"Bailing Out of tanks" Topic

It would seem that a lot of rules, not us of course, seem to make a big thing of bailing ot of tanks that are potentially workable. I have just read a history of the 712TH Armoured division over the entire WWII period. The anecdotres from that make it seem a very rare event. Lots of times troops bail out but almost allways from a tank that is no-longer functioning in any pratical way. Certainly my reading of the tea leaves is that it was well less than 5%. This is well below any accuracy required for a tabletop game.

So why is it such a popular issue depite being a very uncommon event? Tanks break down much more frequently but the same rules that cover bail out do not cover the more proable issue of machanical failure.

Off the top of my head.

Misunderstanding – like maybe how often tanks were fixed up and returned to service.

Lack of research.

Or maybe the designer felt it made his rules more interesting.

I believe Squad Leader had a bail out rule but I can't ever remember actually having it happen in a game. Other than that, I don't believe I've ever played in a game where it was even a possibility. What rule sets are you thinking of ?

Flames of War – bailed tanks are quite routine.

Though frankly I think it's more of a "naming" issue. Really I think of it as "suppressed" NOT as if the crew left the safety of a tank to go running around in harms way with no armor between them and the enemy.

Otherwise it's the only rule set I can think of that uses the term.

ASL has bail out rules but only for tanks that are immobile.

The FOW rules specifically state that the crew is not necessarily outside the tank. They may be stunned or just huddled down in the bottom of the vehicle.

Having a fifteen pound slag of molten steel fly past your chest from side to side can be awfully convicing to get out, when you are in the tight confines of an armoured vehicle.

Nevermind if it sets something on fire or off to explode. now in all likelihood, the tank or gun crew that just hit you, seeing that you did not explode the first time will be fairly well encouraged to put another round into your hide until such time as that you do burn or explode.

Oh and time to reload another round to fire from a tank or an anti tank gun is four to five seconds.

Should the enemy lose interest in destroying your vehicle, you can always get back in after you have shovelled out what is filling your underwear.

Finns captured bailed out tanks and were able to drive them away on several occasions in WWII.
They even captured one "by smoke" whatever that means (SU152?)

PBI has no "bailed out" result. A tank is either OK, immobilised or dead in PBI. I have not seen many rule sets for WW2 with bail out as a result.

martin

In the NUTS! system from Two Hour Wargames, if a vehicle is immobilized by enemy fire the crew will bail out. They can always opt to re-enter the vehicle later.

In my home-brewed rules: If a hit that could have knocked out a tank, didn't (due to die roll) the crew must make a morale check; if it fails, it bails. However, if, on any future turn, neither the crew nor the tank is under fire they can re-enter the tank if they can pass a morale check (assuming that they are still near the tank). If players want to interpret that as suppressed, pinned or something other than actually exiting the tank, that's fine with me.

It happened rarely and was due to a morale failure of the crew. Something happened that caused them to think the tank was or was about to become dead. Anecdotally, the most frequent were probably Russian crews in the early Eastern Front and Syrians in the Golan in 73.

My landlord in Germany was a radio operator in tanks. Of the four tanks he crewed that were "lost", one was lost in the middle of an engagement when only the lower half of the tank commander fell back into the turret. In his words, they all got out rather quickly. He also left a good vehicle when they had run out of fuel and ammunition.
I have read a number of descriptions of engagements where the crew of a vehicle dismounted because they thought the tank had been hit and was on fire (either smoke or WP).
I have also read accounts of penetrations/ partial penetations/ or thru and thru hits on an armored vehicle seemed to have no effect and the vehicle continued to fight.
It is all a question of morale, training and confidence in ones equipment. A failure on any one of these may not cause the crew to bail, but fail all three and you're probably going bye bye.

My take on it is that in most cases, crews wouldn't bail out of their armor protection to trade it for the very thin protection offered by plain air.

Only if the vehicle is immobilized, the turret is jammed, or the vehicle otherwise inoperative would a crew bail out.

Sometimes, crew casualties might cause a bail too, but again, you're trading armor plate for the cover that thin air and dirt can offer, so……..

From what I see in many rules, being hit by enemy fire isn't a good reason to cause a crew to bail out, especially if it didn't penetrate the tank.

Actually reading books by armored crew men it was fairly common. If you got hit hard enough to hear or feel it you bailed since the next shot would be coming soon. Remember you kept firing until you saw smoke or fire to make sure the enemy vehicle was knocked out.

In Chain of Command, a crew of vehicle may be forced to bail out due to the amount of shock sustained from being hit. Unfortunately the rules do not allow the crew to get back in said vehicle nor are they a fighting force/team on foot…they simply just disappear.

I guess for a skirmish game that would be ok. I'm trying to work something out for the crew…since I have a variety of dismounted crew for Americans, Russians and Germans all painted up and ready for some action.

P.

I've also read of some tanks taking dozens of hits, and their crews didn't bail, too.

German doctrine in WWII was to not bail out unless the tank was on fire.

You can find plenty of documentation supporting either point of view, I think.

A plain old morale check is probably sufficient.

Of course, if a tank crew is alive to tell their memoirs we know they either didn't get incinerated or they bailed before they did :-)

Action All Fronts has bail-out rules. But they don't get back in again.

My reading suggests that any crew that failed to bail out from an immobilised tank were mad. Before Kursk German tank crews were told to stay in their tanks if they were immobilised, result a lot of dead German tank crews.

It was a tactic in Normandy. Fire smoke at a German tank and hope that the crew bail out.

Trading armor for no armor seems like a poor choice, when you are sitting comfortably in your chair reasoning about it all. But …

Remember that the armor keeps bad things IN just as well as it keeps bad things out. Even better, in fact.

Once the crew believes (or even suspects) that the armor is no longer keeping bad things out, and that bad things are in fact inside the tank, they usually want out. And they want out RIGHT NOW.

Fire is the most important bad thing that the crew does not want in the tank. Most crews would bail immediately if they believed there was fire inside the tank. Smoke was often effective in encouraging this, as most crews did not want to take the time to investigate the source of smoke in their tank. Even if there were fire extinguishers available, they were seldom used for interior fires. Get out first, ask questions later. However, a tank in combat normally has a fair bit of smoke inside from it's own guns firing, so it usually takes a substantial and rapid increase in smoke to spur concerns about fire. My own readings indicate that a crew that was "smoked" before they had begun fighting was more likely to bail than a crew "smoked" in the middle of a back-and-forth fight.

Broken body parts might also be interpreted as an indicator that bad things were entering the tank. Here a strong tank commander could probably keep the crew at their tasks by issuing immediate instructions to remedy the source of bad things entering the tank. This might be orders to button up because there are snipers or incoming artillery, or for the driver to reverse into cover or otherwise drive out of the immediate danger, or for the gunner to engage a spotted enemy. But without those orders, or without the ability to execute on those orders (the tank is immobilized, or the gunner is the one with broken body parts, etc. ), or without confidence in the TC, then the crew might well decide not to wait for more bad things to enter the tank, and bail.

Loud and repeated strikes to the tank's armor could also result in the crew believing the armor would no longer keep bad things out. Sometimes heavy strikes could cause spalling inside, causing injury or damage. The fact that the projectile did not penetrate the armor was sometimes interpreted as a good thing, giving the crew the confidence to stay. And sometimes the presence of spalling was enough to convince the crew that the armor was not working, and it was time to get out. Also non-penetrating hits often generated smoke inside the tank (the paint on the inner armor surface could burn, or something struck by the spalling might smolder). This might lead to all of the other concerns about smoke in the tank, as noted above.

Eventually there is also the issue of panic. Panic is a bad thing inside the tank. Once a crewman is pushed by whatever combination of events into a state of panic, confinement will add to his sense of terror. So occasionally crews will bail just from panic. This is notably less likely in veteran crews.

Or so my readings, and conversations with tankers, have given me to believe. I have not actually been there, nor done that, and make no claim to first-hand experience.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I think what your unit is doing at the time will have a huge effect too. If your unit is retreating and you're hit, staying in the tank to be captured by the advancing enemy doesn't seem a good idea.
If you're advancing, and not the 'point' vehicle, then exiting the vehicle doesn't seem as urgent a requirement, unless you're still in the line of fire, although I'd still evacuate, I think most tankers would, unless fanatical. Very much dependent too, on what caused the stoppage, ie; vehicle malfunction, mine, indirect enemy fire, direct enemy fire.

In none of our rules has the issue of bailing out been of prime concern. i have bailed out of a burning tank and it not fun. The person in the most difficult position is the gunner. he has to slide over to the loader position and up that hatch or less desirable over to the TC location and up that one which takes longer. The driver has to options up or down. Going down may seem safer to avoid enemy fire but seldom is the hatch not at least partially blocked by high mud/ground or other debris.
Our situation occured in peacetime gunnery but in action the amount of time that you expose yourself on the deck or turret means that the enemy could snipe at you and prevent the first out to help the gunner or driver if needed. Loaders are like jack rabbits and pop out of their hatch and take off with ease. LOL!
The major issue that makes bailing out almost impossible is the damage inside the tank which would prevent bailing. Another issue is the condition of the crew. After being damaged many of the crew members may not only be wounded, suffering from concussions but more likely suffering from broken bones.
All of this means that most crews would be combat ineffective to continue a battle. Survival is their main concern.

There is a T26 in the Panssari Museum in Finland (at least there was when I visited in 1982) that had a penetration that went straight through the turret – in and out.
No idea what happened to the crew – but the tank would have been fine – do damage to engine or main gun.
I bet they bailed out.
I have a picture of it somewhere

Panther vs Pershing duel in Cologne Germany. A Sherman gets hit and crew bails, three of them are killed. Then the Pershing hits the Panther and it's crew bails out. If you go to 5:11 it shows the Panther crew bailing.

YouTube link

I suspect a great deal of this has to do with crew morale, psychology and expectations regarding the local combat situation.

The crew of the famous KV2 outside Leningrad in 1941 stayed with their tank despite taking dozens of hits from German AT guns and artillery. Why? Probably because they were not only brave fellows, but also confident that the local Germans had nothing in their inventory that could defeat the KV2's armor.

At the other end of the spectrum are German accounts alleging that, in the 1945 Lake Balaton fighting, Russian crews of totally untouched JS1's were seen to abandon their vehicles after a nearby tank of their element had been knocked out.

By my understanding, Sherman crews at Normandy would immediately abandon their vehicle upon it being hit. There are several reasons to suggest that this was a sensible response: statistically, 19 out of 20 AT and tank gun hits upon Sherman armor resulted in full penetrations; the doctrine of the Germans to continue firing upon a target tank until it burned was known to Allied tankers and meant that they had perhaps 10-15 seconds to bail before another round could be expected to come their way; the majority of Shermans suffering penetrations could be expected to catch fire anyways within a very short period of time after being hit. There was no sense in risking one's life inside a compromised vehicle.

It's a complicated issue and I do not believe that a single simple rule can accommodate all the possible nuances. It might be necessary to tailor special rules on a scenario by scenario basis.

Strictly my opinion, of course.

B

statistically, 19 out of 20 AT and tank gun hits upon Sherman armor resulted in full penetrations

First an AT gun has to hit you. In the desert the 8.8cm averaged 10 rounds per kill claim at normal ranges rising to 20 at long range. A 1945 survey found 48 tanks with 1 penetration also has 19 scoops. Only 1 tank from 57 had more than 2 penetrations

Morale:
If you see tanks around you being knocked out = you're next. If you see tanks around you being hit but not knocked out = you're OK.

You see smoke inside the tank = morale check

Hits are not penetrating but spalling is injuring crew and knocking out other systems = morale check

Driver Status:
If a non-penetrating hit caused spalling that killed him your tank is at least temporary mobilized. If your unit is advancing you may stay or bail. If you are withdrawing you'd most likely bail. Drivers have also been known to panic and bog the vehicle while backing up. I've also read accounts of the headless body of the commander falling back inside the tank and onto the driver.

Commander status: Many tanks were pretty much blind without the commander. If he is killed the vehicle could withdraw or crew bail depending on the current situation. It was not unusual for an explosion to eject a tank commander that was in his hatch observing completely out of the tank. I worked with a guy that was a TC in N. Africa and he woke up 6 months later and survived because he was thrown clear. The rest of his crew died. After being hit and you look around and see the TC is no longer there you'd most likely bail too.

Then there is fear of the unknown. Let's say the intercom goes out in the middle of an intense engagement. The driver and radioman are pretty isolated from the crew in the turret. If the turret cannot communicate with the driver they may think he's KIA. If the driver cannot communicate with the commander he may think he is KIA. With no driver or commander the tank is pretty ineffective and people may panic.

Fear of the unknown also occurs moments after a penetration. Accounts I've read are the the entire crew experiences a violent flash and over pressure if not an explosion. The round itself, if it does not penetrate out the other side, will bounce around inside the compartment causing other damage and causalities. You may suddenly realize your face and clothes are wet but it's not from perspiration. You may have lost a body part but because of shock it may take a few moments for that to sink in.

A frontal penetration into the lower hull may mean the round also ends up in the engine compartment where all kinds of nasty things can happen but maybe not right away. A very small fire could grow into a conflagration and explosion in moments. Most crews left their hatches unlatched to decrease the over pressure inside. With the hatches now blown open that sunlight shining through is going to look very inviting and safe as compared to being inside.

If a round penetrated you'd also know that you have 5-15 seconds before the next one hits. That's about the minimum amount of time to bail out. There could also be an SOP order by the commander on what to do when hit too.

Wolfhag

I think it's mostly a naming issue with Flames of War. I'd rather call it "Crew Shaken" or something like that, though I'm sure GW would have called to complain about it.

Rolling to un-bail a tank allows you to shout "Get back in zee tank!" in your worst German accent!

I can't picture a tank crew that has actually bailed out of their tank getting back in while there is still shooting going on.

I think that FOW rather overdoes this but neither should it be ignored.

In my own rules AFV crews often bail out and sometimes are able to re-man them. If the AFV is knocked out they can occasionally get the AFV working again but it's rare. If the vehicle was destroyed and burning they cannot.

Knocked out tanks were usually repaired and returned to service if not burned out. [assuming your side could recover them]. It did take a few days though.

Crews would often consider their AFV to be knocked out if penetrated while in fact everything vital is still working. They crew being injured or just scared into bailing out is IMO the main way AFVs get knocked out – except perhaps immobilised AFVs would often get abandoned too.

"German doctrine in WWII was to not bail out unless the tank was on fire."

LOL, I guess some crews didn't read that particular manual. Especially the ones who bailed out under air attack and the guys who left a Stug with the engine running in the middle of a street in Arnhem.

I read one account where the (Allied) crews started bailing out the minute they came under fire from unlocated AT guns, but before any vehicles were actually hit!

In most likelihood, any penetration resulted in the tank being knocked out of action for some reason. I think some game designers see this as creating a very deadly game -- too deadly and too fast -- so they want some kind of middle ground result. Being able to have partial damage without totally negating performance, or bailing out but allowing the crew to re-enter if the vehicle is still operable, reflects this thinking.

To be honest, I struggle with this, too. Maybe it's the old "simulation vs game" dilemma.

I'm reminded of the scene in the movie "Patton" where Gen. Bradley says he asked a tank crewman if the German guns could penetrate their tanks, and the crewman said, "No sir, they just come in one side and rattle around a bit."

And of course for campaigns, it may be helpful to know how badly damaged a tank is. Germans seem to have been very keen to recover their damaged tanks (and enemy ones as well).

It depends on the scale of your game as well. If you have one platoon of tanks on the board you'd be interested in the crew status, but I play with 1-2 companies' worth of troops and tanks, and all I want to know is if the tank is a runner or not. The only time bail outs are not the same as knocked out is if they've taken a mobility hit when the tank platoon routs, then they roll to stay in the tank. If they fail the crew is considered to have fled and the tank's knocked out. If they pass they are hiding in the tank until the platoon recovers morale. However, every turn a platoon continues to fail morale it loses another tank (either the crew bailed out and fled or the tank has gone somewhere outside the commander's control), so the mobility hits are usually the first to go.

BTW I recommend anyone who wants to know what it was like to go in to battle in a tank in WW2 to read Tank Men by Robert Kershaw,

If you see tanks around you being knocked out = you're next.

The problem with this line of reasoning is the assumption that the crew can see what's happening around them outside of the tank. They can not.

The driver can see straight in front. The gunner can see what the turret is pointed at. The loader can't see anything except his position inside the tank.

Only the TC can see out and about, in most cases. And even this can be highly restricted by what his tank provides in vision ports/periscopes, what his nation's doctrine and his own personal approach is to "heads out" in combat, and most importantly by what he is looking at and for.

I watched a platoon of M1A2s get picked off, one by one, in a training exercise at Ft. Knox back in about 2004. It was in the sims bay … a fairly amazing set up in a large warehouse, where each tank crew (minus the loader, who's role is simulated) sat in a fully configured virtual reality "box", with full equipment just like the interior of the tank, and all of their vision ports provided with screens all linked to the master system. A full battalion of these crew "boxes" were all linked to a master sim, with the sim umpire/controller playing the opfor. There was even a Battalion HQ set-up in the building, with 2 APCs backed up to each other, map tables, radios, and camo net over the whole thing.

This was an officer's training, so it was a platoon of officers, each crewman being at least a 2nd Lt. The platoon leader directed his tanks to take hull-down positions on a ridge. But the opfor had already occupied a higher ridge to their flank, and proceeded to smoke the tanks one-by-one right down the line.

We were in the master control room with the combat team CO, who was pacing furiously while the training umpire told him "no, you can not give the advice on their position. They have not given you a sitrep, so you don't know where they are." So he had to watch, WITH an audience, as his command died.

The commo went something like this:

"Reddog to reddog units. Report status."
"Reddog 1 in position."
"Reddog 2 in position."
…
"Reddog to reddog 3. Report status."
…
"Reddog to reddog 3. REPORT STATUS."
…
"Reddog to reddog 2, do you have eyes on reddog 3?"
…
"Reddog 1 to reddog. Reddog 2 is burning."
"Reddog to reddog 1. Say again? Burning?."
"Reddog leader to reddog 1, REPEAT LAST TRANSMISSION!"
"Reddog leader to any reddog, REPORT!"
"Reddog to dog leader. We are ….."

No further transmissions. Then the crews walked into the control room, rather downtrodden, for their lecture.

Probably a memorable lesson. But clearly illustrated that the guys in a tank generally have NO idea what's going on outside, except in the direction they are looking. No morale failure. No time for a morale failure. They all died in place, at their posts. Virtually, fortunately.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

A good example of bailing out is to see some of the real world footage coming back from the unfortunate events in our current world. If you watch tankers fighting insurgents, they will usually bail pretty darn quickly once a weapon has penetrated.

You're pretty much looking at an instance of "If you aren't dead after the almighty loud bang and the vehicle suddenly filling with smoke, you will be darn soon after if you don't get out!"

A lot of it comes down to "will the armour hold?" if that answer is a resounding no, or there have been enough "almost didn't" moments (A Tiger tank in the Bulge actually bailed after a Greyhound armoured car plinked it at short range with 37mm shots and smoke grenades into the open turret hatch) then your troops will get out.

Disciplined forces will take longer to succumb to "almost didn't", so that would be when your training/ morale comes into play… but anything where it hit and penetrated, resulting in anything other than a mobility kill (i.e like FOW if you fail a firepower check) you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be out of that like there's no tomorrow!

And of course for campaigns, it may be helpful to know how badly damaged a tank is. Germans seem to have been very keen to recover their damaged tanks (and enemy ones as well)

True of Americans, as well. It wasn't just the fact that the US built 50,000 Shermans, but we also could bring one back from the dead in as little as 24 hours as long as it hadn't burned. A burned tank has weakened the armor, basically turning hardened steel plate back into mild steel.

There are US tanker memoirs about how they knew when they'd gotten a battlefield recovery, the crew could smell the disinfectant used to wash the blood out of the inside of the tank.

(A Tiger tank in the Bulge actually bailed after a Greyhound armoured car plinked it at short range with 37mm shots and smoke grenades into the open turret hatch)

WW2 smoke grenades were white phosphorous, I'd get the hell out of any structure that had a burning WP grenade in it before the WP burned ME.

"A good example of bailing out is to see some of the real world footage coming back from the unfortunate events in our current world. If you watch tankers fighting insurgents, they will usually bail pretty darn quickly once a weapon has penetrated."

Indeed its damn stupid to have tanks standing still in towns without infantry support. And those T72's go up like a rocket (ammunition charges kept in the autoloader).

Lots of times troops bail out but almost always from a tank that is no-longer functioning in any practical way. Certainly my reading of the tea leaves is that it was well less than 5%. This is well below any accuracy required for a tabletop game.

In my rules (Panzer War) there always has to be damage to tank or crew to instigate a bailout. Though I have read that there are very rare occurrences where a non-damaging penetration followed by confusion and panic caused the crew to bail out. In that condition the crew could re-man the tank after settling down.

So why is it such a popular issue despite being a very uncommon event? Tanks break down much more frequently but the same rules that cover bail out do not cover the more probable issue of mechanical failure.

I my opinion this is a rule based on a desired affect. The effect that is desired is to empower infantry in its struggle with armor. The authors come up a variety of reasons to turn the tank crew sniveling from infantry fire. But there is not a reciprocal morale check in these rules of scattering infantry, dug-in or otherwise, at the sight of approaching tank treads.

And why is this?
For one it is driven by the miniatures themselves. You might even develop a graph plotting scale+cost+painting time vs tank bail out ease. If one has spent days, weeks or even months painting up their infantry the authors and shop owners don't want them to be trounced by someone spending a minute dipping a tank into green or gray paint. Sorry to be so cynical.

I my opinion this is a rule based on a desired affect. The effect that is desired is to empower infantry in its struggle with armor. The authors come up a variety of reasons to turn the tank crew sniveling from infantry fire. …

And why is this?
For one it is driven by the miniatures themselves. … If one has spent days, weeks or even months painting up their infantry the authors and shop owners don't want them to be trounced by someone spending a minute dipping a tank into green or gray paint. Sorry to be so cynical.

Not sure if it is primarily the cost of the miniatures, or perhaps just the desire to keep the infantry the focus of the rules, but I think Mobius is on track with his identification of the issue.

He and I have discussed similar issues before as reasons we both choose rules that have 1-to-squad rather than 1-to-fireteam infantry basing.

The truth is, if I spend my time painting up a company of 30 – 40 stands of Russian (or French, or British, or Polish) infantry, and you spend your time painting up a company of 17 German Panzer 3's or 4's (or even 38t's), and I spend my time moving all of my 30 – 40 stands of infantry into exactly PERFECT positions … you will roll right over me with your panzers and it won't even be an interesting game.

And that is exactly what Germany proved, again and again, in 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942.

If you want the rules to focus on infantry, and you allow the gamers to choose their own forces, the gamer who chooses tanks will either roll right over the infantry or simply drive around the infantry unless you build in ridiculously a-historical capabilities or you only allow limited, tightly proscribed scenarios.

Yes, in close terrain (forests, towns) the infantry might get close enough to close-assault a tank with improvised or even purpose-built explosives and flame weapons. Great. So if your company of infantry faces a platoon of 3 or 4 tanks, and there is only one possible route for the tanks to take to some key objective, and you have lots of cover on that route, go for it.

But if your company of infantry faces a company of 17 tanks, forget it. It just ain't happening. And if your game board actually looks at all like the real world, with multiple paths to achieving a useful result, forget it. You'll get one or two tanks, the rest will roll right over you, and the game will be over. Or they'll just roll past you, and you'll never even get a chance to interfere with them.

So you say you'll put in some AT guns. Great. But you need some very well thought-out rules for hidden units and spotting and rate-of-fire to provide realistic capabilities to AT guns. Many gamers don't want to have hidden units, and most gamers become frustrated with rules that don't allow them to shoot at models they can see on the table. If your rules try to provide a game constructed of pretty models on the table and buckets of dice, again you must make a-historical rules to balance the inherent mobility and robustness of tanks.

I reach these conclusions by looking at all the various AARs of 15mm and 28mm games, which tend to be infantry focused, compared with my own experiences in 6mm gaming, which tends to be tank-focused. Once you get a company of tanks on the board, with rules that give you anything like realistic capabilities for those tanks, you need to have a battalion or more, with AT guns, engineering works and artillery, to provide a reasonably balanced infantry-based counter-force.

Guys who play 15mm and 28mm want to set up a base of fire with their LMG while a section of riflemen move around the flank, and then it's in with the grenades and bayonets. Or they want to see brave Sgt. Grimface use the superior morale of his "veteran +1" status to charge in with his SMG and gun 'em all down. That's the fun of the larger scales.

But unless we abstract out much of the fun details of the infantry, or give them ridiculously exaggerated capabilities vs. armor, we need a game where one side needs to manage 120 stands in a turn, while the other side moves 10 or 15. Just try to make that game flow…

Managing the disparity in combat power is a real challenge to rule-writers. But the existence of the disparity should not be a surprise to anyone who reads history.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I agree that there is an element of fudging involved to make tanks less capable versus infantry.

One thing that aggravates the problem is that beginning gamers naturally buy their 'armies' first then think about terrain much later. Early games get played with perhaps a house, two hills and a wood as terrain. This further plays into the hands of the tank armies.

No rules for concealment is also an issue. Infantry is hard to spot even in open ground if the men just keep low.

FOW is guilty but so is ASL which makes it quite easy for infantry to engage tanks in close combat citing balance as the main reason.

It is possible to design rules that keep tanks/infantry/artillery in balance but they need to be quite complex with some ideas that are not easily embraced by new players.

Having the infantry in contact with their artillery (or at least mortars) would help some.

Discussion on tank losses. what to notice here is that 1/3 of tank losses is due to abandonment. So crews bailed.

link

Abandonment and bailing out are two different things.

Tank crews can call in FA or mortars. But of course they have to remain in the vehicle, which may not be an option if hit …

Abandonment and bailing out are two different things.

How do you abandon a tank without getting out of it?

I assume he means you can bail out and stay by the tank rather than run off without getting out.

Bailing out is usually referred to when in combat or under attack. The abandonment statistics can be after combat when crews assess their tanks combat worthiness. Take for example Panzer Gunner, Bruno Freisen's experience with his Mark IVs. The tank he was in suffered damage on two occasions which put it out of action. The crew did not bail out of the tank while the battle was on. (One time it was a gun barrel damaged. The other time it was turret jammed.) Once it was over, his crew got permission to abandon the vehicle and walk back to their lines.