Black Box

In 1918 the Germans had launched massive attacks and broken the allied lines. Then after stiff fighting the Germans suffered a crushing defeat. Ludendorff called it "The black day of the German army". A significant part of it might be down to one tank. A Whippet MK A light tank nicknamed Musical Box.
On 8th of August, Lt C.B Arnold, his gunner, C. Ribbans and the driver W. J. Carney climbed into their Whippet tank. One of 8 tanks in the unit, and left their overnight camp near Amiens. At 0420 the formation departed, passing Villers-Bretonneux (see Edfrancis thread about why that place is famous). However the going was bad, and soon all the other 7 whippets were bogged down, leaving Musical Box on her own.

Lt Arnold moved his tank up behind some Australian infantry and MKV tanks. Shortly after linking up with the advance his area came under fire from a battery of German field guns. Able to spit out 48 rounds per minute the German battery started causing serious problems for the infantry, two of the MKV's were smashed by the barrage.
Arnold drove his tank at its top speed of 8mph past the front of the battery engaging them with his machine guns. The Germans launched over 30 rounds at him, luckily none failed to connect. The Whippet made it to cover on the flank of the battery, and enabled Arnold to mount a flank attack on the Germans scattering the battery, and smashing the local German defences. The Australians were able to move up the quarter of a mile, and take the German position with no further loss.

After dismounting to liaise with the infantry Arnold moved off to rescue several troops of cavalry who had been taken under fire by Germans in a wheat field. After routing those Germans Arnold continued to attack. Unknown to him he by now was far out in front of the advance, deep inside the German lines.

Arnold came across a railway bridge defended by Germans. Rushing down the rails he smashed through their lines and scattered their defence, causing over 60 casualties to the defenders. For the next hour or so he harried a German battalion, causing significant damage.
Musical Box was not getting off scot free. The Battalion of Germans had put up such a storm of concentrated fire the fuel cans stored on the outside of the tank had been hit multiple times. These doused the tank in flammable fuel which leaked into the fighting compartment. The crew were standing knee deep in the petrol. The fumes became so bad that all three crew were forced to wear their respirators.
So Musical Box was now a driving bomb, with the crew drenched in fuel, the slightest spark and it's would all be over.

It was by now 2PM; Musical Box ploughed further into the German lines, and became possibly the only tank in WWI to score an aerial kill. She came across an airfield and on it an observation balloon. The transport for the Balloon, and the craft itself were both swiftly destroyed.
Moving on Lt Arnold spotted a German truck approaching, so he hid his tank round a corner, and as the truck drove past rammed it. Continuing down the road Musical Box found the rest of the transport column and set about them. She also routed another column of German infantry.

As Musical Box penetrated deeper resistance began to stiffen. Arnold didn't know it but Ludendorff's HQ was close by! In a fierce fire fight the Germans belted Musical Box with everything they had. At this point the left hand pistol port was shot off by weight of German fire. Grabbing one of the other machine guns Lt Arnold pulled it off its mounting and stuck the barrel through the hole ripped in his tanks flank. Firing the machine gun from the hip as his Gunner manned the Left Machine gun they delivered effective fire onto the enemy.

After 10 hours of constant combat, drenched in fuel the inevitable had to happen. A German field gun managed to score a pair of hits that ignited the fuel.
Bailing out Lt Arnold realised that both the other crew members were still inside the tank, he rushed back and despite being on fire himself dragged both from the blazing wreck. British infantry later found the burnt out hulk of Musical Box.

Although being in no shape to try, they attempted to escape, but were all captured by the Germans, during their capture one of the crew was shot and Lt Arnold sustained a bayonet wound.
Lt Arnold was interrogated almost immediately, and there followed an exchange between a German officer and Lt Arnold that is worthy of any film.
After being asked any question Lt Arnold replied: "I do not know."
"Do not know, or will not tell?" Was the German officers response.
"You can take it which way you wish!"  Arnold defiantly replied, followed by a under his breath comment of "...and be damned to you!"
The German officer stormed out of the interrogation.

Lt CB Arnold

Arnold was sent to a German POW camp at Freiburg, where he found his Brother, whom had been captured earlier in the war. It appears that Lt Arnold received a DSO.

[ALL] WG & Linux

Online game developer and publisher Wargaming relies on Linux and open source software to produce and distribute its line of popular military strategy games, says Maksim Melnikau, a solution architect at Wargaming.

The growing company joined the Linux Foundation in May as it seeks to advance the gaming industry. And it's off to a great start, having shipped more than 15 titles since 1998, including the armored World of Tanks and World of Warplanes, a free-to-play flight combat game. Wargaming is now expanding to a new mobile platform and continues to hire developers as it opens offices across the globe.

Here, Melnikau discusses how Wargming uses Linux; the company's hardware setup; gaming on Linux; his advice to game developers; and openings at the company.

How does Wargaming use Linux?

We extensively use Linux for multiple Wargaming projects. Servers for all our games, for example, are powered by Linux. Whether you play World of Tanks and World of Warplanes on PC, World of Tanks: Blitz on iPad, iPhone or any Android device, World of Tanks 360 Edition on your Xbox, or World of Tanks Generals in your browser—the server side is always Linux-based.

To run its web services, Wargaming actively uses a wide range of open source tools and frameworks such as, to name but a few: MySQL, Python, Django, Nginx, and RabbitMQ, and when it comes to servers, all our games rely on Linux.

The company’s development studios handle their day-to-day operations and processes, widely applying Linux. Finally, many of us prefer the GNU OS for everyday use.

What’s your server setup? 

World of Tanks has client-server based architecture, where everything is being calculated on the server. The major benefit it grants is security—it is virtually impossible to hack in to the World of Tanks. The client does nothing other than translate keyboard and mouse movements into commands to send to the server.

The overall server setup depends on the amount of active players. The Russian game cluster, for example, peaks with more than 800,000 concurrent users, which calls for relevant server capacities. Presently the game cluster has close to 300 powerful servers with 24 threads and 64 GB RAM each. Besides significant computing power, we have huge database machines with a lot of RAM (our largest database server has 384GB RAM, to be exact) and powerful storage (24 HDD x 600 GB in RAID10).

What are some of Wargaming’s most popular titles for LinuxOS users?

Although there’s no World of Tanks client for Linux, the game runs on Wine and other Windows emulators.
The collectible card MMO game World of Tanks Generals, which is now in Closed Alpha testing, will be cross-platform. Another upcoming title—the mobile MMO action game World of Tanks Blitz—will have a version for Android.

How has the recent release to Steam on Linux worked out so far?

Wargaming is not using Steam for its products. The company’s vision is to create and run its own distribution services. However, we are happy to watch Linux evolve as a quality gaming platform, and Steam is what helps it to grow.

What advice would you give developers who want to build games for Linux?

For starters, I’d tell them to be less platform-specific and concentrate more on the quality and robustness of the experience they create. If your game is engaging, accessible, and deep, it will attract players at launch. Don’t stop when the game goes live—improve and grow it to ensure users stick to it for years on. As for the server side, I would definitely advise you to choose Linux.

Why did you join the Linux Foundation?

We rely on Linux open source tools a lot. They help us continuously improve on our server platform and stay in the vanguard of the global technology evolution of this massive movement.
The Linux Foundation contributed greatly to Wargaming’s success, and we hope to continue our collaboration in the future and expand it into other areas.

I see you’re currently looking for a Linux system administrator. What are the skills and experience you look for in new Linux hires?

Besides system administrators, we seek Linux system developers and Web developers. The full list of vacancies and requirements for them is available at Hot Vacancies section of Wargaming’s corporate website. Linux engineers will find plentiful offerings there. As for the skills, we hire both experienced specialists and those only starting their work life.

Originally posted here.

[WoWP] Going Open Beta. Updated

World of Warplanes is going open beta: actually it already has done in Russia, and NA servers are being updated at this time, while EU will have to wait until July 4.

Updated. July 4. EU has also joined the open beta joy of WoWP. 

There is 0.5.0 update that brings the game to a new stage. Pre-orders (effective after full release) will also be available upon open beta launch - gave example to RU ones.

Reminder: during open beta (at later stages) there will be a chance to "farm" in-game gold in WoWP and spend it acquiring unified/single premium account for all (currently 2) WG games.

See you in the sky and waiting for first-hand feedback.   

France's unknown Hero

Note:
Most of the material in this article was originally in French, so I had to use Google translate. This may have allowed errors to slip in, however I do believe its as true as it can be.

Special thanks to Roland Narboux, who helped me fill in some of the blanks. Mr Narboux also published the only book on the subject, which has far more details than contained in the article bellow. The book is however only in French. He's also the author of the Alfred Stanke article I link to later on.
Also thanks to Gauthier Blanc who helped with the French when Google failed me.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Marcel Claude Emile Haegelen was born on 13th of September 1896 in Belfort, France. He is almost utterly unknown, even in France. This is surprising considering his exploits.

Before World War One, Haegelen was a car salesman. He enlisted in the army, and was posted to 27e Régiment d'Infanterie. During his service with this unit he was involved in the precursor fighting and earliest stages to the battle of Verdun, at the bitter back and forth trench warfare at the Saint-Mihiel salient. During less than a year his service earned him three commendations, and the Rank of Corporal.
In July 1915 he started to learn to fly, joining Escadrille F8 (a reconnaissance squadron) at the start of 1916, flying Nieuports. In March 1917 he joined N103 Groupe De Combat. His SPAD carried the emblem of the Squadron, the famous "Les Cigongnes" or Stork.
Haegelen spent allot of his time shooting down observation balloons. But in the last years of the war he found himself mainly fighting against fighters of Jagdgeschwader 1, commanded by Herman Göring.
At the end of the war Haegelen had a total of 22 kills, 12 Balloons and 10 Air craft.

Haegelen left the air force in 1921; he was hired by the French firm Hanriot, initially as an instructor. He had a hand in the company’s move to Bourges in 1928, where he became Chief test pilot. The company set up a factory and aerodrome at this location.
In 1931 and 1932 Haegelen won the Michelin cup, the second time being the world record holder.
In 1936 Hanriot and Farman Aviation were nationalized into SNCAC.

At the outbreak of World War Two, Haegelen was enlisted back into the French air force, and given the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Forming an ad hoc unit made up of 6 Polish pilots and another pilot of unknown nationality, they were stationed at Bourges to protect the SNCAC works. The flight flew Curtis H-75 Hawks that France had purchased in response to the outbreak of war. Haegelen's H-75 carried the Les Cigongnes emblem.

In June 1940 Haeglen intercepted a German air raid attacking the town. Closing on a HE-111, he pursued it eventually shooting it down. In the process his plane took 14 hits, some of the bullets missing Haegelens head by inches. One bullet, however, hit him in the shoulder. He still managed to nurse the plane back to base and land it. At the age of 44, 22 years after his last kill, Haegelen scored his 23rd victory. He became one of only about 6 people to score air victories in both world wars.

Haegelen's unit racked up 30 combat sorties during the battle of France, but it was all for naught. As the Germans approached Bourges, Haegelen received orders to lead his flight to Algiers. Once there he was part of a team testing imported US aircraft until France surrendered. Haegelen was a committed anti-German, and wanted to join the allies and carry on fighting. However he knew his advanced age would hinder that. So he returned to Bourges under the terms of the Armistice. SNCAC in the meantime had been taken over by the Germans, and was building Siebel 204 aircraft.
Haegelen carried on working as SNCAC, but not as a collaborator. Haegelen was actually part of the French Resistance. Obviously the exact details of the Resistance's exploits are little documented. However we do know that Haegelen carried out a detailed reconnaissance of the SNCAC factory and Avord airfield, passing the results on to the allies. When the Allies bombed the airfield in 1944 they smashed Avord, with no casualties or damage to the surrounding town, due largely to Haegelen's work.

Another incident that might have been Haegelen's work at the SNCAC factory has a number of leaflets being distributed early in November. These called for a 3 minutes silence to celebrate the victory over Germany in the First World War. At the designated time the entire staff of the factory downed tools and observed the silence. The Germans were furious, arresting two men and deporting them.

Haegelen himself was arrested on March 15th 1943, by the Gestapo for espionage. Kept in solitary confinement for 33 days, the future looked bleak for Haegelen. Then mysteriously he was released without charge. There is some indication that Göring had ordered Haegelen's release, due to them both being Aces of the great war, and had fought against each other!
After his release Haegelen organised a raid, where he and few other associates broke into SNCAC and emptied the German armoury of weapons. They then handed the truck load of ordnance over to another resistance unit to be used against the Germans.

Although not entirely clear on the details, documents suggest Haegelen had some contact with another incredible man in the area, Alfred Stanke. See the following link for another little known hero:

Google translate or Roland Narboux's article on Alfred Stanke.

Haegelen survived the war, dying on 25 May 1950, and is buried in Pasir-Ris. At the time of his death He was a Grand Officer of the Legion d'Honneur, holder of the Military Medal, the Croix de guerre 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.

[WoT] 0.8.7 Preview

Taken from WoT RU.

No comments. 

[360] Tanks All Around

Taken from here.

Did you have a chance to try the game in beta on during E3 2013? Any thoughts?

I don't own any console and my first PvP experience with WoT 360 happened about 3 weeks ago - found the controls pretty intuitive. Sure thing, gold Xbox Live sub requirement is a kind of entry barrier, unfortunately there was nothing we could. May be MS will drop this as they did with updating fees just recently. :)

And, which side are you on - Xbox One or PS4? 

[WoWP] The Right Stuff

Back in the early days of flight people wrestled with technology they barely understood, with engines that would crash for no reason. Equally the controls were utter nightmares, and would often lock up at high speeds or just do something unpredictable, and pitch you into the ground.

To spur on the early pioneers there were many prestigious prizes.

Now am I talking about WOWP or the real world? The answer is “both”. I was an Alpha Tester for WoWP, and for a couple of months each week I would set a challenge for the players to win, and give it an award. The awards were named after a Person, item or event in aviation history. Required Proof was a screen shot.

So I figure it would be interesting to revisit those early days and immortalize the Winners. Keep in mind this was Alpha Testing so the controls seemed like they were actively trying to kill you, and the graphics looked bad. Of course the game has also evolved so its likely you will be able to better these numbers, but back in March 2012 it was a very different game.

Claimed Prizes:

John Derry Medal:

For achieving Mach 1. Winner: Trebs, clocking a speed of Mach 1.16.

John Derry was the First Briton to achieve Mach 1. In a later flight in the same aircraft it crashed killing him.

The Mario Pezzi Award:

Highest altitude you can reach in a piston aircraft. Winner: Sgt_Bones with an altitude of 2361m.

Lieutenant Colonel Pezzi set the Propeller driven altitude record. He set it in 1937 (in a bi-plane), and it stands to this day! 

Walter Frame Gibb Award:  

Highest altitude you can reach in a Jet aircraft. Winner: MartokY with an altitude of 3706m.
Walter Gibb, set the first Turbojet record in 1953, in a Canberra bomber.

Alan Pollock Award: 

For Low flying, under a bridge. If there is a tie break, the person who is inverted wins. Winner: GrmlZ, with an altitude of 3m and inverted.
On 5 April 1968 Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock flew his Hawker Hunter under Tower Bridge.

Le Prieur award: 

Get a Air-to-air kill with a piece of Ordnance, not a gun. Winner: GrmlZ.
Le Prieur rockets were a type of incendiary air-to-air rockets. They were invented by the French Lieutenant Yves Le Prieur and were first used in the Battle of Verdun.

Unclaimed awards. 

(remember applications are closed)

Chuck Yeager Medal:
Doing Mach 1 and surviving! Chuck Yeager was the first Person to do Mach 1 and survive in 1947

HMS Argus award:
For the First Landing! The award is named after the first Aircraft carrier, which conducted the first landing on 1 October 1918.

Scott Crossfield Award:
Doing Mach 2. Scott Crossfield was the first person to do Mach 2 in 1953.

From the Mud...

Before the war Captain Donald Richardson was a Greengrocer. So when in 1917 he found himself in charge of a section of Tanks its unsurprising one of them sprouted the name Fray Bentos, a type of canned meat sold in the UK. Or at least that is the story.

Either way Captain Richardson was himself inside the tank during the Passchendaele offensive. It was wettest August on record, and by the 23rd the battlefield was a quagmire.

On that day the section of tanks was detailed to destroy a selection of German held farms. Although these had been farms before the war, they were now strong points/ heavily fortified concrete bunkers. Cpt Richardson led his section from Fray Bentos. Despite the tank never having been in combat, and all the crew being green the tank section destroyed the strongpoint at Somme farm. However all the tanks in the section were bogged down or knocked out, leaving Fray Bentos to continue on alone to destroy Gallipoli Farm.

As the approached the strongpoint a burst of HMG fire hit the driver’s vision port, the spalling from this burst caused injury to the face of the driver. As he fell in shock and surprise he caught the control levers, causing the tank to lurch to one side, and bog down.

Immobilised, high and dry with one sponson pointing into the mud the other into the sky, a Crewman called Brady volunteered to go outside and attach the unbogging beam. As he unhooked the beam the same HMG killed him. However at this point the Sponson gunner spotted the HMG nest and found his 6 pounder gun could just depress enough to hit it, which he did destroying the HMG.

The Germans now brought artillery to bear on the beached tank. A massive shell impacted alongside the tank punching a splinter into the chest of one of the sponson Gunners. As the rounds carried on falling the pounding caused the tank to start to sink sideways. When she stopped sinking the right sponson was utterly buried, and the left could not depress enough to do anything. Furthermore the shaking of the shells had caused Brady's body and the unbogging beam to slide off the tank, blocking the right door, as Cpt Richardson found out when he tried to lead a party outside to attach the unbogging beam. Unable to open the door the crew were unable to free the tank.

In the early afternoon the Germans launched a counter attack to re-take Somme farm. Right in their path lay Fray Bentos. Using her Lewis guns she broke up the attack.

Suddenly the tank came under fire from Somme farm as well as the Germans at Gallipoli and the artillery fire. The British forces as Somme farm were trying to destroy the tank to stop it being captured by the Germans.  Sgt Missen volunteered to act as a runner and return to Somme farm to let the forces there know of the tanks plight. Crossing no man’s land in broad daylight, Sgt Missen was wounded. However he did get the message through.

So for the first day the Germans had been content to bombard Fray Bentos with everything from mortars to larger artillery pieces. However overnight they tried something else. In the early hours after being up for around 24 hours, Cpt Richardson was startled by the Sponson door being heaved open. Silhouetted against the stars was the shape of a German soldier with a grenade. Luckily Cpt Richardson reacted faster, pulling his service revolver and shooting the German. The door slammed shut as the grenade detonated.

On the MKIV tanks was the sponsons could be retracted into the hull for transport. The blast of the grenade forced the left hand sponson to fall into the transport position smashing one of the sponson gunners across the chest.  At this point the Infantry at Somme Farm started firing up flares to illuminate the battlefield. And they kept this up for the remainder of the night. To make use of this light the Left door was used as a hatch, it did involve the crew man tasked with the job to hold the heavy solid armour door up with one hand while aiming and shooting with his pistol. This did enable the Tank crew to engage and rout another sapper party trying to sneak up on them .

At the start of the second day the crew in desperation started to drink the radiator water from the engines.

During the next 24 hours numerous assault parties were broken up by either Lewis gun fire or the use of the crew’s personal weapons. The tank had also provided a bulwark of fire against several German counter attacks against Somme farm. After three days solid in action, there was only one unwounded member of the crew, and they'd run out of food and water.

So Cpt Richardson ordered the crew to abandon the vehicle. They all made it to friendly lines, but to Cpt Richardson’s surprise the crew manning the Lewis guns had, as standing order required, dismounted the guns and brought them out with them. Before collapsing through exhaustion Cpt Richardson turned the Lewis guns over to the infantry's care.

Everyone of the crew later received a gallantry award of some form.

Note: The pictures used in this article are not of Fray Bentos.  Another tank bore the same number (F41), and was captured by the Germans. Or are generic stock photographs from the war.

As far as I've been able to tell there are no Photographs of Fray Bentos, apart from one aerial reconnaissance photograph.

[WoT] 0.8.6 Hits EU

Major 0.8.6 update has just hit EU and it's time for first-hand feedback on it (NA guys, sorry for the release delay this time).

• tier 10 arty branches
• economy changes including switch to free-2-win and credit income boost
• exp income boost for TDs and SPGs 
• game mechanics changes (HEAT, spall liner, camos, accuracy, shell normalization, pen reduction, damage and pen range, velocity reduction for arty shells)  
• dynamic camera
• new Korean-style map
• new birds added to Ruinberg and Lakeville

And how is overall performance after 0.8.6?

[WG] WoWS Is Taking Off

The first WoWS demo took place during E3 and consisted of two 6 vs 6 battles. Players fought US and Japanese destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and carriers.

The scale of action was epic with maps up 100 km in length and width with multiple islands. And there is reason to go large, because battleships (like demoed North Carolina) had effective range up to 40km.

Battles usually began with recon and fighter planes taking off from cruisers and carriers to locate the enemies. While both sides are approaching one another it's time to get a closer look at nicely modeled ships, all based on real-life materials. The attention to detail is impressive, however the decks did look a bit empty without crews dashing about. Well, this is pre-alpha.

Balance is classical: rock - paper - scissors.

Battleships with their heavy but slow guns are weak in close combat, and can't defend against destroyers which are vulnerable against cruisers which have little to withstand battleships' competition.

As for carriers, well, they have no guns worth mentioning. Carriers have a game of their own, using RTS-like UI to control their aerial forces. There is no control of single aircraft of course (go play WoWP), orders are given to entire units.

The goal of the battle is to capture and defend the central area. Players control only main armament - the rest of the guns are automated.

Aiming is done using ballistic reticle that make camera follow shell's trajectory. The trick is to choose the right distance and predict the movement of your enemy so as to strike it hard and not waste your ammo and loading time.

HP bars are in place just like in WoT.

Destroyers are using torpedos which are .. surprised .. powerful. Underwater hits lead to decrease of floatage bar (water incoming!).

Both 10-minute battles were rather fast and dynamic. Who said ships are slowpokes. One of the battles ended with last survived carrier being destroyed by concentrated fire of 2 cruisers and 1 battleship.

All in all it didn't like like swimming tanks, lots of things work differently. The demoed CTF battles took place in the south Pacific and near Orkney islands.

Ready for beta?