Apocal

What is wrong with this?

I was under the impression, possibly mistaken, that the truly heavy pieces like the 240mm howitzer were under the control of artillery groups built specifically for this sort of mission, with specialized survey and geolocation units to enhance their accuracy.

Playability.

Schroedinger's Betrayal.

If I'm defending and forgot fortifications, it is either because I'm in a village/town or I simply forgot.

Some of the SAA fighters are actually Sunni turncoats.

Yeah, now that I'm playing a few WEGO MP matches, I'm finding that my "rhythm" is all screwed up with WEGO. In RT, I'm fairly good with controlling my forces in response to the enemy's moves/countermoves but in WEGO I just can't seem to get the right pacing and miss way too many opportunities.

Good god, who thought that handgrip was a good idea?

Not nearly as petty as Childresses' comment implying that the Germans had honor that the Americans lacked. At any rate, trying to ascribe the notion of honor to something as large and diverse as a nation of many millions is a bit silly.

You sound extremely silly attributing honorable behavior to the side practicing genocide.

Stigler's act of mercy is less about disobeying what he felt was an immoral cause and more reflective of the fact that - for normal human beings - there has to be a justification behind killing another human being beyond lofty ideals. Typically in war, it is fairly simple: him or I, but in Stigler's case he felt no threat and reached his limit for justification.

Very few people who got to spend time dodging hot steel consider it such an exhilarating, informative experience they want their children to do it. If any of my children suddenly need to discover for themselves that was is a generally bad and universally serious business, I have a collection of about 900 pictures and 20 videos I can show them.

I actually couldn't find a report of a tank being immobilized by hand-held AT for CMBN's period and region, which is why I used a Russian account instead. Admittedly, I didn't exactly try hard, since the east front account was *right there*. v0v

Yes, I did. If you'd like, I could provide a different quote: "Until someone shows actual combat reports it’s just a bus and no MG was ever fired from a Hanomag in anger. It seems like you are the one who is taking a ridiculous extreme position here." The point is that in NWE, the halftracks were almost never in a position to even attempt to do the things described as doctrine. They were left far behind, out of the direct fire-fight. It isn't even hard to imagine why, with every American infantry division having around 40-50 active medium tanks attached on an average day and bazookas being issued in considerable numbers.

The first quote was Jason's first post on the subject of their actual (as opposed to doctrinal) employment. Are you talking about this?: "24. Every enemy antitank weapon has superiority over you because it is always ready to fire. Compensate for this superiority by rapid travel, by utilizing the terrain, making short stops to fire, and by actively concentrating your shots. When you have located an antitank gun close to you, charge it while firing and destroy it." OK. OK then, Kursk is a bad example. He also brought up, essentially, every major German armored attack in NWE. Nobody was claiming to have killed Hanomags with direct fire and the Germans weren't claiming they lost them to direct fire, where and when are they being used?

What? He never argued that.

As it was explained to me, it is an abstraction of various means (including mines and AT grenades) of immobilizing or disabling a tank via close assault. As for the realism of it? According to one account: "Of course, we knew we were almost doomed - we had no AT-guns, no machine-guns - we were almost hopeless against the tanks. We had the grenades, but it is very hard to knock out a tank with a hand grenade!" ... "The problem is that a tank is made of steel, and you are not. It fires its main gun and machine-guns at you. It can also squash you. It is very hard to knock out a tank in general, but it is especially hard to knock it out with a hand grenade. If the crew is "green", then you still have a chance, but if there are vets in the tank, it is utterly impossible. Unfortunately, you only learn this when the tank suddenly turns and squashes you. Or kills you with a machine-gun. By the way, what do you mean - to knock out? We had the anti-tank grenades, but they were useless against heavy tanks. It is not every grenade that sets tank on fire! It takes training, coolness and experience. You do not have many chances to get close to a tank, but you have even fewer chances to get away from the tank if you failed to knock it out. In most of the cases we would try to damage the tracks. Then you could try the satchel charge. The crew does not necessarily abandon the immobilized tank, it can stay and continue to fight. You should always burn the tank." "That time we did not even have the bottles ("Molotov Cocktails" - Valeri). We only had hand grenades, and most of them were "pineapples". At that moment some people appeared on the ridge - they were running towards us as fast as their legs would carry them. That meant that our defenses were completely broken and avalanche of tanks and Panzergrenadiers was about to descend on us." The picture he paints is fairly clear, even with heavy AT grenades, their preferred target was the tracks to immobilize the tank, then later you could improvise some means of setting the tank on fire. Pineapples (hand grenades) are implied to be useless.

:S He isn't saying that. At any rate, giving the same army more numbers and shinier toys will virtually ensure they are stronger. Of course, some people eat paint-chips and perform worse, but there always exceptions and that is pointing towards a better tool being poorly used, rather than anything wrong with the tool itself.

Not as far as I can tell.

Weren't the majority of Hiwis in some combatant capacity? Or am I misremembering?

I hate to double-dip in a thread, but now I'm curious: what do you use 60mm mortars for? Anything role(s) in specific or just generalized beatdown sticks? And I agree there should be some kind of truck, ammo box or editor-side supply setting that a scenario designer can use to increase the ammo above the norm. It is sometimes difficult in defense scenarios only because everything other than HMGs is running close to black.

Presumably those same non-combatants contributed towards the first total. No one is arguing purely numbers. And the Germans of 1940 (well, mid-1941) still had most of Europe, parts of the Med and North Africa to keep supplied.

Battalions already get a platoon of 81mm and/or 120mm mortars with plenty of ammo for just that reason.

The mines still go off.

I'm not under that impression. I am under the impression that most of the battalion commander's and higher, along with their staffs had combat experience of some form, had the benefit of lessons learned all the prior years of fighting and had a better appreciation of how modern combat functioned.