View Single Post
  #39  
Old 12-11-2010, 05:28 PM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: East Tennessee, USA
Posts: 2,883
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Panther Al View Post
This is a bit of thread necromancy but I noted a post by chalkline about Vauban style fortification making good T2K forts. This is something I've always been into and done a number of papers on back in the school days so I would like to point out that he is right only to a point: against small arms and light automatic cannon you couldn't ask for better, but the real reason this style of fortification died wasn't air power or modern indirect fire guns, it was the advent of rifle cannon. The heavy hitting and accurate fire was just the ticket to destroying specific sections of wall whereas before it was impossible to focus the cannon fire tight enough to so. Roll up to one today with anything 40mm in size and you'll go through faster that a corporal running to his first NCO call.

Have to admit though that I always wanted to play a game where my character can build up such a place.
A lot of people don't remember the epic stand of the 2nd Battalion, 110th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, elements of B Company, 707th Tank Battalion and elements of B Company, 2nd Tank Battalion, 9th Armored Division at the town of Clervaux, Belgium...December 17-18, 1944. While the Americans fought house to house against elements of the 2nd Panzer Division and were mostly either destroyed or forced to retreat by 1825 hours on the 17th, elements of the 2nd Battalion held the chateau for another day, blocking traffic for another 24 hours, allowing time for CCR of the 9th Armored (and that bunch from the airborne mafia whose name escapes me at the moment...) to get into position to block the drive towards Bastogne.
__________________
The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
Reply With Quote