[INF vs TANKS]

There are too many posts in this thread to reply to individually, so I'll resort to generalities.

The whole point of a recoilless weapon is that no momentum is imparted to the launcher. That means that the momentum of the projectile plus the front expulsion of propellant gas must be entirely compensated by the momentum of the propellant gas and/or plug ejected from the rear. Until they repeal the Law of Conservation of Momentum that's not going to change. This means that no matter how modern, every recoilless weapon is going to have exactly the same backblast given its shot momentum. Venturies don't change this in the slightest. Any argument about 'generation of weapon' or 'modern weapons have less backblast' should be accompanied by a treatise why the weapons in question should be excused from obeying the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Law of Conservation of Momentum.

There are four main dangers about backblast. Shock waves, high speed gas jet ablation, overpressure, and heat.

Shock waves are propagating waves of sudden pressure followed by rarefaction. They impart a sudden movement to whatever is around. Contrary to popular belief, they don't move objects very far. They move the impacted object quite violently, but only for a very small displacement. Some items, like loose rubble, almost don't react to shockwaves. Other items, like panes of glass or some types of doors, shatter or dislodge, because their elastic strain range is quite small. The human body doesn't like shock waves. Especially the lungs can be lethally damaged by shockwaves. However, the danger of shockwaves from a properly functioning recoilless weapon are slight. A steady deflagration is sought, because otherwise the tube would rupture and the weapon blows up. A well known problem for the first production run of the PzF 60. Very little in the way of shockwaves can be expected for the early generations of weapons, because the exhaust velocities were low. Modern rcl's like the RPG 7 have more issues with this, but still it is a minor concern. This effect is more dominant in explosives going off, like blast grenades or satchel charges. The wave reflects quite well, and this causes big problems in enclosed spaces. However, since rcl's don't generate a lot of shockwaves, it doesn't come into play very much.

High speed gas jet ablation is the same principle used in gas cutting machines. The gas acts as a sand blasting jet, and rips any exposed surface to shreds. The velocities and jet density must be very high for this to happen, and this effect is only apparent inside the direct exit flare of the weapon. For a PzF this means the 'beam' of fire up to two meters [est] behind the weapon. It doesn't reflect well, and after slight dissipation the effect vanishes very quickly. However, when and where the phenomenon occurs, it will literally shred human flesh and bone. The early generation short PzF tubes were easily tucked in the armpit by novice users, and this would literally blow their arm off. Thence the longer tubes later, even though the rear half of the tube had no further function. Look at some cross-sections to see the long straight empty exhaust tube. This is the effect warned against most.

Overpressure, sometimes erroneously called persistent pressure wave in military 'science', is the most important problem to consider in this context. A truly enclosed area such as a bunker would have trouble venting off the hot gases generated by the weapon. The excess gas would increase the interior pressure, thus damaging the occupants. This is a very serious problem in small unvented spaces, but add a sufficiently effective vent, and the problem goes away. The 'safe limits' about room size and vent size mentioned earlier seem, especially with the unchanging vent size, on the experimentally safe side. Please note that in considering the vent size, the window through which the shot is fired is a major vent as well! If we invent a soldier firing a PzF 100 through a small aperture in an unvented room, we could compute off the cuff using standard NIST injury thresholds that he would typically be suppressed if the room was smaller than 12 cubic meters, injured requiring medical aid in a room smaller than 4 cubic meters, and would have a 50% chance of dying of blast injuries in a room of half a cubic meter. Venting will [unpredictably but greatly] impact these effects. I think we can agree that inhalation of burning powder is a much greater danger than the pressure!

Heat is a dangerous one. The nitroglycolic fuel of a RPzB is a neatly surface-burning propellant, which comes out of the nozzle fully-decomposed and in great preponderance fully combusted. It comes out hot, but is unlikely to ignite household materials at ranges more than a metre or two. However, if obstructed, the volume of hot gas produced is likely to sear flesh if redirected towards personnel. A safe distance to clear the rear of the tube should be taken into consideration, but it is very hard to make a good estimate of how great this range should be. I leave that to doctrinal analysis.

The PzF produces a short 'cough' of heat, much less than the Ofenrohr, but since it used black powder, there was a great risk of particles of flaring powder flying out and lodging in combustible items. Though nothing that wouldn't be dealt with by ten seconds of swatting with newspapers or brooms, this is not the kind of thing enjoyed if you're at Faust range of the enemy.

There are warnings in doctrine about backblast of PzF and Ofenrohr. With the Ofenrohr, there should be no comrades behind you for 30m. Not strange when you realise that the ignition jack is going to come out of the back of the rocket in a hurry. There are no warnings not to fire the thing indoors, but there are diagrams of PzB trenches that show little concern for blast or heat effects around corners. Also fire concerns are not mentioned, again because of the nitroglycolic rocket fuel. Its fuel will make quite a bit of nasty smoke, although its toxicity is overstated.

The doctrinal warnings about the PzF are to keep the back of the tube pointed away from yourself or comrades for a few meters, it differs how many. Firing from indoors or bunkers is nowhere forbidden. Firing from dug in positions is recommended to be done with the end of the weapon extending above the rim, but otherwise it is mentioned in Fibeln that when firing from spiderholes, one meter of clearance behind the weapon suffices. Scorched tunics are to be expected, though.

As for the acrid smoke from a PzF choking out the firing tank hunter, watch this:

Panzerfaust 60 fired

This is a PzF 60, and check how much of that smoke is actually dust!

As for the B10 movies, notice that after firing in the second movie, the windows are still in their frames! How is that for huge, destructive overpressures? I'm sure I'm not the only adventurous kid who's blown out some windows when experimenting with things that go boom.

It would be nice if we could look critically at received wisdom for a change. I really can't believe that this is still a contested issue.

[German Interleaved Roadwheels: An Introspective]

Interleaved roadwheels was a compromise to a string of self-imposed problems. Limited swingarm movement for first generation torsion bars required longer swingarms to amplify the shock absorbing effect. But long swingarms with tiny wheels comes with its own set of problems. So they opted for long swingarms with large wheels. Again, another problem arises - large wheels meant fewer wheel stations per side and poor distribution of weight. So they compromised again, more wheel stations by overlapping the big wheels. Its interesting that they apparently got fed up with the whole affair and most 'paper panzers' on the drawing board at war's end had reverted to external-mounted leaf-spring sprung wheels. Many based on the old Czech Panzer 38(t) drivetrain.

I disagree entirely. As war progressed, the Krauts put Schachtellaufwerk on the latest Pz II and Pz III models to improve their speed and reliability. With big wheels, because big wheels means big radii of curvature, which in turn means less churning of mud, and thus better off-road capability.

As to the Schachtellaufwerk on the heavies being overengineering of a bad idea, just have a look at the VK4501 project, which culminated in the Ferdinand. This machine used 'traditional' suspension, although also with large wheels. It burned out motors at the least provocation, didn't want to turn well offroad, shed tracks, and was an automotive liability that made the Tiger and Panther look like Toyota Landcruisers.

The whole story of the Tiger [and by extension, the Panther] being designed with Schachtellaufwerk seems to stem from the early realisation by the overall design team that they weren't going to be able to power such a big machine if it wasn't optimised for light running. A consideration the French did with one of their questionable designs post-war [AMX 50?]. The rest of the world just switched to high-power Diesels, and powered out of the problem.

The Paper Panzers never got to the point where a decision was reached about such technicalities as suspension, armament, engines, or any other considerations. To say that they 'went back' is a bit quick.

Finally, let us not forget that the Tiger B was designed from scratch based upon experience with the Tiger, and they kept Schachtellaufwerk, although they went to steel rimmed wheels to keep maintenance to a minimum.

[German Interleaved Roadwheels: An Introspective]

Does anyone have the primary sources indicating that the Schachtellaufwerk was more susceptible to freezing/mudding up? I've been looking, and I only find one very short mention of Pz IV's getting mired in frozen mud. And they didn't have the overlapping wheels.

[German Interleaved Roadwheels: An Introspective]

It's a bit of a mystery who decided to do it, based upon what. There are many different sources claiming different things.

- The Wirtschaftsministerium liked that the Schachtellaufwerk-equipped machines used less rubber for the roadwheels per kilometer. Also fuel consumption seems to have been better.

- PzII-neu drivers waxed poetic about the new overlapping wheel set shedding track much less often.

- There are unsubstantiated rumours from front units about improved mine resistance, but this is not borne out by the Waffenamt tests.

- Wide wheel sets made the use of wide tracks possible. according to design conference reports. I find this hard to accept as a reason though: they could just have used modern-style wide wheels.

- The track stayed straighter under the roadwheels in muddy ground, which would have made crawling out of a bog situation much easier. Especially with front sprockets.

- Track tension and concomitant wear needs to be lower with the flatter roadwheel surface. This is especially important with the amount of road marching the Germans did.

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

ArgusEye, doubling down on howlers, I hadn't noticed for a while.

He wrote "not a countable infinity of countable infinities, because that would constitute another countable infinity. You can't switch cardinalities by simply raising your domain to the nth power."

No on one and yes on two. Any finite number of countable infinities is still countable, check. But no, a countable infinity of them is not "n" of them, and a countable infinity of countable infinities is uncountable.

Theorem: Let S be a set of sets, S1, S2, S3, ... . If S is finite or has the power Aleph Null, and if all sets S1, S2, S3, ... have the power Aleph Null, then the set of all objects belonging to these sets also has the power Aleph Null.

By hypothesis, every set S1, S2, S3, ... can be arranged in a sequence. Let us denote by x(i,j) the ith object in Sj. For instance, x(2,3) denotes the 2nd object in the 3rd sequence S3. Now there is only a finite number of terms x(i,j) with i+j equal to some number a. Hence we can arrange the terms with i+j=3, follow this by a sequence containting all terms with i+j=4, etc. Then we obtain a sequence containing each object occurring in any Sj at least once. Strike out the repetitions, and you have a sequence containing each of our objects exactly once.

This is the quickest proof of Cantor diagonalization constraining Aleph Null sets to the power ≤ Aleph Null to Aleph Null.

Now go hang your head in shame. When will it get through to you that mathematics is not a field where you can bluff your way through?

[Still a great game for a quick WW2 blast]

"I wish they'd do even a cursory strategic layer though."

+1 to that...

In the recent past I umpired a strategic level game where the battles were decided by CMBB. The same is quite doable for CMAK. It was rather fun. The biggest issue was that the battles tended to be lopsided, with great concentrations of force on thin defenses, and it mattered not much whether the attacker won, but how the time and his losses were. Gives rather a different slant on the game.

[On-map Mortars and Spotting]

Good that you got it to work. Happy shelling!

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

A countable infinity of countable infinities gives you more than a countable infinity.

Read the link I posted on the Hilbert Hotel. You're wrong again.

All (countably infinitely long) sequences of rationals (themselves countably infinite) comprise a set that is a countable infinity of countable infinities - and have the cardinality of the reals, and are not countable.

If you replace the word "sequence" with the word "series", then this is indeed the reals. But not a countable infinity of countable infinities, because that would constitute another countable infinity. You can't switch cardinalities by simply raising your domain to the nth power. Cantor diagonalization still works for nth powers.

It is only the single most famous result in all of set theory, that all sequences of rationals cannot be enumerated - that is, put into one to one correspondence with the natural numbers.

Cantor diagonalization is not the grand result of set theory, but it does blow your statement away. As for enumeration of rationals, I posted a nice YouTube video proving that they are numerable.

I already pointed out this mistake to ArgusEye when I mentioned that he ignored the word "sequence" in my phrase that he quoted. All he has done since is double down on that mistake, and pretend I didn't say "sequences of rationals" but merely "rationals", when I simply didn't. He is making it up.

If you don't want your terminology errors corrected, that's fine, but then your statement stays gibberish. Sequences of numbers do not make new numbers, you see.

The rest of what he is retailing is not obscure, is not in dispute, and is utterly basic in this area.

In fact everything I wrote is utterly basic. I don't know more than the very basics.

You remind me of people who crank their engines until their battery is dead, instead of reviewing their options. Repeating errors doesn't make you right.

And I do apologize for derailing the thread.

[Fifth Army Bazooka tests vs. Panther]

Nice find, mr. Kettler!

When the report mentions ricochets, I assume it is the entire rocket ricocheting off the impact site, without detonating? Hyperplastic metal jets don't bounce well.

[On-map Mortars and Spotting]

Are they perhaps still setting up?

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

I didn't understand much of this.

Could someone please provide a crayon version interpretation? Many thanks.

I'll give it a try, but don't be fooled: this is only a sketch of reality, and by no means a proof of anything. There are multiple definitions of the sets, I use the simplest one to explain, which is antiquated.

Let's suppose we play a game. One of us says a number, the other one says a number, the one saying the higher number wins. This is a very tedious game. After all, the only thing the second speaker has to do, is to add one to the number the first speaker said. There is no highest number that cannot be beaten. The sequence of numbers stretches out infinitely, in both the positive and negative directions.

In many mathematical applications, one needs to take the entirety of the set of numbers one is working with, and perform some mathemagic with them. This kind of maneuver is called improper in most cases. Whether or not this succeeds, or is allowable whilst maintaining the truth of the calculation, depends very much on the circumstances one is computing in. Knowing something about the nature of infinity is therefore very useful.

It turns out infinity performs some really odd tricks. I will refer you to the Hilbert Hotel for some entry-level mind-blowing oddity. Sometimes one can perform operations using infinity, sometimes not. This was a problem for many years, and caused much upset and conflict until Georg Cantor decided to properly define some different kinds of infinity, and their properties. This goes quite deep, and I will only pick out the most pertinent bits to this discussion, a little later in this post.

Let us return to the stupid game of my first paragraph. Infinity is not a number, so we cannot call it as our play; what infinity, in its simplest form, boils down to in this context, is if our first player would say: I will not stick to one number, I will keep counting up, forever! This could be said to be a cheat, but then: so could the notion of infinity.

Now let us look at another problem. There is a safe, with a combination keypad, and a burglar with eternity on his hands. We don't know how long the key string of numbers is, but if we start to count at zero, and keep adding up, we are bound to find it before eternity runs out. Every little step of the way gets us that one step closer to the solution. The safe builder has infinite numbers to choose from, but we will hit that number, no matter how insanely huge it is.

This example is of something called 'countable infinity'. There is no limit to the amount of numbers to try, but we get there in the end. Countability is due to the set of numbers in use.

Let me explain what is meant by set in this context. If I'm counting, I'm using only the set N+, which contains all positive natural numbers. Those are the whole numbers, like 1, 2, 3, 59874, etc. It does not contain 2/3, Pi, -4, or i. I can extend this set to be N, the set of all natural numbers, including the negatives. This contains N+, but adds to this negative whole integers like -1, -5, -1008237, etc. I do this by performing a subtraction [a mathematical operation] on my set, and this opens up a new expanse of possible numbers. Now, I can also decide to use a bigger set. We can add the set Z [or Q], of the rational numbers. These are numbers where one natural number is divided by another. Examples are 2/3, -1/2, 18/19, 227/13, and so forth. This set of numbers is opened up to us by using a mathematical operation, division, on our natural numbers. It contains all the previous sets.

With that last set, you can get arbitrarily close to any number you want to reach. The fine-ness of your stripes along the number line can be as fine as you want it. But it will always be stripes, it will always be little steps. There will always be space between the stripes. And in that space, there is always room for a point along the line. No matter how fine you make it.

Coming back to our burglar, this is equivalent to him having to type in two numbers, one above the stripe and one below, giving him a lot more work, to get them both exactly right. But he can do it, in much the same way he can do it with whole numbers. It will take him idiotically longer, though.

If we play another stupid game, I could challenge you to give me two numbers so close to each other, that there is no space between them. I will always be able to give you a number in between. If you say 0 and 1, I will tell you 1/2. If you say 2/10000000000000 and 3/10000000000000, I'll tell you 25/100000000000000. And so on. There is always room.

This ends when we go to the set R, of the real numbers. Real numbers must be on the number line, between other numbers, but they don't have to be rational. They are allowed to have a value that you cannot express as a fraction. These numbers fill the space completely. This becomes pretty hard to explain further, and proof is usually left for advanced students, and to be honest I don't remember it anyway. Just take my word for it.

We now have a set R which contains all the previous sets, plus numbers like e, sqrt(2) and pi. We can expand further, but for the sake of sanity we won't. The set R is obtained from the set Z by a mathematical operation, to be exact: infinite series. This refers to a mathematical expression containing an endless series of fractions added to each other. Any two [or more] fractions can be added to make another single fraction, but an infinite series escapes this bound by dint of it being infinite itself. You have to go into infinity just to get one number, so to speak.

All sets before R were countably infinite. Even the rationals, which can be made as dense as you want them, are countable. I posted a YouTube movie about that earlier. But the real number set, the reals are different. You can make the width of the 'stripes' on the number line infinitely small. The width of each number becomes zero.

This makes them innumerable. After you counted any number of reals, you still have not advanced anything along the timeline. There are infinitely many points between any[/y] two points, no matter how close! And this is another kind of infinite than with the rational numbers, where we have the same story, of infinite possibilities between any two numbers.

Here we come to the meat of the matter. The countable infinities are made using non-infinite methods, of subtraction, addition and division. Reals are made injecting infinity into their creation using the infinite series. For some mathematical applications [mostly pure math though] this is an important difference. Therefore, Cantor cast the distinction between countable and uncountable sets into numberable infinity, Aleph Null, and innumerable infinities, Aleph 1 and up.

If the choices for the combination to the safe are numerable, the burglar will at one time get there, and it is an infinity Aleph null. If there is no way to go by all the possibilities, no matter how many, one by one, there is Aleph One or higher.

Useful? Only if you use infinity in finicky applications. I have never found a good use for them in my field.

From this you must see why I choked on pedantry about obscure mathematical expressions used wrongly. By our very nature we define graphs not by infinite series, but by inputting data within our tragically short lifetimes. Give me the same keyboard and mouse as 76mm, and infinity to go through the possibilities, and I will at one point create any graph he created. Not that I have the patience.

[About Pak40's penertration data on German side]

Do you have a bigger pic of the data sheet? I find it quite hard to read.

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

C'mon, ArgusEye. That's easy for you to say.

Allright, fair point!

I think I couldn't put it clearer than this gentleman:

Which contains the original Cantor proposals, although it lacks rigour in this formulation. For a rigourous treatment, any book on Cantorian mathematics will cover it.

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

Argus - more absurd attempts to make simple reasoning an activity requiring the permission of others, and once again it fails hopelessly.

Permission? Where did you get that straw man?

Sequences of rationals are not single rationals; all reals can be represented by such sequences; it is the bog standard way of defining the animals in the first place.

No. They are usually defined by series, I will assume you mean that.

That handles the absurd red herring reference to non rational reals, which just ignored the word "sequence" in the phrase it quotes.

You came up with the rationals comprising the reals. Not me. The cardinality of Z reaches only Aleph null. You limit yourself [needlessly] into error.

Next to my alleged error, leaving aside the absurd red herring of computer anything, which no one else had ever mentioned, "what we are computing" is a comment on 76mm's prior post (containing the prescient observation that the thread was becoming absurd), "you could draw an infinite number of such curves, each of them different to some extent, based on what you are trying to graph and what you are trying to reflect." So no, we are not trying to use a computer to splice a line through n known datapoints, there is no prior countable set being mapped to the real domain; the exact thing we are calculating is the cardinality of all continuous functions on a closed interval.

Bull. I refer to my earlier post.

And the number of those is the cardinality of the continuum - it is a bog standard result and one Argus undoubtedly knows. He prefers trivial geometric ways of proving it (that to me aren't revealing or proof like enough, even if elegant to one who already sees why).

A proof that is not proof like enough? What I wrote is no proof. What you wrote was confused gibberish.

No, "he" is not going to have less than infinite generating functions, and doesn't need to define them - the precise question spoke of graphs of different things, not any one thing, etc. 76mm or a hypothetical "he" is under no such constraint.

Reality tends to be a bitch. If you're going to try to show off by using obscure mathematical expressions, you need to get them right. Cantor came up with his cardinality structure exactly because of the kind of errors you're making. And now you're using his jargon to make exactly those errors. It would be funny if it wasn't annoying.

Everything is contained in a simple "could" - any imaginable continuous squiggle might track something or other that one of 76mm's imaginary discussion participants might have wanted to graph.

That indeed had been 76mm's point and I was merely agreeing with him about it, with modest added "color",

which you got wrong. Simple. Now you could bite your tongue and learn, and not be the same kind of wrong again, or you can rant and rail trying to put a shine on your failure, and set yourself up for the same failure again. I think I know which one you're going to come up with, but feel free to surprise me.

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

ArgusEye wrote "some things are sufficiently WRONG that I cannot resist. It isn't aleph one curves. Quit that." So confident that the continuum hypothesis is false, are we? I know it is true, so there lol.

No; the continuum hypothesis is quite well supported. It is your assertion that is wrong.

The curves in question are continuous, and the cardinality of all continuous functions on any finite interval is the same as the cardinality of the reals. It isn't less than the cardinality of the reals, because it contains the constant functions. And it isn't more than the cardinality of the reals, because each continuous function is defined by its values on all rational points (since it is continuous, and the rationals are dense), so there is a one to one mapping between sequences of rationals and these functions, and all (convergent) sequences of rationals is the definition of the reals.

Go rationalize pi or Eulers number, then come back. Both real numbers.

(I can define function distances in multiple ways to get the metric that establishes the correspondence, but any one suffices; the rational sequences will converge because they approximate a continuous function on a finite interval).

You start with an error. The first thing you learn in higher mathematics: never lose track of what you are computing. You went wrong there. Even if we discard the obvious granularity of a computer graph [enough to invalidate your statement, but not 'mathy' enough] there is the question of someone making a graph. He is going to have less than real infinity enumerating the functions and/or datapoints. He has to define them. This alone means that he has a choice of at most countably infinite curves, limiting him to Aleph null. You cannot just raise the cardinality of his available input domain by assuming the entire output set is available to him. Trivial error. The rest is a clunky bunch of half-understood math jargon, instead of stating that you can map all points bijectively to a line, which would have sufficed for the continuum applicability.

Leaving only the quibble, is the cardinality of the continuum equal to aleph one - which is the continuum hypothesis stated. Yes I am having fun with it, no there is no reason to "quit that", and no it isn't even remotely "WRONG" in block capitals.

The continuum hypothesis is correct. But you are WRONG.

But as with similar perfectly clear arguments to anyone who understands their terms, I never cease to be entertained by those who think their authoritarian pronouncements, personal opinions, red herrings and sophisms, matter a darn, or that the man in front of them requires their permission to reason, in utterly clear and simple ways.

So spoke the walking sophism.

Whenever I read your posts, I see unfounded optimism about your analytical skills. You talk the math talk, but you can't walk the walk. If you can't even get simple applicability issues for cardinality [or in other threads, statistics] right, I cannot but shake my head. Your use of jargon, straw men, snow jobs, and half-assed bandying around of almost-correct-but-not-quite-understood mathematical terminology might impress the uninformed, but not me, buddy. You just look sad to me.

[Shreck team needs an mp40]

Still? Seriously?

[Vulnerability of Hanomag halftrack gunners..]

The half-tracks were meant to give some measure of support. Doctrine tells us so explicitly. It also tells us that they are not to be employed in this way until the heavy hitters of the enemy have been spent. After the tanks rolled over the enemy lines, and the main effort has shattered the opposition, there are still plenty of hold-outs to be taken, and the main gain from a battle is found in the pursuit. Two functions for which the light armor is a fine choice.

So no, you wouldn't use them as most do in the game. That much is true. But to suggest they weren't used for combat is silly. The 251/16 isn't much use for non-combat purposes. There were up-armoring kits around. The Stummel was given a coax late in the war. Most pictures of killed Hanomags show the machine-gun on its mount, so it wasn't whisked off with the troops with any regularity. They weren't tanks, but they were armored troop carriers.

The Hanomags were mostly employed ferrying men and materiel around through artillery stonk territory. If they could be spared, they would also get around to other tasks. But when did the Heer ever have anything to spare?

[Reassessment of Italian Combat Prowess]

76mm - yes you could draw an infinite number of such curves (aleph 1 of them, in fact).

I didn't want to get sucked into this whole thread, but some things are sufficiently WRONG that I cannot resist. It isn't aleph one curves. Quit that.

As to the main thrust of the discussion, to compare the strengths of 40 Wehrmacht vs 44 Wehrmacht is kind of pointless. Different people with different tools in a very different environment. What is the comparison for, anyway? It all starts with a straw man argument way back in post 65.

In the end it would come down to this: the 40 Wehrmacht would win every battle. Because the 44 Wehrmacht would show up four years late. Just as trite as the rest of the bickering. Which is too bad, because the original point of debate was quite interesting.

[Effective SMG range, Help grogs]

There's a big difference in what people call effective range. Do we speak of effective range as in:

-the range at which the bullet can still hurt targets?

-the range to which the weapon is sighted?

-the range at which the accuracy of the weapon is such that it can reliably hit a man sized target?

-the range at which a soldier can reliably hit a man sized target?

-or perhaps the range at which an average soldier on an average battlefield is better off firing than not firing?

Some of these are a lot easier to quantify than others.

[Help with Armored Covered Arc]

Just open up your arc. The TacAI is better than you think.

[Thinking about getting it]

The scale and graphics are very different. By modern esthetic standards, it is decidedly clunky. However, as a wargame it works. That doesn't change. The depth of the old game is equal to or greater than the newer, so don't expect a 'light' game here. It is good. There are always points one can critique, but from my perspective, there still is no stronger competitor. Definitely worth the 7 bucks.

[Soviet Tiger penetration study May 1943]

Very nice. Especially the photo's are great. My gratitude is great.

['Explosive Bullets']

Are they referring to 20mm used in the ground role, perhaps?

[accuracy/efficiency of machine gun fire]

From what I remember, the ROF for the MG42 was decided upon by observing that the variable ROF on the MG34 with that feature was always turned up to the maximum by the soldiers in the field. There was a requirement by the Waffenamt in 1937 that machine gun ROF should be increased due to experiences in the field, and again in 1941. The reason for which would be interesting to find.

There are three aspects to deciding how effective machine gunnery is. First is how many casualties it makes. High ROF has advantages and disadvantages there. You catch the upright squad before they can hug the ground with more bullets. On the other hand, you burn through your ammo quicker. I have yet to see real research into this, although it does make sense.

The second aspect is suppression. With a steady dunka-dunka-dunka, you can keep going a lot longer with your ammo supply than with a fast crrrack! The suppression by the MG42 wasn't so much the bullets flying around you the whole time, but more the realization that if you showed your head, somebody would try to saw it off. Whether that is more, less, or equally useful is up for debate.

The third aspect is how the machine gunner experiences the whole affair. If the machine gunner feels more confident in a faster shooting gun, he will stick to it longer. If he is comfortable that a one-second burst has hosed down a target sufficiently, so that he doesn't need to keep focusing on it, he might be able to keep more targets occupied. The machine gun is not only beating the morale of the enemy down, it's raising the morale of your own guys.