In the Operation Blue Theatre Selector, on page 84 of “Armies of Germany”, the Theatre Selector gives the options for a reinforced platoon from Army Group South in 1942.
The list allows for long-barrelled PzIII, and short-barrelled PzIV and Stugs. Whilst these were well represented in Army Group South at the start of “Case Blue” there were also significant numbers of long-barrelled PzIV and Stugs. So where are these is the list?
Different sources give different numbers of panzer types, but looking at different sources I believe the number of tanks in Army Group South at the start of Case Blue were:
936 Panzer III
121 Panzer IV G (actually F2 but these do not exist in the Armies of Germany Book)
156 Panzer IV E
422 others
So whilst long-barrelled PzIV were under 8% of the total tanks at the start of the campaign, I think this should be enough to allow them to be included.
And whilst Army Group South started with 293 Marder II and Marder III self-propelled anti-tank guns (armed with the 75mm Pak 40 and captured Russian 7.62mm gun respectively), they also had 185 long-barrelled Stug F, which should also be in the list.
I realise that the Theatre Selectors aim to give a flavour of the forces used, and not allow for every option; but I think sufficient long-barrelled PzIV and Stug were in Army Group South to allow for the options to be available in the Theatre Selector.
After all, T34s and KV1s were only 10% of Soviet armour in June 1941 – but both tanks are allowed in the Soviet June 1941 list. And whilst the number of long-barrelled tanks was only 8% at the start of Case Blue, the proportion increased as the campaign went on. This was partly due to PzIV F2 being the ‘standard’ version of the PzIV production tank; and increasingly PzIII being converted to Stugs.
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