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What effect did the stabilized MG have on rifles?


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Um, it is silly to expect 1 foot terrain refinements with 12 man units. The unit isn't at a 2m by 2m location to start with. Of course the microdetail of the terrain has to be abstracted, units force it. You can't order 12 men to hide in one 12 inch depression. Mixing them is a round square and a misunderstanding.

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they say the open tiles in CM aren't really open, the greater detail is just abstracted.

there are lot's of studies about spotting, target engagement ranges, fire effectiveness such. supposedly some studies went thru millions of casualty reports.

getting familiar with these observed dynamics and then designing the game so that it gives similar results is more likely a better approach than trying to simulate individual weapons or fires accurately. most of the important variables in scoring a hit are not related to actual shooting with a weapon.

the generalization goes for WW2 that 2/3rds of rifle fire goes at under 300 yards, and most of actual hits come from under 100 yards, and it doesn't make any difference wether the fire is aimed or not.

one other generalization is that the defender needs to fire five bullets per minute per meter to stop an attack.

a defending MG (or "equivalent", like 10 rifles or 0.3 mortars) is likely to cause around 0.5 casulties when odds are 1:1. it rises per attacker's odds (ratio to power of 0.5). attacking tanks negate it (halved per every 3 tanks / mg). and so forth. there are a gazillion of studies about this type of stuff.

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CMSF is not a big improvement, because I can't order the men to spread out realistically or to seek individual cover realistically, but they are treated as exposed when their single man icon goes to a dumb spot. It is a busted hybrid idea in my opinion. They'd be more accurate just correcting the ammo expenditure rate in CMx1. Not that I expect either. (Incidentally, you can correct much of the CMx1 issues by just being generous with ammo and sparing with clock time).

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CMSF is really a big step forward in that respect at least. It lacks fine enough detail in the terrain model (which is no better than CMx1 really, 8x8 vs 10x10 and 1m vs 1.25m) to exploit it though.

I'm afraid that you are mistaken in your comparison. I can assure you that the individual terrain tile in CMx1 is 20 meters square not 10 meters square (I'm 100% positive of this). So it's a comparison of 8 meters square in CMx2 vs 20 meters square in CMx1. I am less sure of the elevation, but I seem to recall that it was 2.5 meters in CMx1 not 1.25 meters. A quick check in the scenario editor would clear that up though. I was just passing through and have no intention of getting entangled in a Jason C thread. Nothing to see here, everyone just move along. :)

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CMBO had the terrain elevations of 2.5 and 5; CMBB had 1.25, 2.5 and 5; and CMAK had 1.25, 2.5, 5 and (don't shoot if this is wrong) 8 metres. Yep, important stuff.

In CMx2 the whole thing is different, so that while the editor terrain elevation minimum difference is 1m, all the points between the manually set elevations are calculated smoothly. So in effect it goes below one metre.

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You are both right. If we consider only the physics then marching men in the open, in front of an LMG (distance ~400m) would be dead within minutes. Not pinned, not broken - KIA. You can clearly simulate this in any kind of realistic FPS (like Armed Assault).

CM's fire effect "charts" (inherited from the boardgame world) are generally good abstractions, but in this extremal case the effect is just too soft. Moving in the open was suicidal even in ASL (a [2,-2] shot or worse). CM also models the open terrain as an undulated sea of molehills. It would be interesting to repeat the tests on pavement tiles.

Of course modifying the FP/cover relationships would also result in different tactics - you would simply not march in the open that often.

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Sorry, your mental expectations are simply false. You don't know the actual history of such fights, that is all.

Take Omaha. 60 direct fire cannons and about 100 M42s cover 8000 yards of beach, along with 30 indirect fire weapons of 81mm to 150mm caliber. Along with over 1000 infantrymen. The worst hit units in the initial landing suffer 50% losses then reach the seawall, the second wave suffers the same for about half the landing units but the other half suffer little. Those comprise the bulk of the losses all day, and overall the Germans manage only a 2.5 to 1 exchange ratio. No company is wiped out, no company fails to cross the beach, though the rate of losses is well above normal and high enough above it to completely shatter the hard hit companies as units and to render them largely ineffective for the remainder of the day.

But are they shot down to a man, just KIA, all of them? Nope, not remotely. The average defending rifleman gets maybe 1 man opposite, the defending artillery pieces and machineguns average no more than 15 apiece (and perhaps as low as 9), despite no effective reply fire for the first hour of the engagement, in which most of the US losses are taken.

And that is an outlier of bloody failure by a ridiculously overexposed and massed target on far less cover than is typical.

You are just wrong. All to all visibility is harder than you think, firing behavior isn't what you think, ammo constraints prevent theoretical rates of fire from having anything to do with tactical reality.

But at the same time, far less than annihilation fire is sufficient to convince men with any tactical choice in the matter to pack it in. They practically always do have such choice in the matter, and they use it.

Average losses to the losing side in major infantry engagements haven't changed since the invention of muskets, or if anything have gone down. You can find a handful of outliers worse than that (in any era incidentally, that will be true), but the average is set by men's willingness to lean into danger and not by the weaponry used. The latter effects ranges and deployments, not realized battlefield lethality. That is up to the men and they simply will not live out your imaginary bloodbaths. The existing ones are more than sufficient, thank you very much.

"But I don't see how this happens". That isn't the game's problem or reality's problem, it is your problem. I can explain it to you at any length you desire, but if you don't start by accepting that you can be and indeed all the real evidence screams, are, flat wrong in your expectation, then there is nothing for it.

No one can continue to fire as fast as they can pull the triggers, they would all be dry in minutes. If targets were on average as exposed as you imagine, the entire war would be over in a hour as they did so; they aren't. Men hold their fire when they don't see a serious threat to themselves because they would be ammo dry in minutes if they didn't and they don't want to call down reply fire on themselves if they can safely avoid it. When the men in front of them are busted, they slack off, and it is entirely sensible of them to do so.

Nobody is going to burn through 1500 to 5000 rounds per gun on every MG as fast as 25 round bursts can be fired, area fire at distant prone targets, trying to rack up a few more kills. It is tactical suicide, not effective - the ammo will not grow back and when it is gone you will be executed. You fire when you have to and when the target warrants it. When it is enough, a few may continue to fire, and the slower firing rifles will keep up suppression, but surge fire rates are over, for excellent reasons.

What is packet movement for a squad? It is everyone prone under all available cover, then one man gets up and dashes 5-10 paces and hits the deck again. When he goes down another gets up. A few of the more rested men are crawling in the meantime, particularly if they don't like their current position. Occasionally a few others may be firing back, usually ineffectively, but hoping to make someone duck.

"Well, but there isn't any cover there". Shells make holes, men worm 6 inches lower into sand, men lie still behind bodies of others, there is a beached landing craft there, a knocked out tank here, a flimsy beach obstacle there, burning grass and drifting smoke here. Men up in strongpoint A are looking this way rather than that, in strongpoint B are ammo dry, in strongpoint C are heads down as a DD fires at their embrasure, etc.

Firing range thinking and combat have nothing to do with each other, full stop.

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Caught an episode of "Band of Brothers" being re-broadcast, "The Breaking Point", Bulge and Foy. Terrifying portrayal of barrage (by simple 81 mm mortars, as a dud shell shows at one point) in woods, with treebursts; and assault on Foy portrayed as great lines of infantry in greatcoats rushing at snowsuited Germans in a village (the Germans merely seem to fall back before the heroes of Easy Company). The portrayal of infantry assault did bother me (no packet movement or fire and movement, no real suppression effect by HMGs, unscathed infantry dashes and casualties only at pretty close range), but I relaxed when I realized I was watching a game of CMBO.

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Of course, an attack on Foy did happen and did succeed thanks in large part to a change in combat leadership while it was still in progress. The movie makers do not understand what actually happened, but the veterans interviewed do, or the salient parts of it at least. The reality can be detected under the narrative given. You just can't believe your eyes, you can believe the plot. The illusion arises from first not understanding the plot independently, and attempting to deduce the operative relationships not from that plot, but from the images.

The theme of the episode is the difference competent battle leadership makes. Naturally it only succeeds it showing a cartoon of the moral side of such competence, but the narrative makes the intellectual side of it clear enough, if you know how it actually works.

The first requisite is to remain cool enough as men are being killed, and is easily portrayed. Second is situational awareness - the new captain knows which key MG is inflicting most of the damage and holding up any advance, already, because he has seen it inflict the bulk of the losses, has located it, and above all because he has sited hundreds of such defenses himself and knows what role that weapon is playing in the enemy defense scheme. He can solve the reverse LOS problem in real time because he is thinking in terms of a scheme of defense laid out on the ground in front of him as he would order it. Which brings up the third, the eye for terrain and the covered route. Nothing is uncovered completely at the start against a competent defense, but as it accumulates losses and damage it develops holes and seams where defenders have gone down and their scheme assignments are going unfilled. This is detectable from locations where friendlies have moved with impunity, when they should not be able to if the scheme were intact.

The failing commander is flustered by losses and his impotence to date. He thinks of drastic changes of plan out of manuals, which in reality would leave his men exposed to fire too long and merely run them onto intact portions of the defensive scheme. He is thinking of his training and in broad brush method terms, instead of the defense's present exact empirical state. He reaches for the wrong adaptation - here, slow maneuver instead of support fire to surgically remove a key element of the defense. He condemns the unfairness of it all, as though that could help him, etc - the moral aspects even the TV crew can grok, but the technical ones are buried in the vet narrative tidbits they did not comprehend.

The solution appears not from "Germans falling back before heros", but from (1) use of company support weapons to make a surgical hole in the defensive fire scheme (2) personally showing the route that will create into the defense, thus broadcasting the terrain appreciation the captain already arrived at (3) that example lifting the men to exploit the newly covered route.

There is another aspect of the attack shown but probably not in its real detail. It was a convergent attack by 2 forces, poorly coordinated between them. Very likely some of the area fire pinning Easy was coming from friendly fire directed across the defense, unaware of the positions they had reached. Establishing communication with the other unit could lift that fire. It was also possible to exploit the success to date of other units, and thereby limit the amount that the faltering Easy needed to do.

In the show, this is merely portrayed as a miraculous bravery and invulnerability to seemingly omnipresent enemy fire. The reality is enemy confusion, accurate knowledge of their defense and its deterioration in the course of the fight, and terrain analysis, can reveal routes that are safer than they appear to everyone else present. They see only the objective overall danger evidenced by dead and wounded friends on every side. The captain sees empirical detail, can read LOS both ways, and gauges enemy state and confusion accurately.

It is a perfectly fine episode if you know what to look for, and what it must really be telling you about how Foy was actually taken.

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I have a couple questions on that. First, how far apart should a squad be spread out, and are the men in pairs or singles or what?

a squad is supposed to have a footprint 50 meters wide when on defence. when moving it depends on factors like formation.

WW2 era field manuals and such are a handy source for quick checks on stuff like that. reality was different from field manuals, but it gives a general idea of how things were supposed to be done by book.

Any leads? Short of a trip to the city I haven't been able to find anything like that.

giving leads is hard because the subject matter is so huge and there is so much data out there. it ranges from general Operations Research to neurological details of human biology. if you google, try to use as formal terms as possible (e.g. "target acquisition" instead of "spotting"). you might want to first google sites that publish military studies, raports and papers and then try to find good stuff with their internal search engines.

on the subject of WW2 rifle / LMG fire i would recommend as a good starting point an old paper called "Operational Requirements for an Infantry Hand Weapon". it's available for free as a PDF over here http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/AD000346 but the quality of that scan is truly abyssmal.

some of those other generalized numbers i gave you came from "Stress of Battle", which contains huge amounts of that kind of stuff from British OR studies. there's a preview version of it at google books but unfortunately it appears to cover only some of the first pages and cuts off parts dealing with rifle and MG fires.

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Foy: well, yes, the facts are (I assume) respected by BoB makers-- assault floundered, change of leadership, attack broke through; yes, the breakdown of the incompetent, Yale educated captain (or whatever it was) is portrayed very strikingly. But the movie isn't just supposed to tell-- it's supposed to /show/. I enjoy the detail (look, a BAR guy; look, the field dressing taped to the webbing; look, some soldiers are wearing improvised snowsuits and have tied sheets around their helmets), the desaturated colour, the faces-- but I just don't know if an infantry Co. in the assault /looked/ like this-- long lines assaulting. The Germans also only appear as snowsuited men, standing around, often in the open, and falling back. Relating to the subject of this thread: aimed rifle fire, ample use of sharpshooters, HMG and LMG: did men really rush out into the assault in long firing lines in the face of that sort of defence ? Maybe they did (Paul Fussell's memoirs start with an incident where his Company shelters behind a railway embankment, set up two HMGs (M1917s), then go "over the top", which gives Fussell an odd WWI deja vu feeling-- but, I suppose, precisely because this was not what a usual infantry assault looked like)-- but I'd like to be sure, before "believing" in what I see. Otherwise, I might as well read a JasonC boiling down of infantry AARs-- and try to imagine, like generations of people did when reading about combat, before the invention of moving pictures

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Adam,

Here's what JasonC was talking about at the Battle of Colenso. The Boers were supposed to hold their fire, but the British presented them with a fat massed, jammed up rifle target, so they let fly--and chopped the British to ribbons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Colenso

If there was any good news to be had, it was that the fat target was now clad in khaki, rather than high visibility scarlet! Nor did it help the British cause that Lieutenant General Lord Methuen, seeing no Boers visible, had blithely assumed they weren't there.

This major gaffe is addressed in passing in what was then the first installment of a new series in MILITARY ILLUSTRATED, No. 102: Worst Generals In The World, "The General Who Lost The Same Battle Twice," by John Laffin. No, Methuen didn't take "top honors," nor did Kitchener, with an even bigger military lapse of his own.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Forgive me for being a bore. I looked at Ambrose, Band of Brothers, on the attack on Foy. What seems to have happened (not entirely clear from the narrative) is this.

*2nd Battn of 506th Reg. ordered to attack Foy. E company ordered to attack over 200 m open ground (with some haystacks) (I company also sent into the attack elsewhere). Battn HQ sets up 2 MGs in support, they lay down suppressive fire, E Co. moves out in skirmish line, 3 plts abreast, ordered to move out as quickly as possible to Foy.

* They receive negligible fire (rifle potshots).

*First plt falls behind during the advance, clearing out some outhouses and farm buildings (small German outpost captured, interrogated ["Where are the other defenders", which shows that the German main line has not shown itself yet], then killed when one of the prisoners reaches for a pistol).

*Commanding officer of E Company unnerved by first plt. falling behind, stops the advance, pulls sec. and third plt. into some form of column or fire base, sets up his mortars and HMGs, and orders first plt to flank [sounds like my CM playing style]

*At this moment, as first plt. is setting out on its flanking move, it takes 5 casualties from aimed rifle fire.

*The account doesn't make this clear, but I assume that this is the moment when German defenders actually open up, at less than 100 m range. ("Sitting ducks").

*Another officer takes over command, pulls first plt. back, and somehow frontally assaults his way into the village. He also personally somehow works his way to I company and back.

*This officer mentions being shot at with an 88mm on his way to take command of E company, so I assume that, indeed, the defenders did open up at some point.

*The reader is explicitly told that this is simply a rear-guard action, very skillfully fought, by the Germans.

*The episode of the TV series may have conflated this action with the much more violent attack on Noville ?

Well, that's Ambrose. No doubt there's a better account. But it's clear that it's not a dense line of guys in greatcoats running out into MG and rifle and gun fire and mortars while their Battn commander shouts "Keep moving", and only stopping when their lily-livered CO loses his nerve, it's a long skein-like skirmish line walking under a suppressive barrage from HMG, against a defender who's holding his fire, and in fact only opens up once he sees the threat of a flanking move.

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It is a fair point. I notice on examination that Ambrose states as positive facts both that 3 Tigers trundled out of the town in the retreat, and that the Americans took 100 PWs, most of them wounded. Meanwhile his main source, Captain Winter's memoirs, say nothing about any tanks at all, and states positively that the number of prisoners was about 20.

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I looked up Winter's memoirs, "Beyond Band of Brothers". He writes that E Company maintained a good pace in the snow in its initial advance, then stops inexplicably; he then sends Speirs to take over, etc. He also says that he set up two MG sections, not two MGs-- I assume this means 4 MGs ? So the attack is supported by 4 HMGs, + E. Co's organic support weapons-- mortars surely, not sure about M1919s

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No, an MG section for a rifle company generally means a single 5 man M1919A4 team, in CM terms, which are the standard company heavy weapons. As for "E company's support weapons", um, that is what he is describing.

Maybe a couple of 60mm as well, but they don't figure prominently in Winters, who says the haystack (not building loft) that was KOed to unplug the advance, was hit by a grenade launcher (presumably meaning rifle grenade, though I suppose a 60mm might be meant) and contained 2 riflemen not an MG.

The company was at 50% strength, 1st platoon was 18 men and lost a third of them in the bonehead flanking idea. The other "company" put in to the attack elsewhere, is described as having only 25 men. Shoestring depleted stuff, not "4 HMGs plus 1 50 and 2 30s and 3 mortars", in other words.

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Thanks, I'd forgotten about the haystack with the two snipers.

Faithful to Tom Hanks' injunction in Da Vinci Code ("Quick, a library !"), I went to look up what i could by André Laffargue. Found his Memoirs, quite amusing in a old-timey sort of way. He describes in detail

a. his first action in 1914, French attack taken apart by German 105mm arty. (At one point, they repel a German counter attack with rifle fire at 800 m). No mention of MG fire in this early battle, but much trepidation about the accuracy of German arty (and comaprison with the puniness of French arty).

b. the attack he took part in on 9May 1915: heavy French arty prep (including 75mm fired at wire ?), then infantry advance. What happens is quite interesting: the advance gets roughed up by MG fire, at 200m, his plt hits the ground under MG fire, and shakes out into some kind of firing line, and starts to duel the MGs, as far as I can make out, with rifle fire. He thinks this a bad idea, so, by personal example (he goes beserk at this stage), starts to advance in leaps and bounds, 80m bounds, alternating with periods of aimed rifle fire, and also firing on the advance (the things you can do with a bolt action !). His plt. imitates and shadows him This suppresses the defenders enough for his plt to rush the trench. Laffargue is shot in the knee during the melee in the trench, but his plt clambers out of trench 1, and captures trench 2.

During his stay in hospital (and physiotherapy), Laffargue writes his memo on "How infantry should attack", with JasonC mentioned earlier (inspired by his reading of a similar doc. by a Russian officer about tactics in 1905), sends it to Foch. Foch likes it, has it printed and distributed. Sensation, Laffargue is decorated (and promoted to staff duty). He duly writes his second work, "Infantry in the attrition battle" (mostly about how arty should be used to widen penetrations, as far as I can tell). (He also dreams up in 1916, during the Somme-- a moderate success from his viewpoint-- a flank offensive where deep penetration is to be exploited with armoured cars, but that's another story).

I thought this might be of interest-- I read this in the original French, and not sure how accessible this is. Laffargue's original memo might be more difficult to find !

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It might also be of interest to give a summary of Laffargue's first action, 19-20 August 1914.

Picture the letter T. The horizontal bar is the German position, on high ground (held by Bavarian Division); let's call it the Baronville heights. The vertical bar is a ridge, 3 km long, leading to the German position. Let's call this the Marthyl ridge. A road runs along this ridge (the Chateau Salins-Baronville road). The sides of the ridge are scalloped with gullies and outcrops.

19 August. The French attack along the Marthyl ridge, using the road as their line of advance. They advance in large infy formations, like those Michael Dorosh mentioned (120+ men). Battn after Battn is shelled to pieces by "heavy arty" (105mm ?). Laffargue's formation deploys, gets shelled, he takes his platoon forward in search of dead ground, and ends up marching off the Marthyl ridge, taking shelter in one of the gullies on the left side of the ridge. Night falls. Laffargue pulls his men over the ridge, to the right hand side of the "vertical bar", with the rest of the French formation (division ?).

20 August. The French march up to the ridge again. This time, the Germans counter-attack, from their right (i.e the left side of the T), swinging units out of line and using the ridge (the vertical bar) to mask their movement. They crest the ridge and shoot it out with the French formations. One of the units, on the extreme right of the Germans (extreme left of our imaginary map) meets no opposition, so marches over the Marthyl ridge (the vertical bar) onto the French-held, right hand side. They are spotted by Laffargue's platoon and get checked by long range rifle fire by Laffargue and other units. At this point, the Germans counterattack from their left (the right side of our map), and take the French units under crossfire. The French break and withdraw in disorder.

And for Adam's question about how long range rifle engagements work / feel like-- on 20 August, Laffargue is marching his platoon in column up one of the gullies on the right hand side of the vertical bar of the T (Marthyl ridge), when suddenly he starts taking casualties. He has no idea what's going on, but his men stop, kneel, wheel to the left--presto, a firing line. He scans the landscape with binoculars, and notices a "dotted line of grey"-- the Bavarian unit that's crested the ridge. He estimates the range at 800 m and calls out aimed fire on the enemy, but his men have already started fire. He looks at the Bavarian line, and sees it "underlined with rifle impacts", and occasionally one of the dots resolves into a flailing human figure. Note that his men have no scopes, but are firing with bolt action Lebels (I assume) over iron sights; the sight picture Laffargue sees in his binoculars hints at pretty rapid, if aimed, fire (I always thought that a British specialty).

It's interesting that in 1914, Laffargue actually leads his men with a drawn sword. In 1915, he charges with a rifle.

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Thanks, Adam. I also look forward to JasonC's post (is he saying that "there is no such thing as 100% exposed open ground, or that historically, even when faced with open ground, firing patterns are such as to nullify really high expoure in most cases ?)

I should modify what I wrote about Laffargue's 9 May 1915 attack. His comapny took losses from the moment it went over the top; Laffargue writes that he took it forward in 50-80 m bounds, taking shelter in ditches, etc, until they got fairly close to the German ttrench (80m !), and there form up in line and start trading fire with German defenders, including a HMG. More losses taken (2 squads wiped out), and Laffargue sees the red mist, and his story gets a bit hazy there-- but he seems to indicate assault, firing on the run, on the trench. Not sure how reliable all of this is, but that's what he writes.

I post this as a service: his memoirs are actually quite tedious. His "Livre du soldat", post WWI small arms manuals and small-scale tactics manual, might be different (a google search shows that it went through 200+ editions, down into the 1950s

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