Sherman (and other tank) smoke launchers

[beatmasta]

As almost every tank is able to pop smoke, what kind of smoke launchers did for example shermans have? The smoke screen looks like it's been fired from this kind of device http://www.flickr.com/photos/36888991@N06/4241092554/

But the Shermans and I think other vehicles don't have that kind of smoke launchers modeled in the game so did they have some other kind of device to form the smoke in real life? Except than shooting smoke rounds, but the pop smoke command does not do that.

[akd]

Mounted in the turret roof, as seen here:

Some vehicles have no launching device. The crew simply tosses a smoke grenade out by hand.

[Statisoris]

I have always felt that popping smoke might be a little overmodeled on many AFV's in CMBN. Almost all of them pop multiple smoke charges simultaneously as if they were using some sort of modernish M250/M7 smoke defense system.

[Taki]

Like lots of other things (like the Reaction and Spotting Time of Tanks) they took directly from CMSF Abrams

You know, the US Boys had it (The Propaganda says)

[akd]

I have always felt that popping smoke might be a little overmodeled on many AFV's in CMBN. Almost all of them pop multiple smoke charges simultaneously as if they were using some sort of modernish M250/M7 smoke defense system.

Almost all? Which ones exactly.

[sburke]

Almost all? Which ones exactly.

Just tried out 3 shermans and they all fired 3 rounds in about 8 seconds. Approx 3 seconds apart for each smoke round. They are distinctly visible firing individually. None had been under fire or spotted an enemy so one could consider this almost training field testing. Does not seemed far fetched at all to fire these from an inside the turret gun. Haven't tried it from a vehicle one would be expecting hand thrown smoke grenades but would be curious to see how different it looks.

[Statisoris]

Just tried out 3 shermans and they all fired 3 rounds in about 8 seconds. Approx 3 seconds apart for each smoke round. They are distinctly visible firing individually. None had been under fire or spotted an enemy so one could consider this almost training field testing. Does not seemed far fetched at all to fire these from an inside the turret gun. Haven't tried it from a vehicle one would be expecting hand thrown smoke grenades but would be curious to see how different it looks.

Ok, nevermind. I just remembered multiple smoke rounds went out very fast in most situations and thought it was strange for a one tube system.

[Pak40]

Shermans crews had a hand launched smoke mortar, iirc.

[beatmasta]

I think the smoke pattern looks quite the same as the modern tools have in CMSF. And I tried it with all the sherman models and every one of them have the same pattern. I'm pretty sure the Garman vehicles have the same. I doubt that the vehicles have launchers they should. As the game tries to model real life events as closely as possible I think that the different types of smoke launchers have not been modelled properly.

Big deal? No, but could be more realistic.

[Michael Emrys]

I'm in agreement with beatmasta. I haven't done any testing, so my opinion doesn't really count for much, nor have I deliberately used vehicle smoke more than once or twice in all my playing, and my tanks have seldom spontaneously deployed it. More commonly, if they take serious fire, they die before they get the chance to use smoke mortars. That said, the pattern looks suspiciously modern, and it seems that tanks in other people's games deploy smoke more—sometimes much more—than was historically the case. Is it not the case that many of those vehicles that had smoke mortars or candles required time consuming reloading from outside the vehicle? It's been a long time, but ISTR reading something along those lines. If anybody has definite information about that, it would be interesting to hear.

Michael

[Pak40]

My experience with the Sherman's smoke is they pop out one at a time like they're supposed to. It doesn't take long for them to reload and pop out subsequent smoke, so it may seem like they're all simultaneously fired. I'll have to test it out next time I play.

[MikeyD]

Non-smoke-mortar armor you can actually see the hatch fly open (when appropriate) and an old fashioned infantry HC smoke grenade get tossed out. M10 TD smoke grenades gets lobbed out of the open turret by a crewmember. Smoke use has got adjusted again and again and again. A lot of debate, consensus and compromise happened before you got to see it in the game. Didn't it change a bit in the patch too? I'm losing track.

[Sgt Schultz]

I use pop smoke all the time, and think the smoke effect is accurate.

Modern smoke does a low-order explosion to spread a globe of smoke almost instantly.

Our smoke comes fuming out of a grenade and takes a while to spread.

The speed of multiple launches seems OK as well. Maybe a tad quick, but nothng worth tweaking imho.

[beatmasta]

Non-smoke-mortar armor you can actually see the hatch fly open (when appropriate) and an old fashioned infantry HC smoke grenade get tossed out. M10 TD smoke grenades gets lobbed out of the open turret by a crewmember. Smoke use has got adjusted again and again and again. A lot of debate, consensus and compromise happened before you got to see it in the game. Didn't it change a bit in the patch too? I'm losing track.

Will have to check that more closely then! I had several shermans when I tested it and watched it form a bit further.

[RockinHarry]

Here´s a bit of Sherman smoke poppin action from a video I made some time ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5pAZqCs_wA

Can´t tell if that truely resembles real world capabilities, but the Shermans do pester the area with smoke quite successfully. :eek:

[Michael Emrys]

Here´s a bit of Sherman smoke poppin action from a video I made some time ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5pAZqCs_wA

Can´t tell if that truely resembles real world capabilities, but the Shermans do pester the area with smoke quite successfully. :eek:

That looks like it was firing smoke shells (WP) from the cannon, not smoke from the smoke mortar, which should form a screen immediately in front of the tank.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

That looks like it was firing smoke shells (WP) from the cannon, not smoke from the smoke mortar, which should form a screen immediately in front of the tank.

Michael

No, it's firing smoke from the mortar; if you watch closely you can see the smoke bombs arcing from the turret. Hard to tell the exact number; I can definitely count at least 6 grenades going out, but I think there may be more. They look to be about 2-3 seconds apart.

It might be firing smoke shells from the main gun as well, though; I don't think so but it's a little hard to tell given the quality of the video.

Regardless, it is certainly not true that Sherman's defensive smoke ability in CMBN is anything like what you see coming from tanks like M1A1 in CMSF. The M1A1 puts out an automatic broadcast of smoke grenades fired from multiple tubes simultaneously. The grenades detonate more or less simultaneously and obscure the tank from a broad field of view within seconds. So I'm not sure where the suggestion that the Sherman's smoke mortar function is somehow an errant "holdover" from CMSF is coming from. It's clearly coded quite differently.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the smoke mortar for Shermans in CMBN is perfectly modeled, though. I personally have no idea how quickly a Sherman crew could reasonably be expected to fire off the smoke mortar under combat conditions. Considering the mortar had to be reloaded between each shot, 6 smoke bombs in ~18 seconds is certainly pretty quick work -- seems to me that this would represent a crew member pretty much slamming grenades into the mortar breech and pulling the trigger as quickly as he could. Then again, the crew's lives depended upon it, and presumably they did train and drill on the thing... seems to me like this is an area where you might be able to argue for a "tweak", if you were able to come up with the evidence to support your case, but the current modeling is certainly at least in the ballpark.