How do you deal with French tanks

[void1984]

Hi

I'm playing a German campaign and I have encounter French armour forces. I have tough time dealing with them.
My tanks with 3.7cm canon can scratch only once in a while and even that only on small distances. Their side armour isn't much thinner then frontal.
4.7cm PaK works good, but only below 500m and are still useless against Char B1 bis.
JPz I the same as above and it can zero on target it's usually destroyed with response.
Sometimes I am able to assault some of them with infantry (if playing against AI), but my infantry lacks any AT weapons.
I can buy a section of those expensive 8.8cm Flaks, but they help only on very open terrain. (And too many of them don't seem realistic as a support of infantry company)

So, any suggestions?

[Roman]

To me it was the same. The French tanks are very strong by the Germans in that year. So bought my main fueza infantry AT weapons. Is most effective in wooded areas. A couple of guns of 88 to open areas in France.
Also disabling the option preferences heavy tank. Thereby avoid being attacked by hordes of tanks indestructible.

[iCaMpWiThAWP]

Avoid them.
If you REALLY need to fight them, Jpz is your best chance, move light panzers around to draw fire, then use your Jpz to kill the strongest armour, a good thing is that the french have mostly poor AP rounds, so you can take some long range fire with your panzers...

[Brian61]

1) Use artillery and/or heavy weapons to suppress and button up the enemy tanks.
2) Destroy all the lighter tanks first.
3) Isolate each heavy tank using smoke and terrain.
4) Mass panzer fire at the heavies, at least 5:1 but more is better. While the german guns may not destroy, they are likely to damage the target.
5) If necessary (crew doesn't abandon or tank is not mobility killed), move a JPz I or a 4.7cm ATG to within 300m and fire into the weakest face (usually rear).
6) All else fails, close assault with troops having grenade bundles or, preferably, engineers with flame throwers or satchel charges.

Hope this helps,
Brian

[gila]

Brian gives very good tips,
Also keep in mind,the Char B-1 is very slow,and the AI tends to be reckless with armour thus they may not fire with accy or as often at higher speeds.
Might make turns a little higher and hide your faster tanks and ambush them to get a mobilty kill, and finish them with infantry that have the G.ladung.

[Roman]

To me, the infantry G. Landung never failed me. But I also use JPZ. And obviously some tanks to finish.

[gila]

JPZ's have the higher caliber longer gun,if you keep out of range since they have poor armour.
Still Char's are tough to bust.
Somewhat OT,i'm pretty sure 88's were not commanly used as AT guns in France until the desert war with the Afrika Corps.

[Brian61]

Originally Posted by gila

Somewhat OT,i'm pretty sure 88's were not commanly used as AT guns in France until the desert war with the Afrika Corps.

Depends on what you mean by comman use. Rommel had a battery available at the Battle of Arras. I'm pretty sure batteries were attached to other units as well, expressly for use in the anti-tank role. Problem is, the 88 FlaK is a rather large awkward piece of equipment unlike smaller ATGs. This means good visibility and favorable terrain was required for their use. Nearly impossible to use in the advance, hence the experiment with a small number of truck mounted 'portee' versions in France.

At some point there was a gun carriage for the 88 that allowed for firing without a fully deployed setup, although at lower accuracy and ROF. I don't think that version is in the game though. Anyhow, I find the use in game of the 88 to be highly situational, at best you'll get one or two turns of fire before you'd better pack it up and run just ahead of the arriving artillery shells. Redeploying to use a second time in a battle is difficult.

Brian

[gila]

Rommel i'm sure used 88's in France,he saw thier worth as a big gun against armour but they were mostly not used as an ATG,very hard to get them down to a level firing position,until the gun carriage was redesigned and AP shells replaced the flak shells, that they became a more less dedicated ATG's we know of in No.Africa.
So i agree they were used in France yes,but not "expressly in a ATG role" as you say,more as a last ditch ATG with the inferiour flak rounds and mostly in the AAA role.

[Brian61]

Hmmm.. I was under the impression that 88's attached to Wehrmacht were for use in the AT role. Be that as it may, even if dual role, Guderian's XIXth Motorized Army Corps had 3 batteries of Luftwaffe 88's attached as well as a company of the portee version.

Looking at the parent organization (Gruppe von Kleist), there was one battery of attached Luftwaffe 88's per division basically. For comparison, there was a platoon of self propelled 47mm ATGs per division. In Gruppe von Kleist, there were at least as many attached Luftwaffe 88's as JPz I's.

Slicing down to the typical battalion level for the game, using Gruppe von Kleist as a model gives about half an 88 or a bit less than half a JPz I per battalion, so yeah uncommon in one way but not any less common than other typically used units.

Confusingly, at Arras, the 88's Rommel employed probably came from PzAbwAbt 525 which was a Werhmacht unit with 88mm FlaK guns *not* a Luftwaffe attachment although there were also Luftwaffe 88's attached to his parent organization .

Another part of the picture I'm missing is the number of towed 4.7cm ATGs available. From the data I've been looking at it seems the towed ATG battalions of Panzer divisions in 1940 may have had some but most infantry divisions had only 3.7cm ATGs. I'm not sure if it would be something like one platoon of 4.7cm ATGs per towed ATG company in a Panzer division or ???

I guess the suprising part of this is that the JPz I's were as rare as the 88's.

Brian