War Diary (dev log) of Conflict-Series by Joni Nuutinen
(see also: Sortable Table of Games :: FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions)
Book excerpt: "It is perhaps ironic that the German Army, which in 1940 stunned the world with its blitzkrieg method of mobile warfare, was the least mobile major army in Europe in 1944. This truth is not due to the fact that the German Army had retrogressed; the others had caught up with and then surpassed Germans in every area of mobility.
American methods of mass production had irrevocably tilted the balance of power. The German panzer and panzer grenadier branches constituted only 10.8% of the German Army in 1944. The vast majority of the German divisions were made up of horse-drawn units.
The Red Army, on the other hand, had been so liberally supplied with American Lend-Lease equipment (especially 2.5-ton trucks) that it was one of the most mobile armies in the world by 1944.
Once the Soviets got behind a German infantry division, the German foot soldiers had little chance of catching up. They could only hope to escape, and even this depended on their comrades-- stabilizing the front, so that they themselves would not have too far to travel.
-- The German Defeat In The East, 1944-45 by Samuel W. Mitcham
Cobra: US Breakthrough Strike gets a small update to version 1.0.1 refining OOB and improving the way the overlay taskbars are handled on some devices.
(note: this is a small scale entirely free campaign)
Edit: Seems to have stuck in eternal Play Store review... If only flat-broke Google could somehow afford to hire another outsourced dude to do these. *sigh*
Video (Tank Museum) Birth of the TANK - Armoured Warfare In WWI
-- The Tank was born of the uniquely brutal battlefield conditions of WW1. This video looks at the different tanks developed during the Great War, examines how they were used and assesses how they performed.
Developer life: One of the tormenting aspects of being a developer who does everything from AI logic to combat formulas to OOB research to graphics is that I simply CANNOT just take a focused glance at one single thing in the game I just opened. NOPE! My mind automatically and frenziedly began analyzing it all:
Is the relative size of elements okay? Why is the AI opponent moving that way? Does the gameplay move forward too slowly? That menu text must be under 40 characters, but is it now incomprehensible? Should I draw a flag over the cliff, over the road, or over the terrain, or do they cover each other in a poor way?
Because of this nonstop barrage of observations from wildly varying fields, I can occasionally miss something obvious. And at times, I kind of semi-notice something. It's like having a quarter of a thought, not quite strong enough to trigger mindful realization and action...
Until two months later, that thing - KABOOM - enters my consciousness, and I realize that the blue color scheme is incorrect in that one view. And then I realize that I kind of, sort of, have been knowing that for two months already. But not quite. It's hard to articulate.
I guess information overload can cause less important stuff to float at the periphery of the mind. Spooky.
Juno & Sword jumps ashore, and in version 2.2, sabotage action (via General) is now more powerful, unifying the unit-icons into the old standard, static units marked with the letter V. New German commander icon.
Article: Huge piles of rusty WWII ammunition are poisoning the Baltic Sea. Germany is trying to recover them
-- 1.6 million tons of old ammunition are lying on the bottom of the North Sea and Baltic Sea, posing a considerable danger.
Most was sunk in the ocean after the war because the Allies ordered Germany destroy all ordnance. At the time the easiest way to do so seemed to be to dump everything into the sea.
Trains from all over Germany were sent to the coasts in 1946, and fishermen were commissioned to take the material to designated disposal areas in the Baltic and North Seas.
Article: Developer survey shows trust in AI coding tools is falling as usage rises
-- The latest survey of 49,000 professional developers found that four in five developers use AI tools in their workflow in 2025, yet trust in the accuracy of AI has fallen from 40% in previous years to just 29% this year.
The single largest reported problem: 45 percent of respondents said they struggled with "AI solutions that are almost right, but not quite".
More than a third report that some of their visits to Stack Overflow are a result of AI-related issues.
Battle of Bulge rolls on to version 6.6, more American replacements, added cliffs to a lesser degree, unified the icons to the old standard.
"Major Albin Irzyk was convinced that Chaumont was finally under American control. For several hours, GIs had wrestled with the German defenders, clawing for possession of the town. The fallschirmj--gers who had remained had contested every inch...
However, it was the Germans-- turn to strike back, and they hit the American forces at the worst time. GIs were finishing up an assault, and as a result, the men were tired and disorganized. They had not established any prepared fighting positions, and were not ready for a counterstroke.
Moreover, though the GIs now owned Chaumont, they did not control the high ground to the north. As a result, the German Tiger tanks had perfect attack-by-fire positions, which their tank commanders exploited.
The German infantry rode in on the tanks and dismounted as they approached the village. Reports varied as to the size of the German force. Some claimed that the Wehrmacht assaulted with 22 Panzers. In reality, there were 4 Tiger tanks and few StuGs.
Major Irzyk was on the radio, communicating with his commanders when the first 8.8cm rounds hit. --It was the frightening, demoralizing, intimidating, unreal sounds, screeches, and screams of high velocity tank gun rounds hitting, exploding, and ricocheting all around them.--
-- Patton at the Battle of the Bulge, How the General's Tanks Turned the Tide at Bastogne by Leo Barron
Peleliu thunders to version 3.2.0.2 bringing along new icon for the Japanese commander, bug fixes, and restoration of the solid REAL icon style.
Video: The Battle of Los Angeles
-- Decent coverage of the "mysterious" battle of Los Angeles. It's an interesting YT channel, dude basically drops one video per year, but gets millions of views due to the level of his research.
If you follow WW2-news at all, there recently have been several headlines about "lost" paintings:
-- Two paintings valued at $1 million each stolen during WWII found in Ohio
-- Argentina recovers long-lost looted Italian painting after it was spotted in a real estate listing by a daughter of a German officer
Congratulations to whoever managed to crash Peleliu, it was such a freak thing that I actually did the math and calculated that the chance of that happening is one per 2,430,000 play-throughs. If I were you, I might consider buying a lottery ticket at this point.
Stalingrad stealthily reaches version 5.2.0.1. A massive HOF reset plus making the scenario a bit easier (more replacements, more resources, less slowing down), so reaching a top 10 score shoud not be an impossible task.
Article: An AI-generated fake image of a WWII nurse is circulating online
-- An image is circulating widely on social media claiming to show an Allied forces WWII nurse taking the names of soldiers who died during the D-Day landings in Normandy in France.
In reality, the Allies established 8 military cemeteries within four days of the D Day landings on 6 June 1944, with the first American and British nurses arriving on 10 and 12 June.
In the picture, the alleged nurse is not wearing an accurate uniform. Official archives show that army nurses serving in Normandy wore much different attire from what is depicted in the social media posts.
Coding: 10 months ago I began a megalomaniac process of updating the way the underlying game engine handles adding units into the map/scenario with variation while considering that the enemy might now hold the area that was supposed to get the reinforcement, etc. It gets complex very quickly.
I'm happy to say the initial rollout has finally been finished, the next round of updates just finetunes any possible issues (industry, fuel rewards, etc special elements on hostile area might have some hiccups due to special rules (spread around the hundreds of thousands of lines of code) that I might have missed ).
The old system was very random, in hindsight, excessively random for the bigger maps, more complex terrain, new more robust unit types, and the ever increasing number of units. This means, the update/fix cycle should pick up speed now, after the massive code-change has been carried out.
Article: Up to 450,000 Poles served in the Wehrmacht during WWII
-- Anyone entering the first room of the exhibition "Our Boys" in the Museum of Gdansk is greeted by dozens of photos showing men in the German uniform. But these photos are unusual because they show citizens of occupied Poland... Almost 90,000 Polish Wehrmacht soldiers defected to the British and American armed forces on the western front.
Tech/Article: 18 Popular Code Packages Hacked, Rigged to Steal
-- At least 18 popular JavaScript code packages that are downloaded more than two billion times each week compromised with malicious software, after a developer involved in maintaining the projects was phished.
-- And this is why all software projects that rely on dozens of libraries (maintained by random people), each of which relies on dozens of libraries (maintained by random people), will always be troublesome. Many code libraries included in the projects by the U.S. military are maintained by...some Russian dude.
-- This is why my games use ZERO outside libraries. More work for me, but at least I don't have to blindly hope and assume that a library made out of 20 libraries maintained by various random persons might be safe this time and all the future times I use it. Too many layers, too much outsourcing.
Poland between Germany & USSR parades into version 1.6, and I'm still confused how some players can actually win this scenario. I can hold a sector or two with the help of terrain and throwing a lot of resources, replacements, and reinforcements there, but then some other sector collapses like a house of cardboard cards.
"In 1925 the Polish Army began general discussions with the French about an ambitious military rebuilding plan to better satisfy strategic commitments in the event of an eventual war with Germany. The plan envisioned raising Polish strength to a total of 60 infantry divisions, 9 cavalry divisions, 30 tank battalions, and 180-200 aircraft squadrons. This plan presumed extensive French support for the effort. The aim of the rebuilding plan was to permit the commitment of 20 divisions to the German front, 20 to the Soviet front, and 20 in High Command Reserve. In 1926 a new scheme, a more realistic Plan S, envisioned raising Polish Army strength over the next ten years to 30 infantry divisions, 9 reserve divisions, and 3 cavalry divisions but only 3 tank battalions. 1935-1938 strategic defense plans were modernized, and just as they were submitted, events overtook them: Germany seized the remainder of Czechoslovakia, which was disastrous for the current plan. So, yet another plan was needed to consider the likelihood of German attacks all along the southern periphery of Poland. French suggested a plan to defend behind river lines, but this was rejected as it assumed that the Polish Army would be fully mobilized and concentrated (an act that the French resisted as provocation). Unfortunately, a sizable proportion of the Polish population lived in areas that would have been readily surrendered to the Germans, thereby depriving the Polish Army of many of the reservists, not to mention key industrial areas, so this plan was politically unacceptable. The river strategy also overlooked the fact that many of the rivers dried up in the summer. So a different plan was adopted: spreading the frontier Polish forces forward to wage a fighting withdrawal while the rest of the army was mobilized, all the while knowing that the French had promised to launch a full-scale counteroffensive two weeks later. This plan seriously misunderstood the pace of the fighting by underestimating the speed of German mechanized units. "
-- The Polish Campaign by Steven Zaloga & Victor Madej
Operation Barbarossa: Minor update to version 7.0.1
Video: Where Every Roman Emperor was Buried
-- The burial place of every Roman and Byzantine emperor, from Augustus to Constantine XI.
Article: Pricy age-verification requirements drive small sites to quit or withdraw from states/countries
-- Lawmakers sell age-verification mandates as a silver bullet for Big Tech--s harms, but in practice, these laws do nothing to rein in the tech giants. Instead, they crush smaller platforms that can--t absorb the costs.
If you live in Mississippi, you are no longer able to log into Bluesky or Dreamwidth accounts because both social platforms decided to block all users in Mississippi from their services rather than risk hefty fines under the state--s age verification mandate.
Panzer Army Afrika (Germans defending at 2nd El Alamein) steps into version 3004.
This is the first attempt at making the new Samsung devices not hover stuff over the bottom part of the screen, so if you have that issue, check this out. Also, related to before, also tinker with the Immersive Mode setting, which has been rewritten to be more compatible with the drastically changing logic that system uses over various versions of Android.
Article: Details unearthed: Britain's plot to nuke Russia in wake of WWII... using bombs dropped from wooden planes
-- As many as 400 Mosquito fighter-bombers, which were famously made of plywood, would have been equipped with atomic bombs. The file outlining the claimed plot was discovered in the National Archives at Kew in West London.
Importantly, the document is distinct to the May 1945 plan 'Operation Unthinkable', in which Britain envisaged a surprise attack on Russia immediately after Germany's defeat.
Eastern Front HOF seems to failed to list all the scores, the oldest scores were removed ahead of schedule (=update) to resolve the issue.
Video: Why Medieval Coins Look So Primitive Compared to Ancient Coins (Rome etc)
-- Yet another example of Rome's industrial power.
Anzio & Monte Cassino updated to version 5.0.2 which includes a big bunch of patches. Apologies for the slow reaction to the crash, the source of it was an odd one.
Battle of Moscow 1941 crawls to version 6.2.0.1 adding a faster new game initialization, a handful of Soviet reserve divisions have been removed after OOB arguments (what zones were included in the game vs reinforcements), plus all the latest improvements to the underlying game engine.
Video: 10 Secrets Behind TV--s Most Chaotic War Comedy 'Allo 'Allo!
-- BBC lived in nonstop fear of a diplomatic incident for daring to make fun of the occupation of France and the French Resistance, but it turns out mocking every side equally made the series extremely popular, even among the real members of the French Resistance.
Article: Tanks at a crossroads: dead end or evolving labyrinth?
-- The role of tanks is now reduced to direct support of infantry units: the attacking vehicle rapidly moves to a firing position, strikes pre-detected targets and then retreats swiftly...
A tactic has emerged involving the preliminary disabling of a tank--s running gear by a --leader drone,-- after which the immobilized tank is sequentially destroyed by a swarm of drones...
Drones controlled via fiber-optic lines make radio frequency jammers useless.
New Game: Simple fully-free campaign: Cobra: US Breakthrough Strike out now!
-- Play Store
-- Amazon App Store
-- The Motorized Infantry setting gives Allied infantry 2 MPs per turn, and whether that is used will be shown in the Hall of Fame.
Article: D-Day maps bought as part of --10 job lot sell for --23,000
-- The collection, giving detail of the five landing beaches codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword during the 1944 invasion of Normandy, was first bought for just --10 from a local auction. The hoard had been in the possession of Royal Naval sub-lieutenant Walter Page, who served on Landing Craft Tank (LCT) 2138.
Video: Japan's plan to bomb USA with the plane Fugaku G10N
-- The Nakajima G10N Fugaku was a planned Japanese ultra-long-range heavy bomber conceived as a method for mounting aerial attacks from Japan against industrial targets along the American west coast.
Axis Endgame in Tunisia rolls on to version 2! Plenty of tweaks to make the campaigns a bit easier: more extra MPs and replacements, Allied air superiority loses oomph sooner.
Also, this begins a rollout of a new change: disbanding dugouts will generate some random lower-end replacements of each scenario to reduce misusing this feature.
NOTICE: I can't at the moment update anything in the Amazon App Store, as Amazon just endlessly asks me to identify which images are "hats" and then the Amazon site dies of "internal errors."
Ah, what can you do? 9-year-old kids code these types of things in a coding camp, but a big tech company with a market cap of 2.4 trillion USD doesn't have a chance in heck of getting any basics correct. I'll go and try to swim in an increasingly colder lake. Cheers.
Video: German POWs Were Shocked By America--s Industrial Might After Arriving In The United States
-- When Afrika Korps veterans arrived in the United States in 1943, expecting to find a weak, divided nation, they instead encountered an industrial colossus...
Invasion of Poland 1939 updated to version 6.2, tweaking the Slovak timetable, changing the Polish tank icon to tankette one and adding the latest upgrades.
Article: Inside the collapse of Builder.ai: Workers tell how they did coding, not AI
-- Although Builder.ai did use AI for basic tasks, former employees said, it relied on staff and outsourced developers in countries including India and Ukraine to do the vast majority of its work.
The senior software engineer said --I think Sachin was a very good marketer and had a vision of how he expected things to be. Unfortunately, his vision didn--t match the reality a lot of the time.--
Article: Google loses app store antitrust appeal
-- One billion dollar level penalty/fine at a time, we'll grind Google to dust unless it starts to treat developers with respect. A million angry developers contacting 2-3 politicians/authorities per day for 3 years straight is a billion lobbying efforts against Google.
The clueless Google could, of course, have all this developer effort protecting Google, but nope, they do not care about developers hit by random bans and a defunct appeal system.
Podcast episode: The Rise and Fall of Carthage (History Hit)
-- A good one hour summary of the Punic Wars.
I deeply dislike how bloated and massive modern software is. Depending on what data sets you use, the size of my games is 1/50th or 1/100th of the average game size in the Play Store. That in spite of me offering two icon sets for units.
The tiny size explains why even 10-year-old devices can still run them. All the code is mine, no third-party libraries, which themselves are often made out of fourth-party libraries. No dozens of layers of abstractions from "smart" code-generating platforms.
This also explains why most (outsourced) customer support knows less than the user having troubles: there are dozens of layers of code from unknown sources, and the publishers of an app may be vaguely controlling the last layer. Too much unknown.
And the same is happening in the physical world: you buy a chair, and the materials come from 20 countries, parts are made in 20 countries, assembly is done in 2 countries, and the company selling the chair has no idea about the chair or how it was made. Nothing is personal anymore.
When that chair was made by a local craftsman or a small local company, they had to face, in the real world, the people who used their chairs. Not only could they answer every question, but unless they wanted to be ridiculed to their face about low quality, they had motivation to do as well as possible.
With 40 layers of abstraction, nobody is in charge, nobody has control, nobody takes responsibility. I know I'm one of the last devs having total control, both for the good and the bad. And I own my mistakes, and achievements.
I watched somebody read a bunch of random Pacific "WW2" letters from 1946, and they included a surprising amount of combat: Americans vs Chinese communists, Brits vs Indonesian nationalists, French/Brits vs. Indochinese warlords... There is surprisingly little coverage about that postwar aspect. I guess people were tired of war news.
Rommel & Afrika Korps marches on to version 6.4.0.1, in the process adding cliffs, switching to a new tactical routes system, RECAM being its own unit type with 3 HPs and 2 MPs, assigning motorized-resource will highlight the proper units, and a few British dugouts and artillery units. You have NO IDEA how much work it was to get all the new stuff working on this decade-and-a-half-old code base.
I will simply never understand the logic behind why I sometimes get 20 feedback messages about one single visual bug, yet sometimes a bad visual bug exists for 5 months and literally nobody bothers to report it and then I have trouble believing my own sad eyes that this issue has existed all this time. Please report jarring things.
Article: Google will block sideloading of unverified Android apps in a year or two
-- Google intends to verify developer identities no matter where they offer their content, and apps without verification won't work on most Android devices in the coming years.
-- Great news if you're in the foolish habit of blindly downloading questionable apps from unknown sources. Horribly bureaucratic Kafka-esque news for any developer like me who wants on the side to offer new projects, baselessly banned games, and free demo versions (AFTER GOOGLE BEGGED ME TO CREATE THEM AND THEN BANNED THEM YEARS LATER). How can I verify a game that is much wanted by Google and later not wanted by Google? It's an example #49586749986 of Google's policies violently clashing with Google's policies. They just never bother to plan even one step forward, not to mention that their left hand doesn't have the foggiest idea who their right hand is smacking. Fortunately, this is years away from actually rolling out in the West, plus big corporations have now joined the rank of displeased as this would add SOOOOO much pointless overhead, so we'll see what actually happens when
Article: America's last surviving WWII ace passes at 103
-- A WWII veteran from Nebraska believed to be America's last surviving 'ace' pilot who shot down five enemy planes has passed away at age 103. Donald McPherson served as a Navy fighter pilot aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex, which battled Japanese forces during the final years of the war. He earned the Congressional Gold Medal and three Distinguished Flying Crosses. He was listed as the conflict's last living US ace by both the American Fighter Aces Association and the Fagen Fighters WWII Museum.
Fall of Normandy version 6.2.1.2 fixes the HOF entry not ending game-play on some devices.
Operation Luttich minor patch-filled update to version 2.4.1. This should fix all the leaks in the new Cliff system, so updates from now on should have that settled.
Article: Research to begin into WW2 RAF losses in far east
-- While Bomber Command did not serve in the region during the war, its aircraft and crews were assigned to a new unit called Tiger Force to provide long-range bombing support in the Allied advance against Japan...
Once the research on the far eastern theatre is complete, Losses Database will have recorded every life lost in any of the Second World War bombing commands.
The database will provide an additional resource, not only for military historians and visitors to our site, but also for family history websites.
This was a rough summer, as two people I befriended over my games sadly did pass away. "Time waits for no one" is such a true yet ruthless saying. I will miss those passionate chats about random pieces of history that occasionally took place over the decade.
It's unsettling how hard it is to truly appreciate something until you lose it. Even the smallest moments can carry so much weight when you realize there won't ever be more. RIP.
Article: Woman loses 5lb in a week after switching to WWII rations
-- Hannah Hall, from Nottingham, who fell in love with the 1940s after watching wartime films with her late grandfather, shares nostalgic and educational YouTube videos of life during wartime Britain. In one of the latest clips she did an experiment and followed a WWII-style rationed diet for a week.
Armed with a 1940s ration book replica, Hannah was surprised by the small portion sizes. She had not only lost 5Ib in weight, with zero exercise, but she also got used to feeling hungry again, she started to enjoy cooking again, and became conscious of what she was eating.
"The air attack on 25 July started with strafing runs by P47s along the northern edge of the bomb zone... The effect on the German defenses was devastating. The German communications network, which depended heavily on field telephones, was completely disrupted. However, the 25 July air attack repeated the problems of the previous day, with bombs again fallign short into American lines, causing significant problems in launching the initial attacks... Overall, the first day's attack had been disappointing. Instead of gaining 3 miles, Collins' VII Corps had only penetrated a mile. Collins decided to commit the mechanized forces early. This paid off, as the usual coordinates German counterattacks were missing. Bayerlein reported to Hausser that his division was on the verge of evaporating."
-- Operation Cobra 1944: Breakout from Normandy
Article: The last WWII recipient of the Victoria Cross passes
-- Despite anti-aircraft fire from a German U-boat, Flight Lieutenant John Cruickshank manoeuvred his aircraft to drop depth charges from a height of only 50ft above the water, but the charges failed to release.
Cruickshank knew he had lost the element of surprise and that the gunners aboard the submarine were now prepared.
Yet he resolved to approach the U-boat a once again. As Cruickshank and his crew came in for a second time, they were hit by intense and accurate enemy fire. Cruickshank received 72 separate injuries.
Despite his serious injuries, Cruickshank pressed home the attack and released the depth charges himself...
Falaise Pocket (Allied Side) version 2.4.4 fixes the Unit Tally issue that might cause crash.
Operation Barbarossa critical fix version 7.0.0.2! HOF might have misfired on some devices!
At least I can skip the coffee to get my heart rate up on those days I wake up to a serious bug. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to those who make the effort to report the rare edge case issues. A bug affecting 2% of devices might seem like nothing, relatively speaking, but if it is your very own playthrough that gets ruined, it's everything. And as always, I can only fix the troubles I'm aware of. And I truly want this series to be as good as it can, so I don't mind spending my Sunday morning getting a critical fix out.
First World War: Western Front gets a bunch of fixes with version 6.2.1.
Article: A sniper claims world record 4,000-metre shot
-- The record was set using a 14.5mm Snipex Alligator rifle. The historic shot was fired on August 14 and was guided by artificial intelligence working with a drone reconnaissance complex. The regular breaking of records is testament to how rapidly sniper technology has been advancing in recent years.
Operation Barbarossa rolls on to the version 7.0! Timescale is faster during January-February, industry list on War Status, King Tiger and IS2 units later in the game...
Article: Two survivors reveal what it was really like to fight WWII in Asia
-- Captain Yavar Abbas is 104 years old, but seems decades younger. He joined the 11th Sikh regiment after the fall of Burma in mid 1942, and applied to be a combat cameraman. Yavar was filming at the siege of Imphal and Battle of Kohima in 1944 in north eastern India -- pivotal battles which saw intense hand-to-hand fighting. Japanese forces were successfully repelled, and the looming invasion of British India was thwarted.
There is unbelievably fierce competition between the Play Store and the Amazon App Store about which one can make updating the screenshots more needlessly convoluted and bewildering.
Amazon features buttons smaller than half an atom, and if your mouse shakes even a little bit the whole screenshot arrangement explodes. Also, everything is so tiny I don't really know what I'm even rearranging.
Meanwhile, the Play Store has replaced zero-click instant drag-and-drop with a 943588567-click side-loading bar that has 9687469 similarly named buttons, some of which affect the entire environment and some just the local sidebar, and they all roll and jump to show old stuff that has nothing to do with anything.
Imagine that every time you went to a grocery store, you had to go through three bad circus shows, because that is what it feels like to do a quick screenshot update. Uploading images was solved in 1995, the big tech is just making everything to fancy that it is less effective.
Brits at El Alamein updated to version 3, more British replacements and all the latest updates that are in the process of rolling out.
Article: Film studios releasing films with AI-altered scenes
-- The studio re-released one of its major hits, Raanjhanaa, a 2013 romantic drama, in cinemas but has used artificial intelligence to change its tragic end, in which the male lead dies.
8 decades after bombing of Hiroshima, search for missing continues on nearby island
-- Decades later, people in the area are looking for the missing. Rebun Kayo, a Hiroshima University researcher, regularly visits Ninoshima to search for remains.
Take II: Guadancanal version 4.4.1.2 fixes handful of issues and adds ability to re-embark half of the supply depot
Podcast: Feeding the Bear: Lend Lease to the USSR
-- The usual narrative often paints Lend-Lease as the lifeline that saved the Soviet Union. But, as with most things in history, the reality is far more complex. While Lend-Lease undeniably made a difference, its impact, timing, and strategic value are worth examining more closely. We dig into what was actually sent, when it arrived, how it was used, and whether or not it really was decisive in turning the tide on the Eastern Front.
Article: By whining few times to payment processers VISA/Mastercard, activists of Collective Shout manage to ban thousands of games
-- Many of the games and digital artworks caught in the sweep were unnecessarily censored from storefronts Steam and Itch.io , developers say
-- Basically, having enough skin-colored pixels might result in a ban by a bot for being too adult, games where people held hands got banned
-- Canadian developers and artists are frustrated that an Australian lobby group and U.S.-based payment processors have ruined their income
-- Affected developers and supporters have started phone campaigns and petitions to pressure payment processors to reverse their actions.
Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka Tanaka--s superiors told him to proceed with his nighttime reinforcement and resupply efforts (known by the Americans as the --Tokyo Express.--) On August 31 and September 1 Tanaka--s destroyers landed a thousand troops on Guadalcanal.
But then the army forced the navy to revert to using transports and landing barges during the daytime so more men could be landed at one time. Tanaka was recalled to destroyer duty. The change had disastrous consequences for the Japanese. On September 3 Henderson scout planes on dawn patrol up the Slot spotted more than a dozen barges loaded with troops. Sixteen dive bombers took off from Guadalcanal and bombed them in the open sea, sinking several of them...
The Japanese resumed nighttime destroyer landings...
The Americal pilots operating from the Henderson field grew accustomed to a daily routine of going out on morning and afternoon searches for Japanese ships and then withstanding noontime Japanese raids and nightly bombings and shellings. It was --like a broken record-- day after day with little variance.--
-- Midnight in the Pacific, The Battle of Guadalcanal by Joseph Wheelan
Attempt II: Tinkering with a new idea for a fully free, small, simple scenario to help with discovery. Let's see if I actually learned anything at all from the first attempt, and this time I avoid turning it all into a complex, large campaign.
Article: U.S. Space Force prepares next X-37B spaceplane launch
-- The infrared laser communications system onboard OTV-8 will operate in conjunction with proliferated commercial satellite networks in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The effort aims to demonstrate higher-capacity data links and enhanced security compared to traditional radio-frequency transmissions.
Before digital maps... Many kids no longer can read analog clocks, will the same happen to paper maps?
Utah & Omaha steps forward to version 2.0.1 adding cliffs due to popular demand (imagine them as bocage), and changes/updates handful of the icons.
Article: As rusting war-era ships decay on the seafloor, their toxic cargoes pose a risk
-- 8,500 ships with fuel in them lie beneath the waves, most dating back to WW1 and WW2. Limited data means the actual number is much higher. The rate at which wrecks have been breaking down has started to accelerate.
The wrecks can be great for local marine life, for fishermen or even for diving - and so the local tourism industry. They may also be the last resting places for the crew. Some are regarded as war graves and --cultural heritage-- - a status which comes with lots of legislation. So, who exactly is responsible for cleaning up these wrecks?
Article: Weak password allowed hackers to bankrupt a 158-year-old company with 700 workers
-- The hackers managed to gain entry to the computer system by guessing an employee's password, after which they encrypted the company's data and locked its internal systems. Director Paul Abbott says he hasn't told the one employee that their compromised password led to the destruction of the company. "Would you want to know if it was you?"
Kiev 1941 thunders into version 1.4. If you have played this game a lot recently, let me know if the Soviet dugouts are placed poorly.
The way I had done it previously did not work at all with the way the new underlying game engine handles it, so I had to change a lot of things, and I'm not sure how well, after all the variation, the intended fortification lines held up.
Article (book review): Victory --45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders by James Holland and Al Murray
-- The first significant capitulation began weeks before the fall of Berlin when two backstabbing rivals in the German high command in Northern Italy separately schemed to save their own postwar skins.
The greatest defense fortification line in history - that barely even existed! The myth of the Mannerheim Line: When the Finnish Winter War began, for the most part the work on the line was not even started, and if it was started, soon the work ended due to lack of funds and lack of reinforced concrete.
However, the Finnish government needed an argument both to calm down Finns and assure foreign countries considering helping that, in spite of naively choosing not to buy weapons in any meaningful amount, Finland had a chance against the immensely bigger USSR.
Solution: The Finnish government talked about the Mannerheim Line like it was a 3-story modern marvel of weaponry. In reality, it was mostly a tiny water-directing ditch in which men stood, as actual digging had not begun outside few key sectors.
On the other side, the USSR needed an excuse why its gigantic Red Army had failed to march over a tiny country that hadn't even purchased modern weapons - while Germany steamrolled over more prepared countries in the blink of an eye.
Then the USSR got it: their army was not bad, corrupt, and inefficient. No, no, no! The slow progress was simply because of the sky-high, impenetrable defenses of the space-age Mannerheim Line.
So, in a rare case in military history, both sides of a fight were praising this barely existing mud line between two countries as if it was better than the Maginot Line.
Miserable Finnish soldiers standing in a muddy ditch reading a newspaper article glorifying the unbreakable Mannerheim Line were outraged!
And they also raised the valid point: if Finns have to pull back, then how the heck the Finnish government is going to explain the fact that even this super-amazing top-notch fortification could not stop the Red Army.
One of my least favorite things is how Google's Android Studio development environment always crashes, especially after they began using AI code, and then Google's crash reporter crashes while trying to report those crashes, and after manually submitting the meta-crash for half a year, it still has not been fixed...
Meanwhile, Google is penalizing small developers for not instantly fixing everything...
The problem with the Google's "Industry Standard" coding practises, that it tries to force on us developers, is that it only works if you're having the latest phone and strikingly fast Internet. Too many too-rich people making decisions, the standards have no touch with any reality.
Operation Luttich (German Drive into Falaise Gap) rolls on to the version 2.4.
Article (links to videos)
About Norway:
"Not only were the Germans aware of the vital importance of maintaining the year-round supply of Swedish ore, and of the role of Narvik and the Inner Leads in the maintenance of the winter supply, but they were also fully alive to the strategic importance of Norway--s long coastline and sheltering fjords. As early in the war as 23 October 1939, Grand Admiral Raeder had sent a memo to the German High Command arguing the need for bases in northern Norway for their surface raiders and U-boats... Cut off from all communication with his Army headquarters, with troops suffering badly from air attacks by Luftwaffe, not knowing what was happening or what the Government policy was, Norwegian General Erichson and 3,000 men crossed over into Sweden rather than surrender and were interned... In Narvik, the Norwegian Senior Naval Officer, Cdr Askim, had received instructions from his Government in Oslo, literally minutes before the sighting of the British destroyers as they approached Narvik, that British forces were not to be opposed... News of the German occupation threw the Allied War Cabinet into total disarray. Ad hoc decisions were made, often without consulting or informing each other, by the Admiralty and War Office. Commanders-in-Chief were bypassed, or told belatedly of decisions. The Admiralty decided to concentrate the naval effort upon the parts of Norway, such as Narvik, which appeared to have most strategic importance."
-- Norway 1940 Chronicle of a Chaotic Campaign by Harry Plevy
If you have sent feedback about Japan in WW2, don't worry; every single piece has been read and put on the to-do list. I'm simply just, quite frankly, still finding myself having a bit of aversion to exceedingly replying about that game. Firstly, making it took forever and drained me, and because it is so perpetually complex, the fix cycle of dealing with each edge case just kept on going on week after week after week, burning through whatever reserves I had. After one player stopped screaming that "the US/USSR would NEVER declare war this easily," a second started yelling that "the US/USSR would ALWAYS declare the war earlier to defend its allies." Okay, how do you fix that?
If you care about your privacy or have a painfully slow old computer, I would recommend LibreWolf browser. It's a clean Firefox fork that removes a ton of telemetry/data collection that Firefox/Mozilla gathers about you, and in the process makes the browser more lightweight.
It also has uBlock Origin built-in, which can block ads, pointless cookie pop-ups, social media buttons, etc if you bother to tweak it a bit. If you don't know, uBlock Origin is the best ad blocker around; the guy running it is just as annoying purist as me.
On the downside, you will need to install a separate updater if you want LibreWolf to automatically update itself, and the bug fixes take few moments longer to be available compared to the mothership (Firefox), plus obviously there is no built-in cloud sync of bookmarks because privacy is taken seriously.
I have been using it for a while and so far (knock knock) haven't run in any noteworthy issues, but it is possible that one day one site will not work because of the effective privacy measures.
Battle of Guadalcanal sails into version 4.4 which brings in cliffs, Americal Division marked with a different icon (but otherwise functions as all US Army Infantry units), and Japanese units try to operationally comprehend that the island can be cut into multiple parts.
Let's retry this.... Invasion of Norway version 5010 rewrites the whole warship part of the Allied landings, plus changes the icon for the commander, and fixes misbehaving northern air-dropped supply depot.
Video: 1942 German nuclear reactor failure
-- On the 23rd of June 1942, the Leipzig L-iv Nuclear reactor experienced the world's first reactor disaster.
Bougainville Gambit updated to version 1.2.
Video: Why Did WW1 End So Suddenly? The Unexpected Armistice of 1918
-- This lecture will re-examine how the First World War ended. It will discuss both why Germany requested a ceasefire, and why the Allies and America granted one... the Allies had good reasons not to press on to Berlin.
Sad to say I never did personally raise a WW2 plane from the bottom of a lake as a kid ;-)
Article: WWII SB2C Helldiver found underwater by teens in the --80s takes flight
-- The National Museum of World War II Aviation in Colorado Springs, Colo., restored and flew a Navy Curtiss-Wright SB2C Helldiver that two teenagers found at the bottom of Lake Washington.
As teenagers, Matt McCauley and Jeff Hummel found the wreck of the SB2C Helldiver WWII warplane and raised it with lift bags from the bottom of Lake Washington in 1984.
McCauley said seeing the plane take flight was the realization of a 41-year-old dream.
Suddenly the northern, mostly diversional attack finds a weak point in the German front line and gets within touching distance of Paris. Sadly, this is too late for the western pocket of French Resistance in Paris that failed to hold on to enough space to not get squeezed from all sides simultaneously.
Article: WWII Japanese Navy destroyer Teruzuki found 83 years after it sank
-- Teruzuki was sunk in Dec 1942 by US torpedoes while transporting food for soldiers in Guadalcanal. Measuring over 134m (440ft) long, Teruzuki was the Imperial Japanese Navy--s second Akizuki-class destroyer built with air-search radar. Since Japan--s naval vessel plans were a tightly held secret, there are no historical images of Teruzuki and the latest survey is the first ever to get a glimpse of the vessel for this generation.
That delightful season when any attempt to do deep work is interrupted by a fly.
NOOOO! Play Store plans to remove handy pricing templates, which allowed switching between "discount" to "normal" to "new game" prices in a second. Changing prices for almost 200 countries manually for every project will be a nightmare, as that's well over 10,000 fields to fiddle with. Mercy.
Video: Euler's Work on Ballistics: mathematics in war
-- Artilleymen might find this interesting... 2018 lecture about artillery "calculations" over the centuries by Dr June Barrow-Green, Professor of Mathematics
What's the worst mistake your country did during WWII in your opinion? I'll do mine.
Finland was a very young and naive country, so the pre-war consensus was that "we are a tiny peaceful nation; no need to put any oomph into our military." When the USSR attacked, there was a MAD rush to train replacements.
But then, instead of sending these quickly and poorly trained men into existing units where combat-experienced soldiers would have shown them relevant up-to-date skills, Finland kept raising new regiments.
These new units were so utterly clueless that when several of them were ordered to take part in a counterattack (which would have decimated them), they could not even make it to the staging area before the whole counterattack was over.
These new regiments quickly gained the nickname 'porcelain regiments" for their ability to scatter at the slightest contact with the enemy. I realize it looks prestigious to be able to say that "we have 6 new regiments" but if their combat value is close to zero, why do this when the nation is fighting for its existence?
Germany reported the same issue: a large chunk of tanks went to new units that did not know how to do effective modern camo, and most of those tanks were taken out by ground combat planes before they got near the front line.
Was there a belief that training together created such a strong cohesion that it trumped real-world experience? Or was it a WW1-era artifact that mobilizing the max number of units for a war that was assumed to be short was a priority?
In any case, rashly formed Finnish regiments were horrible; all that effort and equipment was for nothing.
Clothes used to be skillfully made by tailors with decades of accumulated knowledge of fits and fabrics and the local environment. When factories cloned their process and knowledge, people happily switched to cheap, bad, soulless clothes. Millions of jobs lost.
Food used to be lovingly made by familiar chefs from fresh local ingredients with decades of collected wisdom and skill, considering the local tastes. When factories cloned their process and knowledge, people happily switched to bland, cheap, factory-made processed food. Millions of jobs lost.
Do you think the art will survive the machine cloning of processes, techniques, and knowledge any better? Having a meal used to take hours; now there is a penalty for the company if food does not appear in the blink of an eye. Instant meh seems to be crushing slow quality in most fields most of the time.
I'm sad because I think the train to stop all this automation left the station a long time ago. The time to protest was when the industrial revolution started. Protests might have helped to include other values in the decision-making process that is now based on faceless layered efficiency, performance, and profit.
Article/Video: Commercially available, general-purpose humanoid robot goes bezerk
-- A viral video showing a Unitree H1 humanoid robot violently thrashing mid-test has stirred fresh concerns about the risks of advanced robotics. Standing 5.9 feet tall and weighing 104 pounds (47 kg), each joint of Unitree H1 robot is able to produce up to 365 pound-feet of torque.
Panzer Missions version 6.4 rolling out. Relocating the troops closer to the front line at the start, adding cliffs, big HOF cleanup, continuing tweaking the campaign after the previous redo of the whole mission-structure.
PRICING: Paris 44: Uprising & Liberation dropping to the normal price level (might take a moment for the change to roll out across the globe).
Well, I just deleted two of my social media accounts. First one because I used to it to talk to historians and military veterans, and it regularly got locked because according to tech-bros: "it's suspicious to talk to seniors or people over 50, it can only be scam." Sigh. I guess it's the latest big-tech law: people are only allowed to interact with people born in the same year. I removed the second account because the platform showed me a must-watch non-skippable ad. Yeah, nope, if you FORCE me to watch ads I will never be using that platform as long as I live.
"The issue of the French participation in the battle of Berlin in late April-early May 1945... Historians of the "last battle," such as Anthony Beevor, Erich Kuby, Tony Le Tissier, Anthony Read and David Fisher, Pierre Rocolle, and Cornelius Ryan, all acknowledge the role of the 33rd WSS Division Charlemagne in defending the German capital. And, they generally tell the same story.
Carried in the chaotic retreat of the German army from Pomerania in February-March 1945, the Charlemagne regrouped in the Neustrelitz area, 80 miles north of Berlin; of the 7,000 men who had trained in Wildflecken during the winter 1944-45, about 1,000 were left. Up to 350 volunteers, led by the Brigadefuhrer Krukenberg, were trucked to Berlin on April 24. The rest of the men were assigned to construction work.
After briefly resting in a wooded area in the southwestern part of the city, the 350 French soldiers moved east to the Neukolln neighborhood on April 25, where they joined the Scandinavian 11th WSS Division Nordland and some Tiger II tanks. Slowly pulling north, they successively defended the Neukolln city hall, the Hermannplatz, the Belle-Alliance Platz, and a series of positions along the centrally located Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse.
On May 2, when General Weidling announced the capitulation of Berlin, 30 French soldiers were still holding the intersection Wilhelmstrasse-Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, two blocks from the Chancellery they were in charge of protecting. Some managed to escape Berlin, whereas others were taken POW by the Russians."
-- The French Who Fought for H: Memories from the Outcasts by Philippe Carrard
So, everyone is making tiny miniature military drones capable of taking images. Might be a slight privacy killer once it enters the hands of the public...
I wish I had one lifetime to waste to code a better social media platform. Actual settings to switch between chronological and algorithmic best-of feeds. Actual levers to control how much friends/family/news/hobbies/local info you would see. Modes for "I'm tired, show me only comfy stuff" and "I'm energetic, explore new out-of-comfort-zone topics." Busy switch when you have 30 seconds in that whole day to browse social and you only want to see the absolute core posts. Bored mode to see 1000 striking posts. Shopping mode when you actually want/need to buy something. Forcing/enticing users to rate random posts so the system could not be gamed by those trying to sell stuff. There are literally hundreds of ways to make a better social platform than what any of the current ones are. Would it make billions? No. But it would make a few million, which is enough, and maybe make the world a better place. Look at the richest people on the planet donating away all their money when they realize they wasted their entire lives getting more and more and more money that has no value after a certain point. Chuck Feeney donated away 100% of his 8 billion. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, etc., are on the same track. Why miss 99% of what life is about by frantically collecting something if you are then going to 100% dump it away?
Almost everything in the modern world is pushing against making a great product. Here is the latest example.
A biohacking acquaintance made a very clean supplement: lab tested source materials, lab tested final product, and actually meaningful bioavailability in human physiology.
It got such a high Amazon rating that AI bots removed the product because "only a product with made-up reviews can get that high of a rating."
This is the same issue I have if I write detailed and organized release notes to app updates in the Play Store. AI flags it as "AI", and it goes into days-long review.
The only way to get anything out to the world, is to purposefully, with great effort, make it worse than what it is, to work hard to include typos and nonsense.
I know I sound like a cranky old man, but as a techie, how is this modern world supposed to make any sense?
AI is a tool. And like with any tool, there is a right way to use it and a wrong one. The world is literally punishing for excellence or any deviation from the mindlessly boring average.
I do not want to spend my one unique life on this planet making my creations worse to get pass ill-considered AI checks.
Imagine 8 billion people trying their mightiest to work less and less well in a desperate attempt to nosedive towards the ever-decreasing level of average to avoid getting flagged by the AI.
Podcast episode: Bruce Lockhart and the Political Warfare Executive
-- Professor James Crossland discusses the extraordinary life of Robert Bruce Lockhart, who was a key figure behind the scenes of 20th-century history. His career began before WW1 and took him from revolutionary Russia to wartime Britain, often placing him near the centre of power and influence.
During WW2, he served as Director-General of the Political Warfare Executive, the organisation responsible for British propaganda efforts against the Axis powers.
Every small content creator is saying the same: "I wish there was a way to explain to AI-haters that 99.9% of creative people would LOVE to indeed have such a huge pile of money that they could hire artists."
But in reality, vast majority of creative people are struggling, and if they can't drive a Maserati, they will walk; if they can't eat caviar, they will eat macaroni or fast; if they can't hire other creatives, they will use free AI tools for a moment to at least get something created.
If you want content creators to use less AI, buy their works instead of boycotting them. Driving the 90% of the poorest creative people out, you are guaranteeing that only rich people create content.
We are close to the point that the #1 reason for creative people to stop working for their dreams is out-of-proportion anti-AI hysteria by the people using AI-text-prediction, AI-grammar fix, AI-enhanced GPS to navigate, taking AI-enhanced photos with their phones...
Hey: If you're truly anti-AI, you will never touch a phone again as long as you live.
Article: RIP D-Day Omaha-beach veteran 'Papa Jake' Larson
-- D-Day veteran ----Papa Jake---- Larson, who survived German gunfire on Normandy's bluffs in 1944 and then garnered 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate WWII and his fallen comrades, has passed away at 102. "We are the lucky ones. We are their family. We have the responsibility to honor these guys who gave us a chance to be alive."
American Revolutionary War version 6.2 tries to bring the old, exception-filled code into better alignment with the game-engine. Let's see how many things break...
Joining the German Army in late 1944 might not be the smartest move... especially if you're a French person, yet...
"Lambert and Le Marec estimate 40,000 Frenchmen joined German Army, while 46,000 integrated into the Free French Forces on the side of the Allies... In the case of the French volunteers, why some of them enlisted in German Army, especially in 1944 after D-Day?
Jacques Auvray explains he was rejected by the French Resistance, so he joined the WSS in his frenzy to serve at any price.
Several memoirs argue that the real enemy was the USSR that aimed to wipe out religion and private ownership, and the French who took arms against Soviet Communism in German Military were not traitors, but pioneers... the alleged vanguard of the European Army... that was battling for Western Civilization.
Christian de La Maziere, compromised because of his collaborationist activities, uses metaphoric language: it is precisely when the house is on fire, and when one could escape from it taking advantage of the catastrophe, that it must be defended with even more energy."
-- The French Who Fought for H: Memories from the Outcasts by Philippe Carrard
More and more people have applied for over 10,000 jobs and have nothing to show for it. It is troubling to observe humans around the world all independently arriving at the same grim conclusion:
"Any reset of the current system, no matter how violent, is likely to improve my situation." And so, an increasing number of voters choose the craziest or angriest party, not because they share values with them, but because it's the quickest way to null the current structure.
Societies stand because of trust. By ruthlessly optimizing performance until every remaining job is soul-crushingly exhausting while others have no work, will undermine the whole social contraption.
Video: AKHENATEN - the reign of Egypt--s most radical Pharaoh
-- If you like a channel where an archeologist passionately speaks about various topics without pointless excess thrills, you might like to check this one out
Fall of Normandy updated to 6.2.1 to fix a critical issue. This also marks the start of a roll out of making the units which have dug-in to withdraw much less (that effect was too small). Well, that did not work at all, let's try v6.2.1.1
WW1 sketchbook reveals Tommy's view of life in the trenches in the year of the Battle of the Somme
-- A sketchbook from a Tommy in the trenches has been discovered in a storage locker 109 years later. Lieutenant Frederick Holmes was an accomplished artist before the start of the First World War. He was sent to the Western Front in 1916 - the year of the bloody Battle of the Somme - and fought with the London Regiment. During his time there he produced 45 colour sketches depicting wartime views
I'm increasingly flooded with two types of messages:
1) Out-of-work graphic artists looking for work. The worst one is threatening to endlessly spam me until I fill out his long form that includes filling out my personal information to unsubscribe from his job applications! Like, dude, semi-blackmailing and threatening is not how you get hired anywhere.
2) Criminals outright paying for either to control my old, well-verified account or to publish their scam apps. It's relentless on all my personal and business channels. And the offered sums just keep on going up. I hate to say it, but I would be suspicious of any developer account that was silent for 4 years and now suddenly activates.
Finnish Defense 1944 rolls on to the version 4.2.
Good news, Anzio & Monta Cassino is back on the update schedule on the Play Store.
Video: Texas Coast Natives Who Fought Colonization for 300 Years
-- After contact with Europeans the Karankawa maintained control of the coast for centuries through the skillful defense of their lands.
They first fought the Spanish and then the French, pirates, and finally Anglo American settlers.
The Karankawa--s struggles even intersected with the Texas Revolution which gave birth to the Republic of Texas.
"In the weeks following the Liberation, Paris experienced an Anglo-Saxon influx which far surpassed the days of the Versailles peace conference... One of the first British officers to enter Paris was Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Rothschild, who had been seconded to the US army after D-Day to train its officers in the arts of sabotage and counter-sabotage. Victor Rothschild was a man of many parts and many paradoxes: Scientist, academic, and government adviser by profession, he was also a socialist, a millionaire, a jazz pianist and a peer who both hated privilege and enjoyed it... Few of the journalists starting to pour in knew Paris better than Lee Miller. In her US war correspondent--s uniform, she went straight to the Place de l--Od--on. There she found the painter and theatre designer Christian B--rard and Boris Kochno. They took her to see Picasso in his studio... Almost everyone in London with a good excuse made sure of a trip to Paris as soon as possible after the Liberation. Like many from the OSS office in London, Evangeline Bruce hiked a pillion ride on the back of an OSS motorbicycle for a tour of central Paris. One of the sights to be seen at the Ritz was Ernest Hemingway..."
-- Paris After the Liberation 1944 by Antony Beevor
Battle of Suomussalmi (Winter War) slides to the version 4.2 adding Skis resource (chance of extra MP between turns) and the cliff-system. The extra movement should enable seizing top spots in the Hall of Fame.
First World War: Western Front updated to version 6.2. As the months pass, some Allied units will be in 'mutiny' (marked with magenta edge). These units are likely to withdraw without a fight. New action by General: Assign infiltration tactics to the closest combat unit. More bonus vs trenches, cancels out Allied trench bonus, the unit is more likely to seize the trench intact Big graphics update. Only available on the Amazon App Store, since nonsensical bots of the Google's Play Store decimate apps that are regularly updated.
Article: The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour
-- In May 1944 a 23-year-old British girl called Pippa Latour parachuted into occupied Normandy with nothing more than a sten gun, a compass, and a lethal pill to swallow in the event that she was caught. She poased as a French teenage who cycled around the Normandy countryside selling goats-- milk soap.
"I was not a James Bond-style spy. I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos."
Then, using a sets hidden in bombed-out buildings around the countryside, she would transmit the information back to her handlers in London. Within hours, a deadly attack by the Allies from the skies would remove the German soldiers.
UK's oldest WWII veteran, Donald Rose, passes at 110
-- Rose joined the army aged 23 and served in North Africa, Italy and France, participating in the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.
Ardennes Offensive thundering to version 5.6 adding cliffs, few German Neberwerfer units and all the latest hoopla.
"Dietrich von Choltitz, the German commander of Paris was frank in his assessment: --The situation in Paris is untenable. All authorities and officials have left the city. The outbreak of a rebellion might take place at any time. Individual shootings are the daily order, individual vehicles are being attacked, looted and crews taken prisoner...
Whatever he might have thought in private, in public von Choltitz was determined to bluff the Resistance into submission. In a discussion with the Swiss legate, Ren-- Naville, von Choltitz threatened that he would deploy --150 Tiger tanks-- against the Resistance strongholds...
Journalist Claude Roy saw the two remote-controlled Goliath tanks being manoeuvred around on the lawn in front of the Grand Palais and then sent in. At least one Goliath was blown up, setting fire to the building...
At 22:15, von Choltitz had a telephone conversation with Army Group B in which he explained that the situation in the capital was spiralling out of control. Von Choltitz--s superiors were well aware of this: General Blumentritt, Model--s chief of staff, had been unable to get into the city because of the barricades."
-- 11 Days in August, The Liberation of Paris in 1944 by Matthew Cobb
Video: Shenzhen Has Fallen: China's Richest City Is Now a Ghost Town
-- Shenzhen was once the crown jewel of China's rise: the Silicon Valley of the East, the city of innovation, tech, and boundless opportunity. But in 2025, the lights are dimming. This video takes you deep into the economic meltdown unfolding in China--s most iconic city. In this deep expos--, we reveal the truth behind the headlines: Why teachers can--t get paid. Why factories are shutting down in waves...
Article: Google confirms it will roll out an update that makes Pixel 6a phones unsable
-- After nerfing the Pixel 4a's battery capacity earlier this year, Google has confirmed a similar update is rolling out to the Pixel 6a after units started to catch fire. Pixel 6a owners can get measly $100 in cash or $150 in store credit but that process is filled with fees and caveats. This is particularly galling because the Pixel 6a is still an officially supported phone, with its final guaranteed update coming in 2027.
Okay, I'll admit it. The latest version of Android Studio that force-feeds AI tools, GIT tools and automated suggestions is unusable even if you turn OFF absolutely everything Google allows one to turn off. So I'm moving back to the old version before all the AI bloatware. When I try to do a simple, previously nanosecond-long operation like using control-C to copy a simple line of text, my whole machine crawls to a halt. The AI goes into overdrive to search the entire world to overanalyze this action. Geez, I just want to do a simple copy-and-paste. There is no need to use $900 worth of processing power to hyper-calculate what's happening.
The first proper summer day in Finland, so I sprinted 10k to a beach to alternate between freezing in the water and sunshine-reading Soviet war interpreter Elena Rzhevskaya's memoirs from the Battle of Berlin. Her unit was a part of the Vasily Kuznetsov's 3rd Army, tasked with taking the Reichstag. Elena was one of the key people searching for top Germans in Berlin bunkers and the Chancellery.
"Between July and December 1941 a total of Soviet 1,523 enterprises, the great bulk of them iron, steel and engineering plants, were moved to the Urals, to the Volga region, to Kazakhstan in central Asia, and to eastern Siberia. One and a half million wagon-loads were carried eastwards on the Soviet rail network.
16 million Soviet citizens escaped the German net, many of them factory workers, engineers, plant managers, all needed to keep the uprooted industries going. The whole process was a messy, improvised affair. Workers arrived without their machines; equipment without its workforce.
So short of rolling-stock was the rail system that car-loads of machinery were dumped beside the track in the Russian interior so that trains could return to the battlefront in the west to pick up further cargoes. The transplanted enterprises were destined for the most inhospitable regions of the vast Soviet Union.
Workers struggled to assemble their new premises in temperatures 40 below, while the machines, thick with hoar frost, had to be revived with braziers...
German armies swept through the rich iron, coal and steel regions of western Russia and the Ukraine, depriving Soviet industry of two-thirds of its coal and steel. In the year leading to the siege of Stalingrad Germany produced four times as much steel as the Soviet Union."
-- Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy
Randomized controlled trial: When experienced developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without. In other words: AI makes them slower
-- Even after experiencing the slowdown, developers still believed AI had sped them up by 20%. The slowdown persists across different outcome measures, estimator methodologies, and many other subsets/analyses of our data.
I'm just happy we didn't willy-nilly, without any facts, data, or planning, force-deploy AI across every industry... oh wait a second, that's precisely what we did. Why are long-term planning, looking at science, and critical thinking in such short supply?
Patriotic War marches on to reach version 2.2, which sees a slight fall in the MP cost of evacuating factories, some terrain and dugout edits, plus adding IS-2 tanks to the player/Soviet side. Oh, almost forgot: Green checkboxes indicate valid sideways movement options during the early phase when withdrawal is blocked. It goes without saying that this game contains letters from the alphabet, so out of control Google bots banned it, but you can reliably get it via the Amazon App Store.
Have you ever considered what it actually takes to relocate an entire factory...
D-Day version 7.6 rolling out. I can't believe I published this game 14 years ago. And wouldn't you know it, after 14 years of adding new features to this tiny-scale-map scenario, it is squeaking from the corners at times.
Article: Crazy maritime story, I can already imagine comments in the style of the Monty Python's Black Knight.
The bow of of the USS New Orleans, blown off by a Japanese torpedo in 1942, relocated
-- In the November 1942 a fleet of 9 ships, including the USS New Orleans, intercepted 8 Japanese destroyers trying to deliver food to their forces on the island of Guadalcanal. The Japanese gained the upper hand, sinking one US heavy cruiser and damaging 3 more. The USS New Orleans was hit by a 'Long Lance' torpedo, tearing off nearly a third of the ship. Miraculously, the crew managed to get the ship to a nearby harbor, where they stabilized it by creating a makeshift bow of coconut logs, which allowed them to sail backwards all the way across the Pacific Ocean back to the U.S. so the ship could be repaired.
That satisfactory feeling when you almost over-heat your test device into a fireball, but finally manage to pinpoint the location of a bug that happens once every roughly 25,000 turns (turned out to be various layers of variation maxing out in one direction).
Korean War: Massive update to v4.0.0.2. Crossing the border-river to Chinese territory will escalate SINO-UN war and double Chinese units. Shuffling the cities and Victory Points around. Cost on moving via railways depends on the unit type. Obviously only available via the Amazon App Store since Google randomly blackballs apps with words or colors in it.
Article (gotta love real estate agents and their positive spins): Two WW2 bunkers on sale in Kent, UK
--"The bunkers, 60 feet below ground, were once home to the Royal Corps of Signals who used them for 12 months before it became clear there was a flooding problem. The land off Broadwater Down encompasses 4.7 acres and is located in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. According to estate agents, it has two bunkers which add up to 7,000 square feet of space. It could make the perfect development opportunity for a new 'prepper'."
Fall of Normandy: I would appreciate feedback and play-through on the version 6.2 that is now rolling out as it changes some fundamental elements (the player's HOF alias show with the score is now entered when the game ends, etc) due to the Google's ban-happy AI bots.
TAKING PARIS:
"Throughout the afternoon, Billotte--s leading elements fought to drive the German anti-tank gunners from the crossroads at Croix de Berny and by 7 p.m. had it in their hands. But Fresnes, from which fire swept the Paris road, still held out. It was garrisoned by the German military defaulters who had the day before been confined in its cells, supported by several anti-tank guns; an 88 mm was ensconced in the sepulchral gateway of the prison itself. At a range of three hundred yards along the sweep of the avenue de la R--publique, a duel opened between the anti-tank gunners and three French tanks. One was manned by a native of Fresnes who had crossed the Zone libre and Spain to join de Gaulle, another by an escaped 'guest' of the Gestapo who had been held in the prison. The Germans-- first shot set the leading Sherman ablaze; its commander perished in sight of the church where he had been married. The second tank destroyed the 88 mm with its return of fire. The third, driven by the former internee, crashed through the gateway, tossing the wreck of the gun aside, and took possession of the central courtyard. But the battle had taken an hour and had cost four more Shermans, caught in enfilade from guns sited at other points around the prison perimeter. Billotte reckoned that he must regroup..."
-- Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris by John Keegan
Article: Google Play Store removes millions of apps
It's upsetting to see many niche, life-saving medical apps getting removed just because the developer did not happen to have cabinets filled with appropriate diplomas. One of the apps allowed estimating blood sugar crashes based on exercise, but I guess those patients are expendable to Google. Not to mention tens of thousands of sensitive creative developers losing their hand-to-mouth income that paid for their rent or meds. People in this type of field often are introverted and socially awkward and therefore lack social safety networks to fall back on. So, how many just ended up jobless, ending their business? How many switched their careers away from automated big tech randomly dictating matters? How many ended up leveling up to the heaven to code there? Nobody knows. Tragic. They are not just numbers on big tech's faceless data sheets.
People do NOT appreciate getting falsely accused. Report: At least 13 people took their own ***** as a result of Britain's Post Office scandal, in which almost 1,000 postal employees were wrongly prosecuted or convicted because of a faulty computer system.
WWII Podcast: The First US Army Rangers of WWII
-- Author Mir Bahmanyar covers early US Rangers, from being trained by British Commandos using live rounds, all the way to their fateful engagement at Cisterna in 1944, a battle that ended in disaster for two Ranger battalions.
Still demotivated as **** from the below:
Play Store rejected the update v5001 for Anzio and Monte Cassino since I did not provide them passwords to log in to this app that SIMPLY HAS NO passwords! The ONLY WAY I can update this app is by giving Google credentials to log in in the app, even though there is no login at all. In other words, I will NEVER ever be able to update this app because there is no passwords to give neither does any password field exists for Google to enter this imaginery password into.
I have filed an appeal, but considering all my 98796987698 previous appeals about these type of ridiculous quagmires are totally, utterly, and completely ignored and never answered or settled by Google, I do not have high hopes.
So what now? Do I remove the text-string Hall-of-Fame username feature entirely from the rest of the games, since Google literally cannot understand it at all anymore (dumber every week) and will likely block every single future updates for all apps for the same reason? Or do I risk it and try to rename it to something like "nickname", "gamer tag", or "what horoscope sign should the 13th one called" to avoid AI going waywire.
This is yet another lose-lose situation where:
1) In the past, human reviewers have rejected the app updates unless I plainly (like to a 5-year-old) explain that there are "no accounts, no passwords." Basically, an outsourced person in a different culture has 5 seconds to understand the case about an app they have never used and dictate the future of that business, oh joy.
2) But zero-logic AI bots, also dictating the fate of decades-old companies, then go and reject the same app after seeing keywords like "(no) account, (no) password" without me providing those nonexistent passwords for those nonexistent "enter-password" fields for the review process.
We developers are once again left with the reality that unless we do two opposite things at the same time, horrible things happen. There are dozens of Play Store policies that contradict each other, guaranteeing nobody will ever be able to satisfy them all and there will always be technical grounds for disqualification. And without a working appeal process (I personally haven't received a reply/decision in two years) there will be relentless fear that your life's work can be wiped out at any moment.
There are truly no combination of words for me to express how much I disdain big tech's dystopian, unhuman, and anti-common-sense approach. Imagine getting fired from your job for randomly using the word "security" in some sentense because an AI bot noticed that some bad actor also used the word "security" in their texts, and then you could not even ever speak to your bosses to plead your case. The level of unfairness makes me scream. What's the point of working for a year on a project if this level of stupid can wipe it out in a nanosecond without any recourse? So many sensitive creative personalities have given up and ended, either their career or life, after getting unfairly flattened by the doofus AI/outsourced decision.
I recently stopped adding full, detailed change logs into Play Store updates since AI review bots instantly penalized me for using logical, engineer-minded, cohesive lists. Only AI can write logical lists, claims the AI, and so all my updates ended up in the days-long review. Then I began adding errors and casual, thoroughly pointless chit-chat into the What's New section, and BOOM, all updates once again went through smoothly. We now live in a reality where I have to use a lot of my energy to pretend to be stupid, chaotic, and to make mistakes intentionally to be able to post updates. That's how upside-down a world you have to live in if you operate with the bit tech.
NEW GAME! PARIS 44: UPRISING & LIBERATION out now!
The uprising has begun. Drive your armored spearheads into Paris, eliminate enemy strongholds, and secure the capital before German forces moving along the south and the north flank re-enter the fight.
Historical Background: After the Falaise Gap closed, the Americans and British made the firm decision to bypass Paris, fearing a drawn-out urban battle like Stalingrad. Paris also demanded 4,000 tons of supplies daily, capturing it could stall the Allied advance toward the Rhine. However, on August 19th, an insurrection erupted in Paris. For days, chaotic negotiations and fleeting ceasefires unfolded as both sides tested each other--s strength. The Germans struggled to determine whether the resistance had weapons for 1,000 fighters or 100,000. The French, in turn, feared the Germans might still be able to deploy front-line reinforcements into the city. On the 22nd, both sides reached a grim consensus: there would be no truce. As the Resistance built hundreds of barricades, German forces entrenched themselves in a handful of strongholds, waiting for Panzergrenadier reinforcements to crush the uprising. The Resistance hoped their defiance would force Eisenhower--s hand, and with de Gaulle applying political pressure, the Allies finally relented. On August 23rd, French and American tanks began a frantic push toward the capital.
Now, the race is on: Can Germany deploy armored reinforcements in time to crush the insurrection? Or will the Allies break through first, liberating Paris before the uprising collapses or the fight bogs down into a months-long battle of urban attrition?
⊕ Play Store (full paid)
⊕ Amazon App Store (full paid)
⊕ Amazon Free version
⊕ Local free 20-turn-limit demo version APK (for sideloading, no ads)
"A new French revolution raged in the streets of Paris today... They fought like their forefathers did under Danton and Robespierre."
-- UP dispatch by correspondent James McGlincy (Aug 25, 1944)
Thousands take part in re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo
-- 210 years after the French were defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, marking the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, the decisive clash is re-enacted. The event brought together more than 2,600 history enthusiasts from around the world.
Norway is sailing towards version 5.0.0.4... Okay, hoping that now all the clashes between the new fail-safe system of units' locations and various landings and air drops and convoys are settled.
One of the signs that I'm mentally exhausted is that I really want to start to watch the Allo Allo series.
Allied Invasion of Italy version 5.6 on its way, adds cliffs on top of all the latest features rolling out.
Article: Tiger Tanks United for the First Time at TANKFEST 2025
-- Thousands witnessed two rare WW2-era German Tiger tanks running together for the first time ever at a special display as part of TANKFEST 2025, at the Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset.
-- Video footage: Running Tiger and King Tiger in 4K
Sicily version 5001 rolling out, adds cliffs and all the latest doohickeys.
Union version 1.6.2.3 out, fixing the available gold vs what items are enabled in generals' menu mismatch...
Operation Market Garden version 6210 fixes the issue of some British parachute units ending up with the main push.
Video: The Only Country That Celebrates WW2 1940-1945 Occupation
"FFI fighters from the 17th arrondissement, including Georges Dukson, went to the SOMUA tank factory in the northern suburbs, found a newly produced S35 light tank, and, to the acclamation of the crowd, drove it to the Mairie of the 17th arrondissement. Shortly after 13:00, journalist Claude Roy accompanied Dukson and a group of FFI fighters who marched in single file behind the tank, which now had --FFI-- and a Gaullist cross of Lorraine painted on its sides, as it went out to attack a nest of German soldiers on the boulevard des Batignolles. They were filmed by a newsreel cameraman who was one of the group of cinematographers who followed the insurrection. As the tank manoeuvred near the Citro--n garage on the rue de Rome, Dukson was shot in the arm and hastily evacuated."
-- Eleven Days in August, The Liberation of Paris in 1944 by Matthew Cobb
Iwo Jima sees a setting to double Japanese troops in the cave systems and a ton of Cave-visibility fixes with the version 6.2.
Article: Top 10 most influential military news sites
-- Drawing on both editorial influence and digital performance, these ten platforms have become primary sources for decision-makers, analysts, and defense enthusiasts.
1) The War Zone
2) Military.com
3) Army Recognition
Okinawa version 5.2.0.2 on the way...
Utah & Omaha Beaches 1944 updated to version 2.0 with the addition of M10 tank destroyer units.
If you have reset issue after hitting "END TURN" and you are expecting to lose several units, this MIGHT be bypassed by turning OFF option of showing "FALLEN dialogs".
Operation Spring Awakening version 2.6.3.2 rolling out...
Article: Korean War recalled by British veterans
-- As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, MailOnline has tracked down 3 British veterans. All in their 90s, their stories shed light on a conflict seldom taught in schools... Brian Parritt highlights his superiors, 3 of whom had served in WW2: "There was great respect for them, there is no nonsense when you know your Sergeant Major had fought his way from El-Alamein, up through Italy and on to Monte Cassino." ... As Ken Keld, then 19, looked up from his position, he could see wave upon wave of Chinese soldiers coming towards him. Ken, while holding them off, was running out of ammunition. Within moments, the Chinese had stormed his trench. Ken was pushed back into the tunnels which had been dug by the Black Watch. We were in there when they blew the ends in. With Ken and his comrades buried alive in the tunnel with just a Sten gun and one grenade, the Duke's outside launched a heroic counter offensive on the Chinese trenches...
The next round of updates will remove the "intelligence" segment from the War Status Report (displayed at the start of each turn). Instead, all intelligence information will now be shown directly on the map in the following ways:
-- 'Intel' tags on revealed enemy units,
-- Labels indicating 'Strong Enemy Presence' etc text,
-- Red movement arrows (some accurate, others based on faulty intelligence).
90-min video: Godfather of AI: I Tried to Warn Them, But We--ve Already Lost Control
-- Geoffrey Hinton, recognised as the --Godfather of AI-- for his pioneering work on neural networks, received the 2018 Turing Award (Nobel Prize of computing). In 2023, he left Google to warn people about the dangers of AI. Paraphrasing: "One guy with a grudge who knows a little bit about molecular biology and a lot about AI can now relatively cheaply create new viruses... People generalize from other smaller innovations that humans don't lose their jobs, they just move up in the value change, but I think this is different. If a trench has been dug or a reply letter written in a fraction of the time, fewer people are needed... The industrial revolution replaced muscle, now AI replaces brain and intelligence... It's going to be a long time before it's as good at physical manupulation as us, so a good choice would be to be a plumber... I haven't come to terms with what the development of super intelligence could do to my children's future..." Anything you look back on and say 'with the hindsight I have now, I should have taken a different approach at that juncture'? "I wish I had spent more time with my wife, who passed away from cancer... Urgent short-term threat to human happiness: if you make a lot of people unemployed, even if they get uniserval basic income, they're not going to be happy because they need purpose. They need to feel they are contributing something."
"Operation Market Garden was a bus with a great many hands on the steering wheel but, in the poisonous atmosphere of SHAEF, no-one was allowed to emerge as the designated driver. With no consensus on how it should be driven or at what speed, a crash was arguably inevitable. Of the Allied commanders directly involved, only General Taylor of the 101st had previous command experience at the level asked of him. Browning had no airborne combat experience at all. Brereton had come from an air force command and had assumed control of the Airborne Army just a few weeks before. Although Gavin had seen combat with the 82nd he had only taken over the Division in August (in the process becoming, at 37 years old, the youngest Major General since Custer) and was leading his first operation. Horrocks, too, had only recently assumed command of XXX Corps after 14 months recuperation from wounds received in North Africa and had been seriously ill during August. Urquhart, as we have seen, was also new and inexperienced. All had yet to make their mark on their commands, as Horrocks-- furious attempts to instil a sense of urgency on the Guards Armoured Division demonstrated... Poor to non-existent forward planning was also a feature of XXX Corps-- performance, as shown by the fact that it does not appear to have occurred to anyone to have the corps and divisional allotment of assault boats on hand until US and Polish airborne commanders asked for them. "
-- Operation Market Garden, The Legend of the Waal Crossing by Tim Lynch
Operation Market Garden updated to version 6201. In addition to a huge list of updates to the game engine, I also finally managed to rewrite the well-over-decade old code handling the airfield that brings in reinforcements. Obviously a big Hall-of-Fame update too. Let me know if something is fundamentally broken.
The mud of the eastern front fully stopped the Germans, but mostly in ways people do not realize. If anything wet got between interlocked parts of complex suspension/track systems, freezing then wrecked the whole vehicle. Only the wonder weapon of the highest caliber could get the armies moving again. Meet Raupenschlepper Ost. When troops got their hands on this simple-enough wonder-weapon to actually work in the harsh conditions, the orders instantly maxed out all production capacity. It was pretty much the only German vehicle that remained operational in the East throughout the year, so it ended up doing just about every job you can think of.
Article: Okinawa marks 80 years since end of one of harshest WWII battles
-- Okinawa was sacrificed by Japan--s Imperial Army to defend the mainland, historians say. The island group remained under U.S. occupation until its reversion in 1972. Nearly 2,000 tons of unexploded U.S. bombs remain in Okinawa. A recent explosion at a storage site at a U.S. military base caused minor injuries to 4 Japanese soldiers.
Database servers were down for few hours.
Operation Spring Awakening: Line-of-Sight fix with version 2.6.3. The Amazon Developer Console is under maintenance, so Amazon gets updated whenever they might return online one day.
So, I planned to publish a fully free game, "Paris 44: Uprising and Liberation," to increase discovery... but it turned into a too complex game due to the uprising to be a proper and simple --starter-- game. As a result of so many test-players saying that, I'm releasing it as a normal paid game, and later try to make another simpler game for promotion. All this reminds me of how the Battle of Kasserine Pass project ballooned into the Axis Endgame in Tunisia as the map kept expanding, and new unit types got added.
Article: Inside the secret tunnels under London where 'Ian Fleming dreamed up James Bond in WWII'
-- The complex, officially the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels, was built 1940-1942. Had they been used as a shelter, the tunnels could have housed 8,000 people. Instead, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - created by Churchill to 'set Europe ablaze' - moved in. The complex was later turned into a telecommunications hub, and 4 more tunnels were built in a north-south direction. Now The London Tunnels Company hope to raise --150million to re-develop the site as a tourist attraction.
The latest episode of Expedition Unknown (S16-E01) explores some (previously unseen) German WW2-era tunnel systems in Poland. Not for the claustrophobic.
WW2 Podcast: Robert Capa--s D-Day Photographs. Drawing on official military records, eyewitness testimony, and detailed photo analysis, Charles Herrick offers a new and controversial perspective.
So, basically, Capa didn't know how cameras or film work or how to take a decent photo. He faked a fair chunk of his war photos (in unpublished pics, the 'dead' walk around after faking a scene). And if you have seen a great Capa-pic it's likely because another photojournalist who actually understood how photography works and who actually was with the first-wave troops took that photo, but it's widely miscredited to Capa due to his relentless self-promotion.
Hooray, finally located the source of the MISCLICK issue. So that will be getting better with the next round of updates.
I'll probably soon post on this page a link to a very early beta of the new, fully-free campaign for sideloading. Background: The plan here is to increase visibility in app stores via an easy, quick, completely free game.
Video (new channel, check it out, maybe you like it): The Last Days of Austria-Hungary
-- In November 1918, a 650-year-old empire simply vanished. When 29-year-old Emperor Karl inherited the Habsburg throne in 1916, he inherited an impossible situation: war on 3 fronts, 50 million subjects speaking 8 languages, a starving population. An empire older than America itself dissolved as completely as if it had never existed, leaving 50 million people to reinvent their identities.
Article: Google Is Shutting Down Android Instant Apps
-- Google has officially confirmed that it will be sunsetting Android Instant Apps in December 2025
After semi-violently trying to force developers to go all-in with the Instant App idea, Google is now like "hahaa, just joking, sorry for once again burying profitable entrepreneurs by tricking them into investing time and money into a half-baked contrapsion we cancel". According to the website "Killed by Google", over 250 Google offerings have gotten the boot so far, which means there is well over 50% chance of Google soon canceling whatever it proudly and loudly announces. Try building a business on top of that out of control minefield.
I'm pondering about releasing a simple, easy, and smaller-scale WWII campaign for free to reach new players in the Play Store (discovery getting worse each year). Fully free, no ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking, no turn-limitations. Maybe just strip away quotations and a few settings, etc which could be an issue with the masses (somebody always finds a way to get offended), and streamline maintenance. If nothing comes out of it, so be it: I wasted a few weeks. However, if the freebie, over the years, pulls a few more players into the orbit of the series, nice.
Science/Research: Military experience predicts military multitasking better than laboratory measures in officer cadets
-- In contrast to our expectations, the associations between lab and military multitasking and working memory were weak. Furthermore, the participants did not display multitasking decrements but improvements as a function of time on task in the military setting. Moreover, we found a positive association between the time officer cadets had already served in the military and military performance. In conclusion, it appears unlikely that one can simply predict military performance by means of lab measures. Hence, personnel selection procedures might need to consider cognitive capabilities as less important and rely more on training achievements.
Almost like real-world experience is invaluable, who could have possibly ever guessed that *sarcasm*
Article: What British children are taught about history in school (report by Policy Exchange)
-- Sitting at the bottom of the list was the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo with only 11% of students studying the topic. They were followed by the Battle of Agincourt (18%), the Boer War (25%). The top five most studied topics are now the Transatlantic Slave Trade (99%), Britain in WW1 (99%), the Norman Conquest (98%), the Abolition of Slavery (96%) and Reformation (95%). Elsewhere, 53% of people say their knowledge on British history has been informed by film and TV. 15% learn about history through social media. 12% say their knowledge comes from newspaper and news media outlets.
Falaise Gap (Allied Side) version 2.4.2 is on its way.
Video: 15 Controversial War Films Hollywod Buried
-- This list is packed with banned war movies, blacklisted anti-war films, and controversial military dramas that studios buried, censored, or disowned.
Tarawa 2.4.0.1 out to fix strangeness caused by the reef-system interfering with the logic of who controls water hexagons.
Luzon version 2.6 on its way... Restores the replacement rate back to the expected and supply-related icons redone to better fit the theme of unit-icons.
I thought about sharing an interesting video from YouTube, but I'm stuck between "every history buff already follows the famous high-quality channels" and "darn, most of the other content is just content farming and semi-auto-generated generalities without any actual research and knowledge."
Designer: "Make it more boxy, I'm taking a stand against all these rounded and sloped surfaces!"
"At the German listening post at the Dutch plant of Phillips Electric outside Einhoven, agents were listening to the radio traffic on the main cable between Britain and the USA. One time, experts hit the jackpot; they overheard a conversation on the scrambler phone between Churchill and Roosevelt... There was an attempt to undermine the British economy with the mass production of fake British 5 pound notes. One German agent had the audacity to ask a Swiss bank to check whether the notes were real or not. He said he suspected they were not. The Swiss gave the notes a clean bill of health. However, the plan to drop notes by the ton into Britain was never carried out. Instead the money was mostly used to buy the weapons the Allied had dropped to the various resistance groups... Operation North Pole was an unqualified success. Nearly 50 Dutch agents from SOE went into the bag. The booty dropped by the RAF was an eye-opener. For the first time the Germans were able to obtain British secret weapons, almost straight from the factory. And what weapons they were: coal filled with plastic explosive, Chianti bottles with explosives in the base, folding motorbikes, armoured canoes for attacking shipping, even dead rats filled with plastic explosive and rusty bolts which were, in reality, limpet mines for destroying railway bridges... Americans planned to stop Swiss banks from handling German gold, but Admiral Canaris pushed a whole stream of Germans from the fake --resistance-- to contact John Foster Dulles to block this blocking. In the end Canaris succeeded. People are arguing about the missing Melmer gold to this day, with the current German and US Governments at loggerheads over what happened to the stolen assets and which firms should pay compensation to whom... Canaris had dreamed up --strategic sabotage--. This entailed the sabotage of US plants which would have a far-ranging impact. Abwehr agents were to blow up a cryo-lite factory in Philadelphia, which manufactured the essential materials for the production of aluminium. The plan failed as one of the agents, an ex-waiter, figured out he could keep the whole flush-fund if he betrayed his comrades to the FBI... After the war the Allies found a dossier of some 250 individual reports in the German Admiralty archives, all dealing with the time and place of the Allied invasion. --Of these only one, from a French colonel in Algiers, was correct. But this had been filed away unheeded with the dross. The majority opinion gave July 1944 as the month and the Pas de Calais as the place."
-- Espionage Campaign Against the Allies by Charles Whiting
Will the future wars be about water? Some households spend up to 30% of their income on water
-- Almost half of the Kabul--s boreholes (the primary source of drinking water) have dried out. If trends continue, all of Kabul--s aquifers will run dry as early as 2030, an existential threat to the 7 million inhabitants.
Overused rivers leave little or nothing for downstream nations, creating critical challenges for agriculture and livelihoods. For example, extensive water usage by China and Laos on the Mekong River jeopardizes Vietnam's vital rice-growing regions. Similarly, the Colorado River is so heavily tapped that it no longer consistently reaches the sea, devastating Mexico's delta and farming communities. India's hydroelectric projects along the Indus River are crippling agriculture in Pakistan. In the Middle East, Turkey's extensive irrigation systems significantly deplete the Tigris-Euphrates Rivers, causing severe water shortages in downstream countries like Syria and Iraq. Furthermore, as Ethiopia and Sudan increase their use of the Nile River, less water reaches Egypt, a nation heavily reliant on its flow.
These aren't theoretical concerns; water scarcity is already leading to deadly conflicts. In April 2021 and again in 2022, border clashes erupted in the Batken region between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over access to the Golovnoy water intake facility on the Isfara River. These confrontations tragically resulted in over 55 deaths and hundreds injured, with both sides resorting to mortars and heavy weapons. More recently, in May 2023, Iranian and Taliban border guards exchanged fire at a disputed canal point along the Helmand River. This conflict, triggered by reduced water flow from Afghan dams, left at least three Iranian soldiers and two Afghans dead, highlighting the severe human cost of water disputes.
Tinian version 1.4.0.3 on the way. Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith considered Tinian "the perfect amphibious operation in the Pacific war."
A reminder to all who are new here: there exists a free, turn-limited version of almost all the games available if you know how to sideload an app. No ads, no tracking, just a turn-limit, usually at 20. Try any game as long as you like. See "local APK" download link on the main page.
Tarawa v2.4 rolling out...
If you wish to feel old, try explaining the concept of "WIRED headphones" to a member of the latest generation. "It goes INTO the phone?" I think it's safe to say the very latest tech kids have grown almost solely around wireless charging and wireless headphones, and the ancient Sumerian-era concept of "wire" greatly mystifies them. Also, what happens when these new incoming generations are supposed to take care of the basic infastructure?
Article: D-Day soldier who helped capture Pegasus Bridge passes at 102
-- Trooper Roy Cadman was a member of 1st Special Service Brigade which landed at Sword Beach at Normandy on June 6 1944 and helped capture Pegasus Bridge. Trooper Cadman, of 3 Commando, 1st Special Service Brigade, later recalled: --The beach was a mass of flame and smoke, and I thought nobody could survive that. We went ashore with green berets. We battled our way through three or four big concrete bunkers with slits in it and guns sticking out. Our objective was to meet the 6th Airborne Division who captured Pegasus Bridge. We were in such a state that we couldn--t go any further -- we had not got enough men. The commandos regrouped and made the eight-mile journey to Pegasus Bridge before sealing the perimeter.
Battle of Leyte Island rushes to version 4.0 after somebody spotted that, ahem, minefields don't really work. Obviously, that also includes a major Hall of Fame clearance. .
Book excerpt:
"The only questions that the Japanese had in 1944 was where and when would the Americans attack. They knew that the Philippines would be attacked, but which island and when? While garrison forces were established on all major Philippine Islands, an attempt was made to retain a mobile reserve which could be rushed to the point of the most danger once the Americans showed their intentions. General Kuroda was left with the choice of where to station his reserves and how to plan for an effective defense. His tenure was short-lived, however. Early in October 1944, General Kuroda had accepted the reality of facts in evidence that his superiors chose to ignore. He advised the chief of army intelligence in the Imperial General HQ that it would be better for Japan to negotiate a peace now than await the destruction of the nation at the hands of the victorious Allies. He advised a concentration of all available ground forces on Luzon, mentioning in his reasoning that the Americans, with their superiority in air and naval power, could take the Philippines whenever they chose. He detailed the superiority of American air power and remarked that the building of airfields on Leyte was of no benefit to the Japanese since they could not staff or equip those fields. He concluded that in effect, they had been built for the American's to use. Quickly labeled a --defeatist-- he was removed from his command."
-- Leyte 1944, The Soldiers' Battle by Nathan N Prefer
How German tank commander evaded FBI for 40 years by building new life as all-American ski instructor after escaping PoW camp at end of WWII
-- Having been sent to fight with Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in North Africa, Georg Gaertner was captured by British troops in Tunis in 1943. By September 1945, after WW2 had come to an end, Gaertner had decided that he did not want to grapple with the possible fate that awaited him back home as his hometown Swidnica was now controlled by the Soviet regime. Gaertner slipped under the fence of Camp Deming and boarded a freight train to California. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing...
Invasion of Japan version 4.0 out! Faster pace of replacements and resources, plus plenty of other tweaks plus a proper refresh of the REAL-icon-set, few icons are entirely new.
Well, Defending Spanish Republic has unfortunately entered the spiral of "fix one thing and another one pops up". We are already at at the version 1406. I had to re-reset few MP-cost-counters.
Article: Major evacuation in Cologne after WWII bombs discovered
- The biggest evacuation (20,000 people) in Cologne since WWII is under way after the discovery of 3 unexploded bombs (two of 20 tons and one of 10 tons) dropped by allied forces. Three bridges over the Rhine have been closed and rail traffic has been halted or diverted.
Operation Spring Awakening is reaching towards version 2.6. The handful of the best scores are ridiculous; I'm saying this after my own risky attempt saw those risks realized at full.
Site: Old Maps Online
-- Choose an area and use slide-timer to see how borders have changed over time
Saipan: fix on its way (v3602).
Podcast episode: British Tanks of the Red Army : WW2 Podcast
-- While most British tanks did not fare well in Soviet conditions, the Red Army appreciated Valentine tanks that were shipped over in thousands, so that it actually made a two-digit percentage of all the tanks at one time. Sadly, since no country wants to remember their losses or draws, this huge contribution during the early critical years has not gained a foothold in the headlines, and most glory goes to domestic T34.
Okay, I'll admit it. After a week of watching photorealistic videos of newscasters, standup-comedians and re-imagined film trailers made via a simple text prompt by a kid who knows nothing about videos and audio, I'm enjoying online videos less. Instead of relaxing, my mind is working overtime trying to figure out if this is real or not. It's basically a standard joke now that video content creators make AI versions of themselves talking about AI, and most viewers can't tell the difference as the footage flips between the real and the AI creator.
And flagging AI-videos as "AI" will only make it worse, since only law-abiding entities will comply, and for example, a state wanting to push propaganda will obviously not tag their videos. Therefore, people relying on AI-tags, instead of learning to identify fake footage themselves, will be fooled more.
Dreadfully, I have already watched many people working in the audiovisual field talking about their very recent firing. The inescapable reality is that, if you're running an ad agency, will you risk $200,000 to shoot a single ad with real, finicky, injury-prone humans when the end result might not even be satisfactory? Or do you spend $200 to have AI generate 100 ads of the same quality and then choose the best one out of those? Since most are struggling financially, the AI videos will take over. Can you recall a time in history when a 1000X cheaper product of similar quality lost to the more expensive one?
Comically, even online creators raging against AI-generated videos are regularly caught liking AI-generated videos because even pros in the field can't tell the difference half of the time. Tip: At this early stage, the skin is still too flawlessly smooth, and the background might be too much/little out of focus vs main object. And this is only the crude, first widespread version.
On the plus side, if you have ever dreamed of making a film, you pretty much now can, with only a few hundred dollars, get both film-studio quality audio and video with only text prompts. And we are not too far from the point where one can just ask AI to generate more episodes on the fly. "Okay, AI, make me 10 more episodes of Friends, but include fewer jokes about Monica cleaning stuff and more Ross overreacting and Chandler making jokes."
Remember when we had 2 TV channels, and pretty much every human being saw the same thing? We had shared experiences we could talk about. Okay, admittably we had a horribly one-sided view of everything, but arguably that felt safe and comforting, since that one-sided presentation kind of made sense. Having shared experiences is getting more rare by the month. Even when watching a sporting event, you can now choose different camera angles, etc.
Our mindset should recalibrate into approaching Internet (videos) as we would approach a magician doing a street show. The magician will pull a pink elephant out of our ears, but we don't take that as the reality on which we build our worldview. But how do we deal with the inevitable apathy when nothing can be trusted or everything requires an excessive amount of work to verify? It's the classic issue: a lie takes a second, but properly disproving it with sources consumes days of intense work. Many athletes doing amazing feats after years of disciplined training are already getting brutally attacked in comments because people don't believe what they are seeing is real. There is one tall woman sharing people's reactions as she walks through malls: now her comments are just people screaming; it's all AI. Anything deviating from the norm will be doubted relentlessly. Did you buy a shirt that looks perfect on you? It must be AI! Trust will be in short supply.
And let's zoom out ten more steps to look at the ultimate level: What is the point of improving yourself and your skills as a human if the AI will be 100,000X better in seconds? What's the endgame.
PDF: WWII shipwrecks and submarine attacks in New South Wales waters 1940-1944
-- Wartime secrecy meant that the public knew little of the impact on merchant vessels by enemy submarines during WWII. But Japanese submarines, even a German U-boat and to a lesser extent minelayers, had significant successes operating along the east coast of Australia. Here is a detailed list of 19 merchant ships were sunk by torpedoes, gunfire or mines off the NSW coast during 1941-1944.
Random rumination: Is there any practical way to include and showcase the massive effect of code-breaking into the game play? Is it such an underappreciated part of the WWII, that sometimes I want to include it in its full effect just to drive home the point. And if you don't believe the importance of code breaking, here is a handy test: Challenge your friend to a chess match, but always loudly explain all your plans to your friend before each move. How can you win under such conditions? Unless your friend is a deep friend potato, he will win.
The mind of an AI player: One of the conundrums I have wrestled with for two decades is how to balance tactical and strategic priorities when AI makes decisions. If an AI unit, on the way to massive attack, doesn't take the empty city nearby, the AI will look dumber than a doorknob. However, if most AI units on the way to attack get distracted with small local tactical tasks, that massive attack takes place with one or two units. In that case the AI feels like a harmless kid running after every shiny thing it sees. For a smart person, crunching all those countless aspects to make a smart decision is almost effortless. But trying to give a sensible numerical value to everything in a way that reflects the current tactical and strategic situation is a fool's errand. The number of variations is infinite. And worse yet, you can't really use any fixed weighted values, since that would eventually make the AI predictable. And if that priority system is already such a complex formula that your head hurts from understanding what happens and why, adding "varying variation" into it will make later analysis such a Herculean effort.
Let's take a quick case study of how humans make decisions: Your unit could take an empty AI-held city, but nearby your unit is about to be encircled. You factor in the importance of the city, is the city threatened, are you likely to be able to hold it later, do you have resources to fortify the taken city? How much will this slow down the unit taking it, etc. And on the other side of the equation: how likely is the other unit cut off, can other units nearby help it, is it a key unit, can air force supply in if it get cut off, maybe that unit can afford to be cut off for one turn, etc. Each of these factors in turn requires thinking about a handful of other factors. Once you start to break down human decision-making, you realize how tricky modeling it even a little bit is. As a human you instantly merge info from dozens of hexagons and factor in dozeons of units in 2D map where time is the 3rd dimension. This is why so AI is useless in most games. If the AI unit super simply and mindlessly always goes towards the closest city there really isn't much challenge in that game. And even the seemingly obvious decisions can get fuzzy quickly in real life. Let's say you can move a unit south to cut off an AI unit. Okay, on the theoretical surface level, that move should always be done, because trying to help a cut-off unit is such a disruption. But what if that means weakening your line defending supply city while the AI will most likely push your unit away with tank units flooding towards that hexagon? Is it still an obvious move to make? How do you put that scenario in numbers, formulas, and math in multiple dimensions of map and time?
It's tragi-comic, but once the number of AI-player tasks per unit grows too high, the best and most practical answer to this AI-priority-challenge actually is... adding more AI units. If the AI unit marching to the mass attack can tag an adjacent unit to take the empty city a turn ot two later, the problem is for the most part solved. This 'too many tasks' issue is why games with fragmented control of the map, like Spanish Civil War games, are such a perplexing undertaking for the AI. There might be tactical tasks both in the north and south of the unit, plus the front line cohesion should be held, and there are strategic things to group towards in the East. In the worst case, there are 20 tasks pulling the AI in every direction, and sometimes the AI unit moves south and sees a never-before-seen player's unit. This new information tilts the priorities of those 20 tasks in different order. Oh no, now the AI unit moves back, which looks like a silly waste of move points. But, after a certain level of improvements, the processing required and the data needed to be kept in memory to make the AI smarter are now no longer worth the cost. This also partially explains why pushing a risky spearhead deep into the AI front line works better than what you might expect. As the number of front-line hexagons and enemy units near the AI unit in different directions increases, the number of tasks fighting for the top priority in the AI's logic goes up drastically. And this in turn increases the chance that the best move might get narrowly beaten-in-priority in the middle of the sea of various tactical, operational, and strategic moves the AI ponders. This also explains why the last 10% of the campaign might not be an epic final battle: Supply is out, AI is crushed under too many tactical tasks. Taking a wider view: Maybe the big epic final battles died with modern warfare that require supply and logistics. In WW2, Japan and Germany did not rise to the one last epic battle, but simply whithered away, running out of fuel and ammo.
Defending Spanish Republic version 1.4 marching out... Let's see if this take finally restores the balance for everyone. Also trying to get a singular fix out for the Union.
Science: Aging with board games: fostering well-being in the older population
-- This study investigated the role of board games as a viable tool to promote the well-being of older people and, consequently, to promote positive aging... The results showed that the level of well-being experienced while playing was significantly higher than that observed in daily life, F(1,131)=14.604, p=0.000, particularly with board games with a low or medium level of difficulty, F(2,126)=10.982, p=0.001... The results are particularly important because board games can be a low-cost intervention to promote the well-being of older people. They can be easily adopted by social community centers, and playing board games can become a routine practice.
Site: Oculi Mundi is the online home of The Sunderland Collection of world maps, celestial maps, atlases, and globes
-- Various maps basically from 1470s and onwards
I remember when in the early days of Facebook you could post to your group of 10,000 people, and 10,000 people saw that post. Then it fell to 1,000 seeing the post, and Facebook once asked money to 'boost' the post. Then only 100 out of 10,000 saw a new post, and there were several popups about paying Facebook so they might graciously show your post to the group of people who wanted to see that post. Now, if you're lucky, 10 people out of 10,000 will see a new post, and for one week I'll be beaten to exhaustion with Facebook's gangster extortion to 'pay for any visibility whatsoever'. By now, almost all platforms and search engines work the exact reverse way to their early days. Imagine if the weight of the average food portion went down 1000X, or the price of a new car went up 1000X. Why do we tolerate certain things worsening 1000X when we would riot if other companies did that to their products? Remember how magical the Internet was when Google hired 10,000 engineers who found and highlighted the best content there was? Then somebody at Google realized that "wait a second, if those 10,000 engineers prevent anyone from ever finding anything, the content creators have to pay to us to be discovered." I'm sure kids who have known nothing else than this model find this normal. But, let me tell you, if you experienced the time when social media and search engines showed you content, it has been a painful downfall to live through. If I had one extra lifetime, I would do a search engine or social platform my way, not ruthlessly optimizing it to make money. How about we optimize it for discovery and happiness, and make enough money to keep the thing going? I have an odd respect for Craigslist because it has not changed much over decades: it's still hyper simple, with very few ads and data collection. Almost every other giant of the web has fallen to the greed.
Russian GPS interference is so exceptionally heavy that Finnish ocean-research ship Aranda struggles to carry out meaningfully accurate work on Gulf of Finland. Somebody might ask when low-intensity warfare against a NATO member is too much...
Experience report by XXXXVIII Panzer corps about its deployment on eastern front late-1943/early-1944
"Infantry divisions in the present form are no longer up to date. The assignment of an assault gun battalion can fundamentally remedy this... Blocking units. The German side could for the most part only throw alarm units against Russian tank formations that rapidly penetrated in depth. Their combat value was low. ATG regiments seem necessary... In its present organization, the artillery is very difficult to move (apparatus of staffs and supply units, which is constructed around the few barrels is too extensive and complicated.) To achieve a mass effect and a destructive effect at the decisive point, an increase of mortars and rocket launchers at the expense of the barrel artillery is necessary. The Russian has moved in this direction for more than a year."
-- The German Army on the Eastern Front: An Inner View of the Ostheer's Experiences of War
At first glance I thought this was a fake photo, but its' just colossal semi-transparent German WW1 biplane Linke-Hofmann RI
Marcel Ophuls, Oscar-winning filmmaker who forced France to face its WWII past, passes away at 97
-- His landmark 1969 documentary "The Sorrow and the Pity" shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the occupiers during WWII. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French TV for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it "destroyed the myths the French still need." The film's devastating message: France--s wartime story was not one of widespread resistance, but of ordinary compromise - driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity.
Version 1.4 rolling out for Panzers to Baku.
"The oil question was becoming crucial for both Germany and the USSR. To emphasize his intention, at a meeting of Heeresgruppe S--d--s senior officers at Poltava on 1 June 1942, German leader stated that --If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must end this war.-- Nearly two weeks later, General Halder reported that based on a land forces quartermaster--s assessment, fuel for the upcoming summer offensive was only expected to last until mid-September... Brandenburgers were tasked with infiltrating enemy lines to Maikop, where they were to ease the way for the anticipated arrival of 13th Panzer Division, as well as securing the area--s oil assets until conventional forces arrived. After dark a 62-man fake-NKVD contingent marched through friendly lines around Novoalexandrovsk and into the Soviet territory... As Brandenburgers approached the Armavir--Tuapse Railway, which comprised several parallel tracks at the city--s main train station, they were stopped by actual NKVD personnel attempting to regulate military vehicles through the overwhelming chaos. When asked who he was, the Brandenburger commander responded that he was a --Major Truchin-- from 124th NKVD Rifle Brigade on special assignment. The checkpoint commander moved them through."
-- Behind Soviet Lines, Brandenburgers Capture the Maikop Oilfields 1942
Spanish Civil War version 3.4 marching out. This should finally settle the overactive AI generals issue that has been bugging this particular campaign so badly (due to the fragmented initial setup putting so many generals near the front line).
"On June 8 1944 General Spaatz issued an order that remained in force until the war ended - the primary aim of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces would be to deny oil to Germany. Following that order, Ploesti and other oil refineries were the major targets.--How could the Germans take such punishment? How could they defend their country?-- Where did they get the fighters? The pilots? The antiaircraft guns? These questions were difficult for the AAF to answer, since the feeling had been that just one more blow - or two, or three - would do it and the Germans would pack it up.-- Nothing like that happened. The Germans made vast efforts to disperse their aircraft factories and at the end of 1943 were producing twice the number of fighters estimated by the Allies. At that stage of the war, German fighter pilots were among the best in the world. German technical knowledge and skill were equally outstanding. They were bringing a rocket-propelled fighter, the ME 163, and a jet-propelled fighter, the ME 262, on line. Despite many attacks on aircraft-producing factories, the Germans built 2,177 single-engine fighters in June 1944 (compared to 1,016 in February 1943) and more than 3,000 in September. The jet aircraft were the most serious threat and the Fifteenth went after the jet factories in Friederichshafen in a series of July raids. A postwar assessment determined that these missions destroyed 950 jet aircraft, fewer than the estimates at the time but still an impressive result. The raids on ball bearing plants had caused much physical damage but had hardly interrupted the flow of ball bearings to the factories where they were needed.--In July 1944, the Fifteenth lost 318 heavy bombers in its many missions against refineries scattered across southern Europe. It was the worst month of the war for the Fifteenth."
-- The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys who Flew the B-24s over Germany
I come bearing both good and bad news. After days of diving deeper and deeper into how the AI figures out things with its fuzzy logic, I ultimately located the logic error that made some Partizan, etc units oddly passive at times. Bad news: Partizan and Polish Home-Army units will now be more active. You can see the first fixed logic working in the Fall of the German Army Group Center as the version 2603 rolls out. It's maddening to hyper-focus on one issue that long and relentlessly; I need an episode of a lighthearted and empty-headed TV show to unwind.
Axis Crimean Campaign is inching towards version 2.6 and there is a minor update to Japan-in-WW2 with version 1.1.0.7 (never-ending balancing of elements and fixing the Australian graphic issue).
Article: Royal Navy launches first 12-meter uncrewed submarine
-- The 19-tonne sub is categorized as an Extra-Large Uncrewed Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV). Name Excalibur, it will operate under the newly formed Fleet Experimentation Squadron, which falls within the Royal Navy--s Disruptive Capabilities and Technologies Office.
"Records from Japan--s Ministry of Foreign Affairs verify that Japanese officials contacted non-Japanese journalists as early as December 1932... Following Japan--s military invasion of China in the summer of 1937, Japan had faced harsh international criticism. The Japanese government sought to discredit what it considered exaggerated accounts foreign missionaries provided to the outside world. One American in particular, journalist Frederick Vincent Williams, worked for Japan by producing in 1938 a book called Behind the News in China, suggesting that the behavior of the Japanese military was beyond reproach and that Japan had no role in the instigation of any problems in China... Tourism plans in 1930s Japan surpassed the wildest dreams of even its staunchest supporters. Japanese travel brochures touted Xinjing, the new capital of Manchukuo, as a planned utopian city of the future to demonstrate to the world the modernity Japan was bringing to Asia... When news of Tokyo as the future site for the 1940 Olympics was broadcast, Japan went into a delirium. However, the 1940 Olympics never took place. Japan cancelled its Olympic plans in the middle of 1938 amidst worries over steel production and whether the government would be able to requisition from tightfisted military leaders the necessary funds."
-- The thought war: Japanese imperial propaganda
Last resident of WWII 'ghost village' that was cleared for D-Day troops passes away at 100
-- The 'village that died for England' was evacuated in 1943 so soldiers could practice house-to-house combat manoeuvres ahead of D-Day. Peter Wellman, the last surviving former resident, made a final visit last year to see the abandoned coastal village of Tyneham in Dorset where he was born and brought up. Although MoD promised citizens could return after the war, they were never allowed back.
Updated Demyansk Pocket 1942 to version 6.6. That took ridiculously long, since there are so many exceptions to normal rule sets. Also, every time I type the word 'Demyansk' anywhere, all the spell checkers kick in and start to scream that 'this here is a super obvious error'.
HOF (Hall of Fame): Trying to make the visual appearance of the HOF pages both more dense, so the lines don't go 'over' with long names, but also add a dash of color. And, since there are two entirely different ways to handle the style of HTML pages, you either have to support the old or the new standard. I try to support both to make sure everything is covered, but the challenge with running both standards is that even the tiniest mistake with the placing of 'empty space' can break some obscure parsers, resulting in colors being off. So, if you still are seeing white-text on white-background, drop me an email. The current code should, in theory, work on pretty much every possible combo, but there is that nasty thing called 'reality' that always seems to find some device that interprets standards a bit uniquely.
Dieppe version 2 is making its way through the app store processes. I'm testing writing some hollow freehand text to the update-text field on the Play Store to see if that would reduce the chance of getting stuck in eternal review. My theory being that if Google's ultra-simplistic AI sees logical text (=could be AI) or text that repeats elsewhere, it flags the update, so maybe that can be avoided by being non-strict, non-logical, and non-useful in the what's new field. I used to regularly post to various social media pages, and since I was REGULAR in my actions, I nonstop got flagged for being an automated/AI poster. It tells so much about how dysfunctional modern times are. If I want to submit a simple post online, I have to think hard about how to appear as a chaotic humanlike poster instead of a disciplined, engineer-minded person. That has over time effectively killed my desire to post anything anywhere: I just want to merrily and in a carefree manner post something for the joy of it, not do a 60-minute analysis of current policy/censorship/posting-schedule trends. Also, if you do not follow big tech, many big firms have now given an order that a new human person can ONLY be hired if the manager can prove that that particular job cannot be done by an AI. UPDATE: the new version went through the Play Store security in seconds, either it's a random coincidence, or Google's 'improved security check' truly relies on infant-level-thinking and all text appearing like a drunked random chaotic human wrote it.
Video: Sinking of HMS Glorious: German Film Reel 1940
-- Original film reel showing the sinking of the HMS Glorious aircraft carrier by German battleships.
Let me tell you about the most devastating historical letdown I--ve ever encountered: the Knights Templar--s unshakable obsession with the stuff that gave them their power. Some years ago, I had the privilege to read translated documents about one of the biggest Nights Templar bases and how they operated. After lifetime exposure to the lore of their wealth, secrets, relics, and military prowess, I was not ready for what 85% of their inner writings were actually discussing about. Obviously they needed to be in top fighting shape and mental state, so they required nutritious food, which meant manure. Document after document, week after week: Where to get manure, which was the best kind, etc. To be the shining example to the whole neighboring area on how to flourish, everyone needed to be healthy and strong, meaning reliable, solid food to give energy to build things and guard routes. This could only be provided if Templars had a steady flow of fertilizer. To strike the fear to the heart of rulers, Templars needed, you know, a chain of stuff that all ultimately relied on getting that mulch. The glamour went from 100 to zero. Imagine these legendary warrior-monks, sworn to secrecy and clad in iconic white mantles, spending their days debating cow vs horse dung like medieval agricultural influencers. And yes, seriously speaking, it makes sense. In medieval times, it was hard to rely on others delivering food to you during tough times. So the more critical and fought-over the location, the more fractured the environment was, the more the focus went to securing your own crops in limited spaces, meaning you were inevitably preoccupied with manure or you were dead. To this day, every single time a documentary breathlessly announces, --We are about to dig up a secret Templar vault!-- I can't help but to think, --Forget gold: test that soil for 700-year-old fertilizer potency'!--
Japan-in-WW2 assign-resource-freeze might happen when trying to assign a resource to a stack of units. Version 1.1.0.6 rolling out, fixing this.
When RAF dropped 200,000 incendiary devices and cheap pistols to Germany
-- On September 25, 1944, a squadron of Lancaster bombers dropped 200,000 packages containing small incendiary devices and American-made single-shot Liberator pistols above Frankrut. It was hoped that the weapons would land behind the barbed wire fences of various camps and cause a wave of mass sabotage.
Okay, Japan-in-WW2 is starting to push against the limits it can safely run on, so version 1.1.0.5 will try to keep less data in memory and 'trim the fat' so to speak.
Argh, a couple of the campaigns have a bug that activates AI units too early.
Updated FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Added a list of settings to tweak to make moving the units easier and thereby help to pass the turns in a quicker manner.
"During WW2, the US Army resisted most efforts to place a heavy tank into operation. The difficult encounters with the heavy King Tiger and Panther medium tanks in Europe changed some of this policy, but the Army Ground Forces tended to oppose any tank approaching the 50--70 ton range. The Ordnance Department, however, saw a need for a special assault tank capable of dealing with fortifications. In September 1943, concept and design work began on a vehicle designed to deal with the expected works of the West Wall and other conceivable German strongholds. Early concepts called for use of the new T5E1 105mm cannon that performed very well against armor and reinforced concrete. With frontal armor 203mm thick, the resulting vehicle would require the electric drive installed in the T1E1 heavy tank and T23 medium tank... In March 1944, the design was approved for five pilot vehicles of the special assault tank, designated heavy tank T28. Among many departures from conventional designs, this tank was designed without a turret in order to lower the height of an otherwise huge vehicle. In order to reduce the ground pressure, a second set of tracks was provided... Then the chief of research and development of the Ordnance Department, advised the head of the department that the --startling performance of the new tungsten-carbide ammunition-- now in use by the German Army left the T28 too vulnerable. He recommended increasing the frontal armor to 305mm."
-- Super-Heavy Tanks of World War II
Lucky me, I seem to have developed a new typo: Whenever I'm typing at a high speed, there is a danger of 'London' turning into 'Longon'.
Well, a few millennia have passed by, and most updates are still stuck in the eternal Play Store review. So I guess I'll need to stop posting "version X is rolling out" stuff or post them with time delay. In the worse case, those messages are only creating confusion when players don't see the announced updates. Sadly, there is now less point in quickly reacting to any issues in the games, since nothing can be updated within a reasonable/relieable/knowable time frame. Plus, it's taking mental gymnastics to realize that "ah, this feedback email is about the new latest version on the Amazon App Store and this another comment is about the old old old version at the Play Store, and that issue was already fixed a few versions ago".
It feels like that every day, a new Google product or service takes a step closer to being outright useless. After weeks of missing Gmail notifications, I was forced to install another email app simply to get notifications working. It's Google's own app on Google's own Operating System, for crying out loud. Basics should work! I do not care if the fancy AI garbled replies work, but I truly need the fundamentals to work without fail; otherwise, there is zero point to even using that product. Google's market cap is almost 2,000,000,000,000.00. One might think they could afford to hire one guy to work on fundamentals instead of all focus going to new exiting, exploding, market-disrupting innovative speculative vaporware.
Oh, and why did installing the new email app feel like walking through a minefield? After typing the precise name of the app I wanted to install into the search field of the Play Store, I got a ton of ads and misleading images. I guess those screen-filling images also directed to the apps mentioned in the ads. After scrolling down and managing to tap the tiny, narrow space allocated to the actual real true search result showing the only app that matches the searched name, I got greeted with... pointless data safety info. Please show me something useful like the version number, last update, feature list, and how long the developer account has been active, or user reviews. Data safety info is a joke. Let me demonstrate, since I have to fill out billions of those bureaucratic forms. Since I do not collect device-released user-account data at all, should I answer that "I sell user-account data to third parties" or that "user-account data is only sent to my servers"? Either of those has anything to do with what happens in my apps, but I'm only given the bureaucratic, pre-made, poorly thought out options to choose from.
Well, what a screeching day. Every single app update, big or tiny fix, is firmly stuck in an eternal yet pointless Play Store review. I dropped my favorite coffee mug on the floor, and it shattered into tiny pieces. I missed several critical emails, and so I had to install a SECOND email app on my phone to simply get notifications of new emails. Gmail never shows notifications, and some of its notification-related settings crash if I try to alter them. And yes, trust me, I have flipped on the 9889 layers of settings that could be blocking notifications. And to add to the misery. I tried to send a package to a friend to cheer him up but decided not to send the book after realizing that postage fees would be more than there is currently money on this planet. The prices don't make any sense to me anymore. I think it's much cheaper if I study to become an aircraft engineer, build a plane, and fly the book over to its destination. I can't wait for this day to be done and dusted. Oh, I'll just need to find a way to unwind enough to be able to get into sleep.
The major elements left out of the Japan-in-WW2 game:
-- US bombing raids: excluded for balance reasons.
-- Japanese submarines: too many units to move/process already.
-- Atomic bombs: few players like sudden game enders, plus it's a sensitive topic.
One might sum most of that up as 'too many dimensions'... Basically, the underlying 2D game engine would need to be properly morphed into a 3D one to allow aerial and submerged units to exist in their own dimension without causing mayhem. Just imagine a busy channel between islands filled with surface units, submarines, and planes.
I might have to find a super-tiny scenario to one day try running the game-play in air/ground/surfare-water/under-water levels.
Article: How America--s Mexico Campaigns Shaped the Civil War--s Top Generals
-- On April APRIL 9, 1865 Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee met at Appomattox to formalize the end of the bloodiest war in American history. After a few seconds of awkward silence Grant spoke first, reminding Lee that they had met 18 years earlier in Mexico. It was during General Winfield Scott--s 1847 Mexico City Campaign... In 1848, the young army officers believed that they had just been through the great epic event of their lives; none could imagine that it was just a prelude to something much bigger and far bloodier that would overshadow the two-year conflict below the Rio Grande.
Japan-in-WW2 version 1.1 rolling out, assuming it does not once again get stuck in the Play Store review. I'm starting to think it's some foolish AI that sees the word 'dive bomber' and goes haywire. At this stage, I'm just so mentally tired of coming up with'safe' words to replace anything history- or military-related. I guess we could call them something like 'sea planes', which would also differentiate from land-based ground attack planes.
Main Change Log:
-- AI-controlled cities left uncaptured may now experience local insurgencies
-- MP markers now include a white or black dot for easier visibility (Options: Off, Default Transparency, Max)
-- AI battleships may now conduct bombardments against land targets
-- Japanese main units parked within 2--3 hexes of U.S. cities on the east side of the map will increase tensions
-- Ground attack planes are now less effective against warships and may suffer extra MP loss (especially when overused)
-- Uprisings are now more likely (previous strict rules made them rare)
-- Unit Size toggle [U] now cycles through a 'hide all units' mode
-- Tension levels escalate faster during the 1940s
-- Warships at full HP will begin to refuel automatically when idle in a friendly harbor
-- Option added to hide oilfield/mine/industry capture images
-- Ground units can no longer rest while on harbor hexagons
-- Bases can now refuel from a truck located on the same hex (via 'Take Fuel' button)
-- When a Dive Bomber unit moves to a hex with both carriers and bases, total aircraft capacity is now correctly calculated
-- AI: Expanding and varying the target selection for AI landing fleets. Trying to choreograph the edge-warship-pile-up with more robust refuel/task/repair priorities
-- Fix: Piling up over 16 units per hexagon caused graphics issues
-- Crash fix: Cost counter overflow when too many units of one type are in play
If you guys had ANY idea how much energy and time it takes to change anything in a system this complex. Just doing the above took me 8 hours of high-intensity concentration and thinking, and it's all taken from my Sunday. And I left a couple of the bigger things for the future major updates. Plus there is the fairly hard to avoid fear of screwing up the whole pandemonium.
Guam slides to version 2.6.
As evening of 20 July closed in, Admiral Conolly and those around him who were responsible for the invasion of Guam looked forward with high optimism to the success of their enterprise. Reports indicated that "all known major defensive installations in position to interfere with the transports approach and the landing have been destroyed and the assault beaches cleared of obstructions and searched for mines with negative results."
Ashore, the Japanese command was not to be outmatched, at least in outward show of confidence. To the men of the 48th Independent Mixed Brigade, General Shigematsu announced encouragingly: "The enemy, overconfident because of his successful landing on Saipan, is planning a reckless and insufficiently prepared landing on Guam. We have an excellent opportunity to annihilate him upon the beaches. We are dedicated to the task of destroying this enemy, and are confident that we shall comply with the Imperial wish."
-- Campaign In the Marianas: U.S. Army Center of Military History
Panzers to Leningrad version 3.6 is rolli ng out with all the latest doohickeys.
Remember that time when the Union army marched to New York to fight... the draft rioters?
Thanks to its status as America's business capital, New York City stood deeply divided at the start of the Civil War. The passage of the nation--s first military draft act, in March 1863, only worsened the situation. Not only did it allow the wealthy to buy their way out of military service but it also exempted African Americans from the draft. As the initial lists of the conscripted began to spread, a large-scale armed protest movement got underway. After a night of heavy rain, rioters returned to the streets early on Tuesday, July 14, looting and destroying businesses in the downtown area. Among the dead was Col. Henry O--Brien, the commander of a local regiment. The mob also began constructing barricades around the city. As the violence continued to spread, the city--s mayor formally asked the War Department to send federal troops. By the fourth day of the uproar, more than 4,000 federal troops, including battle-hardened veterans fresh from the horrors of Gettysburg, had arrived in the city to face off against rioters. Estimates vary greatly as to the number of people killed in the Draft Riots. Local reports initially cited 1200 perished, but modern historians believe (only) up to 120 people lost their lives.
the main source for the above
Somebody asked why the way the storms are drawn has changed twice in a year. So, one day I realized that there exists a fairly good 'rain' symbol in one of the Unicode sets. No need to carry around an image file; just use that pre-set symbol. Since that particular Unicode set has been around for well over a decade and it was not an edge-case character set, I foolishly thought that every single manufacturer would be implementing it by now. Halfway through rolling it out, it turned out to have two problems. One, some manufacturers did not support it, and the result was that some type of messy placeholder symbol was used instead. Second, I found out that one of my many code editors did not support that character set either, and when I rarely opened up the code in that one editor, it turned that great rain symbol into an incoherent mumble. And that's why, in the middle of rolling that first way to draw the storms, I was forced to flip into a simpler, second system. One of the issues of any complicated way to indicate 'rain' is that it can cover too much of the underlying information/units/etc., especially if other big changes happen to the map (like winter in some scenarios). In some cases, there simply are too many layers of information to show. Terrain, rivers, units, roads, markers on units, weather, etc can pile up on top of each other. And on a budget phone, when zoomed out, it's just outright impossible to show dozens of different things with few available pixels.
Article: 598-coin cache hidden in the 1940s found in Czech Republic
-- Hikers came across the 15.4lb (7kg) hoard worth over --250,000 after taking a short cut on the wooded slopes of the Czech Republic's northeastern Podkrkonos-- Mountains. The metal box contained a total of sixteen snuff boxes, ten bracelets, gold coins...
CRETE now at version 5.0. After 9 years of putting patch after patch over the chaos created by dozens of parachute units randomly ending up over each other, I finally bit the bullet. I rewrote all the code handling the unit scattering during initial/early major landings. It's so much clearer now: let me tell you, looking at your own code from a decade ago is not always pleasant. On top of the that, I added two weak British light tank units to give the scenario some variety, plus introduced random impassable cliffs (the same system used in Bougainville). With the REAL unit icon set rebuilt from originals, it feels like a different game now. I was also a bit sad to find that on some devices there was a ghost text drawn on the screen. Geez, had somebody told me, I would have fixed that months ago.
Video: What Happened to All the Flak Fired During WWII?
-- In some edge cases, the falling debris from Flak-fire and unexploded shells caused more damage than the bombing raid itself.
Article: Black female WWII unit, 'Six Triple Eight,' to receive U.S. congressional honor
-- The only Black, all-female unit to serve in Europe during World War II, commonly known as the "Six Triple Eight," will be presented with the Congressional Gold Medal
The Third Battle of Kharkov marching towards the version 3.6
The greatest naval battle in history
"The American combined chiefs-of-staff had long before agreed the policy for defeating the Japanese at sea and recovering all the many islands they had occupied... The first move was a thrust from the Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal north to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. The island of Tarawa proved the hardest nut to crack, but thanks to the control of the air by the Americans, Tarawa was captured by the courageous Marines...
The Marianas were a different matter. The Japanese High Command was now alarmed and gathered together the remnants of its Navy into one giant task force. The supreme commander was Admiral Soemu Toyoda. The Japanese had managed to scrape together no fewer than 9 carriers. In all they could launch 500 planes...
The Battle for the Philippines was the greatest naval battle in history, judged in terms of the number of ships taking part, the number of ships sunk, and the importance of its outcome. It included every form of naval warfare of the twentieth century: gunnery duels between battleships; destroyer battles at night and by day, as ferocious and sustained as any at the Battle of Jutland; submarines that stalked the depths, sinking many ships; and, finally, carrier warfare on a scale never dreamed of even by the most ardent enthusiasts of air warfare at sea."
-- Naval Battles of the Twentieth Century
I have been traveling near the Russia-Finland border, and it's horrifying how a couple of times my GPS has been 1 km off for hours. After some small Finnish airports near the border unsuccessfully tried new fancy ways to block the 'mysterious' GPS disruption, they have now been installing the old-style radio navigation equipment to facilitate aircraft landings. Modern solutions are unreliable if somebody puts any effort into messing them up. Official numbers: There were a total of 2,800 GPS disturbances affecting aviation in Finland in 2024, compared to just 200 incidents in 2023. So, I can't help but to wonder: Now that Finland is in NATO, how will their troops with excessively fancy gear manage here?
You would not believe me if I told you the amount of feedback I get that basically begins with "you should follow my advice since I'm the inventor of board games and served in most armies and special forces around the world, and I know everything about business, and I personally know every name in this field, and I ace every game." Sigh, okay, so why in the past 20 years, every publisher and developer that has tried your suggestion went bankrupt? Although, to be fair, one should never judge a message by its style. In the early days, I once received an ALL CAPS SCREAMING message written in a childish style, and in hindsight, to my shock, I ended up at least half-implementing most of those points. A good idea does not need merits or coherent style, and a bad idea does not get better even if it is backed by the emperor of dice. Also, there should be a different folder for feedback received on Friday or Saturday night after maybe emptying a few barrels too many.
Supplying Rommel
"The senior quartermaster officer for Africa was Oberstleutnant Graf Klinkowstr--m. He organized his logistics support forces into 3 supply columnss, each with a lift capacity of 360 tons. With the shift of the front to the area around Tobruk/Bardia, the distances to the front from the main port of supply climbed to 1,500 km... The first blow to the German supply effort was delivered by Force --K-- on the evening of 16 April. All 4 freighters of a convoy were sunk and 3,000 DAK soldiers swam in the waters of the Mediterranean for their lives...
The Italian freighter Birminia had reached Tripoli safely. In the bowels of the 10,000-ton ship was ammunition for the DAK, including 10-kilogram bombs, which were crated in bundles of 10. During the offloading, one of the crates was dropped and it went off. As a result of sympathetic explosions, all of the remaining ammunition went up, ripping off the deck of the ship...
Of the 37,000 tons that were loaded on ships in November, only 23% reached their ports of call. Despite the almost superhuman efforts of the German and Italian sailors and the coastal waterway traffic, the needs of the DAK for its attack on Tobruk were only 40% met."
-- Das Afrika Korps: Erwin Rommel and the Germans in Africa, 1941-43
Video: How the US Brazenly Stole the Soviet Union--s Best Helicopter
It seems that many updates and fixes are once again stuck on the Play Store. Sigh. I think Google's automated technology doesn't any more work on weekends, you know, just like your toaster, TV and game console do not work on weekends because it's way too impossible to do technically. Why is so much tech going backwards?
On the road, so limited replies...
Case Blue: Version 3 rolling out.
"General Hasso von Manteuffel had no choice but to order the Panzer Lehr and 2nd Panzer to bypass Bastogne. Instead, he left the 26th Volksgrenadier to perform siege warfare... After the war von Manteuffel became irritated by the focus on Bastogne. --It--s surprising to me that Bastogne has an honourable place in American military history,-- he observed, --and St Vith is hardly mentioned! The Battle of the Bulge was not fought solely at Bastogne.--
Field Marshal von Rundstedt: too much reliance had been placed on Dietrich--s 6th Panzer Army. This meant that the emphasis of the attack was not in the central Ardennes, where the roads were better. 'This decision was a fundamental mistake that unbalanced the whole offensive.' German HQ then made matters worse by reinforcing Dietrich and not von Manteuffel, even though the latter had created the opportunity for a breakout...
The grand plan had all been for nothing. Nevertheless, the Ardennes offensive had proved to be a remarkable battle. Germans had thrown 3 armies at 6 US divisions over a 50-mile front achieving complete surprise. This resulted in an embarrassing breakthrough that brought the Americans and the British to loggerheads. Despite some American units being thrown into a state of utter confusion, Von Manteuffel and Model, though, never came close to getting to Antwerp, which had became the holy grail for the Allies, as it answered to all their supply problems. The Allies were only able to land just over 35,000 tons of supplies a day using the liberated Channel ports. Antwerp--s docks were capable of handling up to 3X this amount.
Germans severely underestimated the speed of the Allied response: Within the space of just four days the Allies reacted by redeploying half a million men to the Ardennes."
-- H--s Winter: The German Battle of the Bulge
It literally does not matter how much memory I reserve for resources in any given campaign, there will always be a handful of players building and placing and stockpiling so much that the underlying game engine runs out of memory. At least in some games, I can slowly increase the price/cost of resources if there already exists a board-filling amount of them. Another issue is speed. Sometimes you have to loop an index against itself. And looping 100 on 100 is only 10,000 checks-- but try giving 1000 -- 1000 a try, and suddenly we are at a million checks level of magnitude. The jump from 100 to 1000 is 10X, but the checks in a loop checking against itself: the jump is 10,000 to 1,000,000 that is 100X times more processing. The requirements simply spiral out of control if you're not putting in some limits, even if the resources might cycle at the higher and stranger rate for a player or two.
Berlin version 5200 rolling out. Okay, make it 5203 that should fix most issues.
Overworked and underforked. I literally don't know where all my forks are, I can currently locate one.
Video: When One StuG III Crushed 24 T-34s in a Day. Ace Commander Hugo Primozic�s Hour of Glory.
"Outstanding early successes only concealed Japan�s grave structural weakness. The army was already overextended in China, and each new conquest in Asia or the Pacific seemed to demand still another troop commitment to protect the recently acquired territory. Thus the navy needed Rabaul to protect Truk�s southern flank, but then needed Port Moresby to protect Rabaul�s flank, and then needed northern Australia to protect Moresby. It needed the Solomons as advance bases for operations against Port Moresby and Australia. And Fiji and Samoa became essential in order to sever the line of communication between Australia and the United States. In China, generals clamored for offensives against Chongqing; in Burma they wanted to drive to India; and in the southern region, admirals dreamed of invading Australia and India.
The imperial navy approved the F-S (Fiji-Samoa) and the Midway operations on April 5. The former would sever the line of communication between the United States and Australia (and thereby deny Australia�s use as a forward staging base for the Allied counteroffensive), and the latter would provoke the decisive naval engagement and destruction of the American fleet. It was further decided to occupy the Aleutian Islands to prevent air attacks on Japan from that direction. The Midway operation came as a total surprise to the army, which went along because it was solely a navy operation and there was nothing the army could do about it... The Doolittle raid embarrassed the army, which was responsible for air defense of the home islands and was thus persuaded to join the Midway operation to thwart future carrier-based air attacks. Around the same time, the North China Area Army tried to broker regional truces by bribing warlords."
� Japan's Imperial Army, Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945
Let's see if version 3.4.0.5 finally settles everything in the Balkan game.
HOF: The service provider tightened database-related security settings, and that prevented one part of my code from running as normal. So, just to be safe, I flushed the database-'pipes' to force any scores stuck on my end.
France 1940 version 6.0 rolling out! The Belgian divisions were split into active (normal) and weaker reserve unit types. Graphics reconstructed from originals. There might have been some unit-icon confusion between French motorized, mechanized, and armored.
You know it has been a good week when, in spite of hectic updates, almost every single crash on record from the last 7 days has been caused by me testing various things.
Japan's Indian troops attack Gurkhas defending India
"Some argued that with the Indian National Army (INA) in the vanguard of the Japanese offensive into India it might even topple the Raj... For months the Indian National Army had been awash with the propaganda that when confronted by their kith and kin the Indian troops of the British Army would refuse to fire, and joyfully join in the revolution. For the men of B Company, 4/10th Gurkha Rifles, however, nothing could have been further from the truth. Five miles south of Palel, dug in along a ridge, the Gurkhas watched the Indians approaching in an extraordinarily lackadaisical manner. The sustained and disciplined firepower of the waiting Gurkhas, unmoved by the thought that they might be firing on their erstwhile colleagues, scattered the startled Indians. For the loss of two Gurkha, the INA lost two officers and many soldiers, together with the surrender of 35. A few miles to the rear the INA Regimental HQ was attacked, and the following morning was hit by a strike by RAF Hurricanes coordinated with an artillery bombardment. The attacking force was largely decimated by these actions. The greatest effect of these disasters, however, was on INA morale which, combined with repeated Japanese failure to supply the division with either food or ammunition precipitated a series of crises in Indian National Army ranks. Many men deserted, while others shot themselves through the foot or hand in an attempt to escape the battlefield. Of the 3,000 men of the 2nd Gandhi Regiment who marched into the hills at the end of March only 1,000 remained by 15 June, and then only 750 two weeks later."
� Japan's Last Bid for Victory, The Invasion of India 1944
If you need to get those pesky colonial Brits out of India, who is the one fiery Indian woman you will call to raise all-female regiments to attack and liberate India? It's captain Lakshmi Swaminathan of course. Rani of Jhansi Regiment was one of the first all-female combat regiments in modern military history, and in spring of 1944 it was one of the Indian National Army (INA) units that attacked from Burma to India... Although after the Allied-side Gurkhas wiped out few INA regiments, Japanese decided to keep captain Lakshmi's female regiment in the rear handling the resulting chaos from the failed attack and retreat.
Japan-in-WW2Version 1.0.7 starting to roll out.
� AI Unit Animation setting: AI units now animate only if there are at least X player-controlled hexagons within range 2.
� Carrier Deployment: The 5 initial Japanese carriers and their planes can now be time-released at the start of Year X so they only enter play later to speed up play
� Japanese airforce units block more of the AI strafing and with high tech-level withing range 2. Reduced strafing in China during early years; strafing heavily depends on wars against the UK/US.
� Ships can only rest/repair in harbors if no adjacent enemy city or unit is present.
� Updated new US battleship names for accuracy. During the transition, new names use underscores to avoid duplication issues
� Fixes: Fixed an issue where the USSR war-status counter failed to escalate to full war. Addressed AI over-cautiousness with amphibious landings. Resolved an issue where planes with full movement points (MPs) but low HP could become stuck among AI units, blocking turn progression.Fixed "river-on-ocean" graphical glitches. MP cost for constructing dugouts now scales more sharply with the number of existing dugouts. If the game engine runs out of memory, it prioritizes removing dugouts farthest from enemy units (excluding those on the west/north edges of the map and in Home Islands).
If you're trying to install an app manually (also known as side-loading) on an older device and it doesn't work the first time, don't worry, it might just be a timing issue. Sometimes, even if everything is done correctly, the device may show a message like "install failed" at the end. In many cases, simply trying the installation a second time will succeed. This happens because newer software is often tested on the latest high-end phones, and may not always account for how slowly things work on older devices. So the app is not necessarily prevented from installing, your device might just need a second attempt to catch up.
Once again, I'm shocked and bewildered to discover that the 'trial and error' of life includes actual 'errors'�and, truth be told, I'm not especially fond of the 'trials' either.
Axis Balkan Campaign updates itself to version 3.4.0.2 (make it version 3.4.0.3) and that includes rebuilding most of the icons. On top of the ongoing list of additions, changes include new unit type for the Greek Tankette unit, less HPs for the not yet fully mobilized units, new icon for the Italian commander, if Engineers are turned OFF generals can request airfields and hospitals.
I would like to meet the devious person at Amazon who replaced the one hyper-quick �remove all screenshots� button with excruciatingly slow one-by-one removal of screenshots via an incredibly ultra-tiny x-marker. I could previously do that task literally, no exaggeration, in under one second. It was one button. Now it's like this: Do one super-focused click on one tiny 'x' marker in the corner of one tiny thumb of a screenshot. Then wait, wait, wait, processing, wait, wait, oh wow, YES, the page is responsive again for the next action. Try very hard to click on the next miniscule 'x' button without boiling over from frustration. Then wait, wait, wait... Repeat until all the countless old screenshots are removed. Sigh! Who walked into a meeting and said, 'I got a great idea, guys!' This is a strong contender for the most bewildering tech change I experienced in the last 12 months.
I wonder how much happier and unique game-makers were in the 1990s, when you basically never received feedback unless somebody wrote you a letter or your game got reviewed. And since you had very few games to compare your idea to, you were much more inclined to follow your own, utterly non-standard vision. Now there is a nonstop flood of feedback in every direction, and since almost everybody copies almost every (good) feature and practice, we are marching towards a clone city, where everything just resembles everything else more and more. Don't get me wrong, feedback allows 20X faster fixes and corrections, but it's also very challenging on many layers. Even if you do 999 out of the 1,000 things right, the majority of the feedback will be negative. And players will loudly demand the game be taken in a direction they happen to like. It's hard to maintain a positive drive and a clear vision of your own when there is booming, nonstop screaming to make things differently. What was the last game that made you go: �Huh? WTF is this?�
Features rolling out:
� Setting: Each turn store full-screen map as a screenshot. These can be viewed turn by turn later. Tap to 2x zoom. Default OFF. Note: eats up to 300k storage per pic on 1920x1080 display. [please note that these are on the app's own storage so not visible on image galleries of the device, and all these will be removed when you finish the game]
� Stars indicating the most battles changed: Now the unit with the most battles of its unit type has 2 star-markers
� ROUT: Out-of-supply unit can once per turn ROUT, lose roughly half of its HPs to gain 1 MP
� Setting: Make unit-icons harsh/gritty as they lose HPs (less saturation, more contrast) [similar to 'darken the damaged units']
� WAYPOINT: Select a unit with MPs, tap further than the unit can travel to during this turn, and the unit will automatically continue the travel at the start of the next turn. Or select no-MP unit, long press the hexagon where it should go. Options: OFF or ONLY if target tap >= 1/2/3/4 hexagons away. [the newer version will be get triggered by scrolling on the map]
� If unit has multiple negative MPs at the start of a turn and it has no other text-tags set, -X MPs tag will be set. If nothing else is happening, focus will be on the unit with most negative MPs at the start of the turn.
Since the lowest-end budget phones no longer crash after I add slightly higher-quality icons, I'm also tempted to start adding new unit types into older campaigns. Or use that untapped capacity to include some basic variation, like using different REAL icons for German vs Italian commanders on the same side. Sadly, there still are some campaigns that outright lack unit types. For example, some Pacific islands were basically attacked by American Marines and defended by the Japanese Army. There might have been a few tanks and some random Japanese construction or Navy unit, but that doesn't change the fact that without adding some miniscule, insignificant unit types, it's tough to even get to 10 different unit types. Or should I take advantage of that unused potential to make the image of every general unique in those campaigns? Although if I do that in only a few games, then there will be nonstop questions of why this isn't the case in every game. And maybe in those extreme cases, new unit types should not be forced into play just to add variety. Maybe war was sometimes gray and monotonous. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Eastern Front: "Please add all the Axis separately, Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Finns; plus also keep all the auxiliary units separate by type: oh, and add light tanks and late-war heavy tanks, and Stugs and split antitank guns into early weak ones and later strong ones." One unit type at a time, please.
Oh, this riles up me: I have new 'friends' on several social media platforms. Why? Because most apps have switched to a new, sneaky design that shows the 'add as a friend' button precisely where you press when you are quickly flipping through multiple posts. We have reached a point where we need an acronym for �sorry, I didn't mean to add you as a friend; the borderline illegal setup misled me into tapping that action.�
German Security Divisions vs Soviet Partizans
From as early as the summer of 1941 demands for troops at the front had stripped the German Security Divisions of considerable manpower. The Security Divisions lost not only personnel from their initial complements on invasion but also horses and hence mobility. On 2 June 1941 the 281st Security Division had 1,876 horses, by 11 September there were only 760. Replacements were considered inadequate for the task expected of them. The 281st Security Division reported that "the bulk of the personnel are too old, more than 80% more than 30 years old"...
In a partisan diary captured by 281st Security Division, it was reported for 14 September 1941 that "our reception in the villages has become consistently worse; the Germans warn the civilian population of the consequences of assisting us". Consequently the diary went on to state that "the population of the villages is intimidated by the Germans. They barter with us and assist us only with great trepidation, lest the German troops harm them". Certainly the partisans were not seen in the same positive light as the Red Army in part as a result of the repercussions of a partisan presence in the locality. The above partisan diary reports that on 29 September 1941 the partisans arrived in a village to be told: "We are German subjects � move on! We don�t have any bread ourselves. Many of your sort come through here. Better that you were at the front with the Army!"
� The War Behind the Eastern Front, Soviet Partisans in North-West Russia 1941-1944
Updates. Big update to Union (version 1.6)! Amazingly enough, I changed everything, yet it went through the Play Store update process in seconds. Thankfully, after several days, the latest update to Japan-in-WW2 is finally out, that's version 1.0.6. Also, below are a couple of longer pieces of writing about AI and graphics, I guess after the all the coding I was looking for something else to do for a change. There is actual military-history/game posts below all the sudden verbalization.
Graphics chat by non-artsy developer. I have been testing a bit higher image quality for a while now in several games, and unlike in the past, I have not seen any out-of-memory crashes. I guess the worst budget phones have all retired by now. So, this allows me to move forward with upgrading the unit-icons (please don't get too excited). Some games will see bigger graphics updates than others. In a handful of scenarios, the icons are effectively based on the decade-old base images and will be replaced with icons based on newer, entirely different image-sets that are a bit more board-game/drawing inspired. Yes, the good news is that I have had a decade to try to secure some image sets. I feel like they might work on these games. And while some images continue to look and be the same, they will be higher quality versions, reworked from the original HQ sources. It's strange to see something you have stared at for 10-years change; at times it's jarring, and in some cases it feels like jumping from cave-art to space-art. And yes, some old graphics were, how to put it nicely, 'not great'. Understandably so, after some images had been re-edited dozens of times, resized and rescaled to be smaller, driven through various image-optimizers, simplified to be recognizable at very low pixel densities, etc. You do that to an image year after year, not always with the greatest of care in the middle of the night, tired and monitor adjusting color-space without me realizing it. In the end, the 20th edit of the image is a broken mess. In some icons, the original base-color has half-vanished for various reasons, so at least the visuals should be more color-striking moving forward. One thing that has caused many wars inside my mind is 'gradient'. Yes, I admit, using a color gradient in the image looks great, but you basically instantly 4X the size for an eye candy. Plus, there is the argument that it's harder to get a solid quick-glance overview of the map if instead of unified simple colors, you are looking at the gliding and ever-changing color shades.
And since I don't have an artistic/visual bone in me, my fashion sense is 'beige cargo pants, please', I'm sure some changes will horribly misfire and mismatch the overall style of the campaign in question. I can't really draw from scratch, but I'm fluent enough with GIMP (image editor) that I can edit, mix, bend, and twist. And the world is filled with talented people to buy/hire source images from. Hopefully this stepping-up-of-graphics will happen at a four-steps-forward, one-step-back speed. The factor that is making this very challenging, is that all the options allow changing the style so much: NATO/REAL icons, background style/image, intensity of colors and markers, and shadows. What I'm trying to say: The changes should look tolerable on the default and most common visual options, but I'm afraid that some setting-combinations inevitably result in an ugly, chaotic, or cluttered map. For example, the new movement-arrow color fits pleasantly with the default background color, but is an eye-sore on some background patterns. Those types of things can't be solved so that everything always works and looks fine. And this leads to the question: Should some visual settings be removed? I'm split on this: On the other hand, I want there to be plenty of options to tweak the elements, but the maintenance of such a tangled web is overwhelming. I would like to cut down the time it takes to secure that the 100 options interacting with 100 options do not fundamentally clash. I'm strongly on both sides of the argument.
Victory Cards: I will slowly continue to add the various 'victory', etc cards. As an eye candy that has nothing to do with the actual game play, they will always be a low priority for me. Thankfully there are a lot of big old photo/poster/art collections freely available online these days, so I can always try to throw/merge together a handful of retro pics/drawings on GIMP. Add some military symbols to see if the end result would make a usable image. Most of the time it is not, but the process is something different, so it's actually relaxing if I don't take it too seriously or try to force it. I do appreciate the gentle feedback about the fact that some of those cards 'visually do not work at all within the theme of this game'. I agree. I'll replace the worst ones as the updates circle back, so basically the same process will take place as with the 'doodle flags'. Throw 30 things at the wall, repeat replacing the worst 3, and things will slowly get better. Obviously, I'm keeping the size of the victory cards tiny to avoid bloat, so that sets strict limits on how 'glorious' the entire graphic can be. But, at least they set the tone when they succeed in fitting the vibe of the campaign. And if one image is shown multiple times, I will try to include a setting to turn it ON/OFF. I'm not an arts guy, but looking at all the stunning old oriental drawings and posters made me want to create victory cards for all the big islands on the Pacific Ocean. Even as a coder, I get it: if I had one extra lifetime, trying to create something visual by mixing and editing would be a thrilling way to spend that one extra lifetime. But I'm still a coder: logic, numbers, algorithms. So, realistically, the level of graphics will always be between 'WTF is that smudge supposed to be' and 'good enough'. Like I have been consistently saying from the start: the selling point of my games is a certain hopefully unique mix of patterns and variation, easy to play but hard to master! No endless menus or micromanagement, just chasing that feeling when the player goes: 'JUST ONE MORE TURN'! To me, a game is a success if it makes me think: 'ooh, I'll play one more turn to see how that situation evolves as I maneuver my troops.'
"With the invention of photography in the 1830s, the possibility of capturing the events of war was first explored... (from Wikipedia/War-photography)
� The Mexican-American War was the first one to be captured by a camera. A number of daguerreotypes were taken of the occupation of Saltillo during the Mexican�American War, in 1847 by an unknown photographer
� John McCosh, a surgeon in the Bengal Army, is the first war photographer known by name. He produced a series of photos documenting the Second Anglo-Sikh War 1848-1849
� The Hungarian�Romanian K�roly Szathm�ry Papp took photographs of officers in 1853 and of war scenes near Oltenita and Silistra in 1854, during the Crimean War
� Stefano Lecchi took photos of the battle locations of the Roman Republic using the Calotype process (1849-1859)
� The first official attempts at war photography were made by the British at the start of the Crimean War. In March 1854, Gilbert Elliott was commissioned to photograph views of the Russian fortifications along the coast of the Baltic Sea."
How close was Japan to destroying the Panama Canal in WWII?
"Many in the Imperial Japanese Navy considered attacking the Panama Canal with huge I-400 subs�which could launch several planes�a top priority... There was tremendous complexity in launching the planes from the sub. While the sub was still submerged, the crew climbed up an access tube that led into the hangar. Once inside, mechanics pumped coolant and heated lubricating oil into the plane�s engine... After the planes destroyed the lock gates of Panama Canal, they were to rendezvous with subs in the Gulf of Panama. Ditching their planes in the ocean, the aircrews would swim to their subs... The I-400 left Maizuru Naval Base on July 21, 1945�the Panama Canal was about to be destroyed! However, while moving along Hokkaido, a Japanese shore battery spotted the sub�s silhouette and opened fire.. It was a close call... The attack plan was straightforward. The I-400, I-401 plus 2 other subs would travel independently and only meet up before the attack. However, when the I-400 waited at the final rendezvous point before the attack, none of the other subs showed up. They must all have been sunk. The transmissions coming out of Sydney claimed that Russia had declared war on Japan and a special bomb had been used. Many of the I-400�s officers doubted what they heard. One of the men even reported hearing that Japan had won the war. Unexplainably, the I-401 was actually fine, but it waited near a different faraway island - something had gone horribly wrong at some stage of planning or communication. The post-surrender orders subs received were contradictory. No order explicitly canceled the attack, let alone told to stand down. In fact, one of the orders said 'submarines should execute their missions'. Both subs separately continued with their attack plans.. I-401 was too far from Panama and just as it instead prepared to strike a nearby atoll, it received orders to cease all combat activity as the attack by the Soviet Union made continuing the war impossible. One officer suggested they hide out on a Pacific island... I-400 received its order to dispose of weapons when it was over a hundred miles away from the point from which it could strike the Panama Canal. Both I-400 and I-401 were later captured by the U.S. Navy, which scuttled both subs to prevent Soviet inspection."
� Operation Storm: Japan's Top Secret Submarines and Its Plan to Change the Course of WWII
Post-note: The locks of the Panama Canal were obviously heavily defended by the U.S. due to their ability to cause a nasty cascade of failures, both in the canal system itself if the man-made lakes broke free and to the global flow of U.S. military logistics. So, even if Japan had carried out the attacks, the outcome would have been unknown. Attack during daylight would have made bombing accurate but counter-measures would have been fully active. While night-time attack most likely would have failed to cause enough damage. And, even if successfull, the strike would have not made any difference in 1945 when everything else was collapsing for Japan. But it is a curious piece of history what-if and technology.
Pic (above): Already in 1927, Brits had HMS M2, a Royal Navy submarine aircraft carrier. As the West scrapped the idea over time, Japan ended up being the only country taking this weapon system seriously (I400 was classified for 'decisive long-range attacks') with the plans to make 18 huge submarines. However, during WW2 Japan only managed to manufacture 2 huge submarine aircraft carriers (pics below) and 1 huge submarine tanker (I-402). In addition, Japan had the smaller submarine aircraft carriers like I-13 and I-14 (Modified A2-type), plus some submarines that could launch a single recon aircraft.
Video: 15 Most Historically Accurate WWII Movies Ever Made
� One recreated the inside of a German U-boat down to the grease stains. Another used actual code that was once a government secret.
Latest 5 games that were updated in the past week or two: Juno-Sword, American Civil War (South), Battle of the Bulge, Japan-in-WW2, Kursk.
Joys of weather on Eastern Front
"In April the weather broke for good. Snow and ice melted. The water was knee-deep on the roads. The men waded waist-deep through the icy swamps and marshes. Rafts had to be built for the heavy machine-guns from branches of trees and bushes, or otherwise they would disappear in the mud. The wounded had to be laid on stretchers made of branches, or else they would have drowned. Anything that weighed anything (rifles, horses, men) sank into the swamp. The uniforms were sodden... Bale after bale of straw was collected by the grenadiers from the villages and flung down in the mud. Even the infantry got stuck with their vehicles and made only very slow progress... Entire companies were pulling bogged-down lorries out of the mud of the roads. The motor-cyclists made wooden skids for their machines from boards and planks and pulled them along behind them. Major Vogt, commanding the support units of 18th Panzer Division, was in despair. How did the Russians manage with these muddy roads year after year? He hit on the answer. He got hold of the small tough horses he had seen the local peasants use, as well as their light farm carts, and used them for sending his divisions' supplies forward. It worked. The motorized convoys were stuck in the mud, but the small peasant carts got through."
� Moves East 1941-1943
Yes, I'm aware of the issue in the American Civil War, version 7.0.2.1 has already been pushed out and should fix it. At this stage the best tool to predict if an app update gets through the Play Store quickly is to throw a dice. Sometimes it takes 2 minutes, or 2 hours, or maybe 2 days. Major update might be out in 2 minutes, and some hyper-tiny fix-update that barely changes anything is stuck in review for 2 days.
Battle of Bulge version 7.4 is rolling out, and should balance the flow of the campaign better. Plus the HOF has been cleared from the oldest scores, so there is a nice opening to seize the top spot.
User Interface: I think I�ve finally figured out the cause of the annoyance some players have experienced�excessive triggering of various features while scrolling the map. The bad news is that I still need to roll out this improvement to all the games, so it will take time. However, if you�re one of the players who scrolls the map frequently, the next round of updates will drastically reduce accidental triggers of other actions.
Logistics during the Pacific War
"Almost every human and mechanical need had to be met by shipment across thousands of miles of ocean. The south-west Pacific was known as the �goat and cabbage circuit,� because so much unwelcome food came from Australia. The scale of logistics was staggering. In the five months from 1 September 1944 fleet tankers delivered to the fast carrier force 8.25 million barrels of fuel oil, 12.25 million gallons of aviation gas. In addition, they shifted thousands of drums of lubricating oil in 14 grades, compressed gases, oxygen, spare belly tanks, mail, personnel and food. Fresh water was a constant issue. The heat caused tanks to become contaminated, which necessitated draining them for cleaning. So desperate were some seamen for a serious drink that they built stills or drained alcohol from torpedo propulsion systems. The latter practice may have raised morale, but drastically shortened the torpedoes� range."
� Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
Japan-in-WW2 Monday News: Later today, I�ll drop the price from "new" to "normal" (edit: done now). Over the weekend, heavy usage uncovered two critical bugs, so another update � version 1.0.5 � is coming as you read this, along with two handfuls of tweaks, plus the addition of a harbor adjacent to Singapore (whether to keep it or not was heavily debated during development). I�m not gonna lie: It�s humbling to see this complex app running and to daily discover a new "yeah, that absolutely needs changing" aspect. Change log is mostly: fix, fix, fix... But I have to believe that if I keep hammering the nails, eventually everything gets nailed down. One player even managed to land on the American mainland in a way that exposed a big bug nobody encountered during testing. The other way to look at it? Not enough testers ever made it that far with enough force to expose a flaw in full scale combat on the 'edge of the world' across the Pacific. Nail, meet hammer.
Future of Removed Play Store Games: I�m still unsure how to proceed with the games removed from the Play Store (thanks to Google�s overly aggressive bots). Compounding the issue, these games won�t remain available for purchase on the Amazon App Store for non-Kindle Fire devices indefinitely�Amazon is restricting their app store to Kindle Fire devices only. Here are the options I�m considering:
� Direct sales via PayPal, etc. (Great: No big tech ruining everything. Bad: Manual process, slow updates, tax/accounting hassles.)
� Third-party digital storefront (Reduces some hassles but depends on platform quality.)
� Alternative Android app stores (Most remaining stores are subpar.)
� Rework, rebrand, and re-release on Play Store (Risky and labor-intensive�would require maintaining two separate versions for Amazon and Play Store.)
Each option presents significant challenges. Feedback is welcome!
"Code changes were causing the Japanese considerable difficulty. Their forces were spread out over the western Pacific, and communications with some detachments were difficult. Before the code could be changed, code books had to be delivered to all holders. Occasionally, a major message would have to be encrypted in some minor code... I remember one message decrypted early in July 1942, when we were reading very little current messages... we were able to read all of a Japanese message planning a land attack on Port Moresby. A Japanese Army force planned to land near Buna on 21 July 1942 and cross the Owen Stanley Range to attack Port Moresby from the rear... There were a few nuggets of pure intel gold among the documents captured at Guadalcanal. One such nugget was a chart of Palau, which revealed that big Japanese ships used the West Passage. These files also included a number of Japanese propaganda (�surrender�) leaflets in bad English, illustrated with crude x pictures... A steady stream of captured personal diaries began to appear in early 1943. These presented another problem for the translation section because they were written in sosho, the Japanese cursive script... On 29 January 1943 the Japanese submarine I-1 was sunk. Allied divers salvaged a treasure trove of valuable secret documents. The I-1 was carrying not only the current codes, but editions scheduled to go into effect in the future. 200,000 secret documents, widely distributed across the broad Pacific, had been compromised and had to be replaced."
� Double-edged secrets : US naval intelligence operations in the Pacific
In my latest playthrough of Japan-in-WW2, I encountered a thrilling moment featuring land and naval units from both sides during a landing in Australia. However, as the success of the operation hung in the balance, I became so engrossed in the maneuvering and gameplay that I completely forgot to take any screenshots. ARGH! I was so furious - you can�t easily replicate those moments, which require countless hours of play in a certain way to reach.
What I like about this particular "peak Japan" map is that it actually shows how Japan managed to seize the coastal areas to form a coherent logistics flow in mainland China. Most maps skip this since Japan only achieved/secured this feat properly after starting to slip elsewhere.
"Many WWII maps depict Japan's maximum territorial expansion around 1942, emphasizing conquests like the fall of Singapore, the Philippines, and Burma. At this point, Japan was still struggling to fully secure large parts of the Chinese coast, so later gains often get overlooked. Unlike the Blitzkrieg in Europe, Japan�s control over the Chinese coastline wasn't a sudden event. It was a slow process, where they seized major cities, but rural areas remained contested for years. This makes it harder to represent on static maps. In addition, Western perspectives on WWII tend to focus on the Pacific and European theaters. The war in China, despite being a major front, is often treated as a background conflict. This leads to oversimplified maps that fail to show how Japan slowly tightened its grip on the coast. After the war, both the Communist and Nationalist governments had their own reasons for downplaying Japan�s control over China�s coast."
Japan in WW2
� Congrats to those who managed to win the game, amazing job!
� Version 1.0.4.2 rolling out, Play Store still lagging days behind
� This update should comprehensively eliminate wrong-country triggers
Random military tidbit: The Finnish army has for decades collected data on how much new recruits can run in 12 minutes (Cooper test). The peak was in 1975 when the average was 2760 meters (1.715 miles), and it has been declining ever since, the lowest average was in 2019 with 2358 meters (1.465 miles).
Please update Japan-in-WW2 to version 1.0.3.X depending on which app store you use.
To celebrate Monday, Google's Play Store, after taking their sweet time and letting several key updates pile up for some apps, actually let through two of my countless updates. *sigh* It reminds me of that time one developer tried to update an old app controlling a critical piece of hospital equipment, and Google rejected the update because the old app did not meet modern design guidelines. The hospital appealed, as spending months on a total rework of the old specialty app that worked perfectly well apart from needing one tiny update was insane, but Google shut them down. Because forcing everyone to mindlessly obey bureaucratic design guidelines was more important than using common sense and keeping people alive. It's a beautiful utopian illusion that we can be hyperefficient and control everything with one rule set, but there are always exceptions. And if 1% of cases are exceptions, out of 1,000,000 cases, that's 10,000 utter failures due to lack of human oversight and taking context into consideration. We live in strange times, as the last remnants of human interaction and reasoning are squeezed out of all the systems. Only the absolutely mind-numbingly boring average will be allowed; everything else will be unsympathetically filtered out.
MiniReview site has a review of the Eastern Front WWII
During 2025, I'll be slowly separating the html documenation pages (that apps link to) into game specific ones and one generic-rule page.
Article: Two Aircraft Carriers Were Stationed In the Great Lakes During WWII
� While the majority of aircraft carriers sailed the world�s oceans during the conflict, two were stationed in the Great Lakes: the USS Wolverine (IX-64) and Sable (IX-81).
I'll be posting several short book excerpts about Japan/WW2 over the coming weeks, as I went through a fairly big pile of history books during the research phase of creating Japan-in-WW2. Two things specifically stuck in my mind.
Firstly, the USSR had many oil fields on their 'eastern half', plus many other natural resources Japan needed. So, why didn't Japan go after the USSR, especially when it was 'busy' defending itself against German invasion? Japan attacking the 'godless west-hating' Soviet Union would have triggered the US/UK less than seizing the western assets in the Dutch East Indies. There seem to be numerous smaller reasons for Japan's reluctance to attack the USSR. Natural resources in the USSR were in primitive places with harsh climates; in addition to seizing the resources, Japan would have needed to make a huge infrastructure investment. In the early 1940s, Japan actually made deals with the USSR, so Japan did receive natural resources, even some oil, without tying itself up in combat. And Japan was wary of the Soviet Red Army after 10 years of border battles and wars, in which it sometimes got beaten badly. Plus, the Japanese Navy was keen on Southern expansion (food, rubber, etc).
The second aspect that was fascinating to me was how diverse the Japanese attitudes toward their conquest were. And by that, I mean that politicians and officers wildly varied, all the way from dreamers of Japan uniting all Asia as equals to ruthless power-hungry conquerors seeing themselves on top of the food chain. It's hard to escape the feeling that due to Japan being in a warlike (mental) state from the early 1930s onwards, the expansion steamroller slowly gathering speed was inevitable. At challenging times, slowly but surely, one compromise at a time, one moderate sidelined at a time, the politics eroded from meaningful multi-sided conversation into one-sided zealous approach. And it wasn't even one steamroller, but two, since the Army and the Navy were operating in their own separate universes. History, especially wars, often seems so simple when looking at the grand total, the superficial one-line summary, often written by winners for the first few decades. But if you dig deeper, all nations and armies are made out of millions of unique people, each with their own views and values. Military history quickly gets muddy when you read individuals' wildly varying fears and hopes from their diaries and memoirs. What I'm trying to say with this word salad is that, as a westerner, it has been a learning experience to hear all the different voices, what was planned at various levels, and what actually ended up happening.
Japan trying to figure out the Western Allies: "the impending British surrender would be a profound shock to the U.S."
"The Japanese navy wanted to establish an outer perimeter that reached to Australia, Hawaii, and India. Allied attempts to defend those vital areas would bring about the long-sought climactic fleet engagement. The army, however, was content to defend the current gains and consolidate its forces to repulse enemy counteroffensives anticipated after 1943. In other words, the army wanted to dig in to fight a protracted war of attrition whereas the navy demanded further expansion and the destruction SR f the U.S. fleet to make a protracted war possible.
In an economy-of-force move, army authorities expected to withdraw sizeable numbers of troops from the southern front to refit, reequip, and modernize them for the long-term struggle. Plans would reduce the 450,000 troops to 250,000 personnel by the end of 1942. The 200,000 recycled troops would reinforce Japan�s northern front in anticipation of operations against the Soviet Union beginning in the spring of 1942...
For the first time the Japanese army�s strategic planners expressed doubt that Germany could defeat the USSR in 1942, but they held out hope that German occupation of the Caucasus might cause the Soviet regime to collapse...
As for the British and American, the loss of their advanced bases and colonies had lowered overall Allied morale, and the impending British surrender would be a profound psychological shock to the United States, where societal unrest was likely to develop as the American standard of living declined and wartime sacrifices increased without hope of victory. Based on these encouraging assessments, the liaison conference decided to expand the current gains and create an impregnable strategic defensive perimeter."
� Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall 1853-1945
Japan-in-WW2 version 1.0.3 is rolling out. Biggest change: Only one increase in political tensions per province per turn, except for key events like seizing oil fields, etc. Well, the update instantly rolled out to the Amazon App Store as usual, but the critical fix-update is stuck on Play Store review, yes, yet again. How lovely that I can fix bugs in minutes, but Google Play Store, sigh, can't be bothered, and everything takes days. Why don't they let developers fix apps quickly? And what's the logic behind Play Store doing the 987987th deep review of the same exact app within 2 weeks? Every week I wake up and make a holy oath that 'this is the week I won't be raging about Google', and BANG, ten things they do make everybody's life worse. I simply can't take it quietly after the insanities pile up. Then Google has the audacity to loudly wonder why all developers abandon Android and move over to Apple. *sigh*
Japan in Java:
"In the summer of 1941, Japanese planning and organization for the invasion of Southeast Asia and the Pacific began in earnest, as worsening relations with the U.S. and the Netherlands East Indies and continued Axis victories in Europe made war for Southeast Asia�s resources seem a concrete possibility...
On March 10, 1942, one day after the Dutch surrender near Bandung, General Imamura and 12 top staff members of the 16th Army deliberated on the shape of Japan�s administration in Java. Imamura�s memoirs revealed a discussion of a much less inspiring nature than the nationalists might have hoped. The issue at hand: should the Japanese be moderate or repressive? ...
In March 1943, as the 1-year anniversary of the Dutch surrender approached, occupied Java hung in an awkward state of limbo. So many promises had been made in the past year, yet so few had come to fruition. After a dramatic early heyday, the personnel on both sides who had trumpeted these promises most loudly in the early going�the men of the propaganda squad, and the nationalists who had staked their reputations on collaboration with their early projects�had proven no match for stronger forces on both sides...
In December 1944, in an impassioned and sympathetic text by a Japanese officer pulled few punches in describing how Japanese ignorance, an inappropriate sense of superiority, and a shortsighted focus on material requisition alone were betraying Japan�s Greater Asian mission in Java... launched into a sustained diatribe against the persistence of what he saw as Western-style colonial attitudes regarding Indonesians among his fellow Japanese...
As the occupation wore on, supplies of cotton and clothing drastically dwindled. Those who were better off, from the middle class and above, were able to purchase clothing on the black market; but for Jakarta�s masses the only option were emergency garments distributed by the local authorities, at first made from gunny sacks, and later rubber. By 1945 �they were all wearing rubber. It was really rubber. When they�d walk, you�d hear a creaking sound.�
� Japan�s Occupation of Java in the Second World War
Video: Hellenistic Mega Weapons
� The kings of the Hellenistic world became famous for gigantic siege towers, super battleships, floating siege platforms...
One Japanese perspective to WW2
"The Australians we fought at Isurava were tenacious. I was a veteran of China, but I�d never encountered such hard fighting before. In China the enemy ran away, but the Australians here, in a good position, stayed... They�d tricked us and recaptured Kokoda, and they held us up for 4 days at Isurava. They knew our tactics well and used them against us. We, on the other hand, we were not as good as we were in China�not as tough. Too many of our best men had perished. We had not given consideration to the type of enemy we now faced. We still had traditional weapons like swords, which we had used in China. The Australians had excellent weapons, like the Bren gun. It was better than our light machine gun and I saw to it that, after Isurava, all my company was using captured Bren guns... We had a parade and the commander called out names. As company sergeant major my responsibility was to reply. I kept saying �killed in action� and I began to cry... Seeing their excellent sanitary arrangements it was hard to understand that Australia was the place where the British sent all their criminals. The men would make jokes, saying, �lookout, there are criminals up there.� Given that, it was a surprising thing that they could create a disciplined army. During the enemy retreat they�d throw away food they could not carry back. If we saw something shining in the jungle we�d know it was a tin can. We�d go get them, or sometimes we�d find a pile of rice. We would wash the mud off and eat it."
� Sadashige Imanishi in Japan's Pacific War
NEW GAME: JAPAN in WW2 - PACIFIC EXPANSE
By orders of magnitude, this is the most complex game I�ve ever crafted! Both sides execute multiple landings that play almost as mini-games, while carrier battles with dive bombers rage, destroyers lay minefields, and battleships pulverize smaller ships. Diplomacy shifts from low tensions to desperate appeasement to all-out war. Direct your industry to produce infantry, supply ships, and tankers to seize Dutch oil fields, or manufacture tanks to capture Chinese mines for iron and coal. Maybe build more carriers and battleships to push the U.S. out of the Pacific�or shock everyone by taking on the USSR.
"In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."
� Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy Combined Fleet
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Free turn-limited version as APK file for side-loading
NOTE: Amazon App Store will only continue to exists for Kindle Fire Tablets!
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo on Amazon
This is definitely on the harder end of campaigns: In some test games, I seized most of mainland China and the iron-coal mines, but was decisively defeated on the oceans, which cut off all the islands I had seized. And if I ensured I conquered all the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies, I then inevitably got steamrolled on the mainland by the British, Chinese, and Soviet Red Army after failing to appease the latter enough to keep it out of the war.
There are a ton of moving parts and elements here, so please let me know if something goes entirely unwordly and battleships start to fly over the islands. In one particular test game, the British AI became obsessed with seizing Formosa. Their first landing took me completely by surprise, as none of my early warning systems spotted their fleet, but by sheer luck, I had just trained an infantry army on Formosa and a general was sailing by, and I managed to fight off the first landing. A year later, I spotted yet another British fleet suspiciously moving toward Formosa, so I had some time to prepare. The third time the British landed on Formosa was after the American naval power had wiped out two-thirds of my surface ships, and things were generally in a downward spiral.
Yet another way to try to explain how labyrinthine this scenario is: the final round of testing took 11 times longer than it usually does.
I know these games tend to attract people who like a challenge, but seriously, good luck!
See photos of America's attempt to create a WW1 tank out of a tractor
� The emergence of British and French tanks prompted the US Army to design a tank of their own... developed a prototype built off of an existing Holt Model 75 tractor powered by a modified hybrid gas-electric engine... moved at a top speed of 6 mph and was practically immobile on an incline.
Sooo, I might have slighly lost the control of the seas... and most of the home islands as the result. But I did manage to hold part of Australia for a while until the logistics collapsed.
I'll now be replying to many many many thousands of messages and emails that piled up during the creation of the new game, so apologies for general chaos, typos, and curtness in my writing in advance.
One such project by big tech closes down and other one jumps forward!
Google is bringing every Android game to Windows in big gaming update. The PC-based Play Games platform is expanding to bring every single Android game to Windows (no a firm timeline yet)
Last surviving Battle of Britain pilot passes
� The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John 'Paddy' Hemingway, has passed away at the age of 105.
Well, this is disheartening to say the least:
Amazon is shutting down its app store on Android (only keeps it for Kindle Fire Tablets)
� "Starting August 20, 2025, you will no longer have access to the Amazon Appstore on your Android device. The company added that the app store will still be functional on its own devices, such as Fire TV and Fire Tablet."
Rommel & Afrika Korps: Fixed the Next-Unit button not centering issue.
Working on a new game, many moving parts...
Article: Fight for Manila � Inside the Largest Urban Battle in U.S. Army History
� The Japanese set fires to destroy supplies rather than let them fall into the hands of the Americans. They lost control and a huge inferno burned about a third of Manila. Stunned at the devastation, MacArthur�s leadership began to fall apart. As the theater commander, it was his responsibility to develop strategy and communicate those plans to his subordinate commanders so they could design military operations and implement tactics to support his intent. He failed to perform these tasks...
The Bovington Tank Museum to Recreate Capture of Infamous German Tank at Tiger Day Spring
� Captured in April 1943, Tiger 131 had served with the Wehrmacht�s Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 504 (Heavy Tank Battalion 504) throughout the Tunisia Campaign. This year, the Tiger Day event will be extra special, with the museum putting on a recreation of Tiger 131�s capture by British forces in Tunisia in 1943.
SAS rogue hero Mike Sadler, who was the last surviving 'original' member of elite WWII unit and passed away at 103, left over $2 million estate to his family
� In 1941, Mike Sadler met a member of the Long Range Desert Group, a reconnaissance unit based in the North African desert, who persuaded him to join the elite Special Air Service after it was formed by David Stirling in 1941. In that December, Sadler was part of the first successful SAS raid, on Wadi Tamet airfield, where a team of six men ruined 24 aircraft and a fuel dump.
End of January DISCOUNTS: Four early games, Okinawa, Panzer Missions, Rommel & Afrika Korps, and Operation Barbarossa are all available at the discount price until the end of January on both Play Store and Amazon App Store!
A pilot in Harrier GR9A ejects just in time, Kandahar, Afghanistan, 2009
Breaking the 'D-Day Loop': Supporting Obscure WWII Scenarios in Games
I wish more players would give the less known WWII campaigns a fair chance. Especially since there are free turn-limited versions available both on this site and on Amazon App Store to try them with zero commitment or risk or cost. No ads, no nothing, just turn-limit, usually at 20 turns. Bougainville has seen one of the highest rates of 'great game' feedback, but, alas, many do not even bother to try, since it is such an utterly unknown name even to us history buffs. Daily, players request ever-more obscure scenarios to be made. But, the sad reality is that unless I have 10X bigger fan-base or Play Store discovery actually works, 99% of those suggestions are a financial non-starter. I love history, but there is a limit after which is just not worth it anymore, because so much time out of your one unique life goes into crafting each game. This need for results creates a kind of self-reinforcing �D-Day loop�, since everybody knows that particular �history word� and countless films have been made about it, games about it tend to sell well enough. And while it's a great, secure first step for anyone looking to get their very first game out, you can't exactly make a 50 D-Day games. After the handful of obvious choices like Operation Barbarossa, Iwo Jima, Market Garden, and American Civil War, anyone crafting new games have to make a jump into the unknown and tackle a less-known battle or campaign or war. My point here is this: If you want to see unknown scenarios as games, you might have to consider supporting us by actively spreading the word or buying other less-known scenarios to encourage us developers to take risks by creating more of them. I personally love the unique setup of Demyansk Pocket: It's not about a single frontline, nor about seizing all the area. But if you stop 100 people on the street, it will be an outright miracle if one of them can explain what the combat at Demyansk was all about. How do you generate interest or sell 'unknown'.
One of the trickiest aspects of making a new game is that after working hard month after month, breaking game mechanics down to atoms, everything is super obvious to me inside my mind. Then, when finally the complicated major components of the new campaign click and work together, the all-encompassing feeling is being over-joyed. This is, on many levels, the worst possible head-space to try to explain and document how the new, different elements work to the imagined newbie player. It is such a mind-twist to then try to wipe out your memory and try to experience the game with fresh eyes. How does ammo truck deliver its cargo, and where does it re-stock? And even the hardcore fans doing the early testing are bad at this, because they know the series and the logic I'm likely to use, and they are good at figuring things out on their own. The best thing would be to locate a history buff who has never seen my games, place him in a rat-mace type lab conditions, and observe his very first attempt at finishing the scenario. So, I could put info on the unit-info dialog, but not many players check that out. So, I put info on the documentation, but ever fewer read that. Write the info to FAQ, nope, only long time players read that. I put info on the status line, well, that is only shown briefly and might not be seen. I brutally force the info on a pop-up dialog shoved to the player's face when they select the unit for the first or second time, okay, now they actually likely see it and might even glance at it. But that is such a disruptive user experience, especially after you have learned the info and do not need to or want to ever see it again. Clearly, then, I should only show the info once. Okay, but then I need to keep track of that data about showing information and store it. With hundreds and hundreds of pieces of information that need to be shown to a completely new player, eventually half of the game-code is about tracking data indicating what 'show-only-twice' info was shown and how many times. Considering a player might select that unit 100,000 times over the years, and I only show that popup once or twice, that is an extremely poor ratio of code and storage space to (hyper-rare) usage. After decades of wrestling with this, I have begun to think that it is fundamentally impossible to, in a simple way, make the experience smooth, both for experienced players (no pointless jarring dialogs about stuff they fully know already) and total newbies (bombarding them about how do the extra features of this particular unit type work). Probably the most feasible solution would be to have a setting for experienced players to turn OFF all 'intro dialogs'. And after that, ramp up the number of those 'intro dialogs' while mentioning in every single one of them that you can turn them off at any time. More work for the future updates, I guess, as the latest generation of players are not by default familiar with the logic and rule-sets of the old-timey physical board games.
As previously explained in detail, since out-of-control bots by Google now permanently ban games for having historically accurate flags and symbols, I'll be switching to fictional doodle flags. This will likely be a process with plenty of retakes as some ideas won't work on certain resolutions or screen technologies that twist colors, so don't wonder if each update throws in a new flag for a while.
Please, if you experience a significant non-crash issue with any game, just tap my picture on the app, and it will open your default email client, and you can write a quick message to me. I rather get 30 messages about a bug that affects game-play than none. And many issues are limited to only a handful of players (due to settings, tactics, devices, etc being different), so unless you don't take few seconds to report it, I might never be aware of it. And due to my mind-reading abilities still being close to zero, then it won't be fixed, quickly at least. I am passionate about these games, but I can't be playing all the games all the time with all the devices with all the option combinations to spot any potential flaws (which are inevitable when there are untold amounts of lines of code interacting). It TRULY breaks my heart to realize there has been a noteworthy issue for 2 weeks impacting some of you, but nobody bothered to report it to me. The second I woke up this morning, and somebody finally reported this particular bug, the first thing, even before my morning coffee, was to fix it. And yes, sadly, sometimes I fix a bug within 30 minutes of being informed of its existence, but then the app update gets stuck in a 1-day or 1-week or 1-month long Play Store review. Even though the app has existed 11 years and been through 983798769485 thorough checks, what a perfect waste of everybody's resources and time. Plus, a nice way to keep apps buggy and erode the trust in both Android apps in Play Store and on how responsive developers are.
Article (pics & vid) WW2 Junkers Ju 88 Plane found in the Sea South of Sicily
� A Junkers Ju 88 plane was found 51m deep on the seabed near the small island of Capo Passero, located at the southern tip of Sicily. This aircraft, identified by its serial number, belonged to Kampfgeschwader-54, a Luftwaffe unit that took off on March 2, 1943, from Catania with the mission to bomb the port of Tripoli. However, it was intercepted and attacked by night fighters...
Article: UK and US Special Forces veterans take on gruelling desert camel trek for charity
� Following in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, former Special Forces soldiers are riding camels across 700 miles of Saudi Arabian and Jordanian desert in 25 days. The team is on a mission to raise funds for the Special Forces Club Benevolent Fund, first launched at the end of WWII to help Special Forces veterans.
All history-content creators covering history are just so exhausted by ever-increasing senlesess wrong-almost-always automated banning
"I want to fill you in on some of the challenges that anyone creating historical content on YouTube is really dealing with a significant way these days and I know that this has been a problem for a while now but it seems as though just even in the last couple of weeks it has ESCALATED in a SIGNIFICANT way and what I'm talking about is the problem of demonetization and AD restriction and even age restriction on videos simply talking about historic content and I want to use a few examples just from the last several weeks that I have personally dealt with and then talk about some of what I see happening across the board for YouTube content creators in general."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnPrVn24dTE
"The 6th Airborne Division used 20 Tetrarch light tanks during Operation Tonga, the British airborne landings in Normandy in June 1944. The tanks were landed by glider, where their appearance caused the Germans to cancel a counter-attack at a key moment in the battle but individually, they did not perform well. Several were lost in accidents and those that did see action proved to be inferior in firepower and armour to the German armoured vehicles."
Short book excerpt:
"Lion-sur-Mer was one of the few real trouble spots on Sword. Of the three British beaches, Sword was expected to be the most heavily defended. Troops had been briefed that casualties would be very high. Private John Gale of the 1/ South Lancashire Regiment was �cold-bloodedly told that all of us in the first wave would probably be wiped out.� The picture was painted in even blacker terms to the commandos. It was drilled into them that �no matter what happens we must get on the beaches, for there will be no evacuation ... no going back.� The 4th commandos expected to be �written off on the beaches,� as Corporal James Colley and Private Stanley Stewart remember, for they were told their casualties would run as �high as eighty-four percent.� And the men who were to land ahead of the infantry in amphibious tanks were warned that �even those of you who reach the beach can expect sixty percent casualties.� Private Christopher Smith, driver of an amphibious tank, thought his chances of survival were slim. Rumor had increased the casualty figure to ninety percent and Smith was inclined to believe it.� For a while it looked as though the worst of the predictions might come true. In some sectors first-wave troops were heavily machine-gunned and mortared... There will always be differences of opinion about the nature of the fighting on Sword. Men of the East Yorks disagree with their own history, which says that it was �just like a training show, only easier.�"
� The Longest Day June 6, 1944 by Cornelius Ryan
Perry Dahl, one of the last living American WWII aces with 9 kills, has passed away at 101
� Storied career: Dahl was flying a new P-38L7 when he downed a Kawasaki Ki-61 Tony over San Pablo, Leyte, on Nov. 10, 1944. As he turned to make a second attack, however, his plane collided with his wingman. Dahl bailed out, only to be captured by a Japanese patrol and later rescued by Philippine Resistance fighters. He rejoined his squadron on Jan. 15, 1945, and on March 5, he shot down a Mitsubishi Ki-21 bomber down near Formosa.
New year, new game banned in the Play Store by out-of-control AI bot. This time for using an old-timey anti-N*zi Soviet flag in the Patriotic War game. And yes, the Play Store Policy Team okay'ed using it in this particular historical context years earlier. But that doesn't matter. Facts don't matter. It's all automated to until infinity. Switching to fictional doodle flags and symbols in a desperate attempt to avoid getting flagged in the future. (Tragi)Comical to spent a decade getting things historically accurate and then another decade replacing everything with nonsense. My rant on how modern Google does not work at all
Could a board game help prepare Taiwan for war with China?
� The latest development in a growing trend for �military boardgames� gives players the chance to �defend� Taiwan in the lead-up to a war with China. A new board game called '2045' allows players to take on roles from military commanders and undercover operatives to civilian resistance fighters battling a fictional Chinese invasion... In December, Taiwan�s Presidential Office ran its first-ever 'tabletop' war-game exercises for military and government officials simulating a military escalation with China to test the government�s response readiness.
How the last Japanese soldier was finally lured out of the jungle 30 years after WWII ended
� Teruo Nakamura's misguided loyalty to the emperor's cause was all the more remarkable given that he wasn't even Japanese... after the loss of radio contact with Tokyo, his unit was ordered to break up into smaller groups and launch a guerrilla campaign from within the jungle. Even when Allied planes dropped waterproof leaflets telling them that they were fighting a lost cause, they could not conceive that the emperor would have done something so shameful as admitting defeat. On rare occasions, he encountered islanders who tried to explain to him that the Allies had triumphed but still he was not persuaded, replying that 'Japan is invincible'... Once asked by a journalist how he felt about 'wasting' 30 years of his life on Morotai he had replied that his years had not been wasted: he had been serving his country. But the Japanese government seemed ungrateful for his inadvertent service. His low rank and Amis ethnicity meant that he did not get the hero's welcome, and as a Taiwanese citizen, he was ineligible for the pensions and honours granted to Japanese veterans.
Game series updates: Rolling out new icon for the cities: Settlement-Style (6th option, uses a bit more memory). Fallen-dialog now has an option to turn it ON/OFF or only show it for units with HP. In few games like Eastern Front and Patriotic War, northern rivers froze and crossing them costs fewer MPs for non-tank unit types. There seems to be a character-set issue and on some devices the blue-dots depicting rainstorms are not available, and the operating system falls back to using question marks. So, yes, a group of blue questions floating around is indeed a storm, sorry about that, darn compatibility. The new lighter-weight crash-reporting system is on its third iteration already, and rolled out to some games, and not at all on those scenarios that are most out of date at the moment of writing this. Norway has a setting to ramp up the later British warships. Panzer Missions had a major rewrite in the last few versions, as the logic via which Soviet units increase with each mission was completely redone (it had gotten too messy after 13 years of tweaks). And as already mentioned, some rarely-read in-app documentation will be moved to the website to reduce app-size.
Reading the book: �The Rising Sun The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945� by John Toland, and I'm really liking it, as it takes such a multitude of views on events as they unwrap. Kudos, no wonder it won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. You know it's a good book when one of your reactions is: Why haven't I read this much earlier?
Warren Upton, the oldest living survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and the last remaining survivor of the USS Utah, has passed away at 105
� He had been getting ready to shave when he felt the first torpedo hit the Utah. Then the second torpedo hit and the ship began to list and capsize. The then-22-year-old swam ashore to Ford Island, where he jumped in a trench to avoid Japanese planes strafing the area...
Well, what a fitting way to finish the year: saw a crash that I have never seen before, I can only assume this did not happen on a device that is a phone or even anything remotely like it. And while I appreciate one of you trying to run my game on the Android running a fridge or something like that... Please, seeing these obscure issues gives me serious stress until I finally figure out that this is not going to be a widespread problem.
D-Day commando whose unit landed in Normandy without helmets dies aged 100
� Dennis Donovan served with 48 (Royal Marine) Commando and was part of a force that landed at Juno Beach on June 6 1944. The Ministry of Defence estimates that 70 to 80 D-Day veterans are still alive.
Jolly Holidays! Don't let the Santa out-flank you...
First ever scientific study on WW1 Somme-crater reveals new details on its history
� British miners had dug a gallery for 900 metres from their lines and packed it with 40,000 lbs of explosives. It was one of 19 mines placed beneath German front positions that were detonated on 1st July, 1916 to mark the start of the Somme offensive. But the detonation of the mine at Hawthorn Ridge, filmed by Geoffrey Malins, took place 10 minutes before the whistles blew... Military historian Professor Peter Doyle: The Germans had mastered the art of capturing craters and used this to their advantage...
Trying to get Okinawa with its decade+ old special naval element with warships and carriers and special kamikaze element and special fake-unit element to work smoothly on the new streamlined code is sure taking some frustrating trial and error.
News article: Vietnam Veteran & Second-Longest Held POW in US History to Receive Congressional Gold Medal
� Everett Alvarez was the first US aviator to be captured and would spend 8 and a half years as a Vietnam-war POW in the prison camp they dubbed the Hanoi Hilton. He was the second-longest held POW in US military history after Army Capt. Floyd Thompson, who was held for almost 9 years after the aircraft he was riding in was shot down in March 1964.
If you have been reading the Change Logs of recent game updates, you have noticed that more than one game has lost a unit or two from the AI side. I have been double-checking the Order-of-Battle (OOB) which tend to gather conflicting over the years of dealing with hundreds of units, and moving them around between initial setup and reinforcements, not to mention extra additions as years pass by. Sometimes one source lists a division as 108th-Division, and another as 108-Rifle-ID, so the matching part can be only 3 characters and easy to miss. And sometimes, I have only known the Corps data, and as better OOB data emerges, I'm learning that the division I have added separately was actually already included as one of the units in the Corps. This shouldn't be a big change, as one game might go from AI having 120 units to having 118. In scenarios with only a dozen units, the active combatants are usually much better known.
Two underlying changes coming to the games.
� I will be relocating the rarely-read documentation from the app to the website. In addition, of reducing the app size, some segments of the text can also be unified into one single location instead of carrying around and maintaining 60 different copies of it.
� I will be switching from the open-source ACRA crash library to my own crash-and-error handling code. This both decreases the size of the app, and frees me from having to worry about issues and privacy of outside code libraries.
So, overall the size of the app goes down, nothing should change behaviour-wise, if it does, let me know as always. If you want a sneak peak, Okinawa version 5.0.3 already includes both of these underlying modifications.
In case you haven't noticed, there is a Sortable Table of all Games. You can currently sort the scenarios by release date, historical date, or by map size. I hope to add more data in the coming months if the table sees a lot of usage.
The version 2.4.4 of Axis Crimean Campaign sees a big change in the underlying codebase, so if the app feels bad in a negative way, drop me an email.
If you spend some time with me, you'll inevitably hear me say something along the lines of: "I just want 48 hours in every day, because there are so many interesting things to do, read, learn, try, research..."
Happy and relieved to say that I have finally managed to wrangle back the control of the conflict-series domain and properly set it to redirect to the old reliable hosting. Plus 2/3 of the games have been updated to flush out any missing scores, the rest of the apps will be updated to do the same in the coming weeks.
Article: Peleliu Island: Japan to exhume 1,000 WWII soldiers
- In 2013, a memorial group formed by the families and comrades of the soldiers who belonged to the 2nd Regiment of the Mito Infantry, which was stationed on Peleliu, obtained a map of the mass burial site from the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum
Change of Winds! So, okay, in few games the direction of the wind/storms have been completely wrong (when storms are turned ON from settings). It seems that I basically forgot to update the wind-data when creating some campaigns. So, if the rainstorm suddenly does 180, that's why. I'll be straight with you, the metrological data is not usually the upmost top priority when working on the intrigues of a scenario.
1539-42 Coronado Expedition Cannon Discovered in Arizona
- This wall gun is the first gun associated with the Coronado expedition and the oldest firearm found within the continental USA, and perhaps the oldest cannon known on the continent.
- Francisco V�zquez de Coronado mortgaged his wife's possessions and borrowed heavily for the expedition, that included 150 mounted soldiers and 200 infantrymen, to find legendary cities of C�bola... the local Sobaipuri O'odham people attacked the settlement in the Santa Cruz Valley of Arizona, leading to the Spaniards retreating from the area.
Animation-process: As many have noticed, the AI animation now includes support units like generals and artillery in most games. There is also a status bar (bottom of the screen) text, indicating whether the AI general judges the situation (from his limited knowledge of player's units) to be favorable to attack, or tilted to player's favor, in which case the general focuses on defense. If the AI general can not see huge advantage either way, it settles for a middle-ground tactical actions. In addition, of the visual side, the logic of AI general has been updated. Enemy commanders are a bit more careful to not get overrun while also at the same time trying to avoid (senseless looking) back-and-forth movements, and share extra MPs to the closest unit more (just as the player can do). It goes without saying that when an AI general faces multiple nearby fronts, the priorities may clash, resulting in non-optimal moves. Most evident in games like Spanish Civil War, where it's very challenging to get the AI general to stay focused on one province. I would assume this also changes the gaming experience slightly into a more difficult direction.
Article: How Coffee Helped the Union Caffeinate Their Way to Victory in the Civil War
- Ten months into the Civil War, the Union was short on a crucial supply, the absence of which threatened to sap the fighting strength of the Northern army: coffee. Luckily for the Union, Stephen Allen Benson, president of the relatively young Republic of Liberia, had a plan. A ship that left the port at Monrovia in August 1862 carried 6,000 pounds of premium African coffee. It was the first major shipment to the Union, and would prove vital in the North's victory.
"The German Army which entered Russia wore a very smart uniform. Officers and NCOs carried silver lace on their shoulder straps, there were coloured bayonet knots. General officers wore gold and scarlet, everywhere there was colour on our uniforms... Throughout the last three years of the war our uniforms were being simplified and many units, particularly in the WSS, took to wearing camouflage pattern suits as a mark of distinction. All in all we took on the appearance of mechanics in dungarees and were no longer soldiers in a distinctive and smart uniform."
� War on the Eastern Front, The German Soldier in Russia 1941-1945 by James Lucas
FB link: "A Junkers 88 aircraft was found at a depth of 51 meters in the foothills of Capo Passero in Syracuse Province. Thanks to the spotting of the serial, was able to identify with precision: a KG 54 (Kampfgeschwader), taken off on March 2, 1943 from Catania to bomb the port of Tripoli... With this recent discovery, the total number of Junkers Ju 88 found in Syracuse waters rises to six."
[link to a facebook post with images]
Science article: New Estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records. We leverage the recently released full count of individual census returns and a sample of linked records across multiple censuses. Our national estimate is 698,000 Civil War deaths. This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths based on a 1% census sample.
POSTPONED, since many still use old Amazon tablets! � I will be dropping the support for the Android 5 (API Level 22 nicknamed 'Lollipop') since that was released a decade ago in 2014/2015, and it is getting too hard to maintain compatibility that far back. The cheapest Android tablets/phones start from $40, so, you should seriously consider updating if you're still rocking a decade old device.
HOF/website missing? Hosting Debacle November-2024 explained!
500,000 Japanese WW2 'phantom' ceramic coins discovered. The coins provided a crucial substitute for standard metal currency during WWII, whenmetal was reallocated for munitions, prompting the Japanese government to commission ceramic coins to sustain internal trade. 15 million of these ceramic coins were produced, though most were destroyed after Japan's surrender. As a result, the 1-sen coins became known as "phantom" coins.
The Yanagi scheme included several famous long submarine voyages that transported essential wartime materials, blueprints, and technical expertise between Japan and Germany. Germans received rubber, quinine, gold, mica, tungsten, you know, if the cargo sub survived the mind boggingly long trip avoiding Allied mines/planes/warships... while Japan received optical glass, blueprints for jet/rocket/radar technology, mercury, plus an entire German Type IXC U-boat (U-511), while a disassembled Me 262 could not be delivered before the war ended. Japanese I-8 traveled 48,000 km in 6 months to carry out one trip. The Germans also converted a handful of large Italian submarines into supply subs after realizing they were much better fit for the epic, long voyages. Japanese submarines and German U-boats also operated together and shared intelligence, especially in the Indian Ocean, in order to cut the Allied trade routes. On oceans filled both German and Japanese submarines, they had to implement a policy to not attack other submarines. After Germany threw in the towel, 6 U-boats remaining in Japanese territory were taken over by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
"After sinking the USS Indianapolis, which we had thought to be an Idaho-class battleship, (Japanese submarine) I-58 made her way north. On August 9 an atom bomb similar to the one dropped at Hiroshima was dropped at Nagasaki. It was reported, too, that the Soviet Union had joined in the fight against Japan. The determination was still there, but there was little we could do. However, the morale on board I-58 was very good. While submerged during the forenoon of August 10, our sound detector picked up an echo. I raised the periscope and found there was a destroyer some way off. I ordered the crews of 5 and 6 Kaitens to stand by... In fact, since the advent of Kaitens, American destroyers had not been quite so confident as before... Kaiten 4 penetrated the American convoy right in front of the destroyer, and with the sound of the explosion the whole convoy was thrown into confusion.... On the evening of August 15, I was suddenly called to the hatch by the senior wireless rating. I thought I had never seen a man so sad: he said, "Look what's come." It was a communiqu� announcing the end of WWII."
- Sunk, The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet 1941-1945 by Mochitsura Hashimoto
"By late 1944, the German military had reassessed the need for Zimmerit because Allied forces were not using magnetic anti-tank mines as much as initially feared and Zimmerit was time-consuming and labor-intensive to apply, requiring special coatings and time to cure properly. Germany faced severe shortages of materials and production disruptions, and Zimmerit was ultimately deemed an unnecessary use of resources"
Virtually every book or article suggest the failure of Market-Garden was caused by an intelligence failure... Not everyone agreed with SHAEF's overly optimistic assessment. In fact, the closer an analyst was to the front, the less optimistic his reports tended to be. Colonel Koch, the U.S. Third Army G2, stated in his G2 Estimate number 9 on 28 August that: "Despite crippling factors of shattered communications . . . losses in personnel and equipment, the enemy nevertheless has been able to maintain a sufficiently cohesive front to exercise an overall control of his tactical situation. His withdrawal, though continuing, has not been a rout or mass collapse�" Even though Ultra reported on the 6th that the First German Parachute Army was to assume the sector east of Antwerp, there is no mention of this in the text of the summary. On the German order of battle map provided with the summary, the First Parachute Army is written on the margin of the map as unlocated. The same is true for the II SS Panzer Corps and the panzer divisions. All of these units are reported to be unlocated despite the Ultra reports... Ultra continued to feed information to the analysts, but none of it went directly to the fighters.
- Operation Market-Garden: Ultra Intelligence Ignored by Major Joel Jeffson
Bougainbille Gambit version 1.0.1 rolling out. The usual one-month-after-release fixes and tweaks based on all the feedback, plus adding a setting to show orange redeployment circle on the units about to be removed from the play soon.
Professor of history Francis L. Loewenheim: "What we have here, in effect, is the real Ike."
- In secret parts of a wartime diary Dwight D. Eisenhower characterized Douglas MacArthur as a "baby" and an "uncertain factor" who "likes his boot lickers." Eisenhower in early 1942 described Adm. Ernest J. King, commander of the US fleet as WW2 began, as an "arbitrary, stubborn type" and a "mental bully." One way to help win the war was "to get someone to sh**t King."
NY Times Article
"The Brandenburgers would not be the only German commando forces in operation for Case Blue. Soviet POWs who volunteered were either used in their original uniforms or outfitted as civilians and began filtering behind enemy lines as early as May to wreak havoc in Red Army rear areas. On 22 May, Abwehr agents were also parachuted into Voronezh, Stalingrad, Krasnodar and other key areas where they sabotaged railway lines, power stations and pipelines while Operation 'Hannover' was launched by 350 White Russians of Sonderverb�nd Graukopf on 22 May around Army Group Centre. Though they inflicted heavy casualties on the Red Army, the savage fighting left only a hundred survivors to return to the German lines. In the Caucasus, the Sonderverb�nd Bergmann was formed from 200 Germans and 550 former Soviet POWs or deserters who were ethnically Georgian, Armenian, north Caucasian and Azerbaijani. The Brandenburger troops who were to take part in Case Blue moved east to their respective operational areas during June and July... However, as the Brandenburgers penetrated up to 100km behind enemy lines using the confusion as cover, it was not just the Soviets who frequently mistook them for Red Army troops and Pinkert's men were repeatedly shelled by their own forces, causing needless casualties and affecting morale. ... As resistance faded in the city of Rostov itself, Grabert's company made its way to the river by truck, carrying inflatable boats as part of their equipment and established itself with Stolz, crossing the northern branch of the Don River along with 28 volunteers from the Kradsch�tzen Battalion's engineer platoon. Ferried across the river, they established a command post on the far bank. In sweltering summer heat, heavy machine-gun and mortar fire caused a small number of German casualties, the first half-company of Brandenburgers already making their way across using their inflatables under the command of Oberleutnant Dr Oskar H�ller. Securing a larger bridgehead on the river's south bank, the remainder of the 8th Company soon followed and Grabert planned his assault on the bridge itself. After establishing his position, Grabert awaited darkness before beginning his assault. Covered by supressing fire from the northern bank, the Brandenburgers pushed through intense fire, illuminated by drifting parachute flares and a burning truck on the bridge itself. They stormed the southern end of the bridge and captured it intact. Grabert was grazed in the head by a ricochet and his men were low on ammunition as he planned to continue the attack and take the next bridge downriver. Flares signalled his men to move their heavy weapons forward as his assault group prepared to rush forward, capitalising on their speed to keep pressure on the retreating defenders and keep them off balance. The bridge they held was still swept with heavy machine-gun fire and unusable and the seizure of further crossings would serve to push the defenders away from the river bank that they still held in isolated pockets. Leading from the front, Grabert took his company in a direct assault at 0230hrs as dawn approached, though Soviet machine guns that had previously been concealed opened fire and took them by surprise. Several men were hit, but the momentum of the attack carried the Brandenburgers through and the next bridge was soon secured, though only with a tenuous grip. However, amongst those men that had been seriously wounded was Grabert himself... Casualties were steadily mounting as ammunition and medical supplies began to run out for the remaining Germans. With the heat of the midday sun tormenting the Germans, Unteroffizier Fohrer was despatched to swim back across the river and request aerial and artillery support and it was only the timely intervention of Stukas that allowed the remaining Brandenburgers to hold their position until elements of the 13th Panzer Division crossed the captured bridge."
-- from BRANDENBURGERS: The Third Reich's Elite Special Forces by Lawrence Paterson
Price of Bougainville Gambit 1943 reduced from New Game to normal price!
Kurt Vonnegut's Lost Board Game Finally for Sale
- After releasing his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952, to positive reviews and poor sales, he needed other streams of income... he was most passionate about designing a board game called General Headquarters... The 40 pages of notes amid Vonnegut's papers include several revisions of its rules, and pitch letters to board-game companies suggesting that GHQ could "become the third popular checkerboard game" - and even "be used to train cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point."
John Kinsel Sr., one of the last Navajo Code Talkers from WWII, dies at 107
- With Kinsel�s death, only two Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.
In one of the biggest updates I have ever put out, the Eastern Front reaches version 7.0. It gets SeaLifts, Gebirgsj�gers, option to only rest in West, better AI, more data in Unit Tally, improved animation, un-captured POWs might give 1 HP to Soviet rifle units, etc. If you are in the middle of an epic play-through, maybe finish that first, since this is such a massive update, that better not take chances with it ruining something.
The Last Ever US Cavalry Charge Into Combat Occurred in WWII
- On January 16, 1942, Lt. Edwin P. Ramsey led men from E and F Troops into Morong. While their Japanese opponents were equipped with tanks and machine guns, the 27 American and Filipino cavalrymen had only their pistols and the horses upon which they were riding. The Japanese troops stationed in the village were caught off-guard by the sight and scattered as the American and Filipino troops, pistols drawn, galloped toward them at full speed.
NEW GAME: BOUGAINVILLE GAMBIT 1943
WWII Pacific campaign like no other: unique instant Japanese counter-landing on top of the US landing, Japanese counter-attack by the elite 6th Division that genuinely threatens the landing force, can Australians smoothly take over and finish the seizing the island once Americans are redeployed elsewhere.
You are in command of Allied forces in WWII, tasked with leading an amphibious assault on Bougainville. Your first objective is to secure the three airfields marked on the map, using American troops. These airfields are critical to gain air strike capabilities. Once secured, fresh Australian troops will relieve the US forces and take on the task of capturing the rest of the island.
Beware: a massive Japanese naval base nearby may launch a counter-landing. Additionally, you will likely be facing a truly fierce counter-attack by the elite and battle-hardened Japanese 6th Division, which has seen combat since 1937. Air strikes will only be available after the three designated airfields are under your control. On the positive side, the western coast, though swampy, should initially have a lighter Japanese presence, unlike the heavily fortified north, east, and south sectors.
Unique Challenges of the Bougainville Campaign: Bougainville presents a number of unique challenges. Notably, you may face a rapid Japanese counter-landing almost on top of your own ongoing landing. The Japanese will repeatedly attempt to reinforce their troops, though many of these efforts will fail. This campaign also marks the first combat action of African American infantry units, with elements of the 93rd Division seeing action in the Pacific Theater. Additionally, partway through the campaign, US forces will be replaced by Australian units who will need to secure the rest of the island.
This campaign is often overlooked due to its role in the wider passive encirclement of Rabaul, one of Japan's most fortified positions in the South Pacific. Bougainville's active periods of combat were interspersed with long stretches of inactivity, contributing to its lower profile in WWII histories.
Historical Background: After assessing the heavily fortified Japanese base at Rabaul, Allied commanders decided to encircle and cut it of supplies rather than launch a direct, costly assault. A key step in this strategy was seizing Bougainville, where the Allies planned to build several airfields. With the Japanese already having constructed fortifications and airfields on the northern and southern ends of the island, the Americans boldly chose the swampy central region for their own airfields, catching Japanese strategic planners by surprise.
Good luck with the campaign!
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
The infamous Japanese counter-landing on top of the present American landing:
"Japanese soldiers slipped ashore in 21 landing craft under the very noses of the American defenders. Patrolling PT boats missed the destroyers, and an antitank platoon on shore saw the landing craft but thought they were American. The enemy soldiers landed so close to the American lines that they actually cut off several marines in an outpost, who were later rescued by two LCM's. The Japanese attacked at once in the vicinity of a lagoon... "
Developer backstory: I have been working on this rarely talked about Pacific War campaign for around five years. The fundamental challenge is that this 2-year long WWII campaign alternates between exciting fairly unique events, and absolutely-nothing-happened periods of several months. After years of trying to keep the time-frame historically accurate and artificially slow down the flow of the game in various ways, both me and test-players all came to the simple conclusion that: okay, let's just skip past all slow periods entirely, and weave the active periods into one continuous experience. Which, I'm relieved to report, actually worked out great!
News article: Masamitsu Yoshioka, last of Japan's Pearl Harbor attack force, dies at 106. When Pearl Harbor came into view, black smoke was rising from the US ships hit by the first wave of Japan's surprise attack. The crew of a Nakajima B5N2 torpedo bomber readied for its run. The 23-year-old navigator and bombardier on board, Masamitsu Yoshioka, had practiced his part of the maneuver for months. He was stunned when he was told his carrier group would be part of a massive strike on American territory that included more than 300 Japanese warplanes. "I knew that this meant a gigantic war."
News article: A Japanese Soldier's Son Receives the Flag of His Father after nearly eight decades. During World War II, many Japanese soldiers carried good-luck flags, which featured handwritten well wishes from friends and loved ones. They varied in size but were usually small enough for their owners to fold up and wear inside their uniforms. They also happened to be an item that Allied soldiers collected as battlefield souvenirs...
Gut-wrenching bug in every other recently updated game, so more updates rolling out. If the latest play-through seems extra hard around 15-30 turns, wait for the next dot-one etc fix and restart the ongoing game play from the start. Apologies! Sad face.
Market Garden: Hey, you one player who managed to crash the latest version of this particular game. If you see this, could you kindly drop me an email, letting me know what and under which circumstances were you attacking that caused this issue. Thanks.
Okinawa: Version 5.0 sees addition of the surprise parachute landing of Japanese Giretsu Kuteitai airborne commandos (assumed to gone perfectly to make sense on the scale of the map, there is some variation built-in to counter the players stockpiling units at the right hexagon to instantly neutralize this threat). Some scenarios are really, really hard to come up with various unit types. In the most boring cases, it really just was one type of infantry fighting against enemy infantry. And so, if you want to add some 'flavor' to the Order of Battle, you have to dig pretty deep, meaning tiny scale units. And eventually it simply no longer makes any sense to have 10 men unit fighting 10,000 men division. But such is life: Some battles were a Smorgasbord of unit types, and some were plain vanilla all the way through.
Yet another American secret weapon?
"I was one of the lucky ones to go in on the first wave at Leyte," says Bob Seiler. "The night before my platoon sergeant made a racquet, similar to one for tennis, using a piece of cardboard. Because I was the tallest in the platoon, I was to stand up and bat away any hand grenades that the Japs might try to throw into our amtrac."
- Crisis in the Pacific, The Battles or the Philippines Islands
With Panzer Missions version 6.2 it was time to admit that 13 years of adding various rules and tweaks and exceptions and modifications on how the Soviet units and unit types increase with each passed mission had turned it into a mess, and it was time to rewrite that critical piece of code. The latest version offers a much more streamlined logic, so any tweaks in the future won't be half-guesswork because of all the complexities involved. A new weak 'Newly-Raised infantry unit' type was added, this type gets more common as turns of each mission pass by. Soviet replacements initially only happen in the northern third of the map, but with each mission the limit moves southwards. It should be more possible to get past 10 missions now.
The latest FAQ entry: So, here is the challenge: some players visualize the antitank-gun unit as this army-sized mega formation holding cutting-edge battleground changing weapons (that cut through tanks and bunkers at easy) with unlimited aerial support and never-ending supply of armor for the offense and clearly this unit type should always crush any opposition anywhere! Yet, and here comes the trouble. Half of the player visualize the antitank-gun unit as one single weak, out-of-date antitank gun (that can't make a dent even to a cardboard box) with two soldiers, and these players get bent out of shape if this unit ever does anything else than very clearly lose a battle. Maybe, just maybe, there is some middle round, where the antitank-gun unit has some limited means and strength, it's mostly defensive unit, and sometimes it wins, and sometimes it loses, and let's call this super crazy place 'reality'.
Article: America's Oldest Board Game. Travelers' Tour Through the United States, published in 1822 by Frederick and Roe Lockwood, is the earliest known American board game. This geography-centric game, for 2 to 4 players, is based on a map of the United States at the time. It features 24 states, ranging from the Atlantic coast to new Southern ones such as Missouri and Arkansas. The map includes 139 numbered cities and towns, which serve as spots for players to move to.
D-DAY Through German Eyes: "I saw that whole landing craft go up in flames within seconds, and sink very quickly, surrounded by men struggling in the water. I thought, 'If many more try to turn away like that, there won't be enough Americans to replace the perished ones on the beach, and so we will win this dreadful fight.' ... I did see, in the distance, one single tank emerge from the sea. It was a Sherman type, very recognizable. I had the impression that it was coming up from the sea bed, that is how it looked to me. That was an incredible sight. I had no idea it was even possible to make tanks travel under water. I never heard of our forces being able to do such a thing. But this single tank was on its own, and it was fired on and halted by PAK guns further down the beach... After that, I saw a very large landing craft approach several hundred meters away, and as it lowered its ramp I saw a Sherman tank come out and roll down into the shallows. This tank had some kind of screen or tubing around it, and it traveled slowly but effectively through the shallows and onto the sand, and began firing up at the Resistance Points on the cliffs down there. Other tanks came out of the craft behind it, I am not sure how many, but several. At the same time, we began receiving very accurate mortar fire onto our position. So the moment when I thought that we might win was very brief."
Youtube video: What happened to Surcouf: the largest cruiser submarine of WW2
Poland between Germany and USSR: Okay, oops. I found out that some German divisions were still set on the passive defensive mode, so, the version 1.4 might increase the difficulty level a bit. And by 'a bit' I mean I have no idea how much this changes things. So, if the difficulty level happens to skyrocket, let me know.
Operation Barbarossa version 6.4: Axis unit type split into Romanian, Hungarian, Italian unit types. Siberian and Guards Infantry split into two separate unit types. Added German Antitank Gun Units (late 1941 reinforcements). Rewrote the decade-old reinforcements schedule, tweaked and fixed the starting OOB and added a tiny bit of variation. Setting: Axis units can only rest in Berlin, Vienna, Bucharest (default OFF). Call-for-Support resource now works between various tank units. Added strafing by Soviet air force (inactive during the few first months). Plus all the usual upgrades from this round. Hopefully rewriting the reinforcement schedule does not completely break the flow of the campaign. Let me know if it does!
Facebook post with posts: Warships/boats from the German Black Sea fleet recovered from the river Danube
A big update to Kursk too with version 6.6! Notice, if you have lived under the rock the last two years, then a quick heads-up. Kursk, Korea, and First World War Western Front games are no longer available via Play Store, and you can only get them via Amazon App Store. See the older segments of this blog for details about the whole debacle.
Switzerland offers cash prize to get munitions out of lakes
- For years the Swiss military used the lakes as dumping grounds for old munition. In Lake Lucerne there are 3,300 tonnes of munition, and 4,500 tonnes in Neuchatel. Now, the Swiss defence department offers $58,000 in prize money for the best idea to get it out.
AI: Summer 2024 update: The next round of updates (starting from 2024 August 18) will bring forth an AI-player that has higher priority to tackling the player's dugouts and minefields and supports units like generals, artillery, aifroce, fuel delivery units, etc. In addition, the route selection will have more variety and hopefully better unit-type-based logic. The first game to include this will be Panzers to Leningrad version 3.2 so check it out and let me know if you detect anything going horribly astray.
I'm not claiming that managing the current number of apps/projects in app stores is impossible, but after working ridiculously hard for two months my to-do list is now longer than what it was when I started two months ago :-I So, if you're hoping for a new game, you're out of luck. Also, sincere preliminary apologies to my very likely angry outburst to anyone happily and merrily suggesting adding even more new features and trying to increase my workload even more. All I want is a few hundred hours more per each day, is that really too much to ask for?
Lost wreck of WW1 Royal Navy warship found in 'remarkable' condition off the Aberdeenshire coast
- HMS Hawke was discovered by a team of divers about 70 miles east of Fraserburgh. More than 500 of the ship's crew perished when it was attacked by the German U-boat U-9 in October 1914.
Battle of the Bulge: Version 6.2 updates the German order-of-the-battle and corrects the ancient HPs/strengths/behavior/naming of the German armored unit types. In addition, German replacements/strafing/etc decline at a slightly faster rate. This new setup should be more tolerable to play and more historically accurate. It goes without saying that the Hall of Fame will see bigger cleanups in the future to reflect the fact that the flow of the entire campaign has been tweaked.
Invasion of Norway (version 4.2): Added 3 HP Norwegian King & Government unit that starts north of Oslo and tries to reach one of the still Norwegian-held coastal cities. Capturing it will give small combat bonus plus one +1 MP resource per turn for the rest of the game.
Demyansk Pocket: Total HOF reset will happen soon after 2024 August 12: In the biggest screw-up of the last 20 months, I both messed up the initial location of units on half of the devices and learned that secondary filters of HOF (Hall of Fame) failed. Since I have no way of knowing which score is from a properly functioning scenario, I'm forced to zero the whole Hall of Fame and only play-throughs STARTED with version 6.4.1 will be included in the new HOF for Demyansk Pocket. Apologies!
Battle of Moscow 1941: Massive update with version 6.0 (okay update to 6.0.0.1 on its way), generals can summon security divisions, tripled Soviet cavalry, rewrote a lot of old code like cold weather effects, new icon for Siberian divisions, AI tweaks, etc... Let me know if I managed to completely break something...
Unbelievable numbers, should we believe them or not?
During the Battle of Kursk, the 653rd Heavy Panzerj�ger Battalion using Elefant tank destroyers reported knocking out 320 Soviet tanks, for the loss of 13 Elefants.
"For three hours our Ferdinands fought in the cavalcade of enemy fire and proved to be immune to enemy fire! In the evening of the first day, first enemy tanks were destroyed, while others retreated. Crews of field and anti-tank guns run away after firing few uneffective shots against our Ferdinands. In first engagements 656th Panzerjager Regiment destroyed numerous artillery positions, bunkers as well as 120 Soviet tanks"
� July 19th of 1943 Report by Platoon commander Boehm
After a quick glance at the metrics, I think I'm currently actively maintaining roughly 10 million lines of highly complex code. None of that is auto-generated code, I have manually written every single line, and especially written it to be very dense code. So pardon me if I at times act like a Looney Tunes character.
"One of the last remaining operational WWII-era liberty ships is at risk of falling into disrepair and losing its certification from the US Coast Guard. The SS John W. Brown, docked in Baltimore, Maryland, is slated to head to dry-dock for repairs, and the volunteer team charged with her upkeep is requesting the public's help to fund $500,000 of the over $1 million price tag." (Article)
Features rolling out: Selecting a unit will once pop-up any possible defensive battle results from the AI movement phase. Marked with red B1, B2, etc tags with black background on units. This feature is disabled if the whole combat pop-up dialog is turned OFF. The latter part of the roll-out will also include a setting to enable/disable this. A setting will be added to ask for a confirmation when trying to move a unit that is actively resting at the moment to prevent accidentally ruining the rest and refit process. Set minefield icon to REAL, (triangle) NATO, default (this option can override the default icon set). Unit graphics will undergo a contrast increase. Provinces will be calculated in a new improved way, that might change the province borders a tiny big mid-game as the system switches to the new method.
The first encounters of Siberian troops as Germans push towards Moscow
"At Borodino the regiments of the 2nd WSS Division and the "Hauenschild Brigade" of 10th Panzer Division with the 7th Panzer Regiment, as well as a battalion of 90th Motorized Artillery Regiment and the motor-cycle battalion of 10th Division, had their first encounter with the Siberians: tall, burly fellows in long great-coats, with fur caps on their heads and high fur boots. They were most generously equipped with anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, and even more so with the dangerous 7.62cm multipurpose gun nicknamed by the German troopers the "Crash Boom." They fought impassively. There was never any panic. They stood fast and held on. They killed and let themselves be killed. It was an appalling battle... In spite of the soft roads the 98th Infantry Division had come up by forced marches. At Detchino it had fought its way through cunningly devised field positions and pillbox lines arranged in deep echelon and manned by Siberians. These men took no prisoners. For five days the furious fighting raged. The battalions suffered heavy casualties. The 282nd, 289th, and 290th Infantry Regiments were greatly reduced in number; most of the battalion and company commanders had been killed or wounded. The sapper battalion lost 100 men. But Moscow, the great objective, spurred the men on..."
Guadalcanal: A big update that added separate Tokyo Express units (low strength Japanese ships trying to land reinforcements near the current front line).
Youtube series: The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Article: Bud Anderson, America's last WW2I 'triple ace,' dies at 102. Brig. Gen. Clarence "Bud" Anderson, the last American fighter pilot known as a "triple ace" for downing 16 German planes during WW2, passed away in California at the age of 102.
Price of Kiev: Largest WW2 Encirclement dropped to normal (from 'new').
There are no words to describe how much I miss the early days of Internet when I could get hold of a grown adult human being from any company if there was an issue. These days, I'll just face 999 layers of poorly automated trash bots spewing out totally unrelated automated replies. I guess I'm turning into an old man yelling at kids staying off his AI generated lawn unless they do in-app purchases and watch 80 hours of forced ads.
Article: How a captured Luftwaffe Fw 190 led to the development of the Spitfire Mk IX, the best close-in fighter of WWII. The capture of an Fw 190A belonging to JG26 on Jun. 23, 1942 led to the production of the Type 361 Mk IX Spitfire. This had a strengthened airframe, a four-bladed propeller and a 6o-series Merlin engine...
I have added a SeaLift feature (moving troops between a few selected cities) to Defending Spanish Republic, and I'm hoping to add it to other scenarios too. It won't necessarily be super useful, unless the front lines happen to be at a certain way, but I think the feature still adds a bit of that famous 'something else', AKA new dimensions. Interesting to see in how many games this can be meaningfully implemented, and it goes without saying that in some games I'm starting slow with only a few routes, and then expand once the initial issues have been addressed. The basic logic is that the player can transport one unit per turn, both cities and area around them must be controlled, and there is a tiny chance (depending on the game) of losing HPs during the transport. The sealifts are indicated by anchor symbols adjacent to cities with text label indicating it is a sealift ('sealift to Valencia').
Google Play Store had started a more rigorous developer-account verification process. This is good news overall, as the brand-new accounts publishing trash will have a much harder time to do their usual hit-and-run tactics. Unfortunately, the verification process is turning out to be stressful for me, since documentation from the various Finnish systems and global databases just doesn't fit well with the requirements built on USA-logic and Google'e US-only out-of-date data. And to make matters worse, I have had accounts in various Google departments literally forever, and as a result, my info inevitably has tiny dot-comma-level differences ('address' vs 'address.' spot the critical difference that makes these totally different addresses) that the nitpicking automated processes get hung up on. Sigh, operating in global world is painful at times... EDIT: Well, it took a ridiculous amount of back and forth emailing before Google finally admitted their data is out-of-date and escalated the support case upwards enough times that my issues finally got solved. You would think that Google could handle basic tech, basic data, basic software, basic engineering but, no, nope, no they can't. How many of these cases I have been forced to go through over the last 14 years of doing business with Google. I can't even keep tract anymore. And most of the time Google has been in the end forced to admit that their policies made no sense, algorithms were erroneous, reviewers made mistakes, or Google simply had bad data. Okay, I'll admit that one time it actually was my fault, since I had forgotten to update my info in one particular registry.
Forgotten D-Day cameramen
-- The world's collective memory of D-Day is often summarized by the work of Robert Capa. Amazing yet blurry photos of Omaha Beach have become legendary. But, under German fire, Richard Taylor was also documenting history. His unit was meant to take images of the landings, but he was the only one to bring home video footage of American troops that day in Colleville-sur-Mer.
� News story
� Footage
How 'effortless' was the legendary 1941 Kiev Encirclement that resulted in the largest capture of enemy soldiers in history:
"Although organized Soviet resistance varied from haphazard to almost non-existent, a more formidable obstacle slowed Guderian's forces. According to German war diaries, the Soviet 'roads' south of Roslavl could barely be dignified by such a distinction. Typically they consisted of little more than sandy farm tracks, more accustomed to the light traffic of small horses and peasant carts. The advent of dozens of tanks and hundreds of heavily loaded trucks soon turned them into quagmires, even in the absence of rain. In the 4th Panzer Division's sector south of Unscha the trucks were constantly getting bogged down and those that could not be dug out had to be pulled out with tractors. The war diary of Lemelsen's XXXXVII Panzer Corps noted that movement was 'exceedingly slow and difficult'. Indeed, the many small streams that crisscrossed the area and could not be skirted were even more of a problem than the dire state of the roads. Their bridges had to be reinforced or rebuilt as they were too weak to support the traffic, and in the worst affected areas even the deployment of all the available engineering units could not avert hours of delay. Even Guderian, who was traveling in the area, got stuck so badly that he had to signal for replacement armored command vehicles, personnel trucks and motorcycles. As he noted in his memoir, the experience 'was a grim omen for the future'...
As Model's 3rd Panzer Division fought its way towards the town of Novgorod-Severskii on the Desna, it received reports that its great bridge spanning the river had been destroyed. These reports, however, proved incorrect and through a combination of Soviet ineptitude, good luck and swift action on the part of two German lieutenants, the bridge was seized intact on the morning of 26 August. The importance of this achievement was summed up in the 3rd Panzer Division's war diary: 'Given the wide riverbed and swampy banks the bridge, with a length of 800 metres, spanned an otherwise almost impassable obstacle.' As Model remarked to one of the two lieutenants involved in its capture, 'This bridge is as good as a whole division.' Guderian recalled that the news was 'surprising and most gratifying'...
Yet the sunken roads plagued the long motorized columns of Panzer Group 2, which even in the best of circumstances tended to grind small roads out of existence. On 5 September Bock noted that Guderian's only success was seizing the small town of Sosnitsa, and two days later he added that the panzer group's advance was 'only mediocre'. By contrast, the typically less mobile infantry of the Second and Sixth Armies was managing to force multiple bridgeheads across the Desna. The implications of the changing conditions, as well as the fatigue of the German motorized units and the fanatical Soviet resistance, discredit the references to Guderian's oft-lauded, seamless blitzkrieg into the Ukraine in August and September 1941. Aided by Weichs's Second Army, Guderian's panzer group fought a tough, grinding and sluggish campaign, advancing on a broad front with a long, thinly defended left flank. Meanwhile, Kleist's Panzer Group 1 and Stulpnagel's Seventeenth Army made no progress, aside from the costly house-to-house fighting in Dnepropetrovsk and the more recent bridgehead across the Dnepr near Kremenchug. This is not to say that the offensive in the Ukraine did not enjoy a measure of success - and the potential rewards multiplied at an almost exponential rate the longer Stalin insisted on holding Kiev - but the German advance was by no means rapid, trouble free or inexpensive in blood and materiel."
NEW GAME: KIEV 1941: LARGEST WW2 ENCIRCLEMENT
You are in command of the German armed forces planning to create the largest encirclement in the military history by using two fast-moving panzer pincers, one from the north and one from the south, to encircle the huge number of Red Army formations located at and behind the city of Kiev. Historical background: Due to the economic importance of the southern USSR, the most and best Soviet units were placed here. This meant, that when the Germans invaded in 1941, the southern group advanced most slowly. Eventually, Germans postponed the middle group's advance towards Moscow that was evacuated and empty, and decided to turn the panzer divisions led by General Guderian southwards towards the rear area of Kiev. And if the southern group's own panzer army could get their act together (they were also tasked with seizing the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk) and advance north to link up with the Guderian's panzers, a million Red Army soldiers could be cut off. In spite of his generals' pleas, Stalin refused to empty the Kiev area until it was too late, and instead kept on sending more Red Army reserve troops towards Guderian's armored pincer in order to stop the German encirclement movement and hold on to the industrially key area. The result was a gigantic battle that pulled in more and more divisions from both sides as overstretched Germans simply struggled to cut off and contain such an unprecedented number of Soviet Armies. Do you have the nerves and maneuvering finess to drive two narrow panzer wedges deep in the USSR to pull off the historic encirclement in a timely manner, or do you cave in and choose a wider yet slower attack? Or maybe your panzer pincers themselves will cut off...
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
The encirclement of Kiev in 1941 inflicted devastating losses on the Soviet Red Army. Here's a breakdown of the estimated figures: Soldiers: Estimates in Soviet sources range from 452,700 to over 616,304 killed, captured, or missing. Armies: 5th, 37th, 26th, 21st, and 38th armies, totaling 43 divisions, were almost entirely wiped out. The 40th Army also suffered significant losses. Equipment: 2,642 guns and mortars, and 64 tanks were lost. German period sources mention the losses as 665,000 prisoners, 3718 guns, 884 armoured fighting vehicles.
"The battle and encirclement of Kiev was the Wehrmacht's greatest triumph of the war in the East and the Red Army's greatest single disaster."
� Historian Evan Mawdsley
Maps: It is time for my annual whining about maps. You might think that a city-name is a fairly solid thing. Wrong! WW2-era German maps use completely different city-names than period Soviet maps, and the USSR had a funny tendency to rename cities later on. Plus, Finnish and Western maps might use a third and a fourth totally different city-name. For example, one map has Wroclaw, other maps show Breslau, the next Vratislavia, another shows Boroszl�, and the list goes on and on, and they are all referring to the same city. And at least for the bigger cities there is proper info available if you dig, but for the smaller ones, there is nothing online. So, does this bend of a river have nine different towns or are all the wildly different names referring to the same place? Who knows...
Kursk and Korea updated, obviously only applies to Amazon App Store, as both games are still outlawed in the Google Play Store. Thanks for all the messages telling me that you have filed a complaint in the Play Store, it's annoying to keep on eye on an app for years, see that it's valid and regularly updated, and buy it, and then have it randomly and suddenly removed due to a random Friday night outsourced-kid drank-too-much and needed to meet his ban-performance goals. I do miss the old days when actual grown-up humans managed app stores and had enough time to consider all the angles, instead of out of control algorithms and outsourced kids hastily whooshing around wiping out decade old businesses.
Emails, released as part of the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google, tell a dramatic story about how Google's finance and advertising teams, led by Raghavan with the blessing of CEO Sundar Pichai, actively worked to make Google search WORSE to make the company more money. source/
Underwater Panzer tanks on WWII Eastern Front
"An interesting new secret weapon was employed here for the first time-underwater tanks, also known as diving tanks. They were to cross the river under water, just like submarines. Then, on the far bank, they were to go into action as ordinary tanks, smashing enemy positions along the river and intercepting any counter-attacks. It was an amazing plan. In fact, it was over a year old and had originally been intended for a different purpose-forwith Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England. The idea was that they would be unloaded well off the south coast of England, in about 25 feet of water, to advance over the sea-floor to the flat beaches. There they were to have emerged from the waves, like Neptune, to have fought down the British coastal defences on both sides of Hastings, to have formed bridgeheads for the first German landing craft, and eventually to have advanced inland, causing havoc and panic in the coastal hinterland.
The idea was immediately put into effect. In July 1940 four diving-tank sections were formed from eight experienced Panzer regiments, and posted to Putlos on the German Baltic coast for special training. It was a strange course for the tank crews. In their Mark III and IV tanks they virtually turned into U-boat men. The operational task required manoeuvrability in water of twenty-five to thirty feet. That meant that the tanks had to withstand a water pressure of about two atmospheres and had to be appropriately sealed. This was achieved by a special adhesive. Sealing the joint between turret and tank body was done very simply by means of an extended bicycle inner tube which could be inflated by the gun-loader inside the tank. The gun itself was fitted with a rubber muzzle cap which could be blasted off from the turret within a second.
A special problem, however, was the supply of fresh air to the engine and the crew. Here the principle of the later U-boat snorkel was anticipated. A special hose about fifty feet long was fitted by a special suction device to a floating buoy, which, at the same time, carried an aerial. The tanks were steered with the aid of a gyro-compass. Towards the end of July 1940 the four detachments practised in strictest secrecy at H�rnum on the Island of Sylt. An ancient ferry of the R�gen service would take them well out to sea; there they would slither down a hinged ramp to the sea-floor, and make their own way back to the coast. The unevenness of the seabed did not seem to worry the monsters. The experiments were highly successful. But then, in mid-October 1940, Operation Sea Lion was called off for good. The dream of the U-boat tanks had ended. Of the special detachments three were united into a plain tank regiment, 18th Panzer Regiment, while the remaining detachment was assigned to 6th Panzer Regiment, 3rd Panzer Division.
In the spring of 1941, when the High Command of the Army was discussing the crossing of the Bug north of Brest, in connection with the planning of Operation Barbarossa, somebody on the General Staff remembered the diving tanks. "Surely we had those things . . ." Inquiries were made. Questions were asked at 18th Panzer Regiment. "Oh, yes, we still have those old diving tanks." An order came for diving basins to be built near Prague. 18th Panzer Regiment tested the diving capacity of the old tanks. Since they were no longer required to move under the sea, but merely to cross a river, the fifty-foot-long rubber snorkel was replaced by a ten-foot steel pipe. The exhaust pipes were fitted with one-way valves. Within a short time the U-boat tanks were again in perfect condition. On 22nd June 1941 they passed their ordeal by fire.
In the sector of 18th Panzer Division fifty batteries of all calibres opened fire at 0315 in order to clear the way to the other bank for the diving tanks. General Nehring, the divisional commander, has since described this as "a magnificent spectacle, but rather pointless since the Russians had been clever enough to withdraw their troops from the border area, leaving behind only weak frontier detachments, which subsequently fought very bravely."
At 0445 hours Sergeant Wierschin advanced into the Bug with diving tank No. 1. The infantrymen watched him in amazement. The water closed over the tank. "Playing at U-boats!" Only the slim steel tube which supplied fresh air to the crews and engine showed above the surface, indicating Wierschin's progress under water. There were also the exhaust bubbles, but these were quickly obliterated by the current. Tank after tank-the whole of 1st Battalion, 18th Panzer Regiment, under the battalion commander, Manfred Graf Strachwitz-dived into the river. And now the first ones were crawling up the far bank like mysterious amphibians. A soft plop and the rubber caps were blown off the gun muzzles. The gun-loaders let the air out of the bicycle inner tubes round the turrets. Turret hatches were flung open and the skippers wriggled out. An arm thrust into the air three times: the signal "Tanks forward."
Eighty tanks had crossed the frontier river under water. Eighty tanks were moving into action. Their presence was more than welcome in the bridgehead. Enemy armoured scout-cars were approaching. At once came the firing orders for the leading tanks: "Turret-one o'clock -armour-piercing-800 yards-group of armoured scout-cars -fire at will." The monsters fired. Several armoured scout-cars were burning. The rest retreated hurriedly. The armoured spearheads of Army Group Centre moved on in the direction of Minsk and Smolensk."
-- from Moves East by Paul Carell
What Happened To The WWII German Saboteurs Who Tried To Blow Up America? -- As early as 1940, Nazi spies had been scouting and mapping the U.S. for potential targets should America enter the war, and although that group was busted in 1941, the precedent was established... to send in teams to start blowing things up, the planning fell first to Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence outfit... Chief among the assigned targets were facilities belonging to the Aluminum Company of America, which would have devastated the U.S.'s war machine... Walter Kappe and a longtime New York resident George Dasch chose 11 others who would attend a sabotage school together... The saboteurs split into two teams when they left France, with one group heading to New York and the other to Florida. Unfortunately for the New York team, they hit a sandbar and had to walk the last 100 yards, which got the attention of a Coast Guard officer named John C. Cullen...
Hello you one player who updated Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Norway and had crashes. The saved games on your device are several years old and in format no longer supported, so I recommend starting a new game. You can either uninstall and reinstall the app, clear the data of the game in question via system settings, or change your username to 'forcenewgame' to bypass trying to load the saved game. Sorry, for the inconvenience.
I'm rolling out tweaks to the City-Defense-Bonus system, if you would like to give early feedback, check out the latest 5.0.2 version of Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge will be also getting it soon). And yes, in this particular campaign, the city bonus is less effective during the first 10 turns (surprise attack). Tweaking combat in city: Factors for bonuses: distance to own city (applies to both sides, the point being, the defender obviously gets a bigger bonus the closer to the own city it is located, and the attacker will be penalized the more far away it is from an own city), size of the city (defense), setting (ramp the bonus up from weakest to strongest), penalty for motorized/armored attack, penalty for attacking with a weak/small/low-quality unit, extra bonus if defending own supply city, being encircled nulls some defense bonuses in addition of delivering its own combat penalty, possible special early/late campaign effects, etc. And to clarify, no city-bonus mention in combat dialog as this would be too much to parse into words.
News Article: Lt. Cmdr. Lou Conter, the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, died at 102. Mr. Conter was a quartermaster, standing on the main deck of the Arizona as Japanese planes flew overhead at 7:55 a.m. on Dec. 7 that year. The battleship's dead account for nearly half of those killed in the surprise attack.
History Hit Podcast The British WW1 Hero-pilot Frederick Rutland Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor
Pricing: Defending the Spanish Republic (the latest game) is now priced the same as all the games.
Once a year I run into a note I have written to myself in the middle of the night about a particular scenario, but now, three months later, it does not make any sense to me at all. To do what, where, why? Was it a response to an email feedback, did I promise I would do this, whatever the heck it is. I can only take solace in the fact that I do get tens of thousands of notes right... but sometimes, there just is too little information to make any sense out of it later.
Changes rolling out: I happened to notice a bug in the underlying game engine that gave the AI generals and AI artillery an extra MP between turns from time to time. A fix to that will be rolled out starting late March. I'm also slowly starting to unify the rear-area-extra-MPs across the series, as it has been massively different in certain scenarios, this will be a fairly long roll-out, as there will likely be tweaks to making the campaign both easier (most of the time) and harder. The old 'getting extra MPs in rear-area' rule was absolutely, the new one tolerates one or two enemy held hexagons within the big range that is used to calculate the likelihood of getting extra MPs. I'm also looking into blocking unnatural combos of various movements methods, i.e. in the future it will not be possible to combine railway movement and operational movement to dash across the map.
Grandchildren's Longevity and Their Grandfathers' POW Trauma in the US Civil War
- An association exists between a grandfather's ex-POW status and the longevity after age 45 of his sons and male-line grandsons but not of his daughters, granddaughters... Male-line grandsons lost a year of life at age 45 (4% of remaining life expectancy) if descended from ex-POWs who suffered severe captivity conditions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38393987/
RIP Android on Windows: Microsoft will kill Windows Subsystem for Android on Windows-11 next year. Amazon has since sent out an email clarifying that Amazon Appstore on Windows-11 will no longer be available starting March 6, 2024. news article
Panzer Missions has finally reached a point that I'm slowly starting to make it easier, for some time it tended to be easy enough for the great players to simply keep on grinding almost forever, which precisely wasn't the point, as after 10th mission they were supposed to be close to impossible, but over the years all the extra resources and features gave the player too much oomph. And yes, I still tend to write out everything that I have one topic, in one huge 'sentence'.
News article: "The Air Force has decided to retire an F-35A stealth jet as it was seriously damaged by a bird strike. A comprehensive analysis with its U.S. manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, showed that the F-35A suffered damage in 300 components..." source
NEW GAME: DEFENDING SPANISH REPUBLIC 1936
The still loyal remnants of the armed forces of the Spanish Republic army find themselves in control of various disconnected areas inside Spain after a semi-failed coup by Nationalists. After the first small-scale militia struggles settle down, in the middle of August 1936, you are given full control of the Republican armed forces just as the rebels start to gather their forces for the attempt to take Madrid. While most countries choose a non-interventionist policy in the Spanish Civil War, you'll receive help in the form of sympathetic International Brigades, plus tanks and planes from the USSR. Meanwhile Germany, Italy and Portugal give support for the rebels in the form of troops and planes, not to forget that the battle-hardened Army of Africa also chooses to align with the Nationalists. Can you outmaneuver General Franco's wide array of quality forces intelligently enough, both in defense and attack, to turn the dispersed setup to your full control of the Iberian Peninsula to guarantee the continuation of the Second Spanish Republic?
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
"You don't know what you have done because you don't know Franco as do I, given that he was under my command in the African Army� If you give him Spain, he is going to believe that it is his and he will not allow anyone to replace him in the war or after it, until his death."
-- Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer warning his fellow rebel generals at the start of the Spanish Civil War
AI: So, the good and bad news is that during the testing of the latest campaign, I have managed to find a way to coordinate the AI's efforts in a more grouped-together manner without causing a noticeable increase in processing. This is great news for scenarios that are too easy and potentially troublesome for the already very challenging campaigns, which might need some tweaking after the next round of updates. While crunching numbers for the Defending Spanish Republic, I also happened to spot a flaw in the movement-priority system that has caused the AI to excessively group together support units (generals, artillery, etc.). This flaw is in the underlying game engine, so it is affecting all games as of February 2024.
Mike Sadler, Intrepid Desert Navigator in World War II, Dies at 103. Maj. Mike Sadler, a WWII navigator on the trackless Sahara of North Africa, who guided Britain's first special forces across sand seas on daring behind-the-lines night raids that blew up enemy aircraft on the ground and troops in their billets, was one of the first recruits and the last surviving member of the S.A.S. from the year of its founding, 1941
News: US To Restore Tinian Airfield Once Home To Largest B-29 Bomber Fleet During WWII. Tinian currently houses one international airfield, while Tinian North Airfield, once the most extensive B-29 base during World War II, lies largely concealed by jungle growth. However, the runways and taxiways remain intact.
Utah & Omaha: Hospital fix rolling out.
Article: 8 Strange Tank Prototypes That Never Made It To Battle... Including Vezdekhod, CLB 75, Kugelpanzer, Lebedenko...
Changes currently rolling out: INFO/STRENGTH-MAP button on general's menu varies a bit, but will usually show three separate things (unless there is space in the menu to show these things separately): (1) Unit Type Info pop-up dialog, (2) Unit History pop-up dialog, (3) shade the mini-map in the upper-right corner with the current strength estimate of the forces based on known or recently known units. Certain actions in the menu of generals will alternate, most commonly requesting Sabotage and Call-for-Support, or building Hospital and Airfield. Fuel carrying trucks or depot units had some inconsistencies in their MP cost and likelihood of getting reward MPs for dumping fuel, these should now be uniform across the games. There are some new 'hardware' related settings in the options (dice) menu, including turning rounded display ON/OFF (pad the text at the bottom status line to avoid it being cut off in the corners) and allowing to turn making of the failsafe copy of the current going game ON/OFF (turn this OFF if you're playing on a decade old device which is totally running out of space and storage).
News: A senior American diplomat spied for Cuba for 42 years
- Victor Manuel Rocha, advisor to the highest executive decision-making body of the US government, the National Security Council and the US Southern Command, arrested
- Meeting with an undercover agent, Rocha spoke with a pride about his espionage for the Cubans over several decades
Pricing: Tinian changed to normal price!
Video: Two Vietnamese girls react as they watch Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnam War film by Stanley Kubrick, for the first time.
BATTLE OF TINIAN 1944
You command the American WWII Marine forces tasked with carrying out an amphibious assault on the island of Tinian in order to turn it into one of the biggest airbases in the world.
⊕ Full paid version on Play Store
⊕ Full paid on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited demo version on Amazon
⊕ Free turn-limited as APK file for side-loading on your device
To surprise the Japanese defenders, the American commanders decided, after some feisty arguments, to roll the dice and land on the ridiculously narrow northern beach. It's width was only a fraction of what WWII-era amphibious military doctrine considered reasonable. And while this surprise move guaranteed an easier first day for the American troops, the narrow beach also limited the speed of the future reinforcements and made the logistics vulnerable to storms or other disruptions. Commanders on both sides waited to see if the US Marines could block the inevitable Japanese counter-attack during the first night, to keep the landing beaches open to allow successful continuation of the attack.
Features: Flamethrower tanks as a separate unit to take out enemy dugouts and landing ramp units which turn a few hexagons into a road as they disembark. The 30x40 size of the map and the non-excessive number of units allows the turns progress quickly and keeps the front line fluid enough to always have something exciting going on.
"In war as in every other phase of activity, there are enterprises so skillfully conceived and successfully executed, that they become models of their kind. Our capture of Tinian belongs in this category. If such a tactical superlative can be used to describe a military maneuver, where the result brilliantly consummated the planning and performance, Tinian was the perfect amphibious operation in the Pacific war."
-- General Holland Smith
Pic: Left-side: Sometimes an encirclement works flawlessly and you manage keep both your speed and coherent front-line while cutting off more than a handful of enemy units. Right-side: And sometimes your troops simply comprehensively run out of movement, and you know the next turns will be chaotic side-way spurts as you are forced to react in a way that creates a chain reaction that weakens the front-line one small sector at a time.
Article: A German armored counterattack of 21st Panzer Division actually reached Normandy beaches. The panzers on the beach certainly had the greatest armor and firepower of assets on the beach. But they had a huge problem: The Brits had naval artillery right offshore and air support overhead...
The arch of every single social media platform (from the point of view of fans and content creators):
� Phase-1: Thousands of engineers work hard to connect content creators with their fans. Fans want to see everything from their favorite content creators. Content creators want their fans to see everything they post. Engineers try hard to deliver that. It's magical.
� Phase-2: Literally everything gets filled with ads to keep on increasing the ad sales eternally, until the placement of the ads no longer even makes any sense whatsoever. The latest example of this is Google Play Store system notifications now often have a red dot when you open the Play Store app, and when you click that notification marker on the play store app to see the critical system message, it's often just a spammy ad promoting an app. Why would anyone ever again check why the play store app notification dot is on? Then Google will, of course, whine that nobody checks their critical yet ad-filled notifications, and begins to force every new change and update to users.
� Phase-3: Thousands of engineers work hard to prevent fans ever seeing anything from the content creator they love. Unless that content creator pays a gigantic amount of money to 'boost' their post. In essence: Engineer try really, really mightily to prevent those two willing participants from having any interaction whatsoever, unless money is extracted from that social interaction. This is the exact opposite of a 'social media connecting people'.
� Phase-4: Everyone moves to the latest new shiny social media that seems magical since it still connects fans with the content they really want to see... and so the cycle begins once again from the start.
� Content creators often whine about being shadowbanned, in reality, that's rare. It's just social media companies going through their usual arch of actually helping to create social interactions to excess ads to blackmailing content creators if they want to be seen at all by the people who really want to see their content. It's sad. It's sick. It's a fundamentally broken model. This is why even the mightiest social media sites have always fallen, so far. Maybe one day a social media will emerge that alters that pattern. Or maybe the old crumbling social media sites manage to lobby for so much bureaucratic regulation that it makes it too costly for any new social media sites to rise ever again.
Researching archives for the next game, and light-heartedly arguing with a military library whether one particular reserve formation was committed to combat or not. Might be one of those cases that part-of/gear-from-it it was, and the rest was not committed.
The movement arrows (indicating the past movement of the ground combat units) system, which can be turned ON/OFF from Settings, does not scale properly under certain conditions. The fix will be rolled out with the next round of updates. Also, these movement arrows might not appear for the multi-MP units that are deep in the quiet rear area, to prevent the arrows from fillng up the entire map.
There was a line of forts defining the eastern Roman frontier. This article presents the results of a regional-scale remote sensing-based survey utilizing declassified CORONA and HEXAGON spy satellite imagery from the 1960s and 1970s, which demonstrate there are far more forts than previously recognized...
Google Play Store has removed Korean War, WW1-Western Front, and Kursk. So, if you ever want to update those apps or install them to a new device, simply re-buy them from Amazon App Store, which does not go around randomly removing apps that have been around up to 10 years and passed 978987987 previous reviews without problems. Frustrated. The core issue is this: In the past I have offered free no-ads no-tracking turn-limited demo versions as separate apps because the players kept asking for them. I can't delete those old free demo apps from the Play Store, that's not allowed. I did make them unpublished, BUT, if I don't update them I will get penalized (YES, Google in its infinite wisdom forces developers to update a decade ago abandoned apps). But if I DO update the old demos, they will get republished, and I get penalized for having duplicate content (the demo app is too similar to the paid app). It's a guaranteed lose-lose situation for a developer like me, who has a lot of stuff on the play store since I have been active over a decade (in the past all the rules were different, in apps were not around or initially only worked in a few countries). And yes, I have appealed these decisions 98798897 times, in the past I have won, but these days there is very, very, very little human consideration left in the Play Store processes. And even if you get a human, he/she has one nanosecond to make a decision to meet his/her quota of decisions for that week. It's utterly hopeless, all human common sense and taking context in consideration is forever lost. It is also noteworthy, that these random blurs of bans often happen on Friday nights. My apps are high enough quality that everyone can browse through the Facebook page and see that many have publicly stated my Android-only apps have kept them from switching to Apple ecosystem. This is freaking reward I get for trying to increase trust in the play store by offering free demo versions the players can test, even for a year if they please.
It is hard to put it into words, how massively different experience it is to make business with Amazon vs Google. Play Store keeps regularly coming up with random or illogical decisions, in the past I have succeeded in getting most of them overturned, but in recent years the appeal process has sadly turned from thoughtful humans to even more automated/outsourced brainless rule staring without any common sense considerations. In a total opposite to Google: The Amazon App Store has contacted me precisely twice over all these years, and both times I have agreed that they were making a solid point, and I happily made a minor change in the game. Feedback from Amazon has so far been very thoughtful and useful, and I have had zero disagreement with their suggestions based on consistent, predictable logic. Over the years, Amazon has earned my trust, while dealing with the Play Store is like being in an abusive relationship you can't (afford to) quit. Every time they contact me, I'm instantly stressed and fearful: what thing that was fine the previous 979879878 times is now raising their anger. It is pretty obvious why most android developers have either shifted to solely creating apps for iPhones, or quit the software field entirely, or just simply committed sui***e after Google's conflicting policy rules have decimated the business they have worked their best years on.
App founder quits Google, says company doesn't serve users anymore: A scathing blog post details dysfunctional life inside Google: "The company is trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, and other bureaucratic processes, and while the employees are capable, they get very little done quarter over quarter, year over year. I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function."
Article: Rusting Panzer tank (Bergepanther) is discovered in a Polish river
-- Similar model fetched 15 million euros in Germany two years ago
Some of the defaults settings will change (only affects new installs), for example, moving the unselected unit by swiping from it to the adjacent hexagon and automatic focusing of the map into the direction of the multi-hexagon travel will be turned OFF by default in the future to make the user interface simpler for the new players.
If you like history/WWII pics, I'm once again active on the game series Facebook Page. If you have followed me for a long time, you know that one year I'm posting daily and then go into anti-social-media mode, and barely post anything in a year.
Archaeologists Unearth WWII-Era Air Catapult System In UK. Developed 1938-1940, the RAE Mark III Catapult was designed to launch fully fueled and loaded bombers from runways as short as 270 feet long.
Some of you really like to place a lot of minefields on the map, so I have been deploying a double solution of increasing the amount of memory reserved for the resources and making the mines a bit more expensive to make sure the system can handle that. And I get it, especially on the harder difficulty levels you might need to dig in pretty deep on some sectors to survive.
News article: Undersea video of lost WWII aircraft carriers provides new clues about their dramatic last moments. Video of the first detailed look at the USS Yorktown and two Japanese aircraft carriers Akagi and Kaga that were sunk during the Battle of Midway.
Well, I just panic-rushed to my laptop to fix a crash-causing bug in one of the games, only to realize 5 minutes later that the version number of the crashing app is actually over two years old. The resistance to (auto) updating apps never ceases to surprise me.
News article: Ellsworth Johnson, Last Survivor of a Secret Army Unit, Dies at 100. -- During World War II, he parachuted into France and China as part of a special operations group (that spawned today's Green Berets) on missions for the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the C.I.A.
Always fun updating WW1: Western Front, as it has both decade+ old code and a lot of exceptions from the mainstream WWII games.
Yeremenko's account of the first appearance of Katyushas (Soviet rocket launchers)
About mid-July I received a telephone message from headquarters: "It is intended to employ 'yeresa' in the battle against the fascists, A detachment armed with this new weapon will be assigned to you. Test the weapon and let us have your report on it."
'Yeresa' was the name for the first rocket-mortar batteries. Not even Yeremenko had known about them. We tested the new weapon near Rudnya. The rockets streaked through the air with a terrifying whine. They, soared up like comets with a red tail and then exploded with a crash like thunder. The effect of the bursts of 320 rockets within a span of 26 seconds in a very limited area exceeded all expectations.
The Germans ran away in panic and terror. Admittedly, our own troops withdrew likewise. For security reasons we had not informed them beforehand about the use of the new weapon.
The victims of this surprise were parts of Hoth's 12th Panzer Division. At first the effect on the troops was really terrifying. The German troops nicknamed the rocket mortar "Stalin's organ-pipes." The Russians called it "Katyusha"- Little Kate. Luckily, Yeremenko had only one unit. Thus the appearance of the howling Katyusha at Rudnya did not turn the tide of the battle, but it was another reminder of the technological capacity of the Soviets. It convinced the optimists in the German High Command of the need for caution --or, to put it differently, for haste.
That confusing moment when you find out that one of your updates 3 months ago never actually went out in one of the app stores. Maybe I didn't click the final button, maybe the Internet had a hiccup, maybe the partizan movement got to it. It's a mystery. Well, better much later with even newer update than never.
Let me tell you, updating the campaigns with fuel and ammo logistics requires intensive concentration to not break up anything.
"T-34s! Now it was the turn of the German Central Front to experience that wonder-weapon which had made its appearance on the southern sector during the first 48 hours of the war, spreading terror and fear wherever it moved. Six miles east of Borisov, near the village of Lipki, Nehring's and Kreyzer's armoured spearheads made contact. The 18th Panzer Division clashed with a crack unit from the centre of Karl Marx's world revolution. When it first hove into sight the T-34 struck a good deal of terror among the German armoured spearheads and Panzerj�gers. But abreast of it, at a distance of about 100 feet, came an even bigger monster-a KV-2, weighing 52 tons. The light T-26 and BT tanks between the two giants were soon set on fire by the German Mark Ills. But their 5-cm. shells made no impression whatever on the two giants. The first Mark III received a direct hit and went up in flames. The other German tanks scuttled out of the way. The two Soviet monsters continued to advance.
Three German Mark IVs, nicknamed "the stubs," hastened to the scene, with their 7-5-cm. short-barrel cannon. But the heaviest German tanks then in existence were still some three tons lighter than the T-34, and the range of their guns was considerably less. However, the German commanders discovered that the crew of the T-34 were unsure of themselves and very slow in their fire. The German tanks underran its fire, weaved round it, and dodged its shells. They got the giant between them. They shot up its tracks. machine-gun fire from a Mark III. Meanwhile the huge 52-ton KV-2 with its 15-2-cm. cannon was still shooting it out with two German Mark Ills. The German shells penetrated into the Russian tank's plating as far as their driving bands, and then got stuck. Nevertheless the Russians suddenly abandoned their vehicle-probably because of engine trouble.
This incident reveals the cardinal mistake of the Russians. They employed their T-34s and super-heavy KVs not in formation, but individually among light and medium tanks, and as support for the infantry. Those were very outdated tank tactics. The result was that these vastly superior Soviet tanks were smashed up one by one by the German tank companies, in spite of the terror they originally struck among them. In this way General Kreyzer's counter-attack near Lipki collapsed."
� Book exceprt from Moves East by Carell
Argh, I rolled out corrupt escape-withdraw-process trigger to a handful of games, which explains the recent flurry of double updates.
Video: All The Times We Nearly Blew Up The World (Veritasium YT channel). The crash of nuclear-armed B-52 near Thule was not an isolated incident. Two years earlier, another B-52 carrying 4 hydrogen bombs crashed near the Spanish town of Palomares. One of the four bombs was recovered virtually intact, but two others released plutonium when their explosive triggers detonated. A fourth bomb fell into the sea, it was eventually recovered, but radiation released by the damaged weapons required a U.S.-led effort to decontaminate 640 acres of topsoil...
Price of Baku dropped to normal price.
Article: Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel recalls what it's like to fly the Ju 87G, the tank busting Ju 87 fitted with 37 mm Cannons that allowed him to destroy 12 T-34s in one day... results with the BK 3.7cm-equipped Junkers did vary, and some units found the weapon to be unsatisfactory. Thus, they removed the cannon and returned to carrying bombs. But those crews which prevailed began to devise effective short-dive or shallow glide, low-level attack tactics in which an enemy tank was approached in a long, straight run, and fire opened at the closest possible range. Proof of the success of this method came in July 1943 when, despite his earlier reservations, Hauptmann Rudel of StG 2 destroyed 12 T-34s in one day, each one being recorded by a photograph...
Patriotic War got 'geo-blocked' in the Russian Play Store. I don't know why.
Auto-move (moving the selected unit multiple hexagons at once in the quiet rear area) is getting more settings which allow you to turn the entire thing off, or set the range it is active. There is also a setting to allow predicatively moving the map view forwards into the direction of travel, this way you don't have to constantly scroll the map as you auto-move the unit in the vast rear areas.
I just can't believe how troublesome events the enemy amphibious landings can be. Placing AI units on the map mid-game on a spot where the player might already have units makes the whole question of who controls what so confusing to the underlying code. For example, in some cases the city might have been controlled by the AI, but the hexagon (land) under the city was controlled by the player, and you can imagine how that conflict screws up various reality checks. Not to mention that players approach the area in various ways, with various timetables, with varying tactics (dugouts, mines, etc), so it doesn't really matter if I use time or area based triggers, things can always go wrong. And since the amphibious AI landings rely on a vast number of underlying code calls, any change in them will potentially throw calculations off balance. I guess what I'm trying to say is, apologies for the diverse array of issues with the landings.
Video: America's Wars 1754-1945: Animated Battle Map. The American Battlefield Trust presents to you "America's Wars" Animated Battle Map, detailing all major U.S. military conflicts from the French and Indian War to the conclusion of World War Two.
Operation Barbarossa version 6.2 adds new ways of marking/drawing scattered units, battle markers, and movement arrows. The goal is that hopefully the movement arrows and battle markers can be drawn over each other without making a horrible mess. Naturally, there are a couple of settings to alter their appearance: The transparency/strength of the movement arrows can be tweaked or turned off, and various symbols can be selected to mark the locations in which units have scattered in. You might want to check how it all looks to send me feedback before these changes roll out to every possible game.
Book excerpt:
13th Panzer Division on 20th September succeeded in crossing the Terek south-west of Mozdok. On 25th September General von Mackensen launched an attack with the whole of HI Panzer Corps against Ordzhonikidze, on the road to Tiflis. While 23rd Panzer Division was slowly advancing with units of 111 th Infantry Division, the SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Viking," brought up from the Western Caucasus, pushed through farther south against the Georgian Military Highway. The ancient road to Tiflis was reached.
The combat group of the WSS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Nordland" arrived on the battlefield from the lower, wooded part of the Caucasus, and with it the "Viking" Division was able to force its way into the northern part of the Grozny oilfields, and to block the Georgian Military Highway at two points. The keypoint known as Hill 711 was stormed, at heavy cost, by a battalion of Finnish volunteers fighting within the "Viking" Division, and was held against all enemy counterattacks. But would the troops have any strength left for the final push, for the last 60 miles?
Four weeks passed before III Panzer Corps had accumulated the necessary reserves in manpower, fuel, and replacements to launch a new-and as they hoped the final-attack.
On 25th and 26th October the Corps moved forward from its bridgehead on the western bank of the Terek in order to break through towards the south-east. The battalions fought stubbornly. An enemy force of four divisions was smashed and about 7000 prisoners were taken. Rumanian mountain troops blocked the valleys leading to the south. The 13th and 23rd Panzer Divisions drove on to the south-east, and by a vigorous attack on 1st November took Alagir and cut the Ossetian Military Highway on both sides of the town. Major-General Herr's 13th Panzer Division, following up this bold armoured thrust, reached a point three miles west of Ordzhonikidze on 5th November.
By then the last remnants of strength were spent. Soviet counter-attacks from the north cut off the divisions from their rearward communications...
from ...Moves East by Carell
PANZERS TO BAKU 1942 is out!
Operation Edelweiss: The ambitious attempt by the Axis forces to launch an attack across the Kalmyk Steppe and deep into the Caucasus region to seize the critical and vast oil reserves in the faraway Baku. Fuel and ammo logistics, horrible terrain, and Soviet landings on the flank all combine to make this a harrowing attempt. On the plus side, rebels hiding in the mountains are ready to start an anti-Soviet insurgency.
⊕ Play Store (full paid) ⊕
⊕ local free turn-limited APK to sideload ⊕
⊕ Free turn-limited version at Amazon ⊕
⊕ Full at Amazon App Store ⊕
If you liked Axis Endgame in Tunisia (Kasserine Pass), you'll like this one too, as the overall basic setup is similar.
Major features and updates currently in the process of being rolled out:
+ Setting: Make support units to be at higher or lower initial selection priority when using NEXT button
+ Setting: Automove (moving several hexagons at once) can focus the map into direction of travel (less need to move map around)
+ Units that will get a combat bonus from the selected General marked with black-and-white edges instead of the previous solid color
+ Building hospital/airfield requires at least 90% of the province to be under your control (varies by difficulty level)
+ Slightly bigger Status Line at the bottom of the screen (useful on tablets)
Podcast: The Fall of Mussolini. History Hit podcast.
Of Heroes and Traitors - Seven Great Generals Who Switched Sides in Wartime. For some who change sides, it is a shrewd political move that puts them on the path to hero status. Others find that they have squandered any hope of esteem and a glorious reputation.
Over 700 Civil War-Era Gold Coins Found Buried on a Kentucky Farm. A Civil War-era treasure of more than 700 gold coins was unearthed in a Kentucky cornfield, a find that has at least partly vindicated legends of lost Civil War gold that have driven American treasure hunters for more than 150 years. It is possible the hoard was buried ahead of a destructive Confederate raid carried out by Brig. Gen. John H. Morgan in the summer of 1863.
New features that are currently in process of rolling out: Automove (moving the selected rear-area unit multiple hexagons at once by tapping far-away is now a settings that limits the range of this feature), bombardment by the player has been made more effective in severeal campaigns, If a unit covers a tactical route, narrow yellow-green arrow drawn over the unit to indicate the route, Dugout can be placed on a border hexagon of a province if enemy control at most around 10% of it, Settings: Less initial HP to reflect the fact that units were still in the process of being mobilized (only a handful of games).
Videos:
Why the Japanese were the most DYSFUNCTIONAL Force in WW2 (The Front Youtube channel)
D-Day - The Forgotten SAS Operation called TITANIC
The Secret Box that Was Snuck Out of the UK to Completely Change WW2
The forgotten Japanese attack against the U.S. before Pearl Harbor
Director of The Tank Museum, Richard Smith, shares his choice of what he considers to be the worst 5 tanks at the Bovington Tank Museum
Did a German Pilot Break the Sound Barrier 2 Years Before Chuck Yeager?
Tankgewehr M1918 - The World's First Anti-Tank Rifle. Nine months after British and French forces rolled their tanks onto the Western Front in World War I, Germany readied a wholly new kind of counter-weapon. Driven by the shocking and surprise appearance of a new mechanized foe, German generals contracted Waffenfabrik Mauser AG to build the first anti-tank rifle of its kind in history...
Changes rolling out: coloring of the minimap is changing on some games; loss/victory texts have been rewritten, instead of ON/OFF setting for all generals, it is now possible to set a percent chance for each general being in play; if a unit covers a tactical route, a narrow yellow-green arrow is drawn over the unit (just like with the rivers); a turn cannot be ended if resources that would expire between turns are still available, a dugout can be placed on a border hexagon of a province if the enemy controls few hexagons of that province (difficulty level also affects this calculation), more UNDO actions, simplified and size-wise smaller icons (dugouts, shield city, some NATO symbols), and much more.
Podcast episode: The Battle of Leyte Gulf [WW2 Podcast]. The battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of WWII, it consisted of four separate actions near the Philippines between the US Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Japanese plan was to disrupt the American landings on the island of Leyte. In one respect, the plan was a success, the Japanese did draw off Admiral Halsey's 3rd Fleet...
Game: Operation Sea Lion: Big updates: added a British landing on a coastal town by British special forces, setting to inflict HP losses on German ground combat units while being transported over the channels.
Video: Territories Under German Control Till The End of WWII - The Very Last Battles of WW2 in Europe ... Discussing the last battle lines of WW2 in Europe and talk about the last WWII battles that were fought, like the Georgian Revolt of Texel, the battle for Itter Castle, the final WW2 battle: the battle of Odzak. (History Hustle Youtube Channel)
D-Day version 7.0. A big rewrite of the whole campaign in order to bring back the long-lost balance in this particular scenario (some winning it too quickly before German reinforcements even arrive while others got stuck in battle of attrition. If you have played this game for years, let me know how this latest version feels to you.
The Red Army Used Camels to Fight the Germans at the Battle of Stalingrad. It appears Camels were first implemented by soldiers fighting around the Kalmyk Steppe, as the animals were better able to navigate the difficult terrain than military vehicles and could carry more than a horse. Many of the camels belonged to the 120th Guards Rifle Division and served at the Battle of Stalingrad.
The Spy Behind the Iron Curtain. This episode of History Hit podcast contains high-speed chases, modified cars and a mission to uncover secret enemy technology. It's everything you'd find in a James Bond movie, but also on a Cold War BRIXMIS mission- one that today's guest Dave Butler was part of, gathering intelligence on Soviet firepower as Britain prepared for World War 3.
Rolling out: A sabotage feature is coming to most campaigns. The generals can, via the action menu, request guerilla sabotage acts in nearby enemy-controlled areas, some of which will turn into player control for the duration of that turn. Cost: usually 1 TMP and 2 MPs. If you feel that this is too much of a fantastical feature, simply do not use it.
Rolling out: As I'm dropping support for the decade-old versions of Android, I will be able to update the design of the pop-up dialogs, which have been relying on the very primitive default code, to be as combatible and as small in size as possible.
A big update to Operation Market Garden, which includes more actions for generals and, hopefully, a fix for the flaw that caused paratroopers to be thrown over enemy dugouts during variation/initialization.
UNION (American Civil War 1861-1865)
Note: Version 1.0.1.2 rolling out (refined the Victory Point distribution in cities)...
Imagine for a moment that you are the commander of the Union armies during the most pivotal moment in American history - the Civil War. Your mission is clear: conquer the cities held by the rebellious Confederacy and reunite a nation torn apart by strife.
As you survey the vast front line stretching from the eastern coastline to the wild west, you are faced with critical decisions at every turn. Do you prioritize raising new infantry corps to bolster your forces? Do you rely more heavily on the power of gunboats and artillery to strike fear into the hearts of your enemies? Or do you take a more strategic approach, constructing a comprehensive transportation network with railways, locomotives, and riverboats to optimize the logistics of your military machine?
Though the road ahead may be long and treacherous, you have the strength, the will, and the determination to see this through. The fate of a nation hangs in the balance, and it is up to you to make the tough choices that will shape the course of history.
- Play Store
- Amazon App Store
- Free Turn-limited version at Amazon
- Local free-APK for sideloading
If you have followed my incoherent ramblings for a decade, you know that the Union side of the American Civil War has been one of those campaigns I have tried to make a couple of times before over the years, but I have never managed to get anything satisfying or worth releasing until now. The difficulties of crafting a challenging scenario from the Union side are many. Union had much more industrial strength and manpower (in some sources, the Union produced 95% of iron; good luck creating a balanced multi-year war from that initial setup), and the capitols are right next to each other, only a few hexagons apart, so how do you make the flow of the game such that one side does not seize the capital instantly? The Union carried out several landings; how do you sensibly model that without getting too complicated? Not to forget that when the war started, both sides had fairly small, militia-styled formations that only later evolved into massive corps and armies. And how do you add enough unit types to keep the game from being just pure monotous regular infantry? So, to even out the playing field at least a little, one has to dig up pretty much everything from logistics to riots and uprisings and native raids from tribes that tried to use the situation in their favor to gain more independence or autonomy. Unbelievably many moving parts have to fit well enough to create an engaging yet challenging game-play without drifting into ridiculous territory. But I'm happy and proud to say that I think I have finally managed to bring all these elements together in a way that creates that "I NEED to play ONE MORE TURN!" feeling.
Video: Japan's Secret Supercarrier Only Seen Twice in WW2. Shinano was an aircraft carrier built by the Imperial Japanese Navy and the largest such ship built up to that time. She remains the largest warship ever sunk by a submarine.
DISCOUNT: Fall of Normandy 1944 (German side of the D-Day) is available at the lower price for a couple of weeks at Play Store (in the selected countries that cover 99% of my sales). It's a smaller scale scenario, basically the reversal of the D-Day. But be warned: it's a challenging campaign as the Allied ground and aerial superiority grinds away your forces as they get closer to the beachheads, that regularly receive new fresh divisions.
WW2-Podcast: Desert Armour: Tank Warfare in North Africa... Was Italy the only country that was prepared for the desert warfare?
Article: The isolated Thule Air Base in Greenland is the only U.S. outpost that can monitor all of Russia's missiles, but thawing permafrost is undermining the station. The American military is belatedly scrambling to address the base's deterioration, particularly the possibility that an infrastructure failure could disable Thule's radar tracking... Near Thule Air Base, over 35,000 cubic meters of ice are breaking off from the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier each year. 'You can sit there and you can just listen to the icebergs break off the glacier.'
On the last stages of testing a new game...
Video: Castle Expert's top ten medieval castles (Shadiversity Youtube channel)
A handful of rare bugs will be fixed during the next round of updates. These bugs include various landing issues where a certain type of supporting non-combat unit might block the landing because combat does not occur. Plus, some initial variations might occasionally throw units where they should not be. Thanks for all the feedback; it is much appreciated. Some of these bugs require a fairly strange combination of events to occur.
The oldest Android API to be supported in the latest versions of the apps will be 21 (5.0 LOLLIPOP released in 2014).
Article: A WWII bomb found in Great Yarmouth has detonated while work was being done to defuse it, causing a huge blast that was heard for miles. People on social media said they heard a loud bang and felt buildings shake 15 miles (24km) away.
Video: 12 Abandoned Submarines In The World (LightningTop12 Youtube channel)
Treasure map that 'shows where Germans hid their looted riches worth MILLIONS during WWII' is revealed to the public for the first time by the National Archives of the Netherlands
Aftermath: Now, throughout Ommeren there is evidence of unauthorised excavations. Exasperated residents have appealed to treasure-hunters to stay away after they descended on the Dutch village of Ommeren searching for riches potentially worth millions, allegedly hidden by German soldiers during World War Two.
Poland between Germany and USSR: Version 1.0.0.3 rolling out with a handful of fixes and tweaks.
POLAND between GERMANY AND USSR!
Rarely in military history has a country been attacked from all four cardinal directions. In September 1939, the Polish armed forces, still in the middle of the process of mobilizing, faced that grim reality. It's like a real-life tower defense scenario in which you are attacked from every possible angle. You command the Polish WWII armed forces, which are hopelessly defending Poland from attacks from three separate directions-or from four directions if the USSR decides to attack as well. The official plan, called Plan West (the September campaign), relies on defending all land areas, but it might be smarter to use the defensive fortifications, rivers, and local militia to your advantage to slow down the German advance enough to mobilize all the regular divisions and brigades into a concentrated defense. Every day of fighting increases the likelihood of receiving Western assistance, or at the very least strengthens the case for the rebirth of the Polish nation after the war!
o Play Store (full paid)
o Local free APK to sideload
o Free turn-limited at Amazon
o Full at Amazon
Article: Could WWII-era Panzer VIII Maus (128mm gun) Stood A Chance Against modern M1A1 Abrams (small 120mm gun with lower number of rounds)?
Video: An International Legionnaire's Guide to Useful and Useless Kit. A British volunteer back from Ukraine (LindyBeige Youtube Channel).
Over the entire course of the second world war only one Axis prisoner managed to escape Canadian Allied captivity and make it all the way back home to Germany. This is the extraordinary story of Lieutenant Franz von Werra. In von Werra's case it had become clear that the British Isles could no longer contain the slippery pilot, so on January 10, 1941 von Werra and a thousand other German prisoners were placed aboard the ocean liner SS Duchess of York to be sent to internment camps in Canada.
Podcast: The Last Dambuster: Johnny Johnson (An episode of History Hit podcast).
Article: The Young War Gamers Who Changed the Course of WWII. In January 1942 Admiral Cecil Usborne formed the Western Approaches Tactical Unit or WATU, a dedicated war gaming and analysis organization under the command of Commander Gilbert Roberts.
Podcast: US Navy Demolition Divers (WW2 Podcast). The Combat Demolition Unit would land on D-Day with the first wave of troops. It was their job to clear coastal defences that might get in the way of landing craft. In the Pacific, Underwater Demolition Teams were carrying out similar tasks on islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa
Site: The Medal of Honor Valor Trail� connects you to the places most deeply linked with Medal of Honor recipients from the Civil War through the 21st century - battlefields, birth and burial places, namesake sites, monuments and museums. Its goal is to connect powerful stories to tangible places, creating meaningful connections to the past.
Video: Stalingrad Private Footage and a war diary from a member of the 71st German Infantry Division.
Article: How One French Tank Destroyed an Entire Panzer Company. Some French tanks managed to be used to their fullest potential by foolhardy commanders such as Captain Pierre Billotte, making up for the lack of a general defense plan through the use of wit and innovative tactics. As the German Panzer column entered the village of Stonne, they did not expect any resistance, this expectation would be shattered when the lead tank of the Panzer column would see Billotte's Char B1 bis turn onto the street the Panzer column was on. After disabling the leading and last Panzer within the column, the remaining Panzers started showering the Char B1 bis with shells. This would be a problem for any other tank, but as the Char B1 bis were built with very heavy frontal armor...
Video: The Forgotten FIRST 'Doolittle Raid' 1938! (Mark Felton Youtube channel). Four years before Jimmy Doolittle led his daring raid on Tokyo someone else attacked Japan by air, using American-built aircraft.
The Battle of Moscow had a bug that reduced the probability of attacks by the AI. Fixed in version 4702. This is a strong contender for the worst bug of 2022.
Video: The Largest US Surrender In Europe in WW2 - The Infantryman's Perspective
And yet another patch of APKs added on the site (free turn-limited versoins):
Guam,
Spanish Civil War,
Rommel & Afrika Korps,
German Defense: Second Battle of El Alamein,
British Offensive: Second Battle of El Alamein,
Invasion of Sicily,
Allied Italian Campaign,
Anzio & Monte Cassino,
German Airborne Invasion of Crete,
D-Day,
Moscow
Article: German tank with three turrets confused Allied spies during WWII: Though it was designed to be Germany's state-of-the-art medium tank, the Neubaufahrzeug suffered from drivetrain problems...
Added more APKs on the site (free turn-limited versoins): Operation Luttich (German drive to Falaise Gap), Fall of Stalingrad, Falaise Gap (Allied), First World War: Western Front, American Civil War, American Revolutionary War, Axis Crimean Campaign
Video: Craziest Soviet Machines You Won't Believe Exist Part-1 (By Amazed Youtube channel)
Added more APKs on the site (free turn-limited versoins): Ardennes Offensive (German side), Battle of Bulge (Allied side), Invasion of France, Operation Market Garden, Axis Balkan Campaign, Juno & Sword Beaches, Utah & Omaha Beaches, Dieppe Raid, Battle of Berlin, Fall of Army Group Center, Drive to Caucasus
Video: Who Was the First Person to Drop a Bomb From an Aeroplane (Highlight History Youtube Channel)
AXIS ENDGAME IN TUNISIA (Kasserine Pass)
The Allies are rebuilding and regrouping after the failed run to Tunis, the British 8th Army is still far away, and the Allied stranglehold on the Axis supply routes from Europe to Tunisia is only just starting to severely reduce the flow of resources. This is the perfect chance for the Axis units concentrating in Tunis to try to flank and encircle a handful of the most advanced Allied divisions by attacking via the Kasserine Pass to take on the inexperienced Americans, seizing the Allied fuel depots located behind the city of Tebessa, and using that extra fuel to drive Panzer Divisions all the way to the city of Bone (northwest corner). If successfully carried out, this difficult maneuver might, once again, turn the tide of war in North Africa, and maybe even prevent the notorious collapse of the Axis armed forces in Tunisia. Not only will you face tough decisions about the motorized attack - how many spearheads to use, when to turn North, how to make the meager fuel last to the targets - but also about the wider strategic situation in Tunisia: Will you take an offensive or a defensive posture vs the eventually coming attack by the British 8th Army, and how will you handle the northern Tunisia where more and more infantry and some special units will eventually became available as the desperate last reinforcements from Europe arrive before the Allied stranglehold of the Mediterranean supply routes starts to reduce the amount of fuel and resources available. Fuel and ammo trucks plus fuel depots can be refilled from any Axis supply city (marked with the letter 'S' and a yellow circle around them).
o Play Store (full paid)
o Local free APK
o Free turn-limited version at Amazon
o Paid Amazon App Store
The real difficulty, IMHO, is a multiple layered thing. Low unit density makes for loss sensitivity. Fuel limit creates a movement sensitivity. The key to limiting this is planning. All in caps too. I've had to plan out some major attacks that took 5-6 turns to stock the fuel. Plus the use of weapons and planning what units are in a supporting role.
Paul C.
I have NEVER changed the map scale and details so many times as I did during the crafting of Axis Endgame in Tunisia. The whole project started as a limited Kasserine Pass scenario, but since all the moving pieces in Tunisia inevitably affect each other, I piece by piece, ended up adding more land area to the map, which led to adding more armies, which forced a total re-do of AI, rear area movement, fuel and ammo resources, and everything. The campaign starts after the failed Allied run for Tunis, when both sides are regrouping and concentrating their forces, which opens up a chance for a flanking attack for the Rommel-led Axis side. If you manage to push through the French and inexperienced American forces and turn your motorized offensive north, you will learn that the fuel logistics is such that you're mostly relying on seizing the Allied depots located between Tebessa and Bone to finish the attack. Since the Allies are building up forces both in the upper-left and bottom-right corners of the map, it's essential to hurry up and cut off the most advanced Allied forces plus Allied supply cities before the notorious collapse Axis forces in Tunisia gets under way via the combination of Allied stranglehold on Axis supply lines from Europe and sheer Allied numeric superiority.
Article: The US military doesn't know where 6 of its nuclear weapons are. The U.S. military had 32 nuclear accidents, also called "Broken Arrow" incidents, during the Cold War, and several nuclear weapons remain unaccounted for. The Soviet Union lost far more during the Cold War, often due to submarines sinking with a dozen or more nuclear missiles on board.
Added more APKs on site (free turn-limited versions): Operation Spring Awakening, Drive to Leningrad, Invasion of Poland, Finnish Defense 1944, Battle of Suomussalmi, Operation Sealion, Invasion of Norway.
Article: Low water levels on Danube reveal sunken WW2 German warships. The vessels were among hundreds scuttled along the Danube by German Germany's Black Sea fleet in 1944 as they retreated from advancing Soviet forces.
In addition of showing yellow edge on units which can receive +1 HP replacements, this yellow edge feature will be extended to extra MPs.
Podcast episode: Author Ian W. Toll who has written extensively on the Pacific Theater in the Second World War joins Dan to put the finishing touches on the Supernova in the East subject matter. (Dan Carlin's Hardcore History addentum
Video: hy The Allies Couldn't Overcome German Trenches in Spring 1917 (The Great War Youtube channel)
As a test, I have begun to slowly add the free turn-limited versions of games as local APKs on this website. The listings on the main page now include Operation Barbarossa, Iwo Jima, Korean War, and, naturally, Axis Endgame in Tunisia.
Features rolling out: When replacement resources are selected, unit types able to receive +1 HP will have yellow edges (if not max HP already). Set 0-3 random units from both sides to be heroes or cowards, with a combat bonus or penalty of up to 50% (if you want more paranoia in your game play). The icons of units will be updated to include less gradient, which both makes the icons clearer on small screens and reduces their size. Campaigns with fuel delivery on land will include new options to have circles around out-of-fuel units to spot them more easily.
Video: Forgotten 1943 Battle Between America and Canada (Mark Felton Youtube channel).
Video: World War II in Europe with Flags: Every Day (Geography and Space channel).
The U-Boat War: A Global History 1939-45. An episode of WW2 Podcast.
A Deep Dive into the Tiger I, by the Chieftain (Youtube video)
Science: Effects of Tabletop Games on Cognition in Older Adults: 11-study Systematic Review and 10-study Meta-Analysis.
In older adults with intact cognition, tabletop games had positive effects on their global cognition (standardized mean differences [SMD]=1.36, 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 0.37-2.34, P < 0.001) and executive function (SMD=0.47, 95% CI: 0.12-0.83, P<0.001). In older adults with cognitive impairment, significant differences were found in global cognition (SMD=0.53, 95% CI: 0.09-0.98, P=0.02). pub-med source
Troop movement animation of WWII in Estonia by Eastory Youtube channel
Juno & Sword game seems to be, once again, mysteriously, available on the Play Store. You know, after being removed for almost a year for 'being an exact clone of Utah & Omaha' due to having completely different units, map, AI, etc. I just simply love love love trying to run a serious business on top of such a blindingly random platform. Obviously, I never heard back from Google about most of my appeals.
The next round of updates, after getting a new game out, will bring forth a handful of AI fixes, reducing the 'getting stuck over a hospital' type issues caused by priorities interlocking the unit at one spot.
Landing in The First Wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day, A Regiment's Last Survivor Remembers (American Veterans Center channel on Youtube)
Yes, I'm working on new games, nope, it's not progressing very quickly.
Hall of Fame bug: After receiving a report of a score not showing in the HOF, and after doing a lot of digging, I finally managed to find an edge case which might prevent the score from being included in the database. Fortunately, a hash of these 'unaccepted' scores was made, so if you lost an epic score, email me the details, and I can confirm that from the hash, and add it manually. Apologies.
First Time Watching: Full Metal Jacket (Brandon). Here is something a little bit less stressing, I have recently watched some 'First Time Watching' videos on Youtube, it's interesting to see how wildly differently various people react to war films, and on what aspects they chose to focus on.
It's a tough time to be an independent developer located in the Eastern part of Europe at the moment, so I would appreciate any help, from purchasing a game to any likes, ratings, or shares possible. Simply trying to get into a productive frame of mind for a longer periods of time is challening, when people I personally know have volunteered to serve and are seeing action, and there exists so many aspects of life to worry about and get distracted by. Not just my own, but my elderly parent, who is also located near the border to Russia. Strange times we live in.
Features rolling out: Adding options to (1) turn sending your scores to the online database ON/OFF (2) turn developer alerts of major events ON/OFF. Both of these can be found from Settings (Main=Dice) once they have been added.
Zeppelin Warfare. At the start of hostilities, the German military had two airship fleets: one for the navy and one for the army. As the war progressed it was the navy Zeppelins that pursued the air war against Britain with the greatest conviction. Throughout 1915, German airships encountered little in the way of serious opposition when they appeared over Britain. The nation had trailed in aviation development prior to the outbreak of war and had also given little consideration to creating an aerial defense plan.
Russian Invasion of Finland - The Winter War 1939-40 video by Mark Felton
Apologies for the lower-than-usual rate of updates on this log, but since I'm located adjacent to a country involved in a major land war in Europe, I have been a little bit pre-occupied with refugees, preparations, and watching readings in gamma-radiation meters increase as heavy combat vehicles rumble the ground and rise Chernobyl-dust into the air from the shaking soil... It's still hard to truly comprehend that a major land war is once again ongoing in Europe - and we might be heading into the Cold War II. Hoping for the best - preparing for the worst.
Features rolling out: Minefields won't be arriving automatically, but need to be requested by Generals (assuming minefields are not requested from Depots/Battleships/Engineers), HP replacements can be assigned to a unit which has up to 3 enemy controlled hexagons adjacent to it (on normal Difficulty Level), HOF located to web, AI artillery may escape just like AI generals do, unit resting in hospital won't be interrupted by storms/enemy-artillery/strafing/cold/fatigue, add more military history quotations.
Tank Angling: Historical or Stupid Game Mechanic? video on Military History not Visualized Youtube channel.
'Lost' blueprint discovered for world's first tank built by the Brits to win WWI
The fascinating design document is the only known blueprint for the British-made Mark I tank that exists. The highly-detailed, large scale technical plan is like an 'X-ray' for the tracked vehicle that helped change the course of the First World War. The 44ins by 28ins blueprint, that is dated May 1916, has come from a private vendor whose family have owned it for some considerable time.
DIEPPE: HOF had excess test-conditions filtereing out many scores, fixed now. Also, seems that at least one player has found to way to 'beat' the game and conquer the whole map, so a lot of tweaks coming in the next update. I'm also considering adding a rule which would LIMIT the number of the evacuated units to one per evacuation location per turn.
Eastern Front: Version 6261 rolling out, fixes the resource assignment issue on some devices.
NEW GAME: DIEPPE RAID 1942 is starting to roll out. The harrowing Canadian-British Commando raid on the port town of Dieppe in 1942 to practice the D-Day landings. Play Store or Amazon or Free at Amazon. Exceptionally your final score will be cumulative Victory Points multiplied by the number of combat units evacuated.
HOF: Viewing the Hall of Fame will be relocated from the app to the server. The app will simply include a link to the HOF webpage (opened in your default browser). The online HOF will not make an effort to remove multiple scores by the same username (as the app did). There are multiple reasons for the change: (1) Older budget devices are are often short on space and processing power, which creates various issues. (2) Downloading and processing and sorting and viewing thousands of entries made of various data types is error prone. (3) The web listing will always be up-to-date. (4) The smaller application size never hurt anyone. (5) High score data is just once transferred to the server, the end of story - instead of moving the new scores back and forth between the device and the server and the other devices updating their Hall of Fame.
What changes and features are generally being rolled out (early 2022): Assigning replacements (+1 HP) to a unit will be a bit easier (3 adjacent enemy hexagons allowed, but the severity of enemy-blocks-replacements depends on the Difficulty Level. AI artillery might escape capture (just like the AI generals do). AI will be better at holding a coherent front line (instead of accidentally sending all the units in one specific area away to carry out various tactical/strategic acts). The Hall of Fame (HOF) will be updated (see the separate segment about HOF on this page).
Privacy Policy. It is now a little bit more detailed.
Airships of the American Civil War: The Bizarre Story of the Union Army's Experimental Balloon Corps. It was because of the daring accomplishments of men like Lowe and La Mountain that the brief, but spectacular experiment known as the Union Army Balloon Corps came to exist.
The oldest Android API to be supported in the latest versions of the apps will be 19 (4.4 Kitkat).
The Absurd Rules-of-Engagement GIs Had to Follow During the Vietnam War. One of the more curious locations fought over during Vietnam was Michelin's rubber tree plantation - yes, Michelin the tire company. This plantation was a major headache for US troops, as they were forbidden from calling in artillery on enemies inside of it.
Working on the Hall-of-Fame databases, which have not been properly updated in ages...
Obscure Military Ranks That No Longer Exist And What They Meant
If the zoom in/out buttons stop responding, reduce the size of the minimap on the upper left corner, as the cause very likely is some type of rounding issue where the minimap is assumed to cover the zoom buttons.
Melting Alpine glacier reveals hidden WW1 tunnels and bunker. Military historian Giovanni Cadioli wriggles in backwards, his head torch revealing an extraordinary scene that has literally been frozen in time. It is a First World War bunker constructed from timber, scattered with the possessions of its past inhabitants - rusted tins of food, bullet casings and metal cooking implements.
Battle of the Bulge fix: HOF database was stuck after the latest update.
Mark Felton has an interesting theory about an 'unknown' Japanese torpedo attack on San Francisco in 1941 : Golden Gate Torpedo Attack - Japanese Assault on San Francisco 1941
Renaming First World War: Western Front to World War I: Western Front since Google Play Store no longer allows words like 'first' or 'great'.
Operation Barbarossa: The Lost Diaries of Lt. Friedrich Sander (History Hit Podcast) what was it really like to serve on the front lines of the Eastern Front? The historian Rob Sch�fer has given History Hit exclusive access to the diaries of Lt. Friedrich Sander, a Panzer officer and one of the 3 million German troops involved in Operation Barbarossa. The diaries are brutal in their honesty
New super """"""""""brilliant"""""""""" Google Play Store policy, no more numbers in the title or app name, so which Battle of Berlin is my app, who knows, because I can't use the year... *sigh*
The Kettering Bug: America's First Foray Into Unmanned Drone Technology Started During WWI. The development of such a machine began in WWI, when the US Army asked American inventor Charles Kettering to design a flying bomb, one that could fly without a pilot. Kettering was tasked with designing a flying bomb capable of hitting a target 40 miles away. Orville Wright, the man credited with taking to the skies for the first time, was a consultant for the project. The Kettering Bug looks like a relatively conventional aircraft, but it's actually a flying bomb, a precursor to the modern-day cruise missile.
George Patton bought supplies from Sears because the US was so unprepared for WWII. Petton was born into an affluent family and married the daughter of an extremely wealthy businessman, whose family was also worth a fortune. With these funds, Patton was able to personally finance the equipping of an armored division.
Air force unit can land on out-of-supply airfields from now on. The during-the-tap check for supply route has been too much work for the old budget devices.
That thing when you start to make a quick 8 minute fix and are still figuring that app out 8 hours later...
Battle of Medina Ridge 1991: One of the Largest Tank Battles in US History. By the 27th of February, the Gulf War coalition had already made huge progress through Iraq... the US 1st Armored Division arrived at the seven-mile-long Medina Ridge. Unbeknownst to them, the ridge was hiding an enormous force from the elite Medina Republican Guard Division, that had a mix of T-72 and T-62 tanks...
In order to reduce the massive amount of processing the creation of a new game takes, I have started a long-term process to relocate creation of some of the (non-front-line) units from new game creation to the turn number two. This should not change anything at all, but if you start a new game and suddenly an ememy unit emerges over your unit at the start of the turn 2, let me know, this is theoretically possible with when a higher amount of variation is turned on from Settings.
The First Air Raid Happened When Austria Dropped Bombs on Venice from Pilotless Hot-Air Balloons (1849). It was possible to launch a fleet of hot air balloons loaded with explosives from a ship and send them in the general direction of a target. That's what the Austrian army did - twice - over Venice, in a campaign to recapture the city when its citizens rebelled against imperial rule and built their own republic.
History Hit Podcast: The Unheard Tapes of Bomber Command
Little Willie: The World's Oldest Preserved Tank Prototype
Seems like WWII bunkers are the latest thing:
1) Unique Islington flat with refurbished WW2 bunker goes on the market
2) Bunker L479: World War II bunker turned into an Airbnb in France
After re-capturing the city of Vyborg in August 1941, the Finns discovered time-ignited and radio-triggered mines left by the Russians. The mines exploded after a certain part of their machinery resonated with a certain radio frequency. A group of pioneers led by Lieutenant Lauri Sutela found special launch devices in Antrea from an explosive placed under the bridge. The equipment was studied and the frequency reserved for blasting was blocked by playing the song S�kkij�rven Polkka nonstop on the radio for 6 months until the batteries of the mine-launchers were calculated to be exhausted.
WW2 Podcast: Luftwaffe Special Weapons (aviation historian Robert Forsyth). As the course of the second world war turned against the Third Reich some radical proposals and inventive designs, were put forward by armaments manufacturers, scientists, technicians, aircrew and even private individuals to the German Air Ministry for consideration as weapons to be utilised by the Luftwaffe. Some proposals were destined never to leave the drawing board, while others not only underwent trials but were issued to operational units and used in action.
Slowly updating the "Italian Trilogy": Sicily, Anzio-Cassino, Italian Campaign...
This episode the History Hit podcast changed my views on Gallipoli campaign Gallipoli: What Led to Britain's WW1 Disaster?.
Article: Little Willie: The World's Oldest Preserved Tank Prototype. Britain's Little Willie claims the title of the world's oldest tank, being assembled and driven over a century ago. It is a prototype that was pivotal in the eventual creation of the famous rhomboid tanks that rolled across WWI battlefields.
Article: The Bovington Tank Museum has hosted its first wedding after one couple said their vows in front of a World War Two tank.
Article: Submarine USS R-14 (SS-91) Made it Home with a Sail Made of Blankets
I will be renaming "Second Battle of El Alamein: German Defense" to "Panzer Army Africa: 2nd El Alamein" or something similar to avoid crazy bans based on apps sharing a word or two in the title.
Video: Secret Allied Panther Tank Factory
Inflatable 3-ton dummy lorry
Video link: Blackadder answers: How did World War I Begin?
Background image-pattern setting will be turned OFF (using yellow-green-color) by default on new installations from now on.
News: An elderly German man is facing a suspended prison sentence for storing a WWII tank in his basement. According to man's lawyer, a US museum is keen to buy the 1943 Panther tank. Central to the case is whether the man broke Germany's War Weapons Control Act by holding the tank as the legislation controls the manufacture, sale, and transport of weapons of war.
Oh, how I love to hate settings and options... Yes, it's great as a user to be able to tweak everything so that everything works and looks pleasant on your particular display technology and brightness settings. However, as a developer, it's so much work to keep all the various settings from conflicting with each other, at least tragically. Some city icons are transparent, some are not, so some cover adjacent rivers, some do not. Add on top of this the changes in the size of the icons for units, and now everything starts to be drawn over each other a lot with certain combinations of settings. Now multiply this with hundreds of settings, each with a handful of possible values. As a developer, you might check all those 50,000 combinations when you're creating the very first game or game engine, but checking everything after each and every tiny change and addition is not humanly possible if you want to keep progressing. Let's say 50,000 combinations of various settings and options exist per app; some are quick to test, some are not (for example, if you need to create a specific stack of various types of units); let's say it takes on average 5 minutes to see if something creates problems or not. If you spent 12 hours per day carrying out those checks, you'd be finished in a year. If you want to check everything, a year of checks after every new change would completely kill all progress. This is why (even the biggest) companies either avoid settings like poison or keep simplifying the options they offer, or they simply check the new changes and the most popular combinations and hope for the best for the rare combinations. Over the years, you will of course inevitably create setting combinations that will screw something up; all you can do is rely on players taking their time to report them or using common sense to not get stuck using that particular combination out of the tens of thousands possible. You can automate some checks, but drawing 20 things on top of each other is not one of them.
I have been asked what Youtube channels I recommend for WWII related content. I definitely praise these three channels mentioned below. Both are awe-inspiring because of their in-depth coverage of a topic is based on countless different books/sources, instead of just one or two. If you're a history buff, I'm certain you are aware how distorted and varying sources are in each country vs the next, and the view of WWII changes per decade, add on top of that the tensions of the Cold War, nationalistic pride, translation errors, etc, and it's no wonder some topics might be outright incorrect even in some eminent WWII books.
(1) Mark Felton Productions - Pretty much the only channel I have came across that didn't get confused by the shady politically motivated documentation East Germany produced about some post-war events, you gotta respect that.
(2) TIK History - His detailed mega-series on the battle of Stalingrad is relying in-depth Soviet and Western sources, even laying out the most likely answers to some of the decades long arguments about what happened at place Z on day X.
(3) World War Two week by week in realtime by Indy Neidell & Spartacus Olsson
Article: Operation Unthinkable - Churchill's Plan to Drive the Red Army From Eastern Europe in 1945 ... Churchill had long held that Stalin represented the greatest threat to the security of post-war Europe... The strategic architect of his proposed land offensive was Brigadier Geoffrey Thompson... Operation Unthinkable was to involve more than 8,000 tanks and would use 47 American, British, Canadian and Polish forces push the Red Army back to the Oder and Neisse rivers...
Added six Play-through documents by various players with screenshots and commentary (shared from Google Drive) to the FAQ-page.
Excerpt from the book 'Moves East' by Paul Carell:
The Soviets tried to break through the barrier again to restore communications with their 9 cut-off divisions which had made the penetration. That had to be prevented. For this task Model chose the best man. "Hold on at all costs," had been Model's order to Obersturmbannf�hrer Otto Kumm and his 650-strong regiment from the 2nd WSS Division. "At all costs," the general had repeated emphatically.
The Russians attacked ceaselessly. Day after day their formations grew more numerous. They were intent on getting through, on restoring contact with the cut-off divisions. It was at that point that the battle of Rzhev was being decided. The Russians kept up their charge ceaselessly - by day and by night, throughout 3 weeks. They flung in battalion after battalion, then regiment after regiment, and eventually brigade after brigade.
On the sixth day the Russians appeared in front of 10th Company with 30 light tanks. They advanced to within 50 yards of the positions. They halted. And then the whole armada opened fire at the infantry dug-outs and machine-gun posts. They continued blasting them from all barrels for a full 30 minutes. Then they drove back into the forest. Silence and brittle cold hung over the plain. Two hours later a man crawled out of the shattered position of 10th Company back to battalion HQs. He was helped in. He was Rottenf�hrer Wagner. Seriously wounded, with frost-bitten hands, he tried to stand up in front of Bollert, the battalion commander, to make his report. But he collapsed, and reported lying on the floor: "Hauptsturmf�hrer, I'm the only one left from the company." A tremor ran through him. A moment later there was no survivor of 10th Company.
There was now a gap in the front two-thirds of a mile wide. The VI Army Corps rushed 120 men into the line-drivers, cooks, bootmakers, and tailors. Paymasters were in charge of platoons. Fine men, but wholly inexperienced in this kind of fighting. They moved into the positions of 10th Company.
When dusk fell the Soviets were within 50 yards of Kumm's regimental HQ at Klepenino. The small village had 30 houses, but only 8 were left. Hauptsturmf�hrer Holzer, the regiment's adjutant, had cut deep holes under the floor and sawn firing slits into the lower beams which formed the wall. From the regimental commander down to the drivers each man stood in his firing-pit, with carbine, machine-pistol or machine-gun. No matter how often they attacked, the Soviets never got closer than 15 yards. Kumm's front on the northern edge of the great pocket held firmly. Relief brigades of the Soviet 39th Army did not succeed.
German casualties, too, had been heavy. On 18th February, when Kumm reported at his divisional HQ, Model happened to be there. He said to Kumm, "I know what your regiment has been through - but I still can't do without it. What is its present strength?"
Kumm gestured towards the window. "Herr Generaloberst, my regiment is on parade outside." Model glanced through the window: there were 35 men left standing of the 650.
The difficulty level is slowly affecting more and more elements (tiny things like getting certain types of resources a bit earlier on easy level, etc.).
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