Slitherine

From Japan, I'd like to thank you for this interesting discussion. I love both history and the OOB game series. I just can't get enough.

ctskelly wrote:From Japan, I'd like to thank you for this interesting discussion. I love both history and the OOB game series. I just can't get enough.

Hello ctskelly,
Thank you very much for your kind words.
This thread is just for people like you who like OoB and the history of World War II.

kondi754 wrote:

ctskelly wrote:From Japan, I'd like to thank you for this interesting discussion. I love both history and the OOB game series. I just can't get enough.

Hello ctskelly,
Thank you very much for your kind words.
This thread is just for people like you who like OoB and the history of World War II.

Excellent discussion; quite civilly conducted. My compliments!

Hi guys i think the must unaccurately of oob pzkrieg is missing of T34\43 with improved turret... with missing of soviet 76mm At gun

GUNDOBALDO08 wrote:Hi guys i think the must unaccurately of oob pzkrieg is missing of T34\43 with improved turret... with missing of soviet 76mm At gun

USSR units will certainly be corrected before Soviet DLC.
I think it's a temporary state.

GUNDOBALDO08 wrote:with missing of soviet 76mm At gun

I can't believe it either that after so many official DLCs involving Soviets there is still no 76mm AT gun (mode) available. But missing AT modes are also lacking for plenty other guns. I miss the quality release of Pacific where most Japanese and US towed/platform guns, even AA ones, came with AT mode.

Deutsche Africa Corps vehicles.
Pz VI Tigers were sent to Tunisia (December 1942/January 1943) after the El Alamein's defeat.

Table attached in better resolution.

Regio Esercito armored vehicles. Most of them were used during the fighting in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia.
P26/40 heavy tank was never used by the Italian army.
In 1943, after the capitulation of Fascist Italy, several dozen tanks of this type were taken over by the German army as Panzerkampfwagen P 40 737 (i). These tanks were used against allied forces at Anzio.

From previews, it looks as though at least one of Sandstorm's fourteen scenarios will be a speculative "what-if" one (Malta). Most World War II buffs have read about the hypothetical victories which Rommel and the Afrika Korps could have gone on to win "if only Hitler had released one or two more divisions from the East" or "if only the Italians had sent them adequate supplies:" Egypt would have been taken, the Suez Canal would have been closed, Turkey would have been induced to join the Axis, the Soviet forces in the Caucuses would have been cut off, and eventually the Italo-German Panzerarmee would have met up with the Japanese somewhere in Persia or India.

However, the verdict of most professional historians is that even the conquest of Egypt was logistically unfeasible and anything beyond that was pure fantasy. Even if the threat of British air and naval interdiction from Malta had been neutralized, Rommel's supply line was a single east-west highway running all the way back to Tripoli. At El Alamein, the distance between the Axis forces and their principal supply point was 1300 miles. Even if there had been enough motor transport (which there was not), roughly half the fuel landed at Tripoli was consumed in the process of bringing it forward before even accounting for the inevitable mechanical breakdowns operating at such distances as well as losses to British fighter bombers and long-range recon patrols. The capture of Benghazi and Tobruk did little to alleviate the situation because those two ports could facilitate only around 20% of the Panzerarmee's daily requirements under ideal circumstances (in practice it was much less). As General Ritter von Thoma, author of the original 1940 feasibility study of deploying a German force to assist the Italians who was briefly commander of the Afrika Korps prior to being taken prisoner at El Alamein, summed it up, "Rommel's forces were never strong enough to attempt the conquest of Egypt. But he could not resist the temptation to push on in the flush of victory. That was his undoing."

I'm guessing that Alexandria and the Suez Canal may be included as scenarios, but that otherwise OOB will follow its usual pattern of more or less sticking with a linear historical campaign. On the other hand, fourteen scenarios seems like a lot even if Tunisia is included.

[Didn't realize the beta had started when I posted this, so I guess those who know can't say yet. Hope I'll get in at some point and find out for myself.]

I agree with your opinion.
It should also be added that the advantage of Montgomery at El Alamein was so significant over the German-Italian forces that there was no possibility to win by the Axis troops.
I participate in the tests and I can say that the players will meet a few surprises and the campaign promises to be fantastic.

kondi754 wrote: It should also be added that the advantage of Montgomery at El Alamein was so significant over the German-Italian forces that there was no possibility to win by the Axis troops.

Smiled


And what if the Italian special forces managed to block the Suez Canal)))?

WAFFEN SS (in a nutshell )

Early Waffen SS troops were like standard Wehrmacht motorised inf units and often even worse equipped with older equipment and without medium field artillery
They started to receive better equipment only before the Balkan campaign, and this equipment you talk about is in the SS divisions from the time of the Battle of Kursk

The development of the Waffen SS units until 1943 is well illustrated by the following Leibstandarte organization diagrams (below)

If it were to be in line with historical realities, then the development of Waffen SS in OoB should look like this:
1. 1 aux unit during Dunkerque sc
2. the opportunity to purchase the Waffen SS I specialization before Yugoslavia scn (instead of 6 CPs, there should be 9CPs immediately, to be able to buy 1 SS-Inf unit (+ truck) and 1 StuG)
3. Waffen SS II specialization available for purchase before Kharkov 43 scn (of course, much more CPs and much more RPs and RPs / turn)

As far as the actual achievements of the Waffen SS are concerned, the vast majority of them refer to the Eastern Front, where SS officers met with the rather primitive tactics of the Soviets, even at the end of the war.
The Waffen SS was initially criticized by the Wehrmacht for poor training and too high losses due to unnecessary fanaticism. This is especially true for the years 1939-40.
The first successes were the Balkan campaign of 1941.
Again, performing secondary functions during Barbarossa.
Excellent attitude of Leibstandarte (Rostov) and Totenkopf (Demyansk, Kholm) during difficult winter of 1941/42
Viking successes in the Caucasus in 1942 and on the Mius River in the summer of 1943
Fame gained at Kursk by the II SS Panzer Corps, and later over the Dnepr crises and in Ukraine in the winter of 1943/44
Defense of Narva in Estonia in the winter of 1944 by Scandinavian and West European SS volunteers.
The destruction of 2 Soviet armored corps near Warsaw in the summer of 1944 by Viking and Totenkopf,
then heavy fighting in Hungary in the winter and early spring of 1945. The first use of Panther G tanks and armoured carriers with infrared equipment!
Thanks to this, SS troops massacred several Soviet armored brigades.

On the western front the only achievement was the Wittmann's rally under Villers Bocage.
I do not consider the Market-Garden because it was more of Montgomery's defeat than the success of the Waffen SS.
The Waffen SS didn't play a major role also at the Battle of Bulge, where 5th Panzer Army of Wehrmacht under command of gen.von Manteuffel was the most successful

The best known crimes of Waffen SS:
1940 - cases of shooting and burning alive British prisoners in the vicinity of Dunkirk
1941 - murder of several hundred Jews in Ternopil in Ukraine by soldiers from the Wiking division
1941 - cooperation the Totenkopf and Reich divisions with the Einsatzgruppen in Belarus and Latvia during the killing of thousands of Jews
1943 - murdering all patients and personnel of soviet's military hospital in recaptured Kharkov
1944 - murdering over 600 men, women and children in the French Oradour-sur-Glane by Reich division
1944 - shooting several dozen Canadian prisoners by soldiers of Hilerjugend division in Normandy
1944/45 - civilian massacres in Italy and Greece
1944 - Malmedy massacre in Belgium (KG Peiper from Leibstandarte)

I have only written the crimes of the Waffen SS first line units, I do not include back, protective and anti-partisan units, such as those recruited from criminals (i.e. Dirlewanger brigade)
A separate topic is the crimes of Russian or Ukrainian SS men in the USSR and in Poland, or Bosnian and Croatian SS men in Yugoslavia.