Affentitten

Can any of you tube fans tell me what sort of minimum ranges or elevations a mortar would have? I had a fast moving halftrack taken out yesterday from a top hit by a 2" mortar at a range of 13 meters. And yes, it was a mortar shell that did it, not a grenade. The very annoyed German crew then bailed out and Lugered the mortar team to death. But how realistic is it for a mortar crew to aim at and hit a vehicle moving at pace directly towards them and less than 4 car lengths away?

Take a look at this listing. It has some of the patches you are looking for, particularly towards the bottom of the list under "Independent Infantry Brigades and Brigade Groups". Unit Organizations

Reagrding the Commando officer who killed a German with a bow and arrow, his name was Major "Mad" Jack Churchill MC. He was one of the founding members of the Commandos and was involved in their first raid on Vaagso, Norway, coincidentally named Operation Archery!

panzerwefer 42, I'll have a look when I get home tonight. The story was in a magazine article on the founding of the Commandos. Iread it when I was at high school (15 years ago!) However, in moving house recently, I uncovered this stash of magazines so I know exactly where to look.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>though there is one interesting case of a Commando officer wielding a Claymore... <hr></blockquote> There is also an interesting case of one of the founding officers of the Commandos getting a confirmed kill during the retreat to Dunkirk using a bow and arrow! Apparently he was an competitive archer and retained this bit of personal kit when his unit packed their bags and retreated.

Although it is the accepted paradigm that the RAF was on is last legs and a small but doughty band of heroes saved Albion in the face of overwhelming odds, the truth is a little less dramatic. The Luftwaffe had sustained serious casualties in pilots and aircraft during the preceeding campaigns in Poland, the Low Countries and France. That had reduced their superiority in fighters. Most statistical stack-ups of the BoB concentrate on the opposing numbers of planes, but if you take out all those Heinkels, Stukas and Dorniers, the number of fighters on both side was relatively even. Since the Me-109s only had the range for about 20 minutes of flight over the British mainland, the odds were a little more tipped in favour of the Brits, who also had their AA defences and the chance of getting their bailed-out pilots back in the air again the next day.

Further fuel on the Sealion bonfire is the late stage at which it was planned. I understand that it wasn't until early August that Hitler, goaded by Goering's reassurances, firmly started to consider the idea. It wans't then until September that the Luftwaffe really got into the swing of things. I'm sure that most of us are familiar with the complex equations of time, tide and weather that had to be considered for Overlord. Even has the BoB succeeded in its rather loose aims, the cross-Channel invasion would have taken place in late Autumn or early winter. On a flat barge in the Channel during winter? Forget it.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr> Can't they just load the dead guy into the breech and blow him out with the next round?<hr></blockquote> As long as his head is no wider than 88mm. Or smaller for Sherman crews.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>An experienced tank crew (in real life) should be trained for all crew positions. I've heard tales of the exhausted and half-suffocated loader slumping into the gunner's seat while the gunner takes a turn at loading. The tiger with it's heavy shells was especially hard on the loaders. In a 'fight or die' situation I can well imagine the decapitated commander being pulled down to the bottom of the turret floor and the bow mg operator scrambling back to take up whichever position needs filling. For a tank to just sit there for 10 turns something REALLY ugly must'a happened in that vehicle (intestines all over the drving controls for example). <hr></blockquote> I hate to shatter your idea, but there aint that much room to start swapping positions inside most tanks, especially if there are deadweight bodies to pull around. My only experience is with T-55s, but I can tell you there that there is no way that the commander, gunner and driver would be able to swap roles without getting out of the tank. In many cases, the driving compartment is just inaccessible from the other part of the tank. Likewise, bodies lying elsewhere would severely limit the traverse of the turret because the breech of the main weapon needs room to move.

Actually, the idea behind shooting naval mines with rifles is to pierce the casing and sink the thing. Sometimes they will explode, but generally that's a happy side effect.

"Schreck" in another context can also mean "shock". So "tank shocker" could be another interpretation for Panzerschreck.

In the old days of cannons and ball shot, calibres used to be measured according to how many pounds a lead sphere of the same diameter as the barrel would weigh. So the bigger the poundage, the bigger the bore. A similar measure is used for smooth bore small arms like shotguns. But the numbers work the opposite way. Here the measure is "how many lead spheres of the same diameter as the barrel would it take to make up a pound?" So a 12 gauge means 12 of those lead balls would make up a pound, whilst the smaller 20 gauge would need 20 balls.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> When did Australian troops enter the fray in serious numbers in earnest ? IIRC not before 1941-42. By then the British (Commonwealth) Army had started mounting up the odds after they had barely survived the initial reverses. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thew first major engagements were in North Africa against the Italians and Germans and in Palestine/Syria against the Vichy French. (We had a Governor General who was awarded the VC for killing Frenchmen in WW2!) After North Africa was over our guys were called home to face the Japs. Churchill and Roosevelt actually tried to hijack the Aiussie troopships off to Burma, issuing orders to the Navy without telling the Australian government! But the boys got back in time to fight the Japs in New Guinea, then an Australian territory. Of course, the other big formation of volunteers was the divsion that was sent off to bolster the British garrison in Singapore, only to be ordered to surrender within a few weeks of arrival. Going back to WW1, as I said, the Aussie forces were all volunteer for the whole war. There was a big referendum on conscription that divided the country, but the NO vote carried. The troops at the front line were quite universal in opposing conscription, since they didn't want to serve alongside unmotivated men. Another intersting facet is that men who volunteered after the Gallipoli disaster were accorded a huge amount of respect by the existing veterans. They figured that the guys in the "mates battalions" must be made of strong stuff because they offered to come even after seeing how disastrous war could be. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The army does not want people in who think for themselves,<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Quite wrong. The army doesn't want conscripts because with the tiny budget they get, having to pay for unmotivated people to sit around in a barracks, and for professionals to supervise them would be a ridiculous drain on resources. Not to mention that the Australian army prides itself on being one of the most professional in the world. Conscription would water that down. Let's face it, we in the West (south!)aren't fighting the sort of wars anymore where massed formations of illiterate riflemen are needed to tip the balance.

In reference to the post regarding the joys of being a conscript in Finland, I thought I'd add some more experiences. My bro-in-law did his 18 months (?) in the French army. They went on combat training ONCE. That was a two or three day affair. The rest of the time him and his peers basically sat around in a barracks. My brother-in-law, being a blacksmith and machinist by trade, got the special additional duty of being the base locksmith. At least then he got to amuse himself in the machine shop and made me a really nice hunting knife :cool: When I lived in Germany, I lived with a guy who told me about his conscript days in the German marines. He spent all his time sitting in a fristy barracks on the North Sea. Occasionally they would "borrow" a Zodiac and mount unauthorised forays onto the nearest Dutch islands. Sometimes they would have a bit of a brawl with the equally bored Dutch soldiers, other times they would be allowed to make duty free beer purchases at the Dutch army PX. I think the most imaginative use of conscript training though goes to a guy who was in the German news when I first arrived. He'd broken into an army depot and stolen an APC, which he'd learnt to drive during national service. He drove it to the local jail and used the 20mm cannon to blow the **** out of the front door. His buddy, who was doing time, then ran out and they both made a clean getaway.

Just to blow my own trumpet, here's a story I wrote earlier this year on the next generation AVRE. Remember, I was writing for a general audience. (And I've just noticed that I said most AVRE's were based on Sherman hulls. Ooops! Enter the Trojan

Tero's points: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Can you say how the Aussie troops rated the conscript German and Japanese troops they were fighting against ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Not really. A lot of the early fighting in North Africa was done against the Italians, and I think the universal opinion of them as soldiers was pretty low. I gather that the Germans were respected a lot more and seen more as equals, thus making victory over them something to be relished. I dare say that the Aussies had more respect for the Germans than they did for the Brits! As for the Japs, Australians were basically indoctrinated about the Yellow Peril, and that all Japenese soldiers were a sub-human, short-sighted, barbarous type of monster. Fighting the Japs was far more personal because of the level of cruelty perpetrated by the Japanese on Allied POWs. And as my grandfather said: "They was heathens." <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>In your opinion, is there any difference in being involuntarily drafted in a time of war and being subject to a conscript system already before the war and then being called up from the reserves to active duty ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> By what measure? Morally? Quality? <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> (On conscription to Vietnam) That is interesting. Can you give any reasons why did you go to conscription (in case you indeed did migrate to conscription)?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I can't really. I guess they just needed to fill the ranks for a war that was never hugely popular. The politicians in charge would have been guys who served in WW2, and I guess there was a sense of "It never did me any harm." <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> While your arguments against concription seem valid they are based on highly isolated cases (in the global scale). Ever since Vietnam the US military has been trying to polish its shield and clean up its reputation and therein lies the seed of rather selfserving scorn of conscription. Wars of aggression have been very hard on conscript armies. Especially unpopular lost wars. But still that does not warrant the wholesale disregard of conscription as a viable military option.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm not disregarding it. Soembody above said that all armies in WW2 were conscript armies and that they always beat the regulars. I cited Australia as proof against. Interestingly enough, conscription is agin being bandied about here to fill the ranks for the current world "conflict". But it'll never happen. The army doesn't want it, the politicians don't want it and neither does the public. If anyone is interested in the Australian experience of war in the last 100 years, take a look at this site that I (with my company) worked on over the last couple of years: Australians At War [ 10-21-2001: Message edited by: Affentitten ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> To sum this long rambling post, conscript armies, ceteris paribus, will defeat professional armies because they can recruit from a wider and thus better pool; and shunt the fittest and brightest into combat positions. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that one of the biggest problems that the US Army had in WW2 was that the fittest and brightest were almost anywhere BUT in combat positions. Nearly all of the college grads and men with a modicum of ability had found themselves positions in the staff, administratation or the technical branches. Huge swathes of talented people were also siphoned off into the Army Air Force. The guys left in the rifle companies were generally the ones with limited abilities and without the initiatiave to find themselves a safer occupation. That was the whole point of why the US had to abandon its officer program for college students and ship them off piecemeal as grunts to fill places on the front line. As to the performance of conscripts versus volunteers in a mass battlefield situation, let's take Australia as an example. We didn't have conscription in WW1 (though there were two referenda over it), but Aussie troops performed pretty admirably and usually outstripped the British draftees they fought alongside. The Aussies also didn't have the death penalty for desertion, yet their rates for going AWOL were paltry compared to the Brits. I'm not certain, but I also believe we didn't have conscription in WW2, yet again, Aussies did pretty well in the battles the fought. (With the exception of Crete, but we can blame the Kiwi general for that one!) We DID have conscription in Vietnam, and suffered the same social upheaval over it as the USA did. As far as I know, a compromise was established that although conscription continued, only conscripts who volunteered once in the Army were sent to Nam. Otherwise they were used for support duties back home. Once again, this voluntary theory paid off in that Australian combat performance in Vietnam was proportionately better than that of the American units made up more heavily of "against their will" levees.

OK, I tried using the search function to find some info, but it keeps timing out on me. So..... 1) Can roadblocks be blown apart like buildings can? 2) Are AT minefields depleted by vehicles having driven across them?

I'd like to get into this in more detail, but the book I need to confirm some of the points aint here at work with me. But basically, the Commonwealth artillery command system was a highly elaborate one, with all levels from troop, through battery to regimental and beyond tied in together by land lines and radio. FOO's could order fire from their batteries, with orders for heavier or more concentrated bombardments being passed up to brigade, divisional and corps level, and control being passed quickly to the man at the sharp end if the situation warranted it. I guess that discretion and responsibility in only calling for what was needed was the key to this system. Each battalion had an attached RA FOO, as somebody has mentioned, always a captain. Sometimes a Lieutenant would be detached from a gun troop to act as FOO for a company or smaller unit. Sometimes communication problems meant FOOs didn't get what they bargained for. In the defence of the Arnhem perimter, a Lieutenant Barron of the 1st Airlanding Light regt RA was sent forward and called upon for a "stonk" on a tree line about 200 yards from positions of the Border Regiment. However, Barron's wireless, to be used to contact his troop, refused to work, so he had no choice but to use the Borderer's battalion net and hope the orders got through to the batteries of 75mm pack howitzers back at Oosterbeck. He relayed the orders and nothing happened for several long minutes. The Borderer's company commander began to get very irritated indeed, as he was expecting an attack from that tree line in compnay strength. Eventually the radio crackled back "Shot, scale 1 with the heavies." Barron realised, with mixed emotions, that his orders had been relayed back to the 5.5 inchers of the Wessex division. They were firing a full battery program onto his target without any ranging shots. Barron knew that they were firing at extreme range, and that the spread of shot would probably engulf them all. He pulled down the cranky major behind a wall just as the rounds arrived.....all on target. Seeing the woods completely disappearing in an inferno of explosions, the Borderer's commander became quite lively. "Well done Gunner! More of that! Not bad those little guns of yours!" A patrol after dark found at least a platoon's worth of dead Germans in the woods and piles of abondones and damaged equipment.

As somebody mentioned, 3 of the 5 code names for the D-Day beaches (I think Juno, Utah and Omaha) popped up as answers to clues in the Times crossword on consecutive days about a month before the invasion. There was of course a massive investigation into this, with the fuddy duddy old school teacher who complied the crosswords subject to the best anal probings that British Intelligence could come up with. Various theories have been ventured about why he chose those words, but in at least one case, the crossword had been compiled before the codename was even chosen. It does seem though that it was just one of the most massive coincidences in history, and in any event, it would have been a pretty convoluted way of passing information to the Germans!

So I'm assuming that, indeed, the shape of a kilt wouldn't skin properly on the infantry sprites?

As a newbie, may I ask a stupid question? Has anyone done any kilts for Scottish troops? Or wouldn't they skin right? I ask because my grandad was in the Gordons, and I'd love to see them in CM!

In WW2 the sheer number of operations meant that random cose words were the go for the Allies. They were usually vetted for coincidence or implied meaning, but there were sometimes slip-ups. It's hard to imagine, for example, how anybody thought that Operation "Neptune" wasn't a give away for the British naval operation element of D-Day. The Normandy campaign saw some associated operations, as somebody has already mentioned, Goodwood, Epsom and so on are events in the British flat-racing season. You could sometimes get a "Comet 2" if an original plan was amended slightly. Hitler was little more melodramatic and often named big operations after heroic bits of German mythology. The Americans today are a little bit that way inclined too. I think they have a public name for the campaign that always sounds heroic and patriotic, but then the individual elements of the campaign are named secretly. As an aside, I had a mate who got the Australian copyright to "desert storm". When "Desert Sheild" was implemented, my mate went and registered about 2 dozen names with the appropriate intellectual property office. He did things like "Desert Fury", "Desert Thunder" and so on. Bingo.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Masochism? Yeah, I guess! My main interest is airborne artillery, so I was thrilled to see a 75mm howitzer crop up in one of the pre-packaged scenarios I investigated last week.