gunnergoz

Didn't you get your copy yet? Darn, you've been missing out!

That's not cammo, guys...that's moss. The darn thing hasn't moved in 12 years due to budget cutbacks!

Very excellent work, Juju! A terrific idea executed well. Thanks!

In brief, I can tell you that I began modding by taking .bmp files into a paint program like Paintshop Pro and altering them to suit my tastes. I save the file (keeping the original in a safe folder or altering its name) and move the altered .bmp into the CMBO BMP folder. Begin the game and voila you are a modder!

Well, it's not much, but check out this quote: "The Russian military also trained suicide dogs, during WW II. The dogs (half staved) were loaded with explosives, and trained to seek out food under moving tanks; a trigger device attached to their backpacks, would depressed causing an explosion capable of cutting through the steel under belly of the tanks. In one day, alone, on the Izyum sector, these canine tank busters destroyed nine tanks and two armored cars. So feared by the Germans, that as soon as they heard the barking and saw the running dogs, they would frantically turned their tanks around and head back towards their own lines, for they knew from experience what was in store for them." Propaganda? Who knows. The site is http://community-2.webtv.net/Hahn-50thAP-K9/K9History21/ Another brief mention here: http://www.wdogs.com/eng/black_russian_terrier/pages_of_history-e.shtml Or this quote: "Last were the "Tank Destroyer Dogs", of which there were only a few companies, possibly only three. These were trained at an Institute in or near Moscow, first used in the Battle of Moscow (but I don't have a confirmed date of First Use - German reports indicate November or maybe October 1941, but I haven't seen the original Intelligence reports, only second-hand accounts), again at Stalingrad, and last, the 42nd Tank Destroyer Dog Company, at Kursk. Never very effective. I class them alongside the German "Goliath" remote-controlled demolition machines - technically innovative and interesting, but marginal in real usefulness except in VERY favorable circumstances. Incidentally, Steve Zaloga in his latest T-34 book, "Soviet Tanks in Combat 1941-1945" (Concord's Armor At War series,1997) has a photo on pg 72 of a mine dog being trained with a T-34/85 in 1993(!), so at least they learned not to train them under civilian tractors and apparently continued trying to make them work even after the USSR became ol' fashioned Russia again. As far as I can tell from the single article in the "Voenno-Istoricheskii Zhurnal" and the German accounts, they were deployed in small teams of squad or platoon-size; probably 2-3 handlers and dogs per section/squad." Taken from: http://history.vif2.ru/forum/archive1/mb.cgi-warclub1+934758211+pg.3.htm So sorry, next time I'll do my homework before I post.

Not to kill a dead dog, but I erred in not doing a search on "dog" before posting. My point was not that the practice was prevalent or even common, but that oddities like that even happened during the war, sort of an OBW. Wish I knew what the actual figures were. The "to good effect" comment was probably brazen, but was based upon some reading I did a long time ago. Italy produced an illustrated WW2 history magazine called "7 Anni di Guerra" (7 years of war) which had one issue partly devoted to war dogs. It had some of the only photos I recall ever seeing of the mine dogs being prepared and fielded. I'm sure that once the word got out, the Germans shot every dog within miles of their vehicles. Now that my interest is up, I'll query some of my in-laws in Ukraine and see what their recollections of this practice are.

Sorry, Jeff it's true. You use them in the complete absence of your own tanks and you don't feed them for several days before you use them. Don't forget that for the first year of the war, the mass of Soviet infantry could go for weeks and not see a friendly tank after most of the T-26's and BT's were chewed up. Extreme times call for extreme measures. Our "urban legends" mentality raised in peace and plenty cannot envision what people went through and had to resort to in a war that killed 20 million or so Russians. [This message has been edited by gunnergoz (edited 04-04-2001).]

Grozny was a prime example of misguided politics impacting a military campaign.

One thing that the Russians used to considerable effect (and which I'm sure CM2 WILL NOT model is trained anti-tank dogs. These dogs were trained to look for food under farm tractors. They were then released on the battlefield with a mine or explosive charge strapped to their back. Wouldn't the SPCA have a field day with that one! And if CM2 could somehow model it, I'm sure we'd never hear the end of it if a certain type of animal rights group got a hold of it. BTW I love animals my self and deplore the practice, but history is history.

There's a funny story about Truman's first meeting with Stalin, where Stalin complained about not getting enough of anything to fight the war. He said that the shortage of rubber meant that his troops could not have condoms for their manly needs. Truman immediately told Stalin that he sympathized and would ship 1,000,000 boxes of condoms to the USSR as soon as possible. Stalin was pleased, if a little baffled with the quick offer of something so non-essential to the war effort. When Stalin's attention was turned, Truman turned to his aid and him to have trojan make up 1,000,000 12-inch-long condoms and ship them to the Russkies, but first have the condom boxes labeled "Texas Medium."

Excellent work! Keep it up! Thank you.

It's a Commie plot!

HMMM, you probably have something there 109 Gustav...

There's always a chance. I had files on CultureK for a while (remember them?) but they seem to have shut down. I'm always looking for new hosts but the more trafficked sites veer away from hosting my grasses for some reason.

One way to tell would be to remove .bmp files 1500-1519 (EXCEPT 1503) from your BMP directory. Keep them in another directory for safekeeping. If you see grass when you then boot CM, you are looking at hi-res files 1550-1569. If CM won't boot, just pop the old files back into the directory and keep playing...lo res unfortunately. BTW file 1503 is used to generate the "off-battlefield" diluted green color in the background.

The statement that "tanks ain't free" is really most meaningful when considering the ingredients used to manufacture one, more than the dollar cost. Costs really only seem to be a factor in peacetime, when politics and parsimony rule. The Soviet's 40's economy just produced what it needed, based upon projections of resource and manpower availability. The contemporary US economy was essentially unlimited by comparison. The Brits did have economic woes but this was circumvented by lend-lease and grants from the US. The driving forces really were the availability of resources (especially key ores, rubber and petroleum) and production capacity. Some designs could be blessed or cursed depending upon their comparative need for critical minerals and ores. This meant that at the national level, planners had to decide in what proportions they wanted to procure tanks, warships (enormous consumers of high-grade steels and ores), planes (alloys and rubber) or other projects, including that little one named Manhattan. The other factor that dictated tank design for the US was the issue of transportability. US planners deliberately limited US tank designs to certain parameters that facilitated transportation into the war zone. The tank designs had to fit into LST's, needed to be able to be winched into AKA's, fit upon rail cars, pass through rail tunnels, cross standardized bridges, etc. This is a major reason why the M-6 heavy tank never saw combat. While it was recognized as an inadequate design, the main thing that killed it was the fact that overseas combat commanders knew that for each two M-6's shipped to them they could instead have 3 or 4 Shermans. They opted for quantity and ease of delivery.

BigMac, a shot from a middle view (key 2 or 3) with sunny sky would be best, especially if it had a good range of distance and altitude differential like a big map provides. If possible, tilt the camera down to get a more top-down view of the grass pattern below the viewpoint. BTW this request for snaps is only with respect to what you perceive to be problems. If you like it, cool, don't bother! I'm running a Matrox G400 Max with 32 MB and so I am curious as to how your video card depicts these grass textures compared to mine. I don't think there should be a big difference, but I've been surprised before...

One frequently overlooked fact about the T-34/76 is that it had a two-man turret with the commander having to carry out gun control tasks as well as "fighting" the tank through the battlefield. This meant that the TC in a '76 was busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. Small wonder that their TC's situational awareness was often dismal and that it was relatively easy for German tankers to get "inside the decision loop" of their Russian counterparts and so outmanouver and outfight them. Add to this the lack of radios and the frequent lack of training of crews in the '76's in the early days of the war (say to mid-'43) and one has a recipe for disaster. CM2 will have to find a way to adequately model this unique failing of the basic T-34 design as it is easily overlooked.

I have to disagree with you on this one, Jason. My understanding is that the Shermans brewed easily because of the combustibility of the gasoline fuel, the amount of fuel/fumes always present in the bilges, and due to the relative combustibility of the hydraulic fluid, especially in the turret drive. Given the fact that a fuel-fed fire was marginally slower to consume everything than an ammo fire, the crew had at least a fighting chance to evacuate the tank if they had a fuel-system based fire. Once the ammo blew, however, almost no one got out alive. That's why the Army focused upon wet stowage, so as to increase the time the crew had to evacuate. The Army was committed to their logistic decision to stick with gasoline as a tank fuel, and so could not easily address the basic flammability issues. But they did attempt to give the tankers a chance to get out before the ammo blew.

Yeah, I have to agree with much of what my pals here are saying. Doctrinally, the Army leadership (McNair) was off the mark with the exploitation tank/tank destroyer sort of thinking. As was said, though, "quantity has a quality all its own." Shermans were available in great quantity and they worked reliably. Even detractors of the Sherman concede it was dependable and logistically easy to support (compared to competitive designs). American industry, based upon the automotive mass-production model, was perhaps the secret war-winner for us. That industrial base and the know-how behind it enabled all the war-winners (jeep, C-47, DUKW, Garand, LST, Victory/Liberty ships, CVE's, etc, etc to be procured in quantity and with relatively great speed. Design flaws and shortcomings were generally compensated for by the practicality and robustness of the designs that these teams came up with. Some tank designs that the US came up with were plain bad...check out the M-6 heavy tank sometime. Fortunately, it never was fielded in combat. Others, like the M-24, were excellent for their day and intended use. All in all, I'd rather have a brilliant logistical planner working for a middling general, than the other way around. That's the basic combination we had in the Gulf War and it worked in the 90's as well as it did for us in the 40's.

BigMac, Maybe I need to try checking the treebase files on The Last Defense to see what happened. I'm wondering if perhaps some file #'s got swapped. The bases for woods, sparse woods and seasonal woods variations need updating to better match the color palette of realgrass anyway. The brush and marsh I personally use are the latest releases I posted to The Last Defense and I plan to stick with them for a while. I plan to be at work on Realgrass seasonal variants in the next few days, so stand by.

Oh, Boy, here we go with the Those Nasty Yanks Nuked Japan For No Good Reason thread... Think go I'll have dinner and come back later see what comes of this hot potato

Hello, Bigmac If you can possibly do it, please send me a screen snap of your install of bushygrass and one later of the realgrass. I'm wondering if variations in video cards may be altering the textures of the grass in some way. My email address is obtainable through the forum. Thanks for the feedback, BTW.

Halftracks must have had halfbrakes...

Doc, do you think that the literal translation of Ukraine as "borderland" might have led to others referring to it as "the borderland?" Sort of makes sense to me. BTW my wife is Ukrainian and never refers to her homeland as anything but Ukraine, that is without the "the."