John D Salt

The BBC has a report on this subject, which refers to reporting by the Italian TV station RAI: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4417024.stm I have sent a note to the BBC commenting on the story. Personally, I am amazed at such a song-and-dance about such a commonplace weapon filling as WP. It was used by both sides in the Falklands War in 1982, and I don't recall any great fuss about it then. I don't know how widely the stuff is currently issued, but I'd be quite surprised if it's not fielded by every army in NATO. Hell, I've known teenage Navy cadets use the stuff on exercise. I am baffled by the US references to WP as an illuminant, whereas every use I have ever heard of it has been as an obscurant or a target-marker, or as a casualty-causing agent. PRO document WO 291/150, "WP as an anti-personnel weapon", 1943, states that WP injuries, while extremely painful, are unlikely to prove lethal. WP is neither a "chemical weapon" nor banned by any international convention. The convention restricting certain weapons mentioned in the BBC report -- which, as it points out, the USA has in any case not signed -- specifically excludes from its categorization of "incendiary weapons" obscurants, illuminants and target indicators (see for example http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multi/texts/BH790.txt ) On the one hand, this story may arise from someone's genuine but muddle-headed belief that warfare can be made nicer by banning certain weapons which sound as if they might be somehow nastier than plain old HE. On the other, it might very well be a deliberate propaganda effort to blacken the USA's name by any means possible. Either way, the allegation that WP violates any international convention is false. All the best, John.

Recent UK programmes such as, for example, Apache (US helo), Javelin (US missile), Minimi (Belgian LMG), or Bowman (US radios and Canadian BMS)? What alternatives do you suggest that are more "off-the-shelf"? "Neither much good"? Please name a Western (or indeed Eastern) aircraft that matches it capabilities in low-level deep penetration or long-range interception. Nope. F-15 was designed as an air-superiority fighter. Tornado was not. You might as well criticize the Buccaneer or the Tu-28 for their inability to dogfight. Given the amazingly large number of king-size pig's breakfasts the UK defence procurement people have made over the past decade or three, picking on Tornado and Clansman/Ptarmigan is an astonishingly poor choice of examples. All the best, John.

The range of an infantry mortar depends largely on how many secondaries (or "augmenting charges", US "increments") you can safely stuff down the barrel to send the bomb on its way. The Mk 4 barrel was designed to take a heavier charge than the previous marks of barrel, and so could take a bigger charge for longer range. PRO document WO 291/491, "Notes on R & A trials of British 3-in and German 8cm mortars", published in 1943, notes that between these two mortars "It is safe to conclude that the difference in maximum range using top service charge is small." It also reports one shoot on which a 3-in mortar was fired using 16 secondaries, and achieved a range of 3874 yards. I should be interested to see your source for that. If it really says that an 81mm bomb won't fit in a 3-inch mortar barrel, it is simply wrong. I suspect that it just says that the German and Italian rounds couldn't be fired, which would be correct up until the introduction of the Mark 5 barrel, which had a modified striker stud to allow it to fire German and Italian 81mm bombs [source: Jane's Infantry Weapions, 1975, Ed F W A Hobart]. People who still refuse to believe that the 3-inch mortar tube is 81mm in internal diameter are cordially invited to take calipers and ruler and measure a real one, as I have done. All the best, John.

Ok, then, how about "Men with pointed sticks -- the dominant weapon system for four thousand years"? All the best, John.

A short response to two tiny parts of it:- Surely (Joad mode) that all depends on what you mean by "pressure". I think there is more to "pressure" than raw casualty rates. In terms of keeping the primary group gelled and maintaining the mental health of the individuals, the occasional short, sharp bloodbath may be a lot less stressful than a sustained "low-intensity" grind over months and years. You'll often have heard it said that "the waiting is the worst bit", so more waiting and less fighting may be a much tougher proposition, psychologically, than the old-fashioned close-combat wargasm. I'd be very interested to know your reasons for thinking those things; they do not match the picture I have of what makes people successful in combat. I do not believe that it is aggression that keeps soldiers fighting instead of running, but rather loyalty to the primary group with which they have strong social bonds. While it may be necessary to "summon up the blood" and have the red mist come down at the point of a final assault, simple animal aggression at any other time is I think most likely to result in people doing something stupid and getting themselves killed. It is for these reasons that "hate training" has been pretty well discredited, at least in the British Army, these past sixty years; it was probably Lionel Wigram's one really bad idea. Nor have I ever seen any evidence that losing friends and a desire for revenge are important contributors to combat motivation. Likewise, the idea that people become better fighters by the experience of surviving battles seems to me to be wrong; as Lord Moran pointed out, courage is a wasting resource. Some people crack after a short time, some people crack after a long time, but everybody cracks eventually, and the more combat you experience, the closer you come to cracking, if you survive. All the best, John.

"It's not how well you do on the exercise, it's how you perform at the de-brief." All the best, John.

Hence my use of the phrase "so-called". I have no doubt there are still wargamers somewhere referring to different models of T-34 as the T-34A, T34C and so on. All the best, John.

Yup, the game knows. I rather suspect that the game consulted the author of the Russian Battlefield site on the matter. If you potter with the scenario editor, you will find that the Panther Ausf A is listed with "occasional flaws in upper hull front", and the Ausf G with "frequent flaws in upper hull front". You will also see that the angle on the upper hull front of the IS-2 changes from 30deg for the 1943 and early 1944 models to 60deg for the main 1944 model (the so-called "IS-2m"). All the best, John.

Aha! Thanks for clearing that up, Wicky. </font>

If this is not a copy of the SL/COI scenario, can I put in a plea not to copy their Germanic transliteration of "совхоз"? "Sovkhoz" is the usual Anglophone transliteration, and "state farm" the usual translation. I hope there are no Klimenti Woroshilow tanks in the scenarion, either. All the best, John.

Mr. Picky would like to point out that, in the British tradition, Mechanized Infantry are not supposed to fight from their carriers, barring exceptional circumstances (mostly in the "Yeah, right" category of tactics, such as the suggestion I saw in one manual that it might be sensible to motor through the enemy position in FV 432s, then dismount behind the position and assault back through it). The people who fight from IFVs are, in British Army English, called Armoured Infantry. The fact that APP-6A doesn't have clearly-distinguishable symbols for each type means that Warrior (armoured infantry) elements used to be distinguished by a little "W" under the sausage in the box. Now that FV432 is no longer used as an infantry carrier, the "W" is gone, and Saxon (mechanized infantry) elements are distinguished by the wheeled mobility modifier. What they'll do with FRES I have no idea. All the best, John.

Well, quite. My complaint would be that wooden bunkers (DZOTs, if you prefer) are too easy to kill, by quite a long way, and vastly too easy to spot. As things stand, an MG in a trench is much more effective than a wooden MG bunker, apart from its much smaller ammo supply -- which hardly matters, because if the attacker has any direct-fire guns of 20mm or larger, the bunker dies long before expending its ammo. One of the reasons I think FTs are largely useless in CM is that the kind of target they were intended to deal with -- bunkers -- are far too easy to kill with other weapons. In real life, any reasonably robust field-work that doesn't leave obvious covered approaches is only going to be reduced after an elaborately-prepared assault, probably involving smoke and engineers. All the best, John.

Given that the Fennec (as we spell it in Wales) is also known as the "Desert Fox", it's hard to think of a better name for a German AFV. All the best, John.

OOB = Order of Battle </font>

I have the vague impression that mortars aimed at hard targets shoot until the target is buttoned-up, or one shot if you order them to until they think better of it. That doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me, since the military usefulness of aiming a 50mm light mortar (with no smoke available) at a closed-down tank seems approximately equal whether you put rounds down the range or not. All the best, John.

Because the Stryker is a troop carrier, not a fighting vehicle? </font>

But this "notable difference" is between one "82mm" bomb and another "82mm" bomb. Both are fired from the same tube. All the best, John.

What, you think people get cleverer when they work in committees? All the best, John.

Assuming that by "formation" you mean division and regiment, what you need should be in chapter 3 of Zaloga & Ness' "Red Army Handbook 1939-1945" (Sutton Publishing, Thrupp, 1998), which has staff tables showing organisation down to troop (platoon) level. All the best, John.

A nice example of "technological undercut" -- if I'm going to rely on improved SA and sophisticated DAS to make up for lack of armour, a sackful of Albanian-army-surplus PTRDs might be just the thing. Although to be modern, we'll call them "anti-materiel rifles". I suspect, though, that the normal protection level of even the spam-can class of modern APC will be proof against tungsten-cored 14.5mm all round. Angled boron carbide can work wonders, I reckon. One of the points this brings up is that, whereas in WW2 you could be reasonably sure that armour was steel and projectiles were steel, tungsten or (explosively-formed) copper, games set in the modern period have to consider a wider variety of possible armour materials (aluminium, Kevlar, boron carbine, silicon carbide, possibly in combination as well as singly) and types (add spaced armour, ERA, and soon active armour and electric armour) and projectile materials (add staballoy) and types (add HESH, EFP, thermobaric, tandem and top-attack HEAT). All the best, John.

Jane's Book of Infantry Weapons for 1975 shows on pp. 707-708 drawings of three Soviet 82mm mortar bombs. The diameter over the bourrelets is given as: bomb________diameter O-832_______3.202 inches O-832D______3.216 inches O-832DU_____3.2 inches The same source gives the internal diameter of the British 3-inch mortar as 3.208 inches. Given the sorts of tolerances I imagine these things to be manufactured to, I think they are effectively all the same size. Of course, there's no way of really telling, short of getting an 81mm mortar tube and stuffing 82mm ammunition down it. But on page 726, there is a drawing of a Yugoslav mortar bomb, described as "The 81mm HE bomb. (The Yugoslavian 82mm HE projectile, Model M31)". The drawing shows it with a diameter over the bourrelets of 3.210 inches, and the number "82" written on it. It is fired from the 81mm mortars M31 and M68, respectively copies of the US 81mm M1 and French 81mm Brandt MO-81-61-L. All the best, John.

Yes, I'm aware of that, I was focusing on the D-44, which I believe was a '45 rather than a '44 model when it comes to year designations, but seems to be the gun the original poster has in mind. I suppose confusion with the AA gun in the ground role might explain Chamberlain & Gander's belief that there was an 85mm Divisional Gun in '43. They say: "...during 1943, a new gun appeared that added weight to the barrages then becoming commonplace on the Eastern Front. The new gun was the 85mm Model 1943 or 85-43, and was often referred to as a divisional gun. As things turned out the 85-43 spent most of its life being used as an anti-tank gun. It was produced in relatively small numbers." That doesn't sound very much like AA in the ground role to me, but I can hardly think what else it might be supposed to refer to. All the best, John.

Because that was one of the bore diameters chosen by Wilfred (later Sir Wilfred) Scott-Stokes when he invented the modern mortar. http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/stokes.htm Stokes mortars came in two calibres, nominally 3-inch and 4-inch. Originally, they fired cylindrical projectiles of those calibres, which were seated in the bore by two rings that fitted the bore diameter, about a fifth of an inch wider -- thus the rings were the only parts of the projectile that needed to be manufactured with precision. Of course, this means that the bore diameters of the 3-inch and 4-inch Stokes mortars were 3.2 inches and 4.2 inches respectively. Later, the French Brandt design of finned bomb was adopted to give the Stokes-Brandt pattern of mortar that persists to this day. This also explains why the British called their standard WW2 mortar a 3-inch mortar when it was really an 81mm, like everyone else's. Weapons nominally described as 3-inch, 8cm, 81mm, 82mm, 4.2-inch, 10cm, 105mm, 106mm and 107mm mortars all perpetuate the original Stokes calibres, and the word "mortar" in modern usage now almost invariably means a Stokes-Brandt pattern mortar. All the best, John.

I imagine that the reason no Russian 85mm towed ATk guns are included in the game is that none were included in WW2. Zaloga and Ness' "Red Army Handbook" (1998), TN-30-430 "Handbook on USSR Military Forces" (1945) and Foedrowitz' "Soviet Field Artillery in WW2" (1996) all fail to mention towed 85mm ATk or field guns. Valera Potapov's excellent "Russian Battlefield" site states clearly that the D-44 85mm Divisional Gun was not ready in time to see service during the war, and lists various 85mm experimental guns, none of which were accpeted for service: http://www.battlefield.ru/guns/field_16.html Chamberlain & Gander's WW2 Fact File "Light and Medium Field Artillery" (1975) lists the D-44 divisional gun, and mentions a model 1943 85mm gun, for which no picture seems to be available. Given the state of knowledge of Soviet equipment in the West in 1975, I am strongly inclined to believe that on this occasion Chamberlain and Gander are mistaken. The D-44 is a very well-known gun, and I can hardly imagine that Zaloga, Ness and Foedrowitz just forgot about it. Do you have any other evidence for the use of 85mm Divisional Guns by the Red Army in WW2? All the best, John.

I think it's essential that we see a version of CM that includes both mobile bath units and divisional sausage-making companies (using the division's pigs to recce for minefields will be regarded as gamey). On the one hand, it's good to model logisitics, and on the other, think what a great title you'd have if baths and sausages are included -- "Combat Mission: from Bad to Wurst". All the best, John.