Determinant

Well, yes, Kursk is atypical for the War in Russia as it was the last time that initiative rested with the Axis. Also the first time that BLITZKRIEG utterly failed to break through the defence and advance into the defender's rear. Just the sort of role where one would expect one's, mostly bullet and splinter-proof, SPW mounted infantry to excel. If you believed the doctrine. But they did not. They did not even try to motor through in SPWs. The Red Army had their measure. But that's not to say that light armoured vehicles, like the SPW, do not have their uses. Try reading Sidney Jary's (author of Platoon 18) article in the British Army Review (112) 'I love my Bren Gun Carrier'. Jary says that the Bren Gun Carrier was, although very vulnerable to any form of anti-tank fire, invaluable in moving forward ammo and supplies in ground exposed to shell splinters and 'bullet drizzle'. Something that a soft skin vehicle could never do. But they were not mounting up in them and driving through the enemy lines. That would have been a rather ostentatious form of suicide by remote control. Oh, and the much hyped Kursk battle. Is that like the 'much hyped' battles of Waterloo, Midway, El Alamein and Normandy?

Next you'll say that you don't believe in Keyser Soze.

There is room for both approaches in intelligence gathering. I served 15 years with recon (with jeeps/humvees, if we were **very** lucky with choppers but most of the time on foot with a huge backpack) in mountaineous and covered terrain (forests and cities). Well. You are a braver man than me Chum. I think that you will be luckier in recon on your own two feet (whilst carrying a pig on your back) than in a vehicle. Or God forbid the horror - a chopper. I'd rather walk. But say. I see you are in God's own country of Switzerland. Have you really got rid of your bicycle unit? A pity if you have. But what do politicians and bean counters know?

Well shame on the two of you. You should both march yourselves off to your nearest staff college library. Once there read the recent Jane's IDR article about the US Army saying that the Bradley is a poor recon vehicle on account of its large size and noise signature that causes OPFOR to kill it regularly and reliably at NTC. Thus the use of the HMMV in the recon role. Also not a perfect vehicle but less likely to be spotted and killed, resulting in the loss of your valuable recon unit. The 1 AB Div jeep Sqn at Arnhem is a nice example. Better characterised, I think, as an attempted coup de main to seize the road bridge than recce. And look what they achieved... More reasons for not driving to work blindly in light vehicles if fighting is your business. I'm amazed that this non-argument has got as far as it has. Well done all.

I like the idea. What does it do?

Convoy discipline. Think of it as a bumper sticker: 'If you can read this sign then you are driving too close and we will both be blown up by the same bomb'. An indirect tribute to the effect of the DAF on operations.

Kingfish, Sorry to be a pain. I think that I have been having problems with my e-mail. I don't seem to have received the Axis set-up for 'Things go Bump in the Night'. I'm supposed to be playing Cpt T in Gp 1 Sect 4. My address is in the profile. Many thanks, Nigel

Kingfish, Sorry to be a pain. I think that I have been having problems with my e-mail. I don't seem to have received the Axis set-up for 'Things go Bump in the Night'. I'm supposed to be playing Cpt T in Gp 1 Sect 4. My address is in the profile. Many thanks, Nigel

Kingfish, Sorry to be a pain. I think that I have been having problems with my e-mail. I don't seem to have received the Axis set-up for 'Things go Bump in the Night'. I'm supposed to be playing Cpt T in Gp 1 Sect 4. My address is in the profile. Many thanks, Nigel

Good point. And not just UK tankers. Many of the Normandy accounts suggest that all sides indulged in area fire. I am sure that it must have been just the same in the concentrated fighting on the East front. Perhaps the only unreality is that it is perhaps easier to knock down houses in the game than it was historically. Particularly the 'light' buildings. I wonder if this is due to assumptions from shoddy modern house building?

Oh be still you Group 1 Sect IV Wildcats. Ole Sripey is merely away for a couple of weeks. He is a most reliable opponent. I would expect him to be back by the end of the week. Best of all he is a weak opponent. His attacks are crude and slow. No better than those of a clumsy child. It would be too awful to have him replaced by someone who knows what they are doing. Just hang in there for the easy points and rich pickings once he blunders his ineffectual way back on to the battlefield.

Oh be still you Group 1 Sect IV Wildcats. Ole Sripey is merely away for a couple of weeks. He is a most reliable opponent. I would expect him to be back by the end of the week. Best of all he is a weak opponent. His attacks are crude and slow. No better than those of a clumsy child. It would be too awful to have him replaced by someone who knows what they are doing. Just hang in there for the easy points and rich pickings once he blunders his ineffectual way back on to the battlefield.

Oh be still you Group 1 Sect IV Wildcats. Ole Sripey is merely away for a couple of weeks. He is a most reliable opponent. I would expect him to be back by the end of the week. Best of all he is a weak opponent. His attacks are crude and slow. No better than those of a clumsy child. It would be too awful to have him replaced by someone who knows what they are doing. Just hang in there for the easy points and rich pickings once he blunders his ineffectual way back on to the battlefield.

1. Its dark 2. Whats the range? 3. Whats the target height/width? 4. Are they moving? 5. they were close misses? </font>

'Came the dawn and the ground looked frightful. The Bosche started shooting flares over us, and then came in the 3/4 light the dreaded bouncing, gleaming "white tennis ball", the fastest I've ever seen, shot from the 88mm gun. Very quickly our friends on the left started to blow up and catch fire. Guy saved us ... He put us all right. The tennis balls came very close to us all and too close to one or two, but Guy maneouvred us so that we got into a good position for retaliation and could not get into serious trouble.' Capt C B Stoddart 25 Oct 42, El Alamein, letter to his father. Not all of those tennis balls seemed to be getting their first round hits under battle conditions. Is this due to the incompetence of the 88mm Flak crews in the A/Tk role as opposed to the invincible Tiger crews? Or is it all a bit harder than it looks from my armchair?

Thanks for that flamingknives. Very interesting. It was the drum magazines that made me think that I was looking at Lewis guns. There is of course absolutely no resemblance whatsoever between the Lewis gun and the Vickers K apart from the fact that they both use (quite dissimilar) drum magazines. That's the kind of thing that has made me the commentator that I am today. How I have escaped recruitment as a 'military expert' on the TV news is anyone's guess...

You probably won't notice by the time you're used to tea tainted by the taste of petrol from the cans you carry your water in! Many thanks for the note about the Vickers K. I am ashamed (blushes deeply) but, up until you set me straight, I had been confusing the Vickers K with the Lewis gun seen festooning SAS jeeps. Dumber than a box of spanners. That's me. Presumably if the Vickers K is the same as the infantry model just less the water jacket, so no changeable barrel, it must have suffered from overheating?

Is there any other kind of Vickers? I think that squeezing MGs into AFVs is harder than it sounds. The modern example of the Warrior IFV is a case in point. The co-axial MG is a 7.62 Hughes chain-gun. They had to put it in upside down or on its side or some such nonsense (it wouldn't fit otherwise) and it doesn't always feed quite as it should in consequence. Still the unassailable advantage of a water-cooled MG is that you will always have boiling water on tap, so to speak, to make a nice cup of tea at any hour of the day or night. A most civilised weapon.

All you need for slaughter is bullets and water. Both in short supply all the time in any combat that I have ever read or heard about. Has anybody ever heard anyone who was in a firefight at close range say: 'Ammo? Plenty of that. Wasn't even worried about burning it off in two minutes flat. I pick my shots me.' I should like to meet such a man. Shake his hand. Maybe buy him a beer.

Those who are about to die, electronically speaking, salute you...

A two inch mortar bomb is more like a thin bottle of wine if it was made of metal and filled with sand. If you think that two men could usefully carry more than 20 rounds then we will no doubt see you on World's Strongest Man pulling a Humvee by a rope in your teeth. The two inch mortar, in the British Infantry, is traditionally fired by the Platoon Sergeant. Yes there is only one. As I have noted since CMBO. He does not, obviously, actually carry any of it himself. Keeping a dog and barking yourself. Not done. The bombs would be distributed amongst the rest of the platoon. The mysteries of getting bombs to mortar under fire are, wisely in my view, glossed over in the CM series. The developers are obviously thoughtful men - aside of course from their bizarre long-standing conviction that UK rifle sections are commanded by Sergeants. Perhaps it is an obsession with the Brigade of Guards. Who knows? No matter. There are some things in life that do not repay close study. Resupply on the battlefield within F echelon is just one of them.

My dear fellow, well done. Sadly these days I can hardly ever describe myself as overjoyed. Middle age will do that to a man. But I am very pleased to hear that you are writing a historically correct BF scenario. There will always, I hope, be a place for scenarios that try to portray the horror and pity of war as it really is. Please do mail me your completed scenario when it is ready. I am only sorry that I did not make the cut for the test team. Good luck with it.

My dear fellow, well done. Sadly these days I can hardly ever describe myself as overjoyed. Middle age will do that to a man. But I am very pleased to hear that you are writing a historically correct BF scenario. There will always, I hope, be a place for scenarios that try to portray the horror and pity of war as it really is. Please do mail me your completed scenario when it is ready. I am only sorry that I did not make the cut for the test team. Good luck with it.

Optics are an important element for long-range spotting - if you can't see them you can't hit them. But effective range-finding is an aspect of optics that is critical for accuracy. Completely anecdotally I have seen pictures of German troops with rangefinders (either the six foot (?) long tubes or the 'bunny ear' periscopes - both of which I assume are stereoscopic range-finders) but I can't recall seeing a single picture of allied troops using range-finders. Does any know how range-finders were used and at what scale they were issued to in the various armies? Thinking of the CM 'has binoculars' label there should also be one for 'has rangefinder'. Perhaps the allied experience is best summarised by the story in that old classic 'Is Paris Burning?' about the British Sherman crew who got a first round disabling hit on Panther on the Champs Elysee in Paris because the commander had only just read in his Michelin Guide that it was 1100 yards long. Splendid if true.

Oh, they'll spot you alright. The real question is will they 'identify' you. Think of it from the aircrew perspective: 'Are those Allied troops advancing or German troops retiring?' Well I don't even think that the thought process gets that far. They just see a 'target' then they attack it. They are like Felix Domesticus: they pounce. Am I the only person who saw the footage of Jon Simpson (UK journo - liberator of Kabul & man about town) being bombed by US Air in the latest Gulf War? Military aircraft in war are like Greek Gods in myth. Powerful and yet utterly capricious. Indeed given the scale of most CM maps it would perhaps have been best, and no doubt more realistic, if they had been left out of the game altogether. As things stand I think that CM Air is frighteningly, perhaps ahistorically effective. They almost always get within 1000m of their intended target. Not bad going in those pre-GPS/FLIR etc days...