Leopard_2

Heck, does it matter? At 800m, you don't see anything in woods if it doesn't move - and especially not from a buttoned-up tank...

My term in the German army is over 10 years past, and damn it, I gave away my copy of "The Edge of the Sword: Compendium of modern Firearms"... too bad, it had some pretty good data on precision. According to this, the MG42 was 25.5 lbs (11.6 kg). Fits with the ~12 kg estimate we were given for the MG3. And the same site says that you could fit a drum magazine instead of the belt - but I never got my hands on a drum magazine in my army time. Again, there's supposed to be someone besides you helping to carry the ammo and splicing the belts together. Again, I don't know the Bren, but what struck me in the MG3 was the ultra-quick barrel change. (You hit a lever with the palm of your right hand, and the whole barrel frame swivels to the right. You pull the hot barrel out - preferrably with a glove on - insert the new barrel, and slap the frame shut. Commence firing. )

About the belt vs. magazine reloading... well, that depends on where that magazine / belt is, now does it? If I have a second man at my MG3 / MG42, I don't have to reload at all. Splicing the end of belt #1 to the beginning of belt #2 is a very easy thing to do, basically giving you an "endless belt" - can't do that with a magazine. And as for having the magazine at your belt... nope, not faster at all. In fact it took me longer to crank a new mag from my belt into my G3 combat rifle than getting a new (ammo) belt into the MG3 from an ammo box beside me. Not to speak of the wiggling you have to do to get at your belt pouches when lying down.

I started some googling on the subject, looking for references of mortars vs. tanks. I found some "funny" stuff at Road Warriors, about Iraq: Now that's what I call an optimist. :-D Sorry, but I seriously doubt that. A WWII tank withstanding a mortar round is one thing, but this... let's just hope it never gets field-tested. Or have studied history and know that the best tank isn't impervious to a side or rear shot... and were about as optimistic about their training and equipment as the US tank driver believing in his chances vs. a quarter-ton bomb...

flamingknives, do you have any sources? I mean, I have some experience with the MG3 (being the MG42 modified to fire 7.62x51mm NATO), and I can't complain about the reload speed. (Open cover, insert belt, close cover, cock is only one step more than remove magazine, insert magazine, cock - and I would argue that inserting the belt is quicker than inserting a magazine, but then I've never handled a Bren.) As for controlability, when firing from the bipod (as the MG42 / MG3 is intended to be used), I had little trouble keeping whole volleys in target at around 600m...

Arguable. That "source" is tertiary at best, claims that "Sturzkampfflugzeug" is correct but doesn't give any reasons / sources for that claim. The usual "Google count" gives 536 hits for "Sturzkampfflugzeug", most of which are 1:1 copies from the text you linked (5 out of the first 10 hits alone). "Sturzkampfbomber" gives 761 hits. Add to that the fact that what those planes did while diving was bombing, the english translation of "dive bomber" (not "dive plane"), my "gut feeling" as native German speaker, and that I've never even heard the term "Sturzkampfflugzeug" before this thread... I'd like better proof.

My 0.02€: Yes, and I very much like it. In my book, the ultimate wargame would allow me to give orders to my Leutnants and see how the battle unfolds, modelling reality instead of "rules" or "mechanics".

A question for the tech grogs: Combat Mission seems to run under Wine, but there's a problem: The screen resolution finder running on first start is basically killing X (after hopping screenmodes a bit). Is there any way of circumventing this, i.e. manually setting up a screenmode config?

Given this pic, I'd say the one facing the camera. (Preview for an aerial poster for sale here to give those a credit whose server the pic is on. That's a period aerial shot of D-Day. They also have the other beachheads as aerial posters.)

...absolutely ignoring fuse setting and material of shell, and possibly several other factors... Nope, doesn't make it in the Rolemaster rulebooks. :-D

Allow me to disagree. Not on the fact that war was, if not inevitable, then very hard to avoid, but on the reasons for it. I don't think many people today actually realize what the Versailles treaty did to Germany. The reparations agreed upon by Chancellor Wirth on May 11th, 1921 would have resulted in Germany paying 132 billion Goldmark for 66 years - that's up until 1987! - plus paying 26% of its exports to the Allies. Those weren't even the original demands (which were more like 300 billion Goldmark), and the Allies weren't friendly about it (occupying the Ruhrgebiet when their demands weren't met). Not even counting in the great depression, it would have been very hard to have a people stand to such a treaty for two generations.

Luckily that's an OR function, not an XOR.

Just printing out the wisecracks: The word was "Sturzkampfbomber", not "Sturzkampfflugzeug". Ordnung muß sein.

Just for completeness, the 8.8 I mentioned above was abandoned by the crew after a 76.2 hit (1 casualty), MG hit (1 casualty), and a couple of near misses. They got another two shots fired, but failed to hit anything. One 8.8 vs. one SU-122. That sucks. Now I can only hope my opponent maneuvers badly (i.e., within range of what else I have in the way of AT), or I'm toast. I'll try replacing that 8.8 FlaK in that scenario with a 8.8 PaK, and do some comparisons...

http://brude.by.ru/ef.htm is the only pic I could find, not very helpful I fear...

Well, that much I already figured - tanks are awfully good at spotting. They spotted a half-covered, dug-in, "hidden" 8.8 at >800m in the CMBB scenario I'm just playing. A position good enough that after the round, three 76.2 shots hit the railroad embankment the gun is hidden behind, two shots went wide, and the 8.8 got one kill (a SU-122) out of three shots... can't wait for tonight to find out how long the 8.8 can hold out against the barrage from half a dozen tanks.

(This was a stupid question about human opponents and unhiding certain forces, deleted since my PBEM opponent just phoned asking me the URL to this forum... ) [ November 02, 2004, 03:59 AM: Message edited by: Leopard_2 ]

Ah, I finally see something here... A FlaK crew would be trained to fire at planes flying at several thousand meters altitude at a given speed in a given direction, and not having to worry too much about being attacked themselves. You might want to take note of the number of planes shot down by FlaK, compared to the number of shots fired at 'em, despite the given altitude / given direction. Still the 8.8 was considered to be a very good FlaK... I don't know whether the game correctly models this, but I could perfectly picture a PaK crew doing a much better job. You might also note that the 8.8 FlaK had even less protection to the gunners and a higher profile than later PaK versions. (Still talking reality here instead of game mechanics as I admittedly lack the experience with CM yet.)

I think one of the major mistakes is judging from just a single scenario. The 88 is vulnerable to HE fire: Huge target, poor protection for the gunners. If there's a whole bunch of tanks out there shelling me with HE, I couldn't stay calm to take good aim. You might want to test some other scenarios. Or check out how well a Tiger performs (with a gun crew that's snugly protected by lots of armor) in place of the 88. And it wasn't just the precision of the 88 that made for its good reputation... citing "Rommels Krieg in Afrika" from memory:

I think the best chance of ending the war 1944 would have been the Stauffenberg group being successful...

Oh come on. What's that now? Which one do you mean - the one of the people thinking you're doing a great job there or the one of the people thinking it was a major mistake? And what does it have to do with what we're talking about? No, of course I am completely ignorant of it. And again, what does it have to do with the subject of all German WWII Generals having to have some great evil inside them? Erm... *bitingmytongue*... No, I won't go there. Your reaction is already heated enough as it is. I obviously don't know whether to laugh at this or not. I never said that, I never believed that, and I do take offense at being pushed into that category by your black & white thinking. There certainly were people perfectly aware of the crimes of the Nazi regime in their full amorality, and happily having a hand in them. There weren't few of such people, and there is very little if anything to be said in favour of them. But, if such a thought does fit into your world scheme, I can perfectly picture a frontline General not coming into contact with hard evidence, and dismissing the rumours as propaganda. Just as well as I can picture you making a real good fascist. Or me, for that matter. It all depends on what we are fed, and how much we reflect on it.

Same reason as to why people climb the Mount Everest: Because it's there.

Let's stick to the actual persons mentioned. WWII certainly was not "initiated" by any of the Generals. Some were a bit too eager to follow, for my tastes, but it was initiated by Hitler. As for the planning and executing, you are right, they did it. But, in all honesty, what was the alternative? They did chose to become officers because that was what they were good at. All Generals of WWII started their officer's carreer well before the Nazis took control, unless I am seriously mistaken. So you are a senior officer in your country's army. Suddenly, political leadership changes, and thinks quickly escalate. Army is growing (with a real career to be made!), and country is getting set for a war. (Up until now, not so different from the Bush administration. I'm sure several senior officers in Iraq disagree with that war; did any of them raise a ruckus about it?) Now remember, it's not like everyone at that time was treated with horrible pictures from Auschwitz in school. It's not like there wasn't some sound, if twisted, logic behind the arguments of the Nazis. Talk about Germany being the big bad aggressor could easily be dismissed for enemy propaganda, and joining in such talk was high treason. And quite many people actually believed the "backstab legend", that German forces were not defeated in the field in WWI, but "backstabbed" by politics. All this could make a German General sleep rather well those days, at least in the overtures of the war. Once all hell broke lose, you have an army in the field. Your men are dying out there, and it's your job to make plans so the number of casualties is at a minimum for the job at hand. That can keep you quite busy, with very little time to ponder philosophy of war or who started it all. Such thoughts are very easy to have sixty years later and no personal involvement whatsoever. I don't think many officers in Vietnam or Afghanistan did think much about that question either, most certainly not after the first shots were fired.

Yes, it will penetrate ridiculous amounts of armor. However, once it's through, damage inflicted to the crew and interior isn't as high as with an AP or shaped-charge round.

I've read quite some third-party-view literature on Rommel (though nothing written by himself), and especially in the North Africa theater, he was a commander well-respected by his opponents because he had honor, and treated e.g. POW's no worse than he had to. I find this a strange notion. You don't have to have some evil inside to be a good soldier, or officer, IMNSHO. When I served my term in the German army, we exercised with dud munitions. We were told that, for safety reasons, we shouldn't aim directly at the other person, but a bit off to the side. (Since the gadget screwed on top of the barrel to increase the dud's recoil so the action would work could come off if you had really bad luck.) When the **** hit the fan, I could never remember that. I went "target, aim, fire, change position, target, aim, fire, reload, ..." and fought until cease fire was called or ammo ran out. If anything, I was frustrated because those targets kept moving and firing back, with nothing to prove that I won and they lost... Those were my comrades, the guys I did spend months with drilling and exercising, but when the action was up, they became mere targets, threats to be dealt with in the most effective way possible. I think it isn't much different at the officer or general level. If you have the skill, you apply it. No sinister "dark side" involved. Killing is part of any animal capable of doing so, and on the battlefield it's to kill or being killed. And besides, that would mean Patton, Montgommery et al. would have that "dark side", too. What they did was no different. [ October 26, 2004, 01:43 AM: Message edited by: Leopard_2 ]