hueglin
Posts: 297
Joined: 6/25/2006 From: Kingston, ON, Canada Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Rune Iversen quote:
ORIGINAL: freeboy a kill shot at 20-450 yards is very differrent than one at 1500 yards.. I think if you where in a open plains duel aqt 1500 to2500 yds, you would never everr want a allied gun less than the fireflies 25 lb or the german panther high vel 75 or those 88s.. remmeber tactics, vs guns.. I can kill u with my knife if you cannot see me in the fog and u have a 12 guage. The funny thing is, that you don´t really find many examples of long range duels in the tactical narratives very much (apart from AT guns whose doctrinal role it was to duel at long range anyway), apart from a few instances (Brits in Normandy for exemple). Each time the germans did bring out sizeable number of Kats, they did so in either inclement weather (snow, morning fog, rain) or in constrcited terrain (Ardennes. Mortain to a degree). Which suggests that accuracy and killing power above 1000 meters, while certainly nice to have, was not necessarily decisive in a majority of cases. I`d suggest that the reason why the Germans only brought out a sizeable number of any type of tank in bad weather or constricted terrain had more to do with Allied air supremacy than purposely choosing to engage at shorter distances. By 1944 air power (and limited resources) was having a serious affect on their abilty to conduct mobile operations of any type. That is one of the reasons Rommel wanted the armoured reserves close to the beach heads - so that they wouldn`t be interedicted by air power while being committed from deep operational reserve positions. I suspect the Germans began to have the same reservations about employing armour at the tactical level and felt it was better to operate from as much cover as possible - hence the close fight.
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