John Kettler

Runs over to the gramophone, cranks the handle and puts on "I'm Still Waiting" by Diana Ross. We normally rely on you for this kind of stuff John.
I was never able to find a Major Foster or Forster serving with The Hants. The only Major Forster I could find served with The Berks in WW1.

Control-S  / Command-S is your friend.
If you are spending more than 7 seconds on a web page, spend another second to save it.

Hadn't seen this fine set of pics before and, frankly, am not really all that great on discerning the various T-72 and T-90 versions. AllI I sought to do was find a way to get those photos over here, especially after I noticed the new (to me) protective scheme. The article you provided was very good. It packed a lot of information into a small piece.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

Warts 'n' all,
Too funny! I did find it to begin with and definitely passed the word tomy CM colleagues, too. Would've made all the sense in the world to put it on the CMBN Forum, but for the life of me, I can't find the blasted thing. Maybe because it's no longer existent? That happened to me when I failed to print out a most illuminating analysis of what Russian ATRs did to a Tiger Kompanie at Kursk. So extensive were deliberately targeted vision block losses to the cupolas that the entire Kompanie was unfightable, despite Abteilung stocks being exhausted, forcing getting them from Regiment, which took two weeks. Just as well, for many TCs had glass in their eyes, putting them temporarily out of action, and a few had the vision block and bracket smashed straight into their faces. The guys who got the hit in the face with armor glass and the stout steel bracket for it were hospitalized for upwards of two weeks. When I next looked for the account, it was gone. Huge informational loss of some highly unusual and valuable information!  As for the current matter, I think the problem lies in defective memory as to the unit. Believe it was one of those two or three part names, but the short form was five, with the last letter being "S" for sure. As it is, I don't really have enough to use the Internet Wayback Machine, either. That's why I was hoping that seeing the OP might jog someone's memory. So far, no miracles on this project.

Regards,

John Kettler
 

That, unfortunately, presently remains correct, but this is something I can at least look at once I can DL. The subject matter of the new game was my job from Valentine's Day 1978 on for many years. Killing Soviet and Warsaw Pact AFVs was a major part of the Hughes Aircraft Missile Systems group product line, which included TOW, a whole bunch of Maverick versions, the developmental revolutionary WASP brilliant swarm missile, the deep strike massed armor killer ASSAULT BREAKER and more.  If a particular CMx2 title interests me, and I can afford it, I pre-order. May not be able to play now, but am fundamentally an optimist (I WILL be able to eventually play) and a BFC supporter, so pre-ordered anyway.

Regards,

John Kettler

That, unfortunately, presently remains correct, but this is something I can at least look at once I can DL. The subject matter of the new game was my job from Valentine's Day 1978 on for many years. Killing Soviet and Warsaw Pact AFVs was a major part of the Hughes Aircraft Missile Systems group product line, which included TOW, a whole bunch of Maverick versions, the developmental revolutionary WASP brilliant swarm missile, the deep strike massed armor killer ASSAULT BREAKER and more.  If a particular CMx2 title interests me, and I can afford it, I pre-order. May not be able to play now, but am fundamentally an optimist (I WILL be able to eventually play) and a BFC supporter, so pre-ordered anyway.

Regards,

John Kettler

That, unfortunately, presently remains correct, but this is something I can at least look at once I can DL. The subject matter of the new game was my job from Valentine's Day 1978 on for many years. Killing Soviet and Warsaw Pact AFVs was a major part of the Hughes Aircraft Missile Systems group product line, which included TOW, a whole bunch of Maverick versions, the developmental revolutionary WASP brilliant swarm missile, the deep strike massed armor killer ASSAULT BREAKER and more.  If a particular CMx2 title interests me, and I can afford it, I pre-order. May not be able to play now, but am fundamentally an optimist (I WILL be able to eventually play) and a BFC supporter, so pre-ordered anyway.

Regards,

John Kettler

That, unfortunately, presently remains correct, but this is something I can at least look at once I can DL. The subject matter of the new game was my job from Valentine's Day 1978 on for many years. Killing Soviet and Warsaw Pact AFVs was a major part of the Hughes Aircraft Missile Systems group product line, which included TOW, a whole bunch of Maverick versions, the developmental revolutionary WASP brilliant swarm missile, the deep strike massed armor killer ASSAULT BREAKER and more.  If a particular CMx2 title interests me, and I can afford it, I pre-order. May not be able to play now, but am fundamentally an optimist (I WILL be able to eventually play) and a BFC supporter, so pre-ordered anyway.

Regards,

John Kettler

LVTs needed even before then--Scheldt Estuary Campaign.

Regards,

John Kettler

It was photographed on the Eastern Front in 1943

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-197-1235-15%2C_Russland-Mitte%2C_Panzerjäger_"Marder_II".jpg
Regards,
John Kettler

The American Heritage Museum, which belongs to the Collings Foundation, has an IS-2, which will eventually be a runner. The Collings Foundation apparently bought a substantial part of the esteemed Jacques Littlefield collection after his death. The AHM is in Stow, Massachusetts. YT has several videos, in one of which it's Track Day for the IS-2 and, of all things, a Borgward B IV Ladungsleger. The term means charge layer, a big HE charge in an armored box it would trundle up and drop off right next to a vexatious strongpoint!  In this video, the IS-2 is already tracked and is being moved into the work area. The group doing a;; the work on these AFVs is Abrams Company of the United States Brotherhood Of Tanks and nothing to do with robots or internet mischief. The soundtrack, aside from a mournful Russian song, is highly distracting and many songs weird, given the subject matter.  Recommend muting it, for there's no VO or live dialogue you'd miss out on.
 
Regards,

John Kettler
 

chuckdyke,
In the prepared defense, what you say would make sense, and such installations were shown in that Sacred War video, but the accounts I read mentioned no field phones. It's absolutely true that the US supplied vast amounts of commo wire, field phones, switch boxes and more to Russia. This is readily verifiable in the Lend Lease shipment lists on HyperWar.

All,

Something worthy to note is that the Cover Armor Arc is the plan, if you will, but not necessarily the reality. The AI can, will and sometimes does override your plan, including firing prematurely and even engaging out of sector, for example. This is the result of the rightly dreaded under the hood calculations over which you are powerless. While you may think you're issuing orders, as far as the AI is concerned, they're more like strong suggestions. My understanding is that the better quality your troops, the better their morale and fatigue status, the more likely your plan will be followed. Since the typical CMx2 game for the defender involves very few ATGs and such, things like premature opening of fire can severely damage defense integrity when the offending weapon is dealt with quickly and decisively by direct and indirect fires. Similarly, an ATG which engages out of sector may create a de facto breach in the defense, allowing the enemy, whether AI or human, to go where their should be no way in.

The above reminds me of something sorely missing from the CM games from the get: the At My Command order to open fire. If you watch Russian war movies and series especially, the ATGs are rigidly controlled until explicitly ordered to fire (Ogon!), so as not to give away the battery position until crushing surprise fire can be delivered at very high Ph from close range. Not only is this an issue for AT ambushes but also for infantry ambushes. Haven't played CMSF, so can't speak to that, but have handled a hasty AT defense in CMBS. In none of them have I found a properly implemented capability to open devastating, stunning, simultaneous fire to gain fire superiority. As a result, ambushes don't work in-game anywhere nearly as well as they do in real combat. In turn, this causes significant losses which shouldn't be sustained. This is especially true when facing a high quality foe with modern equipment in CMBS, where a poorly executed attempt (uncooperative AI when using Cover Armor) to apply simultaneous fire to a larger heavily armed foe can get the defense shredded in a handful of minutes, if that. TOW 2B is a marvelous weapon, but if the struck T-90 series tank survives or has friends looking the right way, at typical combat range, the life expectancy of the firing Bradley CFV is likely to be exceedingly short, especially since there isn't very good modeling of hull down, leaving a huge chunk of the house on tracks Bradley CFV exposed when only the turret should be hittable.

Regards,

John Kettler

Doctrinal open fire range for the ZIS-3 was 750 meters and 500 meters for the 45 mm M1937 and M1942. IN the latter case, the weapon was accurate enough to target specific parts of the tank, such as tracks. The Red Army philosophy was to hold fire until a high hit probability would result, the idea being to open with surprise fire and then pour it on until the foe broke or the battery was blown up or overrun. See Drabkin's excellent Panzer Killers for more information.

Regards,

John Kettler



 

Doctrinal open fire range for the ZIS-3 was 750 meters and 500 meters for the 45 mm M1937 and M1942. IN the latter case, the weapon was accurate enough to target specific parts of the tank, such as tracks. The Red Army philosophy was to hold fire until a high hit probability would result, the idea being to open with surprise fire and then pour it on until the foe broke or the battery was blown up or overrun. See Drabkin's excellent Panzer Killers for more information.

Regards,

John Kettler



 

Doctrinal open fire range for the ZIS-3 was 750 meters and 500 meters for the 45 mm M1937 and M1942. IN the latter case, the weapon was accurate enough to target specific parts of the tank, such as tracks. The Red Army philosophy was to hold fire until a high hit probability would result, the idea being to open with surprise fire and then pour it on until the foe broke or the battery was blown up or overrun. See Drabkin's excellent Panzer Killers for more information.

Regards,

John Kettler



 

akd,

In my 11+ years as a Soviet Threat Analyst, I never saw the Ivon Ivonovitch (sic) pub. Had no idea such a thing existed and asked retired SFC Army Scout brother George whether he ever had one. He'd never seen one but liked the idea.
The T-62 side view is off, for the turret more nearly resembles the T-55 than the T-62, whose turret is pretty symmetric front and back when viewed from the side. Indeed, it was a point of instant recognition, being referred to as the inverted frying pan. Ivan is clearly talking about the T-62 when mentioning the 115 mm gun. The aiming point chart is a travesty, for the BRDM-2 is labeled BTR-60 and the BTR-60 a BRDM-22! Clearly, this document wasn't properly proofed, if proofed at all, before being sent to press. 

Had one of these full size posters in my office. Don't recall the scale, but it was donme in such a way that you could use a dollar bill to measure the items depicted.



and one of these in my desk drawer. Used it many times.


 
Got one of these from a former RAND nuclear weapon expert. Unfortunately, my Nuclear Effects Weapon Computer No. 2 somehow disappeared after I left military aerospace. It was pretty slick, because it allowed you to determine the effects of weapon A, in delivery mode B, against target C, of hardness D, with a CEP of E, to achieve a given result F. IN practice, it typically took less time to set up and run a given calculation than it did to type this description using two fingers. This manual computer neatly illustrated the value of decreasing CEP, which was the US approach to ICBM and SLBM design, as opposed to the big Soviet warheads and really bad CEP.




ng cavscout,
Never saw those, but as a kid in elementary school, got to read the USAF maintenance and safety mags via a USAF sergeant in maintenance who lived down the street from us. His daughter was our babysitter a number of times. Through those magazines, I learned about FOD, what sort of damage a screwdriver or flashlight left inside a jet engine could do, the importance of correct lube, PM and more, including the dire consequences of improperly safing or utterly failing to safe ejection seats before working in the cockpit! Had great stark b/w cartoons memorably illustrating what to do and what not to do when it came to taking care of your assigned aircraft.

Regards,

John Kettler

Most of us are broadly aware of Stalin's purges of the Red Army and their devastating impact on Soviet combat performance when the Germans invaded and for quite some time thereafter, but what if it wasn't quite that way? What if the numbers are enormously exaggerated? What if the truth was cloaked and then and largely remains so now, at least, here in the West? A Texas A&M history professor, Robert Reese, a SME on the Soviet military under Stalin and author of four books on that topic, takes a hard look at what really happened, how bad it was, who it affected, how, why, reporting biases, already existing officer shortfalls, training deficiencies and more. The true picture is far more complex, convoluted and nuanced than the cut and dried depiction we're used to encountering.

https://www.historynet.com/stalin-attacks-red-army.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

Doctrinal open fire range for the ZIS-3 was 750 meters and 500 meters for the 45 mm M1937 and M1942. IN the latter case, the weapon was accurate enough to target specific parts of the tank, such as tracks. The Red Army philosophy was to hold fire until a high hit probability would result, the idea being to open with surprise fire and then pour it on until the foe broke or the battery was blown up or overrun. See Drabkin's excellent Panzer Killers for more information.

Regards,

John Kettler



 

"Under White Cupolas" shows how the Soviet Desantniki trained and fought, together with some good material on the air landing troops, who came in by plane once an aerodrome was secured. The paratroopers fought in their jump coveralls and paratrooper helmets, were very lightly equipped relative to US and British airborne troops. This made them speedy by comparison. The pragmatic Russian approach to doing things simply is clearly on display (check out the supply bundles). Found it odd the Desantniki would destroy fuel and munition stocks on an airfield they planned to capture, but maybe that was in case they couldn't actually seize the objective, thus turning that mission into a raid instead to inflict crippling damage on that airfield.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

"Under White Cupolas" shows how the Soviet Desantniki trained and fought, together with some good material on the air landing troops, who came in by plane once an aerodrome was secured. The paratroopers fought in their jump coveralls and paratrooper helmets, were very lightly equipped relative to US and British airborne troops. This made them speedy by comparison. The pragmatic Russian approach to doing things simply is clearly on display (check out the supply bundles). Found it odd the Desantniki would destroy fuel and munition stocks on an airfield they planned to capture, but maybe that was in case they couldn't actually seize the objective, thus turning that mission into a raid instead to inflict crippling damage on that airfield.
 
Regards,

John Kettler

Friends of the Tank Museum posted on Toyota pickups being used by insurgents and posted this one, whose significance I didn't get initially because my eyes were blurry and I wasn't expecting to see what I did. Even without detonating, the RPG projectile had considerable penetration power. Would say, based on angle of impact and depth of penetration, this shot was fired from very close range and possibly from an entrenchment or foxhole.



Regards,

John Kettler

markus44,

The accounts I've read said that the M72 wasn't very effective vs the PT-76 because the flotation chambers acted as spaced armor against the relatively weak warhead. Believe much the same thing happened during WW II when US troops tried to kill the Ka-Mi amphibious tank frontally, only to be defeated by the big bolt-on flotation chamber. My recollection is that the only sure kill frontally by the LAW was a direct hit on the low, small conical turret. By contrast, the M19 106 mm recoilless rifle was a sure kill, since the ammunition grossly overmatched the PT-76's protection. 

LukeFF,

Rather than jump on me, how about you go find the book I referenced and see what Cockburn wrote? May've misattributed the author, but the story is burned into my memory. As for deliberately not reporting a serious deficiency or even lying to Moscow, go look at Kursk, where the Russians LOST (as in didn't know its location) an entire division for hours. Believe an assistant chief of staff for the owning Army was quietly sent to go find that unit. This was with the STAVKA emissary in the CP! That one was in Zamulin's phenomenal Destroying The Myth. Zamulin also reported severe losses being totally buried and not reported to Stalin himself, who was closely following the Kursk battle. Red Army commanders flat out lied to Stalin himself about the combat state of their units.

You also need to understand what Russian military personnel call the vertical stroke. This is a system in which a defect, failure or screwup further down the chain of command cascades vertically upward. This creates tremendous pressure not to report problems, for that blights the owning officer's career and that of his superiors. Going along to get along is the rule.
And just look at all the non-reporting and other matters that led led to Mathias Rust flying with impunity from Finland all the way to Red Square. This was a textbook case of the vertical stroke at work afterwards, for both the head of Air Defense and the mighty Minister of Defense himself were sacked, but so were some 150 lower ranking officers. The heaviest air defense system on the planet was penetrated and operated in for almost seven hours by a young idealist with 50 hours' flying time under his belt in a single-engine Cessna with added fuel stowage. Rust would've landed on Red Square, but there were too many people, so instead he wound up landing on a road near Lenin's tomb. His single act, intended to promote peace, made the Russian military the laughingstock of the world.

https://lflank.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/mathias-rust-and-his-flight-to-moscow/

The US has had similar problems, with an ongoing one being sexual abuse of female cadets at the service academies, abuse of women aboard ship and in various Army, Marine and Air Force units. Speaking of Marines, back when the V-22 Osprey was in development, the Corps was found to be gun decking the flight test logs to make the tilt rotor seem far safer than it was. The US Army rigged the survivability tests for the Bradley and got caught by Congressmen, resulting not only in a scandal but highly undesirable lampooning in a black comedy about the Bradley's development starring Kelsey Grammer. That film was called The Pentagon Wars.

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/18/us/tests-of-bradley-armored-vehicle-criticized.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars

With things like the above as context, it seems to me entirely possible, especially if the radar antennas are already iced up, thus high drag, that a powerful storm coming in at full force straight off the Pacific could indeed wreck those radars, especially if maintenance corners had been cut on them, something we know went on in the Soviet armed forces. Knowing what I know of the Soviet military, militaries in general and how organizations behave, the scenario wouldn't shock me. 

Before closing, would note that for seven years, the US Navy had a massive cheating scandal in its Nuclear Power Systems Program.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-navys-nuclear-cheating-scandal-is-worse-than-you-think-d0557a91f13

while the Air Force had a a huge scandal in proficiency testing of Minuteman missile crews and a senior missile officer who got drunk in Moscow!

https://news.yahoo.com/34-missile-launch-officers-implicated-nuclear-cheating-scandal-042221654.html 
 
Regards,

John Kettler

 

As I've several times noted in the last two decades, regardless of appearances, the PT-76, armed with the same gun as the T-34/76, was a potent tank killer, thanks to a HEAT round designed specifically to defeat the highly advanced steel-glass-steel armor planned for the T95 MBT, which was never produced because the US went the M48 route. The Israelis captured some of these rounds in the Yom Kippur War, but didn't provide any to the US until 1984. The only way the Egyptians could've gotten them was for these  first to be declared obsolete and replaced with something even nastier. That was when live fire tests found that it would frontally pierce the mighty XM-1 which had highly classified siliceous cored armor, the same thing the T95 had. Great was the consternation, and this is why the M1 HA was crash developed and fielded. Worse was to follow, for historically the US static fired HEAT warheads to test penetration. But the US discovered the Russian HEAT rounds, when tested dynamically, could penetrate as much as 40% better than static detonation showed. This was because their HEAT was specifically designed to take advantage of the velocity from the cannon launch. Source for these shockers was Dr. Joseph Backofen (world class HEAT expert and the CIA's SME on HEAT) at the Soviet Threat Technology Conference (U) 1985. This was a SECRET//NOFORN /WNINTEL  (No Foreign,/Warning Intelligence (Sources and Methods) Involved) no notes conference in which a terrified CIA, in the Year of the Spy, brought in its top Soviet weapon experts and told the defense industry threat people how bad things really were. Please understand that because its reports drew on contractor data and other proprietary information (PROPIN), we contractors hardly ever got to see what the CIA knew. During my 11+ years as a Soviet Threat Analyst, the only CIA reporting I saw was at that conference.
What we saw, in topic after topic, was terrifying, and it's a wonder no one died from one horrible shock after another. Not kidding! At least one guy was removed from the auditorium after getting into some sort of health difficulties. To give you some sense of how bad it was, thanks to great memory and specialized memory training, I came back and wrote up the entire conference, topic by topic. The resulting 40-page report turned the Operations Analysis Department manager's face paper white and moth agape. He was my boss's boss there. After reading it straight through and surfacing from that reading visibly traumatized, he decreed that only I, he and his boss were cleared to read it in its entirety, and others in the department were permitted to read only that part directly pertinent to their work--under his direct and constant supervision. Stated simply, in practically every military field, the Soviets had us dead to rights, and that was without factoring in the devastating crypto penetrations resulting from getting the crypto gear from the seizure of the USS PUEBLO and the key cards from the tremendously effective Walker-Whitworth spy ring. In the armor-anti-armor presentation, not only could they penetrate us and we couldn't penetrate them (T-64/T-72/T-80), but every anti-armor weapon in the inventory other than the Hellfire and the Maverick was judged useless frontally. The get well program cost the US billions. As if that wasn't bad enough, by the time we found out about a particular tank, it was often a decade or more before we got to really learn about it. The T-64 was kept in the interior military districts, well away from western eyes, to such effect we didn't see it for 20 years, dubbing it the M1984! 

Am hoping that CM: Cold War reflects these and other grim realities.

Regards,

John Kettler
 

As I've several times noted in the last two decades, regardless of appearances, the PT-76, armed with the same gun as the T-34/76, was a potent tank killer, thanks to a HEAT round designed specifically to defeat the highly advanced steel-glass-steel armor planned for the T95 MBT, which was never produced because the US went the M48 route. The Israelis captured some of these rounds in the Yom Kippur War, but didn't provide any to the US until 1984. The only way the Egyptians could've gotten them was for these  first to be declared obsolete and replaced with something even nastier. That was when live fire tests found that it would frontally pierce the mighty XM-1 which had highly classified siliceous cored armor, the same thing the T95 had. Great was the consternation, and this is why the M1 HA was crash developed and fielded. Worse was to follow, for historically the US static fired HEAT warheads to test penetration. But the US discovered the Russian HEAT rounds, when tested dynamically, could penetrate as much as 40% better than static detonation showed. This was because their HEAT was specifically designed to take advantage of the velocity from the cannon launch. Source for these shockers was Dr. Joseph Backofen (world class HEAT expert and the CIA's SME on HEAT) at the Soviet Threat Technology Conference (U) 1985. This was a SECRET//NOFORN /WNINTEL  (No Foreign,/Warning Intelligence (Sources and Methods) Involved) no notes conference in which a terrified CIA, in the Year of the Spy, brought in its top Soviet weapon experts and told the defense industry threat people how bad things really were. Please understand that because its reports drew on contractor data and other proprietary information (PROPIN), we contractors hardly ever got to see what the CIA knew. During my 11+ years as a Soviet Threat Analyst, the only CIA reporting I saw was at that conference.
What we saw, in topic after topic, was terrifying, and it's a wonder no one died from one horrible shock after another. Not kidding! At least one guy was removed from the auditorium after getting into some sort of health difficulties. To give you some sense of how bad it was, thanks to great memory and specialized memory training, I came back and wrote up the entire conference, topic by topic. The resulting 40-page report turned the Operations Analysis Department manager's face paper white and moth agape. He was my boss's boss there. After reading it straight through and surfacing from that reading visibly traumatized, he decreed that only I, he and his boss were cleared to read it in its entirety, and others in the department were permitted to read only that part directly pertinent to their work--under his direct and constant supervision. Stated simply, in practically every military field, the Soviets had us dead to rights, and that was without factoring in the devastating crypto penetrations resulting from getting the crypto gear from the seizure of the USS PUEBLO and the key cards from the tremendously effective Walker-Whitworth spy ring. In the armor-anti-armor presentation, not only could they penetrate us and we couldn't penetrate them (T-64/T-72/T-80), but every anti-armor weapon in the inventory other than the Hellfire and the Maverick was judged useless frontally. The get well program cost the US billions. As if that wasn't bad enough, by the time we found out about a particular tank, it was often a decade or more before we got to really learn about it. The T-64 was kept in the interior military districts, well away from western eyes, to such effect we didn't see it for 20 years, dubbing it the M1984! 

Am hoping that CM: Cold War reflects these and other grim realities.

Regards,

John Kettler
 

Friends of the Tank Museum posted on Toyota pickups being used by insurgents and posted this one, whose significance I didn't get initially because my eyes were blurry and I wasn't expecting to see what I did. Even without detonating, the RPG projectile had considerable penetration power. Would say, based on angle of impact and depth of penetration, this shot was fired from very close range and possibly from an entrenchment or foxhole.



Regards,

John Kettler