wokelly

As far as I know the guns fire at their practical rate of fire. In the MG42's case that is about 150-180 rounds per minute on the bipod and about double that on the tripod. They fire faster as the enemy gets closer. I do agree a supressive fire command would be a nice addition, especially for HMGs which have the ammo to lay down high volumes of fire. Too many times I need my water cooled 30 cals to lay down some heavy fire, but I get the practical rate of fire which takes time.

Zuehlke's books on Juno are pretty good.

Well for the Canadians you can look at the Laurier Military Center's website. They have a lot of their journals from a few years back uploaded and viewable for free. Some really good stuff in there concerning Operational Research reports as well as examinations of battles and tactics: (NOTE: They have placeholders for many article but have not uploaded anything after 2003, so clicking those links will get you nothing.) http://www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca/archived-articles/ The website is in general very good, but lots of archival stuff they plan on, but have not yet uploaded. At some point all the OR reports will be available for view, along with huge numbers of Aerial Reconassiance photo taken by the RCAF. Will take time, I worked there uploading stuff, time consuming work.

Around the 1980's I believe. As I said in a previous post, my nitpick with the video is how long it took the Bren gunner to reload (10 seconds). Seems awfully slow, but it was a pretty poor clip so I will wait until I see more videos or play the module to launch a full scale complaining campaign.

Beyonet Strength has a good little free section on WWII tactics here: http://www.bayonetstrength.150m.com/Tactics/infantry_tactics_of_world_war_tw.htm

I am starting to get the impression the Brit infantry may be to be lousy in this module, between the videos and these two comments. Admittingly the Brits did not have a great deal of firepower but in CMAK for example the 1944 Brit squad was generally competitive with the 1944 German infantry and 1944 US squads (US had suerpior close range firepower over the Brits (40 and 100m), the Brits had better close range over the Germans (40m), and the Germans had better long range firepower (250m and greater). It was the PanzerGrenadier/SS and German Airborne units that tended to really stand out. How do the Brits compare in this one?

What? Can you elaborate?

The Brits can be expected to play differently in Infantry and Armour than the US, indirect fire will likely be similar. Some basics: British Battalion vs US Battalion Brits: -1 Battalion HQ unit with 50 men --1 Bren Gun Carrier --Assortment of other carriers, trucks and jeeps -1 HQ company with 95 men --3 Additional Brens --4 Additional Piats --Assortment of Trucks, Jeeps and Motorcycles (no carriers) -4 Infantry companies with ~120 men each --Each with 3 rifle platoons with 3 sections each --1 2 inch mortar and 1 PIAT per platoon --One HQ platoon, with a spare Bren and 2 inch mortar --A few unarmed carriers, trucks and jeeps -1 support company with ~192 men --6 x 57mm guns (with HE shells) --6 x 3 inch mortars --13 Bren Gun Carriers (with Brens) --6 spare Brens --7 spare PIATs --10 spare 2 inch mortars --Large assortment of additional Carries (Almost 30 unarmed Universal and Loyd Carriers), trucks and jeeps etc All told: -845 officers and men -45 Bren Guns -18 Bren Carriers with Brens -26 2 inch mortars -23 PIATs -6 3-inch mortars -6 57mm guns US Battalion: -HQ Company with 126 men --2 .50 cal MGs --8 Bazooka's --3x 57mm guns --Assortment of Jeeps and trucks Heavy Weapons Company: --8 Tripod water cooled .30 cals --1 .50 cal --6 81mm mortars --6 additional bazooka's --Assortment of softskinned transport Three Rifle Companies with 193 men each --3 rifle platoons with 3 sections, 1 weapons platoon --9 BARs --2 M1919 .30 cals --1 .50 cal --3 60mm mortars --5 Bazooka's In total: -871 officers and men -27 BARs -6 M1919 .30 Cals -8 M1917 .30 Cals (water cooled) -6 .50 cals -9 60mm mortars -6 81mm mortars -29 Bazooka's -3 57mm ATGs NOTE - Shortly after Normandy it was realize more firepower was needed, the TO&E was amended, 6 additional M1919's were given to the Battalion HQ company, and 18 additional BARs (6 per company) were issued. I do not think this is in game however, perhaps a future module of the late 1944 campaigns? Some observations: -The biggest difference between the Brits and US is the Universal Carrier, both armed and not. Armed it can be a mobile bunker (to a degree) or mobile reverser, as well as a small troop transport to move important units around the map (can't fit a full squad protected) with some armor protection. It should be interesting to use these in game, as well as the unarmed ones as armoured resupply vehicles if they are available. -The British Battalion has more Machine Guns (especially if you don't count the BAR as one), but none of them are belt fed or tripod mounted. In general 4 vickers were parceled out to each Battalion from Division but this still compares poorly with US and German use of tripod mounted MGs. I relied a lot on the .30 cals (both 1917 and 1919 types) for fire support, it will be interesting to see how well the additional Bren teams can manage. -The Brits have more 57mms than the US (and they have HE so they can be used against soft targets, and APDS for use against heavy tanks), but marginally less PIATs than the US has Bazooka's. Also the British infantry squad has no anti-tank rifle grenades like the US Squad does, so British squads are more vulnerable if German tanks break into their position. German tanks will be a more common threat in this module, so it may hurt having to rely on the PIAT which was found to be quite inaccurate past 50 meters. -Most of the British Battalions firepower is in its support company. British rifle companies have no weapons platoon so on their own are not that heavily armed. This probably explains why most British actions in Normandy and beyond were generally Battalion sized at least, with the support company and HQ company spreading its additional weapons across its companies. For scenario builders this is important, a lot of people like company sized engagements, but the fact is the British company does not have as much going for it as the US or German companies (especially panzer grenadier units). If you do make company sized engagements, add on some support company and HQ company assets. -The Brits have 3x the number of light mortars the US do, but the US 60mm is a much superior weapon with a much larger charge than the 2-inch despite only 10mm in difference, and a significantly longer range (~2000m for the 60mm, ~500m for the 2-inch). The 2-inch can be used for knocking out positions like the 60mm, but it was mainly a smoke weapon for platoon maneuvering. I do wonder how useful it will be.

I agree. I sometimes think I am playing a different game than other people. ATGs are almost always invisible until they fire at least 1 shot and usually 2. Tank commanders are blind as hell when unbuttoned and apparently can't see the enemy which the infantry right next to the tank can clearly see. Yet I come onto the forum and hear people complain about tank commanders seeing too quickly and AT guns being easy to spot. I don't get that, though bunkers do show up quickly without firing a shot.

Well Timothy Place's "Military training in the British Army, 1940-1944" is more critical of Monty in regards to tactics if you want another good view on the subject. I dislike Reynolds Steel Inferno work personally, filled with too many of the 1980's revisionist sterotypes about each side and a painfully terrible examination of opposing tanks with Reynolds going so far as to say only a luck hit on a Panzer (not panther or tiger) would disable it. It also reads like a mix of Hubert Meyers two volume work and Kurt Meyers memoirs which makes me feel he relied almost exclusively on those sources. Even when he refers to Canadian or British war diary quotations, he is quoting Hubert Meyer who actually did go and read those diary's. It just never felt like he did much research on his own, but relied on the works of others, which is not a bad thing but it just reinforced what was being written (including all the good and bad) without adding much new info. I personally think John English's recent work "Surrender Invites Death: Fighting the Waffen SS in Normandy" has a more balanced examination of things. It can be summed up in the SS were quite good on the defensive despite the odds, probably looked better than they were because of Allied mistakes at times, but had quite a bit of difficulty in launching successful attacks themselves even when the odds were in their favor. It is a bit Canadian focused, but that is because English is Canadian and has written extensively on the subject (very critical of Canadian Generalship in past works though not as much in this one I find) so he brings lots of his previous works into this one.

I may be nitpicking here, but at 3:42 on the first video, it took around 10 seconds for the Bren gunner to reload his magazine, at 5:54 it took the Panzershrek guy 6 seconds to reload his rocket. That just doesn't seem right to me, that replacing a magazine on a LMG can take longer then reloading an anti-tank rocket. From what I have read you could swap out a mag on a Bren in 2 seconds with a loader, and not much more than 5-6 seconds on your own. 10 second long reloads are going to seriously hamper the British squads firepower given it is much more dependent on the LMG than the US squad. Hell Lee Ermey can reload and commence firing on his own in 6 seconds and he is not even trained in using it.

"Colossal Cracks" by Stephen Hart is a very good read on British doctrine, tactics and leadership in Normandy. Pretty much redefined the British in Normandy, you won't find many serious studies on Normandy that do not cite this book or use the phrase "Colossal Cracks" when referring to 21st Army Group.

Perhaps a bit more related to the commonwealth module, from an old post in 2005 on these forums by Gpig: Here's another one (15 April, 1945 - from the South Alberta Regiment History), but this is a STUART vs KingTiger; . . . RHQ called them back with orders to circle around the other squadrons and secure a hamlet with the interesting name of Amerika. Their advance would take them over the ground of a small Luftwaffe airfield northeast of the village of Varrelbusch. Halkyard had been out that way in the morning with his tank and a Sherman troop. Halkie was in the lead and "it was a beautiful morning," George Gallimore recalled, when suddenly, "Right out of the ground from a ditch or dug out," like some primeval behemoth, lumbered their worst nightmare - a German Tiger II tank. Called the King, or Royal Tiger, this 68-ton monster from the Henschel factory at Cassel, with face-hardened armour plate up to four inches thick and an 88mm gun almost longer than their Stuart, represented the ultimate in Wehrmacht tank design. "Get in reverse, back up!" Halkyard shouted at his driver, Sonny Plotsky, just as the first 88 round hit nearby and the "dust rose, the tank was just full of dust." Plotsky threw the automatic transmission into reverse but the tank nearly stalled because his foot was on the gas pedal and there was some anxious seconds until the Stuart jerked backwards. Another round came in, and then another - that "bugger fired three shots at us and missed," remembered Gallimore, which allowed Halkyard to take cover behind a building where the four Shermans of their supporting troop were waiting. The South Albertas only had one weapon that could even damage a Tiger and that was a 17-pdr. so the suppoorting troop's Firefly moved up to fire and was just as promptly knocked out. [snip] RHQ was anxious for Danny "to press on." Having heard of a Tiger in the vicinity he was not about to take chances so decided to make a foot recce forward and dismounted from his tank. Years later he thought to himself, "You dumb bastard, they could have had snipers in those woods" but he arrived at the tree line, where in the fading light he could make out an armoured vehicle some eight hundred to a thousand yards ahead behind a blown bridge over a small creek. As he recalled, "I put the binoculars up to my eyes and I swear that the muzzle of this thing was sitting at the edge of my binoculars, it was so huge." Danny was looking at the same King Tiger Halkyard had enocountered that morning. Returning to his troop, he discussed the situation with Tom Milner and they decided to move the troop's two 17-pdr. tanks forward clear of the trees and open fire. This was done, and they immediately came under fire from the Tiger but just as quickly returned it. Carson Daley recalled that he fired "three shots and they ricocheted into the air off the Tiger and my knees were knocking something terrible." Tom Milner recalls firing eight rounds of 17-pdr. AP and that "either the first or the second did something to the gun in the turret, and the barrel was left pointing cockamamy." Danny remembers watching the 17-pdr. rounds go "wheww" and they just glanced off. Matters were not helped by RHQ, which prodded Danny by asking "how are you making out, we've got to move." Danny pointed out to them that, even if he got the Tiger, they would still need a bridge to get across the creek ahead. A few thousand yards away, the other troops in the squadron were monitoring the fight on their wireless and Bill Luton remembered "it was fascinating to sit there and listen to Danny McLeod masterminding the battle over the air and hear the firing, which was not far away. The pyrotechnics were not bad either. Danny now brought his two 75mm Shermans up to add weight to his fire. "We fired everything," he remembered, and "to this day, I cannot tell you what happened, whether an HE hit the muzzle brake and bent it back or it was a 17-pdr round that hit, but it was bent back about six inches." At this point the Tiger commander decided that perhaps discretion was the better part of valour and began to back away, but "backed a little more broadside to us" and Danny "thinks it was an HE round that set the engine compartment on fire." The Tiger began to brew. When it was over, Milner recalled, "a Tiger tank lay all shattered and in pieces, a barn had burned to the ground, and a house had been blown to bits." By now it was dark and Danny was ordered to pull back and Laager for the night. As they did so, Tom Milner remembers that a British SAS jeep pulled up beside his tank and the driver shouted, "Thanks, chaps, we weren't too sure how we were going to get around that corner" and then drove off into the darkness. Danny moved his troop back some distance and they "lit up the landscape" pouring HE into every flammable structure they could see. That done, they settled down for the night, having fought one of the most successful single-troop actions in the history of the South Alberta Regiment. It had been, the War Diarist concluded, "a ding dong fight in the failing light." --------------------- Danny got a Military Cross for this action, and post war went on to have a relatively successful hockey career. He is still alive I believe, if you watch "Greatest Tank Battles: Hochwald Gap" you will see an interview by him since he took part in that battle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0WKajKktaA

Yeah the Paras got the Mark V stens with fore grips, better sights and even a bayonet attachment. My only gripe with the screen shots from the commonwealth module is that the Paras are using the regular uglier stens instead of the nicely finished Mark V.

The panther is interesting in that it does well against the Tiger but in reality the Tiger proved more formidable against Allied tanks. Panther works well in a High Velocity environment but in the medium velocity environment it found itself against most allied tanks the front armor proved no better than the Tigers, and its side armor proved a big Achilles heel. The British studied some 60 KOed panthers in Normandy, concluded it took roughly 2.5 hits to kill one. The Tiger in contrast (though the samle size of 5 was small) took 4.1 hits to kill.

I brought this up awhile ago, the answer was no. Frankly I heavily disagree with the rationale given but regardless the answer was pretty clear.

Been meaning to play this one but it won't load past 39%. Cranked down the graphics and put it on turn based and it still doesn't work

Agreed though this has been debated already.

It would not have been shut down, more so factories which had built rails cars and engines but now built T-34s would never have been converted. Lend lease allowed the Russians to concentrate on producing certain weapons. They probably could have managed to build enough trucks and rail engines for themselves, they would have had a lot less tanks though.

You may be thinking of Hastings (or D'Este?) who claimed the Brits had over 100k troops in England. None of those men were ranked as fit for front line service though. The British stripped everything they could for the 1944 campaign, even the divisions meant to protect England. Had the british been as ruthless as the Germans, certainly they could have found probably a few 100,000 low quality recruits and made their own ulcer units and what not. They didn't go that route though. The US system was poor even when it worked, where as the German and British systems were quite good when they worked. No system is perfect, but a system that would send a wounded vet to a new unit rather than his old one was awful. The US Army certainly came to that conclusion, they abandoned it shortly after the war. As for battle exhaustion casualties, the British/Commonwealth armies recognized the problem and treated it. The German and Soviets however did not believe it though. German executions in WWI = 60 men German executions in WWII = ~20,000 men.

I'm personally pretty excited for the Churchills, some tanks with some decent armour protection will be nice. A note for battlefront, the guys at WWIIOL recently discovered the Churchills gun mantlet on the Mark III and IV is actually 10cm thick, not 8.6cm thick like the turret armor is. One guy contacted a group restoring a Mark III, Mark IV and Mark VII and they measured the mantlet thickness by hand. Mark III and Mark IV have 10cm mantlets and the Mark VII has a 15.2cm mantlet. You can see their website here: http://www.churchilltank.com/Home_Page/Home.html There most certainly were Achilles (well 17pdr armed M10s) in Normandy. British Divisional AT brigades were 50% towed 17pdrs (with a few 6prdrs), and 50% M10s (with half with the 3" gun and the other half with 17pdr). Even a few photo's of KOed ones in Normandy. Certain scenario's need them. At St. Lambert the crusader AAs were used to engage German infantry as well as to run ammunition from the rear to the front. Apparently the 20mm fuzes were very sensitive, would detonate on tree branches or upon coming in contact with a human. There apparently is footage from the camera man at St. Lambert who went through a wooded area where the Crusader AAs had engaged German infantry. The Crusaders had shot into the trees and the wooden splinters along with the shrapnel had cut up all the Germans who had been infiltrating that way.

It really wasn't a much different story with the brits. The british had pretty heavy manpower shortages by late 1944, so when divisions got badly chopped up it was quite possible the unit would be broken up and the men sent as reinforcements to other units (happened a few times). The British system worked well when it worked, and was certainly better than the US system. However, like the Germans, it broke down when the twin problems of heavy losses and limited manpower appeared and probably was no better than the US reinforcement system when that happened. The British, much like the Germans, really did not have enough divisions to rotate them around for rest and refit. Even the 6th Airborn division was kept in Normandy for the entire battle because the British didn't have a spare division to replace it with, where as the US 101st and 82nd were withdrawn by the end of June. The inability to rest divisions was actually a big issue during the race across France after Normandy, even a few of the Armour divisions had to stop their headlong rush into the open because the men were simply too exhausted. The only sustained rest the British divisions got in NW Europe was when winter rolled in. Ironically the British solders in WWI got more time in the rear than your average WWII British solder. In WWI it was 33% in the front line trenches, 33% in the secondary trenches, and 33% in the rear. In WWII there was often no men to spare to let others into the rear.

Gonna argue against this one, book is about 30 years out of date with recent works. Normandy historiography has evolved a lot over even the last decade, let alone three. Frankly I would argue that newer the book is the better, even though there are recent works which are mediocre at best. 1980's revisionist works were good for their time, but their explanations for a lot of stuff does not hold a candle compared to modern stuff. I can't really offer any good up to date study of the campaign as a whole, though I can offer books that focus on aspects of Normandy. Personally I have been focused on the Anglo-Canadian side more recently, so for that my recommendations are: British Armour in the Normandy Campaign 1944 by John Buckley Colossal Cracks - 21st Army group in Normandy by Stephen Hart Fields of Fire - Canadians in Normandy by Terry Copp I also hear Zitterling's Normandy work is quite good though I know people have problems with his arguments (hard to find a book that everyone likes). Also there is Antony Beevor's recent Normandy book, which is at the very least a recent publication that is likely to contain more recent works by other authors and thus should be better than many of the 1980's "classics". Unfortunately nothing quite Glantz like for Normandy as of yet.

Could the StuG cost more because they were rarer in Normandy than the Mark IV. Buckley (citing Zitterling) puts StuGs committed at under 600, which is slighly less than the Panther numbers (650) which served and much less than Mark IVs (900). I know there is a rarity cost thing but maybe the moderate difference was just represented in the cost category rather than the rarity part. Why did StuGs get lower grade armour?

Boy I have been getting that one wrong for a long time then.