gunnergoz

"Let's your kids and his kids fight." Works for most politicians and has for quite some time.

I'd never seen this clip before of a King Tiger running at the Sameur tank museum: I don't know about you, but the engine sounds just don't match the massiveness of the tank - I knew it was underpowered, but didn't realize it actually sounded so as well.

Seems that about 20 years after a war, some creative film maker often decides he's going to "tell it like it was", i.e. how he imagined it was, which is often in marked contrast to the wartime and immediate postwar films that are usually very patriotic and gung-ho. This happened about 20 years after WW2, and again after Korea and Vietnam, each war having films that were to some degree revisionistic being made quite some time after the shooting was over. Hollywood tends to see everything through some sort of filter that seems to warp reality, be it in contemporary or postwar films. Even Audie Murphy couldn't get Hollywood to make a truly realistic war movie: as much as he tried, "To Hell and Back" still had all the typical Hollywood hoo-rah stuff in it, though many parts of it did come from Murphy's wartime experiences. Lee Marvin had a bit better luck with his "Big Red One" but that was a long time later and it was nowhere near as melodramatic as was Audie's film, which was a product of the 50's when WW2 was still seen through more idealistic filters. Modern film making seems to be taking a different course. Not entirely sure if it is because the wars seem to go on forever nowdays, or because the internet makes it difficult to easily categorize wartime experience into simplistic black and white events.

The Italian army in the interwar years was filled with a lot of geriatric generals and young officers who received little practical mentoring, beyond perhaps hearing veterans' war stories from "La Grande Guerra" (as they called WW1.) Many of the men in the ranks had relatively poor educations, coming from the working class, and in some cases, spoke different dialects from their officers, who were generally drawn from the ranks of the middle and upper classes. NCO ranks existed, but were not so much professionals as "lifers" who were expected to do little more than pass on the orders of the officers. There was not much mingling between officers and enlisted - again, class tended to work against them. The officers were better paid and coddled with better food, faster mail service, etc. The disparities created a gap that tended to break down unit cohesion under the stress of combat. Mussolini's administration tended to simply put tinsel on the tree, so to speak, and did almost nothing to prepare the army for war. BTW, BFC: were the Italian voices done by native speakers of Italian? They seem pretty stilted and not at all comfortable with the language. Some of the words were actually mispronounced. This was a bit of a let down.

Congratulations! You just made my "Ignore" list.

It was pretty appalling.

Yep, keep them tankettes well out of range of anything bigger than a pistol or carbine. .30 cal AP seems to go right through them, which means a rifleman theoretically can take one out...in practice it takes at least a BAR or LMG to do it from what I've seen so far. The scout car is totally unarmored so needs to be hull down and if it is going against anything with a .30 or .50 cal MG, it better have the first shot! But it does a bang up job on infantry if the infantry does not have LMG's with them.

It's not that Emrys is always right, it is simply that, as often than not, others are wrong.

It does seem smoother and quicker responding - albeit on a small map from the first scenario. So far, so good.

I love watching the Bersaglieri's helmet penne waving in the breeze as they move up...

Got mine in before midnight as well. Finally. A cheap vice if ever there was one.

That just put you permanently on my ignore list.

I would like the 1985 thing too except I to this day still find it terrifying to contemplate the what-if. As a US Army dependent/brat in Europe in the 50's and 60's, my friends and I lived in constant worry that the real balloon might go up someday; we dependent families were actually being prepared for it by the Army with various exercises, rehearsals and training programs. Then, in the 80's, I was in the military myself and got to worry about it in a different light, as a potential protagonist and not simply a bystander. OK, its just a game, but it is still creepy for me nonetheless. (Which doesn't mean I wouldn't buy it, I'd just have to have a healthy toot of my favorite libation before sitting down to play.) BTW did I mention that I married "one of the enemy?" My (formerly Ukrainian) wife served in the Red Army about the same time that I was in the US Navy, chasing her country's submarines all over the place. Life is a hoot.

I can't for various reasons pre-order until the 31st of July...hope that will suffice.

BTW this thread makes me nostalgic for the good old days when the BFC forum was a lively, if not necessarily logical, place.

1. Traditionally, Russian troops were issued long cloths to use as foot bindings, which were wrapped around the foot and ankle in a specific way. They were said to be superior to (often poorly made) socks. Don't know how long the practice lasted, but I'm fairly sure it was well into the postwar era. Link: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?133843-Russian-foot-bindings-and-technique 2. Drunk on duty is only a problem if you define it a problem. In Russia, no problem...until you embarrass some general. 3. It is said that early satellite photo analysts looked for the telltale sign of Soviet collective farm workers whose shaved heads glinted sunlight back into space, as an indication that that year's class of conscripts had been sent off to pick up the harvest - again.

Avatar: In space, no one can hear you pontificate. It seems like SF films are often used to convey some sort of subtext; a semi-subliminal message warning of one dark future or another, which can be read by reading between the lines of dialog and viewing fairly unambiguous visible cues. Still, I enjoy the heck out of the better ones and especially love a good bug hunt or first contact story. Next up: NATO/WP take on the Alien Invaders! Oh, sorry, that's been done already: Independence Day...

I do hope there will be an early war East Front pack out at some point. I'd love to try to hold off the invading panzers with my few KV-1's and -2's and hordes of little T-26's. Then later could come the battles for Moscow and Stalingrad. Ah, I can't wait...

Ukraine's current leadership is very corrupt and totally out to gut the country for its own enrichment. It plays with Russian nationalism to get support in the Eastern Ukraine, in part to counter the Ukrainian nationalism that is prevalent in the Western half of the country. Unfortunately, this current crop of bosses has learned to use the state's security apparatus to suppress dissent - note the very public jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko and other political dissidents - and corral in the media. So a repeat of the Orange Revolution is not likely given this regime's very heavy handed suppression of public displays of discontent. The military is still mostly conscript, though, and it is doubtful it would hold together if the regime decided to start shooting down people in the streets. Joining NATO? Becoming part of the European Union? Not a chance. Not until this regime is long gone and the country manages to get some breathing space. Big brother Russia is also a factor, though intervention a la Georgia/Ossetia is not very likely - Ukrainians would resist that quite vigorously. But they will continue to play footsies with Putin, if for no other reason than they need Russia's natural gas if they want warm homes in the winter. I suppose if you have to design a wargame around it, you could posit a situation where Russia does intervene - say in Eastern Ukraine - on behalf of a tottering, pro-Russian government, and the Western part of the country (which includes the capital, Kiev) might conceivably request NATO assistance to re-unify the nation and eject the Russian "intruders." Not likely, but a scenario does not have to be authentic, just plausible.

A price I find fair and will gladly pay.

Very true, Michael I have several of their books...the ones on Panzers in Normandy and Battle of the Bulge are just crammed full of battles, maps, images (then and now of course) and lots of loving details by history grogs that know their stuff. Just go to afterthebattle.com and drool a bit. US orders have to go through RZM.com but they too are well worth a visit. When I win the lotto, I plan to clean out RZM's warehouse.

Armor Magazine's WW2 issues, if you can find them in a library, are probably an excellent source for scenarios.

In one game I saw a German kill himself and his buddy nearby with a dropped potato masher after he'd been hit while standing up to throw it.

Bovington is one of my favorite places in the world. The Tiger was not running when I was there 20 some years ago but still worth seeing. Thanks for the video links.

The one key advantage US HT's have is that many if not most of them are equipped with a .50 Cal MG which has better range than the 30-06 and 7.92 and can make swiss cheese out of the German HT's. So if the US player can stand off sufficiently, he should in theory have a firepower advantage.