kohlenklau

The winner is announced!
Mr E.R. Bradshaw of Napier Court, Black Lion Road LONDON SE14.
Mr. Bradshaw wins a year's supply of Whizzo Butter

The DAR is being held over at the other thread. Join us if you like. 
 
CMRT BEF1940 MOD
GREEN JACKET'S BRIDGE
The following series of PBEM screenshots and commentary is respectfully dedicated to the actual man who led the British forces at the battle portrayed...2/Lieut Robert John Barr, MC.

Barr, Robert John - MC

CMRT BEF1940 MOD
GREEN JACKET'S BRIDGE
The following series of PBEM screenshots and commentary is respectfully dedicated to the actual man who led the British forces at the battle portrayed...2/Lieut Robert John Barr, MC.

Barr, Robert John - MC
Rank : Captain Army Number : 92683
Unit : 44th AA Bn, 579th LAA Regt
Biography :
Educated at Stamford School, Bobby Barr played rugby for Leicester Football Club 241 times between 1928 and 1938, and was Captain 1936-38. He also played once for the Barbarians F C in 1935, and three also times for England. He also played cricket occasionally as a wicketkeeper/batsman for Leicestershire CCC's 2nd XI. Commissioned 2Lt in The Royal Engineers on 19.7.1939, he served in 44th (The Leicestershire Regiment) Anti-Aircraft Battalion RE (TA), which converted to a Searchlight Regiment RA in 1940. Serving in a different unit he was captured in May 1940 during a rear-guard action at Boulogne, and was awarded the M.C. for ‘gallant and distinguished service in the defence of Calais in May 1940’ (L.G. 20.9.1945). He was a prisoner of war in Oflag VII B as at 28.2.1943, where at Eichstaet in Bavaria he was a member of the escape committee and escaped himself, being captured four miles from the Swiss border. He was repatriated in 1945. In 1949 he was serving as a Captain in 579th (The Royal Leicestershire Regiment) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment RA (TA) in Leicester. After the war he founded the hosiery brand-label manufacturing firm of 'Barr, Ratcliffe and Co' at Sileby and Oadby, and became a member of the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters. For Leicester FC he was Team Secretary 1946-57, Honorary Secretary 1957-62 and President 1962-65.
He died in 1975, aged 68 years.
The above information is from the below link.
https://royalleicestershireregiment.org.uk/entity/71117-barr-robert-john-mc?q
On the 23rd of May 1940, the invasion of France was just shy of two weeks in progress. The First Panzer Division had fought through the Ardennes and then through Sedan towards the channel coast. The Division's Kampfgruppe Kruger was now headed east, south of Calais, towards Dunkirk - where the BEF was assembled for possible evacuation under Operation Dynamo. The War Office sent reinforcements to Calais by ship from Dover (a battalion of tanks {3RTR} and roughly 3 battalions of infantry). The confusing story is very well told in Airey Neave's "The Flames of Calais"...
"Kruger's assault group of the First Panzer Division continued their advance eastwards. After he had beaten off an attack by the Third Royal Tank Regiment between Hames-Bouceres and Guines, his light tanks  advanced to the St Omer Canal at Les Attaques, eight miles due south of Calais. These light tanks were reported to 2/Lieut. R.J. Barr, commander of C troop, 1st Searchlight Battery, at Ferme Vendroux, south of Coulogne, at noon. They were making for the canal bridge at Les Attaques. With about fifty men, Barr doubled back through Coulogne to hold the canal bridge and crossroads, where he formed a road-block with a three-ton lorry and a bus. After sending for reinforcements from the 2nd Searchlight Battery at at Pont de Coulogne he waited for the German tanks..."
 

The DAR is being held over at the other thread. Join us if you like. 
 
CMRT BEF1940 MOD
GREEN JACKET'S BRIDGE
The following series of PBEM screenshots and commentary is respectfully dedicated to the actual man who led the British forces at the battle portrayed...2/Lieut Robert John Barr, MC.

Barr, Robert John - MC

In a week shy of 2 months, I and about 3 other guys have created a France 1940 mod of damn decent results. 
Call me an a-hole, but I think a few heads should hang in shame!
Get it here
 

I think this weekend, maybe starting Friday, I will be having a PBEM against @Heinrich505 and do posts and comments for a new battle involving this new mod.
23 May 1940. Les Attaques, France. A bridge along the Canal de Calais. The Germans are headed toward the channel ports to surround and crush the BEF.
C Troop of the 1st Searchlight Battery, Royal Artillery, is dispatched to defend the bridge at Les Attaques...

I played it against myself. Lots of excitement I thought. I still gotta "BEF" those 2 truck roadblocks.

 

I think this weekend, maybe starting Friday, I will be having a PBEM against @Heinrich505 and do posts and comments for a new battle involving this new mod.
23 May 1940. Les Attaques, France. A bridge along the Canal de Calais. The Germans are headed toward the channel ports to surround and crush the BEF.
C Troop of the 1st Searchlight Battery, Royal Artillery, is dispatched to defend the bridge at Les Attaques...

CMRT new patch 2.13...I think it just took away the capability to purchase a German flamethrower team in the scenario editor. I definitely had that ability before.
EDIT: I can only purchase the FT team in Luftwaffe airborne infantry.
Before it was regular German infantry could...
BFC patch is like a guy brings new topping item to the salad bar but then everybody sees they accidentally stop bringing tomatoes or whatever.

Operation Deadstick... I've updated my Scenario I made years ago, now with the Horsa glider and updated Canal bridge, 

Major Howard Lands Meters away from the Benouville bridge, he leaves the Horsa glider, to begin the operation, his orders are simple, take the bridge and hold until relieved...

Within minutes they are engaging with the Anti Tank Gun and German Bridge security units...

After dealing with the At Tank and Bunker, Howard and his men storm over the bridge, objective to engage the German troops in trenches on the other side...

A German squad, storms out of the barracks and get to the trenches on the opposite side of the river...

More of Major Howards teams join the assault on the bridge...

The Wehrmacht troops defend well initially but are only conscripts and very nervous and don't take much for them to make a run for it...

The Paras soon reach The Café Gondrée, which becomes the first building to be liberated on D-Day, the café owners were in the cellar and are the first French civilians to be liberated, Major Howards learns that the Ranville Bridge had also been successfully assaulted...

But Lieutenant Brotheridge, commander of No.25 Platoon, "D" Company, 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, was the first allied casualty of D-Day...

The paras start to create a defence perimeter around the bridge, waiting for the German response... and clearing any enemy troops from the surrounding houses...

Some surrender...

...some try to resist...

but resistance at this stage is futile...

The bridge is secure... for now...

Reinforcements start to trickle in from units of the 6th Airborne division...

Later in the morning three German Panzer IV's make the decision to attack the bridge (historically the first Pzr IV was destroyed, at the junction by a very brave para with a Piat close range, this made the other two panzers retreat), in my scenario one of the tanks make it close to the bridge...

...but I managed to despatch this threat when it entered a courtyard near the bridge, all crew mown down by the elite paras...

Now Major Howard remembers his orders, 'hold until relieved', things quit down and the paras do their best to prepare for the counter attacks that were sure to come soon.
 
Note:
Special thanks to Lucky strike for his Hedgerow Hell Mod.
To Phil for sending me his amazing model of the Horsa Glider.
To JM Stuff for destroyed Vehicle Mod.
 
And anyone one else who's Mod i've used. Cheers

Short update:
Work is going on well 👍🏻
In 2-3 weeks, the Beta-Version of the Campaign „Into Hell“ will be ready for the final test run. It will consist of 8 single missions (from tiny to huge). 
So, if there is anybody who likes to play the campaign before the official release, pm me 👍🏻😎
Regards
Mr.X 

1. Make sure the axis side has no remaining non-arrived reinforcements.
2. My 2 cent idea. Since this is the typical airborne arrived in the enemy's midst...set the axis escape direction to be towards the main area of allies. This might compound their sense of desperation and get Jerry to throw in the towel.
 

doing a bit of exploring, you can change attachment points using similar text editing, I just changed the canteen attachment point on the smod_american_greatcoat.mds
from
....american_canteen*.bip01 pelvis (* = 12 char 0C)
to
....american_canteen*.bip01 spine (* = 11 char 0B)
This worked fine and looks better actually. The location of the canteen is moved slighlty, but now it is attached to the spine and not the pelvis so it stays rigidly attached to the belt on the greatcoat texture... when on the pelvis it moved around quite a bit depending on stance and animations...

Noticed a bug while editing uniforms. On the american greatcoat model, soldier equipped with SMG has their SMG ammo pouches inverted. On the normal US Para model (smod_american_m42-para.mds), the orientation is correct. So I compared the data chucks and on a hunch copied a sequence of bytes which had no similarity between the two models, moving it from the para model to the greatcoat model.
This restored the correct rotation of the SMG ammo on the greatcoat model.

 
 

I downloaded a free 3D model and the author is Mr Helijah. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/airspeed-horsa-7febf28fb92a4189b71dd3796af78c51
It needed massive changes in Blender to get it to show as a flavor flave object. Just so you don't think it was plug n play 5 minutes.
Maybe 3 hours work I did renaming and editing. AND I still have a few things to fix.


 

I have stuff all over the place in this CM forum. I scratch my head sometimes on where exactly is best to write or record or note something that I am doing.
I picked this thread to show, for whoever cares to read it, how I will create my first BEF scenario. There are youtube videos and pdf's for CM scenario creation. I can't say this will be a great place to learn anything new but it will show how my brain works. Take it or leave it.
SCENARIO SEEDS:
I get inspired or get an idea from several of my usual places. One source is the ASL scenario archive. I honestly do not have a strong knowledge of France 1940. It seems like such a short timeframe of May-June 1940 but it DOES have tons of scenario seeds waiting to grow a CM scenario. the archive has a search engine and I found actually 2 small scenarios covering the same historical battle with just infantry and Universal Carriers aka "bren carriers". It was 21 May 1940 near Esquelmes, Belgium. The BEF unit was 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, part of the British 1st Infantry Division (The Big Red One, hahaha just kidding, wrong army!) 
Nicholls and Nash
https://www.aslscenarioarchive.com/scenario.php?id=58768
Carrier Assault on Poplar Ridge
https://www.aslscenarioarchive.com/scenario.php?id=60991
Lots of great documentation on the battle.
https://www.historyhit.com/all-hell-broke-lose-how-harry-nicholls-won-his-victoria-cross/
http://ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/war-diary-3rd-battalion-grenadier-guards-bef-sep-1939-to-jun-1940.27587/page-2
I have old maps from the 1930's.

I have google earth.
I have started the map in CM. I am working on the mods for the Bren Carriers and the Grenadier Guards battledress.
I will keep you posted here how it shapes up over the next few weeks and then I HOPE to do a PBEM DAR here to display the scenario and mod.
 

ok, maybe later in the winter I swing back to CMRT stuff. I want to do Spanish Blue Division Mod and they were attacked by KV-1

Thanks for the kind words. A couple other guys took me up several notches by sprinkling their magic into my "fake lobster"...Without them it would not be near as good.
@Damian45 has several awesome uniform mods YET to be showcased. I will get there I promise.
@Falaise has some BEF stuff that will see its debut very soon.
@JM Stuff is working a Belgium map and scenario as well. Maybe later in the fall or winter we shall see that Battle Pack.

Protze also good with the Hungarian mod. They had some number from 41 or 42.

I have brought over my PanzerKampfwagen I's to the CMRT France 1940 mod.

 

Nobody chimed in. Not a single entry. Surprise! Mr. E.R. Bradshaw was not an actual forumite. So I get all the whizzo butter!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Return to seriousness.
The scenario editor details are noteworthy of how I have crafted the German infantry force.
Anyway, for anybody out there interested in making CMRT seem more early war @Artkin @Suchy here is what I did.
I set date to May 1945. Quality to poor. Purchased a shifstamm kriegsmarine battalion!
I only needed a company size force so I deleted out a bunch of stuff.
The mod turns them into German infantry.
Return date to June 1944. Region is Soviet Union.
I get 99.9% LMG34. No rifle grenades. I don't see any G41 or G43. I have only 2 or 3 panzerfaust 30 or 30k among the company. Go to those squads and detach an anti-tank team. You lose 2 riflemen but they take the panzerfaust and you can use an exit zone filter near the axis set up zone to pull them out of the scenario early.
 

Cool! Have fun man.
 

BEF1940 THE BRIDGE AT L'AVALETTE


1445, 25 May 1940. Approaching a bridge over the Canal d'Aire at L'Avalette; near Bethuny, France. A slight haze with a light wind from the east. 
You are the human player controlling the probe by elements of Rommel's 7th Panzer Division. 
The mission is to cross the bridge and clear the area on the far side. Occupy the objective. Sweep it clean of the British to obtain 500 points and win the battle. 
Herr General Rommel is angered at the delays experienced by the division in crossing the canal. Radio intercepts indicate we are confronted by the "Royal Irish Fusiliers". They are a British infantry division with limited support from their French allies. We can expect light anti-tank weapons and some variety of barbed wire or other obstacle. 
A small scout patrol has just approached the outskirts of the bridge. The rest of that rifle platoon follows close behind. At 5 minutes another rifle platoon with a demolition team is due to arrive - and finally a few panzers at 10 minutes. 

1115, 21 May 1940. Along the Escaut Canal near Esquelmes, Belgium. A slight haze, light wind from the east. 
You are the human player controlling the counter-attack of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards. 
The mission is to counter-attack and destroy the German bridgehead. Occupy the objective. Sweep it clean of Jerry to obtain 500 points and win the battle. 
Excerpts from the 3rd Bn. Grenadier Guards War Diary...
**1940 May 21
**At 0730 hours a violent Artillery, Mortar and Machine Gun barrage fell on the whole of the 1st GUARDS BRIGADE front.
**A determined enemy attack was launched at the point of junction of the Battalion and the 2nd Battalion COLDSTREAM GUARDS.
**A crossing was forced and Machine Guns, Mortars and Snipers got across the river, infiltrating on the left, and forced our men back as far as the PONT A CHIN road.
**The open country held by our forward Companies was completely under enemy observation, and every movement made by our troops was dogged by accurate Machine Gun and Mortar Fire.
**Seeing that the situation was serious the Battalion Commander went forward in a Carrier and made a recce on the spot as there was no post from which he could see what was happening.
**As a result, No. 3 Company was ordered to counter attack and regain No. 4 Company’s position. Supported by one Section of Carriers under Lieutenant H. REYNELL-PACK and this attack went in with great dash at 1130 hours

The platoons of No. 3 Company (reserve force) have been ordered to the start line west of the PECQ - PONT A CHIN ROAD. 7 Platoon has already arrived and can be repositioned in the dark blue set up zone. 8 and 9 Platoon will arrive in that same area at 5 and 10 minutes respectively, more or less centered on the map. You can shift the axis of the attack as you desire. Finally, the carriers are being fueled and will be in position at 1130 in the south-west corner of the map. 
NOTE: The Germans are attempting to reinforce the bridgehead. You must decide to either wait for the carriers or to press onward now with 7 Platoon. 
A few men from No. 4 Company are still trapped down by the canal bank, most likely in rough shape.