Trommelfeuer

I've seen this in CMBO and CMBB...quite often in CMBB, rare in CMBO... Since I'm knee-deep in CMBB "Operation Störfang" and I don't have much time I only played CMAK demo "Line of defense" for a short time as the germans. I witnessed two "trigger-happy" P-51 pilots who unleashed their rockets at US armour...quite funny... CMAK looks brilliant, sounds superb and I will buy it for sure. But for now I'm too busy on the Ostfront. Greetings, Sven [ November 20, 2003, 04:26 PM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

Right now I've finished battle 2, I'm busy with writing the AAR... I will post it when it's complete, including some nice screenshots. Greetings, Sven

Yup, it's the wrecked airstrip... I'm through with the first battle now, and this BA-6 won't cause me any headaches any more...but it was tough... 5 Stielhandgranten hit the Ba-6, number three immobilized it. Then a Wurfmine hit it, no big effect...but the geballte Ladung finally did the job... I'm going to post an AAR on the http://www.eichenbaum.org - forum when I've finished the operation...(...this will take a while though, I've not much time tom play these days...) Greetings, Sven

Sgt. Carmello’s Rattletrap Tank ( or the Day We Knew Italy Would Lose the War ) by Mark McLaughlin Sgt. Carmello and his company of crack Carabinieri had been pinned down in the mountain pass for two very cold, uncomfortable and frightening hours. With his captain dead, casualties mounting and their advance stalled by heavy machine-gun fire from the heights above them, Sgt. Carmello and his only surviving officer, a young cadet lieutenant, called for armor support. The path to retreat was still clear, but none of the soldiers wanted to go back. After all, Carmello told his comrades, the men shooting at them were wearing skirts. Surely such men would not stand up to Italian tanks. The sergeant was wrong. As he has often related in his halting yet clear English, that was the day he knew Italy would lose the war. It was also the day he vowed he would someday go to America, if only to get away from such idiots as Benito Mussolini. In 1938 Carmello and many of the other men in his company of Sicilians had joined the Italian national police, the Carabinieri, to escape being drafted into the Italian army. Unfortunately for them, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini militarized the Carabinieri. Some of the Carabinieri were selected to serve as field police while others were formed into crack commando units. Mussolini, or “Il Duce,” as he preferred to be called, had personally reminded the Carabinieri of their regiment’s glorious history as an elite heavy cavalry regiment during the Risorgimento and Reunification of Italy in the previous century. The Carabinieri, Il Duce had proclaimed, had always been at the forefront of battle. Now they would lead the army in retracing the footsteps of the ancient legions to rebuild Mussolini’s New Roman Empire. Those footsteps had taken some Carabinieri into Ethiopia, Libya and now Egypt, where they were confronting British General Archibald Wavell’s small Middle East Command. Carmello’s company had been spared the desert campaigns. They had been sent into newly conquered Albania, where they were selected to be the very tip of the spearhead of General Sebastiano Visconti-Prasca’s invasion of Greece in late October, 1940. The Carabinieri were to clear the difficult mountain roads along the Greco-Albanian frontier of “light resistance.” So far, however, like their brethren in the Alpini, Bersaglieri and other elite regiments in the advance guard of the Italian army, the Carabinieri had met with nothing but heavy fire. Greek General Alexander Papagos had had many months to prepare for Visconti-Prasca. Papagos had built up a series of strong defensive lines in the difficult mountain terrain along the Greco-Albanian border. Although not as well-equipped as the modern, mechanized Italian army, Papagos had nearly as many men (150,000 vs 162,000 Italians), and he had positioned them well. The men Papagos positioned in the mountain passes wore light olive green skirts, knee socks and shoes with little fluffy tassels. These were the “men in skirts” that Carmello say firing down on his Carabinieri. Little did he know at the time that these skirted warriors were the Evzones, the best shots in the Greek army. Tough, native mountain fighters with a tradition not unlike that of the Scottish Highlanders or the Italian Alpini, the Evzones manned the first line of defense: the mountain passes. Carmello had lost too many men dueling with the Greek snipers. He ordered his soldiers to take cover in the rocks and cuts alongside the road. He saw no sense in exposing his men to danger when victory would be assured once the tanks arrived. An hour later, he heard the telltale clankety-clank, rumble-rumble, whirr-whirr of bogie wheels as the Italian armor approached. His men began to cheer as the lead tank in the Italian armored column turned the corner and came up the road behind them. The tank was alone. One tank. That was all the Italian Tank Corps had sent. Carmello was a little downcast, but he did not let his men see his disappointment. At least it was not one of the little light machine-gun tanks (like the Carro Veloce 35). It was a real tank. A big tank. The best the Italians had made to date: an M.11/39 medium tank, with a real cannon -- a 37 mm gun. The Evzones poured fire down on the M.11/39. Carmello’s Carabinieri jeered as machine-gun and rifle bullets bounced off its armor plates. The turret rotated to allow its 8 mm light machine-gun to spray the heights. The tank turned on its treads so that the main gun in the body of the tank could bear. It fired. A great “boom” echoed in the pass. Rocks flew in the air where the shell hit. ...and Sgt. Carmello remembers that there was also another strange banging sound, like a rattle, coming from the tank. The tank fired again, and again and again. Each time the gun fired and recoiled, however, Carmello recalls, the rattling got louder. Then he notice that the armor was coming loose. Italian tanks were not solid-cast. Plates of thin armor (30 mm in the case of the M.11/39) were bolted on to a metal frame. Unfortunately, the bolts tended to come loose, especially when the tanks were jostled going over rough terrain or when they were subjected to stress -- like the recoil of their gun. The tankers knew this; they carried special wrenches to tighten the bolts during rest stops. Carmello tried to crawl to the tank, but the Evzones were still pouring fire down on his position. The tank fired again, and again and again....and then a plate fell off. The tankers were probably too excited or too busy choking from the dust and smoke to notice, and they fired again and again....and another plate fell off. That is when Carmello heard another sound he has never forgotten: laughter. The Greeks stopped firing. They were laughing. As the dust began to clear Carmello could see why: there sat the tank, a half a dozen of its armor plates lying about, and the turret gunner sitting there, unprotected, for all to see. The gunner kicked down and yelled to the driver to put the tank in gear and retreat -- but it would not go. One of the plates that had fallen off had become jammed in the bogie wheels. The turret gunner scrambled out of the skeleton turret and ran for the rocks. The driver and cannoneer jumped out and followed. As they cowered behind Carmello the sergeant looked around at the bewildered faces of his men ... and like a single man, they all stood up with their hands over their heads. The rattletrap tank had been the last straw; it had convinced them all that Italy would never win this war. source http://63.249.242.39/wsarc05.htm Greetings, Sven [ November 15, 2003, 07:52 AM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

Got 'em! They are simply amazing! Great job Sir - thank you very much! Regards, Sven

Aye, thanks a lot for your answers gentlemen ! I just hoped the BA-6 would be disabled by the fire, but I think a Wurfmine or a geballte Ladung from a nearby Panzerjäger team will also do the job. The good thing about the fire is that the BA-6 crew seems to be panicked / confused, so far they have only fired one grenade at the nearby Fallschirmjägers without causing any casualities... By the way...why won't tanks drive through fires like the fire above? When I order a tank to drive through a fire it will take a route around it...such a bushfire shouldn't be able to cause any damage on a tank - or am I wrong again ? (...perhaps the crew just don't want to inhale too much smoke ?) Regards, Sven. P.S. @ Nils Eikelenboom, your Sevastopol A1 Operation just kicks ass! Great work, I love it!

Imagine you have three Fallschirmjäger squads crawling through a wheat field to close the distance to a BA-6 armoured car... Your Fallschirmjägers have only Stielhandgranten left, since all Gewehrgranaten and geballte Ladungen were spent to destroy an enemy bunker... Finally you are near enough and order your men to attack...two Stielhandgranaten are thrown and the wheat beneath the armoured car catches fire... The fire spreads rapidly... Now the BA-6 drives straight ahead, then reverses back into the fire, comes out again only to reverse once more right into the fire (..perhaps the crew was panicked?) - shouldn't the tires of the BA-6 catch fire and shouldn't this result in an immobile BA-6 ? (..the Ba-6 spent one and a half minutes in the fire...) Regards, Sven

Yea, got it now, looks excellent! Thank you very much! Greetings, Sven

I play scenarios very very conservative, my main goal is keeping my own casualities very low and so far this works very well. (...against the Artificial Intellicence...) For example: I've played through the first three Stalingrad Pack scenarios "Into the void", "When worlds collide" and "6th Army Probe". I got three total Axis victories with minor losses. I think I'll try Operation Störfang V2 now... Greetings, Sven

I live in Hamburg, Germany with my wife and my little 8 months-old daughter ( and we have two cats ). Greetings, Sven

I only made the first photo (..Since I have no scanner I took a photo with my digicam from my book "Mit Rommel in der Wüste" -> "With Rommel in the desert" ) and resized it with windows paint.. The other two photos are from these websites: http://ww2photo.mimerswell.com/tanks/d/sdkfz/sd10/sd10.htm http://www.wwiivehicles.com/html/germany/halftracks_2.html Sturmfla vor! Greetings, Sven

Bump! Regards, Sven

Right now in CM:BB the Sdkfz 10/4 does only fire to the rear / to the sides (very limited field of fire), it's not possible to fire to the front. So, will there be a "Sturmfla" be avaiable for CM:AK that is able to fire to the front...? ..would be great! Here's a pic of a 2cm Flak auf Fahrgestell Zugkraftwagen 1t (Sdkfz 10/4), Demag D7: Regards, Sven P.S. A "Sturmfla" for CM:BB with the ability to fire to the front would also be very nice, wouldn't it ? [ November 11, 2003, 02:42 PM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

Hui! Good work! Is it already avaible for download? ( If only we could get a multi-turret-tanks patch for CMBB in a while...sigh...) Greetings, Sven

Oh, sorry! I really don't know what happened when I unpacked EDS_WINTER_SHACKS.ZIP and EDS_SUMMER_SHACKS.ZIP for the first time...somehow they must have been messed together in one folder... :confused: When I just checked it again, everything worked fine, both ZIP-files contain different BMPs. Sorry! Greetings, Sven

Captain Wacky, your sound-Mod is really damn good! Thank you very much for it! The MG42 still doesn't sound like ripping velvet but it's the best avaiable MG 42 sound, no doubt! Regards, Sven

Yup, flowers still grow during wartime... Click me! Thanks again for re-uploading your great peasant shack Mod to Mod heaven !!! Just a small "bug": EDS_WINTER_SHACKS.ZIP and EDS_SUMMER_SHACKS.ZIP both contain exactly the same files, bmps for summer and winter shacks... Greetings, Sven P.S. EDS_TREES and EDS_BUNKERS are also great! [ November 10, 2003, 03:45 PM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

Wow, cool! Thank you very much! Greetings, Sven

I had the same Panzer 38 - hybrid problem with Canon's dusty Pz 38... BMPs 15220, 15221 and 15225 are the ones that need to be overwritten to solve the problem. Thank you guys and thank you battlefront.com for a search function that really works fine! Greetings, Sven

@ Ed "Tanks a lot" Kinney: I just realized that I've "only" got your Ed's summer shack-damaged - Mod, so I will only see your beautiful textures for the peasant shacks when they are damaged (BMP numbers 6000-6008 are still original ones)...did you also release Ed's summer shack-"undamaged" Mod sometime ago? (I must have missed that one somehow...) If so, please re-upload it to http://www.cmmods.com/ Oh please! Regards, Sven [ November 09, 2003, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

Well I just did what you asked for...click both links above and you are there... Just download CMMOS 4.03 from Here (...same link as above...), read the readme carefully, afterwards download everything you want for your CMBB (CM:BB CMMODS rulesets and Mods) from the same page. ( Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin CMMOS Mod Pages ) Then go to Mod Heaven and download more Mods for CM:BB.... Greetings, Sven

I'm pretty sure that every 3rd party Mod on CMHQ is for CMBO...(...cause I've almost every single one of them, all for CMBO...) If you're looking for CMBB Mods, take a look at CMHQ's CMBB CMMOS Mod Pages or go to Mod Heaven. Regards, Sven [ November 08, 2003, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

@ John Calvin: Put the files into your CMBB\BMP - Folder. The original BMPs will be overwritten, so you'll see Tanks a lot's new beautiful buildings in every battle. (Note: There's a nice readme coming along wit this Mod explaining just this...) @ Ed "Tanks a lot" Kinney: Beautiful, truly beautiful! Thank you very much! (I think it would be good if you re-upload your nice summer peasant shacks-Mod to Mod Heaven, I still have them, but some guys might be missing them...) Grettings, Sven [ November 08, 2003, 04:33 AM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]

Sounds great, looks great, man this even smells great! I'm really looking forward to it! Regards, Sven

I've just finished reading Kurt Meyer's (Panzermeyer) Grenadiere, and this is really more than interesting... The english version looks like this: (---> After the capture of Kurt Meyer, the story of the 12th SS from the end of the fighting in Normandy until the end of the war is told by Hubert Meyer.) Here you'll find some passages from this book about "Panzermeyer's" time as the commander of the 12.SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend: Caen, June 6, 1944 Caen, June 7, 1944 Rauray, west of Caen, June 26, 1944 Carpiquet airfield, west of Caen, July 4, 1944 Withdrawal from Caen, July 9-10, 1944 Meeting with Erwin Rommel, July 17, 1944 Hill 159, north of Falaise, August 14-15, 1944 Falaise gap, August 19-20, 1944 ************************************************* Here's some more to read: The Defeat of the 12th SS ( Young men form the 12th SS pose for the camera after winning the Iron Cross 2nd class for their part in the fighting for Caen and the surrounding areas.) Regards, Sven [ November 05, 2003, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: Trommelfeuer ]