John Kettler

What I know for sure is that it was an SPI  game and that founder Jim Dunnigan wrote that pithy rejoinder. Believe the game may've been WURZBURG, for I distinctly recall there was a flap after the city fathers discovered their beloved city was going to be bought in. Certainly, the response from Dunnigan to the depictic a tac nuke question was emphatic and definitely thought-provoking, but not as much as the revaltion of a REAL Soviet war plan after the Berlin Wall came down which revealed they would use 200 tac nukes to reach the Channel in TWO weeks. A terrifying read! International Defense Review once published a German military analysis of what a single aptly named MIRVED SS-18/SATAN ICBM could do to Germany. Bye bye Deutschland!

https://xenagoguevicene.wordpress.com/2018/09/16/wwiii-plan-soviet-army-planned-to-use-200-tactical-nukes-to-capture-western-europe-in-2-weeks-with-invasion-by-conventional-forces-by-zachary-keck-national-interest-16-sept-2018/

Regards,

John Kettler

MBT was so wildly out of touch with reality that even LSD couldn't be used to explain it. For example, a T-80 engaging a Gen One Abrams couldn't penetrate it frontally from one hex range. The reality was that a PT-76 could reliably kill one from effective 76 mm engagement range because the original Abrams armor design was siliceous core steel sandwich just like that on the aborted T95 program (beaten out by the M48 series). This was practically heart attack inducing when the CIA's top HEAT guy, Dr. Joseph Backofen, the dean of HEAT history, design and effects, briefed us at the SECRET and change (no notes or handouts) first CIA Soviet Threat Technology Conference in 1985. The munition was first recovered during the Yom Kippur War by Israel but not provided to the US until 1984 (great ally, right?), despite having been declared obsolete sometime in the late 1960s, thus allowing its export. As if that wasn't bad enough, the US found that traditional static penetration testing of cannon launched HEAT understated performance as much as 40% when dynamic testing (realistic impact velocities) was used. This was because these Russian warheads were specifically designed to take advantage of that kinetic impetus.

Regards,

John Kettler

John,  well first off glad you enjoyed the AAR.  As to the TOWs, in game the thermal sight can see thru smoke.  In RL the jury was split.  Most refs state that the sight had “limited capability” assuming the smoke/haze was not too thick or treated:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=uPm_ohVUidIC&pg=RA2-PA27&lpg=RA2-PA27&dq=AN/TAS+4+thermal+sight+and+smoke&source=bl&ots=sw47xwM97F&sig=ACfU3U3kWIRxdZnJPJkyBBOnKCD7H8Tv0Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFiaeW-onzAhUSd98KHUCKBm8Q6AF6BAgMEAM#v=onepage&q=AN%2FTAS 4 thermal sight and smoke&f=false
So for a Soviet commander this is a bit of a crapshoot with some vey high stakes if you make the wrong call.  

Sgt.Squarehead,

The difference between AT-3 of the Yom Kippur War and the AT-3B of this fight is dramatic. Warhead penetration is considerably improved, but the devastating improvement is in missile guidance, for AT-3B is SACLOS, not MCLOS. Thus, all the, er, gunner has to do is put the crosshairs on the target and keep them there--just like a TOW does. Consequently Ph is on par with the TOW. Believe the AT-3B was also faster than the AT-3.

Regards,

John Kettler

The_Capt,

Do you mean to tell us the people who fielded a jammer against every radar and transmitter of importance, including using MRL fired expendable radio jammers, can't return the favor? Used to deal with their jammers as part of my threat work, and the BRICK series was flat out scary. Let me give you some idea of Red capabilities. When the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, they deployed so much aerial and ground jamming (along with revolutionary radar absorbent chaff) that we couldn't see what was happening at all. 

Regards,

John Kettler

The_Capt,

Do you mean to tell us the people who fielded a jammer against every radar and transmitter of importance, including using MRL fired expendable radio jammers, can't return the favor? Used to deal with their jammers as part of my threat work, and the BRICK series was flat out scary. Let me give you some idea of Red capabilities. When the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, they deployed so much aerial and ground jamming (along with revolutionary radar absorbent chaff) that we couldn't see what was happening at all. 

Regards,

John Kettler

The_Capt,

On a BMP-1, the forward ports L and R are the only ones that will take the PKM. The rest are for the AKMS.




Regards,

John Kettler

The opening material and illos were priceless. Have a serious question for you, though. In your February 18 post, you say that the  TOW can fire through smoke. Except, it can't. Smoke blocks LOS, and without LOS, SACLOS guidance doesn't work. The standard TOW sight, absent, say, flares, isn't night capable, either. The Texas Instruments AN/TAS 4 thermal sight, which was designed to fit the TOW and other systems, does provide a night capability, but it most certainly is WX limited. How do I know? Was the Soviet Threat Analyst in the Operations Analysis Department of Hughes Aircraft Company, Missile Systems Group, which made the TOW. TOW studies and analyses were major parts of my department's work.
To give the mathematicians and computer modelers some sense of the real world, a TOW launcher was set up on a hill across the street on a hill not all that far from the plant and looking down into the Chatsworth Reservoir area behind the plant. Believe slant range was typical for Western Europe, maybe 700 yards or so. Was playing TC that day in a bailed NG M48A5, and with a real NG guy who worked at the plant driving it. We crewed the tank being used as the search target. We had rain (misty to moderate) and some fog. Great was their consternation when time and again, they couldn't see us at all, either visually with 7 x 50 binos or with the AN/TAS 4.
Unfortunately, the AN/TAS 4 is hard to find usable information about online, so I have no read on how it fares vs HC type smoke, let alone WP or RP. What I do know is that it wasn't until the US deployed advanced 8-12 micron FLIR systems that we finally had real ability to see through smoke, and to exploit that, the TOW 2 was fitted with what we called the waffle iron (gridded thermal source) in addition to the usual xenon visible band beacon. Having the advanced FLIR but only a xenon only TOW wouldn't work through smoke, because there was no way for the tracker to see the missile's xenon beacon through smoke.

Believe the American advantage/s you describe in the game may not have existed IRL. Would love to see some solid tech data on the deployed US systems supposed to be able to work through smoke in 1982. If you put a blanket of smoke in front of his positions, then you deny him the few long range firing positions available, allowing you to close on him and engage him in a knife fight where you have huge weight of numbers. Can tell you the Russians did careful map analysis of all the good firing positions for the US screening force and plotted fires on them. This would've been especially bad for ATGM armed helos waiting to rise up and fire!

Regards,

John Kettler

By a fluke, came across this video with the stunning story of an epic active defense by Israeli tank commander LT Zvika Greengold during the Yom Kippur War. What he did was so damaging to the Syrians that he may well have saved Israel from defeat. Am posting this because it shows the true killing potential of a good tank (Centurion) handled by real tank pros and what an aggressive, motivated TC can do, using terrain and calculated daring extremely well, against even a huge combined arms force of vastly greater power and far worse training and experience. What he did is the essence of what the US planned to do to the Soviets in Europe when fighting while greatly outnumbered. Through much of some 24 hours of almost continuous combat, and never having more than a handful of tanks at most, often fighting solo, he time and time again savaged the attacking Syrians in their T-55s and mercifully fewer T-62s, with much of the action taking place at night, with the foe having active IR and the Israelis no such help. During this action, he swapped tanks three times after they were hit. He fought on, even burned, until he could do no more. By then, reinforcements had arrived.

While the situation described is obviously not a typical CMx2 battle, I believe that it would be a fascinating scenario through which to explore the core situation, but while having no idea myself as to how VPs would be handled. If nothing else, it would be a real performance test in seeing how well players might fare as the defender in a similar situation. During this action, LT Greengold became a multiple tank ace and was awarded the Medal of Valor (Israel's highest military honor) for his timely incredible successful defense against overwhelming odds.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

This looks really good to me.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

By a fluke, came across this video with the stunning story of an epic active defense by Israeli tank commander LT Zvika Greengold during the Yom Kippur War. What he did was so damaging to the Syrians that he may well have saved Israel from defeat. Am posting this because it shows the true killing potential of a good tank (Centurion) handled by real tank pros and what an aggressive, motivated TC can do, using terrain and calculated daring extremely well, against even a huge combined arms force of vastly greater power and far worse training and experience. What he did is the essence of what the US planned to do to the Soviets in Europe when fighting while greatly outnumbered. Through much of some 24 hours of almost continuous combat, and never having more than a handful of tanks at most, often fighting solo, he time and time again savaged the attacking Syrians in their T-55s and mercifully fewer T-62s, with much of the action taking place at night, with the foe having active IR and the Israelis no such help. During this action, he swapped tanks three times after they were hit. He fought on, even burned, until he could do no more. By then, reinforcements had arrived.

While the situation described is obviously not a typical CMx2 battle, I believe that it would be a fascinating scenario through which to explore the core situation, but while having no idea myself as to how VPs would be handled. If nothing else, it would be a real performance test in seeing how well players might fare as the defender in a similar situation. During this action, LT Greengold became a multiple tank ace and was awarded the Medal of Valor (Israel's highest military honor) for his timely incredible successful defense against overwhelming odds.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

This drone is whipping along at such a clip you may wish to slow down playback speed. From what I can tell, this is recent imagery.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

What a fascinating discussion! There's an apt historical anecdote I'd like to share.

In 1820, the whaler Essex was repeatedly rammed, and ultimately sunk, by an enormous enraged sperm whale, ultimately inspiring the Melville novel Moby Dick. The story of what happened after the skipper, John Pollard, and crew took to the lifeboats is, for want of a better description, serially gruesome.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/essex-ship

But what came in the aftermath (forget where I read it) was in some ways worse. At a Nantucket party the mother of one of the crewmen who didn't make it it approached the former skipper and said: "I believe you knew my son" and named him, to which he replied: "Why know him, ma'am, I et him."

Ref the OP, here, also, we find people being killed as food, not dying and then being used as food. At least in this case, lots were drawn.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

This looks really good to me.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

For WW I (and maybe mass produced tanks in general), the hands down winner for ugliest, in my view, at least, is the St. Chamond. Not only does is look ugly, stupid and ungainly, but from a functional aspect, it seems optimized for taking core samples out of the far wall of a trench when crossing!



The Cromwell baffles me. As a tank that looks martial? Full marks. But as a design I'd want to go to war in? Seems to me that the positive aspects of the Crusader, all those sloping surfaces, were abandoned utterly, resulting in an armored box whose only real armor slope on upper hull and above was the glacis plate, a device for assisting arriving projectiles to hit the driver's plate. with everything else vertical. Compared to a Crusader, the Cromwell was a super tank.

Regards,

John Kettler

SAN loss near certainty, but delight certain! 830 paintings covering a multitude of periods and subjects.

https://scrolller.com/r/BattlePaintings

Regards,

John Kettler

A Canadian 17 Pounder Sherman (Firefly) of the 21st Armoured Regt. (The Governor General's Foot Guards) in Wissel, Germany. March/April, 1945.

The tank appears to be fitted with an 8-tube smoke discharger I've never seen before. It's a fine study of a combat vehicle and building damage at excellent resolution.




Regards,

John Kettler

A Canadian 17 Pounder Sherman (Firefly) of the 21st Armoured Regt. (The Governor General's Foot Guards) in Wissel, Germany. March/April, 1945.

The tank appears to be fitted with an 8-tube smoke discharger I've never seen before. It's a fine study of a combat vehicle and building damage at excellent resolution.




Regards,

John Kettler

For comparison, here's how the Japanese did it in the same time frame. This is nothing short of astounding, but there's nothing in the video at all on the pole mines visible in the keyframe. Also, while the Japanese incendiary bottles were designed to use a wick (impossible to light under windy conditions), happily for them, the tanks, under extreme heat conditions, provided the means to ignite them. By contrast, the Russians used a wickless system employing a chemical igniter activated when the bottle broke. 
 
Regards,

John Kettler

What's shown here would be broadly applicable to German and probably Axis forces working closely with the Germans. Nor would it be confined solely to the Eastern Front. The guy who did this is a dyed-in-the-wool hands on German (nationality) military historian. He is brutal on every nation's defects in equipment tactics or both and not one of those fanboy types. There is an error of omission or lack of understanding regarding the use of the axe, too, for German close combat against tanks training films show that one important use is to bend exposed MG barrels, using the back of the axe head as a hammer, as a way to defang the tank , thus facilitating its ultimate outright destruction. Another tactic not mentioned at all was putting a grenade up the cannon barrel. There's video from Iraq of this being done with devastating effect on a T-72. Strongly suspect the gun breech was open when this wass done, for the effect was pretty much instantaneous. 
 

Regards,

John Kettler

A Canadian 17 Pounder Sherman (Firefly) of the 21st Armoured Regt. (The Governor General's Foot Guards) in Wissel, Germany. March/April, 1945.

The tank appears to be fitted with an 8-tube smoke discharger I've never seen before. It's a fine study of a combat vehicle and building damage at excellent resolution.




Regards,

John Kettler

A Canadian 17 Pounder Sherman (Firefly) of the 21st Armoured Regt. (The Governor General's Foot Guards) in Wissel, Germany. March/April, 1945.

The tank appears to be fitted with an 8-tube smoke discharger I've never seen before. It's a fine study of a combat vehicle and building damage at excellent resolution.




Regards,

John Kettler

What's shown here would be broadly applicable to German and probably Axis forces working closely with the Germans. Nor would it be confined solely to the Eastern Front. The guy who did this is a dyed-in-the-wool hands on German (nationality) military historian. He is brutal on every nation's defects in equipment tactics or both and not one of those fanboy types. There is an error of omission or lack of understanding regarding the use of the axe, too, for German close combat against tanks training films show that one important use is to bend exposed MG barrels, using the back of the axe head as a hammer, as a way to defang the tank , thus facilitating its ultimate outright destruction. Another tactic not mentioned at all was putting a grenade up the cannon barrel. There's video from Iraq of this being done with devastating effect on a T-72. Strongly suspect the gun breech was open when this wass done, for the effect was pretty much instantaneous. 
 

Regards,

John Kettler

This is a truly awful film, so why post about it? It's full of Soviet military hardware, including the star of the show, a then state-of-the-art Ka-50 Black Shark, NATO codename HOKUM! The video's not crisp, but even so, you'll be able to see some amazing things, including Soviet AFVs in an operational mountainous environment, not the Poligon. This film obviously had Soviet MoD support, for real AFVs get shot up and blown up. The bill alone just for the helicopters used must've been enormous, but I suspect a lot of it was charged off as training. Because some of what's shown is pretty gruesome in places, I've opted not to post a link, but the war toy goodness is on YT and the title for this post is how YT lists the video.  The impressive maneuvering capabilities of the Ka-50 are on considerable display. If you're used to regular helicopters, prepare to be surprised. 

Regards,

John Kettler

They Fought for the Motherland, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk who directed the 8-hour War and Peace that cost $100,000,00 in then-year dollars and had 40,000 Red Army soldiers in it, follows a Rifle Regiment in the run up to the Battle of Stalingrad. The shoot location had to be moved when digging entrenchments turned up bones of the war head and lots of UXO. Another one for which the link is good but Mosfilm blocks embedding! 
 
Regards,

John Kettler