Red Flood

[Rodion Romanovich]

Interesting new take on interactives!

I think Kagemusha's idea of mortars sounds great. As for anti-tank abilities I supposed the light mortars it probably takes very well-trained crews and quite decent spotting to stop tanks with it, but I suppose it's slightly better than the alternative way of dealing with tanks - high-calibre rifles to blind them by hitting crew windows followed by sneaking up on the tank and planting explosives - which was the normal way for infantry to deal with tanks at the time...

Task for today: Get all information about the German airborne units in 1940; their strength, their training, their equipment, their tactics, their planes, their strengths and weaknesses.

I'll post a list of our most numerously deployed small arms:
- Submachine guns: MP38, soon also MP40
- Bolt-action rifles: Karabiner 98k, with bayonets and possibly also gewehr granate (rifle grenades). I suppose the paras used the 98k shorter pipe carbine version rather than the 98 rifle.
- Semi-automatic rifles: N.A. at this time
- Assault rifles: N.A. at this time
- Sniper rifles: probably a few Karabiner 98k equipped with scope are available. The FG42 fallshimjaegergewehr, probably one of the most flexible German small arms when it came (scope, plus auto and semi-auto fire modes), came in 1942.
- Machineguns: MG34
- Grenades: stielgranate. Most seem to be shock grenades rather than fragmentation grenades (no fragmented metal but rather a strong concussive explosive power), ideally suited for offensive tactics (and probably very deadly indoors in bunkers) but poor for defense
- Anti-tank arms: not much at all, possibly a few high-calibre rifles to take out electronic equipment and the window panes through which the tank crew looks, combined with explosive charges or "Tellerminen" to attach to the tank while it's been blinded. The serious AT weapons such as Panzerfaust and Panzershreck came much later
- Artillery: 5cm mortar, 14.5 kg, 0.9 kg bombs, 520 metres range. Later largely replaced by the larger 8cm mortar of weight 56 kg (possible to dismantle for transportation), range 2400 metres, bomb 3.5 kg (both smoke, explosive and flare). There was also in 1942 a Kurzer 42 version of the 8cm mortar which was lighter but still nearly as effective, probably a weapon well-suited to paratroopers but there's little information on how it was deployed.
- Handguns: doesn't matter much I guess so I won't bother listing them

From what I can see the paras would rely on rifles, smgs, grenades and different forms of explosives mainly at this time. The paras had more machineguns than the normal infantry - one extra per platoon I think. Mortars seem to have been issued in the same numbers as for the normal infantry. But I wonder how much of mortar and machinegun fire power that could actually be brought to battle during airborne insertions.

I think Kagemusha's idea with mortar support is quite good. It wouldn't be as effective as the later anti-tank methods, but specially trained mortar crews might be able to stop tanks more effectively than the high-calibre rifle+explosives method, at least in some scenarios. Suppose a tank force in the open is pinning a paratrooper formation in cover. The mortar is excellent for such situations, where the rifle+explosives method isn't as effective. But I don't know how good accuracy mortars had at this time. Plus each mortar bomb would weigh quite a lot so a mobile mortar team with airborne insertion and without vehicles could hardly carry more than a few dozen mortar shells even for the smallest German mortars AFAIK. For example it says that the lightest German 5cm mortar had bombs each weighing 0.9 kg, the actual mortar weighing about 14.5 kg.

a good page with information about ww2 weaponry: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/index.htm The info provided there about paratroopers in 1940 is limited I'm afraid...