GoodGuy
Posts: 1469
Joined: 5/17/2006
From: Cologne, Germany
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Arjuna
The only thing I have to add is that light woodsare not forest. They represent scattered trees about twenty or metres apart. So there is no problem with movement per se for AFVs in this terrain.
Correct. But even forests served as cover for tanks, like during the offensive in the Ardennes, or say during the rearguard actions of the German troops that were then pushed into the Ruhrgebiet area, which resulted in getting trapped in the "Ruhr-Kessel" ("Ruhr pocket"):
After the US troops had crossed the river Rhein (bridgehead at Remagen) , the Germans retreated to the north and the east. The main push of the Allied troops occured towards Siegen and then Lippstadt (southern pincer) and from Wesel towards Münster and Lippstadt.
During the push towards Siegen, the American units had to cross a low mountain range region, with plenty of creeks, valleys, rivers and small bridges, turning many places into chokepoints.
When the US units approached the Siegen area, close to my grandfather's hometown (its church was turned into a German field hospital by the local Army commander), they could not cross a creek for days, as they could not overcome (and not see !) a single StuG helping with rearguard action (the town's chronicle might have mentioned a "Sturmpanzer", I am not sure right now), that had been placed on a hill/slope overlooking the entire creek sector. I think the creek was not even half as wide as the river Sieg on the first picture (link below), IIRC, but the US troops could still not make it.
The German tank kept firing until it ran out of ammo. When the crew then figured that the tank was actually stuck in the forest's soft ground, since they had not moved it for several days, the crew blew it up, IIRC, and retreated towards the Ruhr area. The crew did not have a problem to get the tank into the Forest, though.
The terrain still looks like back then:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Kanufahrt_auf_der_Sieg.jpg
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/philipus/philipus1006/philipus100600057/7125089-landschaft-mit-fluss-sieg-nordrhein-westfalen-deutschland.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Burgholz45.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergisches_Land
So, the Germans moved their tanks into dense woods, if needed, in order to avoid Allied dive bombers or to bolster defensive perimeters.
I think it's a misconcept in the game, if tanks cannot move into forests. It took tank units some time to move into woods (say near roads, to avoid Allied dive bombers/tactical bombers) and even more time to move to defensive perimeters deep inside woods (slopes, hills with good overview), but if the ground had the right layout (say massive rocks under a layer of soil, like quite some areas in the region I described above), a tank would easily cut these trees (European spruce, fir tree) down. My great-grandfather had a stone quarry in the area, the region is packed with rocky ground, like shale and granite.
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< Message edited by GoodGuy -- 3/20/2012 5:19:30 AM >
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December 22nd, 1944
Bastogne
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8th of August, 2006
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Tank companies retreating to light woods? Realistic? - 
RE: Tank companies retreating to light woods? Realistic? - 
RE: Tank companies retreating to light woods? Realistic? - 
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