Kanonier Reichmann

To be able to mount a 1,000 bomber raid in the form of Operation Gomorrah on Hamburg in July 1943 hardly backs up the view that bombing only really became serious from 1944 onwards. That's a lmost 2 years before the Nazi regime finally capitulated and from what I understand, the peoples will to resist was still very high, judging by the fierce fighting in and around Berlin. On the count of breaking the populations will, it appeared to have failed miserably. Regards KR

Mingan has a very good point. Surely the appearance of a highly threatening unit such as a Sherman should override pretty much everything and draw a suitable response to this deadly threat? As for the previous post about the Sherman having a gun mounted higher up so that it could shoot back while the Semovente can't defies all logic. If something can fire at you then your unit should be able to fire back at it. Why can't the higher Sherman turret which has the gun mounted within it be targeted? Talk about a lack of common sense! If that's how the game is programed then there's an obvious problem here which defies basic reality. Regards KR

How much influence did Harris have in providing assistance to the civilian government in coming to that decision on the directive to target factory workers? I can't believe he had no hand in the ultimate policy direction, especially seeing he is appointed as head of Bomber Command within a week of the directive being issued. Sounds to me like a case of ensuring the right person for the job is in place to carry out an unpalatable directive. The sort of person who will prosecute such a directive with great zeal and determination despite contrary views. Seems like the person in the form of Harris was well chosen for such an unconscionable strategy. Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay would have made fine bedfellows and had much in common to discuss if they ever crossed paths in their wartime service. To give you an idea of the mindset of leMay, this quote was attributed to him... Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal... in the context of being questioned over the use of firebombing on cities like Tokyo. Regards KR

Do please go on about the past shady activities. Sounds interesting! Regards KR

What... fighting over the stocks of chocolate? Makes for a new dynamic I suppose, instead of oil. Regards KR

I wouldn't have thought so. To do so would have smacked of sheer hypocrisy. I believe it was considered to charge Nazi high ranking naval personnel with war crimes for the unrestricted U-Boat campaign until it was pointed out that the Allies did exactly that and far more effectively, against the Japanese in the Pacific. Regards KR

You may be right. Apparently attributed to Winston Churchill. On the subjct of ol' Winnie and the bombing camapign over Europe I found this quote particularly insightful with regards to the aims of the campaign. Regards KR

I agree entirely with the above. I never said the Allies had descended to the rock bottom levels of morality the Nazis had but I still believe they should have held themselves to a higher level of principle than they did. Bombing cities heavily populated with civilians "until the rubble bounced" smacked of sheer revenge as the primary motivating factor. Not exactly high brow is it. Regards KR

In John Kettlers thread about pictures of tanks from a French website there is a whole range of excellent pictures of an ISIII. Truly a beast! Regards KR

Excellent find John. The multiple shots of each AFV are very good. The example of a Panther even had the AAMG42 mounted on the roof. Regards KR

You remember it first hand don't you Michael. Regards KR

It appears the Germans have a habit of continuing the trend even to the present day. A prime example is the technical marvel of Volkswagen engineering in designing the 1.4 Litre Turbocharged AND Supercharged engine that is fitted to may VW Golfs. They're a brilliant design in theory but the trouble is, they keep having reliability issues. I guess with so many complications in the engineering there are simply too many things that can go wrong. There's something to be said for the KISS principal, a philosophy I don't see any German manufacturer ever adopting! Regards KR

The thing is... at the time of the Dresden bombing, Bomber Command was more than capable of pretty much precision bombing using their Mosquito pathfinders to drop flares and electronic gadgetry available to guide then to the correct point to drop the bombs. They achieved a pretty tight grouping on the old part of the city east of the city centre, the place where most civilians lived. It was clear what the target was from the outset and they achieved it with remarkable efficiency. If they really intended to cripple the infrastructure of the city, surely the one major bridge that spanned the Elbe through which all rail transport flowed would have been a high priority target? As it turned out, it was never targeted and left completely untouched despite the number of bombers used in the raid. It's very clear what the target was... the occupants of the city. The part I'm quoting below are the stated aims of Bomber Command in their bombing campaign as referenced in Wikipedia on the subject of Bomber Harris.

This quote from the article noob referenced in his most recent post: It seems pretty clear to me that Bomber Harris with his tactic of using 2 massive waves of bombers, deliberately tried to maximise the chances of a firestorm targeted on the most populous area of the city and ensure that any resulting fires couldn't be fought due to the destruction of any resources trying to fight them in the 2nd wave of bombings. The marshalling yards weren't targeted, nor the city's major airfield but the main population centre instead. This to me clearly indicates Harris's complete disregard for civilian casualties and, in fact, the specific targeting of civilians. His goal was the extermination of the entire German people's and if he was given a completely free hand, he would have done his utmost to achieve it. Now, I'm not in any way saying this act was as criminal as the attempted annhilation of the Jewish population in Europe at the hand of the Nazi's or other horrors under that regime conducted on the Eastern Front but does anyone seriously think that the Dresden firestorm which killed 135,000 people in one fell swoop would not have been prosecuted as a war crime if, heaven forbid, the Axis managed to win? No, I didn't think so. Regards KR

I agree. Jurgen Prochnow was superb in the film Das Boot. The final scene where he's watching his U-Boat slowly slip under the water after the bombing run while his own life is slipping away, as if inextricably bonded together, is unforgettable! Regards KR

Well, SPR pales into insignificance on that front when compared with The Thin Red Line. The number of times the main character went off with his... Consider the lilly... moments was absurd to the extreme. It was beyond a joke to think that a Marine under the stress of combat in the sh!thole that Guadalcanal was would be continually having these philosophical moments when the reality would be all he's thinking of is how to survive til the next day and get some food into his stomach at the same time. Regards KR

I suppose Dresden was a classic example of attempting to destroy industry as the primary target. An objective in which they failed miserably to achieve despite the massive loss of civilian life. Not just German U-Boats but Allied submarines as well I think is what you failed to mention. If you continue with that line of argument then you're saying that it would have been wrong for Allied warships to blockade and sink merchant shipping, if necessary, that's heading into Nazi Germany? The fact is, the shipping is often carrying weapons of war so it's accepted that they're valid targets in wartime. Enemy population centres with little or no industry... not so much. Regards KR

So, is Bomber Harris supposed to be someone who deserves praise? Seeing as he was the one who deliberately targeted millions of civilians with his bombing campaign against German population centres which resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths is that a praiseworthy achievement? It appeared that his main motivation was revenge on the German peoples for having bombed English civilian centres (also an unforgiveable strategy). Of course, Germany claimed that they were simply responding to the (ineffectual) bombing raid that had been orchestrated by Bomber Command against Berlin in the early days of the Battle of Britain. I guess he simply wanted to prove once and for all that 2 wrongs do in fact make a right. Regards KR

I believe BFC have stated before that the problem with knowing exactly what you've spotted is linked in with the game engine where individual bullets & shells are tracked and how they intersect with other units means that the detail of enemy units has to be known. It's particularly a problem with AFV's which can vary significantly in size and shape. Personally, I would have thought retaining FOW for infantry units would be more doable since they are all of the same height and shape but the numbers of men in each formation varies of course. Regards KR

In that case... the extremely long term view! Regards KR

Hi John. That article on the Medal of Honour matter doesn't really answer the question of how a new weapon system could increase its effectiveness against the enemy by up to 50% due to the element of the unknown causing morale problems to troops on the receiving end. I think you'll need a different example to reference the point made about new weapons! Regards KR

I have heard that many well educated Chinese citizens have been indoctrinated via the state education system to fervently believe that there has never been any moon landings and that all the Apollo 11 to 17 missions were a fake a la the '70's film Capricorn One. i.e. all done in a Hollywood studio to fool the world. Apparently it's too much for the Chinese citizenry to take that the capitalist imperialists had the knowhow and determination to reach the moon some 40 years before their own space program could get off the ground. Regards KR

Yep, we've gone from Borg spotting in CMx1 to Borg ID'ing in CMx2. Ideally we should have relative spotting combined with misidentifying of enemy units and sound contact routines similar to CMx1, although I can see why that's difficult with precision ballistic calculations built into CMx2. Regards KR

Kinda begs for flamethrowers to be modelled in that environment, doesn't it. Regards KR

I have always seen this happen when I have the F troop! Regards KR