Jump to content
Please support this forum by joining the SH Patreon ×
Sturgeon's House

delete013

Scrublord
  • Posts

    204
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Posts posted by delete013

  1. 1 hour ago, Toxn said:

    Meanwhile, the Soviet forces in the area have them pressing an advance over the previous few days, then overrunning the position on the 19th. They don't seem to notice the Tigers operating in the area, and it doesn't slow them down at all.

    Not exactly. 18.-20. April Soviets gradually push Germans over Strausberg, which is where the last natural obstacle before Berlin is. In the process they suffer the biggest losses in the battle for Berlin but don't know what exactly is causing this (AT guns and Panzerfausts are mentioned and the inspection of wrecks shows mostly kinetic projectiles. Soviets claim one Tiger B).

     

    Quote

    "An account of events on 19 April 1945 from after-action reports of 12 Guards Tank Corps and subordinate tank brigades:

    12 Guards Tank Corps:by 18.00 19 April 49 Guards Tank Brigade has captured Prädikow and started a battle for Prötzel. 48 Guards Tank Brigade captured Reichenberg and Ihlow then followed behind 49 GTBr. 66 Guards Tank Brigade and 34 Guards Motor Rifle Brigade after a short artillery barrage took Grunow. West of Grunow enemy was holding a strongly fortified position with antitank weapons. An attempt to attack it without preparation and a shallow flanking maneuver failed with heavy casualties. On 19 April the corps lost 25 T-34 destroyed and 27 damaged, 3 IS-122 and 2 SU-76 damaged, total 57 AFVs. Personnel losses – 75 men killed and 227 wounded. Most losses suffered in failed attack west of Grunow. In the early morning of 20 April the corps started a march to Tiefensee bypassing the Grunow area from the north.

    48 Guards Tank Brigade: by 11.00 Reichenberg is captured, then Ihlow is taken after a brief combat. Advancing with 49 GTBr the brigade reached a western edge of a grove west of Ihlow. 2 Tank Battalion with replacement tank joined the brigade at Ihlow at 13.30. Then the brigade advanced to Grunow. A strong defense position with many tanks and mortars was met on the eastern edge of a grove north-east of Grunow. Brigade’s loses at Grunow – 17 tanks destroyed and 2 damaged, 12 men killed and 73 wounded. One German “Tiger” tank is claimed (the only mention of Tigers I can find)

    49 Guards Tank Brigade – Ihlow is taken in the morning, then an advance to Prädikow. A 7-hour long battle for Prädikow, heavy losses due to lacking infantry support. Prädikow is fully taken at 17.00 The brigade reached Prötzel meeting a fortified position and anti-tank obstacles there. An attempt to outflank Prötzel failed due to obstacles in a forest. By 22.00 the brigade is on a edge of a forest 2 km south-east of Prötzel. In the night – reconnaissance and search for bypass routes. Losses during the day – 16 men killed and 36 wounded, 4 tanks destroyed and 6 damaged.

    66 Guards Tank Brigade – 35 tanks operational on evening of 18 April. During the night and morning of 19 April the brigade is fighting for Reichenberg in cooperation with 49 GTBr, 34 Guards Motor Brigade and 79 Guards Heavy Tank Regiment. After Reichenberg is captured the brigade pursues to the south-West meeting mines and fire from German rearguards. Especially intense resistance at Grunow which was an important road hub. Grunow is taken on the evening of 19 April. 30 tank operational. "

    Notice this is an indirect proof. As is with most historical records is none of this 100% facts. It is impossible to pin each loss to its source, but the reduction of causes based on unit location and equipment, the most probable explanation is provided.

     

    1 hour ago, Toxn said:

    As I've said, you don't seem to have laid out a coherent thesis at all here, so the following is simply my first impression. But from where I stand the most likely account is that Nazi tiger 2s were operating more or less in the area (a few got knocked out in the process, it seems), did a day's work for a heavy tank unit on the defensive, and then came home to have their exploits bundled up for propaganda purposes while the position itself got overrun.

    503 wasn't overrun, it retreated into Berlin.

    This isn't my thesis, it is all the work of critical mass. He is the real deal, not some amateur like me.

  2. 1 hour ago, Toxn said:

    Okay, firstly this is slightly fetishistic and creepy. Secondly, what's your thesis here?

    Don't judge facts with political orientation.

    1 hour ago, Toxn said:

    So Korner's claims are fiction, but the 'core' of the story is real and heroic. What's the core here? That a bunch of Nazi units inflicted losses on leading Soviet units (without holding up the advance in any way) and that some of these units had Tigers? That the losses were disproportionate over and above the amount expected by a force on the defensive operating out of prepared positions? 

    Sigh, one more time. Körner claimed less than what was attributed to him later. But his claim is still big and fits in the Soviet loss numbers. Read the comments again, all bits are there.

    1 hour ago, Toxn said:

    What's the actual event that you're cheering for here?

    Crew and vehicle performance.

  3. 5 minutes ago, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks said:

    You have to wonder why it's so important to Delete, that these Nazi Propaganda victories be true, it's weird.  Who white knights for the Nazis these days? 

    My primary goal in such historical analysis is the truth. This case is especially interesting because a proper analysis is new to me and because it appears to be one of those beleaguered "myths".

    It is exciting to know that certain people of the past were capable of such performance against impossible odds, in times, where individuals became but insignificant gears in the machinery of industrial warfare. It is very unfortunate that they gave their best for a perfide regime, but those are some of the finest feats in the recorded military history.

  4. 10 minutes ago, Lord_James said:


    Yes, because the kraut’s had only 88mm guns in their arsenal... 

     

    No 

    Other 

    Common

    AT guns

    The man went so far to check the composition and equipment of the units involved:

    Quote

    Notice that there was no Panzerjäger platoon employed. Towed ATG (75mm up) were further south near Buckow and north in direction Eberswalde.
    The only assets east of Strausberg were the 103./503. PzAbt. (9 operational Tiger Ausf. B and 7 operational Flakpanzer with 20mm guns) reinforced by 5 StuG, some remnants of the 9th Para. infantery Div. and PzGr.Reg NORGE in reserve (some APC, mortars). It´s possible that the latter had a few 37mm or 50mm ATG.

    Brilliant work.

  5. 4 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

     

    You didn't read all of that guy's comments, even:

     

    "The whole story was blown out of proportion in subsequent german tertiary reception of the action, most likely due to inaccurate descriptions and lack of access to source documents. Someone started putting the whole units claim incorrectly to Körners credit and then kept on adding whatever Harrer, Diers, Schäfer, Turk, Müller et al. claimed on their own on top to arrive with a new unit claim. And instead of "for no losses", I have hard evidence to confirm that four TIGER Ausf. B were total write offs on this day (two caught by artillery or Katyusha barrage, one to side penetration and another one abandoned and not recovered) and two further tanks received sufficient damage to forcing their pre-emptive retreat."

     

    So in other words, it's fiction

    What is fiction is Körner alone and 100 kills. That is also what I deemed unbelievable, if you recall. German army never claimed that and the point of that article and Beer's post was to prove that it did, is therefore untrustworthy. I don't care what propaganda or post-war writers said. You can call them biased, but not the German army. Facts were wrongly interpreted but the core of the story is real = extraordinary damage dealt by a few tigers and that the actual claims are credible.

  6. 47 minutes ago, Toxn said:

    Which is of course why Soviet forces in the area overran the position that that unit was based at and then complained about anti-tank guns and panzerfausts.

    Error in secondary sources.

    Quote

    Though this article went so far in claiming that nothing happened on 19th of April in the area and that´s not any better than what secondary accounts made out of the events,...

    ...

    Yet they [Germans] made one local counter attack and significantly delayed the main progress.

    ...

    This is important because the regulations required losses to be notified within two days. The revised document can therefore be considered as reliable for information of the reporting period.

    ...

    It appears that the 5th Shock Army recorded 175 tanks/SPG knocked out until apr. 20th, of which 84 were IS-2 Heavy tanks. Total write offs for IS-2 were 32 with 24 more heavy tanks send to medium time repair. Considering that on the evening of the 18th, the two units reported 48 and 50 operational IS-2, it´s possible to reasonably deduce that at least 31 of these heavy tank knock outs occured before the 19th and consequently up to 53 IS-2 heavy tank knock outs may have occuring on 19th and 20th, alone (presuming no double knock outs are present, which may be too simplistic).

    Quote

    The only assets east of Strausberg were the 103./503. PzAbt. (9 operational Tiger Ausf. B and 7 operational Flakpanzer with 20mm guns) reinforced by 5 StuG, some remnants of the 9th Para. infantery Div. and PzGr.Reg NORGE in reserve (some APC, mortars). It´s possible that the latter had a few 37mm or 50mm ATG.

     

    47 minutes ago, Toxn said:

    It all makes perfect sense so long as you ascribe every single lost vehicle to tigers that can magically shift position by 100km.

    Quote

    Finally, Köerner doesn´t need to be cloned to be everywhere. Prädikow, Grunow and Bollerdorf are all closeby. If You take the road it´s less than 7km from Prädikow in the north via Grunow to Bollersdorf in the south. From the platoons prepared position at the eastern edge of the Schwarzberge it´s approx. 2km to Prädikow (to the NNE) and Grunow (to the E), a bit more than 3km to Bollersdorf (to the SE). Even with detour that requires a march less than 6km for Körners group to regroup and join "NORGE"s local counterattack.

     

  7. 56 minutes ago, Bronezhilet said:

    Ah yes, "hit by projectile" a surefire way to determine the cause of destruction to be the 'long 8,8' since that thing is unique in the sense that it's the only thing on the battlefield that fires projectiles!

     

    The rest of the guns fire... what exactly?

    The point of that classification is to exclude Panzerfausts. Sure, there were other cannons too. Let's ask here, what are the best AT tools at hand? I believe they are Tiger Bs. This on its own wouldn't be enough, but critical mass matched their location with those of the affected Soviet units and that is a credible motive.

  8. 16 hours ago, Toxn said:

    You're ignoring the part where critical mass founds his argument on the Soviet losses of that entire part of the front for that day, then elides his way into the two numbers being similar and that therefore Korner's account is somehow legit.

     

    Peter goes into this at length.

    No, critical mass specifically states that Körner hadn'tdestroyed all 100 T-34s, nor did he claim them. Claims and losses are for the entire Heeresgruppe Weichsel and mostly 1st Belorussian front of which most (not all) can be attiributed to Panzerabteilung 503, considering the location of units. Critical mass also mentions that Soviet reports indicate mostly "projectile hits", hence the long 8,8 the most probable candidate. Unless he messed up primary sources is this a very solid explanation of the situation. 

  9. 10 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

     

    I apologize for reading the Tiger B as JT (I was very, very tired) - not that the Tiger B was known for having really any better mobility. And if he, good boy that he is, was following orders by this point in the war - his Tiger B wouldn't be carrying much more ammo than a JT. With the turret stowage verboten, he gets only 48 rounds per tank.

    Full capacity of the production model was 84. Without rear turret stock, 68. Plus what they can store elsewhere. Plus what others can give him. Better go back to sleep.

     

    10 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

    And since this is a *tank* unit and not a *TD* unit, it means that a good chunk of his ammo is gonna be HE which is not going to do much to the IS-2s frontally to say the least. And even with 48 rounds of AP, with every shot a killing hit, *you still don't have enough ammo for all of the kills he claimed*. This is far and away the logically hardest argument in favor of him talking shit - it is physically impossible for them to have knocked out more tanks than they had ammo for.

    Considering the treat, they likely put more AP shells that HE. But unless we have some testimony, I can't say for sure.

     

    10 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

    And yes, Artillery can cause immense problems - often of the 'oh god the front plate caved in' sort the ML-20 was famous for. But you'll note he didn't claim artillery knocked out the tanks, just that somehow it only broke track links and final drives. Track links are somewhat understandable as pressure and shrapnel from near bursts can blow off links - but the final drive is such a tiny target that is covered from most angles that nobody else in the war recalls final drives being destroyed by arty to be an issue. You don't even see other Panther/JgPanther units trying to blame arty for their final drives exploding.

    The report doesn't say that there were no other causes. But enough to get mentioned. Smth which very likely happened considering the availability and reliance of WAllies on artillery. This artillery was mostly indirect l that rarely hit the vehicle directly. Hence, k.o. is a matter of interpretation. Mobility kill, I guess.

    Almost all failed German armoured attacks that Americans casually attribute to their skill and tanks were stopped this way. With many many many artillery shells (or by CAS). This usually had two important effects, destruction or retreat of German infantry and damaging of tanks. After the artillery finished, US tanks and infantry shot up what was left on the field. This includes a lot of immobilised and abandoned vehicles then appearing as kill claims, which is understandable. The only direct fire unit that likely did destroy many manned German tanks were TDs, because they were a dedicated defensive weapon with a single task of waiting in the back for panzer breakthroughs and placed on potential venues of attacks.

  10. 7 hours ago, TokyoMorose said:

    Thankfully, we have the soviet combat logs - Körner was ran over in a few hours, and they don't even bother to record meeting the vehicles in their logs. They spend more time whining about Panzerfausts.

     

    https://www.tankarchives.ca/2014/05/cheating-at-statistics-7-korner-conjurer.html

    I'm not sure you know what you posted. This is one of those articles, where in comments, critical mass dismantles tankarchives. He provides a good answer to Körner's mistery. The latter only claimed 11 tanks and 39 possible. Secondary sources then misinterpreted it. But in the words of critical mass:

     

    "The bottomline is that the credited claims do indeed match soviet losses on this day in general and 5th SA and 2nd GTA losses in particular."

     

    @Beer You might want to read it too. It is basically how most panzer ace myths came about. Wrongly attributed kill claims and missing reports on Allied losses. The improbable story is blamed on the soldier, instead of on book writers. The same goes to Wittmann, perhaps the most slandered soldier of ww2.

     

  11. 16 minutes ago, TokyoMorose said:

     

    Because, as I stated in my sarcastic suuuure line, the final drive is a very small target (and it's only exposed from some angles!). You'll note other armies have a conspicuous lack of 'oops all our final drives were hit by arty what a shame'. So either the man is bullshitting as to why the final drives broke, or the allies are actually putting their very best marksmen on artillery teams - with strict orders to aim only for final drives.

    The key to that report is that artillery can damage drive train and that recovery was usually impossible. Allied tanks featured similar problems if hit by artilley, only that German artillery wasn't much present in the west.

     

    16 minutes ago, TokyoMorose said:

    You'd think the Germans would realize that it's a wee bit unlikely that Karl and Ko destroyed *more tanks than they carried ammo combined*. Seriously, each JT carries 40 rounds at 100% stowage. Where did the ~30 extra kills come from, repeatedly limping into them with the JT's famous agility?

    Or is it because Körner was in a tiger B?

  12. 17 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

     

    Sure that's not just more "allied propaganda?" After all, how can we be sure the Battle of Arracourt occurred?

    You want to squeeze that with the Jews, eh? ccc

    "Battle of Arracourt" is, afaik, a recent invention of certain US authors in  desperate attempt to portray US tank units in a positive light. Likely part of a plan to sell books. Nobody, US army nor Wehrmacht called it so and the events are part of what is called "Lorraine campaign" in US historical literature.

×
×
  • Create New...