Quote:
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