Wilkommen!

For those who know me and those that don't, I'm Sledgehammer427, I am currently a moderator of the Tanksim.com sub-forum at SUBSIM.com (link below)
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=203

I've had a passion for tanks for a long time, I consider myself a historian and researcher, I will run analysis of tank battles by request and use my years of knowledge (I have no experience in tanks, but I've studied them and their crews) to give the request-er a plausible scenario.

Well what do you say I tell you why I made this?

I have a game called Steel Fury-Kharkov 1942, it's an armor simulation that places you in either a German tank or a Russian one. The scenarios in the stock game are based on real things that happened during the fighting in the Kharkov Pocket (a pocket is better illustrated as a bulge, e.g., the Battle of The Bulge. It happens when the front line of an advancing force (lets say blue) is pushed farther forward in a specific place rather than advancing as one line. On a map this would create a bulge, an enemy (red) can also create one if they attack a pair of weak spots in this line, creating a bulge in an attempt to complete a pincering maneuver. The attacking blue force would then have to fight on 3 fronts instead of one and would have to either retreat back to the formation or crush the attacking red forces entirely)

The fighting in the Kharkov area was so intense it was nicknamed "the meat grinder." Soldiers on both sides weren't apt to sugarcoat things like this.

I wanted to blog my experience in the fighting that goes on in this game, from the viewpoint of both a German tanker and a Russian one. There are no politics on this battlefield. One cannot hear Hitler's speeches or Stalin's mighty rallying calls. There are no propaganda posters, there are no crying civilians, no children, not even dogs. This is what war was like for the men that fought in these hot, growling, clanking monsters.

I play on the most realistic settings possible, I will only use external views because sometimes you need an out-of tank perspective.

First entry coming soon! :D