hank

Hi - Delurking after a few years of nonparticipation to see what my member number is and to say that way back when I started reading the original AAR posts, downloaded the demo, played it incessantly, bought CMBO, played it incessantly, downloaded the CMBB demo and never bought another game. But not because I didn't want, but rather that my old-timey Mac died and the new one I acquired was/is OSX only. I'm slavering to get to play CMx2.

In the book _Brazen_Chariots_ the author (a Honey commander in North Africa) talks about going hull down quite often. From time to time he even mentions going 'turret down'; ie, he's unbuttoned and only his head is poking up above the contour. So I'd say yes, a WWII tank crew would try to minimize the profile of their huge metal boxes whenever possible.

I'll toss in a couple more comments into a thread that has veered quite wildly away from the M12 GMC. On the subject of height, the Sherman and the Panther were roughly the same. I don't recall too much wingeing about how the Panther was too tall. The Sherman's height came from the early versions being driven by aircraft radial engines. These are not compact power plants, but were the only thing available at the time. By the time a better, smaller in-line engine was available the US was committed to building lots and lots of Shermans. There was no time cut a foot or two off its height (which would entail shutting down factories to re-tool). Once again we're back to the guys in the tanks wanting more protection vs the guys not getting shot at weighing alternatives and deciding to win the war their way. On the gun issue, there is no argument that McNair got what was coming to him during Cobra. Up-gunning to something a bit zippier was held back by his devotion to the prewar doctrine. As far as GI Joe making a bad decision by transferring to armor so he wouldn't have to walk so much, it definitely reduced his chances of being killed. The 200% infantry division casualty rate vs the 100% armor division rate made Joe's choice a pretty good one. Even though the flawed prewar tank/TD doctrine was tossed out the window after the war, it is still hard to argue that it was a failure. It wasn't the best, but it worked and tank crews were far from having the most dangerous job in combat.

To paraphrase a guy over on soc.history.world-war-ii, the typical US infantry division suffered around 200% casualties in the campaign from Normandy to the end of the war. The typical armored division suffered about 100%, with most of them in the amormed infantry portion of the division. Shipping a bigger, better tank means fewer tanks in Europe, and less support for the PBI. It's not a stretch to imagine that means more casualties in the infantry. So, given that we did win, why would we sacrifice the lives of infantrymen, who were having a tough time of it anyway, to save more tankers, who were comparitively safer? It seems to be a common complaint that the Americans didn't drive around in some sort of land-battleship, but alone among all combatants the Americans had to get all of their armor across an ocean before getting it into battle. This imposes a definite constraint on how you plan your war. Can you get the big tanks into an LST? Oops looks like we have to redesign them too. Too bad the big tanks won't go over the bridges the engineers can lay down. It's much more complicated than merely invoking a bigger tank. Everything the tank touches has to take into account its size. There's another book floating around out there called "The View From the Turret". It's the history of an independent (read infantry support) tank battalion armed with mostly 75mm Shermans. In it the author makes the standard complaints about how horrible the Sherman was. But the funny thing is that if you add up the number of Shermans knocked out by German armor (note we are excluding AT gun and infantry kills) and compare it with the number of German tanks the battalion knocked out, the lowly Sherman actually had a positive kill ratio. That's not too bad for a unit armed with the wimpiest version of the tank. I freely admit that incremental improvements to the Sherman could have been done more quickly, but at the strategic level, the Sherman is in a tie with the, equally mediocre, T34 as the best tank of the war. Oh, and one last swipe at the "Death Traps" guy, he was in the 3rd Armored Division. They had the distinction of having the highest tank loss rate of any American division. So the REMF author was fixing tanks for a bunch of guys that were at best a little over-aggressive considering that they weren't driving around in land-battleships.

The bigger ones are probably 75 or 76 mm. It was common practice among allied tankers to run an AP round through abandoned German vehicles. It was probably good practice for the gunners and prudent as well. Just because it's not moving now doesn't mean it's not playing dead. The smaller dots could be ricochets of smaller guns. I imagine that a .50 from close range just might dig a gouge big enough to cast a shadow.

Hi - I don't want to burst any bubbles here, but IIRC Wittmann was in the SS. That pretty much makes him a Nazi... - Hank

Hi - I've noticed that if I leave the Control Strip extended when I start a game with 1.0 or 1.0.1, mouse clicks on the bottom of the screen are grabbed by the control strip, not the button at the bottom of the screen (e.g. Hot Keys). ISTR that the Gold Demo did not behave this way. It's not a big deal since I can escape out of the game and retract it, but I thought I would mention it as something that may be easy to fix for 1.0.2 Thanks for listening. ------------------ - Hank

Hello again - In my slow moving PBEM game of VoT, I had one of my 105mm Shermans target the SW corner of the map for smoke. I did not order it to do so and I had not given it any movement orders. The tank's turret turned toward that corner and stayed pointed that way for the whole turn. I have the file and can mail to BTS if you want and tell me where to send it. ------------------ - Hank

Hi - I've gotten the Mac version running on a G4 and a souped up 7600 (270 MHz G3, IxMicro Road Rocket (or something like that) 4 MB video card, 176 MB RAm). The G4 runs great. With the 7600 I have to manually switch to 640 x 480 before starting the game, then everything works fine. ------------------ - Hank

Hi - I just thought I'd chime in on the targetting issue. I am currently in a blind PBEM game of VoT. I have twice ordered one of my Shermans to fire smoke at a bunker. Both times when I got to the movie for those turns the tank's targetting line was drawn to the SW corner of the map. Neither time did the tank fire smoke at the bunker. I have also had my other Sherman, with no fire orders at all (but moving under "Hunt") have a smoke targetting line drawn to the SW corner of the map. Just out of curiosity, is the SW corner of the map the origin of the map coordinates? This targetting thing is acting like a failure to update the target coordinates from an intial zero state. I would bet that since all the units mentioned so far have not had LOS to the corner, the sticky-ness of the targetting order wears off and then targets of opportunity are being fired at. Thanks for listening, ------------------ - Hank

Hi - First time poster, long time lurker and I have come up empty on the search. I've noticed a strange PBEM file name quirk while playing on my Mac: I can specify any name I want in the dialog (eg, CM.vt.5.18)but when I go to the PBEM folder the name is CM.vt.txt. Everything after the second dot is replaced by txt. I realize I can get around this by changing my file naming convention but I like the one I've chosen. Perhaps this feature could be disabled in the upcoming patch and the name I actually typed could be used to create the file. Thanks for listening. ------------------ - Hank