gunnergoz

The photo looks like the one the Germans destroyed at their test grounds so it would not be captured intact. IIRC the turret was installed on the chassis that is now at Kubinka, the Russian armor museum and their own tank test and development grounds. What a waste of resources that the late war uber-tank programs were! And thank Goodness for that! :eek:

Better yet, the SU-100 will do more than put a tear in your eye, son...It will tear you a whole new one! I'm really looking forward to CMBB BIG TIME!

I appreciate the gesture of an apology, no hard feelings remain on this end. Ethnic jokes bring out the worst in people, be they the originator or the audience. I care a lot about this forum and the people in it that I've come to think of as friends; my reaction was from the gut because that's where I felt it at the time.

Thanks for insulting my people, jerkoff.

I was raised in post-war Italy. For many years I had 2 German steel helmets and an FJ helmet I'd gotten from a local farmer...he'd been using them as chicken feeders! I also found parts of a WWI helmet at an Alpine WWI battlefield (Monte Grappa).

Mom's are great. Yours is a keeper!

Comparisons between soldier stats of WW2 era and today do not take into account the fact that soldiers today are trained to fire weapons reactively to enemy actions. It's the old Pavlovian theory of building autonomous reactions that will work automatically under stress and without thought or hesitation. GI's today are much more likely to fire their weapons than their WW2 or Korean (or even Vietnam) counterparts because they have been conditioned to do so. The hard part can be turning them off once they get started.

Some one may correct me on this, but I believe that the required tungsten was in short supply in Germany and the rounds were only in production for a brief while. I think they might have made it to Africa, and probably to the Russian front also, but probably were out of production by the time of the Normandy battles in '44.

Michael, this is conjecture on my part but I think that a compelling reason for the change might be that the E8 Sherman had a wider track and lower ground pressure than the Achilles 17-pdr tank destroyer. This would help alot in the Korean mud and paddies. Also, the Achilles was open-topped and there might have been thought given to it's lighter armor as compared to the Sherman. They might have been anticipating firefights with the tanks engaging enemy infantry relatively close up, where the open-topped Achilles would be at a distinct disadvantage. Finally, you can warm up inside a closed Sherman a lot easier than in the open turreted Achilles. And Korea gets real cold, my old Dad told me! Just my 2bits worth...

Good luck trying to egg the team on, I suspect that they're hard at work and will only post as they reach some threshhold that only they know the timing of. Meanwhile, like yourself, the rest of us are squirming with anticipation...

Just a small point but IIRC, the Crusader AA had twin Oerlikons or Polstens (20mm) vice twin Bofors (40mm). I think this photo bears this out. [ February 13, 2002, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: gunnergoz ]

You have way too much free time on your hands

My 2 bits (I know you all await breathlessly for it ): If I were alter the question a bit, I'd ask: "Which country produced the best tank it could come up with AT THE TIME." To such a question, I'd have to give the not to first the Russians, second the Germans, third to the US and fourth to the Brits. What I mean by this is that internecine politics, narrow-minded leadership and a refusal to "think outside of box led the Brits and US in particular to evolve tanks that were not as good as might have been designed had the engineers been given free reign, or had the fighting troops been listened to more closely. The Russians I laud for coming up with the T-34 which was years ahead of it's foes and a real trend-setter. I also compliment the Germans for seeing the need for better tanks and guns and invariably rising to the challenge in both evolutionary and revolutionary bounds, creating excellent machines in the process. British tank design was muddled jumble of outmoded thinking, twisted by competing interests within the Royal Army between infantry generals and cavalry generals. The engineers couldn't seem to make anything complicated enough to suit their tastes and were badly locked into unimaginative designs for way too long. The US Army was hampered by the single-minded obstinacy of the Army Ground Forces leadership, which was responsible for designing and raising the wartime army and its weaponry. These folks convinced themselves that the Sherman was the best tank design in the world, never even having seen an enemy tank or having paid much attention to world events. The fact that it was "made in USA" was sufficient for these gents. The Sherman's advantages - automotive reliability, mobility and suitability for mass production - were more attributable to the US automotive industry's input to the design, than to any skill on the part of army planners who devised the thing. Later US tank designs were quite good, both the Chaffee and Pershing being at least equal to their opponents. But, thanks to the army leadership, the introduction of both tanks was delayed in part due to the stubborn refusal of AGF to admit that the Sherman and Stuart were obsolete literally off the starting blocks.

Germans actually devised an adapter for their full-auto weapons that turned the bullet path 90-degree, essentially enabling the gun to "fire around the corner". This was supposed to work indepentently outside the tank, or from within using the pistol ports. It could sustain several hundred rounds of fire before being "blown out." IIRC the pistol port on the Pershing was used to lob brass casings out of the turret, as much as anything else. Can't say about the one on the Sherman, it seems that they were often welded up as the war went on and deleted post-war from new designs. As noted elsewhere, they just introduced an unnecessary weak point in the armor and were legacies of an earlier generation of tanks.

1. The 128mm was only used in the Jagtiger AFAIK. 2. The MPG is pretty large at several megs and I downloaded it from Usenet (alt.binaries.military so you may get someone to post it again for you.

Please excuse me if at first this seems off-topic: I have an MPG of a Javelin missisle test fired against a fairly modern Russian tank, T-72 or T-80 era. The Javelin is a lightweight HEAT missle that uses a pop-up atttack to hit top-down on the target where the armor is thinnest. Anyway, in the film, the tank is hit and literally flies to pieces. The turret lands some distance away, perhaps 10 meters, and buries itself several feet into the earth. The chassis, sides and track of the tank fly in many large and small pieces up to 50 meters away. Finally, the engine block lands about 70 meters from the tank. Admiteddly, this is a modern weapon hitting a modern tank. Also, there is no way to know if the tank had ammunition within it for the test. What I'm getting at is the stark reality of catastrophic failure of a tanks' armor is awesome indeed to behold. I've seen photos of hundreds of destroyed tanks, old and modern, and I've never seen this scale of destruction. So...is pushing an engine block out of a tank possible? I don't know for a fact that it is in the scenario of the IS-2 hit on a German tank, but somehow, having seen that film, I'm a bit less inclined to say anything is impossible. The level of violence inherent in these weapons' effects is a little hard to comprehend from the comfort of my computer hutch. Let me just say, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of one.

Impressive film, glad I saw it.

Look no further: http://www.combatmission.com/ Hope you enjoy yourself!

I'm sure that the IS-2 and it's powerful 122mm main gun will give rise to spirited debate about the merits of this tank vs it's German opponents. This will doubless include discussion of the equally awesome 100mm and 152mm weapons fielded on SP Gun chassis by the Russians. One thing that should be kept in mind about the IS-2 in particular is that it was not primarily designed or fielded as an anti-tank weapon but rather saw it's most effective use in breakthrough and assault situations, moving up with or slightly in advance of the infantry. In those cases, the relatively low ammo loadout and slow firing rate were not so critical as is true in tank-vs-tank combat. I, for one, am really jazzed about the prospect of fighting with these powerful beasts in CMBB.

My two bits' worth: This is a pretty fatuous thread to begin with. No where have I seen BTS demonstrate a propensity to favor one side versus the other. What's more, an even moderate knowledge of history will confirm that weather is neutral and that it favors only the prepared while handicapping those who are not. BTS can program a balanced game without resorting to lame handicaps and modifiers. If there are imbalances, they will probably demonstrate historic situations and events that we pretty much all know to be true. It will be up to the gamer to restore equilibrium by strategy and guile.

I'm not sure I understand what is the benefit of portraying the 120mm mortars on-map. They were historically set up well behind the lines and they had something of a dead zone that would leave them unable to engage in small scenarios. As to mounted 120's, they have quite a recoil and I don't believe anyone tried mounting them until the Israelis experimented with putting them into old Shermans, finally using the technique to mount 160mm mortars. Halftracks probably couldn't take the recoil as their frame is pretty flimsy, though some one may have tried this at one time or another. The US now mounts the 120 on a modified M-113 full track APC but this has sturdy, thick-walled aluminum construction.

Leonardo DeCaprio playing in the role of what? Bayonet dummy?

Steve, thanks for taking time to reply. I can see how including horses will be a programming nightmare (no pun intended) and of course I'm not clamoring to have them in CMBB at any rate. Their use, especially by the Russians, was fairly widespread, especially in the harassment, raiding and recon roles. And you are correct, horseflesh does not hold up well to automatic weapons. The following is taken from "Barbarossa" by David Glanz and describes Russian counter-attacks in November, 1941 in front of Moscow: "Rokossovsky committed Major-General L.M.Dovator's 20th and 44th Cavalry Divisions into combat to exploit. The consequences were disastrous. The inexperienced 44th Mongolian Cavalry Division conducted a mounted charge across an open, snow-covered field during which it lost 2,000 cavalrymen and their horses to artillery and machine-gun fire of the German 106th Infantry Division, which suffered no casualties." It is later noted that the 44th had arrived by rail from Tashkent and was unused to the broken and swampy ground in which it was forced to operate. So, clearly, cavalry is not best used against front-line troops, but it would still be interesting to see what it could do in the recon role as well as in raids against rear-area troops, logistics trains and supply heads. So, I still stand interested in eventually seeing this aspect of history depicted in some CM variant game, though I realize that it may indeed by a cold day in hell by the time I do!

BMP file #1503 is the one used for screen-edge filler. I usually copy & rename on of the darker shades of the current grass tile set.

As to the see-through men, your bitmaps may be corrupted and need to be renstalled. If you only have the demo for now, I'd re-install it as I'm not sure the regular skins work (anybody know?). For that matter, I'm not sure that mods work with the demo. If they do, all you need do is download the ones that you like from the web and unzip them into your CMBO "bmp" folder. Corrupted bitmaps can also sometimes be repaired buy judicious use of a paint program, but its tedious and one should know what they're doing. I'd just re-install the demo from your archived demo zip file, assuming it's still on your hard drive. Once your purchased CMBO disk arrives, be sure to delete the demo files. Good luck!