An observation

[coe]

I was re-reading a few old war books but you eventually run into those stories where a panzer division is reduced to about 25 tanks but somehow stops the massive offensive (or at least delays it) while having a favorable exchange ratio. then I realized that 25 tanks of WWII size couldn't even fill a small parking lot, and yet at times somehow manage to check an enemy advance without the enemy swarming all over where the tanks were not and somehow engulfing them.

[Sergei]

Armoured divisions consist of more than just tanks. Eg. artillery is quite important. Maybe the authors failed at conveying the 'big picture' while focusing on the thrilling bits about tank vs. tank combat?

[Kingfish]

The quality of the opposition needs to be also taken into account. Look at the losses Das reich inflicted on 5th Guards tank at Prokhovrovka, and IIRC they had fewer than 25 tanks deployed between the Psel and RR embankment.

[coe]

this is true but it is still a bit boggling, they can't be everywhere at once and those cannons didn't have that long a range! 20 tanks could fill just a short 75 yrds on a street (not spaced out)

[Sergei]

But tanks don't fight in tight phalanx formations, so that is a pointless comparison.

[Cuirassier]

Remember too that attacking formations could often be just as weak, or almost. Once the Soviet tank and mech corps went deep, the number of operational runners reduced drastically, with any given corps commonly having only 25-50 AFV's running any given day.

Furthermore, late war, one rarely sees a seriously reduced PD stopping much of anything. For example, look at 5th PD during Bagration. It arrived on the scene once the Soviet's had already broken through and was full strength having a battalion of Panthers and one of Pz. IV's. A battalion of Tiger's also fought with them. They fought 5GTA along the Minsk axis and certainly got their share of kills. But by the end the formation was gutted and the Soviets closed the pocket anyway.

Most of the claims of seriously understrength PD's stopping major offensives or even causing serious delay is propaganda that seeks to glorify the skill of the Panzertruppen. In reality it took full strength panzer corps arriving on scene with fresh PD's to stop anything major. When understrength PD's did actually stop something, it was because the attacker was just as exhausted and understrength as the defending Germans, or even more so. The third battle of Kharkov is a good example of this. Group Popov was only a tank army sized formation in name only. When they were counterattacked they had fewer than 50 tanks, iirc.

[Der Alte Fritz]

The other factor to remember is SPACE (the final frontier.....)

Look at a map and you think - what a vast area. Get down on the ground and you quickly realise that on most terrain, there are only a few possible routes across that map, difficult terrain such as woods, forests, fences, rivers, streams, etc break up the terrain into fairly small chunks. There are exceptions to this such as the steppes but even here the very deep balkas that cut up the steppes mean that if you want to cross in a vehicle you are limited to one or more crossing points.

The result of this is that in any given area there are one or two routes across it or one or two choke points. So even a small group of tanks is likely to meet another small group of tanks because that is the only place for them to go.

This is the reason why if you study an area such as northern Italy which has had centuries of wars fought over it, the same places have battles time and time again. The terrain determines the campaign and battlefield options and limits them to a few choices.

In the olden days of wargaming before computers, games were produced that did not use 'maps' as such but took this concept and produced a map rather like the London Tube map. It simply showed points of significance, say towns, defensive positions, choke points etc and connected these by lines which corresponded with the number of routes available and showed the time each route took. It stripped the 'map' back to its barest essentials.

For example. If you looking to cross the Alps, you can look at a pretty map with masses of detail but the reality is that you have three options corresponding to the three passes.

[Stalins Organ]

Also troops tend to mass for the attack, but spread out on defence - the defender usually has advantages in terms of selecting terrain and visibility.

Also of course your "sample" has what is known as "observation bias" - it ignore those cases where the smaller force was walked over with no trouble at all...or was defeated after a lesser fight. You don't hear about those so much, but I wouldn't be surprised if careful stufy revelaed many more poccasions where that was what happened rather than heroic sucessful defence against the odds!

[Michael Emrys]

Look at a map and you think - what a vast area. Get down on the ground and you quickly realise that on most terrain, there are only a few possible routes across that map, difficult terrain such as woods, forests, fences, rivers, streams, etc break up the terrain into fairly small chunks. There are exceptions to this such as the steppes but even here the very deep balkas that cut up the steppes mean that if you want to cross in a vehicle you are limited to one or more crossing points.

The result of this is that in any given area there are one or two routes across it or one or two choke points. So even a small group of tanks is likely to meet another small group of tanks because that is the only place for them to go.

This is oh so true. During the '70s I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains, part of the Coastal range of North Central California, which run roughly north to south from just south of San Francisco to around Santa Cruz. I was halfway down a 30 mile strip that ran from about Redwood City to just north of Bonnie Doon. That strip was crossed west to east by just three paved highways, although there was also a web of dirt roads that ran in many directions.

This was rugged terrain, probably more so than the Ardennes. Although much of the hills was cover by open meadow, it was broken up by wooded ravines that were difficult to pass by vehicles. The point is, that if you were trying to move a mechanized army from the coast into the heavily populated Bay Area through this region (and forget for the moment that that would be a strategic imbecility from the outset), the three east-west highways would be absolutely essential.

There are an almost infinite number of choke points along these routes. A small force could easily delay one ten times its size. A larger force could probably defend against one three times its size indefinitely. Given a sufficient advantage in size, an attacker could force the defenders back, but in order to do so he would have to deploy and find flanking routes to winkle them out of position. And he would have to do that again and again against a clever and resourceful defender who could judge his moment to pull back and set up another ambush.

In short, after studying the problem, I decided that I would not like to be in the army trying to attack through such terrain if it was defended with any tactical acumen at all.

Michael

[JasonC]

I am not remotely convinced by any of the explanations offered. The point that some of this is propaganda strikes me as the soundest one made - the small forces that succeeded are heralded, the ones that didn't are passed over in silence, etc - but it is frequent enough that this can't be the whole story. Nor does it vary enough with terrain to fight the later explanation - it happens in sweeping campaigns across open steppe, in forest regions, in developed and well settled areas with a full road net, etc.

I offer elements of a different explanation. One, people have this frustrating and irrational dislike of dying painfully to no purpose. This is so upsetting to the plans of higher muckety mucks and it gets in the way of easy deductions from the size of forces to military outcomes. A formation conducts a road march; the enemy has largely evaporated. All of a sudden it isn't a road march anymore; there are incoming artillery shells and they are loud and they go BOOM, and human body parts go flying through the air in a disconcerting manner.

Sometimes lower level personnel simply go to ground and freeze. They didn't want to die today and their officers haven't sufficiently prepared or motivated them for what they are facing. No, this isn't a squad hitting "shaken" and recovering in 40 seconds. Sometimes it is a whole battalion just all about the shop, unwilling to expose themselves to anything, for hours at a time.

Next comes indescribable confusion. The brigadier is sure it is all a balls up and the column is shooting at friendlies. The captain has ordered the men to deploy to the left of the road to create a base of fire, but the lieutenant has ordered a rush out of his ambush drill instincts. Try playing a game of combat mission where you get to give orders to 1 6 man HQ with 2 pistols, an SMG and 3 rifles sometime. Your wife or girlfriend can give orders to one tank if you can convince her to learn the interface controls that instant. Everything else, you can move individually with 5 turn's worth of advance notice, and only one unit per turn.

By the time the mechanized corps has even heard there is an enemy armor "brigade" at Wheresville, and sorted out whether than means a half division Kampguppe or a half battalion worth of armor in western terms, and given orders to advance resolutely on Wheresville from 2 coordinated axes, the KG in question is 15 miles away raising a ruckus with a different rifle regiment entirely.

The enemy doesn't know the size of the engaged formations. It doesn't know if they are the tip of a bigger force or the only thing they are facing. They don't know whether a stream of 20 different reports from 4 different locations spread over 3 hours are all part of one fight with a single battalion that is moving around, or 4 separate fights each with a regiment strength enemy. They don't know what happened at each of the locations or at what time, either.

In the commander's experience, he has faced full panzer corps scale counterattacks a couple of times that wrecked enough formations and stopped whole offensives. And he has faced ineffective delaying actions scores of times, and a smattering of things in between. Everything that is happening sounds like several of these and he is not sure which this latest episode is shaping up to be. Sometimes he is feeling lucky and assumes it is the small sort and orders his men to press - and when there isn't much out there, often enough that means most of his men hit air and the modest enemy force doesn't have to fight them (though it does have to worry about them getting into their rear if they hang around long enough). Sometimes he gets cautious and covers his flanks and calls up supports and passes on confused reports and calls for orders.

Any force tightly enough deployed to be surveyed by one set of eyes, all tied in to the same radio net, moving and fighting confidently to recklessly, has a perfectly reasonable prospect of causing untold delay and confusion, in such circumstances.

War is friction, and scale multiplies it.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

I was re-reading a few old war books but you eventually run into those stories where a panzer division is reduced to about 25 tanks but somehow stops the massive offensive (or at least delays it) while having a favorable exchange ratio. then I realized that 25 tanks of WWII size couldn't even fill a small parking lot, and yet at times somehow manage to check an enemy advance without the enemy swarming all over where the tanks were not and somehow engulfing them.

on tactical level a couple of platoons of panzers that lay an ambush will stop a tank regiment for a day or even destroy it.

doctrinally the Soviets won't try to challenge those panzers and they will instead look for a panzer-free passage elsewhere for their tanks. they will try to set up ambushes on those panzers with PAK-fronts and SUs.

Soviets were a bit shaky about panzer divisions after faring so badly against them during the first years. they vastly overestimated their numbers (unintentionally or not) and were perhaps a bit too passive when they faced them (later in war). some of it is silly, like when 15 Panzer IVs appear and as a consequence a tank army goes to defensive. of course they had reasons for it, i'm not saying it was cowardice or anything like that. economy of force, strategic-operational stance, chaos & confusion, events taking place on neighbouring sectors and all that.

they were also hindered by the tightly preplanned and scheduled operations: when a detail went wrong it had potential for ruining everything around it, or at least causing confused inaction or even mindless carnage. this wasn't such an issue later in the war, but in the early days it was one crucial aspect of the great fails.

also worth noting is that sometimes a tank corps means just 50 tanks, so that indimitating "OMG entire XXIV Tank Corps kthxbye!!!" marker on the map may in fact be quite impotent on the ground (just like it was with the panzer divisions, though it was a lot more common for the PDs).

you can try the tactical aspect by creating a 1km map in CMBB. make a road go south-north on the eastern edge and put in a large unified area of scattered trees on the western edge. mark the road and terrain around it with a good number of German TRPs. for about first 500 meters put something that blocks LOS between the road and the scattered trees.

put a couple of platoons of panzers into those scattered trees with covered arcs set to almost zero. distance to road should be around 600-800 meters, depending on panzer models. put 40 typical Soviet tanks on the road at the edge with LOS block (make them arrive as reinforcement if it gets too tight).

orders those tanks to move by the road to the other edge. when a good part of those tanks are visible to the panzers in the scattered trees, at that 600-800 meter range, and with the Soviets moving on top of those TRPs, remove the covered arcs and open fire at those tanks.

borg spotting ruins some of the effect, but it works good enough to showcase how it goes.

[Stalins Organ]

I am not remotely convinced by any of the explanations offered. The point that some of this is propaganda strikes me as the soundest one made - the small forces that succeeded are heralded, the ones that didn't are passed over in silence, etc - but it is frequent enough that this can't be the whole story. Nor does it vary enough with terrain to fight the later explanation - it happens in sweeping campaigns across open steppe, in forest regions, in developed and well settled areas with a full road net, etc.

IMO, given the number of combats that can occur "...in sweeping campaigns across open steppe, in forest regions, in developed and well settled areas with a full road net, etc.", a minscule proportion of the whole might still be a relatively large absolute number.

But you are right in your implication that without a proper survey or some logical reasoning to estimate numbers we'll never know.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

i have no difficulties in believing it was real. you can read about it so often that it surely must have existed.

as for reasons how it was possible on the tactical level, i suspect it's a combination of preferred methods per available assets, higher c3 to combat elements ratio, higher cohesion and the darwinian selection of the remaining combat assets.

my impression is that 15 veteran Panzer IVs tend to do better than 45 green Panthers. when the Panthers finally have learned the ways of the land, they are down to those 15 runners themselves.

[dieseltaylor]

And at the end of day - luck.

Villers-Bocage and the Tiger sheds a track, the gearbox breaks. It is the knife edge of daring success and looking a total prat sat in the middle of an enemy brigade. Experience will tell you that the odds of a Tiger breaking down or other immobilisation factor and its a willingness to take the calculated risk that can lead to extreme resullts.

Interesting to conjecture the factor of bloodlust, mental breakdown of self-preservation, acceptance of likely death at some stage in advance, - in the exploits that create the extremes.

I do wonder if the Wagnerian legends contributed to a fighting to the death

[Vark]

At the end of the day the very fact that theses machines were crewed by humans, with all the attendant problems that creates. I was just sitting at work and considering five colleagues who have all worked here for roughly the smame time, 6-8 years and if my profession were to be modelled by a games designer we would all be rated Veteran. Yet our approach to work, our ideas about priorities and our effectiveness in certain situations covers a broad spectrum. The big problem that wargames designers are always faced with is that with the advent of computers mechanical factors, relating to combat, are far more accurately modelled, compared to the basic CRT's of classic games. Trouble is the attendant morale model is, by its nature retarded, get a realistic programme to simulate human behaviour under stress and you would retire with a Cressusian pile of cash from both military and civilian companies.

I read a very good review of Squad Leader by an ex-soldier who hated the idea that all squads of a nation were bland and homogeneous and firepower dictated changes in factors, the morale model being mainly dependent on the squad leader counters. In CM terms your unit might be rated a veteran but the leader is very fragile, after seeing a close friend die recently and will be ok (act as a veteran) if things are going well but might crack (act as green leader) if too many casualties are taken. Similarly the squad 'over the hill' is green but the MG gunner is a lethal crackshot and its leader grew up near the battle location and knows the terrain from his boyhood escapades. They are green because they have had little training and experience but if the two squads clash the veteran squad will be the weaker, due to factors impossible to calculate other than assigning arbitary factors, which make a nonsense of any system.

As for Wagner, the Germans took great store in converting their battlefield trials to titanic struggles between the pure human, steeped in the ancient ways of a warrior and the mechanistic hordes of his opponents. I even read an 'account' of an SS tank commander who, when blown out of his tank sans clothes, routed the slavic hordes with an aquired SMG and grenades. Just take a look at Nazi art and see the what they found appealing, hint it's not landscapes of abstract art!

Finally, of course a small force can dislocate and disrupt a greater force if that smaller force is more culturally attuned to conflict, for conflicts sake, or if the smaller forces survival is more dependent than the larger. Ok we just had our lead units whacked lets go firm and call up the big boys, why sacrifice ourselves, we are winning the war and it's obvious it won't go on too long. That smae unit though fights to the death when it is cut off or needs to rescue a fellow unit under threat of anihilation. Apart from scenario specific rules the CM model will only offer the very vaguest approximation of human response, and a bloody good thing too!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

bah, i think it has nothing to do with propaganda or heroic mindset. the ones with the heroic mindset are the fools who died three months ago and who wasted their panzer battalions in stupid frontal assaults against unrecced PAK-fronts. they are the antithesis of the brilliant 15 tank strong panzer divisions that achieve marvels with almost nothing.

commanding and controlling a huge formation like a panzer division is extremely hard to do well. by default everything fails and goes wrong. you need something extra to make something or anything happen well or just ok.

with these tiny 15 tank strong panzer divisions you have situation where everyone knows everyone and the status of the elements. there's more than enough real battle experience and chain of command is as clear as it gets. there's enough brain power to process the information to be able to understand and coordinate actions. combat elements are so small that they are able to react to new orders and information almost instantly. because the division is so weak, there's no room for foolish heroism.

the opposite is the green almost up to TOE panzer division (ok, a Soviet tank division or early war tank corps is a better example) which is almost like a blind mammoth. everything takes great lengths of time to accomplish and there's always confusion. orders are issued without throughout understanding of the situation and orders are received mixed, conflicting and desperately late. when a battle rises, acts are not coordinated and it's just a huge SNAFU. the only thing that saves the day, if you are lucky enough, is the dumb overwhelming superiority in blind fire power.

[JasonC]

URD - Xactly. Fanboys reading Signal or eating their wheaties have nothing to do with it; command span and friction favoring the tightly integrated fist has everything to do with it. The same reason led the Russians to drop Mech corps for brigades in late 1941. They just couldn't coordinate the former; the latter might not act on the same scale but they do reliably accomplish something.

Consider a recent operational level wargame, Normandy 44 from GMT. They can't show tactical stuff when the turns are a day and the units are regiments or tank battalions, but they can show combined arms effects and such. So what do they do?

Units get a quality level rating, +1 to -2. If all the attackers are negative they get a column shift against them. If the attackers have a +1 unit in the force and higher top QL than the defenders they get a column shift in their favor.

Only one "formation" can attack at full strength. (Formation is basically a division here). One attached unit is allowed if stacked with the main formation. Everything else participating it halved. No more than 18 combat factors can take part in any battle.

Attackers get a column shift for armor if the best armor rating in their side is greater than any AT rating on the defender's side, else none.

Defenders with infantry force types get adds for the terrain, up to double the strength of the infantry type units in the force max. The typical location adds the strength of an infantry battalion, the best locations a full regiment worth.

Attacks across even minor rivers half the attackers and across major ones or out of flooded areas halve them plus a column shift for the defenders.

Ok, now put a step reduced panzer battalion stacked with a step reduced panzer grenadier regiments in an decent terrain hex in this system, what happens?

The Pz Gdr is +1 QL level - therefore no attacker shift for QL is possible and they will get -1 odds column if green or worse QL.

The panzers are 3 (if Pz IV) or 4 (if Panther) AT rating, so even the step reduced battalion will neutralize any attacking armor shift (the Allies don't have Panthers anywhere themselves).

The step reduced Pz Gdrs are still 3-5 strength - call it 4. That is enough to earn any available terrain bonus for defending infantry strength. The armor is 2 more. Thus the defense strength is 10 in a town to 8 in mixed terrain.

This means the attackers will never get better than 2 to 1 odds and that only if they max out the possible attacking force. It may take massive forces to get to those levels, when everything beyond the initial formation is halved, so are rivers etc.

In that game, the expectation for a 1 to 1 attack is 3 times the losses to attackers as to defenders. For 2 to 1, 3 to 2 loss rates expected.

What is realistic about that game's systems and the example?

A veteran force of combined arms does not have weaknesses for the attacker to exploit, like lax quality, or inability to exploit defensing cover, or weakness against armor. A sufficient KG can defend its location against everything that can be brought to bear around it, at something like even numbers actually engaged - when miscoordination of larger units, delays from terrain, and defender advantages from cover are taken into account.

Does this mean the little KG is going to win all the time? No. The bigger force need not care that it may lose 3 to 1, and can just pound and pound again and take the resulting lumps and grind the already weak KG to powder. Firepower arms can bring the loss rates back closer to even and perform that wearing out more efficiently, if they are available.

It explains a good sustained loss ratio and delay and losses inflicted despite the overall odds against. But it fails in the end, because the smaller force can't take the ongoing losses. The big clumsy formations can. They don't squash the smaller like a bug and they aren't fighting more effectively man for man. But they can outlast it and absorb everything it dishes out to them.

That, and not "I have more so he loses everything and I lose nothing", is the usual sequence and outcome.

Notice, if the defending forces do not have such advantages, they lose more lopsidedly. If they have no defense against armor for example. If they have no infantry manpower to exploit terrain. If they are low quality and thus come apart easily in action. Or if the attackers have a massive advantage in the firepower arms (air, arty etc) and the logistics that support them.

You don't see such relations easily at the CMBB scale because it doesn't give you the real coordination problem larger forces face (you get to command everything with a fixed time delay etc), and those problems arise on a scale larger than a typical CM combat. You'd see it more nearly with "iron man" rules of only level 1 view and on a clock to give your orders. Then the side with one reinforced company of mixed armor and veteran squads will achieve meaningfully better coordination than a sprawling battalion of green infantry.

I could still win easily with the green infantry (lol), especially with normal CM rules and full command coordination. I wouldn't get as much per man but I wouldn't need to; with the right attrition tactics the smaller force would still be outlasted and worn down and shot to rags. In the real deal, coordination isn't that good and forces pack it in and call it a day at much lower levels of loss or even mere danger...

[undead reindeer cavalry]

The same reason led the Russians to drop Mech corps for brigades in late 1941. They just couldn't coordinate the former; the latter might not act on the same scale but they do reliably accomplish something.

yep, it took a great amount of accumulated experience to finally be able to deploy corps and army level armored formations that would not collapse under the weight of their own body.

slightly related to this all, i have already for some time tried to find some free brain processing time to think about and analyse the performance of the late German panzer brigades, possibly with comparison to the Soviet tank brigades & with an evaluation of the potential contradictions and similarities between German and Soviet experiences.

there obviously was something that crippled the theorical combat power of those panzer brigades in most cases (e.g. PB 107th's relatively good performance during Market Garden seems to be one exception), but what exactly it was remains a bit unclear to me (and whether or not there's any contradiction with the Soviet experiences -- i'd like to note here that i understand that a part of the motives & causes behind these quite similar solutions were different between Soviets and Germans, especially what comes to the ideas discussed previously in this thread i.e. command & control of larger formations, and the differences in the internal structure of the brigades).

the most obvious first thought is that the panzer brigades were simply manned by such untrained and inexperienced material that the performance of the brigades could only be expected to be very low. perhaps panzer brigades (in reality regiments) had too little flesh to survive the initial evolutionary battlefield pressure -- when a division has lived thru the attritional learning phase it's still big enough to continue to exist as a separate unit, but what remains of the panzer brigade is too little to be usable in any practical way and is better off being assimilated into a local PD.

another thought is that brigades themselves performed relatively OKish (keeping in mind the quality of personnel), but it was the parent formations that caused the fail. e.g. because in many cases panzer brigades didn't have any recovery & repair elements, they were dependant on the parent formation to offer these services. if the parent formation failed to offer them the brigade would quickly disintegrate as the phoenix cycle of armored rebirth is broken and numbers from the temporary losses shift directly to the permant losses column (or long term repair column, when all but the most trivial repairs require transfer to distant rear service depots).

but it seems to me things like these do not explain it all. it seems the brigades in most cases were clumsy and mostly caused a puff instead of a bang created by similar sized KG of a PD. comparing with the previously discussed weak panzer divisions, this is still somewhat surprising. on the other hand cases like the 107th, which had some experienced veteran personnel, might indicate that it's all about the incompetence caused by lack of training and experience, possibly combined with a lethal dose of simplistic or forced aggression, just like discussed in this thread.

what interests me in the above is the theory of sound usage and justification for fielding these types of formations, the requirements set by them on the circumstances and parent formations and their value in comparison to the use of elements such as seperate battalions. in theory these panzer bat + gren bat + support coys brigades could be highly agile units with the combat power of a good sized tactical KG, even if lacking the long term operational durability. on the other hand the brigades were weak enough to require constant linking with their changing set of parent & sister formations, which is bound to increase friction if compared to how different battalions within a PD grow to act smoothly within the formation.

You don't see such relations easily at the CMBB scale because it doesn't give you the real coordination problem larger forces face (you get to command everything with a fixed time delay etc), and those problems arise on a scale larger than a typical CM combat. You'd see it more nearly with "iron man" rules of only level 1 view and on a clock to give your orders. Then the side with one reinforced company of mixed armor and veteran squads will achieve meaningfully better coordination than a sprawling battalion of green infantry.

yes and the combat part of things is the less important part of coordination and delay issues with large units.

for example i was recently reading a war diary of a Finnish rifle company and here's a rough timeline for one action:

00:00: parent formation receives information about enemy attack at location X (several km away, this is taking place in an inactive part of the front)

+15 mins: parent formation has made a plan and has briefed the coy's officers about the situation & mission

+15 mins: everyone in the coy has been informed about the mission and the coy has assembled itself

+15 mins: the coy is loaded into trucks

+15 mins: the trucks have transported the coy into a start off point close to location X

+15 mins: the coy unloads and assumes attack formation

+15 mins: the coy attacks & routs the enemy force and the battle has ended

most of the time is taken by things other than combat. with larger formations it becomes exponentially worse.

for comparison in the effect of scale & arms, i remember reading a quote made by an US tank battalion commander in Normandy: he said that even in the most optimal conditions it would take five hours for his tank battalion to start moving counting from the moment it has received the order.

In the real deal, coordination isn't that good and forces pack it in and call it a day at much lower levels of loss or even mere danger...

in the real deal your whole green rifle battalion could have only a single waypoint and you would set it by first selecting the whole battalion in CMBB.

i remember reading a Finnish wartime document in which a captured Soviet rifle division commader was asked for his opinion on why Soviets performed so badly. he listed things like total unablity of anyone to understand maps or how to use a compass. he gave one example in which one officer was 6 km (or 7, i can't rememver which one) away from the position he claimed he was at. trying to organize and coordinate divisional operations which such material must have been "challenging".

[JasonC]

The panzer brigades failed because they were green and the men had not worked together before, had not been forged into a cohesive unit. They were also used far too aggressively and thrown into frankly reckless operational fights. But they underperformed even for the circumstances of their deployment. I don't think it was service and support stuff either - the actual tactical uses were shoddy and led to very high losses right on the field, not just maintenance attrition over a time scale of a week or two in action, e.g.

The same equipment and personnel fed into depleted but veteran Panzer divisions would have fought 3 times as hard, easily.

My favorite example of this is the brigade that lost essentially its entire Panther battalion, and about 25% losses from its Panzer IV battalion, in one day of combat with a single combat command of a French armor division. They got themselves into a village in a river bottom area in a tableland, with the French around them on 2 then 3 sides up on the level of the plateau. The French were able to keep superior Panthers entirely pinned below the crest for hours on end, with cross fire for short 75 Shermans and their supporting Priest battalion, firing both direct and indirect. While pinned in the low ground, they suffered extensively from endless French artillery fire dropped in to the confined location, and several air strikes as well. Eventually the French crawled up to the crestlines and annihilated what was left - practically without loss. The Panzer IV battalion tried to rescue the trapped Panther group along another road, but were easily stopped with lopsided losses, 3 or 4 to 1 against, dueling vanilla Sherman 75s.

These are the signs of very poor tactical judgment and of paralysis once the plan went pear-shaped...

On the poor operational situations front, some of them were essentially told to deliver local counterattacks in support of evaporating remnants of Heer infantry battalions, that amounted to taking on entire US corps, and that in a tactically offensive posture. They were expected to engage, get a few licks in, and disengage for other uses on a time scale of 2-3 days. Instead, 3 days later they were at 20% strength and throroughly beaten in moral terms.

If it were only about eating wheaties, they'd have done better. It wasn't, and they didn't. Veterans used to working together in a tight tactically coordinated fashion were the source of the strength seen in other cases. Small and inept is even worse than big and inept...

[dieseltaylor]

URC -

I do find your lack of capitals at the start of sentences most off-putting. The full stop is relatively small but tied to an initial capital it works well for people who read English quickly.

I don't like to ignore posts but time is limited and if a writer makes reading trickier than it ought to be then it will be less likely to be read.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

But they underperformed even for the circumstances of their deployment.

that's why i suspect there's more to it than seems obvious. usually green units seem to learn the most critical lessons within the first couple days of combat, but these brigades seem to never learn.

Small and inept is even worse than big and inept...

naturally, but going small does help when the ineptitude is caused by the size of a formation.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

URC -

I do find your lack of capitals at the start of sentences most off-putting. The full stop is relatively small but tied to an initial capital it works well for people who read English quickly.

I don't like to ignore posts but time is limited and if a writer makes reading trickier than it ought to be then it will be less likely to be read.

it's a filthy habit, i admit it, that goes back to the archaic era of computerized communication. back when fonts had a fixed width (well, fonts didn't even exist yet) and screen resolutions were defined not in pixels.

nonetheless it's a poor excuse and i am sorry for the inconvenience and discomfort my incoherent typing and grammatical structure (if any) must have caused you. i don't know if it helps, but i probably know how you feel when i try reading German texts with those bizarre capitalization rules.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

i noticed a couple of mentions in the interwebs about panzer battalions being equipped with a type of radios that would not enable them to communicate with brigade hq. it's stuff like this that i am suspecting for their continued level of performance that was far below any expectations.

[Michael Emrys]

it's a filthy habit, i admit it, that goes back to the archaic era of computerized communication.

There should be a key on each side of your keyboard labeled "Shift"—or its equivalent in Finnish. Use of it at appropriate moments will make the problem and its ensuing criticism go away. Honest.

Michael

[Sergei]

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!

Apparently the board software is very anti-capslock though - an all-capslock post is changed to Only First Letters in Capital.