SimpleSimon
-
Posts
572 -
Joined
-
Days Won
2
Posts posted by SimpleSimon
-
-
Michael is right, that your infantry are coming under heavy fire is why the assault gun was invented.
The US and Russians also tended to distribute light tanks or obsolete ones to the infantry for use supporting infantry for which personally I really like the Stuart.
The American toolkit is not very sophisticated but it has lots of stuff. Because of that the US Army was able to put weapons that would normally be reserved at the Company level down to the Platoon's level. It is not abnormal to see freaking squads trudging around with the Browning M1919, with the M1917s supporting it not far behind. This is where that whole "typhoon of steel" stuff the Japanese complained about all the time came from. The Americans just always seemed to have fire support normally reserved for a higher level, made organic to squads! A Private was actually pretty likely to see the entire "Arsenal of Democracy" in his career.
-
9 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
We only think it was a blunder because they lost. That's hindsight. Back then, the way it looked was that they might well win.
The real blunder is that they declared war on the US.
Certainly. In fact Hitler was far from alone in believing that the USSR was both decadent and weak and that Stalin's regime was just going to collapse. Russia is not unbeatable, it was soundly defeated in 1917 and the Soviets had made utter buffoons of themselves in Poland and Finland before 1940. It was apparent that the USSR was a century behind the world in agriculture and infrastructure and that a lot of people living inside and outside of it were still very salty about the whole Revolution thing.
On the other hand Hitler was violating Bismarckian rules, like fighting on two fronts and engaging in "pre-emptive" wars. He was also ignorant to the reality that Germany had beaten Russia before, in 1917, and the Ukrainian "bread basket" had proven a total disappointment back then too. Japan came off Khalkhin Gol very badly, and got a nasty foretaste of what a competently managed Soviet Army confidently running a Deep Battle could do. Overall the facts indeed make the invasion a much murkier decision than some members of the milhistory community like to say. In the end, I think it was a bad idea because it was wrong. It was absolutely and completely a monstrous decision grounded in the kind of moral bankruptcy only the Nazis were capable of. Unfortunately as many of us know now, Nazi depravity was only just beginning.
9 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:If the Soviets had lost, we'd be all clever about how their strategy was foolish, their technology bad, etc.
TBH people already say those things even though they won.
-
3 hours ago, DerKommissar said:
Italy was one of the many offenders of not heeding the lessons of WW1. Ironically enough, turning themselves into Austro-Hungary 2.0 in the Balkans. Through out the 30s, most of their military aspirations were colonial, in nature. Many generals, like Graziani that would go toe-to-toe with conventional armies, were still thinking in pre-world war colonial concepts. Spreading too thin being one of the consequences. Illustrious battleships on the bottom of Taranto, another.
They certainly did not appreciate the fundamental elements of the era's fighting. Ironically Badoglio and a number of other Italian Generals had great foresight in predicting that developments in armor and mechanization would make motorized tank armies the way of the future. What they failed to understand or maybe just internalize was such developments were beyond Italy's capability to emulate, and as a result they neglected to reinforce the Italian military or operate in a way that played into the strengths it had. They wanted the Army to learn how to run before it knew how to walk.
The Binary Divisions, light tank hordes, bi-plane fighters with superchargers, etc were all the products of a force trying to keep up with the Joneses, but on budget. In fact if they stuck to thinking like 1918 they may well have been better off. Fighting conventional trench-artillery wars with big infantry divisions, cavalry, sieges, etc was seen as unimaginative and wasteful and Fascists don't like that. They see themselves as clever revolutionaries subverting convention and achieving surprise victory through ruthless pragmatism not fighting gritty protracted campaigns over hilltops and road junctions.
A proposal did exist for Italy to operate a motorized expeditionary force only up to the headcount it could reliably equip and deploy. This would not have amounted to much more than a pair of motorized divisions though and Mussolini would've had no use for such a small force in his grandiose plans to reorganize the Balkans into Neo Illyria.
QuoteA big number of Mussolini's own Blackshirt buddies opposed getting involved in something they had planned on avoiding. Explains why Italy was so eager to get out of the war -- I remember hearing a story about Italian sentries helping the US invaders of Sicily out of the water. I guess Mussolini started getting high on his own supply and gambled resources (political and material) that a pre-modern Italy did not even aspire to.
I always wanted more AFVs for the Italians in CM:FI. However, whenever I read up on the history -- I start to think FI was being generous.
Indeed. Many of Mussolini's subordinates were well aware of the challenges Italy faced, but board meetings between himself and the military never failed to be bizarre events. Mussolini was always being given feedback along the lines of what the Navy/Air Force/Army might be able to do instead of what they could do. Probably because what it could do against the targets Mussolini always had in mind wasn't much. Africa is within Britain's sphere of interest and the Balkans were a French interest.
Ironically the Italian military was a powerful card in Mussolini's hand in international negotiations, and as long as nobody knew what shape it was in he was able to wield it effectively. Mussolini's greatest achievements were diplomatic, not military. In the end him and Hitler shared the apocalyptic worldview that diplomacy was only the lead up to an unavoidable confrontation and it would not have been very in character for either of them to stay out of war for much longer.
-
Anybody in Libya in 1940 would've found it difficult to repulse the British. The British force in North Africa had an enormous number of artillery tubes for its size and they had the 7th Armoured Division. The Italian Army was widely spread out because it had to protect both borders (the French overseas territories were still a big unknown) and deal with Libyan rebels, and the single highway/railway combo it had for supply, the Via Balbo, was exposed along its entire length to British naval gunfire. I know the loss figure of around 150,000 men is usually thrown around but it's sort of misleading. The British didn't envelop the entire Italian force all at once and much of that force was composed of Libyan locals. Operation Compass was a major victory to be sure but not one that Italy couldn't rebound from. The British didn't have a way to follow it up and much of the Italian Army in Libya remained at large.
The other major catastrophe for Italy was Malta. It's a little lesser to me because it would've taken someone very perceptive to predict the British would fight so hard for the island, sending whole convoys over and over again to be massacred as long as a few ships made it was very uncharacteristic for them. Still, its position on the Axis supply route should've made an invasion a no brainer and it would've been well worth losing ships over.
What bothers me about Greece is that there was just no excuse for it. The more you learn about it the harder it is to understand how it fell out. Other Italian screw ups have reasonable enough explanations
-
I think no single event proved more catastrophic for Italy than the Invasion of Greece, a campaign which goes to show victory can be a defeat all its own. Despite eventually succeeding (with German assistance) the complete debacle it degenerated into confirmed OKW perceptions that Italy was an inferior, and thus they were entitled to whatever they needed from it. Being a junior partner to Nazi Germany was always bad for your health, because at their best the Nazis weren't going to help and at their worst they would cannibalize nearby allies when they were weak. Without any political or military currency to influence Germany, Mussolini was doomed to become "Our Gaulieter in Italy" in the words of German troops and Italy another expendable Axis pawn.
The irony is Italy possessed a number of assets Germany ended up badly in need of, a navy, large manpower reserves (!!!!), bases with close proximity to vulnerable British ones, etc. Of course converting a lot of these things into useful tools for the Axis war effort was just completely beyond the Frat-Boy Prussian Officers of the OKW, who revealed on multiple occasions that coalition warfare and all of its importance completely eluded them. They simply assumed that Hitler was managing Germany's allies and in turn Hitler assumed they were working up plans all the time to incorporate those allies into Axis strategy. For how well this was working reference: Operation Uranus.
-
It was a crippling bottleneck. Italy was indeed a rural nation known for its citrus and wine production. On the one hand, some of the world's most famous automotive, arms, and aero firms were there. Maserati, Beretta, Fiat, Ansaldo, etc were world wide brands and made considerable profits on international sales. Italian industry was capable of making high quality products, it just clearly was not capable lots of quality products. All of Italy's best hardware was generally limited production run stuff, and manufacturing was always slow. Even small orders were ridiculously expensive owing to the need for them to import raw materials, and because the Italian government would generally take private firms on their word that they were getting the best deal.
There were some silver linings. Italy had a large population for its size and could put millions of men in the field, but arming all these men was problematic due to the industrial bottlenecks and even cases of corruption. Many men in the Italian Army never got uniforms or boots, much less weapons or rations. The Italian Army's ration during the war was of such notoriously bad quality that Italian troops referred to it as "dead donkey".
The Italians inherited lots of weaponry from the defeated Austo-Hungarians in the last war. Much of which were quality artillery tubes by Skoda works. In fact Italy's artillery may well have been its most functional arm during the war and both World Wars were artillery wars. However it had the classic limitation of needing to rely on pre-planned fire missions because radios and field telephones were so scarce. The Italian Army did not have enough trucks or movers for all of them and i'm sure there weren't even enough horses to meet the artillery's requirements for mobility. Even if there were, ammunition shortages had to be frequent events because of the next major issue, the Italian Navy.
On paper the Italian Navy looked very impressive. Lots of relatively modern capital ships with impressive throw weights. I believe the most modern of which the Littorio class actually overmatched the most recent British and German designs in firepower at least until HMS Vanguard appeared. In many ways German capital ships were markedly inferior to Italian ones, and it was in Regia Marina the Germans placed the most hope in an Italian partnership by far. The Italian Navy also had impressive sealift capability, operating a large merchant fleet. However, the Italian Navy was remarkably deficient in escort vessels, the lack of which was so egregious that when the Italians launched Littorio and Vittorio Veneto in 1940 they had to withdraw ships from outposts like the Dodacanese Islands to protect them. This meant that the safe perimeter the Navy could operate within got that much smaller leading to an overall decrease it capability. The Italian Navy actually lost effectiveness by having too many capital ships since it had to shut down bases without so much as a shot being fired. Since the Navy was pressed to protect its own assets from destruction it's natural to imply that they would find it extremely difficult to protect Italy's communication lines to its Empire and all those issues caused by industrial bottlenecks are now magnified tenfold because what little they do manufacture is unlikely to end up anywhere it will have an effect on the war.
That last bit really sums up the whole war effort. Everything in the Italian war effort was a circular mess of self perpetuating failure. The failure of one element led to the failure of the others and then vice versa.
-
HP is kind of a misleading value in tank engines though. The Panzer IV was only supposed to run on 300HP but tank engines have enormous displacement. The cylinders are huge because the engine needs to make lots of torque, not necessarily a lot of power. If you want constant high power output you want RPM, like an airplane engine.
In all cases the relationship between power and weight was well understood, what was not well understood was how quickly expenses went up for increasingly heavier chassis and the engines to move them. This is why tankettes were so popular in the 1930s. You could build lots of them on a budget the bean counters wouldn't surely veto, and few countries had anything to stop them with. Additionally they look good for your annual military parade and the public can't tell that they're cheap.
The L3 and other Italian tanks were designed for practicality in Italy's mountainous terrain good roads were infrequent and heavy bridges even less common. They also suffered from Italy's completely dysfunctional military bureaucracy which was both aimless and unassertive. Private manufacturers had just about no oversight and were incompetently managed. Machine tools in Italy were generally of poor quality and much of the population lacked technical skills. I just finished "Mussolini and his Generals" and really the problems with the Italian military were so clear but also very nuanced. I still find it difficult to describe exactly what the problem was, but I guess overall it was a lack of the sort of all-level cooperation and communication that made the other industrial powers so much better at waging "World" war.
One could point out that the Italians did on occasion make some very good, very competitive weapon systems, like the Beretta Modello 38, the Macchi C.205, or the Cannone da 90/53 which may well have been the best AAA gun of the war. You had some of the world's most prominent figures of military thinking like Giulio Douhet, Italo Balbo, and Pietro Badoglio all of whom had impressive talents and keen foresight, yet when at the helm of their respective services proved little better at leadership than the old conservatives they had replaced. So in the end, one could also point that the Italian Army that went to war in 1940 was actually inferior to the one that it went to war with in 1915...
-
1 hour ago, aleader said:
Ok, I'm specifically referring to the way things are working in the 'Break the Bank' battle. It's obvious that most haven't attempted it yet. There is no way for 'follow-on forces' to access the inner buildings (and this is no reinforcements in this one either), and it would be very stupid to run AFV's down those narrow corridors. Thus, all this firepower at your disposal is only useful down the flanks, which presents it's own difficulties obviously. The issue in this one is if you do attempt to take the middle buildings, even with overwatch, yada, yada (I've been playing this series since 2000
), there does not seem to be a good way to enter occupied buildings in this one...and I HATE taking casualties! 
Ok so I played the first 15 min of the scenario as REDFOR and BLUFOR and this is what I got.
Disregard the implied plan and redeploy your force along the central avenue toward the Bank complex. Advance straight at them! Use your infantry to screen the nearby structures but do not let them stray far from your armor. You need to concentrate your force to achieve the maximum effect in firepower. Your armor, specifically the Challengers are your best card on this map and you should assert it. Use them to push back the initial defenses and then drop artillery on the back end of the Bank. You can pre plan this w/delay so it falls on the Syrians after they withdraw into the structure. Most of the city is not your objective, and you should not spend lives trying to clear it.
Do not complicate this attack by conducting wild goose chases against every strongpoint in the city. Both the AI and myself had the best results by making a strong effort up the center. I did not play far enough to clear the bank, but as REDFOR I already had a lot of Rattled troops and Knocked Out equipment by the 15min mark. British artillery was still falling, with air support on the way. Again, I did not play into the securing effort but things were not looking good.
You will take casualties, your force is outnumbered and on a tight schedule. In the real world I hazard to say an attack such as this would not be attempted as long as the British had an idea of what they were up against. They would bring up more support or neutralize weaker outposts first. I will play the scenario more thoroughly another time but I have work tomorrow.
-
One very interesting use of irregulars is to pair them up with Syrian Army regulars on the same map and try to work out those dynamics. How should one use them then? As a trip wire against an unexpected attack? As hastati to wear down the enemy before he confronts your principes? Interspersed with Regular units so they can "corset stiffen" otherwise weak units? As Auxilia to reinforce a failing defense? As a last ditch holdout with your HQ units?
This is why I play.
-
It sounds to me like common sense would dictate this structure be bypassed and left for follow on forces to deal with. Aiming to capture an occupied factory size structure, like the size of say Stalingrad Tank Factory or Chernobyl NPP, within the time span of a CM scenario would be considered ambitious by real military men, reckless by some of them even. Clearing developments of such size and density could be a major effort that spans hours, days even.
-
Lethaface has the first point about clearing any kind of large structure, start by razing as much of it as possible. Use whatever you've got to leave the defenders without ground to go to. I would posit that unless it's absolutely critical for you to do so, consider bypassing large office complexes, factories, and any large structure. If you can drive an enemy deep into the building then just isolate and bypass them. Nobody cares if all your enemy is ready to defend is the 3rd floor men's room. They can be on Mercury for all I care then.
If you have to clear a structure your force must outnumber the potential defenders within the building. Under matched circumstances you should not be surprised to end up with 1:1 exchange rates. Even Green troops can fumble their way into doing a lot of damage with luck. After that, I generally have as many squads as possible advance in parallel with each other using the Assault Command, with some teams following along in Hunt. If you've got Engineers use and abuse them because they can breach walls and that will stun or kill defenders on the other side. Seriously a pair of engineers can wipe out whole squads if they start things off with a block of C4 to the wall.
-
Lethaface has the first best tip down for securing large structures, which is to raze as much of the building as you can before entry. Go in with engineers when youve got them because they will shock and kill enemies by demo charging through walls. Breach and clear.
The other tip is to consider bypassing as much as you can because unless totally clearing the structure is necessary you can consider just ignoring any remaining defenders holed up inside. The enemy is of no relevance to you if all he's ready to defend is the 3rd floor men's room. He could be on Mercury for all I care.
-
The Syrians are conducting a defense which in all cases, leaves their force without the initiative. The most they could expect to achieve is within those repetitive convoy ambushes because the assets necessary to fully wield Deep Battle are not there. The nature of the war theyre fighting leaves them with only one avenue for success, which is to inflict heavy casualties on BLUFOR. The tools at the disposal of a poor nation leave it capable of little else.
I think the most succinct issue is that everyone keeps trying to follow the Operation Iraqi Freedom Script for Shock Force. (Understandable, the game was designed to emulate it and Desert Storm.) A credible campaign depicting the Syrians with the advantage could be done. A blitz campaign against one of its neighbors (a fictional neighbor would be wise) backed by weak western garrison troops, reminiscent of the Korean War, as an example.
-
I played CM:A last year, it's so archaic now but it really fascinating game for me because I knew virtually nothing of the Soviet-Afghan war. The Cold War is a badly neglected theatre the CM games could do a lot with. I'm sure that horse has been beaten thoroughly.
The lack of a RED campaign in SF2 doesn't surprise me now or then either. Invariably it would be defensive battling, which does not lend itself well to a campaign structure although it can be done. (See, German campaign in Market Garden add-on for BN)
I get a kick out of playing the Syrians, because the odds are so badly stacked against them. The poor Syrian Army, modeled like a Russian Tank Army but lacking many of the critical features to complete the work such as air supremacy and heavy artillery support. After playing the WW2 games the Syrian Army's 1945 esque design is so much more apparent to me now, with all of its disadvantages, and some surprising advantages I certainly did not consider in the proper context back when I played SF1.
-
20 hours ago, aleader said:
I played through the Alamo mission in the demo and noticed that the Marders do not fire the ATGM, even at tanks (T-62's)? They were able to knock out/immobilize the tanks with their MK20 after several rounds, but I'm guessing they need to be unbuttoned to use the ATGM? A cursory search shows a limitation of the MILAN 3 is exposure of the operator, which does seem surprising for a modern IFV. Or maybe they figure it's not necessary against a T-62? Is the TACAI able to reason to that extent? In my experience, Bradley's almost always fire as expected in Black Sea, but maybe just because the operator isn't exposed?
The MILAN came out after development of the Marder was finished and initial production began. Marder is another relatively old IFV chassis that, like the BMP, was developed before the rise of modern (that is, useful) ATGMs. Then in the 1970s everyone went crazy with ATGMs and started demanding they be put on everything that could carry them because IFVs are difficult to sell to the bean counters with the underline that "it's not a tank", but often cost more than many contemporary tanks...
-
I think it might be a crew experience sort of thing. I don't mind either way though. I don't think it's my job to micromanage every function and detail of my pixeltruppen. Sometimes they're just going to be stupid. People can make mistakes and are generally more apt to do so in a pitched fight than a video game implies.
The BMP's ATGM don't even strike me as for use "in a pinch". They're more like a last ditch.
-
The BMP's fire control is entirely manual and its optics are unenhanced. It does not surprise me that the Bradley, a much newer and more expensive design, comes out on top more often.
The BMP is supposed to have a 3 man crew but I believe when the squad disembarks one of those men is the vehicle's commander. I am not sure if this is intentional, it would not surprise me since the vehicle is supposed to cooperate closely with its' dismounts. The BMP is a first generation IFV meant to provide protection and fire support for the infantry. It can fight armor but really is not intended to duel anything much heavier than an M113. It caused a major stir in the west when it came out but much of the thinking behind it is very 1945ish, aside from the NBC protection which was a major selling point of the vehicle not covered in the game's scope. I personally like it quite a bit, and actually prefer the BMP-1 to the later models myself. The BMP-2's autocannon is undoubtedly better against armor but I prefer the Grom against soft targets and light vehicles that are so common amongst BLUFOR.
-
I used to select it back in SF1 for point missions on the belief it was some kind of HEAT or delayed-action round myself.
-
Target Heavy is the sign off for your unit to hit a given location with everything it's got. Target Light is what you want for suppressive fire. The BMP's main gun sits somewhat inbetween both commands unfortunately, but I prefer the crews use it on identified targets anyway. I do not think it's very good against structures and they don't carry enough ammo to really just unload with it.
-
It certainly works if your enemy tries to pursue your force right on the heel. On the operational level though it's a losing proposition for the defender, since now an enemy can use the slope to maneuver on or enfilade other positions. That's outside the scope of the games for the most part. Didn't stop German accounts from describing reverse slope defense as some kind of genius Germanic subversion of conventional tactics and not just because their positions on the hill face were deleted by howitzers.
-
It's amazing to me how determined western Generals like Gavin were to vindicate the Airborne concept. I'm pretty sure that between his own efforts and the efforts of Stephen Ambrose were what left us with the Airborne Cult in American military folklore. It still amuses me that the Airborne Drop's major achievement at Normandy, the "finest hour" of Airborne Operations ever, was that they just managed to avoid being totally annihilated by 2nd rate garrison troops.
Gavin's mindset toward Vietnam was the setup for Dien Bien Phu. Even heli-borne drops proved insanely dangerous and difficult events.
-
6 hours ago, domfluff said:
Assuming you absolutely *have* to go over the top, rather than flanking, a reverse slope position, how do you plan to go about it?
Conceptually, this is not hugely different across titles - the one exception is for drones + indirect fire, so that's presumably cheating.
The Germans used to plan whole defenses around fighting from the reverse slope in Italy. The Americans would silhouette themselves as they went over the top and present easy targets. A defender has a slight advantage with that in mind but you can take it back with smoke and high angle fire. Kaunitz is right that TRPs should be placed in the enemy's rear and then used if you're convinced what's back there is going to put up a big fight. I usually detail Division Guns or Corp Guns if I have them, in the 155mm range, to firing on the reverse in planned bombardments. That's where you can expect HQ or enemy fire support assets to be located if they're on map. Mortars i'll keep in reserve to deal with holdouts still determined to die for the Fatherland.
-
After Fortress Italy, the difficulty goes up I think from Shock Force 1, to Battle for Normandy, to Red Thunder. Red Thunder has some notoriously difficult scenarios and the campaigns are titanic events that almost exceed the capabilities of a single player to manage. Shock Force was a relatively flexible game because the difficulty was almost a direct function of which side you decide to play. BLUFOR are generally much easier to play than the Syrians but the Syrians are super satisfying to win with if you're up for the challenge.
I think what made Fortress Italy easier was that the campaigns and scenarios mostly followed the doctrinal thinking of each side. So everyone was being asked to fight really in-character for their respective side. If you understand the basics you'd be rewarded for that and as a result it's the best game to start on.
-
2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
Some of the biggest Nebelwerfers actually had a very limited maximum range of some 2200 metres, so I guess a typical combat range would be 1000-1500m. That's well within the scope of a CM scenario.
And there were many smaller rockets available with a longer range. I see 15cm artillery used all the time, but rarely ever 15cm rockets. They were not a rare weapon either - according to the wiki, 6000 launchers were produced, and millions of pieces of ammunition.
Yeah don't get me wrong I think we should see more of it in the game. Many scenarios are actually really anemic on support assets in general I think.
How much would the rights cost To CMA
in Combat Mission Afghanistan
Posted · Edited by SimpleSimon
CMA2 sure buy, over here.
The games have more than enough tools at their disposal to be interesting. The issue is just lack of imagination and poor research. If you set some Grants and Panzers to fight over a 2kmx2km map of flat desert sure that's not very exciting. If people think that's how all or even most of the fighting in North Africa happened wellllll...