tss

Panzer Leader wrote: Seriously, have they given a DEFINITIVE answer? Two or three times by my count and I have steered clear of horse threads lately. - Tommi

patboivin wrote: Given the life expentancy of people on the front lines during WW-II (my own gaming record as a commander bears this out), you can expect your "career" to last an average of two weeks or so, I believe. Grognards would have better figures I'm sure. A couple of weeks ago I went through a binder of archival data of my grandfather's infantry company (1./JR37, he was the assistant leader of the first platoon). There were several officer lists of the batallion (and its individual companies). In particular, the first list for the company was made on late-June 1941 (my notes are at home right now so I can't remember the actual dates). The second list was on September 1941 (or maybe it was October). There wasn't a single name common in the lists. In fact, most of the officers were killed or wounded in the first battle, Särkisyrjä. The third batallion of JR 37 also fought in the same area. One of its companies (7th, I think) lost all its officers on one day at Särkisyrjä. Lars Holmström (who was an artillery FO) writes in his memoirs that in spring 1943 that they fought along one company of JR 12 that had lost all its officers 5 times in the almost two years of the war. - Tommi

Terence wrote: because the Russians had built roads or tracks through the swamps that the Germans had believed impassable. One nice example on this happened near Ilomantsi on summer '44. The Soviets started to construct a new supply route through the forest. (The whole area was one big forest, and for the Central Europeans on this thread, big in this context means something like 200 km x 200 km). Finnish recon planes noticed it and monitored its building. Soviets built a wooden bridge over a wide stream and continued the road some a little way on the other side. Then, on one day a recon pilot noticed that Soviets had burned the bridge down and no work had been done. The Finnish commanders in the area then decided that Soviets had cancelled their forthcoming attack. The recon planes flew over the road occasionally, and the situation stayed that way. However, a few weeks after that one infantry recon patrol happened to come to the river. They noticed that the bridge had been built again and was heavily guarded. They also noticed that the road actually continued beyond its "end-point" but it was narrower and concealed by fir trees that were hanging from ropes across it. The patrol then quite literally run back to their base. The Soviet attack started six hours after they reported the situation. - Tommi

Mr. Hankey wrote: Yeah, and your point being? My point being that the percentage of tank losses that were directly knocked out by aircraft was not too big. I've seen various figures, and not a single one has been larger than 7-8%. (The proportion of indirect kills caused via supply interdiction and subsequent abandoment was quite large, but difficult to quantify). You make it sound as though a fighterbomber has about as much chance of hitting a tank as you do hitting the lottery. Depends on the lottery. The Finnish national lottery has one change in 15 million for the main prize. Most fighter pilots were much better than that. Well, as a matter of fact, tanks were destroyed by fighters on a regular and frequent basis, on the eastern and western front. Yes, they were. But other losses (mines, AT guns, tanks, infantry AT weapons) were heavier. Also, there were a lot of sorties per each kill. The Il-2 was designed pretty specifically for tank busting. And it was quite good in it. However, having a complete air superiority and dozens of Il-2s doesn't automatically mean that all enemy tanks will go up in flames. For example, Finns lost 30-40 tanks in summer '44 (I can't remember the exact figure and my sources are at home). If I remember correctly, not a single one was destroyed by air attacks. Even anti-tank rifles caused more casualties (one T-26 platoon). If you want to talk about the Stuka, we are looking at about a 70%+ hit rating. There are no Stukas in CMBO. Dive bombers were inherently more accurate than fighter-bombers. I remember reading about one Stuka pilot (the name escapes me now) Hans-Ulrich Rudel, most probably. ho stated that he could, as a matter of routine, put a bomb in a three foot radius at any given time. Rudel is not a particularly good example of the capabilities of an average combat pilot. The man flew over 2500 combat missions, far more than any other pilot in any country. At Vuosalmi the Germans lost (to light AA fire) one Stuka pilot (can't remember the name, he had a Knight's Cross) that was considered to be very experienced and one of the best. He had a little over 600 combat flights at the time. Sorry if I sound a bit harsh, except your statement is only sheer speculation on your part with no basis in fact. Sheer speculation true, but has the basis on studies that were conducted on tank wrecks (that showed that only 1 wreck in 20 could be identified as aerial kill). Oh, and I'm pretty thick-skinned. Simply because you can do algebra does not make you an authority on dropping bombs. Agreed. Hell, I can do enough differental equations in my head to intercept a projectile traveling at about 40 mph for a distance of over 80 yards, doing continuous updates during it's travel and know almost exactly where it will be at it's end point. It's called catching a football. The speed of the football: 40 mph = 64 km/h. The speed of attacking aircraft: 350 km/h. A five-fold difference. With some practice, I'm sure those guys would have no problem, given the right circumstances, of hitting pretty much anything they wanted. Given the right circumstances. However, the enemy wouldn't usually give the right circumstances. Actually, they would usually do as much as they could to make the circumstances as wrong as possible. The main point of my calculation was to stress the fact that the pilot had to have a sub-second timing in releasing the bombs, if he aimed at an individual tank. (Bombing along a tank column would be easier because there would be more than one tank on his aiming line). The exact figures are irrelevant. Note that I don't claim that "sub-second timing" makes it impossible to aim bombs and hit. (After all, baseball players need also pretty good timing to hit the ball). Just that even a small mistake from the pilots part will make the bombs fall far enough from the target to leave armored targets intact. That mistake may be simply flinching when an enemy AA mg starts firing tracers. Assessing bombing accuracy is actually a pretty difficult thing to do. Most pilots will report that they either got a direct hit or at least a near miss. They probably even believe that themselves. It's the same thing that happens in fighter kills (all sides regularly overclaimed by a factor of 2-3) or sniper kills (whether a sniper hits or misses the target will immediately drop down and it may be difficult to find out what happened to him). - Tommi

Mr. Hankey wrote: I don't know who told you that, but a flight (four planes) of P-47's can completely destroy a tank column of about ten tanks. "Can", yes, but in general, not "will". One 500 pounder will completely anilalate a tiger tank especially if it hits the engine compartment area The key word is "if". It was pretty hard to drop a bomb close enough to knock a tank out. I'm not certain what is the lethal radius for a 500 lbr bomb with respect to a heavy tank, but I'd guess that it is not much more than 15 meters. So with 15 meters there's about 30 m error margin when dropping a bomb. A plane zooming in at 350 km/h goes 30 meters in 0.3 seconds or so. You don't have to make a big mistake in releasing a bomb and it will miss altogether. - Tommi

Jeff Duquette: JR = Jagaer Regiment? "Jalkaväkirykmentti" (infantry regiment). However, jääkäri troops were also abbreviated with 'J', but they were organized in batallions (JP, "jääkäripataljoona") and brigades (JPr, "jääkäriprikaati"). -Tommi

I wrote: I was personally surprised to find out that the Finnish JR 1 had "only" 20% physical losses on 9-10 June 1944. After all, the Valkeasaari sector was pounded by almost 1000 guns, including several batteries of 12" naval guns, for hours. As I have mentioned earlier, my grandfather was a platoon assistant-leader in JR 58, the unit that was positioned next to the ill-fated JR 1 that took the heaviest blow in the Soviet breakthrough. JR 58 also received heavy bombardment but since the Soviets found it a tougher nut to crack, they decided to concentrate on JR 1 (yes, they could have come through also from JR 58's sector, but JR 1 offered slightly less resistance). One other thing that I've mentioned about grandpa' is that his military records have a month-long gap. I previously thought that he had been wounded in the bombardment and for some reason it hadn't been recorded (they were quite confused days). However, yesterday I found out that he and 5-6 of his mates were left behind the advancing Red Army lines. It took them three weeks to get back to own side. Neither he nor any other man in his group ever told their families what happened during those weeks. Never. Two of them are still alive (grandpa' died almost 10 years ago), and hopefully they tell about it someday. - Tommi

Jeff Duquette wrote: I'm curious if perhaps indirect Artillery is overly powerful in CM when considering entrenched troops? Various post war studies from both WWI and WWII would seem to imply that well entrenched soldiers were not dying in droves even during fairly heavy, extended, barrages. I was personally surprised to find out that the Finnish JR 1 had "only" 20% physical losses on 9-10 June 1944. After all, the Valkeasaari sector was pounded by almost 1000 guns, including several batteries of 12" naval guns, for hours. However, if you consider also the psychological losses, the men who get shocked so badly that they can't think about anything else than getting out of the way of the coming major assault, the losses of JR 1 skyrocket to something like 80% or more. Also, apparently not a single defender of the two strongpoints that faced the first attackk (and thus had the heaviest bombardment) survived. (Some may have been captured, I'm not sure, but in any case those two platoons were completely written out). All laid out in a neat timetable. The timetable would typically be something which is non-adjustable in real time. It was a common Soviet practice to indicate the position of the front line by firing signal flares constantly. When the flares advanced close to the edge of the barrage, the artillerists knew to move the fire forward. - Tommi

It will be interesting to see whether CM2 can handle the Ihantala battle or not. The infantry units aren't a problem at all: Finns had less than 500 men on the battle area and near reserves (a regiment, but so heavily attrited that it was down to a batallion strength) and on the final day before the 12th regiment was relieved its combat strength had fallen to 200 men or so. The Soviets had more infantry, but they too had had so many losses that the units that were sent to attack were not much stronger than a couple of batallions, at most. However, they had several dozens of tanks and assault guns in the area left after they lost almost 50 tanks in the first two days. The problems come from artillery. Picture a CM map about 3000x2000 meter large. Put there at least 50 Finnish target registeration points and perhaps 20-30 Soviet ones. (I have seen the Finnish artillery target chart but not a Soviet one. The disparity in the figures is due the fact that Finns had many "barrage targets" that would need at least 2 or 3 CM TRPs to cover). Add enough Finnish spotters to get the fire of 21 artillery batallions, that is, 63 batteries (well, 247 guns to be exact, some batteries were not in full strength) ranging from 75mm up to 8". Add enough Soviet spotters to get ~500 guns. Watch how many units are alive after five rounds of combat. (At Ihantala Finns usually fired artillery missions 5-7 batallions at a time (15-21 batteries) against 200x300 meter target areas). - Tommi [ 04-20-2001: Message edited by: tss ]

MrSpkr wrote: I agree absolutely. Radios were uncommon in Russia - there might be a single radio for a tank platoon (especially in the early years). Sure, Soviets didn't have that much radios available for forward observers. However, the radios that they had were allocated on the observers of breakthrough units. Also, in 1944 Soviets tried to get forward observers as close to the enemy as possibly, even before the battle. For example, at Ihantala (on 28 or 29 June 1944) one Finnish night patrol stumbled on a Soviet FO team that had actually infiltrated _through_ Finnish lines. They had radios. Earlier that summer Finns had in several places suspected that enemy spotters were in rear areas but as far as I know this was the first (and only) time when a FO team was actually found there. - Tommi

PeterNZer wrote: I think it's because Finns are stake raving mad No, we just get those headaches sometimes. - Tommi

Aaargh. I managed to destroy my long reply. I'll put here a much shorter one: Skipper wrote: I've read many accounts like this: "bombers, prep artillery strike, then infantry assault. Drunk submachine-gunners hosing our trenches with lead. We let them come close and then open up. Long bursts of our MG are making wide sweeps in the enemy lines. Decimated attackers withdraw. Two hours later the whole sequence is repeated. And so it continues until dusk." Guess, who are the attackers in these accounts? Germans. Combat reports are pretty interesting things. They very often overestimate the enemy strength and enemy losses. I just wrote several nice examples but after managing to destroy them I'll write only one again. During Summer 1942 one Soviet partisan brigade was sent behind Finnish lines to destroy the HQ of an Army Corps. However, the mission failed and there was a two-month long pursuit battle in the wilderness. In the second last night behind Finnish lines the brigade broke through a defence line. I've read three accounts of this combat, two Finnish and one Soviet. One Finnish account is in Tikkanen's "Sissiprikaatin tuho" and it is apparently based on interviews of men of the Finnish 12th Brigade. The other Finnish account is by P. Perttuli, commander of one Finnish company (not in the 12th Brigade) that participated in the battle. The Soviet account is by Dmitri Gusarov (in "Korpi ei tunne armo", I can't remember its name in Russian) and it combines Soviet veteran interviews to the Tikkanen's account. Anyway, Tikkanen's account is the oldest and according to it Soviets bypassed one defence line and surprised a rajajääkäri ("Border jäger") company camp destroying it and causing 24 KIA and dozens of wounded. He also claims that Finnish MGs caused ~70 casualties on Soviets when they crossed a marsh. Gusarov had access to "Sissiprikaatin tuho" and he took the number of Finnish casualties directly from there, and added that they also destroyed one MG post that was positioned in the edge of the marsh. It has been some time since I read it, but I seem to remember that Gusarov didn't give the number of Soviet casualties at all. Finally, captain Perttuli gives a different account than either of above. He was the commander of the Rajajääkäri company whose camp was overrun. However, according to him the camp was empty at the time and they only lost the tents (riddled by bullet and shrapnel holes) and several backbags, including the commander's excellent Norwegian one. According to him, his company lost only 4 men that night. I just checked the database of Finnish military KIAs, and it confirms Perttuli's story, since it lists only one dead rajajääkäri on that date. Also, Perttuli puts the number of Soviet KIA to 53, IIRC. I believe this figure more than the Tikkanen's one, since earlier in the book Tikkanen claimed that "over 300 bodies were counted on the Tjasa-river battlefield", when a captured radio report form the partisans stated that their losses were 258 men, including well-over 100 MIA (can't remember actual figure), most of whom were alive but lost in the forest. BTW, Perttuli was the man who commanded the recon mission round Lake Lieksajärvi that served as the inspiration for the Finnish war movie "Ambush" ("Rukajärven tie"). He started the war as a 2nd lt and ended it as a major, gaining three promotions in three years. - Tommi [ 04-20-2001: Message edited by: tss ]

Jarmo wrote: Too bad the channel is undergroundish and unlikely to have many wievers interested in strategic games, mainly appealing to the console crowd. Undergroundish? If that channel tried to get little more underground than it is right now, they would end up surfacing on the other side. But I have to admit that they have some pretty original stuff. I don't know of any other channel that has a feature show devoted to reviewing pr0n movies. - Tommi

Big Time Software wrote: If we do put in a random factor it should be based on Experience IMHO. The more experienced, the less likely the unit will fail to fire full bore. And during winter scenarios there's the possibility of MG crews leaving the oil in the bolt so that it will freeze, dropping the ROF down from 500 rounds/minute to whopping 10 rounds/minute or so. That's a mistake that a large portion of green troops did on their first combat battles, and even some good units did that sometimes. - Tommi

Skipper wrote: but what is "laukaus"? Like Jarmo just wrote, it means "a shot" (as in someone just fired his gun). Those with LMGs or SMGs can also shout "sarja, sarrrrrja" ("a burst") but they will be accused of wasting ammunition if they do it too much. BTW. I checked my sources. The one Finnish occasion of sending unarmed men to combat that I wrote about was, indeed, the Patoniemi counter attack but I remembered the unit incorrectly (batallion was right but company wrong). It was actually liutenant Linnaterä's 2./JR 30 instead of Jylhä's 1./JR 30. (Though it is possible that Jylhä had also some of those unarmed recruits). - Tommi

Skipper wrote: Note the use of words. The "areas that germnans recently evacuated" we will call "liberated occupied territories". Terminology is a pretty interesting thing. Not relevant to this topic, but I've always been amused on Soviet historians who write about the "liberation of the old Russian town Vyborg from occupation on 20 June 1944". (For those who don't about Isthmus history: Vyborg was founded in the end of 13th century by Swedes at the place of an old Karelian trading post and up to 13.3.1940 vast majority of its inhabitants were Finns or Karelians). [i would like to add that I find the deluded visions of the "Greater-Finland" activists almost as amusing when they wrote about their plans of liberating most of the Northern Russia. But then again, I've always been fond of bad propaganda.] - Tommi [ 04-18-2001: Message edited by: tss ]

ferdinand wrote: So, the fact that *some* were sent straight to the gulag seems well documented, if the number is not. There are a lot of different numbers floating around and it is very difficult to say what are the most reliable. Most of the relatively recent estimates that I've seen put the figure of POWs sent to Gulag to somewhere between 200-500 thousand. I would guess that the fate of the POWs depended highly on who interrogated them after release. Also, the treatment got more lenient by time. In 1940, well over 90% of the ~3500 soldiers that had been captured and then released by Finns were sent to Gulag. In Stepakov's book "Sodalla on hintansa" (I don't know whether it is published amnywhere outside Finland) the author told that he had interviewed one former POW who had been one of the lucky ones to escape a sentence to prison camps. He and several other heavily wounded men were simply released without any official statement at all after they had been held in custody for several months. He believed that somebody had forgotten them and that they were released by mistake. - Tommi

Jarmo wrote: I almost mentioned this, but I couldn't remember any other examples of this than the "enemy at the gates" and I hesitate to quote hollywood products as historic proof.. One historic example, but not a Soviet one: During the February battles at Taipale in 1940 several unarmed replacements arrived to the 1./JR 21 just before a counter attack. They were ordered to follow the attack and pick up weapons of the wounded and KIAs. Or was it just before the counter attack to Patoniemi on Christmas 1939. I can't remember for certain and my sources are at home. (Just to clarify the part that I accidentally cut out when writing the message: the counter attack was Finnish. And thinking again, it was the Patoniemi attack and the unit was then still called 1./JR 30 (the name of the regiment was later changed in an effort to confuse Soviets into thinking that new reinforcements had arrived.) ). - Tommi [ 04-18-2001: Message edited by: tss ]

aka_tom_w wrote: How about things like tanks leaving tracks in the snow? (It happens now in Flashpoint 1985) That would be very nice (as would be infantry leaving tracks in forests). However, it would place really high burden on LOS checks. And I mean really high. In the rest of this post I will try to demonstrate this using figures derived by the DOMH method. (Those who don't like estimates that are based on wild guesses should directly skip to the next post, and do not pass the GO square and collect 200 zorkmids on the way). Suppose that there are 25 units per side that each move 4 terrain tiles forward per turn. I seem to remember that the internal engine uses a 2 x 2 meter grid, so one unit leaves marks on at least 80 places on each turn. (For tanks the locations of both tracks, for infantry it would be even more). I don't know how often CM does LOS checks. Let's estimate that it is once per second. Currently each of the 25 units have to check los to every enemy unit, so there is 50 x 25 x 60 = 37500 LOS checks during one turn. If the engine has to check also LOS to enemy tracks, in the second turn it has to do at least 50 x 25 x 60 + 50 x 25 x 80 x 60 = 3037500 LOS checks, plus the checks for new track marks that are deposited. At the start of the third turn, each unit has left marks on 160 places, so for that turn 6037500 checks are necessary, and so on. The real situation is not quite that bad since after one track mark is seen by some unit you don't have to check LOS to it again. However, in the worst case the units are advancing towards each other with a large hill or a forest in the middle blocking the LOS for ten turns or so. Of course, it is probably possible to optimize a majority of the LOS checks away, but I would bet that it will still be an untractable problem for the near future. - Tommi

MacAuliff wrote: Because it wasn't done in real action. Sometimes it was. Not often, but when necessary and terrain permitted. A case example: The Finnish attack over Tuulosjoki river in September 1941. One or two T-26 companies crossed the river via several fords. The river would be one or two (or perhaps even three) CM terrain tiles wide at the point, I'm not certain. The commander of the point platoon crossed the river on foot probing the way with a long pole. One T-26 (I think it was a twin-turreted MG version m. 1931) lost a track after hitting a sumberged rock and its crew spent half an hour in the icy waters before they managed to get it back on. Other tanks crossed the river without significant problems, though the banks were quite steep. The Finnish pre-attack artillery bombardment had caused such a great havoc among the Soviet defenders that they couldn't offer any serious resistance on the river banks. They had several 45 mm AT guns positioned in the area, but they didn't open fire. Possibly their crews had fled. Later when the point units had crossed the river also the heavy T-28 platoon forded it, but at that time the front line was already at least one kilometer away. - Tommi

The Commissar wrote: That is, the well documented and immensely wasteful wave attacks made by conscript mobs of UNARMED men, used primarily as bullet fodder for the actual armed troops who would be advancing behind them. Are you really certain about that? The way that I've read it is that the unarmed men followed the armed men and picked up the weapons of their fallen comrades. - Tommi

Originally posted by Olle Petersson wrote: How on earth did they transport and deploy the fortress guns? The fortress mounts are (at least with that light guns) bolted on a concrete base. So, you get a bunch of pioneers to make a concrete base, unbolt the guns at the old location, transport them to the new place, and bolt them again. (My grandfather's pioneer company made the bases of few guns of the Patoniemi 47 mm Nordenfield battery at Taipale.) Some time ago I read one book that collected stories of coastal artillery veterans. One veteran told that his 150 mm fixed-mount battery was transported and deployed three times during summer and fall '44. (From Poventsa to Kaarnajoki to place X that I can't remember and finally after armistice to someplace inside the new borders). - Tommi

David Aitken wrote: It takes a couple of seconds to line up the gun before you pull the trigger. You pick your target and line it up. Your target ducks, whether in reaction to your fire or through sound tactics. Elsewhere another target gets up and dashes. You line up the new target and fire. I try to keep out of the MG threads since I don't have much hard data (except the Finnish officer's handbooks rule of thumb that at 1000 m range you need 700 bullets per minute per 100 meters of front to cause 50% casualties on walking targets). However, there's one nice quote in Veijo Meri's "Manillaköysi" (in the famous "Mad Staff Sergeant"-episode) about aiming in combat: [my translation] <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> It takes at least four seconds after moving the sights before the firer can stabilize his aim. In four seconds Jesse Owens would run 40 meters. To realize that a dash starts at a different point than expected takes at least two seconds since a man doesn't immediately understand what he sees; more often three or four seconds. So an atatcker has guaranteed safe time six seconds. He may move that long as carelessy as during a sunday stroll. A particularly fast man can make a child in that time, and even a slow man can move six meters with speed of one meter per second, though no man is that slow. According to the staff sergeant's calculations, one might go for seven seconds by taking a 10% risk. By taking a 20% risk one could go for eight seconds. But if one wants to run for nine seconds, it is already a 60% risk. If the range is short, a sudden well-conducted charge will take the platoon into enemy positions and through them without losses. "They say that the best men die in the war. I have seen more than one war and I can say that is utter rubbish. All poor men die at start." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Note that Meri is a novelist and he didn't mean that the sergeant's figures should be scientifically justifiable. - Tommi

Lee wrote: The thing that's bad about this is that it requires the use of cookies and, like many PC users, I almost never turn on cookies for security reasons. The thing that I use is to make the cookie-file write-protected. I don't know whether it works with Windows and Internet Exploder, but I do all my surfing under Linux in any case. When the cookie-file is write-protected, the browser will hold the cookie in memory, but it will not be written, so when you exit the browser the cookie disappears. This has the added bonus that, for example, Doubleclick has now (probably) ~700 entries for me. If enough people do this, it will hopefully bust their database. - Tommi

RenoFlame 36 wrote: Looks like a Sturmgeschutz IV to me. Stug IVs had 8 roadwheels, not 6. - Tommi