Andreas

Doesn't sound that unusual to me, for the time period, but certainly could be the record holder. Similar densities were reached in the Iassy-Kishinev Operation in late August 1944. I had described this operation here.

BTW - the reason I only saw this now is that those are not really tactical questions, they are operational. When someone says 'tactical' on this board I think of questions along the lines of 'How do I use the SU-76 against the King Tiger?' (answer: very carefully).

The artillery density got higher, up to one gun per meter at the start of the Berlin operation. The barrages were quite complex, and would engage all enemy defensive and firing positions, aiming to destroy gun and MG emplacements, and annihilate the infantry. They shifted target quite a bit during the preparation. Special breakthrough armour regiments, equipped with heavy tanks (first KV, then IS), or SP guns (SU-76, IS-122/152 or ISU-122/152) were used to directly support infantry breaking into the defensive positions. These were independent regiments (really battalions, if you compare them to the German units) that would be attached on an 'as-needed' basis. After the breakthrough was achieved, fully mobile mechanised and cavalry/mechanised formations would be inserted into the breakthrough. These could be either tank armies, mech corps, tank corps, or cavalry/mechanised corps. Their goal was to thrust as far as possible into the German rear, especially later in the war no longer caring about creating pockets. These formations would primarily be equipped with T34 and Shermans. These would be infantry versus infantry, probably supported by direct fire elements, such as guns, ATRs and machine guns. The attack would not be determined in trying to gain and hold ground, but determined enough to cause the Germans to open up with all their defensive fire elements. Intel officers would oversee the attacks from dug-outs in the rear, with maps into which they would enter any newly discovered or shifted German firing positions. The Germans used a lot of 'silent' MGs, i.e. HMGs that were ordered not to fire at targets of opportunity or even during raids and probes, but were kept hidden for full-scale assaults. These could really mess up the Soviet infantry's day, so it became extremely important to get them to speak, so to say. If, as in Bagration, or the L'vov Sandomierz Operation, these reconnaissance battalions found the forward trenches empty, or easy to take, they would do so, and dig in there. In both cases this led to parts of the barrage being cancelled. The frontage of such an attack would be very narrow, as little as a few hundred yards. A full battalion in the attack had not more than 500 yards frontage anyway, in a full-scale assault, so these attacks may have had less than that. The odds - well, that really depends, and there can be no general answer to that. A

That xxx65 file was a bit of a problem, the one with the arrow down on the front. Because of installing that, instead of just the ordinary xxx65 file, the whole front of the SP gun was just white, since there was no file covering it.

For doing some very nice mods of those heros of Communist direct firepower, the ISU-122 and ISU-152. I found them last night on CMMODS - very nice, especially after I figured out how to make the white front disappear *cough cough*. Very nice to see high quality mods of Soviet stuff. Now I think I have to design a scenario or two with those monsters. Lovely Matilda too!

Looked at them, still not convinced. In your test you are not using bounding overwatch. Bad tactics. To punish you for it your guys trying to withdraw should lose cohesion, and the morale effects are correct, IMO.

The game going 'gold' is not the release, it happens before release.

You only attack in very narrow sectors and pour everything into the breakthrough. The rest of the frontline does not need to move as fast, and does not need to be very strong anyway because the Germans were no longer much of a danger. In at least two offensives, German collapse was so quick and so total that no real pocket creation was necessary - Bagration, and the Vistula-Oder operation. If you are just busy whacking a reactive enemy westwards through central Europe, these units make a lot of sense.

Only if you make thoughtful suggestions, like Kip or I did.

I was joking, of course. Although few TV programmes can have been a more accurate portrayal of the south than 'The Beverly Hillbillies', and we all marvel at the even-handed description of small-town judicial process dished out in 'My cousin Vinnie', an unforgettable movie not just for that reason... Now, imagine you're a deer. You're prancing along... [ July 18, 2003, 08:44 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Brilliant, tanks a lot!

Jon, the site appears to be down. Anyone else got any ideas?

Overlooked that one - I am with Martin on the '.' issue, I think it is overcomplicating matters considerably, and grammar is the more likely explanation.

Hillbillies

1. definitely pre 1941 establishment 2. see 1. 3. No idea, but here is a snippet from www.battlefield.ru: An ATR platoon was included in the TOE of the machinegun-artillery company of machinegun-artillery battalions of the fortified region. This platoon had two submachine guns and 7 ATRs (two squads, one with three and the other with four ATRs). A cavalry squadron (TOE 06/233 of 6 January 1942) had a ATR platoon (6 rifles, and later 9 submachine-guns). 4. see 1. for second part - I would have thought there were not too many at Kursk, because in that sort of battle you want the staying power of the infantry. If you look at the database on Red Army Studies (link in my sig) you maybe able to find an article on the topic.

According to CALL - MOUT = Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain. I'd trust them. If you have the CMBO - SE disk, there should be a battle called 'To the last man' on it. If it is mine (there is a similarly named one by Bill Wilder), it is a city battle.

Well, I have Umlaute galore on my Mac at home, but the shoddy piece of crap produced by a failed company (Compaq) in front of me has so far resisted my efforts to draw the secret of Umlaut writing out of it. Maybe I have to start using a needle on its HDD.

Well, when I say TRP I just mean the mechanism of doing it. How it is represented is another matter, and red smoke for the Germans would be the right way to go, IIRC.

The worst, yes. The most numerous, certainly not. Memoirs by British soldiers are quite frank about the times they were attacked by their own planes in France, and elsewhere. I fully agree - a TRP for air attack (could be coded in as a nice red smoke signal) should do it, and would make the handling more flexible. Players can either place it themselves during the battle, or it could be pre-placed by a scenario designer.

Mike, do you have any pictures of Ortona before it became a heap of rubble by any chance?

Replace 'Russians' with 'Americans', and you have Lesley McNair's last words.

In the middle of a fully matured corn/sunflower field I'd give you <1m LOS. One thing though is that modern wheat/rye is a lot shorter than even varieties from 20-30 years ago. Selective breeding has done a lot for this. Shorter crops are less likely to be damaged in a storm, and obviously waste less input on straw. Edit - it would still be shorter though, I am sure. Anyone knows the height of 1940s wheat/rye? Andreas 'Home on the Ranch' [ July 17, 2003, 08:28 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

I think not - AFAIK the massive expansion of rape seed is a fairly recent event in agriculture. Here is a paper dealing with the history of rapeseed that seems to support this conclusion. Look at the graph at the very end. My suspicion would be that in the Soviet Union most oil was from sunflowers, so rape-seed would not need to be grown.

Just found this very interesting website while googling for some pictures of Ortona, for, err, no specific reason. Worth going through, has newsreels and radio coverage from the battlefield. CBC - Return to Ortona .

If I think about it, that strikes me as a very rose-tinted view of air support in WW2. The recent war in Iraq should have shown to any doubters that CAS is a dangerous business for the friendlies on the ground. Unless you want to suggest that things today have regressed from the wonderful state they were in during WW2.