jasoncawley@ameritech.net

Flamethrowers are not meant as anti-tank weapons. They are meant to wipe out bunkers, entrenched infantry, and houses. What all those things have in common is unarmored men inside an imposing piece of cover that is difficult to hit with regular weapons. But they also have openings the men inside are sighting through. The point of the liquid is to get into openings that aimed shots find too small to go through. There aren't necessarily such openings on AFVs. Open top ones, flamethrowers should work on, for the same reason they work against bunkers and such. Similar story for unbuttoned AFVs, if you catch them that way with their hatches open. But a buttoned, topped AFV is not a box of matches and it is made out of steel, not wood. Flamethrowers do sometimes take out buttoned tanks, because sometimes the burning fuel will get into the engine compartment and manage to set the engine on fire. There is lubricating motor oil in there. Elsewhere on some tanks are some containers of hydraulic fluid to move the turret and such, and it has a gas supply somewhere (often diesel, though, which does not ignite so easily). But most of those combustibles, like the ammo supply, are stowed well inside the tank where the flame is not going to get if the tank is buttoned up. Basically, you manage to set the engine on fire or you don't. The fire lasts and spreads or it doesn't. The flamethrower itself is only firing for a few seconds, not nearly long enough a fire to actual destroy the tank. A tank has to burn for minutes to actually knock it out (smoke overwhelming the crew unless they bail out e.g.), which is only going to happen if parts of it catch fire in their own right.

You are looking for a downloadable, zipped excel file. The last page of it has the unit costs and the rariety factors over on the fall right columns of that spreadsheet page. The factors are numbers from 0.9 up to 1.6, the higher the number the less common the item. There are numbers for each month covered from 6/44 to 5/45, since the scarity of some items changed over time. As a rule of thumb on using the scarity numbers, obviously if the players want to allow everything to have fun with their favorite toys, that is up to them. If you want a fight restricted to common items, I suggest allowing any amount of points spent on 0.9 and 1.0 units, and up to 25% of the points allowed on 1.1 rarer ones. Force flexibility will be quite limited, and the 1.1s are needed to have any real force flexibility. This will also work best in smaller battles, not huge ones. For an in between setting, I'd recommend any amount of 1.2 or less items allowed, with up to 25% of the points allowed for 1.3 rareness items. That gives considerably greater force flexibility, and allows players to take the kind of force they want rather than the vanilla common types. But it will exclude the rare and uber vehicles. One other quibble with the numbers in the chart. The commonness of M36 Jackons and M18 Hellcats, compared to M10s, strikes my as off. I do not think they were that common, and the M-10s are regularly encountered in the unit histories much later in the war than that chart indicates. In the Bulge fighting in Dec 44, for instance, most TD units still had M-10s, not the other improved types. Another similar quibble is that the chart has the M-20 utility car rarer than the M-8, when in fact the cavalry troops had more of the M-20s than of the M-8s. It is true the M-8s were also used in the tank destroyer battalions, but the ratio in the "cavalry" more than makes up for this. The M-20 should probably be the same 1.2 rareness as the M-8. Sherman Firefly, on the other hand, should probably be 1.3 not 1.2 rariety. But these are small quibbles. Generally the numbers are fine. Incidentally, on the actual scarity of various weapons types, I thought people might be somewhat interested in the following factoids on German small arms and anti-tank devices. In CM, one sees the Panzerschrecks handed out to every platoon, like U.S. bazookas. That was probably not the case. The Fausts were much more common, and the Schrecks comparatively rare - more like 1/ company not 1/platoon. Anyway, here are some numbers, whole war - Total K98 rifles - 11.4 million Other Semi-auto rifles - ~500K MP40 SMGs (and similar models) - 908K. MP44 SMGs - 426K MG42 MGs - 415K Schrecks - ~250K Schreck rounds - 1.5 million Flamethrowers - 62K K98 Rifle grenades - 18.3 million Fausts - 7.4 million Anti-tank mines - 21 million Magnetic mines for infantry - 554K Smoke grenades - ~5 million 81mm Mortars - 76K 81mm Mortar rounds - 74 million 120mm Mortars - 8.5K 120mm Mortar rounds - 5.4 million So things are immediately apparent. The K98 rifle was far, far more common than the other small arms types. Those averaged only about 1 per squad over the whole war. Naturally, they made up a larger portion in the late war and in some troop types, but the rifle was still the standard German small-arm. Also interesting is that the rifle grenade for the K98 was several times more common than even the Panzerfaust, which was many times more common than even Schreck rounds let alone Schreck launchers. Some of the rifle grenades were certainly used in 42-43 before the Fausts became common, but they were certainly still being used in the late-war years. The AT versions of those were rated at 70mm penetration of flat steel, much less than the Faust but still dangerous to the side armor of typical Allied AFVs, and lethal to light armored vehicles too. It is also interesting that the number of anti-tank mines was so high. Most of them where the flat plate Teller mines - 17.6 million of them. One does not usually have the picture of the AT mines being 2-3 times as common as the Panzerfausts, but they were. Naturally, they didn't move and some were left behind in theaters that no longer mattered. But they were a bigger part of the AT picture than they commonly appear in tactical games. In addition, the large number of mortar rounds made and fired stands out, and matches the testimony of the historical participants. The figures are 11 mortar rounds for every faust, more like 55 for every Shreck round, and ~300 for every Schreck launcher. The average German 81mm mortar apparently fired up to 1000 rounds in its service life - testimony to its range, ease of use, and tactical survivability. More rifles, rifle grenades, mortar fire missions, and mines, along with plenty of Panzerfausts. Fewer Schrecks and squad-level automatic weapons than we sometimes are led to believe. For what it is worth...

Wheels are for roads. Tracks are for terrain. The revised settings seem much more realistic to me. As for "can't scout", the idea that fast off road movement is the most important thing in scouting strikes me as off based, probably a result of an excessively tactical focus. What one wants is the ability to go a few miles down the road, see what is around, and get out of Dodge in a hurry whenever necessary. Plus a low profile. U.S. recon battalions usually had Stuarts in them or attached to them, in part because of their better off-road abilities but also for their fully topped armor. Halftracks are also good off-road scouting vehicles, much better than wheeled ones. The speeds in your table, incidentally, work out to around 15 mph for the faster off-road vehicles, and more like 10 mph for the slower ones. That is probably about right.

Superquick vs. delay is a common and plain vanilla thing. Delay is used against heavy cover, SQ against personnel in the open or soft skinned vehicles like trucks. There was certainly nothing specially German about it - an extremely silly idea. With high trajectories and indirect fire, the shells do bury rather than bounce, but that is still better against dug in troops or buildings than surface detonation is. Skipping is an effective of a flat trajectory, obviously, combined with delay. It would happen because of near misses more than on purpose, but that basically just works to make the area easier to hit close enough for an effect. (A direct hit, even quick, is going to do the target it quite effectively, thank you very much). As for the reason the stowage was delay rather than SQ, that is just a function of safety. A fuse set on SQ is much easier to set off by jarring it or dropping it than one on delay. The fuse is effectively on a "hair trigger" with the SQ setting.

Others have already given some good information, but I can add some stuff. That small arms load out - ~30 SMGs, ~75 carbines, and ~140 M-1s, is basically the men with other jobs having carbines and the sergeants having SMGs, while the riflemen in the infantry squads have M-1s. Officers used SMGs or carbines as they prefered. Each squad had one man as the driver of its track, and he got a carbine. The MG loaders, mortarmen, and anti-tank guys, and commo men also got carbines. The biggest change from a standard infantry company is that the armored infantry did not have a weapons company, like the foot guys, instead parceling out the weapons to the platoons. Instead they had their anti-tank company. Often that traded in its 57mm ATGs for bazookas and was assigned to the line platoons, as the other fellow stated. Each platoon was organized to fit into 5 halftracks, with an HQ squad, 2 normal squads, an MG squad, and a mortar squad. In CM terms that would be platoon HQ, 1/2 rifle squad in the first HT, 2 HTs with rifle squads, then 2 MG teams in the 4th HT, and 2 mortar teams in the 5th. If the bazooka-style AT platoon was used, then a 6th HT with 2xBazooka teams would be added. The mortar teams were only 3-4 men. The MG teams were 5 men, sgt, gunner, loader, and 2 riflemen, with MG, SMG, carbine, and 2 M-1s if that matters. The standard rifle squads would be 2 SMG plus 8-9 rifles (8 if, as usual, one rifleman was left to man an MG on HT). Sometimes there was one scoped rifle per platoon, sometimes not. The nominal organization of the anti-tank platoon was a jeep with the company HQ (2 men and the driver), then 3 57mm ATG teams, divided into a 5 man crew and a 4 man ammo-handling team, plus the driver. But as others have mentioned, sometimes these weapons were not used and these squads were turned into squad sized bazooka teams instead, then probably attached one-each to the regular platoons, several bazookas each. They did have far more automatic weapons than the standard infantry company. Each platoon had its 2 light machineguns in the MG squad to use dismounted, and there were 50 cals and 30 cals on the HTs. But those were in place of BARs. They also had 2 light mortars per platoon instead of one. In CM terms I'd model the company like this - Commander's HT - Company HQ - SMG, carbine, 2 rifles FO - 2 man team 3 armored infantry platoons each command HT HQ - SMG, carbine, 3 rifles rifle team - SMG, 4 rifles squad HT, 2 SMG + 8 rifles MG HT, 2x5-man MG teams Mortar HT, 2x60mm Mortar teams plus AT platoon 1 jeep with HQ team (2 men) plus 3 HT each 57 ATG, crew - Or - 3 HT each 2xBazooka teams (6 all told) In addition to the composition of the armored infantry companies, it is probably a good idea to review the load-out of an armored division to get an idea of the common attached troops or support they'd have. A typical armored division had 3 armor battalions, 3 armored infantry battalions, 3 armored field artillery battalions (M-7 "Priest" SP 105mm usually), a recon battalion with armored cars, and a combat engineer battalion. They also usually had attached 1 AAA battalion, usually 40mm or quad 50 cals mounted on HTs or a mix of both, plus usually an attached TD battalion. The tank battalions had 3 companies of medium tanks and usually one of light too for scouting (medium means Shermans, light means Stuarts). The recon battalion had 3 troops/companies of armored cars - M-20s - 1 troop of M-8s, and usually 1 company of light tanks attached (sometimes taken from one of the armor battalions). The TD battalion had a company of M-8s to scout and 3 of M-10s. Because of the above, it would be very common to see armored infantry with the support of Shermans and a few Stuarts, up to 1 to 1 with the number of HTs, or with some M-8s and M-10 TDs (2 and 4-5 e.g.), or with Stuarts, M-8s, and M-20s (2+2+6 e.g.). SP quad 50 HTs or 40mm HTs would also be reasonable common (in pairs probably), and a platoon of engineers likewise. And they would generally have 105mm arty support on call, readily available. Overall, they pack enourmous firepower but it is definitely ranged firepower. Against infantry with nothing better than MG and Fausts they are formidable indeed, especially in more open country with room to use all of their MGs and fire support. They were not designed or equipped for the role of close assault with SMGs, German storm-battalion style, but instead were meant to cut off enemy infantry, isolate and pin them with ranged fire, and shoot the heck out of them or just allow the rest of the force to bypass them. Anything the copious MG firepower could not wipe out the dedicated 105's and/or supporting tanks/TDs would plaster. On actual close assaults, the other fellow is right that many of the men prefered to ride the backs of the tanks, since the HTs were vunerable in a close assault role. The idea there was to dismount pretty close and then prevent the enemy infantry from getting into faust range of the supporting armor, with a grenade and close firepower barrier. Then the armor behind could do the killing, not a rush by the armored infantry. That was the idea and the doctrine, and some of the basic field mods people used. Other common field mods were to turn the mortars or 57mm ATGs into armed HTs with those weapons instead of seperate teams, and to add an extra pair of dismounted HMGs or MMGs to a platoon on defense, by stripping some of the HTs. I hope this is interesting.

Yes, you are right about the 28mm being a squeeze bore and the rest. In fact the 37 was standard earlier. Both had trouble penetrating heavier allied tanks (particularly the Brit Matilda), even early in the war. On the other fellow's DU question, I can explain some of the issues as I know them. DU is used primarily for its density, but it also has other useful properties. To understand all the reasons, you have to know a bit about modern composite armor. On a tank like the M-1, the armor is a sandwich of different layers, designed to defeat different aspects of penetrating rounds. First there is a plate of face hardened steel, thick enough to stop small arms and HE effects but which most anti-tank rounds can easily get through. Behind it is a thin layer of a special ceramic held in place by a titanium mesh. This is designed to shatter rapidly and thus to carry away energy from the point of impact around half of the tank. It is also heat resistent, and less dense than the steel ahead of it. It essentially crumbles into powder barely held in place by the mesh, and in doing so it makes room for molten bits of metal from the initial penetration, and tends to spread and isolate them in a sort of "sand" that resists heat. Behind the ceramic is another thick steel plate. A penetrating round has to bore through this, it is not enough to produce spalling behind it by a shock-wave of pressure through the armor, because there are further layers still ahead. Behind this second steel plate is the DU layer, about an inch thick, sandwiched into the middle of the armor. It is much, much denser than the steel plate ahead of it, which the penetrator still has to bore through. Well, boring through something is actually pushing that something back into the thing behind to make room. If the stuff behind is as rigid or more so, it is possible to just transmit the shock wave through the material without displacing it - a column through the armor acts like a nail, with the round the hammer pounding it further into the tank. Clear enough. But a denser but not as rigid layer behind makes this much harder to achieve. See, moving stuff out of the way is a function of density. Driving a shockwave through the armor itself is a function of rigidity. The ideal thing in the armor itself at this point, is very dense but with some "give" to it in hardness terms (ability to melt and compress e.g.). That is what the DU provides. It is then backed up with a last rigid plate, so that its give does not break into the tank. DU rounds will defeat such specialized armors better than non DU rounds. DU is very dense but not heat resistent and hard like tungsten is. It is comparatively softer. But even in liquid form it is much denser than solid steel. DU going through an armor plate will move between cracks in more seperated, less dense materials. (You can think of it as how "sharp" it is, heated). It is good at pushing stuff out of the way. When DU gets to another DU layer, it moves it relatively easily, but with some spreading out of the area of the impact. If the inward-moving DU is strong enough in total momentum terms it will break through the plate behind, as unable to hold up its weight in effect, rather than shattering off a small piece of the inward face. What happens when very rigid rounds hit this kind of armor? They get to the DU layer and then they cartwheel off. It is easier for the round to tear through the upper layers of steel moving sideways (rear of the "arrow" rotating upward) than to push the DU out of the way straight ahead. The round is not defeated by "out-hard-ing" it and causing it to shatter, but by making the way into the tank less easy for pushing stuff out of the way, than a deflection that cuts a groove in the upper armor. The rigidness of the round is not all gain. Understand, the kinetic energy of the round is enourmous, and it is going to go somewhere. There are only a limited number of candidate places for it to go. The best of them is to remain kinetic energy of that round while not passing through the interior of the tank. Next best is spread over as much of the tank as possible, or converted to heat over a wider area. The thing one wants to avoid is all of the kinetic energy staying focused right along the initial direction of flight, because there is enough energy there to vaporize (if heat) a thin column of armor, or accelerate that column of armor into the tank, or both - with lots to spare inside if the energy does not spread out. Conversely, what one wants in a round is super high kinetic energy to start with of course (and dense helps that), enough hardness to not shatter, and a minimum cross section not just at the point of impact (the thinness of the arrow) but through the whole length of the widdening cone made down into the armor. The chief thing keeping that "focusing" there, is just the inertia of the round. It is going so fast it doesn't "want" to change direction easily. But whether it meets anything denser than itself along the way will also effect that, as will "room" or give it meets, etc. That is about as much as I know about it. Undoubtedly there are parts missing. For what it is worth...

"1 tank leader, who was alone manning the electric APX4 turret. He could sit on a jump seat and use a rotary cupola with 1 periscope and 2 fixed episcopes. To aim the 47 mm gun or the coaxial MG, he used a single telescopic sight (x4)." Um, read what I said. That is what I said. The 75/18 is the infantry-smacker. 18 calibers, a stubby little howitzer to toss HE. The 47/32 is the "hole punch" for enemy tanks. And the tank commander gets to - read my list, I said most of the things he has to do. Tell the driver where to go, spot the enemy, run the turret, put the round in, train the sight, level his bubbles both ways. Impossible. They simply did not think that tank to tank combat would be the main deal when they designed that tank. They gave it a gun for that, because they knew it could happen. But they thought the main thing would be reducing strong points for the infantry - MG nests mostly - with the HE in that hull mounted howitzer. While stopped. Well, it wasn't that kind of war, that is all. And the result was the main event had to be accomplished by one man running the entire freaking tank, practically. While his German counterpart picked targets and places to manuever and thought about where the rest of his platoon was and how to work around somebody's flank, and directed his gunner and driver to carry out the tasks that involved, the French tank commander was leveling his bubbles or fishing for a shell hand-off and blind as a bat to everything not in his immediate sight picture (if that), while the rest of his crew prayed. As a Frenchman said of a certain cavalry formation at Balaclava, "c'est magnifique - mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

In response to one fellow's questions about the uses of it, I quote from the other fellow's web article - "Tungsten carbide, the hardest metal made, was essential for tough, heat resistant steel and high speed cutting tools that could machine military equipment 10 to 15 times faster than normal tools. Steel hardened by alloys like tungsten was a vital war commodity. Altogether there were more than 15,000 tungsten applications. Its most important military uses were in armor plate and the carbide cores of high velocity armor piercing projectiles. The Germans had been the first to use tungsten this way, and no practical substitutes were available." The short answer is that it is all about alloys. The most important use was the machine tools, because as mentioned tungsten hardened tools could work much faster, being both harder and far more heat resistent than other alloys. Making lots of tanks, planes, etc means cutting a lot of steel into complicated shapes in mass production fashion. The second use was in steel plate, to face-harden it, make it less brittle, and more heat tolerant (since penetrating rounds melt the armor along their flight-path from the friction of the contact). There the Germans were able to engineer a number of substitutes, to reduce the tungsten content of the alloys used for steel plate. But there were limits on such measures, because all of the substitutes were tight too, as well as less effective for the same amount (nickel is an example, as in stainless steel - also important for bearings and such). The Germans had enough tungsten from the Spanish and Portugese supply that they did not suffer shortages in the critical machine-tool area - though they still had to economize on the amount of tool work and cutting overall. (Incidentally, that is one reason assault guns were favored - no turret means fewer and simpler parts). They had tungsten left for the armor alloys but tried to sustitute other metals in the alloys whenever possible. The armor quality is going down as the war progressed, though, ton for ton, because the stuff going into it is not perfect mixes by good-enough ersatz measures. In 44 that still wasn't too bad, but by the end of 44 and early 45 it was a real issue. Meanwhile, all of the above - Portugese supplies and economy in alloy use of it for armor and not overbuilding the machine tools, left some for shells. But not a lot. And the highest priority use of the stuff that could be allocated to shells was the marginal AT weapons that would be effective with its aid, but would be obsolete without it. They were not trying to make the best round for the best tank to have in 2 battles. They were trying to solve a complicated anti-tank problem - how to stop hordes of T_34s and Shermans from the limited machinery and engineering and raw materials base they had to work with. Which means they were in the business of cutting it close. The priority was 50mm AT rounds, because there were thousands of perfectly good 50mm AT guns already in existence from earlier in the war. There was no realistic prospect of replacing every one of them with a 75 ATG, let alone an 88. The best guns had to go into the tanks and TDs anyway. That meant hundreds of infantry divisions with their indigenous AT battalions and a few attached StuGs had to stop the Allied armor on both fronts with what they had. So it was obvious, as a measure of economy, that 50mm APCR was the stuff to make. It would give the infantry a fighting chance. And Russia was the place to send it too, because the heaviest enemy tanks would be faced there, and more important because the most common tank that would be faced there by the line infantry - the T-34 - was more heavily armored than the Shermans faced in the west. They had tried the same idea earlier with guns as small at the 28mm ATG. But even with APCR, it was hopeless. Some APCR was used with those guns in North Africa, against the lighter tanks often faced before El Alamein - Stuarts and Crusaders for example. But there were also Valentines and Matildas in the desert, and some Grants and Shermans too, and it was hopeless to try to keep the 28mm ATG soldiering along. They also have many 37mm ATGs, the generation between the 28s and the 50s. They made APCR ammo for those too, as well as experimenting with HEAT rounds for them. Again a stopgap measure. 37mm APCR might occasionally hole the tanks encountered in North Africa, or T-34s from the side, but it was not going to let scores of line infantry divisions defeat massive Soviet armor attacks. The 50mm APCR therefore was the place to use the tungsten that was available for shells. 75s and 88s could be counted on to do their work without additional help, and the smaller guns soon proved inadequate even with APCR help and thereby a waste of the stuff. But high velocity 50mm guns with APCR could act as real ATGs, while without it they could not. Cutting it close is what economics is about - enough, not too much, because too much here means not enough there, which could have been better supplied. Does that mean every 50mm ATG in Russian had a regular supply of the stuff? No, certainly not. But that was the place to use what they did have, and mostly that is where it was used.

The Germans indeed liked to hide tanks in buildings, as well as guns. But sometimes it backfired - the buildings had cellars, the floors could not take the weight of the heavier tanks, and the tanks fell right in LOL.

Maybe they couldn't see them themselves. 1 round sounds like they were firing their spotting rounds. The mortars need to either see the target themselves, or have a HQ unit near them (close enough for the red "in command" lines) that can see the target to correct their fire. Sounds to me like they fired the spotting rounds, and neither they nor any immediate commander saw where they landed and went off. The best way to use the on-map mortars is to place them behind a ridge, in woods, or behind a building or group of buildings, with the position they are behind one with good fields of view. Then put their platoon HQ, or a company or higher HQ, at the wood line or crest or in the buildings, preferably sneaking it there. The HQ can see things but will generally be out of range and won't give itself away by firing. If the HQ has a combat bonus, the fire will also be somewhat more effective. Then the HQ spots and you pick targets it can see. Understand, these guys do not have radios. They cannot get firing directions from some seperate machinegunner half-way across the battlefield. Their HQ ahead of them has to see the target himself. His command distance (red lines) represents him calling out fire directions or sending a runner, etc. When the mortars fire, the HQ sees where the shells land and calls out corrections to them - that happens automatically if the mortars are "in command" and the HQ can see the spot where the shell landed. Incidentally, the best target for light mortars is infantry in the open or in woods. They are much less effective against vehicles, though they might hurt unarmored trucks and the like. Even with thin, open-topped halftracks you are counting on a lucky direct hit inside to do anything. A light mortar round is basically the explosive power of a hand grenade, just thrown a long way. I hope this helps.

The old Panzerblitz (PB for short) game seriously underrated mortars, and light artillery generally. They had a huge step up to 105mm arty, giving it 40 FP, while 120mm mortars got 15 and 81mm got 3. CM (and ASL before it) have it more nearly right. Mortars were very effective and quite common. Every infantry battalion on both sides had a mortar unit in its heavy weapons company. They are as important and regular a part of WW II infantry combat as machineguns or bazookas/panzerfausts. Incidentally, part of the PB problem was game scale, part was designers choices, part was the combat system. Mortars have very high rates of fire, and PB turns are 2 minutes and the scenarios ran 10-15 turns typically. Well, the average light mortar battery did not have the ammo to fire continually for 20-30 minutes without resupply, because the shells can go down the tubes very fast. But PB had no ammo system at all. The designers compromised by lowering the FP of the units with limited ammo, in the mistaken belief that low FP for all game would be about like higher FP for shorter periods. Not with their somewhat silly odds-based combat system it wasn't. In CM, light and medium mortars, on map or off, are good for a few minutes fire only. That fire is much more effective, in part because it is hitting smaller units (squads not PB platoons), but also because it is the real deal of full ROF ammo use and a real combat system that doesn't pretend lots of guys in the same place are safely from an explosion just because there are lots of them there (like the PB odds system did). As for the availability of off board arty, the historical reality is that the Americans had tons and tons of the stuff. There were single FOs that called down 140 fire missions in one five day battle, 40 a day at the peak of it, with 6 FOs working in a battalion. Each of those would be about half a CM module, maybe a third of one. Each U.S. battalion in the line in the Normandy fighting had the support of around 5000 shells per day. The Germans had not seen anything like it, even vets of the eastern front (live ones anyway). The Germans were not as well off. The battalion mortars would usually be available, if they had ammo. The heavier 120mm mortars were also common. In the real arty, they did have large numbers of 105mm artillery pieces, but they tended to have serious problems. Allied planes took them out, or took out their ammo vehicles, or artillery took them out, or they ran out of shells and the trains to bring more were shot up by planes or the tracks and bridges were smashed by bombers, etc. As an example of the effective of Allied air superiority, witnesses reported that when U.S. artillery spotter planes flew along the front, every German battery within a few miles would fall silent. They would get clobbered if they fired, as the planes called down counterbattery fire on them. This is one reason the Germans liked mortars so much - they were much easier to move again, shoot and scoot fashion, since they are so light compared to tube artillery. A realistic protrayal of artillery support in CM would be very pro-Allied in allowed weights. The Germans would have 81mm mortars available if they wanted to buy the support. 105mm arty or 120mm mortars, they might have 1 module of support of one or the other in a larger fight, but nothing like always. The U.S. would always have 81mm and 105mm support available, and in larger fights they could have several of each (realistically, 1-2 81mm and 4.2" mortar plus 1-3 105mm arty), and perhaps 155mm (0-1 modules) but not always. Brits would be between the two, with 3 inch mortars always and 25-lber most of the time. That was the real balancer of the better German tanks, not Hellcats and Jacksons and Pershings and Sherman Jumbos everywhere. If you want it in the form of a rule, I'd put it like this. Germans should have 1 81mm, and 0-1 105mm or 120mm, one or the other. Americans 1 81mm, 0-1 4.2" Mortar, 1-3 105mm, 0-1 155mm. Brits 1 76mm/3" mortar, 0-2 25-lber/88mm. Those are the levels of support the front-line portions of 1 battalion might reasonably expect in a fight.

They didn't have much. They had pack mules. The mountain guns were designed to come apart and be carried by mules if necessary. The idea of mountain infantry is that if it can't go over a mountain range without a road, you leave it behind. That includes POL, because one has to assume it could take weeks to fight one's way across, without road resupply. In practice, they probably commandeered a few trucks from rear area supply troops whenever they weren't actually deployed in the mountains, to make supply and details easier. But there was nothing whatever motorized about them, in TOE terms.

No one has mentioned the actual problem with this, which is not the sighting through the building, nor the LOS and LOF being different. I have no problem with those things, frankly. Sure, there will always be slight kinks in such procedures, compared to reality. But CM does a good job of them, and I for one prefer the present situation to impenetrable "buildings" that are actually nothing but clapboard, when the shooter may be a 50 cal or more. The problem is that the explosion of a shell soon after leaving a tube is not going to produce a circular blast. As near as I can tell, in CM the shell lands somewhere, and then it effects things in its blast radius. This is a good enough approximation most of the time. But it is not accurate about what happens with an explosion of a large shell moving at a high velocity on a flat trajectory. The truth is the force of the explosion is carried forward with the momentum of the shell. The "kill zone" is an elongated ellipse, not a circle, stretched in the direction of the shells motion. For a shell coming down at a high angle, there is practically no difference. And for a small caliber shell, the blast radius is small enough there is little reason to monkey with the approximate effects. But in the situation discussed, the building wall would be blown down, but most of the force of the explosion would carry into the building, not backwards up the line of flight. If the building was tall enough, the rubble might fall on the vehicle and damage it, to be sure. Or falling rubble might block the near track, or damage the barrel protruding that way. But the actual effects of the initial blast would be stretched forward along the line of fire by the shell's momentum, not evenly distributed backwards to the shooting vehicle. It is probably too much to expect CM to model such things. But in principle it should be possible. Put the blast zone as an ellipse with the point of impact at one foci, for instance, and the other focus of the ellipse directly along the line of sight, by some distance determined by the velocity of the projectile and its impact angle to the ground. It might be the case that accurate modeling like that would still take out the Wespe if the hit was close enough. But you'd have to be closer to get that strange result than with the approximation of a circular blast.

A. I want to be able to focus on the actions, and the way A fades out feels more correct to me. B jumps out at me like a painting in a museum - it demands attention and focus, and that doesn't not feel right for the feeling created by night overcast skies. One man's opinion...

Wolfram is the name of the ore, tungsten in the name of the metal. That is, wolfram is rock with flecks of tungsten all through it, which is the natural state in which tungsten is found, before milling and refining it. When someone talks about a wolfram-tipped round they certainly mean tungsten.

These are fine ideas, but I would add to them additional options. One of the gamier things players do when buying uber items is they mix and match with abandon. This is not realistic, and it makes uber items more affordable in effect. A partial solution is to require that tanks or armored SP guns / TDs be bought mostly one type, and in historical formation sizes, or not at all. To allow variety, one other lighter armor type can be allowed, with more flexibility on the number (the restriction to one type is enough). So for example, the players can buy the tank type they like, but must buy 4 or 5 of them, or 8 or 10 of them. (SS and US used 5 tank platoons, while regular German army and Brits used 4 tank platoons). If you want to blow your points on 4 Tiger Is, OK. The secondary vehicle rule excludes main battle tanks and heavily armored TDs. But Priest of Sexton SPA, or halftracks, or carriers, are OK. This is you chance to buy 1-2 vehicles of a special type, but not 1-2 vehicles of *each* special type. Or to buy a troop of M-8s or enough halftracks for all of your armored infantry - but not *both*. Similarly, I've heard of a German player taking 2 Wespes and a Hummel, for all the world straight out of Panzerblitz - LOL. More realistic would be to take 1 module of 105mm arty support and be done with it, but if you are going to bring them on map, they would certainly be one type not mixed. They fought and fired together in batteries and battalions you know, and would not mix types because it would mean supply, ammo, parts, and range coordination headaches to no good purpose. Players might still use the exclusions about the level of items purchased. But the idea is that making the main armor purchases "lumpier" will force tougher decisions on the players. Going for armor may mean really skimping on other things, for instance. A seperate idea is to restrict the portion of people's force expenditures that can be spent on armored vehicles, to 25% of the force or whatever. The drawback of this is that it provides both players with some info about what they are likely to be up against. But it may be better than a pure infantry battle restriction. Incidentally, I also have a few quibbles with the existing recommendations, but quibbles is all they are. I wouldn't include Pumas in recon battles, because really there were only a tiny number of them in the entire war on all fronts. And on the other hand, I'd allow the M-10 tank destroyer for the Americans in the 75 battles. Yes, they have a better gun, but they also have a weak turret and they were not the rare uber-item the Jacksons and Hellcats were, but in fact were quite common pieces of equipment. I'd similarly allow the British Sexton - seems strange to allow the Priest (U.S. SP 105mm arty) but not the Sexton (Brit SP 25-lber arty), since they really are comparable in every way. It might be the 88mm designation that throws people off. That is just a 25 lber howitzer on the Sexton, not a German high-velocity AA/AT gun. I'll also pass on another suggestion I've seen that I think has merit. Check the number built of any item. If it is less than 1000, do not use it, as too rare to show up much. Obviously, purely optional - some people like playing with the stranger toys of course. But for a more realistic sense of the fighting, the 1000+ restriction makes sense, because few people saw the other stuff at all. A few hundred items on a continent over years means not much chance they are on your mile of front on one particular day. On arty restrictions, I like the 105 rule but would relax it slightly, to 120mm for the middle setting there. That allows the medium German mortars, which are mostly comparable in weight and common-ness to 105mm arty. And I might allow a single module only of stuff about 120mm in the other cases (Panther 76 rule I mean). Some support by heavy guns in a higher tech, less restricted, or harder battle makes some sense. But nobody is going to get the support of 4-5 batteries of 155mm or anything like that. So, combining all of the above, one might see 5 Shermans, 105mm Arty, supporting M3 HTs or M8s but not both. One might see 4 Panthers, 2 AA halftracks, 120mm mortars. But one would not see 2 King Tigers, 1 Nashorn, 1 Jagdpanther, and a flamethrower Hezter. Just some additional ideas for realism in force choices, for those who are interested...

The way to use Shermans against heavier German tanks is in teams. Pair off two Shermans, and assign some infantry to work with each of them - a squad each will do, split into pairs of half squads for each tank in the pair. The team works seperated, not bunched up. One on the right, one on the left. The infantry goes first - use the half-squad without a BAR in it for the probing role (45 squads each has one BAR, so use either). The BAR half squad covers and takes over if the first gets torched. The infantry job is to *spot* for its tank. Keep the tank in dead ground, low or behind a wood or building, until your infantry gets a gander at what is ahead. When the infantry gets to the front of an obstacle, building or treeline etc - then pull the tank up behind that obstacle. The infantry sees what is ahead again. When you spot a German tank, what you want to do is have the left or the right tank-team set up to engage it, depending on which way it is facing. If it is facing sort of towards both of them, then you may have to send both at once, one a little after the other. The goal is to get a flank shot on the tank, obviously. It can't face two directions at once, so if your team is properly seperated one or the other should have a flank. The infantry are going first, because you cannot afford to nose around with your tanks leading. If you do, like as not the first you see of the enemy tank will be its front, and it will torch one of your tanks with your other one not in position to take it out in turn. How do you ensure that the team can see the same spot, and do not get taken down by two different German tanks? You peek out from behind obstacles, on the interior side. So the left tank in the team peeks out of the right side of its obstacle, and the right tank peeks out of the left side of its obstacle, and their lines of sight converge on some point ahead of the center-line of the team. The direct lines forward from each are masked by the obstacles in front of them. See the idea? Their lines of sight are an inverted "V", with its apex on some spot of the German line. Each peeking from behind some obstacle. The infantry will have occupied that obstacle first, so there will not be a Panzerfaust waiting when you crawl up to next it, and you will effectively be able to see through it without the enemy being able to see you through it. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. It is all about teamwork. Infantry probes and spots. You can idle the engines once behind an obstacle to try to listen for enemy tanks, too. One half-squad in the obstacle, the tank behind it, the other half-squad already on its way to the next position if nothing was seen from this one. The whole seperated team of 2 tanks and 4 half-squads crawls forward like stepping legs. Be patient. Adapt the whole process to the lay of the terrain, but that is the basic idea.

By "great overwatch positions" I assume you mean positions that can see lots of area. That is using the front armor of his beasties, and trying to deny you room to deploy. The problem with it, is that a position that can see lots of the field, can be seen from lots of the field (duh), and that lets you pick the spot to engage him from. In addition, such position disclose to you where he is pretty fast. And it should not be too hard to draw his fire (heh heh). So, how you you exploit all of that? First, by not trying to do the same thing yourself. If you put your tanks in places that can see lots of ground, he will see them and torch them, and your fire back will bounce off his front more often than not. Instead, you want to put your tanks in places where they see only a small part of the enemy position. "Keyhole sighting" it is called. Peeking out from behind a body of woods or a building, you can find spots that only see 150 meters length of one ridge, and are masked by terrain from the rest of his position. Use your infantry to find good spots. They go somewhere and see what they can see, then they can get into the cover you are going to hide behind. They see things for the tanks, which can stay in dead ground until ready instead of nosing forward themselves and getting bushwhacked. Then pick one of his TDs, and distract it. Give it a half squad to look at, or half two tanks move into different, seperated firing positions at once. You want a flank shot, obviously - even at range you can kill him with a flank shot. To get one, you have to make him turn to face something else. Use smoke to mask other TDs *while* you are tackling one of them. Say one of those two seperated tank "keyhole" positions can also be seen by a second TD or his. Then blanket that one in smoke just before springing the two-on-one on the other one. See the idea? If you know where his guys are, it is not so hard to seperate off one vehicle at a time and overload it with more enemies, from more angles, than it can handle or present its front armor towards at once. You don't have to cavalry charge to do this, though sometimes you will want to race somebody forward to a closer keyhole piece of cover to get a better angle or whatever. Also, do not discount your infantry. If the ground is wide open, then sure they will not be able to close with his TDs in overwatch positions, but if the terrain isn't that clear then they should be able to get closer. Be patient. Stay back inside woods or behind buildings between rushes forward, instead of at the forward edges of them, to avoid being pounded by his HE all day. Sneak a small unit to the edge to keep an eye on things, but do not fire with it (use the hide command, or send a low range HQ or half-squad). When you pick off a TD or two, look for the areas that are no longer covered because those guns were the only ones that could see some patch of ground, and ruch through that area before he brings another TD over. Get behind keyhole cover again with your tanks, and move the infantry closer. What you want to have happen, is to force him to crawl around looking for you or for angles that can shoot at you, while also getting your infantry teams closer and closer to him. He is not nearly so formidable when moving around, because he has to show sides to move much, to somebody somewhere, and he can't turn on a new threat nearly as fast as you can. If he has *no* infantry helping him, your infantry should give you so big a spotting edge that you should be able to keep your tanks reasonably safe while stalking his to get 2-1, 2 angle situations. And after a few of those, to walk your guys close enough to him to force him to leave ridges or get zooked. If he does have some covering infantry, then use your mortars and offboard arty on them, after you find them. Use mortars for smoke, too. But it is a waste of the ammo trying toi wipe out all his TDs with off board arty, especially the lighter stuff. Anything under 105mm, if isn't worth firing HE missions at him. As for your force mix, obviously you want Shermans or M-10s for the main armor dueling, setting up these 2-1s and keyhole shots. Some M-8s or Stuarts for closer rushes are a fine idea too (flank on Hetzers that is). As is offboard arty, an 81mm or two for smoke and infantry shooting, maybe one heavier module to try to actually kill things. But get some infantry too for the sighting and bazooka work up close, and not green guys obviously. Don't bother with halftracks, they are shell bait against this kind of enemy. The enemy's main weakness should be differential spotting and intel from his manner of fighting, "overwatch" or out in sight using his front armor to dominant areas. That broadcasts where he is. Don't tell him where you are, and use the infantry to keep his positions spotted. Then you hunt, with the "keyhole and distraction" idea, and the "double team at angles" idea, and the "blind the others" idea. It is all about teamwork and patience and traps, not about the thickness of front armor plates, nor a suicidal charge of the light brigade.

Yes Jeff, same person. I haven't been doing Stars in 10 months or so. I've been doing the Napoleonic Battleground series (NWC club), some TacOps, and now Combat Mission - as well as work LOL. When Stars SN comes out, I may get back into that I suppose. The Battleground series, battlefront's games, and Stars are far and away the best strategy games out there IMnsHO. Interesting that they weren't in the ones reviewed, probably because of that "brigade level" requirement. Still, the choice of Sid Meier Gettysburg over the BG series is perverse, it is not nearly as good a game system. PacWar, for its day, was another fine game (lousy interface though - Jeff McBride would cringe). In the realm of older games, the V4Victory series wasn't bad either, especially the Russian one. Had a few kinks in the supply system but otherwise was a fine game. TOAW remains a disappointment to me. All the relevant factors are not at the player's fingertips, even to know let alone to manipulate. That detracts very significantly from the strategy aspect of it. The designer thought that telling units which place to go was the "strategy" part, but gets it quite wrong. The whole phasing system of TOAW puts the premium on feel for how hard to push when, and the determining issue (supply) is flat hidden. Like playing chess with your own queen and rooks hidden and on random squares - it just does not work as a game. There is also a definite "mosnter" tendency on the part of scenario designers for it, including one extra level of detail below what the scale of any given battle ought to be, resulting in monster stacks the interface doesn't handle well, etc. The idea was promising and the research that went into some aspects of it impressive, and it is a very flexible game system. But the game design aspects of it are broken, and no amount of supposed "realism" or "detail" can make up for that. Game designers often forget their job description, that is the underlying problem. They think they are historians (TOAW), or movie directors (SM Getty), and drop the ball. The folks here haven't, and that is why CM and TacOps are successful games. One man's opinions...

The Germans had no domestic supply of tungsten. But they did have a source of supply - ore from Spain and Portugal. That accounted for 63% of all German use of the stuff from 1941 to 1944. The Allies devoted more effort to cutting off the supply of tungsten to Germany than to any other metal, by sending agents to buy it up, by threatening embargos and retaliations, by intercepting shipments cloak and dagger style, by bombing trains once they got into France. But the Germans responded by economizing on uses of it (which certainly did restrict them, obviously), with the result that at the end of 1944 they still had stockpiles adequate for 2 years consumption at the rate they were then using it. Source is Alan S. Milward, War Economy and Society 1939-1945, Chapter 9 Economic Warfare, page 314. The Germans also had shortages of manganese - they economized and lived of of captured Soviet stocks (before the invasion they got it from the Russians under the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact trade deals), and small amounts from Slovokia and Hungary. They were also short of nickel - very important for some applications - but they got supplies of it from the Finns after 1941, as well as seizing stocks of it in conquered areas. Chrome was tight, and the Allies bought the entire Turkish production stream (the pre war source for Germany), so they lived off of smaller supplies from the Balkans. If the Allies had known the entire state of the German metals situation, they would have put a larger effort into cutting off Spain, invading northern Finland, and if possible entering the Balkans or at least aiming the partisan activities there better and supporting them with bombing of the limited Balkan rail net. Doing so probably would have starved the Germans of non-ferrous metals by mid 44 at the latest. Similarly, if the Allies had known and managed it, cutting off Swedish supplies of iron ore would have cut the German steel industry in half. But they did not know what all the shortages and weaknesses in the German supply picture actually were. They knew tungsten and chrome were tight and tried to restrict them through pressure on the Spanish and the Turks, but with only limited success. They also, of course, eventually focused successfully on oil production, but even there the success was less than it might have been because they did not have enough information about the Germany economy. (In particular, they did not understand how dependent high-octane av-gas was on just a few vunerable synthetic hydrogenation plants). But there was not absolute shortage of tungsten. It did need to be economized, and machine tools and metallurgy were the highest priority use. AP shells made with it were definitely needed more on the Russian front than in the west, to enable 50mm ATGs (thousands of them, and all that many of the line infantry divisions had) to handle T-34s and the like. But as mentioned, they had years worth, of the low rate of consumption they had dropped use of the stuff down to anyway, remaining in stockpiles at the end of 1944, largely because of Spanish and Portugese ore supplies in the preceeding 3 years. For what it is worth...

Quite realistic for a training manual, if you discount a little of the heroic rhetoric. Some clarifications at spots you had question marks - dry depot, as opposed to a wet one with POL (fuel etc). Yellow fuse on the magnetic mine if you want to get away (yellow was ~5 seconds I think, red only ~2 seconds). Schreck rounds - pull the pin (like on a grenade) before loading. (A safety feature to prevent them going off when a shell-carrier hit the dirt).

Your instinct to take a lot of good infantry is sound. I'd want a battalion in a scenario that big, or at least two companies. It is also fine to buy a fair amount of arty, but I'd take just one module of 120mm mortars and then by 81mm mortars for the rest (3 modules of them should do). You are not likely to kill vehicles (let alone tanks) with arty, and he is not going to be dug in. What you want to be able to do is to pin down his infantry over and over, and to smash bunched up troops in woods particularly (that is the 120mm mission). Mortars have good response times and decent prospects of airbursts in the woods. If he bunches up in the open ground, MGs pin him. If he bunches up in woods, mortars pin him. If he spreads out, the MGs cut off each group from the others by covering the open ground, and you save the mortars. The idea is to slow him down and string out his force over the huge distances the map will provide. Pick an infantry formation type that uses 2 LMG squads if you can - like Motorized Infantry troops, for example. When split into half squads, they are much more effective than 1 LMG troop types, because the LMG is so much of the overall firepower, especially at range. Regulars are sufficient for the quality level. With a far amount of woods, you might also consider part of the force Volksgrenadier. Some of their squads are pure SMG, others are 2 LMG. Keep one platoon of SMG-type troops for a counterattacking role, veteran quality. You can consider adding engineer extras to them, but that is not essential. In a big battle like this, do not skimp on transport (halftracks or whatever). It can make a big difference if you are able to redeploy men from threat to threat. The hills may help with that, be providing dead ground areas to move along, but that depends on the "grain" of the hills you wind up with. Armored TDs will be more survivable against an attacker who likes arty. Bunkered AT guns on a reverse slope can sometimes work though, too, provided your infantry can hold the ground ahead of them (a body of woods or whatever). Or non-bunkered AA guns on the reverse slope (which will also provide some air defense, and cover deep flanks against light armored incursions by armored cars or halftracks). The idea is to hit small portions of the enemy force as they come over crest lines while the rest of his force is still masked and unable to shoot back at you. Use the split up half-squads as machinegun nests and interlock their fields of fire across areas of open ground. Then hide, letting HQs spot for them. It can make sense to let the first unit past - often scouts - and shoot the main body behind. A half squad or two cut off ahead of his main body by open ground covered by fire is pretty well dead. Use these MG nests, AT sniping, hunting by your TDs, and harassing 81mm mortar fire, to slow him down, weaken him. Leave you main body behind all of this, and try to pick a main position that is not too obvious, not an artillery target from the word go, and which cannot be seen by the entire battlefield. You want to force his strung out forces to bunch up opposite your main force to mass enough firepower to fight you, then hit them with the heavy mortars and counterattack with the reserve if you can. People will get through on one flank or another, count on it. Have local counterattack forces to cut these incursions off - single assault guns / TDs with some infantry support (any HQ, 2 half-squads preferably with Panzerfausts, a Schreck e.g). Another wild card that can be useful is a hidden AT gun with very long range in some location with a wide field of fire, but hidden and not firing until the middle of the game. People tend to assume if some location has been in LOS for a long time and nobody has shot at them, that nobody is there, at least with enough range to reach out and hit them. And one good hidden AT gun can do quite a number on enemy armor if you are patient enough to let him really come out into its LOS. One 88 is the idea. But the location has to not be so obvious it gets arty attention in the first 5 minutes. Don't worry about the objective areas. Turn off the "flags". Just worry about defeating the enemy - if you do, you will manage the rest and if he defeats you, he will manage the rest. Whatever you have left, buy more TDs. Spend the leftovers after the last one you can afford on a few obstacles and put them wherever, without clustering them near you main position. Just cover them with an MG nest half-squad, maybe a hiding Shreck. There is a way to attack this sort of defense, by trying to engage your men piecemeal, a few at a time, with a large portion of his attacking force. What will work against him there are #1 limited time - it takes more time to attack in sequence one after another a bunch of small positions, #2 providing longer range ambush chances for your TDs farther back, peeking out at the locations near your next little strong point (you know just where that is, because you picked it) and #3 bunching up his infantry then getting pinned down by the mortars and losing more time. I realise the above can seem like a lot to organize and assemble. But the basic idea is simple enough. You want his early attacks to hit thinly spread forces in lots-o-little packets, while your armor and main position stay safe farther back. Then react to where he comes, ambushing with your armor and pivoting on your main infantry position as a sort of safely held area. (The infantry position effectively makes certain areas safe for your armor, and also spots for them). The main line of resistence / infantry position is your shield. Your armor and reserves are your sword. The little guys strung out front are sand thrown in his eyes, so he doesn't know where your main body is but sees little bits seemingly everywhere. I hope this is helpful, and good luck.

I have not seen units with actual "hide" orders break their "hide" and shoot back because of area fire. But certainly firing tends to show your location, and units without explicit hide orders will shoot back at things they can see that are in range and can be hurt. So, e.g. if you put an HMG in s stone building with wide fields of fire, nobody may know it is there. Shoot up treelines and people will know it is there, see it, and in range fire back, like as not. One counts on the cover to protect the shooter. It can also be a useful idea in blockbusting, or moving from building to building. A tank putting a few HE rounds into a building before your men rush it can make the entrance decidedly less risky. MG fire might pin part of a treeline with area fire too, but generally isn't worth the ammo and jam chances - although one can use the coaxials on vehicles for that role, as their ammo is nearly unlimited. Artillery can be called down on suspected enemy positions before anyone is seen, but this can sometimes be wasteful since usually their available ammo is limited. If you know someone is there, obviously the arty idea is fine. People in anything heavier than woods cover are quite unlikely to be hurt by small arms area fire, and in the open you can see them. So those are the obvious recon-by-fire possibilities - guns or tanks at buildings, MGs up high to draw fire, vehicle MGs to hose tree lines.

Gen. Bayerlein, 12 SS Panzer, account of the effect of interdiction fighter-bombers on his division in a single day, June 7, 1944. The day after D-Day, this example shows the effect on a Panzer division trying to close to the front but not yet in action. "By noon it was terrible; every vehicle was covered with tree branches and moved along hedges and the edges of woods. Road junctions were bombed and a bridge was knocked out. By the end of the day I had lost forty tank-trucks carrying fuel, and ninety other vehicles. Five of my tanks were knocked out, and eighty-four halftracks, prime movers and self-propelled guns". By this account, it was the light armored and unarmored vehicles that suffered the lion's share of the losses. Tanks were not invunerable to the fighter-bombers, but they generally survived while the lighter vehicles did not. The overall losses, in one day (certainly a "surge" day for sorties, to be sure) are enourmous, perhaps a quarter of the vehicles in his entire division. Numerous reports show German infantry divisions taking two weeks to reach the battlefield from Brittany, averaging no more than ten miles a day, in night marches along secondary roads to avoid fighter bombers. That is undoubtedly the main effect of WW II tac air. The German forces lost operational mobility behind the front and were attrited strongly whenever they attempted any rapid road movement. A related issue would be the inability of other support vehicles to properly supply the tanks. Thus Bayelein lost much of his POL and ability to move it in that one day of strikes. The loss of prime movers and half tracks certainly meant less ability to maintain the tanks, supply spare parts, repair damaged tanks, etc. When the battle turned mobile again after the breakout, there are credible German reports that half of all tank losses were due to mechanical failures. Without immediate logistic support and forced to move over the fighter-bomber hunted roads in the mobile fighting, many of them were undoubtedly abandoned as soon as anything broke down, since the prospect of fixing them was negligible, owing in no small part of the successes of tac air. But the accounts of the actual battlefield fighting and CAS proper, as opposed to interdiction missions, are much less clear and the accomplishments of tac air definitely less impressive on that score. One hears far more about the omnipresent allied artillery. In the Normandy fighting and breakout battles, it seems a typical U.S. infantry battalion on the front line was often supported by ~5000 shells per day. Per battalion. There were fewer tac air sorties than that flown over the entire continent. I do not mean to suggest arty killed more tanks, but it undoubtedly delivered far more close fire support by an enourmous factor. As for a comment by another fellow that air supposedly destroyed more tanks in Desert Storm than ground arms, I am afraid that is simply not the case. The ground arms did most of the physical destruction of armor - air had certainly destroyed Iraqi morale and logistics utterly and the entire case was "overdetermined", to be sure. For whatever it is worth...

Everyone knows about the bomb in the Wolf's Lair that almost got him, shattered his ear drums in fact. But few people know how many times it was attempted. One incident is related in Alan Clarke's "Barbarossa", about WW II on the eastern front (great history by the way). British intel managed to get a bomb to a resistence German officer who managed to smuggle the bomb onto Hitler's plane when he was flying back from a trip to the Russian front - from Smolensk if I recall it right. The officer got the bomb aboard by claiming it was a case of liquor he was sending home. When the plane arrived safely, he nervously retrieved the bomb (as his package)and found out what had happened, without being discovered. If the bomb had gone off, the miss in the Wolf's Lair could not have happened - it would have taken place at more than 10,000 feet and there would have been no chance of survivors. The design was jury rigged to provide a timing mechanism. A clock was to release a sort of latch that let acid lose, to eat through a thin wire, which was holding back a spring pushing a nail, which served as the firing pin. The nail was to hit a percussion cap imbedded in the side of the explosive charge itself to set that off. The clock worked, the latch released, the acid ate through the wire, the spring released the nail, the nail struck the percussion cap - which then did not go off. It was hit by the nail hard enough to dent it, but it just didn't detonate.