Harry Yeide

I haven't turned to the armored infantry yet. If I ever finish the project I'm working on now, I promise I'll take a look.

Doh! Career.

I have barely had time to scratch the surface of CMBN, but as a Mac user and early OSX adopter, it is a thrill that the drought is over. Old hands may remember that CMBO was the game that inspired me to write my first book, "Steel Victory," which I realized could be a great story after I started going through the tank battalion records at the National Archives looking for scenario fodder. I missed being able to play the games that came along afterward, but I kept writing, despite having a day job because I'd gotten hooked. Seven more books worth of hooked to be precise. These include several more books on armor at the battalion level and below ("The Tank Killers" about the TD force, "Steeds of Steel" about the mechanized cavalry, and "The Infantry's Armor," where I expanded the story of the separate tank battalions to all theaters of the war and reworked the material on the ETO to incorporate the infantry's perspective, which I should have done in the first place.) I have loaded the Normandy chapters of these three books into the Public Folder of my website (http://web.mac.com/yeide/World_War_II_History/Home_Page.html) to give some context to the game you are playing. I hope you find them interesting. While you're there, check out "Fighting Patton," due out in September. Thanks, Battlefront!

El Guettar was a good meeting engagement with all sorts of great hardware on both sides. The II Corps had the best of the first day, but I'd argue the 10th Panzer Division had the better of it thereafter.

Is that the Ferdinand from Anzio?

And right you would be. Projectile, APC. 3 inch M62A1.

I never left. There just hasn't been much of the old nitty gritty military stuff in a long time. Cheers.

The show was bad history in many cases. The story about the spotter plane and naval gunfire is not reflected in the official records. The counterattack by the 1st Chasseurs d'Afrique on 8 and 9 November was defeated in some rather desperate fighting at the classic Combat Mission tactical level. Patton 360 also said the TDs at El Guettar were spread out across the valley floor, when in fact they were arrayed along the crest of the hills. The whole thing was closer to a docudrama on Meth.

It may look a tad familiar now....

It looks sharp on my Mac. Can you send me a screen shot of what you see? Thanks!

Commonwealth forces used amtracs in Holland. For the Roer River crossing, the 739th Tank Battalion supplied twenty-seven tank drivers to operate LVTs, which ferried personnel and equipment across the Rriver during the assault. The swift current forced the battalion to discontinue use of the LVTs. The 747th Tank Battalion was issued LVTs for the Rhine crossing, and between 24 and 26 March made 1,112 roundtrips across the Rhine in support of the Ninth Army.

Due to Apple's "upgrade" from .Mac to the self-indulgent "MobileMe," the software I've used to build and maintain my web site appears to be going away. I have had to reconstruct the thing in iWeb (bleach). The new address is: World War II History by Harry Yeide. To encourage folks to visit and update any links to my page, I've added a bunch of pictures to the "More Tank Photos" and "More TD Photos" sections. Cheers!

I've been through the AARs of every TD battalion, separate tank battalion, and armored division, and I suspect that a story that good would have shown up elsewhere. Could be, but....

It was a 3-inch gun, and both the American and German accounts indicate the round struck the Tiger's gun mantlet.

Yes, the one that backed into the building. The TD battalion had been performing security duties, and the fight in Stavelot was the first time the men had fired shots in anger. Not bad.

Mighty good. The King Tiger knocked out in Stavelot was done in by a towed gun from the 825th TD Bn in the crew's first combat action.

The scale is 1:10000. Sorry, I though that was on the map. I'm fairly sure elevation is in meters, and the areas marked with feet are gates through the hedgerows, not the height of the hedgerow.

Go to the public folder at my website (http://homepage.mac.com/yeide/Menu2.html) and look at the file Hill192TerrainStudy.jpg. There's some real bocage for you to mull.

Oops! Double post.

The account is from the 741st TB's AAR. The 2d Infantry Division formed part of V Corps and attacked through heavy bocage east of the main VII Corps attack. The end of the story was that the sortie worked great, but the division soon enough ran into heavy German resistance. Planners had not taken into account that the Germans typically held most of their infantry strength back at an MLR hundreds of yards to the rear of the first line of defense.

There are plenty of AARs that mention use of the hedgerow cutters, but except for those armored outfits that wound up in the hedgerow country around Brest, the "Culin phase" was pretty short. The best example of the cutter's use en masse was the "sortie" mounted on 26 July by the 2d Infantry Division with the 741st Tank Battalion and several cavalry units. The AAR reads:

Thanks, John. I have no clue how Amazon decides those things. They're bundling "The Tank Killers" with Steve Zaloga's book on US tank and TD battalions in the ETO, which makes a lot more sense.

My new book, Steeds of Steel, is in stock as of today at Amazon ( Steeds of Steel ) . Here is your one-stop history of the US mechanized cavalry in all theaters of operations. Cheers.

I have posted brief histories of all of the US cavalry reconnaissance squadrons and armored reconnassance battalions here: Cavalry Histories . Merry Christmas!