Andreas

Well, I have just tried this in a number of varieties, and I simply can not see the problem. IS-1 is always hunting across a crest, regular, commanding vehicle (out of LOS) has a morale bonus, vehicular cover arc over the frontal arc in action. Panther is conscript, padlocked, buttoned. 1) Panther at 360m, presenting broadside to IS-1, Panther dies, no cowering 2) Panther at 650m, presenting rear to IS-1 Panther dies, no cowering 3) Panther at 650m, presenting front to IS-1 Panther dies, no cowering 4) Panther at 1,000m, presenting front to IS-1, but no AP Panther dies 5) Panther at 1,000m, presenting front to IS-1, with AP a) IS-1 hunts, fires, upon return fire runs away IS-1 hunts, sees Panther, fires, runs away c) IS-1 hunts, sees Panther, runs away until backing on wood (later removed), then fights it out (i.e. rather tries to fight instead of presenting side armour to Panther) - broken off with no result because the wood skewed the result. d) IS-1 hunts, sees Panther, runs away, at end of turn (still in LOS) reverse order is cancelled, 20sec pause order given, IS-1 starts ding-dong fight, sticks it out despite partial penetrations and crew casualty. IS-1 dies. e) Commanding vehicle IS-1 now gets in on the action. Acquires Panther at 800m, engages, hits with glancing shot. Panther returns fire, IS-1 dies. Conclusion - I think there is a whole gamut of outcomes. Treeburst's post setting this off is a pretty useless rant of the 'My Tiger just died wawawa' type, because we know nothing about the conditions of the engagement. What I have just seen seemed very realistic to me - sometimes they fight, sometimes they don't. At the longer ranges, the Panther clearly has an edge, due to higher hit probability, and better penetration ability - the IS-1 only manages front turret partial penetrations (most engagements are HD in this setup), while the Panther can penetrate the front of the turret and the glacis at least partially, sometimes fully. The two times the IS-1 stood to fight it out under these odds, it died. I am sorry for bringing an actual playtest into this discussion, you can now return to JasonC's regularly scheduled lecture on how BFC is shafting the Soviets.

I am sure you don't need me to answer that one. Just think of people with low-end machines, and don't put all the craters in that you put into that sodding Sirangarblegarblefinnish map I am playing against Sergei.

I'd have gone with 'catastrophic' for summer 1944. What was disastrous about summer 1943 was the piercing of the Dnepr (non-existent Ostwall) line in the south. I did not say you claimed otherwise, but from just reading about exchange ratios, it sounds as if the Germans had won themselves to death. Which is not what happened - tactical exchange ratios were neither here nor there, because the Germans were operationally and strategically outfought by STAVKA in the summer battles of 1943, starting with Zitadelle/Orjol.

Well, but it is totally meaningless if you don't start eating into your enemy's reserves. Which is what happened. Tactically fine for the Germans, well done - but operationally/strategically desastrous, as was shown two weeks later. They also matter tactically if you can not make good your losses on the spot, i.e. without taking a breather to bring up the reserves. Because then your infantry losses are the critical factor, your tank losses are not. So IMO the Prokhorovka myth is pretty much irrelevant when looking at the question of whether the Germans were bled white. If they had lost no tanks at Prokhorovka, they still could not have gone on much further, because the tanks were not the issue. Like so many others, you seem to make the mistake of just looking at the exchange rate of losses, without looking at the question of who could actually afford it in the short run (let alone the long run, but that is the Reichstag argument). The Red Army could at Kursk (not comfortably), while the Germans absolutely could not. Therefore 'that ain't too bad' is actually 'that was a friggin' desaster', because they needed to inflict probably 1:10 or more to avoid being kicked back to the Dnepr by autumn. Steppe Front could insert two fresh armies into Voronezh Front on the 18th, on top of the two armies it had already inserted. All that 1:5 bought the Germans was two weeks by making it impossible for the Steppe Front to be inserted as a whole to counter-attack from the move. Big friggin' whoop, in General Forum parlance.

So infantry losses don't matter? An interesting interpretation, if that is what you mean. It is not what German commanders thought.

Well, I am still wondering what the mythology of Prokhorovka has to do with the statement that the German formations were bled white? But I take it you now agree with Kip's statement that the German formations were bled white?

Sven I think Sergei may have been a bit sarcastic. Then again, do Finns have humour? Playing one of his battles at the moment, the answer must be - no. So maybe you are right. Unless of course you want to suggest that German recon units attacked regardless of the enemy situation, all the time.

That is not how I understand Newton's argument, so you excuse me if I don't agree that 'nuff has been said. IIMU that Newton criticises Zetterling choice of unit of analysis in two ways. First the scope of the battle. I.e. he would include the Orel battles, and Polkovodets Rumyantsev. I think there are good arguments for that because it will ensure a more robust analysis (German forces of Model's 2nd Army were diverted to deal with Bagramyan's Orel offensive - making it more difficult to continue on the northern shoulder). But IMO more importantly, he also criticises the loss analysis within the battle as Zetterling defines it. In particular Zetterling's analysis of the losses on army level. It is quite clear to me that this is the totally wrong way of looking at it. You can only have 5% ration strength losses on army level, but still be left with completely gutted formations. In a German division, the 'teeth' units usually were about 1/3rd or less of the total strength (let's ignore the fact that ration strength includes soldiers who are ill/wounded, and Soviet POWs in auxiliary roles). The Germans had three different terms for this Verpflegunsstärke (ration strength), Gefechtsstärke (combat strength) and Grabenstärke (trench strength), with the latter a very narrow number of just the soldiers available to fight the enemy. Since the majority of losses in the division will occur in the teeth units, a 5% overall loss of the division turns into 3-4 times that on the combat level. Hence we see reports of divisions with a nominal strength of ~12,000 men deemed destroyed when they took ~2,500 men losses. The same with Zetterling's figures - while the army's ration strength may only have gone down by 5%, that means that the typical infantry platoon was probably pretty much wiped out. Hence Kip's use of the term 'bled dry'. That is before we get into issues such as the need to divert forces elsewhere. I also note that on the TDI Forum, this particular criticism has not been refuted, AFAICT.

Yes, you are dismissing it 'The logic I so despise - nuff said' - what is that other than a dismissal? And no, not every battle is linked as closely as these two - the performance of the Germans in Zitadelle had a direct impact on Polkovodets Rumyantsev. The performance of the Germans before Leningrad in 1941 did not have a direct impact on the Berlin Operation. So to dismiss it as 'that is just the old who flew the flag on the Reichstag thing' does not wash. It is not the logic you so despise - think about it. If the Germans had really kicked Steppe Front's rear during their attack, who would have been there to attack German lines two weeks later? If the Soviets had completely trashed the German attack without needing to take 5th Guards TA out of the Steppe Front, would they have struggled as much around Kharkov and Akhtyrka? There is a direct link between the two battles. That Zetterling does not analyse it does not mean it is not there. Seeing the link does not mean that every campaign has to be viewed from the 'who made it to the Reichstag' angle. You can take that strawman home right now.

You are making it a bit too easy on you to dismiss that one. The battle for Kursk and Polokovodets Rumyantsev are a set of two fairly well linked operational events, in which the outcome of both was linked (had the Germans managed to achieve a significantly better casualty ratio in Zitadelle, the Soviet forces could not have taken them apart two weeks later). So no, not 'nuff said', much as you would like that.

There is a variant to Type A, one that Landsers used to describe as 'Halsschmerzen' (throat infection = yearning for the Ritterkreuz on the part of their commander), and that is embodied in the German phrase 'Viel Feind, viel Ehr.' (Many enemies - much honour). I leave it up to the reader to figure it out. BTW - in playtesting the scenario came in as barely winnable, and very tough. That is of course playtesting with a very small group of often very experienced players, who also had gotten used to the CMBO/CMBB changes at the time they tested it. Clearly, if you pick up CMBB with no prior knowledge of the game, or expecting it to work like CMBO, or indeed you are not a very experienced player, you stand little to no chance of winning it. [ March 26, 2004, 11:24 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

I thought the 256 unit limit went with CMBB. Now it is just a question of breaking the code through saturation, but not a hard limit. I think...

Ah Jason, the wonder judge of history. Well no it is not - broken that is. Unlike you, I am in a position to make that judgement. So, with that out of the way, yes it is very tough, and probably a bit tougher than planned for. But that was the intention (Edit: to have it tough, not tougher than planned for, that was obviously not the intention - just thought I'd make that clear, you never know these days). In the scenario, it is IMO a perfectly valid choice to back off and cancel the attack. It is also the smart thing to do from a force preservation perspective. But that behaviour is not rewarded in CM, so it makes no sense, and people try to really break it. But then again, that happened in real life. [ March 26, 2004, 11:17 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

The best. But what's it about? </font>

The funniest virus I got was one that was sent from my work address to my work address. The problem is that now our admins have clamped down on emails using trigger words, and a lot of legit stuff gets stuck in their net with no warning that it has not been delivered. Brought to you by Bill Gates and the muppets at Microsoft.

No idea - I have not looked at it again since it went on the CD. I have even forgotten what the problems were. Something with the victory conditions/op type, IIRC.

That quote is from January 1942 (Reinhard Stumpf "Hitler's Monologe", quoted in Frieser), so should not concern us here as much, since it falls after the slight mishaps on the eastern front.

Probably the F22? Rechambered, I would guess, although maybe not, depending on the time of war it went. Which gun is it at Aberdeen Proving Grounds? [ March 18, 2004, 10:14 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

No

In a Regiment or Abteilung there would be no meteorological battery, just a platoon, called "Wetterzug" (Weather Platoon). A lot of this info is on my website, as Jon points out, under 'The Organisation'.

Frieser just quotes Addington, who gives an article in Time Magazine on the war in Poland as the first occurance. 25th Sept. 1939, but no author.

Just thought that instead of burying this in the end of the Panzergrenadier thread, I give it its own topic. Well you couldn't be more right old bean. It's a British journalists' description of what the Nazi war machine did to Poland, France and the Soviet Union (in the first few years of the War in Russia). </font>

Determinant - the Wehrmacht had to believe in the concept, because WW I had shown that the other approach (trying to win a war of attrition) did not work for a country so ill-placed in geographic terms, and so ill-equipped with raw materials, and unable to feed its people without reliance on external supplies. I do not know a lot about the Great War in the east, but I am not sure that your characterisation of the Tsarist army being defeated in pitched battles is quite correct. At least not if you look for decisive events. It seems more to me that it collapsed internally, and that the occupation of Ukraine was more a question of railroad logistics, then anything else. What would have happened if in the east another democracy or reasonably developed state had stood, instead of the rotten edifice of Tsarist Russia, is anyone's guess. The assumption for Barbarossa was probably quite similar. Only this time the edifice was not rotten. [ March 17, 2004, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Arizona National Zombie Attack Corps

What's the difference?