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kensal

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Everything posted by kensal

  1. There's a lot of this in Surrender Invites Death - all the Canadian Shermans are waiting behind buildings. Realistically it is gamey because the pile of rubble from a destroyed building would almost certainly still block the line of sight
  2. Indeed and if you read up on the quotes on Operation Goodwood (the quote may even be in the Colossal Crack briefing) you will see that a British officer was told to drive through Sollers (or one of the other towns in the way of the advance) in a bren carrier, to see if it was occupied. He did, drove all the way through without being shot at. He turned round at the other side to see his armoured regt being shot up behind him
  3. I find it fascinating how much effort and resource the Germans put into building and designing strange weapons and aircraft. These vehicles are a case in point - they over a thousand of them and nearly 8,000 goliaths, yet their lack of usefulness must have been as glaringly apparent to the average German soldier as it is to us.
  4. I suppose many on here have read some of the US Army military history sources at http://www.history.army.mil/. There are some very vivid accounts of small unit actions there particularly of the initial days of the US parachute operations in the Cotentin, which show how effectively very well trained, armed and motivated infantry forces can operate against less well organised and trained opposition. The accounts of the hedgerow fighting subsequently towards St Lo contains one account, said to be from a frontline infantry officer, that sets out the particular difficulties of attacking through hedgerow country, as follows http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/100-13/st-lo_3.htm "There were just three ways that our infantry could get through the hedgerow country. They could walk down the road, which always makes the leading men feel practically naked (and they are). They could attempt to get through gaps in the corners of the hedgerows and crawl up along the row leading forward or rush through in a group and spread out in the field beyond. This was not a popular method. In the first place often there were no gaps just when you wanted one most, and in the second place the Germans knew about them before we did and were usually prepared with machine-gun and machine-pistol reception committees. The third method was to rush a skirmish line over a hedgerow and then across the field. This could have been a fair method if there had been no hedgerows. Usually we could not get through the hedge without hacking a way through. This of course took time, and a German machine gun can fire a lot of rounds in a very short time. Sometimes the hedges themselves were not thick. But it still took time for the infantryman to climb up the bank and scramble over, during which time he was a luscious target, and when he got over the Germans knew exactly where he was. All in all it was very discouraging to the men who had to go first. The farther to the rear one got the easier it all seemed. Of course the Germans did not defend every hedgerow, but no one knew without stepping out into the spotlight which ones he did defend. It was difficult to gain fire superiority when it was most needed. In the first place machine guns were almost useless in the attack because about the only way they could be used was to fire from the hip. If you set them up before the advance started, they had no field of fire and could not shoot the enemy. If you carried them along until you met the enemy, still the only way to get them in position was to set them up on top of a hedgerow bank. That was not good because the German was in the next bank and got you before you set the gun down. Anyway, it had to be laid on the bank, no tripod, just a gun barrel lying unevenly on its stomach. On the other hand the Germans could dig their guns into the banks in advance, camouflage them, and be all set to cover the roads, trails, and other bottlenecks our men had to use. The artillery was the major fire support weapon. But it suffered certain handicaps. In the first place it had to be adjusted from the front line by forward observers. These sometimes had difficulty knowing just where they were, and the trees frequently delayed adjustment because of the short vision. If you found the enemy in the next hedgerow he was frequently less than 100 yards from you, and that was too close for artillery fire, particularly since short rounds would probably burst in the trees over your men in your own hedgerow. If the enemy was two or more hedgerows ahead of you, that wasn't so good either, because the mere delay in getting to him through that last hedgerow just in front of him gave him time to rise up and smite you after the artillery lifted. The mortars were effective providing you knew just what to shoot at and where it was, but the infantryman still had the delay and exposure of getting through the last hedgerow. The Germans, being on the defensive, profited by these minor items of the terrain. They could dig in, site their weapons to cover the approaches, and prepare tunnels and other covered exits for themselves. Then when our men appeared, laboriously working their way forward, the Germans could knock off the first one or two, cause the others to duck down behind the bank, and then call for his own mortar support. The German mortars were very, very efficient. By the time our men were ready to go after him, the German and his men and guns had obligingly retired to the next stop. If our men had rushed him instead of ducking down behind the bank, his machine gun or machine pistol would knock a number off. For our infantrymen, it was what you might call in baseball parlance, a fielder's choice. No man was very enthusiastic about it. But back in the dugout I have often heard the remark in tones of contempt and anger: "Why don't they get up and go?" The tanks are no better off. They have two choices. They can go down the roads, which in this case were just mud lanes, often too narrow for a tank, often sunk four to six feet below the adjacent banks, and generally deep in mud. The Class 4 roads were decent in spots, but only for one-way traffic, with few exits to the adjacent fields. An armored outfit, whether it is a platoon or an armored army, attacking along a single road attacks on a front of one tank. The rest of the tanks are just roadblocks trailing along behind. When the first tank runs into a mine or an 88 or 75 shell, it always stops, and it usually burns up. And it efficiently blocks the road so the majestic column of roaring tanks comes to an ignominious stop. The next step is to try to find out where the enemy gun or tank is, and wheel up a tank or so to shoot at him. The only trouble is, that probably only the men in the first tank saw his gun ash, and they aren't talking any more. The tanks trying to get into position to do some shooting are easily seen and get shot before they can do much about it. I have seen it happen. In the hedgerows it is almost impossible to get firing positions in the front row, and in the rear you can't see the enemy anyway so no one bothers. Usually the tanks waited for the infantry to do something about it. Instead of charging valiantly down the road, the tanks may try to bull their way through the hedgerows. This is very slow and gives the enemy time to get his tanks or guns where they can do the most good. Then he just waits. And in the solution, there is always a minor and local problem to be solved, a problem which caused a certain amount of irritation, and that is, who is going over the hedgerow first, the infantry or the tank? It is surprising how self-effacing most men can be in such situations. Anyone who actually fought in the hedgerows realizes that at best the going was necessarily slow, and that a skillful, defending force could cause great delay and heavy losses to an attacking force many times stronger. This, because the attacker can't use his fire power effectively and because he can't advance rapidly except on the road where he is quickly stopped at some convenient spot. There were a number of other factors which contributed to the difficulties of fighting through the hedgerows. The area was merely a succession of small enclosed pastures with a few orchards, likewise enclosed by hedgerows. Seldom could one see clearly beyond the confine of the field. It was difficult to keep physical contact with adjacent squads, platoons, or larger units. It was difficult to determine exactly where one was. Unlike conditions in open country, flanks could not be protected by fields of fire. All these contributed to the difficulties of control and caused a feeling of isolation on the part of small units. All this meant that the front-line troops thought their neighbors were nowhere around. They could not see them, they were not in the adjacent field, therefore they were behind. Often this feeling of being out on a limb would cause the leading elements to halt and wait for the tank units to come up (and sometimes these were ahead). German counterattacks in the hedgerows failed largely for the same reasons our own advance was slowed. Any attack quickly loses its momentum, and then because of our artillery and fighter bombers the Germans would suffer disastrous loss. In fact we found that generally the best way to beat the Germans was to get them to counterattack- provided we had prepared to meet them." The purpose of posting all of this is simply to ask whether the modelling in CMBN fully reflects the dangers and difficulties in performing offensive operations in the heavy hedgerow country faced by the Americans (and in this respect I think on the whole the British forces operated in less closely confined terrain to the west of St Lo and around Caen, although the terrain they operated involved its own particular challenges). Personally I think not - my view is that a more accurate modelling would provide for, in respect of the average quality forces,: - less control over forces in contact or close to contact with the enemy - more proneness of forces to simply hunker down and decline to act offensively - less ability to spot save in their most immediate locality - higher casualties for forces exposing themselves to enemy defensive fire in order to get into firing positions themselves - less ability to deploy all forces into firing positions - laying on artillery may be rather too simple I understand that the designers have to create a system which allows for balanced play and which compresses what in reality may have amounted to several hours of real time into one or two hours of game time. However despite that the account above does give a real sense of the difficulties in getting anyone to move forward offensively and effectively in such a claustrophobic environment. What do others think?
  5. Flamethrowers ought to be modelled in CMBN if they can be done so accurately because it is a simulation and so should catch all aspects of the history it is intended to simulate. The idea that modelling flamethrowers crosses a moral line is flawed in my view - the majority of WWII casualties were caused by artillery (I think I have seen figures around 70%) and a significant percentage of those killed by artillery were probably not killed outright immediately but instead suffered prolonged, painful and often lonely deaths on the battlefield. I do not think that that represents a significantly better way of dying compared to dying by flamethrower. While handheld flamethrowers may not have been that common or used in Normandy (I simply don't know - I don't think the British used them much and they are primarily attack weapons, so the Germans probably used them sparingly, and I do not know about the Americans), the British did use the Crocodile flame thrower Churchill variants a lot and they were very popular with the British infantry they supported and reportedly very effective.
  6. slightly off-topic but there seem to be a lot more MP43 / MP44 / StG44 in the German ranks than were actually at Normandy?
  7. I've only been playing CMBN for a few months so this issue may have been debated in the past. Sorry if that's case. However I wanted to get an idea about how realistic people think tanks' ability to spot and quickly engage infantry is. Playing Bois de Baugin yesterday, I noticed on a couple of occasions tanks spotting panzerschrek teams hidden behind walls or in brush in or around the central village (Compagne?) and orchard and shredding them before team was aware of the tanks' presence. This in a fairly smoky environment. I would have thought that buttoned up tanks without supporting infantry would find it pretty difficult to see hidden infantry (but having never been in one it is an assumption) Also why is that 9x out of 10, the first casualty in the shrek team is the shrek guy - murphy's law :mad:
  8. Ultradave - I'm glad that a higher spec mac works with ver 2.0, although it does mean I will have to wait until I buy a new mac. Problem is my current mac is working so well otherwise, so I haven't any excuse to do that!
  9. Hi Phil I have tried ver 1.11 and ver 2.0 on lowest possible settings but now they hang on opening any scenario. One thing you mentioned was to turn off shaders but I do not have any options relating to shaders or shadows in the option screen... I have raised a support ticket as that is probably a more appropriate way to take this forward. Thanks Julian
  10. Has anyone worked out whether once you mark an enemy minefield with engineers you need to worry about it further i.e. the AI will prevent your units randomly crossing over a marked minefield unless you specifically order them to do that?
  11. i've just splurted coffee coffee all over my computer....
  12. Phil Thanks will try those tips, though it may well be the low spec is the issue. I am out of town for a few days so won't be able to report back for a while/ Thank you very much for the help and happy new year!
  13. Hi Phil Thanks for the quick response ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro 256 MB video card. I can check the memory usage on the mac using Activity Monitor - I can get about 1.6GB of free RAM on starting 2.0 and once it freezes I switch to a new desktop without closing the frozen game and at that stage Activity Monitor is showing virtually no memory available. I have played version 1.10 without any problem at all save for some slowing of performance on the biggest scenarios at critical points. When I added version 1.11 recently I experienced the problem experienced by others of CMSF force references replacing CMBN forces (on QB screen). Ver. 2.0 resolved that but I still have the game freezing on clicking the red button. So currently I am still using 1.10 which is fine for the moment but if there is a way to get 2.0 working that would be great. I did find that upgrading to Mountain Lion has helped improve performance generally.
  14. Could any mac users share their experience of 2.0 - I have only 2 gb RAM and am finding that anything other than the smallest scenario on 2.0 is freezing my machine from lack of RAM, despite using memoryfreer to squeeze every last available drop possible
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