Mark IV

Darryl, I tend to agree with your general concerns, but it sure doesn't make much of a case for ABMs, does it? ABMs are for ICBM-equipped potential adversaries like China, Russia, and France . They are a very long way from ready, but "ready" starts with tests and demos (even beta demos!). The first cannon probably couldn't hit s**t either. It was 25 years from the V2 to the moon, and the moon is relatively large and predictable. Decoys are part of the challenge and simply one more obstacle to be overcome. If the whole ABM concept is proven to be unfeasible then the tests will be valuable for that reason alone. Time to look at particle beams and orbiting lasers again! Do people think that politics and technology have somehow peaked, and that nothing new is possible? It would be nice to negotiate ICBMs out of existence but that's not real likely soon. As long as they're around I would like to see countermeasures being worked on. Taking history at face value, I prefer a gram of prevention to a kilo of cure.

In reality you'd do a lot better to GIVE the billions of dollars to the regions from which fundamentalists who might use these things arise and try to create employment and better living standards. There's a word in there I don't quite understand... "give"? "Invest" makes more sense in the context. Investments create jobs. Historically, gifts only create wealthy gift-administrators. We already are investing (and giving) billions to third world countries who hate us. They still hate us, but they remind us when we're behind in our payments. At least we're keeping the dialogue open, as they say... What do you think would really happen if we gave a few (extra) billion to Syria, Libya, Iran, or Afghanistan? As for ABMs: Oh, come on, we're just playing around. A little R&D never hurt anything. We've evolved from spending billions to kill foreign populations, to spending billions to kill incoming missiles. This is progress. If China wants to go broke building countermeasures, like their erstwhile mentors in the world-wide revolution export business, that's fine, too. Suitcase nukes (assuming some apocryphal exaggeration for effect- I wanna see the biceps on THAT courier) are really a bigger concern, but the responsibility of different organizations, like the FBI. Probably ATF, too, since I'm sure those things need to be registered. The National Defense establishment gets paid to handle incoming, and it would look bad for them if somebody plunked a nuke down in the middle of the US. Smuggled weapons of mass destruction are not their thing. I'm sure we're spending plenty of billions on that, too, but in the appropriate departments.

They make a little spring-loaded thingy that clamps on the rear of the trigger guard, and places just enough tension on the trigger. If you cradle the rifle loosely the recoil will fire the next round, with predictable results. This is supposedly legal, and it may as well be, since it's not much more accurate than what you describe. But if you float an empty bleach container down a little creek and you have piles of surplus Chicom ammo, it's good clean healthy fun the whole family can enjoy. If I can find the stupid thing I'll give it to you (thrill wore off and I dasn't make that kind of noise in Kalifornia). I was thinking a battery-powered drink mixer with a little cam, in the trigger guard... but I'm sure that's crossing some kind of line.

There is quite a bit of the kind of information you are looking for in "When the Odds Were Even". Apparently there has been some discussion of this book here before, but I am finding it quite interesting. There is very little anecdotal information, and a lot of concentration on German training, doctrine, and command structure.

The observation that split squads panic easily in recon roles (without an HQ) would apply equally to a 3-man scout team, wouldn't it? I mean, they're supposed to look, not get into firefights. It's a risky role and of course they might run into trouble- in which case either the split squad OR the recon team should & would get back to the main force. That said, I&R (intelligence and reconnaissance) platoons were pretty common at infantry regiment level, weren't they?

Jeez, why do you always make agreeing with you so distasteful? BTS has responded to reasoned argument with rifle grenades, indirect fire mods, dead bodies, enhanced explosions, pivoting, sandbag effects on turrets, sprinting Panzerfausts, and a bunch of things I probably don't even know about or can't remember. Nobody owes us a pet feature, so why not be civil about it? State the case and move on, man.

If you don't move, it is NOT a relative issue in the examples given above. Hull-down to a piece of real estate (i.e., a road, or a gap) will not change unless you move. Period. It is hull-down to an absolute point in space. Other vehicles do not matter. Armored crewmen practice doing this. It is second nature when establishing a defensive position or setting up and ambush. You are anticipating where the enemy will appear. If you do move, of course it changes. If enemies appear elsewhere, you are not necessarily hull-down to them. It is not relative to enemies at all, but to the point you drew your line to. That is all.

The question is, are you taking any of the bastards with you? Desert Storm has skewed a lot of people's notions about tank battle. In WWII, if you killed some of the other guys tanks and THEN you DIED, you were a Tanker. Position is one key. Being where you're not supposed to be is real powerful. Massed firepower is another. The more tubes the other guy is looking up at once, the better. Other than that, it just might be the old bitty across the street... any antennae on her roof? Thought so. I suppose she's just calling her sister in Stuttgart about the weather....

The problem is that if you want hull-down from a ridge to a road, you can't see what a real TC could see in order to get that. If your AFV isn't on the ridge yet, you have to zoom forward at level 1. As soon as you leave the AFV, your perspective changes- your eyeballs roll down the tube and drop to the ground. You are no longer seeing from the center-mass of the AFV, or the TC's hatch. Your lookers are lower. So hull-down for them is different than for a multiple-tonned vehicle. Now if I want to set up a hull-down position relative to a road, I drive to the general area and look. I yell "Gunner, can you JUST see that there road in yer optics?" or better yet, let him tell the driver when to stop. There's really no difference at present between Hunt and Move for setting up hull-down against an empty area. You just go there, pan around at 1, and creep back and forth and hope you got it. A real crew would know and just do it.

I'm still wrapping up a Gold Demo scenario. It's hard to go back to AI after you've been eviscerated by humans. CMers are a pretty reliable bunch. Being humans they are subject to other-world interruptions (disease, work, women, births), but most carry on despite the handicap of being carbon-based.

tailz: Nice trick. But if I drag the Enfield Mk V out of the closet, I'm willing to bet that with all the practice in the world I don't get anywhere close to 450rpm ROF. I can't really approximate those ROFs with my semi-auto Mini-30, for that matter, without one of those "devices". Username: Yes, average, or rounded down for most-winded section. Chain's weakest link and all that. Cueball: Depending on terrain you might be right. In urban and woods situations you'd better just strap on those track boots, though. Which leads me to add that Abandoned jeeps with perfectly serviceable .50s should be remanned (remannable?). Why would a Veteran jeep crew opt to run around with pistols (why do they only have pistols?) instead of returning distant fire with a perfectly good half-inch death ray, to support the platoon they are part of? I can understand un-assing the jeep in close combat (pardoning the expression) but this is quite different than Abandoning a tank with a hole in it. Even if the jeep is no longer a vehicle the .50 is still a BFG.

Involuntary squad-splitting (while running) would be much more likely in broken or wooded terrain. I kind of like it. I don't know why they would need to return to the same state in order to recombine, though, possibly barring the "pinned" status. Rested, ready, tired, or weary, together is together. The overall squad could take the average status of the recombined halves. Marching fire was a good tactic in the right situations, and helped overcome the US rifleman's tendency not to shoot without a definite target. It was not executed on the run, AFAIK. The whole unit fired on the advance at anything that looked like it could conceal a German- clumps of brush, etc. Doubler has a great little section on this (pp279-280): "In attacks across open ground, infantry platoons deployed into skirmish lines with their BARs and light machine-guns scattered along the line. The idea was for soldiers to keep pressing forward while throwing a wall of lead before them." He goes on to quote Patton's advice to Third Army infantry: "...One round should be fired every two or three steps... The whistle of the bullets, the scream of the ricochet... have such an effect that his small arms fire becomes negligible...Keep working forward...shooting adds to your self-confidence, because you are doing something."

Jeezuz, people, what part of "don't feed the troll" don't you understand? Your brilliant counter-flames are making the troll's day- he gets noticed. Ignore this thread until they can lock it up.

The Search feature does not actually "credit" the thread to anyone; rather it lists the author of the first post with a match to your search criteria in a given thread. Creating hull defilade with dozer blades and other digging means was common for the defense, and still is. The wall is a nice "field expedient" but digging in was more effective, since the earth itself was your cover. The little berm piled up around the hole from the digging is nice concealment, but not terribly effective cover. Bullethead has described it well. Such digs can be interesting to back out of under fire, though, when it's bug-out time. [This message has been edited by Mark IV (edited 07-08-2000).]

Welcome aboard. Give up your life, it gets worse from here. PS: Make sure Fog of War (FOW) is set to Full.

Your first link above worked fine just now. The second does not, because the "!" is included in the url. I'm in the US, but I go to army.mil all the time.

Well, the British were trained to ski (without poles) while firing a Walther PPK backwards at pursuing ski troops with submachine-guns. Was that on the History Channel, or... oh, wait, it'll come to me...

I must be missing something. I set up a QB with 1000 pts., Axis Green, Allied attacker, Attacker +200%. I picked Volkssturm, combined arms, Feb 45, snow. I also gave the 'puter a +1 Combat experience for good measure and thus expect to be massacred. However, when it was time to pick units, I could only pick infantry and support vehicles. No armor, no artillery. But lots and lots of Panzerschrecks. No mixing of unit experience ('course, Volkssturm rarely got to veteran status). It did not appear as though the individual units could be tweaked much. Is this because I picked Volkssturm?

No time for comments but my vote is in.

I wondered about that, too: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/006211.html

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>let's play devil's advocate and presume that FDR indeed wanted Pearl to be attacked. Why leave the Pacific fleet there in the harbor to stand as a big fat juicy target that couldn't maneuver in defense? Couldn't the fleet had been put to sea, or even sent back to its San Diego home base?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The Japanese did not attack Pearl Harbor; they were attacking the US fleet. The whole point was to neutralize the US power in Pacific so the real aim of seizing the oil could be accomplished. No fleet, no attack. This one of those debates where, despite there being no evidence for a conspiracy, the burden is apparently on historians to prove that it didn't happen. Roosevelt wanted war. He did not want the fleet sunk. Someone's observation that, in the mindset of 1941, battlewagons counted, was spot on. You wouldn't start a war by deliberately sacrificing your most promising means of waging it. This debate has always obscured the shameful conduct of our defense of the Philippines, which was a much more likely and predictable object of attack than Pearl. Still not a conspiracy- just shameful.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Altogether I've probably spent over $300 on books<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I suppose I long for the day when I could have said that. Since I discovered CM, I've spent that amount again, just on WWII, which I'd gotten away from for a while. I go through fads- ancient, Byzantine, medieval, Napoleon, Crimea, Zulu & Boer, F-P and R-J Wars were biggies, and lately I've been digging into the Spanish-American and Korea (50s, not 1871... yet). Love the ACW but it's just one more can 'o worms. WWII was my first love, and CM is like running into her again at the class reunion, and she lookin' good. It's amazing that I don't know more than I do! Idiots (and others) kick my butt all the time. But, it beats TV.

I wonder if Michael Doubler is aware of Combat Mission? As often as he is cited here, someone should clue him in. All I know is that he was affiliated with University of Kansas, and that the book was published in 1995. How about a live chat on CMHQ with Doubler? Would that be awesome, or what?

Small arms are one things, rockets and 'fausts are another. Think about backblast in the confines of a steel box. Not only would the other occupants be fried, the shooter would likely be scorched himself. I would be interested in what the Heeresdienstvorschrift says about firing antitank weapons from halftracks. For game purposes, Green units might be allowed to do it- once.

That's a couple of good deals. I paid more than that for Macksey's book, second-hand.