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PFs I don't feel were all that effective. They kept tanks at a respectable distance but unless the tank commander gets careless or runs into an ambush they shouldn't kill tanks. I remember reading somewhere that only a very small minority of Soviet AFV losses were caused by Panzerfausts. The main reason for this was that the T-34s would stay out of range and fire at German positions until there was no one left to use them. However, the Fausts were very deadly in forested areas if the tanks somehow got separated from the covering infantry. During Ihantala battle Faustmen (actually, a few of them had also Panzerschecks) of the 12th Finnish Infantry Regiment destroyed 50 Soviet tanks in 48 hours. For two days small 2 men teams sneaked their way through forest and ambushed T-34s, JS-IIs, and JSU-122s. What made this really feat really impressive was the fact that the unit had received first Fausts two days before the battle and had practically no training. The Faustmen crawled so close to the enemy tanks that they could not miss. Mostly this meant 30-40 meters, but some advanced to 15-20 meters. -Tommi

Except that in real life the FO more often than not does not ask for a specific number of rounds. He asks for a fire mission in fact he may just call for things like "immediate suppression" etc. The artillery practices varied from a country to country. In Finnish army the observers would explicitly state the desired shell amount, either as numbers or using more abstract "tuliannos" (literally: "fire portion"). The number of shells in a "tuliannos" depended on the size of the firing artillery. Unfortunately, I don't remember any exact figures but generally, a single "tuliannos" would be heavy enough to surpress the all enemy activity in a 100x100 meter square. In addition, in defence there would be pre-registered barrage areas ("sulku"). Each battery would have a preallocated firing schedule so that the FO could call simply: "one 'sulku' to area X" and the battery would fire the shells. If one barrage was not enough, the FO would then ask for more. Finnish artillery was also very flexible in the target selection and there were no intermediate steps in the fire allocation chain. As I have mentioned before, once a 2nd Lieutenant directed the fire of all batteries in range to a single point target. (The shells landed one minute before the scheduled start of a Soviet armored attack. The attack was canceled.) -Tommi

You understand much more about this topic than me, but is it really realistic that an FO could/would tell the battery to fire for 10 seconds? No, but he could and would say something like "x rounds, fire for effect", where x is the number of rounds that the FO estimates to be enough to reach the desired effect. -Tommi

I had a team with 2 fausts at a distance of *7* meters from a sherman, and they ignored it. Well, if I were that close to a tank I certainly wouldn't shoot it with a Panzerfaust. It would be way too close for my personal safety. I remember reading a case where a Finnish faustman was almost crushed by falling bits of a T-34 after he had hit its ammo storage, and the tank was about 20-30 meters away. - Tommi

Hard to imagine it now, but at that time anti-tank weapons were all 37-45mm (the Russian 45 was one of hte better ones!) The Russian 45mm gun was _really_ good for its time. It could penetrate the armor of just about all tanks in use in '30s from all directions. For example, it could shoot through the T-26 turret ("through" as in "the shot penetrated both front and back sides of the turret"). Also, it was small and a single man can push it on level surface (I managed to try this when I was in army. IIRC, the gun was one of those that were captured from Soviets at Raate road on January '40). The small size made it easy to conceal. The gun remained a threat for German armor for long time. While it could not penetrate the front armor of post-42 tanks, the flanks and rears of Pz-IV and Panther were vulnerable to it, at least from close range. And of course T-35's weer used in reasonably substantial numbers in 1940-41 - you couldn't do a Finnish/Barbarossa version/expansion of CM without them. Well, it seems probable that the T-35 was actually never used against Finns, the reports being misidentifications. (Yes, it is possible confuse T-28s to T-35s if you haven't seen the latter live. Especially, if the only AT weapons you have are demolition charges, molotov coctails, and logs and you are not interested in sticking your head up until the thing is close enough to use them.) - Tommi

There has been quite a lot of discussion about campaigns but I don't remember anyone bringing up this particular point. Is it possible to have more than one map in a campaign? This would be an useful feature if someone wanted to follow the war path of a particular unit during a moving campaign, where an unit might first fight one day at place A, advance for day or two without opposition, and then fight again at place B. One concrete example springs to my mind: During fighting of the Korsun pocket (or, as Germans incorrectly called it, Cherkassy pocket) the Wallonian brigade was used to defend the South East direction of the pocket and before the breakout attempt they first had to march some 10 km to the Western part of the pocket. - Tommi

It would make troops less likely to fight hard, but would otherwise not mess up their experience rating. Yes, that is what I was after. I got the idea while reading a history about Ltn Lauri Törni's Jaeger Company. In one occasion Törni's unit was sent to fix a situation where 80 Finns of another company had decided that they had had enough of war and deserted when the Soviets started an artillery preparation. The deserted unit was composed mostly of former convicts who were promised freedom if they joined the army. The unit had combat experience and would have been a "regular" unit in CM terms. (Later the whole batallion was disarmed and the men were transferred to fortification duties). The book gives reasonably accurate details of many company to batallion sized actions (together with map scetches) that would make interesting scenarios for CM2. I would say that Törni's company was among the best units of the whole war. The men were all volunteered veterans between 20-25 years of age who were handpicked by Törni. Törni himself was one of the most interesting military personnel of this century. He fought in three armies and in (at least) four wars and was highly decorated by each of them. In Finnish army he received "Mannerheim's Cross", the highest military award. After Finland made an armistice with Soviet Union Törni joined Waffen-SS and commanded a detachment in the battle of Berlin receiving an Iron Cross 1st Class. After the war he escaped from a British POW camp and moved to Venezuela. He then joined the U.S. army under the name of Larry A. Thorne. He served as a captain in Vietnam with Green Berets when his helicopter crashed and all passengers were killed. Thorne was posthumously awarded a DFC and a Legion of Merit (he had received a Bronze star and a Purple heart before). The body of Thorne was not found until last Summer. The Soviets respected Törni as an enemy so much that they offered a bounty for his head. I don't remember the size of the bounty but it was about the same size as one offered for Rudel. - Tommi

Some time ago I wrote: ... The longest one I'm aware happened on 26.6.1944 near Portinhoikka when a Finnish T-34m41 gunner destroyed a T-34/85 with one shot from the distance of 2000 metres. I have read about that shot in three different books but it seems that the event didn't take place after all as the war diary of the Finnish Heavy Tank Company doesn't mention any destroyed enemy tanks for the day (actually, I misremembered the date by a few days). In a period of heavy fighting war diaries were often incomplete but it was relatively quiet day so the diary is probably correct. - Tommi

Would it be possible to add a new morale thingy (my vocabulary runs short once again) that would work in an opposite way to fanatism? For example, a veteran unit might be weary of the war and break off a battle easily. In a truly convoluted situation an unit might be both fanatic and anti-fanatic. In CM this feature would most often came in play with late-war British and German units. In CM2 this would affect mostly minor axis countries. -Tommi

As a side issue, General Chuikov, the commander of Soviet forces in Stalingrad, mentions in his book one occasion where the Russians manhandled a _122mm howitzer_ into a building for close range fire support. I'd guess that the German defenders were quite surprised when the gun started firing at their fortified building at a range of 100 meters. IIRC, the third shot collapsed the building and the Soviet infantry had only to mop up the remains. I don't remember what kind of building was used as the gun position but given that the event occurred quite late in the battle it was probably mostly in ruins. Anyway, I've seen a couple of such howitzers and they are quite _big_. It must have been one hell of an assignment to transport the thing over the ruins of the city using only muscles. -Tommi

I got my hands on "Punaiset panssarit", and there is quite a lot detail about steering systems of Soviet tanks. In fact, the discussion is more detailed than what I can translate with my English vocabulary... Most Soviet tanks from T-26 to KV-I used "clutch-break" system: the driver turned the tank by pressing clutch to remove the power from one track. If steeper turning is necessary, the driver could also break the track. The JS tanks had a different but related system where the driver could change one track to lower gear. The book explains that the "clutch-break" system worked well when the ratio of lenght of the track to the width was at most 1.4:1. The T-26 tanks had just that ratio and so they were quite agile. Of the larger tanks, T-28 had 2.71:1 and T-35 had 2.84:1. As result, those tanks were very difficult to drive in narrow and windy forest roads. The Finnish experience with T-28 was that driving it was physically tiring and on narrow roads it had to be driven at walk speed. For T-34 the ratio was 1.5:1 but because it had powerful engine there was no turning problems. The book also states that the turning radius was most often between four and ten times the width of the tank (about 10-30 meters), depending on the speed. - Tommi

The Soviets had (IIRC) 6 tanks with more than one turret. Four of the tanks were production models: T-35 was the huge 5-turretted beast (1x76mm, 1x45 mm, 3xMG or 1x76mm, 2x45mm, and 2xMG), T-28 was a medium tank with three turrets (1x76mm, 2xMG), and both T-26 and T-37 had versions with 2 mg turrets. The two other tanks were almost identical SMK and T-100, both having two turrets, one with 45mm gun and another with a large gun (76? 122? 152? I'm not sure and my sources are away). Only one prototype of both was manufactured and they field tested at Summa against Finnish defences during the Winter War. The SMK broke through Finnish lines but was stopped by a mechanical malfunction (or it hit a mine, accounts differ). The Finns tried to tow it away, but it was too heavy and stayed in place until the Soviet breakthrough two months later. I don't remember what exactly happened to T-100, but it too broke down and Soviets did not have equipment capable of towing the beast, either. Anyway, the first prototype of KV-I was present at the same tests and it was seen to be clearly better than either SMK or T-100, and the other projects were canceled. Finnish sources claim that Soviets used T-35s during Winter War, but Soviet sources deny it. Given the technical knowledge of an average Finnish infantryman of the time, I would trust the Soviet account more. (Identifying Soviet tanks was not exactly a precision science back then, the main categories were "small", "large", and "very large"). IIRC, a couple of hundreds of T-35s were used in 1941. In theory it should have been the most powerful tank of the time, but in practice it performed very poorly. The tank was way too heavy and the five turrets weighted so much that the armor had to be surprisingly thin. It could be destroyed even with a 37mm AT gun if hit a correct place. The tank was impossible to camouflage and the commander was overtaxed. The final fatal flaw was mechanical reliability. I remember once reading a table that showed the T-35 losses of one tank army. I don't remember the exact numbers, but roughly only 10% of the losses were caused by Germans, the rest were lost because of breakdowns. -Tommi

If the Germans couldn't put neutral steer into Pz IVs I can't imagine the Soviets putting it into T-34s I've mentioned the book "Punaiset panssarit" a couple of times on this forum. I remember reading a section about tank steering on it and since the author was a commander of Finnish Armoured Brigade at a time when T-34/85s were still in use, I would guess that the details can be found there. Of course I forgot to check the book yesterday and it will probably be Saturday before I can lay my hands on it again. -Tommi

When CM2 is done then I think that this issue is going to have to be tackled since Soviet sights were abysmal and I think its generally established many of their sights weren't much good beyond 300 metres. Agreed, but with some luck (or make it with lots of luck) and a good gunner one could get hits over large distance even with Soviet sights. The longest one I'm aware happened on 26.6.1944 near Portinhoikka when a Finnish T-34m41 gunner destroyed a T-34/85 with one shot from the distance of 2000 metres. I too have read a couple of courses on statistics and know that the shot clearly an outlier and should be ignored when discussing about the average performance. I just wanted to point out that long-distance hits were possible even with Soviet-made sights even if they were (very) rare. - Tommi

How about allowing two squads of the same platoon to share ammo if the platoon leader is also present? Similarily, squads of same company could share ammo if the company commander is present. -Tommi

In today's "Helsingin sanomat" was a short article about a really old wargame, where 'really old' means that it didn't have even hexes. The publication date of the game is not known, but based on the used fonts it was some time before 1910! The objective of the game was to capture the Balkans. The participants were Turkey, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, and (IIRC) Serbia. The map consisted of countries that were colored with different colors. The possible routes for armies were marked with traditional interconnected circles. (Given the geography of the Balkans this might be even more realistic option than hexes). There were two types of units in the game, artillery and infantry. The artillery could fire two circles away while the infantry had to be in neighbouring circles. Each side had a different amount of troops with Turkey being the strongest power. The actual combat details were left out of the article, but they seem to have included dice somewhere. The goal of the game was to capture the capitals of other countries. When a capital was seized the victor received the control of the remaining units of the country. -Tommi

Actually just to show up the moronic AI in the Eastern Front version of that game [snip] I guess it is the same game in which I was playing on defensive. I set up my troops, started game, went to shower, came back, and saw that the enemy had routed. Then I deployed again for the next battle, started game, went to eat breakfast, came back, and I was victorious once again. -Tommi

One of my uncles had a guy in his unit in WWII who was a baseball pitcher in high school. Once he got a hang of the weight of a grenade, he was supposedly very accurate and very long ranged. "Forget that basic training, give em a fastball right up the middle." Imagine then a game similar to baseball but with the additional attribute that the ball weighs _exactly_ the same as the hand grenade model used by the army. In the early twenties "Tahko" Pihkala designed just such game "Pesäpallo" by combining aspects of baseball and an old Finnish game for the explicit purpose of generating better soldiers. The new game became quickly accepted to school PE classes and as a result most of Finnish soldiers had much experience of throwing grenade weighting objects around, giving them an edge over Soviets. -Tommi

The same thing happened to one of my StuGs last friday. A bazooka (at least I think it was a bazooka) knocked its main gun out. I then moved it next to a nearly-dead American squad (only two men left), unbuttoned, and targetted the squad for three turns in a row without and the thing didn't fire a single MG round. And no, I didn't save the autosaves :-( - Tommi

I agree that tanks overrunning infantry was probably not very common occurrence. However, tanks running over equipment was more common. I can remember two concrete cases where Finnish tankers overrun guns: First, in November 1941 sergeant Heino drove over an AT gun battery with his T-34 (if I remember correctly he had captured it himself some time before). The sources that I have read of the occasion differ on details. One source claimed that the guns were 45 mm AT guns that were positioned in a small orchard in a village and the guns had time to fire a couple of shots which failed to penetrate the armor. If I remember correctly, this version was attributed to a Finnish T-26 driver who witnessed the thing. The other account stated that the guns were 76 mm "crack-boom"s that were in tow and Heino overrun them before they couldn't open fire. The second case happened on 14 June at Kuuterselkä. The Stug-IIIg of Lt Olli Aulanko run over a Soviet AT gun company that was on tow. The Soviet column blocked the road and after firing a couple of shots from the main gun Aulanko decided to run over the horses, carriages, and guns. Both of the above occurrences are well-documented. BTW, both Aulanko and Heino received the Mannerheim's cross, the highest Finnish military award. Aulanko for destroying 22 Soviet tanks. I don't remember exactly what Heino did to receive the award but he was clearly the best Finnish tank driver of the war. Someone mentioned Hassel's books on this thread (I can't check it right now). His books are 100% fiction. In fact, I have noticed word-to-word rips from at least three different war books. First, from "All quient on Western Front" he took some scenes, at least the one where the men receive triple rations because the field kitchen doesn't know about the heavy losses. Hassel plagiarized the "Good Soldier Svejk" heavily. Right now I can remember one case (there were more): the occasion when field kitchen throws the food away because they were only practicing occurred in one of Svejk's endles stories. From Linna's "The Unknown Soldier" he ripped the "Finland-Soviet Union Wrestling Championship" word-to-word. My opinion is, that if there is some real occurrence in Hassel's books that is because he copied it from some authentic book. -Tommi

During the Tali-Ihantala battle in Karelian Isthmus in Summer '44 a Finnish artillery 2nd Lieutenant (I can't remember his name) stopped a major Soviet armored assault in two minutes. He directed the fire of _all_ Finnish guns and mortars (I can't remember the actual number of artillery pieces, maybe a little over a hundred) that were in the range against the Soviet assembly point. Nobody attacked that day or the next day. And as for inexperienced artillery observers. When I was in the coastal artillery I witnessed a case where an opistoupseerioppilas (I don't know the corresponding U.S. rank, he was in military school studying to be an active junior officer) fired a live 130 mm shell a full kilometer out of the safety sector. At the range of 10 km. With about 30 degree wide sector and the target area was in the middle of it. I don't know how he managed to do it. -Tommi

Unfortunately, the enforced time limit will not work for PBEM games without some really clever protocols. The basic problem: player Foo may make n copies of the turn file ==> player Foo may spend n x limit minutes planning his moves. The problem could be partly circuvented if CM assigned and stored an identifier for each ongoing game, but then you would have to play the whole game with same installation. -Tommi

Jaakko, I suggest that you find Pekka Kantakoski's "Punaiset panssarit" which contains a reasonably detailed account on armor penetration. The book is quite expensive, but it has just been bought to Leppävaara library and it is available _now_ at the library H2 of Helsinki University. (It's quite amazing how much information you can find on the Internet when you know what you are looking...) Of course, this reply doesn't help much those who cannot read Finnish. (Your poster stats stated that you are from Finland, so I guess you can read it -Tommi

Incidentally - your post on gaulish surnames you seem to have forgotten the most obvious examples of Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix. Actually, if I remember correctly the "-ix" suffix in Gaulish names was used to signify a person of noble birth and even then only the noblest were allowed to use it. Of course, I read this about 3-4 years ago so I might be quite wrong. And no, I haven't tested the demo. I was already asleep when it was posted and now I'm still at work. -Tommi

I think that captured the essence of moving units very well. LOTS of layers of command to be traversed before your order becomes enacted. And in worst case each layer misunderstands the orders... One of the worst examples of that was the battle of Poltava in 1708 (yup, a long before WWII) where the Swedish plan was to use surprise factor to bypass a fort-line, regroup, and attack the Russian camp. However, General-Major Roos misunderstood his orders and ordered his troops to take the fort-line. In the end one third of the Swedish infantry was bled white while trying to capture well defended and alert forts (the surprise failed because forming up took too much time) without any necessary equipment. Of the 2000 men in his command only 80 survived the day and most of them were wounded. (They kept attacking the forts until the casualty level reached about 50%, became separated from the rest of army, fought a series of small combats, and ended up being encircled in an old monastery). Meanwhile, the main army almost succeeded in breaking through the Russian line-of-battle but they failed when the attack lost its momentum. With Roos's 2000 men they might have succeeded. The result was the worst defeat in Swedish history and the end of Sweden's position as a major European country. - Tommi