Machor

+1 My experiences with this in the game weren't tests, but I've certainly had many instances where troops weren't running away because of tree bursts. Also, as I mentioned in my post back in January 9, there's an operational aspect to this behaviour. Foxholes may be readily abandoned, but trenches represent significant investment [historically, 'investment' was a military term that made its way into economics] by both the troops digging them and the command ordering them to do so, and should not be abandoned unless troops holding them outright panic. [And WW1 serves to show that troops will hold out in trenches under hellish bombardment.]

For what it's worth, my thoughts on this from January 9:

I read just one work of Heinlein's as a teenager, but I would still recommend it over many classics of world literature after all these years.

You see, I fear there may be no trick at all... I think they may have meant it at full face value: "We'll attract the babes with big boobs, so needy men will come to our eatery to look at them." This is in southern China, where women tend to be pretty flat, so I wouldn't be surprised if many men are boob fetishists.

I don't have Barbarossa to Berlin, but I suspect you may be thinking about the ampulomet.

The more I try to keep up with this thread and the forum in general the more I fall behind, so I'm posting after having gone through only the last page. First, some housekeeping. This is simply not true. Unless someone finds a credible source to the contrary, this ain't true either. And now for today's bizarre news... How do gender politics in China compare to North America in the 21st century? "Chinese restaurant offers bra-size discounts" http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-40851224 "A Chinese restaurant has come under fire for offering discounts to women depending on their bra size, it's reported. According to the Qianjiang Evening Post, local people complained to the council after seeing posters advertising discounts for the Trendy Shrimp restaurant at a mall in Hangzhou, the main city of coastal Zhejiang province. The company's adverts showed a line-up of cartoon women in their underwear with the slogan "The whole city is looking for BREASTS". It listed discounts for women depending on their cup size, with greater offers available to women with bigger busts. One representative complaint said the posters were "vulgar advertising" and "discriminatory towards women". The posters first appeared on 1 August and have since been removed, but Trendy Shrimp general manager Lan Shenggang defended their sales strategy. "Once the promotion started, customer numbers rose by about 20%," he said, adding that "some of the girls we met were very proud - they had nothing to hide"."

From Gordon Rottman's The Rocket Propelled Grenade (Osprey, 2010; pp. 11-16): "It is surprising that the Soviets failed to field a practical antitank rocket launcher during the Great Patriotic War as they had such a desperate need for one. They were familiar with the US 2.36in (60mm) M1 antitank rocket launcher, or bazooka (having been provided with 8,500 of these in late 1942) as well as with the Panzerfaust from 1943, and they had their own well-developed Katyusha rocket program. Instead the Soviets persisted with their antitank rifle and grenades, and used all the Panzerfäuste they could lay their hands on, along with German magnetic hand-mines. The Soviets had attempted to field an antitank rocket launcher, the RS-65, in 1931. This was a very crude and heavy 65mm shoulder-fired weapon. Its warhead relied on blast effect as the shaped-charge had not yet been perfected. The cumbersome weapon was none too effective and was dropped. The next attempt was the 82mm SPG-82 rocket launcher (Stankovii Protivotankovii Granatomet – mounted antitank grenade launcher). Its development began in 1942 and it saw limited fielding in 1944. This weapon was distinctly Soviet in its design – crude and unrefined. It was unnecessarily heavy at 38kg, overly long at 2,100mm, fitted with a large, awkward shield, and mounted on a two-wheel carriage which was too low to the ground. This heavy, oversized weapon was the opposite of the concept of an easily portable antitank weapon, as the bazooka and Panzerfaust were. Its HEAT round was also made less effective because of a point-detonating fuze. These ungainly characteristics, coupled with its mere 300m practical range and 175mm armor penetration – little better than the far lighter and more wieldy bazooka – immediately sent the Red Army in search of an alternative tank-killer. ... The Red Army did capture and use Panzerfäuste, which they nicknamed Fausts, as they had no comparable man-portable antitank weapons. So many Fausts were captured that the average rifleman became as familiar with them as with his own weapons. ... Soviet study of the Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck, and bazooka led to research for a new weapon, which would combine the most desirable features of these launchers with a primary aim of keeping the new weapon compact and light, yet still lethal to modern tanks. Headed by G. P. Lominskiy, lead design engineer at the Main Artillery Directorate’s Small Arms and Mortar Research Range, development of the LPG-44 and its PG-70 HEAT round began in 1944. Prototypes were built and successfully test-fired, with the result that it was redesignated the RPG-1 in 1945, with the projectile now called the PG-1. This was a simple reloadable, shoulderfired launcher fitted with a pistol grip and trigger for percussion firing. It had a flip-up leaf sight and no forward sight. To aim it the appropriate range aperture in the leaf sight was aligned on the top edge of the warhead and with the target, as with the Panzerfaust. The 1m tube had a wooden sheath to protect the firer from heat. The 70mm warhead was fitted with a short 30mm propellant cartridge that slid into the muzzle. Over this was a sleeve that slid over the barrel with three ring-fins for stabilization. Preparations were being made to put the RPG-1 into series production, but too many unsolvable problems developed with the projectile, mainly with the base-detonating fuze and inconsistent propellant ignition at different temperatures. It had a low velocity, which affected its accuracy against moving targets, a flat trajectory for only 50m of its 75m range, and it could penetrate only 150mm of armor, less than the Panzerfaust. Work continued until 1948 when it was cancelled." I hope this helps.

As I was away from the forum for a while I have a long backlog to clear in this thread. In the meantime, a phenomenon that I have long suspected to exist was made official today: the battledress fashion industry... "Pentagon 'wasted $28m' on Afghan camouflaged uniforms" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40350047 "US taxpayers unnecessarily spent $28m on uniforms for the Afghan National Army, according to the US inspector general tasked with overseeing the war. In a scathing report, John Sopko said that officials bought "forest" pattern uniforms, despite the country's landscape being only 2.1% wooded. The decision was "not based on an evaluation of its appropriateness for the Afghan environment", he wrote. A former Afghan defence minister chose the pattern in 2007, he says. In the 17-page report, Mr Sopko writes that Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak chose the privately owned pattern over a cheaper pattern that the US military already owned. US officials, who had been searching for patterns online with Mr Wardak, authorised the purchase because he "liked what he saw", they wrote at the time. "My concern is what if the minister of defence liked purple, or liked pink?" Mr Sopko told USA Today in an interview. "Are we going to buy pink uniforms for soldiers and not ask questions? That's insane. This is just simply stupid on its face. "We wasted $28 million of taxpayers' money in the name of fashion, because the defence minister thought that that pattern was pretty.""

Gotta bring out the fruity, eh?

I checked out both the links you posted and the games mentioned in her blog post, and must say that everything other than Warhammer 40K is way too fruity for my taste. I did play RPGs and JRPGs back in the day so can't really go all John Wayne on this, but personally do not perceive the subculture that is being discussed as 'my hobby.' It may be different for the rest of the community if you folks can make time from playing CM for the fruity stuff as well. I think the reason we don't see women playing wargames simply boils down to the cultural construction of gender identities. I do hope and anticipate that more women will join 'this' hobby as those cultural constructs change and women make professional careers in combat duties, though it'll likely start from popular games and take a long time to trickle to CM. We may get lucky with current professional military women getting into CMBS and CMSF II if Steve succeeds in pitching them as training tools - and there is no innuendo in that "get lucky." There's nothing trivial about libel. Her claim that a cop knowingly went on record calling her a "drunken slut" is a blatant lie. The incident that supposedly happened when she was 13 - I leave to your intelligence to judge. It would have been something if one pedo had had the gall to 'come out' in public, but it turns out all three men in the store were pedos... What is this - a paedophile ring masquerading as a W40K club? IMO, she's trying to carve an online presence for herself by exploiting what I'll call, for lack of a better term, the 'nerd' subculture's sexual harassment problem. All the power to her - as long as her libels don't spill on to wargaming.

This is corroborated by Chris McNab: "All in all, the Shpagin presented a compelling combination of advantages, and it was adopted as the ‘Submachine Gun of the Shpagin System, Type 1941’ by the Defence Committee of the Council of People’s Commissars on 21 December 1940, manufacture beginning in the autumn of 1941. In testimony to its suitability for mass production, by the spring of 1942 Soviet factories were rolling out 3,000 units a day, which resulted in a total wartime production figure of more than five million guns. The production times were not only spurred by political incentives – local Communist Party members were given responsibility for fulfilling quotas in their district – but also by ingenious repurposing of the materials. For example, it was discovered that a Mosin-Nagant rifle barrel could be cut in half to form two barrels for PPSh-41 guns." Soviet Submachine Guns of World War II. Osprey, 2014, pp. 11-2 [my italics]

As someone who served in law enforcement and now lives in Canada... +1000

That's why I wrote "tankers with buddies." Quoting this site on that particular tank: "Here is another rare tank. A T-34-85 with a D-5-T, and a commander's RSB-F radio! Only 5 were produced."

I have searched the internets for the 4 drum box and could not find it mentioned anywhere... The 3 drum box is solidly confirmed - this one was for sale from Moscow: The store's page has more info on the item [in Russian]: https://derr.su/perenoska-dlya-diskovyh-magazinov-pulemeta-dp-27-dp-20-2813.html There is a post on Reddit that claims the gunner's assistant carried two of these boxes, which would be close to JK's source. The same post discusses how for the Lewis, which the DP replaced, the drums were carried on a vest that could hold 8 magazines, which might have caused a confusion in JK's source. Here's the link to that Reddit post: Reminds me of the days I used to go after German soldiers with the PTRD in Red Orchestra.

See the discussion in this thread:

For what it's worth, the Russian Wikipedia article on the DP states that the gunner's assistant carried three drum magazines in a box: "Пулемёт обслуживали два человека: стрелок и его помощник, который переносил короб с 3 дисками." And all three 1/6 scale DP/DPM gunner action figures that have been released by Dragon to date have come with a pouch for a second magazine: So yes, in between the 'authority' of Wikipedia and Dragon 1/6 military action figures we have 3 magazines with the assistant + 2 magazines with the gunner = 5 magazines. This isn't to say that JK's source is incorrect - given the very long time it took to load DP magazines, it would've been entirely logical for a CO to order his gunner assistants to carry extra magazines in lieu of their personal weapons and ammo - I, for sure, would've given such an order.

I think I have a positive ID! Pause the video at 16:34, and you can clearly see the loader's armoured glass viewing port and pistol port - that rules out the IS. The loader's hatch is also visible, which rules out T-34 variants before the M1942. So, we're looking at either T-34/76 M1942, or T-34/85. If you study the seating arrangement of the T-34/85 closely, you can see it's impossible to have a camera angle showing the gunner's face that wouldn't at least show the commander's legs, and probably torso as well. The other evidence in favour of the T-34/76 is, as you've mentioned, the shell size. While I failed to find a picture of someone holding the 76mm shell, the following picture shows the size of the 85mm relative to a man, which is significantly larger than the one in the footage: Now, while the white interior of the turret combined with poor lighting and film quality may well be creating an illusion, I do share your concern that the turret interior lacks the angles that one would expect in a vanilla T-34/76 M1942 turret. I therefore suspect that this is a T-34/76 M1942 with the ChTZ turret! Unfortunately, I failed to find any pictures showing the interior of the ChTZ turret. While the ChTZ part is speculative, I feel that we can positively ID the vehicle as a T-34/76 M1942, which leaves us with the fascinating 'discovery' that the T-34/76 commander/gunner could 'drive' the tank as well. I think this deserves a thread of its own. In the meantime, some more young Soviet tankers with buddies...

@Amizaur Thank you for sharing the video! I think the footage that moved you is from inside a T-34/76. They're using it in the documentary because the veteran is telling how the gunner would make the driver stop the tank to take aim by kicking him from behind. The footage itself is quite fascinating, as it seems to show the T-34/76's commander/gunner practically 'driving' the tank by using the driver's shoulders as pedals - anyone seeing potential here for a one-player T-34/76 simulator? The cameraman must have been filming from the assistant driver's seat. If you could confirm that the footage is actually from inside the IS-1 that too would be fascinating, as I have never seen that 'rare' tank on film.

Given the Norwegians' experience with stealthy naval missiles, they might borrow the concept for an AT missile... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile

... in response to Russian APS. Must say I'm surprised - and equally intrigued by its replacement: "Should Russia's new Armata T-14 tanks worry Nato?" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40083641 "A Russian innovation in armoured warfare has pushed Norway to replace many of its current anti-tank systems. Active protection systems (APS) are being built into Russia's new Armata T-14 tank, posing a problem for a whole generation of anti-armour weapons, not least the US-supplied Javelin guided missile, used by the Norwegian Army. The warning comes from Brig Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. He says this is a problem that most Nato countries have barely begun to grapple with. APS threatens to make existing anti-tank weapons far less effective, and there is little real discussion of this among many Western militaries, he says. Some countries are conducting research and trials to equip their own tanks with APS. "But they seem to miss the uncomfortable implications for their own anti-armour capabilities," he says. Norway is one of the first Nato countries to grasp this nettle. Its latest defence procurement plan envisages spending 200-350m kroner (£18.5-32.5m; $24-42m) on replacing its Javelin missiles, "to maintain the capacity to fight against heavy armoured vehicles". "There is a need for [an] anti-tank missile," it says, "that can penetrate APS systems"."

It is the Turkish ASELSAN SARP: The tank is not in its primary fighting position. This appears to be the new Turkish tactic against armoured SVBIED following the losses mentioned earlier in the thread. The tanks wait in cover for SVBIED to emerge, exposing themselves briefly to engage them before reversing to cover. This LEO2 is in a similar position: BTW, Bellingcat just published a report on the Turkish AFV losses: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/02/12/battle-al-bab-verifying-turkish-military-vehicle-losses/

My apologies for the knee-jerk reaction, as I've been conditioned by other forum members constantly resorting to 'whataboutism'. I'm not on top of this. The way I see it there was a last minute deal brokered by Turkey that saved the defenders from senseless loss of life, though Turkey did of course have its own agenda in wanting to use more FSA fighters against ISIS and the YPG. Al-Nusra obviously made public its dissatisfaction with this deal with the assassination of the Russian ambassador. The guy in the video complains of Turkey refusing to give them a 'digger' - I think he means a 'mole' - to dig a 5 km. tunnel through the siege, but I can't see how it would have been feasible to hide such an operation from the RuAF. For all practical purposes, Aleppo fell the night the US election results came in.

Erm, did you watch it yourself? He keeps referring to Assad and his regime. He calls on Sunnis to come help the Sunni fighters just as Shiites have come to help Alawites. And he comes across as a pretty nutty guy who believes the West and Turkey conspired with Assad to let him take Aleppo. I don't see how his statements - or for that matter, all the atrocities that have been committed by jihadist groups - absolve Russia of responsibility for aiding a regime that is running a systematic mass extermination campaign. I mean you oppose the Georgians robbing the Ossetians of their autonomy and the Ukrainian Rada voting to revoke the status of Russian, but mass extrajudicial executions are 'nema problema'?

Sorry to go OT with this breaking news - it seems we have a new S-21 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum ): "Syria conflict: Thousands hanged at Saydnaya prison, Amnesty says" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38885901 "As many as 13,000 people, most of them civilian opposition supporters, have been executed in secret at a prison in Syria, Amnesty International says. A new report by the human rights group alleges that mass hangings took place every week at Saydnaya prison between September 2011 and December 2015. Amnesty says the alleged executions were authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government. ... Although it does not have evidence of executions taking place since December 2015, the group says it has no reason to believe they have stopped and that thousands more were likely to have died. Amnesty says these practices amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity."

A tidbit: "Moscow Claims Media War Win" https://web.archive.org/web/20120523210654/http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/moscow-claims-media-war-win/372391.html "Tbilisi has also helped muddy the waters about the outbreak of the war. Shortly after Georgian troops entered South Ossetia, officials said the use of force was to "restore constitutional order" in the separatist region. But they later said Russian forces had moved into South Ossetia first, on Aug. 7, and that Georgia had no choice but to send troops to head off an invasion. Paradoxically, these Georgian claims have been bolstered by two reports in state-controlled Russian media. On Aug. 7, state-owned Rossia television showed Sergei Bagapsh, the leader of Abkhazia, the other separatist province within Georgia, speaking at a meeting of the Abkhaz National Security Council. According to the report, which is still on the station's web site, he said: "I have spoken to the president of South Ossetia. It has more or less stabilized now. A battalion from the North Caucasus District has entered the area." In September, a Russian officer who fought in South Ossetia was quoted in an interview as saying his regiment was dispatched from the Russian-Georgian border to Tskhinvali on the evening of Aug. 7 and was fighting Georgian forces the following morning. The interview was published by Krasnaya Zvezda, the Defense Ministry's official newspaper. The paper published another article 10 days later, in which the officer, Captain Denis Sidristy, said the correct date for the advance to Tskhinvali had been Aug. 8."