CM 2 And Snipers

[grunto2]

bts should model snipers the way they do in asl.

nonetheless, as it is, an elite sharpshooter with 15 rounds of ammo can be a factor in a small, company level battle.

now i read in american rifleman once that a u.s. infantry company's sharpshooter carried an m1903 (bolt-action 30.06) with tracers.

in the advance he would sneak ahead of his company, a couple hundred yards or so, then fire tracers at enemy positions he would spot. when his company saw where the tracers went, they were supposed to start laying in fire, manuevering, etc.

now at 18 points for regular it might be a bit expensive to use sharpshooters as probes in cmbo.

the debate over whether a sharpshooter equals a sniper or if a sharpshooter is 'part sniper,' or 'something completely different and not a sniper at all' is an interesting one.

in game terms the roles given various units by the commander may be 'ahistorical,' but isn't the action in the game itself more often than not, itself 'realistic?'

anyway for cm2 i like the idea of keeping the sharpshooter types from cmbo and adding some kind of abstract sniper cabability, perhaps not represented by a unit on the map.

the example given of the company commander being down 3 guys, and the weapons platoon hq being wiped out... that seemed a little extreme. maybe something like 1 casualty in each would be more 'realistic.'

andy

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Simon Fox:

Sheesh!

Will the quantifiers vs the qualitators become worse than than the attritionists vs the maneuverists?

Already are if you ask me.

Can the sermoniser acheive moral ascendency over the expatiator?

If I had any grits, I'd ask you to ki...

"Moral ascendancy"? Sounds like Cross of Iron all over again. Or was that "Spiritual Domination?" Maybe it means the same in German. I hope not; I prefer to think of us all here as equals. Everyone has an area of expertise, everyone benefits from those that share. If you didn't, you wouldn't be here. For it to work that way, one has to be willing to admit when they're wrong, or consider other view points. That's why we're (supposed to) be here. Not to set one's self up as the smartest, but to learn from each other.

Damn, this IS turning into a sermon. You bring out the worst in me, Simon.

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Simon Fox:

Sheesh!

Will the quantifiers vs the qualitators become worse than than the attritionists vs the maneuverists?

Can the sermoniser acheive moral ascendency over the expatiator?

Or will he choke upon those 'grits' (whatever the hell they are)?

The disinterested masses are just that.

Hehe...exactly. If your post wasnt so long, I'd put it in my sig. I think nothing more needs to be said, since Jason's last post just shows how far he is willing to go to defend his methodology in the face of healthy skepticism. Jason, the fact that you are going ballistic trying to defend purely subjective numbers merely proves the point that it's probably best just to leave such arguments as abstractions. This isn't meant to be a criticism of your conclusions, intelligence, blah, blah, blah...just a friendly criticism of your tone in your latest messages. It's tough to take someone seriously when they're ranting.

Edit: Forgot to kiss the grits.

[This message has been edited by Mannheim Tanker (edited 03-20-2001).]

[Londoner]

Jason, u miss the point, although you rightly name many factors accounting for the German defeat at stalingrad, you fail to see that u CANNOT precisely quanitify their importance. Nobody ran around counting the exact number of casualties caused by arty, infantry, tanks, aircraft, snipers, booby traps, lack of sleep, fear, stupidity, drunkeness etc etc etc. Your tidy maths simply doesn't apply here old son. Christ you would think that was obvious...

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In military operations timing is everything.

Wellington

1800.

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Londoner (edited 03-20-2001).]

[Guest Andrew Hedges]

Snipers as such shouldn't be in CM 2. They're out not the right scale, and they didn't work (with probably one or two exceptions) as part of a combined arms team. They worked by themselves, to either kill officers, or, more generally, to harass troops.

[JeffRaider]

Enough of this childish quibbling, I have a MUCH more important question. How is BTS, in all of its enlightened magnificence, going to deal with the highly controversial and incredibly to difficult to model (for us CM Geeks, anyway) PASSIONATE Sniper To Sniper SEX SCENES? We all know that snipers are a randy bunch, just look at the names some of them are given, Bob "the Nailer" Lee Swagger, and Carlos (Don Juanabe) Hathcock (no explanation needed). Also of some importance is the modelling of the hip grind, with variations for Great Russians and Peasants from the Urals. Also, Soviet-issue lipstick needs to be planted on all the female snipers.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Londener, go back and read what I said. The first paragraph that set off Mr. Dorosh. You will not find the slightest bit of what you now claim is there. Go look.

Mr. Dorosh pretended it was there. You bought it, because you only noticed heat, instead of paying any attention to what I said. As an exercise, locate the first sentence of the paragraph in which I got down to numbers. Read it.

The 2nd poster in the thread asked for a relative weight. Not me. All you silly self-important fellows are mad at the question, and pretend it cannot be answered.

None of the supposed pretence of exactitude you declaim against was ever mentioned at all. "Less than", and a wide range, is not a pretence of exactitude. But go read it, you may learn something.

Incidentally, not one person on this thread has alleged that the truth about the fellow's question lies outside the range I suggested. Some "pretence of exactitude". It'd pass for a "conventional wisdom" on that basis alone.

In case anyone doesn't know why Mr. Dorosh is being such a silly person on the subject, it is because he has an axe to grind in another thread. He wants to ignore numbers so he can invent changes to CM mechanics to suit his whims about favoring certain sides, without justifying them.

To say nothing of other reasons.

Oh, and you can all take a flying amorous embrace at a rotating breakfast pastry.

[PeterNZer]

JasonCrawley:

"Less than", and a wide range, is not a pretence of exactitude

..so when you said earlier that other people's statements of 'less than' and 'more than' implied some kind of numerical basis you were wrong?

One can conclude, now, from your debates that either:

1) You wrote those numbers up which are by your own admision above are entirely meaningless but just go to show that 'less than' is the factor not 'more than' as the very first poster of this thread claimed. Well, congratulations on using maths to 'prove' something we all knew after 5 minutes reading history anyway.

2) You do seriously believe your numbers provide more insight on the issue than plain historical study.

What you're missing Jason is that this debate is rapidly moving from 'Snipers, interesting' to 'lets laugh at Jason'.

I must admit between this thread and the highly amusing panzerfaust thread I am loosing respect for you, (whereas previously I'd make sure to read your posts). I know this is the case for others I've talked to on ICQ too.

If you want to talk history, do so, but don't bother with those silly number games unless they are actually going to prove or highlight something useful that can't be concluded through simple reading/research.

I have this funny picture of Jason trying to cross the street. Most people would look both ways to check it was clear and then walk when it was. Jason would pull out Excel and and the local traffic database to produce the statistical likelihood of their being a car on the street at the time he wanted to cross. Choosing a time where he has a statistically greater chance of living than dying, he crosses.

Well looks like this time you got hit Jason. I hear you're supposed to be doing a Doctorate. I certainly hope it isn't in History or Politics because the kind of number games you present would be pinned to the profs tea-room wall for a good laugh at the uni's I studied at.

This is NOT to say that you can't do interesting things with numbers, I can dig up some great papers with interesting use of algebra to describe political events. You SHOULD note that these professional papers contain much content describing the variables, why they were chossen and the probable flaws in the argument.

Please just admit your variables are of your own devising and may or may not be the best ones (that's what any half-decent academic would do) and say that your model is rough at best and open to debate. These are the facts of this case and the more you argue otherwise the sillier you look.

I think most people don't realise the high caliber of posters on this forum. There are people here who do this stuff -for a living- (like me and Germanboy), there are university professors here, there are known experts in their fields of history/etc who pass by as well as the usual handful of overly smart people. They are all used to critical, academic debate and know how it works.

Incase you don't know Jason, it goes like this:

1) someone presents an idea.

2) Everyone else critiques it pointing out the holes

3) the person defends idea and admits when there's a mistake/error

4) person corrects his thesis

5) return to step one until there's little decent criticism.

By failing to make it past step 3 you've made a lot of people have a good chuckle. Don't you see there are many valid criticism of your ideas? Or are you simply able to pull perfectly formed thesis from your butt?

PeterNZ

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- Official owner of the sig files of Dalem, Croda and JeffShandorf -

Der Kessel scenario design group

Combat Vision movies

[Croda]

Well, seeing as I'm obviously the only one who understood Jason's point, let me attempt to rephrase it so we can stop this senseless bickering.

Jason's numbers were intentionally bogus. They hold no credibility and he knows it. His goal was to point out that no matter how you look at it, there were several aspects of the battle that by the nature of warfare had to cause more casualties than sniper fire. He picked 4 arbitrary aspects of the battle and no one here has argued that any one of those caused fewer casulaties than sniper fire.

As of this point, everyone is happy. No numbers have been used to represent anything. Now let me ask a hypothetical question:

If in a given battle casualties could only be caused in 5 different fashions, and each one caused the exact same number of casualties, wouldn't each manner of destruction have tallied 1/5 of the total number? Now, if I were to tell you that 1 of those methods caused more casualties than the other 4, then it would mean that it caused more than 1/5 of the total, and each of the other 4 then caused less than 1/5 of the total. That's simple math with no numbers and should be pretty easy to follow.

Now apply that to Jason's post. If 4 items were larger factors than the 5th, then the 5th is by necessity less than 1/5 of the total. This is where everyone jumps up and down. Why? Because he tried to quantify the unquantifiable. That in no way invalidates nor detracts from his point. If someone disagrees, then refute the points that the numbers are "derived" from and not just the numbers. It seems to me that this has become a simple argument over the semantics of using arbitrary numbers in an argument by people who enjoy arguing just for the sake of being argumentative.

Jason's argument is strong, and well thought out, and certainly isn't deserving of the level of crap it received.

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Woot! - Maximus2k

Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.

You are quite correct, but sniper is an easier term to use than 'Semi-regular soldier hiding out and shooting enemies unawares.' - wwb_99

The New CessPool

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by PeterNZer:

In case you don't know Jason, it goes like this:

1) someone presents an idea.

2) Everyone else critiques it pointing out the holes

3) the person defends idea and admits when there's a mistake/error

4) person corrects his thesis

5) return to step one until there's little decent criticism.

By failing to make it past step 3 you've made a lot of people have a good chuckle. Don't you see there are many valid criticism of your ideas? Or are you simply able to pull perfectly formed thesis from your butt?

PeterNZ

Pretty good summary there, Peter. Just to reiterate my earlier comments (because I get the feeling Jason didn't understand them - or merely dismissed them), none of my criticisms were meant to be taken personally, Jason. You've written some excellent posts in other threads, and I've usually taken an interest in reading them. Your comments over the past few days, however, have shed some doubt on your credibility. This is what I've been trying to point out to you.

Throwing numbers and a large vocabulary at the masses doesn't necessarily make you an expert. It's the interpretation of those numbers and facts that shows true intelligence. If you are in fact a doctoral student, you are clearly intelligent (and many past posts show this as well). However, you do need to learn to accept criticism from others, as peer review will ALWAYS find flaws in any argument - from anyone.

You may be a bright guy, but the community in this forum, as aptly described by Peter, is above par when it comes to rationally debating history. If you can't accept criticism of your ideas on this forum, you are in a world of trouble when it comes time to defend your thesis! Best of luck...

As to the earlier comment on including sex scenes in CM2: I can't wait until the mod makers get a hold of that one!

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Croda:

Well, seeing as I'm obviously the only one who understood Jason's point, let me attempt to rephrase it so we can stop this senseless bickering.

Jason's numbers were intentionally bogus.

I think many of us DID understand his point. That's not what the bone of contention has been over.

They hold no credibility and he knows it. His goal was to point out that no matter how you look at it, there were several aspects of the battle that by the nature of warfare had to cause more casualties than sniper fire. He picked 4 arbitrary aspects of the battle and no one here has argued that any one of those caused fewer casulaties than sniper fire.

I must be incredibly dense then (wouldn't be the first time that I've been accused of it! LOL!). It sounded to me like he was trying to place a number (within bounds) on the effectiveness of snipers in the Battle of Stalingrad, as compared to other factors. To do so would require quatifying every other factor as well. You can't selectively choose just a few without justifying your reasoning for doing so.

If in a given battle casualties could only be caused in 5 different fashions, and each one caused the exact same number of casualties, wouldn't each manner of destruction have tallied 1/5 of the total number?

No, I wouldn't say that any one factor contributed 1/5 of the total. That's the problem. There is no basis (at least no evidence that anyone has provided) that the five factors given are equally weighted. This is where Jason got into problems with his figurin'. Nobody was arguing that he HAD to pin down an exact statistic, but the fact that he held on to his conclusion in the face of healthy debate - and resorted to name calling and throwing big words at everyone in his defense - is the bone of contention.

That's simple math with no numbers and should be pretty easy to follow.

It's simple math, but an erroneous conclusion, due to the assumptions I described above. This is one of the first points you learn in an intro statistics course. I'm not trying be a bonehead by pointing out nitpicky details, but am rather arguing for keeping subjective arguments as abstractions. I believe Jason was the one that threw numbers into the debate.

Jason's argument is strong, and well thought out, and certainly isn't deserving of the level of crap it received.

His "argument" was strong, but his assumptions were erroneous. His pigheaded defense of them in the face of contrary evidence IS deserving of the level of "crap" he received. If you look through his posts, and the responses to them, you'll see that most of the disrespect has been one-sided. I believe that he is the only one that has made this entire debate a personal matter, and that's unfortunate.

Edit: HTML

[This message has been edited by Mannheim Tanker (edited 03-21-2001).]

[Croda]

Perhaps my view then is skewed because I have studied language and literature as opposed to history and statistics, but I've always been a user of hyperbole in writing and argument, perhaps because I find flat statistics boring.

Given the fact that there is no way to quantify how any one factor in the battle was more or less important than any other factor, how do you debate the issue? Jason used (in my unesteemed opinion) logic and reason touched with hyperbole to derive his numbers.

But how then do you debate a sniper's impact without casualty reports? You can go by first hand accounts by the Germans. Well, the fear value alone of a unit under harassing sniper fire is going to overstate the impact that sniper had. You can go by first hand Soviet sniper reports, who are most likely going to exagerate their own importance and kill tallies (human nature). Where do we find the truth? Certainly not in Hollywood.

So Jason made an attempt at labelling the unlabelable, and I can find no fault in that, nor his conclusions. Call my the enemy of the scientific process.

As for his personal retorts, I don't care to defend them, but I will put forth that this forum has a tendency to "put the dogs out" when they smell someone in their backyard.

Thanks for the respons, Manheim

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Woot! - Maximus2k

Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.

You are quite correct, but sniper is an easier term to use than 'Semi-regular soldier hiding out and shooting enemies unawares.' - wwb_99

The New CessPool

[Michael Dorosh]

I'll apologize to Jason right now, if it will help matters any. I am genuinely sorry that he feels attacked, and I obviously was insulting with some of my latter remarks to him, for which pique is my only justification/defence

I certainly could have been a little less hotheaded about it, but if there is any other justification for what I have been saying, let it be the same passion for history that Jason obviously has.

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Croda:

Perhaps my view then is skewed because I have studied language and literature as opposed to history and statistics, but I've always been a user of hyperbole in writing and argument, perhaps because I find flat statistics boring.

Given the fact that there is no way to quantify how any one factor in the battle was more or less important than any other factor, how do you debate the issue? Jason used (in my unesteemed opinion) logic and reason touched with hyperbole to derive his numbers.

But how then do you debate a sniper's impact without casualty reports? You can go by first hand accounts by the Germans. Well, the fear value alone of a unit under harassing sniper fire is going to overstate the impact that sniper had. You can go by first hand Soviet sniper reports, who are most likely going to exagerate their own importance and kill tallies (human nature). Where do we find the truth? Certainly not in Hollywood.

So Jason made an attempt at labelling the unlabelable, and I can find no fault in that, nor his conclusions. Call my the enemy of the scientific process.

As for his personal retorts, I don't care to defend them, but I will put forth that this forum has a tendency to "put the dogs out" when they smell someone in their backyard.

Thanks for the respons, Manheim

No problem, Croda. I found myself nodding off in many of my stats classes - and I find it interesting!

The "solution" (actually, I'd say the approach Jason would have been better off taking) would be to stick with his abstractions. The fact that you can't account for every sniper, etc is reason enough to abandon trying to assign a number to their effectiveness. It's Jason's insistence on attempting to do so that brought criticism upon him - and rightly so. Had he addressed the points brought up by others, I'm willing to guess that most of us (if not all) would have cut him a little more slack. The fact that he blatantly dismissed everyone's arguments and opinions is what brought the fury and hell of the Almighty Grog Service upon him.

Your example of the fear factor may be reason enough (if backed up by enough anecdotal evidence) to include some simulation of this (panicked squads perhaps?) in CM2. Unlike a lot of the grogs around here, I don't need a leather bound thesis supported by 10 appendices of figures to convince me of the RELATIVE importance of some factor in a battle.

And you're certainly right about the "dogs" on the forum! I'm sure many are sniffing me out as I write this...

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Croda:

But how then do you debate a sniper's impact without casualty reports? You can go by first hand accounts by the Germans. Well, the fear value alone of a unit under harassing sniper fire is going to overstate the impact that sniper had. You can go by first hand Soviet sniper reports, who are most likely going to exagerate their own importance and kill tallies (human nature). Where do we find the truth? Certainly not in Hollywood.

This is, syllable for syllable, exactly what I/we have been saying all along.

So Jason made an attempt at labelling the unlabelable, and I can find no fault in that, nor his conclusions. Call my the enemy of the scientific process.

There's been enough name-calling. Not to be confrontational, but if there are those of us who do find fault, should we be prevented from attempting to discuss this - and be called names in the process simply because we don't agree? I mean, discussing things is kind of what the place is all about, isn't it?

As for his personal retorts, I don't care to defend them, but I will put forth that this forum has a tendency to "put the dogs out" when they smell someone in their backyard.

Especially the Peng thread, eh? You are right, of course. I have been trying to add more to this, but it comes off as a sermon so I'll skip it. Well said on your part. Please feel free to not kiss my grits.

[Croda]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

This is, syllable for syllable, exactly what I/we have been saying all along.

And I agree, but I should have furthered my point by saying that if you have no way of accruing hard data, then in my opinion logical and informed speculation are a valid recourse for discussion of the topic. That's what archaeologists and anthropologists have been doing for centuries. When there is no way to know for sure, you take what you know from other resources and apply them to the unknown to get the "logical" picture. Granted there is no way to be sure that this is the historically accurate picture, but it is a start (read: Big Bang Theory and Black Holes and Dinosaurs and Ancient Egypt). This is what I saw Jason as doing.

There's been enough name-calling. Not to be confrontational, but if there are those of us who do find fault, should we be prevented from attempting to discuss this - and be called names in the process simply because we don't agree? I mean, discussing things is kind of what the place is all about, isn't it?

Agreed.

I suppose I felt that no one attempted to see the spirit of the numbers, and focused entirely on the fact that they were unsubstantiable. But I certainly agree that the discussions here, while perhaps a bit too low level, are a solid 1/5 of the best part of this forum.

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Woot! - Maximus2k

Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.

You are quite correct, but sniper is an easier term to use than 'Semi-regular soldier hiding out and shooting enemies unawares.' - wwb_99

The New CessPool

[This message has been edited by Croda (edited 03-21-2001).]

[Mannheim Tanker]

Originally posted by Croda:

But I certainly agree that the discussions here, while perhaps a bit too low level, are a solid 1/5 of the best part of this forum.

plus or minus one standard deviation Sorry, couldn't resist!

[Terence]

Originally posted by Croda:

Jason's argument is strong, and well thought out, and certainly isn't deserving of the level of crap it received.

Absolutely correct. All Jason is saying is that there were a lot of things more important than snipers in the fighting for Stalingrad.

All this piling on seems a trifle hysterical.

[tss]

Croda wrote:

Jason used (in my unesteemed opinion) logic and reason touched with hyperbole to derive his numbers.

Others have given here reasons why using hyperbole is dangerous when deriving concrete numbers and I don't want to duplicate that. I don't have any qualms about Jason's upper bound (one of my fields is complexity theory and I'm used to difficult "worst case" results when the "average case" is much easier), except that it doesn't actually tell anything since 20% of 250000 casualties (IIRC) is 50000 and we may be pretty sure that Soviet snipers didn't kill 5 full infantry divisions.

Now, to my actual point of this post. When using mathematics and logic to prove something, your proof is only as good as your assumptions. For example, given the two statements:

A) All dolphins are camels

All camels live in deserts

we can conclude that all dolphins live in deserts using sound inference rules (transitivity of implication, to be exact). The error was in the assumptions. The funny thing about logic is that we can also get correct results from incorrect assumptions. For example, given:

A) No fish lives in a desert

All delphins are fishes.

we can conclude that no delphins live in deserts. Now, the result was correct even though the assumption was incorrect.

In my opinion (as a graduate student specializing mostly in computational logic), Jason reached the correct conclusion (that snipers didn't have that great effect in the battle) but his assumptions were shady. The use of concrete numbers (here the range of 2-20%) hides a lot of the fuzziness and abstract nature of the situation.

In my opinion, if it is not possible to get a reasonably exact figures, it is better to do without numbers altogether. Here the keyword is "reasonably" and its meaning depends on the situation. Sometimes it is enough to know how many zeroes are in the number. Sometimes it is not.

- Tommi

[Spook]

JUDAS H. PRIEST, I go away for a day on business travel and come back to find this topic snowballed. And I am compelled to follow up because on two occasions in this thread, Jason says he was following up to my quote below:

Originally posted by Spook:

But how much "weight" did the "sniper factor" really have to the overall battle of Stalingrad when weighed against all other factors?

Now for a little dash of irony here....I didn't really expect that anyone could effectively "quantify" the effect that snipers had at Stalingrad, thus it was a bit of a rhetorical question provided in response to the initial post.

Regardless, Jason put out a pair of "impact fractions" that has generated some acid here. Do I agree with these numbers? Not on face value, BUT I don't automatically dismiss them either. (And mind you, I consider myself quite scrutinous of numbers, statistics, and "weighted factors.") I think it could've stated to Jason in a straigtforward way, "The onus is on you to prove your cited numbers, IF you meant those numbers as explicit reference. Until then, I am unconvinced." From my view, making a statement like that will express your skepticism while not yet denigrating the other guy's credibility. So it doesn't get "personal" yet.

Now for a little exercise in perspective: The following quote was part of a review of "Enemy" from the Washington Post:

"In 'Enemy,' it comes down to this: a single bullet in either sniper's brain is going to settle the Battle of Stalingrad and World War II, once and for all. Does it get more riveting than this?"

Does anyone here think that Jason's initial post reached anywhere close to the same level of bull**** hyperbole as in this quote?

I would agree with some posters here that Jason needn't had thrown in those fractional numbers for his initial post. BUT...Jason still provided a detailed synopsis of the Stalingrad battle (and related campaign) so that you could easily see where his point of reference was. At the least, I commend him for grasping the "big picture" of Stalingrad a hell of a lot better than the Washington Post movie reviewer.

So I ask those of you still arguing over "sniper impact" and Jason's resultant credibility to give it a rest. That's become a "forest/trees" debate now.

But as an aside, I do like the earlier suggestions by other posters that "sniper effect" in CM2 could be modeled in a random way, such as random casualties to units/officers or morale checks occuring at game start-up (or even during game play) as one example.

[This message has been edited by Spook (edited 03-21-2001).]

[Michael Dorosh]

tss - your dolphins examples bring back fond memories of "syllogisms" etc. that we learned in some of my Communications classes. Kind of reminds me that all the thousands of dollars I spent was wasted cause I can't remember a blessed thing beyond the word "syllogism"! Oh well, at least I'm now qualified to drive a truck for UPS if I wanted to.

[Guest wwb_99]

I suspect the 'sniper effect' is already modeled somewhat in CMBO. I have seen full squads come under sniper fire, get confused, and run for cover before. Not sure it is, but it looked pretty realistic for what a group of 12 armed men would do when confronted with an unlocated active shooter.

WWB

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Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

[Croda]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

I suspect the 'sniper effect' is already modeled somewhat in CMBO. I have seen full squads come under sniper fire, get confused, and run for cover before. Not sure it is, but it looked pretty realistic for what a group of 12 armed men would do when confronted with an unlocated active shooter.

WWB

You mean of course when confronted with an unlocated 'Semi-regular soldier hiding out and shooting enemies unawares.'

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Woot! - Maximus2k

Stick around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.

You are quite correct, but sniper is an easier term to use than 'Semi-regular soldier hiding out and shooting enemies unawares.' - wwb_99

The New CessPool

[Guest wwb_99]

ROFL. Correct again Croda. From now on I shall refer to them as SRSHOASEU.

WWB

[Jasper]

Originally posted by grunto2:

...in the advance he would sneak ahead of his company, a couple hundred yards or so, then fire tracers at enemy positions he would spot.

Please consider that in doing so he also gives away his own position to the enemy. I suspect the Army didn't need to budget for his retirement. The way to be both (a) a sniper and ( old at the same time, would be to have a number of different carfullly chosen hidden firing postions and ways to get to them without being seen. After firing like one shot you'd move to the next position. That's a sniper. That's why they're different kinds of soldiers.

The guy hanging out in the church steeple with a scoped rifle is a sharpshooter. Both the 'snipers' in SPR were sharpshooters.

In the 1942 Russian article "Snipers In Stalindgrad", available at the Geocities site listed below, it makes mention that regular infantry wern't allowed near the firing postions (because they'd give them away).

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Check out http://www.geocities.com/funfacts2001/ or

http://hyperion.spaceports.com/~funfacts/ or

http://www.britwar.co.uk/members/FunFacts/ for military documents written during WWII.

[This message has been edited by Jasper (edited 03-21-2001).]