Several Moscow 42 Questions

[Ricky B]

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For example: AGC (the entire Army Group, all armies in it combined) reported losses of, on average 463 KIA, 1674 WIA and 208 MIA per day in the period of January 1st to January 10th 1942. That's about 2345 men per day at one of the peak times of the 1941-1942 winter offensive, or about 390 men per daylight turn. In game terms, you can achieve that with between 8 and 16 assaults with 3 battalions vs. 1 German battalion, without any artillery fire.

Comrade, I don't know what source you used for your numbers here, but while they seem reasonable, I do think they are a bit low. This site http://www.feldgrau.com/stats.html, which has numbers that are similar to at least one other source I have seen, shows the Germans lost around 44,000 men KIA and 10,000 MIA in the month of January 1942. I would guess half of these or a bit more would be from AGC where the majority of the fighting was occuring during the month. Now this includes losses from the weather, I am not sure if your numbers do or not. With frostbite losses as WIA, I would still guess a 3-1 WIA to KIA ration, so add in another 130,000 wounded - but many returned to action fairly soon, they had to. Still that gives ~95,000 men lost in action in AGC, or 3200 per day all month long - again reasonably close to your number but still higher.

However, losses in PzC include men out of action for various reasons - got lost from the unit while retreating, ran away, etc. These make up some of the men adding to unit strength when the units do get to rest.

Anyway, while the pursuit is on losses will run higher than average, and higher than your numbers, but there will be pauses in some areas and losses will be lower, at least normally for a long campaign. For example, there is no way the Soviets will be able to assault numerous times every single turn - either the Germans will be crushed or will be moving away down the roads in T mode, leaving a rear guard behind. Don't forget to use rear guards when retreating, or contact will never be broken.

Overall your comments work in the short term, but as the days go by the losses will drop at times and average out lower than you expect.

But I will agree that in PzC absolute losses as reported will be higher than historical in most cases - it is easier to keep pushing an offensive when they aren't real mean marching through the snow, and the "losses" as I mentioned aren't always historical KIA/WIA/MIA.

That is my take anyway.

Rick