Zooks and schrecks on balconies

[John Kettler]

KR,

Brilliantly argued! Argus Eye is a university physics researcher who knows his stuff.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=106028&highlight=ArgusEye&page=2

Regards,

John Kettler

[slysniper]

In a lengthy thread posted around this time last year a poster by the name of Argus Eye unearthed this little gem from a US Army field manual.

It's all contained in this thread with particuklar reference to page 5... http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=100839&highlight=Backblast&page=5

The main point that I gained from it was that a study that stikkypixie quoted from in a link he provided confirmed that RPG7's could and were fired from enclosed spaces and its ejector charge is stronger than that of the Panzerfaust.

Game over man. Game over.

Regards

KR

I missed this in whatever earlier thread it came from, very interesting. I will have to say it does make for a case in that maybe it could be allowed.

Except for the fact that military training taught them to not do it. So the only time it likely was used was when someone was deperate enough to use it. And who cares that they cannot hear after that, hearing is way undervalued.

Or maybe, they invented hearing protection for themselves also after their buddies did it the first time and they saw what happened.

Wish on, if it has to be one way or the other, The more correct choice is to not allow it.

[akd]

Except for the fact that military training taught them to not do it.

Do you have any references to support this?

[Vanir Ausf B]

And who cares that they cannot hear after that, hearing is way undervalued.

That may be true, at least in the WW2 era. I could be wrong, but as far as I know hearing protection was not issued to artilleymen either. I have no personal experience but I would bet that standing next to a 155mm all day can't be good for the ears.

And I cannot accept that the proper real world usage of AT rockets in urban environments involved running out into the middle of the street to fire them.

[A Canadian Cat]

And I cannot accept that the proper real world usage of AT rockets in urban environments involved running out into the middle of the street to fire them.

Now that I can agree with. Which is why people have been asking for the ability to peek / shoot around corners. It seems to me that in an urban setting the correct thing to do when firing a rocket would be to stay as close to cover as possible so after you let the thing fly you can duck away immediately.

@Erwin's tip about plotting a fast move way point into the middle of the street and another fast move into cover is the closest we have to that but really no one would run at all they would just step out form corner of the house let it loose and then slip back behind the corner.

The other thing I would like to see is firing from balconies. That is out in the open so it should be fair game.

[umlaut]

Do you have any references to support this?

When I read this I went searching via google. I found these manuals for bazookas and panzerschrecks (plus a few more superficial manuals for panzerfausts):

http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/bazooka/index.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33599058/TB-200-6-Launcher-Rocket-AT-M1-Bazooka-USA-1942

http://www.bergflak.com/images/D1864_1.pdf

http://www.bergflak.com/images/Merkblatt.pdf

As far as I can tell, none of these manuals mention restrictions on or warnings about firing from buildings (but I must admit that I do have a hard time trying to read german set in gothic font - as in the last manual). If firing from buildings was considered lethal or hazardous, wouldn´t it then be logic to assume that the manuals would have warned against it?

[slysniper]

f. The launcher may be fired from the shoulder in the standing, kneeling, sitting, or prone positions. If fired from the prone position, the body should be at an angle of at least 45 degrees to the direction of fire so as to avoid injury from the back blast of the rocket.

g. In using the launcher, it is essential that no personnel, or inflammable material be directly behind the launcher within a distance of 20 feet.

h. Never stand in or near the rear of the launcher while it is being fired because the hot gases can inflict serious burns. When firing from trenches or fox holes, clearance should be provided so that back blast is not deflected against personnel.

what part of this do you not understand as a warning for firing a bazooka from within a room.

Now I will say that given how it reads I would risk firing a bazooke if I was in a large room and I did not have a wall close behind me. Or any friendly troops behind me.

Now I figure a shreik would require a little more clearence and I have no clue about a PF.

So it becomes even more complicated for the programmer to get the game to do it right. Yes, let that guy fire from the balcony, as long as he does not point the thing with the back side facing any building wall. I can see why they avoided it.

But I will agree with you in that maybe it was a little more common than what I had beleived.

So when you get them to add it in the game, dont forget to make them add the effects if he mis-judges his clearences.

[JonS]

That may be true, at least in the WW2 era. I could be wrong, but as far as I know hearing protection was not issued to artilleymen either. I have no personal experience but I would bet that standing next to a 155mm all day can't be good for the ears.

It's possibly apocryphal, but I distinctly remember being told that gunners are (were?) the only members of the armed forces who can pass a medical despite being deaf, as a nod to that particular occupational hazard.

Regarding ear muffs, I’ve read plenty of first hand accounts which mention gunners stuffing their ears with cotton wool and the like. Not quite as good as Grade 5s, but probably better than nothing.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

The funny thing is, I'm not actually arguing over allowing Panzerschreks to fire from within buildings as these were launchers which used rocket propellled HEAT warheads to achieve their mission. I'm arguing over Panzerfausts which weren't rocket propelled and thus, represented far less risk to occupants within a building when fired from within it.

As per this post from akd in the thread I previously referenced the workings of both the PIAT and the Panzerfaust were quite similar when it came to the initial propelling of the warhead (although the PIAT also had a spigot arrangement in that design).

Panzerfaust has no rocket propellant either.

PIAT uses a small propelling charge, probably about 1 oz. blackpowder. It is not a recoilless weapon, but a spigot mortar. Part of the recoil force from the explosion is absorbed by the resetting spring, but some is imparted to the shooter/baseplate.

The smallest panzerfaust uses a somewhat larger blackpowder propelling charge (around 2 oz.) However, it vents the force of the explosion to the rear and is thus recoilless.

I'm at a loss to understand why a PIAT is all fine and dandy to use within a building (as it should be) yet the Panzerfaust with a similar use of black powder to propel the HEAT round is absolutely forbidden. Sure, I wouldn't want to stand behind a Faust when it's fired as you'll certainly cop ignition burns but to flat out forbid all use of the weapon withina structure makes no sense at all.

Regards

KR

Both would create some amount of overpressure if fired in a confined space, as would any firearm. The question is of degree.

[sburke]

f. The launcher may be fired from the shoulder in the standing, kneeling, sitting, or prone positions. If fired from the prone position, the body should be at an angle of at least 45 degrees to the direction of fire so as to avoid injury from the back blast of the rocket.

g. In using the launcher, it is essential that no personnel, or inflammable material be directly behind the launcher within a distance of 20 feet.

How many houses of the period had rooms of a depth of 20 feet? My house was built in 1941 and it's standard room is just about 12x12 excluding furniture. If they are giving warnings of 20 ft clearance my guess is they felt they didn't need to explain that firing it in a 10x10 room with furniture/bedding/curtains etc was a really bad idea. mmm I am still not seeing anything here that is going to convince BF to change their stance at least not for a standard building.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

I'll state it again. The Panzerfaust uses black powder ignition to propel its HEAT round and not a rocket motor. If you seriously think that 2 oz. of black powder (or even 4 to 6 oz. of black powder for later models) being ignited is going to repeatedly cause some catastrophic negative effects within a normal sized room then there's something seriously awry with your reasoning.

The only thing I can think of that could happen is that a timber walled structure could possibly catch alight from the back blast but that would surely be an exception rather than a rule.

Regards

KR

[Vanir Ausf B]

Effects on structures and resulting debris. The smallest room (2.8 m x 2.2 m), a wooden frame structure, was severely damaged by DRAGON. The 4.6 m x 4.7 m frame building was clearly but not severly damaged structurally and the 9.1 m x 5.9 m frame building was barely damaged structurally, even after firing one LAW, one DRAGON and two TOW rounds from it. Furthermore, none of the damage indicated a threat to the gunner, because the damage tended to occur on the ceiling, and on the wall or walls away from the gunner's position. The masonry buildings, because of their heavy construction, showed little damage. Surprisingly, debris would have represented little hazard to a firer. In no case was anything observed flying toward the front of the room with sufficient velocity to be dangerous. In support of this conclusion, none of the goats experienced any skin penetrations during the tests, even though they were oriented with their long axes toward the rear wall. Furthermore, even the items placed to the rear of the weapon moved surprisingly little. However, personnel standing directly in the back blast would certainly have been injured by the ignition plugs of the LAW and TOW missiles or by the blast from DRAGON or the 90mm recoilless rifle.

In summary, although wooden frame structures suffered some structural damage, there was no collapse that would have harmed the firer. The walls behind the weapon did suffer damage; however, the firer at the front of the room would not have been injured by debris from the weapon or any entrained in the back blast. So long as personnel stay out of the flow field behind the weapon, injury from debris is unlikely.

It should be recognized that the foregoing data are not exhaustive, are not from the human, and lack a theoretical base; but the lack of injury to anything other than the ears suggests that if the ears can be protected, firing one round from an enclosure may not be a great risk for a soldier and given certain tactical situations, may be a much smaller risk than remaining in the open.

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA244127

That last part is key. No matter how risky shooting from buildings may or may not have been, if the alternative was running out into the middle of the street and engaging in a high noon showdown with a Tiger tank and perhaps accompanying infantry I think I would take my chances from the building, no matter what the training manual says about room size.

[John Kettler]

umlaut,

Nice finds!

slysniper,

Drat! You found the IV g. bazooka note first!

KR,

I think you don't quite have a handle of the PIAT's operation yet. You pull the trigger, whereupon an enormous compression (not tension as I keep reading) spring violently decompresses, slamming the spigot smartly into the socket at the rear of the PIAT bomb. This initiates the aforementioned propulsion charge, which ideally does two things: It hurls the bomb toward the target and recocks the spring for a subsequent shot. As Ian Hogg wryly notes, this didn't always happen, necessitating a back wrenching manual recocking drill.

The firing produced little in the way of a launch signature, with no flaming rocket out of one end and no fire trail out the back, not to mention debris flung violently about. To the uninitiated, it looks much like a very large rifle grenade being fired. This is why it can be fired indoors with impunity.

The Panzerfaust, by contrast, goes Bang! Out comes the bomb in its looping trajectory headed toward the target. Out of the other end comes the subject of the Achtung! Feuerstrahl! warning. The link gives an excellent description of the weapon and the backblast hazard zone from the Fire Jet. The link goes on to note that firing a Panzerschreck indoors is even more dicey than firing a Panzerfaust from inside a building.

http://www.oocities.org/pizzatest/panzerfaust2.htm

Here's a vid showing both the Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck firing. Though far from ideal, it does give some sense of what's happening behind the weapons.

Here's a PIAT firing. Note that the only major visual signature is the Kitty exploding!

Granted, that was a movie, but I think the launching end of it, at the very least, was a service munition. Here, for comparison, is right before D-Day footage of a PIAT team on the firing range (~0:42). Note there's almost nothing to see on the PIAT end of the equation.

As an aside, it is easy to find practically everything you want, in terms of video, on the Boys antitank rifle, to include the Disney produced training film on same for the Canadian Army, but nearly impossible to find anything on the PIAT.

Commonalities of the PIAT and Panzerfaust? Handheld antitank weapons firing shaped charge projectiles. Principles of operation are about as different as night and day.

I hope this makes clear what is both confusing and contentious in some circles. In closing, I had the opportunity to pick up PIAT at a gun show over a decade back. The PIAT's made of substantial, solid steel and seems to weigh about a ton. I shudder to think what it was like having to drag one of those all over western Europe.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Commonalities of the PIAT and Panzerfaust? Handheld antitank weapons firing shaped charge projectiles. Principles of operation are about as different as night and day.

I hope this makes clear what is both confusing and contentious in some circles. In closing, I had the opportunity to pick up PIAT at a gun show over a decade back. The PIAT's made of substantial, solid steel and seems to weigh about a ton. I shudder to think what it was like having to drag one of those all over western Europe.

Regards,

John Kettler

John. Surely the fact that both the Panzerfaust & PIAT use ignition of black powder as the propulsion charge is a fairly glaring commonality?

Regards

KR

[JonS]

They're both made of metal too! AND they're both anti-tank weapons! Why, they're practically the same weapon! As long as you ignore all the differences.

[John Kettler]

KR,

Fair point, but I a) didn't think of it, since I was working from an operating principle perspective, and does a Panzerfaust indeed use black powder? I doubtless read what was used, but remembering in the moment's another matter altogether. I hope you found my post useful.

Regards,

John Kettler

[umlaut]

what part of this do you not understand as a warning for firing a bazooka from within a room.

Well, most of this, actually.

If the quotes from the manuals above are supposed to tell the GI´s that they shouldn´t fire bazookas from inside rooms, I´d say the do it in a very indirect way. I would have imagined they´d say something like: "DO NOT FIRE FROM INSIDE BUILDINGS" to make sure the message had gotten across.

So when you get them to add it in the game, dont forget to make them add the effects if he mis-judges his clearences.

Please tell me, where exactly I said that I wanted these features added in the game? akd asked for references that supported that soldiers were trained not to fire zooks and schrecks from inside buildings. I went looking for those - and to my own surprise I wasn´t able to find any. So I posted the findings.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

KR,

I hope you found my post useful.

Regards,

John Kettler

Yes, very useful thanks John.

Regards

KR

[RockinHarry]

This is the original service manual D 560/4 for the PzFaust 100m as of january 1945. It´s quite brief and for obvious reasons anything but rocket science.

I bracketed the stuff of relevance for this thread in yellow and translated:

"When launched, there shouldn´t be anybody standing up to 10m behind the firer."

"The fire jet/blast can be lethal up to 3m if it hits a comrade."

"When fired from within a foxhole, make sure the tube end points above ground."

"Otherwise, when the tube end points within the hole, a clearance of about 1m (to the wall) is usually enough for the firers safety."

THAT´S IT!

Now use common sense and make own conclusions for any thinkable combat situation.

[slysniper]

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA244127

That last part is key. No matter how risky shooting from buildings may or may not have been, if the alternative was running out into the middle of the street and engaging in a high noon showdown with a Tiger tank and perhaps accompanying infantry I think I would take my chances from the building, no matter what the training manual says about room size.

Well, you have never experenced a busted eardrum, try that first, then tell me how your not willing to use the weapon correctly. Now the game could improve on where in the street the guy is shooting from, but he wants the street.

[slysniper]

Well, most of this, actually.

If the quotes from the manuals above are supposed to tell the GI´s that they shouldn´t fire bazookas from inside rooms, I´d say the do it in a very indirect way. I would have imagined they´d say something like: "DO NOT FIRE FROM INSIDE BUILDINGS" to make sure the message had gotten across.

Please tell me, where exactly I said that I wanted these features added in the game? akd asked for references that supported that soldiers were trained not to fire zooks and schrecks from inside buildings. I went looking for those - and to my own surprise I wasn´t able to find any. So I posted the findings.

The sarcastic remarks is not directed towards you, just to anyone in general that are on the other side of the debate in that these facts should be iqnored and that allowing the weapons use from buildings is a better approach

[akd]

f. The launcher may be fired from the shoulder in the standing, kneeling, sitting, or prone positions. If fired from the prone position, the body should be at an angle of at least 45 degrees to the direction of fire so as to avoid injury from the back blast of the rocket.

g. In using the launcher, it is essential that no personnel, or inflammable material be directly behind the launcher within a distance of 20 feet.

h. Never stand in or near the rear of the launcher while it is being fired because the hot gases can inflict serious burns. When firing from trenches or fox holes, clearance should be provided so that back blast is not deflected against personnel.

what part of this do you not understand as a warning for firing a bazooka from within a room.

Now I will say that given how it reads I would risk firing a bazooke if I was in a large room and I did not have a wall close behind me. Or any friendly troops behind me.

Now I figure a shreik would require a little more clearence and I have no clue about a PF.

So it becomes even more complicated for the programmer to get the game to do it right. Yes, let that guy fire from the balcony, as long as he does not point the thing with the back side facing any building wall. I can see why they avoided it.

But I will agree with you in that maybe it was a little more common than what I had beleived.

So when you get them to add it in the game, dont forget to make them add the effects if he mis-judges his clearences.

Backblast area is ignored by the game. Pixeltruppen can fire a panzerfaust with their back to a wall, pixeltruppen can fire a panzerfaust at a high angle upward, pixeltruppen can fire a panzerfaust with friendlies in the backblast area.

The above does not say anything specific about buildings. It says 20 feet behind should be clear of inflammable material. The more relevant data would be the distance at which a barrier reflects enough blast to endanger the gunner. Note in the panzerfaust manual the "fire jet" danger area is 10m, but the minimum clearance for a barrier behind the launcher (fighting position wall) is 1m.

The issue here is not so much the backblast, and as noted above, the length of the fire jet of a panzerfaust would not in and of itself prevent firing indoors from a typical room. The question is whether a typical exterior room could be sufficiently ventilated (open doors/windows) to decrease the potential danger from overpressure for a given charge. Since the charge size for recoilless weapons varies greatly, the blanket prohibition probably does not reflect reality well, particularly when set against other limitations of the game engine (no external firing positions on buildings, no vertical limitations on AFV spotting/firing, no minimum distance on AFV weapons, no threat to friendlies from firing tank cannons in proximity, etc.) Most likely many or most buildings would offer "safe enough" firing positions for weapons using smaller charges with either no prep beyond leaving the door open, or very brief prep. Not surprisingly anecdotes of panzerfaust use from buildings abound, and Allied tankers fully expected to be fired on by panzerfausts from buildings. Every door and window was a threat and close protection from friendly infantry was seen as essential. Compare to CM where the player is 100% guarunteed to not be fired on by panzerfaust from any building ever.

In my personal opinion, at least panzerfaust (particularly smallish charge Panzerfaust 30 and 30k) should be allowed to fire from buildings without negative effects, but no recoilless weapons whatsoever should be allowed to fire from bunkers.

Here is a video of B-10 recoilless rifle fired indoors:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtzvrg_baba-amr-homs_news

Would be interesting to do an energy comparison between that and the Panzerfaust 30K.

[Tempestzzzz]

Followed this thread with interest.

Don't want to hijack it.

I collect pdf's on old military manuals and since my German is passable I'm not intimidated by non English manuals.

RockinHarry is your Panzerfaust manual available for download anywhere?

Best I could find was this current pdf.

http://trizna.ru/galerea/albums/userpics/Panzerfaust_30_klein.pdf

Oh yeah in going to Wikipedia it said Panzerfausts were used by the Communist guerrillas in the post war Philippines! What the hell...:eek:

[RockinHarry]

Followed this thread with interest.

Don't want to hijack it.

I collect pdf's on old military manuals and since my German is passable I'm not intimidated by non English manuals.

RockinHarry is your Panzerfaust manual available for download anywhere?

Best I could find was this current pdf.

http://trizna.ru/galerea/albums/userpics/Panzerfaust_30_klein.pdf

Oh yeah in going to Wikipedia it said Panzerfausts were used by the Communist guerrillas in the post war Philippines! What the hell...:eek:

IIRC it was from this scribd user, but he´s obviously relocating his collection elsewhere.

http://de.scribd.com/haraoi_conal

But could also be from another user at this site. Just have a look around. Else, drop me a PM.

[RockinHarry]

just found an interesting photo sequence. The soldiers do not appear to be mightily impressed by the shooting. No idea what the polish text describes though.