Pack Kuma

I think that Russian tank is in love. :eek:

Up in New Haven, but the spousey is currently in Manhatten for the semester, right there on the Upper West Side.

When you watch war movies, (the one that brought this to mind was Stalingrad), and you try to figure out the status of the squad onscreen, OK, cautious, panic, routed, etc. Incidentally, if you watch this movie closely you can see that sneaking does in fact look *very* tiring, as does advancing, assaulting, etc., especially with bullets twanging 3 inches from your ear and you shootin' your buddy who you thought was a Russky jus' come around the corner. Re-watching this movie really made me appreciate the realism in CMBB, down to the detail that went into the uniforms of the sojers.

I've got a Gott Mitt Uns belt buckle, an Iron Cross 2nd class (1st WW, but who knows maybe some WW2 Volkssturm dude that had been in both wore it), a soldbuch belonging to one M. Richter, and a whitewashed stahlhelm. No firearms, tho.

I recall that on the Western front the Tigger was held in such dread by Allied tankers that they were even under orders *not* to engage them? And that vanilla PzIV's were constantly being misidentified as such. I wonder if those Russian tankers are just 'fraid because of certain tank's rep, and then they misidentify everything as either Tiger or Jagdpanther, which is cause for...RUN AWAY!

I once had a rash that looked like that Really good work...though I wouldn't want to golf there.

Well, CMBB IS better than sex, especially after you've been married for a while. It's the difference between drinking beer and playing darts on the one hand...and mowing the lawn on the other

If only the snow storms had not come and wiped out the vodka fields and refineries, our family would not have had to set out for California, and we would still be happily busting permafrost on our farm. --from "The Potatoes of Wrath"

Taffers all of ye. Yeh don't ebun know when thar's a truly brilliant mind among ye. I'm a thinkin' that Mr. Goodbeer is jus' an angry lout wid a mind fer a good competitive gamin'. But all ye's been postin' on de Peng thread fer so long it's rotted ye brains and you don't know it. What a pity, what a pity.

Oh, by the way, the book also contains extensive development information on all the tanks and has a lot of pictures I've never seen before after years of studying WWII. Authors: Tim Bean and Will Fowler. MBI Publishing Co., 2002. Retail is $22.95, worth every cent.

Hi, I just bought this great book at Barnes and Noble called "Russian Tanks of World War II / Stalin's Armored Might." Looks to have a lot of good information, pictures, schematics, and just general info most Russian tanks of the era, if anyone is as fascinated with armor as much as me. Good bathroom reading. My wife: "How long is it going to take you in there?" Me, reading happily on the Watery Throne of the Ancients: "Oh, just another hour or two."

Oh, by the way, sorry if this isn't so on-topic for this forums but many who play CMBB may also be interested, and in fact cut their teeth on the Ostfront, with Cross of Iron.

Got the sad news moments ago...for all of us Cross of Iron fans. Oscar-Winner James Coburn Dies at 74 1 hour, 48 minutes ago By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) - Actor James Coburn (news), who took on the tough-guy role in such films as "Our Man Flint" and "The Magnificent Seven," but whose anguished portrayal of an abusive father in "Affliction" finally earned him an Oscar, died Monday. He was 74. Coburn died of a heart attack at home while listening to music with his wife, said his manager, Hillard Elkins. Coburn won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for the 1998 film after overcoming a 10-year struggle with arthritis that left one hand crippled. Despite those earlier physical problems he had been upbeat and working regularly, Elkins said Monday night. Most recently, he appeared in the new film "The Man From Elysian Fields" and finished another called "American Gun." "And I have five or six scripts I've got to get out of my office because he can't shoot them now," said Elkins, his voice breaking. Born in Laurel, Neb., on Aug. 31, 1928, Coburn studied acting in Los Angeles and with Stella Adler in New York He appeared on stage in New York and in such dramatic television series as "Studio One" and "General Electric Theatre" in the 1950s. He made his movie debut in "Ride Lonesome" in 1959, following it with another Western, "Face of a Fugitive," the same year. He caught the public's attention the following year, when he played knife-throwing Britt in the epic Western "The Magnificent Seven." Although he had few lines compared with his other macho co-stars, who included Yul Brynner (news), Eli Wallach (news) and Steve McQueen, film historian Leonard Maltin noted Coburn's mere screen presence grabbed the public's attention. "He was a guy who looked like he was casual, but he studied and he worked and he understood character," Elkins said of Coburn's success. "He was a hell of an actor, he had a great sense of humor and those performances will be remembered for a very long time," he added. After "The Magnificent Seven," Coburn played sidekicks and villains until the late 1960s when he cashed in on the James Bond mania with the humorous spy spoofs "Our Man Flint" and "In Like Flint." He also won acclaim for such films as "The President's Analyst," which he also produced, the World War II escape epic "The Great Escape" and "Goldengirl." In the 1980s he all but disappeared from the screen with the onset of arthritis. He said he "healed himself" with pills that had a sulfur base. His knuckles remained gnarled, but he said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press that the pain was gone. He said then, when the film roles weren't coming, "I've been reading a lot of stuff. I want to go to work. It's what I do best; it's the only thing I can really do. "Actors are boring when they're not working, it's a natural condition, because they don't have anything to do, they just lay around and that's why so many of them get drunk. They really get to be boring people. My wife will attest to that," he said with a hearty laugh. His health restored, he worked steadily through the '90s, appearing in such wide-ranging fare as "Young Guns II," "The Nutty Professor," "The Cherokee Kid" and "Maverick." After winning a reputation for his leading roles, he capped his career with an Oscar for a supporting effort in "Affliction," as Glen Whitehouse, the abusive father to Nick Nolte (news)'s cop character in "Affliction." It was his only Oscar nomination, and it came after scores of films. In all, he made more than 100. "I've been working and doing this work for, like, over half my life and I finally got one right I guess," he said in his acceptance speech. "Some of them you do for money, some of them you do for love," he added. "This is a love child,"

"You can pause, rewind and replay the action from any angle you desire, from high above the battlefield to the back of your M1s." Yeah, you haven't heard about, Combat Mission: Desert Storm? At least he doesn't say the (must be German) M1's are left open in the back so a well placed explosion can render them obsolete. :eek:

There was an extremely long and entertaining thread over at the Matrix/Steel Panthers forum in the Art of Wargaming section that addressed these very questions. Don't be put off by the seemingly unrelated thread title, it gets into a lot of the details about this campaign, and one of the principal posters strongly argues that the USSR was in fact preparing to launch an attack on Germany. Happy reading! http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21873