Determinant

Btw. what Madmatt says is the way it works in CMBB, too. </font>

Yes it was a standard real life tactic for the CMAK to stand off and open fire from 1,500 yards and up. They were reluctant, from the British perspective to get mixed up in a knife fight. Also they would tend to attack late in the day with the advantage of having the sun behind them. Having recently read the 4th Indian Div's post operational report for Op BATTLEAXE (Jun-Nov 41) in the PRO (WO 201/357) the Brits thought that they were damaging Axis Armour in these long range exchanges. But then go on to note that the Germans are left in possession of the field and are thus able to recover damaged vehicles. Mind you there is also criticism of the Brit 'I' tanks habitually opening fire at 1,500 - 2,000 yards 'thus denying good targets to the 2 pr and 25 pr guns'. The 2 pr is stated to have 'again showed its excellence'. No comment on optics as a significant factor though. But it does imply that the long range duels did not all go the German's way but that through their better management of the battlefield they were able to exploit it to their advantage.

Yes, you can't beat Barrie Pitt. Well written and very readable.

Good stuff. A fine range of posts. What does it tell us? This issue reminds me of the debate about the effect of pistol rounds on the human body. It was a big topic of debate in the 70s. The .45 ACP scored extra above the diddly squat wet boy 9mm and similar girls' rounds in the man's world of practical pistol. More killing power the pundits said. Get one of those big boys inside you and it was supposed to be game over. Very likely I'm sure. But it ain't necessarily so as the song says. I found the first post - the guy talking about the need for DU in the GAU-8 most interesting. But we can probably only advance this debate if we can do hard sums. I hate maths. Thinking back to the pistol shooting analogy we probably need to do some work on the energy and mass of the projectiles. Then work out what might be left once under armour. My own personal crude perception is that I am happy seeing ATRs - 40mm going under armour with no effect; keep an open mind about it for the mid-range guns; but would be incredulous if it happened for any of the major league big bore HV guns. I'm a 'get a 17 lbr in you - you're dead' kind of guy but agnostic to sceptical about lesser fry. I do not understand chemical-shaped rounds at all. All that colourful 'hot molten jets of super-heated plasma injected into the crew compartment' stuff sounds to me like they're selling something. I would be interested if somebody could shag the maths on this sort of thing.

Oh. By 88mm I meant kinetic. As in THE FEARED DUAL ROLE KILLER rather than the PzK HEAT round. That's chemistry with a bit of physics. Who knows what's going on there? But you make a very good point. Armour. What's it for? It's to keep sharp, hot pieces of fast moving metal from perforating one's precious flesh. We can all sign up to that. Hell I'd buy the company if the bloated war-profiteers who have cornered the market in armaments manufacturing hadn't driven me out of the market with their $900 step-ladders. So what are we left with? I don't know if you have seen any stuff on WWI tanks. The crews there were dressed (primitive body armour; chain-mail goggles etc) in the expectation that their armour would be penetrated. A bit uncomfortable one might think as they were driving around in mobile saunas. So why did they bother? Why not save themselves the trouble and ride ponies? Because at the least in their saunas they were, nearly, bullet proof. And thus the game begins - thicker armour - wider, faster rounds - chemical rounds - reactive armour. The dance goes on. You think that it is unacceptable that a perforated AFV should be able to fight on. I ask why not? What makes you think that it is wrong? Show me the why-for and I will follow you. There is an acronym in the British Army: FIDO which stands for 'F*ck It - Drive On!' I remember asking lots of tricksy questions to a young RTR tank commander many years ago. He looked at me sharply and replied that in a tight spot he would quote 'Fight the Tank'. By which he meant not that he would do whatever he could to destroy the enemy with his tank while it could still fight. He would fight. So we come back to my earlier question. Your armour is penetrated. So what? You keep fighting while you are able. What you need to produce is something factual about penetrated AFVs rather than a gut feeling that something is wrong. I should note that I am not unsympathetic to your case. I think that, in real life, there were probably far fewer hits than we see in CM. I actually look at some of the CMAK Desert encounters - both sides blazing away pointlessly at +1000 metres - and think that was how it must have been. So. We know you don't like it. What proof do you have that a perforated AFV should die there and then?

Sigh. As they used to say on Badge Patrol (or whatever). 'The facts Madam. Just give me the facts.' Enough already with the 'My Enemies are driving around like Bonny and Clyde on Angel Dust' sob stories from CMAK games. Lots of people feel that something is wrong. Why? Is it because you are getting lots of 'Front Turret Penetration' reports but Godzilla is still moving and fighting? I always thought it wrong that we get these reports in EFOW. It should mostly be 'Hit?' with an occasional 'Hit!'. Does it all contradict your historical studies of AFV penetration effects? What do we really know about this subject? I know that modern penetrations are often disastrous but what about WWII? Do we know anything about this subject at all or are we just plucking stuff out of the air? So where's the facts? Where's the science? What energy is left in the round post-penetration? What size the bursting charge? What track did the round follow post-penetration? What's the theoretical effect 'under-armour'? What historical accounts or reports can we find of penetrations, both 'effective' and 'non-effective' in CM terms? Mind you I did love the one shot - one kill approach to life in CMBO. Made those fascist bastards in the Waffen SS sweat when you were defending as the Amis. 50 cal opened up those HTs like sardine cans. Great fun. But was it, uhh, historical? Dunno. By the bye if someone has had a non-damaging front turret penetration from a 88mm then maybe I will ask for my money back! I lean back and look forward to a proper education in ballistics. Don't disappoint me now.

Troops everywhere have a potty-mouth I fear. If I may quote verbatim from William Boyd's Introduction to Frederic Manning's 'Her Privates We' (Serpent's Tail Press 1999) Warning severe filth ahead: - - - - - - - 'Two brief quotations will serve as the best introduction to this unique and extraordinary novel ... A corporal is dressing down the men in his section. "'You shut your blasted mouth see!' said the exasperated Corporal Hamley, stooping as he entered the tent, the lift of his head, with chin thrust forward as he stooped, giving him a more desperately aggressive appearance. 'An' you let me 'ear you talkin' on parade again with an officer present and you'll be on the bloody mat quick. See? You miserable beggar, you! A bloody cow like you's sufficient to demoralize a whole muckin' Army Corps. Got it? Get those buzzers out, and do some bloody work for a change.'" Nothing too unusal here: standard NCO aggression ... but now here is the same passage as it was originally written and as it was originally meant to be read. "'You shut your blasted mouth, see!' said the exasperated Corporal Hamley, stooping as he entered the tent, the lift of his head, with his chin thrust forward as he stooped, giving him a more desperately aggressive appearance, ' 'An' you let me 'ear you talkin' on parade again with an officer present and you'll be on the bloody mat, quick. See? You miserable bugger you! A bloody c*nt like you's sufficient to demoralise a whole f*ckin' Army Corps. Got it? Get those buzzers out, and do some bloody work, for a change.'" It is remarkable the change wrought by the good old Anglo-Saxon demotic of 'bugger' 'c*nt' and 'f*ckin''. What was familiar, stereotypical, almost parodic, becomes real - the whole situation charged and violent.' End of quote. Phew. Gentle reader I did * where my courage failed. It is a family game after all. I also note from the Oxford English Dictionary that S.O.B. is indeed old english. The first occurrence of it was in 1330 AD and it also appears in Shakespeare's King Lear. I was confusing it I think with 'Mutha-F**ka' which greatly impressed me in Michael Herr's 'Despatches' when I first read it as a 13 year old. Now M.F. is certainly one of the many vibrant gifts of expression that American has made to wider English. CMAK's a great game. It would be even more immersive with some proper grown up swearing and correct terminology for the Brits.

Delay the beer! My dear fellow - never think of such a desperate thing. I try to make it a rule never to post without at least a few beers on board. Old Empire India Pale Ale powers my little observations...

Very much my point old chap. I incompetently failed to explain that everything before the colon is the current script and everything after is my proposed replacement.

You make a good point. The script for my fellow Brits is too too shame making on occasion. It makes me wince from time to time. If there is any technically minded person out there with a penchant for sound mods then I propose the following for starters: Enemy unit! Engage! : Enemy unit! FIRE! Ceasefire! : STOP! STOP! STOP! Move it Soldier : Move your Arse! Hit the Dirt! : Take Cover! Son of a Bitch! (when wounded) : Fecking Hell! Let's move it out : Let's go Hold your position : Still! Stay still! Come on! Get a move on : Come on! Shift your blooming arses! Enemy tank! Engage! : Tank Action! FIRE!

I am sorry that I cannot remember the source but I vaguely recall reading from a book about the '73 Yom Kippur war where an Israeli tank crew reported that they had been hit a large number of times by Arab AT weapons and that in some spots that they could look through the holes that had been drilled right through the tank. Wrong war; wrong tanks; and wrong weapons of course. But it seems to suggest that penetration is not necessarily always fatal. I think that the warship analogy is a good one. They are packed nearly just as tight as a tank and they sometimes stumble through more than their fair share of hits but can still float; move and fight but not necessarily all three!

The John Lennon glasses and the failure to stand very close to the razor suggest hippy to me. No doubt he listens to jazz music and reads beat poetry in his spare time. It all puts the Nazi hatred of 'decadent' art into perspective somehow...

My favourite all-time BS lucky shot is in that fine historical record of a film: 'Blackhawk Down'. You know the bit where the Delta Operator throws the hand grenade 100m through a window the size of an A4 piece of paper. A man with those skills should be making big money in the major leagues rather than whatever, in comparison, derisory SF pay the US Govt is pleased to shell out. I have to say that the scene was a welcome chuckle in an otherwise humourless film.

This confusion is perfectly understandable. It comes from the British practice of rotating complete units (ie infantry battalions or armour regiments) rather than leaving the units in place and trickle-posting personnel through them which, as I understand it is the preferred US model. This means that there is mostly no connection between units and how they are brigaded together. Thus in Normandy you could find the 56th Inf Bde with 2 Essex; 2 South Wales Borderers; and 2 Gloucestershires. One wonders what they found to say to each other - but the Brigade sports meetings must have been keenly fought affairs! Things become slightly more confusing at Divisional level. As a result of the WWI experience where Bdes were swopped fairly promiscuously between Divs there was an attempt to keep Bdes in the same Divs. And of course you have the regional Divs (51 Highland; 43 Wessex; 50 Northumberland etc) which I suppose reflected the territorial nature of many of the units found in those Divs (UK equivalent of US national guard) and was an attempt to give a bit of coherence to the Div as an entity. The important thing to remember is that in the British Army the unit is very strong. Nobody is much concerned by Bdes and Divs. Men will remain with the same group for a long period of time. This is good for brush-fire wars and Imperial Policing: it generates high morale and a sense of belonging. The negative side to it though (and there is a negative side to everything) is that it is expensive to rotate whole units; and it also generates a certain insularity of mind. This is potentially corrosive of proper all arms warfare. Now who is going to explain to me the alphabet soup of Regimental Combat Teams?

No, you're not UberGrogged. You're both UberGrogging together. Michael is right about cavalry regiment amalgamations viz the 17/21st Lancers with their natty 'Death or Glory' Cap Badge. The 17/21st was of course a single regiment of armour (subsequently amalgamated again out of existence). Or a tank battalion in more prosaic Continental (pick either) terms. A single unit. There is thus no 16/21st etc. And you are of course also right to say that the number in front of the slash designates the battalion number of a regiment of infantry. Thus the 2/Hampshires would be the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment. I would not go quite as far to say that a regiment is merely 'administrative'. It is of course just that in combat terms but it is also one's family. Life becomes slightly more complicated when you are dealing with infantry regiments that, post-Cardwell reforms, are still known by numbers (which is uncommon). John Masters' old mob the 2/4th Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles being a case in point. They were thus the 2nd Battalion of that Regiment implying that there could be other battalions of that Regiment in existence rather than merely being an amalgamation of the 2nd and 4th PWOGRs. D'you see? The US is of course familiar with this with, for instance, the famous example of the 3/75 Rangers being the 3rd Battalion of the 75th Rangers Regiment. Phew.

Yes - I'd buy that package. I would even pay more than $15 for the privilege. I have to say that post-CMBB/AK I no longer have CMBO on my harddrive. It would be nice to go back to NW Europe while we wait out the long gestation of CM2. It would not, I suppose, divert very much from the development of the new engine.

Well Kitty does have a point. The rights and wrongs of the South Atlantic War (SAW) ought to be on the General Forum. Not polluting this fine and valuable thread. But while I'm here... Ariel made a good point about the SAW when he said that it was largely fought without breaches of the Law of Armed Conflict. The reason why the old friendship between the UK and Argentina was not completely destroyed by the War was that each side felt that the other had, by and large, 'fought by the rules'. I heartily agree with that sentiment. I disagree though with the label 'gentlemanly' being applied to any war. War is, as an Israeli soldier once put it,'murder and fear, murder and fear'. It is never gentlemanly. I also disagree with the assertion that the sinking of the Gen Belgrano was 'blurry'. She was a major combat unit of the Argentinian Navy on the High Seas while a state of international armed conflict existed between Argentina and the UK. That international armed conflict had been triggered by the illegal Argentinian occupation of the Islands. The Belgrano was thus a perfectly valid object of attack. That does not mean that I do not feel the greatest pity for the hundreds of Argentinian conscript sailors who died horrifying deaths in the frozen wastes of the Southern Ocean. But the only men who bear responsibility for those deaths are the men who ordered the Invasion of the Islands and then sent the Belgrano to sea. But this is a sad topic for Christmas time. We are all, I hope, friends now and friends we will remain.

I can make this pitch in 50 words or less: 'It's a screwball romantic comedy like a cross between 'Friends' and 'Mash' with a twist of 'Dead Like Me' thrown in'. It'll run for at least five seasons and the Easter '45 end of run finale will knock your socks off.

Malvinas. Except for the blurry Gral. Belgrano cruiser episode, a gentlemen's war. </font>

I do admire your Italian heritage. Such a fiery and spirited temperament. It reminds me of Captain Correlli. When can we expect your historically accurate and equally playable BF scenario? I for one can bearly contain my excitement.

I do admire your Italian heritage. Such a fiery and spirited temperament. It reminds me of Captain Correlli. When can we expect your historically accurate and equally playable BF scenario? I for one can bearly contain my excitement.

The chaos of all battlefields I should think. The best thing about CMBB/CMAK is trying to work out what the heck is happening: I know it's going wrong - I just don't know why. There's that telling quote from the first world war looking back to the 2nd Boer War and the difficulties of spotting the enemy on the modern battlefield. It goes something along the lines of: Many of the men there that day never idenitified the Boer firing positions. Indeed many of them still do not know where the Boers were even now eighteen years after the battle. Some things never change.

Originally posted by Kitty: Q: How do you know there's aircrew in your bar? A: They'll tell you.

Ahh. Yes. Aircrew. Wake up and smell the smart kids who can do maths. They'd all have been doctors you know. If they'd had a shred of compassion. What's the line in the Hitchcock film?: they're at the top of the Big Wheel, looking down. The Psycho says: 'Look at them. Like ants. What does it matter if a few of them stop moving?' Isn't it a shame how aircrew are always so brutally abused once they're shot down over enemy territory? Moves me to tears of pity it does.

I bought my copy direct from BFC and had it on the day before the advertised release day. Posted from their depot in the Irish Republic. Nice website by the way.