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ColinWright -> RE: Allies Western Front 1944 - Replacement Rate (1/5/2010 10:56:46 PM)
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I've been through this before with Jerry McDonald's Fall Grau. He came up with some incredible replacement rates based on actual production.
The relationship between production and arms actually present in battle is a long and tortuous one. You can't assume anything like a 1:1 relationship, and many, many other factors intervene.
The following come to mind, but the list is hardly intended to be inclusive.
1. How many of the weapons are in transit at any given time? How long does it take the average M-10 to get from the factory gate to the end user? Maybe there're lotsa M-10's piling up in New Jersey -- but only ten are being shipped overseas per week.
2. What's the breakdown rate like? What is the repair capacity? Does ten units produced translate into ten units in service, or three waiting for repairs, four being repaired, and three in service?
3. How many are diverted to training units?
4. Do the weapons turn out to require further modifications/additional equipment before they can be put into service? This happens a lot. Fighters arrive without gun sights, rubber treads need to be replaced with steel ones before the tanks can be used in desert, etc.
5. Are the munitions on hand to allow the units to be used as designed? Maybe the real limitation for the PX-4 isn't the production of PX-4's, but how much tungsten-core 37 mm AP shell is available.
6. Are trained crews on hand? You can't fly Spitfires without Spitfire pilots.
7. What kind of reserves are maintained? Production could be very low -- but there could be ample reserves. Of course, how quickly can they be delivered...
I'd tend to advocate finding out how many weapons were actually in service in the units over time. How they got there, and how many were originally produced is secondary. You can find strength returns in unit diaries and stuff. Does the unit usually have a full quota of whatever, or are there frequently deficits? If the former, then the replacement rate obviously exceeds whatever the normal loss rate is. If the latter, then the weapons aren't getting to the troops in sufficient quantity -- for whatever reason.
The resulting rate will be a guess -- but looking at the production rate probably won't help. It isn't really a direct factor. That is to say, it could be high, or it could be low -- that isn't necessarily what would determine your replacement rate. After all, the Germans produced 17,000 or something Bf-109's in 1944 -- your 'War in Europe' scenario isn't going to be better for it if you give the Germans 333 Bf-109's per week in replacements.
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