Triumvir

Good _Lord_ it is John Salt (check his profile and his posting style.) I think that word of CM must have spread to s.m.m. Next up: the clash of the super-grogs... for while I've never seen Jason's name pop up on s.m.m he is certainly quite prolific on other groups.

And none of them -- not even the vaunted Germans whose officers came from the ranks -- could hold a candle to Bill Slim. Because Slim was defeated badly in 1942, and after two years, SMASHED his opponents without a flicker. He fought manoeuvre and attrition -- look at Imphal and Kohima for examples of the two -- and made damn sure that he won because he knew that adage better than any other general did; battles are won by generals, but wars are won by soldiers. Not just combat troops, but the lowly supply sergeants and drivers who make sure that the combat troops have enough to eat and fight with. Slim cared for them all, in a way that no other general did. Monty, Patton, Bradley and Eisenhower all stayed apart from the men they commanded. But for thirty five years, veterans of Burma would cluster around Slim when he attended the annual dinner for the Order of the Burma Star. It's a signal trait for a general officer to be respected not just for his rank, but as a man.

I don't think it's that gamey at all. Some things are indeed ahistorical (although apparently, if you read accounts of the Bulge, sending people up in jeeps as recon did happen) such as piling together tons and tons of wunderwaffe. But improving fields of fire on the defence? Heck, _everyone_ does that in the army. When training as an MG gunner, we prepared range cards and cleared terrain from our field of fire; when a mortarman, we prepared range cards for semi-direct fire; I don't see why an AT gun shouldn't prepare range cards and set up particular fields of fire. I agree with Abn_Ranger87 on almost all his points, especially about replacing thrown track. But laying concertina wasn't that bad; we did it in jungle without too much problems. We had heavy leather gloves with metal bands, something like brigantine armour, and if you're careful enough and respect the wire, it's not so painful. Course, in our training, we weren't allowed to _physically_ clear terrain except for once or twice (otherwise the next batch of training troops wouldn't have any terrain to pretend to clear!) for practice but it's a legitimate practice.

Alas, I don't think that we can do this for CMBB in the time remaining since I know absolutely nothing about Mac programming and have no idea if there are reusable bits of browser code out there but.... Why not have the briefings be written up as HTML? A minimal subset of HTML v4, no CSS support, no meta tags, no nested tables, no ECMAScript, none of that stuff; just straight markup and positioning. That makes the setup of the briefings that much easier, since HTML is only _marginally_ harder to learn than text (take the multiple websites out there by that sad portion of AOLers... please) This will let you handle briefings and positioning and add a bit of eye candy that the community can definitely use; but at the price of being a bit more excluding than the current system. Thoughts/comments?

Not all of USENET is dead; even thinking that USENET is dead betrays a definite n00b13 bias. The alt.* hierarchy isn't all there is to USENET. Heck, sci.military.moderated is a great example of debate on the internet; so are others like rec.humor.oracle.d. Newbie spanking is a sport that never even came close to dying out on USENET. Not to mention the occasional spots of brilliance even in the alt.* hierarchy like alt.usage.english or alt.folklore.urban. As for your position, though; I find myself agreeing with you. There is a difference between a newbie and an idiot; and there are many, many idiots who post here.

As opposed to how often Allied or German planes were fired on by their own AA, I suppose. Truth of the matter is, when you see an airplane coming towards you in a combat situation, either you shoot at it or you hide; and people remember being shot at much more than they remember not seeing something, for some curious reason.

As just about anyone but an American, I'd say. Glurge like this doesn't usually originate from anywhere else. No comments as to why either; I'm just making an observation with no elucidation. In any case, I also agree with Dorosh; anyone can be uncomfortable in the field, but it helps to have brains if you want to be comfortable _and_ tactical... a single spraypainted cooler with ice-cold soda is an _incredible_ morale booster in a hot deployment ground under the sun. Not to mention that you can use the runoff later to wash your face with and wake yourself up in the morning. Course, you need a vehicle for this, but the joy of being a gunner lies in being chauffered everywhere you go... But again, to each their own.

1 thing I haven't seen yet is; what are movement rates taken as? Are they abstracted into the movement rate of the units? If so, what's the appropriate distance travelled by a towed unit with organic transportation? If not, what are the distances that a foot/motorized/armoured unit can cover?

I can also tell you from personal experience that six men can move a 25pdr -- which is comparable to a 75mm PaK -- up a 300m long hillslope in under three minutes. Mmmm... 25pdr races. Such fun. And then there was the time when we manhandled a 155mm howitzer 10 metres out of a hole... but that took about 20 men. 20 very enthusiastic men, I can assure you. But it took very little time to move it.

XP is a great OS. Much much better than 98, or [shudder] 95. I used W2K when it first came out, and that itself was a _huge_ leap over 98. The stability of 2K has to be seen to be believed; I can't even use 98 anymore. XP is so much easier and more stable -- and since I program for a living, is fully Win32, meaning that I can use it to program and play with -- that I'd sooner cut up my cable modem than go back to any of the 9x family. Course, when CM comes out under Linux...

I'm running a 1.4 Athlon with XP and a GeForce3. I have the same problems as I did with Win2K and a GeForce 1; the white text is, as others have said, rendered transparent. But the quick fix for this is to Alt-Tab bounce back to CM; and this has never failed to fix the problem for me.

In re our previous discussions on Schurzen, or the standoff plates on Wehrmacht armour, I point you guys to the discussion currently going on in sci.military.moderated, regarding WWII armour types. There's a lot of good words in there, coming from respected people like Tony Williams and John Salt. DejaGoogle Link Enjoy. <edit> Gah, someone beat me to it! See what you get for jumping straight in without checking the forum first. </edit> [ 10-27-2001: Message edited by: Triumvir ]</p>

Iron Chef Sakai, your name is B1FF and I claim my two-fifty.

Which Ancient Rome are you talking about? The days of the Republic, or the days of the Emperors? Before Caesar, the legions were made up of the Roman people, with all members of society serving. Much like how in the Greek poleis, the hoplites were basically a crosssection of the entire male population of the city. As for the professional legions, well, they inevitably with time turned into Praetorians, and with even more time, turned into the same legions that lost to the Bulgars outside Constantinople. Certainly not the "finest military machine in the world" by then. Obviously not all professional armies follow that route; look at the British during the Napoleonic Wars, whose conscription was mostly limited to the Navy, not the Army (but that navy was the finest in the world; _Shannon_ smashed _Chesapeake_ in fifteen minutes with a pressed crew.) For kotay, it's definitely a few years of our time! Though when inside, we would only sing "two years of our time" -- the other was just too depressing. Anyway, not only have I never served a day of reservist, I haven't even got a unit. I left two months after ORD and haven't been back except for vacation since. Five year anniversary just passed by... damn, I feel old.

Err, the propellant charges for mortars aren't dynamite. They're a reasonably stable substance that doesn't ignite unless the at the base of the round goes off; and that won't happen unless the safety ring in the top of the mortar is pulled. These features are, as far as I know, common to all NATO ammo for mortars. Most military ammo is stable; it will not ignite unless placed in conditions of extremely high temperatures and pressure. You can happily toss TNT or C4 into a fire and use it to cook with; just for GOD'S SAKE don't stamp on the fire to put it out. As for bag charges, I can testify that they burn, but do not explode. I had the joy of going along for the battery disposal of unused charges after a three day live-fire exercise; the flame -- and I don't think I'm exaggerating -- must have been at least thirty metres high. From ten metres away, we could feel a _scorching_ heat.

Training to be soldiers, to fight for our land... Got it in one. Not that I was particularly trying to hide it... Besides, I thought that the reserve age for WOSE was 45? Since I've not served a day of reservist, I wouldn't know... Besides, army was fun. Got to make a _lot_ of big guns go boom... Besides, I think we actually outnumber the uberFinns in terms of reserves. Wasn't it a bit expensive buying CM? Not to mention the wait in shipping...

Are you guys serious? Two exercises in six months? Alas for the uberfinn... My conscription term was two and a half years, of which I spent one in training and one and a half in a unit. Of that one and a half, we went on a 3-4 day exercise roughly once every week on high readiness, and once every three weeks on low readiness. High readiness was one month, low readiness was two months, interchanging. My unit had live firing precisely four times in my intake, but we had to go overseas to do that... but I know that the PBI had lots and lots of blanks to fire before firing live ammo. I do concede the age to you uber-finns, though; to serve till sixty is a long, long time. My term runs out when I'm forty five.

Go on, then; what's wrong with it? I'm using IE 6.0 and the links don't work. The mouseover pointer remains the "I" and I can't click on them. I can copy and paste them into the address bar, of course; but I thought you should know.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Yes, this is correct. The BK was responsible for "technical gunnery", ie making sure that SOPs, Drills, etc were carried out correctly.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Interesting. I know the BK as combining the functions of calculation as well as leadership at the gun post. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>GPOs would alternate going forward to recce the next position<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ahh... now I can reconcile that. Would troops deploy separately or as a united battery? In my service, the troops were integrated into a single battery, and the laying versus recce functions were separated between the two GPOs. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Valid, and it has been suggested, though in conjunction with increasing the fanaticism to reflect the passion to defend the guns.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I thought about that, but I wasn't sure if it was necessarily accurate. Since you can't designate fanaticism, I suppose that you'd have to make them fanatic too to reflect the willingness of the actual gunners (as opposed to the gunnery assistants) to defend the guns. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>More or less, although the RSM is over with the trucks at echelon. The squad represents the stray bods at Bty HQ who could be formed into an ad-hoc fighting force. Depending on the degree of notice, this could realistically be another full section by stripping men from the guns and other sources.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ah, my bad; I saw the multiple troops and was confused into thinking that the org chart was for the battalion, not the battery. The squad then would be under command of the BSM, no? I don't know anything about the numbers, unfortunately, so I can't assign numbers; but giving a CoyHQ to the battery seems a little overdoing it. The men in the CoyHQ seem to me to be more likely to be included in the rifle section (which would be made up of linesmen, clerks, gunnery assistants etc.) Was there really only one Vickers in a battery estab? And should the guns receive more HE ammo at the start of the scenario? I've always assumed that the amount held by FOs represent the base engagement rate (alas, my terminology is 5 years out of mind), the equivalent of an infantryman's contact rate. Shouldn't the guns get more ammo to work with at the position? <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Quo Fas Et Vino Du Femme!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Shouldn't that be Quo Vino Et Femme Du C^H^Hcunt? (Or will I be done in by BTS for being naughty?)

There were special shrapnel rings that were placed around the faust head that would detonate and cause fragmentation damage. PanzerFaust Link The page is pretty good, overall.

Nice page; but the links at the bottom don't work. It's a great summary and extension of what has gone before. I'm curious about the different roles of the Battery Commander and the Battery Captain. Am I right to say that the Battery Commander works with the manoeuvre units and the Battery Captain is involved with the administration of the battery at the firing point? Or does the Battery Captain take the place of the modern day Battery Reconnaissance Officer, in scouting and selecting good deployment positions? Or does the Gun Positioning Officer handle the firing calculations as well as the siting of the guns? I ask because, thanks to the conscript nature of the particular army I served, some changes have had to be made to the basic Commonwealth pattern. I do have one minor nit to raise about the experience levels; I think that the gunners in the battery HQ should be notched down in experience to green. The HQ units should stay regular/veteran, though. Do these gunners reflect the RSM's linesmen and reaction squad? Was there a practice in WWII of detaching men from each gun along with the BSM to form a ready reaction squad? Or did the gunners serve their guns exclusively, without using small arms? In Oriente Primus!

Professional soldiers are good for the wars that they fight. In other words, small, limited conflicts that do not affect the homeland. But for large conflicts, there can be no comparison between a conscript army and a professional army; quantity has a quality of its own. The traditional problem of a professional army -- recruitment from the dregs of society leavened by a few true volunteers -- is never really solvable. The perks involved and the comparatively easy life (against the civilian world) are quite tempting. However, the traditional benefit of a professional army -- the unswerving will and ability to die without flinching -- can't be discounted. A conscript army simply doesn't have the first problem; by coercing the fitter and brighter part of the polity, it in effect levels out the initial disadvantage of less training. Motivation, though, is a incredibly important part of a conscript army; and it is much harder to develop and nurture such motivation in any war apart from the defence of the homeland. Napoleon won his wars with the levee en masse; he smashed all opposing professional armies save the British. All the armies in WWII were conscript armies. The North Koreans nearly crushed the American Regular Army in 1950. German troops routinely place ahead or equal with British and Canadian troops in gunnery. And let's not talk about the Israelis, the modern day uber-Finns. (Incidentally, has anyone ever won an SPII game playing the Arabs against Israelis, apart from 1973 battles?) As counter examples are the British at Salamanca, and the UN coalition in Korea and the Gulf. To sum this long rambling post, conscript armies, ceteris paribus, will defeat professional armies because they can recruit from a wider and thus better pool; and shunt the fittest and brightest into combat positions. But in a war fought far from the homeland, the conscript army's will to fight will inevitably diminsh while that of the professional army will stay the same. This can tip the scales enough that the conscript army will lose to the professional one. [edited for this comment] Oh, and wasn't it me who first came up with this suggestion? Hoarding this for a long time, eh tero? Naughty naughty uber-Finn... 8) [ 10-19-2001: Message edited by: Triumvir ]

Heck, the Matilda was the Tiger of the early war. Perhaps even the King Tiger; German tanks couldn't penetrate it even from the rear. Only the 88 could kill it; but just about anyone could run away from it. Also, it was heavily hindered by the lack of a HE shell for its 2pdr.

No more leopard crawls for me, thank you very much! It's refreshing to know that the Commonwealth at large still keeps much of their military terminology in common, even if it does bring back shuddery flashbacks of sadist training camp lieutenants.

Interesting that you should have a specific name for that; is there any other form of movement for infantry on the march? Does the infantry actually march in file on exercises?