1stUkrainianFront

Ca ne fait rien. 1stUkrainianFront

1) You can get free satellite imagery, map and elevation model data at http://geoengine.nima.mil/geospatial/SW_TOOLS/NIMAMUSE/webinter/rast_roam.html 2) You can get commercial global satellite imagery coverage in natural color at 15m/pixel resolution at: http://www.earthsat.com/naturalvue Don't know what this would cost. You can probably download small areas covering individual CM-size battlefields for free.

Uzi -- Sorry to get off track there. I figured I'd mention the imagery -- if useful -- as a resource to help folks make maps with the realism level Stoffel was talking about. Idea being to help mapmakers get to something that would be "an exact replica of the real terrain." 1stUkrainianFront

WWB -- Sure, e-mail me a couple of requests by lat-long or place name and I'll see what I can come up with. Cheers 1stUkrainianFront

Sure, no rush. I've got the 5m image for Sevastopol and the immediate area. Outside about 10 km from the city our resolution drops down to 10m, which is OK but doesn't have the nice detail of the 5m images. By the way, how big are the tiles on a CM map?

Eichenbaum -- The Sevastopol satellite image I sent you has 5m resolution. That is equivalent to a map of about 1:15,000 scale. This is better than most topo maps (usually 1:25,000-1:50,000 scale). But of course the image doesn't have the elevation contours. What we find when using these images for most real-world purposes is that image + map gives you the best possible result. The images have a lot of photographic detail like the texture of the terrain, presence of little clumps of woods, etc. which the map can't give you. If you have your brother put the satellite image into his AutoCAD model he can probably do things like drape the image over the terrain elevations -- should be a pretty exciting view. If you've been working off maps from 1942 you will also be able to see how things have changed in the sixty years since the battle. The city probably got flattened during the siege ("Is Paris Burning?") so it would have been completely rebuilt after the war. In the image you can clearly see all the Soviet-type postwar apartment blocks. Haven't been down to Sevastopol yet but I may make it down there from Kiev this fall. Cheers 1stUkrainianFront

Eichenbaum -- I have some 5 & 10-meter satellite imagery for southwest Crimea. Sure, go ahead & send me an e-mail. Suggest you include the exact areas you are looking for and I'll try to clip them out for you. Say, how did you include your two pictures in your post above? 1stUkrainianFront

The villages in rural Ukraine nowadays are laid out with the village itself, houses straggling along the main & secondary roads. Each house usually has a large yard/vegetable garden out back. Then just outside the villages are a ring of small patchwork fields which were turned over to private ownership for market & subsistence gardening in the early 1990s. Then out beyond the small fields are the large fields of the ex-collective farms. Those are the big geometric shapes. The ex-collective fields are huge -- I mean gigantic -- often 1.5-3 kilometers on a side. A lot of the big fields are probably the result of Soviet agriculture post-war, when they started farming with the big tractors & combines. Before the war the fields were probably smaller, and there would have been quite a few small hamlets scattered around in the hollows, and the central villages would have been smaller. They got bigger in the 50s & 60s when the Soviets conducted a "village consolidation" program. Actually what I'm doing out here in Kiev is using those satellite images and also field surveys to chop the big collective fields up into smaller pieces and return them to private ownership. Sortof like Stalin's collectivization in reverse. It's all perfect tank country, that's for sure. And every village has monuments to the poor people who died in the war. Hundreds of names in every village. Sergei, yes, the maps do have coordinates. I also have a full set of 1:100,000-scale topo maps covering Ukraine. Those are useful but maybe somewhat too small-scale to be extremely useful in doing CMBB scenarios. I may be able to scrounge up a digital elevation model as well which would have the actual topo heights in digital form. If anybody wants a particular location, let me know either by name or by lat-long and I'll try to clip out the imagery. I've also dug up an overview map of the Kiev defense lines in 1941, could send that as well.

I sent you two images. Shows the real landscape of modern-day Ukraine very well. Look forward to your impressions.

Well, the whole country is many gigabytes. But I have clipped out a couple of pieces each of about 1-2 megabytes. I could e-mail 'em to anybody who's interested, then if someone wants to do a scenario in a particular area I could clip that out as well & send it over. Got no webspace of my own so this would be via e-mail. It could be fun to do a Defense-of-Kiev 1941 battle or op -- one of the few places that held on really hard in '41. Then for the late-war armor fans, could do Zhitomir-Malin 1943 or liberation-and-relief of Kiev, or 1941 counterattack at Korosten or etc. etc.

Comrades -- I have a bunch of 5-meter resolution satellite imagery of Ukraine which I could send to anyone who wants to do CMBB maps. You can see what the landscape looks like out here -- lots of green fields, tree belts, sprawling villages of wooden houses. I've got areas around Chernigov, Zhitomir, Malin, Ternopol, etc. -- Lots of heavy armor action all through these places in '41 and on the way back in '43-44. Sure, the photos are modern and there has no doubt been plenty of change since WWII but much of that around will have been around the cities, not out in the countryside. I'd attach a file here with the post but I dunno how -- advice anyone? Cheers 1stUkrainianFront [ July 12, 2004, 05:43 PM: Message edited by: 1stUkrainianFront ]

Tuomio -- Your point is clear for scenarios with mixed orders of battle, i.e. mixed inf/tanks/guns. But as the Soviets, how would you approach a battle which is largely tank vs. tank such as Prokhorovka: Finale (Soviets have approx. 60 T-34's + 10 T-70's + 8 SU-122's vs. Germans with approx. 16 Pz III's, 8 Pz II's, 8 PzIVG's, 4 Marders, 6 Tigers). No inf. or arty on either side and terrain is gently rolling hills with a couple of roads & villages. Not asking for specific scenario suggestions, rather guidelines for tactical employment of the Soviet armor in this type of terrain vs. this type of opponent. Also as the Soviets, how would you approach a battle such as Panzer Blitz Situation 7. Soviets have approx. 20 T-34's, 4 Kv-85's, 4 ISU-152's and some weak inf. & trucks vs. Germans with 5 Panthers, 6 Pz IV's, 4 StugIII's and some weak inf. Terrain includes ravines, multiple hills & woods, and roads. Snow present. Off-road movement has reasonable chance to cause bog. Again looking for guidelines on how to approach this kind of encounter with Soviet armor. 1stUkrainianFront

Comrades -- I would like to pursue Cap'n Crank's question a little more. I've been pretty darn demoralized trying to get any kind of success with the Soviet tanks vs. the Germans in quite a range of scenarios. Just for example Prokhorovka: Finale or Panzer Blitz Situation 7: Relief of Kiev. I'd be very interested in a fairly detailed discussion of what does and doesn't work with the Soviet tanks. 1) When I bunch them up with 4-6 tanks in a small area (small LOS footprint) and try to treat multiple Soviet tanks as if they were a single German or US tank, they still can't hit and that just concentrates the targets for the Huns. 2) When I spread the Soviet AFV's out in a loose formation with depth to it to try to get surprise side shots, the Germans can plow gently forward in a tight formation and overwhelm each in turn. 3) When I charge with a massed wall of T-34's, the casualties are horrendous. Sure, sometimes it works and the T's can overwhelm the Panzers, but that's maybe one time out of 5 or 6. This tactic works very well when visibility is limited (i.e. Royal Opponent scenario) and extremely poorly when there is any kind of bog risk in open terrain. I'm stationed out in Kiev these days and running all around Ukraine, so I know the Red Army figured out how to use their tanks successfully or they wouldn't have been able to liberate this place. But what did they do? More specifically, how *exactly* can one employ the Soviet armor in CMBB to have some reasonable chance of success? By the way there are amazing, poignant memorials to all the people lost in the war in every Ukrainian village we visit. And very often there's a real T-34/SU-85/ISU-152 up on a pedestal in the village squares, fresh flowers regularly laid in front of the people's names and sometimes wreaths around the tank barrels. Regards