Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (Full Version)

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Akmatov -> Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 12:58:11 AM)

Been thinking a bit about the way TOAW restricts chemical effects to a decrease in readiness and think this is radically incorrect. The chemical rules seem to be based on the use of WW1 era agents, not the nerve and blood agents developed from @1940 forward.

Just imagine sarin nerve agent being used against the Russians in 1943, you would see a massive kill, not a decrease in readiness. Think of the massive use of sarin against the highly concentrated Russian forces at Stalingrad, Stalingrad would have been known as the Graveyard of the Soviet Army. Any thoughts on how this could be easily tweaked by a non-modder to more realistically reflect the effects of chemical agents? Surely this has been addressed before.

The only easy 'fix' I can think of is to give the sarin capable force low level nuclear weapons and call them nerve gas - this would cause both considerable casualties and would contaminate the ground.



Curtis Lemay -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 3:35:46 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Akmatov

Been thinking a bit about the way TOAW restricts chemical effects to a decrease in readiness and think this is radically incorrect. The chemical rules seem to be based on the use of WW1 era agents, not the nerve and blood agents developed from @1940 forward.

Just imagine sarin nerve agent being used against the Russians in 1943, you would see a massive kill, not a decrease in readiness. Think of the massive use of sarin against the highly concentrated Russian forces at Stalingrad, Stalingrad would have been known as the Graveyard of the Soviet Army. Any thoughts on how this could be easily tweaked by a non-modder to more realistically reflect the effects of chemical agents? Surely this has been addressed before.

The only easy 'fix' I can think of is to give the sarin capable force low level nuclear weapons and call them nerve gas - this would cause both considerable casualties and would contaminate the ground.


If chemicals are authorized, bombardments are more lethal. Note that Force NBC factors can be varied to adjust relative lethality.



Curtis Lemay -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 7:10:04 PM)

Having said that, it may be that using agents like Sarin or Soman in WWII would be beyond TOAW's limits - short of treating them as nuclear. The Allies didn't even have suits that could survive those. Anyone who's read "Black Cross" would have to be disturbed about it.



Akmatov -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 7:55:56 PM)

quote:

The Allies didn't even have suits that could survive those.


Exactly my point and I'm not at all sure what percent of troops even had a gas mask with them most of the time. Had Hitler gotten over his aversion to gas, the impact would have been devastating- hmm, probably so much so that neither TOAW or reality would handle it.



Curtis Lemay -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 9:48:39 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Akmatov

quote:

The Allies didn't even have suits that could survive those.


Exactly my point and I'm not at all sure what percent of troops even had a gas mask with them most of the time. Had Hitler gotten over his aversion to gas, the impact would have been devastating- hmm, probably so much so that neither TOAW or reality would handle it.


Again, if you use the default NBC factors (33%) for both sides that's like saying "we're not using Sarin". But if you change that to one side with NBC of 90% and the other with 10%, or such, you might get very devastating results. I haven't tried it, though. But I'm not yet convinced that it isn't within TOAW's capabilities - lethality-wise anyway. You won't get contamination effects from chemicals, though. That only comes from nuclear.

And, of course, once chemical warfare was in effect, defensive practices would change ASAP.



Akmatov -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 11:15:47 PM)

quote:

Again, if you use the default NBC factors (33%) for both sides that's like saying "we're not using Sarin".

I quite agree, as a result of this discussion I'm realize just what a dividing line was created by sarin.

quote:

But if you change that to one side with NBC of 90% and the other with 10%, or such, you might get very devastating results.

Where would I do that?

quote:

And, of course, once chemical warfare was in effect, defensive practices would change ASAP.

Quite agree, as far as it was possible. For example, suppose the Germans use sarin to devastating effect. Would it then be likely that the Russian would be able to design, produce and distribute adequate numbers of full protective suits to salvage their military situation? I'm thinking the answer would be probably not. Of course, the German ability to produce and deploy enough sarin to be effective also gets us into questions of industrial capability.



shunwick -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/6/2012 11:55:54 PM)

Akmatov,

The Soviets would have responded with chemical weapons, surely? How prepared or how quickly could the Germans have reacted?

The Soviets, as far as I know, were not behind in chemical warfare research. Their post WW I writings show that they expected the next war to be chemical.

My understanding, and I could be wrong, was that WW II was largely chemical free because both sides were locked in mutual deterrence.

Oh, and you change the NBC combat proficiency in the force editor. I have not actually tried it so I am assuming that it works for chemical attacks as well as nuclear.

Best wishes,
Steve



Curtis Lemay -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/7/2012 4:16:22 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Akmatov

Quite agree, as far as it was possible. For example, suppose the Germans use sarin to devastating effect. Would it then be likely that the Russian would be able to design, produce and distribute adequate numbers of full protective suits to salvage their military situation? I'm thinking the answer would be probably not. Of course, the German ability to produce and deploy enough sarin to be effective also gets us into questions of industrial capability.


They could disperse into a defense in greater depth - lower troop concentrations would reduce the gas's lethality. In contrast, the Germans, as the aggressor, would be more concentrated. And just because they had the gas doesn't mean that they had developed the suits for it at the time - or that their troops were supplied with them, or could even operate in them if they had them. Wind changes could kill more Germans than Soviets under that scenario.

And, they would respond with their own gas. The Allies had Phosgene - 1/30th the lethality of Sarin. Of course, you just need a gas mask to protect from that - but that was true in WWI, and it still was deadly. The force concentration issue makes NBC stuff better defensive than offensive options (true for those Warsaw Pact planners you mentioned, as well). This is why the real danger of Sarin was to the Normandy beaches.

The Germans produced 7,000 tons of Sarin during the war. 0.1 milligram (1/1000th of a raindrop) will kill you in 1 minute. Soman (30 times as deadly as Sarin - and persistent) never reached the mass production stage.



Akmatov -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/7/2012 7:49:49 PM)

shunwick
quote:

The Soviets would have responded with chemical weapons, surely? How prepared or how quickly could the Germans have reacted?

Indeed I'm sure they would have, but I think the invention of nerve gas was roughly equivalent to the difference between TNT and nucs (this might be an exaggeration, but the difference is very significant)

quote:

My understanding, and I could be wrong, was that WW II was largely chemical free because both sides were locked in mutual deterrence.

I'm not sure about the Allies, but the Germans didn't utilize chemical weapons because Hitler absolutely forbade it. From a purely military point of view that was counter productive, but he as a gas casualty in the later part of the war and apparently this left him with a life-long horror of chemical weapons.

Curtis Lemay
quote:

you just need a gas mask to protect from that

One of the reasons nerve gas is vastly more deadly the phosgene.

quote:

The Germans produced 7,000 tons of Sarin during the war. 0.1 milligram (1/1000th of a raindrop) will kill you in 1 minute. Soman (30 times as deadly as Sarin - and persistent) never reached the mass production stage.

Thx, I was wondering how much of the stuff was actually produced.

General conclusion is that I need to do some research and figure out how to tweak the Editor.




shunwick -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/8/2012 11:06:24 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Akmatov

shunwick

quote:

My understanding, and I could be wrong, was that WW II was largely chemical free because both sides were locked in mutual deterrence.


I'm not sure about the Allies, but the Germans didn't utilize chemical weapons because Hitler absolutely forbade it. From a purely military point of view that was counter productive, but he as a gas casualty in the later part of the war and apparently this left him with a life-long horror of chemical weapons.



Akmatov,

I read somewhere (probably on the internet so the usual caution applies), that Speer, who was opposed to the use of chemical weapons, brought in Otto Ambros (IG Farben's expert on chemical weapons) to brief Hitler on their use. This was early 1943.

Ambros told Hitler that because the allies had greater access to ethylene they could outproduce Germany in mustard gas. Hitler interrupted him saying that the older toxins were known to him but wanted specifically to know about the "new stuff" (ie Tabun and Sarin) code name "N-Stoff" and whether or not the allies had access to anything similar.

Ambros told Hitler that Farben had published research information about organophosphates and Tabun in something like 1905 (or there abouts - I can't remember exactly) and patented Tabun in 1937 and Sarin in 1938.

Ambros concluded, from the total lack of published material on organophosphates in the allies literature, that such research was top secret and therefore they were likely to have gases similar or even advanced.

In addition, it was only after the allied invasion of Normandy that Hitler became dissatisfied with the army ordnance production and testing of N-Stoff and moved responsibility for it to the SS. So testing was still going on in 44.

How much of that is true I do not know since I can't remember what the sources were or even if the sources were given.

Certainly, the use of Sarin on the Normandy beaches would have put paid to Overlord but I am not sure that the Germans had trained personnel or operational procedures in place to deploy it even if they had wanted to.

It is a interesting area of research though.

Best wishes,
Steve




Akmatov -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/8/2012 11:32:35 PM)

shunwick - very interesting stuff. Ambros however seemed to miss the possibility that the reason there was no Allied research publication was that there was no research. As best I recall, nerve gas was one of those things that totally surprised the Allies when the got to looking through the German weapons programs after the war.



shunwick -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/8/2012 11:54:22 PM)

Akmatov,

Yes, the allies did not have nerve gas. But the Germans thought they did and so... mutual deterrence.

Not quite that simple, of course, but...

Best wishes,
Steve



Silent Hunter -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/20/2012 1:41:53 PM)

Hi, first post.

In a Cold War WWIII scenario, it would be largely restricted to a readiness problem - while NATO and the WP had NBC suits, using them in the warm conditions of a German summer would seriously slow down a lot of operations.



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