tss

I would have thought his comments were more appropriate to Totenkopf than Wiking. You should remember the time aspect. Kaila served in it when it was in its first battles. The Wiking division got better, and by end of 1942 it was a good division. At that time, Kaila had been back in Finland for half a year. Other Finns confirmed at least some of Kaila's points. Many soldiers commented that fire discipline was very poor. During one night when the division was moving through a forest a couple of partisans fired few shots with rifles at the column of (I think) Nordland regiment. The column stopped, men poured out and started shooting at all directions. The blind firing lasted for half an hour. Also, the troops were only trained for attacks and defensive tactics were not taught. On one occasion, Soviets mounted a small-scale counter attack. The Germans retreated hastily leaving their trucks behind. The Soviets would have burned the whole column if some ten or so Finns hadn't stayed behind to defend the vehicles. However, one has to remember that the Finns in question were all veterans of Winter War and had a lot of experience in stopping Red Army attacks while the Germans were still green. There's also some other evidence that casts doubt on early SS quality. I've often mentioned the SS division Nord on this subject. The division's first attack was a mindless human-wave assault against heavily fortified positions and led to very heavy casualties. A couple of months later when Soviets started their counter attack at Kiestinki a detachment of Finns, SS, and ordinary German troops defended flanks of the main troops. The SS men formed almost 50% of the total size of the detachment and their sector was only 33% of the front but still the Soviet patrols could get through their lines almost at will while Finns and Wermacht troops stopped almost all Soviet probes. - Tommi

But you said that a fuzzy value is between 0 and 1 not 0 or 1. So I am mystifyed by your use of whole numbers No need to be mystified. You can always normalize the whole numbers back to the range between 0 and 1 by divining with the largest allowed number. (Actually, your fuzzy engine can do that automatically, and if it doesn't, it really should). For example, suppose that all integers are less than 10. Then you divide with 10 to get the fractions. Me, I'm not in the fuzzy stuff, classical logic is enough for me. (See http://www.tcs.hut.fi/Software/smodels for the logic programming system that I'm currently maintaining). - Tommi

I recently came upon the following quote on Waffen-SS. The author was Finnish captain Y.P.I. Kaila who served in the SS-Division Wiking for ten months, starting from the beginning of Barbarossa. By that time he was already veteran of two wars, Spain and Winter War. The extract was written in 1942 and it's a part of his report on his experience: "I noticed much bravery but almost no skill. The officer corps of Waffen-SS didn't train themselves with tactical questions! The combat and leading one's troops in battle were seen to be so simple that no special expertise would be necessary and Germanic bravery would be enough. As I mentioned before, the war begun so soon that I didn't have opportunities to examine the combat training in the unit. Therefore my opinion on training in SS forces is based on the results, actions on the front, both on battlefield and outside of it. I got very poor picture on this; poor terrain use, short-sighted bravery, actual mania on gathering in large groups, non-existent fire control, companies were led by being a champion warrior, etc. On marches one of the basic requirements of motorized troops, driving discipline, was poor and the troop accommodation was impractical and unhygienic. I notices significant signs of un-professionalism everywhere and true expertise was either not known or arrogantly belittled. The lack of training was compensated, though with a bloody price, by common bravery and I hold the SS-troops in high regard in this respect. The discipline was faultless. I didn't observe a single occurrence where a man would have disobeyed any order from his squad leader, not even a displeasing or a highly dangerous one. A leader, especially an officer, could maintain his authority even better than what his rank in SS-Kameradscath would have required." Note that this extract tells of the state of Waffen-SS in 1941. The quality of SS troops rose with the war (at least, until '44) as the highly paid experiences were not forgotten. - Tommi

This may or may not be true. One of our corporals told that it had happened on their first "forest session". We still use WW-II model tents here in Finland (they are really good tents, so why replace them..). The tents are big enough to accommondate 10 men comfortably, 16 (half-platoon) if necessary. The tents are heated by a metal stove in the middle of it. Throughout the night there is one additional guard, called "spark guard" whose job is to see that there is fire inside the stove and not outside it. There are two methods in use to chose the turns. Either the squad leader (usually there's one tent for each squad) makes a list that is posted on a visible spot, or a "rotating spark" is used, where the guard wakes up the next one clockwise. Also, the best spots are directly opposite the "door" of the tent since then no-one walks over you when going to guard. In this occassion a corporal decided to use "rotating spark" and went to sleep on his usual spot. However, the regimental commander's sauna evening had stretched longer than normal and he was too tired (and possibly slightly intoxicated) to drive his home and he decided to sleep in a tent. So he entered this particular tent after everyone but the spark guard were sleeping and took a place besides the corporal. After a couple of hours had passed, one private went to wake up the next man without noticing that it was the Colonel. He noticed his error quickly and apologized, but the Colonel decided that he would sit his turn at the stove. When he had sit his turn he went to wake up the next guy, who happened to be the corporal. The corporal's first reaction was: "Look what I have on my collars and think again". Well, the Colonel looked and saw only two stripes, so he answered: "Sir corporal, what if you reconsidered that". Well, he woke up, reconsidered, and maintained the fire until morning. - Tommi

Yeah, army stories. This happened on the last week of our basic training. I was on a leave at the time but a lot of my battery pals swore it really happened. We had a roll call each night at nine o'clock and usually the nco-on-duty would announce it and specify what clothes we should be wearing. That evening he just called "come with whatever you have on right now". One man had anticipated that and came wearing underpants, 4 leather straps over his upper body, water-proof leggins in his arms, a helmet, and a gas-mask. The roll call was not too quick that night...

My take on it is that the platoon HQ had a radio and was thus in contact with all higher HQ's. However, no unit lower than platoon had a radio in WWII thus a squad out of command of the platoon was effectively out of touch with the entire army! I don't know about American practices but Germans certainly didn't have radios for all platoons. Or even for all companies. I'd say the main reason is in tactical doctrine: individual squads were not sent on separate missions (during a combat) but individual platoons were. - Tommi

I personally think that the as has a little too much stuff in it. In particular, the contrast between the halftrack and the Tiger is a little too large when they are in the right end of the gif. I fear that the high contrast "flicker" distracts the reader of a web page where it is posted too much. Sure, it's good to be noticed, but if an ad seriously disturbs reading because eyes automatically try to focus on it, it's too intrusive. How would the gif look like if there was only one vehicle type (Tiger?) and the difference between two frames was smaller? Then again, I regularly read web sites with Lynx and enable Javascrip only when absolutely necessary, so my opinions may not correspond with the majority of web surfers. - Tommi

I just have to write this... ITs a Damn Game for crying out loud not Doctor Dessertation on German Infantry tactics Would that be a medically trained cupcake, or what? No malice intended, - Tommi

MG Mannschft wrote: That Ratio Is determend not by the total Number killed on both sides but the ratio bettwen how many where facing how many others. To tell the truth, I cannot understand your argument. I try to express my point more clearly so that you can see whether we are talking on the same subject at all. In the East Front Germans lost about 2.6 million KIA and 2.5 million POWs, so their total irrecoverable losses were a little over 5 million. Right now I don't have available stats that would show how many of the POWs were captured during the final month of the war. Let's suppose that half of them were. Then, German total losses were about 3.85 million during the war. At the same time, Soviets lost 6.2 million KIA and 4.5 million POWs, out of which 2.7 million died in captivity, for the total of 8.9 million killed soldiers. These figures give a total casualty ratio of 2.3:1. As for the relative sizes of the forces, the average monthly average (nice term) of the Red Army size was 5.8 million men. This varied from 2.8 million at the end of '41 to 6.8 million in late '44. At the beginning of the war there was 4.2 million Soviets in army. I don't have the German stats available right now but they had approximately 3.5 million soldiers in East front, so the Soviets had a superiority of 3:2 for most of the war and 2:1 from late '44 on. Given these figures, it is not possible that Germans had consistently 15:1 kill ratio. There were certainly many battles where Germans killed or captured hundreds of Soviets while losing only few of their numbers, maybe even battles with ratios up to 500:1. However, there were also battles where Soviets racked similar odds. For example, at Salla 1941 Soviets threw back the SS-Division Nord when it tried to attack the fortified hill. Soviet losses are not known, but they couldn't be over 20-30 men. German losses numbered in hundreds. - Tommi

Marnix wrote: Maskirova is the art of deception, building decoys and mockups, which the Russians excelled at The Soviets were also pretty good on hiding their intentions on operational level. Before their attack in Karelia 1944 they sent two or three spy teams with the explicit purpose of getting caught. Of course, the spys themselves didn't know that but it is the only rational explanation for the situation. Both teams were wearing _German_ uniforms and had the mission of finding out what German units were being transported to Karelian Isthmus. Not finding out whether there were any Germans there, but finding the specific units. At the time there were no German units and there were no plans to send any, and the Soviet leaders knew it perfectly well. The main idea of the spy missions was to convince Finnish leadership that Soviets feared attack against Leningrad and so they had to be on defence. Guess what. It worked good enough. Everybody in the division commander level and downwards knew that the Red Army would attack and soon, but the Army Corps level and above thought that there would be many months before Soviets could attack. - Tommi

MG Mannschft wrote: And the statisics prove that when fighting the russians, for every german that died, 15 russians fell. Are you seriously claiming that Soviets lost over 40 million soldiers KIA? Given that there were usually about 3-4 wounded for each KIA that would put Soviet total losses to 160-200 million. The whole population of SU was between 160 and 180 millions at the time. So, if your claim is correct, each and every russian male of military age was was killed after he had been wounded a couple of times. I seriously suspect that figure. I have posted the current Soviet casualty figures before and I don't have time to post them again right now. You can find them by searching for "Krivosheev". On the first post of this thread you wrote: German Stug III's with "Regular" Crews, the best Optics for any Fighting Vehicles, The optics don't matter much from short range. A few days ago I posted on Finnish experiences with 37 mm Bofors gun. There were two types of the guns, one with good optics and one with a simple open sight. In normal battle ranges both were as accurate. In fact, when firing at dusk the open-sighted version was more accurate. - Tommi

KiloIndiaAlpha is using a lot of fancy words to say that it is easier to program an AI behavior that will usually play relatively well than to program a lot of special cases so that it will perform better in some specific occasions. At least that is how I understood it. However, it's 1 am here, I've spent the last seven hours trying to get my paper on formal logic to publishable condition, and I'll probably be here until 4 am so my thoughts are not too clear right now. Well, at least 22 hours left until deadline... - Tommi

Thanks, Mikester. I searched already but the thread I got was almost a year old. I was just wondering if anything has changed. A year? Oh dear, I remember reading that thread when it was first posted. I hadn't registered at the time, though. Have I really been following this forum for almost a year now? - Tommi

The registry can be kept in excel format. Oh no, the registry should be in a format that anybody can read, preferably in plain ASCII text. I for one don't want to spend my time trying to find a machine with installed Excel when it would be easy to just open the registry in a text-editor or alternatively a html browser. (I use Windows only for gaming and I'm not interested in paying some hundreds of dollars just to get Office tools that I wouldn't use in any case). - Tommi

Spotting by Buttoned Tanks of Hidden units IS addressed in the 1.01 patch that will be made available the day of shipping. This may be the fastest patch released in history... I think I remember reading about one game that was published in 1999 that had a patch available for download a full week before it hit the shelves. I can't remember the name of the game, though. - Tommi

MG Mannschft wrote: Tss, You've misunderstood what I wrote. I ment Miss'es, not actual Hits on the target and also, these are all Red army Tanks, Not Shermans. Quite a Difference I'd say. It's not clear how many of the shots were misses and how many hit but failed to penetrate in the Polviselkä example. The guns were positioned so that they could usually get flank shots so I guess that in the case of T-34s one hit was enough to disable it. However, a gunner may have continued firing at the tank until it was clearly destroyed, ie, until it was burning or exploded. The case of KV tanks is not so clear since they may have been, in fact, JS-II tanks. The 75mm pak couldn't reliably penetrate JS-II from front so there may have been more non-killing hits. (As an example of true blind luck, I could mention that a couple of days after that one Finnish 37mm AT gun managed to destroy a KV-1 from _front_. First shot hit the bow MG mount and knocked it loose. The second shot entered the same hole and blew up the ammo of the tank.) Blackhorse wrote: Good god man, they must have been ******* bricks !! You really can't help but admire those Finnish gunners after reading that one. That is some very close combat. They were also helped by the terrain. The region was forested and there were only two good "panzer trails" in the area. One electric line and one road. Since it was clear where the tanks would attack, the AT guns could be positioned up in hills firing at the flanks of the Red tanks. The really tough guys were the Finnish close-defence teams that stalked Red tanks with fausts and schrecks. For example, private Eero Seppänen saw a Panzerschreck for the first time on the morning of 28 June. By the afternoon he had fired a total of four shots with the weapon and destroyed 3 T-34s. (The first shot went over a T-34 because he didn't know how to aim the thing, yet). During that and the next day private 1st class Ville Väisänen destroyed 8 Soviet tanks with Panzerfausts (the 60-meter model). On 29 June Väisänen disappeared during a artillery barrage when he was on his way to get more fausts. Both Seppänen and Väisänen received Mannerheim's crosses. - Tommi

With the editor I'm sure you could model an anti-tank ditch. Just make a depression where both sides are too steep for them to climb. Yeah, but can you cross it the Russian way: remove the turret of one of your tanks, drive it into the ditch, and drive rest of your tanks over it. (They did this at Summa February 1940 with a T-26) - Tommi

I happen to have a table of tank kills that the gunners of the Finnish Panzerjaeger Batallion achieved during summer '44. At the time the gunners were all veterans who had served at least three years. (Finnish practice was to put the best man in a gun crew as a gunner.) The unit used towed versions of the same gun that Stugs used. Here are the entries for the battle of Polviselkä 11.6.1944: (this is poorly formatted, because I'm yet again writing from home. Also note that it is possible that the KV-1 tanks were actually JS-II tanks since tank recognition was not a precision science with Finnish troops, not even with AT troops.) - a KV tank brewed up with 3rd shot (range 150m) - two T-34/85s brewed up. First with 6 shots and second with 5 shots (150-200 m) - One T-34-85 and 3 KV-1s. First and second with 2nd shot and third with 1st shot. (100-300 meters) - one KV-1 with first shot (250m) - one KV-1 brewed up with 3rd shot (40 m) - three KV-1s. No ammo expenditure known - one KV-1 and 1 T-34/85, both with first shot (200m and 74m) As can seen from the entries, destroying a tank with a first shot was not a rule and there's the interesting case of using three rounds at the range of 40 meters. On the next day the 4th AT gun company that was armed with 50 mm guns had a battle against tanks. They destroyed 8 tanks (6 T-34 and 2 KV-1) the ammo expenditures were pretty high because 50mm pak was not too powerful gun: 12, 13, 41!, 9, 9, 9, 16. It is not known how many shots were used at the Klims. - Tommi

As I'm once again writing from home using Lynx I don't try to quote anybody's text. The attack formation on Loimola advance was more or less improvised. At the time Finns had only one tank batallion that was deployed on other front. Major Lehtinen noticed that the Soviet defenders of the 71th Division were poorly trained and demoralized and a quick attack could probably rout them if they were not given time to regroup. When Finns advanced with tank support the formation was led by one infantry squad. About 50 meters after that was on tank platoon. A infantry platoon followed the tanks along with 2 AT rifle teams. Next was one AT gun section along with a 81 mm mortar section. Behind them was one infantry company that was again followed by one tank platoon and an AT-gun section. The rest of the point batallion followed the second AT gun section. When the column met enemy resistance is started attack immedietely. The point squad would recon the enemy positions and tanks and AT guns would start shelling them. The point platoon would spread and attack the Soviet positions. If the defenders were a simple delaying force, they would usually disengage at this point and the advance could continue in a matter of few minutes. If the resistance was stiffer, the mortars would be set to firing positions and the rest of the point company would outflank the defenders. The Finnish practice was that an artillery observer would go with the point platoon and the usual order was that the platoon leader and the FO should "be close enough to wear only one pair of trousers". This ensured that the artillery support would arrive quickly and that it would fall where it was needed. - Tommi

May I suggest you to remove the spinning Xoom logo since it slows quite significantly the loading of the page - Tommi

I recently read details about Finnish advance to Loimola (and beyond) on July 1941. The attack was pretty unique in Finnish army and I would like to know whether anything like it ever happened on other fronts. The thing that made the attack special was the fact that the point unit of the drive was a Panzerjaeger batallion. The spearpoint of the attack was two trucks that both towed a 37 mm AT gun and carried a gun crew. The gun crew was organized so that one man stood on the carriage of the gun and he was at all times ready to disconnect the gun the moment that the truct started to break. Another man who was armed with a SMG stood in the front and watched over the truck cabin as a lookout. When he noticed some enemies he would hit the top of the cabin with the stock of his gun and start firing at them. At that point the truck driver stopped, the gun crew disembarked and without any specific orders fired a couple of shots at the enemy while still on the middle of road before pushing the gun to better cover. While they were finding better positions the second gun had arrived at the scene to provide fire support. The guns were transported loaded and it took approximately 10 seconds to get the first shot off after the gun was detached. The initial rounds were not too accurate but they served to get the Sovied troops careful. The Panzerjaeger batallion didn't suffer any casualties on that attack... (The guns advanced some 10-20 km as point elements) - Tommi

The standard policy for Finnish AT gun units on defence was to prepate two or three different firing positions, time permitting. Each different position was supplied with AP and HE shells. Of course, pushing a 75 mm AT gun to a new firing position takes quite a long time but there were cases where changing positions happened during a single combat, for example, at Polviselkä 11.6.1944. It is difficult to say how often units were actually resupplied in the middle of combat. In particular, accounts often lump all combats that happened during a day to one big battle, while there may well have been many long pauses without any fighting. As a practical example, I could mention the only M-3 Grant that was destroyed in Karelian Isthmus on summer '44. One account mentiones simply that a Panzerfaustman immobilized the tank and then crawler near it to finish it with two Molotoc coctails. The account made it seem that it happened in a short period of time. However, another account mentions the fact that Soviets actually dug the tank in between the two attacks! There had to be _many_ hours between the attacks, since emplacing an immobilized Grant is not an easy job. (The Soviets emplaced the tank because the combat happened at Vuosalmi bridgehead and Soviets were busy bringing in new material over the pontoon bridges so they didn't have the possibility to evacuate damaged tanks.) - Tommi

I've actually never heard of him... Well, does the name "Jas Gripen" say anything to you Was he a volunteer in the Winter War Actually, I would also be interested to know how many air victories did the Swedish volunteers get. I haven't seen any figure for that. They fought in a quiet sector but they had a couple of air combats. I know that there were two Danish volunteers who got air victories, and I think that one of them got two or three. Also, one Italian volunteer got three or four Soviet planes. - Tommi

I took a lot of pride in my constant ability to mock the Italian military. There's nothing inherently wrong in mocking Italian military, as long as you remember that they too had some really tough units. In particular, the 10th Light Flotilla was a pretty extraoridinary unit. - Tommi

-Let's do a coin toss, heads is Russia, tails is Denmark. If it stands on its end we'll attack Istanbul. How Swedish Kings decided foreign policy. Oh, don't forget Poland and Germany. There were good many wars with Poland after Sigismund Wasa decided that wanted to rule both Poland and Sweden. (Note for the casual readers: Sigismund was the king of Poland, even though his father, grandfather, and two uncles were kings of Sweden). In particular, I think that "The Deluge" of 1650's has been the worst war for Poland through the recorded history, WWII included. Speaking of Swedish military achievements... How high is Lars Radeström among the all-time Swedish fighter aces? After all, he destroyed two modern fighters and his kills were confirmed pretty well. In fact, it probably wouldn't be possible to confirm them any better... - Tommi