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White Phosphorus

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About White Phosphorus

  • Birthday 12/29/1982

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  1. That guy has a very appropriate name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRAU
  2. A Russian thinktank put out an analysis of the war a few years ago. Called "Tanks of August" it's all over the web. Here's an English version. http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?lng=en&id=119867
  3. Are we seriously going to have this discussion again?
  4. Heavy SMG squads were garbage in CM:BB because all weapons in the squad were fed from a single ammunition pool. So you would engage the enemy at long range with the MG, which would magically deplete the SMG ammo as well. And by the time you got into SMG range, your squad would have an ammo rating < 5. There was a big thread about that, and people actually defended that crap.
  5. So on what basis did everybody suddenly decide that Zis-3 was good? Is there a penetration test from a certain year that shows that 76.2mm AP ammunition stopped being useless? I'm going to re-post the May 1943 Soviet Tiger penetration study. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69944650/38_11377_12.pdf Summary: The 76.2 mm F-34 (T34 KV) failed to penetrate anything even at 200m range. When firing at the side only the 82mm armor was targeted. 76.2 AA is also bad. Scored only one penetration at 500m on the turret from the side when the round hit the weld between the roof and the side of the turret. 45mm 1937 (T70). firing sub-caliber ammo penetrates 82mm side out to 350, and 62mm side out to 500. This thing is more effective than the F-34. The round is tiny though. Makes only a 20mm hole. 57mm Zis-2. Breaks welds at 500m shooting the front but cannot penetrate. Penetrates the side and turret out to 1000m, makes a giant 110mm hole, and breaks off a chunk of armor 110x140mm. 85mm AA is beast. Penetrates lower front 100mm at 60 degrees at 1000m. The study also lists various artillery pieces, grenades, mines AT rifles, and LL equipment.
  6. I'm thinking the easiest way to model the Soviets is to just give them a higher mark up for having experienced troops. Conscripts get no mark up, green get a reasonable mark-up. Anything above green gets a huge markup. That way the force will be composed of mostly conscript/green replacements and a small number of regular/vets. Whereas the German force is all Vet. Simply forcing the Soviet side to always be conscript implicitly models all the personnel issues.
  7. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69944650/38_11377_12.pdf Original report. The gist of it is that the 76.2 mm F-34 (T34 KV) failed to penetrate anything even at 200m range. When firing at the side only the 82mm armor was targeted. 76.2 AA is also bad. Scored only one penetration at 500m on the turret from the side when the round hit the weld between the roof and the side of the turret. 45mm 1937 (T70). firing sub-caliber ammo penetrates 82mm side out to 350, and 62mm side out to 500. This thing is more effective than the F-34. The round is tiny though. Makes only a 20mm hole. 57mm Zis-2. Breaks welds at 500m shooting the front but cannot penetrate. Penetrates the side and turret out to 1000m, makes a giant 110mm hole, and breaks off a chunk of armor 110x140mm. 85mm AA is beast. Penetrates lower front 100mm at 60 degrees at 1000m. The study also lists various artillery pieces, grenades, mines AT rifles, and LL equipment.
  8. How would this apply to Afghanistan though? The above quote is really only relevant for the European theater, where the goal is deep rapid advance by mobile formations. Soviet general staff study series published during WWII about select operations give a very interesting insight into the centralization in the Soviet army. When reviewing performance of mobile formations, the reaction of Soviet high command can only be described as shock at the ignorance of Soviet commanders. Ignorance of of both the role of their forces, and the mission that they are to carry out. Basically when given freedom, soviet armored and mechanized formations bogged down at every single strong point they came across, and wasted days trying to storm it, with insufficient infantry support. Instead of bypassing and sticking with the operational plan of actually advancing deep into enemy territory. The solution to that problem was to give them less and less initiative, to force them to get a move on. Now when it comes to Afghanistan, if "Bear went over the Mountain" is any indication, Soviet doctrine was completely inapplicable to anything over there, and instead was replaced with a freeform exploration of tactics. If there is no deep battle, there can really be no plan to stick to.
  9. I was watching world at war about Stalingrad, and I noticed a very weird bit of footage. Watch the scene that starts at 1:16. Some kind of large tubular device is shot, at a conglomeration of rubble, and what appears to be a burnt out T-34. This results in a fiery smokey explosion. When the soldiers advance the device is carried by a single soldier. At first I thought it was just a time period error on the part of editors, and they were shooting a schrek, which is interesting in itself, but under closer examination it just doesn't look right. The explosion has no power, and the device looks like it has multiple pieces. The gunshield makes it look like a schreck, though. Here's one for sale, http://www.relics-citadel.ru/index.php?id=6839929460 there is a picture of soldiers with it that look similar to the one in the video.
  10. This paper gives a good overview of how doctrines evolved starting with WWI up to end of Cold War. http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/house.pdf Lets not exaggerate now. Mounted archers vs barbed wire, bunkers, breech loading artillery and machine guns wouldn't work too well. You mean you haven't read David Glantz's opuses on the matter? http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/glantz3/glantz3.asp http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/glantz4/glantz4.asp In the paper edition of the strategic one he even claims: "More recently, Western study of 'August Storm' provided inspiration, concrete guidance and a virtual model for its namesake Operation 'Desert Storm', the US-led coalition that crushed the Iraqi Army in 1991, US Military planners in the Gulf War initially intended to name the offensive phase of the war against Iraq 'Desert Sword' to match the defensive phase 'Desert Shield'. However, planning cells sent to the Gulf from Fort Leavenworth's School of Advance Military Studies, which had studied the Soviet Manchurian offensive in detail, developed an offensive operational plan that replicated the Soviet offensive and named it "desert Storm'." Mounted archers indeed. [ May 15, 2004, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: White Phosphorus ]
  11. It wouldn't have won, but it would be definitely better off than it was defending. They'd get to keep their industries intact which could result in a different weapons mix than they originally had. T-34Ms, T-50s, Tu-2s very nasty. And I don't think that their equipment losses could get any worse than they were in the defensive battles, when there was no transport or gas and whatever wasn't destroyed fell into the enemy hands. Stuff would at least be breaking down on friendly territory.
  12. I think the design team seriously went overboard with the whole "one penetration kills are unrealistic" thing that Close Combat series suffered from. There a single ATR penetration (well any penetration) resulted in a catastrophic explosion. In CMBB however, in one scenario I had a Soviet MG only T-26 pounded with a German ATR at 200 meters for turns on end, without doing any damage. By the time I took out that riffle the front hull must've looked like a wiremesh. The crew should've started aiming and vision slits at that point anyways.
  13. I read that the first batch of T-34/85s was paid for by the Russian orthodox church.
  14. I read a Russian article about Kursk a while ago, and there a Soviet tanker recalled that during the briefing their unit commander specifically instructed the unit to engage Tigers only from the side below 500m and ONLY using sub-caliber ammunition. Of course the reporter could've been wrong, the tanker could've remembered it wrong his officer could've been wrong. So interpret it how will.
  15. I know it is not kosher to refer to other wargames, but in Steel Panthers T-34s had a,b,c,d versions which had alternating armor thickness 5-7mm. And somebody on the forums was so impressed with the detailed modeling that he posted an article about Soviet T-34 production that argued that few factories actually produced T-34s with the specified armor thickness, but made some plates 5-7-10mm thicker then specks. Which might explain the discrepancy in the various AARs. This was so long ago I don't think I'll be able to dig it up.
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