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Still disliking Artillery


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I only ran five of each, but hopefully someone else has more datapoints to add.

105mm Arty, 4 tubes, HE, heavy, short, general, 110m area,

Platoon in open:

A. 9 (8 WIA, 1 KIA, 11 injured)

B. 16 (11 WIA, 5 KIA, 11 injured)

C. 16 (8 WIA, 8 KIA, 11 injured)

D. 19 (12 WIA, 7 KIA, 9 injured)

E. 15 (8 WIA, 7 KIA, 3 injured)

Platoon in foxholes:

A. 2 (1 WIA, 1 KIA, 2 injured)

B. 4 (3 WIA, 1 KIA, 3 injured)

C. 4 (4 WIA, 0 KIA, 5 injured)

D. 5 (4 WIA, 1 KIA, 2 injured)

E. 5 (1 WIA, 4 KIA, 4 injured)

Platoon in trenches:

A. 7 (4 WIA, 3 KIA, 7 injured)

B. 16 (11 KIA, 5 WIA, 8 injured)

C. 7 (4 WIA, 3 KIA, 5 injured)

D. 10 (10 WIA, 0 KIA, 9 injured)

E. 12 (9 WIA, 3 KIA, 6 injured)

Obviously, the platoon in the open was eviscerated by artillery, not sure if that matches wartime effectiveness or not. Surprising to me was that the trenches provided less protection than foxholes, approximately 2/3rds of those killed/wounded in foxholes had actually crawled out of the foxholes during the bombardment and were hit as a result. Nearly all the trench platoon's casualties were physically located in the trenches. I'm guessing with a larger 'open' area, the likelihood of a shell planting itself inside the trench is higher and that accounted for the seemingly ineffective protection offered.

Something to think about.

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Apocal,

The explanation of why troops in trenches fare worse than those in foxholes is simple and straightforward. The trench is bigger, wider, and any shell which lands in it can readily take out multiple men with a single hit. This is precisely why trenches are dug zigzag fashion, with short traverses to limit damage from both indirect and direct fires.

Further, it's my understanding that because of terrain mesh issues, trenches are nowhere nearly as deep as they should be, hence, do not offer historical levels of protection. They have no fire steps, thus denying a lot of real protection against direct fires when shooting from the trenches, as well as creating exaggerated exposure to frag and blast effects from near misses when incoming first arrives, before the men start eating dirt in the bottom of the trench. Trenches, as modeled in the CMx2 engine, are way too wide, making them much easier to hit than was actually the case. If you don't think so, may I suggest taking a look at the German slit trenches in any number of wartime training videos on YouTube?

These factors are why, in my view, you're getting such anomalous results. Men in trenches are far more vulnerable in the game than they were in the real world, and their casualties in your much appreciated and statistically valid (five being the minimum trial size for meaningful statistical analysis) tests reflect this. Unless and until BFC fixes this, if faced with indirect, off board fires, I'm going to take foxholes over trenches every time. This may or may not be a good idea against direct fires. Likewise, the vulnerability level may change if faced with that fearsome fowl, the mortar on the board firing with direct lay.

Hope this helps you understand the perplexing results you got.

Regards,

John Kettler

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I only ran five of each, but hopefully someone else has more datapoints to add.

Obviously, the platoon in the open was eviscerated by artillery, not sure if that matches wartime effectiveness or not. Surprising to me was that the trenches provided less protection than foxholes, approximately 2/3rds of those killed/wounded in foxholes had actually crawled out of the foxholes during the bombardment and were hit as a result. Nearly all the trench platoon's casualties were physically located in the trenches. I'm guessing with a larger 'open' area, the likelihood of a shell planting itself inside the trench is higher and that accounted for the seemingly ineffective protection offered.

Something to think about.

Did you tell the platoon to hide?

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Yeah, I started watching the trench platoon closely and it was virtually always a shell landing smack in the trench that caused casualties. Still no idea why the guys in foxholes seemingly loved to crawl out of them during barrages though.

Did you tell the platoon to hide?

No, I did not.

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Yeah, I started watching the trench platoon closely and it was virtually always a shell landing smack in the trench that caused casualties. Still no idea why the guys in foxholes seemingly loved to crawl out of them during barrages though.

No, I did not.

Hiding should reduce the casualty rate a bit, forcing them to keep their heads down.

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Hiding should reduce the casualty rate a bit, forcing them to keep their heads down.

ISTR that people have reported that it stops the pTruppen wriggling about, too, so they stay in the damn foxholes.

As a side note, one "silver lining" to the mahoosive Italian squads is that, even when Hiding, there are enough eyes "prairie dogging" to make them quite effective scouts... A partial compensation for the fact that they're so big that to scout at all they have to Hide in the first place...

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*Ahem*

The infantry are queens of the battlefield.

Artillery is the King of the battlefield, and thou knowest well what the King does to the queen.

Spoken like a true artilleryman.

Infantry - Queen of Battle

Artillery - King of Battle

Armor - who knows (my roommate went armor and I went artillery so I jest)

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You may well be on to something.

To be honest, I wasn't the first to mention this. At least a couple of years ago someone (haven't the foggiest recollection whom) mentioned that historically trenches allowed the covered movement of reserves. That struck me as such a brilliant realization that the thought stuck with me. My only original contribution was the thought that using trenches but intermittently placing foxholes in strategic locations where you knew you would want to place troops for a prolonged period might be a good way to reap the benefits of both kinds of fortification. I suppose substituting bunkers for foxholes would also be workable.

Michael

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Michael Emrys,

Covered movement of reserves is indeed one of the reasons for trenches, likewise movement of supplies and casualty evacuation. This is as opposed to the fighting trenches proper.

In the Anthony Quinn movie "Lost Command" (see DBP & Algeria film thread over at CMBN Mods), I noticed a potentially usable trick for limiting casualties to troops in trenches. Low sandbag walls ~ 1/2 the depth of the trench. They're high enough to significantly reduce frag and blast effects from detonations on the other side of the barrier, but low enough to cross with minimal, brief exposure of troops doing so.

Regards,

John Kettler

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  • 7 months later...

I remember reading some statistics in history book that says the majority of the casualties in WWII is caused by artillery fire. Of all the hundreds of CM battles I have played so far, I cannot say I have won more than a handful solely on artillery. In fact, it is not as powerful as I expect it to be. I was playing the Polish in the Messina campaign. I have shelled the mountain top with concentrated 105' and 155 and anything and everything I could throw at it. It did the job of suppressing the enemies so that my troop could advance unharrassed for a while. A turn or 2 after the smoke cleared, the enemy managed to claw back out of cover holes to start harrassing my troop. While it is frustrating, I like the realism of it. For every enemy solder hiding in a crater, it cost me a few soldiers to flush out.

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I remember reading some statistics in history book that says the majority of the casualties in WWII is caused by artillery fire. Of all the hundreds of CM battles I have played so far, I cannot say I have won more than a handful solely on artillery. In fact, it is not as powerful as I expect it to be.

I would think that by the time you got to the type of fighting portrayed in CM artillery wasn't as dangerous as some think. FWIR most artillery casualties were from harassment fire (i.e. "let's take some shots there and see if anything happens", or "that looks like a good spot for the enemy to set up a strongpoint, let's blow it apart") since even in quiet areas, artillery was always shooting.

Jyri

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Artillery in CMBN is a powerful factor but not insurmountable. If you keep your AT guns keyholed, well concealed and quiet (at least until the tanks roll) they can survive long enough to do some damage. Other units have to remain mobile. Have two or three backup positions for your HMG teams, tanks etc. Once the first spotting rounds of an arty strike start falling pack up and move out. The real backbreaking artillery assets (105 MM and up) all take a pretty long time to call in. That allows you to stay ahead of the barrage. Of course on a small map with only so many viable defensive strong-points this may be easier said than done. Here's hoping for more sprawling battlefields in future modules.

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I'm curious as to how common it was for a platoon commander who I assume was a Second or 1sr LT. to be able to call and receive fire from 105mm or higher caliber howitzers, guns or other assets. I'm sure sure there are many different situations which could complicate the answer to this question.

The reason why I bring this up is I recall from my youth and model building days I used to love reading the historical notes that were printed on the front page and for the Monogram kit of the mortar and mortarmen it was that mortars were a LT/platoons "personal artillery" that could always be counted on as assets like 105's were often not available for their use.

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I'm curious as to how common it was for a platoon commander who I assume was a Second or 1sr LT. to be able to call and receive fire from 105mm or higher caliber howitzers, guns or other assets.

Most of the heavy arty (bigger than 105s) has "FO required". Italian HQ units can't call in some calibres that other nations' HQ units can, but I don't think a Bttn HQ can call in heavier stuff than a Pltn HQ, in any nation. Not as far as I've noticed anyway.

How this all matches up to historical privileges, I couldn't say.

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I think it has been much improved.

And, with the improvements in MG fire, the balance now seems "WW2" in qualitative character.

The artillery/mortar strikes seem much more inexact (good). The inexactness seems even higher when calling in bigger assets.

I have also learned to "hide" everything as a default mode--only letting something I want to spot actually spot. Motionless squads kneeling seemed to me very vulnerable to random HE.

My sense is that "terrain saves" have been dialed up a bit. I could be wrong, but it would make sense if it was, reflecting microterrain features (rocks, terrain depressions, stumps)

I am learning to live, from an immersion stand-point, with linear fire plans. I still think they are now WW2 accurate, but it is likely a reasonable design choice, rather than the increased ammo and time that would be needed to simulate rectangular or box fire plans.

Also, I am learning to live with the pre-planned bombardment. I had thought it was beyond the scope of CM--though CM1 had it, the lack of linear fire plans made it much less potent. It still seems weird to me to drop a line of shells behind bocage--only to be usually done on turn 1. But it does provide, usually, for interesting decisions (and I image it as a "short-cut" for an actual more shelled rectangular fire plan, and if the scenario designers understand the issues it can be interesting. I have no idea how if is still causes problems in QB--but most people have house rules for this.

As a major critic in the past, I am very pleased.

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I'm curious as to how common it was for a platoon commander who I assume was a Second or 1sr LT. to be able to call and receive fire from 105mm or higher caliber howitzers, guns or other assets. I'm sure sure there are many different situations which could complicate the answer to this question.

Hard to answer because in general, a Plt. HQ doesn't really request fire support from a specific higher asset like 105mm howitzers; he reports the enemy he sees in front of him up the C2 chain, and higher-level HQs decide what, if any support he gets based on the contact report and available assets.

So, if a Plt. HQ sees a whole Battalion of enemy infantry in the open in front of him, assuming availability, he's probably going to get 105mm or better support pretty easily. If all he sees is a couple of enemy MG teams, higher level HQs will probably decide they have bigger targets for the big guns.

CM's system is abstracted; you as the player are simultaneosly Plt. HQ, Coy HQ, Bn HQ, and Divisional FDC. When you plot the fire support mission from the Plt HQ because the Plt HQ is the one that has "eyes on target" and is reporting the coordinates and sending in corrections. But the actual decision to use 105mm or whatever would be made higher up the chain.

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I would think that by the time you got to the type of fighting portrayed in CM artillery wasn't as dangerous as some think. FWIR most artillery casualties were from harassment fire (i.e. "let's take some shots there and see if anything happens", or "that looks like a good spot for the enemy to set up a strongpoint, let's blow it apart") since even in quiet areas, artillery was always shooting.

Jyri

Unobserved harassment and interdiction may have been the majority of artillery casualties overall (I don't know either way), but observed fire against an active enemy is the most effective use of artillery.

Taken from an Army At Dawn:

Darby watched from Djebel Berda in the south as American time-fuze artillery shells - set to burst a few feet above the ground - rained on the enemy formations. "Eerie black smoke of the time shells showed that they were bursting above the heads of the Germans," he wrote. "There was no running, just a relentless forward lurching of bodies."

The fight descended into something between war and manslaughter. Roosevelt, who had ordered the time-fuze barrage, thought the battle "seemed unreal." Gaps appeared in the grenadier ranks. The faces and uniforms of those still standing turned brown with grit as if the doomed men had already begun returning, earth to earth, dust to dust. Roosevelt later wrote:

'Just in front of me were four hundred men, a German unit. We took them under fire and they went to ground behind some sand dunes. The artillery went after them with time shells, air burst. In no time they were up running to rear. Black bursts over their head, khaki figures reeling and falling.'

Enemy soldiers bunched behind one hill in such numbers that the formation seemed to spread like a shadow. Then Allied artillery found the reverse slope. "The battalion broke from cover and started to run for another wadi in the rear," reported Clift Andrus. "But none ever reached it." At 6:45 PM an 18th Infantry observation post reported: "Our artillery crucified them." Shells fell at seven-yard intervals across the retreating shot-torn ranks. "My God," Patton murmured to Roosevelt, "it seems a crime to murder good infantry like that."

Survivors rejoined the panzers to withdraw eastward in the haze and long shadows. How many men the Germans lost remains uncertain, but the 10th Panzer Division, already badly reduced before the battle, was essentially halved again.

Observed fires, placed onto an active enemy is basically what we have in CMx2 and it can be surprisingly lethal. Granted, lethality of artillery in-game is a bit too high in a raw numbers sense, but other effects are more muted.

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db-zero - practices varied across national armies, and within them with time and unit experience, and for the western allies, even the individual initiative and level of training of the particular junior officer.

First understand that all armies used dedicated artillery forward observers as part of their artillery arm. These were not infantrymen given that job, but members of the artillery branch of service formally subordinated to this or that artillery formation, but serving detached from the physical location of their battalion or battery. The artillery formation sent out advanced parties to scout their gun locations, and observation posts to observe the enemy, and these forward observers.

The forward observers were the component of the artillery formations tasked with accompanying the maneuver elements - infantry and armor battalions - to direct the fires of their specific artillery formation. They had powerful radios to reach their guns or fire direction centers in between. The larger parties had surveying equipment and maps to accurately triangulate the positions of targets, though the actual plotting of the angle of fire for a mission was done by the fire direction center or battery itself, in most armies (the Russians are an exception in many of these things, more on them below).

The guns were supposed to respond to fire commands given by those dedicated FOs.

Sometimes they instead were directed in "command push" fashion by higher commands, especially division level, occasionally separate artillery brigade commands. This was the case with missions like counterbattery fire, interdiction, planned barrages, etc. It could also be used in a reactive fashion to respond on a large scale to an enemy offensive. E.g. a division orders a massed fire of all its guns at targets throughout sector five to respond to a heavy enemy assault there. That sort of thing doesn't need eyeballs up front adjusting the fire. They can just blow up the whole village of Wheresville.

But could infantry or armor officers use their own radios to break in to that artillery system and call for fires themselves? The answer is, technologically yes if they had a powerful enough radio. But organizationally, the answer is "it depends" on the army and the year. The Russians rarely if ever did such things - they did not trust junior LTs with the direction of whole divisional artilleries. The Germans would frequently dedicate a single battery to a single maneuver formation, or sometimes a single battalion to a somewhat larger formation, and let its maneuver-element "line" commander direct the fire of those guns, and only those guns.

This was a matter of command tasking and doctrine, not of technological limits.

Understand, the risk of turning over fire direction to junior officers is that too many of them call for fire from the same guns, too often, and that chaos may result. Chaos in the sense of truly urgent calls for fire going unheeded because the guns being called are already firing an inessential mission someplace else - or already blew their available ammo on such shoots.

Despite such risks, the Americans by midwar and the British by late war had learned or decided that the flexibility and surge firepower effects of pushing authority to call for massed fires low down on the command totem pole was worth it. By mid 1944, it was perfectly normal for a captain or LT with a radio to call for massed fire and get it, when he had a good enough target. Artillery commanders and senior maneuver elements commanders could intervene and "take the guns away" if they had to, because something else more urgent came up, or because their awareness of the overall battle told them it was a misuse of resources (ammo e.g.). But absent such "vetos", the junior guys out at the point-ee end could call for the skies to open, and get it.

In those armies, by those dates.

For the Americans, this wasn't all gravy. Overuse of fires by the most aggressive FOs and junior officers could use up available ammo very rapidly, and the logistic links to the guns could not always keep up. US 105mm ammunition was in a drought from September at the westwall through the beginning of December. All the flexibility in the world about who can call for fire won't help if the battery on the other end of the line only has 15 rounds per gun to last the whole day.

The Russians had a different approach to these matters. Personnel who could direct the fires sensibly were lacking, even in the artillery formations. Early in the war they were so scarce that lots of guns were used in direct lay, meaning the gunners themselves could see the targets they were shelling, and their own fall of shot, and correct their fire themselves. That had two downsides - the obvious one that the guns were more exposed to enemy action and loss, and the less obvious one that the artillerymen picked their own targets rather than answering the needs of the maneuver element, "line" commanders.

When trying to understand Russian artillery doctrine, it is also important to know that the Germans had the best radio direction finding in the world, bar none. They were technical leaders at it, as much as the allies were in radar. Their E-war units could triangulate the position of active Russian radios of sufficient transmitting power quite rapidly and quite accurately. In the early war, an airstrike could then be directed at the presumed HQ involved, and all war artillery harassment fires could use such reports. The Russians quickly became quite paranoid about using the radio. Someone actually was out to get them. Because they did not fully understand what the Germans were able to do with radio direction finding, higher ups who saw the results suspected lax security procedures instead. They assumed that the Russians were using the radios "in the clear" rather than in code, and were giving away their positions by what they were saying. They reacted by (1) preferring phone lines and (2) insisting on laborious encoding and decoding of radio transmissions. Which were not things available to junior officers up at the point-ee end, and took time. As for the phone lines, they were certainly more secure, but they were also more likely to be cut by enemy artillery fire in the locations with heavy action.

The western allies did not face the same difficulties because they were fighting with complete command of the air, and their counterbattery - including counterbattery directed from the air by light observation planes - was a terror to the German guns. There were also many more radios of all power levels transmitting all the time from a late war western allied formation, making radio direction finding less effective at spotting the HQs and the battery positions. In 1941 or 1942 on the Russian front, if a radio transmitter of any power was emitting regularly from a given spot, there was a high value target right at that spot. Less so for a 1944 US or British position.

The main way the Russians dealt with the issue, though, was to give each tier of their organizations some artillery like assets, to employ as they saw fit for the tasks that seemed urgent at their own command level. So an infantry battalion used its own 82mm mortars, and an infantry regiment used its own 76mm infantry guns along with the mortars of its component battalions, and so on. These commands could be given verbally in person, or by runner. Lots of guns were up at army level, and firing to plan or command direction as explained above (for counterbattery, harassment, planned barrages etc). Those were not typically used "reactively" and were not answering to a junior officer on the radio.

In the Russian army, the junior officers were reporting enemy positions and such, of course, and higher ups might *decide* that those reports merited telling a higher level artillery formation to intervene in that fight, this way or that. But the junior officers were not *commanding* the guns. Higher level allocation and push downward, was the norm, rather than "recon pull" by the eyes out front.

I hope that helps.

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I think it has been much improved.

And, with the improvements in MG fire, the balance now seems "WW2" in qualitative character.

The artillery/mortar strikes seem much more inexact (good). The inexactness seems even higher when calling in bigger assets.

Can you be more specific what you think improved, and when?

Onboard mortars/artillery or off-map?

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Let's not forget the paucity of early war radio equipment and the almost total inability to change frequencies. Crystal tuning "drift", receivers rather than transmitters, and incompatible nets all precluded formations from calling directly for fires.

Just because a '42 company had a radio (for example), did not mean it could contact anyone other than its battalion HQ. And then, only if all the technical issues were working in its favor.

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And a very good thread rolls on! Would like to expand upon parts of it.

Russian Artillery in Direct Lay

The Russians call such use "fire from uncovered positions," where "covered" means the target can't be engaged with direct fire. Fire from uncovered positions was officially treated in their firing norms as being 10X as effective as fire from covered positions, and this is true to this day. See Isby, Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army, Fully Revised Edition under Artillery for details. As rightly noted, though, the weapons firing in Direct Lay are exposed to counterfire, but such employment typically is in the context of lots of other fire assets in either the prepared defense or the crushing initial blow of an offensive.

Turning now to German RDF and related artillery detection means, I believe this piece deserves close reading. It details how the Russians used their artillery over time and what the Germans did in response. Of particular interest is the discussion of the German artillery reconnaissance and devastating fire program laid on by the Germans. That's in Example III.

http://www.allworldwars.com/Tactics-and-Fire-Control-of-Russian-Artillery-in-1941-44-by-Richert.html

Regards,

John Kettler

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