Foxbat

Ah, Sokoban! Those were the days...

Or see the previous thread

To his credit, it is clear he actually played the game (if only all reviewers did that) and he does a good job of describing game aspects that are probably unfamiliar to the uninitiated.. some things are still hilarious though: "I’ve actually not seen an email option in a modern game." one can only imagine what a PBEM game Battlefield 1942 would be like [ January 13, 2003, 07:37 AM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Look, it may not be entirely clear but I'm not arguing anything. I'm just trying (with little success apparently) to point out that the soviets planned the initial counter-offensive in Model's sector. This gave Model additional grief (without which he might have been more succesfull).

I suppose this is how you interpret my posts on the subject of leading with infantry vs leading with tanks.</font>

I'm sorry if I implied that, I was merely trying to sketch that there was more to it than "Manly Manstein's uses tanks as the spearhead, GOOD" versus "Stuffy Model uses his infantry in front of the tanks, the silly man, which is BAD". It doesn't have to mean that, at all. It seems to me that the soviet plan all along had been to counter-attack near Orel first. This makes a lot of sense because the Northern Pincer was percieved to be weaker (I'll stop there because if I credit the duhssians with any more "planning" I'll be slammed for attributing to them skills and insights they did not have ). I don't have a good reference handy, but IIRC the counter-attack forces intended for the attack into the Kharkov bulge were not actually in postion for an offensive at that point. And those to the north obviously were, since they were able to go on the offensive while the Kursk fighting was still going on. That is what I'm getting at; Model was the main target for the initial soviet counter-offensive that would unbalance the offensive so that the southern pincer would be weakened (as units were pulled out to save the general situation) making it ripe for the second soviet blow near Kharkov. In the North things went more or less as planned, but in the south the germans weren't slowed as much as expected and this led to the bloody counter-attacks. And while the losses inflicted on the commited reserves did push back the Kharkov offensive some weeks it was not the initial reason for the southern forces attacking later. Or to put it in a more simple way, if the soviets had decided to mount their initial counter-offensive in the Kharkov area rather than near Orel Model would have been more succesfull (or at least would have had an easier situation), while Manstein would have been less succesfull than he was historically.

Allied commanders didn't use infantry for the breaktrough because they were inhumane, or because 'men are cheaper than tanks'. Such tactics were used quite simply because that is what worked (for them anyway). In fact rather than this method being Dumb & Wasteful experience had shown that using the tanks to lead the way was wastefull and ineffective, so they should be commended for using the infantry effectively and not slammed for being soldier-killers.

Mission Impossible Finns vs Russians, frozen plains. One Finnish Suomi submachinegunner vs a battalion of russians, player must play the russians of course.

I think that can be explained without going in to the particularities of hydronomolonolucular flow Basically what APCR/subcalibre/sabot does is that a harder or heavier projeticle (solid steel subcalibre was still generally of a higher hardness than normal solid shot) is hitting a smaller area at a higher speed. That it doesn't shatter is partly because the harder (or heavier) material is less shatter prone, and because penetration is more instantanious. For a comparison imagine for example pricking a needle into a cushion vs stabbing it with a knife, stabbing it with a knife uses more force and the blade is subjected to the same force it exerts. Take that situation to to the extreme and the stabbing force would be enough to break the point of the knife, while the needle would still penetrate. Things work much the same with sabot vs solid shot (and that that is caused by the penetrator acting like a flow through the armour is nice to know, but I'm pretty sure that that was only discovered after such penetrators come into use ). Well I guess my explanations isn't half as clear as I hoped, but I hope it helps some anyway.

It is often pointed out as the difference between the northern and southern pincers, and thus a possible cause of the northern pincer's failure. I'm not sold on that though, first of all as was pointed out the soviets have claimed that the northern pincer was their best side. And that can be substantiated somewhat by the fact that several units intended for the northern pincer never actually made it there because of soviet actions, and the counterattack on the northern pincer did indeed start before the german offensive was called off (IIRC the southern counter-attack force wasn't even properaly positioned for a counter-attack at the time). Also there is the issue of the composition of german forces, I don't have any references handy but of the top of my head I would say that Manstein basically had the cream of the german panzer force while Model had a more infantry heavy force. Anyway that's just a very global assesment of some of the factors involved, I hope some of the experts can go into some more detail.

What the heck are these guys? Looks like some kind of naval uniform with the color & hats, and the guys in the front are using what is obviously a PTRD (albeit their method is a bit unorthdox ). But the guy in the back seems to be packing something for more advanced :confused:

Yes, especially for certain projectiles this phenomen actually causes them to penetrate a far thinner amount of armor than you would expect based on nominal penetration. Just the thickness of the plate.

Great links, especially this one http://rhino.shef.ac.uk:3001/mr-home/hobbies/resource.html has a great selection of "suspect" articles from the Leavenworth "Sovietologists", quite a few subjects that you won't find described anywhere else.

I don't think so, I expect the only thing that would help (short of increasing the calibre) would be to make the projectile from better quality steel.

I see. The BTR is obviously no IFV, but whether or not it is a true APC is a matter of definition. The BTR are is a nice piece of kit, but it lacks real dismount doors (new versions at least have those sidedoors) so it's more an armored truck than a true APC imho. Or before that, hence 'rifles' and 'guards' units But the GPW is/was really ingrained in soviet military culture.