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SimpleSimon

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Posts posted by SimpleSimon

  1. 46 minutes ago, holoween said:

    Obsolete in the sense that using it gives you a significant disadvantedge.

    Where? When? How? It's a machine gun. It's likely competition was to be bolt action rifles and pistols which the British expected would make up the grand majority of the enemy's small arms stocks as they had in the last war. They could not have foreseen it would be the MG34 when the Bren was selected for service in 1935 and the Bren wasn't going to be selected with what the Germans had in mind anyway. It was selected to replace the Lewis. Did it make a better machine gun than the MG42? Sadly no. It was another example of an Allied "good enough" weapon that equipped their Armies. Their victorious Armies. 

    I actually think by the way that the MG42 was one of the war's best weapons all around, so much so that by itself it basically bought Germany 6 months of survival. It was made almost entirely of stampings so despite being introduced mid war it made up considerable ground and still managed around 420,000 copies in a war where only weapon systems that can be produced in such numbers would have any measurable effect. Availability was king in 20th century battlefields and the MG42 was seriously everywhere (to no lesser extent the MG34) and frequent enough to push those Tommy and Rusky Infantry companies to the ground so much in so many places that it led to what must've been many cancelled attacks and frustrating delays while artillery support had to be called up all the time. Gotta delete every tree berm in a 2000m radius just to get moving again. The effects of its legendary muzzle report require very little input from commentators...

    I just read the other day that in spite of the MG42, MG34, MG13, enormous numbers of captured Czech, French, and Russian small arms the Germans still had to issue MG08s to Security and reserve units a lot. Obsolescence is truly a meaningless concept when "nothing" is the alternative it seems. Also I can't find production figures for the Bren for some reason but I would not be surprised if overall fewer Brens were built than MG42s. The Bren was specifically intended for the Army infantry so it wouldn't compete with Royal Air Force demands (who had the Vickers K and Browning), the Royal Navy (who had the Vickers. 50 cal) the Royal Armored Corp (who had the BESA) and well, the Army itself who still had over a million Vickers HMGs from the Great War. The Lewis still appeared every now and then, especially when the 30,000 Brens issued to the BEF were all lost during the evacuation. I suspect many ended up equipping Dominion troops but the Bren's production must've been quite high because despite losses from early war setbacks the weapons could still be seen in the hands of Dominion troops in the Pacific.

    Now the STEN? Yeah that one's hard to apologize for. Did bag Reinhard Heydrich tho...

     

     

  2. 2 hours ago, holoween said:

    Where is the difference in usage to an mg42?

    That seems about as focused on the mg as the germans. A proper mg is simply a better weapon. Just like semiautomatic rifles completely obsoleted boltaction rifles as an infantry weapon and then the assaultrifle obsoleted it.

    The only place where you still find lmgs is when they are basically just a standard assault rifle with a heavier barrel and a bigger magazine. While the bren was quite possibly the best lmg it simply became obsolete just like the watercooled hmg.

    It didn't become obsolete, it became inappropriate. Tbh I often hear the word 'obsolete' a lot and it never fails to give me pause. What does it mean? Since the Bren is obsolete what does that mean exactly? That it's not a threat? Couldn't be since it fires bullets and last I checked, modern guns still fire those. No the Bren's problem just as the problem of the generation of weapons that came before it was that the Armies it was built for reconfigured around light, mobile, and fast cadres of uniformly well-equipped and motorized task-force style military formations. The US Army typically refers to them as "Combat Teams" ie Regimental Combat Team, Brigade Combat Team, etc. Such formations have no use for positional fighting, preferring mobility and fast reaction to the "trench" fighting of the 20th century's wars. Those wars were fought by huge million man draftee Armies that don't exist anymore for good reason. (They were not terribly efficient and tended to lend themselves to excessive displays of aggression and brinksmanship on the part of the host' nation.) 

    Small formations are easier to equip uniformly, the most important element of this the near universal-preponderance of motorization and mechanization by modern military forces. Nobody huffs it on foot anymore anywhere really, except for training events. Maneuverability used to be luxury but now battlefields are under such total surveillance that it means survival and this means that formations must be light. This has an observable affect on weapon systems at all levels of these formations from the prevalence of light armor now reflected by the IFV such Marder, Bradley, Warrior etc, and ICV such as Stryker, BTR, Dingo, MRAP, etc. Modern military forces at least in the west are literally the ultimate realization of Guderian's or Liddell Hart's designs, crucially enabled by the circumstances of today's world- a design which did not exist in their time. In these circumstances yeah, the MG42 is the best. It's such an optimal weapon for this kind of force configuration that just about every potential competitor available, the MAG, the Minimi, the M60, the PKM, all incorporate some degree of it in their design be it technical (air cooled, belt-feed, quick change barrel), or usage (the GPMG as a concept). This is where many of the frequent claims that various modern machine guns are all "copies" of the MG42 has a modicum of truth to it, but statements like that create more questions than they answer without some all important context. "Well yes, but no"

    First generation assault rifles already numbered the Bren's days of course, (and never could've equipped those huge draftee Armies) but at least for a time what the Bren had on any assault rifle was that it could actually maintain sustained automatic fire while assault rifles couldn't do this without overheating. (The British designed their version of the FAL for this but it ended up being very heavy.) Design being the way it was assault rifles were expected to use automatic fire only for emergencies but otherwise operate more or less as the last generation of battle rifles just had. Shooting mainly at specific targets. Once the MAG and Minimi appeared of course the Bren was toast but for some reason the British decided they wanted to try making an assault rifle (the L86) try to play machine gun and it predictably failed because the SA80 it was based on is a rifle and lacks a quick change barrel and a host of other features that make it a good machine gun. It turns out regardless of design ya just can't beat physics, especially not thermodynamics. 

     

  3. 2 hours ago, holoween said:

    First it doesnt exactly have a light barrel. Second if it did start to warp it would actually aim higher as it is supported at the front of the reciever aswell. Third the actual maximum range asssigned to it in the german army is 1200m. And fourth its a machinegun not a sniperrifle.

    If the aimpoint wanders it's not going to be a trivial event even if we're thinking in terms of spreads than point fire. As long as you're spotting your fire, it shouldn't matter much, but it's a thing that can happen is all i'm saying. 

    Anyway, i'm not seriously trying to suggest that the Bren is a better weapon than the MG34/42, just that its merits are often downplayed a bit much for my taste because it doesn't fit a model or method of fighting it wasn't designed for. The Germans encouraged a bit more distinct squad-level tactics than the British did, fire-and-maneuver etc whereas the British rifle infantry preferred something closer to fire-and-advance, but they never named their design like Auftragstaktik or anything. German infantry squads didn't have light mortars though (they did at first but their early war model-the granatwerfer 36-was one of the worst examples of the type), and this is part of the reason why I think verges on misunderstanding to say "the Bren sucked" which i'm accusing no one of.

    It's just that even looking at the Bren from MG42 Mountain paints a misleading picture. It leaves out that the British expected the Bren to work in tandem with a 2in mortar, sniper teams, engineers etc all under the cover of the battalion's mortars and HMGs.  This was all fully appreciated by the Germans too, but wielded differently because from that view the squad's machine gun is the main effort, everyone else supports it. The pyramid of support is inverted, it's bottom-up rather than top-down. That's why if you were to give the Wehrmacht the Bren they'd be inclined to look at it and go "oh we don't have much use for that". 

  4. 22 minutes ago, holoween said:

    For Barrel wear and heating actual rounds fired per minute is also the only relevant metric. As for changing the barrel you keep acting as if its a disadvantedge while its the opposite. Its not the cas that you have to change the barrel constantly or the gun will break but its to allow it to keep up with water cooled hmgs in sustained fire. Just to illustrate with the mg3 by the book you should change barrel after each 120 round belt. In practice exceeding that by an order of magnitude isnt uncommon when using it as a coaxial tank mg because its somewhat awkward to do.

     

    Coaxial machine guns are usually built with a thicker barrel than the infantry variants. Water cooled machine guns also usually have a thicker barrel than air cooled machine guns (which incidentally are still much larger than the barrel on an assault rifle). I don't really think barrel changing is a disadvantage per se, it's just another thing the gunner has to fiddle with in action other than everything else he's got to do. He needs an assistant and the assistant needs asbestos gloves by the way-which i'm sure get lost a lot. It's important to keep in mind that we're talking about rifle infantry's use of the MG42 per se though, the Weapons Company ie: the guys using it on a tripod, would have a whole crew who's job would be to service the weapon constantly. I imagine the MG42 was the least demanding "heavy" machine gun of all time but in return it seems that it wasn't quite heavy enough sometimes. The Vickers and M1917 were very stable platforms and very resistant to high operating temperatures of constant fire, but were also around 20lbs heavier (gun + water). 

     If you want a machine gun like the MG42 but don't want the hassle of water cooling it's certainly one way to have it. The other way is to just build it really heavy like the Hotchkiss or Browning M2 but then it won't make a good SAW will it? If you've got an assistant around barrel changing is a non-event and in fact the Bren had a quick change barrel too. Other issue is that the front sight post is part of the barrel. It's just that i've read more than a few accounts of green or inexperienced gunners burning out MG42s and 34s because when startled or panicked they tend to hold the trigger down and at such high cyclic rates the MG42 is very punishing on mistakes like that. The MG3 may suggest changes at 120 rounds, but with or without trigger discipline you'll get there very fast-hence as you say all the cases of overruns. Biggest issue though is the lighter barrel warps or "droops"-there is no condition where it won't-and this leads to "wandering" of the aim point over great distance. I suspect this is why the graduations in the telescopic sight for the weapon end at around 1,600m. 

    It's not a major issue it's not really a design flaw, it's just the Bren is a bit less demanding on its user's trigger discipline although a limited-use 100 round pan mag existed for it. The big advantage of its 30 round mags was that the whole squad could easily carry a few and even refill them from loose rounds. Belts are seriously a big pain, and the containers the Germans issued for them seem to have been lost a lot. Once the British went to the FAL the Bren got a bit hard to justify-but unlike first generation assault rifles it was actually designed for sustained automatic fire. 

  5. 4 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

    As for QBs in general, I've always felt that the Germans have an edge because they have no real weaknesses.

    Not at the layer of fighting depicted by the game that's for sure, but as designed Germany's Infantry and Panzer Divisions were both a tad light on artillery support. The Panzer Divisions particularly lacked built in recovery assets and were reliant on Corp maintenance and recovery units loaned in from a GHQ, a rather glaring omission for an Army so short of vehicles all the time. Probably a big reason why so many Tiger tanks were stumbled over by Allied forces and written off with the usual story. "Abandoned and blown up by own crew". 

    Early war the Landwehr lacked heavy mortars, the only ones available were for chemical troops and how many of them were around? Once German troops encountered Russian 120mm mortars this mistake was quickly rectified...

    11 hours ago, Erwin said:

    Also, my understanding re MG42 effectiveness is that while ammo consumption is an issue, it is still superior to the Bren since the Bren has an even bigger ammo problem - the mags contain only 20(?) bullets.  The MG42 can keep firing while the Bren has to reload.  Easier to have a five hundred rounds on 5 belts than 25 mags to reload.  The Bren is supposedly very accurate and the (Netflix) movie "Siege of Jadotville" has a significant plot point where it is used as a sniper weapon.  (So, that is definitive!)

    They're designed from very different backgrounds, and the MG42 was a more recent variant of the MG34 designed to facilitate war production. (It was actually a simplified version of the MG34.) The Germans wanted one machine gun that could do every job be it heavy machine gun, squad-automatic-weapon, pintle mount, tank coax, etc. The original "General Purpose Machine Gun" and there were some issues with that sort of thing, namely that the weapon's standardization meant that the German Army lacked specialized machine guns like the DShK or Browning M2. Ammunition consumption was a problem, but it sounds like a bigger one was the need to keep and carry around fresh barrels which got worn out fast by the high rate of fire. Not a problem if you're going to use the weapon the way the Germans usually did ie: to rapidly punish enemy movement rather than what British or Russians or Americans usually had in mind ie: sustained heavy fire on a predicted or known position. 

    Both guns (MG42/34) were belt fed, a notorious vector for stoppages and jamming from particle or debris ingestion in a machine gun. The Bren was magazine fed explicitly so this wouldn't be a major issue. In theory both the MG42 and Bren required assistant gunners for operation but the Bren was much simpler to operate without an assistant. I know the label "light machine gun" makes the Bren sound like a certain kind of weapon but it's a bit misleading. In fact the weapon was used more like an Automatic-Rifle-closer to the BAR and Madsen-although it could be mounted on a tripod and was a far better alternative to those two guns.  

  6. The Panzer IV uses a variant of the Pak 40 and has the Zeiss optical sight which is a handy tool for estimating range if you know a thing or two about it. The Sherman has a sight with some lines drawn on it and little else, and the 75mm M3 had about 2/3-3/4 the muzzle velocity of the L/48. It was harder to use at long range because it was intended as a general-purpose gun, and the Sherman carried a heavy load of HE shells for it to sling since it was intended mostly to bombard soft positions. Flat trajectory from a high muzzle velocity would facilitate first-round accuracy, but why you need that against trenches and foxholes? Higher muzzle velocity will require larger shell casings and consequent reduction in ammunition supply. I don't find it too shocking that the Panzer IV has a slight edge at range, many of the factors that made it an inferior tank to the M4 would not be in the scope of CM. 

    And in fact the M3 gun was intended for use against tanks despite common misconceptions otherwise, but the Americans had to accept some compromises in the gun's performance in order to meet the demands placed on the design. The Army wanted a balanced tank, not a Tiger killer. So there's a degree of truth to which the Sherman was "sub optimal" against other tanks but only sort of and before Normandy even there were plans to replace the Sherman with the T20 which had the M1 76mm gun. That tank was cancelled though and no one was going to delay the invasion of Europe so Shermans could get a better gun. 

  7. 1 hour ago, ASL Veteran said:

    I don't care about QB point values in the slightest, but what is baffling to me is how anyone could think that anything hand crafted would be cheaper than anything mass produced. 

    Think we're having a miscommunication here. I'm referring to unskilled labor by my use of the term "hand crafting". Not sure if you're thinking of artisan-crafting ie: skilled hand crafting? Anyway, I think it's reflective of how ugly the subject is that little has been written on the Nazi use of slave labor until recent, and how enormous its effects were on their production, and how that inherently bound up the whole war effort with the Holocaust.

    So lathes don't grow on trees. They have to be built and make use of valuable raw materials. Slaves come free from the concentration camps and are seen by the Nazis as expendable. I'm not endorsing this sort of thinking, just highlighting that human labor can indeed enter circumstances where it becomes less dependent on input than factories and machinery ie: industrial tooling. You have to be as prepared as the Nazis were to expend human life in order to achieve this, or you could just be Foxconn. If mass production could engage in cycles of endless devaluation than why is de-industrialization a thing? Why are factories closed and their contents sold off? You're not wrong here the tendency in a normal society is for workers and governments to setup barriers between capitalism and the exploitation-to-destruction of human labor. So the typical counter-play is to use machinery and automation to remove workers and their wages from the process. What if you're the Nazis though and you're faced by a severe materials shortage? What if you have no scruples about expending human lives in production? 

    Like, you're right, usually the nature of industrial production is to replace workers with machines because machines have lower inputs-but their required input is never negligible. The Nazis created a situation-a horrifying one-where they could use and expend human labor in the industrial process (especially in unskilled sectors although the V2 and Me262 programs were surprising exceptions to this) and if we look at the industrial process completely devoid of any humanity then nothing's cheaper than a working slave. Worst case is you go from 0 to 1 here. Yes a voluntary healthy worker will make 10 value but needs 4 input and an assembly line makes 300  but needs 50 of something etc. Multiply 1 by enough times while subtracting nothing from the value produced in the form of wages and you're profiting. Economists will lambast your process as inefficient and absolutely all normal human beings should not fail to underline the unspeakable sacrilege of expending human lives like this but it is materially cheaper than a machine. The Nazis created this situation where human life became less valuable than machinery owing to the artificial materials shortage created by "the front". 

    Now if we view the nature of the process through its social relations then we can see that in fact it didn't come cheap. The cost or bill presented to Nazi Germany for this manner of production was the World War. Their methods proved unable to pay that bill...

     

  8. 21 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

    It was based on what the currencies were worth in Neutral Sweden. US manufacturing was far more efficient and could produce a comparative vehicle a lot cheaper. We are better off asking Battle Front about their formula.  

    Sorry what? Based on a Swedish currency? How was that negotiated? How and why was the American process cheaper? American workers were unionized and made use of the some of the most sophisticated machine tools in the world, which all sounds far more expensive than slave labor and hand-crafting ubiquitous in German factory firms. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm interrogating you a bit here but a lot of this statement creates more questions than it answers. It's baffling to me. 

    Market value is useful in peacetime conditions but I would caution referencing it during wartime. Currencies not limited to the Reichsmark when through explosive inflation/devaluation cycles with the war's turns and this fiscal instability continued for a number of years after the war until the consequences of the Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods Conference stabilized the world's markets a bit through rebuilding booms. 

    Material values, ie: tons of steel, rubber, copper, etc are "safer" measures of value at least in the sense that represent objectively measurable inputs, but that's still not the system I think CM should reference for unit values. I would say within the timeline of the game's narrative values should be reflected by frontline reserves of units or maybe even something more local. "X" Panzers under the command of Army Group B and such. Production value is outside the scope of the game ultimately.

  9. 3 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

    I have the answer probably. A Panzer IV cost 110 Thousand Reichsmarks during WW 2, A Sherman cost $ 50000 on average during WW 2. In buying power The Reichsmark is maybe 80% to 90% of the US$ that is if they converted their money in neutral Sweden for example. It is a theory, but I don't know which formula the game designers used. 

    That still wouldn't be a very good formula to run on given the Reichsmark's fluctuation of value during the war and the enormous hidden or obscured costs involved in the use of slave labor the Nazis applied. In any case, I doubt the rarity costs were thought up based on things like production man-hours or fiscal policy. 

  10. Mare Nostrum

    The Navy's end of the war kicked off on the 11th of June when French warships bombarded the Ligurian coast and British warships hit Cyrenaica. Despite these raids Admiral Cavagnari would detach no ships to coastal defense. The Admiral felt that the Navy's primary responsibility was protection of Italian supply lines to Libya. The fraught dangers of the Mediterranean sea that year led the Navy to attempt resupply efforts via torpedo boats, submarines, and destroyers at first. These ships could not carry much cargo though and eventually it became clear that Graziani would need convoys if he was to receive proper resupply. 

    The first convoy sent to North Africa would be escorted by the entire surface fleet, but was offset by poor coordination with the Regia Aeronautica. A painful system of communication was in place between naval and air liasons that involved 

    A. A senior naval officer had to place a request with the nearest shore-based naval command

    B. Naval command local passed the support request to the regional RA HQ-or sometimes even through General HQ in Rome. 

    C. Order dissemination to nearest airfield.

    Unsurprisingly, orders were frequently lost or delayed owing to misinterpretations or misunderstandings. General Pricolo complained that the Navy would make requests for reconnaissance aircraft to cover airspace naval aviation was already observing, thus wasting his aircrews time. 

    On July 6th a convoy of 5 steam ships set out from Naples to Benghazi. A close escort screen of destroyers and light cruisers would give close protection to the convoy while a squadron of heavy cruisers screened the route from Malta and the main battle fleet with Cavour and Giulio Cesare  remained nearby. Admiral Campioni's order of the day emphasized an aggressive stance, and he informed Rome that he planned on engaging any British forces he crossed paths with. 

    He wish would be granted. The same morning the convoy set out Campioni was sent a wire from Rome. Admiral Sommerville's Force H had left Gibraltar and later that day that Admiral Cunningham's Mediterranean Fleet with 3 battleships had also sortied. Misleading intelligence from the Germans implied that at least one of these forces was heading to bombard Sicily. In fact Force H would return to Gibraltar without ever engaging Campioni citing threats from Italian coastal air cover. The Royal Navy however, had little doubt as to Campioni's intentions...at the end of June they had obtained a code book from an Italian submarine and while not a complete source of information on Italian naval code-it enabled Cunningham to infer what the Italians were doing and where they were to a degree.

    Regia Aeronautica failed to establish a corridor of sweeps south-east of Sicily and a gap opened up in the area toward Navarino Bay in Greece. Cunningham was able to move his fleet through this unobserved region, Italian seaplanes only managed to spot his force at 10am on July 8th. For the rest of the day Regia Aeronautica would make attacks on Cunningham's fleet dropping 531 bombs and scoring one hit on Gloucester. Matching a pre-war fear held by the Royal Navy, Italian seaplanes proved very good at shadowing naval forces, sending real time updates of Cunningham's position back to their superiors for further strikes.

    Yet Rome proved remarkably meek. While Campioni was steaming toward an engagement he recieved a communique from Rome ordering him to avoid engagement with Cunningham's battleships. The order coming directly from the Duce himself. A few minutes later Italian aircraft attacked his fleet-mistaking it for the British-although they did no damage. 

    Although Campioni was prepared to fight, he was concerned the British might move between his force and Taranto, cutting off his escape route. Admiral Carlo Bergamini requested to send out the new battleships Littorio and Vittorio Veneto but this was refused. Their crews were not fully trained and damage from an accidental fire on board Littorio still required repairs. They would've done well to meet with Campioni anyway though. When Campioni's fleet crossed paths with Cunningham's at 3:08pm his forces were out of position. The cruiser destroyer screen he had established ended up behind the fleet's battleships and so were the heavy cruisers most of whom were lagging behind the rest of the fleet when they should've been ahead of the fleets battleships. 

    Both sides cruisers began firing at each other at the same time. Giulio Cesare scored a straddle on Warspite, but a minor course change by Warspite threw off the  Italian battleship's fire for the rest of the battle.  Four minutes after fighting began Cesare was hit by HMS Warspite, the warship's 15inch shell blew a 6.1 meter hole in the rear smoke stack of Cesare knocking out 4 of her 8 boilers and lowering her speed to 18 knots. A few minutes afterwards Campioni decided to disengage south west into a zone covered by Italian submarines. Cunningham, aware that Campioni was trying to lead him into a trap, decided not to follow. Italian aircraft continued to bombard both fleets for the rest of the day inflicting no damage on either. 

    The Battle of Punta Stilo revealed a number of major deficiencies with the Navy's operations. Gunfire was awful, with salvos suffering from wide dispersment and destroyers launching torpedoes from too far away. The Italian Air Force clearly had a major ship-recognition problem, with Italian airmen only failing to inflict more damage on Cunningham's ships and their own because they bombed from too high up-12,000 feet usually. The Navy had no torpedo bombers because experiments with them in 1939 had been cancelled. 

    Most painful of all was the realization that the Navy desperately needed aircraft carriers. Having to coordinate through multiple liaisons for air support from Regia Aeronautica proved an unreliable process under regular load. Once a battle broke out it inevitably collapsed under the strain and communication between Naval and Air Forces broke down entirely. 

    In September Italian naval intelligence suggested that the British force in Alexandria had been reinforced to 4 battleships and an aircraft carrier. With the odds now against them, Mussolini forbade any further search and destroy operations designed to draw British forces out into battle. The greatest problem was that limited supplies of fuel-oil meant that the current pace the Navy had only enough fuel for 13 months of operations, and he ordered convoy escorts be cut down to the bare minimum or sometimes none at all. At the same time Mussolini had been prioritizing and goading his Generals into offensive in Africa he was sabotaging Italy's ability to do so...

    Greece 

    Ever since Munich the Greek Dictator and burgeoning fascist, Ioannis Metaxas, had gone to great lengths to assure Mussolini that Greece had no desire for an alliance with the British. Fascist press and Mussolini were constantly attacking Greece as a British outpost in the Mediterranean and an Allied co-belligerent. As early as July Italian aircraft had been bombing Greek warships and auxiliaries and that month, an Italian submarine sank the cruiser Helli in Tinos harbor. Although the Italians blamed the British, Greek authorities discovered fragments of an Italian made torpedo. They were ordered by Athens nonetheless to cover this up and an announcement of the attack was not made until October-after the Italian invasion had begun. 

    On October 25th while attending the play Madame Butterfly Emanuele Grazzi-the Italian Ambassador- was handed an ultimatum and strict instructions to present it personally to General Metaxas. Presenting the note to Metaxas on October 27th, it accused Greece of allowing the Royal Navy to use its waters and coasts for operations, and of terrorism in Albania. Greece was given 3 hours to reply to a demand that Italian forces be allowed to occupy unspecified "strategic points" in his country. Although not mentioned by Gooch, Metaxas reply to this message was a one word 

    "No". 

    On October 28th Italian troops crossed the Greek frontier. Visconti Prasca'a Army advanced into a region of the Balkans which drastically multiplied the challenges it faced. Only four roads connected Albania to Greece and there was only a single two lane highway from Durazzo to Tirana. Not one railway line existed between the fronts. Most of the available paths were little more than mule tracks and mountain footpaths. With winter weather imminent much of the Balkans was about to slammed by blizzards and blinding winter storms. Between them the ports of Durazzo and Valona could only land 50 trucks and a bit over 1,000 tons of supplies a day. The Italians could not have picked a worse time to invade. 

    Things went wrong right away. Bridges blown up by the Greeks forced Italian troops to cross at creeks which turned into rivers in the bad weather. Greek defensive positions were much stronger than expected, backed by 105mm guns which outranged Italian artillery. Italian troops, caught up huge traffic jams and road blocks going on for miles were sitting ducks to bombardments. An Albanian battalion was broken by a Greek counter attack and fled into the Carabinieri unit behind them that had been setup to prevent them from routing. Rather than reform the Albanians got into firefights with the military police blocking detachments. 

    After only 10 days all progress had halted. Rome was shocked back into reality. Serious resistance at all points had stifled the invasion. Mussolini wanted a landing of 5,100 men at Prevesa in 48 hours which his Generals universally objected to. Ships in Prevesa would be exposed to attack, and the troops would be landing on an open beach vulnerable to attack from local high ground. The Royal Navy was close and was unlikely to ignore a golden opportunity to easily punish an invasion force. 

    Roatta made it clear to Mussolini that defeating Greece would require at least 20 divisions, and they now needed two and half months to prepare for a new offensive. Revealing a staggering disregard for the suffering of his own men Mussolini simply excused the whole endeavor as a genius move of his strategy to influence peace negotiations saying that "when it comes to making peace we'll have more sacrifices and therefore more rights". 

    Next time, further humiliation in Greece, the Navy's safe anchorage at Taranto turns out not to be so safe, and Sir Richard O'Connor inflicts his magnum opus upon Graziani's troops...

  11. Our scope for a raid seems pretty wide here. We talking best Commando raid? Best air raid? Best raid by frontline troops? Best espionage raid? A lot of guys seem pretty fixated on daring or particularly exciting raids but tbh excitement was usually not what planners were looking for, and was usually a symptom of things going more wrong than right. 

    I guess in the big picture sort of thing you can't beat Operation Gunnerside, the relatively quiet attack which sealed the fate of the Nazi nuclear-weapons program. Most of Germany's deuterium supply was destroyed in the raid and none of the Norwegian Commandos were lost, all of them successfully evading a 3,000 strong manhunt. Not long after the decision was made to abandon nuclear weapons research. The raid probably wasn't the sole factor leading to that, but it was certainly the last straw. 

    The Gran Sasso raid is sort of subjectively impressive to me, but in retrospect it wasn't really that surprising. Mussolini's security was untrustworthy and lightly armed and he was unimportant to everyone except Hitler by then. 

  12. The Panzer IV was a pre war tank, little the Germans did could fundamentally alter that fact. It was almost unable to accept the new L/43 gun which kept it competitive, without which the war might well have ended a few months earlier than it did. The Ausf H was the most-overburdened model with a slower road cruise speed than the Tiger and faster forward sprocket wear than it too. No remedy was ever found for the weak turret armor (50mm). After the F2 model the Panzer IV was entirely a stop-gap to hold over Panzer Divisions until the Panther arrived, and Hitler nearly cancelled further production of it entirely but Guderian talked him out of this. The Mk IV's serviceability generally decreased throughout the war commensurate with its increasingly overweight chassis though, which was part of the argument for the Panther who's serviceability figures generally improved up until the economy began to fail. 

     Accounting for value of production between it and the M4 would be hard due to different accounting methods and materials use, but the Sherman was around 10 tons heavier and used way more rubber so I can't imagine it was the cheaper tank. The way the QB generator doles out value and points is highly dubious to me, and I prefer to use the scenario editor myself course I often have a way more specific context jangling around in the back of my mind as to my scenario so for me anyway, spin-the-bottle wouldn't work in any circumstances. 

  13. Fumbling Outwards in Every Possible Direction 

    While Italian troops were awkwardly stumbling their way through French defenses of the Alps, Mussolini considered more theatres for Italy to go on the offensive in while characteristically failing to decide on priority of any kind. In the near future campaigns were considered against Yugoslavia, Greece, British North Africa, and even Switzerland, although this last one would mercifully be dropped. 

    Yugoslavia and Greece were special to Mussolini, as he considered both nations to be British outposts, but Egypt held considerable prestige value if it could be taken. Turning the Suez Canal into an Italian holding would not only secure Italian East Africa but enable Regia Marina to achieve a long held dream of establishing bases in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Now that the French weren't a problem, Comando Supremo could concentrate on an Eastward thrust with no danger of being attacked from behind ie: from Tunisia. Mussolini envisioned air assaults against Gibraltar and Malta both of which would be "sterilized" (Gooch notes Mussolini really liked to use that word).

    Italo Balbo however, had serious reservations and told the German military attaché that Libya was "practically hopeless", lacking supplies, fortifications, and modern tanks and airplanes. He asked the Germans for 50 tanks but Mussolini offered him 70 M tanks. He would also require a thousand trucks, more anti-aircraft guns, and newer anti-tank guns. The British had the Matilda II which couldn't be stopped by anything smaller than a large field howitzer or aerial bombs-also in short supply. Italian airfields in Africa were not well defended, but they were well defended enough to shoot down their own Governor-General and chief advocate. Italo Balbo's SM 79 was shot down by Italian anti-aircraft gunners at Tobruk on June 28th 1940-having mistaken the airplane for a British bomber, the airfield had been attacked by British aircraft just prior to Balbo's arrival. 

    Balbo's loss was a major morale shock, he had been a worldwide celebrity in the aviation industry, and was seen by some as potential rival to the Duce. Knowing this was probably why Mussolini dispatched him to Libya in the first place. Graziani was sent to replace him, being told that the 100,000 strong force there would soon be augmented to 170,000 men and was probably facing a 110,000 strong British Army in Egypt. When Graziani arrived in Libya two days after Balbo's death, he was surprised to find that zero-plans had been made to invade Egypt. Three days later Mussolini advised him to be ready to move by the middle of next month into Egypt to coincide with Germany's invasion plan for England-Operation SEA LION-. 

    Graziani had only 3,500 trucks and little fuel however, and operational planning against Egypt got off to a slow start. He advised Rome that he would be able to capture Sollum in mid-August, but Mussolini was expecting Alexandria and Graziani's modest plans didn't go down well with the Duce. Attack planning on Alexandria looked far from promising however. There was only one avenue for advancing on the city along the coast line-exposed to British naval and air attack its entire length-and the total lack of baggage trains for his divisions meant that there was no room for tactical maneuver off of the local infrastructure. Mussolini would have none of it, he was determined to assist Hitler and scatter his limited forces worldwide. 

    The naval situation was not promising either. Originally scheduled to be ready by August, Admiral Campioni admitted to Mussolini at the end of July that neither one of the new Littorio class battleships were ready for combat. Vittorio Veneto's guns were deficient, not reaching anywhere near projected accuracy figures in shooting trials. This left the RM with its three First World War battleships, facing four British battleships at Alexandria which would be much closer to their own base in operations and would benefit from air cover. 

    At the beginning of August Graziani and Mussolini met, and Graziani attempted to talk the Duce down from an invasion of Egypt. With an attack on England looking imminent though Mussolini demanded action of some kind in Africa. Both men talked past each other for the most part, and left the meeting with cross impressions. Mussolini thought Graziani would begin his assault in a few days and Graziani believed he had impressed upon the Duce that this could not happen. Graziani assessed that he would need 9 motorized divisions, more 149mm guns, 5,200 trucks and other movers to face the 7 British divisions in Egypt and project force across 250km of desert from Tripoli. Nothing was said about the air support problem, Graziani had only 108 fighters for all of Libya. 

    With disappointment streaming out of Tripoli Mussolini turned his attention back on the Balkans. The day after Mussolini's useless conference with Graziani the Duce began to speak of an Italian attack on Yugoslavia by the end of September. Then he changed his mind at the end of the month when a report came out that a British battleship had been spotted in Navarino Bay in Greece-although it turned out later that this was just an island with two thin palm trees. This did not stop Ciano from fusillading the Greek minister in Rome with accusations that Greece was aligning with Britain and planning on betraying Italy. Athens fired back that the only violations of neutrality so far had been overflights of the Greek border by Italian reconnaissance airplanes. 

    In mid July Hitler implied that he would back the Italians in any effort they made against the Greeks, not wanting the Ionian Islands to become a British base, and the Italians opened their hostilities (but still shied away from an outright war declaration) with Greece by bombing the Greek destroyer Hydra and an auxiliary ship. Fascist press whipped itself up into a frenzy, claiming an impending Greek invasion of Albania and incursions across the border by Greek troops. Mussolini himself, still sore over the incident with Greece over Corfu in the 1920s, told his son in law that "the Greeks were deceiving themselves if they thought he had forgotten". 

    Once it became clear to the OKW that Italy was planning a simultaneous invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece Hitler became nervous. Ribbentrop was dispatched to highlight that Germany wanted a coordinated strategy against Britain-not necessarily the Balkans-and Italian action against Greece had become unwelcome. With this Mussolini shifted his attention back to North Africa for the time, and allowed invasions against Yugoslavia to be delayed until October and against Greece to be delayed until the end of September. Graziani instead was commanded to begin offensive operations against Egypt before August ended to coincide with Operation Sea Lion. 

    But by early September and after a meeting at Berchtesgaden where Hitler complained that bad weather was delaying operations, it had become clear to Ciano that the invasion of England had been postponed. This had little effect on Mussolini, who now wanted Egypt regardless of whether Germany would put troops ashore in England or not. Then a note arrived from Germany at Badoglio's HQ that the Germans were prepared to send an armored division to Africa if the Italian's requested it-deeply annoying Badoglio as he had not asked for their help. For Mussolini this became the last straw. The idea that the Germans were considering operations in Italy's sphere of interest, the Mediterranean, led Mussolini to command Graziani to begin his assault into Egypt in two days time. No further delays would be tolerated. 

    Something like an Invasion.

    Graziani got his assault going on Egypt on September 13th. Only a day in the pace became agonizingly slow. Royal Air Force planes destroyed roads and bridges, and when tanks and vehicles attempted to move off of them they sank in the deep sands. Yet by the 16th Italian troops had reached Sidi-el-Barani. Advancing 50 miles in three days casualties had been modest, only 120 dead and 410 wounded. The reason soon became evident, rather than make a stand at the border, the British had withdrawn to fortify at Mersa Matruh. 

    Italian Generals were not pleased with the execution of the invasion, with General Annibale Begonzoli complaining that the troops of 23 Marzo division "knew only how to climb on and off lorries". Graziani became interested in the German offer for 150 tanks in North Africa, but he preferred dive bombers highlighting that they'd be able to attack the naval base at Alexandria after he captured Mersa Matruh. Attitudes further improved at the end of September in Rome when Ribbentrop announced that Japan had agreed to sign the upcoming Tripartite Pact. 

    Visiting Pricolo in mid-September the Luftwaffe liaison complained that Graziani's assault was being conducted at the pace of Kitchener's 19th century Army in the Sudan. Gooch states "if anything, this comment was unfair to Kitchener - Graziani's soldiers had in fact moved into Egypt at the same daily pace as Napoleon's Armies". Graziani did face major difficulties however, facing chronic supply bottlenecks from the limited port facilities available in North Africa. Between Tripoli, Benghazi, and Tobruk Libyan ports landed just 50,000 tons of supplies a month, and 200 of 1,000 trucks shipped were lost through enemy air raids on the ports. 

    In early October Mussolini met with Hitler at the Brenner Pass again, and Hitler pointed out that he was planning on  meeting with Franco soon but that early talks of partnership with Spain were not looking good. Franco had been extremely demanding. Mussolini was nonetheless made nervous by the hint of an alliance between Madrid and Berlin, and sent a wire down to Graziani on October 5th. Attack Mersa Matruh now. 

    Graziani pointed out that he was short of water. The Duce simply shrugged this off by saying that men needed less water in October as the weather in Africa cooled. Again help from the Regia Marina was not forthcoming. Only five submarines were cosigned to operate in the waters outside of Alexandria, and the heavy cruisers being used for coastal bombardments of Egypt were withdrawn entirely. Then on October 12th Mussolini got word that the Germans had sent a military mission to Romania, and Graziani sent a note that day pointing out that Mersa Matruh was heavily fortified and he would not be ready to attack the position until November. Worse was still to come...

    Badoglio's HQ was notified at the end of the day that Operation Sea Lion was postponed until 1941. With that the normally stoic General flew into a rage. Without the threat of invasion England would now be able to spare forces for the Mediterranean and African theatres. Italian East Africa-the General's proudest conquest-was doomed...

    Next time, hostilities with Greece graduate into war with Greece. A play is rudely interrupted, and the two Royal Navies cross paths and guns for the first time...

  14. To a degree it's understandable. A lot of these games have such an incredible number of intricate moving parts it'd be strange if they weren't a permanent beta. Trouble I see is that A. Cyberpunk's bugs are frequently more than cosmetic and B. I just don't see anything in the game that was worth all of this intricacy. It's really crazy how CD Project Red kept what was fundamentally a 2012 shooter-rpg game in development for almost 10 years. There's seriously nothing about it that's Earth shattering or noteworthy, if they weren't just awful project managers the game would've released and should've released 4 years ago. In the time that people have been waiting for the game there was a new Deus Ex game, Fallout 4, not one but two Destiny games, Borderlands Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 3, and The Outer Worlds. There was seriously no shortage of games, even big name AAA titles that were already "Cyberpunk 2077". 

  15. On 12/11/2020 at 3:07 PM, Sgt.Squarehead said:

    Cyberpunk 2077 does the same for me.....What a fekkin crock that's turned out to be!  :rolleyes:

    The framerate drops on console are inexcusable, it's not like it's just got some minor cosmetic problems or whatever, it's unplayably dysfunctional. Did you notice how the voice acting tends to have noticeable tonal inconsistencies? Like characters go from calm relaxed tone of voice to AGGIGATED SCREAMING within the same line, and there's nothing that informs any of it. It seems obvious to me that the hectic development schedule meant that they had rushed recording sessions and then had to just stitch together what they had only for the writers to come in afterwards and make more changes. 

    The biggest issue for me is the overall lack of focus or clear flow to the game's mechanical design. Lots of the game is at odds with itself, and lots of unnecessary abstractions are around like the RPG skill tree stuff right alongside the cybernetics skill tree stuff and it's so unclear which or what is necessary to negotiate a playthrough. As I was seeing probably neither of them are really necessary, the game has some majorly cheese-able stuff built right in to its stealth and non-lethal play design which are really making me feel like I don't need to make commitments to perks or traits or cyberz or what have you, I just need to be at the right level. 

    The RPG abstractions are at odds with the shooter mechanics, so in one part of town you run into an enemy you can effortlessly headshot and then in another part of town the guards just laugh off the whole 30 round mag you hit them with cuz "role playing game". There's a useless in game economy for some reason (the best stuff is just handed to you in quests) and the dialogue trees all lead to the same badly voiced cutscenes. It really seems clear to me now that the stuff that made Witcher good was entirely due to what Andrzrej Sapkowski brought to the IP and not thanks to CDPR. 

  16. Deserted, captures were probably returned, and I imagine quite a few were lost in the Alpine forests and hillsides in the snowdrifts, dying from exposure. 

    20 hours ago, BletchleyGeek said:

    Those look like pretty serious losses, how many forces took part in this disaster? 6 or 8 binaria divisions?

    BTW, sounds a lot like the performance at the invasion of Greece. I highly recommend the Italo-Greek scenarios in Command Ops 2 to study that campaign.

    Alpine_Line_10_June_1940.svg

    Here's a map from Wikipedia's extremely detailed page on the invasion. The Piccolo San Bernardino (Little Saint Bernard) is the pass 4th Army is facing into. And as you can see, it happened to be one of the most heavily defended routes. Italian "Divisions" as we know, are being referred to as Divisions on this map but in fact they're more like Brigade groups. While the French look completely screwed, as we read appearances can be deceiving. The French Divisions are full strength, and the Alpine troops were crack formations. Forts overlook all of the favorable routes and the Bernard pass was guarded by the infamous Fort de la Redoute, which was in fact several forts built in the vicinity of an old Napoleonic fort. 

    Bourg St Maurice (savoie-fortifications.com)

    Map of the full position (website is in French). The Italians never knew about most of the sites, and bad weather thwarted reconnaissance. 

  17. The Other Battle of France.

    Despite having spent over 70 years studying the border, Italian Generals and military minds proved remarkably unimaginative over their plans for an invasion of south France. Most plans settled on an attack through the passes through the Corniche and Colle di Tenda and advancing to establish a line on the Rhone river, but few details more specific than those items were considered. Nothing at all was considered after reaching the Rhone. In 1928 the French had begun work on the Ligne Maginot Alpine series of fortifications along the border. These fortifications were much less dense than those on the Maginot Line proper, but were well concealed. The French had guessed the potential invasion routes correctly and consequently much of the defense was oriented at the routes the Italians planned on invading through. 

    In March 1940 Graziani posted general order PR 12, which noted the possibility of offensive action through the Alps toward Albertville and Annecy, but mainly emphasized a defensive stance. 4th Army HQ considered but never followed through with a request for the Bersagliari to study an attack through the Piccolo san Bernardino pass. At the end of May Graziani put PR 12 into effect and Mussolini added up his personal command that Army Group West (consisting of 1st and 4th Armies) remain on the defensive and not push the border under any circumstances. Yet Army Commanders were also asked to study potential offensive plans "under favorable circumstances" from increasingly confusing communiques from Rome. 

    1st Army HQ produced a plan for an attack Colle della Maddalena which was very conventional in design, but Graziani preferred the plan drawn up by 4th Army HQ for an attack through the San Bernarndino pass north, especially since it emphasized speed and maneuver which was closer to Fascist preference. Wildly optimistic assumptions were made about moving motorized and armored divisions through a cart track and that the Regia Aeronautica would have trouble knocking out the forts at Bourg-en-Bresse that guarded the pass. 

    On June 10th Italy declared war on France. While German troops entered Paris a few days later and the Third Republic began to collapse, Italian troops were told to begin conducting small unit-action attacks against French positions on the frontier. General Roatta was instructed to take on deployments necessary for advances through the Colle della Maddalena and Piccolo San Bernardino passes, now fully jettisoning the defensive-elements of PR 12. French patrols were spotted probing the Italian side of the border and in some retaliations some prisoners were taken by the Italians. When Marshall Petain became leader and began agitating for a for an armistice Mussolini interpreted this as the sign of total capitulation he'd been hoping for and pushed Graziani to go on the offensive-which he was enthusiastically agreed to. 

    Furious that Germany might agree to cease hostilities with France before he had been able to cleave anything for himself, Mussolini disregarded warnings about the challenges his troops faced attacking through the Alps. On June 23rd, just as the Italian offensive was getting underway-Mussolini was invited by Hitler to attend a conference discussing French surrender terms. Mussolini showed up at Munich with a huge wish list of items Hitler was completely unwilling to grant any of. They included items such as Italian occupation of the French naval base in Oran (Mers-el-Kebir), Casablanca, Corsica, Tunisia, and the handover of the French Fleet.

    Hitler was not prepared to entertain any of these demands, worried that putting too much pressure on Marshall Petain would lead to his government fleeing to North Africa. Ciano got the impression that Germany was looking for a peaceful settlement with England, and began to realize that there unlikely to be joint German-Italian negotiations with the French. When informed Mussolini only got more greedy. Now he wanted all of Algeria and Egypt to become Italian client states too. 

    As the Offensive against France got underway the Italian's strategy rapidly collapsed into chaos. Roatta received calls from both Army's HQs that neither one of them would be ready to conduct their advances on time, with Guzzoni stating he also needed an armored division and an engineer battalion. Mussolini was informed of this and briefly considered allowing Army Group West to delay, but once he heard the Germans had reach Lyon he changed his mind again and commanded them forward. 

    Petain had ordered French troops to stop fighting, but the local French Commanders decided to disobey the Marshall's orders and agreed to stand and fight. The remaining elements of the French Army were enraged by the Italian stab-in-the-back and had no intention of giving up an inch of French territory to Mussolini's vulturine dash for easy conquests. The German force in Lyon delayed its own advance on the French Alpine positions-but failed to notify Badoglio's HQ of this, and he ordered Army Group West forward into the San Bernardino pass after a 39 aircraft bombardment on suspected French positions by Regia Aeronautica.

    The bombardments missed the French mostly and with minimal knowledge of where French emplacements were Italian columns rapidly became pinned down by French battery fire. It began to snow heavily and Italian columns were ambushed on their flanks by French Ski and Alpine troops. The bad weather crippled Regia Aeronautica, and in the confusion some Italian troops were bombed and attacked by their own airplanes. A few days after the initial advance began a 2nd advance bogged down for all the same reasons-unchallenged French artillery fire, unknown French bunker positions, and bad weather. Only now the Italian's artillery participated in bombardments of their own troops. By the 23rd Mussolini phoned Badoglio and admitted that he wasn't interested in any territorial occupation of France tating that "Hitler might accuse me of having upset the armistice". 

    Fortunately for the Italians, by June 24th French General Charles Huntziger had agreed to an armistice and the four day Franco-Italian war came to an end. The Italians lost 642 men KIA, 2631 wounded, and 616 missing. Over 2,100 got frostbite. The binaria Divisions had done awfully, with their two Regiments frequently becoming exhausted and pinned down along parallel but isolated routs of advance. Without a 3rd Regiment Italian commanders did not have sufficient manpower to rotate exhausted units into reserve, and their men had to stand and fight without respite. Mussolini personally visited the scene of the action at the Piccolo San Bernardino, but convinced himself the episode was a a triumph, boasting to Clara Petacci that "our soldiers overcame very strong resistance". 

    Next time, Graziani goes on (a very slow) one-time-only tour in Africa! Italo Balbo meets an unfortunate fate, and a pair of palm trees are confused for a battleship. Find out next time on Mussolini's Mediterranean Misadventures...

  18. Not to the degree with which Hitler was among his Generals. If anything Mussolini seems to have hoped that Fascist indoctrination would encourage the General Staff and Italian People to cooperate among each other with an unheard of harmony in the complicated nation's history. He still expected to have unquestioned final say however, and even if they had all spoken in one voice they would probably have said some things Mussolini would not have wanted to hear. 

  19. Mussolini would in the year 2019 classify his approach as "data driven" and proceed along the same course I think. It did not help that the Generals and other politicians of Italy did not speak as one voice ever, but as disjointed and competing service branches busy chasing personal prestige and promotions. One infamous instance was when the Chief of Police Arturo Bocchini presented his report to Mussolini on public opinion. Bocchini was no dissident, he was a card carrying member of the Fascist Party. The report that the clear majority of Italians were opposed to war and frightened of it was too overwhelming to misinterpret, but Mussolini's Fascist lackey Achille Starace just shot down the report by claiming that 40 million Italians were prepared to lay down their lives for the Duce. Such dissonance proved so shocking for Mussolini that he kicked both of them out of his office and not long after the two of them were outside they got into a shouting match that nearly became violent. As Gooch says "Bocchini was prioritizing reality while Starace was prioritizing loyalty". 

  20. I think it displeases people when they have a poor understanding of what made them valuable, which the game does not fail to suggest ie: the fragmentation and high-explosive saturated battlefields of the World Wars which made any vehicle with splinter protection extremely valuable. The Hanomag was barely bulletproof, and compared to something like a Bradley or even the Stryker how does the Bren Carrier look? Without context one would never understand why both vehicles were so prized and even why the Universal Carrier was in fact the most heavily produced AFV ever. 

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