Bonus-Malus for Majors

[shri]

Russian fighters were designed for different type of combat. IF Spitfire would meet them on his terms, Soviets would lose, but same applies backwards, Spitfire would lose to Yak if it fights where Yak was designed to shine. BF-109 was equal to Spitfire.

Soviets weren`t leagues ahead in tanks, either. Early T-34s sacrificed so much ergonomics and reliability for their armor and gun, they weren`t much better than German tanks in 1941.
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The Yak-1, did its first flight in January 1940 whereas the Spitfire did it in Mid of 1938 and the Bf109 did it in 1935!, so, the extra years help the Yak-1 in achieving parity, but the bulk of the Russian fleet was not Yaks in 1941, which is exactly the point i am making and you are missing.

BTW, this is the expert opinion on AXIS History forums about the Yak-1 and Spitfire-1

"The Yak and Spitfire are about equal in most areas, roll, turn rates, dive, etc. In one area the Spitfire is better; climb. The Spitfire has roughly double the firepower and is a more durable aircraft being all metal versus the mostly wooden Yak. The Yak is also very vulnerable to fire given that its fuel system is unprotected and the tanks are housed in the first third of both wings. Lack of armor is no help either, the pilot having just an 8mm piece of armor behind his head.

Other problems plauging the Yak include a very unreliable engine (due to poor machining of many surfaces leading to frequent loss of oil pressure among other things), the pneumatic landing gear and flaps often failed to work properly, probably the worst problem was the aircraft's performance dropped like a rock above about 15,000 feet. You can see just how bad in that the Yak 1M with an improved engine dropped the weight of the motor nearly 400 lbs!
A lack of a proper oxygen system didn't hurt because of this but, it gives the Spitfire a huge advantage in atlitude.

On the whole, the Spitfire is likely to dominate a dogfight by simply having altitude advantage and a better climb rate. While the Yak's 20mm is pretty vicious it is mated typically with either just 2 x .30 caliber sized weapons or a single .50 caliber. This is far less fire power than the 8 x .303 or 4 .303 and 2 20mm of a Spitfire."

"Abundance" of manpower is speculation. Eurpoean Axis had more manpower, but only managed to mobilise fewer, as German allies manpower reserves remained relativly untapped.
Soveits didn`t throw people away, Soveit combat doctrine was very sophisticated and relied heavilly on combined arms and support. It was Soviets, after all, who were the ones to have massive runs of CAS planes, tanks, and artillery. Soviet army in 1941 was better equiped in most departments that Germany and it`s allies.

If anything, Soviet doctrine was over-ambitious on reducing cassualties and winning with as fast as possible, with as little blood as possible, which led to early failures due to people down the line lacking skills to execute.

And please, do realise that Soviet does not Russian. It is like saying Canadians, Australians and Americans are British
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By the end of 1941 the Baltics had more or less allied to the Germans and the whole of Byelorussia and Ukraine had been overrun and it would remain so till late 1943-early 1944, what was left was core Russian lands and hence it is a Russian victory and a Russian ploy though the Govt was run mostly by 2 Georgians (Stalin & Beria).

As to "Abundance of Manpower", see the Census reports in late 1930s of the USSR and Germany and the figures are laid bare, the USSR had somewhere between 172 and 196 million (the disputes are due to the fact that the USSR census of 1937 was tweaked by Stalin, the Germans had about 80 million or so, give or take 1 million.
This means the Germans were outnumbered - 2::4.2 or 2::5.
Not small odds, add to this, the Germans were forced to make provisions in North Africa, Italy, Norway and the Western Front and this means even greater odds were present in terms of manpower.

I would suggest reading- "Rzhev meat grinder battles in 1942-43" mentioned by several unbiased writers which showcases the abundance manpower that the USSR/Stalin was willing to throw away. This is just one of the examples.

 

[seattle]

Techs are generic and will apply to every nation equally. A 1940 tank has the same stats for each nation on the planet.

The nation-specific bonus/malus system is done via ministers. Germany will be able to install a minister that buffs U-Boats whereas Japan will have come CV-minister. This is the best possible solution that PDS has found. After all, Germany doesn't have better tanks per se than Japan. It's the manufacturing companies and the doctrines that make them better. For instance: Germany uses Guderian and MAN as manufacturer. Guderian will buff radio communication (he implemented the "radio for each tank, not just division" doctrine to great effect) while MAN will make the tanks better. Japan won't have a leader that buffs tanks and only poor manufacturers if any.
Add national foci to that (for the doctrines) and you got a very accurate representation of the differences between countries.

There's no need for nation-specific tech trees!

 

[mursolini]

Are they not? They are not the "real" Canadians, Australians or Americans anyway. How come are they not British?

Define "real"

The Yak-1, did its first flight in January 1940 whereas the Spitfire did it in Mid of 1938 and the Bf109 did it in 1935!, so, the extra years help the Yak-1 in achieving parity, but the bulk of the Russian fleet was not Yaks in 1941, which is exactly the point i am making and you are missing.

BTW, this is the expert opinion on AXIS History forums about the Yak-1 and Spitfire-1

"The Yak and Spitfire are about equal in most areas, roll, turn rates, dive, etc. In one area the Spitfire is better; climb. The Spitfire has roughly double the firepower and is a more durable aircraft being all metal versus the mostly wooden Yak. The Yak is also very vulnerable to fire given that its fuel system is unprotected and the tanks are housed in the first third of both wings. Lack of armor is no help either, the pilot having just an 8mm piece of armor behind his head.

Other problems plauging the Yak include a very unreliable engine (due to poor machining of many surfaces leading to frequent loss of oil pressure among other things), the pneumatic landing gear and flaps often failed to work properly, probably the worst problem was the aircraft's performance dropped like a rock above about 15,000 feet. You can see just how bad in that the Yak 1M with an improved engine dropped the weight of the motor nearly 400 lbs!
A lack of a proper oxygen system didn't hurt because of this but, it gives the Spitfire a huge advantage in atlitude.

On the whole, the Spitfire is likely to dominate a dogfight by simply having altitude advantage and a better climb rate. While the Yak's 20mm is pretty vicious it is mated typically with either just 2 x .30 caliber sized weapons or a single .50 caliber. This is far less fire power than the 8 x .303 or 4 .303 and 2 20mm of a Spitfire."

Looking at the year of production start is meaningless, as fighters were upgraded every 1/2 year. You also don`t compare performance at specific altitude, which makes your comparison moot.
Try better.

Also, the bulk of RAF wasn`t Spitfire either, and Spirfire and Yak had comparable production speed/year.

By the end of 1941 the Baltics had more or less allied to the Germans and the whole of Byelorussia and Ukraine had been overrun and it would remain so till late 1943-early 1944, what was left was core Russian lands and hence it is a Russian victory and a Russian ploy though the Govt was run mostly by 2 Georgians (Stalin & Beria).

As to "Abundance of Manpower", see the Census reports in late 1930s of the USSR and Germany and the figures are laid bare, the USSR had somewhere between 172 and 196 million (the disputes are due to the fact that the USSR census of 1937 was tweaked by Stalin, the Germans had about 80 million or so, give or take 1 million.
This means the Germans were outnumbered - 2::4.2 or 2::5.
Not small odds, add to this, the Germans were forced to make provisions in North Africa, Italy, Norway and the Western Front and this means even greater odds were present in terms of manpower.

I would suggest reading- "Rzhev meat grinder battles in 1942-43" mentioned by several unbiased writers which showcases the abundance manpower that the USSR/Stalin was willing to throw away. This is just one of the examples.

I would suggest you first figure out that Germany wasn`t alone in the fight, and factor in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and, probably Italy.
The fact that Germans failed to leverage their avialable resources, is, their problem, after all.

Also, since you mention Germanys aother theatres, it is only fair for you to remember the 0.8-2 millions of Soviet troops that were guarding Soviet - Manchurian border at every point of war. Which more than equalises German other commitments.

 

[teamgene]

@shri in 1940 it took over 4000 rounds for each spitfire kill. Until it gets the 20mm gun, it was just a slight upgrade to the hurricane.

Combat on the eastern front generally was not at 30,000 feet.

 

[shri]

@shri in 1940 it took over 4000 rounds for each spitfire kill. Until it gets the 20mm gun, it was just a slight upgrade to the hurricane.

Combat on the eastern front generally was not at 30,000 feet.

I said at 15000 feet and above, not 30,000. I think you have misquoted me. Also you have ignored other points like an all metal body and armor, which meant pilots escaped with their lives even if the planes were badly damaged.
Altitude in the Western Front was 20,000 to 30,000 and in the East between 8000 and 20000 and thus 15000 is an ideal altitude to compare.

Let me go on to explain, why that was crucial- An experienced pilot with 10 or more missions was 4 times as likely to survive as a novice, whereas an expert pilot with 5-10 kills was an even greater asset, it was the "quality of the pre-war German Pilots" who were trained with a lot of care and had got a lot of experience in Spain, Poland, France, BoB etc that allowed them to turkey-shoot the RED Air Force in 1941-42, it wasn't that the Planes were substantially better till the FW190 made its entry in big numbers by mid 1942 and then onward the USSR had substantially greater numbers which negated this advantage.


@mursolini
Production starts do matter, race a car made in the 1950s with one with the 1990s and say it doesn't, the start years decided the "BASE" and this stayed constant, the improvements were more like "Tweaks" - adding external fuel tanks, armor, parachutes, canon, more machine guns, slightly better engines etc, the BASE remained unchanged.
If the spitfire was less in numbers in 1940, the YAK did not exist, which decisively proves the British were a year ahead of the Soviets in Air Techs.

if you think of yourselves a better expert it is upto you to prove with facts & sources and not with useless statements like- Try Better.
The AXIS History forum is an acknowledged an open website which is widely recognised as the best online website for all WW1-WW2 debates.



"I would suggest you first figure out that Germany wasn`t alone in the fight, and factor in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and, probably Italy.
The fact that Germans failed to leverage their avialable resources, is, their problem, after all.

Also, since you mention Germanys aother theatres, it is only fair for you to remember the 0.8-2 millions of Soviet troops that were guarding Soviet - Manchurian border at every point of war. Which more than equalises German other commitments. "

The German man-power and fire-power distribution is detailed here -
"http://www.axishistory.com/axis-nat...-of-german-divisions-by-front-in-world-war-ii"

Stalin got his "crack troops- victors of the 2 Japanese skirmishes" transferred to Moscow in late 1941 and replaced them with "rabble" and the troops on other fronts were mostly "garrison troops", if you want to count "garrison troops", entire corps of "Balts- called Hiwis" and "Ukranian Cossacks" were used by Germany to police their supply columns.

The Soviets had inherent manpower advantages, asking the allies for more "dubious quality manpower" would have put Germany in an even worse situation, the performance of the German allies other than the "Finns (probably best infantry in the whole war)" were miles below average. Finland due to its own sociopolitical reasons did not attack Leningrad in 1941 and thus the siege of Leningrad got infinitely prolonged.

Italy couldn't even conquer Greece on its own and the contributions made to prop up Italy in North Africa negated "twice over" the Italian contribution in the Eastern Front.

Bulgaria contributed troops in the "Balkan Front" but not directly against Russia, there were some troops used for rear area duties but the Bulgars made it clear they wouldn't directly fight Russia- recheck your sources, i have not found a single Bulgar Army on the "FRONTS" in any OOB.

Slovakia had a grand total of 45000 soldiers, it was a small country and their army was probably equal to one corps in the German army or lesser.

 

[teamgene]

@shri If you look at my post, I did not quote you at all. I stated 30,000 feet because it is at these higher altitudes that the spitfire has a superior climb rate. Between 10,000-15,000 feet the spitfire loses its climb advantage to the 109 and i believe also the Yak, though finding statistics that I can actually read is difficult on the Yak. So I most certainly could be wrong.

No argument on your statement about pilot protection, thus why I did not say anything about it. My point is not that the spitfire sucked, it did not and it was a great aircraft. Just in 1940 until it gets the 20mm guns, it was not yet the war winner it became.

Look closer at what was happening with Italian troops in Albania and you will understand why Italy had a problem.

We have gotten way off topic from what this was about.