WW II in the Pacific and Wargaming

[mirth]

[FarAway Sooner]

The ME-109 was a fine plane once it was airborne.  Landing it was too hard.  And, like all the other high-performance stuff the Germans designed during WW II, it suffered from maintenance problems.  I'd now like to turn my attention to the German Tank Glamour Syndrome.

The Tiger and the Panther were great tanks.  But they also reflected a design philosophy that didn't do a very good job of balancing performance versus supply demands, reliability, or economy of function.

When they designed the Sherman, the Americans intentionally opted for quantity and reliability over performance quality.  To the extent that grown men fantasize about driving a tank in WW II, they want the best single tank out there, and the Tigers and the Panthers get all the glamour there.  But they're the really high-maintenance girlfriends who expect you to wait 45 minutes while they get ready, want a fancy dinner with really expensive wine, and then might still just want to call it an early night afterwards.

If anybody designed war games where you also had to maintain your tank between battles, the Panthers and Tigers would be a lot less popular.

The Americans intentionally designed the Sherman so that it could be maintained by less educated crews and even mechanics.  The Americans instituted a whole "asset recovery" system in Western Europe that would tow destroyed Shermans back to central junk yards and cannibalize them for parts.  In many instances, refurbished Shermans went into battle two or three times with different crews.  And the abundance of spare parts made it much easier to fix casual damage.

That performance give-up worked fairly well for the Americans, in part because the best tank destroyer they ultimately developed was probably the P-47 Thunderbolt...

[jomni]

Germans have the coolest toys and Hugo Boss uniforms.

  But the Allies had fully functioning economies and agricultural sectors that were not nearly as labor-intensive and all Axis countries (including Finland, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Japan) except Germany managed to surrender on some kind of terms.  I suppose you could count the surrender of the German armies in Northern Italy as surrendering on terms, but when armies have to work out their own terms, it seems the central design agency with its cool toys has not done a very good job.

Germans are underdogs.  Must support the underdogs.

[Nefaro]

I'd now like to turn my attention to the German Tank Glamour Syndrome.

;D

O0

[Toonces]

We seem to be off-topic, but this thread inspired me to start putting some of my ideas onto paper today.

I seem to have designed a game that is a cross between Harpoon and HPS Midway.  Must try harder...   ::)

[bbmike]

I was just thinking I would love to see a game like Task Force Game's Battlewagon (or Star Fleet Battles) made for the Pacific War. I wonder if SFB could be converted? Carriers, searching for task forces, WWII SSDs... 

[glen55]

Germans have the coolest toys and Hugo Boss uniforms.

<snip> --> Japan:  the Zero, still in my mind the most aesthetically pleasing fighter of WW2 <--<snip>

The Yamato! (And Musashi and Shinano.)  Not to mention Takao-class super-cruisers, Long Lance torpedoes, and world-class night-optics.  And since we're talking about equipment, how about the balls it took to sucker-punch the U.S.?

[MengJiao]

Germans have the coolest toys and Hugo Boss uniforms.

  But the Allies had fully functioning economies and agricultural sectors that were not nearly as labor-intensive and all Axis countries (including Finland, Italy, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Japan) except Germany managed to surrender on some kind of terms.  I suppose you could count the surrender of the German armies in Northern Italy as surrendering on terms, but when armies have to work out their own terms, it seems the central design agency with its cool toys has not done a very good job.

Germans are underdogs.  Must support the underdogs.

And so the ETO is in fact less balanced than the PTO.  At least the Imperial Navy had reasonable aircraft carriers.  Germans -- Nothin'

[sandman2575]

The Yamato! (And Musashi and Shinano.)  Not to mention Takao-class super-cruisers, Long Lance torpedoes, and world-class night-optics.  And since we're talking about equipment, how about the balls it took to sucker-punch the U.S.?

Yamato for sure. The Godzilla of battleships. Yet somehow for me, its bad-ass factor doesn't register as highly as it should, if only because the IJN was essentially too reluctant to commit Yamato and Musashi for fear of losing them, and so they ended rather ingloriously.

I do love the dreadnaught-type battleships like Kongo, obsolete though she was by WW2...

[JasonPratt]

I'd now like to turn my attention to the German Tank Glamour Syndrome.

The late Panthers, and the Tigers, were undoubtedly high-class; but the Panzer IV kicked an excessive amount of ass in various variants, much closer to the volkswagen concept of the Sherman while still being better quality. But in the last years of the war, it wasn't unreasonable to armor and gun up to the Panther and Tiger, to help keep experienced crews alive and to function as a force multiplier, simply because Germany couldn't afford to compete in losing even half as many PzIV (and crews) as Shermans. From a logistical efficiency standpoint, though, and for force application, I'd rather have a division of Pz4s than a brigade of Panthers. (Maybe even moreso than a division of Panthers.)

Add in the various German tank destroyers, many of which were frighteningly brilliant but overlooked by leaders focused on the glory of the tank. Stugs and Elefants? YES PLEASE! And the iconic tracked APC, which had a high survival rate partly because it could FREAKING DODGE SHOTS!

German armor had its problems, but their kit and their tactics were generally ace.

[MengJiao]

I'd now like to turn my attention to the German Tank Glamour Syndrome.

The late Panthers, and the Tigers, were undoubtedly high-class; but the Panzer IV kicked an excessive amount of ass in various variants, much closer to the volkswagen concept of the Sherman while still being better quality. But in the last years of the war, it wasn't unreasonable to armor and gun up to the Panther and Tiger, to help keep experienced crews alive and to function as a force multiplier, simply because Germany couldn't afford to compete in losing even half as many PzIV (and crews) as Shermans. From a logistical efficiency standpoint, though, and for force application, I'd rather have a division of Pz4s than a brigade of Panthers. (Maybe even moreso than a division of Panthers.)

Add in the various German tank destroyers, many of which were frighteningly brilliant but overlooked by leaders focused on the glory of the tank. Stugs and Elefants? YES PLEASE! And the iconic tracked APC, which had a high survival rate partly because it could FREAKING DODGE SHOTS!

German armor had its problems, but their kit and their tactics were generally ace.

Like many things about the Germans in WWII, most of this falls appart under close scrutiny.  For example, by 1944, most Shermans were more combat-capable than most PzKW IVs.  AND the Shermans with bigger guns (Firefly and the US 76mm) were much more effective than Panthers (mostly because position rather than armor determines battles between tanks of roughly equal firepower and Shermans were more likely to get there firstest with the mostest).

[BanzaiCat]

I have a review coming soon to the front page here on the iOS game Tank Battle Pacific. It's a light wargame with not very many missions, but it's cheap (two dolla) and you can buy additional campaigns made up of multiple scenarios for 0.99 each.

If you know Hunted Cow/Hexwar games, you'll know this one.

[FarAway Sooner]

Jason, in the WTO from 1944-1945, assuming they could actually get them running, the biggest challenge for the German tanks' kit and tactics seemed to be that their phone lines to HQ were forever being cut by Allied bombing and artillery.

I read an interesting fact in a Paul Carell book I finished recently that indicated that Americans had 10 times as many staff as the Germans who were dedicated to intelligence at the divisional level.

[jomni]

I have a review coming soon to the front page here on the iOS game Tank Battle Pacific. It's a light wargame with not very many missions, but it's cheap (two dolla) and you can buy additional campaigns made up of multiple scenarios for 0.99 each.

If you know Hunted Cow/Hexwar games, you'll know this one.

Tank Battle Pacific???? Was there such a thing?

[MengJiao]

Jason, in the WTO from 1944-1945, assuming they could actually get them running, the biggest challenge for the German tanks' kit and tactics seemed to be that their phone lines to HQ were forever being cut by Allied bombing and artillery.

I read an interesting fact in a Paul Carell book I finished recently that indicated that Americans had 10 times as many staff as the Germans who were dedicated to intelligence at the divisional level.

  I knew a guy (he's now been dead for 30 years) who was on the Divisional intelligence staff of a US armored division.  Being a young whippersnapper, I once asked him how the US defeated those superior German tanks.  He said, "We always knew where they were and we always had gas."

  Later I found out more.  He also killed some Germans with his .45, which he found very upsetting  AND (at a different level), the German armored formations were very easy to track by radio intell/sigint, whereas American armored formations could (and did) completely absolutely and totally disappear from the radio emissions world and run silent run deep if they needed to.