Sitting Duck?

[xian]

Just for fun -

What are my chances of hitting this immobile Panther with a zook?

1. Very Poor

2. Poor

3. Fair

4. Good

5. Excellent

(Target is just under 100m away and the zook team is within C2 and of average quality)

Actual result:

Rounds Fired: 6

On Target: 0

[LUCASWILLEN05]

You need to be much closer and trying to get a shot at the flank or rear. It looks like there is some drifting smokepartially obscuring the Panther and some vegetation which brobabky didn't help your bazooka team.

[John1966]

No idea what the real world situation would be but in CMBN, they'd have no chance. Mind you, they like to start wasting the ammo at longish range so they must have high expectations.

[YankeeDog]

I'd say "fair" to "poor." 100m is actually my "close enough to consider" cutoff for 'zooks -- In general, I find shots beyond 100m too low %hit to attempt. Maybe with a Veteran or Crack team against a fully exposed target I might try a shot out to 125 or 150m, but only if waiting for a closer shot simply isn't an option.

In the example at hand, you do have a partial flank shot, but you also have that low bocage and tree blocking a good part of the tank, and the intervening dust/smoke probably isn't helping, either.

It would be interesting to re-run the turn enough times to get a true statistical sample and get an actual idea of the hit percentage. If you want my personal SWAG, I'd guess the the hit% to be somewhere in the 10-30% range, which makes 6 misses in a row unlikely, but definitely not impossible.

Bear in mind this is my guess as to % to simply hit the tank. KO chance would be much lower. It's not a shot I would attempt, except in desperation.

[slysniper]

Please dont make me tell the story again about how I lost a Panther to a Bazooka 200m+ away facing the front armor to him. He shot and lopped it over and through trees and somehow managed to hit my rear deck as it flew by the side of the turret.

So you think you were unlucky, think how I felt.

You should have moved up, but if I thought I was going to be able to get 6 shots off at a immobilized tank at 100m. I would have figured at least one hit if not more. Just a bad day for you:)

[xian]

Thanks. Interesting responses. The smoke particles seen in the image are from the missed 'zook' shots so the target wasn't initially obscured by smoke.

Despite being 95m away I believed that it was too risky to move my zook teams into the open ground in front of the boccage in order to take the shot.

If I add this result to the statistics from my previous 2 PBEM games as the US, I find that my 'zook' hit% (hit%, not kill%) now sits at about 1 in 30.

[stikkypixie]

I remember from my Close Combat days that the effective range of a zook is about 80m. For a high probability of hitting, you probaby want to wait until 50m.

[slysniper]

I remember from my Close Combat days that the effective range of a zook is about 80m. For a high probability of hitting, you probaby want to wait until 50m.

Agree, he needs to learn to not let his units fire until like you said his units are within about 50m.

[Sublime]

All this being said - and Ive had some maddeningly poor bazooka shots ( an instance in Eroudeville comes to mind where two seperate squads shot 7 rounds between them at a StuG 60 m away in an open field, all misses )

I've also had some amazingly good shots that saved the day. In the same battle mentioned above, I had a platoon that was caught by an assault howitzer and being chewed to bits. a wounded single soldier with a zook shot a 130m shot and got a partial penetration. didnt KO but caused the gun to retreat and saved the day