Throatwarbler posted:

I would think that a sub can launch some kind of SAM if there was some way to accurately locate the aircraft and then guide the missile to it.

Arquinsiel posted:

Sometimes it literally was that. The French and African campaigns had them doing both jobs, In France is was because British tanks were so solidly built that they could push right up to the AA gun positions and it was just the only gun handy and in Africa the combat moved so fast that there was nowhere to put AA gun positions safely behind the lines that shooting at attacking enemy tanks wasn't also an option. Either way they were purely defensive weapons, unless mounted on a vehicle (which some were).

Nebakenezzer posted:

Honestly there is so much truth to this

Like I think the only reason we have this vision of the Nazis being efficient is because Spock described them as "the most efficient civilization in human history" on the original Star Trek

Cythereal posted:

I remember the old Red Storm Rising game had a Stinger that could be fitted to submarines but the game noted that it was both experimental in design and an incredibly stupid idea to actually use - but if you killed anything with it you'd get major props from the admiralty. Sounds plausible enough (minus the USN being happy if a sub captain actually used the thing), but I have no idea if that was another Clancy "experimental tech that didn't actually work out" or just an invention of the game.

Nenonen posted:

He means the dual purpose guns defending the Reich airspace aren't at the front shooting at tanks and Sturmoviks.

ArchangeI posted:

The German Type 212s supposedly have the ability to launch a short-range SAM based on the IRIS-T through the torpedo tubes while submerged. Guidance is fiber-optic and I'm guessing its really more as a defense against snooping helicopters than defense against full-blown naval patrol aircraft.

hogmartin posted:

There's also a Strela launcher on the Kilo-class in Dangerous Waters, I think.

I can't confirm or deny that submarines have anti-aircraft missiles in the small-arms locker, but surfacing and shooting it out with aircraft is not at all their forte, just hide hide hide.

Throatwarbler posted:

I would think that a sub can launch some kind of SAM if there was some way to accurately locate the aircraft and then guide the missile to it.

Cythereal posted:

Eh, the Red Storm Rising Stinger launcher wasn't something from the small-arms locker but a module attached to the conning tower with four individually sealed Stinger tubes that could be raised like a periscope above the water to fire on aircraft.

Nebakenezzer posted:

The Nazis did respond immediately - when the British Started bombing, Luftwaffe Gen. Kammhuber was put in charge of night defenses. While defending airspace (especially with a network of ground radar) was a very new thing, it was not long before German Night defenses were proportionate to the early threat. Kammhuber also started doing intruder missions with Ju 88s against british bombers at their most vulnerable - when they were landing after a mission. The losses from the intruders were so great that the British were thinking of packing in the entire night-bomber idea, until Hitler stepped in and ordered Kammhuber to stop doing these raids, because the German people needed to see the enemy bombers shot down.

Arquinsiel posted:

Until the end at least

Phobophilia posted:

how easy is it to depress an 88? and wouldnt one used for anti-plane and one for anti-armor be located differently

xthetenth posted:

88s were the main thing that turned Soviet counterattacks in 1941 into disasters, otherwise it was shooting at running gear and relying on poor Soviet infantry support.

Panzeh posted:

That's not really true- most of the Soviet tank losses in 1941 counterattacks were operational because the T-26 was just not that reliable and their stocks were really old. The pak 36 did have trouble with the heavier armor of the T-34 and KV-1 but there were not many of either type and there's more to operations than guns vs armor.

In particular the Germans were a lot more patient and had a better understanding of the use of AT guns operationally than the Soviets until later on when the Soviets learned to focus their AT firepower at the likely points of attack.

Phobophilia posted:

how easy is it to depress an 88? and wouldnt one used for anti-plane and one for anti-armor be located differently

Panzeh posted:

That's not really true- most of the Soviet tank losses in 1941 counterattacks were operational because the T-26 was just not that reliable and their stocks were really old. The pak 36 did have trouble with the heavier armor of the T-34 and KV-1 but there were not many of either type and there's more to operations than guns vs armor.

In particular the Germans were a lot more patient and had a better understanding of the use of AT guns operationally than the Soviets until later on when the Soviets learned to focus their AT firepower at the likely points of attack.

xthetenth posted:

I meant the ones where they burned through their stocks of KV-1 and T-34s, I'm a bad phone poster and should be ashamed. The T-26 and BT-7 attacks got chewed up by basically everything and everything, but the 88s were an important part of the Germans' tactics of taking a key point, forting up and waiting for the Soviets to come at them that made the counterattacks into a stressful afternoon for the Germans and a severe operational setback for the Soviets. The 88 being the primary source of firepower that could take on the modern tanks is a lot of why Katukov's stand by Mtensk was such a mess for the Germans because they had nothing that could be used on the offensive until 7.5 cm HEAT came along (and even that was iffy).

Frosted Flake posted:

I've read Stumbling Colossus and Colossus reborn, and am a big fan of Glantz's writing generally, but I cannot follow what was going on in the Soviet side of Barbarossa. The planned counter-attacks by large armoured reserves didn't accomplish anything, which is not at all what I would expect. What were the Soviets doing in those early few weeks of June-July?

quote:

Rather than jump into page 11 of the "German losses" thread - which is in the wrong forum anyway, since it isn't about scenarios but is largely about what happened in Russia - I thought I'd just start a new one here. It won't be about how the US won the war in Russia, nor about how Germany did. Nor will I cite outsized Russian losses as proof of their tactical mastery.

The subject is things I think I've figured out recently about what really happened in WW II in Russia. Others who have been here a while probably know my basic thesis and are tired of hearing it - that Germany lost a war of attrition by failing to mobilize its own economy, out of hubris. I haven't changed that basic conclusion. But I've noticed several new things, especially about 1941 (which I'll stick to here, for this first round).

The first big one I realized reading Glantz's more recent book on Barbarossa, mistitled "Before Stalingrad" (it actually ends with the early Battle for Moscow period, aka the end of 1941). He doesn't harp on it, but it comes through in various places. As usual with Glantz, it is not his own judgement that is most interesting but the depth of operational narrative and occasional flashes coming through from the original sources he (and so far, it appears, pretty much only he) has looked at. It is Russian logistical weakness.

The basic story of 1941 is the Germans chop the Russian army into pieces and gobble those pieces up. By the time they finish swallowing, there is a new Russian army in front of them. Repeat until the Germans miss a step and stall. People debate which step was the one that missed. But the overall picture is operational and tactical skill vs. "numbers", understood as including "supplies" or "reserves". Germans win at the front, Russians win in the rear.

It is an easy enough picture and it does capture the most essential bits. But on western expectations, mobilization and supply logistics are so closely connected, we just assume (I just assumed, in the past anyway) that the Russians are strong in all the rear areas, just lousy at the front. What comes through in flashes in Glantz is that this is not remotely so. Their combat service and support are god-awful, in 1941.

I think this is the real answer to the standing mystery, what happened to the Russian tank fleet? Glantz had shown from previous operational studies that basically half of it is gone by the end of the summer. At places in this one, it is quite clear they are outnumbered in armor throughout the fall battles. Even though the Germans don't have much (3300 to start and falling). Did the Germans just kill every tank in battle, because T-26s are so bad? I don't think so.

You find there are serious Russian counterattacks with armor. Tank corps strength, and prewar TOEs thus those are big formations. One operation on the Smolensk axis involves well over 1000 tanks. Occasionally there is some early effect, but never anything real to show for any of it. What's going on? Well, that is where the flashes come through. Whole mechanized corps report they are out of gas.

We are not just talking failure to use combined arms in a doctrinally correct manner. We are talking about launching attacks with major formations that push ahead for 2-3 days, and nobody has organized their regular resupply. As in, CSS non-existent.

An early case is Dubno, where initial lack of preparation is still plainly a factor. The operation looks sensible on a map and the forces available include mech formations with 3200 tanks (! - the size of the whole German fleet at the same date. Hardly penny packeting).

The narrative does cite lack of tank infantry cooperation. But it also says air attacks and swamps. Then 2 corps try together, without their motorized infantry division components. We hear of a force with 979 tanks, 426 of them modern models, reduce to 65 in a matter of days. Off in a footnote. "Largely due to technical problems". Another corps cites swamps and air. It reads like the Russian commanders are excuse factories. It also positively screams CF.

And it isn't the only one. Some of that may have been tanks never really operational to begin with, "breakdowns" that consist of the officer in charge asking if it will actually move for the first time since peace ended. But later ones, in front of Smolensk e.g., don't have that explanation really. But the same sort of thing keeps happening.

We read that 5th and 7th Mech have 1036 tanks apiece (!), and their attack fails. Glantz offers that many of them are T-26s or BTs (so what? If half of them were BTs it would still be awesome. Lack of adequate recon and tank infantry cooperation is cited for their failure, against the well prepared AT defense of - one panzer division. That is the footnote version. The main text explains that 7th Mech alone lost 832 tanks within five days and withdrew in disorder "beset also by a host of command and control and logistical problems". CF.

Higher ups gave nonsensical orders. Lower officers obeyed them to the letter. They drove off to point B. No gas arrived to meet them (the route may not have existed, the enemy might have been between, any of a hundred reasons the original order was errant nonsense). They screamed for gas. The front moved. The crews got out and walked. That is my diagnosis of some of these collosal stuff ups. That is how "swamps" consume entire Mech corps.

Later I see a pattern in the encirclement fights. The higher ups are issue counterattack orders, hold at all cost orders. They fear the whole front in collapsing, smell fear, think it is morale and nobody is willing to stand and fight. They are authorizing blocking detachments, cashiering officers for defeatism. The overall effect is to shove units west and drive them into the ground with spikes. When they should be backpeddling like a linebacker trying to get angle to the outside corner, they are thrusting their heads straight forward.

The predictable result is they run out of ammo. The resupply doesn't get as far forward as the men most willing to obey these orders and stand. The Germans get between, or there is no gas, or the guns have shot off their immediate ammo. And nobody knows where to get more. The "near rear" is complete chaos. Off in Moscow, off in the Urals, the trains may be running on time producing new guns and divisions. But 10, 20 miles behind a front, that is moving east by leaps, it is bedlam.

The result is a breakaway force. They can make new formations, but those thrust into action melt rapidly. The mech units are the hardest hit. They are the most dependent on reliable coordination, supply, and CSS. There isn't any. As a result, they fall apart within days, in action. Cadres are all that limp away from the easiest brushes with real combat.

The infantry divisions are much steadier. They die of ammo starvation a week after they are surrounded. There is no fire discipline. They don't know to horde ammo. If not surrounded they live, melting somewhat from casualties to be sure, but not declining in supply related readiness on a exponential half life of days, like the mech stuff does.

The big moves on the map aren't sound. Zhukov is almost relieved when he advises the correct backpedal in the south. He is given a reserve command, taken out of the line. The result is the Kiev pocket and a million men lost. As a rule, the placement of the new armies makes sense and the orders to the existing ones are stark raving mad. (Attack, stay west, fight, blow up Guderian's whole panzer army with an air strike, out of touch and panicky).

The German move south is not a mistake. It works, nearly breaks their back. The lost time is no biggie.

Glantz gives figures sufficient to watch the running strength of the Russian side, in its essentials. The Germans are wiping out over three quarters of a million men per month and the Russians are replacing it, but not gaining. The Russian force in the field has a half life on the order of 60 days. And it isn't the October mud pause that stops this - October is just as disastrous as the months before it, and the respite from the mud is too short to matter.

No, the key thing is that the Germans aren't getting anything themselves. 50k replacements in a time period when the Russians get more like 3 million. It is the sheer scale of the Russian mobilization rate that is the strategic shock to the Germans, and they don't even know it is happening. Every million men they wipe out, they think is the last. When it is just another month or so.

November is the month when Russian field strength soars. There is no Russian odds at that point. The Germans have 2.7 million men in the field and the Russians have only 2.2 million, on November 1. A month later the Germans are weaker not stronger, and the Russians have 4 million. The Russians just don't lose a million men in November - that is all it takes.

Did all of these men come from outnumbering the Germans 10 to 1? No not really. First, Russia's population before the war was about 150 million, Germany's was 80 million. That is 2 to 1, not 10. Second, Germany had help - Romania, Finland, millions of foreign workers in Germany to replace men serving in the army, etc. Third, The Germans overran areas that contained half of the Russian prewar population. While something like 12 million workers were evacuated and men inducted beforehand and refugees, still around 50 million people passed under German rule. There wasn't any numerical discrepancy left to speak of, in the two population bases, by November.

The numerical edge is there at the outset but gets cut to pieces. It has reversed by October and the Germans have an actual edge in numbers, despite no mobilization of their own. If they had mobilized as they attacked, they'd have had double the Russian force by November. What happens in November is the German logistics start giving out, that let's the loss rate fall and the front stabilize, the rear area chaos clears up somewhat (or at least, is matched by equal chaos in German logisitics by then), and front line strength soars.

Before then, the Russians had been treating formations like ammo. The rear area economy and mobilization machine are working - they aren't right up against the battle zone. They field and equip whole armies, and trains drop them at appropriate points ahead of the Germans. And they shift there, in total chaos, until destroyed - under cockamamie orders and utter confusion. The next lot are getting off the trains 100 miles further east.

Not anybody's preferred picture of things, I suspect. But vivid enough and believable enough.

I hope this is interesting.

...

Strategic errors like invading Russia without mobilizing the economy matter most, sure. But on several of the things you said, I don't agree BigDuke. You said two things in particular that I think miss the point. First that the farther back you go the worse the chaos, which is the opposite of what I think I've noticed recently as the real issue. And second, you said you don't think the Russians were capable of operational maneuver. Now, this just clearly isn't so. Glantz gives the actual operational orders in many cases. The conceptions are clear, and the scale is front to army, not tactical. They aren't frozen in place by command paralysis.

No, see, a misdiagnosis of the problem is occurring, and it is setting up one nasty feedback. Stavka gives orders that correctly place tank formations with 1000, 2000, 3000 tanks opposite the shoulders of German spearheads. They counterattack. They *evaporate*, not in massive attrition that reduces the Germans, just "gone in days", poof.

Stavka makes the diagnosis, "morale failure". It thinks everyone is just running away the instant they "see the elephant". It cashiers people, it orders more aggressive actions, it forbids withdrawal, it authorizes blocking detachments etc. It is not doing this instead of maneuvering operationally. It is doing this in response to clear operational conceptions falling apart utterly in days.

Operational conceptions rely on a certain predictable stability of performance of subunits. Sound, modern looking ones ask a lot from large armor formations. When the Germans hit a targeted sector with a panzer corps, the infantry division hit collases in hours and they are in the house. When a Russian tank corps hits a German infantry division, the tank corps disappears. The higher ups are looking at each other, going "WTF?"

The Russians take to giving orders to infantry armies instead because infantry armies are still on the map a week after an attack order.

The front and army level commanders get the message to fight to the last man because their superiors in Stavka (and, as they communicate this, at the front level) have the diagnosis "morale failure". There is a quote in Glantz, front commander to army commander "fight on stubbornly. Exclude any and every notion of a mobile defense. Revise your operational plan". The army commander had proposed a sensible fighting withdrawal. His front superior assumed any attempt to impliment such a thing would lead to immediate dissolving rout. The front commander was almost certainly wrong. Glantz suggests the front commander's main lesson to date was "Stavka required his forces to fight to the death and not abandon their positions".

What happens with the Russian operational conceptions? The ones they make when they still have armor try to do things you'd do if they were German units. And fail utterly, because the armor is not a sword but a floppy piece of string (that's on fire). The later ones are broad front infantry attacks at army to front scale. They have to be, because (1) only infantry formations last (2) smaller ones take losses when they attack instead of defend (3) huge infantry forces need sections of front or there isn't any front (which is often!). (There are second echelons, but forming and behind critical sectors, not stuff to throw away).

As for Russian operational defense conceptions, placement of an army (or whole front, even, occasionally) by rail behind the important sector works just fine. The army commanders and best front commanders see the need for withdrawals when there is such a need. But ring all the wrong alarm bells with their superiors. When the sensible thing to do is in fact to stand and fight stubbornly - at the operational level, mind - and Stavka has any reserves to send to make this realistic - then it works. Examples are Smolensk area in August (Guderian overstretched logistically, then heading elsewhere), right around Leningrad, Moscow front in November.

When instead the absolutely essential thing is to pull back an army or front, there is no lack of people seeing it on the map and advising it. But Stavka doesn't listen, most of the time - or too little, too late. E.g. the south is holding out better, the bright spot. Then an AG South spearhead gets through. The guys along the Romanian border should retreat to the Dnepr immediately. Instead Stavka is ordering Mech counterattacks that fail, without issuing such a withdraw order because it expects the Mech to either work, or at least smash into the Germans and halt both in large scale attrition.

But oops, they just disappear instead, and the Germans push on. Commanders scream to pull the men back. Stavka smells defeatism. Some armies are given the order but rather too late. (Meanwhile, Zhukov, for being right, is off with the Moscow reserve front instead of Southwestern). Barely out of that hook (several armies don't make it), Guderian comes down from the north with a larger one.

This is supposed to be some mistake, to monday morning QBs. It isn't, it creates the worst command crisis of the war on the Russian side. Staff tells Stalin southwestern front must withdraw. "Stalin reproached us, saying that like Budenny we took the path of least resistence - retreating instead of beating the enemy". They wring half measures out of him - 2 armies can pull back a little. We must abandon Kiev - rage. Orders to wipe out Guderian, utterly unreal (an air strike? A few units tossed in his path?).

Front commander says reserves must be sent to slow him and a general withdraw ordered. Moscow, for Stalin, says they must fight from existing positions. His direction superior seconds the motion. Result? "Do not abandon Kiev" and the direction commander is relieved. His successor says he'll hold Kiev, great. SW front chief of staff can't be fooled, says the result will be disaster within days. Result -

"Major General Tupikov has submitted a panicky report to the general staff. On the contrary, the situation requires the maintenance of extreme coolness and steadfastness on the part of commanders at all levels. Avoid panic... You must compel (2 army commanders) to cease their withdrawal. You must instill the entire front with the necessity to fight on stubbornly..."

This surreal order is issued as the trap closes. They fight as stubbornly as they please for the week their ammo lasts, then collapse to nothing. Two thirds of a million men, a million if you count the battles that lead to it. Including that pesky staff general who said "I told you so".

That is what I mean by nonsense orders to operate under. The high command thinks the front line soldiers are just running away and does not understand why its sensible seeming orders have lost the war. The front line can't get the high command to issue realistic orders that it can actually impliment.

The whole planning loop depended on a level of performance from operations ordered, that the close to front CSS and C3 could not deliver. The resulting failure set of one off the world's great blame games, which then ricocheted through the Russian command structure for the whole fall campaign, wrecking everything it touched.

This is not just the result of tanks in the rear spreading panic - on the contrary, very often the tanks are in the rear because of it (withdrawals not authorized etc). And panic is exactly the wrong diagnosis, what the high command thought, and was so wrong about. (Proof - how the infantry armies fight around Smolensk etc). No, a prior failure of subunits to perform as expected wrecks planning and sets up collossal distrust (on a fertile and well plowed field for it) and miscommunication.

There are some sound plans at Stavka, but they ask too much of the front line forces. There is no lack of bravery in the front line forces - if anything they aren't scared enough and are fighting too far to the west instead of backpeddling. The disconnect comes from incredulity over the huge disparity in observed unit performance, that German tank corps with 300 tanks create breakthroughs at will, and Russian mech corps with 1000 tanks disappear days after they are committed to actions that look just as sensible on a map.

World's biggest CF, that's how that disparity got started. That at any rate is my present opinion.

...

Purges and reorganization may have something to do with it, and a general level of strategic surprise, perhaps. But my diagnosis, CSS failure for the mech units in particular, does not turn on those. They may have contribute to it. I think we just underestimate how hard it is to do correctly and how much rides on it.

What is CSS for a modern mobile force, and its supporting C3? It is all the management level planning and gritty detail involved in making sure everything gets where it is needed just before it is needed, in an elaborate waltz. It is all those miles of tanker trucks you see in the desert (recent times), the forward fuel supply points, planned tank laagers every night. It is calculating road space and reconned routes, realistic march schedules, proper interleaving of arms and formations, and every sort of rear support at the appointed place when it is needed. It is lots of trucks actually running every day and bringing everything right where it is needed and when.

Now, I had a previous insight about one of the "rate determiners" for the Russians, early, reading their staff study of the battle of Moscow, on a different subject. Artillery, its proper use and coordination with other arms, and the limits on it. We all know the Russians got a lot better at that over the course of the war. I was looking in part (previously, understand) for why it was weak early. I found some of the expected things, and some things a bit similar to the above. But also one point that just floored me when I realized it.

We have a bright general staff officer analysing why the front line units didn't get more out of their arty. They were always using it direct, and it got knocked out faster or didn't get away if they didn't win, more often. He dug a little into why. Answer, most of the units didn't have anybody to coordinate indirect fire. What was the hold up? Nobody in the typical battery even knew trig. (Whoa. Slow down there.)

The smart kids who knew trig were either off designing new airplanes or doing planning economics. They weren't out with the firing batteries calculating angles for firing solutions. If the gunners couldn't see the fall of shot, they had no idea how to point the guns to hit things. "What's an arctan, Dmitry? Darned if I know." Understand, I am talking early, low level units. This was one reason the Russians centralized guns so much. It made the most of the scarcest factor, trained technical personnel.

Ok, now imagine you are in charge of a Russian 1941 Mech corps. A monster of a formation, 3 divisions - two tank (very tank heavy ones) one motorized infantry plus supporting arms - up to 1000 AFVs. And just suppose you have your understudy staff officer Yvgeny, bright but just the one and fifteen years your junior, half a dozen high school graduates (with four pens, one typewriter and a pack of index cards), a support pool that looks like a mom-n-pop's accounts receivable department, and any desired quantity of bodyguards and no-necks to fetch and carry.

Now your mission is, get the majority of your (2000+ vehicle) combat force in integrated subunits to move 150 miles through a mud-track criss-crossed swampy forest (don't show up piecemeal), make sure everyone has gas, repair units within a few miles of whoever needs it, ammo POL maintenance (watch out for that Messerschmidt!) within 48 hours.

And oh, a new report just came in, it turns out the last one (when you gave your previous orders) was based on information 12 hours old, and actually the Germans have reached Wheresville (Yvgeny, where is Wheresville? You have the map, right?) and cut the road to Ohnosk.

The thing that was puzzling me is the common explanation is just "obsolete tanks" and this made no sense to me. That should at least result in large scale attrition to the Germans as they are taken out. Moreover, the BTs were about as good as the lighter half of the stuff the Germans were riding around in. And the modern stuff put the heavier half of the German fleet to shame, and outnumbered it.

I kept looking for where these heavy half, were. I mean, they had as many KVs and T-34s as the Germans had IVs, IIIs, and StuG, and they are way better. You get a few "checked by..." from tiny numbers of them from time to time, but not operational results. I was thinking, "look, if the T-26s were paperweights you'd still have a monster tank fleet. How can you get nothing out of the good half, just because you also have a bad half? How can having a T-26 and a T-34 be worse than just having the T-34?

Answer - the T-26 can burn your gas, take up your road space, take all your commander's time and babysitting to shepherd hither and yon on the mud trails, etc. Especially if you don't remotely have any of those things to go around.

What does Stavka do? They abolish the Mech corps. This is usually regarded as a big step back to penny packet thinking, but I believe it was correct, indeed absolutely essential. It is vastly harder to move a 1000 AFV glob in a coordinated fashion than it is to move a brigade of 50 T-34s. A reliable brigade of T-34s at the right place and time is more valuable than a wallowing CF of an out-of-gas Mech corps. Let alone half a dozen of those brigades.

This retied the tanks to the infantry formations. Which were lasting long enough to protect and use them. It restored tank infantry cooperation. (Why wasn't there in the mech corps? They had motorized divisions, right? They did, but often left them behind. More on that below). It gave the mobile commander a managable CSS task. It reduced the strain on whatever passed for roads in the area. It put that task more within the likely managerial capacities of Yvgeny and company.

Yes, eventually men who had learned how to manage these brigades and mesh their fighting with infantry formations they supported, had to learn further, how to coordinate several of them as a mech "corps" - on more like a division scale. And once those were behaving reliably (though still pushed too hard, to supply failure, in some rather important instances e.g. in 1942-3), higher muckity mucks could push around whole tank armies again. But the road to all of that was long, a lot had to be learned on the way, and no the men did not remotely know how to do any of it in the summer and fall of 1941.

As for why some of the mech corps trashed their own doctrine and lost tank infantry cooperation, there are some occasional tidbits on the subject in Glantz. Truck shortages cited. Not a lot of detail, but if CSS is the real culprit it will start to make sense.

Which unit has priority for road space? What is the most urgent task for trucks, hauling infantry or hauling gas? In CF supply and C3 conditions, are you stronger for having an extra 1000 soft vehicles strung out on the roads under the Luftwaffe, burning gas? An extra division of men to coordinate and supply? A whole extra passel of muckity mucks insisting on Y and Z once things fall behind plan?

The answer is probably yes, anyway. Triage, leave the weaker tanks, keep combined arms. But green commanders aren't going to see it that way. To simplify, they subordinate everything to getting tanks to A. They manage to get tanks to A. A is a road to nowhere. And a mech corps is eaten by the swamp monster.

Are people who would be factory managers or clerks in a western economy, middling officers in a Russian mechanized corps, in 1941? Is that sort of managerial skill selected for? Remember that one needs in particular to be able to improvise, to plan in detail but also to throw away the plan the instant friction set in.

Why do we have daily returns of tank strength for every German mobile formation, and on the other hand only get occasional end-of-operation, front-wide assessments by elaborate staff studies, on the Russian side? Somebody in the former is presenting a (readable, concise) sheet of paper every day to a professional staffer, who informs the CO exactly what strength he may expect for the coming task. Is are being dotted and Ts crossed.

As a result, German units have notoriously long tails per unit of teeth. Later when they are on the defensive and need trench strength above all, that will come back to bite them. But as a result their modern mech units also go exactly where you tell them to go, arrive on time in a coordinated fashion - and do not get eaten by swamp monsters.

...

BigDuke - fair enough on different ways of trying to make the same point. Mine was that the upper level line commanders knew where to order their units to go. There is such a thing as just failing to think operationally, being reactive and myopic and tactical instead. And leaders can just be lost as to what the right move is, on that scale.

That wasn't the problem. The army and front commanders knew how to play "big chess". The pieces fell apart on them, and the high command overreacted to it by making dumb moves that plenty of the advisors knew where dumb the moment they were made.

On the rear area views, I wasn't talking about perceptions. All commanders have tendency to become excuse factories in any large failure. I meant that objectively, the Russian economy was working much better than anything else in the picture - they were mobilizing, the Germans weren't; they got massive quantities of war material; they fielded new armies reliably and got them where they were needed, strategically speaking. Not the source of failure. But there undoubtedly was chaos and confusion in what I called the "near rear" - roughly, railhead to front line in the active sectors.

Glider - yes that is basically my thesis. Friction complicates CSS and the C3 needed to deal with it. You need much more robust systems to deal with the massive management and coordination problems involved in moving large modern formations around, under friction, than the move anything around in peacetime or than to move simpler infantry formations around under wartime friction.

On an exercise, the focus is on the line commanders and their decisions, as well as simply testing whether everyone more or less knows their job. The higher ups want to see their units respond to commands. It is not typical to deliberately "stress" CSS in a peacetime exercise. More of them are conducted in open plain regions than in swampy forests with limited road nets. Commanders know about them months in advance. Objectives are laid down with cartoon clarity. Reactions to real moves by the enemy are typically restricted to the front line forces themselves. Even today, we send brigades through the NTC (far more realistic training than anything anybody did in the past), not army groups, and they prepare for months. It is the only relevant thing happening. Nobody is getting killed (unless they tell Stalin jokes).

Now, the CSS, C3, and supply tasks involved under wartime friction are a much tougher problem. The whole economy is stressed. There are occasional shortages of everything. Everything wanted is desperately needed someplace else, too. Everything is urgent, a scramble. People are dying en masse, and not standing on ceremony about trying to avoid it. Every time the situation changes, plans fracture - by which I mean, parts do not make sense, parts adapt to the new information and change, while others need to but do not. Throwing them out of coordination with each other. When they were meant to be interlocking parts.

Too abstract. The fuel resupply point for 3rd battalion is Heresk. Tanks will laager there from 6 PM on. Maintenance workshops set up at the south end of the town. Night security is the responsibility of the tank rider company commander. 456th truck company to pick up fuel at Howsaboutoe on the rail line by 4 PM, deliver and unload before 6. 60,000 gal. In peacetime, a walk in the park.

But 3rd battalion was in combat today. It is needed at the front 15 miles from Heresk. The likely next threatened point is 10 miles to the right, but the only road to that threatened point that hasn't been cut yet is the Cowsapop trail, through the village of Saywhatski. The south end of Heresk is a smoking crater because a Stuka visited this morning. There are German infantry in the woods 3 miles west of Heresk. The SMG company took heavy casualties in today's fighting. The 456th truck company was grabbed for another urgent task at 1 PM, will be free by 5 if all goes well, but 30 miles from Howaboutoe. The train is waiting on the siding.

It is now 3 PM. What new orders do you give to correct the situation? What happens when a third of the units involve get the new orders, a third don't and stick to the plan, and a third think its is all a stuff up and nonsense and stand around shouting at each other and proposing disconnected expedients to deal with their own little corner of the problem? And what is Yvgeny going to be able to do about all of it with the 4 pens and the pack of index cards and less than 3 hours? When something is cobbled together anyway, how much harder will the next two days park walks be because of things that went wrong today?

That is the solvable problem. Now try it with the same command resources, but a 1000 AFV tank corps spread over 40 miles with 10-30 of those problems happening simultaneously. You can have help - 10 different cooks proposing their solutions in parallel without consulting each other, and line subordinates implimenting half those proposals by the time you hear of them. When these things are tackled brilliantly nobody much notices. When they fail badly enough, they can have much bigger consequences than we might have thought. That's the theory.


...

I'd imagine that command economy training was something of a drawback, yes. It teaches coordination via a plan, rather than via decentralized incentives reacted to intelligently by independent actors at all levels. Managerially, it rewards control centralization. It is possible to plan things thoroughly that way, but it is work, and it can be too rigid when friction is high.

From my reading of later successes in operational handling of tank and mech brigades and corps, I think the Russians learned individual initiative well enough, whatever background they had, when faced with the empirical problems themselves. Men learn when they have to do something. But in 1941, they hadn't had time to yet. A few lessons from Manchuria, Finland, the Poland occupation. But the Germans were something different, in scale, logistic stress, coordination problems.

Obviously it does not help to be losing catastrophically. That's a feedback, but something was wrong (deeply) with the mech portion of the army from the start, that played a major part in the early losing. (Dubno e.g.)

Eventually the Russians improved their mech arm. They broke through axis minor lines when they hit them, by late 1942. They broke through German lines in mid 43, and kept whole army groups backpeddling furiously in crisis management mode, on both occasions. Those are not signs of perennial incapacity.

But there are other cases where the Russians clearly expected their units to perform on par with German counterparts, and were stunned when they didn't. Kharkov in early 1942 looks fine on a map, but was a disaster. Breakthrough forces lost to thin infantry division defenses. The German armor was available to counterattack on the flanks because it wasn't stressed (or often, needed) to blunt Russian mech forces at their points of attack. Mars featured massive failures of mech forces in wooded terrain, with mobile German reserves playing a larger role. The exploitation after Stalingrad was in many cases pushed to the point of logistic failure, with tank brigades stalled beyond range of support. There is a reason Manstein's counter was so effective, in the late winter.

Overall, I think they were getting a lot better at it, but gradually. Their formation sizes move, too. (Brigades occasionally work in front of Moscow, regularly work in late 42 and on. Corps work late 42 some of the time, reliably in 43). The mech officers are clearly maturing. It probably helps to have a lot more trucks, not to be retreating all the time.

The Russians still had very high armor losses throughout the war. Some of that is undoubtedly just effective German weapons and tactics. Some of it pretty much has to be less than brilliant Russian armor tactics. And I don't doubt that a portion is also less effective CSS than the Germans had or than the US had. I've read military economists who noted that Russian planners considered tanks more like ammo and designed them for short operational lives - certainly compared to the Germans, who kept them around like luggage. (Pz III shorts in Normandy, French tanks...)

I suspect the biggest hold up in 1941 was simply a shortage of competent technical personnel. I don't put that down to purges, though they can't have helped. The whole Russian social structure had this hold up. It was a distinctly less advanced society in many ways. Which is not a comment on their system of government, just an historical reality.

Half the population was engaged in agriculture. Large portions of it could not read. An educated specialist in the west means a man with a university education and years of formal military schooling. An educated specialist, anywhere but the peaks of command or economic control or political bodies, in Russia in 1941, meant somebody who had graduated from high school and had a couple of years on the job training. The average educational standard was more like "finished 8th grade and can read".

Nothing dumb about the average, do not misunderstand. In the west we associate poor levels of formal education with failure to have passed various selective screens. It had no such connotation in Russia in 1941. It was a poorer society, and smart men might live out their lives as farmers or truck drivers. Opportunity was rare.

Among the officer corps, I suspect the selection of war produced most of the improvement. Higher ups who failed rapidly lost their places. Often the Germans just took them out along with their units as the price of their failures. Others were relieved. Formations were turning over rapidly, and the whole army was expanding. So anyone doing anything sensible and still alive, must have gone up the ranks like a rocket. Everyone is learning more about how it works, and those who've figured it out are reaching the positions from which they can make their knowledge effective. But like any institutional learning process, that takes time and proceeds unevenly.

That at any rate is my assessment of the trajectory of the Russian mech arm, on the human "managerial" side.

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Just tell it that it'll probably get melted down for scrap in a couple years.

Frosted Flake posted:

I've read Stumbling Colossus and Colossus reborn, and am a big fan of Glantz's writing generally, but I cannot follow what was going on in the Soviet side of Barbarossa. The planned counter-attacks by large armoured reserves didn't accomplish anything, which is not at all what I would expect. What were the Soviets doing in those early few weeks of June-July?

quote:

I'm also curious to learn more about NKVD border guards. In the same book I'll read that the border guard formations were all destroyed before the end of 1941, but then that border guard units were involved in the battle for Berlin in 1945? Were these surviving units? Cadres and men on leave/hospital? Did the Soviets raise new border guard regiments while being invaded?

quote:

There are also apparently two kinds of Naval Infantry regiment, that has me scratching my head. Some are sailors fighting as infantry and some are trained marines?

gohuskies posted:

Jason Cawley on the Battlefront forums has a good series of posts on how failings by staff and by combat supply and services really did in the Soviet armored efforts in 1941. It's a lot of text but I think it makes a strong case. It wasn't the power of the 88s or tactical issues - it was a fundamental disconnect with the difficulty of using armor in WW2 warfare and the operational ability to execute.

Phobophilia posted:

how easy is it to depress an 88? and wouldnt one used for anti-plane and one for anti-armor be located differently

pthighs posted:

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Although that brings up a question: why didn't the 88 get re-used a lot, like so much other German hardware? I mean, the Israelis used the crap out of K98s in their early years, the French army rebuilt itself on captured German stuff*, and I think a bunch of Balkan powers did too, but the only major use of the 88 is in the Yugoslav wars of the '90s. What gives, if they were such a be-all-end-all in WWII? Were flak and AT guns just generally obsoleted really quick?


* Source: I think I heard this once, or imagined it while drunk on absinthe.

Phobophilia posted:

how easy is it to depress an 88?

Arquinsiel posted:

Until the end at least

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Although that brings up a question: why didn't the 88 get re-used a lot, like so much other German hardware? I mean, the Israelis used the crap out of K98s in their early years, the French army rebuilt itself on captured German stuff*, and I think a bunch of Balkan powers did too, but the only major use of the 88 is in the Yugoslav wars of the '90s. What gives, if they were such a be-all-end-all in WWII? Were flak and AT guns just generally obsoleted really quick?


* Source: I think I heard this once, or imagined it while drunk on absinthe.

lenoon posted:

I think the thing with the 1939-41 RAF bombings were that they might well have been brushed off with exactly that - it really would have been "that single bomber flying over your house and dropping it's bombs in the field over the hill". I don't know how much of a response Germany had to the early long range campaigns, but (and I'm presuming here) their records of the attacks must have pointed towards their lack of efficiency. The Butt report (transcription) is really that astonishing, give it a read!. It's far too easy to forget the incredible difficulty the pre bomber-stream RAF had in even getting to within a couple of miles of the targets. Wikipedia gives a dead link to post-war reports drawn up by the Germans, so I can't check the accuracy, but it says "49℅ of RAF Bomber Command's bombs dropped between May 1940 and May 1941 fell in open country", and once combined with mechanical failure and >5 mile inaccuracy the % of bombs falling on any target, let alone the mission target is vanishingly small.

I feel like every 20 pages or so someone brings up RAF early war bombing as efficient or useful on some new metric, "oh but it did this!", "oh but actually it did x, y, z, caused redirected a, b, c". If it did anything it was the propaganda boost for Britain at home and abroad, and the opposite effect for Germany. I don't know whether it caused a significant shift in allocated resources - though I guess presuming that it didn't is expecting the Nazis to be able to string together these concepts of "effect" and "efficient response", when 1933-45 shows that that was far, far beyond them.

I'm sure Germany did respond, but the response was (probably? possibly?) proportionate to the intelligence on the threat of allied bombing, which did virtually bugger all. Sure did hit the channel ports though.

gohuskies posted:

Jason Cawley on the Battlefront forums has a good series of posts on how failings by staff and by combat supply and services really did in the Soviet armored efforts in 1941. It's a lot of text but I think it makes a strong case. It wasn't the power of the 88s or tactical issues - it was a fundamental disconnect with the difficulty of using armor in WW2 warfare and the operational ability to execute.

Grand Prize Winner posted:

Although that brings up a question: why didn't the 88 get re-used a lot, like so much other German hardware? I mean, the Israelis used the crap out of K98s in their early years, the French army rebuilt itself on captured German stuff*, and I think a bunch of Balkan powers did too, but the only major use of the 88 is in the Yugoslav wars of the '90s. What gives, if they were such a be-all-end-all in WWII? Were flak and AT guns just generally obsoleted really quick?

Koramei posted:

People have said in this thread numerous times that Nazi Germany didn't go into a full war footing until incredibly late, because they were worried about discontent at home.

Comstar posted:

This post just blew my mind. Is there any books that go into detail on this?

Also, there need be a SCP about Russian Swamp Monsters eating entire Mechanized Tank Corps in mid-1941. "What do you mean we lost 1000 tanks to a swamp?!?!.

Nenonen posted:

On top of what's been said, the 8.8 FlaK 18/36 wasn't all that unique, all nations had heavy 85-90mm AA guns that could and at times would be turned into ground use, and they too evolved into tank guns. The German 88 just stood out because for a brief time it was the only gun that could reliably dent a Matilda or KV (and because war nerds swoon over German technology).

FAUXTON posted:

Every time someone tries claiming Germany wasn't mobilized until the late war I want to sit them down and play them that guy's presentation about how utterly shitballs inefficient the German tank factories were.

They were mobilized, they just turned out like 3 tigers a day at full capacity.

Alchenar posted:

Also people tend to over emphasise the 'AA gun' bit and forget that the reason they were deployable against Matildas and KVs was because they were issued with AT shells, and the reason that those AT shells were designed, procured and issued was that it was always anticipated they could be used in a direct fire ground role.

gohuskies posted:

Jason Cawley on the Battlefront forums has a good series of posts on how failings by staff and by combat supply and services really did in the Soviet armored efforts in 1941. It's a lot of text but I think it makes a strong case. It wasn't the power of the 88s or tactical issues - it was a fundamental disconnect with the difficulty of using armor in WW2 warfare and the operational ability to execute.

Yooper posted:

Any good books that cover the industrial side of things?

I work in a metalworking manufacturing facility and I find it absolutely mind boggling that Germany could produce anything of any tolerance or quality in those conditions. A Tiger being made by Germans is one thing, but all of the screws, nuts, bolts, shafts, and miscellaneous stuff had to be made by imported labor. Germany has always had a good machine tool industry, but holy poo poo, they must have worked overtime to cover all of the losses to air raids and such.

my dad posted:

That's a rather interesting read.

Ensign Expendable, anything to comment about this?

Frosted Flake posted:

That was amazing thank you!

As an artilleryman, reading Guns Against the Reich: Memoirs of an Artillery Officer on the Eastern Front was very depressing for the reasons you described. Batteries were wandering around the front, occasionally bumped into panzers while on the march, deployed on the forward slopes of hills and were then unable to move away from counter-battery fires or attacks. I had thought that the 76mm F-22's would have been very effective at holding up some of the tank advances, after all they were the later PaK 39(r) which the Germans used to good effect. Of course, all the AP ammo in the world won't save you from it's Moscow warehouse or if you get lost in the dark and stumble into the Germans.

e: Come to think of it, this also explains how the Germans managed to capture so many Soviet weapons they had them added to the inventory as standard types.


I don't think the Germans cared about that particular part too much.