Patron 2010 - Silver

@SS-GEN said in G40 Historial Beta:

History wise Japan did Attack Siam for 2 days on Dec 8 1941. Then on Dec 27 41 signed treaty so they were allowed to go thur and attack maylay and other country.
I believe there was a ton of guerilla inf resistances. I could add a event card where they could pop up like they did in Philippines had. I do have an event card for US for that action.

James Dunnigan’s book Victory at Sea: World War II in the Pacific has an interesting section on Siam/Thailand’s odd and complicated situation in WWII. As I recall (I don’t have the book in front of me right now), Siam had an authoritarian leader who was was willing to collaborate with Japan, but there were also pro-Allied elements in the government, in the population at large, and in the diplomatic service abroad. If I remember correctly, for example, Siam technically declared war on the US and/or the UK, but the US and the UK ignored the declaration, either because the Siamese ambassabors refused to pass the declaration along to them or because the US and the UK refused to receive it. And the Allies supposedly got a lot of intelligence during the war from the pro-Allied Siamese factions.

A very similar 1942 photo (though taken from the reverse angle) of a troop-laden Panzer III can be seen in the Wikipedia article on Tank Desant, a tactic (which varied from being improvised on the spot to formalized in doctrine) which involved using the outside of tanks as crude infantry carriers. This was fundamentally different from the concept of a true armoured personnel carriers because in the case of an APC the troops are inside the armour (and hence protected), whereas in the case of tank desant the troops are outside the armour (and hence dangerously exposed to enemy fire).

@Wittmann said in On this day during W.W. 2:

@captainwalker Stukas: now I am excited!

And on that subject, note that the photo correctly shows (for the spring 1942 period) conventional Stukas, not the Ju 87G Kanonenvogel tankbuster version which entered service about a year later and first went into combat at Kursk. The Ju 87G is easily recognizable by its large underwing 37mm cannon pods. To put things in perspective, this was the same caliber gun which was the main weapon of the early versions of the Panzer III.

It’s ironic that Friedrich Paulus was sent (as an OKH staff officer) to consult with Rommel in April 1941 with regard to the Tobruk operation because a couple of years later there was another overlap between the two officers. The Stalingrad campaign was on its last legs in early 1943, with Paulus and his staff surrendering on January 31st. At the same time, the North Africa campaign was winding down: Tripoli fell to the Allies on January 23; the Allies entered Tunisia in March, and Rommel left for Germany on March 9. Both defeats were bad news for the Axis side.

@Guldbrand global har en fordel til aksen. typisk byder vi 16-18 ipc til allies. jævner fordelen ud (afhængig af terninger og hærførere selvfølgelig). har ikke spillet så meget 42. men meget anniversary. tror ikke vi når flere spil-datoer inden sommerferien men skal nok gi lyd hvis vi når en i juli. vi spiller ca. hver tredje gang i odense (da vi er 6 stks fra sjælland og 2 fra fyn).

@Guldbrand Vi spiller global i Odense d.11/5 hvis du er interesseret.

As a footnote: I once read a book on the Doolittle Raid in which the author commented that James Doolittle’s family name was somewhat ironic because, on the contrary to “doing little,” the man was actually a powerhouse with a long list of accomplishments in various aviation-related fields, both theoretical and applied. He was, among other things, a test pilot and an aeronautical engineer, a record-setter and a prize winner, with many of these accomplishments pre-dating the outbreak of WWII in 1939 (at which time he was a reserve officer in the Air Corps, having resigned his regular commission in 1930; he returned to active duty in the Air Corps in 1940). WWII added more items to his C.V., the Doolittle Raid being the most famous example but by no means the only one.

Last of WW2 ‘Doolittle Raiders’ Dick Cole dies aged 103

10 April 2019

Dick Cole, the last veteran of a World War Two bombing raid on Japan in retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 103 years old.

The famed Doolittle raid was named for then Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle, who led the first US strikes against Japan during the war in 1942.

Retired Lt Cole was Lt Col Doolittle’s co-pilot in the lead plane.

The raid, which included 16 B-25 bombers and 80 crew members, helped boost morale after Pearl Harbor.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47875466

If I’m not mistaken, the original edition of the Milton Bradley version of A&A was published in 1984 and the one with the rulebook modification / addition was published a couple of years later. Check the date printed on the box; if it says 1984, it’s presumably the original version.

@Trenacker said in Older Battleships:

! Can you remind me of the scale of A&A warships? If I remember correctly, some Panzerschiffe stuff is too large by comparison, no?

According to knp7765, who once looked into the question of scale, “Ships = Varies from capital ships to the smaller vessels. Battleships and Carriers are smaller than 1/2400. It’s closer to 1/3000 or maybe even 1/3500. I’m not sure about the smaller vessels but they are bigger in scale. If Destroyers and Submarines were at the same scale as the Battleships, we would barely be able to see them, much less play with them on the board.”