Armor over run attacks.

[Copper]

Will tanks be able to truly conduct violent over run attacks? Seems that WW2 was full of examples of tanks (especially Russians) crashing into buildings,crushing anit-tank guns or even spinning over foxhole to kill single soldiers. I have read about T-34s going one track into a trench to rid it of German infantry.

Thanks!

Copper

[K.A. Miles]

Yes, I've wondered the same thing. I want to be able to RAM something!

[hoolaman]

I'm a little dubious that WWII was "full" of such incidents.

I'm pretty sure CMx1 allows you to run over guys with vehicles, it just doesn't happen very often. I think crashing a tank into a building would not be very healthy for the occupants of the tank.

[stoat]

I have read many accounts of German tanks stopping over foxholes then gunning the engine and grinding the occupants to death. Also, if the ground was too hard they would put the tank in neutral, gunned the engine, and suffocated the occupants.

In my experience, in CMx1 tanks do not cause casualties when they hit a unit, but instead just cause them to run to a new place. Then again, I try to keep my tanks away from infantry. (well, at least out of crush distance)

[stoat]

Also of tanks ramming AT guns. I think this does work in CMx1.

[JasonC]

"I have read many accounts..."

More to the point, you apparently believed them. Which would seem to be the problem.

[Barrold]

Ouch..JasonC off the top rope with an elbow to the head..

BFS5

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by stoat:

In my experience, in CMx1 tanks do not cause casualties when they hit a unit, but instead just cause them to run to a new place. Then again, I try to keep my tanks away from infantry. (well, at least out of crush distance)

I am pretty sure I once ran over a German with a MG carrier, there is a sound effect and everything!

Now to fire up CM for a test....

[bitterboy101]

Armor "over runs", according to the German armor tactics book I purchased from Battlefront, was a tactic favored for destroying enemy MGs. At least that's what the training manual said.

It would be nice to see tanks crush trees and walls but I'd rather have a great game engine and system rather than features that are just there for looks.

[SgtMuhammed]

The images of tanks smashing things were nearly always staged. Yes it is possible to smash a big tree but it is also really possible to throw track while doing so. NOT a good thing during combat. Tanks went around things if they had a choice.

As to overrun tactics, sure they are in the books, so are bayonet attacks. That doesn't mean they were very popular with the guys who actually had to do them. Running your tank over a big hole can do bad things, and not all of them to the other guy.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by JasonC:

"I have read many accounts..."

More to the point, you apparently believed them. Which would seem to be the problem.

So this account from The Forgotten Soldier is probably not accurate?

A T-34 drove straight over the hole which sheltered Lensen and his companion. Then it reversed, and leveled the place. So Lensen died, on the soil of Prussia, where he has wished to die.

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by Hoolaman:

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

In my experience, in CMx1 tanks do not cause casualties when they hit a unit, but instead just cause them to run to a new place. Then again, I try to keep my tanks away from infantry. (well, at least out of crush distance)

I am pretty sure I once ran over a German with a MG carrier, there is a sound effect and everything!

Now to fire up CM for a test.... </font>

[Gpig]

Ha ha ha! That was awesome. Thanks!

Gpig

[Tankgunner]

Originally posted by stoat:

Also of tanks ramming AT guns. I think this does work in CMx1.

No! It does not. And that was one of the main drawbacks for me.

Run a test with a tank without ammo vs an AT Gun, you'll see.

I can't attack with Matildas moving across italian 47-mm gun just to have the enemy in perfect condition behind them.

And I hate to see that my T-34 running to the flank of two PaK40 guns can not crash them, and have to stop and fire. And enemy gun was often faster... That hurts.

[ParaBellum]

Really? I always thought that once you drive a tank over a gun it gets abandoned by its crew. But then I prefer to plaster them with HE and MG fire anyway...

[Peter Cairns]

The problem is how to have the correct realistic effect without people overdoing it and using it unrealisticly, it's a sort of re run of the "Smoke grenade" debate.

I'd be worried that if done badly we would go from a WW2 sim to an episode of "Whacky Races".

Peter.

[Abbott]

I have read accounts of overruns on the Eastern Front and yes I believe some occurred. However I believe that was not a common incident but occurred due to the situation at the time. A tank can be disabled pretty quickly and the crew killed by close in infantry. A man can roll out of a hole and away from tank treads in a couple of seconds and I believe WWII era tanks usually moved at a crawl.

I never crashed a tank (M48-M60A1) into anything when I was driving but it looks cool on film. It is not as hard as one might think to damage an AFV if it is mishandled. Not to mention that the driver would then have to whip any of the other crewmembers left standing. And all three are perfectly positioned to deliver a nice blow to the back of a dumb drivers head. Or beat the hell out of him while he was trying to wriggle out of a small hatch up front. The inside of an AFV is so hard and filled with so many pointy objects that it can pound the hell out of you just operating it properly.

Nice flying elbow Jason , I could easily picture a quick boot to the head coming from a pissed off loader. Tanks are fun pieces of equipment to operate and are extremely spooky and deadly in action but crewmembers are much more vulnerable to injury then a person might think.

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

I'd be worried that if done badly we would go from a WW2 sim to an episode of "Whacky Races".

Peter.

LOL, good one!

[K.A. Miles]

I guess for me, it's not "did they do it often", but that "they did it sometimes". Yeah, maybe you would have to be totally nuts to ram that building with a tank. Sure, the tank might become immobilized, the gun damaged, and several crew members beaten to pulp--- but I want to have the option to ram/overrun/grind/smash/crush anything or anybody who gets in my way!

[Barrold]

I don't want to be confused with someone who knows anything (not that there's much danger of that) but I think the way BFC thinks is that modelling some rare events simply provides lots of opportunities for unrealistic behavior.

BDH

[JasonC]

No doubt the author considered it poignant symbolism, the blood of his heros ground into Prussian soil by communist steel. A metaphor for east Germany, perhaps. But no, there is no reason to believe it as relating any actual fact.

The writer believed "I have proudly glorified the honor of all German soldiers at a time in history when they were slandered and reviled. In my opinion this was my duty..." That political point was his aim, the book was the means.

He claims he wrote it out in the 50s, it was serialized in Belgium in the 60s and later published as a book. My personal take is that he was a vichy sympathizer who joined the SS and fictionalized aspects of his account for literary purposes - including the shift of the unit he claimed to serve in to GD. (Some of his insignia remarks are true of SS uniforms but not of GD ones, and it fits every other aspect of the case, from goal to writing style to fictionalism and evasiveness).

"Sajer wrote, as many soldiers have done, what in literary terms is known as a roman a clef - a novel based on real persons and events. The roman a clef is a powerful literary form that permits the author the literary license to create characters for dramatic effect, move events forward or backward in time, assign the experiences of several individuals to one central character, or disguise the identify of the novel's principal character by using an assumed name. All of these devices are used in The Forgotten Soldier.

"Thus, the book is similar to Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Although these deal with World War I, both novels are powerful evocations of their respective authors' experiences in the cauldron of combat. Both novels contain incidents and events, written in prose narrative, that trace their central characters' experiences, many of which are based on fact. For example, Sassoon actually participated in the Battle of the Somme as a British subaltern. Therefore, these novels are authentic. However, what they are not are autobiographies, regardless of how authentic they may seem and despite their authors' participation in historical events that provided them with inspiration."

Does this mean no one was ever run over by a tank? No, it means there is no reason to believe a passage in a book by this character relating such an occurance has any basis in any physically real event.

What actually typically happened when tanks and enemy infantry were in close proximity is the tanks shot the infantry with their machineguns and the survivors surrendered. Or occasionally managed to hide. What sometimes but much more rarely happened is the infantry managed to take out a tank by getting close enough to it - a coaxial MG having slightly more effective range than typical infantry AT, and being slightly more effective against a man in shirtsleeves than a rifle is against a 30 ton tank.

But there is reason the affair at Ponyri station is not about Elephants running over lots of Russian infantry and squishing them to death. There is a reason an AFV meant to perform close assaults not having a machinegun was considered a design flaw. And that reason was not, it is easy to just drive over people instead.

Hollywood loves driving tanks through stone walls because they think it conveys a sense of irresistible power to civilians. Soldiers laugh at such things, as an easy way to M-kill your own tanks for nothing in return. What is scary about a tank is its firepower delivered with impunity from ranges beyond reach to point blank. Civilians don't have firepower sense, don't feel the vulnerability involved, so they have to see physical collision.

Manuals love telling tankers to run things over because they are preaching about speed and decisive maneuver, which properly apply only at a much larger level. Actual tankers probe ahead cautiously spraying every bush with machinegun fire. Manuals tell riflemen to attack with bayonets, because they want them to keep advancing instead of pinning on contact forever. Actual infantrymen close to grenade range when they can, but only use bayonets to open ration tins or cut cloth.

[Tankgunner]

Originally posted by ParaBellum:

Really? I always thought that once you drive a tank over a gun it gets abandoned by its crew. But then I prefer to plaster them with HE and MG fire anyway...

Consider a) you just have no HE shell at all

you're shooting too slow (poor ROF)or your optics is poor

In both cases if you will engage in a gun duel, you are a grill. The only option si to get close and crash. So did lots of T-34 crewmen, and beleive me, they were right. I've dealt with a T-34/76, it's terribly hard to aim at something even from a slow moving vehicle

But, at the same time, crushing walls or turning around on a trench is a bad idea and is generally a movie trick.

[Brent Pollock]

Horse Hockey.

I've KOd so many guns this way in CMBO/CMBB/CMAK that I've lost count. Did it with test scenarios and in real games, both. It even works against a gun in a trench.

I've no idea why it didn't work for you...

Originally posted by Tankgunner:

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

Also of tanks ramming AT guns. I think this does work in CMx1.

No! It does not. And that was one of the main drawbacks for me.

Run a test with a tank without ammo vs an AT Gun, you'll see.

I can't attack with Matildas moving across italian 47-mm gun just to have the enemy in perfect condition behind them.</font>

[SgtMuhammed]

Same here. Used it with great success in one of the Kasserine scenarios.

[stoat]

JasonC: From Nipe's "Last Victory in Russia", Stone&Stone Books.

Here and there a crew tried to get its gun into action, while all around them pandemonium reigned. Terror stricken horses raced wildly up and down the road, dodging the SS half tracks and SPWs that charged through the village. Before most of the Russian guns could be put into action, their crews were shot down or run over by SS tanks, the tracks grinding gun and crew into piles of bloody, twisted metal.

Burgett's "Seven Roads to Hell", Dell Books.

The day before a German tank had ground a paratrooper into the dirt, and there wasn't enough left of the poor man to leave for the graves registration team.

[ September 17, 2005, 05:41 PM: Message edited by: stoat ]