PACOPS Type 94 37mm Anti-Tank Gun

This weapon was developed based on the design of the German 3.7cm Pak 36 anti-tank gun to improve upon and replace the Type 11 37mm Infantry Gun that had been in service since 1922. That weapon was considered an inferior substitute for an AT capability due to its low muzzle velocity, poor range and slow reloading time.

The Type 94 began production in 1936 with approximately 3,400 units produced. It could fire both HE and AP rounds and was usually assigned in groups of four to combat infantry regiments. Although the weapon had performed well against Soviet light armor, it was obsolete when facing Allied armor such as the Sherman tank.

PACOPS Type 93 Flamethrower

Both Type 93 and Type 100 flamethrowers were used by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy (SNLF) during World War II, although during the later war period their use devolved into an ad hoc anti-tank capability that met some marginal success on the battlefield. The type that is being modeled for the PACOPS estab is the Type 93 model.

The original concept was to field these weapons in flamethrower companies comprised of between 6-20 units, and these companies were organized into engineer regiments within a typical infantry division. The base unit contains 20 soldiers with 20 flamethrower weapons, with an infantry value of 20, a recon value of 4 and an engineer value of 2 (based on guidelines set forth in the estab editor manual).

PACOPS Type 89 15cm Cannon

Only 150 of these artillery pieces were made from 1929-1945, however it did take its place as the main gun for IJA heavy artillery units. Classified as a Fortress Gun, it had a firing weight of 10,360kg and could fire a HE or AP shell some 19km (it also could fire shrapnel and illumination shells, however those are not being modeled in this build). It could fire approximately two rounds per minute and had a muzzle velocity of 875m/s.

For this effort I will clone the American 155mm M1A1 gun and edit various parameters in order to mutate it into a plausible weapon for the Japanese forces. For the aper and the bombard ammunition I will use the existing JPN Type 1 HE Shell. Several sources reference that the shell was considerably heavier than that used in other 150mm howitzers; however I have not located a specific reference to the shell weight to make a credible change to the cloned data.

Race to the Volga AAR Soviet Union

Chris over at The Sharp End Gaming has provided me and Doug from Cry Havoc! an early build of his new Stalingrad scenario, “Race to the Volga”. This is a companion scenario to “Operation Hubertus” that Chris released on his blog on Monday. Doug has typically played these as the Germans, and I have been playing them as the Soviet Union.

I am in command of the Soviet 62^nd Army with 9,351 personnel, 55 armored fighting vehicles, 1,281 non-armored fighting vehicles and 153 guns with a combined anti-personnel firepower rating of 3,519, anti-armor of 31,474, bombardment of 666 (pure evil), armor of 348 and an infantry value of 4,809. These 113 total starting units are facing a German press into the city that I must repulse or delay as much as possible to collect the Victory Point locations my forces are presently arrayed upon.

Oперация Тернопіль

This is the first playable mission that I am releasing for Iron Front: Liberation 1944. The scenario is a fictitious engagement between a German Panzer Company (ten Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B King Tiger tanks) and a platoon of Soviet anti-tank forces that consist of four AT teams, three 76mm ZiS-3 guns and a small anti-aircraft platform.

Oперация Тернопіль is Russian for Operation Ternopil, which is a city in the western Ukraine where the village of Ivachev is near and what the scenario map Ukraine Ivachev 1944 is loosely based upon. The scenario begins on Sunday August 5, 1944 at 5:35 AM. The Soviets have a small tactical advantage in that the sun is rising behind them.

Operation Hubertus Part II

When I opened up this scenario to continue on I realized that I did not save the battle at the D02 00:00 mark as was originally posted in the first thread. So I am picking up at my last game save, that being D01 11:31 which actually gives me an opportunity to take some vignette shots of how I deployed the artillery units that arrived on the battlefield, and test some new image sizes for Picasa web albums.

What had occurred in the original play through until midnight was that the German forces had blown open a hole (or rather my poorly designed defensive front allowed them to) between the Tank Factory and the Brick Factory leaving the Skudri Crossing Objective wide open for the taking, however they had failed to exploit that advantage properly (I suspect a human opponent would have surged there).

PACOPS: Type 97 Chi-Ha Medium Tank

The 9th Armored Regiment of the 1st Tank Division was reassigned to the 31st Army in April 1944 and sent to Saipan where it was effectively annihilated and not reorganized. Commanded by Colonel Tadashi Goshima, the unit consisted of 31 Type 97 Medium Tanks (modeled below), 4 Type 97-Improved Medium Tanks and 12 Type 95 Light Tanks.

Just after midnight on June 16, 1944 the Japanese forces made a large counterattack against the US 6th Marine Regiment on the beachhead near Charan Kanoa and were soundly repulsed due to inexperience in mounting tactical armored engagements. The Marines were able to concentrate their firepower on the assault and were augmented by naval gunfire.

Pressure Cooker Beta Test

Pressure Cooker is a new scenario I am working on that utilizes my Marine Corps 2.0 mod for the game. In order to play this scenario, you will have to have previously installed the mod. The beta test scenario folder contains three files which will need to be placed in their respective game folders (map files go in the map folder and scenario files go in the scenario folder).

This scenario is setup on a cropped version of the Renkum map that is only 3 km X 3 km and the only crossing point is a ferry that is primed. There are no bridging units; however each side has an engineering unit available from the start that should assist in securing/denying the crossing depending on which side you decide to play as.