CMBB v CMAK

[Nikita]

I'm afraid it is not exactly the right message board to discuss history, but:

Per p. 3: I think you did not understand my point correctly: Russian pre-war methodology of employment of tanks, both in offensive and defensive engagements was limited to tactical attacks, not fire from ambushes, etc. In addition, their tanks poorly echeloned tanks in attack formation and did not care much of fire support from rear echelon during the attack.

p.4 Do not mix the early war (1939-1940) OOB of panzer division and OOB of divisions, that invaded Russia: there was a reform with significantly lowering the amount of tanks per division. Russian OOB was more similar to early war panzer division OOB with all faults and drawbacks, which Germans had already refused and eliminated by June 1941.

As for Raseiniai, we could speak about it in different message board, but I am afraid your vision of the situation is not correct. Russians did not overcome position of divisional arty there (at least that is what I remember), since they attacked without proper fire support and had no arty FO in their tanks.

As for tank battles and German tank losses: majority of tank losses usually are attributed to Russian AT and divisional guns of infantry and poor repairs after unprecedentally lengthy marches.

And, finally, about radios: German tanks, captured at Kursk in 1943, were not 100% equipped with radios. I do not know the real situation in 1941.

[Mad Russian]

I'm afraid it is not exactly the right message board to discuss history, but:

Per p. 3: I think you did not understand my point correctly: Russian pre-war methodology of employment of tanks, both in offensive and defensive engagements was limited to tactical attacks, not fire from ambushes, etc. In addition, their tanks poorly echeloned tanks in attack formation and did not care much of fire support from rear echelon during the attack.

p.4 Do not mix the early war (1939-1940) OOB of panzer division and OOB of divisions, that invaded Russia: there was a reform with significantly lowering the amount of tanks per division. Russian OOB was more similar to early war panzer division OOB with all faults and drawbacks, which Germans had already refused and eliminated by June 1941.

As for Raseiniai, we could speak about it in different message board, but I am afraid your vision of the situation is not correct. Russians did not overcome position of divisional arty there (at least that is what I remember), since they attacked without proper fire support and had no arty FO in their tanks.

As for tank battles and German tank losses: majority of tank losses usually are attributed to Russian AT and divisional guns of infantry and poor repairs after unprecedentally lengthy marches.

And, finally, about radios: German tanks, captured at Kursk in 1943, were not 100% equipped with radios. I do not know the real situation in 1941.

This message board should do fine for a history discussion.

p3. Again, it doesn't make any difference what their methodology was. If the end result was a T-34 or KV-1 actually engaging a German tank in the early months of the war, which happened very frequently, the results would have been dramatically different if the Soviet tanks had been carrying AP rounds instead of most HE rounds.

p4. The Germans didn't learn anything in 1939-1940 except that they wanted twice as many Panzer Divisions so they split the Panzer Regiments in half to achieve that. There were plenty of German Generals that opposed this move. It was a call that Hitler enforced.

Russian OOB was still early war because they still had the tanks to make that OOB work. Only tank losses forced the Russians to change their minds about the numbers of tanks in a formation. Once they had been reduced by losses they found the smaller formations easier to use. As did the Germans for EXACTLY the same reasons.

As for Raseiniai we could speak about it here too. My opinion is not the only one that believes it was a close run thing. The Soviets fought with German armor for three days here. The 6th Panzer Division was in such trouble that the 1st Panzer had to come to their rescue. You talk about the German artillery stopping the attack. That doesn't sound to me like the German armor was doing a stellar job now does it? There were in fact times when the German armor retreated alongside the Russian armor as it advanced because there was nothing they could do to stop the T-34's and KV's. It was in fact the artillery in many places that stopped it and the 1st Panzer Division fighting through it's own battles and coming to the rescue of 6th Panzer Division. What a great tactical advantage the Germans brought to this battle. Pz35(t)'s!! Tiny tanks with 37mm guns. Barely fit to fight French tanks let alone real Russian ones.

Why do you suppose that the majority of German tank losses were attributed to Soviet AT guns if their main tank force didn't have AP rounds????????????????????????? Don't you think that there might have been more tank to tank losses if the T-34's and KV-1's had been equipped with AP rounds? Might that not have made a very big difference in the outcome of the 1941 tank battles?

Most German tanks in the war were equipped with radios. In 1941 almost no Soviet ones were.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Nikita]

The topic is too lengthy and is not related to CMBB engine directly.

I would advice you read more books and understand the merits of combined arms warfare. Sorry, if it sounds offensive, it was not my intention. But this is key for understanding of WWII warfare technology.

Tanks engage tanks on much more seldom occasions, than infantry and its AT weapons. Tank-tank battles happen extremely rarely, when specialised formations clash on operational level. And even in such cases, standard German practice was to meet attacking tanks with ATGs, artillery and tank fire from ambushes, perform maneuvre and then counterattack. That always resulted in high Russian losses. Be it battles of Mechanised Corpses in 1941 or attack of 5th Guard army in 1943 on the southern Kursk salient.

Meeting engagements of tanks were extremely seldom and Russian losses in such in 1941 were much higher. Surely, if in such cases one side had technlogical advantage, it played its tactical role. But this alone can not be trasformed into an operational factor and was always ultimately negated by combined arms effort.

The basic balance between tanks/infantry/supporting units ratio of Geman panzerdivision after reform was followed by all fighting armies at the end of the war with rather slight differencies. Surely any reform usually has opponents.

I suggest we finish discussion, or move it to Historical message board.

[Ratzki]

I'm gonna throw my 2 cents in.

Isn't it a fact that throughout the war German armour, unlike Russian armour, was designed to operate in a tank vs. tank roll? This would imply that tank vs tank battles happened with great frequency. Russian tanks were designed as a duel roll vehicle with infantry support leading the way. Would this not partially explain the lack of radios and two man turrets in the Russian tanks as well as the poor performance vs German armour.

Ok now, be gentle...:)

[bluehand]

Nikita- I'm sorry but I got to point out that the pural of Corp is Corps. having you argue the merits of russian Mech corps and calling them corpses (dead bodies) just disturbs me. But good conversation though. your both right on your points. I'm sure the generals had arguements that were just like that everytime some proposed revamping the army.

[Nikita]

many thanks for advice on grammatics! That's my poor English. I sometimes get stuck with words sounding or written similar. Sorry for that.

As for your technical issue: early war German tanks were not designed to have best antitank capacity and in 1940-1941 had tuff time with British Matildas, French and Russian tanks. Their basic classification of tanks was light and heavy (based on a caliber, not weight under German system), with light being PzIIIs and heavy - Mark IVs. PzIII and PzIV were not specifically designed as universal tank hunters. Short gun of PzIV had good ballistics siutable well against infantry: the distance of horisontally flying shot was not great and speed of shell was relatively not fast, allowing to have shots with greater arcs (siutable to hit hiding "soft targets" from somewhat above) and the fragments of shell after explosion flew more in all sides (including backwards), not concentrating forward, as was the case with higher speed shots.

Only when Germans faced massed Soviet and, partially, British, armor, they were forced to respond not with quantity (this was simply unapplicable decision due to lacking volumes of tank production), but with quality, trying to provide their tanks with greater capabilities to score kills, remaining outside of the enemy's effective range. So, by 1942, PzIIIs and long-barelled PzIVs appeared, followed by PzVs.

In late 1942 and 1943 masses of Russian tanks became so great, that Germans were forced to commit their tanks as primary anti-tank weapon. So it was a forced sollution, but the things were not seen this way in 1941, when Germans enjoyed initiative and overall superiority. Until their strategic defeat at Moscow they did not note T-34 or KV as best tanks, although met them in considerable numbers in border battles. Do not respond with Guderian's reports, I feel sick of his post-war fairy tales.

[Mad Russian]

The topic is too lengthy and is not related to CMBB engine directly.

I would advice you read more books and understand the merits of combined arms warfare. Sorry, if it sounds offensive, it was not my intention. But this is key for understanding of WWII warfare technology.

Tanks engage tanks on much more seldom occasions, than infantry and its AT weapons. Tank-tank battles happen extremely rarely, when specialised formations clash on operational level. And even in such cases, standard German practice was to meet attacking tanks with ATGs, artillery and tank fire from ambushes, perform maneuvre and then counterattack. That always resulted in high Russian losses. Be it battles of Mechanised Corpses in 1941 or attack of 5th Guard army in 1943 on the southern Kursk salient.

Meeting engagements of tanks were extremely seldom and Russian losses in such in 1941 were much higher. Surely, if in such cases one side had technlogical advantage, it played its tactical role. But this alone can not be trasformed into an operational factor and was always ultimately negated by combined arms effort.

The basic balance between tanks/infantry/supporting units ratio of Geman panzerdivision after reform was followed by all fighting armies at the end of the war with rather slight differencies. Surely any reform usually has opponents.

I suggest we finish discussion, or move it to Historical message board.

I see no reason to move it unless Red Devil wants it moved.

We have plenty of room here and anything about the Russian Front concerns CMBB. ESPECIALLY my original comments about the game giving the early war T-34's and KV-1's too much AP ammo.

ROFL!!! Okay, I'll read more books. I am trying to increase my WWII library every month. So far I only have about 2,000 books on WWII in it. But I'm always looking for another very good book to put onto the shelves. I agree that reading up on the subject is the key to understanding the history behind the game.

Meeting Engagements were determined after the war, by the Soviets, to be the most common form of combat. Tanks often met other tanks in combat.

I fail to get your point. You are saying that if CMBB were to correctly show the early war T-34's and KV-1's ammo load outs that this would not make a difference in the game? Or that it didn't make a difference in real life?

Either way I disagree.

Russian losses were high. So were German losses and they would have been higher if the Soviets best tanks had been fully equipped with AP rounds. I don't see how you can come to any other conclusion. I can start siting specifics if you like. The numbers of tanks destroyed per side in the early war battles. The numbers of operational German tanks at any given time during Operation Barbarossa. We can compare the gradual decline in combat effectiveness of the Panzer arm and see just how much difference a 5% increase in losses would have been. That's not much and I personally think if the new gun on the T-34 and KV-1 had been able to fight with full complements of AP rounds the difference would have been far greater than a 5% difference.

The Germans turned a tactical advantage into operational and strategic advantages for them during the time period 1939-1943. Why would the same not hold true for the Soviets? The Soviet Armed Forces were not the pushovers that the Germans thought. You should never forget that the poorly equipped, under trained, out fought, out maneuvered, bad tactics and all Red Army destroyed the best the Germans could field against them.

In 1941 the Red Army took everything the Germans could throw at them and then won the war. They must have been doing something right.

All combat formations were smaller at the end of the war basically due to better communications. Not because the German Panzer Divisions were such successes in 1941 after they were halved simply to give the German Army more tank divisions to play with.

The US for instance kept THREE of their tank divisions at pre-1943 levels. They were referred to as Heavy Divisions. These were the old tank heavy TO&E's and they kept them that way for just that reason. They wanted units with lots of tanks in them. Not all armies downsized their units.

The Russians downsized theirs, when they took too many losses to keep them at full strength, and about the same time they started getting better communications. This allowed better control over smaller units and gave them the mobility they needed to make their deep threat tactics work.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

I'm gonna throw my 2 cents in.

Isn't it a fact that throughout the war German armour, unlike Russian armour, was designed to operate in a tank vs. tank roll? This would imply that tank vs tank battles happened with great frequency. Russian tanks were designed as a duel roll vehicle with infantry support leading the way. Would this not partially explain the lack of radios and two man turrets in the Russian tanks as well as the poor performance vs German armour.

Ok now, be gentle...:)

Tanks were never really a weapons platform designed to do anything but fight infantry. They took on the role of tank killer by default. What better weapon to kill a heavily armoured, mobile gun platform, than another heavily armoured gun platform?

They tried lots of solutions. Tank Destroyers, Assault Guns and of course other tanks. The combination of all of them gives layers to the defense and is generally successful at some point.

Tank to tank battles happen by accident for the attacker and by design for the defender.

The attacker wants overwhelming firepower at the point of attack and the defender wants to be able to blunt that firepower. A balanced attack is something we strive for here in CM but in real life that is the last thing an attacking commander wants to see.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Only when Germans faced massed Soviet and, partially, British, armor, they were forced to respond not with quantity (this was simply unapplicable decision due to lacking volumes of tank production), but with quality, trying to provide their tanks with greater capabilities to score kills, remaining outside of the enemy's effective range. So, by 1942, PzIIIs and long-barelled PzIVs appeared, followed by PzVs.

In late 1942 and 1943 masses of Russian tanks became so great, that Germans were forced to commit their tanks as primary anti-tank weapon. So it was a forced sollution, but the things were not seen this way in 1941, when Germans enjoyed initiative and overall superiority. Until their strategic defeat at Moscow they did not note T-34 or KV as best tanks, although met them in considerable numbers in border battles. Do not respond with Guderian's reports, I feel sick of his post-war fairy tales.

In your earlier posts you claimed that the tank vs tank engagements weren't that important. Here you are claiming they were.

I agree with this post but not your previous one.

The Germans believed that the speed of a tank was as much a weapon as the gun it carried. Couple that with the Luftwaffe's ability to disrupt enemy tank concentrations that proved correct. Take the Luftwaffe out of the equation and German tanks are in a very poor position tactically. Usually outnumbered and almost always fighting with open flanks early in the war.

IMO, the three arms of the forces deployed were equal tank killers at all times in the war. The tanks, anti-tank guns and tank destroyers were all equally important in destroying the enemy's forces and were deployed to great success at different times and places.

The Germans recognized the superiority of the T-34 from their very first meeting. They even sent some back to Germany with the demand that they start making them in German factories. The Panther was produced instead. The Panther was produced in response to the threat that the T-34 posed not because it was a progression of German tank design.

The Germans never enjoyed overall superiority against Soviet armor. Tank to tank. What they enjoyed was formation superiority. A Panzer Division could outfight it's Soviet Tank Corps counterpart because of command control and air superiority.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Mad Russian]

Do not respond with Guderian's reports, I feel sick of his post-war fairy tales.

Which post-war fairy tales would that be?

How do you feel about Chuikov's post-war fairy tales?

Or Zhukov's?

Or Manstein's?

Or Kleist's?

You can dispute their points of view and they are often self serving. BUT not when they are praising the enemies forces, tactics or equipment.

How is that self serving or a fairy tale?

Good Hunting.

MR