Amedeo

Has anyone checked in the game whether the recent tweaks to the armour penetration model, while increasing realism for early war matchups, actually resulted in questionable modelling of the late war engagements? I'm mainly thinking about the apparent advantage of the 100mm AP round with respect to the 122mm APBC round against sloped armour (e.g. the Panther's glacis). The numbers in the info box seems to suggest this, but I'm aware that the game model is too complex to be reduced to that table, and a host of factors are taken into account when calculating actual armour penetration. Thus, did anyone notice something about this 100mm vs. 122m issue? (The truth is that I'm too lazy to setup a test range and have a SU-100 and an ISU-122 shoot up an ammoless Panther, so I'm hoping that someone already did this ) Amedeo

Yes, a Cold War era CM would be a very interesting and addictive game! If I could decide BFC schedule for the next months I'd like to see a new CMBK (Combat Mission: Blitzkrieg covering the early war years... Poland, Winter War, France etc.) with the same engine of the CMBB and CMAK series followed by a Cold War game when the new game engine will be ready. Can't wait for looking the autoloader of my T-64BV finish its loading cycle after my first BM-29 missed the M1 and M735 rounds start ominously bouncing off around Amedeo

James, thanks for the suggestion. I didn't notice this useful tool! Regards, Amedeo

Hi all. May someone suggest where to find historical scenario (based on US military operations from the '80s till today) and/or hypotethical Cold War scenarios? I saw that v4 introduced a lot of 'old stuff' but I'm a little bit tired to see only scenarios featuring late version ABrams vs. T-80Us A.

As a general introduction to the military aspects of the period I may suggest: P. J. Haythornthwaite - The Napoleonic sourcebook For a detailed look at the tactics, weapons and battlefield practice of the period, two interesting books might be: G. Nafziger - Imperial Bayonets B. Nosworthy - Battle tactics of Napoleon and his enemies Once you have a general knowledge of the period you can go on with the zillion books detailing your army of choice Regards, Amedeo

This story is a hoax. Bearskin caps were already in use for british grenadiers (and fusiliers too!) at the time, albeit it was a full dress item and not a field uniform headgear. IIRC after the Waterloo victory the First Regiment of Foot Guards received the title 'Grenadier Guards', thus also the centre companies were to be considered grenadiers and not only the right wing élite companies. Bye, Amedeo

The british grenadiers switched to bearskin caps in 1768. That bearskin was more similar to the Austrian pattern than to the current one. In fact there's no specific trend that can be established. Spain, for example, changed from bearskins to mitre caps in 1800 and Prussia abolished the mitre after the death of Frederick the Great to return to a characteristic headgear for the grenadiers in 1797 that was not a mitre neither a bearskin cap. Subsequent evolutions were different for each army. It's difficult to establish a pattern without allowing for many exceptions. Regards, Amedeo

There were a few KV-2 in service as late as 1943; for example during the Kursk operation there were 10 tanks in the 3rd Mech Corps. Amedeo

As it was said in another thread the term 'fusilier' simply meant "soldier armed with a flintlock" (notice that fusil in french, while it's nowdays used to mean 'rifle', originally was referring only at the flint and has no connection whatsoever to the status of the bore, as in the english word 'rifle', the term was applied to smoothbore weapons). During the late XVIII and early XIX century the terms lost its original meaning (all soldiers were normally equipped with flintlock weapons) and became a distictive term whose exact identification depended on the army. Thus in the french army 'fusilers' were the ordinary line infantry soldiers, in the Russia Army they were the centre companies of grenadier battalions, in Prussian service the Fuesiliere were originally a variant of musketeers and then became specialized light infantry etc. Regards, Amedeo

BTW one can find the last discussion about IS-2 armour on this forum here .

Denizen, I'm glad you 'resurrected' this old issue. In fact I was dubious about the IS-2 armour stats from the beginning, and it's more than two years that I tried to collect evidence from different sources, including Russian ones, to find reasonable data. If you do a search on this forum you will quickly find out what was discovered in the past. In CMBB the IS-2 (late model) is probably incorrectly represented first and foremost because the front hull plates were only 100mm thick (cast version, 90mm rolled). Moreover they modelled also the plating of the rear MG port but, AFAIK, this was done only in the postwar IS-2M modernized models. For what concernes the 130mm mantlet, well, you can read here: http://armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/WWII/IS2/is2_1.html that the 130mm mantlet was planned but discarded because it sported unsormontable problems for a turret that was projected for an 85mm gun, was used to mount a 122mm gun and wasn't able to accept a further armour mass increase in its front part. So, if you have time, please check the context in which your 130mm mantlet reference was made. For what I saw it was only a projected mod that was impossible to carry out. Regards, Amedeo P.S. And there's also the issue regarding the DOI for the BR-471B APBC, does that Tankomaster article says anything about it?

Yes, you may spell the vowels with Umlaut (i.e. metaphony, it's word that indicates a phonetical phenomenon but also the symbol that "represents" it) also with an "e" after the vowel. In fact the origin of the " symbol was the stylization of a little 'e' that was superimposed to the letter. Regards, Amedeo

No, you cannot. But if you run out of HE and other apers rounds your guns will fire AP also at 'soft' targets. Regards, Amedeo

Is AP rounds effect against intantry in CMBB affected by the presence (or absence) of the HE filler and by its size? I presume that a solid AP shot should be times less effective than an AP round with filler that, in turn sould be marginally less effective than an AP round with a large HE filler. (All other things bein equal, of course).

The Italian armour models availability in CMBB is probably too wide! (historically speaking) No doubt that CMAK will feature a much wider range of Italian AFVs. Speaking of the KT issue I'm almost sure they will let it in with an absurd level of rarity. This will avoid unhistorical QB purchases as well as allowing for what-ifs and western Europe scenarios. Regards, Amedeo

Where may I get this old mod for CMBB? A.

It's already modelled in CMBB so I think the Brixia mortar will be also in CMAK. bye Amedeo

Historically speaking the terms Grenadier and Fusilier derived, as already explained, from the late XVII century introduction of 'new' infantry specialties to complement or substitute the pikemam-musketeer combination. The grenandiers were soldiers armed with hand-grenades, therefore they were selected among the tallest (to increase range) and boldest (they had to close with enemy formations) men. Those requirements remained also when the use of actual 'grenades' disappeared from field practice in the early XVIII century. So by mid '700 grenadiers is a term referring to 'heavy' élite infantry. The term 'fusilier' at first meant simply "soldier armed with a flintlock", but when the flintlock became widespread it was a term with a wide range of meanings: in Frederick the Great's Army the Fusiliers were line infantry, after Frederick's death the Fusilier regiments were renamed Musketeers (like the 'older' regiments of the line) and new Fusiliers units were raised as light (trained in skirmishing and open order action) infantry. In other armies, during the same time, the term Fusilier wa sused in other meanings: i.e. in the French Army it was the standard name of the ordinary infantry soldiers, in the Russian Army it was a sort of grenadier. The term Jaeger means 'hunter'. Jaeger units were (in the XVIII and XIX century) light infantry units armed with rifled weapons and trained to be better marksmen that the ordinary infantrymen. The terms stems from the fact that the first rifled weapons were used for hunting (where precision is paramount and cost and ROF is not an issue). Returning to German WW2 practice you might consider that the terms used in this way: Grenadier - 'heavy' infantry élite soldier Fusilier - 'light' infantry soldier Jaeger - 'light' infantry élite marksman Thus the armoured infantry was eventually renamed Panzergrenadier since it were heavy-armed élite shock troops. The parachutist were light infantry and so they were named Fallschirmjaeger. Anyway don't read too deep into the use of historical terms in modern armies because many denominations are kept only for morale and tradition reasons. Regards, Amedeo

I haven't now with me the data for the 81mm mortar. Anyway, as most 81mm mortars used during WW2, the italian one was a copy of the French Brandt mortar. Anyway for the 120mm Brandt mortar (used also by the Italian army after WW2) the standard shell had a mass of 13kg, while the 'grande capacità' one weighted 17kg. BTW the HE filler for the first was 2.500kg, the second had a 4.250kg filler! Regards, Amedeo

I was disappointed too in seeing that BFC decided to stick with the previous values. AFAIK there's no evidence of a 120mm thick lower hull, nor that the plating of the rear MG port was done before the IS-2M postwar modification. But perhaps they managed to find other bit of information about this. I won't feel gamey in buying IS-2 for QBs exactly as I didn't feel gamey when buying gyrostabilizer equipped Fireflies and 105mm armed Shermans in CMBO For what concernes the shrapnel issue, well I don't think it's a bad idea to leave shrapnel modelling out in CMBB. AFAIK BFC guys analyzed the issue and decided that the additional complexity was not worth the effort. Considering that correct shrapnel usage was not so easy for the average artilleryman it might be the right decision. The point is that, after we discovered that 76.2mm 'canisters' consists of properly fuzed shrapnel rounds, I think that the same 'C' rounds ability was to be extended to virtually all the Soviet 76.2mm guns in the game (I think they gave it only to the ZiS-3 simply because the only indirect reference they had for "canister" usage was from the former Soviet soldier that happened to serve in a ZiS-3 equipped battery). Moreover the regular 57mm canister rounds should have been issued also (and foremost) to the 57mm AT gun, and not only to the T-34-57. Thus, it a 1.04 patch would ever see the light (and I strongly doubt this will happen) I think that the best solution could be to give the 'C' rounds also to the other Soviet 76mm field guns (shrapnel rounds that one might assume will be used ONLY in close defence) and the 57mm AT guns (regular canister). Maybe next year, after CMAK and before the CMX2 project ends, BFC might consider to make an add on disk for CMBB (and CMAK?), with some new models and, perhaps, winter BMPs (I think almost everyone here would buy it). Thus it might be an occasion to release a new patch Regards, Amedeo

Go to this page and use canister and/or beehive as keywords for search in the NAME field. You'll find a few more rounds. Bye A.

Returning on the effect of lead-anymony spherical balls fired by canister/shrapnel rounds against covers, helmets etc. it's worth noting that the soviet regulation for the 76mm infantry guns stated that the shrapnel rounds should be effective in piercing the armour of light AFVs. Maybe a bit optimistic but I think this implies that an helmet will survive only the most favourable (geometrically speaking) hits. Again, the canister limitations lie probably more in its narrow cone of fire than in the number or energy of its balls. Regards, Amedeo

Wrong but close enough. Dopp Z stands for Doppelzünder, that is "double fuze": time and percussion. Regards, Amedeo

The graduating ring on the 76mm shrapnel's fuze could be set to K (canister) to UD (impact). Between those extreme settings there was the 'proper' scale for usage as a regular shrapnel with 50m increments from 0 (K) to 130 (thus the maximum flight distance, in airbust mode, would have been 130x50=7500m). Some rounds were preset to "canister" directly at the factory. This document states that at the beginning of the war, shrapnel usage by soviet artillerymen was very limited. This might imply that to use this kind of round properly would have required skills and presence of mind that are not to be found among ill-trained conscripts. On the other hand the Combat Regulations for Tanks and Mechanized Corps of 1944 says that "The choice of weapons and the type of ammunition depends on the target and firing range. With cannon you can shoot [...] with shrapnel: against infantry as well as Stukas and dive bombers" :eek: So I'd guess that the effectiveness of cannister usage depended on the quality and experience of the crew. A conscript crew would have barely managed to fire factory pre-set canister rounds, while a veteran crew would have been able to... shoot down Hans Rudel himself Regards, Amedeo [edited for spelling] [ June 01, 2003, 11:02 AM: Message edited by: Amedeo ]

John, for sure the effectivenes of 76mm shrapnel fuzed "as canister" should be reduced to nil in the 0-10m range (at least). It's not a coincidence, I think, that the accounts, in the same book, about field guns' canister usage during the '20s, said that generally fire was opened at 300m or so. This distance was possibly also selected because it enabled the best overlapping of fire "cones" when used by a deployed battery. Even if the BFC guys don't want to model shrapnel, I think that they could still manage to implement a working model for canister rounds with a variable FP effect in front of the gun that increases with distance until reaching a cutoff. Thus a 76mm canister should have 0 FP at 1m increasing maybe to 500 FP at 200m then decreasing again to 0 FP at 500m. Just my two Eurocents. I don't think this is the best way to model the whole thing but for sure one cannot expect big tweaks for v1.03. Kind regards, Amedeo