Normandy 1944
 

One of the things that I think gets overlooked is how very powerful Allied Naval gunfire was in Normandy in 1944.

A 15inch naval gun could fire at ranges up to almost 22 miles -ie, twice as far inland as Caen- and warships (no matter what crap World of Warships might come out with) all carried HE rounds. A large calibre Warship HE round was a very fearsome thing that could flip even a Tiger tank on its back.

Most of the Normandy battles in June and July should feature Naval Gun Fire Support on the Allied side. In fact it was a major deciding factor in the German's pulling back from close to the coast.

In contrast Allied aircraft were not as effective as they thought they were against German armour. At the time even the American Army Air Force thought that RAF rocket firing Typhoons were the best Allied air force tank busters. Research, after the war, showed they were much less effective than the Air Forces thought they were (when on earth as that ever happened!) Most of those eight, unguided, rockets simply missed... Allied air power was mostly effective against soft vehicles, very unfortunate horses and trains, rather than AFV's.

A Panzer Lehr Division Commander gives a long list of losses to Allied air attacks, over days, that include a whole five tanks...

Re: Normandy 1944
 

you hit hexes with tanks in them with naval gunfire in the game and they are, at the very least, NOT HAPPY.hit them a couple turns in a row and they are even less happy

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Agreed, but I think you could make a fairly strong case for reducing Allied air force anti armour effects and increasing Naval gun fire effects.

Re: Normandy 1944 (Naval Gunfire Support)
 

So I ran a test:

One company of SS Tiger tanks in the open and deployed closely together, not dug in.

One the other side, 10 spotter aircraft, one RN 16in Battleship, two RN 15inch Battleship, one RN 14 inch Battleship, one RN 8inch Heavy Cruiser.

Game set to max visibility. Artillery set to 175%. Game length 39 turns.

Result: 1 Tiger destroyed. 1 Tiger immobilised. 1 Tiger retreating and 2 Tigers buttoned up.

I think that is a bit weak given the naval firepower used...

Re: Normandy 1944
 

How often did you hit them with consecutive bombardments?
On normal artillery settings, if hit hard in the open it is possible to cause retreat or even abandonment, I think damage may be required first for the later.
Can surprise you though Remember hitting one tank with a good wallop of artillery over a couple of turns & it still returned fire & took out my tank with a low to hit chance. Heavily pinned it could only get off one shot with its main armament which just happened to hit.
I realise what you are saying a big shell could flip a tank but how often did it land close enough to actualy do so.
While artillery was a major killer I would be intrestead to know how many rounds were fired per kill.
Do agree but we have had this debate so many times a big shell landing close to armor can have a devastating effect.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

The hexes the Tanks were in were all hit repeatedly. No tank moved at all except the one that retreated (fairly early on). Also note I had Artillery set at 175% (as I normally do for WWII actions).

This was four Battleships and a Heavy Cruiser, with spotter aircraft, firing at a single, highly exposed, company of German tanks, not dug in, in close (ie, in adjoining hexes)order, a near ideal target.

Re: Normandy 1944 (Naval Gunfire Support)
 

something to investigate next year NOT a month before a patch release. It's important to remember these naval bombardments went on longer than normally players give them in the game. One or two turns...6 minutes of gunfire means nothing. Hit the area for 10 turns then let me know what the result is

Re: Normandy 1944 (Naval Gunfire Support)
 

The example of my test was a bombardment, and nothing but a bombardment, for the whole game length, ie, 39 turns, with artillery set at 175%. At the end the area all around the tanks was nothing but shell holes, yet it merely destroyed one and immobilised another.

Was not suggesting it needs to be changed right now, given all the other stuff relating to the next patch going on. I'm sure you have more than enough to do.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

If you have the original "scenario" set up saved. post it

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Not sure how to do that?

It was standard random June 1944 Normandy map Britain V Germany, with beach. Largest Map. Everything set to normal, except Artillery at 175%.(and British set to 110% spotting and 110% shooting, actually an accident since I had been doing an earlier German v USSR scenario set in June 1941 and did not notice to change it back).

German forces Command group (safely far in at rear) One Company SS Tiger Tanks (14 Tanks)Not dug in in fairly close formation on open ground (not in trees or behind hedgerows, etc).

British forces Command Group and Foo (both on Patrol ships) 10 Spotter aircraft (Auster) one 16 inch Battleship, two 15 inch Battleship, one 14 inch battleship, one 8 inch Heavy Cruiser. Game length set to 39 turns.

I set up the spotter aircraft runs to make sure the German tanks were well and truly spotted and then set the game to run on computer control. Results as above.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

From your experiment report I see that only 5 tigers are accounted for while you have 14 others. What about those 14? Is there any chances that they escape unharmed because they quickly run away from the battlefield (due to suppression)? Maybe in the next experiment give them zero speed value?

Also don't forget that in the Normandy campaign, how many Tigers were actually decimated & blown up due to these high-caliber artillery? Compared to those that didn't blow up? We need to have quite a number of actual occurences of Tigers being pounced by high caliber artillery in the war, so we can rightly deduce the statistics. If it's just one or two samples, it's not enough for making conclusions of the high mortality rate. Maybe the samples can be obtained from the Russian front, which experienced a mighty titanic amount of artillery fires (and huge deployments of Tigers too).

Don't forget that war is chaotic. It could be there was another main factor that can wreck & destroy Tigers that way; the wrong Tiger at the wrong road at the wrong time maybe.

Just saying, food for thought.

Cheers!

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Try doing again but modify tank speed to 2 or less, use a smaller map & place all victory hexes near the tanks so the AI concentrates on that area.
Not as effective as you might think, need a near miss to flip a tank from the web.

http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3450

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Gentlemen, let me make it clear the German Tiger Company did not move, at all, during the entire 39 turns of bombardment by four Battleships and a Heavy Cruiser. I repeat they did NOT move at all (other than one Tiger that retreated fairly early on). The tanks sat there, got bombarded by 16 inch, 15 inch, 14 inch and 8 inch guns for turn after turn.

At the end one tank was destroyed, one was immobilised, one tank had run away and just two other tanks even had to button up. That was the total effect of well over 30 turns of heavy naval gun bombardment on tanks, not moving, in the open, that were the only possible target, with maximum visibility and artillery set to 175% of normal, and with a 10% plus to both British spotting and firing.

Let me be clear I love this game, but I think Naval gun Fire support is under powered (and WWII Air is rather over powered). Not the end of the world.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Just to make my position clear I think artillery in our game is, generally, a fair bit under powered in terms of causing casualties. I routinely play WWII games with artillery set at 175% and MBT games with artillery set at 150% (And I still think it is a bit under performing).

In both WWI and WWII artillery was the biggest killer of fighting soldiers, far ahead of Machine guns (another thing, I agree with Suhiir, our game also under estimates a little, especially MMG' and HMG's).

If my test had resulted in two or three Tigers destroyed, two or three immobilised, and most of the rest retreating, all of them buttoned up, I would say that would have been a pretty realistic result.

I also contrast the result I got with four Battleships and a Heavy Cruiser, with using just five units of the best rocket armed Typhoons (the SAP rockets are much better than the AT rockets in the game) that would totally ruin a Company of late war Konigstigers even with say two units of late WWII SPAA. I doubt, very much, that is a historically accurate result.

As I said earlier, the Commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, in bemoaning his losses from days of allied air attacks while moving up to the Normandy front, says he only lost a total of five tanks from all these allied air attacks, although he lost many other soft and weaker AFV's...

The Naval Artillery Results are a bit too weak and the air force results a a fair bit too strong. Just my view.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Well my understanding is that basically in order to destroy a heavy tank you gotta score a direct hit. To immobilize a close miss (or direct hit by lower caliber). Battleships were designed to kill other BBs and heavy cruisers by direct fire with their main armament while saving their secondaries--mostly 4- or 5-inch--for smaller targets like destroyers or torpedo boats. Given that even large tanks are even smaller targets and that the BBs were firing indirectly in your trial, who's to say that the result was unrealistic?

Just my two centavos; perhaps someone better informed might help us out here. Cheers.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

The link I posted tends to support destruction was pretty rare, seen other articles & I would also suspect flipping a tank was fairly rare also. Immobilisation I would suspect is the most likely outcome of anything baring a direct hit, read a report where Panzer commanders tank was stuck, near miss the tank ended up in the crater relativly intact but could not get out as the slopes were to steep.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

When engaging other ships, I presume the gun would be loaded with AP shells. Not so with indirect targets, which would be HE.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Yes, so would I. Unfortunately for the Japanese in the naval battle off Samar, their armor-piercing shells usually passed through the "baby flattops" and destroyer escorts without exploding. Apparently unnerved and disoriented by waves of carrier air attacks, damage to many ships and loss of the Musashi the day before; plus constant strafing attacks by planes (armed only with HE) this day, along with determined torpedo attacks by the escorts, they believed they were engaging fleet carriers and cruisers IIRC.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

They would, as others have pointed out, have been using High Explosive shells not AP. Armour piecing shells were for use on armoured warships (Cruisers and above) and, occasionally, concrete gun emplacements, etc. HE was used against smaller warships and land targets. Battleship shells used at Normandy could be up to 16 inch (406mm) size

Here are a couple of WWII RN instructional films, in colour, about Naval Gunfire support. The first one is a deliberate bombardment of a known position, the second a more 'off the cuff' shoot, against enemy SP Guns.

The Cruiser is a Colony class Light 6 inch Cruiser, the Aircraft Fleet Air Arm Seafires (naval version of the Spitfire). Warships could, of course, also use ground FOO control

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2qIU5SH_s8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-OLPzwpAuU

Re: Normandy 1944 (Naval Gunfire Support)
 

A tiger 1 tank company deployed close together, delay scenario with V-hexes German so they dont move other than in rout.

One observer in front of them, the HQ deployed with a view to the rear of the pack. 2 battleships bought, scenario length 30. Gold spot in the middle of the pack to speed things up.

All values at default - i.e. no pumping up of artillery values.

Test 1 - 2 destroyed, 1-2 abandoned, 50% of the company disabled, 2 rout off map.

Test 2 - 4 destroyed, one routed off map, one damaged and in process of being chased by 15 inch (at 0.1 to adjust for an observer with LOS you can chase a routed tigger!:)) and all others disabled and abandoned by crews, 2 crew surviving at turn 30.

Observations -
The battleships were using 15 inch HE. HE is not good for piercing armour (pen is 9, tigers are generally at least 8 armour on rear and flanks). Even with the occasional bonus for warhead size, they aren't going to slay tigers willy-nilly.

Your test scenario seems to have been unobserved fire(?) - use of random spotter planes and plotting by the A0 who did not have eyes on target?. Unobserved fires are far less concentrated since the rounds tend to land all over the place. But this test scenario was firing into a dust cloud by round 2 or 3 due to shell dust thrown up.

With blast radius set to "on" you could see that most of the shells would strike about half the company with an orange circle showing a hit that at least suppressed the tank.

By about turn 6-8 about half the company was usually hors de combat - damaged, track blown off, and often in retreat or rout with no tracks, leading to abandonment. The remainder of the 30 turns was moving shell fire to try to hit surviving tanks in smoke, so often drifted off intended point of aim.

Battleship fire does do a lot of damage, especially (as with all artillery) if given time to work the targets over. Even on tiger 1s, which will endure where say panzer 4s would be reduced to scrap much earlier.

But battleship HE rounds are NOT Maverick anti-tank missiles.

Re: Normandy 1944
 

Sounds like real life Anzio to me. Couldn't resist when I saw the topic. The following ships exploits in this discussion area are well known to me from my Naval background and history studies.
http://iainballantyne.com/hms-rodney...-hms-rodney-2/

Good topic and good advice about FOO. Many refs. would say or suggest on this topic the importance of these missions coordinated with a naval FOO or other in the success of the mission against armor etc. Andy's test and therefore the game itself represents exactly what history has already shown.

Regards,
Pat
:capt:

Re: Normandy 1944
 

With performance like that, you wonder why they ever bothered developing nukes.... :)

Frankly, I think statements like this: "In one episode where Bletchley’s code-breakers played a vital role, some 50 out of 127 German tanks massing for an attack were wiped out." have very little to do with reality. Tanks are built exactly to take this kind of punishment from blast, fragments and bullets. Their main enemy is not blast and steel flying about, but direct hits from anti-tank weapons. All analysis of WWII tank losses seem to confirm this.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised if those 50 tanks were temporarily out of action due to crews concussion, sights and periscopes being knocked out of alignment and damaged, engines clogged with debris and dust and some damage done to external fittings and suspension components. But "wiped" out seems highly unlikely given the effects of HE on tanks in general - regardless of whether it was delivered by field artillery, ships or bombers.
There are examples of groups of tanks being damaged by massive HE attack and tank attacks being broken up by massive HE fire, but such attacks does not leave behind dozens of broken and burning tanks.

Andys tests seems consistent with what you would expect from long, massive HE attacks on tanks.