A joke from my WW2 veteran dad that relates to this. Squad of troops in a landing craft, ready to hit a beach. One young squaddie calls out to his sarge, "Sarge, I've lost me ammunition!" "Bloody heck! Now is not the time. Alright, Watkins, when you hit the beach, point your gun an' yell 'BANG!' That might fool 'em long enough for me to get you more ammo!" And thus, the troops hit the beach and, among all the shooting and noise, Pte. Watkins is pointing his rifle at the enemy Germans and shouting "BANG! BANG!" Suddenly, an unarmed German stands up and starts walking towards the hapless soldier. Completely ignoring Watkin's desperate "BANG! BANG!", he walks up to him punches him down then starts jumping up and down on him, yelling "TANK! TANK! TANK!" 😁

Things we do for huge… tracts of land….

This post made me think of an exercise during my infantry AIT. We were playing Army’s version of laser tag using MILES equipment. An earbud mounted on your helmet would start shrieking when one of your sensors was hit by a laser. Only the Drill Sergeants could turn it off. The noise was horrible. I was supposed to be laying down a base of fire for a group of guys I hated. I realized no one would ever know if I lit them up. So I did. 37 years later I still smile every time I remember the five of them clutching their helmets one right after the other.

"Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. We are here today to witness the union of two young people in the joyful bond of holy wedlock"

What I take from this is that it require less supply and manpower to conduct actual battle, than to play a wargame.

That sticks as grenade thing sounds a lot like what my dad once had to do when he was in the British army back in the 60s & 70s. An entire regiment without vehicles, but the exercise had to go ahead anyway. It devolved into things like men being ordered to run around making engine noises, shouting "beep jeep I'm a jeep" and "clank clank I'm a tank bangbangbang you're dead" etc.

The film used to illustrate "BRIDGE UMPIRES" is a Swedish film from the late 70s called "Repmånad" depicting a platoon of conscripts doing refreshing training, usually rather grown up men, who quickly degraded to toddlers in behaviour, rather funny as almost all Swedish men did this until the 90s between 4 to 12 years intervals.

Interwar RAF flour bombs tended to lie in stores for years and set into a solid chunk capable of penetrating corrugated iron. Or people, which was thought to not be a good thing: even if they were the common soldiery. The solid 25lb practice bombs could well have penetrated some of the thinner tank armour of the day.

I do really appreciate the clip from Repmånad (repetition month), one of the best Swedish comedy movie of all time! The truck helicopter scene is a classic!! This was a movie that represented the Swedish peoples experience with conscription and the follow up training (know as repmånad) of graduated conscripts that accured every few years after finishing your conscription period, to keep reserve guys "up to date" and remembering the skills they need to fight of an invader. As the movie showed the enthusiasm and dedication of the men varied vildly, sometimes with comical effects.

I was a SAW gunner in OSUT. One day I got the bright idea to yell out b-b-b-b-b-budget cuts for my verbally simulated bursts. The drill sergeants didn't scuff me up for it, so it became my battle cry for the rest of my career.

I get the giggles every time The Chieftain says "Bickering and arguing over 'oo killed 'oo.".

I trialed that GPS system on my tank in fall of 2000. The issue we had was the inability of the system to be able to determine small changes in elevation, so you could hide behind the top of the hill and still shoot someone. It couldn't tell if your gun was unmasked or not.

The thought and concept of a 155mm simunition is both scary and hilarious at the same time. I honestly can't think why nobody has produced one (yet).

An anecdote from the other side of Iron Curtain: There were once division level exercises. There was a bridge. There was a board standing next to bridge with words "Bridge destroyed" on it. A unit of motorized infantry, mounted on OT-64 (aka SKOT) got to that bridge. It's commanding officer looked at the board beside the bridge. He slightly squinted his eyes and yelled: - Kowalski! To me! Once Kowalski git to his commander he was informed that he had 10 minutes tops to create a banner. Banner was created in 8 minutes and was placed on first APC standing before the bridge. What was written on the banner? "We're swimming" (in Polish it's a single word: "Płyniemy").

Actually, you could take a tank out with a .45, you just had to change the emitter to say it was the right weapon. I worked on a project that needed to read the codes and reset them. This was for the medics so that they could work on a virtual version of the casualty. Doing this meant that I had to simulate fire via striking the emitter as Chieftain said and that I had the software to change what the emitter sent out, which could be just about anything. As this ran on a laptop and was closely guarded, it's unlikely anyone in the field would have access to it. I think, however, that you could possibly swap your M4 emitter for an M2 and thus have your own light weight .50 cal. Similarly, if a tank platoon somehow got an extra 120mm emitter, it could put one on the 7.62 coax. Not that I'm suggesting anybody do that, of course.

As an air cadet in the 70s we had a night exercise with 2 other local units after a few hours it just turned into a random brawl of kick and run (friend or foe dint seem to matter ) I can still hear the nco\officers telling us what a disgrace we were!

Since we're talking Tank camo in some regard: "This is Mr E. R. Bradshaw of Napier Court, Black Lion Road, SE 14 who cannot be seen. Could you please stand up, Mr. Bradshaw? " (Is Summarily Blown Up) "This demonstrates the value of not being seen."

Military History (Not?) Visualized did a video where his guest talking about training in the Swiss army. His machine gun team laid down live fire over the heads of their buddies as they advanced. The rule was "Hold out your hand at arm's length, aim a thumb's width above their heads." Yeah, so much for a MILES system that ignore friendly fire.

I didn't even tap MILES like system with coin. Being close enough to guy firing machine gun chambered to 7.62x64R seemed to do the trick

Back in the '90s we (two OHP frigates) were in war games against the Kennedy battle group - asymmetrical threat. Our sister ship did a high speed charge and retreat. Following the naval doctrine of aggression aggression aggression the entire CAP along with most of the escorts went running off after her leaving us free to get in close and empty our 72mm into the carrier. Results? Inconclusive, and the war game was concluded prematurely, our captain got "promoted" to a desk in the Pentagon and that was that. We also did NATO wargames and that was scary because many of those European navies have no idea what they are doing.

I remember reading an article in MHQ on the 1940-41 maneuvers some time ago. The author noted that the Louisiana and Carolina maneuvers were the largest land battles ever fought in North America.

In the late 80s, we traveled down to Catterick a couple of times to conduct Bn TEWTs in a big building with a large map board of the surrounding area (including the A1), with 'cells' all around for sub-unit elements to sit and observe the map and react accordingly in reporting to BN HQ in a mock CP in another part of the building. Having completed a two week intelligence cadre in Orkney, I found myself seconded to the Int Cell to control a right flanking Soviet unit. I would move and deploy this unit's elements according to Soviet doctrine and my BN units would react to what they saw happening. When an engagement commenced, the two sides composition was relayed to computer operators at the top end and a result was computed and then relayed back for resolution on the map board. I loved it and found it a fascinating exercise. I guess, given it was late 80s, that the technology was still fairly basic and that modern systems are probably much more advanced now.

Your description of maneuvers weirdly matches up with my memories of late 30's and early 40's films that have this as a side plot. Mostly it was how to game the system to get results favoring your team. Comedy films loved this. My preteen maneuvers favored dirt clods over rocks. Great exploding effects with dry dirt and rocks tended to leave cranial dents without helmet liners.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail references in the video title? Instant like. As long as you don't go into detail about your father building castles in swamps.

Thank you very much for clarification! Been there myself a couple of time where we generally just shot blanks at each other without any effect or umpires. In basic I was assistent machine gunner and we hosed down a field from which we were attacked. Then later in an exercise I machine gunned from a truck, shooting blanks into a forest where later the ambushers talked about the results. Once we had lasers on our weapons but no receivers... I was in logistics, so we never had any real, in depth combat training on foot.

My Dad would have loved to here this , as he was there in 41 . Having enlisted in 36 ! He was in an AA unit , and got covered quite regularly with flour .

Back in '84 my 12B squad was in 'loose' convoy. Making a 'fast' maneuver to outflank the opfor and blow a bridge. My 5ton had a squad of 11B in the back, along with the pioneer boxes. Closing in on our bridge, we were spotted by choppers and lit up. I was one of the disabled/destroyed trucks. That God awful racket the miles put out.

A swede here, and I did not expect to see a clip from that movie here at 5:10. Love you even more for that now.

This is so good! This is the type of unique content that makes the new Chieftains hatch video so anticipated.

>simuniton tank rounds Actually, russia has those. They're basically huge paintball rounds and they've been working on them since 2016

Video illustrating Bridge umpire is from Swedish 1970ies film. Joke is that refreshment training conscripts want to sneak into town to have a drink. Bridge umpire says the bridge is blown up and wont let them pass no matter how much they point to the bridge and say IT IS RIGHT THERE. So, they regroup, paint "helikopter" on their truck and run across the bridge. Joke being, if the bridge umpire can pretend the bridge is blown up, they can pretend their truck is a helicopter. Brilliant of Chieftain to include that clip :p

It makes perfect sense about an army of umpires keeping score, i love the detail of them driving to the impact zone of artillery. I wonder how many they needed at the 400,000 man Louisiana maneuvers.

Gotta make sure the guards at the HQ stay there, and make sure the generals don't leave this room.

Just got done with NTC last week. My weapon miles was so old, the laser couldn't even be zeroed.

A wonderful video on mid-20th century War Games. Thanks, Chieftain

As someone who has been hit by sim rounds, I can attest that they do in fact hurt like hell. I took one where I wasn't even armored during a building clearing drill and it left a huge purple bruise on my neck for weeks....

The Marine Corps has a real simple way of doing our version of ATC called CAX (Combined Arms Exercise). We just simply use live ordnance agasint a pretend enemy, no lasers, no simunitions, just shoot at nothing. How they decide how well a unit has done and how many casualties they took, I have no idea. I was always more towards the rear taking calls from ground units for air support, be it a log run, clsoe air support, or medevac.

Excellent video! Thanks for explaining this to us; it was certainly fascinating to me :)

I was part of a REME section attached to a RA battery and we were on exercise and came under (pretend) mortar attack. We were in the middle of cooking breakfast, including that of the umpire. He declared us causalities and told us to carry on cooking his breakfast and not join the stand to.

Your a hidden gem that has some incredible history to share with us! Always love the videos. Im slowly working my way back down the catalog. There is still many to be seen! Keep up the awesome work!

Really fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing this

Funny! It seems that nothing has changed in over 20 years since I was in the army. They are still yelling bang due to lack of blank ammo. And the knocking on the lasers is still a thing 🙂 I really like the truck with the word "Helicopter". I once had pleasure of being part of in a truck with the word "Hind" written on the side; Much to the dispair of Blue-force 🙂.

The "repmånad"-clip with "Helicopter" made me happy!

Honestly I was kinda lost trying to follow along with what you were saying... But I liked this type of video.. and type of information... Do more Chief... We liked it a lot... I'm sure. Thanks man

5:05 :D loved that you used a clip from a old Swedish movie :D An old classic :)

OMG! I LOVE the clip from repmånad with the faux helicopter to solve the issue of the faux blown up bridge :D

I was asking myself this question? Nice explanation.

I missed about 30 seconds after the "helicopter" crossed the bridge. Clearly my mission focus has degraded since leaving the military.

I'm reminded of an anecdote from 'The GI's War' which I will paraphrase here: _"A tank drove up to our position and stopped. The top hatch opened and the Tank Commander leaned out of the hatch and informed us we were now his prisoners. One of our guys grabbed a flour grenade and threw it at the tank commander yelling, 'Dead men can't take prisoners!' Suddenly the Umpires appeared, and it seemed quite an argument was brewing, capped off by the tank commander himself being quite indignant at the possibility of becoming a casualty. When we realized the flour bag had hit the man in the face, we decided to become scarce and forestall any attempt at revenge."_

SAAB Bofors make some crazy simulation systems I’ve had the pleasure of using a few times. Indirect fires can be simulated and the entire action can be watched on a big screen after the ex. Really helpful piece of kit, made me think about how I could improve my skills. Let’s just say it’s always very humbling.

As soon as you mentioned sim rounds I got phantoms pains on my forearms

OK back in the day of the Old Corps as raw Marines in the field during ITR we stuck expended blank cartridge's into the flash suppressors of our M-16A1 rifles. When fired they worked like a Rifle Grenade and when entering the area the target Marine a distinct whistle and thump would be heard, an impact was quite painful. It was so un-nerving to the other teams the Troop handlers during the exercise stopped it and inspected all magazines of us Marines to ensure we had no live ammunition. None of us spoke up.

Thanks for reminding me of my wicked childhood. I had a 27-year military career spread over a 35-year period and participated in training exercises ranging from fire-team level field training exercises to corps level command post exercises. I have a few period military manuals from both World Wars, too. The role of politics in massive maneuvers cannot be exaggerated. Somehow, these do have some training value.

In my first Reforger in German in the early 70s for some reason our recon platoon's M114s simulated being tanks, firing flashbangs from M79s. The next year, while one side had red armbands, the other had blue, and referees & observers had white, everyone in my platoon were given black arm bands, except the platoon Sgt got a white one. Every morning of the exercise we were dropped off in between the 2 forces in pairs to be captured to be used for practice in handling POWs. The guys didn't always remember we were actually in the same army, so there were some uncomfortable times until we were transported to collection points, where we had a great time making up stories for the military intelligence folks, the only time I ever saw any of those, and being guarded until the end of the day when the platoon Sgt came around to each collection site with a truck and picked us up. It was fun, there aren't many duty days in the army where you had no supervisor, we picked up a lot of info like freqs and call signs from cheat sheets from the vehicles transporting us we gave up during interrogation, but very, very cold since we were given no chance to warm up and German winters are cold.

Dad told me the flour in the flour bomb was mixed with dirt to keep solders from eating it.

That mention on cheating the MILES system reminded me of the old show reality TV show, Combat Missions, were they cheated on a mission by covering the guy to be escorted with cloth over the sensors to avoid being hit. Since there were obviously cameras around, I think they got kicked out that episode.

Very interesting thank you

I took out a whole platoon with a F89 Minimi and miles. Pure carnage and the DS cracked the shits because I was supposed to put up a feeble defence and politely die, enabling the platoon commander to execute his orders. Decided I wasn't having any of that and lured them into a killing ground where I took the lot out from a well concealed position in an enfilade position.

Before MILES, there was SCOPES..That was the worst. You placed a scope on your M16 rifle and you had to look through a tiny aperture and you had to.read a number on specially marked helmet covers and call that number out to get a kill. Lots of cheating on both sides

I've always enjoyed watching your content you keep it rather entertaining even though you're just standing there talking to a camera lol you could also be a teacher I feel like however specifically a history teacher as it's kind of your strong suit lol hope you have a good day Nick and thanks for the vids lol

thank you, appreciated that

Funny you mention NTC. I trained there before my second Afghanistan trip in 2010. My battalion was in the mass casualty range in their mock city. We got blown up on the way in (my company plus attachments from another). Got my squad and part of another into a large, empty building. We opened some doors to pull security, and I spotted three opfor outside. I shot all three, and the OC with us said “good work sergeant!” and killed me with the god gun. I liked NTC, except the “scripted” encounters.

Even in the 80s we used MILES with great results. We did occasionally use the God gun

On another topic , if you haven’t already seen it, I wanted to recommend you find the recent Russian war movie White Tiger. It was made by an artsy Russian director and the cinematography and action sequences are terrific. It’s a WW2 Eastern front movie with an occult angle. The occult and philosophical bits might not be to everyone’s taste but the equipment in the action scenes is awesome. The Russians brought out many operating T-34s, SU-122s, artillery, a Pzkw-4 and a whole bunch of wrecked and burned out tanks. In one of the scenes depicting wrecked armor they even had one of the Matildas that were supplied to Russia. The only weak point in the production values was that the tank they disguised to look like the White Tiger only looks like a Tiger from certain angles. I found the whole movie riveting, but some viewers might get impatient where it slows down in the last act and gets even more deep and mystical. Anyway, I know how I’m going to paint and weather the next Tiger kit I build!

I hit you with my blanks! 5:07 lol 🚁

How on earth did you find a clip from an old, but great Swedish film to illustrate the bridge umpire? I have actually traveled over that bridge, did not have to write helicopter on my dads car though as at that time the bridge was not blown up by the enemy. We could have done that though as we also visited the hardwarestore where they bought the paint in the film

Back in the pre-WW2 days there were shortages of all types of equipment, among them machine guns. My dad did Army ROTC Advanced Camp at Camp Bullis TX in 1941 and being somewhat of a moose (we run to that as a family - dad played lineman and I played linebacker in high school) was designated a machine gunner. So they're out on a FTX and dad is told to make machine gun noises if he sees a target. Later, he sees four cadets from the "enemy" closely bunched together and advancing towards him, so - feeling like an idiot - he starts going "rat-tat-tat", but it doesn't stop the attackers. Finally, just as they're about to march right over him, he hears them chanting "Tank...tank....tank...."

Memories of exercises on the N York Moors, not firing blanks (they gave off smoke) but shouting "Bang, Two Three" like Dad's army. Opposition said that wasn't fair, because they couldn't see us at all and assaulted the wrong ridge.

He wasn’t kidding about not zeroing the MILES gear. Did 3 NTC rotations in the 2001-2005 timeframe and my unit never did zeroing. When we’d get into firefights we were trying to get close enough to safety kill. Thankfully the OC traveling with us was very accommodating in granting our safety kills, until the OPFOR OC’s came and outranked our OC, so our battle ended there.

I bastard-hated being an observer/ controller. In nuclear security, once you got a reputation as a good OPFOR controller, you lost your slot as a shooter. In one of my last engagements as an OPFOR shooter, nailed a guy with 3 good miles hits and two near misses. Then followed it up with a well placed frag. PROFOR player started mag dumping from the hip as we both retreated to cover. No hits, no near miss. Area controller came over and said we were both down. Oh, man, was I livid. I had that dude dead to rights.

The truck with Helicopter painted on the side appeared in the Swedish film with the Norwegian title "How to make boys out of Men" many moons ago.

2:20 "tapping the laser with a coin" That is what I heard too :)

i fucking loved being the bad guy in war games. shout out to all my OP4 guys

Excellent video as always, your humor and storytelling is still top tier. Though I did have a suggestion for the next Q&A video, is it possible (and effective) to use WP shells against tanks? I was rewatching Fury with a friend and the infamous Tiger scene got me thinking about this, specifically the part of it where the American tanks fire WP shells onto the Tiger’s position. I'd think a smoke-like incendiary compound being sucked into a fighting compartment and engine of pre NBC tanks would be effective. Clearly this is not the case because it's seemingly not common practice and I’ve never heard anything about it, so why is this?

The 1942 example sounds pretty good to me, for the available tech. The forest looks pretty good, no matter how silly the trees seem. But I was a supply clerk on an aircraft carrier and might not even recognize some of the trees and forests.

I regret I have but one upvote to give for the title.

i listened to FM 105-5 a lot in the 80s, man

Great video! I love the Renault FT and all its variants and was wondering if there was a pre ww2 tank that you have a particular interest in?

Me at JRTC: **Rips into Geronimo with a 50cal in defense of my platoon from an up armored M1084 MTV while the gun line direct fires the howitzers** OC: Yeah they shot you with a BMP Me: **looks around for a M113 dressed up to look like a BMP and seeing nothing** Where? OC: Well its notional so its not actually here Me: And the guys I shot with the 50? OC: Unharmed... anyway heres you casualty card... oof Amputated legs, a fractured arm, exposed brain matter, and unconscious, hopefully someone gets to you soon.

That inset clip was hilarious!

I have to ask: how did you even _know_ about the "Helikopter" scene? :) That is an obscure piece of _distinctly_ Swedish popular culture, that is practically known only to Swedish conscripts of the previous millenium.

Hah! You get a like for including the "helikopter" from Repmånad ;)

the classic "destroyed bridge" clip from Repmånad.

very interesting

So these training exercises were just a really elaborate capture the flag game you'd play with the boy scouts. Not gonna lie, sounds kinda fun with some decent weather.

Been asking for a while how exercises are done, thanks!

My favorite story from the GHQ maneuvers is the time a bridge crossing was held up for close to an hour while the umpires of the unit crossing the bridge tried to find the umpires of the unit firing on the bridge only to discover that it was some boys with a carbide cannon.

The movie clip with the truck at the bridge made me laugh. I was a bit supriced to find that it was known outside of Sweden. As i you may alredy have guessed. Helekopter is the Swedish word for Helicopter.

Kind of wonder if this manual was considered during the making of the first episode of Band of Brothers.

Sounds like the movie The Dirty Dozen wasn't that inaccurate in how the wargame was portrayed

I just remember our MILES gear being a hot mess of malfunctions at Hohenfels training area. I had to swap out the gear 3 times for my M113 I was driving our platoon commander around in before finally getting one that didn't tell me I was dead on the system intercom every 5 minutes. An OPFOR BMP baited the armored unit we were attached to into a draw surrounded by a ridge and we took 100% casualties as every hoopdie light was going off on our vehicles.

Question: is the 3-1 points the first mention of the classic 3-1 advantage in order to attack?

I still have my yellow filed MILES "god key" thirty some odd years later!

One wonders if the chaos and randomness of combat was represented in any way. Umpires with a bag of d6's, gathered around a jeep's bonnet, deciding who won...

Unless the milles key has been changed since the mid 90s, the cottter pin on lock for the pintle hook, is the right size to reset the miles harness. Also it could enable god mode, so that the harness would only chirp for a near miss. But god mode was very risky because if an umpire killed you, the yellow key could not be put back in the vest.

Kelly's Heroes demonstrated the efficacy of tank simmunition.

1:45 "The Newer Versions are far more reasonable" Me who just got back from JRTC: **Doubt... All of the Doubt**

Hah! I was very much surprised by the clip from "Repmånad" (1979) xD Sweden represent!

The question is, if one in participating in a wargame and become "hit", does one have a "saving throw", with a D6??

In hindsight, considering that the real world impact of Airborne and Ranger regiments was far outside of the on-paper ability of standard light infantry, it must have come as some shock to some commanders high up the chain how well they performed in real combat.