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WWII–-75th ANNIVERSARY DISCUSSION--#34---MAY 1942 (2)

World War II History

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RJL518
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The Second Battle of Kharkov was an Axis counter-offensive in the region around Kharkov (now Kharkiv)[8] against the Red Army Izium bridgehead offensive conducted 12–28 May 1942, on the Eastern Front during World War II. Its objective was to eliminate the Izium bridgehead over Seversky Donets or the “Barvenkovo bulge” (Russian: Барвенковский выступ) which was one of the Soviet offensive’s staging areas. After a winter counter-offensive that drove German troops away from Moscow and also depleted the Red Army’s reserves, the Kharkov offensive was a new Soviet attempt to expand upon their strategic initiative, although it failed to secure a significant element of surprise.

On 12 May 1942, Soviet forces under the command of Marshal Semyon Timoshenko launched an offensive against the German 6th Army from a salient established during the winter counter-offensive. After initial promising signs, the offensive was stopped by German counterattacks. Critical errors by several staff officers and by Joseph Stalin, who failed to accurately estimate the 6th Army’s potential and overestimated their own newly trained forces, led to a German pincer attack which cut off advancing Soviet troops from the rest of the front. The operation caused almost 300,000 Soviet casualties compared to just 20,000 for the Germans and their allies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Kharkov

Was Stalin right to order this operation against oncoming German forces on the Eastern front?
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June 4 1942 the battle of Midway begins.

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• • • captainwalker

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https://www.facebook.com/USPacificFleet/videos/10159185622247970
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WWII Vet Receives Bronze Star 75 Years Later

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• • • CWO Marc

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Here’s an interesting news story from yesterday. For technology buffs, note that Mr. Smoyer posed in front of a Sherman tank for the occasion (which was a nice touch), but that the tank in which he served as a gunner, and with which he destroyed a Panther, was a Pershing, a late-war 90mm-gunned well-armoured US tank which could take on the Panther on better terms than the thinly-armoured 75mm-gunned Sherman.

Published Wednesday, September 18, 201
World War II veteran Clarence Smoyer, 96, receives the Bronze Star from U.S. Army Maj. Peter Semanoff at the World War II Memorial, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, in Washington. Smoyer fought with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Division, nicknamed the Spearhead Division. In 1945, he defeated a German Panther tank near the cathedral in Cologne, Germany — a dramatic duel filmed by an Army cameraman that was seen all over the world.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/the-u-s-hero-of-cologne-receives-his-bronze-star-75-years-late-1.4599606
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WWII–-75th ANNIVERSARY DISCUSSION--#26---SEPTEMBER 1941

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• • • RJL518

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Germany had essentially two options here. 1) Capture the city quickly, before the defenses could be built up. 2) Capture it via siege.

I don’t think that creating an urban combat situation, in which Germany attempted to capture the city street by street, would have been viable. In typical combat situations German soldiers had a 3:1 or 4:1 advantage in combat effectiveness over their Soviet counterparts. But in urban, street-to-street fighting the ratio was about 1:1. Germany could not afford anything even remotely approaching that 1:1 ratio, which is why something other than street-to-street fighting was necessary.

Von Manstein wrote that during the Barbarossa operation of '41 there had been a perfectly good opportunity to take Leningrad. But that this was wasted, allowing the Soviets to fortify it.

The other option would have been to do a better job of putting it under siege. This would have entailed tightening the cordon around the city, preventing just about anything from making it through. I think there was a case when Germany attempted exactly that. However, at the same time the Soviets were attempting to break the siege, so each side’s offensive encountered the other’s. From a tactical view there may have been more Germany could have done. But I think the real problem was strategic: the Soviet Union had too much military strength. A discussion on how to address that problem is probably outside the scope of this thread.
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WW2 75th Anniversary Poll–-#9--APRIL 1940

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• • • RJL518

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In his history of the war Churchill expresses regret that operation Jupiter, the liberation of Norway, never was carried out. The Brits would never have invaded Sweden.
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Miniature WWII Armoured Train

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• • • CWO Marc

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Here’s an odd item I came across. During WWII, the narrow-gauge Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (located in Kent) operated a miniature armoured train, which it used to patrol the coast in case of invasion. It carried two Boys anti-tank rifles and four Lewis machine guns, and was manned by the 6th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. It supposedly shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109, a Heinkel He 111 and a Dornier Do 17. There are two pictures of it here:

http://liberalengland.blogspot.ca/2009/05/romey-hythe-dymchurch-goes-to-war.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romney,_Hythe_and_Dymchurch_armoured_train.jpg
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Creating a historically accurate WWII game

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• • • KurtGodel7

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@KurtGodel7:

@Red:

Perhaps the greatest A&A gameplay weakness is that tanks and aircraft don’t take attrition losses.Â Historically, even very successful attacks severely depleted these forces.Â Examples would be heavy losses in Poland and France as well as pilot/aircraft losses in several of the major early war IJN/USN encounters.Â

Aircraft were particularly prone to heavy attrition just operating.Â And they were easy to target in suprise attacks at the outbreak of war.Â But since the game allows them to be chosen last they don’t attrit.Â Plus they can be held away from the front.Â This is why the USSR’s air force is almost completely absent in the initial placement.

Perhaps the greatest A&A gameplay weakness is that tanks and aircraft don’t take attrition losses.

They do in my rules set!Â 8-) Every round of ground or naval combat begins with the dogfight phase. In the dogfight phase, all units present fire at their air combat values. Any hits you receive must be applied to air units. Once you have applied a single anti-air hit to one of your air units, you must apply additional hits to that same unit until it’s dead, or until combat ends. (The same is true if you apply an anti-land hit to one of your land units, an anti-naval hit to one of your ships, or an anti-sub hit to one of your submarines.)

There are other ways aircraft can be destroyed as well. In strategic bombing raids, there is one round of dogfight phase, followed by strategic bombers attacking their targets using their strategic bombing values. Strategic bombing raids do permanent damage. For every ten points of damage a production facility experiences in a strategic bombing raid, it is reduced by one level. While nations receive some money from territory income, most of their late game production will come from production facilities. A sufficiently powerful strategic bombing offensive can destroy all those facilities; as well as the underlying cities in which they would exist. The correct defense against a strategic bombing offensive is to build air superiority planes; such as piston fighters or jet fighters.

There is a second way of defending oneself from strategic bombing raids: airfield attacks. To initiate an airfield attack, send your planes to a space with enemy aircraft, and declare an airfield attack. There will be two rounds of dogfight phase. Any of your planes which survived that dogfight may launch one attack against enemy aircraft, using their land combat values.

Interesting. At one time I had an idea for a variant of A&A where unit placement was at the start of your turn and the purchase phase was at the end. The units purchased were considered “in production” and set aside until placement at the beginning of the next turn. While the units are in production the enemy can strategic bomb them before they even get deployed.

By doing this the intention was to make strategic bombing more important and more costly. The other difference was that interceptors defended at full combat value and escorts attacked at full combat value for one round. I have never play-tested this so it might be a game breaker. It seems kind of fun to me though.
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WWII Dog Tag Reunion

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• • • CWO Marc

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Thank you Marc.
I only wish we had been told which unit he had fought with and where it was found.
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T-34

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• • • will6392

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@Jermofoot:

“Quantity has a quality all on its own.” (or something like that)

-Josef Stalin

Totally. I think that quote sums up the Russian victory on its own.

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