Ultradave

In the US, extended Cold War time frame (the 10 years that I was there) that radio operator would theoretically be able to step in and do the FO's job. Eventually he's going to be promoted into it, and when we trained as a FIST everyone got trained on and had live fire practice on calling and adjusting fire missions. We also had a "video" trainer that gave good experience too. (Think virtual golf). So yes, in theory, that RTO could do the job almost as well. We trained together as a team. Just a question of how much experience, really. Dave

I’m on my phone right now so I’ll respond with a bit more detail later but, yes, I’m aware of the regimental system and have read quite a bit on WW1. We have not had anything similar since the Civil War, really. Thanks for the references. Those look interesting and yes, I’m enjoying plenty of time to read. [edit] back on the laptop. During the American Civil War, there were a LOT of regiments that were raised locally, and tended to have a fair number of people who even knew each other in civilian life. During WW1, I think there were units, even some whole divisions, that came at least from a specific state, but many did not. In fact the 82d is nicknamed the "All Americans" (the AA in the logo) because when it was formed as the 82d Infantry Div in WW1 it was found there were soldiers in it from every state. We've lost that "neighborhood" cohesion, but we still keep the old regimental designations for each battalion, even though we don't use regiments any more. WW2 it was regiments. In the Cold War era, we had brigades. Today it's Brigade Combat Team (BCT), which is more permanently integrated support arms, rather than attached, although in practice previously, we always attached to the same units, to promote cohesion. But the battalions still have their regimental designations, and some even show up right in CM - the TF 3-69 is a great example. 3-69 is 3rd Bn, 69th Armored Regiment. A TF is cross attached armor and infantry, and TF-3-69 would be commanded by the armor Bn commander. You can tell that from the name. Artillery too, has its regimental designations. Today, the 82d has the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 319th FA Regiment. But each of those battalions is attached to one of the BCTs. When I was there it was 1st Bn/320th FA, 1st Bn/319th FA, and 2d Bn/321st FA (not too confusing eh?) The sister battalions were at the 101st Abn - Airmobile, and the two independent Airborne Brigades. Thing is, the names are there for history, but in reality, they don't mean that much. Soldiers identify with their battalion. Although there is some esprit about some of the famous infantry regiments in the 82d like the 508th, for example. Other units are the same, it's just that the 82d ones I actually know the designations without having to look it up. It's really very different from the UK regimental system. The 82d is in one way the oddball here though, because enlisted soldiers sometimes DO spend many years, sometimes even careers there, working their way up. Officers however, are rotated, but unlike a lot of US Army units, they tend to keep coming back. A lot of training and unique expertise gets invested in paratroopers, both enlisted and officers, so bringing back officers who were LTs, then come back as CPTs or Majors, then again as LtCol Bn commanders, tends to happen quite a bit. And an infantry Bn Commander may get promoted to COL and command one of the Brigades, then return as commanding general (two star Major General) or one of the two assistant division commanders (Brigadiers). Canada would be different from the UK too, I think. The Parachute Regiment was THE airborne regiment, and therefore had soldiers from all over. The whole Canadian army was about the size of the 82d Airborne when I went there. We had more artillery officers in the 82d than they had in their army. So I believe there units are much more like ours that way, being more taken from across the country, and not locally. Very British in how they operate though. And who can argue with tea on the drop zone after a jump (non-tactical jump to get our Canadian jump wings) Hope this isn't all too much. Dave

Closer than me to the pointy end:-)

Our US artillery is pretty well integrated with the maneuver staffs. At Company level there is a FIST Chief, 2LT, who has a E6 (Staff Sergeant) assistant, and and E3 (PFC) RTO, each infantry platoon has an E5(Sgt) FO, with an E3 RTO (although we never had enough RTOs to go around). At infantry Battalion level there is a Fire Support Office, usually a 1LT, who has a E6 assistant, and an RTO. And then at Brigade level, there is a Brigade Fire Support Office (usually a CPT, occasionally a Major), who also has the usual E6/7 assistant and RTO. The company level applies to Cold War era, as pushing the FOs down to platoon level started around that time with the introduction of the FIST (Fire Support Team). Prior to that you had an FO team located primarily with the Company Commander, and he'd move around as necessary - like with the lead platoon of an attack. One reason for 3 people in the FIST HQ along with the Company Commander is that it's necessary to monitor 3 radio nets - 1) Direct Support to their artillery battery 2) Infantry company or company mortar net. 3) Artillery Battalion or Bn Fire Support Officer net. So each man humps a radio (PRC-77s in my day) The battery Fire Direction Center is going to be monitoring their own 3 FISTs - spread out among the 3 companies of a maneuver battalion, the FA Battalion Fire Direction net (that's the brigade level fire support with all 3 batteries of a FA battalion on it - the FA battalion is supporting a brigade), and the Fire Support officer net (plus Range Control if it's peacetime . The functions of the fire support officers in the maneuver battalion HQs/TOC is to preplan all the fires for an upcoming action - attack or defense - which they would do coordinating with the 3 company FISTs and the maneuver battalion staff. Same at the brigade level but higher level planning. The objective in simplest terms is that EVERY level of maneuver command has artillery staff experts ready to hand, with the comms necessary to get any of the available fire support, and do the fire support planning at that level. My experience was the Canadians operated very similarly, and it seems from @DougPhresh, so too the British, other than maybe the exact numbers and ranks of people at each level. It's a good system that has proved its worth over many years. I'm sure he would agree. I have to say though, I enjoyed gunnery more than beating the bushes with the rifleman, and was really good at it. Being the Fire Direction Officer, both at battery and battalion level - was my favorite job. I hope it's ok to go on and on, but I think it's useful if players have at least a basic understanding of how things work in real life, and then game concepts or restrictions tend to make more sense. And artillery behind the scenes is quite technical (one reason I really loved it). It's all highly controlled and coordinated. For myself, I'd certainly like to read some similar level discussions put forth by armor and infantry veterans. Lookin' at you @The_Capt and others For example a lesson in how to extricate yourself from firing positions and drop back to alternate positions without (hopefully) dying too much along the way. Organization, sequence, techniques, what can or should be done (or not). That would be cool. My armor knowledge consists of I've ridden in a couple tanks and I fired a couple rounds from an M60 on a range, and we got the basics of maneuver tactics. Then I went to the 82d where are "tanks" were M551 Sheridans, which I actually never saw in action. I did see a couple LAPES (Low Altitude Parachute Extraction) out of C-130s though, and that was pretty amazing. So my detailed knowledge is all infantry and artillery. Look for videos of LAPES in YouTube if you want some fun. Dave

That's what I've been doing, you realize? There are authentication tables. Impossible to spoof unless the enemy has captured a copy of one somehow. Even then it would take work. It's a call and response but MUCH more secure than "today's challenge is 'bullfight' and the response is 'olé' " There *are* procedures for processing a call for fire from an untrained observer, HOWEVER, that assumes that the untrained observer can correctly contact the firing battery and can authenticate. THEN, he'll be talked through an adjust fire mission by the Fire Direction Center. We used to train on this by having infantry soldiers get on the radio and make a call for fire with no help from the FO, just in case. Without a proper authentication, though, you're not getting any rounds. And the "keep your FOs alive". Also near to hand. When I was a FIST Chief, the infantry company commander told me that if he spun around quickly and didn't knock me over in the process, I was too far away. And taught his platoon leaders the same thing for their FOs assigned to them. Reach out and touch Dave

This started with Big Sur. Before Big Sur, it worked fine. Updated to Big Sur, it hasn't worked since. I have a ticket in about it, along with the graphics wonkiness of the Activate screen (flashes and bounces). They may or may not be related. So it's not an M1 or Monterey specific issue. It's something Apple did along with Big Sur - wish I knew what. Dave

I can at least speak to the Canadian Cold War era procedures. I've mentioned before but since we're discussing, I did an exchange program with the Cdn Parachute Regt. Their procedures were VERY similar to ours, and so I assumed (obviously correctly) the British are also very similar since the Canadians were very British Army oriented. My background - FIST Chief A/1-320FA(Abn), with C Co, 1-325 Inf(Abn), Fire Direction Officer B/2-321FA(Abn), Fire Support Officer, 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, and Assistant S-3 and Battalion Fire Direction Officer, 2-321FA(Abn). I think when I was editing that previous post, I left out the part where for the Infantry CO or Plt Ldr to call the artillery, they would pretty much have to grab the dead FOs radio and call the battery using his own callsign, not knowing the battery callsign. The battery would force him to authenticate, which his own RTO would be able to do. All this is going to take some time, ASSUMING the FOs radio even works after he is killed. Somehow in reformatting I ended up deleting that part. As @DougPhresh says, anything else requires the radio request to go up-over-down to get to the battery Fire Direction Center. Dave

Usually there would be no radio contact back and forth during the FFE phase. So no one may know for a while that the FO is dead. The infantry CO who the FO is with could make a call if he wanted the mission canceled, but it could take a few minutes to verify that it's a valid call. It's the firing battery that decides the number of rounds to fire, not the FO. The FO describes the target. Firing battery determines rounds to FFE based on target description, standard response, and their ammo situation. So likely you're going to get those 22 minutes of rounds no matter what, unless the FO called for a check fire. If he doesn't, the battery is going to fire what they planned. Dave

Ah, yeah. My previous experience with Matrix PBEM++ is that people tend to set up matches between themselves, say here on the forum or FGM (in this case), and then one will post the match, to prevent random people grabbing it. I've done it that way several times with WitW and Flashpoint Campaigns - agree with someone on the scenario and then one of us posts and the other accepts. So if you just want to play a random game, probably your best bet is to create one, and leave it NOT password protected and someone will no doubt grab it. It's just a function of how people prefer to set things up, I guess. Dave

SF2 I find the campaigns more fun that a lot of the scenarios. Nothing against the scenarios, just the continuing action of the campaigns is fun. I particularly like the British campaign. There is a real variety of different missions and terrain and quite a challenge. Plus two branches for two different paths to take at one point which will change what the last 4-5 scenarios are completely (downtown Damascus, or south of Damascus). Great stuff. And if you saved in the "choice" scenario at the beginning of it, you can go back and choose the other path. You'll know what I mean when you get there - it's obvious how to do that - different objectives. Great stuff. Dave

M1911 recoil takes a little getting used to - to not fight it. We did a range competition with the Canadians. Shot with our own weapons first then switched and used each others. We won the pistol easily. The Canadians needed more practice time with the M1911s before we shot for score. Like a lot more. We could easily shoot the Brownings. Kind of unfair for them. Dave

You've got it. That's the place. Dave

Never had one. I did, early on. Heavy (compared to an M16), but accurate. Compared to an M1, 20 rd mag > 6 rd clip. Add a scope to the base rifle and it's decent sniper rifle. A little hard to clean the bolt with it's funky notches and angles, but that's a minor nit, and I've never cleaned an M1 so I can't compare, and the bolt on a M16 is no prize in the easy to clean sweepstakes either. While on exchange in Canada with the Cdn Parachute Regt, I got to try out their FNs though, and I would take one of those over and M14. Same with their Browning Hi-Power 9mm over our M1911 .45s. This was back in (I think) 1981? Dave

^^^ The breadth and depth of knowledge that @akd brings always amazes me. Dave

Throw a track in the time span of a CM scenario and the best bet for the crew is to grab their pistols and SMGs and become scouts. Dave

Agree. We were all pretty positive this was fixed. If it isn't though, we can resubmit the problem. If you can post a save and instructions on how to generate the misses, it can get looked at. Dave

I am a fan of the Cold War because it never turned hot! Well, a bit warm at times, at least for me, but mostly not hot. Dave

Depends on the bridge of course, but it's tough to destroy sturdy bridges with artillery. A 155mm HE shell has about 15 lbs of explosive in it. Even an 8" has "only" about 20 lbs. You need in the area of 150lbs in one spot to drop one span of a reinforced concrete bridge that is about 5 meters wide (very rough rule of thumb for a typical road bridge). A wooden footbridge is another story of course. One hit = lots of splinters. Getting that one hit though, you can still expend a lot of ammo! Typically, you'd need to expend quite a bit of artillery ammo to destroy a solid bridge, since only a few rounds will actually hit, unless it's modern day with precision munitions, but that's not what you are looking for. Dave

That started with Big Sur. I have a Mantis report in on it. Both that loading screen and the calculating turn progress bars are missing and have been since the Big Sur update. It's an OS thing and not an M1 issue. Dave

I played around with the save file you posted and had no issues at all. I was able to move around, place units. Nothing unusual happened. HOWEVER, I'm on a MacBook Pro, not a PC, and that may make a difference if it's a graphics issue. Perhaps someone with a PC could also take a look at this. Dave

Look at the last couple posts in the 1.03 patch released thread. Dave

My luxury I took for fire planning was a homemade, hinged, plexiglass cover "clipboard" for lack of a better word. It was square, folded map goes inside, grease pencil plans drawn on the plexiglass cover, useful for briefings in the field - as FIST Chief for the Co Cdr, but more useful in the Bde TOC for planning when I was a Brigade FSO. Depending on what we were doing, sometimes the Bde TOC was a tented site, other times it was a dozen of us huddled under some trees. Lots of "sand tables" - clump of grass representing treelines, dirt hills. Pretty rudimentary and quick and easy stuff. This was before the days of GPS, anything digital of any kind. Dave

Yes

Supposed to make to the rest of the titles that get sold by Slitherene. Except for Mac versions ( which won’t be sold by Slitherene or include PBEM+++ — boo, hiss) Dave

Can you post or send the last save file you may have before it freezes? Dave