GoofyStance

Ugh - helps to read the question more carefully, and to look at the tutorial

Perhaps I can help, as I've been using Photoshop for some time now, both for work and play. To apply a mask to an entire layer (assuming you've put the details/contours on their own layer), you simply click on Layer | Add Layer Mask | Hide All If you want to apply a mask to specific details on a layer, but not the whole layer, then you have to decide how you want to select the details. The Magic Wand, a Marquee selection, the Lasso tool, etc. You can use the "Edit in Quick Mask Mode" (Q) to fine-tune the selection with the Eraser tool and the fore/background colors set to Black/White. Black adds to the mask, white subtracts from it, and Gray (gotten via reducing the opacity of Black) makes the mask partially visible. Once the selection is finalized, click on Layer | Add Layer Mask | Hide Selection These steps will hide the selected feature(s) and preserve them. You can duplicate the layer mask and apply it to another layer by Alt-dragging the mask layer to the target layer. I hope this helps. If not, could you be more specific in what you need?

Which makes me wonder: Did any WW II tanks or other AFVs have springs or counterweights to make control of the movement of hatches easier and safer? Michael </font>

And does this "non-forum friend" know her AFV's? I can see it now, a Pzkw IIID rolling past, and this "non-forum friend" remarking on the tank's main armament: "It's so ... small." No wonder the Panthers and Tigers get all the attention.

What form did the US Army's VT-fused 155mm artillery shells take - pure HE, or fragmentation? From what I understand, these shells were highly effective against soft, dug-in targets because of their airburst mode. Seems to me if they were fragmentation-type, they'd be ineffective against bunkers and dugouts with substantial roofs.

Sounds like the Tank Fest was an awesome spectacle - the pics posted were great too (thanks, FK!). Was the Mk III missing some armor from around the gun mantle? And did the muffler covers on the rear of the Tiger have hole damage in them? Made me wonder if the current Tiger driver had backed into something One day a few years ago, I drove along the edge of the Ft. Sill artillery firing range in southwestern Oklahoma, USA, on a quiet two-lane road when I was stopped by flag-waving MP's who had parked a pair of Humvees across both lanes, some 50 yards apart. They were looking to one side of the road, but I couldn't see what they were looking at because of a low ridge blocking my LOS. Suddenly, there was a cloud of dust rising from behind the ridge, and a platoon of four Abrams MBTs came into view, traveling in column. They crossed the road going about 25-30 mph, crashed down on the other side, and disappeared down a shallow ravine. After a minute, the MP's mounted up and drove their Humvees, albeit more slowly, after the tanks, and I continued on my way. No idea why the tanks were at an artillery school / firing range - perhaps for a joint exercise - but it was a great sight!

John, thanks for posting that body of data - it's very interesting to see the range of dispersion. We should note, however, that only the trials in England can be treated with any level of statistical meaning; the data from North Africa is drawn from too small a sample to make statistically significant inferences. Still, taken as a whole, along with the German guidance, it's plain to see that Nebelwerfers were best used, as Kingfish and MikeyD said, for blanketing distant targets. In my defense, I was up against three platoons of M10s and Shermans and an assortment of Rangers and rifle squads, and my lone PaK 38 and Mk IVH had been knocked out. I didn't have anything else in my arsenal to take out the American armor, except for 30m Panzerfausts. Fat lot of good the Nebelwerfers did me though; after it was all over, only one M10 had been immobilized and two rifle squads sent packing. Needless to say, I got creamed in that scenario :mad:

I had the impression that having an unobstructed LOS to a TRP allowed for a quicker response to an artillery call? In addition to greater accuracy of the artillery strike? The hit on the occupied building also reminded me of another question I had: Does the damage caused by a direct hit of an artillery shell vary within a range, or is the damage a fixed amount? For example, if an artillery shell directly hits a building, does it cause X amount of damage, which automatically results in the reduction of the building to rubble (if the amount of damage is great enough), or can the amount vary, which results in the building possibly still standing afterwards?

Last night, I played as the Germans vs. the American AI in a home-made scenario in Italy, October 1943. It was midday, weather was clear with a light breeze blowing across the battlefield. There was a church on a hill on the German side of the line, with an excellent view of the battlefield. On the first level of this church, I had a crack SS company HQ squad (+1 or 2 on all attributes), and on the second level, under the HQ's C&C, I had a crack FO directing a battery of 214mm Nebelwerfers. The FO had a direct, unobstructed LOS to four TRPs on the battlefield. During the fighting, I directed the FO's placement of a Nebelwerfer strike on a TRP about 350 meters away in front of the church. The rockets landed generally in the area of the TRP, but one landed 10 meters in front of the church, rattling the occupants, and another landed 75 meters to the right of the church, demolishing a small building and taking out half the Pzgr. squad that was inside. Now, I know that Nebelwerfers were rather inaccurate, but being off target by some 340 meters seemed rather extreme. The FO had unobstructed vision to the TRP from the time of the artillery call to the time the rockets started landing (about 70 seconds, IIRC), and the Americans had not yet spotted any German presence in the church. Were Nebelwerfers really that inaccurate during the war, or is the modelling a bit off (no pun intended)?

By feeding her fermented bananas?

PC, did you know that another fellow created a Crucifix Hill scenario, apparently for CMBO? Check out this LINK. Maybe the author can furnish you with the details you need. Unless you're that author

I thought it was the 246th Volksgrenadier Division, not a regular infantry formation? HERE'S a site that I came across, it bears out what I posted earlier. It describes the battle for Aachen in fairly good detail, including some basic maps. Hope the info helps ... are you creating a new scenario? If so, I'd be most interested in seeing the results!

I believe that elements of the 1st SS Panzer Corps were sent to Aachen to bolster General Koechling's LXXXI Corps. These elements consisted of the 116th Panzer ("Greyhound") Division and the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division. The garrison, commanded by Colonel Gerhard Wilck, included part of the 246th Volksgrenadier Division and an assortment of static-defense forces, including policemen and Luftwaffe ground personnel. There may have been other forces involved; I'm sure a Google search would turn up some more info.

What FK posted from that web site bears out what I suspected was the case with the PIAT - the propellant cartridge provided some (most?) of the energy to drive the bomb forward, but the rod/spring mechanism (the spigot) also added a bit of "oomph" to the bomb's momentum. Interesting site with some abstruse tidbits.

LZH is an old archiving standard that uses a less efficient compression scheme than ZIP or other schemes. You can use LHARC (a DOS-based program, that's how old LZH is!) to decompress a LZH file, or just use one of the better compression programs around, like WINRAR.

So the mechanism of the spring/rod combo sliding backwards as the bomb leaves the launcher is akin to diving off the bow of a small, unladen rowboat - the boat shoots backwards, and the diver doesn't go very far forward before doing a belly flop into the water? Hence the reason for the propellant charge. But that would mean the charge has to be significantly large, in order to propel the bomb forward 300+ meters. I understand the charge is actually a blank .303 cartridge, which means it'd be rather puny considering the weight of the bomb? Thus, the spring/rod combo HAS to lend some momentum to the bomb ...

After examining the photos and diagrams of the PIAT on the 6th Airborne web site (thanks to the folks who posted the link), I wondered about two things: 1) When the bomb was placed in the "tray," did the piston rest in contact with the propellant cartridge in the bomb's tail? Or was there a space between the tip of the piston and the cartridge? I ask because I wondered if the piston launched the bomb roughly in the manner of a "linear" catapult, or if it crossed a gap, slammed into the base of the bomb, and caused the bomb to fly out, much like kicking a soccer ball. This could affect the physics and accuracy of firing the PIAT, I believe. 2) The open-topped design of the "tray" in the photos suggests that the bomb's base was not inside the tube prior to firing. Is this true? In that case, it seems to me that whatever blast was issued from the propellant charge would emanate radially from the top and sides of the tray, at the latter's junction with the tube.

As I understand it, a shaped-charge warhead will leave a "smallish hole" only if the warhead is perfectly perpendicular to the surface being penetrated. If the warhead hits the surface (in this case, a wall) at a more acute angle, wouldn't the resulting hole be more elliptical, and wouldn't part of the blast be deflected back into the room?

I belatedly (as in, this morning) came to the same conclusion as Ant - that the Allied officer may have been describing the effects of the exploding shell, not any "back blast" from the propellant. Thanks to you folks for your input and comments; it's interest like this that makes the forum an educational delight to peruse, and the CM games an informative pleasure to play!

I've located the relevant passage in The Battery Commander, his Batman, and a Cook where the Allied officer describes the use of a PIAT to knock holes in walls during house-to-house fighting: "... the PIAT, whatever its merits as an anti-tank weapon, had previously been used for blowing holes in walls: in Ortona it was employed extensively in this secondary role, but it was soon discovered to be unsafe to discharge inside houses because of the heavy back blast and the danger of the roof collapsing...." (Chapter 102, "Every Conceivable Use," p. 316) The source is listed as being REPORT NO. 165, OPERATIONS OF 1 CDN INF DIV AND I CDN ARMD BDE IN ITALY 25 NOV 43-4 JAN 44.

I'll need to re-read that chapter of the book, as I'm not positive the officer said "PIAT." I was half asleep when I read that section but I do recall thinking "Huh, I didn't know that about the PIAT ..." and was going to post a query about that on here. I don't know how accurate the movie is, but in A Bridge Too Far, they show Colonel Frost's men firing a PIAT from the balcony of a house overlooking the Arnhem bridge. There wasn't much of a blast when the projectile left the launcher, which seemed to "jive" with what I'd read of the PIAT's characteristics. (By the way, there's footage in The Pianist of a partisan in Warsaw firing a Panzerfaust from the balcony of a building, the target being the police headquarters across the street. Couldn't really see the backblast from the camera's angle, but the resulting explosion was impressive.) Unless someone else beats me to it, I'll post the relevant section from BF's book later.

I wondered about a backblast being produced by the PIAT, as I also thought it was launched by a spring. I don't have the book handy, but an Allied officer in BF's new book The CMAK Companion mentions how hazardous it was to launch a PIAT in a building, due to the backblast. I know this is a subjective question, but any insight would be appreciated - just how much of a backblast did the PIAT produce? As compared to, say, a Panzerfaust?

And what's wrong with military types having a knowledge of botany? Two of the best wartime poems ever written, "In Flanders Field" by Col. John McCrae, and "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer, have botanical influences. Granted, the authors didn't identify the macrophytes by genus and species, and the poems were written in WW1 ... well, you get the idea

And what's wrong with military types having a knowledge of botany? Two of the best wartime poems ever written, "In Flanders Field" by Col. John McCrae, and "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer, have botanical influences. Granted, the authors didn't identify the macrophytes by genus and species, and the poems were written in WW1 ... well, you get the idea

As far as CMAK goes, I've played a QB where an immobilized Panther G with a crack crew fired off all its AP ammo at an advancing mass of (early) Shermans and then started using HE. Two Shermans, IIRC, were first immobilized, then abandoned, after the Panther put 5-7 rounds of HE on each of them. The Panther happened to be keyholed when it was immobilized (by an air strike), so it was able to pick off the Shermans one by one, and to spend more time chucking HE at each of them. [EDIT - The Sherman crews were a mix of Regular and Veteran, btw]