John D Salt

Look on page 22. "Anti-tank artillery support for the two parachute brigades in the division was provided by 3rd and 4th Airlanding Anti-Tank Batteries RA..." "Each consisted of a battery headquarters and four troops of four guns each, being initially equipped with a total of sixteen 6-pounder anti-tank guns. In 1944, the fourth troop in each battery was re-equipped with the heavier 17-pounder gun..." So that's 12 x 6-pdr + 4 x 17-pdr for each airlanding ATk bty, plus the guns in the airlanding brigade. All the best, John.

Mr. Picky was thinking about pointing out that the operational success rate of the Squid (the most extremely successful dumb weapon I can think of) towards the end of WW2 was about 50%. But then, as it's a Squid, that's really six shots. This is an excellent point, and one that I think needs to be rammed home. In a past life, I was analysing spots-per-car (and it could equally well have been kills -- with modern direct-fire weapons, it's target acquisition that is the hard part) for simulated recce vehicles in a variety of scenarios run through one of Fort Halstead's big, detailed battelgroup simulations. We varied sensor fit, weather, and probably other things I don't remember. Regardless of scenario, it was very strongly noticeable that there was great variation between the performance of the best-performing car and the median car. Sometimes the median performance was zero, but significant numbers of spots were still made. I called this the "Lucky Alphonse" effect -- typically, a small number of top-performing vehicles scored most of the spots. In the simulated case, unlike real life, it is known that there is absolutely no variation in the skill levels of the different performers -- they are all statistically identical. Yet "Lucky Alphonse" still appears, just by random variation. All the best, John.

That should be nice and easy. As far as I am aware, there is currently no site hosting this information, and certainly none hosting the current version. Chris Wilson very kindly put the stuff up at his "Britwar" site, but that seems to have evaporated. Since my ISP provides a few megs of freebie web space, producing a web page of my own has been on my "things to do" list for a number of years now. It looks as if it may remain there for a few years more. The penetration file has been completely reorganised over the past couple of years, and is now organised by weapon within category within nationality, instead of as previously by alphabetical order of source (probably the stupidest way to arrange such a file I could have come up with). It has also had a diatribe on ammunition natures and other such stuff added, including my unpopular opinions on Schurzen, and all quantities (in particular, ranges) are now in SI units. During the course of this re-working, I have attempted to track all those places where the sources duplicate each other. As a result of this, I have concluded that, of the 234 sources consulted, you probably need only the four best ones to get a very good picture of German, US and British weapons' penetration performance. For the Russians, I have still found nothing in print as good as Valera Potapov's Russian Batlefield site, which we all know and love. Although I will continue to add new sources as they become available, I have pretty much lost interest in collecting penetration data. The reason for this is that practically no source gives all the information one requires to make sense of the figures provided; in particular, it is very rare to see them give the hardness of the target plate and the penetration criterion used. I started trying to collect penetration formulae, on the grounds that these let you (as Rexford pointed out years ago, and CM has done since its inception) work out the performance of different nationalities' weapons irrespective of their proof criteria. To my surprise and disappointemnt, I could find very few believeable and useable formulae, and fewer still that represented any improvement on de Marre -- you'd think there would be more progress in over a century. My firm favourite to date is Dehn's formula from Technical Report BRL-TR-2770, "A Unified Theory of Penetration", James T. Dehn, December 1986. In the form I have used it, this deals with non-eroding projectiles striking semi-infintite targets at normal impact, ignoring friction. I have written a Java program (I now think I should have stuck to Python) to use the formula, and it gives what I consider believable results. I have yet to get my head around the extended versions of the formula which allow for projectiles losing mass (eroding as they penetrate the target) and gaining mass (during the formation of an explosively-formed penetrator), and it is not obvious to me how I can adapt the formula to account for striking angle, nose shape, the effect of ballistic caps, brittle failure of high-hardness armour steels, projectile shatter, and multiple or non-homogenous plates. Being neither a physicist nor a mechanical engineer I have struggled somewhat to get to grips with the elementary concepts involved, so if anyone can give me a good clear explanation of how adiabatic shear stress banding works I would be very grateful. Even if I ever do work out how to extend the formula to account for the factors above, the problem remains of finding believable figures for the density and ultimate tensile strength of WW2 armour and projectile steels. At the moment I am assuming a constant density and estimating the strength from the Brinell hardness. Anyone not discouraged by these maunderings who still would like a copy of the latest edition of the penetration file, please e-mail me at the address shown in my profile, with "WW2 penfile" in the message title. All the best, John.

Many thanks for the correction. Even though it's always a shame to see a Scotsman keep his money. Apologies to Col. West and other Marines for confusing them with the US Army. All the best, John.

Just so. Please note the logical disjunction. The US system of honors is not merely spelt differently from what we do in the UK, it actually is different. The Bronze Star Medal is one of several cases where the US grants a medal for heroic or meritorious conduct. As we don't know whether the valor device ("combat V") was awarded with Major Crocker's medal, which would be an award for heroic conduct, or without, which would be for meritorious conduct. Since Colonel West evidently knows the character of his late friend, I am entirely happy to accept his evaluation of the man, and I think it would be churlish to question it. It is certainly true that in the British armed forces, since WW1, the most prestigious medals are those awarded for acts of bravery. However, the is a great variety of other awards available for military personnel. Campaign and long service medals or stripes are still awarded just for showing up, or for "X years of undetected crime". Wounds used to be recognised by the wound stripe, equivalent of the US Purple Heart, but no longer are in the British armed forces since 1922. The category of "meritorious" service is largely covered by the British civil honours system (the DSO has since WW1 I think been awarded entirely for bravery rather than any other kind of distinguished service). The MBE and OBE have military divisions, and you will often see these letters appended to the names of soldiers who have served in peace support rather than shooting wars; and knighthoods are awarded to senior military figures just as they are to distinguished civil servants, insustrialists, or actors. AIUI, the Bronze Star Medal can be awarded both as a gallantry decoration, as might be an MC or a mention in dipatches, or for meritorious service, as would be an OBE or MBE (military division). I have no doubt that achievements comparable with Major Crocker's would be recognised by some kind of award were they performed by members of the British forces. If wikipedia is to be believed, you'd lose that bet. The entry for "Bronze Star Medal" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Star_Medal says that Bronze Star medals were awarded retrospectively to holders of the CIB or CMB from WW2. All the best, John.

If only such stats were easily available. I've never found anything like that, but there are a couple of snippets that tend to confirm your "common sense" hypothesis. First, it is a well-known result that most arty casusatlies are caused by the initial rounds. There seems no good reason why a similar effect should not apply to aimed fire. Second, there is the matter of German LMG rates of fire; a piece in an old IDR Special on this topic makes it clear that high ROF was a deliberate decision to exploti fleeting target exposes to the maximum, and PRO document WO 291/474, "Rate of fire of the LMG", reports an OR study whiuch included an assessment of how quickly troops could get under cover on hearing fire being opened (we are taliking about fractions of seconds here), and concluded that a ROF of 1000 rpm gave a 20% advantage in expected hits over a 500 rpm gun. Third, there is the bit in Ewell and Hunt's "Sharpening the Combat Edge" (webbily available at http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/Vietnam/Sharpen/ ) on "the fifteen-second war", this being the time the authors thought the result of a surprise contact was decided in. So, no really useful data, but a few straws in the wind suggesting you're right. All the best, John.

Mr Picky will be along shortly, once he's stopped quivering like a heap of hysterical jelly </font>

Of course, the terrs reserve to themselves the right to redefine what the war is about until they find something they stand a cat in hell's chance of winning. But if it is economic, they are doing a spectacularly poor job, and I knownpeople who could do better on a long weekend with a dozen good blokes and a half-tonne of PE. All the best, John.

Perhaps I'm being extra slow today, but what on Earth does that have to do with the Tetrarch? All the best, John.

I'd go for the Daimler, with or without Littlejohn; the turret is the same, after all, and the armour thickness pretty close if not identical. Staghound or Stuart would be the wrong gun, and Stuart would have too much armour. All the best, John.

The glossary in Chamberlain, Doyle and Jentz gives both, and though von Senger und Etterlin doesn't include a glossary, he uses both. I suspect you're allowed both, just like "6-pdr" or "6-pr" (but not, unless you wish to reduce Mr. Picky to a quivering heap of hysterical jelly, "6-lber"). All the best, John. [ February 24, 2006, 01:05 PM: Message edited by: John D Salt ]

I take (Sf) to indicate "Selbstfahrlafette", so SPs of some kind, very probably Marders. All the best, John.

Fantastically well once Constantine decided to adopt it as the official religion, ISTR. All the best, John.

Navy blue? All the best, John.

Errrm, maybe that you don't check your facts? Do tell, what "radioactive waste/material" have US forces been shooting people with in Iraq? Please note that I expect an answer to this question, and I believe that the word "radioactive" has a quite well-defined meaning. You are, of course, entitled to believe any counterfactual flapdoodle you like. After all, you yourself are the person ost likely to suffer for your inability to perceive facts. All the best, John.

See, it's not Russian cuisine that's bad, it's Soviet cuisine. The following quotes are from "The Food and Cooking of Russia", by Lesley Chamberlain (Allen Lane, London, 1982): "During Soviet rule Russian cuisine has undoubtedly lapsed from the art it had become by the time of the 1917 Revolution. Shortages of ingredients and lack of variety are a great deal to blame. The standardization and nationalization of restaurants have also been a disincentive to good service, high gastronomic standards and inventive menus." "State supplies are plagued by constant and unpredictable shortages of everything except cabbage." All the best, John.

This is an entirely fair point; but the idea of a "crime of passion" is that the perpetrator can claim strength of emotion as a mitigating circumstance, not that extreme emotion renders legal or just those things that would not otherwise be. I didn't say anything even remotely resembling an accusation that you wanted due process thrown out of the window all the time. I asked if we could conclude from your utterances that the other 1% of the time you're opposed to due process when it's a question of protecting the innocent. It seems that we can. I fail to see what this has got to do with limiting the power of government, by the way -- insofar as the blokes who massacred the KZ guards were not following legal orders of their superior officers, they were not acting as agents of government, and I do not believe that the US government has or would have made any claim that they were acting other than ultra vires and unofficially. So it seems clear that you indeed believe in both collective guilt and collective punishment, and I had indeed correctly interpreted your position. I find it impossible to imagine how someone who believes in collective punishment -- which inevitably entails the punishment of an individual for a wrong they did not commit -- can fairly complain about being told he doesn't know what justice is. What's just doesn't change with conditions. What's practical does; and it may be that under some circumstances there are choices to be made about the lesser of two evils. But I cannot see how not shooting the wrong bunch of people is a lesser evil than declining to do so, nor how killing someone who wasn't a KZ guard brings any measure of justice to a KZ guard who legged it and is miles away at the time. Again, I say that I cannot tell the difference between your position and the idea that "some crimes are so terrible that people must be punished whether they are guilty or not". No crime demands "punishment, full stop", they only ever demand punishment for the perpetrator. Nor, on a matter of practicality, do I believe that indiscriminate retribution does anything to "prevent repetition". On the contrary, I suspect it's usually more likely to encourage it. I'd be interested to know of any case where such measures were justufued on grounds of justice, rather than on grounds of practicality; and especially, those in which they involved killing people. I didn't accuse you of not knowing due process, I accused you of not recognising justice. Since you seem to have made it perfectly clear that you consider killing people for a crime they were not guilty of, I think the allegation is perfectly fair. I'll apologise if I have somehow managed to misunderstand your position, but you seem to have made it quite clear. As I can't bring myself to see how a little colourful language is somehow more reprehensible than advocating murder, I'm afraid no apology will be forthcoming otherwise. What gives you the idea that thinking about right and wrong undermines combat efficiency? Soldiers are unlikely to fight very well if they don't believe they are doing the right thing. And I think it is generally acknowledged that the prospect of personal extinction makes people think furiously about this sort of thing at any age. Certainly when I shot my first APWT at TA recruit camp, there was a good deal of discussion in the hut that night about the moral questions that would arise if ever those figure-11 targets were replaced by living, breathing people. If we were to haul ourselves for a moment out of the current rabbit-hole the thread has disappeared down, I think Mr. Jingles might be able to make something of the surmise that it is necessary to convince soldiers that it is honourable to kill, and so military effectivness depends critically on imbuing such a sense of honour (unless the implications of the act of killing can be diluted by technological distancing). After all, the Waffen-SS were fiends for honour; just not the sort of honour I recognise. All the best, John.

What on earth is the point of being stationed on occupation duty in a nice place like Normandy if you are going to eat issue rations for breakfast? Wehrmacht issue at that, and it is a well-known principle that the stronger the army, the worse its food (Source: Asterix Legionnaire). If they were real soldiers, they would be eating fresh croissants, a baguette jambon-beurre and a bit of Camembert or Livarot, with maybe a small glass of Calvados to accompany their coffee. Oh, very good. All the best, John.

If you believe in the idea of whole societies being criminal, then presumably you believe in collective punishment. There are good reasons for why collective punishment is widely regarded as a harmfully stupid idea. Summary execution for complicity in the killing of pregnant women? I hope you are very, very sure you have never been "complicit" in a society that does anything like that, then. And your idea of "logic" apparently consists in grabbing the nearest people to hand in enemy uniform, and killing them, without even pausing to establish whether or not they were the people who actually committed the crimes. I can't see any difference between your argument and the belief that there are some crimes so terrible that people must be punished for them whether they committed them or not. So, can we conclude from this that the other 1% of the time you're opposed to due process when it's a question of protecting the innocent? Possibly not, but I think it's fairly obvious to all fair-minded observers that you wouldn't recognise justice if it bit you very hard in the arse. The point of due process is not, as you seem to imagine, to protect the guilty, but to make sure that you are punishing the right people. John.

I don't think it's quite as simple as that, either. If there's any law or custom of war that says you can't shoot an enemy just because he isn't armed, I'm not aware of it. "Surrendered at discretion" and "hors de combat" are AFAIR the categories that have convention protection. Unarmed enemy have no protection by virtue of being unarmed (there's nothing illegal about killing tank crew as they bail out). Wounded enemy have no protection by virtue of being wounded (plenty of men have gone on fighting after receiving wounds). Enemy aliens engaged in war simply don't get the same legal protection as civilians in peacetime. All the best, John.

Yet you chose not to mention it, and in particular chose not to mention that it was a night action. Ever been in a military exercise at night, have you? You bloody well did. Take all the offence you like, but McIvan has done an excellent and scholarly job of correcting your nonsense. John.

If you mean levels of protective marking, four: RESTRICTED CONFIDENTIAL SECRET TOP SECRET ...and then there's all that fearful bollocks about ATOMIC, CRYPTO and codewords. All the best, John.

Right, this is really the last time I'm responding to Kettler's trolling. So, if the use of Q-ships complied with the laws of war, it appears that you are accusing the British of "hypocrisy" and "eating their cake and having it too" for complying with the laws of war, while underhandedly demanding that the Germans also comply with the laws of war. I'm sorry I misunderstood your intended meaning, and can only plead in mitigation that I had not previously expected even you to make an accusation so wonderfully , glitteringly and thumpingly bloody stupid. Now, on to the business of bombing accuracy, with a few inclusions from previous postings: This is a worthless argument for two reasons. First, you don't present any CEP figures for either force; the assumption of USAAF superiority appears to be mere prejudice on your part. Yes, we've all read Jones, we've all heard of the Butt report, we've all seen the cartoons of B-17s putting bombs into a pickle-barrel. But if the USAAF was so damned accurate, what did they keep hitting Switzerland for? Second, taking an average CEP may make sense per bomb, or per weight of bombs, but it makes little sense by year. The tonnage of bombs dropped went up markedly after 1941, as shown by the following figures from page 120 of Richard Overy's "The Air War 1939-1945" (Papermac, London, 1980): 1940_____14,631 1941_____35,509 1942_____53,755 1943____226,513 1944__1,188,577 1945____477,051 Unfortunately he doesn't give the split between Bomber Command and USAAF tonnage, but the ratio from another source (The designer's notes from the AH game Luftwaffe; not great, but the best I can do while my Alfred Price books are hiding from me) for the whole war is given as about 7 US to 6 British tons. It should be obvious that the RAF's cumulative tonnage up to the end of 1941 (no US figures are included for those years), about 45,000 tones, is entirely swamped by the tonnage we might expect from bomber command for 1944, something over half a million tons. You seem to be unaware that the USAAF participated in the bombing of Hamburg: See Martin Middlebrook's "The Battle of Hamburg" (Allan Lane, 1980l Cassell, 2000), bombing twice on successive days. The only figures for heavy bomber accuracy I can find at the moment are from the "Luftwaffe" designer's notes, which I suspect may be leaning pretty heavily on the USSBS, but they don't quite their sources. The following snippets on accuracy are given: With less than 5/10ths cloud and visual aiming, a B-17 group could be expected to put 32.4%, and a B-24 group 30.4%, of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the aim point. A bit different from "typically putting their bombs within hundreds of feet". Formations with a 3-plane frontage were 45% more accurate, those with a 6-plane frontage 10% more accurate, than those with a 9-plane frontage. (I don't know exactly what numerical meaning we are supposed to assign to "more accurate"). The percentage of boxes (3 to 18 a/c) expected to put at least 10% of their load within 1,000 feet of the target depended on their order of passage over the target: 1st box_____82% 2nd box_____60% 3rd box_____48% 4th box_____47% 5th box_____30% RAF bombers averaged 38% of their tonnage on target and put 40% of their bombs within 425 feet of the aim point. The booklet goes on to say "While it appears that the RAF was vastly more accurate than the AAF, it must be remember (sic) that the "AIMING POINT" for AAF aircraft was usually a single factory building. The "AIMING POINT" for RAF bombers would be the entire city." Personally, I thought the aim point for the RAF was usally the markers (air or ground), usually placed with good accuracy by the Pathfinders. As both forces essentially used pattern-bombing cued by master bombers, it wouldn't cause much surprise if their overall accuracy was not dissimilar. I don't think you can assert any such thing, most particularly because, at the time you asserted it, I had not yet presented any data on bombing accuracy at all. No I didn't. Since my stocks of the milk of human kindness are not yet all entirely evaporated, I shall make the charitable assumption that you are confusing me with Trap One. I take this to be yet another of your frequent slapdash errors, rather than your deliberately attributing to me things I never said, which would be just plain "lying". It does, however, reinforce the necessity of checking your facts, something you seem congenitally incapable of doing, whether you're accusing me of lying or accusing Allied servicemen of mass murder. Now, I really do not intend to respond to any more of your nonsense. John.

Vexillology grog. All the best, John.

There is, of course, the disturbing military question this comparison raises, namely, how successful will the US Forces in Iraq be when the first snows start to fall? All the best, John.