ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Well, actually, a lot of designers put light rifles into their artillery battalions for just this reason: artillery does have some value as infantry, and when the need arises, will fight as such. For example, in Seelowe I've found it best to put in about one light rifle for every two artillery tubes in the artillery regiments. These don't add to the bombardment strength -- but do keep attackers that have broken through the line from rampaging through the entire enemy artillery park.
You mean you put rifle squads, or actually rifles? (I'm sorry, I know nothing about how to design a scenario). About the latter, well that's ok, since most artilery men had rifles/carabines. And, the first case could be a good woorkaround that problem.
. It doesn't matter that the firepower they still have represents about a ton of shells per hour, and what would be coming ashore would allow for about a tenth of that ammunition expenditure -- the artillery can just keep blazing away. So I have to have a house rule: German orange- or red-light artillery can't provide assigned fire support.
Well, to me the problem is not that they could "keep blazing away", but the bolded part. They would still firing, but much less than usually.
As noted, this objection can be dealt with if the program looks at the actual weapons rather than the unit icon.
That would be very nice, to calculate the combat effectiveness of each unit.
If the rifle battalion needs one ton, and the artillery battalion needs fifty tons, what happens if only one ton of munitions can be brought in? You'll obviously do better if you supply the rifle battalion.
Not so sure, I guess would depends on the situation that the forces are involved (see below*). And I can see the case when the artillery recieves 800kg and the rifle unit 200kg (sorry for using metric on you [:'(] )
This in spite of the fact that a full refill of fuel and ammo for them would come to something like two hundred tons. That would be about one full day's airlift right there -- even assuming the planes could all land somewhere near the tanks. It would be a major part of the German supply effort just to keep those four battalions in motion.
Well, the Germans in no way are gonna be able to do a Seelowe only with air supply, and I don't care if they use only infantry
Anyway, as I said, the thing to do would be to make the calculation by weapon rather than by unit icon. As a unit fell into negative supply, the rifle squads would retain say 50% of their combat value. The tanks and artillery pieces would cease to have any value at all. So a well-equipped infantry division -- which derives a lot of its firepower from heavy weapons -- would retain only a fraction of its combat strength. At a lower scale, the artillery would shut down, but the infantry battalions would continue to have considerable value.
A tank with 5% of its full load has perhaps 20% of its defensive value, virtually none of its offensive value, and it essentially can't move. An infantry squad with 5% of its full load might have 40% of its defensive value, 20% of its offensive value, and 60% of its normal movement allowance.
This is the heart of the discussion. And I don't agree with you. A tank with 5% of its load compared with a rifleman squad with 5% of rounds: I don't see any difference, the tank would be able function for not very long, but how is that different compared with a squad with soldiers with and average of seven 7.92mm rounds for their K98k's?. They are both very limited. And since here in TOAW we not have individual tanks, but tank units, what would happen in a case of a armor battalion of fifty tanks with 5% of fuel/ammo, is that they would fill perhaps ten tanks to 20%, and not use the rest. So, yes, the unit will still be able to operate, but at reduced capacity. The same could be said about the artillery.
The only point that have some vality is movement points for the infantry in the case when units are entirely out of supply, but does really matter? I mean, units almost never ran out of supply, because if they do they are pulled out of the line. So we are only concern with which can not reciev any supply at all, and most of those cases are when units are isolated and sourrounded by enmy units.
* see these Niklas Zetterling's quotes:
I have rather extensive records for the Korsun operation in february 1944. I shall see if I can find some data on tank ammunition expenditure. I know this was discussed, because the spearheads of III. Pz.Korps had to receive tank ammunition by air drop, due to the extremely poor condition of the roads.
In any case, here is some data:
In the period 12 – 19 february 1944, the following amounts of ammunition was air dropped to the spear heads of III. Pz.Korps: 79,6 tons of Tiger ammunition, 68,6 tons of Panther ammunition and 4 tons of Pz IV ammunition. These weights include the complete rounds and the stuff they were packed into to be air dropped. It seems that these weights correspond to 3800 rounds of Tiger ammo, 4100 rounds of Panther ammo and 300 rounds of Pz IV ammo.
Before the corps jumped off, it reported (10 february) that it had, operational, 34 Pz IV, 81 Panther and 13 Tiger I in its units (1. Pz.Div., 1. SS-Pz.Div., 16. Pz.Div., 17. Pz.Div., 506. Tiger-Bat. and heavy tank regiment Bäke, the latter consisted of one Panther battalion, II./23, and one Tiger battalion, 503). Also the corps had 20 assault guns operational
It is worth noting that supply problems were encountered almost immediately, and it seems that only the Tigers and Panthers pushed on, leaving the Pz IV and StuG in the rear and on the flanks, which may explain the vast preponderance of Tiger and Panther ammunition dropped. The corps had several tanks in workshops and it was explicitly reported that few were victims to enemy fire, rather most were mechanical breakdowns or simply bogged down in deep mud during the preceding week of fighting. Thus further tanks were added, but on the other hand more tanks broke down or got stuck in the mud. The net effect was gradually declining tank strength.
If we look at these deliveries, they represent (if we use the initial tank strength as a yardstick) 7 rounds per day and Panther delivered and 42 rounds per day and Tiger. Obviously the small number of operational Tiger tanks can distort the picture. The Panther strength declined more rapidly and on 15 february there were 28 Panther operational and 11 Tiger (using these strangth figures as a base, we arrive at 21 rounds per Panther and day (49 for Tigers)). But of the Panthers four could only fire with their machine guns (no explanation given, but ammo shortages can possibly have been a factor, because on the following day 20 tons of Panther ammunition was dropped, compared to 6 tons of Tiger ammunition)
The ratio between AP and HE ammo dropped is not clear, but according to what was brought up to the airfields, it seems that the ratio was approximately 1:1, with a slight preponderance for HE ammo.
So, how representative are these figures. First, an unknown part of the ammo dropped was lost, the Germans estimated that 70 – 80 % did get to the units (this has not been accounted for in my calculations above). Second, this was a period of very intensive fighting, the corps had to rescue about 50,000 fellow soldiers from Soviet encirclement and no effort was spared. On the other hand, the difficult ground may have made it difficult to get into action for many tanks. Also, it is not known if the tanks were topped up with ammo before they jumped off.
Very intertesting. Now, I don't know how much ammo their infantry (the infantry on the panzer units) was receiving, or how much fuel was delivered, but here we have a case when tank units are operating, supply problems are encountered, and and the quartermasters adapt to the situation to keep the tank units on the move. Also noticeable is how they left the PzIV and Stugs behind, and choose to keep the heavier panzers supplied (some people would think that in that situation, they would choose the lighter panzers due to the less fuel consumption, but that's a different topic [:)])
