"So do your skirmish rules allow for this?" Topic

‘… In one such skirmish, two Red tanks attacked a Finnish squad caught in lightly wooded terrain near the village. A lieutenant named Huovinen taped five stick grenades together and crawled toward the tanks; his friend, First Lieutenant Virkki, intended to provide covering fire, despite the fact that he was carrying only his sidearm. At a range of 40 meters Virkki stood up and emptied his 9mm Lahti automatic at the vehicles' observation slits. The T-28 replied with a spray of machinegun fire, and Virkki went down. Those watching felt sure he had been killed. But he had only dropped down to slap another magazine into the butt of his weapon. That done, he jumped up and once more emptied his pistol at the tanks. Altogether this deadly dance step was repeated three times, at which point the Russian tankers seemed to become unnerved. They turned around and clanked back to the village. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Huovinen had been crawling closer to them from the rear and now had his arm cocked to throw the grenade bundle. Just at that moment the tank nearest him put on speed and retreated. He lowered his grenades in astonishment. Surely there were not many instances in modern warfare of tanks being repulsed by pistol fire."
Frozen Hell, by William Trotter, pg. 157

(an incident from the battle of Suomassalmi)

I believe in Rapid Fire tanks coming under small arms fire must take a morale check.

No, because skirmish rules shouldn't waste time on million-to-one shots.

There are numerous documented questions instances of armour withdrawing in the face of small arms fire, or in one SCW incident, bed sheets hung across the road. Generally the armour is unsupported, and understandably, nervous about being stalked by AT teams, which in the example above is exactly what the Finns planned to do.

In our rules infantry can suppress armour with small arms fire, and suppressed armour can halt or withdraw. Many other rules penalise unsupported armour.

Of course from a game pov it is a bit rubbish if your only tank runs away from a bloke with a pistol.

We played a game where a lone rifleman shot the commander out of the turret of a Tiger tank, which immediately backed off the board.

Unfortunately, we don't know what was happening inside the T-28 turret. Did one or more rounds get through the slit? If so, what damage or casualties were caused?

Seeing a guy with a pistol yards away, wouldn't it be safe to assume the T-28 crew believed they were going to be close assaulted and withdrawn?

I think it was fear of the unknown more than just pistol fire. The guy was pretty insistent with his pistol and the T-28 crew may have thought there was more than one or maybe someone had an anti-tank rifle coming up.

In a game, firing automatic weapons at vision and weapon slits that cannot be closed would make a crew very uncomfortable.

I saw a Russian T-62 tank with an additional circular armor welded around the turret ring. They considered small arms fire and shrapnel enough to jam the turret.

It's not unusual for a tank to withdraw after losing its commander.

When my son was in Yemen he saw a Saudi MBT (Challenger?) with no infantry support come under automatic small arms fire. The Saudi crew bailed out and ran away. They were probably expecting to be hit by an RPG or ATGM any second.

Wolfhag

@Wolfhag, I was going to say the same thing. If I was in an unsupported tank taking small arms fire, I would have to wonder of some crafty Finn was making his way around to my side or rear in order to put an ATR round in me. The guy with the pistol could just be a diversion. It is the fear of the unknown, as well as the fear of what is possible. Another tank commander might have ordered his driver to run the guy over. It's the human factor. I was reading a book about armor in the Pacific during WWII and an American Stuart was shot by a Japanese tank's main gun. The Stuart crew immediately bailed out; when their tank didn't explode or catch on fire, they hopped right back in.

79th,
I'm sure the Russian TC was aware of the Finn close assault tactics putting logs into the suspension and Molotov cocktails.

Check out the blind spots:

Wolfhag

This is essentially an RPG

In 'meta' terms, what happened in this incident was that tanks retreated from an indeterminate number infantry, of whom there was a risk that at least one was armed with a dangerous bundle of grenades. Any time your skirmish rules have a tank driven off by infantry with antitank grenades, a narrative like this beckons :~}

Cheers,
John

Seems abit weird, first you need to supply the missing data on the actual scenario, without that, rules cannot be used, they only work with a defined event.

So tank within 40m. This means it closed into this distance without the infantry being being observed this implies good cover for the infantry.

The infantry fired at the gun ports. This implies as a minimum the tank was buttoned up, otherwise you would shoot at the Tank commander out of the hatch. It's a bit strange if it's a squad, you would have logically shot all weapons at the tank, so a bit suspect why only one man fired, maybe the squad are hopeless or the protagonist had already moved to the tank position.

Now firing ports are usually (correct me if I'm wrong) are on the side.

Now is the tank moving or stationary, clearly there was plenty of warning of the tank coming as one guy had time to collect grenades, and tape them together. If so we can assume the Coax would not be on the target immediately. in fact the tank may only have been aware of the shots by the sound but that is a bit of a long shot. But as the commander was buttoned up he would have to scan several viewing ports to even see the attacker slowing his response time dowm.

Now is the tank moving or not? If it's not moving the tank commander is the proud winner of the Darwin awards, stationary in a wood with no infantry cover is just suicidal. Or he is moving so even if he sees the attacker quickly, he seems to have gotten a few rounds off so not too long, the coax is not stabilized so hit probability is less than perfect and the gunner needs to train the gun first.

Now rules, we could get most of this. Buttoned up tank may not be in spotting arc so may not even see the attacker. Or if moving and in sight, none stabilized the attcker is likely to be suppressed but probably not hit.

Now whether on a track or otherwise, on encountering an enemy infantry you would go back the same way instantly, On a track you may go forward but the situation would get worse.
If not on a track, going forward over ground that may conceal a grounding stump would not be a good idea, getting stuck even a moron tank commander may realise is bad option. Hence track or not the sensible option is to retreat over the same path even if it';s not a track.

Aiming at the firing ports seems to be more an authors exaggeration. See ballistic test comments in peacetime using a 9mm pistol.

At 75-yards, we start to stretch the limits of our marksmanship. Hitting the 8″ square block proved a challenge. When we did finally score a hit, the results weren't very enlightening either. ……

from link

Aiming realistically at a port is not likely to ever have been effective so that is a none starter so to need to evaluate that bit in any rules.

So could an idiot stand up and shoot at a tank from 40m, if at a buttoned up tank then yes he may manage it. Our rules would cover it.

Only a Moron would attempt to run over a man in cover at 40m ditance over the ground described, too much risk in a wooded area getting stuck would be a disaster. Our rules would cover this as a reaction, i.e it would be enacted immediately at the tank commanders discretion on detecting the infantry.

So on balance our rules would make a credible resolurtion of the situation as defined.

Feel free to add or constructively critique the proposed scenario, if I have missed any key issues in turning this from an exaggerated anecdote to something plausible.

The Lahti pistol was the Finnish version of the German Luger and was high quality with an 8-round magazine.

The T-28 had two MG turrets on the front hull and a two-man turret. The TC was the gunner and the other was the loader (had an MG on the turret front). This means when shooting the main gun it must be buttoned up. It also had a rear-firing MG that appears to have been fired by with turret crewman.

See for yourself: tank-afv.com/ww2/ussr/T-28.php

If he was firing the pistol into the side turret slit the front turret MG, manned by the loader, could not have fired at him. This means most likely it was one of the MG turrets firing at him.

I could see him concealed and popping up to fire 8 aimed rapid-fire rounds and ducking back down before the MG gunner could manually turn the turret and effectively engage him at close range in the woods. He probably changed positions when reloading.

This is another example of getting inside your opponent's OODA Decision Loop to seize the initiative to shoot first. Combat is not IGYG or chance of unit activations.

With 24 rapid-fire aimed rounds it would not be a one-in-a-million shot for a round, bullet splash, or ricochet to enter the turret through the slit. If so, with the slit being at the height of the crew member's head he'd most likely be hit and WIA or KIA. With either the loader of the gunner/TC out of action, the main gun could not fire. Without the main gun, the only thing you could do is fall back.

Or it could have been a decision to fall back without having a round enter the turret. We'll never know. Simulate however you want or ignore it.

Stranger things than this happened in the war.

One in a million shot?: YouTube link

Wolfhag

Wolfhag I don't think we are in any disagreement as to the fact that done with panache shooting 24 rounds could be possible and have a reasonably good chance of surviving. Interesting you do not speculate on whether the tank was moving, lack of a stabilized gun would have an impact.

Why would an evidently well trained sane individual go for a one in a million shot. Employing Occam's razor" – a principle often attributed to. 14th–century friar William of Ockham that says that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one." (from Google) This makes it was far more reasonably embellishment by the author, the real task being sensible or not distracting the attention of the tank. In addition if the reason was to distract the tank a far simpler explanation then firing of the rounds in the general vicinity of the tank would be far less risky but would still illicit the same response from the tank. Clearly a far more credible approach.

This thread is about rules and how they can reasonably make sense of the real world. Wildly improbable solutions are just that wildly improbable and so not useful.

You could have a massively complex 3D training simulation for fighter pilots and simulate a very rare event like a combustion chamber burthrough resulting in immediate hull loss unfortunately and very unlikely to happen (probably 1in 10^9) per flying hour. However would you simulate it, no it would have wasted millions of tax dollars for no reason.

But somehow you seem to suggest is a useful outcome for a set of rules.

Just as an aside a quick calculation indicates to date that were we to charge something like a commercial rate we have invested about £200.00 GBP 000 in our rules. That indicates that 1 in 1000 000 chances are not a good use of our time, so woulkd not be a sensible thin to model.

Korvessa – Thankyou for your time and effort, the scenario raises interesting questions about the capability of real world tank commanders. No sane tank commander would put his vehicle at such extreme risk knowingly, so he must have been poorly briefed or the reconnaissance information he received was desperately flawed. Or he had no understanding of the strengths and weakness of a tank in close country. As he reveres apparently late, he at some point we can assume finely realize his peril.

UshCha,
No disagreement at all.

We don't know for sure which machine gun fired at him but we do know that the multi-turret arrangement was unsuccessful.

Upon further research, the MG turret had a wheel to traverse it and then fire the MG with one hand. We don't know if the MG was able to depress far enough to be effective at 40 yards either. It does not say if the guy with the grenade bundle was spotted and shot at but it seems the guy with the pistol kept them busy.

I've trained in the woods of VA and at 40 yards it is going to be hard to spot someone who does not want to be seen. The Russian may have been firing at the sound and not even seen the Finn. We'll never know.

A lieutenant named Huovinen taped five stick grenades together and crawled toward the tanks; his friend, First Lieutenant Virkki, intended to provide covering fire, despite the fact that he was carrying only his sidearm.

Most likely the tank was stationary as I don't think you could crawl after a moving tank. If he was providing cover fire they were both probably on the same side of the tank, the side, not the front or rear, I'm rightly or wrongly assuming. The main gun was not stabilized but the guy in the MG turret could probably compensate for the vertical motion like a shoulder-mounted weapon.

Personally, I think it was more the fear of the unknown and what would shoot next that led to the withdrawal.

How would I simulate it? The same way as tank-tank engagement in my game. It's a matter of timing which can be measured or estimated. I think Nuts! can handle it fairly accurately too.

No sane tank commander would put his vehicle at such extreme risk knowingly, so he must have been poorly briefed or the reconnaissance information he received was desperately flawed. Or he had no understanding of the strengths and weakness of a tank in close country. As he reveres apparently late, he at some point we can assume finely realize his peril.

Or his NKVD handler told him not to return without a victory.

Wolfhag

IF shot at in those circumstances I would leave immediately, no need for some die test, the player can decide if he wants to leave. I never understood the Barker thing where a tank had to test to go near a wood. I do that automatically if its a wood I leave it alone, knowing my opponent, you can't trust him not to be in a wood unless you have already cleared it recently. .