After Action Report by Beta Tester "Jaws" from the current beta version of the Combat Mission Shock Force - NATO module.

27 June 2008,

Prologue:

Dutch Bn Commander 17 (NLD) BTG Garde Fuseliers Prinses Irene.

We as the Dutch Battle Group are fighting more then one week intense combat in the northern Syrian green zones. Most of us slept only 2 hours per night and accidents, due exhaustion occur more and more. This morning our recon element reported a Road Block at Highway 4, 45 miles northwest from Kameshli Airport. The badly needed recuperation of the B-Company, needed after the tense Urban fighting at Ar Raqqah, comes after 3 hours abrupt to an end… most of the soldiers were still busy with maintenance and didn’t even see their sleeping bag. The B-Company just move into the direction of the Road Block without Tank Support since they were replacing damaged tracks. They will link up after one or two hours.

Both, Russian and German, campaigns in Theatre of War 2: Kursk 1943, last five days during the initial, defensive stage of the Kursk battle at the south face of the Kursk salient. Grossdeutschland division with assigned forces had tried to break through the units of the Soviet 67th Guards Rifle Division and 3rd Mechanized Corps in this area - Link to the game area in GoogleMaps:

You can see the path of German units which moved from south to north, changing the direction of attack and trying to find a weaker spot in Soviet defense, just by looking at the locations of maps available in the game (white squares are borders of game maps, dotted lines are borders of far, unreachable zones around them):

After the end of the Civil war, the US Navy lost interest in small boats. And the experience of World War I did not impress the US military command and political leaders either. The reason for that was, in part, the favorable geographic location of the United States, with oceans lying between US soil and the fleets of potential enemies. Also, the public saw torpedo boats as "suicide boats" and "poor man's warships". The proposals to even research an option of torpedo boat units were laughed at. America wanted a big fleet of big ships. Even though the Navy Department gave an assignment to create a model of a fast submarine hunter in 1935, this boat was not supposed to be armed with torpedoes. Only on December 5^th of 1935, Rear Admiral Emory Scott, Land Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair, demanded to hold a tender for the creation of a torpedo boat. He was right to point out that the use of small and cheap boats in defense of the coastal regions could help to free many of the large ships for offensive operations. Land cited analogous successful projects in Europe.

After several revolutions, a World war, and a civil war, the country was in a sad state and the new Soviet government could not even think about building an ocean fleet. The only real solution was to create a mosquito fleet that would be able to protect the sea borders. 

The history of World War I British torpedo boats had started in 1915 with a joint report by Lieutenants Hampden, Bremner and Anson from Harwich Striking Force. These officers suggested providing the Royal Navy cruisers with light torpedo boats that could be lowered on water and lifted back on board via standard davits. The cruisers would deliver such torpedo boats to the mine field border at Heligoland Bay. The boats would then be lowered and, thanks to their low draft, will be able to navigate above the mines and attack Cuxhaven, Wilhelmshafen and Helgoland roads.

The ancestors of the new generation of PT boats, which came in the stead of steam traveling boats of the late 19th century, were sports boats equipped with internal combustion engines, and so it seems logical to begin our story with the year of 1902. It was then that several new corporations were founded - the English "Marine Motor Association", the American "American Power Boat Association", the French "Automobile Club de France" and the German "Deutsche Automobilclub". In 1903, the Englishman Alfred Harmsworth organized an annual international contest, the "British International Trophy", with the awarded prize - the "Harmsworth Cup". In June 1903, the cup was won by a 40-feet boat, the "Napier-I", equipped with a 65 HP engine - this boat managed to develop speed of 18.9 knots. 

Torpedo boat CSS David was designed and built by the privately owned Southern Torpedo Company. The reason behind this initiative coming from a private sector organization was simply a 100,000 confederate dollars award, offered for sinking USS New Ironsides - the US Navy northerner squadron ironclad that was blocking the city of Charleston.

The main features of CSS David were an exceptionally low above-water silhouette and ballast tanks that could be filled with water.

Here is a modest set of bones for the Holidays. I can't really send anybody lumps of coal, so even the ones on our naughty list will get to enjoy these. Sorry for those on the good list. Life isn't fair, obviously!

Because the screenshots are always the attention grabbers, I'll post those first and then get into the text stuff.