Foxbat

That is assuming 1) the electrical motor is working 2) the crew isn't scared to death of the thing 3) you have mastered the use of the motor to perfection. 1 was generally true (depending on type, not all T-34s came with this option fitted) these things were simple enough, 2 is a given as there is no turret basket the crew is running around in a place filled with sharp objects, too many guys for such a cramped space, lose floormats, shells, spent cartridges and whatnot. The sparks and bits of metal well only add to the atmosphere... 3 is the crux. The motor is capabel of turning the turret quickly and somewhat efficiently but not very accuratly (only 2 different speed IIRC and as mentioned crude). So turning the turret is going to be a mix of manual and electrical

Of course this is what it should look like: -link to pic- Now if only BFC will do a new wireframe for it (with fluttering sides) it should be a breeze to patch, lacking that you can always buy your own at: SOVIET WWII CAMOUFLAGE AND WINTER CLOTHING. It's the genuine article, like everything else the russians bagged them, tagged them and kept them in storage just in case. [Edit] Site also has some other winter uniform items for sale that were apparently moddeled after some second rate mod for a wargame [ December 24, 2002, 07:29 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

I'm a communist, we don't celebrate christmas. Actually I had some late work and the g/f went to bed before I came back so I have some "quality time" all for myself. Ironicly I was actually through my Stalingrad miniatures boxset I have recently bought, but I couldn't resist nipping in here for a moment.

And in no small part do we have what happened in Stalingrad to thank for what we have now. I pity those men for the way they suffered, the way they died and the callous way they were betrayed by the regime they served.. sent to their deaths merely to prove a point. I propose a toast to those who fought and died in Stalingrad, may the dead rest in peace, the living grow old in comfort and their offspring prosper.

I think you mention tank production yourself, obviously if they have a large expansion of panzer unit without a large increase in the number of panzers that can only be achieved by cutting the number of tanks per unit So simplistically they did "double" their divsional strength without doubling their tank strength and, so simplistically it is as you say they dropped a tank regiment.

If they fought against the Japanese then they were stationed in the Far East and would only be transferred west for the Moscow counter-offensive.

According to Zaloga this pic is supposedly taken in the eighties (and it is a scan taken from one of his books so he should know), guess the mine-dogs were relegated to the task of disposing of old rang targets...

The soviets captured german IR technology and their Gen I was essentialy the same as the german stuff. They used it only as a driver's night vision device until they got their own Gen II online almost a decade later, so I doubt it is the 0berweapon it seems to be

Looks like the Easy-Eight's Battleground rules for 28mm scale miniatures (skirmish/tactical game) they had an interesting but complicated armor system, but I think they went bust recently 28mm ww2 miniatures has been a slaughterhouse in recent times, I don't think there is a company currently in business that has been under the same ownership for more than a year. [EDIT]Official site seems to be dead but here's a site that shows something of what the battleground system was supposed to be... Battleground Group Portland [ December 20, 2002, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Now this is a boxy tank: [ December 13, 2002, 09:12 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Only the middle "box" (with the driver's vision slit) can meaningfully be considered a vertical surface for purposes of determening armor protection (penetrating the side "boxes" won't have a very meaningfull effect). And translating that too a shottrap would probably underestimate the armour value. That would mean 30mm@68/2=40mm effective armor [hope I did my math right, it's late...] in 10% of the frontal hits, whereas in reality it is probably less then 10% of the frontal that is vertical and which has 60mm of armor. Meaning it would overestimate the chance of hitting the vertical plate and underestimate it's armor thickness... And let's not forget that at the time the Valentine's armor was considered to be impressive.

Well no wonder you had a bogging issue, that's part of the scenario

The soviets seem to have been rather fond of "WW I style" intelligence gathering, that is sending small raiding parties into no-mans-land or behind enemy lines and abducting enemy personel. Now that's fighting for intel The actual combat recconaisance before an attack would be forward detachments with a recce in force mission that included capturing or overrunning enemy strongpoints, valuable locations and tactical/operational objectives (eg crossroad and bridges). Such a recon operation would actually woork out as a cascasing affair as each unit send out a subunit to lead the way, as mentioned that could lead to recce units being anywhere from battalion to squad in size.

I don't see how a Tellermine has the capability to lift a turret several meters up into the air, when a massively more powerful gun couldn't even dislocate it. Besides that would actually result in the turret tipping over forward, rather than rising up into the air vertically.. Turrets are blown off by the ammo cooking off not because someone put a firecracker under the turret overhang

No not really, they did meet the occasional T-34 in the first week of combat and there were major ops in the month of June that involved T-34s so June is right. It just took time to filter up through the intel channels, and the russians for their part obviously had little incentive to brag about the availability of the T-34 0bertank at the start of the war seeing how they were simply swept aside without the germans actually giving them much notice at all. Remember as long as they thought the T-34 would turn out to be the russian equivalent of the Mathilda/Char B-1bis alarmbells weren't going off just yet. As for the mortars, I have no idea.. except the russian mortar is actually a bigger calibre at 82mm But since the german and russian mediums are pretty equal it shouldn't be to hard to see what makes them different. I vaguely remember russians shells to be thinner walled, so maybe they have a higher blast value?

Oh and there were only 500-something KV's at the start of Barbarossa, making it the "rarer" tank by quite a margin.

There were indeed almost a thousand T-34s in June 1941 (against 500 T-28s), the reason that the germans didn't immediatly blunder into them is because they weren't stationed at the border not because they weren't in production (would be hard to have a 1940 model in that case ). The T-34 may have been a small part of the tank force (30.000 tanks! in total) but bthat didn't mean there were few, or that the T-28 was any more common. The bulk of the tanks were lights. Mostly T-26s & BTs with a couple thousand recce tanks thrown in for good measure. [ December 11, 2002, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

Basically it means something like 'making clear', ie reconaissance

Aargh..gurgle...blub.. and what's worse he says "There is no campaign mode, where you take a band of raw recruits and turn them into veritable killing machines" I wouldn't mind a campaign, but it doesn't have to come straight out of Quake We already have 5-mouse-clicks-to-get-a-mission missions, but that's still too much effort we need a big red button saying 'QUICK MISSION' that would be effortless and understandable [ December 10, 2002, 08:07 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

If that's a starting point I'm afraid to ask what the end point will be Fortunatly these volumes are being translated to english a volume at a time which should help.

In fact, both memoirs have been edited nth times to suit Soviet inner politics (destalinization period, Brehnev´s views etc.).</font>

That is actually quite hard for me to say now, because ever since I found at that there was moore going on at 'the other side of the hill' then I had been led to believe I have been playing catch-up and I've been reading books with the intent of deepening my understanding of their side of the war. It also depends a little on what kind of books you want, there is truly an ocean of books on "the german perspective" from books that describe quite literaly the perspective of the german soldier to books on literally every major unit or battle.

Usually when this is mentioned, some people will quickly point out that western democracies accepted Nazi views in the schizophrenic atmosphere of Cold War. </font>

This quote [falsyfing abbreviation mine] The bits in bold are lies that I put in to decieve.

Seems to me that Mr. Glantz has taken the criticism quite personally...</font>