Charles Foulkes

I think they look fantastic, but I have low standards. Honestly, I wish the graphics were worse so I could play larger battles more smoothly on my laptop =P For example, I much prefer Steam and Iron over the prettier Distant Guns / Jutland for the same reason when I have a hankering for some dreadnought brawls.

Ah okay, I misunderstood, thanks for clarifying. This thread seems to have been abducted...

It certainly seemed like extreme acceleration to me - which is to say, it didn't appear to accelerate at all, it just stopped and then started moving again at extreme speed. In what way does that not count as a UFO sighting? Is there a common explanation for such typical accounts?

Nope. There is a small airport in Waterloo, but I never saw any planes landing there from where I lived. I have seen jets landing from several different angles and it looked nothing like any of those. I'd like to stress that it was moving incredibly fast - way too fast to be a commercial jet correcting a landing approach. I'm certainly open to prosaic explanations for what I saw, but I'd be more convinced by a scientific explanation for why a small meteorite might appear to stop for a second before bouncing off the atmosphere, than by the suggestion that it was any known aircraft. Some kind of meteor shower on a shallow angle of entry might explain the number of sightings that night, too - some people saw more than one at a time or at different times IIRC, so it wasn't just multiple witnesses to the same event. It seemed like it came down at a fairly deep angle to me, but I imagine it's hard to determine these things from the ground.

I'd considered that, but if that were the case one would expect that it would appear to slow down before stopping completely. I really wish I could find a decent video of the "stop on a dime" phenomenon that is apparently a common feature of many UFO sightings (maybe John Kettler can help me out here?). Perfectly straight trajectories, high and constant velocity, no noise, no flickering - it was like somebody stopped in the middle of drawing a check mark in the sky with a laser pointer. I feel I should add, my father was a fighter pilot in the RCAF before joining Air Canada, so I grew up with an avid interest in such things and thus I am not totally unfamiliar with the performance characteristics of jet aircraft.

Much appreciated, but I just can't believe that it was a jet afterburner, or at least no jet that I've ever heard of. I heard no noise whatsoever, nor did anyone else who reported similar sightings that evening to the best of my knowledge. It looked more like a shooting star (which it may well have been), but without any trail; it moved very fast at an apparently constant speed, stood still for a second, then started moving again in a new direction at a very fast, apparently constant speed. I'm trying to find a video of something like it but not having any luck.

True. Waterloo is pretty flat, but at such a low level I suppose houses could obscure noise as well. It was flying at low speed, and they are pretty quiet to begin with, so I'm not saying there was anything out of the ordinary, just thought it was neat that it was practically silent. Not something you see everyday. Like I said, if it was an aircraft I'd assume it was military, not alien. Could be something bouncing off our atmosphere, but I've never seen a jet that could move at such high speed, stop on a dime, and change direction without accelerating/decelerating.

Well, I hope nobody was waiting with bated breath or anything, because it's probably pretty run-of-the-mill as far as UFO stories go. It was in 2007 if I recall correctly, while I was attending university in Waterloo, Ontario, which I later learned is a bit of a hot spot for UFO sightings. I went out for a smoke at night, and saw a point of golden light travelling very quickly on a downward angle, stop for a second, then zoom off in another direction. I shrugged it off at the time, figuring it was likely a small meteorite bouncing off the atmosphere, but the fact that it appeared to stop on a dime gave me pause for thought. There were several such sightings that evening; my then-girlfriend / now-wife saw one too on her drive home from work. If it was a craft of some sort, I'm inclined to believe it was more likely military than extraterrestrial. They've been experimenting with flying saucer technology since at least the end of the Second World War - some of them in Ontario, such as the VZ-9 Avrocar - so god only knows what kinda toys they have now. On a slightly related note, in 2009 while out having a smoke at another place we rented in Waterloo, my wife and I were buzzed by a jet flying at a very low altitude, especially considering it was over an urban area. Based on the silhouette, and assuming it was Canadian, I believe it was most likely a CT-155 Hawk. Not all that remarkable in and of itself, but what struck me was how incredibly quiet it was - even considering that they are normally quiet aircraft. We couldn't hear anything at all until it was right on top of us, and even then it was like somebody blowing softly in your ear. It was pretty nifty.

Haha, okay, true enough that. I gotta run right now, but I'll tell my UFO story when I get back.

What is he lying about, though? That's what I'm getting at. I'd assumed he was acting in good faith, but chalked up any erroneous conclusions to personal bias and shoddy scholarship based on little or no evidence. I can't speak to his specific claims, but I don't see anything particularly controversial in the paragraph quoted above - as far as I know, many details of Soviet deployments in this period remain sketchy. It's debatable whether the Red Army was in an offensive posture in 1941, but being so far forward, they certainly weren't prepared for defensive operations. My own opinion is that Stalin was preparing to invade Germany, just not in 1941, and was perhaps blinded by his belief that Hitler would not kick off his anti-Bolshevik crusade until Britain had been neutralized.

Uh oh. Forget I said anything, heh. I was just wondering if Viktor Suvorov had some shady past or sinister agenda that I wasn't aware of.

I only know of Suvorov via Icebreaker, and while I reject the theory that Barbarossa was a preemptive attack on a Soviet invasion planned for the summer of 1941, my understanding is that the basic premise that Stalin encouraged Hitler to attack the west in the hopes of stabbing him in the back at a later date is pretty widely accepted. Apart from flawed arguments and perhaps a personal axe to grind, are there any other reasons to question his credibility or good faith? As for Mr. Kettler, I learned long ago to value the voices in the wilderness, because there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I've personally seen a UFO, and I've heard too many kooky stories from folks high and low in military and intelligence circles to dismiss anything out of hand.

If I were a tanker I might indeed see things differently, but I guess I'm more of a logistics guy. If I were fighting a war operationally, I'd rather have a larger number of inferior tanks with compatible parts and reasonable fuel requirements than a smaller number of superior tanks that are constantly breaking down and being abandoned in the field due to a lack of parts or fuel, as frequently happened. However many Shermans or T-34s you can take out in a big cat (and that's a lot, particularly with respect to the latter), it don't make much difference if you can't maintain them in the field for any length of time. I've heard it said that the Russians won the war, we just happened to be in the area at the time. As Womble pointed out, it's economies that win wars in the grand scheme of things, so in that sense nobody won the war so much as Germany lost it by attacking Russia and treating the conquered population so harshly. I'd argue they had a better chance of winning the first world war than the second - which is to say a slim-to-none chance of a negotiated settlement. Two front wars are a bitch. Anyway, I'm drifting off topic here. Not men, but robots. Well, brainwashing augmented human clones may be cheaper, but unpopular, so... robots it is.

And cheap, easy to mass to produce and repair Shermans and T-34s won the day. The Germans might've been better off spamming PzIV, no?

Eventually we'll have light, fast and cheap robowarriors of all kinds with directed energy weapons and hypersonic missiles and the whole shabang, but I imagine there will always be a need for a mobile, well protected and/or concealed human crew armed with things that go boom, perhaps including analog weapons that will still go boom after ECM or EMP effects are taken into account. So I expect tanks will be around for a while yet. I expect things like unmanned submersible vehicles and hypersonic torpedoes, however, will drive the last nail in the coffin of capital ships.

If it's one or the other though, I'd probably wait for CMBS and enjoy the base game in the meantime.

I've never seen them do special sales, just a discount on bundles. I hemmed and hawed about the price before buying the whole package and don't regret it one bit - it's provided many hours of enjoyment when I feel like a break from WW2, and I haven't even gotten around to playing some modules yet.

Fantastic story, real nail-biter, thanks for sharing John. The Patricias and the Moro River campaign are two topics of particular interest to me, so this is much appreciated. Interesting to compare the infantry's version of the day's events, as well.

I've only played the Italian campaign to completion, but from what I've seen of the others, they are very good. I'm currently playing through Conrath's Counterattack, which is a panzer-heavy romp, lots of fun. They generally start off pretty easy and then ramp up the challenge. Because most of them have you on the offensive, I find them a bit easier than many of CMBN's campaigns as you don't have to deal with bocage, but Italy's terrain presents its own unique challenges for attackers and defenders.

Boy this topic really exploded, many interesting replies. I think perhaps guilt is the wrong word for these ambivalent feelings towards wargaming - more of a psychological caution that the compartmentalization of fiction and reality is never airtight - it's a "gaze long on the abyss, and the abyss gazes back" kinda thing

I know what you mean - I stayed away from Shock Force for a long time because it was a bit too close to current events, and I have similar feelings about Black Sea. But CMA whet my appetite for modern combat, and when I found out the Princess Pats were in the NATO module's Canadian campaign, dangit, I had to get it. The setting and subject matter still make me a little uncomfortable at times, though.

You're not the only one. It simply shows that you are a reflective person with a well developed sense of empathy, so that's good. I've thought about this from time to time, and from a relatively young age too, but it really hit a boiling point in university while taking a course on the Holocaust. I had a bit of a breakdown and flunked the course because I failed to hand in my term paper - I just despaired of having anything really meaningful to say about it. But I took it again the following year and passed. It was a turning point for me - up to that point I had focused on the purely military history of war, while afterwards I found it impossible to divorce that history from its social context. War is hell and we mustn't forget that. For me, wargaming is entertaining, but it's not exactly lighthearted entertainment. It's only a game, so one can't take it too seriously, but it can also enhance one's understanding of wars and warfare if taken with an appropriate grain of salt, so in that sense I take my hobby very seriously at times as an educational aid. That's why I enjoy Combat Mission, for its realism. Playing it is a humbling experience, because I am not a tactical genius, and I hate watching my men die - with nary a drop of blood and gore, it can evoke some of the most gut-wrenching feelings of helplessness and despair a game has ever given me. It's painful to watch them curl up in the fetal position under bombardment, or gun down an enemy when he was just about to surrender. But I guess guilt is actually one of the most compelling aspects of the game for me - it's a curious combination of boyish delight at all the toys that go boom, interspersed with moments of sober reflection on the horrors of their real life parallels.

Awesome, thanks guys. I've read a good deal about Deep Battle doctrine, but know very little about Russia's post-Soviet modernization efforts.

Military field manuals are a good start, here are a few sources: http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/ http://armypubs.army.mil/doctrine/Active_FM.html http://www.stevespages.com/page7c.htm Searching the DTIC can turn up some interesting stuff: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/ Does anyone know a good source for modern Russian doctrine in English?

I believe there are up to six missions in the Italian campaign, five if you win them all or fail the fourth, four if you fail the third, and six if you fail the fifth. The third mission was very challenging, took me three tries to win, and I did that by using tons of artillery and basically sacrificing my four German tanks at the end so my Italians could rush down the road and field with very few losses. Unfortunately, I stopped playing when I got to Gela - my laptop gets bogged down with all those buildings. It's playable, just frustratingly slow, so someday I'll give it a try, although it looks daunting - that naval artillery is a scary sight.