Operation Goodwood

[sPzAbt653]

Force D - HMS Roberts, Mauritius and Enterprise. It seems they may have been used to shell the German coastal guns within range of the Goodwood area, as reported in the Wiki article. Perry Moore's book lumps them in with the Corp artillery that shelled 'all known German batteries within range'.

Rather then have the ships in the scenario, I opted to represent them with coast artillery, which gives them less flexibility than the naval icons. They also withdraw at the end of the second day.

I wasn't aware of the 5km thing. It may be more accurate to place the ships on the sea in an area where they can only reach the German coastal batteries.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Force D - HMS Roberts, Mauritius and Enterprise. It seems they may have been used to shell the German coastal guns within range of the Goodwood area, as reported in the Wiki article. Perry Moore's book lumps them in with the Corp artillery that shelled 'all known German batteries within range'.

Rather then have the ships in the scenario, I opted to represent them with coast artillery, which gives them less flexibility than the naval icons. They also withdraw at the end of the second day.

I wasn't aware of the 5km thing. It may be more accurate to place the ships on the sea in an area where they can only reach the German coastal batteries.

I neglected to say what credibility I gave to the 5km thing. I thought you had a counterexample, but perhaps not.

[sPzAbt653]

Bumped up as there is a current AAR going on.

[solops]

Yes i agree it took us Brits a long time to learn the lessons taught to us through WWII,The Americans seemed to learn there lessons a good deal faster however the bottle necks over the bridge didnt help along with the poor design of the tanks didnt they call the sherman the tommy cooker, I once read a book charting 7th Armd Divisions WWII history, when the division was withdrawn from Italy to train and requip for D Day they lost there churchill's and where given cromwells a much lighter cruiser tank not great for the terrain of normandy.

Somewhere in "The Gothic Line" Shermans are referred to as "cigarette lighters." Gasoline goes boom a lot better than diesel. Hats off to anyone who works in a gasoline powered AFV.

[sPzAbt653]

Somewhere in "The Gothic Line" Shermans are referred to as "cigarette lighters."

Yes, also sometimes called Ronsons, a popular lighter of the time. There is an arguement against this 'myth' here :

http://www.weaponsofwwii.com/forum/view ... ?f=10&t=41

[Lobster]

Having known a WW2 tanker I would have to disagree with the terms, Zippo or Ronson, used in reference to a Sherman's flammability. Those are terms used for Shermans equipped with flamethrowers, each term depending on who you were talking to but interchangeable. He also was puzzled about why any anti tank crew would try and target the engine compartment and risk leaving the tank combat capable? You target the crew compartment and kill the crew. Maybe blow up the ammo too unless it's one of the wet storage versions. Seems to me a whole lot of anecdotal evidence and not much solid evidence concerning Sherman's vulnerability due to some of them using gasoline.

Another thing, if Sherman's were such horrible tanks why did entire Soviet mechanized corps turn in T34-85s for Sherman's? They didn't have to. Commonwealth Fireflys could easily knock out the best German tanks frontally. Also, about 8k A2 had diesel engines. If the gas engines were such a handicap why weren't all Sherman's powered by diesels?

I'm also very amused when someone compares a Tiger I, a heavy tank, to a Sherman, a medium tank.

[Alpha77]

It is amusing in all the so called documentaries, when they state how much better Panther & Tiger were. While Panther might be true even as these had some numbers produced. For Tigers this is a popular myth, of course Tiger had much better armor and gun, but a) they were slow and unreliable - the engine was too weak for the heavy weight and b) there werent much Tigers anyway and most were in the east. So the Western army specialists claim how the poor Shermans had too endure terrible terror by Tigers. BUT..........there werent much Tigers that opposed the Western allies at all.

There is a myth (but its probably true) that any Sherman tanker claims he fought Tigers or if his tank was damaged/destroyed ofc it was the mighty Tiger. Probably it was a standard PZ IVH or J modell in reality. It is the same with the Battle of Britain. Every German pilot claimed he was shot down by the good Spitfire - but there werent that much of them. [:)][:D] Probably the warhorse Hurricane also shot down a sizeable number, but the German better claim it was the mighty spit. Same the Sherman tanker claims he fights the allmighty Tiger (which was a PZ IV in reality), which were few in number and not as good as they are made in the media. Panther on the other hand was better when the early problem were solved - due to Hitler wanting them in battle without proper testing.....