Streety

Hi again guys, there's precious little on them, but here's the wiki on those automatic enfields: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee-Enfield#Special_Service_Lee-Enfields:_Commando_and_Automatic_models As to that famous scene in A Bridge Too Far, don't forget that: a) it was a book written by an American and the primary sources were the American Military Historians, not the British, and so is somewhat (sadly) badly skewed. hence the film was not accurate: b1) - for example, part of the reason that there weren't enough transport planes to go around, and some other issues, was because the US didn't give the project their entire support - the film gives full vent to all the British failings (of which there were several critical mistakes, not least Monty being too proud to call it off when they found out that German panzer units were newly stationed near the target) but ignores the American ones. b2) - for example Elliot Gould's entirely fictitious American Officer's role of suggesting the Brits were a bit clueless and disinterested in building pontoons etc. b3) - A key moment in the book and the film (and folklore) is that the 82nd Airborne (with 307th Engineers) cleared and captured Nijmegan bridge to allow the Brit tanks over, only to see the Brits halt for tea. In truth there was more than one bridge, and the Brit tanks had to fight their way across the main highway bridge (top brass having assumed at the time that the 82nd/307th river crossing failed - having seen them so badly shot up) and at first the leading Brit tanks attacking the Germans retreating across the bridge also opened fire on the few (brave) American troops who had survived and made it to the far end of the same bridge. Read here, chapter IV: http://hanskundnani.com/articles/bridge/ c) You see, the book and the film are prime examples of why the Brits get pissed off by Hollywood. And the notion that the tankers wouldn't push on to their besieged colleagues because they had to have a tea break is also just incredibly insulting (and stereotypically enduring) lie. The lead XXX corps tank commander later went on to become a well known politician (Lord Carrington). With 20-20 hindsight, he later said he wondered if perhaps they should have pushed on, but at the time they had just 4 tanks left available at that moment to advance along a single-lane highway (ditched either-side so no way off it), and with no infantry to support them (and having already lost several tanks to German guns despite infantry support) and they were almost out of ammo and fuel, and it was dusk, and they knew they were beyond the time-limit expected that the Brit paras could hold the bridge for, and they knew that the road ahead had not been cleared of German defenders, and the road would go through a portion of town still ahead of them in which we now know that further fighting took place that night. So Carrington's unsupported dash would have certainly failed, even if one or two of the tanks had succeeded in getting through. And I've never forgiven Brit "luvvie" Richard Attenborough for taking the yankee-dollar as the film's director. Right, I'm off for my self-righteous cup of tea......

The short answer to the thread's question is - they did. Various automatic variants of the Enfield rifle were used by British (and Commonwealth) Special Forces in WW2. However, I think they had too much recoil for general use? SOE adopted the M1 later in the war. But previous answers about accuracy, economy of bullets, tried-and-tested design and other reasons for sticking to the non-automatic Enfield rifle are all true. The WW2-era Enfield also had a cup for for firing grenades but this doesn't seem to be represented in CM1 - is it in CM2? Not sure of its actual historical use as a WW2 grenade launcher though. Another answer is they had the Bren - this used the same ammo as the Enfield, and could be fired single-shot as an automatic rifle and was just as accurate, and could even be used with a shoulder strap and fired from the hip more like a sub-machine gun (albeit too unwieldy in close-quarters and only for short spells due to its weight). The Bren was so accurate that for short-burst LMG-use soldiers complained its cone of fire was too small and so later barrels introduced a wobble into the bullet trajectory to increase the cone (which made it less of an automatic rifle and more of machine gun). The British army issued one Bren per section, but with more in back-up, amounting to 1 for every 4 soldiers, and every soldier trained on it. Given that the Bren was arguably the best LMG of the war (and the Brits had large numbers of them), combined with the Enfield as one of the best rifles of the war, I guess British top-brass saw no need to add large numbers of automatic rifles. They had to quickly develop a sten-gun though, for close-quarter action.

Liked that second link! Oh, I wasn't trying to suggest that either was a massive success in Afghanistan, I just trying to weigh up some of their relative (rather than absolute) merits. Yes, the Blowpipe was hard to use (but I deliberately chose my words rather than simply use "MCLOS" terminology as MCLOS can give the misleading idea that the missile was simply manually aimed and manually fired in a "line-of-sight" fashion like a simple gun - MFVG (manually fired and visually guided), would give a better description, but no one ever used that. As to Blowpipe training, I've read that ex-SAS working for MI6 trained some Mujahideen (in secret in Scotland!) but that following poor success, Pakistan then sent some officers into Afghanistan to train the Mujahideen locally. As far as I'm aware there's no hard evidence of either, but if the Blowpipe proved poor in Afghanistan, it's believable that the industry or the British government could save face on the Blowpipe's qualities by subsequently saying the Mujahideen weren't properly trained. Ditto the Stinger - I'm sure the US military-industrial spin-doctors were only to happy to repeat the Mujahideen's exaggerated claims of enemy planes shot down. It looks good at those Arms-Sales Exhibitions. Much as I'm also sure that the Russians (and the Western forces today, both there and elsewhere) made the most of blaming mechanical failure.... Elsewhere, the Patriot missile was another prime example of such spin. "Truth is the first casualty of war" of course.

Yes the Stinger was definitely an upgrade on the Blowpipe. The British Blowpipe was a bit older, launched line-of-sight then radio guided visually with a sighted-joystick, whereas the US Stinger (during its Soviet-Afghan days) was at least infrared-seeking, faster (roughly 1600mph compared to 1100mph), longer ranged (3.25 miles as opposed to 2.5) and carried a bigger warhead (3kg as opposed to 2.2). However, as a weapon for hitting slow-moving Soviet transport planes and copters (relatively) lumbering across those big Afghan skies, the Blowpipe wasn't a terrible choice, and it did have one advantage (by virtue of being visually guided) of not being susceptible to an aircraft's defensive flares, whereas the early Stingers, being IR, were. Hence, the Stinger was better for targeting faster, higher Soviet jets, and the Blowpipe (if the firer had good visibility) could maybe be almost as good a choice for low, slow targets (if those targets were pumping out protective flares, which, if I recall, Soviet transports at that time did). Unfortunately for the British forces in the Falklands, they were mainly trying to hit fast low-flying Argy jets and typically had about 20 seconds to aim, fire and guide before the planes disappeared over the next hilltop. They said it was like trying to shoot planes with a drainpipe - as proven by the 1% success rate. By comparison the SAS secretly had half a dozen hot-off-the-press stingers and confirmed 2 kills (33% success rate) despite no training how to use them. After the Falklands the Brits dumped the Blowpipe, bought Stingers and developed their own Blowpipe-replacement - called the Javelin, which is comparable to the Stinger and both have been upgraded with newer tech (such as being able to distinguish between flares and aircraft signatures) for current use.

Yes, the wavy front underside camouflage to the Firefly's barrel was to hide it's length and so make it less distinguishable from the other British Shermans. The reason for their spread-out distribution among existing tank units (rather than massed into tank-killer formations) was partly that initially they didn't have enough to go round (because it was originally only meant to be a stop-gap due to problems delaying the newer Challengers and Cromwells entering service). And partly because in planning for Normandy the Allies had mistakenly believed that the new Panther tank would be much rarer than was to be the case, and thought they would similarly be spread out piece-meal among existing Panzer IV units rather than being a replacement for such units.

Oh, just to clarify: 1) you'll find varying quotes for the weight that the Brits "yomped" across the Falklands. A lot quote 80lbs (36kg) but the marine commandos carried more than the infantry and those lower figures don't include extra ammo and rations they had to carry. Eg, each 42-Commando also carried 2 or 3 mortar rounds (and each round weighed 12lbs), etc. 2) For "Soviet Vietnam", Carter, Mujahideen, Islamic underbelly etc, check out "American Global Strategy and the 'War on Terrorism'" 2007, by Hall Gardner, around p112. here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BmSpjdDTSnYC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=Carter+islamic+underbelly&source=bl&ots=99TeR_61lh&sig=f1ohJRPsIpVlrMfeuUYiycOsDl4&hl=en Though you can search the web for many other references. The Carter administration, "lame-stream" official histories and silly things like "Charlie Wilson's War", gloss over the fact that covert US ops and funding of the Mujahideen etc started at least 6 months BEFORE (and not in response to) the Soviet army entering Afghanistan. The US did this in order to topple the Communist regime and drag the Soviets in (who were supporting the regime). In other words, it was a war the US created. Boy, did they open Pandora's Box......

Interesting video. The British rifle feared by the Soviet commentator was the old .303 Enfield. The Mujahideen had their AK-47s aplenty, but the Enfiled rifle was more accurate and had a much longer range and the power to penetrate Soviet flak jackets. Hence the Russians hated the things. See page 4 of Sandhurst's Conflict Studies Research Centre doc: http://edocs.nps.edu/AR/org/CSRC/csrc_jan_02.pdf The afghan rebels appeared to be using a Blowpipe when discussing how much they got paid ($25,000) for shooting down a plane. The blowpipe was an anti-aircraft missile which the British supplied to the Mujahideen (1981-ish). Both the Argies and the Brits used them in the Falklands but not very effective (1 plane-kill each, for nearly a hundred used). They are still used today by the Taliban. Later (1985-ish) the US-supplied its Stinger, a similar but newer generation of AA missile. Yes, it was a bit like a Soviet Vietnam - and deliberately so as this is what the US (under Carter) intended - you could say it was a sort of a pay-back for covert Soviet involvement in Vietnam. Carter wanted to suck the Soviets into a quagmire by igniting an "islamic fundamentalist underbelly" along all of Russia's southern borders. This had the effect of toppling the Communist regime in Afghanistan, and dragging the Soviets in, but was a move which has of course come back to bite the US (and the rest of the World) very badly. The Soviet pack of 70 kilos sounds too heavy but is similar to the 145lbs that the Royal Marines 42-Commando unit "yomped" right across boggy, craggy East Falkland with. If they fell over they couldn't get up without a lot of help. And the ground caused lots of foot injuries. They had to do it because all but one of the British transport chinook helicopters were lost when the Argies sank the Atlantic Conveyor. 42-Commando managed it (75 miles) and fought a battle at the end of it, but they only barely coped, and they were extremely fit, so I wonder how far the Soviet conscripts were going with their packs. By the way, post-Falklands Brit tactical analysis determined that 72lbs was the most that soldiers should ever carry into battle. Oh and by the way, that one Falklands chinook is still in British service in Afghanistan today and survived after the pilot was head-wounded when Taliban shot the cock-pit up a couple of years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravo_November

Hi guys, Just to say I spotted another single pink pixel, this time on 8620.bmp (the side view of the panzer III J short, on underside of hull, just forward of the leading ground wheel), and have added a fixed version of this bitmap to the existing Western Front Update patch (the 8th of the Western Front zip files) at CMMODS.

ArgusEye, now come on old boy, you can't accuse me of wrongly thinking you'd said that British optics were bad when you'd originally said in this thread: "With the British scope (from a Comet) I could find the horizon, but every time a car passed, there were a lot of internal reflections from the headlights, and I couldn't tell if it was a car coming from the left or from the right. The whole thing was a bit finicky, and one error could put it out of proper alignment, so maybe I could have gotten a better picture, but I severely doubt anything could have improved the parasitic reflections." So, if you couldn't tell which direction a car was coming from and that the whole thing was finicky, easily put out of alignment and with parasitic reflections, this makes the Comet's sight sound pretty useless to other readers. I'm glad you've revised your comments to now say the sights were all at least "decent", pity you couldn't have said so before. And you can't simply choose to completely dismiss the specific history of the Vickers periscope e-notes link without offering your own references to corroborate your point. The scope was both widely used, sold to other nations and copied. Of course, it would only be as good as the lenses on the end of it, but I used it to point out that if we had the best scope but without the lenses to see which way a vehicle was coming from, then we wouldn't even know if our scope worked properly - let alone be widely used, sold to and copied by the US, Soviets and Germans.

And glad you liked the vickers link John - yes I knew that the Soviets and US had copied our WW2 periscope (albeit Polish invention) technology, but until I went back and re-researched it I hadn't realised the Germans did too. Regards the photo - yes of course a "look at me, mum" shot is different, but you also have to take account of the quality of the private/amateur of the moment shot (as opposed to a professional, arranged photo). Here's some more nice through-the-periscope shots for you to illustrate my point: WW2, through a US Sherman (I think), in action: http://www.ww2gyrene.org/assets/tank_periscope_1.jpg WW2, through another US Sherman (I think), in action: http://www.ww2gyrene.org/assets/Iwo_tank_infantry_moving.jpg Modern, through a state-of-art Periscope, at a Military Equipment Convention: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pDRfSanQq48/T0OTmQnHM6I/AAAAAAAAAEo/2vrdsJZygFM/s1600/DSCN1930.JPG As you see, taking a private photo (whether today or 60yrs ago) through a periscope doesn't give the sort of results a human eye at maximum magnification would get - I merely wanted to show that you can look through these things ok, and by comparison, the previous one I linked was just to give an indication that these things are pretty clear: http://www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection/detail.php?acc=1975-03-63-2-587 Whilst my department considered Ziess to be excellent, I was used to looking through our old WW2-era naval sights and scopes and they looked and worked fine, so I was just reacting to ArgusEye's suggestion (based on one or two old examples) that our old British stuff was next to useless and widely rated as almost the poorest of WW2, when I knew that generally the British tech was very good, in some aspects considered the best the allies had in the war, and had been copied by many other countries during that period.

Thanks for the links John. And thanks for the further info ArgusEye. The descriptions you give of the Brit, US and Italian optics, however, do make them sound so useless that I can't help but wonder if the problems could be due to major damage, lens abrasion, or interior dirt? Here's a 1941 photo taken by a British tanker through his periscope, and it looks clear: http://www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection/detail.php?acc=1975-03-63-2-587 I dig some digging to aid my memory - most WW2 British tanks used the Vickers Mk.IV tank periscope - actually a Polish invention arising out of pre-war collaboration between British and Polish military developers. This scope was copied by the Soviets and eventually by the US and Germany by the end of the war. Of course there were other scopes too, but the point is that British scope-technology couldn't have been that bad if other nations later adopted/copied at some of the Anglo-Polish technology: http://www.enotes.com/topic/Vickers_Tank_Periscope_MK.IV

Perhaps this now needs a new thread of its own?? But I too found Argus' initial tank optics pecking order: "German > Russian > French > American > Brit > Italian" a bit odd - assuming we're talking about overall optical capability (magnification, field of view and range-finding) and quality of manufacture. I always understood German lens quality was the best - and this was still the case long after the war (I worked in British naval design in the 1980s-90s and on maintenance of older ships and subs - some back to the late WW2 era - where everyone I knew took Ziess to be the best). No surprise there, perhaps. But I was also under the impression that early-war Soviet tank optics were based on pre-war British and Polish designs and that late-war Soviet optics were copies of German design (or even captured German optics from German factories they over-ran in 1944/45. American tank optics were (I understood) less good than British mainly because US optics such as in the M4 lacked the range-finding capability of British tank optics (which were still second to German ones, of course). This appears to have been borne-out by the late-war Pershing tank adopting British optics (or so I'd read). This lead me to take it that British optics were the best the Allies had during WW2 (at least, until perhaps the Soviets took-over any German factories in 45). I recollect anecdotal stuff that suggested that though German optics were technically superior they were also more sensitive and more easily mucked up by vibration and gun action than Allied tanks but I've never seen anything definitive. I wonder if some confusion comes in because of the longer period and far greater selection of British tanks? Certainly, some early-to-mid-war tanks could have been rushed and the make and qualities of optics may have been variable. Same could probably be said of Russian stuff. And for all other armies and tank models, optical capability and quality probably never stood entirely still, so perhaps veteran's opinions and specific academic references, or modern re-evaluations of accepted WW2 wisdom based on specific one-off museum examples, now offer too narrow a view-point and should be treated with caution? There's too little on-line, and I don't have the will to search through a hundred or more WW2 books in my attic to seek a point which may not be definitive enough anyway, but I did read one good essay on the subject here: http://www.weaponsofwwii.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2296

"MSPaint" or "MS Paint" (MS = Microsoft) is what everyone else calls it - Microsoft themselves just call it "Paint", and that's how it's listed in Windows XP (and Vista too, I think). But "Paint.NET" may be what Windows7 calls (or has instead of) "Paint". "Paint.NET" is a jazzed-up version of "Paint" (maybe Windows7 doesn't have the old simple "Paint" program, which had lasted since Windows 95 and earlier). The basic functions/operations described above should be the same (except with more fancy options added), but as I don't have Windows7 I can't be sure.

Hi again. Sorry guys. On forums we have people of all ages and abilities (and levels of English etc) but a lot of gamers are very savvy and sometimes can get pissy with me if my advice is something they know already. So I try to aim for one notch above basic (Windows) computer familiarity, but below any modding/manipulation knowledge. But I don't always get it right and don't mean to prejudge people by what level of advice I try to give (and don't pretend to be an expert). Anyways... If you have Windows you should have MSPaint in your programs (and most other systems have some similar very basic image editing/paint program). In Windows its found from the start menu by clicking on programs, then accessories and then is listed as simply "Paint". On your keyboard, you should have a button (probably just to the right of the F12 button, or somewhere near the Home button) called "Prt Scrn" (Print Screen). Sometimes this button is doubled up with another function, so you may have to press CTRL and Prt Scrn to get it to work. Doing so will take a snap shot of whatever is on your screen at that moment. You then open MSPaint, and either press the CTRL and V keys together, or select the "Edit" function from the options at the top of the Paint window, and then select "Paste". And hey presto, your screen image should appear as a bitmap in your Paint window. You can save it as a bitmap, jpeg or other image type. But say you just wanted part of that image, there are several ways to do this, so I'll just provide one: You can click on the "select" button in the toolbox, then, holding the left mouse-button down, drag your cursor from one corner to the diagonally opposite corner of the portion you want. Now go up to the edit button and select "copy". Now go back to your main Windows Start button and open ANOTHER MSPaint program (you can run many at the same time - for modding I always do). Now in the new MSPaint program, select Edit again, and Paste - and your cropped image selection should appear as a new image for you to save (or do further manipulations with). Once you are happy with your cropped image, you can close the original MSPaint program without saving, (or save that screen print image if you wish). Now save your cropped image. The default save format is a bitmap (good for modding) but for photos you'll probably want a jpeg - so in MSPaint click on the "File" option, then select "Save As" and you'll be given (under "Save as Type") various formats to choose from, and asked where you want to save it to (the default is the "My Pictures" folder but you can click "Browse" for another destination). Hope that helps, but look up "MS Paint" on the internet (or use Windows Help) for fuller tutorials.

Hi guys! Sorry, I'm not very good at following forums and only just spotted your responses. John - I'm glad you liked the track - I wish I knew exactly where it came from before ending up on my late father's computer - its so good and so close to the film that I guessed it came from either a soundtrack album (or an unpublished demo). Maybe dad had the album you speak of at some point - he got rid of them all when he went digital in his last years. Erwin - I'm sure I've seen one or two of the pics in that slide show before - you could google. Or if you're desperate, increase the quality of the video, then pause it for a pic and do a "print screen", then open MSPaint and paste (CTRL + V). Then cut and paste the pic - I just tried it and it does work. From other google searches though, I can tell you that WW2 photos are often too small or poor to use as a splash screen....

It might be obvious to some, but wasn't to me, and so it may help others to point out that this is about a scenario for people to download from the Proving Grounds website if they wish.

The "1942" could mean the make-year of the 76mm gun or the year the crew were together. It could be the M1936 or M1939 divisional 76mm gun, which were developed as universal weapons intended for both anti-tank and anti-aircraft use (where they fired a flak round) and fire up to 15 rounds per minute. Certainly a forward-thinking idea (considering, soon afterwards, the finding of a dual-role for the German 88mm in WW2). In 1942 the Russians came up with an improved gun (the M1942 76mm - a.k.a. the "ZiS-3"). This could be what was meant by "1942", but it had the same barrel as the M1939 (except with a muzzle-break added), so could also still fire the same flak rounds. But by 1942 the 25mm & 37mm Soviet copies of Bofors guns were the preferred field AA option, and the ZiS-3 76mm was primarily used as an anti-tank gun. So although probably exaggerated, whichever version of the gun it was, the plane-kills are possibly legit. Soviet 76mm guns (in particular the even earlier M1931 76mm, which were captured in fairly large numbers by the advancing German forces in 1941), were subsequently re-used back in Germany as dedicated flak guns to defend against the British bomber raids - where they definitely shot planes down.

Thanks for the reply Erwin - I'll keep a closer eye on their morale in future and report back if it becomes clear.

Hi Cranky - Don't know how to contact him if his published contact no longer works and he won't respond to a PM, but I had similar issues when working on my offerings so here's my thoughts: It seemed to me (when I was trawling through all the CMMODS mods) that his OSF stuff included some remodded bits of others' work - which if correct would invalidate his idea of ownership or restricted use of the mods. I never re-used any OSF stuff, but in any case, I think CMMODS has always had a policy that mods are offered freely and without restrictions attached (which would also invalidate even Andrew Fox's original demands that people can't alter his mods without his approval). With my stuff, I tried out of ethics/politeness to contact fellow modders whose work I was regurgitating in some fashion to seek their blessing (those few who replied all appreciated being asked and said yes, but some had emails that didn't work or had blocked PMs, and others just didn't reply - which I took as being that they didn't say "no". Whilst it is an ethical must (I think) to credit where you get things from (because of the effort that people have put into it), I think most sensible modders would just be happy that their work was being credited and getting a new lease of life - especially with CM1 stuff when most cutting-edge modders have long-since moved on. But anyway (aside from the fact that once "out there" there's no way of effectively policing a free mod), if Eichenbaum was really still concerned about it he'd have updated his contact details. So, you tried, and you credit him - that's good enough. But in your case it seems you could just tell people taking part in the tourney as to which Eichenbaum mods to use from CMMODS instead of repackaging them? That wouldn't require seeking anyone's blessing.

1) GDog - Hope there's something hidden there for you. 2) Blazing88's - I've got a Samsung netbook (which admittedly only has an integrated intel graphics card, but the concepts might be a similar-enough arrangement to your laptop). On that I had to find the display settings' "aspect ratio" options which then gave me the options to alter the "panel fit". There were 3 options - and I found that by changing from the default "Full Screen (no border)" to the option "center image" (the other option was "maintain aspect ratio"), the games run centered on the screen instead of stretched. On some bigger machines these graphics options instead come under "image scaling" of the graphics card, on others that have both integrated graphics and a dedicated graphics chip sometimes this basic screen option is still managed by the integrated graphics settings. Either way, you probably need to find an option somewhere in your display settings called something like "center image" or turn off one called "image stretch".

Yay you found it! Sorry, if I sounded silly - I only mentioned Googling for battlefront threads and contents because you'd only mentioned using/struggling with the forum's own search system and so I assumed that you therefore weren't aware that forum entries are also open to internet search. Hmm, admittedly I'm on Windows XP, but if I reset my desktop from where it usually is (at 1280x1024) down to 1024x768, to be lower than my game (which was also already set up at 1280x1024) my game then won't start as normal but goes through the list of resolutions from the reduced desktop downward - i.e. the game won't run at a resolution higher than the desktop. This doesn't surprise me (it's as I expected it would act) - I'm just offering it because its different to your experience. Thus I assume either Win7 is different or UltraMon is interfering (in a good way) in the process. Either way, it therefore might be plausible to assume that one can tell Win7 or UltraMon that when you launch the game it does so using a certain set of compatibility rules that end when the game ends, thus preserving your normal desktop. Probably a no-go but maybe worth a try looking at advanced settings somewhere? Just thinking out loud......

Hi GDog, If your display's vertical pixel limit is 1080 or 1050, then you aren't going to get the game run higher than that, and certainly not 1400, I'm afraid. Delete your prefs file again, set your desktop to the primary display and maximum resolution it will go to (whilst still showing all your desktop) then restart the game. The game will then run through available resolutions, starting with your current desktop (if it can match it) else it will cycle down through all others it thinks it can fit through your computer's display card (within the game's own preset limitations - which in this case sounds like the 1280x1024 it offered you). At least, my DVD versions of CM1 games all act this way. Don't know about later download versions of these games but mine don't offer wide-screen, so you either have to let your computer stretch the image (bit ugly) or force your computer's display adapter to not stretch it and live with a black band down each side to fill the gap to the edge of your screen (looks slightly odd after being used to a wide-screen, but gives a nicer, sharper picture). There could of course be other issues specific to your graphics-card... My top tip for searching the Forum for specific queries: use Google instead - just type into Google your specific query like the following four words: CMBB screen resolution battlefront

Sorry for asking but is this really meant for CMAK? Other recent repository mods meant for CMBN have been mistakenly posted in the CMAK area, and the preview pic in the repository is clearly CMBN. But whether for CMAK or CMBN, this seems a very odd mod choice (unless of course as part of a new "Eastern front" conversion for the games), because although this gun became very popular with German troops who captured them from Russians on the Eastern front, very few reached the Western front for use against US or BritCom forces. There would of course have been some German units who transferred from the East to West front (and one or two units of Russians fighting on the German side) and a few of them had the PPSh-41. But even of these, most, I think, would have been the German-ized straight-stick variant, and not looked like the one in the mod anyway...

1) Since releasing zip number 8 (the update patch), I've noticed one more tree (the lightest of the autumn ones) that may need a similar tweak to remove a few bright pixels that look OK at short-medium range, but oddly show up at long range. Also, the lack of green in the all-combined's winter non-snow ground looks fine in the day but at night it creates a greater disparity in hue between different tiles, so you can sometimes clearly see the difference where they join. If this is a problem for you, just use the summer grass. I'll keep these two issues in mind for a possible second update. 2) Call me an idiot (ouch, my ears! - don't all say it at once!), but I never expected downloaders would "pick and choose" certain zips (I simplistically assumed people would want all or nothing). I had put a zip index in the first zip folder, but here it is again to save time for those future readers who don't want the whole thing (all zips are available at the CMMODS site):- WesternFront-1 This contains 4 parent folders: semovente tanks, BritCom armour 1940-43, German armour 1941-43, and all Italian armour (also contains the main readme file and this contents file). WesternFront-2 This contains 3 parent folders: optional 1943 Africa, all early-war uniforms, and the Westernfront shared folder (shared = common bitmaps such as certain terrain, small arms, interface unit and location images, etc.). WesternFront-3 This contains 2 parent folders: a set of English buildings, and a set of Normandy buildings. WesternFront-4 This contains 2 parent folders: an all-combined default terrain, and all-combined winter terrain (further to the terrain in the shared folder in zip2 above, these terrain folders are specifically for changing the all-combined theatre, to create four seasons plus a snow version). WesternFront-5 This contains 2 parent folders: late-war German summer armour, and late-war German winter armour (this may have some wider appeal because I modded some snow versions of models for which I couldn't find any existing mods). WesternFront-6 This contains 1 parent folder: BritCom armour 1943-45 WesternFront-7 This contains 2 parent folders: all late-war uniforms, and all US armour. Westernfont-8 This contains an update patch of tweaked early and late British uniforms, tweaked trees and one corrected tree.

Thanks Aragorn, comments are appreciated! especially when I work and play alone and don't know anyone in person to get feedback from any other way. Of course, much credit goes to many others whose earlier work or ideas (see first post) I've reused/remodded.