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von Lucke

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Posts posted by von Lucke

  1. Originally posted by DrD:

    The B1-bis was the main battle tank of the French army in 1940. Considered one of the most powerful and advanced tanks in the world, it was hampered only by it's low speed and cost of production. .

    You fail to mention the Char B's most glaring Achilles Heel: The very noticable, very vulnerable, external radiator mounted on the left-rear hull. German gunners learned very quickly to aim for this soft spot.
  2. Originally posted by DrD:

    What carried the day for the Nazi invaders was a greater imaginativeness in planning. France and its allies "made no effort to understand how or why German thinking might differ from theirs," did not allow for surprise, believed that their defenses would shield them...

    The original invasion plan called for a limited-goals version of the Schlieffen Plan used in 1914. Hardly "imaginative". Like the old saw goes, "every army trains to re-fight it's last war". In this case, the French were right. It was only at the last minute (due to an intelligence compromise) that Hitler approved Manstein's "Sickle Stroke".
  3. Originally posted by Sergei:

    Hmm, which halftrack has a remote MG? I know that late war StuG's have them. They can be fired unbuttoned, I think the fire arc is limited though.

    Actually, both the 250 and 251 series do. Have had since CMBO. It's not listed in the unit info screen, but they will fire while buttoned up.

    (But don't feel bad about missing it --- it was a couple of years before I found that out, myself).

  4. Actually, I've copied over sound files from CMBO to CMBB to CMAK --- I've increased the volume on some (arty, mostly), decreased it on others (burning noise), and replaced some completely (ambient background, small arms). By this point, I'm not sure which ones are original, and which aren't.

    But I can tell you that most sound files are numbered the same all the way through. So, if you like those CMBO .wav files, copy them over to CMAK.

    Though, you might search around for Oddball_E8's "Father of None Sound Mod". He put together quite the collection. Ncrawler also put together some sounds back in the CMBO days that were pretty good.

  5. Originally posted by flamingknives:

    The Challenger was a bastardised attempt to retro-fit a 17pr. into a Cromwell-based chassis, rather than being a tank in it's own right. As a result, it looked and was very bad. The first tank purpose built for the full-scale 17pr. was the Centurion. Even the Comet, with it's cut-down 17pr., the 77mm, was a better tank, as it had been designed, rather than adapted, with the gun in mind.

    True.

    Always liked the Comet, tho. Prolly the ultimate evolution of the cruiser series.

  6. In CM terms the loss of a Bn or Coy HQ is negligible --- they only serve as "spare" platoon HQ's. While CM is supposed to be a battalion level wargame, it's actual functionality is very much at the platoon level.

    In RL, it's at the Company level that Things Get Done. The destruction of the Company HQ in the midst of battle might not have any effect on the current battle --- assuming everything goes as planned. But you can't have the platoons running willy-nilly hither-and-yon at their own recognizance. Who's going to co-ordinate support with flanking companies? Call up the Weapons Platoon? Commit the reserve platoon? Decide whether the right or left flank needs to move forward or retreat and coordinate with any / all of the above elements while doing so? Platoon commanders are too busy concentrating on what's happening right in front of their faces to worry about the rest of that stuff (and more). For Battalion HQ's, think of all of the above, only x10. The higher you go, the more strategic the concerns, and the more important the decisions are to the over-all battle.

    In short, the Platoon is way over-emphasized in CM, thus minimizing the usefulness of the Coy and Bn command elements. But since we, the Players, serve as the Coy and Bn CO's anyway, does it really make any difference?

  7. Originally posted by Leopard_2:

    > How do you say "good ol' boy" in German?

    Literally, "guter alter Junge", but I'm not sure that's what you intended to say. As the term doesn't seem to be properly defined in your language, "Bodenständig" (down to earth) is the closest I could come up with. Give me a better definition of "good ol' boy", and I give you a better translation. ;)

    I think wbs would be much better qualified than I to render a definition of this American colloquialism --- but, if you've ever seen an American TV show from the '80's called The Dukes of Hazard, you might get the gist of it.
  8. Originally posted by Philippe:

    Unlikely. How you fight tends to be heavily informed by your culture and your society's agendas, and very high on the Aztec agenda was taking prisoners alive to be used for human sacrifice. That's why they were always at a disadvantage in combat with Europeans who seemed to give personal survival by killing as many of the enemy as possible a very high priority. And don't forget that the Spaniards were backed up by thousands of the Aztecs' enraged former subjects who were sick and tired of feeding the Mexican human sacrifice machine. One of the interesting things about reading Bernal Diaz is that the sheer horror that he felt when walking into Aztec temples gets transmitted across the centuries -- a bit like rolling into Auschwitz in '45.

    Here and I thought I was the only one to have read A True History of the Conquest of New Spain.

    What also gets translated down through the centuries was the conquistadores casual indifference toward slaughtering the natives. I was particularly struck by one passage where del Castillo describes using body fat taken from a recently slain native to grease down his sword.

    Given how things turned out, I often wonder if the Tlaxcalans finally regretted overthrowing the Aztecs for the Spanish, in the end.

  9. Interesting to note that in January 1943, after attending the Casablanca Conference, Eisenhower had his staff draw up a tentative plan for the invasions of Corsica and Sardinia. He was evidently under the impression that they were the next objective after Tunisia. It wasn't until sometime in May that he got the word that Husky would aim for Sicily.

    Even so, I believe there was still some talk of going after Corsica right after Sicily. (I suppose once Sicily fell, and the Italian government began secret negotiations for surrender, going the long way around seemed superfulous).

    But I see yr point, and I'd have to agree it makes strategic sense. But when it comes to Churchill's Hellenic jones, "strategic sense" are two words that never seem to apply.

  10. Originally posted by mscano:

    I've got a computer running Windows98SE. When I install the 61.76 drivers and try to run any CM game, I get blue screen of death. When I use older drivers (56.64), the games run fine. Anyone else have this problem and how is it fixed? Video card is a Geforce4 ti4200 w/ 128mb ram.

    :confused:

    YES, I DO!!!!!!!!!

    I just installed the 61.76 drivers when I got Half-Life 2 --- which, BTW, runs fine with 'em --- but whenever I try and run CMAK or CMBB, the 'ol BSOD!!!!!

    WTF????

    PS: Win98SE / GeForce4 Ti 4600 (no overclocking!).

    AAARRRRGGGHHH, etc, etc, etc...

    EDIT: It would appear that the 66.93 WHQL drivers for Win2k / XP are the same as 61.76 Win9x. Double-ARRGGGGG!!!

    [ November 30, 2004, 06:10 PM: Message edited by: von Lucke ]

  11. Originally posted by the_enigma:

    Why where about where they deployed, ive read about some of there battles, a capture and hold operation on some airbase. Always asummed it was in the desert or such. :S?

    Bône, Algeria --- 3rd Battalion, 1st Brigade. (I did a scenario on it, "Bad to the Bône").

    3rd Batt was mobilized for the op so quickly (less than two weeks notice), that they jumped inot NA with their standard-issue Northern European uniforms. I think the other two battalions that went in later also wore the same uni. This was winter of 1942 remember --- and it gets damn cold in the desert at night. I'm sure they appreciated the Denison smock all the more then.

    Oh, and if you want to read a really harrrowing account of the action faced by the British Paras in Tunisia, look up 2nd Battalion's raid on Depienne / Oudna: Abandoned 50 miles behind enemy lines, they where written off by the High Command --- but a certain Colonel John Frost (you may know that name) led them on a march through hostile territory to their own lines --- loosing 50% of the battalion along the way.

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