MOS was 71331

As I recall my training exposure to rifle grenades in the 60s, you put the grenade on the end of the rifle barrel and a special cartridge in the rifle chamber. You put the butt of the rifle on the ground with the grenade up in the air, tilt the rifle in what looks like the appropriate direction, and pull the trigger. I'd guess the odds of getting the grenade into the back of a half-track might be as high as ten percent -- if you'd fired half a dozen or so in training. Getting one into an open tank hatch would pure luck. But if it's the only AT weapon I had and I didn't have to expose myself too much to use it, I'd fire away.

I've never seen the "use explosives" command Dook mentions. His exact sentence is Within the DC range, a "use explosives" command should be available. Perhaps such a command "should be available," but is it?

There's a scenario pitting a German truck convoy escorted by PzIIs and halftracks against a company of partisans. The partisan's three AT rifles account for most of the killed German vehicles. (Many of the kills are not from single hits. There are usually a fair number of "no significant damage" hits.)

Ooops. My ROTC training would have been in summer camp in 1964. I'm pretty sure my Engineer Officer Basic Course in 1966 never included any classes using rifle grenades.

If I recall my ROTC training in 1966 correctly, you attached a rifle grenade to the end of the rifle barrel, placed the butt of the rifle on the ground, and "aimed" the rifle up -- similar to a mortar -- in the general direction of the target. I wouldn't rate its chance of hitting and killing a tank as very good.

Where can I find Limey's grid terrain mod? I installed all the CM Mods' supposedly gridded terrain mods, and I saw no change in the displayed terrain.

I'm trying to, but my opponents haven't responded to my most recent moves in over a month. I've four games underway.

When I'm setting up a Quick Battle, I prefer to have CM select the forces. I believe it's a more interesting challenge to make the best use of the units received instead of "cherry picking" from the many possible units available. CM has dealt me many surprises. I once got a platoon of German 20mm AAA guns in my defending force mix, where I'd probably have chosen one or two AFVs instead. One of those guns immobilized one allied tank and damaged the gun of another before being destroyed by a third. It made for an exciting game.

I, too, have a G3 Mac, and I'm afraid some of the other responders don't realize that the old technology of a G3 won't support the latest versions of the Mac's OS X. The best you can hope for is running version 10.1. For anything later, you're out of luck. If your Mac's down, you can't run anything, neither the v9 emulator or the new "Bootcamp" which only runs on the new Intel processors. You must be running something, though, because you're still on the internet and posting away. Good luck.

Spell checker? I don't need no stinking spell checker.

I like German AAA, so I usually buy some if I have the choice and the force budget. (I prefer letting the game select my forces and then making lemonade from whatever lemons I'm given.) I've seen enemy air power arrive in perhaps half a dozen games, and I've had some AAA in most of them. I can recall at least three games in which my quad-20 or a 37 shot down enemy fighter-bombers. I can also recall my pleasure when it happened -- great.

I don't understand your problem. Send me your credit card number and expiration date, and I'll see if they work from my computer.

I believe the word you're using is "morale," not "moral."

I met a retired Luftwaffe fighter pilot in Munich in 1984, the father of a German girl I was dating. He told me he had flown 262s in the last few months of the war. He claimed he had shot down 12 planes for a net of plus 7, because he'd been shot down 5 times. He said he had met one US pilot who had shot him down in the hospital where they'd both been taken that day. As far as I was concerned, his most interesting victory was knocking down a Lancaster he'd encountered in a day mission. (He'd never flown night missions.)

One option I haven't seen discussed is to play both sides of a scenario with the same opponent. While you will have complete knowledge of the forces you're facing, you won't know how your opponent is using his axis and allied units. If you beat his allied force 62 to 38 while he defeats your allied force 66 to 34, his play (or luck) has been a bit better than yours. In duplicate bridge, the same hands are played at each table, so all the East/West and North/South partners have faced the same situations. The E/W scores on each hand are ranked, and a partnership gets one point for each E/W score they beat and one/half point for each E/W score they tie. [Obviously, the N/S partnerships are scored similarly, and the best N/S result on a hand is the worst E/W result.] This approach eliminates the luck of the deal from the scoring. (A lot of luck still remains: you want to get simple hands against the best opponents and difficult hands against the worst opponents.)

All this talk of tutoring is against the second of W C Field's rules: (1) Never give a sucker an even break. (2) NEVER SMARTEN UP A CHUMP.

I'd like a copy as well. Thanks. harry.pool@boeing.com

US Army, Corps of Engineers. ROTC at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, PA Engineer Officer Basic at Ft Belvoir, VA Jump school at Ft Benning, GA Platoon leader, bn staff officer, with 2d Engr Bn of 2d Inf Div in Korea Also worked on the Safeguard ABM system at the test site on the Kwajalein Atoll. Two years active duty, May 1966 to May 1968, followed by five or six years in army reserves.

Sgt Goody -- "We could hear ... officers on the radio asking for a repeat of the last transmission." No good officer would ask for a repeat of the last transmission. "Repeat" is ONLY used for controlling artillery, as in "Repeat range. Fire for effect." The correct radio message would be "Say again your last transmission."

A 12-man squad may be better than a 6-man squad at spotting, but, as it's twice as large, it's also more likely to be spotted.

I know. I asked for it two or three years ago.

I agree that "militarily important terrain doesn't really change," but the sizes and locations of QB flags don't seem to relate well with that concept. Instead, the game seems to be assigning them randomly. I'd like the players to impose some logic on the flag placements without having total knowledge of the other's choices. The defender might like one flag in a building that he can defend with everything, while the attacker might prefer multiple flags so he can pick which to go for. Obviously, if the defender hunkers down around a pillbox in the north while the attacker drives full tilt for some woods in the south, the situation may not develop in an interesting way. As it stands now, though, both sides know that particular building is worth 200 points (and the one 100 meters away is worth 0) and those woods are worth 400 points (while some others with nicer trees are worthless).

I don't think I should know what terrain my opponent values, and he/she shouldn't know what I value. Could the system allow both players to place their own flags on the map and then assign point values according to some simple function? Offhand, I'd expect flags to increase in value as their distance from the front increases. And flags in buildings or bunkers or on cross-roads or hill tops should be more valuable than flags in the middle of nowhere. While both sides would have some knowledge of what the other side is after, the present flag system provides perfect -- dare I say "unrealistic" -- information. [The system might randomly decide how many flags or points of flags the player must set up.]

As the AI can set up its own forces reasonably whether it's attacking or defending, why not let a player be able to have the AI set up his/her own forces? The AI's set up is usually fairly good, and it's certainly fast. Rather than spending hours tweaking my set up before starting a game, I'd rather have the AI give me a "first approximation" to a good set up which I can then refine -- or ignore, if I don't like it.

The whole idea of a sniper duel seems idiotic. The fighting around Stalingrad was in an area of many square miles, and the Russian and German forces engaged each were taking hundreds of casualties each day. Would either the Germans or the Russians even notice that a single rifleman of the other army was responsible for less than one percent of their losses? If a company sized unit took three or four dead in a short time period, they'd certainly know something was wrong, but how would anyone connect those deaths with a similar string of losses two days later and perhaps a few miles away?