Simon Fox

I really must get a hold of Beevor's book as I haven't read it yet. I would really like to know how his account of the chronology of fateful German decisions compares to that of Joachim Weider in his Stalingrad: Memories and reassessments. A commanders intelligence and character are certainly interesting subjects. Paulus was an intelligent and outstanding general staff officer but clearly totally unsuitable for his position and lacking any moral connection with his own troops. Manstein's self serving post war autobiography tends to cloud the issues somewhat but his performance was certainly not without tarnish. His apraisal of the chances of releiving the city were hopelessly optimistic. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

...if he did Dorosh would probably spank him soundly for being naughty and demand he be banned. Which is ironic because...

Well goz I must say your viewpoint was a bit of the fresh air of restrained reason after the preceding diatribes.

Oops, sorry there Michael got confused with the I vs A in your post. As you say 2 Inf Brigades. Could be due to the nature of the Italian campaign? I don't fink so Jason, I have never seen a Brit armoured division with one battalion of infantry (except after a hard battle ). Could be a specific exception you are referring to but generally early war it would be 6-5-3 (at best 6-6-3 if there is an Inf battalion in the support group or at worst 6-3-3 if there is no infantry brigade) then in 1943 this was changed to 3-4-3 as pointed out by Michael and IPA. This is why some of the independant armoured brigades had motor battalions. They were the ones hived off the armoured divisions when reorganised but the retained their motor battalions. These had a bit more firepower than your standard line infantry battalion IIRC. Now I'm starting to confuse myself so I'm gonna stop.

Michael wrote Which is not strictly correct because two of them did have Motor battalions (the 8th and the 4th I think). The two armoured brigade organisation of the Canadian division in Italy was a historical one since that was the pre-1943 organisation. Following on from Jason's epic tome (long winded as ever). The British generally assigned the independant tank or armoured brigades (they are different) to support infantry divisions for specific operations although some worked together for long periods. Thus British infantry divisions when they got tank support would get an entire brigade (ie 3 regiments/battalions) rather than the tank battalion typically attached to US Inf. Div. This is in addition to their organic AT regiment which was equipped 50% SP and 50% towed (eventually becoming fully SP). So using Jasons ratio terminology the British ID under many circumstances was operating at a 3-9 or 4-9(factoring in the ATk Rgt) armour-infantry ratio, ie in the area of 1-3 to 1-2. As for the British AD that had 3 Rgts (battalions if you like) of armour and 4 battalions of infantry plus an engineer battalion. Which makes for a 3-4 ratio compared to the 3-3 for the US AD and 2-4 for the panzer division.

Tiger, No Hunnicutt is correct, you are just misinterpreting what he says. 12 per armoured regiment is about right for June 1944. That's 1 per troop, that is 4 per squadron, 12 per regiment, 36 per armoured brigade. With British, Canadian, Polish and Czech (later) Armoured brigades either independant or in armoured divisions amounting to 10-11, most of which are at unit establishment or near it(except the Czech). Plus a few in the depots and in Italy (ICs?) that makes 35O+ by D-day. See, I'm not saying Hunnicutt is crap after all

You know tom there is a rumour going around that you only play on maps that have buildings dotted along ridgelines (a most unnatural landscape indeed) so that you can not only hide behind them but be hull-down as well! I would say you are a "shoe-in" for the filthy stinkin' cheatin' gamey bastard of the year award. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

Well I don't have any problem with your position on the Brummbar that's for you to sort out with whoever wants to argue with you and BTS. I just wanted to tell you your figures on the Firefly were incorrect. My source was the Royal Armoured Corps establishment figures which are available on the web. I don't know what your source was but it is definitely short of the mark. I suggest if you wish to use an example stick to the Jumbo, then no one can attack your argument on that basis. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

You are hereby nominated for the filthy stinkin' cheatin' gamey bastard of the year award. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

No, just foot in mouth ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

I cannot speak for Jumbos although I think it was slightly more than 300 but there were definitely a hell of a lot more than 290 Fireflys produced as of D-Day about 350 were in service and by Dec 1944 it was about 750+ climbing to 1000+ by the wars end. Since these are in service figures and do no allow for those lost in combat the production figures would be higher. Oh and those figures are for the NW European theatre only and do not include Italy etc ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds" [This message has been edited by Simon Fox (edited 03-14-2001).]

The minimum reasonable range for these guns when firing indirectly is quite large, plus maybe a few other reasons too. Therefore it was decided that it was more realistic to represent them firing indirectly in the off-map mode. There were some long and sometimes testy hehe discussions in the past. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

Conall, Clearly you are more confused than I am (if that's possible, hehe) Well they are not. Or at least only in the most round about way. OK, let me lead you through it. My comment was in regarding rexford's "last comment" which was: My point was that reading a whole pile of of WO reports of deadeyes on the range might give you an unbalanced idea of how that accuracy translates in combat. The performance of those "sad sacks" and "aces" on the range may translate into something a little different when under stress. It all becomes a little more complex and subjective. The issue has been discussed ad nauseum here before and these sort of firing trials/range results raised then. Some tweaks to long range accuracy have been made as a result. When you start trying to model human behaviour opinions differ and are often expressed vociferously

I agree with BH et al and I am sure if JonS were around instead of being infantry in Timor (snigger) he would probably agree too. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

But if you trust your opponent not to look at your force you can make pseudo QBs using the editor. Or alternatively you can get a neutral third party to set up a scenario using player selected forces. Seems to work well.

Bloody Kiwis!

Or a deliberate decision? Wouldn't stuff like:"ROF, quickness of turning/tracking targets, and quickness of lining up/getting off the 1st shot" be orders given by the crew commander and relate to the inherent quality of the crew? In contrast orders to move the gun might be more likely to emanate from a higher HQ and therefore be subject to that HQ's bonuses? ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

Yes and two (or a multitude) can play at that game can't they? I can think of someone who definitely will be sorry.

Would a "sharpshooter" be expected to be in radio contact with the rest of his unit? At least with a Plt-HQ you would have the moral satisfaction of knowing you weren't being "gamey"

Good stuff Claus. Chuppy, back in the Cesspool with you mythologizer! As Jeff said A Sqn 4th CLY got their arses kicked by Wittmann and a few of his mates and then later the same day B sqn 4th CLY (Bill Cotton and his troop at least) kicked Wittmanns arse. By all accounts A Sqn were attacked from the front of flanks by some Tigers and Wittmann in his from the rear. As has been said it was the 7th ADs first Normandy battle and things weren't quite as tight as they could have been, the fact that some of their recon assets were still in the UK didn't help either. Their motor battalions got pretty shot up at Villers Bocage and later during Goodwood which explains some of their later problems. The tea story is sorta true though misleading. I think the regimental commander was up for an orders group at the time so many of the officers were away from their units. I am not so sure that deficiencies in this unit would be entirely evident at the level of CM. I must admit I really don't like that Villers-Bocage scenario, it seems pretty "gamey" (ducks for cover) to make veteran troops green and conscript to acheive a "historical" result. ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

Geez Pillar stop using that dirty language round here. I don't want to see any more of that 'doctrine' talk, y'hear? I actually use this technique a fair bit since I try not to play QBs but prefer the pick your own sides scenario type battle. One thing that differentiates between half-squads and HQ is that the latter spot better. The reason is that HQ are presumed to have binoculars.

Yes this is me ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

Seeing that so far you have been unable to express your conclusions clearly in this thread it hardly seems likely that I would be cogniscant of them. I am intrigued and startled that you would characterise my observations as intriguing and startling findings. Certainly, I would not go so far as to characterise my questions as "findings". I am delighted to find that the results of your detailed analysis concurr with my own inclination on this subject. I am even more delighted to see that in your last post you are discussing with startling clarity issues of chronolgy which I have previously raised. The question is how could APDS be better modelled in CM. Clearly your analysis regarding slope modifiers is readily implemented. In order model accuracy changes surely it is necessary to better define "inconsistency" as it applies to APDS? Can the inconsistency in APDS be modelled on the basis of 'good' and 'dud' rounds? Or is it a bit more complex? Is a 'good' APDS round more accurate than a 'good' APCBC round? Can the batch variation you describe be modelled in terms of % 'dud' rounds? In which case it would be necessary to determine the % 'dud' for each scenario and hope you get a good batch and then for each round fired determine if it was a dud, could get pretty complex. Or should it just be a flat % throughout the CM time period? As you suggest. I should add that currently CM doesn't model dud rounds. Given the well documented quality control problems encountered late war by the Germans in shell production it may be that in modelling 'duds' for one round a real can of worms will be opened.

So this thread is now an APDS accuracy thread is it? I thought we had one of those. I thought this was a some tanks shoot better than others thread? Or maybe it's the APDS performance is inconsistent but hey guess what guys: so are people! All this study shows is that people and tanks vary which is really stating the bleeding obvious. Since it doesn't seem to be properly controlled for which of these factors is contributing to the variation to what extent and furthermore uses fairly small sample size, it is impossible to draw other than qualitative conclusions. It certainly doesn't support your accuracy jihad which was something you were on about months ago. If you want to return to that one by all means revive that old thread. Trawling through Salts Snippets and starting new threads on every one that takes your fancy is kinda comical, especially since you seem somewhat confused as to the point you are making (unless you are just running two threads with the same point?). ------------------ "Stand to your glasses steady, This world is a world of lies, Here's a toast to the dead already, And here's to the next man to die." -hymn of the "Double Reds"

Actually I agree with you that APDS demonstrated inconsistent performance, this is very clear and seemingly without dispute. What I don't agree with is your mangling of the language which merely obscures the point you are trying to make. If study A says APDS is more accurate than APCBC and study B says APDS is less accurate than APCBC then study A disagrees (the word I used) with study B, the results of the studies are inconsistent with each other and they contradict one another. I think you are missing the intriguing point here. If the performance of APDS is inconsistent then that should show up as intra-trial variation which would lower the results of any particular firing trial given that a sufficiently large sample of rounds were used. This certainly appears to be the case for most of the trials discussed here. Therefore the poor accuracy results for APDS in those trials seems to be due to round to round inconsistency which leads to an overall poor mean performance. When different trials disagree the issues are different. Then the contradictory results are due to either: (A)differences in the methodologies employed to perform the tests or analyse the results or both; ( differences between the rounds used. In the case of B the most likely explanation is not intra batch performance but inter batch performance. That would relate to a manufacturing issue rather than a fundamental design problem. Therefore you may have two distinct phenomena occurring and since you don't have a chronology of these tests things get a little cloudy. Clear as mud? Good