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ArgusEye

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  1. I've been using Google Maps Street View on the Finnish side of the border, and all I see are endless birch forests. Should I use tall pines, or wil forest tiles be OK?

    I'ts going to be a big, boring map this way. It's starting to become obvious how a bunch of light infantry can completely dominate armor-heavy troops in these circumstances.

  2. I'm making a scenario set in operation Polarfuchs, which takes place around Kuusiniemi, currently in Karelia, Russia.

    I've got the topography mostly done, but it seems that everything that is not under water, is forest. There are no fields, no open spaces, it's all just forest. Therefore, to people who know that area, some questions:

    a) How do I get a nice representative landscape? Will endless forest do?

    B) How did these people make a living? Fishing in the lakes, then eating the fish with yummy tree-bark?

  3. Some remarks by the Germans about the use of the PAK43/41:

    Experiences with the 8,8 Pak 43/41

    (From the lessons learned message of a heavy Pz Jäg Abt)

    1. The mobility of the 8,8 Pak 43/41 (mot. Z.) has proven itself during the defensive fight to be better than originally anticipated. In quick position shifting of a whole company hour movements of 25 km were striven for. Such accelerated movements require good conditions though. Besides, it must be borne in mind that normal commercial vehicles will follow slower, so that with arrival at the new position one should count on limited ammunition (carried on tractors or Maultier-carriers).

    The situation dictated repeatedly that the position was assumed or left under enemy observed artillery fire or under attack from attack aircraft. However, everything should be done to avoid such position shifting in the future, because in this case not just the guns, but the entire unit can be destroyed.

    [...]

    Even though the deployment should be always aimed to be executed in well prepared firing positions, it has been shown that units of 8,8 Pak 43/41 (mot. Z.) by dint of their mobility in case of emergency can be also successfully used and deployed in pre-reconnoitered positions by fences, woods, villages, high corn fields and so forth, if proper positions cannot be built in advance. It must be striven for, however, that these positions should be eligible to be quickly vacated after the original enemy attack has been repelled. If the situation by exception forces the position to be tarried in after the original fight, then digging in should follow forthwith, to avoid great casualties.

    [...]

    The size of the guns forbids the deployment of the units of the 8,8 Pak 43/41 (mot. Z.) as positioned troops, which are committed to a position near the MLR for any extended time. On the other hand, it is worth attempting to deploy the schw Panzerjäger-Abteilung at positions of great armored danger in Schwerpunkte, where the most important thing is to use the great range of the guns by appropriate choice of positions. Where the terrain does not allow use of deep positions, one should use short duration deployments in the open in the front lines, where sight cover should not be avoided.

  4. Only if you consider Gustaf as a field gun does it seem wasteful. It was meant as a superheavy siege gun, with a secondary research purpose. The resources used upon it, when implemented in regular weapons, would not have come close to the extra losses incurred if -for instance- Sevastopol was to have been reduced by other means. It was an expensive, highly specialized weapon, but one that did its job. The fact that it did the work with such apparent ease means that its achievements look trivial - though they weren't.

    A single shot from Gustaf knocked out a casemate that had shrugged off 30 direct hits from a Karl (Gerät 040). The only alternative apart from Gustaf would have been to get sappers in there. Hardly a cost-free proposition.

  5. I refer you to page 26 of your own link.

    Backblast dampening measures to modern heavy projectors are quite useful if you don't want to damage your position too much. Collateral damage has become much more of an issue since WWII. It also means that you have less to worry about if there are friendly troops moving about. So there is an advantage to backblast amelioration, but that does not indicate that the use of the weapons without this is impossible indoors.

  6. The Dragon was not designed for work from the interior, but if you are sceptical about the Dragon, that is no problem. The Panzerfaust was a recoilless projector, using 190 grammes of black powder [for the PzF 100] for propulsion. The 90mm RCLR was also purely recoilless, and it used 500 grammes of M5 nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin propellant. It's listed as less of a shot report than the Dragon. And it's also listed in the report excerpt I quoted above.

    The dual stage RPG motors are mostly for added range. You can take a purely recoilless design that does mostly the same, but the firing pressures would be higher, making for a more cumbersome weapon, and with the double propulsion you get more range for the same amount of propellant.

  7. That's why I asked about the primary sources. These booklets just ape each other, and I don't believe the story.

    The Panzerfaust was a recoilless weapon, much like the initial stage of the M47 Dragon missile (which adds a sustainer motor). The dangerous zone of the Panzerfaust was 10 m, that of the Dragon 30 m. If we assume the risk the Nazi's were willing to take was three times more than the US Army of the eighties, then let's call them equivalent in backblast. (I'm being very rough on the Panzerfaust, I am sure you'll agree.)

    Let us turn to pages 8-12 thru 8-14 of US Army Field Manual FM 90-10-1, and we read:

    Since the end of World War II, the US Army has conducted extensive

    testing on the effects of firing recoilless weapons from within enclosures.

    Beginning as early as 1948, tests have been conducted on every type of

    recoilless weapon available. In 1975, the US Army Human Engineering

    Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, conducted extensive

    firing of LAW, Dragon, 90-mm RCLR, and TOW from masonry and frame

    8-12FM 90-10-1

    buildings, and from sandbag bunkers. These tests showed that firing these

    weapons from enclosures presented no serious hazards, even when the

    overpressure was enough to produce structural damage to the building. The

    following were other findings of this test.

    (a) Little hazard exists to the gunnery or crew from any type of flying

    debris. Loose items were not hurled around the room.

    (B)No substantial degradation occurs to the operator’s tracking per-

    formance as a result of obscuration or blast overpressure.

    © The most serious hazard that can be expected is hearing loss. This

    must be evaluated against the advantage gained in combat from firing from

    cover. To place this hazard in perspective, a gunner wearing earplugs and

    firing the loudest combination (the Dragon from within a masonary building)

    is exposed to less noise hazard than if he fired a LAW in the open without

    earplugs.

    (d) The safest place for other soldiers in the room with the firer is against

    the wall from which the weapon is fired. Plastic ignition plugs are a hazard

    to anyone standing directly behind a LAW or TOW when it is fired.

    (e) Firers should take advantage of all available sources of ventilation

    by opening doors and windows. Ventilation does not reduce the noise

    hazard, but it helps clear the room of smoke and dust, and reduces the

    effective duration of the overpressure.

    (f) The only difference between firing these weapons from enclosures

    and firing them in the open is the duration of the pressure fluctuation.

    (g) Frame buildings, especially small ones, can suffer structural damage

    to the rear walls, windows, and doors. Large rooms suffer slight damage, if

    any.

    (3) Recoilless weapons fired from within enclosures create some obscu-

    ration inside the room, but almost none from the gunner’s position looking

    out. Inside the room, obscuration can be intense, but the room remains

    inhabitable. Table 8-8 shows the effects of smoke and obscuration.

    8-13FM 90-10-1

    (4) The Dragon causes the most structural damage but only in frame

    buildings. There does not seem to be any threat of injury to the gunner, since

    the damage is usually to the walls away from the gunner. The most damage

    and debris is from flying plaster chips and pieces of wood trim. Large chunks

    of plasterboard can be dislodged from ceilings. The backblast from LAW,

    Dragon, or TOW rarely displaces furniture. Table 8-9 shows the test results

    of structural damage and debris.

    (Highlights in bold are mine.)

    Furthermore, the rule for firing a Panzerfaust from within a bunker was that one meter of free space should be behind the tube at firing. Not that impressive.

  8. Again, that's not what Battlefront have determined. Any anecdotes about interior use have exceptions like being in the front half of a roofspace with the back blown off. Field manuals said to not use the things indoors.
    Do you have any primary sources for this? The only things I found were exhortations to make sure nobody was behind you within three (later five) meters during firing, making sure the back of the tube was unobstructed when firing from a foxhole, and reminding the soldier that loose debris behind the tube might turn projectile. I've not found much else. Notably lacking from anything I found is any field instruction leaflet forbidding its use from enclosed spaces.

    To be clear: I'm really interested, not just making a point.

  9. URC, I suspect you are confusing effective casualty radius and the density of fire rule-of-thumb to ensure neutralization of a position. Those are quite dissimilar things. It's not that puny.

    By the way, my usual sources fail me in obtaining an issue from INFANTRY magazine, from 1990, more specifically an article in there: "The 60mm Mortar : how good is it?" by John M. Spiszer.

    I also wonder if anyone has found a copy of D. Nathan and R. D. Webster, "A Fragmentation and Lethality Evaluation of the 60MM Mortar in the Fragmentation Material Program"?

  10. At first glance, after one rough reading (that is, without following up on any of the studies cited in the paper mentioned) it appears that this paper does not address any mortar bomb strike against a soldier in a foxhole at any height lower than one foot.
    True.

    But it adresses the angle of incidence of the shrapnel, and that is the main reason that foxholes work quite well against ground bursts.

    Read up on the lessons learned documents from Vietnam. American patrols frequently come under attack from 60mm mortars, but very few casualties result. And this is not due to lack of precision, given the distances sometimes quoted.

  11. Cool - which report is this?

    Combat Developments Experimentation Command '75-'78 suppression quantification report, citing results fromt the suppression experimentation data analysis report of April '76. AD:B10579L

    Note that the machine gun numbers are for six-round bursts, as opposed to the artillery numbers referring to a single blast. Suppression was measured by seeing if a soldier could be distracted enough to lose track of a target he was supposed to follow in the distance.

    Following these numbers, the same can be said for the 60mm what was already said for the 50mm. Not that great as a field piece, nice if you can drop one down an enemy foxhole.

  12. I should think it is rather well-accepted. Is there any particular aspect you wish to hear about? Otherwise, I could refer to the very fact that VT fusing artillery shells was found profitable, I could refer to the small charges in the mortar bombs being unlikely to cave in shelters or trenches, I could refer to the geometry of small fragments starting from the ground having to curve steeply to enter a pit - but these are not citations.

    If you wish a citation, you could do worse than "A THEORETICAL DETERMINATION OF THE BEST HEIGHT OF BURST FOR V.T. FUZED MORTAR BOMBS" from the Byfleet Army Operational Research establishment.

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