tss

Olle Petersson wrote: Armour isn't a parameter. The effect is that burning liquid is sucked into the engine compartment, usually through the rear upper deck.This destroys the engine and thus the vehicle. Yes, but a FT attack against a tank was not a certain kill by any means. Some vehicles had covers over air slits that would allow effective attacks only from certain directions (namely, rear). According to what I've read, a FT is pretty hard to aim at fast moving targets (bulky and the flame obstructs the target) so a tank in motion could well survive an attack. An immobilized tank would certainly be dead meat in very short time. Not only FTs, but also Molotov Coctails are efficient in this respect. Yes but again, only if they hit the correct place. (Oh, Napalm sipping through vision slits or open hatches do add to the devastation.) According to Finnish tactical manuals flamethrowers should be used in pairs while in AT role. The first one blinds the crew by firing at vision slots while the other aims for the engine cover. I don't know whether this was ever tested in practice. - Tommi

Slapdragon: I think lighting all the buildings in a town is gamey, but choosing one the enemy is using as a highway is good playing. I don't see why that is gamey. I'm not certain on West Front but in the East it was very common to torch villages and even towns. Of course, this was most often done in winter and as a final thing to do before retreating from the village but there were also cases of lighting buildings during actual combat. And sometimes torching buildings was the only purpose of the combat, as happened some times during the initial fighting withdrawl phase of the Winter War. The Soviets would find an intact house and send in some unlucky souls to see if it is mined and will blow up. If the house was still intact after the initial examination, some units would move in for the night. Then, in the middle of night would come a platoon of Finns with demolition charges and Molotov coctails to distrupt the sleep. It is possible that my grandfather participated in one nightly house-burning mission on 2nd December 1939. I don't know that for certain because I don't know what platoon he was in. However, his engineer company sent one combined recon and burning patrol that night and my grandfather had a tendency of volunteering to dangerous assignments. (Apparently that patrol didn't actually meet Soviets since they were advancing very slowly and didn't enter the area until 4th December, two days after the last Finnish defenders leaved the area). - Tommi

T34Rules wrote: However, as a player, we are the Command Post, and we should have the ability to know, to some extent, where are personnel are. I am not blind to the fact that in the confusion of battle, this is not always realistic. Actually, I'd put that as: a commander would sometimes know where his men were. And in most of those cases, they were not in a battle. Lately I've spent some time in the Finnish Military Archive reading combat diaries of the units where my grandfather fought. Here are few interesting quotes from the attack of I/JR37 to Särkisyrjä 18.7.1941: "07:35 The 1st company reached the Auvila fields where the advance was halted by strong enemy fire from stone cow houses and other buildings. The 2nd and 3rd companies had advanced too much to left and lost contact to the 1.K. The batallion commander was with the 1.K." and later "13:45 2.K reached its objective and reestablished the contact to with the batallion". and still later: "14:00 Three platoons of 3.K established contact to the batallion". So, the batallion commander Major Larko lost contact to one of his companies for about 6 hours and to another even longer. (BTW, my grandfather and his brother who was killed in that battle were with 1.K.) A Finnish researcher Lasse Laaksonen went through a lot of unit diaries and compared them with reports and orders. He noticed that batallion commanders usually approximately knew where the front line was but with no details. Company commanders would have better knowledge but they would also know it in more general level, as in "the first platoon is holding the farm X". The situation knowledge of higher level HQs could be _really_ inaccurate. - Tommi

Mark IV wrote: Secondly, Japan did originally have intentions toward Russia, which they tested at Kalkhin Gol-Nomonhan, partly against a young armored officer named Zhukov, in 1939. They decided to go south instead. Seems they came to an armored battle and forgot their tanks. The battle of Lake Nomonhan was a small skirmish in 1938 that ended practically as a draw. My copy of Krivosheev is at work but I seem to remember that the Soviet total losses were about 300 and Japanese losses were comparable. The battle of Kalkhin-Gol in the next year was much larger but I can't remember concrete numbers (possibly around 100000). The Soviet losses were pretty heavy (around 30% casualties) and the Japanese losses were heavier. In particular, the Japanese lost practically all of their tanks and trained tank crews. After that debacle the Japanese decided that they don't really want to invade Soviet Union after all. - Tommi

Bruno Weiss wrote: (It was estimated that the crossing would take 24hrs, and take 4 days to land the first 150,000 men) And 12 of those 24 hours would be at night. Without air cover. WWII-era bombers lacked the capability for air attacks, except for torpedo runs in bright moonlight. The Germans didn't have enough torpedo planes (if they had any at all) to stop the Royal Navy at night. The main bulk of Luftwaffe anti-ship aircraft would be Stukas that had troubles attacking fast-moving ships during day. There's no way how they could have stopped Royal Navy destroyers during night. Remember that if even a single destroyer gets through the German escort screen, it can destroy a very large number of barges very quickly. It doesn't even have to fire its weapons, as its trail waves will be enough to capsize the barges. I can't remember reading about _any_ naval detachment that was completely destroyed by air attacks in the whole war. Even the Yamato's kamikaze sortie had survivors (one destroyer). Also, the British had a very large number of fast small craft (motor torpedo and gun boats). While they couldn't fight against large Kriegsmarine ships, they could sink the tugboats easily. As I previously stated and believe the logic of it stands. Were the Luftwaffe to gain full control of the air over the channel, those thousands of guns, and I supposed you mean all of them positioned on the beaches, would most likely have been leveled long before the first barge came into range. It is pretty difficult to knock out camouflaged artillery positions with aircraft, especially if the gun positions are fortified with concrete. - Tommi

We had another saying here in Finland, namely: "One Finn equals ten Russkies". This was used a lot in prewar years by right wing hotheads who wanted that ethnically Finnish areas of Karelia should be added to Finland. Some went as far to propose a war against Soviet Union. Those who used the saying forgot to do the math and see that there were actually 50 Soviets for each Finn. Even at the time those with more sense would answer that claim with: "But what will you do when the eleventh Russkie comes?". If we compare the Krivosheev's figure of 126875 Winter War KIA to Finnish losses of about 22000 men, we see that the correct ratio would have been 1:5.7. - Tommi

Bruno Weiss wrote: Actually, the Soviet death count might be closer to 50 million from what I've read. G.F Krivosheev went through archieved Soviet casualty reports and they totalled to the figure of 8668400 dead 22326905 wounded soldiers. However, these figures are very likely too low, since the casualty reports of the first part of the war are lacking and later some commanders falsified their reports when they very heavy losses. As a practical example of the latter, there's a difference of 18000 casualties between divisional and army level casualty reports of the Karelian Summer attack of 1944. Krivosheev's figure for that operation is a total of 96375 casualties so the difference is almost 20%. If we take a wild guess that the reports were always 20% too low and add an extra million casualties for Summer 1941, the total number of Soviet soldier KIAs would be 11.5 million. (This figure includes those who were killed in prison camps). The rest of Soviet dead were civilians. - Tommi

ScoutPL wrote: The farther you are away from the target the harder it is for the enemy to spot your muzzle flash or pinpoint the direction of the sound. Yes. Finnish snipers in Winter War had one unusual advantage with regards to avoiding detection: for some reason Soviet soldiers got convinced that Finnish snipers would almost always shoot from trees (they even called the snipers as `cuckoo`s). This belief was so universal that it is mentioned as a fact in every Red Army veteran interview that I've read. One even claimed that they had been shot at by mortars that were up in trees. In reality the snipers shot practically always from ground. Someone may have sometimes shot from a tree but I don't know of any case. So, when a sniper shot, the Soviet response was to fire up to trees with all weapons while the sniper sneaked away safely. - Tommi

Dale Larson wrote: CM *really* needs a painless way to watch a complete battle replay. Yup. Unfortunately the developers have said it many times that it is pretty difficult to do as the whole replay code is written from 60 second perspective. Full-battle replays are on The List that contains all the nifty stuff that they will some day add. - Tommi

Lee wrote: there are some other cool countries, like Finland (just ask Tommi ), where you can own machineguns, too. Nope, you can't own a machine gun here. At least, not if it is in a working order. I think that there may be some exceptions for weapon collectors but even they can't shoot them and you have to fill a lot of forms before you can have the permit. We have quite strict weapon laws here. Though I vaguely remember reading some study that estimated that there are about 50000 illegal firearms, most war memoirs. (To put that figure in perspective, the current population of Finland is about 5 milions so according to that study 1% of Finns have an illegal weapon). Most of those weapons lie forgotten in some attic. I don't know whether that figure is accurate or not. I'm not too unhappy with relatively strict gun control. Even though guns are quite troublesome to get here (pistols are most difficult, hunting rifles are quite easy) it is a rare week when there's no case of some drunks shooting at each other. BTW, as I have a long experience reading gun control threads in Usenet and other forums and I have seen where they lead (= to nothing), I make a promise that this is my only message that mentions the whole thing on this forum, ever. - Tommi

ScoutPL wrote: Also I'd like to stick to my comment about scoped rifles and engagement distances. If the Finn had stuck to his scoped rifle he could have doubled his engagement range and raising his head a few centimeters wouldnt have mattered. I think I should point out that Kollaa was a WWI style attrition battle. The Soviet lines were mostly about 100-300 meters from Finnish positions (I don't have a map near to check it). Also, in that area you would be hard pressed to even find a place where you can see more than a half kilometer as the area was heavily wooded with some openings at marshes and fields. Of course, after Soviet artillery had pounded the area for a couple of months there was a lot more open space. Another problem with scopes is that they reflect light. The Soviet sniper that I mentioned above died because of this. Here in Finland the Sun doesn't get very high on Winter days and the practical sniping time would have been cut to half if Häyhä had used scopes. And I once again want to emphasize that I don't claim that snipers would be better of using only iron sights. Just that this particular sniper felt that he was more effective (and much safer) without them. And he got 246 confirmed kills (supposing that I remember the figure correctly). - Tommi

Slapdragon wrote: Simo scored over 500 kills Actually, that figure is exaggarated. No one knows for certain how many kills Häyhä got at Kollaa, not even he himself. IIRC, he got 246 confirmed kills with a rifle. He got another 30-50 before he started counting and at least several dozens when fighting as a SMG gunner. I'd say that his kills ranked up somewhere at 300. Häyhä also fought one duel against a Red Army sniper. The name of the Soviet sniper is not known here in Finland but he managed to kill three Finnish officers in two days. Häyhä found and shot him when sun reflected from his scope. ScoutPL wrote: The fact that your hero was using a rifle with iron sights might lead one to argue he was just a "sharpshooter" anyway. Häyhä used a scoped rifle for some time but discarded it and returned to open sights. The reason was that when firing with telescope sight you have to raise your head a couple of centimeters higher than with open sights. As he could hit his targets without scope, he didn't want to take the unnecessary risk. Hard to get a 600-800m shot, favored ranges for a sniper in any terrain, with the naked eye. Häyhä could consistently hit a running target at 400 meters. With naked eye. However, I want to point out that he had _exceptionally_ good aim. Before the war he had won all Finnish shooting competitions that he had attended. He was an active hunter (using only one shot for each prey) until he was 75 years old and even then stopped it only because of leg troubles. - Tommi

Pham911 wrote: After doing all this, and gunning down a few hapless guards here and there, you could put a bomb in Hitlers bunker, and then watch as he addressed some flunkies just before he and they blew up. And if you get hungry or thirsty when saving the world, you can always find sauerkraut and schnapps in the bunker closets. - Tommi

An old thread, but I seem to have missed it the first time BTS wrote: I think there are some extreme cases where the gunner would be willing to go all out. Shooting from a bunker at waves of charging infantry is about the only one I can think of. Battle of Lake Suvanto on Christmas 1939. One of the most hare-brained military operations of the whole war. The Soviet 4th Division attacked over a frozen lake that wasn't strong enough to carry heavy weapons. Two Finnish MG bunkers fired for 24 hours almost as fast as ammo could be carried to them. One Finn who fought in the counter attack batallion visited one of the bunkers after the last Soviets were thrown back to ice. He later told that he had to stand knee-deep in empty cartridges. One water-cooled Maxim MG had been destroyed by excessive firing. The Soviet division lost about 1500 men KIA and unknown amount of WIA. Total Finnish losses were few dozens (including wounded). - Tommi

Ghengis Jim wrote: As a matter of fact, from what I understand it, you can write a program in C and run it in C++ as a .cpp extension. Correct me if I am wrong, because I probably am... You are wrong (see, if you ask for something you will get it). A non-trivial C program that has been written using "good practices" will not compile as a C++ program. The reason is that C++ requires an explicit cast when the return value of malloc is assigned to somewhere while in C it is a good idea to leave it out. One regular on comp.lang.c newsgroup once tried to compile his C library using a C++ compiler and got few thousand error messages... - Tommi

John Kettler wrote: Can anyone from the artillery community tell me how high a dirt plume a 105 and 155 throw up when they hit? I don't know that but when I was in army I witnessed two times what a modern 130mm coastal gun round does when it is fired with delayed fuze. The cloud of water was 150 meters high and it remained visible for 20-30 seconds. - Tommi

Replying to myself to point out one obvious thing that I forgot to put in my post: Sure, they can't entrench themselves in that time but they may find small gullies and things like that. Of course, it would be a little difficult to hide a Panther inside a ditch or a truck behind a large rock so the temporal dispersion of the artillery rounds doesn't matter so much when the targets are large and can't move. The lessened effect comes when firing infantry targets. - Tommi

Michael emrys wrote: You sure about that last part, Tommi? If the whole battalion was firing, they could lay down that many shells in 5-6 minutes. That gives those men that are furthest from the initial point of the barrage 4-5 minutes time to find cover. Sure, they can't entrench themselves in that time but they may find small gullies and things like that. In artillery barrages the first set of explosion is the most important. That's why it is best to avoid spotting rounds and fire the first salvo so that all rounds land within few seconds (with as many guns as possible). Also, I don't know about the US artillery doctrine but Finnish one explicitly forbade firing two 48 round 150 mm strikes without giving the guns time to cool in between. The reason for this is that otherwise the gun barrels will wear out very quickly and accuracy is lost. Of course, some times this rule was not followed but those cases generally happened only when Soviets were close to making breakthroughs. I can't remember how long the cooling time was supposed to be with the 150 mm guns but I think it was about 10 minutes between strikes. There was also a hourly limit that couldn't be exceeded but I can't remember the details. I don't know whether other armies followed this practice. The Soviets didn't, at least initially. One Winter War battery commander told in an interview that he was almost sent to Siberia when he stopped firing because his guns were red hot and they feared that a round would explode in a barrel. - Tommi

I agree with your suggestions. However, I would like to add one more: The scenario designer should be able to specify the general firing direction of artillery. This matters because the scattering is much greater along the flight path than perpendicular to it. Specifying Number of Rounds for FFE Agreed, completely. Number of Guns per Spotter Also, in some cases the artillery spotter could specify the number of firing guns. Here in Finland the basic number of guns to fire a mission was a batallion (12 guns) but the spotters could alternatively call the fire of 1-2 batteries. - Tommi [This message has been edited by tss (edited 09-23-2000).]

Fred wrote: I was a medic in the German Bundeswehr, and guess what; we were not supposed to get into the main battle line and evacuate under fire. Some medics did that and ended with much respect and medals or being dead. A platoon with a medic who would be ready to risk his life when retrieving the wounded would be a happy platoon. However, most medic had more self-preservation instinct and stayed in the rear. One quite interesting case was a Finnish military _doctor_ (his rank was captain or major, I can't remember and his name also escapes me this moment) who at least three times rescued severely wounded men from between the lines when no-one else dared to go. In one case the wounded was a SS-men who had been caught in barbed wire. What makes this case more impressing was the fact that the doctor was Jewish. The Germans awarded him an Iron Cross for that and for succesfully evacuating his hospital when Soviets counter attacked. However, the doctor refused to take the award. BTW, there was another Finnish Jew who refused to accept an Iron Cross: Major Salomon Klass relieved an encircled SS batallion with his batallion. - Tommi

This has nothing to do with sewers but it popped to my mind from the cellars: There's one new kind of building that I'd like to see in CM2: a cow shed. In Karelia (at least in those parts that were Finnish pre-1940 but in some extend in other parts also) cow sheds had generally two stories (as cows can't climb ladders too well they were on the ground floor). The walls of the first story were of stone and the upper floor had wooden walls. There were few small windows in the stone wall. These kinds of cow sheds were very difficult to attack as they provided good cover and firing ports for MGs. Additionally the internals were quite open and the defender could rapidly switch windows. My great uncle died while trying to clear Särkisyrjä village from enemies. The Soviet defence of the village was based in cow sheds that were positioned high on an open ridge. - Tommi

Panzer Man wrote: Maybe a Tent might work..But it might look like Swiss cheese after a few volleys. Then again, you'd better be shooting with delayed fuzes. One of my acquitances told that when he was in the army in the 70's they once shoot with a heavy mortar (that didn't fire automatically when a round was dropped down the tube) with a muzzle cover still on. They were lucky in that the round exploded only after it had flown some 50-100 meters. - Tommi

dalem wrote: Given no options but to use the wrong tool for the wrong job, then best be lucky. Like they say, if your only tool is a hammer, you will see all problems as nails. And if your only tool is an axe, all problems suddenly start to look interesting and fun to solve after all. - Tommi

jpinard wrote: *** The two weapons that claimed the most kills were the aircraft HE bomb or heavy artillery. I seriously doubt that HE bombs destroyed that many Tigers. According to some figures that I've read, only about 5% of German tank losses could be directly attributed to airplanes. However, fighters and fighter-bombers were very efficient in destroying soft vehicles of panzer formations and crippled them by knocking out fuel transports. Most (60%) of tank losses were cases where the tanks were abandoned by their crews after malfunctions or running out of fuel. This table didn't classify the German losses into different tank types but I'd guess that the Tigers had similar percentages. - Tommi

Chicago Boy wrote: Over 300 rounds of 155mm howitzer fire pummeled the column, knocking out 5 Panthers and 48 half-tracks" Heavy artillery can definitely knock out even heaviest tanks. However, I'd like to point out that 300 rounds of 155mm howitzers is a pretty heavy barrage (and practically impossible to achieve in CM) and I'd suspect that only thick concrete fortifications can survive that. The Finnish artillery doctrine stated that 48 150 mm rounds landing in a 100x100 meter area in one minute would be enough to destroy the combat effectiviness of all enemy troops in the area. With 300 rounds one could cover about 500x100 meter area taking into account the fact that the fire will be spread on a longer period and thus be less efficient. - Tommi