How do you deal with French tanks

[gila]

In your earlier WiKi reference it clearly states that Rommel in the battle of Arras, was forced to bring 88's to deal with heavier British tanks,what ammo did those 88's have?
Not AT but Flak rounds most likley

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by gila

In your earlier WiKi reference it clearly states that Rommel in the battle of Arras, was forced to bring 88's to deal with heavier British tanks,what ammo did those 88's have?
Not AT but Flak rounds most likley

AP. The first use of the 88 as an ATG was in the Spanish Civil War.

However, they were generally specialist AA weapons under their own command. Their commanders did not like letting them go for ATG purposes, since they got stripped of superfluous stuff like the AAA director kit, etc. And since they were great big things, they were dug into pits for protection and concealment that made them impossible to recover when the defended positions got overrun.

In any case - once the 75L48 and the captured 76.2mm ex-Russian ATG (towed or mobile on the Marders etc) started appearing, then the requirement to use 88s as dedicated anti tank guns more or less disappeared. Those guns did the same job, but were less high profile in the towed variant.

As for France 1940, not very hard really. Drench the French infantry with HE fires, also covering the tanks to button them up, break tracks etc. "Force Broken" is based on all the elements on table - so if the majority of the enemy infantry are doing a runner, then the armour will be getting unhappy too.

Deal with any of the lighter tanks first, if you can - the only ones to look out for are those with the long 37mm. Char Bs are extremely slow - so if they are somewhere you don't need to go, you can generally ignore them for now. The Somua is the French tank to treat with most respect.

If you have to deal with a pesky tank or two - keep it suppressed under mortar fire, or smoked off as your mobile AT assets stalk it. Your 15CM SiG should be the weapons of choice for dropping presents on French heavy armour when detected away from your troops. Big bangers that are quite likely to break track, and which have large blast areas that sweep escorting infantry away, and that make craters that slow the things down even more, or can drop a wooden bridge out from under them - a very satisfying trick to pull off !

Since they are so slow then you often have them trundling up to retake V-hexes, eventually. So you can prepare a reception committee for these. Keep them under a hail of indirect fire - to button them up, and to drive off any accompanying infantry, since you want them to be blind and so less likely to spot or hit your tank killers, if they actually did manage to spot them.

If close assaulting with infantry - hose any unbuttoned tank down with rifle, LMG, MMG fires as preparation. The heavy infantry with 50mm direct fire mortars are useful for rattling their cages too - they have a decent warhead size - a few plinks with these can make an uneasy tank change to "retreating" status (hover your mouse over the target), which greatly increases its vulnerability to close assault. Only once fully prepared (and any companions that might give covering fire to the target also suppressed) - do your inf-assault teams go in.

Even if your infantry have no specific AT weaponry bar hand grenades, an assault can make a tank's status go to retreating. It does not matter then if the riflemen are in retreat if you have another asset able to take advantage of that - another inf-assault, or you can motor an AFV up close to pot the retreater "up the kilt" at point-blank range (if there is no other armour able to cover the target). The 37mm tank guns are fine at dealing with a retreating Char, since even if they do not penetrate a side shot can get a track break result, and when that happens a demoralised crew will usually bail, either immediately or in the morale phase at the end of his turn - or even surrender to anyone within 1 hex.

Cheers
Andy

[Roman]

The French tanks had more armor, but they were too heavy and slow. What they had was against the tactics used. Tanks used only for support. Had few armored units.
With respect to sp option is to disable the Heavy Tank AI because if not come over a Char bis herd and become unstoppable. A combination of Pz III medium tanks, tank destroyers and infantry AT ammunition enough. In cases of defense can appeal to the 88.
Speaking of Rommel, he used them enough to destroy bunkers.

[Imp]

Roman heavy tank makes little diffrence AFAIK do alawys play with it off as AI seems to buy better that way. All it does in last few passes is make the AI favour buying armour over its other choices so you might get a few extra tanks instead of it using those points on something else. And I do mean a few will make little diffrence to total no of tanks but seems in my view to give a more piecemeal setup than tank heavy off.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Imp

Roman heavy tank makes little diffrence AFAIK do alawys play with it off as AI seems to buy better that way. All it does in last few passes is make the AI favour buying armour over its other choices so you might get a few extra tanks instead of it using those points on something else. And I do mean a few will make little diffrence to total no of tanks but seems in my view to give a more piecemeal setup than tank heavy off.

AI tank heavy tries to buy a tank company more often - which means that the AI requires to have the points available to do so. It will sometimes then buy platoons of grunts, when it would normally buy companies of them. That does not really save that many points though. Therefore, it is really only noticeably different when points are rather high. It is not going to make any real difference on a thousand or so points battle. It may do on a 10000+ points AI buy.

In any case, the regular AI buy is rather "tank heavy" for most real WW2 situations..

Cheers
Andy

[Roman]

Originally Posted by Imp

Roman heavy tank makes little diffrence AFAIK do alawys play with it off as AI seems to buy better that way. All it does in last few passes is make the AI favour buying armour over its other choices so you might get a few extra tanks instead of it using those points on something else. And I do mean a few will make little diffrence to total no of tanks but seems in my view to give a more piecemeal setup than tank heavy off.

Long time no start a long campaign with Germany. I'm playing more PBEM. But remember that once I tried it and if there was a difference.
I'll try again a long campaign. Perhaps with the experience I gained at this time do not be afraid to Char bis.

[Roman]

I started a long campaign with Germany. I activated the option in preferences IA heavy tank. I put 3000 points of purchase for me and xxx for the IA.
So now I've counted more than 15 tanks 9TP and 7TP Polish, not counting tanks tksm and tks. I'm on turn 10 (of 40). I have 7 panzer III, 5 panzer II and 5 panzer Ib.
All tanks from Poland are in my battle.
Tomorrow I will try but I'm sure if I put out the option heavy tank, do not appear so many tanks.
9TP and 7TP tanks equal or exceed the PZ III 1 vs 1 battle. So were in reality. I read a few 7TP put out of action for more than 20 panzer . They had no decisive action because they were not numerous. That is a separate chapter.
Good night

[runequester]

The things that can be exploited is their fairly mediocre morale ratings and the fact that they tend not to get as many main gun shots off as your crews will.

Shell them mercilessly. If you can get them near dense terrain, infantry assault works fine. It might take a few attempts, but it's doable. Gebalte Ladung help a bit. Engineers help a lot.

[Griefbringer]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

If close assaulting with infantry - hose any unbuttoned tank down with rifle, LMG, MMG fires as preparation. The heavy infantry with 50mm direct fire mortars are useful for rattling their cages too

Don't forget anti-tank rifles, if you have some around - they seem to be excellent for making tanks button up. Just don't expect them to do lots of damage on French tanks (except the very lightest ones) though every now and then they can manage to immobilise the odd tank with a lucky shot.

Speaking of immobilisation, sufficient artillery pounding can also cause a tank here and there to get immobilised, meaning that you can leave dealing with it until later (unless the crew decides to bail out first). And the slow speed of many of the French tanks makes them relatively easy targets for artillery, once you get your forward observer on a good spot.

If you are playing with the German paras, then take advantage of their recoilless rifles. The 7.5 cm version (available from early 1940) might not be particularly impressive, but the 10.5 cm model (available from June 1940 onwards) has a very nasty HEAT round available - though the ammo supply itself is rather limited, so you probably want to have them engaging the enemy at range and then falling back to reload.

[gila]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

AP. The first use of the 88 as an ATG was in the Spanish Civil War.

However, they were generally specialist AA weapons under their own command. Their commanders did not like letting them go for ATG purposes, since they got stripped of superfluous stuff like the AAA director kit, etc. And since they were great big things, they were dug into pits for protection and concealment that made them impossible to recover when the defended positions got overrun.

In any case - once the 75L48 and the captured 76.2mm ex-Russian ATG (towed or mobile on the Marders etc) started appearing, then the requirement to use 88s as dedicated anti tank guns more or less disappeared. Those guns did the same job, but were less high profile in the towed variant.

As for France 1940, not very hard really. Drench the French infantry with HE fires, also covering the tanks to button them up, break tracks etc. "Force Broken" is based on all the elements on table - so if the majority of the enemy infantry are doing a runner, then the armour will be getting unhappy too.

Deal with any of the lighter tanks first, if you can - the only ones to look out for are those with the long 37mm. Char Bs are extremely slow - so if they are somewhere you don't need to go, you can generally ignore them for now. The Somua is the French tank to treat with most respect.

If you have to deal with a pesky tank or two - keep it suppressed under mortar fire, or smoked off as your mobile AT assets stalk it. Your 15CM SiG should be the weapons of choice for dropping presents on French heavy armour when detected away from your troops. Big bangers that are quite likely to break track, and which have large blast areas that sweep escorting infantry away, and that make craters that slow the things down even more, or can drop a wooden bridge out from under them - a very satisfying trick to pull off !

Since they are so slow then you often have them trundling up to retake V-hexes, eventually. So you can prepare a reception committee for these. Keep them under a hail of indirect fire - to button them up, and to drive off any accompanying infantry, since you want them to be blind and so less likely to spot or hit your tank killers, if they actually did manage to spot them.

If close assaulting with infantry - hose any unbuttoned tank down with rifle, LMG, MMG fires as preparation. The heavy infantry with 50mm direct fire mortars are useful for rattling their cages too - they have a decent warhead size - a few plinks with these can make an uneasy tank change to "retreating" status (hover your mouse over the target), which greatly increases its vulnerability to close assault. Only once fully prepared (and any companions that might give covering fire to the target also suppressed) - do your inf-assault teams go in.

Even if your infantry have no specific AT weaponry bar hand grenades, an assault can make a tank's status go to retreating. It does not matter then if the riflemen are in retreat if you have another asset able to take advantage of that - another inf-assault, or you can motor an AFV up close to pot the retreater "up the kilt" at point-blank range (if there is no other armour able to cover the target). The 37mm tank guns are fine at dealing with a retreating Char, since even if they do not penetrate a side shot can get a track break result, and when that happens a demoralised crew will usually bail, either immediately or in the morale phase at the end of his turn - or even surrender to anyone within 1 hex.

Cheers
Andy

Very good advice,however still i don't believe 88's had much effect in France,remember Gerry used used Blitzkrieg tactics against the French,who had the mindset of a "static" warfare,and spread thier slow armour, doubt they could field a few Chars,where mostly scattered. with better odds,the nod should go to the germans.
In Africa it was a different situation with the Brits.