John D Salt

In the situation that occurred in my game, I actually think that the results were not at all unreasonable -- and the vehicle was not in this case re-tracing its path. The assault gun was buttoned-up, in close terrain, having knocked out quite a few enemy vehicles at close range and seen both friendly and enemy infantry running around higgledy-piggledy within a few dozen metres. Someone let off some smoke, and I think it would have been entirely reasonable for the assault gun commander to reverse smartly into a cornfield (the most open terrain to hand) to try to put a bit of distance between himself and who-knows-what that might be plotting to leap out of the smoke and commit unpleasantness at close quarters. It was just one of those days when the cornfield you're reversing across happens, unbeknowst to you, to have an enemy tank parked in the middle of it. Some days you find a shark in the custard, some days you don't... Ah yes. What you're saying is that we ahould seek to exploit informational resources in an integrated and coherent fashion to achieve tactical situational awareness and information dominance in the dynamic land battlespace. Or, more succinctly, RTFB. All the best, John.

I can't remember if it was Jary or Carbuncle who had a grumble in the columns of the British Army Review about the namby-pamby "Armoured Vehicle RE" designation replacing the original, more aggressive-sounding "Assault Vehicle RE". I think RE "Assault Engineers" might have become "Armoured Engineers" at about the same time. As a side-note, although the plural of AVRE these days is almost invariably AVREs, several contemporary documents I have looked at in the PRO, with commendable logic, use the plural AVsRE. Another point of pootling significance is how one pronounces the thing. I am used to hearing "av-ree", presumably because trying to pronounce it like the French river would sound too much like "ARV". All the best, John.

I've just finished a game of "Move it or lose it" against the AI, with me playing the Germans. A fun battle, despite losing all my useful light armour in the first turn or two to all those blasted Stuarts. Some pretty steely moments, too. One MMG team was still swinging at the end of the game after nailing two half tracks and taking fire from god-knows-what right through the game. The solitary StuH shot away almost its entire ammo load, bagging a variety of light armour in a toe-to-toe scramble, before finally backing inexplicably across a cornfield and encountering a Stuart arse-first; it shrugged off two close-range hits performing the neutral turn to bring the gun to bear, but died on the third before getting a shot off. One amazing infantry section in a house over the river that had been repeatedly overrrun ended the game with two men left, still up and fighting and credited with 25 infantry casualties and a half-track. Looking around the map on the AAR, however, I noticed something I had not noticed before, namely three Pz IVs parked tidily out of the way on the rear edge of the map. Yes, they were mentioned in the briefing, if I'd been paying attention. Given that the Americans were down to one each of Stuart, half-track and M-10 by the end of the game, those lads might very well have come in useful. Probably I would have managed something a bit better than the major victory I ended up with. It's at times like this I really appreciate Frank Zappa's remark that stupidity is commoner than hydrogen. Or, to say it in German, "Gegen Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens" (and if any of the Germanophones in the group can give me the exact original form of this from "Die Jungfrau von Orleans", I'd be very grateful -- Mr. Web seems to show lots of variants). All the best, John.

Naah. Borg spotting, failure to distinguish group cohesion from motivation, better indirect fire modelling and an end to the silly idea that British and Commonwealth companies are normally commanded by Captains all come above these two. The second one is IMHO not a problem at all. To comment a bit on the first: True, it is too easy to spot infantry firing at you from cover. Almost no wargames rules reflect the difficulty of finding the enemy; most wargamers would I think complain bitterly if the task was made half as hard as it should be. When I was in the TA the rule-of-thumb we used was "You won't see the enemy until he shoots at you, and sometimes not even then". The third part of the section attack battle-drill (unless dame memory deals me a turd, after battle preparation and reaction to effective enemy fire) was "locating the enemy", typically by having a couple of blokes get up and dash a few paces while the rest of the section tried to spot where the fire was coming from. On exercise, I often saw ambushes sprung because people simply could not believe that the target section could get any closer without seeing them; they almost always could have let them get closer. Junior leaders with good fieldcraft could spring ambushes in woodland from a few metres, and on one occassion (wearing NBC kit, which makes spotting much harder) an ambush was triggered when the point man of the target section trod on the ambush commander's hand. Having said that, fire can be delivered sufficiently accurately to neutralise the enemy without having necessarily pinpointed him. A bullet passing within a couple of metres will probably be enough to make most people give serious thought to the prospect of getting their head well down, and I imagine that it must be even harder to believe that you haven't been seen when there are bullets cracking past nearby. Of course, CM:BO allows speculative area fire, so such a mechanism is in place; but fire may also have an effect even if there is no direct LOS to the target. A good soldier can also read the ground and brass-up likely spots for fire positions. I rather spoilt one OTC training Major's fun when, after a platoon attack for which I had been GPMG gunner of the fire section, he boasted that his fire position in the defence had not been seen throughout the entire action, and he would have bagged dozens of the attackers. I pointed out where I thought his position was, said I had directed about fifty shots at this point, and suggested that the fallen tree-trunk that obscured him from my direction would not have stood up well to 7.62mm ball. Firing sticks? What are those? Is it a funny American way of saying range marks? I assume that "sector sketches" is American for what I would call range cards. Ah, but as well as the defenders being really hard to spot, the attackers are a bit of a problem once the first shot has gone down the range. A properly-trained section will vanish into the ground in no time flat once it comes under effective fire -- the soldiers should have constantly in mind the place they will take cover if fired on, and it's a habit that quickly becomes so ingrained that people carry on doing it for years after they leave the forces. The way the micro-terrain works at this level is a fascinating subject, and people who haven't experienced it first-hand consistently underestimate the effect on line-of-sight that fractions of a metre can have on one's field of view when the eyeballs are at ground level. This is something you can experiment with for yourself; try spotting a friend wearing dull-coloured clothing at different ranges, in different cover, and see how much more or less you can see of each other standing, kneeling and lying. Be advised that you may, as I did when I tried this with a pal, attract the attention of the local constabulary: A passing citizen had thought it worth reporting that two young men wearing camouflage jackets were behaving in an apparently furtive manner in the countryside. :eek: It would be jolly nice if the folks at BTS could come up with an elegant, convincing and computationally efficient way of handling these questions of micro-terrain and the visual abilities of eyeball Mk 1. If they do so, I think they will be rather in advance of any computer simulations currently used or planned in the military research community, where basic infantry questions have never received the attention they deserve. All the best, John.

Strengths of British infantry that don't seem to have been mentioned yet are the fact that there was at full strength a fourth rifle company in the battalion, and the carrier platoon, which has an assortment of uses. Forward resupply, casevac and liaison uses are not modelled in CM:BO, but you might try putting a screen of carriers along the front of an infantry assault against an infantry defence, and see how that helps. I believe the Bn organisation provided in CM:BO is badly short of carriers; as well as those needed to two the 6-pdrs and carry the 3-in mor platoon, there should be 13 in the carrier platoon. Another factor that cannot be modelled at the CM scale is the British infantry troop replacement policy, which was much superior to the deplorable American one. Jac Weller's "Weapons and Tactics: Hastings to Berlin" quotes Colonel Gore-Langton, based on his WW2 experience: "He found that three Brens were required to make as much noise as one MG-42. He believed, however, that one Bren was as good as two MG-42s for shooting at men under combat conditions". A fairly unusual view of the relative merits of the two weapons, I think. I would think that HtH combat would be less common than CM:BO makes it. In "Squad Leader" terms, I would have some pretty stiff morale tests to be passed by the attacker before closing to contact, and by the defender to stand. Once an assault goes in, I would expect the normal result to be the enemy fleeing, rather than standing and slugging it out. All the best, John.

Indeed so; as I had rather thought I had pointed that out some time ago. Some people seem absolutely determined to continue to muddle the effectiveness of a weapon with the number of casualties caused by it. Weapons have effects other than the infliction of casualties. By that time in the war, the Germans were well on their way to doing away with conventional rifles altogehter. Still, how many military rifles have been produced since WW2 without bayonet lugs? All the best, John.

If it matters so little, then why did I have remarkably little difficulty finding evidence of so many of the things? How, if edged weapons have no psychological effect, do you account for the Argentine abandonment of their defensive position at the appearance of 1/7th Gurkhas in the Falklands? I take it that you haven't bothered to read Griffith's "Forward into Battle". You don't seem to be familiar with Dave Hackworth's remarks about bayonet training and Willie Lump-lump in his "About Face", either. Of course, it's possible that you understand more about infantry close combat than Dave Hackworth; but I beg leave to doubt it. If you think "bombast" is out of place in an assault, then I think your understanding of the way infantry tactics works is badly underdeveloped. My military history goes wobbly and out-of-focus before about 1914, but I could have sworn that bayonets had been used for a while before then. I suggest that you read Griffith's "Battle tactics of the Western Front", especially from page 68 onwards, where it is pointed out that many British Army trainers, including Maxse, were looking upon the bayonet with renewed favour in 1918, especially as an adjunct to the creeping barrage. ...or sharpened entrenching tools, or knuckledusters, or passenger handles removed from the London Underground. It has been noted that "fighter types" tend to fight with, as the saying has it, "all available weapons" (see "War on the Mind"). So no disagreement with this particualr "blinding flash of the obvious", although in the hands of the average soldier, I would estimate the likely effectiveness of the bayonet as rather higher than the pistol in close combat. But you seem to have muddled your thinking by the assumption that only killing matters, and that psychological effects don't. It's hard to think of a more grossly erroneous assumption when dealing with infantry combat. People shout and yell when they are assaulting; do you claim that they should not do so because it won't kill anyone? Of course not. I think that something that is described in accounts of it as a "bayonet charge" is, on the face of it, likely to be a bayonet charge. So the fact of their occurrence seems not to be at issue. What the precise mechanism of the psychological effect is in making the enemy pack it in is of course debatable; but I notice that you don't present any evidence for your suppositions about the question. It might seem to be "common sense", but that often misleads in questions of battle psychology. As an example, your apparently "common-sense" statement that "perforated is perforated" will not stand up to a moment's inspection. If infantrymen did genuinely weigh the risks of different threats to their health, they would, presumably, prefer being attacked by grenade to being shot at, as the proportion of deaths from bullet fire is much higher. People do not, however, make such rational judgements in combat; Stouffer's famous table showing comparative rankings of different weapons for lethality and how frightening they were is reproduced, I think, in both "War on the Mind" and Ellis' "The Sharp End". Likewise, the after-action report for the Ia Drang Valley battles reports that the VC reacted quite differently to HE and WP fire, tending to go to ground under the former but get up and run around under the latter, and it is generally accepted that flame weapons have psychological effects much greater than their destructiveness would warrant. I don't know what rank you imagine the officers who would typically give the order "fix bayonets" would be, but I would think that they would typically be Majors at most, and expected to lead their men from the front. To call such officers "rather silly" from the comfort of an armchair is not something I would feel comfortable doing. As you admit yourself that the result may have been a morale boost for the attackers, I am at a loss to discover what the substance of your argument is. Or do you think that opportunities for raising morale are so plentiful that you can afford to pass up a few? This is an extremely silly argument. I cannot imagine any mechanism whereby having or not having a bayonet attached to your rifle would have the slightest effect on your ability to prepare grenades. Grenades, by their nature, tend to be used either against people behind cover or from a distance. Again, you would do well to refer to "Battle tactics of the Western Front"; many British tacticians at the end of WWI considered that extensive grenading effectively meant that progress of the attack had come to an end. Quite so. That's probably why nobody has ever said it was. Inventing counter-arguments solely to knock them down is not a mode of argument I find very convincing. I have open in front of me a copy of the "Report of the committee on the lessons of the Great War" (the Kirke Report), originally published in 1932, re-issued by the British Army Review in 2001 and available from the PRO as WO33/1297. On page 71 of the BAR edition, in Gen. Kennedy's report on operations on the Western Front, there appear the words "For a short distance, pace and the bayonet are the two deciding factors". So an official publication synthesising the combat experience of the period directly contradicts you. Perhaps you would like to post your sources for your position -- or are you in fact the one engaging in "purest bombast and bilge"? All the best, John.

I don't think the "bayonet charge" is uniquely British; the Russians, Japanese and French seem to have been equally fond of it and can equally claim it as their own. There are of course other things than a bayonet that one can brandish while rushing towards the enemy position; as I mentioned in my post citing bayonet charges in NW Europe, some people chose to assault using something else. "Basher" Bates and Thomas Peck Hunter both won their VCs making single-handed assaults with a Bren gun. Colonel "H" Jones in the Falklands went down (and again won a VC) assaulting an Argentine trench with a Sterling SMG. I looked in my copy of "infantry aces of the Third Reich" to see if I could find any examples of successful German bayonet charges, but if the book is anything to go by, the Germans seem to have preferred the grenade and the machine-pistol for close combat. At any rate, I believe that the idea that German troops were less prepared to fight it out hand-to-hand than soldiers of other nations is a mistake; accusing the enemy of being unwilling to stand in close combat is a fairly typical kind of national slur, and has at some time probably been used by almost everyone about almost everyone else (including IIRC by Martin Poppel, a German para, about the British in his book "Heaven and Hell"). It seems to me that there are three different approaches that one can use in an assault. One is to close with the bayonet, and try to scare the enemy out; one is to try to destroy the enemy with grenades; and the third to try to destroy him with bullet fire. Any assault will probably include a mix of these (notice that "Dytor's charge" included both fire and movement and grenade-throwing). Paddy Griffith's "Battle tactics of the Western Front" points out that in WW1 the German preference was for grenading (as mentioned also in Gudmundsson's "Stormtroop tactics"), while the British preferred the bayonet (and I wonder if this was not due to the very unfavourable characteristics of the No. 36M grenade as an assault weapon). Presumably such preferences would continue into WW2, and the German advantage in light automatic weapons would also presumably tend to lessen their reliance on the bayonet (why get up and stick someone when you can let him have a mag from your MP-44?). A peek at the WRG 1925-1950 rules is interesting, as it suggests that formal assaults (suggestive of bayonet charges) tend to be the province of relatively less tactically skilled armies. I don't think that's quite right, but it does seem to me that a full-blooded bayonet charge implies a (perhaps momentary) loss of control that is not necessarily needed if one prefers to fight by grenading (see Tom Wintringham's 1940 book "New Ways of War" and SPI's splendid boardgame "Patrol!" for "grenadist" perspectives on minfantry minor tactics). This loss of control shows in British infantry tactics in the strong emphasis put on re-organising immediately after an assault. It may be that a "grenade-school" assault may not have to surrender control to the same extent. Does anyone have access to WW2-era German infantry tactics documents that indicate whether or not this post-assault reorganisation was emphasised to the same extent? All the best, John.

It's an SOP after you've won the firefight, when the *enemy* is pinned. Incidents of "flight to the front" do occur, but a bayonet charge is the planned climax of practically every British section or platoon attack. It's the way I was trained to do things in the TA, 1978 to 1983. The point about bayonet-work is not its frequency; it is the ultimate nature of the threat it represents. I would imagine that the psychological effect of a bayonet assault is much more likely to get defenders to break and run than any amount of bullet fire. Even in a state of extreme fear, it should be fairly obvious that you can't outrun a bullet, and if you are in a slitter or behind any kind of cover, you are better off keeping your head down than getting up and running (if you're so far gone with fear that you can't even figure this out, then I think the tendency will be to freeze into immobility, not to run for it). It makes more sense, though, to run from men with bayonets -- if you don't, they are going to come into your hole with you, brandishing nasty pointy things. I can find examples of bayonet charges successfully dislodging a defender with a quick flonk around the web. How many instances can people find of bullet fire forcing a dug-in enemy to break and run, as happens in CM? It needs to be modelled because it is a critically important part of how minor tactics work, and influences them strongly by its threat, if not so much by its execution. There are plenty more examples to be found from all theatres in WW2 and from Korea, and more still of people closing the enemy in an apparently suicidal rush but using automatic weapons or grenades rather than rifle and bayonet. A quick exploration on the web produced the folowing examples, all specifically described as "bayonet charges", all from NW Europe 1944-45 and against a German opponent: Capt Robert H Shulz, 2 Bn 358 Inf Regt, 90th Inf Div, La Haye du Puits, France, June 1944. Awarded Silver Star. Sgt Hulon Whittington, 41 Armd Inf Regt, 2nd Armd Div, Grimesnil, France, 29 Jul 1944. Awarded MOH. I & K Coys, 3 Bn 442 RCT, nr. Biffontaine, France, 30 Oct 1944. Awarded PUC. Richard Durkee, 551 Para Inf Bn, 82nd Abn Div, Rochelinval, 05 Jan 1945. That's four more American examples, so Cole's can hardly have been the "only" bayonet charge in NWE even if one doesn't count non-Americans, such as: Lt Tasker Watkins, 1/5 Welch Regt, Barfour, France, 16 Aug 1944. Awarded VC. Lt-Col Payton-Reid, 7 KOSB, Arnhem, 17 Sept 1944. Maj Geoffrey Powell, 156 Para Bn and Brig "Shan" Hackett, Oosterbeek, 19th Sept 1944. I have little doubt that a more thorough search would throw up many more examples. All the best, John.

Oh, the usual way. I don't pretend that this is by any means a complete list, but here are a couple of snippets from Nick van der Bijl's "Nine Battles to Stanley" (Leo Cooper, Barnsley, 1999): At Top Malo house (the order to fix bayonets having been given previously), the M&AW commander "ordered the assault group to advance in skirmish order, as had been practised so often before and which he had briefed the previous night, with two teams of four leapfrogging each other. But, to his utter astonishment, the carefully thought-out plan was totally ignored and all eleven Royal Marines rose, and yelling and screaming, charged down the slope, leaving their commander behind". This attack drove the Argentines out of the house and then seems to have degenerated into a confused shooting-match at close range until the Argentines surrendered. The defeated Argentines were elite naval commandos, adequately equipped with self-loading and automatic weapons. During the night attack on Mount Tumbledown, Major John Kiszely, CO of Left Flank Coy of the Scots Guards "found himself in front of 15 platoon and was heard to shout "Are you with me, 15 platoon?" Silence. "Come on , 15 platoon, are you with me?" Silence, and then a reluctant "Och aye, sir. I'm with you!" and "Aye, sir. I'm f****** with you!" from the other side. Led by their company commander, 15 platoon surged up the slope and charged the marines with bayonets fixed. Kiszely stabbed a dark figure who collapsed back into his trench holding his chest. The Argentine marines and army were slowly overwhelmed, losing seven marines and five army killed, several wounded and others missing. Left Flank bit deep into Vasquez' defences and eventually Kiszely and seven men reached the summit. There was a violent scuffle in the darkness among the rocks before the last of the defenders were driven off. Far below the British saw the lights of Stanley, the ultimate objective." Here is the account from Martin Middlebrook's "Task Force" (revised edition, Penguin, London, 1987) of "Dytor's Charge", for which Lt. Clive Dytor won the MC on Two Sisters leading 8 Troop, Z Coy, 45 Royal Marine Commando. These are Dytor's own words: "It came to a point where I realized it was a stalemate and I actually remembered, at that point, a piece from a book I had read once -- in a book called "The Sharp End" -- a bit about the Black Watch in the Second World War. The adjutant had got up and waved his stick and said, "Is this the Black Watch?" and been killed immediately, but the whole unit had got on then, surged forward. I remember thinking about that and then, before I knew it I suppose, I was up and running forward in the gap between my two forward sections. I shouted "Forward everybody!" I was shouting "Zulu! Zulu! Zulu!" for Z Company. I talked to my blokes afterwards; they were amazed. One of them told me he had shouted out to me "Get your ****ing head down, you stupid bastard!" I ran on, firing my rifle one-handed from my hip and I heard, behind me, my troop getting up and coming forward, also firing. The voice I remember most clearly was that of Corporal Hunt, who later got a Military Medal. I think what happened was that Corporal Hunt was the first man to follow me, his section followed him, the other sections followed, and the troop sergeant came up at the rear, kicking everybody's arse. "So 4, 5 and 6 sections came up abreast, pepperpotting properly. I could hear the section commanders calling "section up, section down." It worked fantastically; it was all done by the three section commanders and the troop sergeant at the rear shouting to keep everybody on the move and the hare-brained troop commander out at the front. "That assault up that hill was the greatest thrill of my life. Even today, I think of it as a divine miracle that we went up, 400 metres I think it was, and never had a bad casualty. Only one man was hurt in the troop, with grenade splinters from a grenade thrown by a man in his own section. When we had been waiting on the Start Line, I had prayed that the Lord would give me the strength and courage to lead my men and do with me what you will and He did just that." I believe that Clive Dytor became a clergyman after leaving the Royal Marines. Middlebrook's narrative continues: "Marine Oyitch, left behind with the casualty group, heard his comrades charging. "We could hear them calling out, "Commandos, Royal Marine Commandos!"; that was to let the Argies know who was going to go in and kill them. If they chose to mix with the best in the world, they were going to get burned." Dytor's men were under fire from automatic weapons the whole way. All the best, John.

The Gurkhas' probably used their kukris (if they got a chance) in the Falklands, as their preferred method of close combat. </font>

That is the figure given as standard in "The British Army Handbook 1943" and mentioned in passing by GMcDF in "Quartered safe out here" when off on his jaunt to see the wonderful Captain (or was it Major?) Grief. I don't think it's enough for serious infantry work, though. My copy of "Infantry Training vol. IV: Infantry section leading and platoon tactics" dated 1950 suggests a basic load of 100 rounds for the riflemen in the section, which seems much more reasonable. The basic load for the section suggested includes 800 rounds of rifle amn, 5 Sten mags, 19 Bren mags, 18 HE and 4 smoke grenades. Recall that amn replen under fire was one of the things for which the carrier was very useful; this is not modelled in CM. All the best, John.

Dunno 'bout that. Mike Reynolds' "Steel inferno", Max Hastings' "Overlord" and Carruthers and Trew's "Normandy Battles" all give 600. By my back-of-an-envelope calculations, there are three tank or armoured brigades committed to Epsom (one in the Armoured Division and two in independent brigades). This makes nine regiments (one of the independent brigades is shy a regiment, but the division has an armoured recce regiment to be counted in). Each regiment has three sabre squadrons. Each sabre squadron would have 18 or 19 battle tanks. Assuming 18, and completely disregarding all light tanks, AA tanks and tanks in RHQs, we have 9 x 3 x 18 = 486. I suspect that the 600 figure has been arrived at by assuming, in round numbers, 60 battle tanks per regiment (a reasonable figure if including the RHQ tanks) and multiplying by 10 for the number of regiments, failing to notice the missing regiment from 31 (IIRC) tank bde. This adjustment would make the final figure 540, rather like Andreas' suggested figure. All the best, John.

I don't like using the word "realistic", which serves only to confuse things; but I would certainly like a game where people had to do terrain recce, something I have never seen a wargame do before except some miniatures games I've umpired. People who think this doesn't matter have, presumably, neither seen a brigade commander potter off to his helo for a flight to take a look at the ground; nor can they have had the educative experience of trying to go "right flanking" through a thigh-deep bog, which stopped our rifle group doing its assault and drew sour remarks about "someone didn't do their terrain recce, did they, sir" from one of the old lags. All the best, John.

There were few bayonet wounds reported -- that has been true at least since the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, though. That is a very different thing from there having been "few, if any, successful bayonet charges". A successful bayonet charge is one from which the enemy runs before getting to handigrips. AIUI, getting a very small number of men up to the enemy position was normally sufficient to cause the enemy to abandon it. The moral effect on both sides -- the attacker's commitment symbolised by acting on the order "Fix bayonets, bayonets fix", and the defender's reaction to seeing the bayonets "glitter in the sun" -- is something that I do not believe the CM engine attemtps to simulate. The effect may be considerable, as Paddy Griffith argues in his excellent and thought-provoking "Forward into Battle" (Antony Bird, Chichester, 1981; I believe a second edition is now available). British infantry were still conducting successful bayonet charges in the Falklands in 1982, remember... All the best, John.

If you want to move them, give them a "move" order. Not really too surprising, is it? All the best, John.

I'd like to know your source for this (apart from memory). I've not heard it before. Again, I'd like to know your source. I did once have a conversation with a pub landlord who claimed to have used the PIAT in what was then Palestine in action against Jewish insurgents, which I imagine would have been at least a year or two after the war. Gander (see reference below) says that the PIAT continued in service during the Korean war. In "Quartered Safe out Here", George McDonald Fraser recounts cocking a PIAT manually while prone, so I think it must have been possible. Terry Gander's book "Bazooka: Hand-Held Hollow-Charge Anti-Tank weapons" (Parkgate Books, London, 1998: ISBN 1-90261-615-4) gives comparative performance stats on all these weapons. The initial velocities of each are stated as being: M1, M1A1, M9 or M9A1 bazooka______83 m/sec R-Werfer Püppchen________________150 m/sec RPzB 43, 54 or 54/1_______________110 m/sec PF klein, PF-30____________________30 m/sec PF-60____________________________45 m/sec PF-100___________________________62 m/sec PF-150________________________c. 200 m/sec PIAT__________________________76-137 m/sec It is not clear to me why the PIAT has a range of velocities shown -- whether this reflects uncertainty about the true value or variation with different models of bomb or firing modes -- but it is clear that the PIAT's intial velocity is at worst very little inferior to the bazooka, and at best higher than either the bazooka or the Panzerschreck. All the best, John.

Indeed. The source I consider the most trustworthy (the tables in Hunnicutt's "Sherman") give the folowing penetration figures for the 75mm M3 at 500 yards and 30 degrees: APC M61 against homogenous armour: 66mm APC M61 against face-hardened armour: 74mm AP M72 against homogenous armour: 76mm AP M72 against face-hardened armour: 66mm The figure given in CM:BO therefore seems entirely reasonable. All the best, John.

What do you believe the difference is? Both the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and Brassey's Companion to the British Army seem to think there's no difference. "Sharpshooter" is the more old-fashioned term; I'm not quite sure why it's used in CM:BO. A marksman is a different thing, denoting shooting skill only, whereas a sniper also needs highly-developed fieldcraft skills. I'm not sure why they come in 1-strong elements in CM:BO; in British doctrine at least snipers always fight in pairs, and I thought this was fairly common in other armies, too. I'd say a marksman was a good shot, a sniper was a good shot with extremely good fieldcraft, and a Sharpshooter was a member of 3/4th County of London Yeomanry. All the best, John.

B T White's "Tanks and other AFVs of WW2" points out that the Staghound was used by SHQs and RHQs, where its roominess was appreciated. I have seen the qualities of the Staghound commented on in war diaries for British cavalry regiments serving in Normandy. AECs were used in the 75 troops of armoured car squadrons in NWE. One of the things that I think is likely to cause confusion is the variety of British recce troops one might meet in the NWE campaign. Roughly, armoured car regiments (cap-badged cavalry) were the recce troops of Corps. They would drive things like Daimlers, Staghounds (HQ troops), AECs (75 troops) and Humbers (HQ troops), with a fair number of scout cars in the mix. Armoured recce regiments (cap-badged cavalry) were the recce troops of armoured divisions. These would drive Cromwells. Yes, Cromwells. Under Pip Roberts in 11 Armd Div, they would be treated like any other armoured regiment and brigaded with another regiments and two battalions to form one of two brigade groups in the division. Recce regiments (cap-badged reconaissance corps) were the recce troops of infantry divisions. They would drive Humbers, carriers, and the Humber Light Recce Car. I really want to see the Humber LRC (and its Canadian equivalent, the Otter) in a future edition of CM, ideally with the choice of Boys ATR or PIAT as anti-tank armament. Additionally, bear in mind that units had their own recce capabilities, typically Stuarts (possibly with turrets removed) and scout cars of the recce and/or intercomm troops in an armoured regiment, and the carrier platoon in an infantry battalion. [Of course, none of the above will be comprehensible if you don't know that the British call armour, tank, arty, sapper and recce battalions "regiments" -- but we all knew that, didn't we?] All the best, John.

Its basically a screw on adapter to produce a squeeze-bore effect with for AP rounds. Developed in the UK by an emigre Czech (?) engineer whose name escapes me at the moment, [snips] </font>

I don't see how it can possibly be anything to do with the charge, whereas (despite the fact I don't sprechen Deutsche worth a damn) copper and sintered iron would seem like quite reasonable materials for driving bands. I'm rather surprised that the copper band should give a shorter barrel life than the sintered iron one, though. All the best, John.

Eh? How on earth would the use of handwheel traverse have any effect at all on trunnion jump? As to the 6-pdr, all 6-pdrs in British service used free (shoulder) traverse. I have never heard it mentioned as anything other than a positive feature. The Americans, adopting and adapting the basic design as the 57mm gun M1, replaced this with handwheel traverse. The MIA2 and all subsequent American models returned to free traverse, "in the light of experience" according to Hogg's "British & American Artillery of WW2". All the best, John.

What particular aspects of the book are "horrible"? All the best, John.