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dieseltaylor

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    Russian Front Analysis

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Interesting from the publishing method and also for the scope. I will keep an eye on it.

    Having looked a little further into the LulU side I also struck that an e-book option surely would be a better seller AND if carefully thought about arrangements made for maps and charts to be easily printable for thos who do not use A4 readers. Or even those who do : )

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    1944, Fuehrer HQ: The wrong time for a joke

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    "Around the Horne" was a notorious radio programme for double-entendres in the 60's ... incidentally double entendre is not an expression in modern French.

    This from Wikipedia

    Round the Horne featured a parody a week, several catchphrases, and many memorable characters. The show often opened with a deadpan delivery by Horne of "the answers to last week's questions" - questions which had never been asked, and which were laced with (what were for BBC Radio at that time) incredible double entendres and sexual innuendo, such as

    "First, the 'Where Do You Find It?' question. Well, the answer came in several parts, as follows: wound round a sailor's leg; on top of the wardrobe; floating in the bath; under a prize bull; and in a
    on the
    . At least, I found one there - couldn't use it - it was covered in
    . I gave it to the
    , actually, and they exhibit it proudly next to a
    of
    ."

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    Bug: Regular artillery mission also depletes smoke munitions

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    JonS - Thanks for explaining it. It is quite simple but looks like most in the thread had not cracked it! BTW I cannot see it explained in the manual in the artillery section have I missed it?

    Whilst on artillery am I right in saying every on-board artillery is able to use both its smoke and its HE.?

    In case anyone is curious about the practical use I gave a cease fire order to a battery of 25pdr in maximum fire mode when we reached the 40 smoke allocation and when they reacted a further 28 rounds had been fired. Of the 12 smoke 4 went as spotting rounds and then the smoke arrived. As you can appreciate there is a significant delay for relaying the battery and for correcting the spotting rounds before the smoke screen arrives. Practice to get confidence in this arm would not be wasted.

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    Bug: Regular artillery mission also depletes smoke munitions

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    There is a certain sense of wonderment that BF goes to this sort of detail over playability. Given there is no facility to tell your battery to conserve enough shells for a later smoke mission the onus for control lies heavily on the players.

    As I have more info on the small UK gun/howitzer I give info on charges. The 25pdr [88mm] also used charges and you can see how complicated it could be be. However overall there would be many more charges than warheads to enable more than minimum fire range.

    The charge bags were variously called 'portions' or 'sections' of the propellant charge. No 1 portion (the core charge) being Charge 1, portions 1 and 2 being Charge 2 and all three portions being Charge 3. Each portion contained a different amount of propellant and in the 25-pdr their bags were coloured red, white and blue. 25-pdr had a second cartridge for Charge Super. When Charge 1 or 2 were ordered the blue and or white bags were removed from the cartridge case.

    In 1944 intermediate charges were introduced to better enable upper register fire by 25-pdr. They were provided as increment bags that were added to a standard charge in a cartridge - one increment to charge 1, one or two increments to charge 2. This took 25-pdr from a 4 charge to a 7 charge gun.

    I find it strange that the 75mm appears to be handicapped in the charges department or is this historically correct? I have read very few artillery memoirs or accounts but shortage of charges has never been worthy of note. Would it be simpler just to allow them to fire what they have?

    I have a vested interest as I have a new player to introduce and he is not a detail man - tracking ammo each turn is not the kind of thing I think he will like.

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    Spotting

    in Combat Mission Fortress Italy

    Posted

    Vanir Ausf B user_offline.gif

    Senior Member

    Join Date: Mar 2001

    Location: In the middle of a desert in SW Wyoming, USA.

    Posts: 3,963

    icon1.gif

    Quote:

    Some forty German tanks were now clearly visible, and they were indeed busily engaged in destroying these guns. There would be nothing to stop them driving down to Tobruk harbour, only 3 miles away. We swung right into battle line.

    I handed Milligan his cigarette, and told him to start shooting. There was no need for me to indicate the target to him. ‘Loaded,’ yelled Adams, and away went another solid shot, tearing at the thick enemy armour. The fumes of burning cordite made us cough, and our eyes water, and soon the turret was so thick with smoke that I could only just make out the figure of Adams as he loaded shell after shell into the breach. We were firing faster than ever before, and so were my other four cruiser tanks.

    It must have been a minute before the Germans spotted us, and by then their tanks had received many hits from our shells.

    -- Leakey’s Luck: A Tank Commander with Nine Lives, by Michael Carver

    Leakey's Luck - Carver's book is very good. However in this instance the enemy tanks were already engaged in battling guns so are arguably distracted from another threat.

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    Spotting

    in Combat Mission Fortress Italy

    Posted

    NOW THIS IS HOW TO HIJACK A THREAD : )

    Anyway it came about regarding spotting ability for a tank dead ahead at 800 feet FEET. Followed by various anecdotes. Fortunately JK has gathered together some respectable sources for us all to read.

    And then we can start raiding our libraries for anecdotes that generally cut very little ice. I hope that people make the important distinction between static and moving targets as there are innumerable stories of static vehicles/men being unspotted.

    Long Range Target Recognition and Identification of Camouflaged Armored Vehicles

    http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a077862.pdf

    is a study prepared for the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Social and Behavioral Sciences by Human Resources Research Organization in 1979. It presents the results of literature research, scale model target identification tests and field tests on the effects of camouflage, background, target lighting and other issues as they relate to AFV detection and identification. Some insights follow.

    "As Pabon1 reported, the Materiel Testing Directorate compared the performance of trained observers (ground and aerial) in detecting pattern painted versus camouflage-augmented M60Al tanks. The camouflage-augmentation techniques used were devices such as nets, brackets, and textured surfaces. Tanks were presented either stationary or in motion. The observers employed ground and aerial surveillance tactics and attempted to detect and identify the target within an array composed of tanks and distractors. The distractors were APCs and a prototype infantry fighting vehicle. The distractors were all pattern painted. The results were:

    "Camouflage application degrades the detectability of the stationary tank for both ground and aerial observers.

    " During the day the dust and noise signature cues created by moving tanks completely nullified the effect of camouflage.

    During night observation trials both stationary and moving vehicles were approximately equally difficult to detect.

    * The stationary pattern painted tank was identified more quickly than the stationary camouflage-augmented tank.

    In target acquisition (after the tank had been initially detected) the camouflage application in general did not affect the observer's perormance. Acquisition times for both vehicles were not significantly different."

    Now, here's what good camouflage (as opposed to pattern painting) on a static tank is worth in terms of both detection range and time to detect.

    "In a well-designed field study, Barnes and Doss17 found that pattern painting alone was not sufficient. The researchers found that a camouflage-augmented tank (nets, disruptors, etc.) was more difficult to detect than a pattern painted tank. This report focused on aircrew target detection performance under two conditions:

    __________________________________________________ ________________________

    Footnotes for 2-9

    "R. J. Pabon. Statistical Analysis Report of the M6OA1 Camouflage

    Test, Technical Report 11-76, Directorate of Combat Operations Analysis, US Army Combined Arms Combat Developments Activity, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, November 1976.

    17.. A. Barnes and N. W. Doss. Human Engineering Laboratory

    Camouflage Applications Test (HELCAT) Observer Performance, Technical Memorandum 32-76, US Army Human Engineering Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving

    Ground, Maryland, November 1976.

    __________________________________________________ __________________________

    (1) detection while flying a nap-of-the-earth route reconnaissance, and (2) detection while searching from a pop-up position.

    Under the route reconnaissance condition, the mean value of the normal straight-line target detection range was 236 meters against the camouflaged tank and 828 meters against the patterned tank. This difference was statistically significant. Mean detection time for the patterned tank was 42.40 seconds, while 75.00 seconds was required for the camouflaged tank. This difference was also significant. Under the pop-up condition the pilot/observer required 36.6 seconds to locate a patterned tank parked adjacent to a wooded area. Only 40% of the subjects detected the augmented tank and it took an average of 95 seconds to locate it."

    Translating into CMx2ese, if you will, a helicopter flying at treetop height has to get 3.5 x closer to spot a camouflaged static tank (as opposed to a pattern painted one) and takes 2.5 CMx2 turns to do so. A pattern painted tank that's static not only is seen from much farther out but is detected in a bit over one turn (~40 seconds). The above study, though erroneously asserting the U.S. didn't camouflage paint its AFVs during WW II, nevertheless does explain why OD was an extremely sound overall paint scheme.

    As noted above, though, movement, associated dust and noise are the great negators of detection minimization. Recall the "use low speed only" signs at Normandy. Noise doesn't carry anywhere nearly as far as seeing does, except at night. The Germans, when preparing for the Bulge attack, muffled the telltale track sounds by covering the roads near the front with straw. The comment of HSU winner Dmitry Loza, though, on T-34 track noise vs those of the M4A2 Sherman are instructive. He says theirs could be heard from a great distance.

    http://english.iremember.ru/tankers/...triy-loza.html

    Pg 1 of link

    (Fair Use)

    "The Sherman drove like a car on hard surfaces, and our T-34 made so much noise that only the devil knows how many kilometers away it could be heard."

    It wasn't merely the lack of rubber treads over their steel tracks, but also the way we held ours together. The Russians used simple steel pins inserted from the back and a flange which, as the track rotated, pushed them back into place. I read this years ago but recently saw it for myself on a WW II production T-34/85 undergoing restoration. Here's how we did our Sherman tracks. It wasn't merely the rubber track pads but the whole technical approach.

    http://www.shermantracks.com/history.html

    (Fair Use)

    Speaking of acoustic detection, during operational testing in Europe, the XM-1, with its low whining turbine engine was effectively a terrifying stealth tank. Rather than announcing its presence with a thunderous multi-fuel diesel, the soft whine (high frequencies don't carry far) of the turbine was all but inaudible, allowing the XM-1s time and again to surprise the "enemy." So pronounced was this effect, in conjunction with better accuracy firing on the move than tanks had previously had while static, that the Army developed a fundamentally new approach to warfare.

    I've been around and in a running M48A5 and near (20 feet) both a running Bradley and an Abrams. Both the M48A5 and the Bradley are thunderous, smoke spewing monsters, whereas the Abrams is practically inaudible and doesn't smoke like an old steam locomotive.

    My brother, who was an Armored Cav Scout on Bradleys in Germany in the late 80s told of how envious he and his men were of the Bundeswehr Luchs, essentially a rework of the German 234 series 8-wheel armored cars. It was low, quiet, not so heavily armed one might be inclined to fight it like a tank and had the same dual driver configuration of its WW II ancestor. By contrast, the Bradley CFV more nearly resembles a house on tracks and puts out so much smoke you might think it was laying it!

    Apropos of visual detection issues (AKA Spotting for us), here is a doctoral dissertation on how human observers really handle the issue of target detection when looking for human targets.

    I've only skimmed it, but I can already tell it's going to blow some minds here. Among other things, it shows it takes very little to distract an observer (bullets flying, explosions, people screaming, not just a few extraneous scene elements reported in the dissertation) and that target fixation (long my bane in wargaming and, as Steve will aver, at times in my posts) in a scene can cause the observer to entirely NOT SEE several other threats!

    http://edocs.nps.edu/npspubs/scholar...ngkunz_PhD.pdf

    MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA (Naval Post Graduate School)

    DISSERTATION

    MODELING HUMAN VISUAL PERCEPTION FOR TARGET DETECTION IN MILITARY SIMULATIONS

    Patrick Jungkung June 2009

    Here is part of the abstract of a 1959 study

    ENGINEERING RESEARCH INSTITUTE

    THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

    ANN ARBOR

    Final Report

    THE EFFECTS OF CERTAIN PSYCHOLOGICAL VARIABLES UPON TARGET DETECTABILITY

    H;. Richard Blackwell

    Vision Research Laboratories

    ERI Project 2455

    BUREAU OF SHIPS, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

    CONTRACT NO. Nobs-72038

    WASHINGTON, D. C.

    June 1958

    http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstr...txt?sequence=4

    "These studies were intended to evaluate the significance of certain

    differences which obviously exist between the conditions under which

    visual detection is studied in the laboratory, and the conditions existing in military visibility problems. The effect of these differences

    is in each case expressed in terms of the contrast factor, that is the

    factor by which target contrast must be multiplied in order to compensate

    for the presence of the difference.

    It was found that when a target appears without previous warning, a contrast factor of 1.40 is required to compensate for the resulting

    loss in visibility. Absence of warning that a target is to appear, and

    absence of prior information concerning the target's size and duration of

    appearance require a contrast factor of 1.49. The absence of knowledge

    concerning the precise location to be occupied by the target requires a

    contrast factor of at least 1.31 even though the observers know precisely

    when to expect the target."

    These are but a few studies (and if I could do a DTIC search, I could find hundreds) which illustrate the nontrivial and complex nature of Spotting under real world conditions. To my knowledge, nobody's run these tests in a realistic or near realistic setting. Obviously, this would further degrade performance.

    Regards,

    John Kettler

    __________________

    Invitational Tourney, ROW I, Section Two, ROW II, Tourney II, Section Four, ROW IV, Group 2, Section 1, ROW V, AAR Judge

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    ALLIED : Gustav Line BETA AAR Round Two - Eye of the Elefant

    in Combat Mission Fortress Italy

    Posted

    Hello,

    Well i was a NCO in a French armor Rgt, i was in a recce platoon and i remenber very well not spotting moving AFV in gully before they moved out at 50 meters of my position.

    Normally you heard motors noise or see gaz smoke, but sometimes wind and sun are not with you.

    I think the CM spotting engine are good.

    In an WWII AFV you have not a good fieldview, you didn't heard anything, and your generally very busy on your work. not very easy to spot another tank on the field.

    Hope my english not to bad :)

    Philippe :)

    Good to hear an original anecdote. And your Anglais is better than my Francais: ) Just a couple of queries. Was the gully to front or side? Was it a friendly tank? Was it unseeable in the gully from where you were situated? It might help me get a handle on RL.

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    CMx2 WWII Series

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    I am reading a book by Ken Tout "In The Shadow of Arnhem" and on P.26 he mentions the Black Watch [Canada] who start an advance with 300 men and have 16 left unscathed attacking vainly Fontenay. All within a CMx2 battle time frame. Later, and rebuilt, they are in a stupid attack in Holland and a Company commander starts with 90 men and ends up with 4 unscathed. Obviously the extreme end of suffering. At Tilly in one case only 2 men survived the battle from a 30 man platoon. They were luckier than a 90 man force which was wiped out by the Hitlerjugend.

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    ALLIED : Gustav Line BETA AAR Round Two - Eye of the Elefant

    in Combat Mission Fortress Italy

    Posted

    Lets face it there are insufficient defending troops/points and Bill is edge hugging on both sides of the map. Sucks.

    It is a problem but when faced with map-making in CMx1 , and I am a fan of large maps, I would make the terrain difficult or impossible to negate the benefit of edge hugging. This would be a time and cost to travel sort of equation.

    Unfortunately if you go for a historical map then edge hugging may become very attractive - particularly having a safe flank means looking straight ahead and one flank and observation seems key.

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