BletchleyGeek

Oooh @Bil Hardenberger looking forward so much to this AAR “Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the tanks!” he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

LOL the 1980s @37mmno need to fake that US infantry any more...

That must be the new CMBS module? Where did you get those binoculars comrade?

Not Fire and Rubble, I wish!, but Final Blitzkrieg.

Actually works exactly in reverse to that, verified that spending all smoke rounds zeroes out HE ammo in FR a couple weeks ago. I think I raised this matter on the helpdesk like in 2017... so I have come to accept it as a feature.

I got that sense Chuck Too bad I am at Melbourne. I would route you to FGM if you don't know it, you may find someone in your same TZ to player real-time or wego live over a connection.

Mate, "the man" is the main author of the rules. If a random person walking down the street, took a look at your front yard and yelled in the general direction of your house "your garden is a shambles, what nonsense!" you'd probably not be amused.

after using all your HE.

Happy New Year to you too @Battlefront.com. Congratulations for scoring significant business successes in a year with so much uncertainty and chaos as this one. I wish you guys to keep scoring like that throughout 2021, hopefully in an easier environment. All the best!

Maybe Steve will just spend his New Year's Day playing some strategic war game or doing something else that brings him joy. That's how I spent mine.

Excellent write up @SimpleSimon. Each weapon is just a component in a system. While, philosophically, almost all WW2 armies were on the same page regarding concepts, they sometimes differed wildly in the approach to bring about abstract concepts like "fire and maneuver". Comparing weapons 1:1 is only meaningful if they are playing equivalent roles on those systems. My contribution to this thread is that the CW armies favoured organisations in "fours" rather than "threes" or "twos". So a CW Bn packs actually 33% more "mass" than a German one. It is not uncommon to find that one CW Bn can carry an assault (where it is difficult to exploit high ROF weapons like the MG42) by sheer numbers, where I would need two German 44 Bns (or three VG). This heft, when augmented with AFVs and timely mortar/artillery support, can be devastating.

They had to run to the chemist to get enough bromide to dip the bones in...

I hope your dad recovers alright and thanks for the post @Ithikial_AU. Enjoy the Xmas break and I'd like to wish a happier 2021 to you and your family!

Cheers John - I am the kind of guy who is happy with a ballpark figure

Those two battle campaigns sound like an interesting concept. Looking for to play them. .... aaaand out of curiosity, how many scenarios are shipping with Fire and Rubble?

Those look like pretty serious losses, how many forces took part in this disaster? 6 or 8 binaria divisions? BTW, sounds a lot like the performance at the invasion of Greece. I highly recommend the Italo-Greek scenarios in Command Ops 2 to study that campaign.

Haha, I think you're right. It's all about having the right filter for the data This also was an important factor for the Third Reich decision making, but my understanding is that GROFAZ was actively encouraging that competition and division amongst services (and also within a single service!). For instance, I am not sure it make so much sense to have two different "Oberkommandos", most of the time in open competition for resources, assets, recognition and using parallel intelligence services. I always found confusing that there was an OKW (high command of the armed forces), and an OKH (high command of the army), and the former wasn't in hierarchy superior to the other. The logical thing would have been to have an OKW and then theater OK's. Was Mussolini also encouraging this kind of "competition"?

This year I have been in SO MANY Zoom meetings where my colleagues were just like this. Sure this approach has a name...

I would be happy to send an Amazon gift card to cover the cost of the book

That pretty much answers my question regarding the offensive in Western Egypt...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jealous_Wall

That's a very interesting observation, thanks for sharing. The disasters in Western Egypt and Greece were quite a double whammy, looking forward to next installments!

Cheers Simon, that's was very useful. I am not a big fan of Beevor but he did a good job summarising the main political and military aspects of the Spanish Civil War. Hugh Thomas' "The Spanish Civil War" work is still the to-go reference (the revised 2001 edition remains a standard mandatory text across all History degrees in Spain, as it is remarkable balanced and non-partisan while going to describe the gory details of a very messy war). While it is correct that the sides were relative lightweights, materially speaking, the chiefs of staff (and their staffs) were all trained officers. So in terms of the planning and execution, leaving aside the political dimension of military operations and some colourful personalities whose importance was greatly amplified by propaganda, it was pretty much what you could expect from the practices of the German General Staff as set by von Schlieffen (as the Spanish Army was rebuilt in the early 1900s after the Spanish-American War of 1898 pretty much in the image of the Prussian Army). There was a gap indeed in the means, e.g. relying on barely trained militias early in the war and abysmal logistics throughout the conflict, not in the technical knowledge. What I find surprising of the Italian experience of the CTV is that they didn't realise that actually worked like a charm were combined arms operations based on maneuver and dislocation that exploited a tactical breakthrough had become now possible. For real and not like in 1918 by sheer luck, thanks to improved signal communications and more reliable, longer range, armored vehicles. As you point out, the CTV was very successful when they abandoned the set-piece battle and went for maneuver (enabled by breaching enemy lines of defence). In contrast, the Condor Legion - the German contingent in Spain - did collect critical experience on what it worked and what did not work from an organisational perspective. Looks like the Italians, and the Soviets, became fixated on the utility of particular pieces of equipment, or how to best employ those pieces of equipment, rather than in the realisation that speed and agility were awesome force multipliers. I am thinking of the invasion of Egypt in 1940, for instance. While there were plenty of mechanised forces capable of fast attacks and maneuver, the Italian Army preferred to dig in and fortify as if it was 1918, waiting for the unavoidable counterattack. Which came, but certainly not in the way and direction they expected: they basically put their heads in a silver platter for O'Connor to chop it up. Perhaps the problem was that they hadn't figured the logistics at all, and there weren't the means to keep those mechanised forces operating away from the stockpiles in Tobruk or Bardia... but then, why start the offensive at all? What was the rationale?

I wonder if the book will go at length into looking the decision making process of Mussolini and his inner circle to join World War II. I am vaguely aware of it being entirely opportunistic, as in "since the Germans will surely win the war then better we join before is over". If the assumption was that World War II would draw to a quick conclusion, and with the collapse of France, barely anyone was thinking otherwise, then leaving the home army divisions bereft of any heavy equipment was quite rational. The problem was that the assumption proved to be completely wrong, and Italy just didn't have the strategic depth (both in the economical and operational dimensions) to absorb the shock of the tide turning in 1943, as Germany did.

I love Cold War Steve @Wicky keep them coming