Panzergrenadiers

[DRG]

I was reminded by one of our playtesters that part of this issue is that the MG's included with the halftracks themselves could be dismounted and used by the squad on the ground which is one reason you see TO&E's from some sources mentioning the extra MG.

Also.... ALL formations in the game are abstractions in one form or another.

Don

[chuckfourth]

Hello
I have been having a look at this site,

http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/...l/site_map.htm

It is an absolute goldmine of TOE information. I think that using this site as a source for company formations would benefit the game greatly as the formations often vary considerably from those currently in the game. That said I might suggest that those concerned might want to run their eye over the panzer grenadiers TOEs in this site prior to rejigging. For instance, until 1943 the 12 man (currently 10) truck mounted panzer grenadiers travelled in 2 protze trucks rather than the single opel and as with the armoured squads had a second LMG (currently 1). But a quick read will reveal much much more of interest.
Best Regards Chuck.

[PatG]

From the overview page of Bayonetstrength:

"The descriptions of units contained in this site refer, where possible, to the officially authorised organisations intended for use. How closely particular units resembled these descriptions is purely arbitrary."

That admission is of course the site's true strength.

Well worth reading.

[cbo]

I'm missing some direct references to the sources used for http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com. He does have a bibliography of sorts, but you cannot tell where exactly he got the specific information from.
Secondly, since at least some of the sources he uses states the specific KStN number, and since he apparently have checked some of the originals as well, he could have made proper references to the actul KStN. That would make it much easier to actually check the information.
Also, his dates are very vague - "circa late 1943" doesn't tell you much.
Actually, some of the pages he refer to in his bibliography have better information IMO.

The reality of German organisation was that a number of different KStN made for each type of unit as the war progressed and individual units were adopting those when ordered to. So you could have many older KStN still in effect while new ones were issued. Furthermore, the could be severel different but contemporary KStN for the same type of unit in operation at one time. The point is that there is not necessarily one particular organisation valid for one particular period.

As for translating the actual KStN to winSPWW2 OOBs, designers have made abstractions. For example combining the different elements of a company HQ into one unit or distributing some of companys heavy arms to the platoon organisation etc. That is a process that have been going on for 8 years with various people working on the OOBs. Some of those doing the work have had access to some very good sources that easily surpasses what you can dig up on badly referenced websites.

I think most people can appreciate that those involved in the game gets slightly pissed off when someone claims the game to be wrong because he found an unreferenced internet site saying somthing different than the game OOB, when the OOB designer have spent hours carefully trying to convert the data from the actual KStN or TO&E*.

Not to mention the fact that limitations of the game engine sometimes forces the OOB designer to make abstractions that doesn't make any sense to the untrained eye. Or may in fact not make sense any longer because the game engine have been improved.

It is by no means trivial - not even for people who have worked on OOB design and played the game for years - to figure out exactly what KStN a specific unit in the OOBs are supposed to represent.

You can of course simply decide that the game is wrong and then go fix whatever the problem is in MobHack. No problem.

But if you want to make a case that some unit needs fixing by the game designers, then you should at least have the respect for their work by stating you case properly.
If, as a playtester, I wanted a particular German tank formation in the game, I'd check all the relevant formations in the German OOB to see whether the formation I had in mind may actually exist somewhere in the OOB. If not, then I tried to figure out what those formations in the game was intended to represent. Then I tried to figure out whether the formation I wanted should in fact be a change to an existing formation or whether a new formation was needed. Then I took a cup of coffe (or a beer) and thought a bit about whether the change was actually suffciently significant to bother busy people with.
If so, then I'd present my case to the designers, including the relevant references.

If you do that, then you will have a much better chance of getting your grievances listened to and perhaps introduced in the game. You will also provide a much better basis for discussion of the changes.

Claus B

* Of course, many country OOBs and units have been created on available, but sketchy information. But if you have something better to offer, you should still do the work and make the proper argument.

PS: A good site for German KStN information is http://chrito.users1.50megs.com/kstn/okh/okhmain.htm that tries to reproduce the actual KStN. It is not without errors, but at least you know exactly what you are looking at.

[Mobhack]

A lot of the "chartered accountancy" school of wargamers bow down and worship at the holy altar of TO&E charts. "So it was written, and so it must have been".

The reality is that these things are about as accurate as modern organisational charts in businesses. (See if you can find the org chart for your organisation !. They reflect the management's view point of how things should be, and do not necessarily reflect the on-the-ground "shop floor" actuality. Civilian organisations have absenteeism due to sickness and so on, military units have the same plus battle casualties, both to "plant" as well as staff.

And in both, the "middle management" (batallion, company and even higher) will often make local "tweaks" to make the organisations work "at the coal face" level, without necessarily bothering the top-level beurocrats. They may hire contract staff if this is a way to get more people and the money comes from a different budget than "staff", and look at how the original microcomputers came in on "office equipment" budgets, without the top levels knowing about this, and without the centralised IT departments knowing that so much strategic company IT work was now being done locally in departments on Visicalc, with no IT department overview or QA of the code. same thing in our TA rifle company - we often borrowed the next door engineer coy's BRENS on a tactical weekend, if they were off building bridges. Or they would "lend" us a few guys who needed infantry tactical brush-up training, so we would then be a bit overstrength.

Some nationalities are more rigid as to this sort of thing and apply "doctrines" which all have to obey. Others, like the British are more flexible, and leave minor details up to the colonel of the batallion to adjust as he sees fit.

So a wargamer comes from the beurocratic worship of TO&E charts, and assumes things are as the chart, unless he actually spends some time reading some history on the subject. (It also helps if he has been involved in some sort of corporate organisation, whether military or civilian, so he can put a reasonable skepticism on such things as org charts in the first place!.

So a wargamer willl make such statements as "All WW2 UK infantry batallions had a carrier platoon for scouting". But history shows that most batallions actually broke these units up, as they had better use for the manpower elsewhere, and the carriers and drivers would be used as "tin jeeps" to do things like drive the RSM around on his rounds, deliver hot meals ammo and mail to the front etc.

A Wargamer will make a statement from TO&E that "a UK rifle platoon had a 2 inch mortar at platoon HQ, as well as a Boyes ATR". Well, my batallion had 2 inch mortars issued, but these stayed in the armoury, as we had better use for the 2 men supposed to carry the silly thing about. And in WW2, the Boyes was determined to be useless by many units, and was conveniently "lost". Again, freeing up manpower which is always a shortage in rifle platoons even in peacetime (there is usually 2 or 3 men away on courses, before we get to those off sick or on leave etc) let alone wartime casualties (where you add dead and injured to the same amounts off sick, on leave, or on courses etc as in peacetime, probably more off on courses in war!).

Really useful (tm) items of course did not get lost. if a rifle platoon shrank due to losses, the 3 brens would be kept, even if rifle srength shrank. Any rifle platoon worth its salt would of course try to "aquire" any really useful(tm) items that others had not nailed down, own-side or OPFOR.

One US Division in NW Europe deliberately stockpiled and issued as regular stores any captured german panzerfaust they came across. (I may well add a rifle squad with pfaust if it is not there already)

The Soviets did the same - regularly using panzerfausts, and also adding nebelwerfers to MRL units for example on and add-hoc basis outside TO&E charts so long as the ammo supply held out. There are Soviet units with captured pfaust.

So remember at all times that a TO&E chart is just a "management level ideal", just like any departmental or divisional civilian org chart. It is a starter, but must be modified by any historical research. A useful starter though - as wargamers are the sort to take a little historical "nugget" and then try to apply that to thier entire army. This is a known fact from ancient wargames to modern. The Romans used bolt throwers mounted on carts on one or 2 occasions in the field, and so about a third of Roman armies on the wargames table usually have cart mounted bolt-throwers trundling around..

So we do need to restrict the gamers choice somehow, and a TO&E chart is useful for this, but equally it cannot be treated as absolute "law" just because it is written down on paper by a beurocrat in the "human resources" department.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

And here's a example of an internet source vs a recognized wrtten source. It just happend that the "internet source" in this case is "Bayonetstrength"

<<<Bayonetstrength>>> regarding PzGren unit structure

It comprised a leader and assistant, armed with a machine pistol and rifle
respectively. They commanded two guns teams, each with a gunner and loader,
and four riflemen. The two gunners each carried a light machine gun and
pistol, their two assistants both pistols, the remaining four men each a
rifle. A driver and assistant were responsible for the vehicle, each armed
with a rifle. The SdKfz 251/1 armoured halftrack mounted its own light
machine gun behind a splinter shield. It was the responsibility of the
assistant driver to man this weapon, and a 'spare' machine pistol was
carried in the vehicle. One of the two dismounted MG34s could be placed on
a rear mounting enabling it to be used in the anti-aircraft role where
required. The concentration of light machine guns was enormous for such a
small unit. In action, the driver and assistant would remain with the
vehicle, the latter providing cover fire from the vehicle machine gun. The
dismounted troops could split into two teams, each with a leader, two
riflemen and a two man gun team. This negated the weakness of riflemen
covering a moving MG team with clunky bolt action weapons.

=====================

It all sound resonable and likely has some validity under certain circumstances but , in WinSPww2 the dismounted formations contains MMG's mounted on tripods which has been called into question

Here's a quote from "Schützenpanzer" by Bruce Culver and Uwe Feist

"The Motorized infantry regiments in the Panzer Divisions were
organized with two battalions each. Each battalion contained three rifle
companies and a heavy support company. A rifle company had three rifle
platoons, each of which consisted of three infantry squads ( Gruppen ) .
Each squad had two MG34 light machine guns, one on a heavy tripod mount, and
8 Mauser 7.92mm Kar 98k rifles. The heavy MG section in each platoon had two
MG34's on Heavy tripods, and there SPW's also had a heavy mount for the
vehicle's forward MG34"

I know for a fact that the OOB was not built from information provided by Culver and Feist's "Schützenpanzer" yet this source does back up the structure we have in place that included MMG's in the games dismounted PzGrenZug. That is not to say that in reality the men in a PzGrenZug wouldn't sometime use the MG34/42 as a LMG and sometimes use the Tripod and use it as a MMG. Different tactical situations would dictate the usage but it also means the structure we have now is "accurate" given the limitations of translating reality into a game. However, it also points out how information can be read one way or another.

"Each squad had two MG34 light machine guns, one on a heavy tripod mount, and 8 Mauser 7.92mm Kar 98k rifles."

Could be read by someone as ....... The squad used 2 MG34 light machine guns AND " one on a heavy tripod mount, and 8 Mauser 7.92mm Kar 98k rifles." Therefore 2 MG34's set up as LMG and an additional MG34 set up as a MMG

OR it could be read to mean there were 2 MG34's and one could be mounted on a tripod that was carried in the vehicle for that purpose.

Which is how we read it.

Don

[chuckfourth]

Hi Claus
Nice Link I do beleive I owe you an apology.
Chuck

[chuckfourth]

Hi Andy
Firstly I should say that I am not saying SPCAMO has got it wrong and Bayonetstrength has got it right, I just mention Bayonetstrength as a reference for anyone that might be interested. However Bayonetstrength's TOEs are IMHO generally more varied, bringing these into the game I think would make the game more interestig to play assuming of course that they are correct. As regards the worship of Toes, as you say they obviously form the starting point for any formations modeled in the game. And actually you could restrict yourself pretty much to the book values if you wanted to, as you can build your own formations anyway. For instance you might just grab a panzerfaust team out of the german encyclopedia when you are building your American
force.
Best Regards Chuck

[chuckfourth]

Hi DRG
Looking at The link Clause supplied
http://chrito.users1.50megs.com/kstn/okh/okhmain.htm
It would appear that maybe shutzenpanzer has suffered in translation or that this is a typo.
There are several grenadier TOES this one in particular
http://chrito.users1.50megs.com/kstn/kstn11141nov41.htm
details the protze mounted grenadiers as described in Bayonet.
Also I have looked at I think each grenadier formation and yes these TOEs do show the rifle squads carrying 2 LMGs and the tripod MMGs restricted to the Support company. This is also the case in the one book I have "german tanks and fighting vehicle of WWII" ISBN 0 7271 0006 8 and pretty much anywhere else on the internet I can find.


The LMG interpretaton makes sense to me as
Obviously a company assault would be impossible to coordinate using this number of MMGs.
All the extra tripod MMGs would only really be useful in prepared defensive positions. So the rest of the time the tripods wouldnt be of much use. This would be a bit wateful as they were very expensive to make (much more than the actual MMG) not to mention training a gun crew in each squad only to 'waste' them as LMG operators.
The normal infantry battalion only had MMGs in the support Coy if this formation was good for the infantry why would the grenadiers need a MMG to be assigned to each rifle squad as well? seems far too generous an allocation ie very top heavy.
So my question is this can we look forward to the German TOES being reworked according to Clauses reference? ie for instance the OPELs in the pre 43 grenadiers being replaced by protze for example? slot 2 holding two LMGs a la BAR? no hurry obviously.
Best Regards Excited Chuck.

[Wiem1938]

The strangeness of a MMG assigned to each section also ignores the use of the MMG in combat. It is not used in the manner of the LMG - aiming direct at small groups.
MMG are used singly, or in groups, to hose down an area-arc (often overlapping) - former Vickers machine-gunner Robin Neillands described it as a 'mad minute' of firing.
One of my sources has the Panzergrenadiers (truck and SPW mounted) having 4xMMG at a company heavy platoon (including 2x81mm mortar, sometimes 2x75mm inf-guns).
As a fighting formation, this would be more sensible, emphasising on organic fire-support, fitting the doctrinal emphasis on low-level initiative.
More 'stones from afar' to annoy anyone...
Richard