Hedges and bocage of steel

[rocketman]

I am by no means a ballistics expert but the way that bocage and hedges absorb HE-shells seems a bit over the top. Time and time again there is a squad hiding just behind bocage/hedge and you pour HE into their position, with few casualties and few rounds that actually penetrate the bocage/hedge line.

Wouldn't the blast/shrapnel at least cause more casualties or make the squad panic/break and run away more often/sooner? Was bocage really that tough? :eek:

[YankeeDog]

Well, it's not like there's a "standard" bocage that can be referenced, but often, yes.

Bear in mind that the bottom few feet of a bocage hedge is generally an earthen embankment several feet thick with a stone core, held together with thick roots. That's cover roughly equivalent to what a trench would provide, as long as the fire is coming from the opposite side of the embankment.

Generally, I find the best way to deal with stubborn infantry behind bocage (if I don't have mortars) is to dump a couple of HE rounds on them to get them heads down, and then maintain the pin with MG area fire while an assault team closes and finishes the job with small arms and grenades at close range.

[TrailApe]

I think the problem is that the real bocage was not just a dense hedge, it was a dense hedge on a highish 'berm' which may have, over the years, been added to with the stones and rocks picked out of the field. Givern that this was all bound together by the hedge and tree roots they were quite a formidable obstacle.

What calibre is the HE?

[rocketman]

Well, it's not like there's a "standard" bocage that can be referenced, but often, yes.

Bear in mind that the bottom few feet of a bocage hedge is generally an earthen embankment several feet thick with a stone core, held together with thick roots. That's cover roughly equivalent to what a trench would provide, as long as the fire is coming from the opposite side of the embankment.

Generally, I find the best way to deal with stubborn infantry behind bocage (if I don't have mortars) is to dump a couple of HE rounds on them to get them heads down, and then maintain the pin with MG area fire while an assault team closes and finishes the job with small arms and grenades at close range.

Didn't know that the berm had a stone core, making it an equivalent of a trench for protection - so maybe it all makes sense.

Sounds like sound tactics for dealing with it.

75mm HE usually has this effect.

[TrailApe]

Aye - well remember it often took Engineers with demo charges to punch holes through the bocage, so 75mm might not have the desired effect.

Keep trying though!

[dieseltaylor]

Quote: Americans in Normandy were challenged by fifty miles of hedgerow country, with "an average of 500 small fields per square mile" (Liberation, p. 21). Hedgerow country was "a patchwork of thousands of small fields enclosed by almost impenetrable hedges. . .dense thickets of hawthorn, brambles, vines and trees ranging up to 15 feet in height, growing out of earthen mounds several feet thick and three or four feet high, with a drainage ditch on either side. The wall and hedges together were so formidable that each field took on the character of a small fort. Defenders dug in at the base of a hedgerow and hidden by vegetation were all but impervious to rifle and artillery fire. So dense was the vegetation that infantrymen poking around the hedgerows sometimes found themselves staring eye to eye at startled Germans. A single machine gun concealed in a hedgerow could mow down attacking troops as they attempted to advance from one hedge to another. Snipers, mounted on wooden platforms in the treetops and using flashless gunpowder to avoid giving away their positions, were a constant threat. Most of the roads were wagon trails, worn into sunken lanes by centuries of use and turned into cavern-like mazes by overarching hedges" (Liberation, p. 17). The narrow, sunken roads were nearly useless to tanks.

From

http://www.geocities.com/findinglinc...ensonWWII.html

Broken link though

I might aswell quote Zaloga

Quote: The tactics worked, but the engineers decided that a charge double the size was really needed. Ploger began a more careful study of the problem. A tank company, penetrating one and a half miles through bocage country, would on average encounter 34 separate hedgerows. This would require 17 tons of explosive per company or about 60 tons per battalion. This was clearly beyond the resources of any engineer battalion.

A hedge every 75 metres.!!

[rocketman]

That description really shows what a formidable obstacle it was. Maybe I have been fooled by the graphics in the game that IMO doesn't show this to its full extent.

[wokelly]

I have had annoying issues with the chest high "bocage" stopping AP rounds from hitting tanks on the other side. Also HE and bullets. I don't have a problem with the really tall stuff so much as the check high stuff blocking things. I need to move my tanks right to the bocage to reliably get guys on the other side.