Shosties

Georg Frederic Handel, contemporary of J.S. Bach, best known for his "Water Music" (the hornpipe movement in particular gets much replay), was a big hit in Hanoverian London and was considered by Beethoven to be the greatest composer ever. He wrote an opera entitled "Xerxes" which is why I asked. Yeah, thinking back I can remember times where using area target for my on-board mortars would have been of benefit. [ August 16, 2002, 02:13 PM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

As usual Jason, you bust out the good stuff. Thanks! redwolf.... Ah, that makes even more sense than a Stuart conversion! So what other guises other than the Badger and the RAM Kangaroo did this AFV find its way into action in? Doesn't the Badger actually have a somewhat higher top speed than the Wasp? Is this a case of better acceleration and turning rate rather than "speed"?

Yup! Which is why I was refining my question. Ahhh, alles klar, as they say Great, now maybe I'll actually start using the area target command for somefink! Xerxes, you wouldn't happen to be a G.F. Handel fan would you?

Engaging reverse slope infantry: is this a case of going full tilt over the top and letting the TacAI take it from there? Or should you have someone peek over the crest so you can pre-target? An interesting possibility would be letting the stream arc over the crest for indirect fire but is this even modeled? Any comments regarding the Badger? Same FT load out and range as the Wasp, slightly higher ground pressure, bit larger target, much more armor (pro), armor rather than vehicle points (con). Seems like a very useful conversion to have done to your Stuarts. I take it both Sherman and Churchill Crocs don't see many QBs given their cost. Still, 80 shots and 100 meter range on the FT and the 75mm to boot give pause.

*Butthead voice* Settle down there, Beavis! On a more serious note, I think its right to keep in mind, for the sake of those who perished in this manner and thus have been deprived of a voice in the affairs of the living, that while war *is* hell, flame warfare is extreme. I would wager that quite a few who dished it out would rather not have the memories of these things with them. I agree with you that it makes sense to save the flame vehicles till later in the game for their shock and routing effect during the mop-up (i.e. you've already "won" at that point, and you want to guarentee it doesn't turn around for your opponent, and you'd like to turn it into a major or total and have auto-surrender kick in). However, I'm curious to see if it is feasible to rely upon them more than that if you give them the right sort of support. [ August 16, 2002, 08:55 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

One thing that I don't think is made very clear in the many, many flamethrowing threads on the forum is just how to go about using vehicular flamethrowers without having them get quickly thumped by infantry AT. In particular, sending Wasps and Badgers against Germans well stocked with late model panzerfausts seems like an iffy proposition to me. Things that come to my mind for making this work: heavy suppression of enemy infantry by arty or direct fire HE fired from well back in LOS, close support of the flamers by friendly infantry (also to convienently bag those flushed out screaming by the fire)... but what do the old hands of the pyro school of play have to say... other than playing against Ghost358th as the British and finding out at the receiving end! [ August 16, 2002, 01:11 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

Very much so. I always thought it was especially ironic that the American produced version should have been named after the Rebel leader. Michael</font>

JLF, From one junior member to another , threads on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of flamethrower units are to be found in great quantity. See that thread kept close to hand here in Tips and Tricks that's called "Anthology of Useful Posts"? There are links to many of those threads right there, in the third message. You can also pick up useful bits that come up in threads that started out with a poorly named title or which rambled away from their original subject by using the forum's search function and concentrating on "Combat Mission - Tips and Tricks". Cheers.

And you didn't have to cop a puppy dog look and say a long drawn out "please" either. That could indeed be true of the majority of the forum members not currently on medication. Poll anyone? I must absent myself from it though. Have we just witnessed the birth of the Roxy Challenge Thread ? :cool: [ August 06, 2002, 03:07 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

Tell that to guys like Vladimir Penniakoff and David Lloyd Owen, though of course some people might doubt that they were entirely rational in those days. Going behind the lines in light vehicles was their bread and butter, either for raiding (PPA) or for gathering intel (LRDG). Of course, they would have avoided strongpoints and dust-ups on the front line like the plague... i.e. the vast majority of situations modelled by CM. So yeah, jeep rushing in CM is generally gamey, but be careful about being so definitive and categorical about RL. Cheers. [ August 06, 2002, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

*LOL* Call this "mouseholing by quantum tunneling!"

The Jeep... A company from the cavalry battalion organic to an ETO armored division had three M8 Greyhounds in the armored car section and six jeeps in the light section. I believe three of the jeeps were armed with the Ma Deuce, and the other three each carried a 60mm mortar crew (single tube, needed to dismount to fire). Here's a huge old thread debating scouting tactics. [ August 05, 2002, 02:59 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

redeker, The problem with this approach in real life would be that I believe ambushers will often let the lead vehicle pass if it doesn't spot them, figuring the point vehicle of a column could be an "expendable"... having a trap sprung later on creates more chaos.

I happened across this in a library, gave it a quick scan and found it pretty interesting (as well as a change of pace, with Red Army officers given something a human face). Red Army Tank Commanders, by Richard Armstrong When told by a brigade commander (Katukov) that he'd rather make a road march to Moscow than travel by rail, Stalin actually asked him how many miles he had till overhaul on his tanks! Amazing!

While this article was written with "one of those other WW2 ETO games" in mind, I found it quite helpful in learning how not to throw away jeeps and Greyhounds and the principles should transfer to CMBO quite directly. http://www.militarygameronline.com/campaginseries/articles/wf_recon.asp Skip the first 1/3rd of the article which is a dicussion of concealment rules for their game, go to "Recon Mission Types and Controlling Factors". Unless your scenario or quick battle is specifically meant to be a probe by recon forces, I would not lead off on the approaches to a flag with lightly armored or unarmored vehicles. In all other situations, these assets are usually much better employed as the eyes and ears for your own flanks in case your opponent is feeling like Hermann Balck that day. There is the temptation to send these folks deep down the map edges to raid into the enemy rear. In this particular wargame I rarely got useful results that way, and in CMBO there should be fewer vulnerable, high victory point targets (big truck and artillery parks, high level HQs, etc.) . The folks who did this sort of thing in real life; LRDG/SAS and Popski's Private Army come to mind; would almost certainly have stayed far away from anything like a typical battle on the front line, choosing to worm their way behind the front someplace quiet. [ July 31, 2002, 10:51 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

I find it interesting the Soviets had a low opinion of the M3 compared to Commonwealth tankers of the 8th Army in North Africa (or so I've heard... anybody dispute this?). I can think of this being attributable to two main reasons: 1) the M3, stopgap though it was, had much to recommend it over every British tank at the time, while Ivan could not help but find it wanting when compared to the T-34. 2) North Africa was forgiving to the M3's main faults: high ground pressure and tall profile. In North Africa as long as you stayed away from soft sand and marshes you'd probably be all right in the M3, and the open-ness made just about any tank stick out so you were at less of a disadvantage then.

As an aside, the Lavochkin LaGG-1 (also the -3?) fighter had a similar nickname, a clever play on the designation. Lakirovannii Garantirovannii Grob Varnished Guaranteed Coffin! :eek: http://www.ophetweb.nl/ww2w/ww2htmls/lagglagg3.html

Maybe not the best place to ask this question, but this thread has me curious. Being a midwesterner I've driven past my share of elevators and like the Stalingrad one they usually put the proverbial brick s***house to shame and look like ideal things to turn into fortresses when your enemy is at the gates. Given that it can't be cheap to build them like this, why is this done? The only reason I can think of would be to contain dust explosions. Any grog countryfolk out there care to enlighten us? [ July 28, 2002, 12:52 AM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

Michael, Good points. Siberia is pretty vast, and that railway was (and mostly still is) the only transport infrastructure out there. If their intention was just to help out the Germans, they could have cut the railway by airstrike/airborne ops and prevented the redeployment that gave Stalin the muscle for his winter counteroffensive. However, there was very little incentive for them to do this. If they even knew about the wealth of Siberia, it was well underneath the ground and would have taken too much time to even begin to exploit for their purposes. The correct answer to Japan's quandry was not (a) Strike North or ( Strike South, but, of course, © No Strike... forget about conquering China, get back in good graces of the international community, and obtain resources the smart and ethical way, by buying them with the money made by exporting manufactured goods. As John Belushi would say, "But Nooooooooo!!!".

That's why I wrote the strike southers had the best seeming answer to the first strategic goal: resources (POL: petroleum oil and lubricants! But also iron ore, rubber, and food!). As for the second, defeating China, I was thinking of a direct rather than indirect factor. The strike north people would have needed to advocate a very ambitious invasion of the Eastern Soviet Union in order to cut off the land lines to China (Akira shaking hands with Fritz in the Urals? "That's your half, this is ours!?"). You bring up the vulnerability of Japan's lines of supply. This was indeed a major instance of why Japanese conduct of the war as a whole wins almost no points in my book. Even more of a head-slapper was that the Japanese did almost nothing to exploit the vulnerability of *our* lines of supply, despite having a large submarine fleet and excellent cruisers. Japanese admirals fixated on big fleet battles, and even then didn't pull them off at all (Coral Sea, Midway, etc.). When it was time to pull out all the stops they got cold feet (Solomons) and we were able to eke out a victory even then, with only one operating fleet carrier in the theater.

There was the Ohka, "cherry blossom", code named Baka, "fool", by the Allies. http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/attack/ohka/index.shtml I've heard that there was insufficent control surface area to affect terminal manuevers during the high speed dive (or maybe transsonic effects were kicking in?) so most never hit their targets.

I remember Mannstein writing in "Lost Victories" that the Slovaks performed very well in his estimation. Am I getting this right? [ July 26, 2002, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

My understanding is that the Japanese were divided into two major camps of strategic thought: "strike north" and "strike south". Their primary goals were to achieve a decisive victory in their invasion of China and ensure access to the resources needed to keep their economy going. The "strike north" camp saw the Soviet Union as Japan's most evident foe. They had tangled before in the Russo-Japanese war and the hotheads were left highly unsatisfied by the peace deal brokered by Teddy Roosevelt. Naturally, had the "strike north" camp prevaled, Stalin would have found himself in quite a bind, particularly if the Japanese had attacked in mid-1941 to tie down the Siberians and prevent them from being available for his winter counteroffensive against the Germans. However, when asked just how their plans would satisfy Japan's primary goals, they did not sound very convincing. That Siberia was a treasure trove of oil and minerals I don't think was known or widely appreciated at the time, so it would not have seemed a ready answer to Japan's resource troubles. Add to this the defeat at Khalkin Gol, which showed the Japanese Army rather unprepared to fight the Red Army. The "strike south" camp saw the Dutch East Indies, the Phillipines, and so on as the ideal place to acquire resources. That going after these would force a conflict with America already hostile over China was beyond doubt, so the centerpiece of this strategy was a knockout blow to the U.S. Pacific and Asiatic fleets and the Army and Marine garrisons in the region. Surely such a blustering opponent as America, throwing it's political weight around without being seriously prepared for war (a lesson to be learned here folks!!) would balk at the cost of retaking the lost ground and sea. That the Navy would be doing the major lifting in this scenario was actually attractive to the more politically powerful Army as it meant fewer resources would need to be diverted from China. (Ironically, it is unclear how either strategy really would have resulted in a decisive victory in China, it all seems like a lot of handwaving to me. [EDIT] Aha, the strike southers could at least point to the Burma Road! [/EDIT]) So that is basically why what happened, happened, as I understand it. Germany and Japan's alliance was more along the lines of moral and propaganda support than a strategic partnership. The Allies certainly devoted much more and much better cooperative thinking and effort at the level of grand strategy considering the inevitable differences of view and competing post war agendas. [ July 26, 2002, 04:05 PM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]

redwolf, Wonderful thread there in the beginning! (As for the later part.... ) *LOL* I especially loved this tidbit: :cool: Thanks, redwolf!

Xenophile, OK, La Haye Sainte, that's 450 killed or wounded over four hours, or 240 minutes. Let's do the math: it averages out to 1.875 casualties per minute for the *whole* regiment (something like a 0.25% chance of being a casualty within a minute at the outset... certianly not as bad as Russian roulette). At that rate, some booze and a rather fearsome gent that was the British NCO in those "scum of the earth" days could keep a man on his feet and in formation. Also, men back then knew that when formation was broken, cavalry would have their field day with them. Keegan (good reference to bring up, BTW, Mike!) points out that the most dangerous time for an army of the day was in retreat! OK, try this out on the "iron men": park several well-sited and tended water-cooled machineguns in front of the regiment. Add indirect shelling from breech loading artillery firing fragmenting shells with HE-filler instead of direct fire solid shot (maybe some cannister) from muzzle loading guns. The casualty rate will soar by orders of magnitude and I doubt the booze, the threatening, and fear of men on horseback will keep them standing in squares for very long. [ July 24, 2002, 11:07 PM: Message edited by: Shosties4th ]