Dietrich

Lemme guess . . . only those who haven't read all the aforementioned books about the Battle of Britain would think that Len Deighton's Fighter is an insightful work? So there was no way the Luftwaffe could have achieved air superiority over the British Isles in the summer/autumn of 1940, and thus there was no way the Germans could have even gotten across the Channel intact; and the German defensive effort in Normandy was doomed as soon as the Allies got ashore. Speaking of Big Cat Envy, though . . . if Tigers and Panthers made up only a fraction of the German armor in Normandy, yet the Allies lost plenty of tanks, then the humble Pz. IV must be (at least somewhat) more capable than it is given credit for. When playing as the Germans, sure, it would be cool to have a couple Tigers or Panthers at my disposal, but when defending, between all the Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks and PaK 40s and even PaK 38s, I think I'll have enough to put up a good anti-armor showing.

(à la Jeremy Clarkson when introducing The Stig on Top Gear) "Some say they were the most formidable armed forces in the Second World War. Others say they were just a bunch of village-burning, civilian-slaughtering, baby-bayonetting, Jew-hating Nazis. All we know is... [pause for effect] ...they're called the Germans!" "Vorschit! Volle Deckung!" "Himmelherrgott--! Sie kommen wieder!" "Vollrotzen!" "[short but blood-curdling scream]" "Mein Gott, die haben ihn erwischt!" "Laufweschel! Laufweschel!" "Handgranate, Deckung!" . . . *clears throat* Uh, yeah, I have a little German blood in me. Honestly, though . . . I dig German equipment, and I think the fact that only one eighth of the Wehrmacht ever faced the Western Allies from Normandy onward says a lot about the Germans' warfighting capability in WW2, but as far as CM:N goes, I'd love playing as anybody, whether German, American, British, other Commonwealth, etc. And yeah, the fact that the British Isles remained undefeated/unoccupied meant that later the US, the British Army, and the other involved Commonwealth forces could use the UK like a giant aircraft carrier parked right off the coast of Europe.

After some experimentation in the editor, I found that with a standard IBCT/SBCT rifle squad, ordering "Split Assault" twice and then reconstituting the teams yielded one with 2x M249, 2x M4, and 1x M4/M203, and the other team with 3x M4 and 1x M4/M203. (Trying this with an HBCT "assault" squad is superfluous, since such a squad is already arranged in three fireteams of three, the first of which includes the two M249s.) Doing a similar trick with a Marine rifle squad yielded one group with 3x M249 and 1x M32 and another of two fire teams (led by the squad leader) each with 3x M16A4 and 1x M32. I guess this shows that I need to have more aware of the tactical flexibility afforded by the various squad-splitting options. hehe

How do you split off the SAWs, rather than just splitting the squad into fireteams? In some scenarios, I have seen squads split asymmetrically (such as one team with all M4s and the other team with the M249s and M4/M203s), but I always wondered "how did the scenario designer get them to split like that?"

This (the whole of this thread as well as the sum of its parts) is why I respect this forum and its members so much and why I'm glad to be a part of it: unlike so many other forums out there, this isn't a bunch of 15- to 25-year-old* too-big-for-their-britches punks who know only how to boast or flame. In other forums, someone who comes across as he who started this thread came across at first would just get flamed till he left. In this forum, even someone confrontational is met with respect and there are clear, purposeful efforts to turn confrontation into discussion. * No offense to those forums members who happen to be 15 to 25 years old.

Alan8325, Did this Challenger of yours get knocked out (even though none of its components were damaged)? So many times I've suffered an MBT knocked out even though none of the crew are wounded (not even just yellow) and no critical components are damaged (that is, the engine, tracks, radio, main gun, etc., are still intact). In any case, the situation of your Challenger shows how detailedly things are modeled in this game!

These points you all have been making about the relative unsuitability of weapons chambered in 7.62mm (or thereabouts) for the role of the typical infantryman's long-arm only reinforce my keenness for a rifle chambered in 6.5mm Grendel. And if I was in, say, an SOF unit and could thus have a chance of being granted my request for a 6.5mm Grendel weapon, then I would have a pretty good chance of getting 6.5mm Grendel ammo for said weapon. But yes, I understand that, for tactical practicality, I would probably end up just using a tricked-out H&K 416 (in 5.56mm NATO) so as to be able to draw ammo from the same store(s) as my teammates.

Ach, I should have known that spelling the German pronunciation of "G" that way -- aside from being incorrect, as it turns out -- would be misinterpreted. :cool: According to my Oxford-Duden German dictionary, "G" is pronounced /ge:/. Besides, does my simply forgetting to check my German phonetic alphabet tablet invalidate the mere supposition I made that the German equivalent of "squad automatic weapon" could possibly be Gruppenschnellfeuerwaffe? "Schwul" heißt "gay" auf Deutsch, nicht wahr?

Well, if the Germans were to equivalentize "Squad Automatic Weapon", the result would be Gruppenschnellfeuerwaffe, with the initialism GSW, which would be pronounced (in German, that is) Gay-Ess-Vay. I think the Minimi/M249/MG4/etc. could be classified "light machine guns" because: 1. They fire a cartridge which is light in comparison to the cartridges typically fired by "actual" machine guns. 2. The belt-fed full-auto nature of these weapons is more or less equivalent to those of their larger counterparts. For the M249 and such, "Squad Automatic Weapon" is more a description of its intended role rather than a designation which indicates its essential nature. Thus, to me it's no big deal that the MG4 is called what it is, even though it's not an MG in the same way that the MG3 is. To me, "MG4" is (or is as nears as makes no odds to) a "nice, clean designation" for this particular small arm. For example, take that certain late-war German automatic weapon which (in part) inspired the AK-47 -- whether you call it an MP44 (Maschinenpistole 44) or an StG (Sturmgewehr 44) doesn't change the weapon itself.

If I were in a unit where I had my choice of long arm, I would ask for an AR-type weapon chambered in 6.5mm Grendel -- better range and better terminal ballistics than 5.56mm, yet without the decreased ammo load capacity of 7.62mm.

I wonder if the first Bundeswehr MG-Schütze who spent a while with an MG4 on a firing range thought: "Minimi, Schminimi."

Cue the first minute and a half of Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.

So long as the Bundeswehr forces in the NATO module have Leopard 2A6s, MG3s, and G36s, I'll be content. If I have to wait for CM:N to get Fallschirmjäger and/or Panzersturmpioniere, I can handle that.

I'm working on a scenario using the "Latakia Airport (large)" map, and I'm puzzled about which Blue forces would be employed in such a battlespace. The scenario begins in the darkness of early morning. I figured that plus or minus a dozen men (including a CCT/JTAC and a sniper team) would insert via HAHO (or HALO) jump and establish an OP at the perimeter of the airfield for initial recon and for calling in air strikes on the OPFOR units in and around the airfield in preparation for the arrival on map of the company or so of Blue light infantry (which had parachuted in or been inserted via helo) about 30 minutes into the scenario. I'm going for as much realism as I can as far as TO&E and unit designations. So my questions are: - Since Latakia is just a few miles from Syria's coast, would the capture of the airfield be assigned to the USMC? If yes, would the advance party consist of the Fire Control Team and a team from the Scout/Sniper Platoon of the MEU assigned to capture the airfield, or would they from the Scout/Snipler Plt. only, with the FCT retained with the MEU command element? Or would they be Force Recon troops? (If they were Force Recon soldiers, they would most likely have M4s rather than M16A4s, and thus IBCT scout sections would be used to simulate them, even though they're from the wrong branch.) Would this sort of mission be not important enough to use MARSOC operators? - If not the USMC, what Army unit(s) might be given the task of capturing the airfield? The Rangers? Army Airborne troops? Perhaps some other light infantry inserted via helo? Would a full company of light infantry be reckoned sufficient for capturing (and holding) an airfield, or would more forces be thought necessary on the ground? - What amount of air assets would be allotted? I figured that, as with the first scenario of the USMC campaign, no less than a pair of JDAM-loaded fast-movers would suffice. Since the battlespace is so near the coast, would the air assets be USN (F/A-18s) or USMC (Harriers), or would they be F-15s or F-16s operating from bases in Turkey (or perhaps even Italy, with in-flight refueling)? - What Red forces would likely be in place in and around the Latakia airfield? Would these include static tanks, or perhaps even non-static tanks? Thanks in advance for any answers and/or insight. =)

Sad, though, that this sort of 'slap in the face' is not unknown among, well, American movie-and game-makers. Thanks to Hollywood, it seems that, as far as most Americans figure, WW2 began on June 6, 1944. BFC, however, stands in sharp and respectable contrast to the typical "the toughest battles of World War Two were fought in western Normandy" shtick of most US game companies.

In CMx1, buttoning/unbuttoning was pretty much an on/off thing -- if you gave the corresponding command, the commander and driver of a tank would both immediately open/close their hatches. In CMx2, buttoning/unbuttoning is much more dynamic. You can give the command, but the crew might not unbutton or button up immediately, depending on several factors. For instance, if you tell an Abrams' crew to unbutton immediately after firing the main gun, it will be a few seconds before the loader opens his hatch, since he was in the process of reloading the main gun when the unbutton order was given. Also, you might give the open-up command but the crew may refuse to do so if their vehicle is consistently under small-arms fire.

Well if two guns fire the same caliber and type of ammo and have the same barrel length, yet one of said guns has a bipod, I'd say the deciding factor is the bipod. Since a bipod means greater stability, which would translate into greater effective range, since the rounds are on target to a greater extent than from an unsupported gun. On the other hand, the M249's full-auto-only and high-ish ROF might well tend to counteract increased accuracy resultant from the bipod... How many inches of concrete is a .50-cal ball round reckoned to penetrate? What about stone? (Of course, that depends on what type of stone...) Wood isn't very plentiful in the desert. Hence the construction of buildings with material that just happens to be sterner stuff than wood. And the Germans (pretty much all rifles and MGs) use a slightly larger round, 7.92mm.

Victims of a single recoilless rifle team north of Dumayr. Thankfully, all eight crewmen survived the battle.

How I was looking forward to a DVD-style case with a hard-copy BF game manual. *sigh* I actually swapped the provided crystal case (oddly, the back was warped, though the disc was intact) with a slimline crystal case I had lying around.

A convenient juxtaposition of pre-1945 ("the only good Nazi is a burnt Nazi"...) as well as post-1945 ("beware the Soviet Integral...") propagandistic perceptions. Whenever I read the back cover of a movie or game which takes place in Normandy between June and December 1944 and I spot the phrase "the toughest battle of the war" or some such, I think: "Yeah, right; tell that to Army Group Center or the defenders of Brest-Litovsk." But wait, I forgot... everything is from America's perspective. When I first heard about CMSF, my delight that Combat Mission had become better than ever was counteracted by my disappointment that the game wasn't set in WW2. But that was largely because of my unfamiliarity with war and the tactics and the equipment thereof post 1945. Once I actually got the game, I became more familiar with the tactics and such, and that fired my interest, and since then I have done a fair amount of research about moderns weapons and military formations. Now I'm actually glad that BFC diverged from the WW2 era. That said, I'm really looking forward the CMx2 WW2 games.

The course this discussion has taken reminds me of how it seems that those in the US who protest "the war" seem to be concerned much more about Iraq than Afghanistan. For example, the fact that the organization Iraq Veterans Against The War is not called Iraq And Afghanistaion Veterans Against The War (aside from the fact that the latter name is unduly cumbersome) seems to reflect the fact that anti-war folks are against the Iraq half of the war. I wonder why. As vehement as anti-war demonstrators in the US can be, I think they generally fail to mention Afghanistan is because the Coalition forces are generally regarded as being there to combat the Taliban -- as opposed to "killing/dying for oil" -- but also because (and, I admit, this is not-very-well-founded supposition) people generally still believe that Osama bin Laden is somewhere in the lawless border realm between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and if intelligence provided broadcastable proof that he was in a position to be captured by a SOF team or simply killed by a JDAM, the cry for his blood would ring out anew in the US, and the Afghanistan half of the war would enjoy a sudden, if limited, surge in support.

I'm an American, and in CMx1 I usually play as the Germans, whereas in CMSF I usually play Blue. *shrug*

I was alluding to the Haditha incident. My intent was, not to suggest that "US soldiers commit war crimes every time someone gets killed by an IED", but to use an incident which actually happened (albeit a unique one) to show why not taking out an insurgent who is in the act of planting an IED could have dire consequences beyond the casualties inflicted by the IED itself. To those who bemoan the taking out of the insurgent in the above-linked video, consider this: If you were a police marksman working security during a major state event and you spotted someone planting a large bomb, would you not take the shot, or would you simply report it and wait for the patrolling police personnel to arrest the bomb-planter? To put in perspective: Eight Marines were charged by the US military in connection with the Haditha incident. In the case of six of those, all charges were dropped. To my knowledge, none of them have served any sentences, let alone been court-marshalled. Wow... a courageous and nonviolent Chinese student has just been compared to an AK-wielding Afghani insurgent who plants roadside bombs and flings acid onto the faces of schoolgirls.

Consider the alternative: Apache (for whatever reason) does not engage and kill insurgent. Insurgent successfully plants IED. Humvee convoy drives down road, triggers IED -- two dead, three wounded. Remaining soldiers -- driven to rage by yet more killing of their comrades by what they consider cowardly and undefenable means -- dismount, storm through several nearby houses and kill everyone (none of whom are insurgents) they encounter.

Corrupt, inefficient and self-absorbed regimes which were, if nothing else, not Communist, correct? The impression I get is that so much of what the US did between the end of World War II and the fall of the Iron Curtain -- from the House Un-American Activities Committee all the way to the Vietnam War -- was basically fighting tooth and nail with all available means against anything which even smelled of Communism.