Infantry VS Armor

[parsifal]

Yes

and the definition of AT gun/support,,, does not include all artillery soren.

does it


It is obvious that you have realized you have backed yourself into a corner and are now attempting to weedle your way out by trying to redifine the scenario parameters. if you are not doing this, you would have raised issue to all the posts that assumed (rightly, because your first post allowed artillery, I repeat, artillery is not classified as AT) artillery support as part of the Infantry force opposing them.

I will repeat the challenge, what allied Infantry force are you proposing that separates its Infantry support fromits Infantry. About the only types I can think of are partisans and police.

I will put it to you straight. In your initial posts you never intended to include artillery as part of the AT park. You know that is utter BS. Now, unless you are going to own up to that I see no point in continuing in this discussion.

I will ask you again, which allied army are you referring to that assaults enemy positions without artillery support, and which classifies artillery as AT?

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Juha, Soren...

Both of you need to grow up!

Do I have to come in here and clean this up? Soren, you know what that means? Juha?

[Juha]

Adler
I'll comply

MacArther
Maybe it is easier to find examples in NW Europe than i thought. This is not a clear case and the opponent is unknown and only thing I can say for sure is that AFVs were NOT Ferdinands. What they were? One possibility is Jagdpanthers from sPzJgAbt 654, that suits to refenrence then as SP monsters, also JgPanther had a hull mg which made it more suitable to attack infantry, but it didn't bogged down easily. There is a unit history of 654, so it should be possible to check that possibility but I don't have a copy of it.
On the other end of scale is Marder I, which had somewhat overloaded chasis and rather narrow tracks, so it would bog down much easier. But I doubt that anyone would call it monster and being opentopped and without hull mg not a first choice to attack infantry. If the story had happened on Eastern Front they would probably have been StuGs because Soviet many times identified StuGs as Elefants/Ferdinands but British usually correctly identified them as AGs (assault guns). One other possibility is JgPz IV.

But late in 1.8.44 Bois du Homme and Hill 361 was taken by 5 Wiltshires/129 Inf.Brig/43 Div. First one Ferdinand attacked but was stopped by a PIAT, but the FOO was badly wounded. After a while an armoured car and 3 Ferdinands attacked swinging right across the open ground in front of "D" Coy. One was soon bogged down and immediately destroyed. The remaining 2 smashed they way through "C" Coy causing casualties to the men in slit trenches. A second Ferdinand was bogged and destroyed. The remaining SP swung back back, after running over some of "A" Coy men, was knocked out by a direct hit from 235 A/T battery M 10 emerging into the clearing below the escarpment. All was over in a few minutes.

I would say that that was fairly typical, PIAT worked sometimes, immobilized AFV near enemy infantry without good support was dead meat, moving AFV, especially heavy AFV, was a difficult nut for infantry. IIRC the M 10s of 43 Div were M 10Cs, ie had 17pdrs cannons in place of 3".

Parsifal
thanks. I remember how the manual minelaying was made, have done it many time in exercises, basic load per man, 4*10kg A/T mines, 12-16 anti-personnel mines, fuses, assault rifle + magazine. We joked that at least we will get long arms. If safe, all 8 men did minelaying, otherwise 2 men with the RPG secured the laying.

Juha

[Juha]

Hello
43 Div (Wessex) seemed to have numerous infantry vs panzers combats.
On the morning of June 26 six Panthers made sudden surprise attack on 5 DCLI, which was digging in Cheux. One of them first knocked out a whole troop of 17-pounders from 333 A/T Bty just coming up. Then tanks knocked out 2 6-pdrs in “D” Coy area and began firefight with 6-pdrs in the area of Battalion HQ. The CO of 5 DCLI was KIA while acting as a loader to one of 6-pdrs. One pz withdrew after being hit 3 times by a PIAT, two others were destroyed by PIAT teams and one turned over while trying to escape. And one was brewed up by a 6 pdr. So German lost 5 out of 6 tanks. Of the bale-out tankers 4 became POWs and 9 were killed. British lost 20 KIA or WIA. IMO Panthers must have been from SS-PzR 12.

On 29 June two coys from 1 Worcestershire made a dawn attack across open cornfields and took Mouen, which was defended by a German coy plus dug-in tanks. Worcesters attacked without tank support but were backed by 2 medium regiments, 3 field artillery regiments and 4.2 in mortars firing smoke and HE. The mediums destroyed several dug-in tanks and rest were knocked out by PIAT teams.
Most probably Germans were from LAH, but the other 3 SSPzDivs or 21 PzD are also possible.

Juha

[cougar32d]

i've been trying to read all this all the way through and i have a few thoughts: #1. most of the text is either straight textbook or out of someone else's book, how about fighting armor in you own thoughts and ideas? and #2. is anyone here truly an expert? it's nothing to get all heated up about.

[Juha]

Hello Cougar
most of my descriptions of combats are from Delaforce's The Fighting Wessex Wyverns. He usually has not identified the panzer units, I have tried identify them from other secondary sources.

I'm more interested in what has happened in real world than what someone things might have been happened. And besides in the first post it was asked for real world stories.

Probably not many of us has be trained or made deep study on WWII tank or A/T tactics. But at least I had training with rather similar equipment and had been under attack of WWII era tanks, albeit with turrets from early 50s, and only in military exercises. I also have had rides on those tanks in cross-country, more or less in full speed and have been inside them but as said their optics were from early 50s. But our tactical training mostly trained us to fight against tanks of 60s. And I was a lowly conscript NCO, so I'd not call myself an expert, even if Finnish combat engineers were trained more in line of German pioneers, we were pioneerejä, so more combat and less engineering than in Anglo-American armies.

My own thinking is, blind them, immobilize them and then destroy them. But that would not be easy and would cost blood, maybe much blood.

Stealth, surprise, deceiv are keys.

Juha

[cougar32d]

i like you style Juha, you bring a wealth of real world experience. however my real world experience is only in modern armored warfare.

[parsifal]

Ive had training in infantry tactics as well. However, Ive also been to officer staff college as well, where a routine method to test theories is to "wargame" the concept out, This is what I was attempting to simulate, so that all the footstamping and carry on could be removed from the debate. There are seven simulations of this "scenarios" being tested at the momemt with reasonably accurate simulations as we speak. Will hopefully have some results of those tests quite soon.

Trouble is, the parameters of what we are testing keep changing, so it is difficult to know what the problem is.

People, including myself, tend to get very animated in these discussions. Dont see anything wrong with that, but there are some unwritten rules that sometimes are broken. Like, not attacking the man, attack the iisue. Still, this is the wild west of the 21st century, so you have to take that sort of rough housing.

[DBII]

Parsfal, what software are you using? I did simulations for the US Army for 9 years. Of course that was many years ago. Started out using dice and radom number charts and ended up with computer networks in different parts of the world. Great work while it lasted.

DBII

[MacArther]

Thanks to Juha and Soren and everyone else that has been contributing their wealth of knowlede to this thread!

[parsifal]

Hi DB

we are using a variety of commercial games, including ASL, Panzerleader, and panzer. These are dice based boardgames. I am also using a computer game called "westfront" by Talonsoft.

I was a trainee PWO in the RAN and got to play around quite a bit at the Tactical warfare school in Sydney. I like to think of it as a $500 million playstation really. I have great confidence that military simulations can deliver very accurate result for "scenarios like this. The German general staff did as well, for that matter

For the record, my contention is this. Unsupported armour cannot defeat an Infantry Force that is supported less dedicated AT support. The remaining supporting arms (eg the artillery and the combat engineers ) will make a meal out of any unsupported armour, regardless of the power of that armour. This is particualrly true if the Infantry is defending, less so if attacking. Trouble is, in the current discussion, the goal posts keep moving, which to me means that we cannot discuss anything with any objectivity

[Glider]

Originally Posted by Juha

Hello

On 29 June two coys from 1 Worcestershire made a dawn attack across open cornfields and took Mouen, which was defended by a German coy plus dug-in tanks. Worcesters attacked without tank support but were backed by 2 medium regiments, 3 field artillery regiments and 4.2 in mortars firing smoke and HE. The mediums destroyed several dug-in tanks and rest were knocked out by PIAT teams.
Most probably Germans were from LAH, but the other 3 SSPzDivs or 21 PzD are also possible.

Juha

This example supports your position and for what its worth its one I support.

Thanks for the examples they were very informative.

[Juha]

Hello
Parsifal, my comment wasn’t directed towards you. But I think that most of us hadn’t any staff training and so we are at least a bit out of our depth if we try to figure realistically different scenarios of WWII combats. Also as a historian by training my interest is focused on what and why something has happened.

I agree with you on armour. Effective combat needs good coordination and good co-operation between different arms. Of course it's also a question of forces used. 6 Panthers against a battalion was too few but against a coy, especially against one which was still digging in, might well worked out. Of course there are always many variables, quality of troops, terrain, visibility etc.

Glider
when I read on the attack, I thought that the genius of the plan was it’s unorthodoxy. We were trained to use imagination and being flexible, trying to outsmart the enemy. But as underdogs that and guts were our best hopes.
On that attack, the CG of the div had ordered a dusk attack through previously attacked unit but the brigadier (Essame) disobeyed and ordered a dawn attack from different direction. Germans probably didn’t think that attack from that direction was very probable. Surprise, good artillery support, a lot of smoke, very open attack formation, men well briefed and deceptive heavy MMG fire to the left seemed to have been the keys to success. The main problem in Delaforce’s book is paucity of maps and the maps that were in the book are not too good. I have to rely on maps in other books when trying to figure out the tactics etc. A good sketch on this attack would help much to understand it.

Juha

[Kruska]

Hello there Soren,

My “idol” Guderian would probably hang himself after reading the last posts regarding armor assault on infantry.
Firstly tank units under no circumstances operate on their own “because of good reasons”, unless the situation ultimately forces them to do so, that is why the Panzergrenadier concept was developed. Infantry in its embedment of joint weapons in conventional warfare is still the ultimate weapon until today.

Therefore Soren, your statement is totally hypothetic from military point of view and proves nothing.
When my friends and I were 16 years old we already learned during war gaming / microarmour sessions that a single on tanks relying operation was doomed.

The W-SS was very famous for their ruthless approach, mostly due to the fact lacking tactically experienced military leaders, Sepp and Dirlewanger – just to name a few – and because of their indestructible believe in racial superiority. Not many SS Commanders had a Reichswehr/Wehrmacht background such as Hausser.

The extreme high losses in regards to Normandy and the SS-HJ document this. Admittedly the Wehrmacht pushed the W-SS formations in less “desirable” attacking or defensive tasks knowing about their recklessness in regards to carry on missions which would have been abandoned by Wehrmacht units in face of heavy losses. Sometimes you need these kinds of suicidal fanatics to gain an advantage for the whole concept of a battle.

Wittman got himself and his crew killed at the end due to this recklessness. Much of the “Mythos” SS is based on the experience of the allies who “acknowledged” the SS attacking anywhere even in face of total annihilation and as such took them as a serious threat in regards to causing losses to them, because some of them were indeed fanatic/blind enough to attack infantry positions solely with tanks.

Regards
Kruska

[parsifal]

Kruska

Agree completely. If the "scenario was modified even a little to include supporting Infantry with the Tiger tank, the allies would be in trouble. Soren assumed I think that we were attacking German military prowess by saying the tiger is doomed in this situation of being unsupported. The fact is that the germans almost never sent thir tanks out unsupported. The great strengtyh of the tiger, was that with just a little (but not none) all arms support, it became a very formidable opponent