

And I agree with the dearly hated Seanachai, may his beard fall out in patches, I may be living through an excellent simulation of life as a German in 1942 Russia. (Perhaps I'll shoot a toe off my left foot later today, try to hide the powder burns, and hope I get shipped home rather than executed.)

I do see some differences, however, between RL and CMBB. Real life KVs are sometimes said to have slowness and poor situational awareness as weaknesses (see Foxbat's contribution above). In real life, this meant you could detour around them or, very carefully, close assault them. In a CMBB QB, however, they have plenty of speed (22 mph, a respectable speed) for the kinds of things that get done in QBs, so you really cannot detour around them (they just drive over to where your forces are) and their situational awareness seems almost preternatural when it comes to infantry approaches.

Again, thanks for your help. I'm climbing the Kije tree of understanding, getting ever closer to the moon of enlightenment.

-- Lt. Kije

[demoss]

On many maps this will not be possible and you would need to drive embarked guns out to emplacing locations, a dicey propostion.

It doesn't take much woods to make this fairly viable. An AT Gun using Move to Contact in woods is virtually invisible, as far as I can tell.

[Robohn]

Lt Kije, you can thank Hazat, my German opponent, for the 150mm infantry gun tip. He taught my KV-1s the hard way about them.

Robohn

[Coffin 'Enry]

It was mentioned above but its probably worth saying again: in 1942 try STUGs.

Cheers

[Lt. Kije]

Thanks, demoss, for the idea of Move To Contact for guns. I hadn't thought of that one. Will try it.

Initial practice QB shows that guns in woods, even on the offense, can be effective against KV-1s. The captured Russian 76.2/L51 has made an especially good showing in my first QB. The German Pak 40 75/L46 has roughly equivalent stats.

Even Green KVs, however, acquire AT guns after a few shots. Maybe my AT guns aren't deep enough in the woods. Remember, since I'm on offense, I don't get foxholes.

Less successful in this QB has been the 150mm infantry gun. It has had a hard time dropping a round near enough to a KV to hurt it. Pretty sloppy trajectory on that 150mm, which doesn't hurt if you are using it for area fire at a large patch of woods, or you are firing at close range like 200 m, but for hitting near enough to shock or demoralize a KV 800 m out.... not so far, at least for me. I'll keep trying.

Thanks to your tips, I'm feeling less like surrendering when the KVs roll out on me.

-- Lt. Kije

[Sirocco]

In a recent game I found at least two T34's dominating the left and central routes of advance. As I recall I had a PzKpfw III which I brought up in the centre to deal with a light Soviet tank. It knocked the Soviet tank out, but was then knocked out itself by a T34 that came up alongside the target.

With another T34 on the left I was in no position to cover the open ground to reach the flags. With the PzKpfw III knocked out I was basically out of armour. So I switched the focus of the attack to the right flank where I had a narrow covered approach. I made a point of pulling two 37mm PaK's closely behind the advance elements and set up an ambush at roughly ninety degrees between the two PaK's on the road the T34's would use to threaten my advance.

One of the two T34's did approach, and between them the PaK's drove it off. That flank advance wasn't threatened by armour after that point. If the T34 hadn't reversed I doubt the PaK's would have knocked it out, but they might have forced the crew to bail through suppression. The key to handling Soviet armour in those circumstances is to improvise like that. Throw everything you have at them, but do it in a co-ordinated way, so your assets aren't picked off piecemeal.

Even a lowly 37mm PaK can handle the heaviest Soviet tank, as long as it's part of a co-ordinated and planned attack.

[Lumbergh]

Originally posted by Sirocco:

Even a lowly 37mm PaK can handle the heaviest Soviet tank, as long as it's part of a co-ordinated and planned attack.

That is, at least until the patch comes out. Until then, the uberdoorknocker reigns supreme over all....

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Lumbergh:

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

Even a lowly 37mm PaK can handle the heaviest Soviet tank, as long as it's part of a co-ordinated and planned attack.

That is, at least until the patch comes out. Until then, the uberdoorknocker reigns supreme over all....</font>