paullus

I apologize to the board. I certainly did not mean to come off as pompous. I'm been a lurker for some time, posted some on the old CM board before CMBB & been playing SC for a month or so. I've been a student of WWII for quite some time (as I assume most of us are) & have been reading a lot of new material coming out of the former Soviet Union that points a new spin on a lot of previous information that was accepted as fact here in the west. I'm at work at the moment & don't have access to my source material, but when I return home I can certainly put some teeth into my arguments. As far as the movement of factories go, a lot of material I've seen, plus interview material with former Soviet officials sheds a lot of light on the subject. A few key factories were moved, but the majority were either in place before the war or built during the first two years of the conflict in the Urals & outlying areas. It was just too time & resource consuming to move the "large" type Soviet-era facilities and get them back up and running in time to have an effect on the outcome of the war. Just like the Soviet's downplayed the massive losses they sustained at Kursk, the notion that they could transplant whole sections of their economy & get them up and running in such a short period of time was great propaganda material. Instead, the notion of beginning to build these new factories in the Urals and other areas beyond easy reach of invading forces in the 1930's was a much better policy and served to be the backbone of Soviet tank, aircraft, and artillery production throughout the war. The wholesale conversation of civilian factories in the same areas also helped, and contributed to the awful state of the Soviet people outside of the military. It was not until the 1960's that Soviet civilian production returned to pre-1941 levels.

The Soviet removal of factories to the East is, for the most part, a myth & propoganda. Some factories were moved, but the Soviets found that the amount of time necessary to get those factories up and running was far longer than it would have been to build them from scratch. When Stalin began his program of rearmament in the late 1920's & 30's, a majority of the new factories were built east of Moscow, out of range of potential enemy states (Poland, Germany, etc). It was these existing factories that contributed the majority of fighting arms to the Red Army during the war. Lend-lease also allowed Soviet industry to concentrate on the war-winning weapons at the expense of all else (building only tanks, artillery, SPGs, & aircraft, not to mention personnel weapons such as MGs & rifles). Uniforms, food, supplies, and transport were provided by the Allies. The entire production run of the Studebaker Truck Company was sent to the Soviet Union, providing over 8000 trucks per month. Outside of the armed forces, the general Soviet population was ill-fed, ill-clothed, and virtually bereft of any modern conveniences or luxuries. By concentrating only on what was necessary to win, the Soviet Union was able to out-produce the Germans (and throw a lot more bodies in front of them). Only a very mobile & adept defense (after the debacles at Stalingrad and the Caucausus) could have prevented was happened historically - something Hitler would have never approved of.

My wife was taking the metro back from work yesterday and noticed someone (a guy - no description) playing CM on their laptop. Anyone here might fit that description? Just goes to show you how small a world we live in.

Not to beat a dead horse, and knowing that the Allied Tungsten code has been tweaked, I ran into the following last night: SPOILER FOR "REST OF THE RED DEVILS...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . During the fourth battle, I had a 6lb AT gun sited perfectly to get shots at the last German King Tiger. The gun had 4h 18at 3t. The gun (with 99% hit probability at 280m) proceeded to fire 10 straight AT shots at the King Tiger, bouncing or shattering every time. Not once did this AT gun fire its tungsten, even though it had a good chance of penetrating. I am crazy (dumb question), or does this not seem quite right? Of course, I lost the gun to the tank finally noticing the plinking my AT gun was giving it...kinda frustrating.

I'm out here in Lanham, MD working. Lived in DC for 8 years, but am now out in cow-country (Cooksville, MD - middle of nowhere). Don't work for the government, but sell to them. Anyone need GSA office furniture?

Regarding partisans in the Soviet Union, the Red Army was still launching multi-divisional operations to clear out the Ukrainian resistance into the 1950's. The last resistance group in the Baltics was finally put down in the 1960's.

Yes, the MP-44 Assault Rifle (first one ever made) was the direct ancestor of the AK-47/74 family of Soviet weapons. The AK-47 was a reverse-engineered MP-44 with updated tech & built to Russian specifications. Also, the M-60 US Machine Gun is almost a direct copy of the MG-42 (which is still used, in updated form by the Bundeswehr). [This message has been edited by paullus (edited 01-18-2001).]

I certainly hope that the Iowas are not fully retired - just mothball them in case we need to use them again. Also, since the 1980 refit, it only takes approx. 800 crewmembers to do the job that 2500 took sixty years ago. BB's can also operate in enclosed waterways (such as the Persian Gulf) that you really would not put an aircraft carrier in times of war (real war). BB's are also many times more survivable than current US warships. The blast that almost took out the USS Cole would have, at most, scratched the paint on an Iowa. I for one would not put my faith in technology 100% (aircraft, missiles, etc). There are times when a battery of unstoppable artillery (in the case of a SAM threat) is necessary. And although a Battleship is much less expensive than an aircraft carrier to operate, I can see how people would want to retire them. I can only hope that they mothball them in case we need that kind of platform again. History does have a way of repeating itself. Remember, the golden age of the aircraft carrier spanned 24 months (1942 - 1944) and only 5 battles ever took place between US & Japanese aircraft carriers (direct confrontations). Just because the aircraft carrier is the primary weapon today, does not mean the same will hold true tomorrow.

SS - Hell on the Eastern Front shows a late war picture (Winter 44/45) of Panzergrenadiers riding on the back of a Panther G.

I was watching some bombing footage from Vietnam this weekend and did notice the pressure waves clearly from the detonations. While the dome may look a little too clean, it does "represent" exactly what occurs when a bomb or shell explodes on the ground (and I have had losses or at least suppression of men within the range of the pressure wave).

For those who would like a campaign: Only two men in Audie Murphy's battalion (who hit the beach in North Africa, went on to Italy, and finally NW Europe), made it to the end of the war. Audie was one, a supply sargeant was the other. It is not realistic to keep units together through more than an operation. Even the Germans mixed and matched constantly. With the wearing down of units and bringing in replacements, the actual skill level of the unit goes down as time goes on, not up.

I think it really depends. If you were the crew, and had just survived being blown to pieces by a 500lb bomb, your tank was immobilized, and the gun was damaged, the best thing you could do was to bail and get the hell out of there. Most of the time I have found that a gun-damaged tank is a useless tank. The crew probably felt the same way.

Funny. I actually have had the opposite happen to me. When I first loaded CM (many moons ago), none of the buildings would turn translucent when units occupied them. Now with 1.1, they do. Its really odd.

German infantry battalions were lucky to have anything like regular TO&E even in 1944 (the units in Normandy were probably the last). By 1945 most infantry divisions were down to 6 battalions instead of 11, and support was whatever could be scrapped together (though Stugs were seen more and more as direct infantry support and added to infantry units as part of the general reorganization of the divisions). Lessons learned through '44 led to the downgrading of the Panzer Divisions from all tanks to a more balanced 2 Pz regiments & 2 PzGr regiments. These watered-down formations were better suited to combat offense/defense of the '44 campaigns. Production lags played a major part in most of the reorganizations, as Hitler consistently mandated the creation of new divisions without reinforcing existing units. The 100,000 men used in the Luftwaffe divisions (almost totally useless) could have been used to rebuild over 40 regular divisions to full strength.

Actually, I didn't have the opportunity to click details (it wasn't an option). I would love to what the conflict might be. Anybody have even a guess as to what might be wrong? (other than me