John Kettler

Steve, Thought you'd enjoy this and might also be so kind as to tell us whether the Weasel will be in the second CMBN Vehicle Pack? Regards, John Kettler

Sgt.Squarehead, Believe that to be true. If so, they suffered the same fate as lots of other Soviet military equipment: developed in secret, trialed and if accepted for service, may never be known, becomes obsolete and is retired, with no one the wiser outside of very limited circles. The T-64 is a prime example of this, for it has never been publicly paraded by either the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation. The SU-122-54 never was, and if there was a similarly configured T-62 chassis sporting the mighty 130 mm, it wasn't either. There is a book on Soviet military parades in Red Square, and one of the things it focuses on is what was shown, what was not and why. We didn't get eyes onto the T-64 until 20 years after it was created. Indeed, until we learned otherwise, we called it the M1984. By contrast, the world first saw the F-117 only seven years after it went operational during Operation Just Cause. Did you know the Soviets had operational DU two years before we did? But as free as the Soviets and later cash strapped Russians were with exporting weaponry, am unaware of so much as a single instance where DU was used for attack by a Soviet/Russian supplied weapon. My recollection was that Saddam's T-72s had only hardened steel KE penetrators, not even tungsten carbide. Read someplace that our tanks were hit in the turret sides and that the penetrators got just far enough in that they stuck out like darts in a dartboard. Regards, John Kettler

Found something wholly unexpected and astounding at the end of that partisan film. Would you believe a real SU-122-54 called an IT-122 by Suvorov/Rezun? This weapon was inadvertently seen during the 1968 Czechoslovakian Invasion, leading to a maskirovka to dissuade the west from reintroducing such weapons itself by removing the guns, plating over the holes and prominently showing the defanged SPGS as ARVs in the May Day parade. Apparently, the weight involved required reworking the T-54 chassis, changing the telltale road wheel spacing. Was happily watching the SU-100s trundle through when one of these showed up and shot from such close range the whole vehicle wouldn't fit the frame broadside. Regards, John Kettler

Sgt.Squarehead, You're right. Believe what threw me was that I'd seen footage from later (Berlin-Oder maybe) used in an Operation Bagration doc, so when something similar was shown in the SU-100 movie, I drew the obvious (but wrong) conclusion. The Russians could've had the SU-100 in time for Operation Bagration, but were forced to wait until they could get a vexing AP shell problem sorted out. Since I don't own CMRT, I don't know what the cutoff point is as far as date. Is it simply too late for CMRT to be doable? http://english.battlefield.ru/tanks/11-spg/36-su-100.html Regards, John Kettler

One of the treasures there is War is War, that SU-100 film I posted before, but unfortunately Russian only and not very good res. No need to suffer thus, for now you can follow the action and see so much that was eyestrain level before. Loved this, but then, the SU-100 is a longtime favorite AFV for me, so it's an incredible treat to see them this way and in quantity. Scenario designers could definitely build a CMRT battle using this as a basis, for this is unambiguously part of Operation Bagration. https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/660-na-voyne-kak-na-voyne.html Regards, John Kettler

"Trial on the Road" is quite the film and rich with all sorts of detail, quite a bit of which would be usable in a CMx2 context for scenario work, depicting terrain, skinning buildings and more. For $5 you can access sovietfilmsonline and watch for 24 hours straight if you like. This and many others have English subtitles. https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/109-proverka-na-dorogah.html Regards, John Kettler

Strong argument for use of focus groups! Regards, John Kettler

Erwin, There's some recent scholarship indicating that the reason Roman manpower was so scarce was that the Empire was severely mauled by plague, forcing the intake of large numbers of barbarians. Guys, Here's a great video on WW II artillery still serving on far-flung battlefields. though there are some wild technicals using ex-Soviet weaponry, most of the focus is on towed artillery in the usual wheeled configuration, plus a few on unpowered tracks. But what really makes this shine is a wealth of GPW Soviet artillery footage I'd not seen before, with the added bonus of stirring Russian military music! Regards, John Kettler

Found these while trying to find some info on composition of GPW Motor Rifle units, a subject on which I know effectively nothing. Has head count, weapons, rank, ammo load, grenade load and more. One interesting tidbit is that the ASL typically had an SVT-40, having both the experience to use it most effectively and the technical skills to keep this weapon far more complex than a Mosin operating properly. https://www.battleorder.org/ussr-rifle-co-1943 https://www.battleorder.org/ussr-rifle-co-1944 Regards, John Kettler

Brother George sent me this. It starts out with a look at the whole Soviet concept of land warfare in context, talks about the developments which led first, to the SVT-38, then the SVT-40, including who had the rifle, why, the vision vs actuality, changes in TO&E over time and a highly detailed walkthrough of the weapon as far as operation and field stripping. The squad charts are a bit confusing because a Maxim MMG is shown in the graphics, though he clearly says LMG. Though the title clearly says "tactics", there is little per se on those. Regards, John Kettler

At almost the very bottom of the page, you'll find the links to the LL soviet UCs, Mark I and II. https://www.o5m6.de/redarmy/_menu.php?cat=ForeignArmour&navtit=Foreign Armour Regards, John Kettler

The Military History club "Za Oborunu" on FB posted a pic series on these AFVs, from which a great deal can be gleaned, including extraordinary troop capacity for UCs, passenger exposure under normal loading, fighting positions from the UC, even a UC armed with a Dushka on top. Regards, John Kettler

Tonight's entry is pretty amazing, even by our standards here. Not content with medical masks, hoodies or both, these guys went with natural concealment! Sublime, You made my night with that one! Maybe your friend could try an image search, presuming the angle's good enough to find other images of the person training to swallow swords? Regards, John Kettler

Did you like the flan gun--operated by the little known (okay, unknown) Mexican contingent known as the Contra Capitalistas? Might've been a typo, though. In any event, the open fire ranges were taken from Artem Drabkin's excellent and altogether too short Panzer Killers. Regards, John Kettler

Normal open fire ranges for ATGs were 500 meters for the 45 mm guns 53-K and M-42 and 750 for the 76.2 mm ZIS-3 DP used as an ATG. I wouldn't give up on big maps just because of this tactic, not least because it's difficult to implement on the open steppe. Essentially, the tactic is a compressed version of the "L" shaped towed ATG battery deployment, which had three guns abreast 250-300 meters apart and a flan gun right or left about (working from memory) 100 meters forward of the gun line. The flank gun would open fire, trying to lure the galled Panzers into turning, thus exposing their flanks to fire from the gun line, but flank guns tended not to last long, whether from counter fire or from being crunched by overrunning Panzers. In his excellent Destroying the Myth, Zamulin repeatedly comments on the deadly accuracy of German tank fire, thanks to superior optics, and from ranges where the Russian tanks and antitank guns couldn't fight effectively. He says that frequently, the Russian gun got off when shot before being destroyed. Regards, John Kettler

If you watched "White Tiger" one of these rare items (or a very good replica) walked right past you on the shoulder of a soldier in the foreground of the opening scene. It looks like a Mosin and mine detector mated! When I decided to see whether that was made up (though seemed to use the look like a rifle so don't get targeted ROKS-2 flamethrower design philosophy), I found this, which proves there was such a weapon. https://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?379677-VIM-203-mine-detector-(used-with-Mosin-rifle) Regards, John Kettler

This is a great account by a vet who had quite a few jobs in the Red Army but ultimately wound up as driver-mechanic in an SU-76 and worked his way up from there. His account gives a superb picture of serving in them, operating them, life in the crew, including combat, killing the foe and being killed by the foe, too. He was wounded, became a Su-76 commander and had quite the unexpected end to his war, too. One of the things which really stands out is how stealthy the critter was in first gear--practically noiseless, whereas he says the clattering T-34s could be heard from 3 kilometers away. Battery frontage in the defense was a kilometer. http://english.battlefield.ru/memoirs/65-rem-ulanov-su-76m-commander.html Regards, John Kettler

Cases like this always intrigue me. I know of a case where somehow the Navy surplused out its NIXIE antitorpedo system (took some doing to get it back from a rather recalcitrant surplus dealer) and another in which a KY-28 crypto sytem of the type the US Army uses wound up on the shelf in used electronics store. That second one caused all kinds of havoc, especially for those who connived to steal and sell it! By comparison, the below is pretty tame but a good read. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/world/europe/germany-missile-laptop.html Regards, John Kettler

If you liked that, go to YT and find LEGO World War 2: Second Sino-Japanese War. Would've posted the link but for some highly NSFW captions! Makes this look anemic and is super intense. Regards, John Kettler

That T-34/76 is really a T-34/76E (for "Ekranimi", indicating it was up armored). Notice the additional plating on the glacis and bow MG. The 45 mm armor plate simply wasn't cutting it, so frontal protection was added to the hull. Regards, John Kettler

As I've many times pointed out, an entire Tiger Company was rendered combat incapable at Kursk as a result of having so many vision blocks shot out the tanks were not only unfightable, but Company and Battalion stocks of same were exhausted, causing a delay of some two weeks to get them from Regiment. There were numerous eye casualties among the TCs, some serious, and a case in which several weeks of hospitalization were required for a TC who had his face smashed by the entire vision block assembly torn loose and driven into it. ATR units were indeed deployed in large formations, sometimes entire Regiments on primary axes of approach. Some idea of the volume of ATR fire may be seen in Tiger 216 which had hundreds of hits from ATRs. 227, in fact, so many the hit breakdown made it into the Tigerfibel. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/articles/tiger-panzer-vi-combat-and-operational-evaluation-1-252-hits-taken-in-combat-ww2-by-rob-schafer.html Regards, John Kettler

Military History Visualized (a German military historian) dissected the Soviet manual on them and came up with all sort of useful stuff, including the surprising to me revelation there was a 500 meter range advantage for the PTRS (1500 meters) over the PTRD (1000). The reason, considering they're practically identical save in the action, is that they have two different kinds of sight. With the cruder single shot PTRD lacking the slider type sight commonly found on military rifles. This is the first time I ever heard of this 50% range advantage for the more complex and expensive, higher ROF PTRS. Turns out the Soviet manual is also wrong about the internal layout of the Panzer III in the aimpoint diagram. Bizarrely, there's no diagram for frontal engagements. Since the manual goes into the dos and don'ts of positioning, open fire ranges and such (ideal range, an oh so exciting 50-100 meters) and such, that is highly relevant to using these weapons in CM, though obviously game engine limitations will constrain things a bit. As a bonus, there's some excellent footage of a Panzer III lang and, I believe, a Panzer IVG. Regards, John Kettler

pnarki, It's a big weapon, but shorter than many other rifles. Though the Kar98K is the same length as the M1 Garand, the Mosin-Nagant rifle is 1.2 m long, the Type 38 Arisaka 1.25 meters for the longer version. Regards, John Kettler

Was trying to find this info for one of my CoC colleagues in the M3 (towed) and M6 (portee) 37 mm Guns, but failed miserably. Happily, I found the data in the tank manual, Page 92 shows the fully developed pattern was 20 yards wide and could go as far as 200 yards. Before that ( the first 70 yards), the pattern is a a very narrow cone. Interestingly, the manual says the M2 may be fired while stationary or moving. Regards, John Kettler

Regards, John Kettler