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."

Any chance there’s a transcript? I can’t even sit down and watch a GOOD two hour movie in one sitting these days, let alone a conversation between two of the most detestable living humans in the entire world.

It’ll be awesome to see the final product when it arrives! Congrats on completing such an ambitious project.

There’s no contradiction. Cutting off the infiltrated Russian troops (even wiping them out) wouldn’t change the overall trend. History is full of examples where local tactical victories (which I hope this turns out to be) failed to change the overall course of the battle.

Unfortunately I think it’s further confirmation Avdiivka will eventually be lost. It’s Bakhmut all over again, the Russian advance is slow, and their losses heavy, but they’re consistently gaining a little more ground day by day, and unless Ukraine launches counterattacks to retake lost ground (likely a costly strategy given their materiel inferiority) then the result is inevitable. It’s honestly painful to watch. The Ukrainians are fighting like lions to defend their country, but unfortunately we happen to live in a time where courage is about as important as the supply of 155mm artillery ammunition. And somehow North Korea is better at helping out the Russians in this way than Ukraine’s western allies…

Can’t speak to the reliability of this report from Telegram, but it does potentially provide some details on what’s happening on the ground at Avdiivka: AVDIVKA UPDATE Russian forces in the south west salient they created have effectively been cut off as Ukraine has regained the key fortified area of the restaurant services area. Russia tried to send a column to reinforce their troops in Avdivka’s lower streets, but this was annihilated. The Russians used a 2km waste water service pipe to get behind the restaurant and into south Avdivka. It’s very narrow and they had to crawl through it, so supplying and reinforcing the now cut off island they’re in in south Avdivka is near impossible, if not pointless. The tunnel needs to be destroyed at both ends and it’s deep so this hasn’t yet happened. Eradicating the Russians in the housing they occupied is well underway. Overall the Russian operation was quite imaginative and it gave them a major gain - taking the southern defences completely and the Ukrainians by surprise. In some ways the Ukrainians should have expected use of the tunnel, or at least taken precautions to block it. It’s far more likely they just never expected it could be used if they even remembered it was there. Russian success - and it was, there’s no getting away from that, it was a daring and imaginative operation, was simply not followed up. Senior commanders doubted its likely success and no one was ready to exploit it until it was far too late. By then the Ukrainians had snatched back the restaurant’s fortification, because nobody reinforced the Russian forces, and now the few remaining Russian troops are more or less trapped, and the whole thing has turned into a Russian disaster. It’s not something Ukraine will fall for again and they’re probably looking to make sure nothing like happens anywhere else either. This could have been the most consequential move the Russians made in months. If they had been ready to exploit the success and acted quickly, given it the support it needed, they could have surrounded Zenit and have broken deep into Avdivka. It would in all likelihood have been the beginning of a much faster end for the town which would have quickly become untenable. Instead their own handful of competent people were as usual, let down by hide bound commanders with zero imagination. Ukraine has always worked well against such opponents and did so again. That they were just as quick to see what had happened and responded with lightning pace to retake the initiative says it all.

This needs to be repeated until the end of time. The idea that the next generation is spoilt, incompetent and incapable of handling what their forebears could might sound convincing if it weren’t for the fact that every single generation throughout history seems to have believed it. And yet, the world continues to spin.

It all sounds like a big misunderstanding more than anything else. I hope it can be resolved without issue, as it would be a shame to have the (up until now) biggest collection of fanmade Red Thunder content get derailed at the last hurdle .

An older model of Bradley besting the Russians’ most modern MBT. Let that be another nail in the coffin for the myth of Russian technical superiority. Also… Steve, is there a chance we’ll see a patch in the future where you can damage a tank in such a way that the turret will be locked in a non-stop spin?

Ohhh boy I was actually gonna contact you regarding ideas anyways, but since the thread‘s here for all to see might as well do it here. Eastern front is where it’s at IMO, so another 3-5 campaigns from there would be really cool. Here’s some of my top suggestions: 1. East Prussia 1944 - Recapture of Gumbinnen & Goldap One of a handful of instances where the Germans went on the attack in the late war period and won. I can envisage a campaign focused around the 5. Panzer-Division and how it aided in the recapture of Gumbinnen and Goldap respectively in the fall of 1944. You could also cover the same Division in East Prussia in early 1945, as it fought impressively in that time too! 2. Retreat to Silesia 1945 - Nehring and von Saucken Floating Pockets This one would be very similar to the Five Bridges campaign from your current battle pack. Essentially, you could follow the retreat of an assemblage of German units in their desperate withdrawal from the Vistula to the Oder River. Which they did in fact succeed in doing, though at great cost. You could focus on either the 16. or 19. Panzer-Divisionen, as these both played a key role in spearheading the retreat. 3. Operation Gemse 1945 - Recapture of Lauban This could make for a short but intense campaign that saw the Germans retake Lauban in March 1945. More research would need to be done to find the best storyline to follow, but the Führer-Grenadier Division as well as the 8. and 17. Panzer-Divisionen would be good candidates to focus on. 4. Operation Südwind 1945 - Destroying the Gran Bridgehead Another short and sweet campaign where either the 1. or 12. SS Panzer-Divisionen could be commanded in the fight to destroy the Gran bridgehead. 5. Budapest 1945 - The Battle for the Hungarian Capital You could make an awesome campaign here similar to the Our Father campaign from your battle pack. As with that campaign, the focus would be on the desperate defense of the city followed by a near hopeless breakout mission. The good news is that I have a good deal of documentation regarding individuals who fought inside, and then successfully broke out from, Budapest. There are thus plenty of candidates that could take on the same role as Major Schmidt for this campaign. 6. Warsaw 1944 - The Defensive Battles of IV. SS-Panzer-Korps Red Thunder (and history in general) has already given plenty of attention to the fighting around Warsaw in early August 1944. However, far less has been written about the subsequent 3 defensive battles of Warsaw in August-October 1944. This is a shame, because in many ways these battles represented some of the finest hours for both the 5. and 3. SS Panzer-Divisionen. A campaign about these battles would help to fill this gap (and let’s face it, you couldn‘t resist doing another campaign about Totenkopf anyways ). 7. Courland 1944/45 - Last Stand of Army Group North This one would have to be a campaign with a greater focus on defense, however there is fortunately a lot of source material available for this time. You could make an entire campaign pack out of the six battles fought here, there’s that much to unpack. If this gets your attention then let me know and I’ll try to find some more specific battles to design a campaign around. One about either the 12. or 14. Panzer-Divisionen could be especially promising. Now, bear in mind that if you’re prepared to cover purely defensive campaigns then the possibilities really are endless. Lmk if you’d be receptive to that and I could probably come up with more suggestions. Or, if you’d rather release another themed campaign battlepack (focusing on a certain theatre/timeframe) I could help flesh that out too. If you want to go down that route then I’d recommend a battlepack focused on either: a) Courland b) East Prussia c) Hungary Your skills as a campaign designer are impressive in any case, so I look forward to seeing whatever does end up shaping up!

A totally valid decision, if a little disappointing. It would’ve been VERY satisfying to pit Leo 2s and Puma IFVs against the Russians in a rematch of the Eastern Front where the Germans are the good guys. Ah well, I’m sure there’ll be a CW expansion that’ll satisfy that itch