LongLeftFlank
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Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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Haven't visited in a bit. Well Broadsword, you're certainly pushing the engine to its limits! It's making me ambitious to tackle bigger chunks of Dien Bien Phu than I originally planned.... once CMBN is bootstrapped to 2.0 of course.
One comment -- just visual really. Any way to make the horizons look a little more "off in the distance?" I keep half-wondering why there aren't TD units up in those heights shooting down.
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You know, as I work my way through Roy's and Windrow's books, it's a revelation to me just how equal to / superior the Vietminh forces had become to the CEFEO forces at pretty much all levels by early 1954, from squad level to technology to C4I to overall strategy. Once again, the "robotic yellow hordes" myth that Westerners fear/cherish so deeply largely goes out the window.
Just throwing out some opinions here for discussion, but it seems to me the only areas where the French retained superiority were:
1. Air power, definitely helpful, especially in covering fighting withdrawals, although the French didn't have nearly enough to make a strategic difference or interdict Vietminh supply lines. But then again, there was probably no amount that *would* have been enough (even atomic bombs, which the US fleetingly considered using to break the siege) given the jungle, monsoons and rising Vietminh AA capabilities. Giap himself greatly overestimated the potency of French air power, but the VM had enough resources to waste some in overpreparing, overcamouflaging, etc.
2. Airlift. A distinctly mixed blessing, since overestimation of its capabilities is what led the French to hold and reinforce distant, isolated locations, culminating in DBP. As with airpower, terrain and weather made this a highly unreliable asset.
3. Battlefield initiative (short term only!). Broadly speaking, by 1954 if the French gave moving Vietminh forces more than about 10 hours to reconsolidate, dig in and receive new orders, the French would get their arses handed to them -- any victory was at best Pyrrhic. Either that or they'd find themselves blasting empty scrapes.
But when the Vietminh didn't get that breathing space, the French units would routinely beat them (or escape) assuming the latter had the strength and leadership to move. Both VM infantry and artillery subunit leaders tended to hold in place and await orders from above. This seems to be the main reason why even late in the game at DBP, skeleton French units repeatedly ejected far greater numbers of Vietminh from newly occupied positions. The French at DBP certainly got better at fighting at night, for the same reasons that the VM had had to become good at it in the first place.... badly outgunned in daylight!
That's pretty much all CEFEO had going for it.
Overland mobility, both big and small unit maneuver and logistics. Vietminh, hands down. No contest. The Vietnminh were virtually never thwarted by terrain. At best, Trinquier's Meo and Thai guerrillas and a couple of the best Para battalions (Bigeard, Brechignac) could match the VM speed in rough country for a limited period. But most CEFEO forces were rendered virtually unfit for combat by any kind of extended overland operation outside the Delta (and even within it), even facing minimal opposition.
Battlefield C4I seems about a wash; heavy radio sets plus lousy conditions negated most of the French technical advantage, especially in terms of calling artillery; on the move the VM instead used spies, runners and primitive but effective signaling systems. The VM were listening in to the French radio net about as much as vice-versa; both sides preferred landlines where possible.
Weapons. By 1954, the VM had equal or better equipment overall... in many cases, it was the same equipment. Their Type 50/51 submachine guns and Chinese Mauser rifles were superior to their French/US equivalents; they largely used the same LMGs. AFVs were of limited value in the terrain and the VM had numerous bazookas and RCLs to kill them -- more 75mms than the French in fact! The US 60mms were likely a bit better than the hodgepodge of VM lights, but the VM seemed able to manpack more 81/82 and 120mm mortars and ammo to their fights. By the end the VM artillery was as good, tube-for-tube, thanks to Chinese transfer of US 75 pack howitzers and 105s captured from the Kuomintang or in Korea. The French maps were shockingly bad at DBP, and it seems their fire mission preplanning was also slipshod, and once the initial VM bombardment shredded their landlines they were punching nearly blind. There are anecdotes that the VM fired a lot of dud rounds, but the same may well have been true of the French. The tropics does that.
Leadership. This is a tricky and incredibly complex one to call -- at DBP both sides demonstrated both genius and numbing incompetence at all levels. Opinions welcome; let me mull on it some more.
Soldier to soldier, the elite VM units were every bit as skillful, tough and courageous as the French paras (whose cadres were nearly half Vietnamese btw!) -- and a lot more numerous. I definitely discount all the agitprop about the Stakhanovite dedication of the bo doi, eagerly throwing themselves like soldier ants on embrasures and under the wheels of guns. It's unclear to me what that really amounts to in terms of battlefield performance. In spite of the "dare to die" legends, their peasant cadres were *distinctly* less fanatical than the Japanese... there was no Emperor to worship and land reform isn't much good if you aren't around to benefit. I'd chalk it up to strong discipline and zero forgiveness of failure, plus the universal soldierly values of camaraderie and the sense that that victory was in reach.
In contrast, for the besieged GOMO forces at DBP, it generally seems the men who were going to desert had largely done so before the fighting started in earnest; whole units in the case of the Thais at CR Anne-Marie. The rest fought and/or fell back without deserting.
As we've established elsewhere, it's nearly pointless to generalize about combat skill and bravery by nationality, experience levels aside. Having your back against the wall tends to "force" out the exceptional in all human beings as they are forced to take risks and break the rules. And by 1954 it was CEFEO which found itself in that position more often. So I'd broadly call it a wash on the above factors that dictated ability to "git 'er done" in the pinch.
My own thoughts and I'm not particularly stuck on them.
Bueller? Bueller? Jason? Anyone?
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Hmm, very interesting blog, thanks. As you likely know very well, these things aren't cars, so I stick with my previous statement. As I noted before, using a defected AFV or two as a semi-static heavy weapons position is a very different proposition from operating a truly mechanized unit. And I suspect it's only a short time before such vehicles are located and destroyed -- by helicopters most likely.
To me this says more about the continuing parlous state of Syrian army morale than about any fundamental change in the FSA's ability to conduct conventional warfare, however keenly we CMSFers might wish it.
Per my OP, I'm going to refrain from further comment so as not to get sucked into yet another "Who Are The Good Guys, Really?" debate....
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It's been some time since I read Louis Hagen's memoir "The Arnhem Lift" (which I gather has been republished), but ISTR he helped an officer operate a PIAT from a hidden post in the attic of a rowhouse, holding at bay a pair of StuGs for a couple of days. I don't recall that he ever named the officer in question, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was this remarkable gentleman.
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If they really want to do Market-Garden correctly, they are going to have to tackle urban combat in a big way. So it might come earlier than you are expecting. But who knows, maybe they just won't be able to get that one together in time for its scheduled release and it will have to wait for the v3 upgrade.
A few observations:
I'm hoping SBurke will back me up here, but in my (fairly extensive) CMSF/CMBN experience there is no urban infantry combat tactic -- modern or WWII -- that a careful player can't replicate *very* nicely indeed in either RT or WeGo mode. That includes recon around corners, mouseholing and ersatz fortified buildings (and assaults on same).
However, there is a good bit of micro involved, especially in Unit Facing commands, to ensure your pixeltroops end up making best use of the partial but solid cover afforded by nearby building and compound walls, as opposed to lingering in the open.
This also assumes a thoughtfully designed map that strikes a reasonable balance between a clump of buildings carelessly tossed down based on a cursory scan of a period aerial photo, and to paraphrase Erwin, COMBAT MISSION:RAT MAZE.
On the other hand, I have found it virtually impossible to program the AI to do much more than hold static positions in an urban setting. The troops have only two speeds: crawl and run, and given the strictly clock-based AI Orders, the latter move all too often ends in a massacre, with entire squads mowed down in narrow streets while pig-headedly trying to beeline to their next waypoint.
Also, units in an AI Group select their next destination squares randomly (within the "painted" area), which can mean a unit that was moving down A Street will then decide to shift over and go down C Street, exposing itself to additional hazards, unless you've set separate AI plans and groups for each advance. Which, in addition to being a hideously complex choreography (you're now coordinating many separate groups and plans) brings you hard up against the 8 (or 16) Group limit pretty quickly. There are a few workarounds but they are few.
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Well done! Sergeant Rock stogies all round!
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Merci pour les encouragement, mes amis, but I'm still hoping one of the many talented French moddeurs in our community is going to take an interest in this at some point.
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Foreground: US Airborne modded (poorly) to French "lizard" camouflage; Canadian airborne.
Background: Polish infantry with LW wireframes and camo with US webbing added to represent Algerian Etranger units; using the officer uniform eliminates the chinstrap and allows a mix of helmets and berets.
With support for the war waning in France, the all-volunteer CEFEO (Corps Expéditionnaire Français en Extrême-Orient) was a pretty cosmopolitan force by 1954, with nonwhites (Vietnamese and North Africans) making up nearly half the headcount even in elite Metropole, Coloniale and Etranger Para battalions. Vietnamese supplementifs (porters, runners, translators and scouts) had given way to autochtones (soldiers) at squad level, in addition to all-Vietnamese companies with local officers. Reverting to ancient custom, these men commonly took their families along with them to war!
Few CEFEO units retained parade ground uniformity in terms of uniforms and equipment in the field; a mix of US, French and British WWII surplus was issued.
I tried retexturing the Garand to look like the French MAS36 service rifle but gave up. A better modder than me will need to push this forward from here. I will probably mess around some more then release what Indochina mods I have.
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I think you're overestimating a single man fleetingly peeking around the corner as an effective way to spot enemy infantry hidden in buildings or behind rubble, etc.
If you're really determined to find out what's there, detach a scout team and have them Fast dash across the street to a patch of cover. If they get shot at or shot, well, mission accomplished! But that doesn't necessarily tip off the other guys in the squad as to exact enemy locations.
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The Germans were rather good at infiltration too, weren't they, using very similar tactics? (imitated or not doesn't matter -- in their basics these tactics as old as the hills) Albeit used largely in a defensive context, e.g. aimed at retaking previously lost positions bagging Allied prisoners, etc.
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It's because you've imported the .mdr file and renamed it, which brings in the wireframe but the game doesn't know where to look for the .bmp texture files. Bring them over to you Z folder too -- they're CMSF tree 6 I believe -- but do NOT rename them.
EDIT: oops, looks like you figured that out. IIRC the palms have an extra .mdr file or something that you need to bring over but not rename... the first file is looking for it under its original filename. Anyway, good luck
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Broadsword: ref my earlier comment that "Inside every Commie is a Nationalist, waiting to get out!" Ho was a fervent Communist. No amount of Presbyterian preaching by Wilson would have converted him to a Horatio Alger Liberal (classical definition here). Had he somehow become one, he would have renounced it in the following decade or been shunted aside and become a historical footnote. These people were not easily sweet-talked out of their beliefs by white men in starched collars; like Nehru, they only adapted to circumstances when compelled.
Americans of all ideological stripes persistently overestimate the extent to which foreigners identify with or want to imitate them.
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Make no mistake; the mainstream Communist line was to "liberate" all of Southeast Asia from colonialism and feudalism. Enthusiasm and meaningful material support for this project waned and waxed over time, of course, and got caught up in the emergent maelstrom of the Vietnam War (Laos and Cambodia).
However, winning a guerrilla war against foreigners (colonialists) and their local supporters -- where the Communists can lay claim to being patriots as well as offering a brighter tomorrow -- is a very different proposition from overthrowing homegrown institutions, however corrupt. So if there's any universal lesson to be drawn, it's probably that foreigners can't fabricate a popular government where none existed before (in living memory).
South Korea is a noteworthy exception; that nation had no institutions at all remaining in 1945 after 50 years of brutal Japanese rule. However, their Communists made the cardinal error of being too closely aligned with Chinese outsiders, limiting their patriotic appeal. The entire country being ravaged by foreign armies probably had a lot to do with it as well; the exhausted people were happy to take copious US aid and keep the peace.
Still, following the ceasefire, a low level "dirty war" had to be fought by the ROK Army through the 1950s-1960s which has never been properly documented (in English).
The Communists made the same mistake in Burma. In Burma, where much of the country is trackless highlands inhabited by hilltribes, the BCP began as a United Front movement but then marginalized itself by becoming too heavily Chinese and worse, fanatical Red Guard dominated. Ethnic Burmese cadres joined the army strongman Ne Win -- himself an avowed socialist backed by the USSR and India -- and shoved the BCP to the Chinese border where by 1975 they became just another tribal opium army. No Western support desired and our ability to influence events in that country remains marginal.
From 1965 or so, the Communist Party of Thailand, a united front of rural reformers and Communist-influenced Chinese huaqiao (20% of the Thai population), mounted an active armed struggle in the Isan and Nan regions (and in Yala, adjacent to Malaysia) that wasn't fully suppressed until the early 1980s. The Royal Thai Army and paramilitary Border Patrol Police, assisted by various hilltribe militias -- including colourfully, the old Kuomintang "opium armies" encamped on the Burma border -- was able to contain this insurgency without substantial US involvement beyond a free flow of arms (which also supplied the guerrillas more than the Chinese ever did, btw).
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Ceasefires are nonsense unless informally agreed to by local commanders. The entire opposition knows they will be murdered the moment they fall under the authority and guns of the Assads again.
However dramatic the humanitarian disaster, the cities aren't truly where the Syrian Civil War is being decided -- the regime shows the reporters only what it wants them to see. I would look instead to the classified NSA satellite imagery that is cataloguing the ramp-up of the IED (roadside bomb) campaign that is, drip by drip, strangling the mech-heavy Syrian army by striking its lengthy logistical tail out in the countryside.
But again, let's keep this thread focused on the game.
Imagine, SBurke, that you have only half as many AFVs to conduct our current game (the others are immobile at base, for lack of spares), and ~20% more poorly trained and undermotivated Shabiha militiamen (OK, they've now been issued body armour) instead? While whatever they say to the cameras, the elite Special Forces units are depleted and weary from being used time and time again for costly close assaults against do-or-die resistance.
In contrast, the weary FSA militias also have slightly fewer infantry but twice as many RPGs, and also have booby traps and IED "paintcan" explosively formed penetrators. These are now manufactured in local workshops using knowhow brought in from Iraq and refined over 8 years of fighting against a vastly more capable opponent.
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It is interesting though to speculate what would have happened had Vietnam been united in 1954 and then fallen under Communist rule. My guess is that America would still have been drawn into a major war, but it would have taken place instead in Laos and the dry plains of northeast Thailand. And there, as in Korea, you would have had a true Communist War of aggression with the monarchist-nationalist Thai and Laotian (ethnically Thai) armies and their CIA-backed hilltribe mercenaries fighting a lot more vigorously against despised Viet (and Chinese) "dog-eaters" than the ARVN did. Unlike Bao Dai, the Thai monarchy was an ancient (though corrupt) institution commanding wide veneration and one that even the Communists hesitated to criticize directly.
SEATO might have been able to keep its ground force commitment to a division or two plus air power. All speculation of course; but some dominos fall more easily than others.
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It is a really good read. I think the US involvement in Vietnam was a huge mistake, but for slightly different reasons than you may usually hear. Anytime you see the world in black and white (or red and blue as the case may be) you miss the subtleties. I think the United States let it's paranoia and French stupidity allow it to miss probably our biggest opportunity to have altered the whole course of history in the cold war. The Vietnamese saw the US as natural allies during the war against Japan and if we had actually backed them in the negotiations in the 1950's to end the war we'd likely have ended up with a staunch ally against China. China invaded Vietnam pretty darn quickly after we were gone and is in current conflict with them over natural resources and Pacific territory (along with every other neighbor they have). And guess who is now their best buddy....us. 50 years of opportunity flushed down the toilet. Yeah it is all hindsight and maybe it wouldn't have worked or couldn't have worked considering the mindset, but we picked far worse and less reliable allies.
Weaving together the histories of three distinct conflicts, Phillip B. Davidson follows the entire course of the Vietnam War, from the initial French skirmishes in 1946 to the dramatic fall of Saigon nearly thirty years later. His connecting thread is North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, a remarkable figure who, with no formal military training, fashioned a rag-tag militia into one of the world's largest and most formidable armies. By focusing on Giap's role throughout the war, and by making available for the first time a wealth of recently declassified North Vietnamese documents, Davidson offers unprecedented insight into Hanoi's military strategies, an insight surpassed only by his inside knowledge of American operations and planning.
Eminently qualified to write this history, Davidson--who served as chief intelligence officer under Generals Westmoreland and Abrams--tells firsthand the story of our tragic ordeal in Indochina and brings his unique understanding to bear on topics of continuing controversy, offering a chilling account, for example, of when and where the U.S. considered using nuclear weapons. The most comprehensive and authoritative history of the conflict to date, Vietnam at War sparkles with a rare immediacy, and brings to life in compelling fashion the war that tore America apart. We witness the chaos in Saigon when fireworks celebrating the Tet holiday are suddenly transformed into deadly rocket and machine-gun fire. We sit in on high-level meetings where General Westmoreland plans operations, or simply engages in some tough "headknocking" with subordinates. And in the end we learn that even the seemingly limitless resources of the U.S. military could not match the revolutionary "grand strategy" of the North Vietnamese.
With its easy movement from intimate memoir to trenchant military analysis, from the conference rooms of generals to the battle-scarred streets of Hue, this is military history at its most gripping. A monumental, engrossing, and unforgettable chronicle, Vietnam at War is indispensable for anyone hoping to understand a conflict that still rages in the American psyche.
Roy is a great writer, though a bit of a pinko in that French Catholic intellectual way. I am now plunging into Windrow and from a CMBN design perspective, his book is a dream... tremendous technical detail. I've actually had trouble getting hold of Fall's books.
I personally doubt the thesis that, to paraphrase Kubrick: "Inside every Commie is a Nationalist, waiting to get out!" In other words, while the Viets and the Chinese were almost certain to lock horns eventually, Ho and the rest of the Politburo weren't about to share power with bourgeois Catholics and any government of national unity would have been farcical and cosmetic. It would basically have been Cuba. Unlike India or Indonesia, there weren't sufficient sectarian divisions in Vietnam to forestall the emergence of a 100% Communist regime. Catholics, Caoidaists, et al were all essentially "foreign" (French) transplants with no real mass credibility. And the immediate adjacency of a militant and confident Red China sealed it.
America washing its hands, or even backing anti-colonial movements of all stripes, would not IMHO have allowed it to alter any of the above. And any goodwill or admiration from WWII didn't last long; hell, the Vietminh were taking Japanese artillerists into their ranks almost immediately! No, Capitalist America was the prime enemy: full stop. Ho would have fully accepted that Internationalist line, whatever sentimentality he may have felt for that enemy. He was an orthodox lifelong Communist.
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Oof, I cracked the door and we're way OT. Short answer: no, I hadn't. I'll respond over at the DBP thread.
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Ah, yes, that I agree with wholeheartedly. But the premise of having the FSA having more "armour" on hand in a tactical engagement than a defected BMP or two seems to me implausible -- as you likely know, there's a lot of complex logistics involved in keeping a mechanized formation in the field. Were a large chunk of the Syrian army command to defect, "liberating" a large segment of the country a la Libya, well that's something else entirely. But I'm not personally inclined to model what-ifs like that right now.
The specific topic of interest to me was: why the hell did it take the Syrian Army so long to "retake" Baba Amr with all those tanks, against an enemy armed with only a few RPGs. And by the way, there's still plenty of rebel activity in Homs, 8 months later. Most of the city is still not under government control, although the FSA hasn't formally declared itself in control either for fear of inviting another savage artillery bombardment.
SB, you know what, I'm gonna take a raincheck on Baba Amr until you get back. Want to do a touch more modding for Dienbienphu, which is sucking me in deeper the more I read. Fascinating battle, for both sides!
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No, no, the ritual Invocation must begin with you asserting some Fact lifted from the Bargain Books section of B&N that *seems* plausible on its face. Bonus points for citing known Nazi apologists.
To which, Ozymamdias-like, JC will then boom using the time-honoured Response: "Hopelessly wrong on all counts." And then proceed to Educate you.
(Don't get me wrong, I just sit slack-jawed like the rest of us)
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Thanks for the interest. There's this little game called CMSF and it has, oh, 3 modules with HUNDREDS of scenarios, mainly set in all kinds of open terrain. So that market seems fairly saturated.... RED v RED campaigns included.
Problem is, in my experience BLUE annihilates RED 73 Easting-style with long range weapons approximately 100% of the time, barring some kind of designer-engineered and highly implausible (and where was that airpower again?) "RED hordes" advantage and/or an unavoidable Turn 1 ambush. Which is all basically what should happen (realistic) barring a total command SNAFU.
Which is why the modus operandi for RED forces since 2002 (and earlier) is not to even bother engaging BLUE in open terrain (nighttime hit and run raids on isolated outposts possibly excepted), but to withdraw into populated areas and hide amid the civilians, trusting in stone walls and ROE to, if not deter attack altogether, neutralize the ranged weapons advantage. And that's what I'm interested in -- standing in the boots of real world combat commanders facing (somewhat) realistic tactical situations and combat environments.
Otherwise, there's plenty of much prettier games out there to choose from.
EDIT: SBurke, I will try to send you a turn tonight. Job search took first priority this week, although I also plowed through Jules Roy's Dienbienphu book.
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the Canuks took out a Tiger (shot it in the ass)
LOL! An immortal quote from fellow Nova Scotian, Donald "Oddball" Sutherland, baby! Don't mix up those paint rounds though.
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Just read this thread for the first time (never got into Wittmania myself). Great project. You still set the standard for historical scenarios.
So if I read you right, you need to *force* the Tigers to hold fire in order to achieve the historical result? Or else, what? left to their own devices, they promptly spot and wipe out their ambushers? Or do results vary more widely? Just curious.
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Mr. E.W. Lambert of Homeleigh, The Burrows, Oswestly, has presented us with a poser. We do not know which Shed he is behind, but we can soon find out...
....it was the Middle one.
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Yeah, come on. A chessboard is "balanced." Every other map is going to be "unbalanced" to some degree unless, say, you simply made each player's "half" a mirror image of the other's. If that's what you want -- a gladiatorial arena for a glorified game of digital team paintball -- go abead and build your own. Or just play World of Tanks and have done.
Me, I am at the very opposite end of the spectrum; I like nothing better than to play games with mismatched forces but the stronger force having to struggle through god-awful terrain and the weaker force having to make best possible use of thatterrain.Like, oh, nearly all real WWII battlefields.
Flavor Object 7 and 8 "potted plants" BETA
in CM Fortress Italy Maps and Mods
Posted
Very creative work on the object wireframes. Not sure derelict vehicles are needed tho, since we can just place wrecks.
Also, if you can find some way to mod a burning vehicle to look like the empty shell of a small building, so we could have a "burning ruin" object, that would be great. Right now, burning bunkers is the best I can do.
What country are you from, btw? Your "accent" (written) is quite unique -- you have some great expressions (no offense I hope).