Fred,
Thank you for sharing. Regardless of my flawed understanding of your career, you still have done more for the country than I have. Medical reasons, when I was 17 and into my 20s, prevented me from taking a more active role. Otherwise I would have been in the Navy, like several members of my family had been. So I ended up being more in academic appreciation.
This whole thread has been an academic exercise. Of couple of people have commented on how the situation is not good tactics, game or otherwise. I never said it was good tactics, only asked the interpretation of the rules. Philosophically the situations comes down to what one sees the combat situation as being. I see it as everything from hand-to-hand to 100+ meter shots. As such, I have little problem visualizing squads of infantry 50ish yards apart with a couple tanks behind them. (which is where the tanks probably should be anyhow.) If I saw PG assault combat as a complete intermingling of the combatants, then I would have thought that any shot would set the whole thing off. Accounts that I have read don't seem to have that happening so much.
For those who denigrate Sherman tanks, I suggest looking at the knockout ratios, especially late 1943 and after. I would also point out that The Sherman tank was still viable in may armies into the 1970s, including with the Israelis who used them to take out an Iraqi armored brigade in the Yom Kippur War. If you want to read Fred's opus, it's
still on the APL website.
