Tero

The DVD is out http://www.cdon.com/main.phtml?nav=6665&nav_genre=6665&navroot=905&display_type=&page=shop&gclid=CPu8sKrP2pQCFQ4YQgod3Gn-kQ I have not checked out the English subtitles but I hope they are not as crappy as the Talvisota subtitles. On the movie itself: the IMDb remarks are accurate. The storyline (and events) are (AFAIK) straight from the unit war diaries. Absolutely no girlie-plot stuff in the movie. You'll have to be initiated in the subject to be able to follow the story since there is no central character. To me it seemed like a dramatized issue of Kansa Taisteli (veterans yarns and studies) magazine and as such very good. As a movie experience I have to say even the wife liked it because of it is gritty and realistic.

By Dan Verssen In addition to indirect fire mentioned earlier you should include (given your scope) mines, remotely command detonated ordnance and suicide attacks. Medium armour too. 60's-70's era BTR/M-113 class IFV's without add-on armour will be easily damaged by HV small arms rounds.

It does not say anythin about frequency of masturbation and how it figures in. After all, it is also (a form of) intercourse.....

Does not hurt me much but can't wait to see how much MD's post count is affected.... Indeed. Was a bit surprised to see how many decades off it was.

We can revert to widely known words like hezmana, frell, yotz, mivonks etc when biatching about stuff.

My first last logged in showed Also, my post count has been halved.

Yes, the wait was long and all but come on !!!

Originally posted by JasonC: Tero - untrue, look under the artillery sections and you will find they give absolute rounds expended for each gun type, both for the winter war and for the later "continuation war". As I said, the site is pure tech-spec. Citing total number of expended rounds does not even begin to tell how, where and when they were expended. Nor does it reflect their tactical use of the artillery formations as part of the force or during the battle. During Winter War one day a battery fire mission could be a whopping 8 rounds, another day 120 etc. Noteworthy right away is the quite high figure for older 3 inch field pieces, an order of magnitude more than for 105s e.g. That was the legacy of the depression. As you know this relative lack of firepower (both caliber and limited availability of the ammo) affected the Finnish infantry tactics and doctrine very profoundly. [ May 23, 2007, 01:24 AM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by JasonC: Mostly though it instead gives the basic weight and range stuff and info on Finnish use and shell expenditure, which may be useful for operational study of Finnish artillery during the war, You should not use this site for that purpose though. This site is pure tech-spec, for operational stuff like ammo expenditure you should turn elsewhere. Text book conditions were rare in those days when it came to available ammo and stuff like that. but isn't useful for Russian ATG performance. Concur. The Finnish testing and measuring was different from the respective Soviet and German practises. Mind you, some of the penetration data was derived and extrapolated from battlefield experiences (or the tests were done using actual steel plates from target vehicles instead of generic slabs of steel) so that would account for some of the discrepencies between the Finnish and more commonly cited figures.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Apart from the fact you have no evidence that the Allied 'damaged' total came anywhere near 5000+ The written off total from the ETO monthly reports from Chris' chart add up to 6066 for the US armour alone (all types). The M5, M24, M4 and M26 written off for the three armies add up to 4126 accoding to the weekly reports chart. I do not have the British written off totals but I think it is safe to say the Allied damaged total went over the 5000+ even if we count only the written off figures. (did I not give you the US total of 700 damaged and repaired tanks to August?) it may have escaped your attention that the argument above completely vindicates my original premise. The written off totals number shot that latest premise of yours out of the water just now. Here it is again: The only way you can get anywhere near a 5:1 kill ratio for the panzers in Normandy is to compare the German 'written off' loss to the Allied total of loss and damage to all causes. I am glad to see you got there in the end. Your original premise that I was gunning for some sort of preconceived kill ratio for the German armour was faulty. My goal is just to try to gauge the gap between the German estimation on Allied battle field armour losses (more commonly called kill claims) and how they correspond with the actual Allied combat losses. The respective kill ratios and pissing contest about whose armour, crews and doctrine was the hottest is irrelevant in this context. Based on the Finnish army official estimate after the Winter War (2000 Red Army tank losses) and how well they corresponded with the actual Red Army combat losses (1900 combat losses in the Istmus part of the front alone) I think it would be neat to know how well other armies estimated the enemy combat losses.

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist: That is so - but he then uses the KOSAVE data to confirm one thing, completely ignoring it's contradiction of another. From what I know about Krivosheevs work you need to be careful about how he classifies data. The Winter War data he released ha a class of losses listes as frostbite. A joint Finnish-Russian research panel later judged these were killed but not counted in the KIA/DOW/MIA and consequently not in the appropriate loss cathtegory. That's really bad analysis - you cannot take 1 facet of oa set of data to confirm another facet where they disagree elsewhere unless you do some pretty damned rigorous analysis to account for the differences that exist. COSAVE is missing Su-76 data, isn't it ?

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist: That is so - but he then uses the KOSAVE data to confirm one thing, completely ignoring it's contradiction of another. From what I know about Krivosheevs work you need to be careful about how he classifies data. The Winter War data he released ha a class of losses listes as frostbite. A joint Finnish-Russian research panel later judged these were killed but not counted in the KIA/DOW/MIA and consequently not in the appropriate loss cathtegory. That's really bad analysis - you cannot take 1 facet of oa set of data to confirm another facet where they disagree elsewhere unless you do some pretty damned rigorous analysis to account for the differences that exist. COSAVE is missing Su-76 data, isn't it ?

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist: How can he assume a 2-3:1 damaged to destroyed ratio (ist para above) when the KOSAVE figures show an actual ratio less than unity (circa 1050:1300 damaged:destroyed in the 2nd para)? Because the first set is as per Krivosheev and the second set is as per KOSAVE ?

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist: How can he assume a 2-3:1 damaged to destroyed ratio (ist para above) when the KOSAVE figures show an actual ratio less than unity (circa 1050:1300 damaged:destroyed in the 2nd para)? Because the first set is as per Krivosheev and the second set is as per KOSAVE ?

Well put. I know what you mean, but I'm not so sure about your conclusions. At the end of the war, a division that had been in the thick of things for years (like, say, 1st US Inf Div ) had roughly the same number of men as a division that had seen nearly no combat at all (like, say 97th US Inf Div). So from that point of view, both divisions had the same number of potential memoir authors. Furthermore, in the case of 1st US Inf Div there are the literally thousands of former members who became POWs, or were injured and invalided out, or were injured and due to the vagaries of the US Repple Depple system ended up in some other unit. Adding those to the men actually in the division when the bullets stopped means that there are actually substantially more potential memoir authors in a division that had heavy cas compared to one that had few. What a veteran division won't have, or have very very few of compared to a rookie division, is plank owners present at the end of hostilities, especially amongst the infantry units. As an anecdotal example; in George Wilson's memoirs as a company commander in 4th US Inf Div, he talks about a parade to be held in [?]early 1945[/?], to be composed of men who'd been involved in the UTAH assault waves on 6th June. Wilson's company had been one of those companies, although he hadn't joined it till mid-July. By the time of the parade there were no veterans of the assault left in the company, although there were presumably some left scattered about France, the UK, and the US. Jon </font>

Originally posted by michael kenny: Much like the German Unit histories that say not many tanks were destroyed by the enemy in Normandy! Infantry or Armoured unit histories ? Depends how Normandy is defined. Since Hitler held back the armour back by definition the were not many tanks destroyed by the enemy in Normandy. [ March 22, 2007, 09:07 PM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry: this document Cheers. Definitely a keeper. has some statistics which may be relevant. On surface it seems there is lots of data which is highly relevant. Especially the depiction recovery SOP and procedures is very relevant. it seems some 60% of Western allied tank casualties were repairable. The Red Army Winter War data shows 80% of the combat losses being repairable. Which seems reasonable given the more effective weapons the Germans had in their use. if i am not mistaken the document indicates that Western Allied tank units did not know their full tank losses (write-offs) as the evaluation between a repairable and unrepairable tank was done at army level. when a unit turned in a damaged tank they just got another tank as a replacement from army tank pool. This would account for the fact the veterans stories and the official statistics speak a very different story about the loss rates of the Western Allied armoured units.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Counting every Allied damaged tank against German total losses is not a valid comparison. Again, we are (at leats I am) not counting them against German total losses. The comparison is Allied tank losses vs German kill claims. The German losses are a totally separate issue.

Originally posted by michael kenny: It would be if it was true but all I ever read is 5:1 kill ratios for the uber-panzers. That is rather the dilemma. The Germans wrote the Western version of the war in the Eastern Front. The Western Front (and the over all war) version was written by the Western Allies. That lead to the scitsoid set up where the Western Allies ruled, the Germans sucked but not as bad as the Communistic horders which overcame the Germans through sheer weight of numbers (as told by the Germans). While their estimation on Red Army vehicle losses may have been rather accurate (scientifically) it was politically expedient to bolster the suppremacy of the Western civilization by allowing the pravado of the aces and the valiance and combat valour of the German troops to seep through, naturally after the Nazi zeal was sanitized out of the stories. Give me a reference that tabulates all German disabled tanks as well as their total losses. Sorry, I have only the Red Army figures for the Isthmus section during Winter War to offer. Which is rather curious. With all the freedom of information in the West it is damned hard to get similar data from Western sources. So far I have never seen any definitive numbers for Western Allied armoured losses. At the same time find me a reference that gives just the Allied total losses for say Goodwood. It would be interesting to see this: 'indoctrination about the Evil Nazi Germans vs Valiant Western Allies (that is)is so throrough it penetrates all aspects of the history writing, including how battle statistics should be determined' in print. Your own remark was what sparked that remark. You gripe about the Germans getting the advantage. You also keep referring to the German estimations as claims. That infers preconceived bias that precludes the possibility the numbers the Germans gave were near the actual mark. Instead they were always inflated and did not correspond with the real figures at any level. I for one have only seen the 'indoctrination' about multiple kills for the German side but I am always ready to learn. Does it really hurt so bad even to consider the possibility the Germans might actually have disabled more vehicles than the Western Allies admitted to after the war (in other words the Germand inflicted comparable damages to the Western Allied armies as they did to the Red Army) ?

Originally posted by michael kenny: If you look at the damage caused to the Tigers at Kursk then it is indeed fortunate that these 'kills' are not counted. Again the figures are slanted to the German advantage! And that is the biggest reason to use only written off vehicles: so the Evil Nazi Germans do not appear to have been competent but were in fact over-claiming savages ? Besides, driving through minefields planted specifically according to the attack plan did not happen that often. The Kursk battle being the norm for the effectiveness of mines against tanks is not really realistic. Be that as it may, how much did the Red Army overclaim and how does it correspond with the known German losses to mines ? So how do you deduct say the British Goodwood mine losses from the total? If the Germans claim 60 and the Allied loss is 45 shot and 15 mine by your method we could say the German shot claim is correct. If the German claim is called estimate then their estimation is close to what really happened. And if we apply the 50% cut the original German claim would be 120 which would add up as 2 KO'd for each written off vehicle. Which is not that unrealistic given the nature of the fighting. I really can see nothing here other than the usual method of counting every Allied damaged tank as a kill and counting these against German total write offs. But the thing is we are not counting them against German total write offs, my dear fellow. We are counting them against the German kill claims. It is really sad if the indoctrination about the Evil Nazi Germans vs Valiant Western Allies is so throrough it penetrates all aspects of the history writing, including how battle statistics should be determined, validated, formulated, calculated and read.

Originally posted by michael kenny: but the claim is a damaged tank is a 'kill'.......... A damaged tank is a kill if the operator of the weapons system makes the claim based on subjective criteria (like crew seen bailing out). The criteria is different for different weapons systems. Airborn systems are trickier but in most cases it seems the operator knew the capabilitis of the weapon used and made a subjective judgement based on subjective observation and corraborating observation made by other aircrews. If the kill is later recovered and repaired or written off by the enemy is irrelevant. What is relevant historically is the enemy score keeping on battle damage classes and repair stats coupled with the written off count. Kill CLAIMS should be compared to the combined number of battle damaged (combat ineffective) vehicles and write offs. Mine related losses are not kills in the sense debated here. Mainly because there is in most cases no way to verify how many tanks mines have taken out. I don't have any data about how the other armies classified mine related enemy vehicle losses. The Finnish army treated mines like defensive obstacles. Since the mine detonation generally takes a tank off line for a substantial period of time (and in most cases causes personel casualties) it can be called a kill. The figure they came up about how many mines it took to make a (mobility) kill of a tank was purely an estimate for use when calculating projected enemy losses. [ March 19, 2007, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by michael kenny: Perhaps someone could give me the 'kill claim' for German minefields? I presume that being in defence their minefields would be extensive. They never seem to get any credit and the numbers would have to be deducted from that claimed by the 'sexy' branches of the Army....... That is very true. The Finnish army calculated that it takes IIRC 200 (could have been anything up to 1000, I'll have to check that) mines to kill a tank. So, if you lay down 1000 mines the calculated enemy losses to mines is 5 tanks.

Originally posted by John D Salt: I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that US Typhoon pilots probably made fewer false claims than practically any other class of ground attack pilot. How many kills claims per mission would you estimate they made, on average ?

Originally posted by John D Salt: I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that US Typhoon pilots probably made fewer false claims than practically any other class of ground attack pilot. How many kills claims per mission would you estimate they made, on average ?

Originally posted by Andreas: Knowing LW procedures, my guess is that the kill had been awarded to Rudel a long time before that (cf. the 1940 Ark Royal sinking). Option 2: by talking to his mateys, e.g. veterans from KG who continued to attack the ships, or to former staff officers of AG North, or officers from LW and SS formations who were engaged in the line containing the Oranienbaum bridgehead. There would only be hundreds of these guys, so of course it would be difficult to get in contact with them, since it is well known that former Wehrmacht folks never talked to each other again after the war. Option 3: He knew about all this (after the war) but as LW had awarded him for the sinking of Marat he did not bother about the fact some of his mateys were attacking static, not-so-very-well floating maritime shore batteries in the Leningrad/Kronstadt area.