How Come Russian AFVs Have No Smoke

[PiggDogg]

Guys,

Let's ignore 1941 with the uber T34s & KVs. We know that these suckers are relatively invulnerable from the front to most (but not all) German fire.

1942 has the German & Russian AFVs pounding each other to slag with all sorts of bouncing shells on somewhat equal front to front terms. PzIIIs versus T34s are relatively equal front to front fights.

1943 the German uber front AFVs (Tigers, Panthers, super StgIIIs) begin to appear. In 44 it even gets worse for the Ruskies. The Russians can't keep up with the front to front AFV battles.

In case anyone has not noticed, the near biggest Russian tanks (Josef Stalins, Su152s, Su122s, etc.) much less the lesser tanks (T34s, etc.) don't like the front of these German uber AFVs. Almost all Russian back away from the German uber front tanks at range.

Basically, the Russian AFVs must maneuver close to German uber AFVs and get on their flanks and rears. This requires that the Russian AFVs move fast and maneuver from cover to cover.

Now this brings up the $.64 question asking for the real life, historical answer: Why don't Russian AFVs have smoke shells to help them maneuver to get on the Germans' ubers' flanks." :eek:

Hey, the Germans, Brits, Poles, Amis, and even the Frogs have smoke. Why did the AFVs of the sons of Old Mother Russia not have smoke shells? :confused:

Indeed, I'm near the oldest person on this board 54 yrs), and I could be consider pretty knowledgable (but not a super grog) on WWII, but I don't know the answer to this question. Smoke 'em, if you got 'em. :cool:

Cheers, Richard

[ October 22, 2002, 10:07 PM: Message edited by: PiggDogg ]

[Redwolf]

Because they have no thermal sights either?

[Straif]

Originally posted by PiggDogg:

Guys,

SNIP

Hey, the Germans, Brits, Poles, Amis, and even the Frogs have smoke. Why did the AFVs of the sons of Old Mother Russia not have smoke shells? :confused:

SNIP

Cheers, Richard

Because Cannabis was forbidden in Russia, even for the military purposes. They had very powerful Drug Tzar there...

They used Vodka instead.

Straif

[Bullethead]

PiggDogg said:

Why don't Russian AFVs have smoke shells ... ?

As best as I can determine, WW2 Russian tanks really didn't carry smoke ammo, so it's not BTS' fault they don't have smoke in CMBB . I admit I've been curious about this myself. I've come to the conclusion it was a doctrinal thing.

Smoke shells are basically good for only 2 things. You can mask an individual enemy unit that's causing you problems w/out blinding yourself with a smoke discharger in your own face, and you can point targets out to arty FOs and supporting airplanes. The latter use requires a pretty good level of training, excellent realtime, inter-arm communications, and very decentralized control, none of which the Russians had as a rule. The former requires an unbuttoned TC looking around trying to spot the threat (say a well-camo'd ATG), which for most of the war the Russians didn't have either.

So basically, the Russian system didn't usually allow for realtime target marking by tankers, and with the TC being the gunner and buttoned up most of the time in action, his odds of being able to spot the type of target usually smoked was pretty low. Hence, the Russians probably figured it was more effective to just carry more killing ammo. That and use tanks in great mass so that an ambusher could knock off a few w/out blunting the whole attack.

This doctrinal stuff is pretty much lost on CMBB. There is no need to mark targets for other units due to the game's absolute spotting system. But OTOH, the default attacker/defender ratio in a QB, and the very small size (compared to a realworld battle) of a most CMBB QBs, mean that needing to mask a dangerous enemy unit is much more important than in real life. The loss of just a couple of AFVs in a given QB can be the difference between victory or defeat. Thus, the Russians' historical lack of smoke ammo is more of a problem in CMBB than it probably was in real life.

That all said, it's my understanding that most WW2 Russian tanks had the ability to inject diesel into the exhaust system to create smoke screens, at least for the ranks behind the first. This had the potential to let the Russians get in close before the Germans could do them much damage, and then flank shots would become available. If you have this, there's another reason not to waste ammo storage space on smoke ammo. Again, however, this system wouldn't do much good in your typical small CMBB battle because you usually don't have enough tanks to both make a decent smokescreen and hide behind it at the same time

[KEEF888]

Cheers, Richard [/qb]

[MikeyD]

After playing CMBO the lack of smoke shells came as a shock, but I trust BFC too much to believe this is an oversite.

One thing CMBO and CMBB don't have is smoke generating abilities beyond 'popping' smoke shells. The late T34-84 (with the two small drums in the back) mounted smoke generating equipment, and the two small boxes on the lower rear of the late Churchills were also smoke generators I believe. But neither CMBO or CMBB model this.

[BeauCoupDinkyDau]

Originally posted by Bullethead:

. . .and you can point targets out to arty FOs and supporting airplanes.

"Use the Purple! USE THE PURPLE!"

[demoss]

>One thing CMBO and CMBB don't have is smoke generating abilities beyond 'popping' smoke shells.

Wrong. You just don't have control over it. I had a Pz III use its smoke discharger after bouncing a few shells off a KV-2 (and going from OK to Panic without taking any hits - also very cool). It's true that you can't give the order to use it, but pay attention to the unit info screen. You'll see "smoke discharger" on a number of vehicles, mostly German.

[MikeyD]

You're referring to smoke candles or smoke mortars, which they do reproduce. I'm talking about sustained smoke generation to cover troop movements. A late T34-85 should be able to crank-up the smoke generator and race across the battlefield laying a column of smoke as he goes. That isn't modeled in the game.

It BFC is tempted to eventually do a Cold War Europe game with the new game engine they should consider modelling this capability.