George MC Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 BÄKE BATTLES: “DER MENSCH” IN THE EAST For the third in our series of outstanding armored battalion/kampfgruppe level commanders on the Ostfront, we will recreate some key battles from the career of the legendary Major General Dr. Franz Bake. He is described by some as “The best kampfgruppe leader of the panzer force”. Although he served in the West in 1940 and for a time in 1944, we will focus on his career in the East. Bäke was known simply as “Der Mensch” to his troops. It is hard to translate this term, which includes the qualities of courage, compassion, and loyalty. Unassuming, friendly and optimistic in outlook, he was deadly serious when it came to conducting panzer operations in a way meant to produce victory at the lowest cost to his men. Prevented by circumstance from panzer command during Barbarossa and Case Blue, Bäke was the quintessential kampfgruppe commander of the second half of the war. He was a man whose personal qualities enabled him to take command of disparate units stitched together into kampfgruppes that were given extremely difficult fire-brigade missions during the long German retreat. He returned to his civilian life as a dentist after the war and died in an automobile accident in 1978. Thousands attended his funeral, in tribute to “der Mensch”. You can check out the series HERE Charlie Meconis and George McEwan Bäke Prelude at Pokhlebin 42 3 December 1942. The trapped German 6th Army lies in Stalingrad, forbidden by Hitler to break out. But Hitler has belatedly agreed to a rescue attempt-Operation Winter Storm, directed by General von Manstein. Armeegruppe Hoth's XLVIIth Panzer Corps is to spearhead the attack from Kotelnikovo, 80 kilometers southwest of the Stalingrad pocket in the bleak Kalmyk Steppe. Rushing all the way from France aboard 75 trains, General Erhard Raus's completely re-fitted and superbly trained 6th Panzer Division is arriving. His panzer grenadiers have already occupied a series of strongpoints north of Kotelnikovo, supported by artillery in place there. But his full strength 11th Panzer Regiment is only now assembling in random order, and already there are reports of Soviet cavalry probes around the village of Pokhlebin. The Reds have reacted quickly to the relief force's arrival. On the 3rd December 1942 the combined arms spearhead of Lt. General Meshkin's IV Cavalry Corps makes violent contact with advance elements from Raus's 6th Panzer Division at the small village of Pokhlebin. Latter that day the newly arrived 11th Panzer Regiment hastily assembles at Kotelnikovo for a counter attack. Among the first panzer commanders ready for action is a middle-aged dentist, Major Dr. Frank Bäke. Old enough to be a father to his men, he is already loved and respected by the panzertruppen of the II. Battalion. Bäke and his battalion are the spearhead of that counter attack. The opening round of Winter Storm is about to begin. A Panzer legend is about to be born… This scenario is available for playtesting at The Proving Grounds. Bäke's Winter Storm I No 2 in the CMBB Combat History series Bäke Battles: “Der Mensch” In The East”, this scenario follows on from the earlier CMBB scenario "Bäke's Prelude at Pokhlebin". After the victory at Pokhlebin, General Raus is supremely confident in the superiority of his tank forces. In the steady rain of a brief thaw, 6th Panzer sent most of its mobile forces in a Kampfgruppe commanded by Panzer Regiment 11's Colonel Hünersdorff across the Aksay on the road toward Verkne Kumsky early on 14 December. Encountering only light opposition at first, most of the Kampfgruppe had just arrived in Verkne Kumsky around 9am when the first Soviet combined tank and infantry attack struck the village from the north. As this attack was being repulsed, reports from both captured Soviets and the II Panzer battalion's light recon platoon of Pz IIs indicated that a large Soviet tank force was on the move southeast of Verkne Kumsky. In order to "fully use his mobility and his full firepower to seek out the enemy in the open terrain", Col. Hünersdorff immediately ordered Major Dr. Bäke to take his reinforced II Battalion out of the village to find and destroy the reported Soviet tank force. Bäke used terrain cover to move his force some 4km south of Verkne Kumsky just to the west of the road and then turned them to the east. One of the most critical and intense tank battles in the history of the Eastern front is about to begin, and Major Bäke will be in the thick of it... You can playtest it at The Proving Grounds [ March 09, 2008, 02:45 PM: Message edited by: George Mc ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vergeltungswaffe Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Looking forward to these. The Strachwitz series was fantastic. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aragorn2002 Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 I'm delighted to see the relief attempt towards Stalingrad is covered twice in this new series, George! Something to look forward to in the coming year. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 21, 2008 Author Share Posted February 21, 2008 Cheers guys 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Alte Fritz Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hi George Have been reading Raus recently and have just finished the 'Turning' battle chapter. Glad to see you are doing so many of the battles of this intersting man. Brilliant. Can you check some of your links as the ones concerning this series are not all owrking on the BT website. Also I am not getting all the pictures. Downloaded the first battle from TPG today but it might be a while before you get a report that is a lot of battle to fight! (Especially as using the old steam powered Brunel computer with the 64k memory. It might have to wait until the GigaBrain StarDestroyer 6000 arrives from the makers next week.) cheers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 22, 2008 Author Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hi DAF They all work OK for me - I'm using Firefox. When I was using IE6 there were problems for some reason, no idea why cos they all work in Dreamweaver when previewed with IE6. I was told it could be browser settings by my website techie. The files are all on the server and work OK from Lycos's view. Not sure why IE would allow me to view the files in preview but then not display em on the web when using IE. Bloody Bill Gates! So you are getting a new machine - nice one. Getting this scenario out has taken up a lot of time, that and finishing off the Strachwitz series. I'll check out your other Russian scenarios soon Cheers fur noo George 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Alte Fritz Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hi George Am using IE7. When I click on the link for the picture I get a page no found responce. All the other BT website pictures load as normal. This is the link that I am using for the 2nd picture on the Baake page. http://www.blowtorchscenarios.com/B%E4ke%20Battles_Der%20Mensch%20on%20the%20Ost%20Front/B%E4ke%20Prelude%20at%20Pokhlebin/Bäke%20at%20Pokhlebin%20Screenies/Soviet%20cavalry%20atta cking%20Pokhlebin.jpg Yeah getting a new machine from www.pcspecialist.co.uk looks better than Dell and more flexible ordering. Using XP and a NVIDIA 7900GT card bought on eBay based on your advice. So keep yout fingers and toes crossed, the Dell machine has cost me 6 weeks on computing nightmare. cheers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philippe Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 I'm not getting any displayed pictures either, apart from the one that's part of the message in the first post. A shame, because your images are always very good and something of an inspiration. Perhaps you could post them directly into this thread? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 22, 2008 Author Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hi All Odd - oh meant to say IE7. The link for the cavalry photo is THIS WEB PAGE Can you let me know if that works. I assume you can see the actual scenario details page for Pokhlebin? Cheers fur noo george 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Der Alte Fritz Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hi Yes I can see the text just the photos are missing. Can see the photo using the link you sent above. cheers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 22, 2008 Author Share Posted February 22, 2008 Hi DAF I've been playing about with the website but from what I can see this appears to be an IE7 issue. Firefox it is all OK, preview in Dreamweaver with IE& it's OK - on the internet IE7 gives me a 404 error page not found. No idea what is going on! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oddball_E8 Posted February 22, 2008 Share Posted February 22, 2008 dude... wouldnt "der mensch" translate nicely into "the man"? as in "you' the man" or something 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 22, 2008 Author Share Posted February 22, 2008 Originally posted by Oddball_E8: dude... wouldnt "der mensch" translate nicely into "the man"? as in "you' the man" or something Yeah it does - although Charlie who is the German speaking part of the team suggests that like 'your the man' means much more. Cheers fur noo George 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted February 23, 2008 Share Posted February 23, 2008 Der Alte Fritz, Unless you're in direct contact with the folks at Guiness and are striving for the Longest URL World Record, would you please use www.tinyurl.com or something similar to tame that monster URL? Practically doubled the page width! Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narses Posted February 23, 2008 Share Posted February 23, 2008 Originally posted by George Mc: Hi DAF They all work OK for me - I'm using Firefox. When I was using IE6 there were problems for some reason, no idea why cos they all work in Dreamweaver when previewed with IE6. I was told it could be browser settings by my website techie. The files are all on the server and work OK from Lycos's view. Not sure why IE would allow me to view the files in preview but then not display em on the web when using IE. Bloody Bill Gates! So you are getting a new machine - nice one. Getting this scenario out has taken up a lot of time, that and finishing off the Strachwitz series. I'll check out your other Russian scenarios soon Cheers fur noo George 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narses Posted February 23, 2008 Share Posted February 23, 2008 Originally posted by George Mc: Hi DAF They all work OK for me - I'm using Firefox. When I was using IE6 there were problems for some reason, no idea why cos they all work in Dreamweaver when previewed with IE6. I was told it could be browser settings by my website techie. The files are all on the server and work OK from Lycos's view. Not sure why IE would allow me to view the files in preview but then not display em on the web when using IE. Bloody Bill Gates! So you are getting a new machine - nice one. Getting this scenario out has taken up a lot of time, that and finishing off the Strachwitz series. I'll check out your other Russian scenarios soon Cheers fur noo George I'm trying to download these new scenarios from Blowtorch or The Proving Grounds. I've tried both WinZip and WinRAR. It appears they do not automatically self-extract into CMBB. I tried putting the CMF file into the CMBB scenario folder and the Dubno map file into BMP folder but still I don't see the scenario (Dubno) appear. How do you load the individual scenariors into CMBB? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 23, 2008 Author Share Posted February 23, 2008 Hi No the files will not automatically unzip - you have to choose wher to unzip em and into what folders. You have to put the operation .cmf file into your scenario folder. When you open CMBB you should find it under the operations section. It it's a battle (scenario) .cme file you'll find it under scenarios. The command maps do not load in game. Either open it to view using an appropriate viewer or print it out and use it as a handy reference. Hope this helps. Cheers fur noo George 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aragorn2002 Posted February 24, 2008 Share Posted February 24, 2008 George, can you tell me what kind of mods you use? Buildings, fence, that sort of thing. I like the way the game looks in your screenshots, and would like to get as close to that as possible. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 24, 2008 Author Share Posted February 24, 2008 I'm using: Gurras Derevynya building, roofs and fence mods. Undaunted's skies MikeyD's terrain bases and winter road mod. Deys winter mods of MikeyDs panzers SPW are the blowtorch ones (based on Pat's mods I think). Infantry are Astrofox's mods. Think that's the main ones Cheers fur noo George 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aragorn2002 Posted February 24, 2008 Share Posted February 24, 2008 Excellent, thank you. Off to work then. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GJK Posted February 25, 2008 Share Posted February 25, 2008 As a tip, you shouldn't use spaces in your file name (some browsers correctly translate it to %20, some do not) and you shouldn't use foreign characters in the file name either (ex: ä). This long URL is bound to give browsers a fit: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">http://www.blowtorchscenarios.com/ B%E4ke%20Battles_Der%20Mensch%20on%20the%20Ost%20Front/B%E4ke%20Prelude%20at%20Pokhlebin/ Bäke%20at%20Pokhlebin%20Screenies/ Thumb%20Soviet%20cavalry%20attacking%20Pokhlebin.jpg</pre> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeatEtr Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Great, a new blowtorch series, this is good to hear. I'll definitely give them a whirl. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 27, 2008 Author Share Posted February 27, 2008 Thanks for the comments guys Cheers fur noo George 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cuirassier Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 Just downloaded the operation and gave it a look from the Soviet side. Though its big, it looks like it will be lots of fun. I've always liked using Soviet cavalry. I can't wait to try this one pbem. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted February 29, 2008 Author Share Posted February 29, 2008 It's big but more the map size. The units are actually rather manageable. Just the map allows players room for manouver Look forward to hearing how you get on Cheers fur noo george 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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