Zakalwe

My second platoon ran into them as I was swinging wide around the flank. My troops got carved up pretty bad, immediately one squad was almost wiped out, but my other platoon was already positioned to assault the hill, so I just tried to contain the enemy platoon (as changing plans in mid-stride is usually a disaster). Luckily the reinforcements showed up at excatly the right time, and hit the Soviets in the back at the moment my platoon was going to be smashed. In the end I managed a major victory, despite having three of the MG34s jammed at one point. Has anyone experimented with moving the machinegun platoon or the mortars? They seem to be pretty optimally placed by default. Zak

I'm interested in testing. I'm planning to start several games with my regular opponent so I could test the scenario from both sides. The scale and battle type sounds just right, so I'm sure I can get my opponent to try this one out. (email adress is in the profile)

The name originated with the Finns, but the first recorded use of the weapon against tanks dates a few years back to the Spanish Civil War. Finns were, however the first to employ it as a standard weapon, and produced it great numbers. It was considerably more effective than grenades in disabling tanks. The flamning liquid was a mixture of various substances, IIRC at least petrol (gasoline) and tar. The Finnish tank killers worked in pairs - ideally one blinded the tank with a smoke or flash grenade, and the other disabled the tank with a Molotov cocktail on the engine deck. The resulting engine fire destroyed the tank. The technique was very effective against early Soviet tanks, the later models had better protection against such attacks. However, killing a tank with a Molotov Cocktail was hazardous operation, best performed against an already immobilised vehicle. ------------------ z veteran of the psychic wars [This message has been edited by Zakalwe (edited 04-04-2001).]

Oh yes, and not only the Soviets. The Soviet 50mm mortar was actually much better than the other 50mm mortar we'll be seeing in CM2: the infamous German 5cm Leichter Granatwerfer M 36. I'm really looking forward to lugging one of these babies around the map - not enough range, and even less firepower. ------------------ z veteran of the psychic wars

I don't have my information handy, but as I recall, The Red Army didn't use its lend-lease halftracks as APCs. Instead, they were mainly used as command and recon vehicles. IIRC, the motorised and tank corps had some M3s in their TO&E from late 42 onwards. They were part of the motorised brigades' recon companies. Apparently the M3 was preferred to the Soviet armoured cars in difficult terrain. ------------------ z veteran of the psychic wars

Thanks for the suggestions on resolving the problem. I was quite certain it wasn't a heat issue, since my CPU runs quite cool even when CM is tormenting it. After spending several hours with diagnostic programs, I finally managed to isolate the problem. Turns out I had forgotten to tone down my graphics card overclocking when I was last tweaking it... so it was mea culpa all along. I tossed out some mods and dropped the resolution a notch, and everything seems to work OK. Of course, even if the full processor load was a factor in the crashes, I have absolutely no beef with BTS, once you start seriously tweaking your machine, you're on your own. [This message has been edited by Zakalwe (edited 03-27-2001).]

I'm experiencing a similar problem. CM is the only program causing regular crashes. I'm running a PII 350 at 500 Mhz, but it has been rock solid until I started playing CM. Cm usually inflicts a crash after 20-30 minuntes of playing - even if I'm not plotting or doing anything else.

The game doesn't explicitly determine the location and status of each man in a squad, right? Maybe the guys with the fausts were out of position to fire - simulated by a random check by the program? I've had similar occurences several times, but I thought nothing of it. I just figured that Hans was too busy thumbing through his pocket-size edition of Goethe (sorry, couldn't resist the pun). Then again, I come from ASL background, so all sort of weird randomness and abstraction is very easy to swallow... z

OTOH, uniforms and general appearance of units can be very deceiving. For example, Prussian Uhlans discovered this in the Battle of Ligny when they charged a slovenly looking and clearly undisciplined French unit composed of overage conscripts. To the Prussians' dismay, it turned out to be the 4th Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard, who hadn't received their uniforms due to their hasty mobilization... Z

Tom, if you are not faint of heart, may I suggest 'August Bank Holiday', available at least on Manx's Combat Missions site. http://www.combat-missions.net/ It is historical, the map is a thing of beauty, and it offers plenty of room for maneuvering. I've played it twice as PBEM, and found it reasonably balanced. However, it's huge, so be prepared...

Check out their weapons mix. They are armed with a lot of automatic weapons. They are very nasty at close range, but their firepower drops off rapidly with the range. Also, the fact that there are only seven men makes them very brittle. Finally, when designing scenarios or buying troops for QBs, Volksturm units should be Conscript or Green. Buying Regular or better Volksturm platoons might be considered gamey by some members of the CM community.

It seems to me that the Soviet ATRs have very little in common with the Lahti ATR. Rather, they were products of different design approaches - PTRD and PTRS were far lighter weapons, they could actually be called rifles without stretching the concept too far. The Lahti ATR, however, was halfway between a rifle and an AT-gun; a design philosophy also evident in the Swiss Solothurn ATR, and taken to the extreme with the German 28mm taper-bore gun, which straddled the line between ATRs and ATGs. I doubt that the Soviet designers were familiar with Lahti, as the weapon was not in service with the Finnish Army during the Winter War.

This was the Battle of Warsaw in 1656. The event is described in Peter Englund's 'Ofredsår'. There is a chapter devoted to 'the last 80 meters of the Middle Ages'. Peter Englund can also serve as a bridge to get us back to the subject of NKVD troops - one of his books (Brev från Nollpunkten, IIRC) has some very interesting essays on the coercive methods of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. IMHO, Englund is an outstanding military historian; it's a real pity his works are only available in the Nordic languages. I'd almost say it's worth learning Swedish just to be able to read his books.

Basically its four tanks in a Heer platoon, and five in an SS platoon. This was the standard allocation according to 'Soll' esrablishment (meaning that the unit was in full strength). Often platoons were missing a tank when going to battle. All the tanks in a platoon would be of the same type - so generally no mixed platoons of Panthers and PzIVs. However, circumstances often forced the formation of 'ersatz' Kampfgruppes of varying sizes, and these might contain a mix of available vehicles rounded up from workshops etc.

About Polish Uhlans charging tanks... This one seems to be a reference to the battle fought on the very first day of World War II near Krojanty (sp?). A Polish Uhlan regiment made a mounted charge to relieve hard-pressed infantry troops. However, during their charge, German armour appeared and promptly cut the cavalry down. I've never come across any references of Polish cavalry charging tanks on purpose. Granted, I'm not a serious student of the Polish campaign, but this story seems like typical mix of misunderstanding and exaggeration so common with battle narratives.

For Normandy battles I'd suggest a bottle of cider, preferably from Normandy. Of course, for those with deeper pockets, some decent Calvados will do just fine. Though usually it's Löwenbräu for me... With less limited funds I'd go for Lagavulin. [This message has been edited by Zakalwe (edited 03-20-2001).]

The Finnish Lahti 20mm ATR was a heavy weapon, and probably should be portrayed in CM2 as a 2 or 3-man team. The rifle weighed around 50 kg unloaded, and it was 225 cm long. The magazine was 10-round box magazine, mounted on the top of the weapon (making it look somewhat like a monstrous Bren gun), loaded magazine weighed around 7 kg. The ATR was commonly called as 'the Elephant Gun' by Finnish soldiers. While it was perfectly adequate for killing most Soviet tanks encountered in 1941, it was almost useless against the T-34 and KV. (Though at least one immobilized KV was brewed up by a Lahti ATR - taking over 80 shots to kill the tank at close range.) It was a good weapon against Soviet machine gun nests and direct firing guns - it could often punch through log bunkers and gunshields (the Red Army often used AT guns as infantry support pieces.) Some of the ATRs were relegated to AA use (a special mount was developed for this use). There was also a fully automatic version of the weapon for AA use. The Lahti rifle was quite unpopular among the troops. Of course it was very awkward to haul around; I've seen pictures of it being carried by two men in a marsh, and they certainly don't seem too happy with their load. In winter, it was mounted on skis, and could be pulled by a skier. Apparently the weapon had a particularly nasty recoil; making the semi-automatic function somewhat moot, as the firer was violently thrown back by gun, and had to resume firing position between each shot. There are some references to 'the Lahti spine', a spinal injury caused by repeated firing of the ATR. [This message has been edited by Zakalwe (edited 03-20-2001).]

Hejsan Stefan, Good to see you here! I agree with you, this has to be one of the best game forums ever - without the posters in this forum it would have taken me months to achieve my current skill in CM. The amount of historical information available is also staggering. BTW, if you have the time, I have a PBEM opening in my schedule. If I remember correctly, I still owe you a chance to make me pay for the capture of Moscow in the monster TOAW match...

Years ago my grandfather told me story about factory produced Molotov cocktails. I'm not entirely sure if it's fabricated - his war stories had to be taken with a grain of salt, but it did sound plausible enough. He arrived at his unit's lodgings to be greeted very joyously. Apparently one of his unit mates had 'liberated' a crate full of liquor; at least the ALKO stamps on the crate indicated it as such. (ALKO was the state owned alcohol company - responsible for the manufacturing and distribution of alcohol in Finland). However, the thirsty men were unpleasantly surprised when the pried the case open - it was full of Molotov cocktails.

I'm re<ady to jump in if there is room. I participated in an ASL tank rumble years ago and it was a blast. Either side is fine - hell, I'll even take a MMG carrier or a Halftrack if nothing else is available...

IIRC, the word was that T-35 won't probably be in the game due to the difficulty of modelling three gun turrets with separate fields of fire. As the tank was never very common, I can easily live with this decision. I think it will be much easier to model T-28, as the weapons in the front turrets are MGs. Also, T-28 was a very common tank in the early stages of the war, so it most certainly should be included.

My schreck team (veteran) just took out a moving Wasp at 192 meters... First time I've seen a hit at more than 150m. So these shots are possible, if very unlikely.

So it's SMK, then? I've been wondering about that picture for a decade. As you stated, Soviet sources deny the use of T-35s in hte Winter War, and some Finnish sources supported this. However, this picture was often cited to represent a T-35, so I was a bit confused. Back in the late 80's I talked to a Finnish veteran who was an ATG gunner in the Summa sector. He said that he was pretty sure there were no T-35s in action (I expressly asked, since I was an avid ASL player at the time), he guessed that most of the infantrymen were confusing T-28s with their larger cousins; the existence of T-35 was common knowledge, but very few actually knew what the vehicle looked like.

CM2 will have to tweak this dead TC issue. Many of the early war vehicles had one or two-man turrets. For example, in early models of T-34 the commander also acted as the gunner. The loss of the commander would most certainly impact such a tank.

While we still have time, I'd like to put forward a request concerning the teminology of CM2. I'm annoyed by the way most WW2 wargames are loosely using the terms 'Russia' and 'Russian' to describe the entirety of Soviet Union and Soviet citizens. So, I sincerely hope we will see 'Soviet rifle squads', instead of 'Russian SMG squads'.