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Marder IIIM has no MG34


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Just experienced during quickbattle that the ingame Marder IIIM has no MG34 as secondary armament. The site Achtung Panzer http://www.achtungpanzer.com/marder-marten-series.htm and wehrmacht history http://www.wehrmacht-history.com/heer/anti-tank-vehicles/panzerjaeger-38-t-mit-7.5-cm-pak-40-3-ausf-m.htm

notes that the Marder IIIM has one.

Is the ingame version a special normandy version that has none or was it just forgotten... ;)

By the way i absolutely love tiny quickbattles on a medium or bigger sized map with armor only... those stugIIIGs are nasty little tank killers...:)

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I'm not at all sure how it would be used or where it was stored. Marder III is not exactly spacious. Its certainly not a coax weapon of any sort and there's no pintle mount for the thing like the backs of halftracks. Which member of the crew would give up his duties to man it? PzIV, I believe, would pull their bow ball mg to use as 'air guard' AA weapon during deployment. I suppose the Marder's ammo supply truck might've kept a MG34 handy and loaned it to them for air guard AA duties during transit... maybe.

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yes, but it was carried inside the crew compartment and it if was used, it was used like troops shoot out of halftracks and jeeps now...

I see this might be the trick...;) but i havent figured out how to use it till now...maybe you have to rotate the marder into a certain angle facing the enemy...will test this out...

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I think it would be used like this rifle (and I'm not so sure that justifies including it as a vehicle weapon):

yes as a crew compartment weapon it should be used like this rifle. the problem is that it isnt marked anywhere inside the vehicle or crew status (crew also has no 7,62mm ammo) and iam not really sure that it is really there. in my special case a bunch of (bailed out) kamikaze tankers was coming towards the marder and he was not able to defend himself (apart from his 75mm ;) )... as far as i know shooting from vehicles is possible with the game enginge but my marder crew havent used any mg during that encounter...

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There are special pivoting mounts which install onto the rail above the fighting compartment. Sightings in the wild are extremely rare. Rare enough that they may as well not exist at all. Befehlsjager vehicles may have them, the rest - highly doubtful. I'd wanna see some hard evidence of their regular use before I supported an initiative to have them added to the game.

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There are special pivoting mounts which install onto the rail above the fighting compartment. Sightings in the wild are extremely rare. Rare enough that they may as well not exist at all. Befehlsjager vehicles may have them, the rest - highly doubtful. I'd wanna see some hard evidence of their regular use before I supported an initiative to have them added to the game.

hm sorry but i have no evidence...the only evidence comes from this sites mentioning that the marder IIIM got one and my experience with earlier marder models during playing achtung panzer Kharkov 1943 (by the way very nice game) from graviteam. Maybe i should buy a book about the marder... ;)

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First time U've seen these, but I, too, believe they were intended for AA use. Certainly some crews used them for close defense in a combat situation - but if the enemy is that close I doubt it'd been very effective - angle seems to be VERY limited, no matter which mount one uses.

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the question is if thats enough proof that an mg for the marder should not be included at all. in my opinion it would be fine to include it as an crew department weapon and in cases of emergency a member of the crew could take it and defend the vehicle by firing over the rim (side, back side). like it is handled in halftracks.

because you can clearly see that there were marder IIIm existent with an mg onboard. and on the other side when it comes to proof: can anybody say 100% for sure that every m4a3 in ww2 was equipped with an 50 cal mounted on its turret ?? i dont think so...but it is modelled like this ingame...!

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The MG-equipped Marder I posted before may simply have had experimental/prototype fittings which never made it into circulation.

It's important to note that after perusing at least several dozens of contemporary photos of Marders in combat I counted a grand total of ZERO Marders packing MGs or their brackets mounted anywhere at all. This fact speaks much louder to me than the existence of MG mounts on a vehicle pictured at it's factory.

At the very least, we can rest-assured that MG-less MarderIIIMs in this game are quite correct. Maybe the odd vehicle had one... but then I'm sure we'd be subjected to Steve's favorite lecture about not wanting to turn the 'extraordinary into the ordinary', and I'm sick of hearing about it :o

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Perhaps they don't have mounts but this isn't proof that crews wouldn't have a weapon for their own defense.

Not at all, provision is made inside the fighting-compartment for one's storage. But that doesn't prove they did have one :o

Personally I don't really see the sense in it, why should they get one? If the crew were ever in a position to actually need it something has gone horrifically wrong. Better served by giving them to riflemen, unless there was some kind of local surplus of MG42s.

Sure, the blueprints say X - but in practice it's often actually Y.

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Perhaps they don't have mounts but this isn't proof that crews wouldn't have a weapon for their own defense.

actually thats excatly what i thought... and this is supported by the note on the site achtung panzer about the marder tank destroyers:

the Ausf H had a 7.92mm MG 37(t) mounted in the front hull, and the Ausf M carried a 7.92mm MG 34 or MG 42 inside the fighting compartment.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/marder-marten-series.htm

you should also keep in mind that earlier versions allways had one mounted so why wouldnt the ausführung M at least have one in the crew compartement.

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you should also keep in mind that earlier versions allways had one mounted so why wouldnt the ausführung M at least have one in the crew compartement.

The ausf.H chassis-variants retained the Bow HMG of the tank-version of the chassis. It does not automatically follow that this means other variants always carry loose MGs for the crew. False logic.

This discussion has piqued my interest enough that I've pestered a friend to translate a section of a Czech-language source I have; I'll report back later.

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If the crew were ever in a position to actually need it something has gone horrifically wrong.

Tactical error doesn't justify non-inclusion, in real life better tactics are used by-and-large they managed to see a need to include the gun. The Sherman includes a 12.7mm AA gun but if the Luftwaffe showed up something would obviously be wrong. It's also hard to imagine that a crew wouldn't procure something to defend themselves with regardless of whether it's the MG34 or not.

Especially in bocage where it would be easy to be flanked even accidentally I wouldn't think they'd want to be caught with their pants down, a certain percentage of Tigers include an MP40 because of the MP40 racks it seems logical to include a self defense weapon at some probability, heck CMSF crews are fully armed on the US side and I can't contemplate where all four crew can house M4s and 500 rounds in the M1.

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Tactical error doesn't justify non-inclusion

Unless you're in the habit of regularly dismounting crews, the only time your crew would have this weapon is when they conduct an urgent dismount as a result of a certain Mr A.P. Round coming to visit. Under those circumstances I think the last thing on their mind would be rooting around under tarps and inside boxes looking for that bloody MG that Hans the blond Bavarian gunner put away 'in a safe place.'

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Unless you're in the habit of regularly dismounting crews, the only time your crew would have this weapon is when they conduct an urgent dismount as a result of a certain Mr A.P. Round coming to visit. Under those circumstances I think the last thing on their mind would be rooting around under tarps and inside boxes looking for that bloody MG that Hans the blond Bavarian gunner put away 'in a safe place.'

:confused:

as far as i know the new engine is capable of showing mounted units (for example in halftracks) using their rifles for self-defense.

heres a quote from the cmbn features page:

"Ability of passengers to fire out of open topped vehicles (including but not limited to hatches)"

so why should the marder crew not be able to do this with their (ficitonal ;) ) crew compartment mg.

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actually iam aware that the crew are not passangers ;)

but if the engine is able to show passangers use their weapons why should it not be able to let one of the crew (for example the loader in emergency situations) use his weapon (mg) ? actually the quote from the features page also supports this because it says: "(including but not limited to hatches)". The only units ingame which look out of hatches are crew members.

thats also supported by the fact that most german halftrack crews have a panzerfaust onboard... the mg-gunner (crew) is able to take it and use it (for example against tanks in emergency situations)

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