Tell me about WWII tank strategy, simply.

In My Humble Opinion
21

To clarify: the enemy is presumably hoping you will place your guys right at the front edge of the built-up zone so that you have a clear field of fire as he approaches. He will then identify your positions and drench them with artillery and direct fire. This essentially negates much of the advantage of defending the city and turns it into a ranged fight with one side hiding in concrete – an advantage, but not as big an advantage as a real in-depth city defense. With luck he will be able to concentrate on your strength and degrade or destroy it while it sits where he can see it and pound it.

Your objective is not to play that game. Put your hedgehogs back inside the built-up zone so he can’t see you positions without having to go into the town and get tangled up in your deadly embrace. Use the scouting forces to lightly occupy the frontal edges of the built-up area to detect and monitor his approach without exposing your main strength to bombardment.

He will have to enter the maze to take it. If he dilutes his strength you can try to concentrate and fall on separated units; if he stays in a strong column, it will have flanks. Use buildings as a screen to manuever to attack the flanks. Buildings he occupies with strong infantry you can bring tanks against and shell, if you can avoid taking much return fire; otherwise hold your tanks back to stab at the flanks of his column.

Your tanks can, in theory, fight face to face against enemy tanks, but why fight fair? Smash infantry that doesn’t have tanks from a safe range, then back away to safety; hit enemy tanks in their weak flanks as they deploy to smash YOUR hedgehogs.

Again, this is theory; practice is…messier.

22

That’s what the Brits used them for, and the French. Rommel and Patton had different ideas.

Here’s how you should use tanks:

23

Tanks are for attacking fortifications. They are typically immune to small arms fire like rifles and machineguns, grenade shrapnel however they are vulnurable to shaped charge explosives (like a bazooka), mines or high velocity anti-tank artillery.

Their treads are also vulnurable to damage from explosives, or bad driving resulting in a “mobility kill”. The tank and crew may be otherwise unharmed but you now have what is essentially a fixed fortification like a pillbox.

WWII tanks are different from modern main battle tanks in that they don’t have computerized targeting or anything like that. That means they often have to stop to accurately fire their main gun, even when on the attack.
For your urban scenario, you would want to attack using “combined arms” tactics. Basically use infantry with and ahead of the tanks to flush out enemy infantry armed with anti tank weapons. Then bring in the tanks to provide direct fire support.

For some movie examples of urban armored combat I recommend:
-Saving Private Ryan
-Full Metal Jacket

24

Although I generally agree tanks should be 1) massed and 2) used offensively, it’s worth noting that John Keegan has said that Blitzkrieg requires a certain amount of cooperation from your foes and can be very difficult, if not impossible, to create without that cooperation.

Because I’m lazy, here someone else’s pretty good summary (I couldn’t figure out how to link directly to the post, and the thread has a lot of trash in it, so I’ll quote it here and link below):

[QUOTE=some guy named Bjorkmeister on Yahoo Answers]
Blitzkrieg involves destroying the enemy’s front-line defences and then exploiting the resulting gap with highly mobile and typically armored forces. The units exploiting the gap pour into the enemy’s rear areas, destroying rear-echelon units such as artillery, command units and logistics units. Remaining front-line forces are then surrounded and cut off from command and resupply.

Germany used it first against Poland, then against the French and British in France, against the British in North Africa, and then once again against the USSR.

Other nations used it as well whenever they could, having learned from the Germans. The earlier poster referred to the Allies using it against Germany during the breakout from Normandy. The USSR used it very well during their famous counter-offensive at Stalingrad.

Blitzkrieg–not to be confused with “the Blitz”, which referred to the bombing of London during the Battle of Britain–has received a lot of press, but it was actually fairly rarely that it was executed well. And, as writer John Keegan points out in his excellent book on WWII, its success requires some cooperation from your enemy. This statement was especially true later in WWII when ordinary infantry divisions were equipped with effective anti-tank capabilities.

“Cooperation” from the enemy is making major tactical or strategic mistakes. In the case of Poland, it was trying to fight Germany at all with an excessively weak military. In the case of the battle of France, it was the allies placing the weight of their forces on their left while assuming that the Germans couldn’t successfully attack through the Ardennes. Also, the French had better tanks than the Germans, but they made the mistake of spreading them out thinly among their infantry units instead of concentrating them in armored formations. For the Germans at Normandy, it was sending more and more forces westward into a trap that was rapidly closing around them from the South.

Source(s):
John Keegan, The Second World War
[/QUOTE]

25

Using tanks in a city is a little like using mounted knights in a castle- it’s the situation least suited to the attacker’s main strengths.

The only thing worse than trying to take a city with tanks is trying to hold it with tanks. Except for holding it against an insurgency. I have no better advice than what’s been given upthread: use the tanks to overwhelm point resistance, but beware of traps. If you anticipate using your tanks to move against the enemy forces’ flanks, then it is vital that the routes you plan to use are secure. When you’re trying to move into position swiftly is NOT the time to suddenly have a street blocked off by demolition charges and your armor fighting just to escape in one piece.

26

What is this game? It sound fun.

27

Map?!
and, Game?!

28

It’s a kriegsspiel, which is a 19th century wargame they used to use to train tactics and such. It’s something little old British men do, I think. You can play in person with maps, or by mail, or whatever - we’re playing online using Google Maps but we know each other. Generally speaking it’s a tabletop game where the fog of war is a major element, and in premodern games communications lag is also a huge deal. (I believe the word is also used for a chess variant with “fog of war” - am I incorrect?) One site worth reading is kriegsspiel.org.uk. I think in the UK you can go out and buy little wooden blocks to represent units and such, but here you beg your girlfriend to make them for you at the appropriate scale if you’re playing tabletop.

It’s not really my thing, but then again I doubt my parents really loved playing Clue with me when I was an only child and we lived way out in the country and I really wanted to play board games - you do what you gotta for the ones you love. :slight_smile:

29

Defending a city with tanks. That’s tough. I’d recommend building a series of bunkers and using the tanks as static artillery units. Try to situate them in areas where your opponents will have to make frontal attacks against them. Clear a fire zone in front of each bunker so they have no hiding places to use during the approach. Space them out close enough so they can support each other and put infantry between them so your enemy can’t outflank you. Make sure you have an escape route ready so that when the attack gets overwhelming you can drop back to the next prepared defensive line.

30

Ach du lieber! Was haben sie fur Infanterie un…

So what kind of infantry, automatic weapons, and artillery support you got goin? And is Columbia secure if you venture out in force. Can the infantry ride tanks? Got any fast moving reconnaissance units? I’m sure you’re going to have fun but you can tell I’m tired of playing against a computer…

31

Quite right - each player has a board with only his own pieces on it, moves are transferred to a master-board by the referee. He also rules out impossible moves, and tells the players whose turn it is to move and whether they are in check and/or can attempt pawn captures or whether a capture has just occurred (but not what has been taken). It’s entertaining to play and even more to watch. :slight_smile:

32

I have nothing to add, but am really enjoying the thread so far. Sailboat’s explanations in particular have been very interesting.

This may be a stupid question, but can we make any assumption about what types of weapons the insurgents will have, what their numbers are, and whether they are organized? Are they likely to have artillery support? I only ask because I was trying to come up with my own strategy but became stymied by not knowing what you were up against. I guess that’s always pretty much the case, isn’t it?

33

Insurgents would most likely have small arms like rifles, submachineguns and maybe a few heavy machineguns most of which would have been stolen from the enemy. In terms of weapons that would be a threat to tanks, possibly shoulder launched missles like the American bazooka or German panzerschreck. They would also make extensive use of mines and improvised explosives (ie the “sticky bomb” from Saving Private Ryan). As for artillery, at best they might have a few light mortars.

Most likely they would be organized into small, highly mobile teams who would avoid direct fights.

I would say that “depends”. Maybe not in the narrow stone villages of WWII Europe, but the OP did say Columbia. Used in conjunction with infantry, tanks can be very effective in an urban environment. They can smash through buildings, and provide cover and direct fire support for the infantry.

34

Funny you say that because that’s exactly the scene I was thinking of when I read the OP. :slight_smile: You’re definitely in some kind of trouble trying to bring a WW2 tank through a maze of streets in a modern city with enemies at large. Forward and close infantry support is a requirement, I would say.

That’s what I was thinking myself, but just wanted to check what other people thought.

35

We don’t know what the enemy (as in the American army - we’re just guessing about the presence of insurgents, we know there’s an army. I suspect that this may be over in just a few game “hours”, as each turn is 30 minutes, but the longer it goes on the more of a problem insurgent action is going to be) has, but I can make an educated guess based on the kind of stuff we had in Charleston. They’ll almost certainly have artillery. Our antiaircraft guns are keeping their planes off AS LONG AS we don’t let anybody take the guns, so there’s more of our men committed right there. We can expect mechanized infantry to be armed with small arms and bazookas, at least. Their tanks will be smaller and lighter than ours. Paratroopers are a possibility but I don’t think they’re really appropriate for the scope of this game (I could get a nasty surprise on that front, of course.) Still, I’m not leaving my rear uncovered for any probing maneuvers, etc.

I told him that a lot of people thought it sounded really interesting, and he said “Great - do any of them want to run a damned game?” I told him no, nobody wants to run one, duh. You’re stuck forever. It’s like being the only person who anybody will let be the dungeon master, honey.

But if anybody’s actually interested in playing one of these, I think he wants to do a big campaign soon with lots of people. PM me e-mail addresses and I’ll be glad to pass them on. It’s definitely not playing against a computer - it teaches you a lot about the absurdities of war. There was a battle in the last one where both sides thought they were getting their asses kicked and that the other guy was just steamrolling over them, so at the same time they started screaming for a retreat and suddenly nobody was on the battlefield anymore. Nobody knew about it until all the maps were revealed at the end. :slight_smile:

36

This is more for the infantry side of the equation, but since you are there to support each other.

Keep in mind that the building aren’t static solid blocks that have to navigated around or hidden behind. Infantry can and should put counter-insurgency troops in place to attack from hiding.

Also, while your instructions are to maintain the city intact, someone mentioned earlier that the practice is messier. Take some buildings that would be ideal for the enemy to occupy and mine them with explosives. If and when the enemy takes one, detonate and drop the building onto them. This will make them extremely hesitant to repeat the tactic. Buildings can also be brought down to funnel enemy troops into channels designed to maximize your strategic advantage as the defender.

37

Don’t know about Columbia, but in many parts of the country, a tank that did this would very likely wind up in the basement.

38

I’m going to be an obnoxious person and say that though I’m not interested in playing or running a game, I wouldn’t mind being on a mailing list of observers. Sounds fascinating, and I might even play in the long run. PM sent.

39

I don’t think there is any simple tank statagy.
I am reading a book titled “DeathTraps” It is a historical account of the Sherman M3 written by a man that worked on them from Normandy to Berlin.

Ii was rough.

40

I just read a (bad) book on the battles around Aachen in the winter of '44-45. He goes into some detail in how the US Army cleared out towns and cities. The key was to keep the infantry off the street as much as possible. Once in a block of buildings, they would blast holes in walls to move between them.

But tanks were very helpful in gaining access to buildings or crossing streets. A tank would blast a door or fire at a machine gun position and then the GIs would rush into a building and start clearing it out. Once that was cleared out they would move down the street and repeat. The tank would generally be a small way back of the infantry (which meant that they had to be careful of the blast effects from firing the gun).

A single Tiger tank would of course ruin their whole day. Which the OP might find interesting. Tiger vs. Sherman rarely went well for the Sherman.

In the book, he mentions repeatedly how amazed the Germans were at the US practice of heading straight into a town first rather than bypass it. The US of course was focusing on roads and roads went thru towns.