dieseltaylor

It depends on how friendly the girls are too each other but in my experience ...... Uh perhaps I better post after the watershed.

Thats why we use smilies! : ) But thanks for the recognition - nobody else realises I am a genuis!!

Well to some of us it is simple : ) However I afraid you can't stop people posting so you might aswell live with it and accept the good with the bits you do not like.

$10 is bearable. BTW sjburkes argument on business advice reminds me of the argument how wonderful is that puddles actually fit the depression in the ground. Not actually proof of superior design : ) However we will let that slide as there can be no doubt that remaining in business is an achievement.

Don't worry JK I get the same cryptic comments from JonS to my posts which are slightly off-tangent and make no sense. Still everyone has their little foibles. I am glad you clarified the ammo matter as it saved me worrying what was going on. Though the concept of picking up a weapon when you have negligible ammo is a problem.

Yep, same for me.

Some people might think that with all the levels of realism with the infantry modelling and calculation of shot that having instantly vapourising crew that allow tanks to operate without interruption is perhaps bizarre! I have got a description of extracting a dead TC from a tank - just a few men and a rope ...! However I would not claim the tank was undriveable but operating the gun would be severely hampered if not stopped. Of course sometimes tipping the TC out the turret if he were draped over the cupola migh be feasible - I am not sure whether tankers did turf them out immediately or withdrew to cover to sort themselves out.

75mm ATG destroyed on probably 2nd shot as orange explosion noted which apparently is generally a hit. However they did not take the village until the following day. Apropos tracking and firing whilst they were covering down the main village street on the following day - from outside the village - an SP crossed the road inside the village. According to Bellamy it was in sight for at most 3 seconds but one of the gunners nailed the front idler and disabled it. Very good shooting indeed according to Bill.

From Troop Leader by Bill Bellamy page 133:

From Bill Bellamy's book Troop Leader after he is edged his Cromwell up an embankment and received a hail of fire, retreated, and then went for a recce on foot: "The view was fantastic and we could see Grobbendonk very clearly a couple of miles away and to our left. Below us was the canal and on the far bank about a mile away, driving at break-neck speed along the road, was a German truck on the back of which was mounted a 20mm multi-barrelled Oerlikon. What a fool I had been not to stand my ground and destroy it. However by now it was too late try to engage it so we set up a look-out post at the top. eventually running a telephone down to my tank and we settled down to watch. Again it was a lovely soft warm day and we took it in turns to keep guard and man the lookout post. I was not going to be caught out again. As soon as all this had been organised I went and inspected 'Abbess of Chantry'. We had received a lot of hits during our brief encounter and everyone told me that I would be astonished at the results. I certainly was. The shells had penetrated the armour plate to the extent of about two inches and had stuck in it. looking as if they had been spot welded on. I asked for Bill Best to come up from the LAD and have a look when he had time, and sure enough a short while later, up he came on his old motorbike. He was as nonplussed as we all were, and went back to check it out. The upshot of the matter was that, having checked the serial number, he found that I had been issued with an unarmoured training tank! Our beloved Abbess' was made from soft steel and was lighter than the others, which explained why she was so much faster, but wouldn't have stopped much except 20mm shells. I was offered a replacement tank, but we all wanted to keep her and despite a great deal of pressure from outside we managed to persuade them that for us she was a 'must'."

It is indefensible to have a system where dead and wounded crew DO NOT affect the vehicles operation.

The portrait is wasted space big time. It conveys probably the least information per pixel.

Does seem overly risky to be firing at that range on a relatively innocuous target. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Carpenter_%28Lt._Col.%29 For other astounding actions.

My money says for sure the AI will go for the closest tank as my hunch is that it does not differentiate between tank dangerousness. If you are able to replay it may be interesting to see if you can torment the AI by moving them closer and back out to see if it changes target : ) But if it is a one off chance stay put and fight it out. We all look forward to the result. P.S. As for backing out it only makes sense if there is a very short move to cover. And in RL, as opposed to the game, reverse was very very slow.

What can one say but I think you are darn right.

Amusing and not too long.

JonS- you seem to have missed answering my last post to you - or possibly not. I am still curious why Greece was not a good example. Anyway thanks for the link to the article on boingboing. It was interesting both to see the amount of student debt and also the arguments advanced in the responses. However a bit more research reveals the astonishing extent of debt: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/student-loan-debt-ticking-time-bomb-deal-bills-143018212.html However to breakdown the figures in a meaningful way this site is needed. http://www.asa.org/policy/resources/stats/default.aspx as a per head basis makes it very much more understandable. I have a gripe here that students are, a lot of the time, to blame for their debt. For instance a friend's son is no more than an hour from home to his uni but feels he should live "in" London. Whilst one could make arguments that it is about the lifestyle and being with peers thats a load of crock when everybodies life is really about choosing between what money you have and what you can afford to do. I am afraid arguments like you are "only young once", "everyone does", "enjoy it before you get to the real world" don't cut any ice whatsoever with me for explaining away debt. However it is true that this is all drastically exacerbated by qualification creep. And really something needs to be done about it as , rather like medicine, this is an increasing spiral of costs for very little useful gain.

As someone who has tiled large floors I really like the Tile Seat concept! Not to mention your original CM improvement!!

: ) Nice catch ME

Having followed the link : ) and seen it is a five yeaar stint as opposed to an 11 month stint it does make sense. Perhaps perception is altered by the downplaying of casualties during the period. I suspect that as naval losses and air losses were trivial the comparison of overall losses compared to WW2 would not have seemed vast- if that comparison was ever made. This is a very useful article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Infantry_Division_%28United_States%29

I picked up Harry Yeide's book " The Tank Kiillers" yesterday for about $10 at a second-hand bookshop. Therefore I will be able to quote liberally : ) Interesting read as I have one action were the Germans nailed 5 M10's for no loss. Sort of confirms lies , dammed lies and statistics. Or more helpfully that in the right/wrong circumstances any force can be stuffed. There is no doubt though that the TD's with the heavier gun where definitely useful in a world of vanilla 75s. At the Falaise fighting the M10 armed 776th TD battalion nailed 46 tanks and SP guns and 77 vehicles. Good going. How did the towed ATG battlaion do .... 607th 34 tanks, 23 SP guns, 9 halftracks and 64 other vehicles. Horses for courses!

Rather annoyingly I cannot find the one picture in the montage which is of interest when I ggogle search. However in my searching I have come across this truly excellent site which if you scroll down through the interesting photos has a US map from 1944 which shows the incredibly dense number of fields. http://battlebus.19.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=256 Searching does reveal that there is a major national stud farm in Normandy towards Paris however the situation in 1944 may not have been so rosy for the riding centres that are now common..

From : Observer's report on the destruction of two German Tiger tanks by British anti-tank guns in North Africa, from Tactical and Technical Trends, July 29, 1943. Might explain why troops mistook IV's for VI's if this was a widely circulated assumption. And also does underline perhaps need for up-gunning.

Thanks for the mini-learning on mines and picture posting. A double value thread. BTW the terrain looks absolutely nothing like Normandy. Its no fun being negative. I would rather say how great the terrain looks. 1. Wooden rail fencing is just not French and possibly not even European. I have not done huge research on the worlds fences [yet] : ) but of all thirties and forties photos of countryside in Western Europe I have looked at, about 400, I do not see wood and rail fences. In fact in my travels over the last forty years I very rarely see post and rail fencing other than when related to horses. 2. The land in the picture is way too open. Average field size in Normandy is in single figure acres and bound by hedges. Around Caen more open but very flat AFAIR.