Parameters of the Game

[byron13]

Originally posted by RobertCrandall
Not only were they brought in by helicopter, but light armour (BMDs) were to be brought in with them so that they would avoid the classic devolution to light infantry once they hit the ground.

BMDs? Pshaw! We'd make mincemeat of 'em, I tell you! Nothing more than an expensive guided missile platform. And fun for .50 caliber target practice.

Just looked around at an AFV ID site and see that the M1 has the same range (give or take) as the M60. While the M1 is thirstier, it carries more fuel, so I think that my generalizations about running for two days in a moderate maneuver environment would hold. Notice the M3 drinks twice as much as the M-113, so I think the infantry battalions probably fixed their deficient fuel support problem by necessity.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by byron13


We used the M60A3s, so I don't know about the fuel consumption of M1s.

Blah, blah, blah.

Wow! Thanks for the extensive notes, you have swung my thinking around 180 degrees on this important topic. I had been worrying that modern heavy tactical units had a perilously short 'loiter time' before resupply was imperative, and that resupply in turn was critically dependent on a functioning radio net. This was causing me a lot of anxiety. I see now that I was misguided on both counts, and that the system was in fact far more robust than I had imagined.

This is doubly satisfying because your description translated back into design terms brings me squarely to the original SimCan spec in the area - I basically don't need to change a thing. (I genufluct in the general direction of Crousetown, Nova Scotia as I say this.) When working backwards from the original C code, I had arrived at basically this appreciation, but without a supporting explanation I had trouble believing it could be this simple (hey, I don't take anything on mere faith). Now I believe.

This question is one of a number that I am working on and soliciting informed opinion on as the game progresses. The idea is to get a reality check from those who have actual experience on some of the questions I'm still worrying about. With your permission I will include this gem.

Many thanks, Rob.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by byron13


BMDs? Pshaw! We'd make mincemeat of 'em, I tell you! Nothing more than an expensive guided missile platform. And fun for .50 caliber target practice.

That, as it happens, is another of my 'reality check' issues. Modern heavy machine guns are just plain wicked and a surprising proportion of "armored" vehicles are in fact vulnerable to them - or are they? Why would so many M113s (just to pick one at random) be built if they in fact had negligable battlefield survivability?

I will never forget a picture I saw of an Israeli infantry squad riding on TOP of their M113 during the incursion into Lebannon many years ago. Apparently they fancied their chances better completely in the open on top than securely buttoned up inside the vehicle. If that is what is happening in real life then I need to get some more info.

My mental model is that the M113 (to continue to use it as an example) is mainly a 'battlefield taxi' to get men and equipment from point A to point B as quickly as possible. The passengers would invariably deploy out of the vehicle in all but the least hostile of situations, and maybe then too. The track would retire a short way to the rear (a few hundred yards tops?) and hide as best it could. Depending on the tactical situation it might try to support the passengers with its own weapons, but this worries me. It would be the first target of the enemy (vehicles always attract fire first, right?), and then the infantry squad would be orphanned and essentially out of the battle. It is better off just skulking about and remaining available to pull out the infantry or possibly bring up ammo and take back wounded during a lull.

How vulnerable would these things be to artillery fire? My assumption is 'highly' and that any kind of concentration of WP 122mm howitzer fire would cause wholesale destruction of vehicles and passengers. Or are they pretty resistant to anything short of a direct hit?

I studied the fighting in the Western Desert (1941-42) quite a bit with a view to creating a game some day. At one point the Brits fielded a 2 pounder anti-tank gun mounted on the back of a truck (the "portee" if memory serves). It had punch and mobility, but in reality was a suicide weapon and disappeared very quickly. When I see a TOW mounted on a M113 (an M901) I feel the same shivers running up and down my back. Do you have any knowledge of these beasts? They were at least intended to fight hull down, right?

The great downside of most ATGM systems is that they give away their positions with a backblast as soon as they are used, and the relatively slow flight times (up to a minute) allow the enemy to react somewhat. Forewarned, you can dash for cover or try to suppress the crews aiming the missile. Its like a game of chicken. Israeli tanks crews either good really good at it in 1973 or they got dead, and that was against the primitive early models. What was taught to American tankers circa 1985?

Back to day job, cheers, Rob.

[byron13]

Gee, I'm uncomfortable that you're taking my word as gospel. No one has fought in as high an intensity environment as a war in Europe was expected to be, so what I've said is just my opinion. Units could certainly be caught in a low supply status. There may be SNAFUs at a higher level, the battalion support platoon may have been caught in the open by Hinds, or . . . you name it. I guess the only point I really feel comfortable with is that if the support platoon and brigade support battalion are intact and have supplies, I think the line companies should be able to resupply fairly easily, with or without radios, so long as the line companies are not engaged and the support platoon has time to service everyone. A lot of ifs, and you can easily conceive of situations where something has gone wrong. I don't think anyone would argue if there were scenarios in which one side or the other was low on fuel, ammunition, or both.

[IronManBeta]

OK then, I promise not to take it as gospel. Back to doubting Thomas mode....

I envisage the opening (day 1 or 2) scenarios having fully up to strength units and reasonably good supply. After that, attrition will set in with a vengeance, and units will start the game increasingly understrength and with increasingly precarious supply. As you note, there are a host of reasons why things might not go right, and some are bound to be felt at any given time.

Lots of fun!

Cheers, Rob.

[byron13]

Despite my bravado, I would not sell the ATGM systems on the BRDM short. We did train to react to Saggers. If one was seen being launched, the observer will yell, "Sagger, Sagger, Sagger!" on the radio, and everyone was supposed to do a "Sagger dance." Of course, no one had ever seen a Sagger (or other ATGM) fired other than maybe a TOW. Likewise, I doubt the average Soviet ATGM operator had fired more than two missiles in his life and very possibly had never fired any.

So, when your Soviet heliborne battalion lands on the bridge with BRDM's on D-Day, I see the following happening. The NATO tanks move up. The Soviets fire Saggers or Spandrels but, due to extreme nervousness of the 18-year old operator, poor training, and low experience, many of the missiles malfunction or miss their target. Many of the NATO tanks do not see the missiles launched or do not understand what it is they are seeing during the launch. Those that do are so suprised at finally seeing a missile fired at them in actual combat yell "S**t!" or something else unhelpful to the driver or, upon hearing "Sagger!", the driver says "huh?" Most tank commanders have never had live smoke grenades loaded in his launchers, and it certainly won't be instinct to hit the grenade launcher button - if he even remembers where it is. As in any combat situation, the crews that survive the first three days of battle will have much higher awareness and develop internal procedures that will keep them alive. So, like you say with regard to Israelis, you either get real good or real dead. Another issue that isn't being discussed is the fact that the ATGMs use a HEAT warhead, which would tremendously reduced effectiveness against chobham armor.

Anyway, don't sell the ATGMs short. The AT-5s and later systems are pretty fast and have a small signature. If there is a lot going on, no one may see where it came from in order to suppress it. Having never fired one, I don't know how much the grenades and dancing would do to throw it off. But I know that I would not want to be in the middle of a field when a Spandrel is fired at me from 1500 meters away.

The BRDM has an extremely low profile from the deck up. A twelve year-old could find a hull down position from which to fire the ATGM while making it difficult to get a return shot. But, once you know where they are, I think you could root them out. We were always told that .50 caliber could penetrate the APCs, especially if you used armor-piercing rounds. This should be true shooting straight into the flank. The front glacis of the APCs was pretty steep, making penetration more difficult, and the passengers were protected by the engine to a large degree. The driver was exposed, though.

As for the -113, I just don't know. You really should ask a crunchy (tanker term for grunts). I agree with you that the -113s would probably pull back after dumping their cargo. They were easy kills, and their .50 was fairly inaccurate on the mount they used. In dense terrain I could see where they might stay close since they would not be exposed to long range weapons systems and, being bullet proof, would be of tremendous assistance against machine guns and whatnot. They would, of course, be very vulnerable to light anti-tank weapons in dense terrain. But ask a grunt.

I do think the passengers were safe against small arms (up to 12.7mm) and shrapnel. The top may have been a weak point since there is a huge hatch up there that has to be light enough to push up, so a good air burst may have penetrated through the top. But I think it would require a direct hit or a very near miss for artillery to destroy one. The probable reason for your memories of Israelis sitting on top of the -113s was mines. The chances of (i) receiving small arms fire and (ii) that small arms fire being accurate was fairly small, but hitting a mine while inside . . . . I'd be on top, too. We did the same in Viet Nam. If you can find any books on armored operations in Viet Nam, you could probably get a lot of good information on the vulnerabilities of the -113 to small arms, LAWs, and mines. I would bet you'll see the passengers on top in half of the pictures. The Bradley? Should be a lot better, though I don't know about the problem they had with burning.

As for the 901 hammerhead, I think it would have been a very effective weapon. You would indeed park hull down, raise the hammerhead so that only the launcher itself could be seen, and shoot. There were two TOWs in the launcher, so you could shoot twice and split. Being completely hull down (if they did it right), it would be impossible to bring effective suppressive fire onto it. The gunner is inside the vehicle protected by armor and not exposed to direct fire at all. The gunner also had thermal sights so that he could shoot at night. The crew was vulnerable during reloading because they had to pop the top hatch to stuff new missiles in, but they could do this out of sight.

Speaking of thermal sights, that it is a huge factor to consider. HPS Simulations' Fulda Gap gives NATO twice the attack strength at night if the firing unit is thermal-equipped. The Iraqis learned the hard way that this was true. Get a good book on the Gulf War and read the stories about how impotent the Iraqis felt being destroyed by an enemy they couldn't even see. Woe to any non-thermal equipped units being engaged at night by thermal-equipped units; it would be THE decisive factor.

[byron13]

Originally posted by byron13
We were always told that .50 caliber could penetrate the APCs, especially if you used armor-piercing rounds.

I don't want to intimate that the .50 cal was the weapon of choice for shooting BMPs, BTRs, and BMDs. We would practice shooting them at gunneries with a .50 cal, but they were a target to be legitimately feared, and shooting them with the main gun was a the only way to make sure of the kill. I think you would only use the .50 cal if the gunner had higher priority threats and you had a light vehicle pop up somewhere nearby, like on a flank. And, of course, you would shoot to suppress.

[Blackhorse]

I was a tank platoon leader / cavalry troop executive officer / squadron (battalion) S3 (operations) with the U.S. Army in the Fulda Gap 1981-84. Some observations:

1. Thermal sights: HUGE improvement over previous night vision equipment (infrared). The fighting abilities of thermal-equipped units should be significantly enhanced -- especially at night, but even in daytime. For the record, most tankers thought the TTS sight in the M60A3 was marginally better than the TIS thermal in the early model M1s.

2. M113s. Definitely "battlefield taxis" . . . designed to protect against shrapnel so troops could be carried through artillery fire "beaten zones" to get to the front lines. Not an armored fighting vehicle in the sense of a BMP or a Bradley. ATGM equipped -113s came in three flavors in the 1980s: the M901 - with the hammerhead - that could stay hull down and launch two TOW missiles. However, the hammerhead was a cranky device and frequently broke down, especially in cold weather. Before the M901, there was a -113 version with an unprotected TOW launcher, which meant that the vehicle had be exposed in order to fire. Finally, there were -113s with the underranged, underpowered and unlamented Dragons, which had all the disadvantages of the exposed TOW launcher.

3. Logistics. M1s consumed massively more fuel than M60s. The M1s were designed to carry enough fuel for one full day's worth of high-tempo operations. If an M1-equipped company in combat got cut off from supply for more than a day, it could be in a world of hurt. EW would probably have had minimal effect on company-level logistics: we sent our trucks back to find the fuel/ammo depots. Frequent radio contact was not necessary to determine their position.

4. Training: I hope the game ratings are not dominated by the simple math of comparing hardware. One lesson of the collapse of the Soviet Union was how vastly we underrated the difference in training/quality between Western soldiers (U.S. in particular) and the Warsaw Pact. In 1989 the quality differential should be large; much less so for scenarios set in the 1960s or 1970s.

5. ATGM training (circa 1984): Flight times were a lot shorter -- 10 to 20 seconds IIRC -- but that was still plenty of time to evade and suppress, which is what we were trained to do. I was fairly confident that my tank could avoid a missile or kill the launcher -- if we detected the launch. Many (most?) ATGMs of that period could not track through "hot smoke" or other "battlefield debris" so their effectiveness would be degraded after the first few moments in high-intensity combat.

6. You'd better have a Fulda Gap scenario!

[IronManBeta]

That's great. Thank you Byron and Blackhorse for your very helpful comments. I've made a mental note to keep rereading these replies as time goes on so that I stay grounded. It is darn easy to drift off course while working on this game!

Rob

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by Blackhorse
2. M113s. Definitely "battlefield taxis" . . . designed to protect against shrapnel so troops could be carried through artillery fire "beaten zones" to get to the front lines. Not an armored fighting vehicle in the sense of a BMP or a Bradley. ATGM equipped -113s came in three flavors in the 1980s: the M901 - with the hammerhead - that could stay hull down and launch two TOW missiles. However, the hammerhead was a cranky device and frequently broke down, especially in cold weather. Before the M901, there was a -113 version with an unprotected TOW launcher, which meant that the vehicle had be exposed in order to fire. Finally, there were -113s with the underranged, underpowered and unlamented Dragons, which had all the disadvantages of the exposed TOW launcher.

In your considered opinion, what would a good company commander do when 122mm and 152mm arty rounds started falling amongst his M113s? Were they sufficiently tough that they could shrug off anything other than a (highly improbable) direct hit? Or were they thin skinned and ordered out of the area pronto? My guess is that they would tough out brief harassing fire, but vamoose if it developed into anything more than that. They were too valuable to just leave sitting in harm's way and even if they weren't completely knocked out, any surface damage would greatly reduce their utility. Or did they have an easy time finding fairly good hides that made them better off staying put?

My instinct is to burrow in and become immobile in a threat situation, but many others respond by seeking freedom of movement and letting the shells fall on empty space. As an arm cav guy I expect you would be in the latter camp. Was there a rule of thumb at work here that you can explain to me?

Much obliged, Rob.

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by RobertCrandall


In your considered opinion, what would a good company commander do when 122mm and 152mm arty rounds started falling amongst his M113s? . . . Was there a rule of thumb at work here that you can explain to me?

Much obliged, Rob.

You'll have to track down a Mech Infantry crunchie . . . er, veteran, to explain any rule of thumb.

For the cavalry, our situation would be somewhat unique. We weren't a very inviting target for artillery. Once we deployed into a defensive position, each -113 would support two scouts on the ground. And you would rarely have more than one (and never more than two!) vehicles within an area the size of an artillery battery's impact zone. If, for some reason, a barrage persisted the troop commander might order the 1 or 2 vehicles in the most heavily hit area to temporarily redeploy, but that's about it. In general, we wanted to keep the vehicles close to the men on the ground so they could vamoose in a hurry, if necessary.

In the advance, by the book we'd be moving forward by "bounding overwatch" so we'd rely on movement to (hopefully!) carry us through any barrage. (In reality, we'd probably keep the -113s permanently "bounding" while the 901s and tanks provided permanent "overwatch")

I don't have any stats handy, but I have to believe that even a near miss by a 152mm would ruin your day inside a -113. There has to be some unclassified data available on that.

Sorry I can't be more helpful . . .

[Ludovic Coval]

I apologize to pop-up in a very interesting discussion but i've a question for Blackhorse :

Did you were with the 11th ACR ?

Regards,

LC

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by Blackhorse


Sorry I can't be more helpful . . .

That answer was not entirely unhelpful to me (note double negative = a positive). The bottom line appears to me that by good fortune I can leave things as they are for the moment in that part of the game. I'm not in the mood for rewrites right now- just let me create great new swathes of virgin code! That is the fun 5% of game development for me.

Oh, a question - I have been worrying about typical company frontages since the project began. In a general sense the cavalry are supposed to be far more spread out. The Black Horse Squadron could have covered as much as 20 to 30 km of frontage in certain circumstances, right? Or am I misremembering a conversation from early in July.... I seem to recall that a former officer of the 11th (whom I met at Origins, what a blast) talked about 60 to 100km frontages for the whole of the regiment.

Since the game is resolved down to 500 m increments, that tells me that I should be talking platoons as the maneuver units for 11 Cav. Does this make sense to you?

Cheers, Rob.

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by Ludovic Coval
I apologize to pop-up in a very interesting discussion but i've a question for Blackhorse :

Did you were with the 11th ACR ?

Regards,

LC

Yep, with the 2nd Squadron ("Eaglehorse, sir!" "Second to None!") in Bad Kissingen from 1981-1984. I was a Tank Platoon leader in H Company (The Hawgs / Razorback) and the XO of Fox Troop. In between I did a short stint as the Assistant S-3.

Most enjoyable jobs of my life, so far.

[byron13]

Robert, leave the cavalry out. They all died in the first 10 minutes anyway! :p

Just wanted to comment on a couple of points Blackhorse made. As to -113s, I agree a near miss by a 152mm may ruin your day. But if you look at how dispersed they should be and the likelihood of any one shell hitting within, say, five meters of the vehicle, it's pretty slim odds. I'm not saying that -113s were virtually invulnerable - they were not. But relatively few rounds in even a large barrage would get close enough to actually theaten the vehicle. You'd certainly have a bunch of leaking oil cans and anything else on the top would be shredded - including, possibly antennae and the fifty. You may also have some large chunks of shrapnel penetrate, but I don't think you would have the spawling effect that a HEAT or sabot round would create.

As for the ATGMs. I still maintain that U.S. forces wouldn't have reacted well to initial engagements by ATGMs. This would have been offset by the lack of experience by the ATGMs gunners. As the gunners got better, the U.S. crews would have also improved - all within the first day or two. My guess is that the improvements would have neutralized each other. As for reaction and suppression, it all depends on the circumstances. If your advancing on Robert's airmobile battalion at the Steinbruck bridge and two BRDMS or BMDs fire at you - yes, you would evade and suppress. But imagining what a full blown assault would look like, I have no confidence that I would be able to react. Your driver is buttoned up, and your gunner and loader all down in the turret. That leaves only the track commander with his head up - if he's not being suppressed by arty. He's busy laying the gun on for the gunner, calling on the radio, guiding the driver as you change firing positions, dealing with problems, and, well, staring at forty tanks bearing down on him from 1500 meters away. There is smoke and fire everywhere. I don't believe that, with everything else going on, I'm going to notice an ATGM launch from 2000 meters away, behind the advancing tanks, fired from some obscured tree line. I'd certainly stand a better chance in a less busy situation or one where I'm advancing to contact. But in my nightmare defensive scenarios, I'm not counting on it. If I were faced with a line of BMPs, I was so used to firing two shots and moving that I probably would have done that without considering that I should back down in the face of a number of ATGM launches.

As for fuel consumption of the M1, it was a hog. But it has about the same range as an M60 due to larger fuel cells. I think that most units would burn more fuel getting to their GDP positions than they would actually fighting. I don't envision a scenario where you are doing so much maneuvering that you run out of fuel within 24 hours. If you did, you're either driving around in circles the whole time or the enemy is pushing you backwards at a horrendous clip. You will be idling most of the time waiting for the enemy, waiting for orders, waiting for the second platoon or Alpha company to advance on your right. I still think you could go for a day and a half or two days on one tank of gas. It would be very uncomfortable, and you would be running on fumes at the end, but I still think you could do it. We had successive battle positions that were only several kilometers apart. You could expect to have three or more major engagements within a 10 or 15 km line. Any counterattacks or defensive shift would be a 5 or 10 km event. I don't see any deep counterattacks by NATO early in the war; the only scenario where I see a huge consumption of fuel is in the event there's a major breakthrough and you're beating feet to Nuernberg, Wuerzburg, or Frankfurt. I invite Blachhorse's comments.

I also agree with Blackhorse that the disparity in training between the U.S. and Warsaw Pact would have been very evident in the 80s. Can't vouch for the rest of NATO, but the U.S. contingent really kicked into high gear with the flood of Reagan money. You had platoon and company commanders from Viet Nam that finally made it into positions of authority where they could change the way things were done. Training became more realistic and, after the Iran hostage crisis and the invasion of Afghanistan, morale was high and troop slots largely filled. From the tanker's perspective, there was a tremendous emphasis on gunnery skills in the early 80s that led to a much more realistic and difficult training standards in late '83. Under the new standards, our battalion qualified only five tanks, and that qualification rate was fairly average across the board. But, with the influx of master gunners and the emphasis on training and care for the equipment, the qualification rate ballooned back up to nearly 100% within a year. New maneuver doctrine was introduced, MLRS and scatterable minefields were introduced, better coordination of air assets introduced as a result of Desert One and Grenada, and the arty guys got a bunch of gee-whiz equipment. There were also a lot of minor changes to equipment and doctrine that most people wouldn't see but was instituted by combat experienced colonels and generals that trained to fight a real war. Finally, from the mid-80s on, the Germans got Leo IIs, the Brits got the Challenger, and the US got M1s and, from around '87 on, they got M1A1s with 120mm. If the Soviets had come acalling in 1988 or 89, the differential in quality would have been enormous. Just ask Saddam, who happened to pick a fight with the U.S. Army - most of whom came from billets in Germany - that had just had a decade of well-funded training. The U.S. Army in the 80s was the best trained and best funded army the world has ever seen. The thunderbolt was forged, and it was forged with a razor's sharpness.

But in the 70s, that would have been a completely different story . . .

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by RobertCrandall

Since the game is resolved down to 500 m increments, that tells me that I should be talking platoons as the maneuver units for 11 Cav. Does this make sense to you?

Cheers, Rob.

Yep. In a "come as you are war" the 2nd Squadron of the 11th (Blackhorse) regiment would have been spread wide. The frontages your cav friend mentioned sound about right. We trained with monthly alerts (anyone who served in Germany in those years will remember the fateful words "Lariat Advance") so that we could be in our wartime positions within 2-3 hours of being alerted. Even if the Soviets achieved strategic surprise, I'm pretty certain we would have been on the border before anyone came across.

As other units came up we'd collapse into covering a more narrow sector -- but probably still 20Kms as the border zigged and zagged.

Perhaps *all* recon units should be represented at the platoon level.

Hopefully, you'll allow players to "mix and match" their TO&Es. So for a cavalry troop, with three platoons, the player could opt to put all his tanks in one platoon or divide them evenly across all three. Similarly, (and more importantly) if the company is going to be the basic maneuver unit, the player should be able to form his companies into tank-heavy and mech-heavy company teams as this was fundamental, at least in U.S. doctrine.

[byron13]

Ahhh, yes. "Lariat Advance." Whenever the phone rings while I'm asleep, I half expect to hear those words.

Odd code word. Any idea where it came from? Think it was originally a random code word like "Market - Garden" or "Blue Steel" that simply remained in use?

[Blackhorse]

Originally posted by byron13
Robert, leave the cavalry out. They all died in the first 10 minutes anyway! :p
. . .

This from the guy that wants scenarios showing the 7th Corps courageously battling . . . the Czechs? :rolleyes: Just kidding. A hearty "Toujours Pret" to any 2nd ACR types out there.

If Byron's right, I'll just have to insist on a 10-minute/turn time scale so the "first turn cavalry" can be in play.

I wholeheartedly concur with Byron's points regarding the vulnerability of M-113s to artillery, and (with a caveat) about the effectiveness of ATGMs. The caveat is that the same factors that will keep a tank commander from spotting an ATGM in a fur-ball battle will also degrade a missile launcher's ability to acquire and track a target. After the first two days of combat weeded out the inexperienced, inept and unlucky tank commanders I think the effectiveness of ATGMs would have decreased. But it's only an opinion. Byron might well be right.

The "range" comparison between the M60 and the M1 is misleading; the M1 can go as far as the M60 because it can travel twice as fast. So if, for example (I'm making these numbers up) the M60 can carry enough fuel for 20 hours of continuous driving, the M1 only carries enough fuel for 10 hours.

This is important because, as Byron points out, you spend a lot of time idling, especially in defensive positions. And an idling M1 still consumes prodigious quantities of fuel.

This point was driven home to me in unforgettable fashion in my first field maneuver as a Troop Executive Officer (responsible for fuel and supply) after we were equipped with the M1s. The rest of our TO&E, including fuel trucks, was the same that we had used to support M60A3s.

We roadmarched into position, then defended against attacks for two days. At the end of the two days, the M1s' fuel tanks were nearly dry -- despite the fact that our fuel trucks were continuously in motion (we worked the drivers in shifts). In the pre-dawn of day three, we attacked -- empty fuel gauges and all -- and refueled vehicle-by-vehicle as they ran dry, and as the fuel trucks came up again. This was definitely *not* doctrine.

In summary, the M1s ran out of fuel after only two days of defensive operations, *despite* being continuously refueled at a level that would have kept an identical number of M60s fully topped off.

Eventually, our fuel trucks were replaced with new models with more than triple the carrying capacity, and, as Byron indicated, other organizational changes were made as well. But if supply were disrupted, an M1 would run out of fuel far faster than another MBT.

While its fun to remember these old "war stories" I don't know how relevant this will be to a game of this scale. It would be interesting to have a scenario where, unbeknownst to the Pact player, the American tanks can not move (or use their thermal sights!) because they are out of fuel.

[byron13]

Originally posted by Blackhorse


This from the guy that wants scenarios showing the 7th Corps courageously battling . . . the Czechs? :rolleyes: Just kidding. A hearty "Toujours Pret" to any 2nd ACR types out there.

Actually, Blackhorse is correct. OpPlan 4-51, Plan Orange, and basic NATO strategy was for VII Corps to decisively defeat the Czechs in the first six hours of the war and then go save V Corps' bacon the following day. On the third day of the war, VII Corps mission was to either save the beleaguered BAOR (after humbly accepting V Corps' teary-eyed thanks) or drive directly on Moscow.

Originally posted by Blackhorse

The "range" comparison between the M60 and the M1 is misleading; the M1 can go as far as the M60 because it can travel twice as fast. So if, for example (I'm making these numbers up) the M60 can carry enough fuel for 20 hours of continuous driving, the M1 only carries enough fuel for 10 hours.

I concede the point. Robert, see what you get by listening to me? Sounds like the M1s are indeed on a 24 hour feeding schedule.

Now, where are the crunchies to tell their side of the story? You know, Robert, I don't know what you're doing for dismounted infantry, but you might want to look at how many guys in an infantry battalion are actually humping a rifle in the mud. It was always my impression that the mechanized infantry battalions didn't have the manpower to do what we would consider the norm in WWII. Each platoon of mech has X number of guys but, after subtracting track drivers and commanders, there weren't that many guys on the ground. So my impression is that if you're asking a mech company to clear out a large town or dense forest, they might have half the number of soldiers available than in WWII. In other words, they were undermanned for a true infantry role and underarmored for anything else.

[IronManBeta]

Originally posted by byron13


Now, where are the crunchies to tell their side of the story? You know, Robert, I don't know what you're doing for dismounted infantry, but you might want to look at how many guys in an infantry battalion are actually humping a rifle in the mud. It was always my impression that the mechanized infantry battalions didn't have the manpower to do what we would consider the norm in WWII. Each platoon of mech has X number of guys but, after subtracting track drivers and commanders, there weren't that many guys on the ground. So my impression is that if you're asking a mech company to clear out a large town or dense forest, they might have half the number of soldiers available than in WWII. In other words, they were undermanned for a true infantry role and underarmored for anything else.

This too has me worried. There is a fabulous book called "On Infantry" by John A. English, a highly experienced Canadian officer published in 1981 (seems like yesterday!) that was well received and put on all kinds of official 'must read' lists by the Marine Corps, etc. One of his central theses towards the end was exactly this, and the thought had always lingered in my mind. NATO just did not have enough of the humble infantry types to do every job and absorb the expected losses for very long at all. I believe that part of our bias against fighting in built up areas was in answer (amongst other reasons) to this - manpower requirements and losses skyrocket when you do. For all their manpower, the Soviets also wanted to avoid fighting in built up areas. (But where else can you fight in Germany in 1989?) No one wanted a return to the meatgrinders of yesteryear.

I'm going to reread the last chapter on modern times tonight and see what else he said!

Rob.