Wicky

It’s time to resume this little project and bring it to conclusion. This likely would have been continued not long after my last post were it not for a small disaster with backups of my source files before I wiped my computer for an OS upgrade. I lost all the turns, and since my opponent chose the map and could not remember which one he used, it was a serious challenge to resume.
Quite a bit of painstaking work went into picking this up again. I went through every map I have for CMBN and could not find the one used for this battle. Let me tell you that going through the 800+ map files is a lot of work. Days of work. It struck me then that he might have used a scenario instead of a QB map, and modified it. After more endless hours, I found it. 
Then the work began of modifying the map, and of reconstructing the situation as it was when I stopped this story. Which brings me to today. 

The past few days I’ve been working on the comic, and have several panels completed. Before posting them I thought I’d bring people up to speed on what’s going on here. 
Those of you who recall the characters from my first CAAR, The Battle of La Ferme Dupont, may remember some of the characters that survived that little fracas. This story takes place some weeks later, taking cue from the last page of the aforementioned CAAR, and tells the tale of Sergeant Hirsch in the later days of the Falaise pocket retreat.
 
Hirsch is a lieutenant now, and his platoon was assigned the task of fording a river and then flanking defenders of a bridge held by US paratroopers. The bridge is vital for the German withdrawal before the noose is tied shut around Falaise. You can see the general info in this map:

 
The platoon has successfully crossed the ford and cleared Hill 141 of US infantry, including a mortar team that has been harassing the main German attack at the bridge. Hirsch has to move through an apple orchard and then reach the hamlet and has very limited time do do so.

Steve, you might already know this if you study Sweden closely but others might not. One reason for our approach to the pandemic is not only by design, but one of necessity. Freedom of moving around may not be restricted in peacetime by law which is part of our constitution. So a declaration of a state of emergency would still not result in people being arrested for violating it. So they use strong recommendations in the hope that people will follow them. Most do. Some don't. And sure, mistakes have been made, primarily a failure to protect nursing homes and long term care facilities. In a way I think it is almost futile to compare countries in the search for "who has handled the crisis the best" or "which strategy works best". I one wants to isolate that factor/variable, there are a myriad of other factors/variables that differentiate countries from each other, and that are dynamic over time - that comparisons are never on equal terms. Furthermore, looking at daily new cases is simply a factor of how much testing is done. We lag behind and has so far mostly tested within the health care sector. In my mind the best way to measure what is going on is to compare number of daily deaths with the seasonal average, like in the WaPo article linked above in an earlier post. In Sweden the public number of deaths are (as far as possible) both in-hospital and out of hospital deaths, something many countries/regions don't. We try to validate the estimated number of Covid-19 related deaths in this fashion and it is pretty accurate. But in the end, the final evaluation of how countries have dealt with this will probably have to wait for a couple of years. And even as tragic as number of deaths are, there a many adverse effects of the pandemic that will take a heavy toll on us all. My biggest fear now is that health care workers can't go on working in these conditions much longer and start to burn out, get depressed, suffer PTSD and such. And when the health care system fails I sure hope there is a vaccine to save us.

The Chinese Ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming also was only a few days ago speaking on the BBC denying Huhan China was the source and pointing the finger at the French as the source of the infection.
He also denies there are no camps in Xinjiang holding Uighurs despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Also what was interesting was how quickly it spread from China to Iran suggesting close contacts between the two esp the Iranian higher ups who came down with Covid-19 in quick sucession.

The Chinese Ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming also was only a few days ago speaking on the BBC denying Huhan China was the source and pointing the finger at the French as the source of the infection.
He also denies there are no camps in Xinjiang holding Uighurs despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Also what was interesting was how quickly it spread from China to Iran suggesting close contacts between the two esp the Iranian higher ups who came down with Covid-19 in quick sucession.

This one kicks off very quickly.

Hey all, 
Came to check up on this forum on the off chance that my fantasy Combat Mission: OPLAN 5029 was going to be announced and we'd finally get to see the PLA in action in this series.
I don't normally post here, I *think* my last post was about 9-10 years ago, but after reading through this thread and seeing some strong opinions and predictions about China, I thought I'd throw in my two cents, as Americans like to say.
I've lived in China for 8 years, speak Mandarin up to HSK level 4-5, and work in manufacturing. I've sat through this whole COVID-19 epidemic, since it first broke here and then spread across the world.
Some of the perceptions about the government here and how they go about their business are pretty laughable, and some are on point, but mostly everyone is viewing society here totally through a western lens, though that's hardly limited to this forum.
 
There seems to be a perception that
1. The virus killed far more people here than is being admitted, even orders of magnitude greater, and that its being covered up to prevent some sort of mass revolt.
2. Society here just needs 'a kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down'; that once the economy goes belly up, there will be some sort of mass revolt.
3. The evil CPC will do absolutely anything to maintain that grip on power, including the mass murder of their own citizens.
4. People are suppressed and given the chance, they will overthrow the tyrannical regime and install a flourishing democracy.
5. My favourite - China has a long view on geopolitics - LOL.
 
The virus could wreck the economy here - there are already warning signs. I've been inundated with offers from factories who have bought PPE manufacturing equipment en masse in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. One insole manufacturer I know has totally collapsed and is relying completely on manufacturing KN95 masks, but due to the recent horror stories of faulty equipment creating yet another gaffe for China, as of two weeks ago only those suppliers on a whitelist can export items marked as medical supplies, regardless of whether or not their factory has all of the ISO standards, FDA registration, EU CE certification, etc. Everyone is scrambling to get on the list. 
China has a mountain of unregulated 'black' financial institutions, massive SME debt, and the situation looks grim to say the least. I read a news article here that had the People's Bank of China warning there is a small chance of depression. That's big news, when they admit something like that, it means the risk is pretty real.
The virus news broke just before the spring festival, which if you don't know is THE major holiday for Chinese and results in the largest human migration in the world every January/February. I was heading up to my wife's family in another city when the news was breaking. While I was there the nationwide lockdown came into place, though for different provinces the rules were slightly different.
Many people in the west seem to think that because China has a huge population and an untrustworthy Government, then by default they simply must have been ravaged and are lying about it. 
Firstly, the virus did affect an area with a large population - the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. Hubei itself has a population about the same as the UK. But it didn't appear everywhere at once, infecting droves of people. It appeared in one place and was noticed by local doctors. China's healthcare system is pretty turd in many ways compared to the west, but its not total rubbish (unless you are talking about traditional chinese medicine, but thats a rant for another day). We all know the story about the doctors that were arrested and accused of spreading rumours on social media. To understand this you have to step back and not straw man every action taken as indicative of the evil government. They were not silenced by the ruling elite, but rather the local police station/government who were following the rules laid out. Pretty stupid and draconian rules obviously, but from their point of view its the same as the rules Captain Crozier apparently broke leading to his dismissal.
Once the actual realisation came through that the doctors were right, action was taken pretty rapidly, though not as fast as we now know could have been taken. Did the government deliberately withhold info from the WHO and the West, allowing the virus to spread so their evil plan could be hatched? Probably not. More likely they didn't realise the scale this was going to be and so nuking their own economy by locking down the country was probably not what came to mind when they had 50 or so people with some weird new type of flu.
When they did fire the pistol though, they did it properly. Remember that this is not the first time that they have had an epidemic, even within the last 20 years. The leading Doctor, the 'hero' of SARS, Zhong Nan Shan, quickly came on TV telling the public and government what to do. Everything was shut down. Existing checkpoints at the entrances to residential areas and roads where manned with people checking everyones temperature. Contact tracing was heavily utilised so that everyone who came into contact with an infected person was contacted and tested. Did China use armed force to suppress people? Yes, but no more than American Police use armed force to suppress rule breakers every day. 
They got on top of things pretty quickly. Are the numbers accurate? Lmao of course not, but mostly for many of the same reasons numbers in good-guy western countries are not accurate. Of course, there IS the possibility that scores more people died, and there are hints here on social media that the numbers are higher - one truck driver admitting in a local news street-interview he'd been delivering about 3000 urns a day for two weeks to a local crematorium in preparation for the Qing Ming festival (the annual festival for honouring the dead). This awkward gaffe was quickly wiped off of Weibo, the Chinese social media platform, but not before millions saw it. Where the masses enraged, demanding the overthrow of the tyrannical regime? No. Most people shrugged it off as pretty normal - of course the official figures are inaccurate.
 
This is quickly turning into a huge post that most people won't bother reading so I'll leave it here for now and if anyone has any questions, they can ask in the forum, and I'll respond.

Numbers are starting to accelerate and blow up in Bakersfield, despite these two doctors (who, seem to be worried about their private business as they urgent care business owners). 

Their claim that the hospitals are empty are false  Yesterday  morning (28th April) , 31 county hospital beds are full from covid--(the ones testing confirmed, with 5 dead now,  856 "tested" positives, local prisons infected, 3,615 tests still pending results.
Their arguments are already falling apart. Every county agency has blasted them and a gaggle of local doctors, hospitals and virologists have had them on the carpet.
This video has been making all the conspiracy/alt-right site rounds of late

Here's an example of what could be an ambiguous death. My oldest daughter is a RN at a major hospital. She was just telling me tonight she has a patient, older, who has COPD. He's had a tough time but has technically recovered from Covid-19, however, it so damaged his lungs that while he no longer has Covid, his COPD will probably now kill him. She says there is little hope for him. He'll technically die of COPD.
So far 7 floors of her hospital are converted to Covid care, new ICUs created. First she was rotated to Covid floors sometimes, then her floor was converted, and she is now being detailed to assist in the ICU. 
However, the point of this post is the good news from the trenches is that the last 3 days they have for the first time, discharged more recovered patients than admitted new ones. It's been a long haul for her and she's pretty strung out. She works 3 days of 12 hour shifts, and then 2 days off. Rinse, repeat. And I wake up at 2am worrying every night. 
But it looks like the worst for her might be..  not over yet, but tapering down... some.

Does it really? Hmmm China makes money from supplying the world with goods used by humans.  Hmm let's shut down the whole world economy and put our own population out of work, get them really mad at the leadership and ferment political change....
That sounds like a cunning plan Baldric would come up with! 
 

Well, so if Germans now have own amphibious vehicle, will the Soviets have the same for parity? Mentioned in other topic Ford-GPA or GMC-DUKW as vehicles of Special purpose motorized battalions

The UK has the ONS office for national statistics and they are doing work on trying to get an accurate picture of what is really happening. It is politically independent. 
The image from the BBC shows 2015 vs 2020.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

I follow a gamers Youtube channel called Gameranx and they have 5.7 million subscribers. They put up a top 10 most historically accurate games list and it was pretty much the usual suspects, big games and so on. As I was watching it I was cursing to myself why these channels never do wargames in a serious fashion, but guess what? Wait for it ....
... and yeah, 5.7 million people might get exposed to a REAL game series 😃

Well apparently we are going to be and it seems the logic is based on fear of an underground movement of speakeasy hair salons.  of all things.....  there simply are no words.  I think I'll go gargle some disinfectant and shove a UV light up my arse.  Science is dead.

Damn you are truly pathetic.  Care to quote the full info instead of cherry picking something for your agenda so we can "show some independent critical thinking" as you expressed it.
Cuomo suggested that an infection rate of 13.9 percent statewide indicates that the death rate could be much lower than what is currently indicated. The state is currently reporting 263,460 confirmed positive coronavirus tests and 15,740 coronavirus deaths statewide, which would indicate a death rate of approximately 6 percent. But if the sample in the antibody testing is indicative of the total percentage of New Yorkers who have antibodies, that means as many as 2.7 million New Yorkers may have had the virus. That would indicate a statewide death rate of about 0.5 percent.
The governor did indicate two caveats with that theory. One is that the official state death count only indicates deaths that happened in a hospital or a nursing home, and does not include coronavirus-related deaths that occurred in a home, which means the official death count is likely higher than that official number. The other caveat is that the data from the antibody testing is only preliminary.
The governor says the tests are crucial on multiple fronts, from identifying potential convalescent plasma donors to informing state officials on the reopening strategy.
The antibody tests have not been immune to controversy, however. In the rush to get antibody tests on the market, their accuracy has been called into question, with fears of a high number of false positives. And the World Health Organization (WHO) said last week that there is no evidence that antibody testing indicates that a person is immune to the disease.
Read that last line again.   I'll spell it out.  There is nothing to say that the 13.9% or 212% are folks who have developed immunity.  We could all use some good news right now, but we all know you don't really care about that. You are looking for justification. What we don't need is to start harping on unconfirmed data as proof.  Then you end up running down the rabbit hole with your fearless leader who just today showed his brilliant mind again.
“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous ultra violet or just very powerful light,” he said, looking toward Bryan and Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the White House coronavirus task force. “And I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you are going to test it.”
He added, “And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you could do either through the skin or in some other way. I think you said that you are going to test that, too. And then I saw the disinfectant, where knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way we could do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning. As you see it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

Think what you want, there have been no strikes yet. Just cover from a GOP that has sold it's soul.  However this isn't about how much of a corrupt pathetic idiot the man you support as Potus is.  He himself apparently thinks it is too early to reopen as well.  Seems my "Marxist media driven narrative" is more in line with Trump right now than yours.  (Granted the idiot can't stick with any plan more than 5 minutes, maybe less if he's about to watch Fox - what a great leader).  But hey he's getting great ratings during the briefings right?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-he-disagrees-strongly-with-georgia-governors-decision-to-reopen-state-000105433.html
And to suggest I want tens of thousands to die just for the doofus to leave office?  That is truly pathetic and beneath you.  How do you go from wanting a discussion and critical thinking to a statement like that?  All that does is confirm I was correct in not expecting any real discussion from you.  Go tune in to Alex jones or Limbaugh or whoever it is that you get your oddly colored view of reality from.
 
 

Thank you but no.  What would be the point?  While I have lots of experience as a VoIP engineer/architect, I have absolutely none as an epidemiologist.  This guy on the other hand is our national expert.  Anthony Stephen Fauci is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. Since January 2020, he has been one of the lead members of the Trump Administration's White House Coronavirus Task Force addressing the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Fauci is widely seen to be one of the most trusted medical figures in the country.
If you don't believe him, why the hell would you believe me?  He says you are wrong and that your suggested path is absolutely the wrong way to deal with this.  He speaks for the White House- most of the time when Trump isn't flip flopping for some adulation points.  If you think you know better than him, well hats off to you.  You can hang out with this lady.
 

Not really.  His position is not supported by the medical community.  They aren't even sure we will develop immunity.  It is not a given.  What we do know is the cost of not doing a lockdown is high.  You can either work with real data and take action recommended by the experts in the field or you can decide based on what someone with unknown credentials posts on the internet (that isn't directed at Kevin but rather the sources posting about this "we need to go with herd immunity" stuff)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sweden-nearly-10-times-number-210442597.html
Just like you can listen to the overwhelming scientific community about climate change or you can listen to the handful of conspiracy people filling the airwaves.
 
My hometown as a historical lesson on what NOT to do
https://news.yahoo.com/parade-killed-thousands-103001530.html

American flu, That was me being cheeky...
Thanks for the interesting article this bit really made me wonder...
Hmm saving lives has a better economic outcome...
"The economic impact of shutdowns
A study published this year argued that cities that acted early and aggressively to impose social distancing to limit the spread of the Spanish flu actually performed better economically after the pandemic was over than those that did not. Fewer workers had died, and the local population more quickly resumed normal economic behavior, three economists found."

+1  Everyone has been making heroic efforts. 
I can't even begin to comprehend how Mike Pence survives the pressure of standing around like a vertical car crash dummy.   

This went much better than I expected. I found a weak spot which allowed me to unravel the enemy positions in quick order.

Gents and Danes (see? I read all the previous posts  ),
The basis of SPOTTING is that it is a time-based check. The seed for the initial spot-check and the interval for subsequent spot-checks is somewhat difficult to determine. In most cases, a 15 second interval will ensure at least ONE spot-check. Now, that spot-check is based on the many factors Steve et alia posted: experience; fatigue; LOS; target location; etc.
Let's say you have an audible contact on a tank. There's dense vegetation, some trees, and some smoke. As well, due to incoming fire, your men may be suppressed. To hope that one spot-check cycle will roll a good contact is...optimistic. Instead, skew the odds to favor your men: give them a PAUSE!
I would suggest replaying that turn (if it's still available) and keep the Sikhs at bay for 1 minute. Yeah, baby, a sitting Sikh kill stack. THEN give them a HUNT command with an ARMOR ARC, moving just one or two action spots, then PAUSE for 15 to 30 seconds. Yeah, baby, a skulking Sikh kill stack. Keep plotting that style of HUNT/PAUSE until you're on the rear of the enemy. Yeah, baby, a satisfied Sikh kill stack.
The key, again, is to allow your troops to accumulate more spot-checks. The only way to do that is to expend TIME.
How do I know this? Let's just say that many men have achieved GLOOOOORY to let me learn this. 
 
Ken

Four pages later this key piece of information finally becomes available, after having literally everyone make false assumptions about it for a month.
The troops DID have contact with the tank! THEY KNEW IT WAS THERE!
Now we know there was some other mitigating factor for spotting, such as the unnecessary 360 degree target arc, or the presence of foliage, smoke, dust, etc.
See? We're finally making progress towards figuring this out. It only took a month and a half. It turns out your troops are not blind, or deaf.
 
Except they DID notice it, they had a contact marker the entire time!
/thread
 
Call me rude all you want, but I was correct about the lack of info, and the OP's inability or unwillingness to provide it.

👍 One of my my faves since CMBB

👍 One of my my faves since CMBB

👍 One of my my faves since CMBB