Thursday, April 9, 2009

All about the photos

As I hinted at with my last entry, I found a picture that threw a monkey wrench into my planned FOW army for the 11.PD.

Here is the culprit.

Photobucket

caption: Capt Finkelmann in ation with his panzer III.

Originally, I had decided on being somewhat of a lemming and equipping my Panzer Kompanie with a mixture of Pz IV F-2's and Pz IIIN's. And why not? Upgrading to Pz III Ausf N's costs an additional 15 pts, compared to the whopping 60 pts for an Ausf F-2. What is there not to like with a short barrel 75mm? FA 6, AT 9, RoF 2, FP 3+ and range of 24". Plus, I was going to equip all the N's with schurzen (skirts) to make on heck of an infantry assault force.

Just one problem....the picture shows a long (lang) barrel 50mm on a Pz III.

Okay, alright, we can handle this.

I'm not a panzer expert and can't snap identify a tank by just looking at the photo. The best I can do is see the long barrel and know it's not a Ausf G or Ausf N. The Pz III Ausf J (late) was known to the "Mark III Special" by the British troops in North Africa.

On the other hand, the Pz III Ausf L were introduced in June 1942 and served until December 1942. Front armor increased from 30mm to 57mm. Many of the L's received turret and hull sideskirts. Now we're talking!

Here's a link with nice Pz III info:

http://www.figuren-modellbau.de/panzer-III.html

By going with Ausf L's, I'm giving up FP 3+ and going to FP 4+. I'm assuming, I don't know, but can hazard a guess that FOW does the FP rating on the size of the shell. 75mm has more explosive charge than a 50mm shell. Makes sense.

I can't argue with AT9 for either the 75mm KwK L/24 or the 50mm KwK L/60. Check the armor penetration table here:

http://www.panzerworld.net/armourpenetration

Switching to Ausf L's changes the upgrade value from +15 pts to +25 pts. Ouch! I had to change my recon element to 8-rads from Luchs. I think this is a good thing since I haven't found any source that says 11.PD had any Luchs. I believe Luchs were with the 4.PD. I did find info on WWII message boards saying that by the start of Barbarossa, 11.PD had retired its 6-rads and went with 8-rads.

Next entry I'll post the Panzer Kompanie. It's not point efficient, but I like it and it fits the historical 11.PD, which is what I'm going for.

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