rum

Andreas, right. Perharbs i should add what under "breakthrough" i mean the attack on a fortified well-prepared enemy position, and the heavy breakthrough tanks are designed to help infantry assault such position, bustign the concrete pillboxes, mg pillboxes, and other fortifications. IMHO the "heavy breakthrough" origins concept could be traced to the Winter War/afterwar, when the KV-2 tank was urgently built, specialy to me able to deal with fortification. Check the memories of the "heavy artillery" officer and the difficulties he met then busting bunkers. http://mannerheim-line.com/veterans/Leontief.htm

Do you mean "tank cannons" or "all cannons"? If "all cannons" then you are wrong. German infantry was using sIG-33 150mm gun. Phew... Russian infantry had only 76mm as a main arty.

Wrong. IS-2 was "heavy breakthrough" tank Wrong. Grabin made his ZIS-2 _before_ the war.

The price issues. Soviet war economy tended to be as optimal as possible (even thought the things were not always going as planned). SU-100 tank destroyers and BS-3 100mm cannon were large, very expensive, and were overkill for 99% of all the targets they could met then they were produced. It was much more "money-effective" to produce 2 SU-85 instead of one SU-100, or to produce 5 ZIS-3 76mm cannon instead of one BS-3. The same reason (price) resulted the withdrawin of ZIS-2 cannon in 1941 from production. This 57mm high-velocity ATG have the 125mm penetration at 100 meters or so. It was able to penetrate both frontal and back armor of any german vehicle it could met in the 1941, and was 200% overkill. Thats why it production was halted and resumed only then Red Army met Tigers and Panthers

flamingkives, as far as i understand the CM engine have one serious drawback in the DM modelling. It doesnt count the the HE effect on the target armor, only the AP effect is considered. I remember Apex did a short test: he positioned the immobile (due to terrain) Jagttiger without the ammo in front of the ISU-152. ISU-152 fired round by round, scoring hit by hit into Jagdtiger front. Without any effect at all. Same picture with the 122 mm shells. In the real life, even the single 122mm shell explosion on the armor would (temporary) incapacitate the crew. Continous explosion of 152mm HE shells (40-50 Kg each) should spread the crew bodies on the inner surface of the armor, even if armor would not me penetrated.

Exactly. Soviet and german rocket system, although both being rocket-powered, differed wastly in their concept. Nebelwerfers were "just another artilery", they were towed guns which had to be positioned, deployed, then loaded and fired repeat until end. "Katyushas", or "Guard Mortairs" were mobile weapon, mostly mounted on the lend-lease "Studebekker" trucks. They were driving into firing position, aiming, fire all their ammo and then immidiatly driving away. The whole fire session would last less then a minute, giving germans no chance to open counter-arty fire or send aviation.

I'd consider this couter-attacks as a "tactical defense", or "mobile defense". Their purpose, if i understand correctly, were inflicting casualties to the attacking soviet troops, not the re-capturing and control of territory. Pardon me? Could you please give me the sources? Do you mean the offense, not the marches/regrouping on friendly territory? Considering the total finnish advance, i can not realize where were such speed. And if sustained such advance rate for several days, finns would outrun Leningrad and left it far behind front lines, are they?

From the article of M. Svirin, published at http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWII/Ferdinand/ferdinand2.html#kursk (sorry i dont know if any english translation is exist). I could translate some quotes which are about Ferdinand. ====== "Total at the battlefield near Ponyri where were 21 Ferdinand, 3 150mm assault gun "Brummbar", eight PzIII and Pz IV tanks (three of them with short barrel), two Commander tanks and two remote-controlled "Borguard tankettes". Most of the Ferdinants were found on the minefield, where landmines were made by the captured high cariber rounds and airbombs, and more then the half of the vehicles had their tracks/wheels damaged. Five vehicles had tracks/wheels damage from the 76mm and higher caliber shells. Two vehicles had their guns disable because of shot-through with soviet shells or ATRs. One vehicle was demolished by direct hit of the airbomb from Pe-2, and one with the hit of 203mm howizer shell into the combat containment top. Only one Ferdinand had a hole from 76mm shell on his port side (7 T-34 and a battery of 76mm guns were shooting at him from all direction at 200...400 meters range, and Only one Ferdinand, which didnt had any tracks/wheels damage, was burned with incendiary bottle thrown by infantry (hilited with me - rum) ====== Where are not enought Ferdinats to get any real statistic (and total 90 producted wont get any statistic at all), but seems what the most effective weapon against them were minefield. Although some infantry soldiers were lucky with ATRs and Molotov Cocktail, also.

Speaking formaly, this is not absolute truth. Finnish troops went something farther then 1939 borders. I think where were several reasons why they didnt continue offensive operation 1. Lack of resources - finnish army suffered from the Winter War already, and didnt have sufficient ammo production for any large scale attacking. 2. People will - the soldier morale was very high then retaking the ground which gone to the USSR with the 1940 agreement, but morale went much lower then they had to occupy territories outside of 1939 borders. 3. While being very well trained in the defensive fights, finns had luck of training in offensive operations.

That is nothing wrong with that shell itself, as many told already. What IS wrong in the game is the amount of that shells, and the loading issues. IMHO, the game handle such shells as "ordinary" ammunition. In real life, they had to be loaded from the gun muzzle, taking much more time, reducing gun consealment, and exposing the loader to the rifle/MG fire.

Im i getting you right, ONE stuka made 16 strafes?

This is modern russian newspaper, it could be with definite anti-communistic bias. The article you mentioned is dated 05/12/2003 12:43 "The Soviet air force received 4,952 Aerocobra and 2,410 Kingcobra fighter jets. " Take note on the last word. Even this could make me ask myself - "how competent the journalist who wrote this article?" I wont mention what KingKobras never saw action in VVS during WWII... "Soviet pilot Alexander Pokryshkin fought with Hitler's Luftwaffe aces in Aerocobra planes, which made him a Hero of the Soviet Union hero three times over. " Yes, Pokryshkin fought in american Aerocobra. As well as in Soviet MiG-3. The top Soviet ace - Kozhedub - flew all war in Lavochkin's planes "However, one has to take into consideration the fact that lend and lease deliveries were made to the USSR during the most difficult period of the war - during the second half of 1942. " This is wrong. The most horrible for USSR was 1941 and the beginning of 1942. " In addition, the USSR would not have been capable of producing its arms without the lend-lease agreement:" Another argurable quote. Enouth for me I do not trying to say what USA aid was worthless. Im just dont like the propaganda what USSR would not be able to win without it. The most valuable lend-lease products were medicals - which saved hundreds thousands of lifes, and the trucks, which wastly increased mobility of soviet troops.

After surrounding Berlin, USSR had not to many choices. 1) Engage city fights. Take casualties. Stalin got "tirant" label. 2) Slowly starvate city to death, like germans tryed to do with Leningrad. Enter after the last defender die. Take heavy causalties because of huge deseases spread from the crowded city with damaged infrastructure/no water/no sanitation. Stalin would got "cruel butcherer" label. 3) Burn the city to ashes, like allied did with Tokio/Dresden/Hamburg/e.t.d. Enter the smoking wrecks. May be after that variant Stalin could got "Democratic leader" and "The Freedom Fighter" label? So what choice you would make at that place?

Interesting discussion here, and a bit "hot debate" i see Grisha and Andreas, salute for your weighted and informative posts. I would like to add the explanation for the Krivosheev's definition of "losses". According to Krivosheev's book (http://soldat.ru/doc/casualties/book/preface.html) "Unrecoverable losses" ("Bezvozvratnye potery"), permanent losses are KIA, MIA, died because of injures on the battlefield or in the hospitals, died because of deseases got on the front, died on other reasons on the front, POW. "Medical losses" ("Sanitarnye potery") are wounded, contused, sick, freezed - all who lost their ability to fight and and were evacuated from the frontlines to the hospitals for more then a one day. Total losses are unrecoverable losses plus medical losses. Where were 78291 unrecoverable losses during Berlin operation. This is 4.1% of total amount of troops involved. The medical losses are 274184, this is 14.4% Grisha - According to Krivosheev, the total losses of Soviet troops were 18.5%, not the 17,5%. Did you counted 17.5% together with Polish? Edit: the UBB considered "<" "S" ">" as a "strike-through" tag. Had to change it to "Salute" [ July 22, 2003, 08:57 AM: Message edited by: rum ]

What I would like to have, is the ability to have a "subtitles" of what the soldiers screaming. Preferable with some hotkey to switch them on/off. Of cause this could not be done by mode, it require game engine modification. Storing this subtitles in the text files with the same names as sounds but different extensions would do the subtitles "moddable" or "translatable".

You would hear lots of inconsistiency. Like MG crew shouting: "Enemy infantry! Load HE! Fire!"

As far as I understand, the main problem what do prevent creation MacOS X native CM application is the usage of legacy technology, QuickDraw 3D RAVE. As QD3D RAVE support dropped under MacOS X, and its support under Classic environment is very limited, Battlefront cannt build OS X native version and CM cannt run under Classic Environment. I know what where is a "Quesa" library, (www.quesa.org) which allow some QuickDraw3D application run under MacOS X natively. I.e. carbon application, linking against QuickDraw 3D, runs under OS 9 using standard Apple QD3D, and under MacOS X using Quesa libraries. Is it possible to build CM version in such way?

Calm down. Huge numerical superiority. </font>

I know those perkele uberfinns never giving up their secrets completely... I can guess what if they revealed the secret of PanzerFaust, then they have something much more powerful and devastating... May be even heavy-caliber, dreaded PanzerKopf ? Some panzerkopf perkeles could be redesigned as flammpanzerkopfs, breathing with fire after all night long FPO consumption

Oh I don't know. With what little (and I mean little) Russian I know. They all seem to swear alot. Never forget the time a Conscript 37mm AA gun brewwed a STUG: KABOOM! "Sukin syn!" Say it with a smile, Ruskie. </font>

It was a loooong 22 days before purchased game arrived into my ofice at Moscow, Russia. So i had to play demo, those two mission. I've played them until i've started to achieve total victory giving maximum favor to the AI opponent (+200% e.t.c). One time, as i was playing "The Valey of Trouble" as german, i've ordered my mortair to open fire at advancing Sherman. I just wanted to force him to button up. But - after the first shot - the Sherman went huge Kaaabooooom. I've checked this moment in slowly motion, frame-by-frame, and realized what mortair shell hit directly into the opened hatch. Well, sometimes such things happening...

What exactly do you need to be translated?

Khane, look at the german manual of tanks destroying. Check for URLs: http://www.il2.ru/images/100/1.jpg http://www.il2.ru/images/100/2.jpg .... http://www.il2.ru/images/100/21.jpg The most impressive is the following: Hope this will help.

I had some conversation with -am- via icq and we've found some grammar mistakes in his posts By "purpose" he meant "target". By "prepared crew" he mean "trained crew".

Wow! Privet, Leonid Glad to see u here too.