dieseltaylor

if you were to cover the partisan activity in the area - this may be useful. It mentions a book derived partly from the College's collection King's College London Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives Papers of Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead Reference code: GB 0099 KCLMA Prentice/Wickstead Title: Prentice, Maj Ronald R [1913-1980] and Wickstead, Capt H Arthur (1913-1989) Dates of creation of material: 1942-1945, 1989-1991 Level of description: individual file and item level Extent: 0.05 m3 or 5 boxes of papers Introduction * Biographical history * Provenance * Scope and content * Arrangement * Conditions of access and use * Related material Brief List * 1 Diaries and notebooks of Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead, 1942-1944 * 2 Documents and papers relating to Allied Military Mission operations, West Macedonia, Greece, 1943-1944 * 3 Papers relating to Greek partisan activities in West Macedonia, Greece, 1943-1944 * 4 Maps and photographs of Allied Military Mission area of operations, West Macedonia, Greece * 5 Correspondence between Allied Military Mission commanders and, 1943-1944 and former Greek partisans, 1946-1955 * 6 Papers relating to wireless-telegraphy signals, Allied Military Mission, West Macedonia, 1943-1944 * 7-8 Papers relating to the administration, finances and logistics of the Allied Military Mission, West Macedonia, 1943-1944 * 9 German papers, documents and newspapers during the occupation of West Macedonia, 1943-1944 * 10 Greek political papers, documents and newspapers, 1941-1946 * 11 Wickstead's post-war partial index of signals, Allied Military Mission, West Macedonia, [1989] * 12 Papers relating to post-war publications about the resistance movement in West Macedonia, [1989-1991] * 13 Post-war Greek newspapers, leaflets and war memorial publications, 1945-[1991] Papers of Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead INTRODUCTION BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY Ronald R Prentice, born [1913]; stationed at General Headquarters, Middle East Command, Cairo, Egypt, 1942; served in Special Operations Executive (SOE), Force 133, Greece, 1943-1944; served in Parachute Regt, [1946]; died [1980]. H Arthur Wickstead, born in Birmingham, West Midlands, 1913; scholar at St John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Double First in Classics; Henry Fellow, Yale University; School Master, Bedford School, Bedfordshire; served in Gloucestershire Regt, 1940-1943; served in Special Operations Executive (SOE), Force 133, Greece, 1943-1944; Allied Control Commission, Palestine, 1946; government official in Cornwall and Shropshire, 1952-1974; died 1989. Prentice and Wickstead were parachuted together into Mastroganni, Greece, on 10 Aug 1943 as part of the British Military Mission (BMM), West Macedonia (Allied Military Mission from autumn 1943). From there, they proceeded to set up a base of operations at Pendalophos (known as Area 1 from Feb 1944). Under the command of Lt Col Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, Special Operations Executive (SOE) forces in the Balkans, or Force 133, they took an active role in Allied efforts to sabotage German activities in Greece, often working alongside indigenous partisan (andarte) movements such as Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos (ELAS). These efforts culminated in Sep-Nov 1944 as the AMM took action against the retreating German Army. Designated Operation NOAH'S ARK, this operation also saw Prentice promoted to Major and in temporary command of Area 1. He left Saloniki on 13 Dec 1944. It is not known when Wickstead was withdrawn from Greece, but it is likely that it was shortly after Prentice's departure. PROVENANCE The papers of Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead were placed in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives as a single collection in June 1993 by Peter Wickstead, son of the late Capt Wickstead. SCOPE AND CONTENT The collection principally concerns the work of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in West Macedonia, Greece, 1943-1945. Prentice's diaries and personal notebooks document his services at General Headquarters, Middle East Command, Cairo, Egypt in 1942 and his services as an SOE commander in West Macedonia, Greece, 1943-1944. These are supported by a series of official and unofficial reports relating to Allied Military Mission operations, notably including situation reports from Allied Military Mission sub-area stations detailing the planning and execution of Operation NOAH'S ARK, the harassment of German forces during their withdrawal from the peninsula, and papers relating to the joint British and Greek command of partisan forces in Greece. The collection also includes papers, in Greek, relating to Greek partisan activities in West Macedonia and combined operations with British and American units; maps and photographs of Allied Military Mission area of operations; correspondence between Allied Military Mission commanders and sub-area commanders; papers relating to wireless-telegraphy traffic; Allied Military Mission administrative, financial, and logistical records; and, German occupation documents and newspapers, most notably relating to German 1 Mountain Div. Substantial additional material in Greek includes political propaganda, party documents and newspapers, 1941-1946 , as well as post-war Greek publications about the resistance movement in Greece. Finally, the collection includes a partially completed index of signals, Allied Military Mission, 1943-1944, compiled by Wickstead shortly before his death in 1989 and papers relating to post-war publications about the resistance movement in West Macedonia, 1943-1944. ARRANGEMENT Papers are arranged by document type and language, as above, and chronologically within sections. Printed post-war material is grouped separately. CONDITIONS OF ACCESS AND USE Access Open, subject to signature of reader's undertaking form. Copyright Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied for research use only. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, attention of the Director of Archive Services. Language English, Greek and German. Transliteration of the Greek material in this collection is based primarily on the modern Greek demotic form rather than the pure katharevusa form. Translation was based on the conversion of Greek words into phonetic symbols and then into the nearest English equivalent. It should also be noted that, over time, modern Greek vocabulary has been supplemented by several strata of loan words; in the case of West Macedonia, these have include influences from Armenia, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. RELATED MATERIAL Related units of description The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives holds several collections relating to SOE operations in the Balkans, most notably the papers of Lt Col Count J A Dobrski (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Dobrski); Capt Patrick Hutchinson Evans (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Evans); Brig Godfrey Pennington Hobbs; Brig Edmund Charles Wolf Myers; Maj Philip Frederick Nind (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Nind); Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead; and, Col (Hon) Christopher Montague Woodhouse. Associated material The Public Record Office, Kew, holds a substantial collection of material relating to SOE operations, most notably Political Warfare Executive correspondence (Ref: FO 898/25-28); papers relating to SOE activities, Middle East, Cairo, 1940-42 (Ref: FO 898/113-114); Quarterly Reports of Special Operations Executive, Oct 1943-Dec 1945 (Ref: PREM 3/408/1); Confidential Papers of Col William J Donovan, 1940-41 (Ref: PREM 4/25/5); and, Special Operations Executive: Balkan Files (Ref: HS 5). Related publications The collection was extensively consulted by Professor (late Lt Col) Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond for his publication, The Allied Military Mission and the Resistance in West Macedonia (Institute for Balkan Studies, 1993).

and this is a fascinating general history of the period ... http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent?file=PRpassion2

Fascinating bridge. I see the local museum takes history up to 1913 - I suspect they do not like talking about the civil war. I will search on : )

Fascinating bridge. I see the local museum takes history up to 1913 - I suspect they do not like talking about the civil war. I will search on : )

LOVE IT Celery grogdom and necropolixxxx grogdom in the same post! What a laugh ---- and so educational : )

Panther Commander "Having been in the military, I can't remember a single time when a Captain was told..."and you are going to get 10 tanks coming down that road in another 8 minutes..." Never happened. They would tell them "3rd Platoon is on the way to support you." And you DIDN'T CARE what 3rd Platoon had because you needed ANYTHING they were bringing!! In my scenarios I NEVER tell the gamer what he is getting exactly. Tanks break down, air attacks happen, people get lost. There are no guarantees on a battlefield and if they give you an arrival time it will be wrong. I don't use deliberately misleading briefings though. Fuzzy is good enough for me." You would have had the advantage of knowing what 3rd Platoon consisted of ............ I agree about approx. timing and I can take fuzzy. : )

I was discussing the game with my brother who played it yonks ago but also enjoyed it thoroughly. He won - but then killing a large points object helps: )

MikeyD LOL and congrats on your 4000th post : )

And I thought Emma was going to descend to talking about pixels mans equipment ...... I misjudged you.

Phillipe I can see what you are getting at. I disagree with you simply as I see the penalties as a method of stopping someone micromanaging to the extreme. Drawing extremely complicated and overly clever routes that hug the ground and are speediest to where they wish to be. Maps were never that good! A unit would not have the benefit of borg spotting or zooming to ground level 300 metres to spyout the land before it gets there. The fix may seem to be a fudge but it generally works. If you play TCP?IP in real time 1 minute moves i minute for orders you get the adrenalin buzz - and you learn to give platoon orders for the computer to get your troops to X. You do not generally give long range orders as you try to work by bounds, if you get bounced you only have moments to rectify the problem in your order phase. A much more realistic battle occurs compared to the analysis to death before giving an order school.

Just finished it and found it very very enjoyable. I tend to play in realtime - one minute for the film and then a min approx. for the turn so may have been able to do slightly better than a 48/52 to the computer. Exactly the same casualties! Amazing CAS taking out MMG 20 metres from a German ATG! Then annoyed Churchill crewmen assaulted it - to within 4 metres - retreated and pinned it down from 17 metres. Very amusing. I would never normally do this but it was that kind of battle. Excellent. Not for humans or replay. But all the better for that.

Hmmm I ask myself which tank would I rather be in Panther , Tiger - Sherman, T34, Churchill Really quite an easy answer : ) I have a suspicion most of the Allied troops would agree with me. Of course Allied combined arms and numbers made sure that whatever superiority an individual tank had over other tanks was never the decisive point. For a day or so there might be success but it would never last. Mr Tittles - "It also reflects the absense of allied AT from being effective. In other words, German superiority." The "failure" of Allied ATG's to be a huge battlefield killer surely reflects there limited role in advance on the battlefield. Also the US never really got the hang of ATG's so mostly the CW were notching up ATG kills. There are plenty of ETO and NA battles were ATG's did account for a lot of tanks. But then it did rely on the Axis attacking them : )

Blimey so this is the new graphics WOW! How did you get hold of it : )

Grogdom excelling itself!!! Well done.

I think one thing thta could be improved quite easily is to actually tell the sides where their reinforcements are coming in if they are road bound. The player can at least then make efforts to avoid reinforcements being bounced on arrival - or choose not to. As previously said by ne my worst scenario against a human did not even advise what my reinforcements would be!!!!!!! How can you plan a battle without knowing the balance of your forces? My I make an observation that in the war I am beginning to suspect that you would count your troops in effectives - not "You have a second batallion SS xxxxxx DIV. coming in 30 minutes" After all this could be any where from tens of tanks to ten tanks. It may seem realistic to give the formation name but I believe the rejoinder would always be what is the effective strength. Some designers are very good about this - and to be fair one could even lie slightly to allow for off-board breakdowns and incidents : ) As I have never designed a scenario please forgive me if I have asked for something the engine is not yet capable of.

Whilst modern is possible surely a Napoleonic - or more to the point - horse and musket can be stretched to cover such a huge number of conflicts rather than just Vietnam or Korea. Much larger market to sell to so commercially a better bet. {Which makes me wonder whether you can equate sailing ships to tanks and through that in also}

It is nice to see that "we" have the time now to devote attention to non-gaming engine improvements rather than items that effect the fighting! I have no problems with the concept of different BMP's for faces at all but I really would rather the next game came along quickly ....

I have just palyed it as the Russians and I do wonder if the smoke barrage was correctly laid by the AI/ other player to account for the easy wins. As the FO's are greyed out I almost missed them. As Russians I won 75/25 and I had to foget where the German reinforcements arrived which was quite funny as they turned up and wasted three tanks instantly and then in a hail of ATR file one backed off the board, one eventually died and then for ten minutes I chased the final one with a HQ who could not assault it - despite having grenades and SMG's . All the while the ATR's where making into a pepper pot. Eventually a squad arrived to put it out of its misery. A bit galling to realise the AI would probably have played the Russians better! Still an interesting scenario to learn from for anyone greenish

Blimey "Yes. My opponent gave up after something like 10 turns. Every Soviet tank in sight was dead." Kelly you must have been very fortunate - I have never fought as the Russians but that sounds too easy .... memo to selve .. play as Ruskies

The sceanario does work - at least against the AI. I won 76/24 losing only 1 vehicle by keyholing, it is very much a learning scenario from the point of view of getting the techniques right. Keep trying and remember to degrade the Rusian observation by keeping them buttoned as far as possible

Thanks for all the information - I really had not understood the difficulties designers suffered from the game engine design. Must be incredibly frustrating - I will be more tolerant in future about what I perceive as foolishness in design actually being a forced work around. : )

Alsations? from Wikipedia "Language The local German dialects are Alsatian and Frankish. Both are referred to as alsacien in French, and neither have any form of official recognition. When Alsace was under German control from 500 to 1648, from 1871 to 1919 and from 1940 to 1944, use of the German language was mandatory. However, parts of the région spoke French exclusively." Apparently with each change of control certain amounts of the population left for their former overlords. In 1870 it was put at 50,000.

I think he was using smoke to cover his position fromm ranged fire when an assault came in .... Very sneaky. I have dropped smoke in front of my gun positions to break sight lines and put them into hide. Most players tend to forget in the heat of battle .... like me ... that tanks carry smoke also [well not russians , matildas er er ... yes well]

Interesting to learn of the deficiencies of the various shots and gun platforms. Just goes to show how bad news gets suppressed!! Serious eye-opener re APDS. I would agree with Mr T that the 90mm on a half track might have been useful - but I have to admit thinking of lots of scenarios where it would be very vulnerable. Possibly to the point that to have it in the right circumstances in the line were so restricted that it would end up being used inappropriately. My father in law was telling me that as a weapon of suppression for squads the Bren failed as it was too accurate. No spray effect --- designers cannot win really : )

In another thread the 17pdr comes over as extremely accurate. Do you have any data on the AA guns accuracy?