Determinant

Hmmm. Keeping it on the military is a tough old thing on the ideological bare-knuckle fight that is the Russian Front. Neither side wanted to tell the truth overmuch. Not much fair-minded 'operational analysis' there I would think. Data you're looking for? Good luck. I think you will have a long. And who knows? Pointless hunt. I'm a bit suspicious of the 'German Sniper' site. Call me an old urban myth cynic. Reads to me a bit like somebody regurgitating 'FM-Sniping' in the syle of A, B, C. It would be nice to see the real article. A bit like Uday and Qusay. Common sense suggests to me that the claimed sniper score is far too high. Got that from reading about the concept of the 'empty battlefield'. Chaps hiding whenever possible because they don't want to be shot by snipers. Makes it a bit tricky to 'destroy AG Centre by sniping' as suggested by the Sov claims. And here's the real deal. Stalingrad. The besieged city. I think that it was the Soviet tanks behind and not the Soviet snipers in front that destroyed 6th Army. Is that wrong? Still I'm sure they played their part. But why NKVD snipers? Why not credit to the Red Army snipers? Let's keep it on the military. Toodle pip.

Expecting a squad with automatic weapons in a build up area to charge any kind of MG and have something left over for afters seems a mite overambitious. Anyone know how much small arms ammo the 101st burnt through to get Uday and Qusay? Ammo rate usage in CMBB feels just about right to me.

Curses. Foiled again. I'm still going to the PRO though and will blame you when justifying it to my wife!

Well if you can wait until next Saturday I'll pop into the PRO to see what they have - closed on Sundays. WO 201/719 looks promising for a start: This is Operation BOOTJACK which is described as plans to seize an aerodrome in the enemy's rear by a brigade group. It's probably not Sidi Rezegh but it's a start and it might make for a very good semi-historical scenario. And then there's AIR 23/1181 Op CRUSADER Air Ops 18 Nov - 12 Dec which may well do it. Of course recruitment as a CMAK play tester would be a powerful motivator for me. My wife hates me going to the PRO. [ July 20, 2003, 06:57 AM: Message edited by: Determinant ]

The distinction between knocked out and abandoned can sometimes seem a bit odd. I suppose that 'knocked out' operates on the vehicle while 'abandoned' operates on the crew. Some determined crews will continue to fight their vehicle, or what's left of it, even once it is technicaly knocked out. While crews who have seen quite enough already thank you will abandon their vehicles at the first sign of a loose grommet. The answer to the flame attack KO must be that the vehicle is burning, and that the flames render the vehicle unuseable. A flame attack abandonment would mean that the crew are scared of being burned to death and want to be elsewhere, even though a few seconds work with a fire extinguisher might see them right as rain. I'm not sure that a fire in the engine compartment would be shrugged off as 'just an 'M' kill' by any but the most fanatic crews. Armoured vehicles are tinderboxes. They are packed with fuel, oil, propellant, explosives and all sorts of combustible stuff. Flame and vehicles is grim stuff. Perhaps the most frightening thing that I saw on the TV coverage of the latest Gulf war was the Paladin SPG brewing up, and I was watching on TV and could easily hide behind my sofa, it must have made a deep impression on those actually there.

Lovely stuff. Buy Barrie Pitt's 'The Crucible of War'. All three volumes. You owe it to yourself. One of the most readable accounts of the war in the Western Desert which covers both strategy and tactics: the grand view down to the grunt in the shell scrape. I particularly enjoyed the description of the LRDG raid on an Italian airfield where they use a bofors mounted on a truck to destroy a well-fought Italian MG post that had just shot up one of their other trucks. And in true CM style you think: 'Ooooh. Light AAA vehicle-mounted in a ground role? That's a bit gamey' Don't miss it.

Ahh, I hadn't noticed that. 'Tis indeed a very fine simulation indeed. I suppose that most ATGWs will have a time of flight under 15 seconds except at very long range. Milan (which bears a striking external resemblance to Spandrel - I wonder are they in any way related ) takes 13 seconds or so to get out to its max range. So operator suppression is modelled. Excellent. But a further dumb supplementary. I know 'pop smoke' is an SOP for vehicles when fired upon. Will targets pop smoke while the ATGW is still inbound thus increasing the chance of a miss? Thanks for the clarification.

Does TacOps model time of flight for ATGW? The visual representation, in TacOps 3 at least, shows the pop-smoke-line-splash as happening all at once, but is there more going on 'under the hood' so to speak?

But then posts from Finland would probably be written in Russian. In regard to these 'What Ifs?' I always remind myself: 'If my Aunt had balls then she would be my Uncle'

Ahh, but that presupposes of course that your 'model' of the board is a university or staff college seminar. Which is not a bad aspiration. But I often prefer to see it as a drunken conversation in a bar. Sometimes funny; somtimes punchy; mostly entertaining. Never let 'facts' intrude on a good argument. I admired your bold attempt to measure the relative effectiveness of the AR vis a vis more primitive weapons by comparing casualty proportions in different theatres and campaigns. An elegant attempt at resolving the effectiveness conundrum. But as you note - it does leave you with the second order problem of knowing when your comparison is valid. I suspect that Vietnam, or any insurgency, will always produce odd statistics about the efficiency of small arms. For instance if you compared inter-war British Army campaigns on North-West Frontier (an insurgency - those wily Pathans) with the Great War you would probably be left with the conclusion that rifle fire was more effective on the Frontier than on the Western Front. Despite the best efforts of the men with the screw guns. I am guessing (and you will not get a single fact out of me on this) that the best comparison for pre-AR and post-AR campaigns in an all arms environment might be the Western Desert in '41-'42 and one of the more unpleasant Arab-Israeli punch ups. Say Yom Kippur in '73? And I bet (note no factual basis whatsoever for the following assertion) that the answer would be that the proportions of casualties amongst indirect/aerial_direct fire crew served/vehicle mounted_direct fire small arms_mines etc would be spookily similar. With maybe even small arms dropping down in the killing stakes - everything else getting much nastier - and AR armed riflemen being unable to hit a cow's arse with a banjo at any realistic combat range in the desert).

LOL. It also gives you a Q nightmare. </font>

Thank you - now I have a vision of Chewbacca sticking halfway out of the top of a Panzer 35(t). </font>

I stand corrected,how else could they have stopped that great behemoth. </font>

I think that you hit the nail on the hit there - it is a nice attempt to represent a fortified strong point building: sandbagged crawlways & mouseholes; bunkers constructed inside rooms; revetted ceilings lined with sandbags; armoured loopholes; grenade chutes; rooms filled with concertina wire - all that gubbins. Come to that - is it possible to put wire in buildings in the Game? [ April 27, 2003, 11:33 AM: Message edited by: Determinant ]

Thanks for those. But the first use of the 88mm in the anti-tank role? Wasn't that in Poland? I liked the bit about the Bedouin having a 'certain liking' for the Germans in preference to their Italian/British occupiers. How could anyone tell? A small correction: water stored in petrol cans doesn't become undrinkable. It just tastes strongly of petrol. Reason enough to use separate cans where available...

But couldn't this go either way? I imagine a veteran/crack crew might keep firing into a target until they were _sure_ that it was dead ('Ivan's a dangerous bastard - they might be faking it like last time - keep hitting him!'). But a green crew might think that a single hit would always suffice ('We hit him! Our National Socialist weapons are far superior to any Bolshevik trash - he must be dead! Find me a new target!').

Wasn't this sort of war crime a regular thing on the Eastern Front? Were the firers Waffen SS? Or were the victims just under 'area fire'? I once had a Sov MG team in a foxhole surrender as an assault came in. A second later my attackers mowed down the now surrendered crew. I'm not sure if there's a vocal in German for 'Too late Chum!' when this happens. Chilling stuff.

I understand that is very difficult to know whether an armoured target has been damaged or destroyed by a hit. CMBB, as in so much else, is perfectly realistic in this regard. It is perhaps a pity that the 'hit and penetration' information cannot be turned off for EFOW - this gives you much more info than your crews would probably have. Interestingly the problem is still with us. One of the key advantages of Depleted Uranium ammo is that its pyrotechnic effect almost invariably causes the target to catch fire. You can see at a glance which targets are dead - they are burning. Conventional AP does not have the same effect - unless being fired into a 'Tommy Cooker' Sherman I suppose...

It is sometimes safest to run towards the enemy. The classic example is when caught in the open on a forward slope. The crest line behind you being further away than the bottom of the slope in front of you - which you hope (fond hope) to be in dead ground to the bastard who is trying to kill you. I fondly remember a, thankfully, blank firing exercise where I chose to 'take cover' (lay down) on a forward slope. I was greeted by a derisive shout from a Parachute Regiment Colour Sergeant DS standing behind me: 'You're as big a fooking target lying there as if you were standing oop! Git yourself down into that fooking gulley! Sound advice that I have often reflected upon.

And the tactics used by the British Army in 1918 would be bad in what way? </font>

Oh. I thought that it already taught that remarkably well. And certainly my experience is that being pinned down is very common when I advance my little guys over open ground into firepower. The challenge, at least in North Africa, will be to find those small folds in the ground in what looks mostly like a pool table. Can't wait!

Yes, it's a fair point that the Indian Army down to brigade level were, I think, formed with one Imperial (ie UK) battalion and two Indian battalions so that there always was a mix. In contrast, of course, to ANZAC formations that aimed to be independent wherever possible for perfectly understandable political reasons (although individual ANZAC units were, I believe, sometimes brigaded into UK brigades - I think that this may have happened in Crete with an Australian unit). I suppose that this will cause problems if CMAK follows the CMBB force selection option set at divisional level: Indian Army divisions contain a mix of Imperial and Indian units. Still for my money ($45!) I would much prefer that the contribution of the Indian Army (the Ghurkas, the Sikhs, the Rajpoots etc) was reflected in the game. I would even like to see the Maori units in the New Zealand army!

The Indian Army must be included. It would be impossible to prepare a complete range of, say, Monte Cassino scenarios without including the Indian Army. The Ghurkas in particular, but many other different regiments were involved in Mediterranean theatre. They made a very important and valuable contribution, and they were much more than just 'Brown Brits'. It seems a bit unfair to reflect, perfectly properly, the contribution and sacrifice of the white Commonwealth (ie Canada and ANZAC) in the Med theatre while passing over that of the Indian Army.

Are those the ones that carry trifles, spotted dick, bread and butter pudding, and sticky toffee pudding? With custard in the radiators? Sorry, the image was too arresting not to run with it... But it would be excellent to have the units to model rear-area raids.

This is very good news. Well done BFC! Only two requests: Aircraft parked on the ground for the LRDG/SAS to attack in airfield raids. More Commonwealth Forces: The South Africans and the Indian Army! Time to buy a new computer I think...