Anraz
Posts: 785
Joined: 7/25/2008
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Hi. Behind the window finally there is a whiff of the thaw, a kind of temporary ersatz spring. No frost, no snow, but also no sun. The past seven days were as usual. Work, work, work... Do you remember that fortifications are on the edges? So among other features we have finished that week, there is one which allows to build complicated lines of fortifications as a single production. Building very long lines of fortifications now is easy and takes only a little space in the building queue of the production window :) Feature connected with building roads works the same way.
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I was born in the country under protection of a big red “brother”. Words like puppet military regime come into mind, but it would be off the pointif I was to explore this political motive any further.
Big brother and propaganda are an inseparable pair. As a kid I used to watch TV novel called “Four tank men and a dog“(“Czterej pancerni i pies”) which is a kind of merger of ”Company of brothers” and “Lassie Come Home”.The film was realized in the `60 and follows the adventures of a tank crew (as in the title) and their T-34 tank. The Second World War shown in the series was far from the real one, in many ways problematic from the standpoint of military realism, sometimes almost grotesque. Not mentioning doubtful examples of friendship with Soviet Army and constant tribute to it, this tank was the best!
In the next years, but still in formative ones, I saw many Discovery-like films glorifying T-34 and the Soviet army. In one of these there was a sentence which woke me from that propaganda dream: “Zhukov was the greatest general, in the battle of Berlin he had 300 thousand wounded and killed soldiers out of 500 thousand who started the battle.” Greatest ever general with casualties of 60% in a single battle???
I started to check things on my own...
It was almost 20 years ago. I was living in the country with centralized economy, which now is no longer like that, but a lot of personal experience connected with a “people’s realm” is still in my memory. I remember Soviet goods like tv sets, bikes, watches, tools, cars... All were almost the same poor quality and not very reliable... All were produced in time of peace in normal factories by qualified staff.
And here come the question - how come in a war time economy in factories moved behind the Ural, in situation when rare resources and materials were often replaced with ersatz, unqualified personnel could build super extra reliable T-34 tank which was so many times vaunted? Is it a miracle or a lie?
There are two very interesting reports made by Soviets in Kubinka where T-34 was compared to just bought Pz III (an ally sold a tank to another ally) and Americans in Aberdeen where T-34 gifted by Stalin (he was pressed a bit to do it) was examined. Both were crushing. Soviet top secret report said that Pz III is better than T-34. It is not a mistake...More or less: T-34 had better amour (but considerably weaken by two big holes on its front - a MG and a hatch) and main gun, had comparable speed, but was unreliable, uncomfortable, had a very short-living engine (40-100 working hours!), had poor aiming systems, its combat compartment was badly ventilated (after a few shots it was full of smoke and the crew was hardly able to do anything), gear was very difficult to operate - to change gears one needed to use 10kg hammer... so driver used to use just the second gear and it hastened breakdowns, bad designed air filters reduced the power of the engine (engine used to choke continually so very rarely T-34 was able to go as deftly as masses believe). Even sloped side walls of the hull offered protection no significantly greater then its counterparts, but caused lack of space inside the tank, for example ammunition was usually kicking around on the floor of combat compartment and aggravated fighting ability of the tank crew. American report pointed out the same weakness of T-34.
Interesting fact which indirectly confirmed such revelations is that Soviet guard units were using Shermans. If M4 had been worse than T-34, they wouldn’t have been using Shermans ;) They were more reliable, more comfortable and had better aiming systems and some more advantages.
There is a WW2 era proverb (used in Polish People’s Army) : “ZiS 5 (truck) – downhill it goes, uphill it must be pushed” ;) This is not far from truth about an average T-34.
The greatest tyrant of XX century, or greatest tyrant ever lived on Earth, Stalin said: “Quantity has its own quality”. For a very long time true sense of his words was clouded by the fog of propaganda slogans. Here comes the revealed truth of the myth of the great soviet weapon. The power of T-34 lies in other place - it was available in large quantities*. It did not matter that almost 50% of the tanks could brake down in the eve of battle, if there were thousands of them ;) It did not matter they were barely operational, if an average tank was destroyed by the enemy after just a several days of service.
As comparison to the quality of American production (M4 Sherman in mind) we could do an interesting in-mind exercise/test: let`s imagine we have two players in 1943: Player A has 100 M4 and B has 100 T-34. Lets imagine that in the eve of the battle 5% of M4 and 50% of T-34 tanks cannot arrive to the battlefield because of quality/breakdowns ... Maybe I should add that firepower and protection in both tanks are on the same level. Would you like to play as A or B?
Now we are even closer to “Bitter Glory”. We have tanks in the game. We can have tanks from different countries in one unit. We can compare tanks from different countries. This long introduction was made to show why well equipped tank, but of a very low quality (do you remember the field called “quality” in the platoon constructor?) may have lower “soft attack” or “hard attack” than other with a smaller gun or with just not as advanced gun of the same caliber. If we look into the M4/T-34 theoretical comparison the shock will be lesser ;)
Let’s talk for a while about Land Lease and level of tank production/destruction in Soviet Union. If we compare the number of tanks destroyed, produced and sent by Allies, we have an interesting figure – final number of tanks in Soviet army after WW2 wasn't significantly greater then the number of tanks sent by the Allies. If we would also consider quality of American tanks and change all tanks into abstract points, who knows if without the help of the Allies the final Soviet score would have been under 0. If there was no LL who now knows what would be the fate of the war in the East...With no locomotives, wagons, rails, trucks, (only ZiS5 instead of a very reliable American trucks), steel, chemicals, food and other countless goods, Soviet tank production would be smaller...
This is another point from long BG list. While playing SU pray for LL or else...
Looking from the other point if we have an average amount of medium quality equipment, but very good doctrines and leaders, we can conquer a lot like Germans did, if we have abundant of equipment, but poor, weak leaders and weak doctrines we are in hopeless situation, until we change something. Soviet army was changing its doctrines in good direction, German had the best ones in the beginning of WW2 and during the course of the war was changing them into worse. I don't know why in games this is always somewhat different or even contrary. It is time to change it :) The doctrinal issue will be discused many times in the future :) See you next Friday in the next part of the diary !
*If we understand the issue of Soviet “quality” and add 3 shifts workday the “miracle” of Soviet productivity becomes less impressive. German industry was stronger then Soviet, but they didn't work overnight, produced much greater quantity of non-military goods and its production was of greater quality. That’s why they were out-produced. The other thing is the kill ratio which was 1 German tank for 3-4 Soviet tanks (various data can be found).
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This screen is to show very early version of NATO counters (not too pretty in fact, but there have been some questions about them). Also notice it is the screen taken from windowed mode of the game.
< Message edited by Anraz -- 1/23/2009 7:49:44 PM >
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