dieseltaylor

http://germandressdaggers.com/Panzer%20Section%20%20Markings%20and%20camaflouge.htm

At WeBoB's there is the BoBster where the statistics are held which a member revised about two years ago to make it more informative. I cannot easily see a record of how many CMBBs have been played totally without either counting manually or stretching my brain to use the database interrogation tool : ) However on our CMBB scenario balance page I see that 77 scenarios have been played 5 times or more. It has to be played at least five times to make the list. The most played scenario has been played 32 times. I imagine a considerable number of CMBB QBs are also recorded. A quick count shows roughly 22 CMBB games to 60 CMAK recorded this year. Understandable as CMAK is the more polished product : )

I have been reading the book which is great fun. Flattening astrology and several other things in the first couple of Chapters http://www.quirkology.com/ the site for a bit more about it

http://www.knowsoft.com/INF104/BB_WWII_Recoll.html some of the real stories. Very interesting. Fpr the same outfit but E battalion there is an even better memoir but I have lost the link though I kept the .pdf

IV's have lousy armour - particularly the turret for which a third of shots are destined unless it is hulldown : ) So with 30mm front armour a Honey will kill out to 2000metres , when the Germans have 50mm armour Honeys kill at 1000 metres. The Germans guns incidentally are a bit underpowered at 2000 metres and the Honey has all the ammo in the world to pepper them with at long range. And the Grant carries even more ammo. The 37mm is very accurate and the high rate of fire is useful.

I agree. There is a rather tedious large desert battle with if I remember correctly 15 Honey's and a similar number of Grants against IIs III's and IV's [ I am not sure if there were longs] plus the dangerous Marder [2] The Germans were hammered. This may be due to the scenario giving me a terrain edge but this is only part of it. Honeys/Stuarts 37mm will do MkIV turrets at decent range so even longs would die soon enough. Part of the German problem would be that the IV's neeed to stand off far enough that they do not get shot through the turret by multiple guns whilst the II's are useless, and the III's need to be close for the 50mm to damage the Grant anway. In theory on a billiard/pool table that would work fine as a theory but on a map with terrain the III's would not be able to guarantee the distant IV's would be fighting there near enemies. It was interessting to see III's actually cowering as they acknowledged that to get closer they would probably die to the Grants even if they could tough up the Honey's.

Unmanned AFV's? Manned AFV's? I was talking about tanks rather than any armoured fighting vehicle so your contention that AFVs will be around in 20 years I can agree with. As for the MBT as we know it now I do not agree. Rather like the battleship the cost of protecting it in action and the capital cost will become prohibitive compared to alternatives. Admittedly if you are to use them in quelling civilians they will be more than adequate but in a full on war there will be alternatives that are more agile and cheaper. You get to the nub with remote control, which may be someone in a light armoured vehicle 5 miles away however for the ultimate fighting machine I expect to see AI directed killing machines that will shoot anything with a temperature and/or movement. Perhaps accompanied by a missile bearing AI vehicle for any old fashioned tanks. Of course not having to enclose a large fighting space with armour means weight. engine power, and dimensions will be smaller giving a tactical advantage over larger slower foe. BTW Sergei. I am wondering who else has voiced the idea that tanks were an obsolete weapon system in 1918 - do you have any names to look up?

How to deal with implacable foes? By changing your ways, or by rubbing the Palestinians and Peace supporters faces in it. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061358.html It seems to me that Israel goes between bad cop, good cop routine but the end result is always Israel grows bigger. In the West the public may not be fully aware of the ignoring of resolutions agreed but I am sure in the Middle East this continuing process is not missed. The fact that the US and EU does not take any serious action against Israel does rather spoil the hope that peace can be negotiated now. Unsurprisingly even in Israel there is a strong lobby for honouring agreements but with right wing /religious extremist parties being used to keep the current Government in power there is not much hope. The cause of peace might be well served if the EU and US flexed its combined muscle and said that there would be a trade embargo until these illegal settlements were flattened. It does not guarantee that a long lasting peace will occur but it is a far better hope than this creeping annexation has of reducing the sense of outrage, and violence.

Sergei Possibly you missed the word "manned" from my previous post as you do not cover that in your reply : ) Incidentally how do you feel about battleships? Tanks have been constantly disappearing for the last 90 years, after becoming obsolete in November 1918. Tanks obsolete in 1918 - I really don't think anyone suggested that in 1918 or even 1928 or 1938 etc. The impression I got is that everyone has been dead keen on building them over the last 90 years. And even now more money and research produces harder armours and active protection systems. I think we may eventually graduate to the semi-mobile Maginot Line - at roughly the same cost to.

5] Surely the manpower pool is a constraint in peace time so having lots of cheap tanks may be better in a real war but in peacetime with limited numbers you may well want a fancy tank. Modern ATM's which fire into tank top armour do seem to indicate that good though tanks are for some things they are highly expensive and vulnerable. Personally I think the day of the manned tank is pretty much over. In the next two decades they will disappear.

I cannot see why this thread is pussying around. Who would start a war to stop another country getting nuclear weapons? Well the US obviously did in the case of Iraq and that was only on the basis of possible WMD's. Was it a matter of oil, of possibly protecting Israel, of Bush Junior proving he was more macho than his Dad. Or all three. Because there were no weapons the US and its Allies made themselves look stupid, greedy and inefficient - and incidentally killed a lot of innocent people. And also gave a boost to resurgent Islam militants. The US cannot police the world no matter how butch it thinks it is. At one time it might have lead coalitions of the major powers however it has lost its credentials by its Iraq adventure. It is isolated and whilst China is probably its closest nuclear superpower friend in terms of self-interest it surely will not go to war to further US and Israeli interests. The EU, Russia etc probably take the view that short of looking for repeated wars over the next century one has to be practical about nuclear power and weapons proliferation. Another words do everything short of war to stop proliferation. And possibly war for nutcase countries like Korea - which after all is small and politically isolated. Iran does have elections and is not a one nutter state. It is not isolated politically or economically so war would seem a little unlikely and unpalatable for most countries.

If you take the moral high ground and declare a non-proliferation policy and then its your non-nuclear allies who become nuclear one might think that was hypocrisy on a grand scale. OK so its politics ..... However the line of reasoning is very clear whereas including cops is in no way relevant. National interest of the US. Interesting - would the US have been better served by being pro-Muslim rather than supporting Israel. I suspect it would have been cheaper over the last 60 years to have done so. An interesting what-if situation. However completely redundant topic : ) Your last paragraph seems completely strange as I cannot see any connection that suggests that any rational person would advocate ANY nation going nuclear. Surely the point of the thread is should you go to war to prevent another nation joining the nuclear club. I realise attacking Pakistan, China, and India was perhaps a tall order but ...... To think if the Shah remained in power the Iranians would have had a bomb some decades by now. It would have been interesting to see how the West would have reacted to a subsequent revolution. Of course no such thing would occur in Pakistan so no worries there then. Joking aside you have to consider whether a country would initiate a nuclear exchange which results in its own destruction or is having the bomb a validation of your country as a world power not to be toyed with trivially by the former Great Powers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7905320.stm responsible use of weaponry reported. The use of flechettes does seem particularly indiscriminate.

One thing BoB could do with is scenario designers. Directors running tournaments often falter when it comes to gathering a handful of balanced scenarios. I am hopeful that we will have more NABLA's tournament at BoB this year to solve the balancing problem. Scenarios are always more interesting if you are unsure whether they are balanced or not ... and in whose direction. I am contemplating whether it is possible you can have Nabla with an element of force picking. Basic idea is that the Axis and Allied sides alternate in having designated units for all players. The hybrid is that say in game one it is an Allied attack and the players chosse whether to go US or Commonwealth Battalion. TD applies the casualty rate and all players then set-up. Interesting to see which Allied force does the best againts the same German force. So not totally randomised so as to lose all use to Nabla but with national picks to make it slightly more interesting. Only a thought for this year : )

Like the German anti-magnetic mine coating : ) Would have been brilliant if any of their enemies used magnetic mines - and how long did they keep using it!

Nice Sergei. Its that Finnish navy training .... : )

It may sound rather hard ass for a friendly club but we have had a few dubious people who have a bad rep who kept re-enlisting under different names. Paratrooper101 who became infamous pretty much everywhere for kickoffs. The other big crime is people who drop games and wander off when losing .. we throw them out of the club also. : ) Everyone left you can be friendly with !

and presumably this also if anything see the pretty movie makes it even less attractive as a game to purchase. Naval games really need a reason to be fighting the battle and given there are no flags to capture it can only be down to destroying ships. Given the nature of luck in battles and other than that the mechanistic weight of shells times rounds etc is paramount seems to me that battle satisfaction is not going to be high. But what do I know ... naval fans will love it possibly.

Which comes back to the not unknown problem that the more territory you take the smaller your army becomes as you occupy your winnings. Arguably Russia was too large to beat as the occupation requirements were sufficient obstacle in themselves. The fact that the German logistics were palpably unable to to provide sufficient supply is just another side of the coin. Short of a Mongolian hordes type scenario laying waste to everything they could there was no real long-term win. Even the laying waste would have just lead to an unwinnable guerilla war. If Russia had sued for an early peace and given up territory that would have just been a delay until the re-match. I am excluding the nuclear line of argument as that is another line of argument that leads to the same conclusion. : )

And if Storm Eagle goes belly-up?

So in what way does it differ from a Panther in its vulnerabilities? Apart of course being 12 tonnes lighter and more reliable.? "The main weakness of the Panther tank was its much thinner (40–50 mm thick) side armor. The thinner side armor was necessary to keep the tank's overall weight within reasonable bounds, but it made the Panther vulnerable to attacks from the side by most Allied and Soviet tank and anti-tank guns. German tactical doctrine for the use of the Panther thus emphasised the importance of flank protection. Five millimeter skirt armor, Schürzen, intended to provide protection for the lower side hull from Soviet anti-tank rifle fire was fitted on the hull side. Zimmerit ceramic coating against magnetic mines also became standard with the Ausf. A, and retrofitted to older versions until deleted from new Panthers from about September 1944." BTW these are the armour figures from the link I quoted earlier, are you confusing the Comet with the Cromwell? Lower Hull Nose 64(I.T.80) Upper Hull Nose 32(I.T.80) Hull Front 74(I.T.80) Hull Sides Upper 32(I.T.80)+14(I.T.180) Hull Sides Lower 29(I.T.80)+14(I.T.180) Hull Rear Lower 32(I.T.80) Hull Rear Upper 25(I.T.80) Hull Roof (Front) 25(I.T.80) Engine Deck 14(I.T.100) Hull Floor 14(I.T.130) Turret Front 102(I.T.90) Turret Roof (Front) 25(I.T.80) Turret Roof (Rear) 20(I.T.80) Turret Sides 64(I.T.80) Turret Rear 57(I.T.80) Turret Floor 25(I.T.11 The T34's turret armour was 45mm, as was its side and rear armour. Sherman side armour 38mm turret 58mm. All three tanks had similar weight. The thing about "best" tank is that the latest model was always going to better than preceding ones as lessons were learned. With 1200 in action the Comet sneaks in, and given the advantages of good gun AND reliability and speed it would have to figure. Of course if you want to change the criteria to best tank with over 1500 fighting examples in WW2 ..... : )

Clearly lacked armour? I thought 4" 102mm was not bad compared to the Sherman and T34. Not as good as frontal on the Panther but better side armour and lighter and more reliable. As for vertical armour - unless one insists on parking on level terrain and perpendicular to the enemy gun the armour is very rarely going to be vertical to anything. Furthermore at that stage of the war guns were defeating all armour pretty much anyway so it sufficient to kill small guns but as for armouring to defeat 88mm and 75/l71? why waste the time. "When the Comet arrived in September 1944 the British had at last a British tank with decent armour, speed and a good gun, many regard it was the best British tank of the war and they are probably right. The Comet was extremely fast, reliable, was easy to drive and had excellent off road performance. The 77mm gun was a slightly less powerful than the 17pdr but was still capable of penetrating thick armour especially when firing APDS ammunition. Armour was decent for a 33 ton tank but clearly inferior to the mammoth German tanks of the period but better than that of tanks such as the Sherman or Cromwell." from here http://www.wwiiequipment.com/index.php?Itemid=56&catid=37:cruiser-tanks&id=59:comet-cruiser-tank-a34&option=com_content&view=article Incidentally the turret traverse of 360 in 24 seconds must have been a useful tactical asset.

So the Comet gets ignored : ( As always a fairly pointless argument as the winning criteria "best" is not defined. Refining it to tactical, or which tank on a one to one basis would you like to be in on a battlefield is the base level and the answer would have to be Panther every time. If you asked me to move an armoured division 150 miles then it would be a Sherman [Comet] etc etc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_tank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34_tank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Sherman

The pin-pricking of the enemy flanks with expeditions in the Med is almost historic British action. Whether it was correct to use sea-power with the advent of planes is moot militarily. One wonders how far it was seen as politically useful to stir the pot for those anti-Facists in the Balkans and give them encouragement.