Arty--malfunction?

[womble]

womble,

Seeing as how the spotting round's plume was well over four times taller than the intervening hedgerow and in plain sight of my FO...

No trees that you had turned off? Was your FO "spotting" or was he "Moving" or "Cowering" (if either of the latter pair, he won't have seen).

Most days I think you've been hacking at the game program code, cos you really don't seem to be playing the same engine everyone else is.

[TrailApe]

Somewhere in the CM archives is a hilarious account of the U.S. Army artillery officer (circa 1990s) teaching young Redlegs their trade--except he couldn't shoot worth a hoot himself, completely failing to get a bracket in the allotted 12 (or was it 18?) rounds

John,

Thinking about it, I wonder if some of these ’bugs’ we bleat on about are actually not bugs but ‘features’. CMBN does abstract a lot of the procedures that FOO’s had to go through and calling in fire missions is a lot easier in theory than it is in practice, I mean to say, what’s so hard about looking at the target, getting a map reference and unloading a ton of HE on it – how hard can that be? so I wonder of one of the developers (perhaps a former Gunner – who knows) has built in an embuggerance factor that brings the end result (ie a shedload of HE onto the right target at the right time) a bit nearer to real life (not as much HE as you wanted, not quite where you wanted it and 10 minutes later than you ideally required it).

I’ve never fired live in anger – so all of my missions were on artillery ranges in Europe – and the thing about artillery ranges is that on the whole they are like the blasted heath in Macbeth, not a lot of anything on them apart from impact craters and old tanks. It’s easy to get into the bunker or trench or whatever with all of your whizzy kit (radar, thermal imagers, lasers and GPS) and blast the hell out of an old hulk – never mind 12 rounds adjusting, with the kit you get now you should with confidence open up with 1RND FFE, a quick adjustment of left/right add/drop 100 then pile it on with 5RND FFE.

However, if you then go and run around with the infantry on a dry (dry! Oh yes! –if it aint raining it aint training) exercise in ‘normal’ urban areas you suddenly find that it’s not as easy as you thought.

Even things which sound so simple - like organising a quick Fire Plan or keeping the signals log – become difficult as you are jogging, crawling or marching along with the Company Commander – you try filling in a form, whilst dictating and with your arms are full of heavy stuff (which keeps banging you in the face at the slightest opportunity) at the same time you are doing a cross country march.

And they are just the minor problems. The real killer is comms - you have to drop down to backpack radios, so they can quickly descend into a farce and the other real problem is Line of Sight and also current location. Now if it’s bad for your modern gunner with modern lightweight dependable kit and accurate maps, how bad must it have been for our forefathers especially in Normandy with it’s claustrophobic hedgerows.

So, sorry for the diatribe, but mebbes there is a reason that once in a while, artillery support is not as useful as it should – in theory – be.

(would still like the lost adjusting round indicator though)

[Michael Emrys]

...calling in fire missions is a lot easier in theory than it is in practice, I mean to say, what’s so hard about looking at the target, getting a map reference and unloading a ton of HE on it – how hard can that be?

Great post, Ape. If I might presume to venture a slight appendix to your rhetorical question, right away some things that might go wrong occur to me off the top of my head.

1. The map isn't accurate.

2. The battery isn't exactly where it thinks it is. (Not likely, but can happen.)

3. The requesting officer isn't where he thinks he is. (Very likely. In hedgerow country extremely likely.)

4. The wind direction shifted while the rounds were in the air.

5. The usual problems with garbled transmissions, fouled calculations, etc.

The long and short of it is that #2 happens.

Michael

[TrailApe]

2. The battery isn't exactly where it thinks it is. (Not likely, but can happen.)

Michael, In total agreement with your points - but #2 - well it happens more than you think - I'm not saying miles off, but if the battery centre is off by a couple of hundred yards (and the map is not 100% accurate) this will make quite a difference in the opening adjustments and will continue until the battery do a registration shoot, which should account for a few of your points - although how often they could do this is open to conjecture.

To add to the complexity of this for the CMBN FOO, a lot of the calculations that are nowadays done in the CP then had to be done by the FOO. For example the modern FOO just needs to give a direction from themselves to the target (a compass bearing will do) and he can then adjust from his point of view, however the CMBN FOO had to know the location of the battery and factor in the adjustment of Gun to Target not FOO to Target.

I have untold admiration for the standards they reached with the equipment available.

[John Kettler]

A U.S. Army study in the late 1970s(?) found the FOs' estimates of own position were typically off by 300 meters. That led the Army to field equipment which let the FOs know where they were to very high precision. Hughes built it, and I can't recall the name of it at the moment. It had a cube shaped box on a tripod, a laser designator and a North seeking gyro, I think.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

womble,

I am really going to have to pay closer attention in future battles to the items you mentioned. It's possible I missed something.

Regards,

John Kettler