gunnergoz
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Posts posted by gunnergoz
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I'm not sure if this works with everyone's video card but with my set up it is relatively easy to get the TC's point of view, at least. It requires careful control by mouse and key movements and placement of the FOV a pixel or two just outside the vehicle itself. While not the same as a periscope or viewslit view from a shooter, it does give a reasonable recreation of what the TC see's from any given position. I use it a lot, it's useful and really adds to the suspension of disbelief. Too much birds'-eye-viewing tends to spoil us and is not really realistic if one want's to get the flavor of the battle.
Just my 25 cents' worth
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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Affentitten:
I think the main difference between the Allied and German approaches was that the Allies, and especially the USA with their massive auto production lines, tended to modify and compromise guns to fit inside a given tank body, whereas the Germans tended to build a tank body around a certain gun.<hr></blockquote>
This is an astute observation even if I only partially agree with it.
The Sherman's 75mm gun was identified as adequate for the tasks at hand early in the design stage, as was the radial engine that would power the tank...giving the Sherman it's awkward height out of need to cram the radial within the engine compartment.
The problem came up once US forces began to actually come into combat with German tanks that outgunned them and outranged them. The tankers could see the need for a gun like the 17pdr that the Brits came up with, but the Army Ground Forces tank design staff would not alter their opinion that the 75 was adequate until post-Normandy losses proved the point beyond any doubt.
By then it was clear that the limited turret diameter of the Sherman series would severely hamper gun accomodation. The 76 fit fairly well, but the 17pdr required a box to be cut into the back of the turret to make things work and give the loader enough room to load rounds at a decent clip.
The Pershing had a larger diameter turret ring designed into it specifically to accomodate the 90mm gun that was by then identified as the minimum weapon needed on the battlefield to cope with current German (and Russian) designs.
In the end, tank designers always have to balance firepower, horsepower (manouverability/reliability) and survivability in their designs. Once the design is frozen, however, it becomes much more difficult to alter the equation that originally derived the design (e.g. the Sherman Jumbo had a relatively low reliability compared to the lighter versions, trading off speed/reliability for survivability.)
German designers did seem more willing to step outside the box, and come up with aggressive solutions to their challenges than did US tank designers who were on the whole severely conventional. The US Army Ground Forces, given such a variant to assess, would have picked to death a turretless TD/SPG design in 42-44... but the Germans implemented one (several, actually) and capitalized upon it's good points with excellent results. By late '44 and '45, the US designers had seen the light and started to look at some turretless designs for super-heavy gun platforms...a day late and a dollar short, as they say.
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NEEEVERMIND!
I finally got a search to work and found the solution that requires REGEDIT fudging around to make CMMOS see the CMBO directory.
Thanks for your interest in helping!
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Hello all,
I tried installing CMMOS 3 and cannot get it to work. No mod switches ever come about. Could it be that it requires CMBO to be in the default directory? I put my CM folder directly under the C: drive for convenience.
It also doesnt seem to be recognizing a great many of the files that I downloaded from CM HQ that were supposed to be CMMOS 3 compatible.
Any ideas?
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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by redwolf:
Why do you say that? The American design with the wheel pairs in one suspesion (what is that system called anyway?) is a nightmare cross-country, and very fuel-consuming on anything not very even. The tanks were fast on streets, but on bad streets they took a lot more fuel and as you leave the streets you slow down to a crawl, and on top of that the narrow tracks on early Shermans will let you bog down rather sooner than later.
Both the Christie system and the torsion bar suspension were much better. The torsion bar syspension was even better driving-wise, but took a lot more space (which made the Jagdpanther so laughable high for a Jagdpanzer).<hr></blockquote>
The early Shermans used a vertical volute suspension. It was indeed better on hard surfaces and had the disadvantage of relatively narrow tracks. It was easy to produce and maintain and was quite reliable. The second-generation used a horizontal volute suspension that improved things a bit, in particular being able to use wider tracks.
As to the torsion bars effect upon raising the height of the jagdpanther, I'd always had the impression that the height was a function of gun trunnion placement and the need to give the piece adequate vertical movement. The torsion bars do take up a few inches of floor space but this didn't seem to affect the Panther or Tiger's height either, and their hull height was very similar to the jagdpanther, at least until the latter's barbette was considered.
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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:
If I may be so bold as to ask... what is dural?
Thanks
Jim R.<hr></blockquote>
Duralumin, a type of alumininum alloy.
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I don't have stats, but the Sherman 75mm HE round was reputed to have a high degree of accuracy on soft targets. It also likely kept it up over a longer span than did the high-performance guns.
Lower muzzle velocity can equate to less barrel wear over time, and this is something we frequently overlook about the big blasters - they get inaccurate fairly quick. Admittedly, the life expectancy of tanks was not as great as artillery pieces, but one does wonder about shell wander due to barrel wear.
For it's primary intended use, i.e. taking out soft targets, the 75 was not a bad weapon.
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Very, very nice work!
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Sigh -
What else can I say?
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Perhaps this tells us something about why US tank turrets had increasingly smaller mantlets in the coming years...M47, M48, M60 and M60A1 all had cast mantlets but the shapes were smaller and presented less frontal target area than the broad expanse of the M26/M46 series mantlet. Were we learning an important lesson? I would venture a guess that we were. It's possible that smaller castings could be better QA'd during production to insure the correct armor value was retained. Although the US stuck to large, complex castings in the hull, it was always anticpated that more hits would go to the turret face - and mantlet - if tankers stayed hull down and faced front to the enemy, i.e. the classic defensive posture that US Army planners envisioned for their tanks in use against the Red Hordes.
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I got my copy already...what are you guys talking about?
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When I think of the post-Cobra events, I imagine streams of defeated (but not yet beaten into submission) German soldiers heading by foot back to the boundary of the Reich, well beyond Paris. In these masses of men, some under unit leadership, some walking alone or in ad hoc groups, were tankers and stug crewmen. It would be many weeks before units could be reconstituted from these experienced, if weary combat veterans.
Under such circumstances, it is not surprising to me that the Germans would resort to the alternative of making up new units with newly issued AFV's and crewmen fresh from the tank troop schools. With leavening from instructor cadres and some returned wounded, these units would pose some threat, though perhaps lacking the elan and unit cohesion of the pre-D-Day formations.
Jason makes some interesting and valid observations here and we are left to ponder what might have happened had the Whermacht & SS panzer/pzgdr divisional structures not been shattered and scattered in the days before, during and after Cobra. Had they been pulled back, reinforced and placed ready for counter-attacks, (instead of being thrown into Mortain or left to run the gauntlet at Falaise) they might have had an entirely different impact upon the coming battles as the Allies approached the frontiers of the Reich.
[ 12-16-2001: Message edited by: gunnergoz ]</p>
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Well, that's why they're called "junior members"...
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"Beep" was the Dodge 3/4 ton weapons carrier; some think it came out of "big jeep."
"Jeep" was the 1/4 ton that we all know and love, the diminutive 4x4 that lived on post war as the French Hotchkiss.
"Peep" was an alternate name for Jeep, origins not clear at all but it was used in WWII lingo.
"Seep" was a name for the amphibious 1/4 ton Ford built GPA, a jeep derivative.
The round-hood vehicle in previous photos is a 1/2 ton Dodge. It used a lighter chassis and frame than the later 3/4 ton weapons carrier shown sideways in the barn or whatever location that is. Hope this helps.
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Army trucks were rated in off-road load carrying capacity, hence they compare to about 1/2 the rated capacity of civilian equivalents that are on hard road only.
There was a Dodge 1 1/4 ton truck, a 3-axle 6x6 variant of the 3/4 ton weapons carrier. Could this be what you speak of?
Also, there was a Chevy or GMC 1 1/2 ton truck, basically a 2 1/2 ton with a single rear axle. This is also fairly rare today.
Either way, good luck.
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What's truly fascinating about this photo is the view we get of the elusive "Soviet mobile barracks building tractor" in the distance beyond the troops. This unique tractor lifted an entire city block at a time and was used to provide front-line Soviet officers with a mobile BOQ building. The slight blur in the photo means that this mobile barracks building tractor was actually photographed during movement, which is a super-rarity.
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Does BTS package LSD with their game disks? Wandering minds want to know...
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The T-34 is a /85 version: There is a cupola for the commander and the size of the turret is larger than the /76 version would be (the /76 turret sides slope up almost continuously from the side armor, at almost the same angle. The /85 turret was larger above the turret ring by a significant degree.
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Just to add my vote: I'm 53 y.o. and have used a Kensington Expert Mouse track ball exclusively for the past 5 or 7 years. Wouldn't do without it. Yes, I have to clean it periodically and yes. I still have to watch my ergometrics for extended keyboard sessions, but I've managed to avoid any lasting damage to date (knock wood!). I did have a near-miss with a sore forearm last year but that was my own fault for not minding my body positions and not taking breaks.
Hope this helps.
BTW I do have a MS Intellimouse connected for occasional use of the wheel, which I wish was integrated into the Kensington ball...sigh...maybe someday?
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Very encouraging and welcome news indeed! Good ole' BTS, You Da Bomb!
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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Sergei:
I think it's cruel and inhuman to shoot captured tanks. US Army should honour the Geneva conventions.<hr></blockquote>
It's even worse to let them rust away as APG does.
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There's more to this story...
The Russian cook had a cousin, Lorenskaya Bobbitskaya, who had an evil axe to grind on sleeping landsers...Hence the common comment that the Eastern Blitzkrieg "petered out."
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Nice work, looks slick.
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<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by aka_tom_w:
Somebody please tell me this is not true???
-tom w<hr></blockquote>
Obviously, Tom, you have never heard of the Hermann Goering Parachute Panzer Division! An entire division of Tigers, panthers, stugs and panzer artillery all set up to chute into the enemy's rear area. Their motto "To boldly go where no landser has been before" is legendary. The only problem ever confronting the division was the shortfall of aircraft - approximately 22,500 JU52's and another 5,500 He111's were needed to lift it into action, along with 18,000 Fiesler Storch's to bring the infantry along. An entire generation of Chinese silk worms gave their all for the Fatherland for parachutes that were to be prepared, unfortunately to no avail since there was insufficient airlift at the time. The silk ended up being used to make a series of fashionable robes for Herr Goering.
My Models!
in Combat Mission Archive #4 (2002)
Posted
<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Boo_Radley:
900 mg files?!?! That's way too huge! How did you shoot them again? You said 35mm camera and had them scanned. Did you scan them on a flatbed scanner yourself or did you have a lab do it? I'm a photographer and I've worked on images that are for trade show booths but the largest file I've ever had was around 400 mgs. And that was for an image that measured 8'x8'.
Also, the models looked great. I haven't worked on scale models for 15 years. What is the name of the liquid you put on decals to melt the edges to make them look more authentic? I can't recall it.<hr></blockquote>
FYI The size of the photo file is attributable to the number of d.p.i. (dots per inch) at which it is resolved. Another issue is the type of file that you choose to save in. It is conceiveable that a straight image file saved at a high resolution could be very large, especially if one didn't use a compressed format like .jpg or similar.
Another issue is the color level (8-bit, 16-bit, etc that is selected. One doesn't always need 32-bit color when scanning.
One problem that comes up frequently is that people scan at way too high a resolution for their intended output, thinking that they somehow will get better quality upon viewing it. The scan resolution, be it 300 d.p.i. or 3000 d.p.i., should correlate to the resolution of the viewing media.
[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: gunnergoz ]</p>