Pop Quiz!

[Tristanjohn]

I thought I'd let everyone know that I'm running another pop quiz over in the Ron-Mogami AAR. You can reach it easily by clicking here (toward the bottom of page): Pop Quiz!

[Tristanjohn]

Come on you guys. Someone must know the answer to this one. It's eaaaaasy!

[rtrapasso]

Urk - i looked at the quiz and i am not sure what the question was.

Is the line you are referring to "There's absolutely nothing it doesn't need." ???

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Urk - i looked at the quiz and i am not sure what the question was.

Is the line you are referring to "There's absolutely nothing it doesn't need." ???

Well, I'd thought I'd written that clearly, but I've gone back and placed the pertinent line in bold letters so there now can be no mistake.

And yes, that's the line I referred to.

I'll now post the quiz here in order to make it more conveninet still for people to play.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, If the defender does not have flank and rear security then the speed of movement does not matter. I mean if it takes 3 days to surround or 10 days to surround it is not important.
I think it is pretty funny to use "I can't protect my flanks and still hold a hex" All that means is you don't belong in the hex to begin with.

In China there should be a line of hexes with CHinese units on them. Maybe not a solid line but certainly at least 3 hexes wide on all road approaches. The flank stacks should hold enough to drive a Japanese division back. Chinese should just surround any Japanese advance that does not provide flank security.

If you can't protect a hex you don't belong in the hex.

Well, I have to agree completely with you on this. As far as you take it. I do wish though, Mogami, that sometime you'd spend your energy trying to motivate others in the forum to clamor for reasonable change in the ground-combat system, just for example, and assuming that's possible, which I kinda doubt. But at least an effort by you in this area would be welcomed here.

Except for one or two old farts around here who, I am told, are pushing 70! (poor guys) I'd say I've wargamed as long as, if not longer than, anyone else around here. And I'm pretty good at it, too, if I do say so myself. Certainly I've come to understand how it all works in general, if only from the sheer number of different game systems I've been exposed to along the way, and based on that I've got to say that I have never seen a ground-combat system so hopeless to its work. There's absolutely nothing it doesn't need.

Pop Quiz!

1) What screen actor read that last line?

2) What famous football player appeared briefly in this film?

3) What famous boxer appeared briefly in this film?

Bonus Question: 10 points

Name the man most fundamentally responsible for the conception of this movie's theme.

[Tristanjohn]

TTT

[rtrapasso]

Sorry, i am drawing a blank on this (literally) - even on Google, nothing comes up for that quote.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Sorry, i am drawing a blank on this (literally) - even on Google, nothing comes up for that quote.

We're in trouble then.

First Clue:

1) What screen actor read that last line? (In an early TV series this actor played a doctor.)

2) What famous football player appeared briefly in this film?

3) What famous boxer appeared briefly in this film?

[rtrapasso]

Well, i am going to have to dig hard for this one, and it may take some time...

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Sorry, i am drawing a blank on this (literally) - even on Google, nothing comes up for that quote.

We're in trouble then.

First Clue:

1) What screen actor read that last line? (In an early TV series this actor played a doctor.)

2) What famous football player appeared briefly in this film?

3) What famous boxer appeared briefly in this film?

Are you sure #3 isn't a WRESTLER? I have a possibility if #3 is a wrestler, not a boxer.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Sorry, i am drawing a blank on this (literally) - even on Google, nothing comes up for that quote.

We're in trouble then.

First Clue:

1) What screen actor read that last line? (In an early TV series this actor played a doctor.)

2) What famous football player appeared briefly in this film?

3) What famous boxer appeared briefly in this film?

Are you sure #3 isn't a WRESTLER? I have a possibility if #3 is a wrestler, not a boxer.

Of course I'm sure. (He might well have wrestled, too, I don't know, but he was a middleweight boxer, and a good one! He won the championship in 1957. Now if that doesn't give it to you nothing will. [8D])

All right, another clue.


Second Clue:

1) What screen actor read that last line? (In an early TV series this actor played a doctor.)

2) What famous football player appeared briefly in this film? (This man's nickname in college was "Golden Boy.")

3) What famous boxer appeared briefly in this film?

[rtrapasso]

Film is "The Devil's Brigade"

actor was Vince Edwards

football player Paul Hornung

boxer Gene Fulmer

never saw it - but have heard of it (barely!)[:'(]

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Film is "The Devil's Brigade"

actor was Vince Edwards

football player Paul Hornung

boxer Gene Fulmer

never saw it - but have heard of it (barely!)[:'(]

Then research it. Or research 1st Special Forces. What I'm after is who is the man who conceived of this unit in WWII?

(Hint: I've already mentioned this man in another thread. Mogami responded, by the way.)

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Film is "The Devil's Brigade"

actor was Vince Edwards

football player Paul Hornung

boxer Gene Fulmer

never saw it - but have heard of it (barely!)[:'(]

Then research it. Or research 1st Special Forces. What I'm after is who is the man who conceived of this unit in WWII?

(Hint: I've already mentioned this man in another thread. Mogami responded, by the way.)

OK - I see what you are driving at. I thought you were maybe talking about some producer. Haven't looked at Mog's answer: i will guess Brig. Gen Emil Eschenburg, a name i ran across in researching this answer.

[rtrapasso]

Gen. Eschenburg was a commander of the 1st Special Service Force, but the original commander was Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick. Don't know if he was the "inspiration" for the unit's formation, but as ORIGINAL commander, it is a good bet...

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Gen. Eschenburg was a commander of the 1st Special Service Force, but the original commander was Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick. Don't know if he was the "inspiration" for the unit's formation, but as ORIGINAL commander, it is a good bet...

I am not getting a response, so i assume i am wrong. One history says the impetus for development of the unit came from a civilian named PIKE, who developed some sort of snow mobile, and the idea was to drop the unit into Norway with these things. The original commander says the idea is bad (in the movie).

[rtrapasso]

Yet another history says "The force was the brainchild of the Allied leaders, particularly Winston Churchill and Lord Louis Mountbatten, who were both known for interesting military schemes. The force was originally created to drop into occupied Norway and destroy power plants the Germans were using to develop heavy water. Eventually, the mission would be scrapped as the RAF did the job for them."

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Gen. Eschenburg was a commander of the 1st Special Service Force, but the original commander was Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick. Don't know if he was the "inspiration" for the unit's formation, but as ORIGINAL commander, it is a good bet...

I am not getting a response, so i assume i am wrong. One history says the impetus for development of the unit came from a civilian named PIKE, who developed some sort of snow mobile, and the idea was to drop the unit into Norway with these things. The original commander says the idea is bad (in the movie).

Still no go, eh?[&:]

OK - researched more and found this - seems to be the same guy with a different spelling (PYKE instead of PIKE):
"Of all of the elite units, the 1st Special Service Force had the most bizarre beginning. The Force was the brainchild of Englishman Geoffrey Pyke, an inventor, propagandist, statistician, financier, economist, and foreign correspondent. Pyke rarely bathed, shaved, or cut his hair, did not like to wear socks, and dressed in a badly stained, crumpled suit. Pyke's personality matched his appearance. [ COMMENT: sounds like a wargamer to me! - RT]

But for all his shortcomings, Pyke was a brilliant man, and many of his ideas became the basis for important advances in a variety of disparate fields. Most important, Pyke had the ear of several powerful people, including Winston Churchill and Lord Louis Mountbatten, who introduced Pyke to General George Marshall.

One of Pyke's schemes was built on snow -- the simple realization that, for nearly half the year, much of Europe was covered in snow. Pyke theorized that whatever country mastered the snow would control Europe. He devised the Plough Project, which involved parachuting men and "snow tanks" into snow-covered areas. The men would ride the tanks across the snow and destroy strategic Axis targets such as hydroelectric plants in Norway and Italy. Just how they would get out remained a mystery. Nevertheless, the plan captured the imagination of Churchill and Mountbatten, who convinced a weary Eisenhower and Marshall to move forward on the idea. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Frederick was given the task of creating the specialized unit for the Plough Project, surely a surprise to Frederick, who had written a War Department report against its feasibility."

[rtrapasso]

More on Pyke: "GEOFFREY NATHANIEL PYKE (1894 - 1948)

By Pete Hall

A short account of the life and times of Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke, variously described as a genius, an eccentric and less flattering names. However it is beyond question that he was a one man think tank who had the 'ear' of Churchill.

Described by Lord Zuckerman as "not a scientist, but a man of a vivid and uncontrollable imagination, and a totally uninhibited tongue."

<SNIP>
~ WW2 ~

In 1939, as war was imminent, he decided that the way to avert war would be to present the results of an opinion poll to Hitler showing that the majority of Germans were against war. He recruited some students, dressed them as golfers and sent them off to German with a clipboard in one hand and a bag of clubs in the other. Preliminary results showed that most Germans were against war, but in the meanwhile Hitler was obviously receiving other information and the plan had to be aborted due to the outbreak of war.

During WW2, he was recruited to the British Combined Operations think-tank, were he came up with some cracking ideas:

TOP SECRET: How to make it easier to for commandos to destroy the strongly defended Romania oilfields.

Send in a team of dogs, the dogs would bay, the guards would think they were wolves and would flee.

Send in a team of dogs with barrels of brandy round their necks, St Bernard-style, so the guards would get drunk.

Send in a team of women to [ahem] distract the men.

Start a few small fires, then the commandos could simply drive about the oilfields dressed as Romania firemen in replica fire-engines. Instead of putting out fires, the 'firemen' would stoke then up by spraying them with water mixed with fused incendiary bombs.

~ A Motorised Sledge ~

This was a motorised sledge controlled by a man walking behind holding reins, so that if the sledge fell into a crevasse, the driver didn't - unless he forgot to let go! Unfortunately this left the driver exposed to gunfire, and most preferred to ride inside and take their chances with crevasses.

A refinement was a sledge towing a torpedo. The sledge was to be driven slowly up a slope to tempt the Germans into giving chase. Half way up the slope the torpedo was to be released to roll down onto the Germans and blow them up!

With added inspiration, to prevent the Germans from tampering with any sledge they came across, the sledges were to be marked with a sign in German warning them to keep clear as it was a secret Gestapo death ray, or 'Officers' Latrine. for Colonels only' on the premise that were a very obedient race.

Pyke was sent to America to experiment with the sledges in the Rockies, but the Pentagon weren't too impressed with the scruffy Pyke - tall, straggly beard, unkempt clothes and no socks (he once met the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, with his flies wide open because he couldn't close the zip) and they didn't appear to give the sledges a fair trial. None were ever used in Norway, but after the war the 'Weasel' played a vital part in polar exploration.

~ Project Habbakuk and Pykrete ~

Habbakuk was to be an enormous aircraft carrier half a mile long, with a hull 30 foot thick made from reinforced ice. The hull was to be made of 'Pykrete, a mixture of water and wood pulp frozen solid, which was stronger than ice, more stable and less inclined to melt. A ship made from Pykrete would be virtually unsinkable (why didn't they think of that when they were building the Titanic!), a torpedo would only make a slight dent in the side that was quickly repaired. Pipes circulating cold air would keep the hull permanently frozen.

Huge ice ships, clad in timber or cork and looking like ordinary ships but much larger, several times the length of the Queen Mary the largest ship of the time, would serve as transports and aircraft carriers, while smaller ships would be adapted to attack enemy ports. The plan was for them to sail into the port and capture enemy warships by spraying them with super-cooled water, encasing them in ice and forcing them to surrender. Blocks of Pykrete would them be used to build a barrier round the port, making an impregnable fortress. From there special teams would spread out into the countryside, spraying railway tunnels with super-cooled water to seal them up and paralyze transport.

Lord Mountbatten, head of Combined Ops, loved the idea so much that he rushed in to Churchill's bathroom and dropped a lump into his hot bath to demonstrate that it resisted melting. Mountbatten later demonstrated it's strength to a group of generals at the Quebec Conference by inviting one of them to take an axe to an ordinary block of ice and a block of Pykrete. The block of ice was shattered with a single blow, but when the axe was brought down on the block of Pykrete the general let out a yelp of pain as his arms were nearly jarred out of their sockets. Mountbatten then demonstrated its impregnability by drawing his revolver and firing at the Pykrete block, but unfortunately the bullet ricocheted off the solid lump and narrowly missed decapitating one of the generals.

A prototype Pykrete ship was built on a Canadian lake and it lasted through a hot summer without melting. Unfortunately the Normandy landings made the need for ice ships unnecessary, and they paid no part in the war.

~ A People Pipeline ~

An idea for a pipeline for pumping men and equipment from ship to shore, or across difficult terrain.

He often worked from his bed so as not to waste time by getting up and dressing, and he would summon military chiefs to bedside conferences in his Hampstead flat among piles of papers, bottles and other debris. After the war he helped the fledgling National Health Service solve staffing problems. He wrote articles and made broadcasts, hoping to introduce his ideas to influential people. The more he studied the world, the more hopeless and pessimistic he became. One winter evening in 1948, when he was still only fifty four, he shaved off his beard, swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and said goodbye to an unappreciative world."

[Cap Mandrake]

It's not Darby is it?


Sorry for the mini-hijack. Anyone know why the smoke trails on the sounding rockets appear curved in RT's sig pic?
Its not what I thought when I was a kid.