OneEyeRoss

If someone who has downloaded it would please make a youtube vid flying between Fulda and Alsfeld and Lauterbach, I would be forever grateful! Especially if it was a helo flight!

I am stuck in download hell. For some reason I am at 4.0 MB/s. Left home, took the grand daughter to soccer practice and didn't move a bit. 0.0 Mb/S the entire time I was gone.... sad face.... Please make a youtube, for those of us in DL Hell, we can live vicariously through your exploits.

Elvis and I had the same Barber...true story. I was in the same unit (1/32 Armor, 3AD) 14 years after he left. The barber at Ray Barracks had pictures of him cutting Elvis' hair - we used to laugh about having the same barber as Elvis, eating in the same mess hall as Elvis, being tankers like Elvis - but not being rich (or good looking, or able to sing)....

Yep, those guys at CGSC had to write a paper about something.... There are some really good ones out there, if a person takes the time to search through them. Here's another period FM to read: https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/fm100-2-1.pdf

Regretfully, the only pictures I ever saw of those (76-77 time frame) were probably burned when the Division was deactivated back in the 90s...and my memory of what I saw 50 years ago isn't all it should be!

This PDF has a great detailed analysis of a Soviet invasion in the Gap, and lists four different scenarios (starts on page 83 of the PDF. it describes combat in the covering force as well as the main battle area. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA129095.pdf

For those people needing reference material: FM 100-5 Operations is a good read. It is obsolete by now, and an easy to find reference, both the 82 and 86 editions. (I am so old we were using the 1976 edition!). (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/US_Army_Field_Manual_100-5%2C_1982.pdf) There are several critics of the manual written (I am guessing by officers going to the Staff College) but even with it's critics it is a good idea of what the doctrine was. Another thing to read, but from the 78-79 era: The Value of Field Fortifications in Modern Warfare (The Fulda Gap stuff starts on page 83) https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA129095.pdf

I have also played around with it a bit in the Caucasus. The AI is a bit "stupid" in the way it attacks, even when I tell it to use a wedge or echelon left/right. And then their insistence on attacking certain units to the exclusion of others. But, AI is what it is. It still is fun, and it beats reading the news.

Ok, for me (and I was a tanker, then medic type in V Corps back in the 70s) this is easy to think about, but DCS has limitations with the number of units you can put on the map at once and have the game run at a decent rate - but here goes: If you look at the area around Alsfeld, then take the road to Lauterbach, then Fulda.....or Alsfeld to Bad Hersfeld: Those were the main avenues of approach that we (3rd Bde, 3AD) were tasked with covering. Anyway, there are spots where the road runs through woods before opening up into farm land. You place an armored brigade with pre-plotted arty and kill boxes for the air wing in those areas and wait for RedFor come come through the woods. Of course, RedFor knows where we will be, and will use rocket/arty fire to disrupt the defense. So, you take two tank battalions, two infantry battalions, one 155 battalion (114 tanks, 18 109s, 15-20 4.2 mortars and a whole bunch of infantry) against a Guards Tank Regiment. And hope the TOW Cobras that Violent Nomad is making come on line soon. For Combined Arms, the numbers are just too large to deal with on a realistic basis - the game engine wouldn't be able to keep up. So, scaled back to a tank platoon (5 tanks) against a GTR company would be about right.

From a V Corps point of view, we really need the Fliegerhorst Kaserne in Hanau. It held the 3rd Armored Division Aviation units, which would be heading to the Gap, since the Fulda AAF would have been quickly over run.

March/April 1976: Lariat Advance - We had an alert (sent me back to my unit from the NCO Academy, only time I know of that that happened). Went to the Ammo Supply Point and we started loading big bullets in the GOER to take to the GDP, and started loaded them into the tanks. When we got to the small arms rounds, most of us got to worrying. Turned out to be an "exercise" (yeah, sure, uh-huh). Great fun. Some of those scramble events were a lot more terrifying than they were fun.

I am impressed with the flight around Fulda! Really nice. And knowing it is coming out in APRIL!!!!! Take my money!!

Because for many of us, this was, or is, home. And when you fly over a place you KNOW, it helps with the immersion if the little things are correct.

And remember to like Vogon poetry

I hope you are right, but I am trying to manage my expectations. I am so looking forward to this....I just don't want to be one of those "why isn't it out yet!" types.

Regretfully, I think you are probably correct.

I don't remember many diesel locomotives in Germany when I lived there. The ones I saw were electric - (one of our sister battalions lost a guy who climbed on top of his GOER during a rail trip to Hohenfels). I am sure there were some diesels, but I don't remember seeing them. I bet that adding all the wires to the map would be a real hassle, though, so I am sure we will be getting petro powered.

There are a lot of us Cold Warriors out here waiting for the same thing. Not sure how realistic the whole thing is going to be, but I am hoping that the old stomping grounds are going to be shown in some detail. The buildings they have shown in some of the preview vids are at least VERY representative of the type we had, so it won't be too far off. Not sure they could go all out, though. I mean, in Ffm alone, there were a LOT of Kasernes, and then the outskirts like Eschborn, Hoetch etc. We need the major places where the heliports were.....

This is SO true. Give it to us, we wants it, oh, wait, it isn't perfect!

Will the church steeple in Marburg still be crooked?

Genau....

Some of the things that we are missing from the "ground pounder" point of view: mine fields and anti-tank ditches. Without the ability to channelize the attacking RedFor, it makes it harder to get the invading forces into the kill boxes for the air component. (Of course, the whole GDP depended on three days of prep work by the combat engineers to dig the ditches, lay the mines and build our berms - not sure whole realistic that whole plan was.)

The M60A3 is appropriate for most NATO units up until about 1984 or so. For those of us wanting to do late 70s (ok, yes, I am an old man reliving my youth) other than the RedEye I think we are fairly well covered.

As a guy who has driven a 577 around the Vogelsberg area during December, in the freezing rain/sleet/spitting snow, trust me. Winter in Fulda is NOT a fun time.....

Only my Grand kids