John Kettler

JM Stuff, The Germans were originally to train, arm and equip 20 infantry divisions of the Chinese Army, but the Sino-Japanese War saw only 8 ready to go. Here's a great thread going into the nits and grits of these unusual to us units. https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=84921 Regards, John Kettler

9 April, though I suspect it may be ages (or never) until CMx2 (or beyond) make this feasible. It's in Danish with English subtitles and is builkt around--wait for it--a Danish bicycle-borne infantry company! An intimate look at a war most of us know little regarding, and certainly not in a CMx2 level context. Battle of Westerplatte is very good and has a remarkable French war toy in it. Saw it on Amazon Prime. Here's a clip. LongLeftFlank, The opening scene in White Tiger not only was grim, but it had something I'd never seen before, a Russian mine detector which took a page from the flamethrower designed to look like a rifle (ROKS-2), but this one had a detection loop on the end. A soldier in the foreground is carrying it draped across the back of his neck. On a separate note, I recently saw 317eme Section, which to me, was another Anabasis story, but instead of Persians and a super long hike, had the remorseless jungle, supply issues, villagers of various levels of loyalty and hostility, internal disaffection and, of course, the Viet Minh. hub6actual, As a war movie, I loved Panfilov's 28. As history, it was nonsense. Official Soviet investigation revealed it to be a whole-cloth fabrication by a reporter. Erwin, 1944 can be had with English subtitles, for I've seen it that way. Believe I watched it on Amazon Prime. Regards, John Kettler

kohlenklau, Seen this? Also, certain issues of the sadly long gone AFV-G2 magazine had comprehensive studies of particular tanks and other AFVs from that area, too, including Tunisia. Of particular note was that each such article came with a paint chip researched to a fare thee well and reconstructed using Floquil model railroad paints. Asa fun side note, in Hell Boats (on YT), which follows an MTB squadron based in Malta (and shot there), there is a military truck done in the same stone pattern a Matilda II was photographed in. https://www.amazon.com/Armour-Camouflage-Markings-Africa-1940-43/dp/0853681015 The above book is arguably the classic reference on the topic. Regards, John Kettler

In looking for the war movie done by the son of the Bondarchuk who directed the gigantic War and Peace mega film, I discovered there is a full-blown sim created by some game designers massively unhappy with how real history and terrain were depicted in the above movie. The Truth About 9th Company is the sim resulting from their outrage, and it is a meticulous depiction of what really happened, when and exactly where. This game attracted national attention and is viewed as both inspirational and preserving the nation's combat heritage. Love the way the scene is set, truly novel and immersive, but the sim proper seems to be more FPS than anything we'd call a tactical sim. The engagement ranges, for an AK-74 using iron sights, seem insanely long. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_About_9th_Company Regards, John Kettler

StieliAlpha, It may be exclusive now to CMx2 Pre-Orders, but I've got DVDs for all the games I own, with one coming for Combat Mission: Cold War. Have ever made it my practice to obtain a physical copy of every CM game bought and to get the game specific physical manual, too, if one's to be had. Regards, John Kettler

What a great thread! Quote Investigator looked into the alleged Lincoln quote and turned up all sorts of goodies. LOng piece, but thoroughly documented and well worth the read! https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/02/18/barrel-of-whiskey/ On a separate note, I feel safe in asserting that no one could top Winston Churchill when it came to incredible alcohol consumption daily coupled with equally incredible high functioning. Here's an analysis from one Scott Alexander on Quora. The analysis concludes Churchill consumed almost twice as much in a day as the NHS recommended for a week! https://www.quora.com/How-much-alcohol-did-Winston-Churchill-drink-per-day?share=1 Scott Alexander Williams , former Volunteer Coordinator at Volunteer Edinburgh (2014-2017) Updated 3 years ago · Author has 64 answers and 184.2K answer views How was it possible for Winston Churchill to drink so much and still function at such a high level? He was very likely a high-functioning alcoholic, judging by his daily intake. Churchill, like most Prime Ministers, had a fairly rigid daily routine that he stuck to as closely as possible. The reason for this is fairly straightforward, as PM he had to make hundreds of decisions (most of which were quite important ones too) every day, as well as react to events pretty much as they occurred. In such a situation, it’s quite possible for you to be too busy thinking about how to respond to the latest inelligence report to decide what you want for breakfast, and if you aren’t careful you’ll be running behind schedule before the morning newspapers arrive. This is a phenomenon called decision fatigue, where the more decisions you make in quick succession, the poorer their quality gets. In a job as serious and stressful as running a country, it’s important to eliminate as many unnecessary decisions as possible from the day to day routine, so you don’t waste precious brain power on things that are irrelevant in the bigger picture. In Churchill’s case, he rather famously took this to extremes, which often made him look quite eccentric - for example, when asked by the White House Butler what he wanted for breakfast each morning, he asked for the same thing to be served every day - a tumbler of sherry waiting for him when he woke; followed by a breakfast of fruit, orange juice, a pot of tea, “something hot” and “something cold” when he was ready. It’s rather telling that he had little concern for the food (provided the quantity was sufficient) but had very clear opinions on what drinks should be served. His drinking followed a fairly regular schedule, with specific drinks at particular intervals throughout the day: 7:30am - the aforementioned glass of sherry when he woke. Around 10–11am - whisky (Johnny Walker preferred) and soda, mixed very weak to begin (only about a thimbleful of whisky in the bottom of the tumbler) but topped up over the course of the morning (and likely getting progressively stronger) until shortly before lunch. 1pm - Churchill would drink a pint of champagne (Pol Roger by preference) with his lunch (usually 3–4 courses) or claret, if champagne wasn’t available. He would often finish his meal with a digestif of brandy (90-year old cognac was his preference). 3:30pm - 5pm - more whisky and soda, to the same method as above, in advance of his daily siesta. 6:30pm - he would awaken to more whisky and soda while he got ready for dinner. 8pm - dinner (nearly always with company) usually meant an aperitif of sherry, with wines paired to each course, or champagne as a default fallback, followed by a digestif of brandy or port. 10pm - after dinner, he would usually enjoy drinks with his dinner guests - typically the same port or brandy enjoyed at the and of the meal. 2am - one last glass of cognac as a nightcap before bed. Looking at the above list then, in a typical day, Churchill might consume: 2 glasses of sherry = 1.8 units 4–5 shots of whisky = 4 units 2 pints of champagne or equivalent wine = 13.5 units 3 glasses of brandy = 4 units 2 glasses of port = 1.8 units Total = 25.1 units That’s almost DOUBLE the recommended maximum WEEKLY intake according to the NHS (14 units). With a daily intake that high sustained for such a long period, he was almost certainly an alcoholic. But the question wasn’t about what he drank (which is something the questioner presumably already knew) but how he continued to function in spite of such a high intake. There are a few reasons for this, and the timetable above is relevant to it - but first we need to discuss the nature of alcoholism. Alcoholism is a physical addiction to alcohol - this is different to many other commonly cited addictions that are psychological in nature, e.g. gambling or sugar. Alcoholism results in significant, measurable changes to the body’s biochemistry, an alcoholic’s body literally becomes dependent on a regular alcohol intake to function. Withdrawal symptoms can be extremely serious, including depression, anxiety, irritability, tremors, sweating, nausea, poor coordination, hallucinations and even seizures. Meanwhile, as with most physical addictions, the body’s ability to filter out and process the drug improves over time, meaning that increasingly higher doses are needed to obtain the same positive effects from ingestion - this is what leads most alcoholics to continue drinking more and more until they either stop drinking, get hospitalised or die. Churchill’s solution seems to have been quite basic - it is the same kind of approach taken by smokers who are attempting to quit. You see, the biggest problem with any kind of drug dependency is that the withdrawal symptoms are generally so severe they can incapacitate you, and leave you unable to function normally. However, for most long-term addicts, the dose required to feel the drugs effects is also high enough to severely incapacitate due to the negative physiological side-effects of the drug. When people are trying to quit, then, they need to be slowly weaned off the drug, with enough of the drug in their system to prevent the side-effects from being too bad, but without reaching a sufficiently high level to feel the high either. This is the basic idea behind nicotine patches, which help smokers to quit by releasing a steady, low-level supply of nicotine into the bloodstream. This isn’t supposed to be sufficient to deliver the “hit” that smoking a cigarette would, but instead keep just enough nicotine in the bloodstream to stave off the withdrawal symptoms. The idea is that the addict starts off with a higher level of the drug and slowly reduces it over time, allowing their body to slowly adjust to lower levels of the drug being present in their system. Looking back to Churchill’s routine then, we can see that he mostly spaced out his drinking evenly throughout the day, with higher levels accompanying meals and before bed. This is pretty much the kind of thing you would see from a smoker using the “patch and inhaler” method for quitting. The whisky and soda is the patch - providing a constant low background level of alcohol to keep him from experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and higher levels with meals to counter the effect of food, which can delay the introduction of alcohol into the bloodstream by absorbing it in the stomach. This constant supply over the course of the day would have continuously supplied his body with alcohol at least as quickly as his liver was able to process it, thus keeping any withdrawal symptoms at bay. The only time he’d have been likely to feel the effects of alcohol withdrawal would have been immediately after waking, as his body would likely have been able to purge most of the alcohol out of bloodstream overnight. This explains his insistence on taking a sherry first thing in the morning before breakfast (i.e. on an empty stomach) to get a quick burst of alcohol and stave off any negative withdrawal symptoms. This explains the lack of withdrawal symptoms, but what about the opposite problem - why wasn’t he drunk all of the time? Surely most people with that level of alcohol intake would be completely soused? Actually, the only reason we might regard his intake as being particularly high is because we generally lack any frame of reference. Nowadays we’re used to the idea of consuming alcohol in single sittings, but this is a fairly modern concept. Historically, the idea of going out on a Friday or Saturday night and drinking half your bodyweight in alcoholic drinks would have seemed simply barbaric and uncivilised. Alcohol was popularised in Europe as it was generally safer to drink than most water supplies, and it was cheap and easy to produce pretty much anywhere in the continent. It was often much less concentrated than it is nowadays, and was served with almost every meal, as well as being consumed between meals too. It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the importance of sanitation became fully understood, and reliable clean water supplies became widespread, that the traditional approach to alcohol consumption began to decline, and it began to be seen more as something pleasant to be enjoyed in its own right, akin to smoking, rather than a normal part of daily life. Churchill’s life straddled the boundary between these times - for him, alcohol would have been present in his life from an early age, but already by then it was no longer the necessity it once was. He would certainly have been no stranger to the idea that controlled drinking throughout the day was less likely to result in drunkenness, which would have been seen as irresponsible and foolish behaviour, if not quite as socially stigmatised as it has become nowadays. Indeed Churchill was once famously accused by Bessie Braddock of being drunk in the House of Commons, inviting his infamous reply “Bessie, you are ugly. But tomorrow I will be sober, and you will still be ugly.” So Churchill’s drinking wasn’t always sufficient to keep him sober, but equally, it was rarely copious enough for him to be thoroughly drunk. Between the increased tolerance he no doubt had due to his high consumption, and the fact that he spread his drinking out so evenly throughout the day, it’s unlikely that he was routinely drinking enough to be impaired. In fact, in a rather amusing account, a Telegraph columnist by the name of Harry Wallop once tried to emulate his drinking[1], but surrendered by 9:30pm, concluding that “I wasn’t roaringly drunk at all, but I was feeling queasy.” So it is quite probable that after a lifetime of maintaining this routine, Churchill actually felt considerably more able to function with his daily intake than he did while sober. Certainly there are accounts that he gave up drinking at various times in his life - mainly to prove to himself and others that he could - although accounts vary as to how successful he was at this. So yes - he was likely a high-functioning alcoholic, meaning that by all outward appearances, he functioned better with alcohol than he would have without it: although I doubt the same could be said for his liver. EDIT (12/02/18): having read some of the other answers and comments, I think there’s also an important distinction to be made here between a “drunkard” and an “alcoholic”. A drunkard is a person who drinks too much, either as a one-off, or out of habit, generally to the point of inebriation (“drunkenness”). An alcoholic is a person who has a physical addiction to alcohol. Many drunkards are alcoholics - but not all of them. Similarly, many alcoholics are drunkards - but not all. In fact, I would be very surprised if there was more than a 50% overlap between these two groups. Someone who drinks solely to get drunk is certainly a drunkard, but if they only do it once a month and have no addiction to alcohol (i.e. don’t experience symptoms of withdrawal throughout the remainder of each month) then they are clearly not an alcoholic. A high-functioning alcoholic, almost by definition, will generally have coping mechanisms in place that avoid drunkenness as much as possible, due to its negative social connotations. The stereotypical image of the red-nosed sot with a mostly empty bottle in hand just doesn’t apply to these people -it isn’t who they are, and it undermines our understanding of what’s really going on with them. Churchill was almost certainly not a habitual drunkard - like many he enjoyed being tipsy in good company now and then, but for the most part he controlled his drinking in a way that ensured it wasn’t noticeable to those who didn’t see him with a glass in his hand. There was almost certainly a degree of myth-building around him too - he knew that a rumour that he could drink like a fish wouldn’t harm his reputation provided he took care not to appear drunk in public (saving the Commons apparently, although PMQ’s does tend to have an air of last orders on a Saturday night about it). However, even a “light” day usually saw him consuming more than the current NHS recommended weekly maximums, meaning he was almost certainly an alcoholic - it’s simply incredible to think that couldn’t have developed a dependency with so high an intake. High-functioning alcoholics aren’t actually that uncommon, as the body can adapt to the higher background levels of blood alcohol easily enough, provided the person in question doesn’t go straight from being teetotal to consuming their recommended weekly maximum every single day. The problem is the unseen damage that slowly builds up. Just because someone isn’t drinking enough to make them drunk, doesn’t mean that they are fine either. Leaving aside cancer and pulmonary risk factors which steadily increase over time, cirrhosis of the liver can take decades to reach the point where it begins having an adverse effect on the rest of the body, largely due to the liver’s amazing degree of redundancy and resilience compared to most of our organs (although considering one of its main purposes is to clean random toxins out of our blood as quickly as possible, this is probably an essential evolution). This is a double-edged sword though, as it means that by the time problems begin to emerge, the organ can be on the verge of complete failure. As a result, high-functioning alcoholics can be at greater risk, as the very coping strategies that help them to hide the severity of their problem from others can make it harder to reach them in order to provide the targeted help they desperately need. Regards, John Kettler

chuckdyke, Thanks! All, Ref St. Nicholas, you may find this of interest. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/st-nicholas-secret-tomb-santa-claus_n_59d50876e4b0218923e70ab1 Regards, John Kettler

chuckdyke, That was the first title I could come up with. Am thinking this might be East Germany, for I don't get Russian from what little I see of the architecture. Regards, John Kettler

It was too big to fit the chimney, so he left it outside. Regards, John Kettler

Bulletpoint, The point was that what people think was happening in Capa's famous pic wasn't happening, and the same mistake was cinematically depicted in SPR. It's absolutely true that elsewhere on Bloody Omaha troops did get ripped apart by MG fire. My paternal uncle George was on an M Boat (LCM) and had to help clean up the floating charnel house resulting from the German defenses: shot up floating corpses, shot up and blown up landing craft. Later, he was part of "Patton's Navy", Boat Two on LCMs hauled across Europe on Dragon Wagon armored tank retrievers hauling Low Boy trailers. Erwin, Recommend you read the whole thing, carefully, for the answers you seek. For a short answer, though, I believe you could say that the myth initially greatly increased the sizzle factor regarding the pics, which were now depicted as rare. They were rare, not because his cameras were damaged, or the film largely ruined in processing, but because he took only a few and went rushing back to England to file them so he could get them into the next LIFE magazine. Most of his pics weren't combat pics at all, but showed the embarkation of. troops, transit and such prior to the lands. Later, multiple interests got involved, some quite active today, to hype the story, hype Robert Capa and, through control of most of the primary source material, continue to keep his work high profile, for ego stroking, family sense of self and profit. One historian characterized a biography of Robert Capa as being not biography but hagiography, a seldom seen word used to describe the story of the life of a saint. Capa himself lied about what really happened in his own autobiography, too. Regards, John. Kettler

The article below is a meticulous dissection and analysis of what turns out to be the myth presented as fact of what happened to Robert Capa's D-Day pics and the purported disaster that destroyed most of them. The piece is long and meticulously provides the best available factual information, considering that highly vested parties control most of the primary source material and allow access only to those who serve their individual and organizational agendas. Among other things, it refutes the commonly held belief (depicted in Saving Private Ryan) that GIs near and behind the German hedgehogs were pinned down and being ripped to pieces. Turns out they were combat engineers there specifically to demolish hedgehogs in their sector and clear the ways for waves of landing craft to come. https://medium.com/exposure-magazine/alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-2657f9af914 Regards, John Kettler

Erwin, Fascinating and shows: a) There's a lot of incorrect information being repeated (including by me inadvertently) and b) The letter refers to a second invasion directed at the heavily fortified Cherbourg Peninsula and the vital port of Havre. Given the extremely bitter and protracted fighting necessary to seize this objective in reality, such a landing could've indeed been a disaster. Also, Ike could easily have whipped out something similar to this statement had the Normandy landings of June 6, 1944 failed. Regards, John Kettler

From one Robert Mordor comes this, er, reinterpretation of the Nebelwerfer projectile. Regards, John Kettler

Vacilllator, Posting about the ISU-152 above reminded me of the other one, which reminded me of the Handschar thing. I don't sit around stewing over these things, but up they bubbled while making this post, so I sounded off, which was therapeutic, I'm sure. If you did win the lottery, I suspect you'd be hard pressed to bring in an AFV from, say, Yugoslavia, but there's a guy in UK who has absolutely incredible things he's getting from several somewheres. Forget the show, but he had a restored M8 armored car, and 88, a SdKfz 7 and, I think, a Lynx. On one show, he had, so help me, a Panther, and on another, sold a 2 cm FlaK. It was live fired on that episode to prove it worked, too. My friends and I used to joke during the Cold War that we needed a private island for a tiny nation and would play the west against the east and get war toys from both. Regards, John Kettler

To me, this is glorious to see and hear. It even shoots, which is more than I can say for a privately owned one which was savaged by a nonchalantly applied cutting torch used on the underside of the gun barrel about a foot in front of the mantlet. The guy doing it didn't say a word. Just went to work and cut a ragged narrow oval hole clean through the bottom of the gun barrel. Wanted to cry a bit and scream at the same time. Hate to see military artifacts, especially functioning equipment, destroyed like that. And while I understand the Yugoslavian government's position on Nazi relics, I nevertheless decry, in a separate instance, not only the destruction of rare SS Handschar steel fez helmets by removing the helmet badges altogether, but by the utter inability to restore them later by reassembly, for it's categorically forbidden to send out Nazi emblems, etc. These rare helmets have thus been permanently mutilated. As a lover of history, whether what happened was good, bad, or indifferent, we are the poorer because these rare artifacts have been permanently damaged. Regards, John Kettler

Someone posted this to a FB wargaming group, and it's a music video obviously done with the full cooperation of the Azerbaijan military.The singer's really good and drop dead gorgeous, too. Must've cost a young fortune to make this military extravaganza. The camouflage scheme on the AFVs is quite a departure from what we're used to seeing, but ought to be well within the skills of your skin-making (grisly name, right?) modders. Regards, John Kettler

Probus, The Panzer IV/Hs are reported in comments to be T-44s. Vergeltungswaffe, Thanks! Can't say I'm shocked I forgot something. Besides, when I posted this time, I'd been up for many hours and just wanted to pass the word. kohlenklau, Did you see my post on your namesake Marder? Yes, I did see T-34? Regards, John Kettler

Apparently, relatively inexpensive Turkish drones beat Pantsir. See last few lines of a most interesting article. https://www.dailysabah.com/business/defense/inexpensive-turkish-armed-drones-reshaping-warfare?fbclid=IwAR1ALFoiiB796U_Nx70NEJgVQkB5yJs2s5y9ogpT9OyZwQSqwmMgGhPZR68 Regards, John Kettler

On this 77th Anniversary Of D-Day at Normandy, many people tend to view the landingas crushing force and firepower delvered against a totally outgunned, woefully undermanned and oft poorly supplied and equipped foe. But things were nowhere nearly so cut and dried. The invasion could've failed, and Supreme Commander would've been responsible had that dire event occurred. In shouldering that responsibility, he had written a short speech to notify the public that the landings had failed and that the responsibility for that disaster lay solely with him. https://militaryhistorynow.com/2018/06/05/bad-news-the-speech-eisenhower-never-had-to-give/ Regards, John Kettler

This helpful article will tell you whom to contact for Russian military inflatable decoys, but you'd probably have to go through ROSBORONEXPORT to make sure you can get this one. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/International/russias-inflatable-military/story?id=11856527 Regards, John Kettler

Did you know the Russians have a full scale Pantsir decoy? Suspect it is not just a visual decoy but is radar reflective and, quite possibly, heated to provide a thermal signature for IR guided weapons. On a separate note, during the Cold War the Russians conned our overhead recon with full scale inflatable submarine decoys, a ruse not discovered until a big storm blew them into impossible locations! Prior to the game being revealed, this meant the Russians had subs at sea when we thought they were still at the pier. Regards, John Kettler

This movie is about the stunning achievements of Captain Semyon Valievich Konalova in his KV-1 (real KV-1C in film). In a way, this movie, set in 1942, is aspirational in terms of CMx2 games to come from earlier in the war than CMRT, but on the other end, it has T-34/76s of models which served to the end of the war and factory fresh T-34/85s. Not CGI tanks. Real ones! Unlike Fury, this gets into the nits and grits of armored warfare down to the level of cannibalizing tank wrecks on the battlefield for vital parts, desperate improvisations, technical repairs under crude field conditions and more. There shouldn't be Panzer IV/Hs (too early), but the skirt armor hides the telltale Russian running gear. The film nicely depicts the second war the Soviet soldiers were fighting, a draconian system in which political officers were sometimes more dangerous than the Germans! Regards, John Kettler

Relative to division strength, combat infantry makes up a tiny portion of overall manpower. Infantry combat chiefly inflicts casualties on this relative handful, whose loss can defang an entire division. To give some idea of how bad things can get, take a look at what a tiny FJ force in Normandy was able to do in terms of inflicting severe casualties (WIS, KIA, POW) on multiple battalions of the US 90th Infantry Division. Back in the 1980s, I read a US Army study found that at the small unit level: platoons and companies, some 80% of the casualties were the result, not of artillery but small arms fire. What's true at the macro level isn't necessarily true at the level of many infantry actions. https://www.historynet.com/us-armys-90th-infantry-division-the-tough-hombres-battle-in-normandy.htm Regards, John Kettler

Bufo, Yes, I did. Why? What I recall being described were major advances so extraordinary as to make "revolutionary" seem an appropriate description. Regards, John Kettler

For years now, JasonC has sought to get people to understand how and why artillery is the biggest killer on the battlefield, yet tabulations and graphs of ammo expenditure lack real impact for most people, but I bet this won't. This should give a perspective on just how many shells were being fired. This is a WW I pic, but the point remains. Regards, John Kettler