pintere

Is it not possible for the Ukrainians to counterattack the flanks of the corridor at Ocheretyne? Standard military logic would suggest that the corridor there is just begging to be cut off. Of course, this war is very different from previous wars…

It's too bad that the Begleit-Grenadier squad found in the Sturmartillerie brigades is as rare as it is. It's basically the perfect German infantry squad as far as CM is concerned, with three elements totaling 7 StG 44, 3 Gewehr 43 + 1 LMG & rifleman, for 12 soldiers total. It's size and loadout mean that it can effectively engage infantry at any range whether on offense or defense, and like most other German infantry squads of this time there's also a couple Panzerfausts per squad. Probably the best choice to go with for frustrated German players when playing either quick battles or PBEM.

So for once the Russians would be right if they said it was all the CIA‘s doing

From yesterday: "At a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, Volodymyr Zelenskyy named 5 urgent defense needs of Ukraine: 7 Patriot air defense systems or similar, one million artillery shells, long-range weapons, aviation and speed in the supply of these weapons." I suppose we’ll know soon enough what exactly the US will be sending and when. My hope is that the very first things they send will be more Patriot batteries and SHELLS. Lots and lots. Crate after crate of 155mm. Assuming the Ukrainians are ready on their end too, in as soon as a couple weeks we may finally see the Russian assault teams once again disappear under rains of fire. And then even the new blyat tanks will have no refuge on the battlefield. Next in line will hopefully be a few F-16 squadrons (to take care of those infernal glide-bombers) as well as a few hundred Bradleys. Based on what we’ve seen at the front, as well as the Ukrainians‘ own statements, I think sending more of these would be of much greater practical value compared to more Abrams. Besides, if Bradleys are indeed able to defeat T90s on the current battlefield then Abrams are probably not even necessary anyways . Speed will of course be vital too, especially if Ukraine is to be ready to meet Russia’s own summer offensive. With luck though, Ukraine will ultimately be ready in time to return the favour the Russians inflicted on them last summer.

This is just a theory, but I wonder if the various persons in Russia are a lot more willing to go to Ukraine on the assumption that they’ll be employed in defensive rather than offensive operations? I know I’d way rather sit in a trench on same quiet patch of frontline as opposed to being crushed by the treads of my own armoured vehicles in the open…

Hmm I’ll keep that in mind next time my Pixeltruppen in CM flee TOWARDS the enemy when they clearly should’ve just stayed put. You know, this war has been a great showcase of how really stupid things can happen in modern warfare. And every time this is the case it becomes easier to forgive the mechanics of Combat Mission when it results in outcomes that seem either unrealistic/unfair.

Did that one Russian at the end (he had no weapon) really just run into the Legionnaires‘ trench and surrender? I didn’t see what happened to him after he hopped in.

Unfortunately Forczyk‘s third book does not tell us this… But the Germans did definitely suffer far greater losses than the Soviets in this phase, as not only the combat units but also all the support units would’ve been entirely lost.

You are correct, these numbers are for the city fight before Uranus only. And for good reason, as the overwhelming majority of German casualties during the Stalingrad battle were from the third phase, the natural consequence of an encircled force being destroyed completely.

And I would do it again! Quality missions deserve quality briefings.

Of course . It should be noted that I’m also very picky with the campaigns I keep for a long time. Ones that don’t make the cut include campaigns with insufficiently accurate uniforms/TOE (this excludes DragonWynn‘s Totenkopf and Finnish campaigns), requirements for mods that don’t come with mod tags (eg DragonWynn‘s Stalingrad campaign) or are duplicates of battles already portrayed in a higher quality campaign (such as the fanmade breakthrough to AG North campaign). Thankfully Frank‘s campaigns have none of these issues!

I might be a little late to the party, but I’d point you in the direction of Robert Forczyk‘s excellent 3 part series on the battle. At the end of book 2 (the one covering the city fighting), he reports that the Germans suffered 20,300 casualties within the city itself (including 4,600 dead/missing) in the time period 1 September — 20 November. Soviet losses are a lot harder to pin down. From September—November the Stalingrad Front suffered about 400,000 casualties, around half of which were dead/missing. Forczyk estimates that about a quarter of these losses were sustained in the city itself. So for the actual urban combat in Stalingrad from September to October, we have 20,300 German losses against ~100,000 Soviet losses. An approximate loss ratio of 5:1 in favour of the attacker, or 10:1 if only dead/missing are counted. I‘m beginning to get the impression that the actual city fight for Stalingrad was indeed a bloodbath, but clearly not a German one… At the very least it clearly shows that urban combat doesn’t necessarily produce higher losses for the attacking side.

Thanks to Frank I now have 16 campaigns to play on my version of Red Thunder. 5 by Battlefront, 5 by Frank, and 6 other fanmade campaigns. We are lucky there are so many good fanmade campaigns for Red Thunder. In fact, there may even be more for this game now than BN! Someone should do a count…

In this sense we can call this a positive development. The idea of the interview was probably to garner sympathy from US citizens to the Russian POV after all. This is just a theory, but I like to think that your average curious individual in the US would’ve started to watch this interview and then gotten so bored by Putin‘s history lesson that they stopped watching before the half hour mark.

Found a transcript for the Putin-Tucker interview: https://www.happyscribe.com/public/the-tucker-carlson-podcast/vladimir-putin-ad58097b-f616-47d8-8bb8-1cbfe9aba16c Among the contents was this juicy nugget: Putin - "Before World War II, Poland collaborated with Hitler, and although it did not yield to Hitler's demands, it still participated in the petitioning of Czechoslovakia together with Hitler, as the Poles had not given the Danzig corridor to Germany and went too far, pushing Hitler to start World War II by attacking them. Why was it Poland against whom war started on first September, 1939? Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland."