60mm Mortar Ammo Needs Resupply

[Georgie]

The 60mm mortar simply does not have enough ammo to be of much use in a large or especially a huge battle, 3 or 4 hours long of battalion strength. Their needs to be a resupply of 60mm ammo available that the scenario designer can utilize.

[JasonC]

And they weren't. The men could not manpack enough ammo up to the tubes. Every mortar was limited not by theoretical rate of fire but by the very limited loads of shells that could be carried forward to the actual firing locations.

[Apocal]

The 60mm mortar simply does not have enough ammo to be of much use in a large or especially a huge battle, 3 or 4 hours long of battalion strength. Their needs to be a resupply of 60mm ammo available that the scenario designer can utilize.

Battalions already get a platoon of 81mm and/or 120mm mortars with plenty of ammo for just that reason.

[womble]

Try using Target Light. Ekes out the ammo pretty well. You'll get about a quarter hour's use out of them, which for the terminal effects they have and the "price"/availability is pretty blimmin' good. I've seen a pair of AI platoons which were lined up along a wall get eviscerated and broken by just one 60mm firing unchallenged in enfilade (not my doing; the 60 was set up there by the scenario designer, IIRC - I just spotted the shot) while they were fixed by infantry to their front.

[Apocal]

I hate to double-dip in a thread, but now I'm curious: what do you use 60mm mortars for? Anything role(s) in specific or just generalized beatdown sticks?

And I agree there should be some kind of truck, ammo box or editor-side supply setting that a scenario designer can use to increase the ammo above the norm. It is sometimes difficult in defense scenarios only because everything other than HMGs is running close to black.

[Pak40]

The 60mm mortar simply does not have enough ammo to be of much use in a large or especially a huge battle, 3 or 4 hours long of battalion strength. Their needs to be a resupply of 60mm ammo available that the scenario designer can utilize.

Well, it's not the proper solution to the problem but the designer can just have a extra mortar teams come on as reinforcements. But I agree with you, scenario designers should have the ability to place whatever kinds of ammo into "supply" trucks to resupply front line troops for those extra long scenarios. This was generally the case IRL.

[Erwin]

+1 for some sort of resupply truck that a designer could fill with the DESIRED ammo. I haven't designed any CM2 scenarios, but it seems hard to locate some types of ammo for resupply in the generic trucks and halftracks - and some of us like large and long scenarios..

[Sublime]

Especially for 7.92mm Kurz rounds as it is you can only get em at all from a type of pillbox. IMO this is a ridiculous oversight.

[Erwin]

I have read that the 7.92 ammo was scarce. But, ammo resupply dumps/trucks etc should have what the designer wants. The ammo may be scarce, but I just don't believe that where it was needed for an attack they didn't have enuff. (Otherwise, the soldiers woulda dumped the gun and used something else.)

[Baneman]

I (Otherwise, the soldiers woulda dumped the gun and used something else.)

Which is exactly what I wish I could get my soldiers to do ... especially when the MP40-armed guy buddy-aids the Stg from a bloke with 6 rounds of ammo...

[Georgie]

I hate to double-dip in a thread, but now I'm curious: what do you use 60mm mortars for? Anything role(s) in specific or just generalized beatdown sticks?

And I agree there should be some kind of truck, ammo box or editor-side supply setting that a scenario designer can use to increase the ammo above the norm. It is sometimes difficult in defense scenarios only because everything other than HMGs is running close to black.

Hello Apocal, I'm working on battalion size scenario on a 3k x 4k map and my theme is that the Americans have advanced so fast that they have outrun their artillery support and they will have to rely on their organic 60mm and 81mm mortars and it would be more realistic , as Pak 40 mentions in a latter post, if they could be resupplied instead of having reinforcement 60 and 81mm mortars. It would also be better because, hopefully, most of the mortars will already be cited and will have the range of some targets. The 81mm mortars will not have arrived on map as yet and the American tanks can't get into the fight until the 60mm mortars knock out some of the German AT guns ,so the advance is held up. The 60mm mortars will be firing at long range and they run out of ammo very fast with out doing much damage to a pinpoint target such as an AT gun. I ran tests just to see how well the mortars can do the job at these ranges and they use a lot of ammo.

[mjkerner]

Sounds like a great scenario, Georgie!

[womble]

If they've outrun their artillery's range, isn't it credible to think they might've outrun their (non-organic) ammo trucks too? If the 60s can't silence the ATGs, the tanks will just have to wait for the advent of the 81mms, so maybe bring them forward in the reinforcement schedule a bit. 81mm can be resupplied by the arrival of more mortar halftracks, if they're on-map.

Alternatively, one of the later-game tactical problems the scenario presents is having the infantry advance without their 60mm support because it had to be used early to get the tanks involved.

Without resupply for the 60s, there are a couple of interesting tactical options for the US commander to choose between: use the 60s up early to get the tanks involved early and preserve operational tempo, or lower the operational tempo at the beginning to preserve the organic infantry HE chuckers for later. If the 60s had resupply, it would be a gimme to burn their ammo early and use the resupply later. Looked at this way, the lack of resupply options is less of a disadvantage.

If (and I can't say for sure whether they do) "specialist team" 60mm picks come with ammo bearers, you could attach a bunch of these to the relevant mortar-containing formations (4th Plt, or each Plt individually, IIRC for the US) and then delete the mortar element. I think then you can make these additional elements part of later reinforcements and maybe give them a truck or two to arrive in. But I'm not optimistic that you can find such things that can be attached into the TO at a level that will permit ammo sharing.

[Redwolf]

Would be interesting to dig up how much 60mm HE was in a typical non-combat delivery to a company or battalion, as specified.

[JasonC]

Redwolf - I've seen some ammo usage figures for mortar rounds in the US army green books on "supporting the forces", the logistics effort coverage. Basically they were chronically short of 81mm to an extreme degree, because it could be fired off so fast, it wasn't a high shipping priority, usage outstripped plan, etc. I don't recall if the table I am thinking of listed 60mm ammo usage as well, but I'd expect it to track with the 81s.

In the lessons learned documents on the fighting in Italy, many units reporting an SOP of reducing the 60mm carried into action in the hill fighting to 2 per company, with the rest of the teams added to the ammo details to increase the rounds carried. But they still list figures around 45-50 shells per tube, tops, even with that adaptation. 81s are to be left and fired from rear areas in battery, because they cannot be supplied on the hill tops and ridges. Similarly, they all council leaving 50 cals behind, and instead carrying 30 cals and as much ammo per gun as the teams can carry.

These are adaptations to hilly conditions and the reliance on man-packing to get ammo to the forward weapons that imposes. Basically, off the road net, a small number of 60s for limited use, and 30s for most fire support, is all that the men can manage and keep supplied.

Indirect fire comes from tube arty that is physically located right on the road net, but has the range to reach all the intervening positions from those supply-able firing positions. Mortars don't have that range, so they become largely unsupply-able.

In the ETO, conditions were better in these respects than in Italy - denser road net, fewer hills. (The Vosges fighting might be similar, though). There the issue is instead that the useful 81s just throw their available rounds so fast they cannot be kept topped off, and the ammo dearth is theater wide. 105s get very tight as well at the westwall, until the front starts moving again in early 1945.

FWIW.

[Sgt Schultz]

I have been asking for ammo crates since release.

Each crate could take up a certain number of passenger slots in either a vehicle or bunker, and then be subject to the acquire command.

Largest ammo in the game for on-map asset is the 150mm German Infantry Gun. Say 3 per crate, 2 HE and 1 HEAT/Smoke. Scale ammo count up as caliber scales down from there.

Stick them in the "Independent Teams" section for QB/Design purposes.

I would love to have a truck full of ammo crates come on the map at around 45 minutes... wouldn't you?

The US 60mm and .45 cal Thompson rounds... The German MP44 "K" ammo and Panzershrek ammo... Everyone's large ATGs...

There are work-arounds for most ammo, but crates would make everyone's life a little easier in longer engagements.

-

Edit - Plus, if they could be placed in structures, then one can imagine the effects of artillery fire/demo charges, and sympathetic detonation effects, in a village turned into an ammo dump.

The night commando scenario from Hell...

[winkelried]

I have been asking for ammo crates since release.

Each crate could take up a certain number of passenger slots in either a vehicle or bunker, and then be subject to the acquire command.

Largest ammo in the game for on-map asset is the 150mm German Infantry Gun. Say 3 per crate, 2 HE and 1 HEAT/Smoke. Scale ammo count up as caliber scales down from there.

Stick them in the "Independent Teams" section for QB/Design purposes.

I would love to have a truck full of ammo crates come on the map at around 45 minutes... wouldn't you?

The US 60mm and .45 cal Thompson rounds... The German MP44 "K" ammo and Panzershrek ammo... Everyone's large ATGs...

There are work-arounds for most ammo, but crates would make everyone's life a little easier in longer engagements.

+1 to this one.

Edit - Plus, if they could be placed in structures, then one can imagine the effects of artillery fire/demo charges, and sympathetic detonation effects, in a village turned into an ammo dump.

The night commando scenario from Hell...

that would be a hell of a scenario :cool: especially at night

[Erwin]

+1. Especially for large/huge scenarios.