killmore

Not all Hitler decisions were that bad. During the Soviet counter attack under Moscow in late 1941 most german generals wanted to withdraw to the west. Some wanted to retreat as far as Polish border! Hitler insisted that the army stays put and fights it out - and germans did succeed in doing that. This made Hitler believe: 1) He knew better what to do then his generals. 2) Later in the war his orders to fight without withdrawal caused huge losses that could be avoided otherwise.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Wildman: Several complete different aspects of aviation being tossed about here. First, the ME-262 debate. The Me was ready to go in 1943, but Hilter wanted to make it a bomber and not a fighter, hence it was late being delivered. <hr></blockquote> Actually engines availability and reliability was a problem. Engine average life was like 20 hours. But you could hear engines scrape metal after just 15 hours... But germans like to blame hitler for most of their failures. Hitler interferance was not worth much - garmans were changing design of ME262 while they were waiting for reliable engines.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Thomas Goetz: A few more thoughts on ground attack aircraft, and at least partial answers to some recent questions. So while the US planes were not officially coordinating with the Soviets, by the late war German aircraft and even ground troops in the East were almost as likely to be attacked by American planes as by Soviet ones. Tom<hr></blockquote> I have seen statements in couple of books that US Jabos were not allowed to attack anything in the east germany (march 1945 until the end). In fact some german generals found it amazing that they were safe from air attack as soon as they withdrew to the east bank of river Laba.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Germanboy: but also with the distinction between 'German' and 'Nazi'<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Let me explain why a lot of East Europeans see all german troops as NAZIS. The definition of Nazi Army unit would be any unit that executed/tortured civilians. In the East these atrocities were performed by most units not just SS. Thus most German WWII soldiers are viewed as Nazis. Even in germany about 2 years ago there was a exhibition of pictures showing atrocities performed by German Army units (Wermaht and not SS) (It was on the news because there were protesters claiming these photographs are falsified and atrocities were fault of just a couple of SS units) There are a lot of documented Polish village massacres and SS was not involved. I am not even going to mention Bialorussia or Ukraine. Compared to German troops Soviet troops are viewed in Poland much better. Sure they would eat a shoe polish or steal a watch but they would not kill or torture Polish civilians. In fact they were often helpfull. (This opinion is aglomeration of opinions of 10 Polish people who lived through WWII) Germans units showed more "restraint" in the West. Soon enough all eye witnesses will die and we will be able claim anything we want...

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by panzerwerfer42: Panther D and A models had an actual flap in the glacis plate that lifted up to allow the driver to look out.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This means that is flap was open then driver was vulnerable. I believe T34s had same system. Doesn't the driver needs to have it open frequently when he drives? What about KV-1? I recall it seem particularly vulnerable.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gpig: But I think you may be wondering about hitting crewmembers while the tank is buttoned up. By firing a round through a vision slit? Is that right? Gpig<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thats right - I think these might actually be important. I will suddenly make some sense to fire 50 caliber MG at front armour of say PzIV. You could immobilize the tanks. Or even kill more than one crew member. Any historical data on that?

Couple of games I have played allowed MGs to kill the tank driver. I presume this is because the tank driver needs to look through a small hole in the armour in order to drive a tank. Were these view slits protected by bullet-proof glass? How common were the losses due to MG fire? I guess commander could be hurt too when he is looking around. Also if MG bullet does get into tank it has a chance to do lots of damage due to ricochets...

Seen that video. Pershing was hunting Panter in the West germany. I would guess Aachen. Commander of the panther was escaping with just one leg...

Quite true. I have seen Polish movie about it in the 1980s...

One of my friends was in Polish army in early 1980s. Company commander stopped them and said: "You can hear the tanks in the distance - they WILL drive right over you. You have couple of minuts to dig in or you will be crushed." They did managed to dig just enough to hide entire body. One of them managed to dig about 2 meter deep hole... Tanks drove right over them. They were driving in a line with only 50 cm between them... This was during the exercise - not during war...

For those interested: http://webhome.idirect.com/~jproc/crypto/enigs1.html and: http://webhome.idirect.com/~jproc/crypto/enigma.html

Well this site says Il2 was a death trap with survivability of 5 missions. (B17 did not have much longer life span in 1943 either - see memphis bell movie) I myself think it was a good plane if it had a fighter protection... http://hep2.physics.arizona.edu/~savin/ram/indexq.html

I liked "Chicks with the tank" part

San Diego - MiraMesa area...

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tero: Well, Whitman was credited with 141 kills. That would make him worth 28,5 AT assets which they could afford to lose without killing a single vehicle while still maintaining the average of 5. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Not true. Whitman bailed out of several tanks and also lost some crew man. Thus his kill ratio was NOT 141:1.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: Jeff wrote: In one battle almost an entire US platoon was killed when a Tiger whacked the side of it with an 88 HE round. Two men escaped unharmed. Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> My problem with CMBO is that this could never happen in CMBO. HE rounds just don't seem to be doing enough damage to the infantry. "Shaken" is not a damage. I think the problem is with modeling a squad. Squad soldiers never stays in exact same point. They are spread out at least somewhat. Therefore if you put 88mm round not exactly in the middle of the squad you will still hurt someone. All too often I see regular 75mm howitzers spending all of their ammo on infantry squads 200m away without killing anyone. (open terrain/Light trees). Yes they do hit very close...

256 is a magic number. That is the maximum number you can store in 1 byte of memory. So if BTS allocated only 1 byte of memory for number of units then this is it.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cos: I have lost 2 PzIV to Daimler AC to frontal shots in the 300 to 400 meter ranges (Panthers made short work of them after that). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I have lost a Tiger to Daimler at 650 meters. Front penetration too.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Duquette: Both the URL's you provided indicate: Current Title Not Available For Purchase Current Title Not Available For Rent<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Right! One guy at work knows a website which sell this movie - I will let you know tommorow

Here is Blockbuster web page for it: http://www.blockbuster.com/bb/movie/details/0,4241,VID-V+++172008,00.html Stalingrad movie (1989)

Nope movie was quite new made in 1989. No mistake about that... I will get you a webpage which sells it.

I just finished watching the last movie made by Soviet Union about WWII. Originally it was suppose to be 15 hours long but they were running out of cash and Soviet union so movie is only 3.5 hours long. Equipment: BT-7s, about 20 T-34-85s, 76mm AT guns, and tons of other - I mean lots of it... German equipment was represented by 3 half-trucks and about a dozen of T-50 "converted" to Pz-IV. You could definitly recognize it was supposed to be P-IV so it was reasonably well done! Airplanes were mainly Czech "post-messershmitt" conversions... Lots of buildings were blown up - at least 2 dozen. Scenary was well made. Fighting was bloody most soviet heros died by the movie end. There were some massive attack scenes. They might not have been as vivid as SPR but they were huge! Czujkov was played by US actor - same one who played Roman general in "Attilla". I don't know his name. There were lots of subplots like death of son of Chrushchev at Stalingrad, Pavlov's house, Red-Capella spy ring, 1942 Soviet attack at Harkov etc... Lots of subplots were obviously cut short like Soviet snipers, Pavlov etc... KGB troops were present and executing. They even mentioned luck of rifles in the summer of 1942! Stalin was shown quite negativly and so was Churchill, Timoshenko and many other commanders. The real hero was Chujkov. Zhukov was barely mentioned. Women were represented rather poorly. Group of them was sitting in uniforms and wondering when a war will end so they can finally find a husband. After that they were sleeping in the shadow of 85mm AAs or bathing naked. They were complaining about shoes - they got only huge size military boots so they were wearing high heels while firing from 85mm AA guns at Pz-IVs. They slowed down german attack and most of them perished. Soon after the tanks from Tank factory pushed the germans back... The movie in in Russian, (Germans speak german and Churchill english). If you want it I think I can find out where you can purchase it...

Winston Churchill, who personally vetted many of the British military code words, ordered that they should be neither overly boastful, nor frivolous. No mother, he wrote, should have to say "that her son was killed in an operation called 'Bunnybug.' " The Defense Department announced that the code name for the domestic mission to protect this country in response to Tuesday's terrorist attack is Operation Noble Eagle. How does the military choose its code words? In general, the first step is that a computer database of appropriately military sounding words spits out possible combinations, with each geographic command given rights to certain letters of the alphabet. The command overseeing the operation chooses candidates--after checking through a registry of previously used names--and sends it to the Joint Staff for review and approval. (The director of operations of the Joint Staff, Lt. General Gregory S. Newbold, has a name worthy of a military operation.) It wasn't a brilliant algorithm that came up with the code word Desert Storm for the invasion of Iraq--that was deliberately chosen.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Roksovkiy: Some tigers knocked out over 100 enemy tanks, some tigers were destroyed being deployed without any enemy kills, but on average the ratio was over 10:1.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I doubt that there were many of these. Best German ace had about 100 some kills and his tank burned a couple of times. So his kills can not be attributed to a single tiger.

March 2002 (if not April)