Eric Young

It is most likely John Ashcroft's fault. Really, I think it is. E

Hey, it ain't that hard to have partical smoke everywhere all the time and my gforce 2 handles it well. E

I doubt that anyone used the standing over the shoulder dumby thing you see in pictures more than once. I can't imagine that they would be that dumb twice in their lives anyway. Instant ear drum explosion and most likely broken collar bone to boot. E

Pak40, There is no recoil with blanks at all. You can dump 100 rounds a burst without barrel rise from the hip with blanks. I guess I am one of those big strong guys fridericus is talking about(5'11 220 pounds and can still do 50 pushups a rep at 45 years old). I always found firing the MG42 a dream to fire with live ammo, but then again I don't think an AK kicks much either. E [ August 29, 2002, 03:15 AM: Message edited by: Eric Young ]

Breakout at Borisov was another fav of mine. Lots of light armor and plenty of russian targets. E

My take on it. I have a lot of experiance with the MG42. The MG42 is very accurate in light config. It is a waist of ammo to fire more than a five round burst with one due to the thing wiggling around. There is very little recoil on the light config no matter how many rounds you fire. The problem is barrel rise. I have fired it from the hip with live rounds and the bullets were launching skyward after about three rounds. Low recoil, lots of barrel rise. It is also very possible for a one man team to fire, reload and change the barrel of the MG42 with little problems. Doing all three is impossible, and it always helps to have an aid gunner to attach the belts of ammo together so no real reload time is needed. This is done by having the first and last link of the ammo belt empty and linking the two belts together with spare bullets from the aid gunners Mauser pouch. I have played both positions, gunner and aid gunner. The gunner has the easy job. All he does is shoot and change a barrel once in a while. The aid gunner has twice the load with four ammo boxes, a mauser and his personal ammo. The gunner just carries the loaded weapon and most likely an ammo belt or two around his neck. Another thing that is cool about this weapon is the design of the ammo boxes. They are made so that you can pick up two of them with one hand really easily. Well they are kind of heavy, but you can grip them easily. Now the tripod mount is a completely different animal. You can hit anything with it you can point it at. And it is easy to aim. It is also easy to change the covered arch if you have one aid gunner. It is also possible to run with a tripod mount over 30-40 meter distances carrying the gun, spare barrels, and six cans of ammo if the crew is used to doing it and you have four people. I have done this many many times in a single day, not just over my total experience. The optics are not all that great really, but better than nothing. The cool feature about the tripod is the auto travers that can be adjusted for suppressive fire. It will swing the gun across the set fire arch back and forth with no control input from the gunner. It also has a nice trigger push button extension that allows the gunner to remain under cover while shooting the gun. In conclusion, the light config is great for aimed short bursts, but not sustained fire. The tripod is great for any need, but only if you have enough men to crew the thing. E

Hey, There is a reason why they kept building those light guns until the end of the war. They are fine weapons at close range, which is 90% of the fighting in Europe. E

It was common practice for German tankers to do something to give a signal to tank recovery crews as to whether the tank was salvageable or not. If the tank crew had time they would elevate the gun before they abandoned it to signal a salvageable tank. If the tank had a significant damage, and the crew had time they would lower the barrel to signify that the tank was beyond repair. I got that out of a US Army publication on German Tank Recovery tactics in World War II. E

QUOTE]Hey, maybe GI Combat will let you mod your troopies to look like Frank Rock, Bulldozer, Wildman, Canary, Ice Cream Soldier, Zack, the Iron Major, et al...[/QB]

Matrox has a killer 128 three monitor card coming out, three monitors of CM, wow. E

Yikes, I'm gonna go broke! E

In my research on German nebelwerfers I found a passage about the Russians protesting their use in the early stages of the war in the east. They thought the rockets used some form of compressed gas as an explosive which they termed gas warfare. That's all I remember off the top of my head about that. All army's of World War II were prepared for gas warfare. The Japanese were the only people to use such things. They dropped bombs filled with plague ridden fleas into Chinese held areas as a form of biological weapon. The black plague still florishes in these areas today. E

The way I judge a game is if you can sit down and play it without the manual. I found that I needed nothing at all to learn the UI and a little trial and error to get the more complicted elements down. It gets an A for not needing a manual. I still have not opened the manual. E

There is no such thing as competition. Good games will get the dollar, bad ones won't. E