Should tanks really be able to fire through bocage?

[Erwin]

I have fired Stummels thru bocage, but it is another example of how one has to become good at playing vs the game system as one has to find precisely the right spot and the right angle etc. and it takes a lot of irritating trial and error.

[dieseltaylor]

Go visit Normandy in Google Maps sometime and drag the little person icon onto one of the back roads. They've ripped down most of the bocage, but there's still enough of it around and it hasn't changed much since '44. In the foreground, you can readily see what I mean. Portions of this section are impenetrable, but move a few yards and you can find a spot to wheel a tank up a bank and poke a gun through. Believe me, that's typical. You will rarely get more than 20 yards without some kind of gap.

Don't get me wrong; I'm be all in favour of more varied terrain, but I'd vote for a dense LOS-blocking thicket of young trees -- a ubiquitous and sorely needed feature -- before I added another flavour of bocage.

Looking at this photo it strikes me that at road level it is likely to be not much wider than 10ft or 9ft or the width of a tank - there was no need for wide roads. Bearing in mind a Churchill is 20ft you can see the difficulty in squaring up to the hedge. Being at an angle is feasible but you then get into the arena of how far can the barrel be raised or lowered where there is already a fudge issue in operation.

I mention the Churchill because that could swivel on its tracks unlike the US tanks.

From

http://www.strijdbewijs.nl/breakout/out2.htm

[sburke]

Looking at this photo it strikes me that at road level it is likely to be not much wider than 10ft or 9ft or the width of a tank

Funny you mention that. Was just reading sections of After D-Day and it discusses the 116th Pz counterattack during Cobra near Tessy sur Vire. Schwerin found the Panthers couldn't use the secondary roads and he was confined to the major arteries...in daylight...in good weather.

[JonS]

It is possible to create a path/track too narrow for vehicles to move along. Basically, put two rows of bocage, in adjacent tiles. When the bocage is like this // or this \\ the gap is too narrow.

Vehicles can pass when the bocage is like this || or this = which seems a little odd, except that generally bocage paths are a biot meandering and should include both ?? and || anyway, effectively making the whole track impassable.