The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

OT: anything goes!

Moderator: Edi

Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Stas Bush wrote:Um... Metro Atlanta has a huge number of housing units and short of blowing up the entire conurbation, how will you ensure war materiel is destroyed? Nukes don't work that way, neither ordinary explosives. The US houses are basically carboard... they will be blown away and inhabitants will die (with the occupying soldiers, but still). It may also work for other towns near Atlanta Metro, as the Germans may likely have more men than these small towns have population.
Tanks, artillery, and armed vehicles are large and conspicuous and cannot be kept under cover at all times. There have to be motor pools and maintenance pools that will be clearly visible targets for bombing. Workshops cannot be concealed inside houses.
By leaving most soldiers in the Atlanta conurbation, the Germans have a steady stream of reinforcements. If you nuke them in the open once, they will certainly stick to towns and not get out in the open (something that should be clear to them: even in their universe going out in the open was stupid since the US had thousands of bombers, and it would be dumb in 1940's USA much less now).
In which case their forward elements (mechanized and parachute divisions, plus any railmobile detachments) get snapped up in short order. Everything else is encircled and starved out.
There aren't that many air force units in Georgia. The rest can be considered lower priority targets. The biggest city is already theirs; other large cities are not within reach. The only thing left is airfields. Not sure if there are many in a 300 km circle outside Atlanta either...
Honestly, you'd probably have to fire hundreds of V2s at an airfield to even put a meaningful number of craters in the runway, and craters are easy to fill with modern construction equipment.
No, if nukes fly they will likely want to give up, that's true. However, there are some things that may give them enough food during the first month - horses, for example. There's no way they can feasibly feed 2,7 million horses. But they can quickly start killing them to feed themselves.
The historical Wehrmacht has lots of horses, but killing them cuts into their ability to move supplies on the tactical level. The napkinwaffe Wehrmacht may or may not have lots of horses- I'm not sure.
Simon_Jester wrote:It'd suck to be sending a horde of troops down the track on troop trains only for them to run into a massive coal train blocking the tracks.
Steam trains don't run faster than 80 kph anyway, and they mostly navigated railways in Eastern Europe where running into something is a minor threat; a bigger is being blown up by the partisans: either the train, or the track, or both.
I didn't mean "run into" literally. The problem here is that these trains are just there and cannot easily be removed from the tracks to allow another train to pass them. It would be comparatively trivial to sabotage tracks in front of advancing German trains just by parking a lot of rolling stock on them.
Simon_Jester wrote:With the sheer number of German soldiers involved, this will become obvious fairly quickly. I expect nuclear attacks on the German field formations within two or three days, personally.
Would it? I mean, would the US really accept a dead civilian for each three dead Germans? Warning shots and trying to catch them in the field sure might happen, but going all out?
Field formations I said. As in, "in the field." Attacks on urban centers may not happen, but they don't have to for the US to win this one. Ultimately, there is absolutely no way that the US will win by defeating seventeen million individual riflemen in house to house firefights; they have the population base to do so in theory but it won't happen. What will happen is that the Germans will either get surrounded in Festung Atlanta and surrender for lack of food, or surrender for fear of nuclear attack.

The process of surrounding Festung Atlanta (and the speed with which it can be starved out) is greatly improved by using nuclear weapons against the predictable corps and army-sized infantry columns the German foot horde will send out to extend its perimeter.
Simon_Jester wrote:Heh, good point on the rails. I guess they will have to keep them coming during the day.
Well, V-1 attacks occurred over a period of about 1-2 years; even firing at the maximum possible rate with all available trained launch crews, I doubt they could run through more than a few percent of the available stockpile before the launch rails were destroyed. Moreover, those V-1s would be aimed at single, predictable, fixed targets, and would come in one at a time separated by wide intervals... and they fly low and slow enough that you could literally sit on your roof with a Strela and blow them out of the sky as they passed, stopping only when you ran out of rockets or got bored.
Outposts, if anything, should be set up inside urban zones; that will provide them with necessary human shields and make fighting a lot more difficult.
Thing is, the advancing armored formations will be targeted in the open field; if they fort up they will be encircled, and will wither on the vine rather rapidly, especially because every night the surrounding US forces can basically sneak up to them with impunity and murder them in the dark due to the night vision disparity.

That can be countered in Festung Atlanta by sheer numbers of guard posts and lighting systems, but it can't be countered by a panzer division in the field.
Since we are talking about a lot of manpower but small distances, it will be quite unlike Barbarossa where fighting could happen in the vast open fields 100 km away from any town. And if there is no perimeter, then it is even more dangerous. If the US cannot control its frontline adequately, this means Germans can sneak into places where no US military are present. Spreading all the tanks into a thin encirclement line isn't how the military works, they cannot put an Abrams every kilometer apart on the border of Georgia and leave the rest of the place totally undefended.
They don't have to; they have one squadron of tanks maneuvering back and forth on the front, kept fully informed of all German movements in the area by overwhelmingly superior reconnaissance. The US units will nearly always be in the right place to counter a German attack, and have such tactical superiority that armored offensives are futile because the attacking tanks will be destroyed from ranges at which the Germans can barely reply with their most accurate weapons.

Or by helicopters which are just OH GOD NO territory for the Wehrmacht.
Hmm. If formed units are appearing in large enough places, then certainly they would appear both inside and on the border of the Atlanta metro area; they might even fill all of Georgia to the brink and still have a density that barely allows divisions to move together (I have to check that though) due to the formation requirements.
This is a relevant concern. I think, given the wording of the OP, we almost have to assume serious Wehrmacht overcrowding in and around Atlanta.
Simon_Jester wrote:I mean, do they have deep bombproof shelters appearing pre-dug out of nothingness?
Not really. Why? The buildings they do not get.
Because things like V1 launch rails and large radar installations fall into that category. Basically, if the Wehrmacht lacks any hardware not conveniently vehicle-portable, that limits them quite a bit in a few areas.
Simon_Jester wrote:Actually, with a six kilometer CEP that means half the missiles land within a circle six kilometers in radius around the target, or an average of about four to five missile strikes per square kilometer. This is not enough to deliver a saturation bombardment attack against... well, pretty much anything.
4-5 missiles per square km with 5000 missiles? Now I'm sure military installations aren't that big, and 1000 square kilometers is quite a lot of area.
That was with one thousand missiles fired. 500 of them (roughly) land within a circle roughly 115 square kilometers in area; the other 500 land outside that area, up to eighteen kilometers from the target.

The point is that the actual target is unlikely to be destroyed, and that while there will be some level of random destruction inflicted on everything in the vicinity (such as a large military base), it will be scattered and incomplete. Only by luck would this kind of barrage inflict any decisive damage.
Simon_Jester wrote: but the target itself is probably untouched.
If runways are damaged, aircraft is useless as it can neither land nor take off. If barracks are hit killing all tanksmen, tanks are useless. So it depends on just what and how is damaged. I am thinking that hangars, airplanes and runways due to their large size and - in case of planes - poor resilience are going to suffer the greatest damage.
Runways and hangars are vulnerable, but only some hangars will get hit, and a big hole in a runway can be filled surprisingly quickly if you can get a bulldozer into the area. Aircraft may be able to take off anyway; you can't disable a three thousand meter runway with a crater 200 meters from one end. And again, the locations of hits are random, there is no way to ensure that you actually shoot what you want to shoot. You're as likely to hit the latrines as you are to hit the control tower.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Yeah, runways can be repaired and pretty much everything can be rebuilt and repaired given some time; generally I was thinking only about the first day or two of the invasion.

Of course, if the Germans want to really do something worthwhile as opposed to either dying with lots of damage to Georgia or simply dying, they need to get some civilian attire and then pose as refugees running from the German invasion in droves, having only some light weaponry in the bags. That may decrease the desire to shoot at random running people (and besides, as already mentioned the US cannot immediately man the entire border of the state).

The Germans may lose most of their war materiel, but they will also have the largest possible terrorist network ever created, and 'catching them all' may prove impossible. Maybe that's a better way of approaching the impossible mission of avenging the Reich. :lol:
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Arguably so, although World War Two Germans will have a hard time posing as modern Americans.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Patroklos
Sith Devotee
Posts: 2577
Joined: 2009-04-14 11:00am

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Patroklos »

Wait, you want to create a clandestine terrorist network with people who don't speak the language of the inhabitants, are going to disarm themselves to the level of the inhabitants, are despised by and will find no refuge from the inhabitants, have no knowledge of the area, and are supposed to conceal themselves in an area where they constitute twice the area of the inhabitants?

BTW Fort Benning by itself is 737 square km. Fort Stewart 1,100. Eglin AFB 1,874. Good luck with those V2s
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Put 20 million people in jail, even there they will be a threat.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Purple
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 5233
Joined: 2010-04-20 08:31am
Location: In a purple cube orbiting this planet. Hijacking satellites for an internet connection.

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Purple »

Patroklos wrote:are going to disarm themselves to the level of the inhabitants
Where are the Germans going to get all the extra guns they need to do that? :P
It has become clear to me in the previous days that any attempts at reconciliation and explanation with the community here has failed. I have tried my best. I really have. I pored my heart out trying. But it was all for nothing.

You win. There, I have said it.

Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
User avatar
Beowulf
The Patrician
Posts: 10621
Joined: 2002-07-04 01:18am
Location: 32ULV

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Beowulf »

Rather than trying to guess what's near Atlanta, in terms of military bases, let's look it up. In Georgia, there's Ft Benning, Ft Gillem, Ft Gordon, Ft McPherson, Ft Stewart, Hunter AAF, MCLB Albany, NAS Atlanta, Kings Bay, Moody AFB, Robins AFB, Dobbins ARB, and Coast Guard Air Station Savannah. NAS Atlanta and Dobbins ARB are in Atlanta Metro area, so they're gone. CGAS Savannah is actually co-located with Hunter AAF. Alabama has Redstone Arsenal, Anniston Army Depot, Fort Rucker, Cairns AAF, Redstone AAF (co-located with Redstone Arsenal), Birmingham ANGB, Montgomery ANGB, Maxwell AFB, Gunter Annex, Dothan ANGS, and CGAS Mobile. Sout Carolina has Fort Jackson, MCAS Beaufort, MCRD Parris Island, Joint Base Charleston, Shaw AFB, and McEntire ANGB. North Carolina has Fort Bragg, Camp Mackall, Simmons AAF, MCAS Cherry Point, MCAS New River, Camp Geiger, Camp Johnson, Camp Lejeune, Pope AFB, Seymour-Johnson AFB, Charlotte ANGB, and CGAS Elizabeth City. Florida has NAS Jacksonville, NAS Key West, NAS Pensacola, NAS Whiting Field, NS Maport, NSA Orlando, NSA Panama City, Eglin AFB, Homstead AFB, MacDill AFB, Tyndall AFB, Duke Field, Hurlburt Field, Camp Blanding, Jacksonville ANGB (distinct from NAS Jacksonville), CGAS Clearwater, and CGAS Miami. Tennessee has Arnold AFB, Fort Campbell (debatably), NSA Mid-South, McGhee Tyson ANGB, Memphis ANGB, and Sabre AHP. That's something like 60 bases to target in the bases continguous to Georgia. Not all of them are within 300km. Surprisingly enough, that includes the Georgia coast. Kings Bay, Ft Stewart, and Hunter AAF are all not vulnerable. A good portion of them are close enough to be useful as staging points, but outside of reasonable attack by the Wehrmacht.

If the Germans leave most of their soldiers in Atlanta, that makes it easy for US forces to take them out as they're travelling to the front. If you can stop a train, (Hellfire to the locomotive will probably do the trick), you have a nice group of targets to rake with cannon fire. Armored trains aren't armored enough to stop a Maverick either. Flak on them would help... but only until the flak guns got taken out. And they would be. At which point you have a train that's block the tracks, as well. Highways aren't much better. Most civilian transport doesn't do off road very well (SUVs especially, despite the look). Block a highway with a couple destroyed vehicles, and you can be free to devastate the column.

Traveling on foot, you say? The average rate of advance for infantry is 2.5mph over roads and 1mph cross country, for 8 hours of marching (20 miles on road). Even if you think that you can roll over the opposition in a tide of bodies, that doesn't mean that you don't need to keep a look out for the enemy. Or you'll end up stepping on a land mine, walking into an ambush, etc, from people who see Nazis, and think "maybe I can bag a couple and get away". There may not be many of them, but there's sure to be some.

As for killing service members on your one shot with the Luftwaffe: a very high proportion of service members live off base in the surrounding community. Most of them you won't kill except by chance in the process of destroying the entire city nearby. This is especially true of reservists and guardsmen.

American tanks are functionally immune to any Wehrmacht armor. The best is armed with a 128mm gun (Jagdtiger). This can penetrate 200mm of armor at 1000 meters. The M1 is at least 940mm effective thickness. M2/M3 is a bit harder to tell, as it's listed as proof against 30mm projectiles... but that's assuming modernish projectiles, not WWII era ones. It's probably functionally immune to Panzer IV and earlier Wehrmacht tanks. It's actually even heavier than those. The main gun is quite possibly effective against the Panzer IV and earlier tanks, as the current ammo is the M919, which is APFSDS-T. Estimates give ~8cm of penetration at 1000m. This is similar to the Panzer IV (depending on shot location and version). Beyond that, M2/M3s have the TOW missile, which is assuredly overkill against any Wehrmacht armor. All American armor is faster than any Wehrmacht armor, which means that the Americans can dictate the range of engagement.

Armored vehicles can get shaken around enough to cause injuries to the crew... but it requires seriously large blasts. The heavier the armor, the large it needs to be (simply due to mass). To affect American armor, you're talking about something in the hundreds of pounds range, not HE rounds from a gun.

On another note, human shields would be quite possibly the worst thing possible. It wouldn't necessarily stop units from getting attack by Americans, but would ensure there wasn't any survivors of that unit.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

McPherson and Gillem are closed, as far as I can tell. Probably some other listed stuff is closed too. I wanted to actually have a list of active emplacements to get a rough idea just how maby soldiers, AFVs and airplanes there are, but that failed due to the uncertain internet info. However, it is clear a lot of the camps are closed after the mid-2000s review...

Saying human shields are a bad idea is not addeessing the issue: if Germans hide in the same houses as civilians and hold the latter captive, how are you going to actually solve this without killing civilians en masse? I assume a lot of the tough guy rethoric is empty, as killing thousands if not millions of civilian US citizens is not going to be the first idea on anyone's mind.

For the first days there will be no landmines and no opposition to look out for.

And about the concussion damage, I was not talking about light gun fire, more about getting hit by a complete wall of heavy artillery shells from the top.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Stas Bush wrote:McPherson and Gillem are closed, as far as I can tell. Probably some other listed stuff is closed too. I wanted to actually have a list of active emplacements to get a rough idea just how maby soldiers, AFVs and airplanes there are, but that failed due to the uncertain internet info. However, it is clear a lot of the camps are closed after the mid-2000s review...
Do the Germans know this? They have maps, that doesn't translate into knowing the operational status of each base.
Saying human shields are a bad idea is not addeessing the issue: if Germans hide in the same houses as civilians and hold the latter captive, how are you going to actually solve this without killing civilians en masse? I assume a lot of the tough guy rethoric is empty, as killing thousands if not millions of civilian US citizens is not going to be the first idea on anyone's mind.
Well, ultimately... you can't solve a hostage situation on that scale without the hostage-taker's consent.

What it comes down to is that if the Germans use human shields to cover their own sleeping-places, those sleeping-places will simply be ignored in favor of other, far more inviting targets, like the motor pools where massive numbers of Wehrmacht vehicles are parked in a small space. Or marching columns of soldiers in the field.
For the first days there will be no landmines and no opposition to look out for.
There will be partisans, basically- plus the occasional company or larger-size National Guard unit that mobilizes quickly from a nearby base and moves to counterattack whatever is nearby.

There isn't enough resistance to pose a threat- but there is enough resistance that the Germans have to make sure someone is watching their flanks, have to organize scout detachments to advance in front of the main body to spot potential ambushes, things like that.

That kind of necessity slows down an army on the march very badly, along with the need to erect large-scale facilities for the troops to bivouac at their destination, which can potentially take hours.
And about the concussion damage, I was not talking about light gun fire, more about getting hit by a complete wall of heavy artillery shells from the top.
The problem is that even with enormous numbers of guns firing, the odds of a direct hit are extremely low, and you need direct hits from very large bombs to kill the crew of the tank by shock alone.

Also, World War Two artillery is not the most flexible-responding of weapon systems. It will take time to call for support, time to compute the appropriate range and get the guns laid in to actually hit the target... time in which the American vehicles will tend to move rather than just sitting there parked while artillery zeroes in on their position.

I'd move. Wouldn't you?
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

The Germans don't know it is closed and they attack it anyway, but what I meant is that there are no soldiers there to put up a fight.

I agree that mechanized columns are going to be attacked and open field movements will not work that well after the initial shock wears off, I merely doubt the US will risk razing enemy-captured towns in a scorched earth policy.

Moving close enough to have line of sight combat with the Germans for National Guard means death as the hail of fire the Germans can offer is something completely unknown to the people serving there. The US troops (I mean proper combat-experienced troops) are in a better position but line-of-sight combat with 1000 to one odds is just a way of quick death.

WWII artillery is effective in line of sight combat (Germans used massively huge field guns to take out targets like the KV tanks which they had no way of piercing through with any of their tank guns) and it worked quite well. We are talking about direct hits from dozens, and at the start thousands of heavy guns in line of sight combat.

So actually driving your tanks away from the Germans is the proper way of saving the relatively few modern tanks that the US has for later when German troop densitiy falls. Attacking head on with M1s is wrong as they'll get killed eventually.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Beowulf
The Patrician
Posts: 10621
Joined: 2002-07-04 01:18am
Location: 32ULV

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Beowulf »

Human shields only work if you believe the enemy will actually not attack you while holding them. Leadership may decide that it's better to kill the Germans than not attack, without proof that the hostages are still alive. If they're receiving fire from the buildings, they're probably going to get attacked regardless of hostages.

Even if they decide against, the Germans are then stuck in a town, and cutoff from supplies. They'll starve, and be forced into surrender. With long range accurate artillery, you don't necessarily need to present a solid line. You just need to be able to pin them in place long enough for the artillery to reach. And US MLRS can reach up to 70km, depending on the rocket.

National Guard troops are combat experienced troops.

WWII artillery may have been effect against WWII heavy tanks... but a M1 tank has an order of magnitude heavier armor than WWII heavy tanks. The other problem is that cannon shells don't actually have much explosive in them. We're talking about 6kg out of a 43kg shell.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Most of the mass murder will happen from the air, as simply nearing a city with a squad of armed soldies in every building is going to result in immense infantry casualties when it comes to line of sight combat; and the military will not want that to happen. The decision on whether to raze the whole area with a few nukes or, more acceptably with a few dozen thousand tons of ordinary bombs, will have to be taken at the highest level of command.

Germans can eventually starve, true enough, although Zor gave them a large amount of supplies. How large? Who knows. The US is warm and it might even last them through the winter, if they also capture all the food supplies meant for the 6 million civilians living there and ration the food carefully.

Most National Guard troops have never been even in a tiny conflict like Chechnya, much less in a real war and even less so in a war where you face an army larger than anything ever faced by any military before. That is like me saying a few squads of modern Russian reservists are going to be effective when faced with over 15 million fully armed and equipped WWII soldiers. Sorry but no.

Incendiary or shrapnel rounds will massacre the infantry, and once it is gone the tanks are going to lose their efficiency at some point as they are not completely invulnerable - they have hatches, ventilation openings and the like.

As for MRLS - that is the same as aircraft bombing but slightly less safe, so what is the point? It will murder city inhabitants just the same. MRLSing cities is very well possible, but in this case there'no reason not to simply send all present B-52s over Atlanta and keep dropping bombs until there's nothing left day over day over day.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Stas Bush wrote:The Germans don't know it is closed and they attack it anyway, but what I meant is that there are no soldiers there to put up a fight.

I agree that mechanized columns are going to be attacked and open field movements will not work that well after the initial shock wears off, I merely doubt the US will risk razing enemy-captured towns in a scorched earth policy.
They don't have to. All they have to do is halt movement of supplies and offer convincing surrender terms.
Moving close enough to have line of sight combat with the Germans for National Guard means death as the hail of fire the Germans can offer is something completely unknown to the people serving there. The US troops (I mean proper combat-experienced troops) are in a better position but line-of-sight combat with 1000 to one odds is just a way of quick death.
Most National Guard formations contain a healthy leavening of combat veterans due to the Iraq War, especially in the officer and NCO corps.
WWII artillery is effective in line of sight combat (Germans used massively huge field guns to take out targets like the KV tanks which they had no way of piercing through with any of their tank guns) and it worked quite well. We are talking about direct hits from dozens, and at the start thousands of heavy guns in line of sight combat.
Er, no.

Remember, those German hordes have to advance slowly out from a central location. When you attack an army of one million men, it's impossible for all million men to shoot at you simultaneously. What you're actually attacking is the lead element of a (very long, numerous) column of men. As a result, it doesn't matter that the enemy has 100000 men to your 200, because only the front 1000 men or so (and their guns) can shoot at you.

Given that the US formations have guided missiles, they can engage men and vehicles from well beyond the effective range of the artillery in that column. Infantry can do something similar by using radios to call in fire from self-propelled artillery, retreating as the enemy advances and keeping their lead elements under steady bombardment.

Now, the Germans can reduce the degree to which this happens by advancing in a long line... but advancing in line across country is very slow. And even if you do advance in line abreast, you have to put out columns of scouts ahead of the main body... who are subject to this same kind of ambushing.
So actually driving your tanks away from the Germans is the proper way of saving the relatively few modern tanks that the US has for later when German troop densitiy falls. Attacking head on with M1s is wrong as they'll get killed eventually.
What you do is, you "shoot and scoot." Take up a good firing position. Then you fire a few rounds from beyond the range they can hit back accurately. When it looks like the enemy has finally managed to deploy enough heavy weaponry to pose a threat to your current position, you back up and do it again.

This is exactly what German Tigers did in the face of Soviet armor formations on the defensive, except that they weren't fast enough to avoid contact indefinitely. Abrams tanks are that fast.
Stas Bush wrote:Most National Guard troops have never been even in a tiny conflict like Chechnya, much less in a real war and even less so in a war where you face an army larger than anything ever faced by any military before. That is like me saying a few squads of modern Russian reservists are going to be effective when faced with over 15 million fully armed and equipped WWII soldiers. Sorry but no.

Incendiary or shrapnel rounds will massacre the infantry, and once it is gone the tanks are going to lose their efficiency at some point as they are not completely invulnerable - they have hatches, ventilation openings and the like.
Why are you picturing this as a stand-up battle in which the small force sits still and waits to be annihilated?

A group of 100 or 200 soldiers obviously cannot fight back against a army of millions indefinitely. What they can do, however, is stage an ambush for the 500 men in front of that army, then retreat five miles, then do it again. The effect of this is to force the advancing army to proceed more cautiously and slowly than it otherwise would.

The usual counter is to have large forces of mobile scouts. However, the German scouts will be a mix of horse cavalry, armored cars, and light tanks. US mechanized forces can effortlessly slaughter any of those, and outrun them besides

The point here is that even relatively small US ground forces taking the field on the first day can significantly delay the German spread from their assembly area, by forcing them to advance like an army capturing territory, rather than like troops marching through secure territory.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Staging ambush against advancing troops only works when the enemy has an open flank. Initially the Germans have none, so that is why I said it is best to wait until the Germans do not have a ridiculous density of several divisions per kilometer. Outrunning on the ground is simply impossible: in line of sight combat you are already within artillery range as a minimum, rifle range as maximum. You can retreat but the soldiers - even US - cannot teleport 10 km away in a second to stay out of artillery range.

Taking up a 'good firing position' requires a position: you said yourself outside of the urban area it is flat and featureless land mostly. Not good at all.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Borgholio
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6297
Joined: 2010-09-03 09:31pm
Location: Southern California

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Borgholio »

What you do is, you "shoot and scoot." Take up a good firing position. Then you fire a few rounds from beyond the range they can hit back accurately. When it looks like the enemy has finally managed to deploy enough heavy weaponry to pose a threat to your current position, you back up and do it again.
Keep in mind that the Abrams has computerized barrel stabilization and is deadly accurate even when moving. The tanks don't have to even stop...they can just rumble ahead of the Germans and shoot as they go. The Tiger 2 had a max effective range of around 2.5 km while the Abrams can hit at 4km or more.
You will be assimilated...bunghole!
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Tanks have to worry about other things than just tanks: artillery, mines, etc. 5-8 km is safely outside the range of most tank guns of the period, but not artillery. To them the Abrams would be just another mobile artillery piece, and treated likewise. What can be seen can also be hit.

MRLS and long-range artillery are invulnerable unless they seriously screw up and end up within sight.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
User avatar
Elheru Aran
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13073
Joined: 2004-03-04 01:15am
Location: Georgia

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Elheru Aran »

Artillery generally has to emplace to be useful, though. That requires some time. WW2 generation artillery also requires quite some time for manual aiming and a spotter to direct fire. Think the US forces are going to give the Wehrmacht time to emplace? Is the Wehrmacht even going to *take* the time if they're trying to spread out?

Certainly they have some self-propelled guns, and I imagine those don't need to emplace, but the great majority of their guns will have to be positioned before they can be fired...
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
User avatar
Borgholio
Sith Acolyte
Posts: 6297
Joined: 2010-09-03 09:31pm
Location: Southern California

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Borgholio »

The Germans only produced about 1500 self propelled artillery units during the war (only spent a few minutes googling numbers, someone correct me if I'm off please). With "only" 1500 units, they would not have enough to protect all of the advancing tanks from the Abrams unless they were concentrated exactly where our tanks happened to be. Furthermore, the self-propelled artillery pieces would be juicy targets for air and drone strikes. Take them out and our own tanks would be untouchable.
You will be assimilated...bunghole!
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Stas Bush wrote:Staging ambush against advancing troops only works when the enemy has an open flank. Initially the Germans have none, so that is why I said it is best to wait until the Germans do not have a ridiculous density of several divisions per kilometer.
The high density might, if anything, actively impede the proper setting-up of artillery batteries. In any case, towed artillery with WWII equipment needs considerable setup time to be prepared for indirect fire, and towing artillery into direct fire range of US ambush positions would be an absurdly unwieldy way of defeating them.

It would be impossible for the entire artillery force of the army to line up like that. Armies don't move like creeping walls of RTS units in a game; they end up strung out along the available roads, and only the units in front can engage.
Taking up a 'good firing position' requires a position: you said yourself outside of the urban area it is flat and featureless land mostly. Not good at all.
...When did I say that? Northern Georgia isn't especially flat as far as I can remember.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Elheru Aran
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13073
Joined: 2004-03-04 01:15am
Location: Georgia

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Elheru Aran »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Taking up a 'good firing position' requires a position: you said yourself outside of the urban area it is flat and featureless land mostly. Not good at all.
...When did I say that? Northern Georgia isn't especially flat as far as I can remember.
It's not terribly mountainous or anything, either, for that matter. Atlanta is more north-central than northern.

Hopefully this link will work. Google topographic map of Georgia:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Georg ... e7!5m1!1e4

It's not very helpful for actual altitudes or anything, but you can see it's fairly rolling terrain, especially when you zoom in. It's nothing like Kansas or whatever. There's definitely hills, river valleys, the occasional small mountains to be found.
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Germans produced 22737 units of self-propelled artillery, though that inclues anti-tank artillery as well.
Simon_Jester wrote:Armies don't move like creeping walls of RTS units in a game; they end up strung out along the available roads, and only the units in front can engage.
Armies can move on roadless terrain and considering the speed of movement is pretty much set, some units might get away faster than others and thus later get destroyed, but the bulk force that is moving in all directions on roadless terrain in a locked front... If there were really high mountains, that would break up the frontline, but there are none and until the main German forces are at the borders of Georgia, it is unlikely their density will fall to anything that'd allow outflanking maneuvers.

The units that move ahead, of course, are a totally different thing and can be encircled and/or outflanked. But not that easily outran, mind you. In real combat, theoretically achievable speed of tanks is not that important: the BT could make 80 kph on good roads and maintain a healthy 50-60 kph on dirt roads, but that did not mean much in real combat.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

The problem is that if units that run into a forest or a range of hills have to slow down, then the front gets channelized and stops looking like a line. It's more of a squiggle. The units (already absurdly overpacked) will either have to angle over and move through clear terrain, or slow down to go through the forests.

Meanwhile, the units that went along the roads, even on foot, are moving a lot faster unless they deliberately slow their advance.

If they slow down to match pace with the people who are stumbling and crashing through a maze of second-growth forest and hacking their way through tangles of kudzu with machetes... they're not going to get very far or very fast.

If they don't slow down, then they're basically bunched up along the roads advancing with poorly secured (or unsecured) flanks. In which case they can be ambushed as discussed above.

The Germans can either advance uniformly and slowly, or quickly and nonuniformly. They cannot maintain a unified, more or less linear, unbroken front line while advancing at a brisk pace. And given that any US forces will likely have plenty of accurate information on German activities from drone aircraft and signals intercepts, it will be relatively easy to stage at least a few pinprick ambushes and counterattacks. Nothing to cause any real harm to the horde as a whole, but enough to force them to move cautiously and send out scouts.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
User avatar
Elheru Aran
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 13073
Joined: 2004-03-04 01:15am
Location: Georgia

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Elheru Aran »

Ooh, yes. Kudzu. Yeah, that covers a lot of territory around here. *Nobody* gets through that stuff without a lot of work. Much easier to go around it, even if that takes a while.

Certainly there might be an initial attempt at blitzkrieg, but with the massive numbers of personnel and vehicles involved, plus the highly likely flight of civilians away from the war zone, the surrounding region is going to turn into one big fat choke-point. The only way the Germans can think to move efficiently is if they halt traffic on the highways completely from Atlanta on outward... which will take time... which will tie up the incoming side to a ridiculous degree, leaving only the outgoing side of the highway open. Once you get around twenty to thirty miles past the center of the city, that narrows to two lanes. And never mind that the highways will be a prime target for attack as they're nice and exposed.

So that leaves either using local roads, which will take a while, or go cross-country, which will take even longer. All that gives the US forces time to get together troops and a quick-and-dirty strategy.
It's a strange world. Let's keep it that way.
User avatar
K. A. Pital
Glamorous Commie
Posts: 20813
Joined: 2003-02-26 11:39am
Location: Elysium

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by K. A. Pital »

Civilians will be running away from outside the Atlanta MA, and as I gather like 70% of Georgia's population is caught there. The other 3 million, of course, will likely try to flee as soon as they can and completely block the interstate lines (maybe even local roads too) for several days after Day 1.
Elheru Aran wrote:The only way the Germans can think to move efficiently is if they halt traffic on the highways completely from Atlanta on outward... which will take time...
Traffic is halted the moment they arrive; the density is such that the highways will be blocked by German war materiel completely and utterly. They arrive both in and around Atlanta MA and completely lock it down (setting up a block post takes 10 minutes and there isn't a square foot of land outside the German line of sight as it is). Depending on how bad it is (if they get the 'Fortress Atlanta' scenario, for example) they can appear inside the houses which means the civilians won't even be able to rush to their cars as there'll be three German soldiers holding every single man, woman, child and elderly at gunpoint.

That is the reality of this crazy OP. :lol:
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...

...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
Assalti Frontali
Simon_Jester
Emperor's Hand
Posts: 30165
Joined: 2009-05-23 07:29pm

Re: The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

Post by Simon_Jester »

Yeah. The catastrophic traffic jams will occur outside Atlanta, which unfortunately is where the Wehrmacht wants to go. Some of them will be far enough down the highway to not concern marching infantry at first, but they'll be obstacles to panzer divisions within a short time.
This space dedicated to Vasily Arkhipov
Post Reply