Armor over run attacks.

[JonS]

Originally posted by dalem:

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

What you don't is the Finn outside of the frame who just threw the tank.

Now that's funny.</font>

[JasonC]

LH - can you show that my supposition is untrue? Or are you making it up?

Why did I conclude that was the GD officer's meaning? (1) Because he contrasts his own *factual* style with Sajer's, which he calls *literary*. Which is a way of calling himself more literally truthful than Sajer, to my ears. (2) Because he never says he believes Sajer, only that he has more "respect" for him.

This brings the question, what caused this respect? Did Sajer explain discrepancies about where armband decorations were worn? Did he relate a military CV and say "yeah, I knew your subordinate Whosits. He bought it around Kiev, remember?" There is no hint of it. It was supposedly in reaction to a letter. Earlier in the document we are given Sajer's response to skeptics. He does not engage on details, he explains his motivation for writing the book, at the time it was written - to praise the German soldier when others would not.

It is entirely natural to assume the GD officer is reacting to that. We have it on undisputed testimony, that is how Sajer has responded to skeptics raising questions about his veracity. I took the GD officer to be flattered and to see the political point of it, to agree it needed doing at the time. Thus, new respect, created by the motivation behind the book. But still he contrasts factual and literary styles. He thereby distinguishes respect for the motive, from belief in the veracity of the account. He endorses the motive, and praises Sajer for having it. And he says he wants to read it again - meaning, the first time he did not read it with that in his mind.

Thus we know several things about the officer's reaction. He did not know the motive before, it was news to him. When he read the book without knowing it, he concluded it was false. Then he learned the motive, and respects Sajer for that motive (because he shares it, considers it just and worthy etc, no doubt). He wants to read the book as a properly motivated piece of literature, instead of reading it as a supposed factual autobiographical account. He might well have approved of it on that score. Fine by me. One has to ask, if he thought it an accurate book on internal evidence, why did he first think it inaccurate? But he never claimed it was - he called it literary in contrast to his factual style - so I find no fault in his statements.

Since this reading of the comments is entirely reasonable and I have no reason to rule it out, I have no reason to take the officer's statement as testimony that Sajer is verbatum accurate. Logically, the form of my argument is to call "non sequitur" - I grant for the sake of argument everything the GD officer said, and Sajer's veracity does not follow from those premises. I compressed all the above to a "no doubt because".

Prove a word of it isn't correct.

[ September 21, 2005, 06:15 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[David I]

Stoat,

Those ain't sashes! Those are Sam Brown type gear for officers - the universal officer leather gear from 1870 to 1945.

DavidI

[stoat]

That's why I added the (I think). I know next to nothing on uniforms, so that was just a suppostion. I was more concerned with getting the tank right.

[Battlefront.com]

Boy, I'll bet when that thing landed it really shook the fillings out of the crew's teeth!

The tank commander, when interviewed after their stay in the hospital, said "everything was going great. Well, until the landing. Apparently that is the hard part of flying".

Steve

[Ardem]

Steve <sigh> these a creditable links and this how I understand them. I cannot believe you can view them any other way. But these are actual inicidents, although I am not saying they are super common, only for specific circumstances.

Am I saying you should model it in CM, probably not, but if tanks rushes like happen in the eastern front, where they would overrun positions with there masses and a soldier didn't move he was going to die.

If a tanker sees a guy in front of him 10 metres away the driver is going to run him over or try too, with too much deviation to the commanders orders.

If there is a wounded guy on the ground in front the tank will attempt to run over him especially if he is a sadisitic sort.

My point is not, did tankers try to use this as a tactic, my point is if a tank tries to overrun a position and run down or crush a foxhole area, they can and would. But with CM you can run over a postion and not kill anyone but may send them into panic. With a 1:1 representation of CM I expect to see if a tank rolls over a infantry person then that person should die.

Anyway back to the links and pointint it out the quotes.

Blood red snow, Memiors of a Easten Front soldier

"All too often the fate of these men would be a violent death. Many of his compatriots would be run over by Russian tanks or blown to pieces by Russian shells." (they are dead but died because of being run over)

Second Link

"These were immediately used to launch a counterattack: the .30-caliber gun mounted on the half-track provided fire, and the track itself was employed to run over the enemy's personnel and his light machine-gun positions. The use of these half-tracks in a counterattack to regain a position proved highly effective."

(You can not misunderstand this)

Third Link

"Barney was injured right after that when he was in a fox hole that was run over by a tank."

(Admittedly this could of been his own tank but I doubt it)

Fourth Link

"We saw corpses of men and horses killed by the artillery barrage or run over by tanks." (If they were killed by artillery fire 'then' run over tanks you would be right, but it said 'or' run over by tanks) (edit: had a think it could of been killed by artillery and run over by tanks so I put this one is the indoubt list)

Fifth Link

Aaron Elson: Dixon says you turned a corner and you saw three German motorcycles.

George Bussell: Yeah, they were parked. I ran over them with the tank. Shoot, you can run over anything in those tanks. Just like a Caterpillar. (He would not of said this unless he did run over other stuff just as cars, walls, other obstacles)

[ September 22, 2005, 12:47 AM: Message edited by: Ardem ]

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by JasonC:

LH - can you show that my supposition is untrue? Or are you making it up?

Prove a word of it isn't correct.

Jason, you apparently know very little about who needs to show, or prove, what.

It doesnt work like this:

Person A: The reason Hitler decided to invade Poland was because he had an enormous craving for Polish ice cream.

Person B: Eh, you just made that up.

Person A: Oh yeah...well PROVE ME WRONG.

Really, for someone who likes to pretend to be very intelligent and well-read on ww2, with lots of theories and insights you sure do your best to come across as something completely different in this thread.

"Can you prove that my made up stuff is wrong" is something you usually expect to hear from a 10 yrold, not from an adult, and definitiviely not from someone with some sort of higher education.

[Ardem]

Hortlund I agree with you on JasonC posting style he should quote in " " and add opinion after it.

But your probably best to let it go, cause all your going to do is frustrate yourself.

After all he picked out the part of the links I made which was not the one I was referring to he conviently skipped that, so I had to post it above and as you can see no doubt to that post.

Unless he misquoted the part above. But time to build a bridge and get over it and I will bring the nails and planks <smile>

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

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

LH - can you show that my supposition is untrue? Or are you making it up?

Prove a word of it isn't correct.

Jason, you apparently know very little about who needs to show, or prove, what.

It doesnt work like this:

Person A: The reason Hitler decided to invade Poland was because he had an enormous craving for Polish ice cream.

Person B: Eh, you just made that up.

Person A: Oh yeah...well PROVE ME WRONG.

Really, for someone who likes to pretend to be very intelligent and well-read on ww2, with lots of theories and insights you sure do your best to come across as something completely different in this thread.

"Can you prove that my made up stuff is wrong" is something you usually expect to hear from a 10 yrold, not from an adult, and definitiviely not from someone with some sort of higher education. </font>

[KiloIndiaAlpha]

Up until now I only found lawyers annoying when I was being shafted by one...

[JasonC]

LH - I take it that is a "no", then.

Obviously anyone serious could cite chapter and verse on something like why Hitler invaded Poland, if it were needed. But it isn't, since the reasons aren't seriously disputed. Or you could handle it my way, and notice the ice cream is better in France, and if it were true Hitler would have gone west first (lol).

Do you seriously dispute my interpretation of the GD officer's comments? Do you have another interpretation of them? I haven't heard it. Let alone any defense of it. Let alone anything to suggest said alternative is the only reasonable reading or that there is the slightest hint against my own. Making it rather unlike the "ice cream theory" of WW II.

I argue my position, you don't argue yours, nor do you argue against mine on the substance. You therefore object merely to my having a reasoned position on the matter, that (I assume, since I haven't heard yours explicitly) happens not to be yours.

Personally, my diagnosis about your amusing silliness on the subject remains a largely unexamined justificationist belief about knowledge, in general. All beliefs originate in named authorities, preferably in print, or something similar. Not a mandatory position for anyone. And it is rather silly to berate for a doctrine without even stating it.

[A.E.B]

This still going?

1. Tanks have very limited visibility, especially close in, so running down infantry is far from easy.

2. Dug in infantry are unlikely to be killed by a tank overrun unless (a) the ground is soft, or ( the tank stops and rotates. My relative who crewed a tank in Nam remarked that VC bunkers kept firing as tanks and APCs drove over them.

3. A slow or stopped tank among infantry is terribly vulnerable. The crew have terrible vision close to the tank, so infantry can easily close-assault with explosives and AT weapons.

Even molotovs can be a danger (as a British Warrior discovered in Basra).

There are a couple of good photos in the book Blook Soaked Soil from the Cherkassy Pocket of KOed Russian armour in and around German Trenches. The tanks were stripped of their infantry support. As the Russian Tanks drove on to the trenches, they were destroyed with TNT and Teller Mines.

A.E.B

[JasonC]

There is another possibility that occurs to me. LH may simply be emotionally invested in the book in question. Maybe he really liked it, thought it deep or wise or otherwise special. It pains him that others consider it dubious, in much the same way some object whenever inconsistencies in their scriptures are brought to their attention. I don't know if this would be considered a more charitable explanation or a less charitable one. Intellectually less, humanly more, perhaps.

LH may also imagine my comments were less thought through than they actually were. That is why it would be instructive for him were he to actually engage on the substance. We have several facts about the GD officer's case, and to accomodate all of them is much more constraining that LH may suspect.

For instance, we know the officer's changed opinion is not a result of internal evidence. We have the prior unbiased trial of his judgment of the internal evidence alone, in his prior opinion of the work. We know he did not change his opinion due to internal factors reconsidered, because he explicitly says he wants to read the book again, meaning he hadn't at the time of the change. Whatever the change is alleged to be, its cause is purely external to the book. To be a newly operating cause, it must also be news to him.

Sajer's motivation is my explanation of that cause. I claim he did not grasp that motivation when he formed his earlier opinion of the book, that it was dubious as history. That knowing Sajer's motivation changed his opinion of Sajer, not his opinion of history. I see that confirmed in the factual-literary distinction the officer offers. What's yours?

[Ardem]

How funny is this, I am doing my nightly reading In Deadly Combat, by Gottlob Herbert Bidermann, when I stumble across a passage which started this whole debate about the fogotten soldier.

For those who have this book page 189, 1st and 2nd line down.

"The tank rolled over the MG nest, paused, and with rumbling engines it turned on it tracks, crushing the hole, burying from sight all traces of the desperately defend position."

The MG nest was really a bit of ruins with a large fox hole dug in. His matter of fact way he puts this, seems to be a common occurance on the russian front. But that is just my opinion.

So if you not going to take forgotten soldier word for T-34 turning their tracks on foxholes here would be an example of it written in a book that noone would dare calling the writer illusionary.

So had to share and have a laugh.

[JasonC]

A.E.B. covered most of the reasons. One to add is, drivers don't generally steer for giant potholes, because they have a tendency to wreck their vehicles. Driving on solid ground is generally preferred.

[JasonC]

Ardem - believable as a means of spiking the machinegun. Does it say people were still in the hole at the time?

[A.E.B]

Someone gave me Forgotten Soldier as a gift, the book is at best entertaining faction. Sajer knows just enough to make his books seem believable, but I kept picking up errors all over the place.

The only really sucessfully use of tanks to kill entrenched infantry occurred during the first Gulf War when US tanks with dozer blades buried pinned Iraqis in their trenches.

But, simply put, no sane tank crew is going to deliberately drive into an entrenched infantry position without close infantry support as it was a perfectly good way to get yourself killed. Many tanks cannot see objects within a few metres of them due to the location of vision devices and the angle. Infantry can stand beside a tank like a Panther and be invisible to the crew when buttoned.

A.E.B

[aka_tom_w]

Just to cite a modern day (like last week) event:

(or current news story)

The raid took place Monday after a British commander said he feared that the two British undercover soldiers had been handed over to a militia group.

A British armored vehicle escorted by a tank crashed into a detention center looking for the two soldiers.

The British forces said the pair had been held at a police jail but were then taken to a house -- apparently held by Shiite militia. When it was determined the two were not at the detention center, the house was stormed and British official said the two soldiers were rescued.

The British military entered the police station and a Warrior armored vehicle crashed through the perimeter wall of the jail.

The dramatic operation Monday followed a day of rioting in the southern Iraqi city, sparked when the two soldiers were said by police and local officials to have fired on an Iraqi police patrol.

From CNN

or the BBC news (pick one)

So it happens

I think everyone here agreed on that.

-tom w

[FredKors]

This tank has been destroyed because:

a) air-bombed

the driver was a woman

c) the crew committed suicide after reading some dozen polemical posts regarding books or something similar...

[c3k]

(Dear God, forgive me....)

JasonC - do you hold that no live, able-bodied soldiers were crushed in their defensive positions by tracked vehicles?

(...I know not what I do...)

Regards,

Ken

[A.E.B]

But I seem to remember seeing burning crew bailing out of their Warrior from fear that the ammo would explode.

Knocking down walls and crushing toyotas is one thing. Dealing with a pack of crunchies surrounding and showering your MICV with burning petroleum is another.

A.E.B

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

Just to cite a modern day (like last week) event:

(or current news story)

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />

The raid took place Monday after a British commander said he feared that the two British undercover soldiers had been handed over to a militia group.

A British armored vehicle escorted by a tank crashed into a detention center looking for the two soldiers.

The British forces said the pair had been held at a police jail but were then taken to a house -- apparently held by Shiite militia. When it was determined the two were not at the detention center, the house was stormed and British official said the two soldiers were rescued.

The British military entered the police station and a Warrior armored vehicle crashed through the perimeter wall of the jail.

The dramatic operation Monday followed a day of rioting in the southern Iraqi city, sparked when the two soldiers were said by police and local officials to have fired on an Iraqi police patrol.

From CNN

or the BBC news (pick one)

So it happens

I think everyone here agreed on that.

-tom w </font>

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by c3k:

JasonC - do you hold that no live, able-bodied soldiers were crushed in their defensive positions by tracked vehicles?

Regards,

Ken

He's saying that there is no creditable evidence that they were.

Why not skip the sarcastic crap in your post, since any sane person would simply ignore anything phrased that way. Edit it out and you might be deemed worthy of a response.

Now is your chance to post some kind of creditable evidence; Sajer obviously isn't it.

Something like

FIRST HUSSARS Part I Orders 7 May 1944...experience in North Africa/Italy has shown that improper use of AFVs (pulling stumps, bulldozing buildings, obstacle clearance) has resulted in extended maintenance and wastage of optics, handguards and stowage mounts. Crew commanders and drivers are reminded also that the proper method of engaging enemy personnel is via Besa/Browning co-ax and flexible mounts rather than driving over entrenched positions."

or

Unteroffizier Schäfer's vehicle entered the open meadow (near Wilkowischken) and led the rest of the company against entrenched positions there. Knowing how disastrous similar Russian armoured assaults on entrenched infantry had been in the Jassi(sic) area, the company chief halted the line of tanks and waited for infantry support. The hard pressed Füsiliers of the II Battalion could not marry up, and so the vehicles went forward just past noon, crushing several unfortunate Russian machinegunners to death in their foxholes.

God, Honor, Fatherland: Panzer Regiment Grossdeutschland by Jung (J.J. Fedorowicz translation 2001)

[A.E.B]

Originally posted by FredKors:

This tank has been destroyed because:

a) air-bombed

the driver was a woman

c) the crew committed suicide after reading some dozen polemical posts regarding books or something similar...

d) being a BT series tank, when threatened by a superior foe (a opel truck), it instinctively turns its strongest armour to face the threat, or

e) the tank was being driven by the AI Driver from T-72.

A.E.B

[c3k]

Michael Dorosh,

I find the statement, "...skip the sarcastic crap..." incredibly amusing, both in the context you chose and in the fact that _you_ wrote it.

Carry on.

Ken