Tero

Roger that. [ September 04, 2002, 05:17 AM: Message edited by: tero ]

Originally posted by Michael emrys: My guess is that it refers to country of origin, not user. That would be one interpretation. But unfortunately the statement is open to other interpretations too...

What does this mean ? The überFinn Stugs come with Bargain Basement optics instead of the optics they were sold and shipped with ? And the Soviets suddenly lose the quality of the optics when using captured vehicles ? I hope not. [ September 03, 2002, 09:04 AM: Message edited by: tero ]

Originally posted by wadepm: My question is, will the TacAI of my pea shooter still target the turret because it knows that is the only place it can penetrate? Propably not. Has anybody gotten mobility kills against the T-34's or KV's ? In the Kursk scen I sustained quite a few mobility kills to the ATG's and the KV's but in the Yelnia scen the T-34's kept on going taking hits allover the body but not a single hit at the tracks/powerpack. I even got a rear shot at a KV with a PzKw-IIIM and it hit the rear turret (before it was KO'd by a flank shot). And one KV got abandoned after having taken several hits and it retreated out of LOS. Eventhough it was out of my LOS and I only had a contact marker showing the contact upgraded to Abandoned. Having that happen in EFOW was a bit of a surprise to be honest. A possible source for gamey intel in the full game ? [ September 02, 2002, 08:41 AM: Message edited by: tero ]

The new feature is neat and useful but it tends to clutter the scenere at longer ranges, making picking up targets (or friendlies) manually a minor pain. Unless they do not do this already could it be possible to have then scale up and down along with the unit graphics so that they would still be there to be seen, but not there to obstruct visibility. [ September 02, 2002, 05:54 AM: Message edited by: tero ]

Originally posted by Sergei: Love that last one! They are definitely über. I wish they would have shown the fighting compartment deck just to see what kind of MG and shield they have modelled in them...

Originally posted by M Hofbauer: depends. are you inquiring about german or finnish machine-gun teams? Finns did not use the MG-42. There was a bipod developed for the Maxim HMG thuogh. http://www.saunalahti.fi/~ejuhola/7.62/maxims.html [ August 30, 2002, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: tero ]

Originally posted by Eric Young: I doubt that anyone used the standing over the shoulder dumby thing you see in pictures more than once. That is what I am asking. I can't imagine that they would be that dumb twice in their lives anyway. Then again what good is a deaf soldier but to act as a mount for the LMG... Instant ear drum explosion and most likely broken collar bone to boot. Concur on the ear drums. Not so sure about the collar bone, given the testimony about the lightness of the recoil. I'm just wondering if this was a sort of unoffical way to turn LMG's into HMG's...

How common was the practise of using a human makeshift stabilizer/mount ? I have seen a lot of pictures of MG-42 LMG being fired with one man holding the bipod. From the looks of it the practise was not very good for the hearing of the man holding the bipod. On the LMG sort bursts: we were told to fire short bursts not so much to conserve ammo but not to give away the position of the SAW needlessly and prematurely.

Originally posted by stalingrd: Hmm I'm not sure why I keep putting the Finns into the equation. To draw the bears in with the honey ? Perhaps I'm envisioning a Finns attack the Aurora's land based gun scenario - it would be nice if it was historical as opposed to fictional of course! Purely fictional unless they managed to place the guns near the old border (where the Finnish troops stopped) before the Finnish army reached it.

Originally posted by MikeyD: Ah! I just remembered that someone told me those 105mm and 75mm German recoilless rifles in CMBO had been introduced into parachute units as early as 1940! This came as a shock to me. Guess we could be seeing them for the opening of Barbarossa along with the other equipment, though in CMBB the 105mm RCCL is too bulky to be treated as mobile units like zooks. More like light anti-tank guns in the game. The Red Army had recoilles guns (at least in the field test phase) already in 1939. A couple of them got captured by the Finns and IIRC one was sent to Germany for evaluation sometime in 1940/1941.

Originally posted by Frunze: I have to be a little sceptical about the idea that the Finnish Communists were totally without support during the war, though. After all, when they were legalized the war, in 1945 they elected 51 members to the Finnish Parliament, more than any other single party. Even if a number of coincidental and temporary factors are involved in that showing, a party doesn't suddenly go from nothing to, what, about a quarter of the voters? They were not totally without support. But the thing is the Finnish Communist party was founded in Moscow. They did try to invoke approx. 1 million new voters into the number of voters. Most of them were non-Finnish speakers and were a part of an arranged tour around the country. If you take a look at the number of Finns who becake POW (a decent ball park figure can be found in When Titans Clashed for example) you will find that the number is extraordinarily low. The number of men who deserted to the enemy side is negligible. After the war O.W. Kuusinen (now buried in the Kremlin wall) did not return from exile in Moscow to rule the newly reinstated party. All the rulers were "new". But still on a string. We call the years immediately after the was as "years of danger". When the Communists lost the majority in the 1948 election IIRC things started to take a turn for the normal.

Originally posted by Determinant: 1. If SMGs don't suck beyond 50 metres then why do FINBAT in KFOR only seem to carry real rifles like everyone else? They are only for show. Besides, take a look at the caliber of the FINBAT rifles. 2. Generically one of the qualities of MGs is their 'looseness'. In a Brit context the Bren is considered to be a 'tight' gun that fires quite a concentrated burst while the GPMG (Belgian MAG under license) is considered 'looser' (burst spreads out more) and thus a better area weapon; and thus a better MG particularly when fired in the sustained role from a tripod. The Bren is a first/second generation automatic, the GPMG you speak of is a third/fourth generation weapon. A lot has happened in the field of small unit tactics between the creation of the two. And many of the first/second generation LMG's manufactured before or during WWII did see service long after the third/fourth generation GPMG's had been introduced. Interestingly if you follow this analogy a bren tripod would actually be quite a bad thing for infantry combat. That is totally dependant on the target environment. If you think of the WWII era LMG's as precursors to assault rifles instead of GPMG's the entire prospect of the LMG concept does a flip. During WWII only the German army had a belt fed LMG in the squad organization, the rest used magazine fed LMG's. During the war the Finnish army captured 9000 DT LMG's (over 9000) and other auto/semiauto weapons (PPSh, semiauto rifles etc). These were integrated into the squad organization to bolster the domestic production. The German MG34/42 family of weapons was not taken up because of the mismatch in the ammo caliber. (And because the availability of captured weapons made the spare part and replacement of existing weaponry damaged in the battle easier than having them bought off the Germans.) After the war a domestic belt fed LMG was produced only in the 60's when the RK-62 assault rifle was adobted as the main weapon. Both use the 7,62R39 round. Curiously enough that is the same caliber the AK-47 uses. And even more curiously the USSR/Russia still is our neighbour. And even after the introduction of these the WWII era weapons were used and stockpiled until the early 90's. But let's not go there. OK 3. But most importantly: 'Dies Irae' - the tournament. Stop wasting your time posting and send me a move. I haven't heard a peep from your Waffen GrenadierNichtMentionTheWarMenn for weeks... I have been waiting a turn from you for a couple of weeks now. I'll resend tonight.

Originally posted by Mike: well I know the Bren was regarded as too accurate when I was doing my time in the infantry because it could put all its bullets into a playing card at 500 yards in the hands of even an average gunner, and that is NOT what it was supposed to do!! With or without the tripod ? A word of caution: I got FLAK for saying a SMG can be as accurate out to 300meters and beyond. In my case it was the Suomi, which made it apparently worse since it was not an Anglo-German-American design AND a SMG is supposed to suck beyond 50meters. Incidentaly, how did you calibrate it to spray the bullets around ?

Originally posted by Mike: Tero read the post we're all replying to - the guy wants to know why MG's couldn't put bullets through holes punched by ATR's. OK. I should have checked what your it referred to. What is being proposed is quite impossible. He should have tried individual shots from rifles instead of MG. That would be remotely feasible. Having said that I still say your statement about the optimization of the MG is not entirely accurate.

Originally posted by Mike: and MG gunner isn't up to the task of hitting it at 200m because his weapon is optimised to spray bullets around the aiming point semi-randomly rather than all hittign the same spot, That is not quite true actually. At least early tanks were prone to sustain damage (like turret jamming and damaged vision devises) due to sustained MG fire.

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: They must be Toydarian Perhaps you should try what works for them then.

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: They must be Toydarian Perhaps you should try what works for them then.

Please resend. Or is it just me ? On a similar note: Where have all my opponents vanished ? Sound off !!! AxisWhatever

Oh, man !!!! Well, off to work then. Keep up the good work.

Originally posted by Frunze: Another word for partisan? More like undercover operative. They spoke Finnish but usually their Finnish was so bad that was their undoing. What would be the distinction between Russian partisans and regular Russian soldiers? Were some of the partisans Karelians or exiled Finnish Communists? They were members of the Communist party. And more often than not extremely fanatical in their zeal. Some of them may have been Karelians and at least in once instance one member of a partisan troop which commited attrocities was later recogniced as having been a local who was known to have gone across the border in the 20/30's. Some of the details mentioned are making me wonder if there was an aspect of civil war as well as Finnish vs. Russian war here, or during the Continuation War, certainly that seems to have been a hope of the Kremlin going by the printing presses Tero mentioned, etc. Actually that "press" was a copying machine to be precise, sorry about the grandiose name I used before. The operation was fought in the Pieningän salo (Pieninkä wilderness) area between July 15th and August 18th 1942. The brigade was the 1st Partisanbrigade which departed Sekeke June 29th 1942. Its task was to penetrate the area to Porajärvi, free POW's in camps near there, destroy a depot at Suojärvi and after that split up and wreak havoc and incite revolt in the Karelian villages. It had some 740 members (700 men, 40 women) and it suffered 90% casualties. Obviously the Kremlin didn't succeed in getting the Finnish working class to rise up en masse to welcome the Red Army, or anything close to that, but did they have some limited degree of success? What they did was provide entertainment for the Finnish front line troops. The propaganda was so based on so old data it did not help the Red Army cause too much. [ August 26, 2002, 01:09 AM: Message edited by: tero ]

Originally posted by 86smopuim: desant? Whats that mean? In Finnish military parlance a desant means (usually) a single Soviet person (often impersonating as a member of the Finnish military) airdropped behind Finnish lines to gather data, blow up bridges and other installations etc. The term "foot desant" refers to larger bodies of men (ie regular troops and formations) who broke through the Finnish defences during the summer of 1944 fighting North of lake Ladoga and were tasked with taking hold of bridges or other choke points to prevent the Finnish troops from pulling back. They were an integral part of the Red Army battle plan. And they failed mainly because they broke through in a place and in a manner which made them succeptible to observation and pursuit right from the start. Had they gone around the Finnish defences in a more inconspicious manner they might have succeeded. russian partisans? That implies indiginous troops Why would their be russian partisans in finland? That is what they called themselves. There was not even an indiginous partisan movement among the Soviet inhabitants in the part of Soviet Karelia the Finns occupied so they had to create and operate one from across the front line.

Originally posted by SpaceHamster: Trust me, thats more than enought for 20 or 30 russian partisans. That brings up a little would-be problem in CMBB: the partisan formations the Finnish forces went up against were very well organized, crafty and the members were generally tough hombres and senoritas. They came across the front line (since there was no indiginous partisan movement in the Finnish sector), at least once at (IIRC, I'll have to check that) brigade strength and while they were being purusued they would kill their wounded and exhausted and even resort to cannibalism to keep alive. They carried with them even a press so as to be able to carry on the party preaching while on the march. In pitched combat they were really tough and willing to sustain huge casualties without breaking just so the main body could slip away from a trap. The brigade mentioned above lost ~80% of its strenght during its failed mission (while inflicting only ~40 Finnish KIA). And still not once were they cornered so that the entire force could be engaged and destroyed at once.

Originally posted by Mike: I've traced Lotta to the Finnish nation-wide voluntary defence auxiliary organisation "Lotta-Svärd", but I was curious why the woman would be executed for being aprt of this?? Some of the political aspects of the Fenno-Soviet brawl had its roots in the Finnish war of independence in 1918. The Soviets used propaganda strongly related to events then because the leader of the intended puppet government (O.W. Kuusinen) had not kept up with current events in Finland after 1918. Hence the Home Guard along with Lotta Svärd organizations were labeled as the tools of tyranny which the white government of Finland was excersising over the working class of Finland. Was it seen as a guerilla organisation, so it's members weer liable to being executed for fighting in civilian clothes as "Francs tiraeurs" (sp??)? As indicated they wore a uniform recogniced by the Finnish government. In fact most of the Finnish troops apart from the Home Guard fought in their civvies with nothing but a cocard and a leather belt issued by the army as garmenst to indicate as legitimate members of the Finnish military during Winter War. Thanks to the pre war shoe string budget. [ August 25, 2002, 05:32 PM: Message edited by: tero ]

Originally posted by Ted: Still you should break down the northern front into coastal and inland battles. Pertaining the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga sectors: The Finnish coastal arty did engage land targets. And AFAIK they could do that at the ranges up to and beyond 20km. An option would be just to add the guns and put the word “naval” next to the caliber and hopefully no one will use it unless it’s in the right context and in agreement with his or her opponent. That would propably be the best solution. One rather relevant point is accuracy (or rather the method of firing) of naval/coastal arty. They were equipped and trained to hit a moving point target at extended ranges. Having their fire scatter around in the manner the regular field arty fire now scatters is less than historically realistic.