Matrix Games Forums

Wow! How do I get my Russian infantry divisions TO&Es fleshed out with more antitank rifles!

Frankly the 45mm Pak wasn't particularly effective against the more up-armored PzKwIIIs of late 41 and 1942. For obvious reasons the Red Army was pretty careful about collecting stats on their various antitank assets in terms of what was killing what. The 45mm Pak doesn’t rank very high as a Panzer Killer.

And as already stated by Helpless and Klydon -- the 14.5mm ATR PTRD -- for all the propaganda surrounding the weapon (see great movies such as Sergey Bondarchuk's "They Fought for their Motherland") -- was not particularly effective at killing Panzers. This according to the Red Army's own studies concerning antitank warfare on the Eastern Front. Much of this sort of material has only become available in the last few years by archival research from the likes of Mikhail Svirin et al. What the PTRD was effective at was generating mobility kills and getting Panzer Crews to button up. In that sense it’s presence on the battlefield, particularly when available in large numbers, would have reduced the combat efficiency of German tank crews.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

That's what happens when you attack two corps with three panzer divisions. You are lucky to have won the battle at all seeing as you were outnumbered in men and guns.

I wouldn’t even have expected these sorts of AFV losses against the tank killing defenses established by the Red Army around the haunches of the Kursk Salient. See N.Zetterling on the sorts of tank losses the Germans were actually experiencing during Kursk. The above cited game attack couldn’t really be considered Kursk by any stretch of the imagination in terms of the level of preparedness of these two Soviet Corps (i.e. they are in a Zero level fort). Open Steppe...unprepared defense...no reserves...hmmmm...

ORIGINAL: Helpless

I don't see AT rifles being that effective at all against PZ-III's, especially the J model. A 45mm AT gun should have a really hard time punching out a J let alone a AT rifle.

That's right, ATRs were very ineffective and used mostly against armored cars. Obviously very high amount is skewing the results and most of the losses are damaged - will be recovered shortly, but it was bit surprising for me as well.

Should Soviet tank divisions suffer a similar casualty rate ( about 1/3rd to 1/2 ) when attacked and forced to retreat, in 1941?

Nice work Helpless in your analysis. This is the type of work that will help improve historical battlefield realism.

[&o]

This gives me hope for less skewed combat results. I agree that combat results need some variance, but they must stay within historical possibilities on some level. Otherwise, you get many of these odd results stacked against you...it could be difficult to recover from. Especially axis forces losing armor.