Aragorn2002

Haha. Glad to hear that, my friend.

In that case we can safely assume it's not.

You bastard...

Wooooowwww!!!

You mean it's released, Dan?

Good screenshots!

This one probably has been downed in 1940....

In my experience there are similarities.

Than you probably haven't talked to your wife yet.

Point taken.

Thank you, Almac. Glad to hear my comments don't only cause hatred and irritation. How does it work? Well, as a big LOTR-fan (hence my name, Aragorn) I alway imagine that process as the Meeting of the Ents. Combine that with the Oracle of Delphi when it comes to information about what progress is made and you have a pretty accurate picture. But seriously, yes, as you described. Last news is that they are now working on a Release Candidate, after which a Final Candidate will appear. And then we can finally go East. I would like to tell you more, but to spite Vacilllator I will keep it short this time.

Don't know why, but somehow that makes me sad.

At last somebody who thinks about me.

O yes. Pre-ordered and waiting. Wait a minute, pre-ordered? That sounds familiair.

A release before Easter would be grand.

In hindsight the Germans should have cancelled the Kursk operation and go over to the defensive. Tsouras describes this rather well, although too optimistically in one of his alternate history books. The Russians would almost certain have launched their summer offensives against Orel and Charkow earlier and a strong German defense of these two cities could have resulted in a stalemate at the eastern front in the summer and autumn of 1943. The Russians would perhaps have exhausted themselves even more than in the defense of Kursk. No doubt the Germans wouldn't have been able to hold Orel and Charkow for long, but they would perhaps have had enough strength left for an orderly retreat behind the Dnjepr. On the other hand it's hard to see a better scenario for the Germans from 1943 on, given the enormous numerical superiority of the Red army.

Moderator, ban this man!

8 weeks...

Of course. And with everytime telling the story the number of enemy casualties gets higher. If only the dead could tell their tales.

I remember reading the book 48 km nach Stalingrad, about the relief attempt of the 6th Army by the 6th Panzer division. The Germans had 160 tanks or so, but only 30 Pz IVF2's that could destroy the T-34/76 from long distance. The rest of their tanks, mainly Pz III, had to get close, before they could knock out the Russian tanks. Still they managed to get the upper hand in most of the tank battles, due to their better training, tactics and optics. I guess it was the German 'Sherman-experience'.

Great stuff! I love these old American training manuals. They no doubt contributed greatly to the fact that the inexperienced US army of 1941-1942 learned the trade of war so damn fast.

I'm not really following all this, except for the screenshots, but I'm more and more looking forward to the module with Dutch, British and German units. Will be very interesting to see how the Leopard I and Chieftain stand their ground against the Russians.

I recall that the monthly production of Panther tanks never exceeded 3 or 400. In the summer of 1944 most Panzer divisions didn't even have them or their Panther battalion was in training and not available. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pz IV (in combination with the StuG III) knocked out most Allied tanks in 1944, or even 1945. During the battle of Normandy few new Panthers were available to replace the heavy losses, so never more than a couple of hundred (running) Panthers can have been available at any time. Btw I've read an interesting fact in Stout Hearts (a fun fact as Sheldon would say). The PIAT, bizarre anti- tank weapon as it was, accounted for 6 % of the German tanks destroyed in Normandy (the RAF in comparison accounted for 7%). Not bad for such a primitive design. Data, data, data...