Profile of coh2player

^^

The Soviets achieved air supremacy in 1943. Even in citadel, the concentrated LW only achieved air parity in that sector. The failure of Barbarossa, Blau, Stalingrad, and the Air war in the west reduced LW presence dramatically.

Even as early as the winter of 1941, the Soviets were already making making cuts for their ambitions for their anti-aircraft defense system, as the LW was not that much of a threat unless it was massed in a 'schwerpunkt', the specialty of LW-4 under von Richthofen.

Stalin and STAVKA also believed that the German was finished, and they actually underestimated the abilities of the axis which lend to some operational blunders in the winter-spring of 1942.

I was under the impression that the Soviets compensated for that with a lot of close air support, especially as the war progressed.

That, but tactical air support with the help of air force liaison personnel was not enough and not reliable enough. The key thing was the 'forward detachment', which was a combined armed battlegroup that resembled German Kampfgruppe or US Combat Command in design and deployment.

The Forward detachment was the exploitation weapon of their Tank armies, and generally had the concentrated armor, communications , and mechanized assets that the richer western armies had but on a much smaller scale (brigade sized). The tank corps and the mech. corps were overall formidable, but comparably blunter weapons- lots of tanks, too little mobile infantry and support assets.

Strategically and operationally, Soviet generalship and command of their tank armies were on the ball by 1943. They understand their capabilities and the abilities of their enemies, and this made them successful. They paid attention to logistics and made their operations work. The Germans cannot claim this at all- and this is where they were weak. They made many organizational mistakes in their attitionist quest for high kill ratios which lost them all the ground. Their operations tended to have little strategic sense in the USSR.

Soviet losses were high due to their low cost organization building doctrine. They never intended to make their army highly expensive, low casualty, high power tactical units with 2-3 years of formation like the USA or CW.

Soviet armored formations were generally much weaker than German formations in motorized infantry, armored reconnaissance, communication systems, and mechanized infantry support. They had no indirect fire self-propelled artillery companies like the Germans did post 1943 (wespe, hummel, etc.) and made up for it with direct fire regiments (SU/ISU-122/152, etc.) which had to expose themselves to deliver their fire support. The army had a lot of tanks, but relatively few motorized combat troops and support for the tanks.

The tanks that were lost were easily replaced in offensives and re-crewed with old and new crews. An abandoned tank has the entire crew still intact. A knocked out tank has (generally) 3 operational men left.

i have some doubts about this. even in 1944 the soviets lost 13 k t-34's in the battle of Berlin they lost 2 entire tank armies . It simply doesnt match up what your saying.

The soviets saw tanks as consumables. Their T-34s were probably close to the cost of a Panzer I or II as far as factor inputs go.

Much of the AFV park for the Germans did not even have a turret in 44'. The rationale for choosing the Sherman also extended to the belief that the Germans would have few panthers and tigers. They were partially correct- the Germans had few tigers but modest numbers of panthers (1 battalion out of 2 outfitted in some panzer divisions).


ImperialDane inserts historical tidbits in his casts for god fun and to fill dead time; but the game and ww2 videogames in general has little to do with reality. :-p

So is the conclusion for Allied general staff thinking as follows:

"We have preponderance of air power. Our battle tanks are not as good as the Axis, but our air power will counter this. We know from Ultra that the Axis tanks have maintenance problems, so the Allied tankers must do the best they can, if we can turn out sufficient replacement tanks?"

I fear that this has to be the conclusion.

If you've studied it, it's true. Much of the German tank park was lost via abandonment as well- real war isn't a videogame (super offtopic)

The collapse of the soviet mechanized corps saw most of Soviet union's armor lost in the first 2 weeks of the war- to abandonment.

The soviet winter counteroffensive of 1942-1943- while mostly successful, most Soviet tanks were also lost to abandonment rather than enemy fire as the logistics situation began collapsing by early 1943.

It's simply wrong to consider all or almost all AFV losses as 'due to enemy fire'.

LLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Beyond that- there was few, if any German divisions that were up to US/CW standards in terms of combat effectiveness in 1944-1945.

There was the 2nd, 116th, 11th, and 21st that posed the most problems- that's about it. The wehrmacht was inferior at a qualitative level as well during this point in time.

Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction is a good illustration of the economic problems facing the Reich and illustrates quite well why the German war effort was doomed to fail. With all that said, I think you're being awfully dismissive of the Allied efforts in the war. They did not simply zerg rush the Germans with densely packed infantry. It's particularly insulting to the Soviet forces, who executed some of the most brilliant offensives in history in the final years of the war to decisively crush the German war machine.

I'm a senior contributor to a WW2 forum and I read books. You learn about WW2 via videogames? no wonder

To close this thread-in-a-thread:

just google "human wave doctrine" or play hearts of iron 3 and you understand why the allies/soviet union won the war.
.