Andreas

Crete - pass. Never read anything about it. If you want to read an excellent book on the Aegean desaster in 1943, get 'Churchill's Folly'. It is all that Beevor is not. Stalingrad - Chuikov's book on Stalingrad, available in English, isa very good start from the Soviet side (just ignore the ideological dross). For the surrounding battle, Glantz 'From the Don to the Dnjepr'. Allegedly the best blow by blow account, although in a weird coffee table format and with a cringe-making title is Stephen Walsh's 'Stalingrad - Hell in the cauldron'. While I have not been able to bring myself to shell out the money (yet), the book 'Death of the leaping horseman' (privately published, look for the website on Google) details the fate of 24. Panzerdivision in Stalingrad, based again on interviews and documentary evidence. Berlin - Cornelius Ryan's 'Berlin - the last battle' is a must-read, and has stood the test of time extremely well, AFAICT. AIUI, Beevor does not add anything to it apart from that claim on the nuclear angle. Again, Ryan interviewed a number of the key actors, amongst them Konev. Also, Konev's memoirs, second volume (The year 1944/45) are a very good read on the topic - unlike other Soviet officers he is sparing on ideological dross. Zhukov's memoirs are interesting, but nowhere near as good. There is a German book dealing with the Halbe cauldron in which most of 9. Armee perished - it is on my stack of books to read, but I have yet to get around to it. Siegfried Knappe's 'Soldat' (English title) details elements of the Berlin battle at the beginning. He was chief of staff to the military commander of Berlin, IIRC. I hope this is somewhat helpful. [ September 03, 2003, 08:09 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

I read his book on the Spanish civil war, and was left unimpressed. Had a look at his Stalingrad book and decided not to bother any further with him after that. Two other board members whose opinion I hold in very high regard think that his Stalingrad book was an abuse of perfectly good paper, and his Berlin book was a total waste of space, distasteful, and boring. Respectively. I am paraphrasing to some degree.

I don't know much about Freyberg's record, but I would not trust a book by Beevor much further on anything than my 2-year old nephew can throw it. ISTR that Ellis is harsh on him, but qualifies it by saying he was a good divisional commander, just out of his depth as a corps commander. Or maybe that is from a beer-hazed conversation with Kip in The Chandos. Hmmm...

My suspicion is that most times it was not the spear that won though, and this was the same when facing the Soviets with the Pak36 in 1944. Simply not enough decent AT weaponry going around - but then again, given the choice between facing an IS-2 with the Pak36 or a Panzerfaust, I would opt for the Pak36. At least you have a bit more of a chance to leg it after you tried and failed. Incidentally, could that be the reason why so many of these guns are now in museums?

The placement of the squad over the tile is abstracted, so some members will be closer, some further away than 24m, regardless of what the interface tells you. This is also the reason why you can see them apply a grenade bundle or a magnetic mine at 15m or carrying out hand-to-hand combat while still 30m from the enemy squad.

Los, I guess that maybe down to there not being a large pool of senior officers to replace the duds with, in the Commonwealth, and a reluctance to let the British command the Commonwealth forces directly. Probably related to the WW I experience. Michael had posted elsewhere about the lack of training for senior Canadian officers. Sacking senior commanders in the British Army did happen frequently, e.g. in Africa, and again some much needed weeding early on in Normandy.

AIUI, doctrine was to use them as a single platoon along the most likely approach route for tanks.

Minor point of Niggle - they realised that a long time before the Berlin Operation. These 'Schweige' (mute) MGs were a very serious headache. Probably the best way to find out where they were was to conduct a very strong reconnaissance in force, strong enough to make the German defenders believe that it was a serious attempt to break through the line, and then have intel personnel observe the battle and check where the tracer is coming from.

Can't remember whether I did translate 'Assault Rifle' as Angriffssturmriffel oder 'Nicht projizierende Abstandswaffe die 'Bumm' macht'. Must be my age. Which one would be right? Have you got anymore examples with dodgy expressions in the CDV manual (preferably from the German manual though and not from Google and the Sueddeutsche)? If so, feel free to email them to me, I am actually quite interested in getting better at it, and would like to learn from my mishtakes.

And THOSE are the safest men on the battlefield. </font>

Would they not normally have communicated by smoke signals (that's how they did it on Leros in 1943)? I can imagine radio to be quite useless, because 'that clump of woods 200 yards NNE from our forward position' does not look markedly different from any other clump of woods, and where the heck is your forward position anyway? While if you pop a red smoke grenade onto the target, everyone's a winner. Except for the guys who are wondering why they have red smoke emanating from their trench.

I have no clue what you are talking about. What did I put in my post that you did not say? But I note that instead of addressing the point of whether friendly fire incidents in the Red Army were the results of recklessness, as you claimed, you have resorted to talking about something completely unrelated. Oh well.

The 'other chap's' name was Konev. I think you are labouring under a large number of misconceptions about how the Soviet system worked in the direction of the war, what actually happened when, who was involved, and generally on how military operations proceed, if you think that the Soviets used less planning than the western allies for their late-war operations. You also appear to know very little about the Berlin operation, so I would go out on a limb here and say that your interpretation is just plain wrong. Whether Stalin set up a competition or not is not proven. This interpretation is based on Konev's memoirs, who himself interpreted Stalin not giving him a firm boundary beyond a certain point as an invitation to move north. Which he did. When friendly fire became a risk though, a firm boundary was immediately established, even though it meant that the capture of the Reichstag was postponed a bit. The initial setup was such that friendly fire was a physical impossibility - the bridgeheads were too far apart. When the pincers met, friendly fire possibly happened, but in the confusion of the battle that was hardly unexpected, and it was rapidly sorted out by the establishment of a boundary. What mine-field clearance has to do with this is completely beyond me. That friendly fire was not an issue during the Normandy campaign is probably news to the casualties from friendly fire in Normandy.

Well d'uh... I am very sorry for overlooking this! Thank you Sergei! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (escaped exclamation marks from Matt's zoo)

Well, I would be interested to hear from you why you think that the reason for blue-on-blue was recklessness in one case, and confusion in another. Please enlighten me as to why it was not confusion in both cases. What about the short-bombing incidents in Cobra and Tractable? Confusion? Recklessness? What about the British APCs blown up in GW I? Confusion? Recklessness? If I were you, I would not answer here, but instead sell the immense expertise in military matters that you must possess to be able to make such judgements to a defense corporation. They pay good money for it.

Is that the same 'recklessness' as displayed during the race for Baghdad in 2003, where US forces were firing on US forces at times! Inquiring minds want to know.

Believe me, you'll notice the difference when you are there.

I spent a lot of the last two days (bank-holiday weekend and I was not feeling well enough to go hiking) playing a TCP/PBEM game with Kip. He set it up as a 2-battle operation, set during the Korsun Operation. Basically I commanded remnants of 4th Panzer trying to break through to the encircled parts of 1. Panzerarmee. He tried to stop me. The task was to take my company of chaps and 17 Panzer IV through a valley bottom to the green fields beyond. Each battle 60+ turns. There was next to no action for about 50 turns. I very methodically cleared the valley bottom against very little resistance, just a few snipers. Then I ran into the first defensive line (one Zis-3 that killed 3 Panzer IV before succumbing to a Grille 15cm round hitting its trench) and it all went pearshaped, because at the same time an artillery barrage struck my main infantry body. So when the first battle ended, I surveyed the field. I had lost 78 men (out of 350) and 5 tanks in total (three to the ATG, one to mines, one immobilised/abandoned in the second battle). I reckon 90% of his chaps never saw action. He had 14 casualties and one gun lost. I decided to withdraw and try again. The main problem was that I had lost most of my infantry, so screening the tanks on the valley bottom would be an impossibility. I think this was one of the most challenging games I ever played. Very very little happened - it was just a case study of clearing an advance route where at every corner you can hit the enemy. Sniping caused considerable concern. It felt pretty close to what happened really, and Kip and I both agreed that breaking off the battle at the point when I decided not to press it was the right decision. Very slow, very little force density, very little action, but still a great game. Reminded me why I love this game so much.

Great stuff Andrew. I have been waiting for this one, and even MikeyD's T34s could not fill the void in my life created by the absence of a good mod for the SU76. Thank you for lifting me to a higher plain of happyness.

Ahem - 'could have failed easily if...' Those are some stiff requirements for 'easy'. So how many German forces would have been released by a non-invasion in France in Summer 1944, and in time to defeat in succession Bagration, L'vov Sandomierz and then Iassy, i.e. not when the autumn storms hit the canal?

Perhaps, but that would be very stupid, wouldn't it? But you can always ask me. Let me know when you have dug out the source for the 300 AFVs.

ATI Radeon 7000 AGP 32MB is the right answer mefinks. Needs to be the Mac version. Look on Ebay. [ August 25, 2003, 03:14 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Woops, completely misread your sentence about the losses. My bad, thanks for the correction.

That you check your facts. And that you do not go around comparing the criticism of silly posts to one of the more obnoxious and repugnant regimes that this planet has seen lately. And that is where my anger comes from. To now claim it is a joke - well, whatever. If you think that is amusing, you'll get into the troll shelf, as far as I am concerned. Not that this will bother you in the least, I am sure. The 'facts' of pricing are in this thread by the way. Enjoy this phase of your life Dandelion.

Strikingly unhelpful is to make bold claims that are completely untrue. To claim that pulling Reinald up on a very silly mistake that gives the completely wrong impression about BFC's product policy is Talibanesque is immature. Edit to add - if by 'the demo' you meant the CMBB demo, then all I can say is that you are making a very broad judgement on very little, not to say, next to no expertise. I know a number of people who no longer touch CMBO. I de-installed it a long time ago. Whether it is the same basic engine or not is completely irrelevant. To all intents and purposes, it is a different, much improved game. Are you sure you are not Lt. Hortlund? I agree that there is a very problematic climate in this forum when people like you feel they can just throw out random claims without checking their facts first. To then try to hide the boo-boo behind some balooney about Taliban is just plain stupid. I had thought a bit more of you Dandelion. Oh well, goes to show I am not the greatest judge of character. [ August 25, 2003, 08:43 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]