Mine clearing

[noxnoctum]

Can you clear mines with artillery? If so what caliber is needed and how good is it at clearing an area?

[agusto]

A direct hit with a 155mm calibre shell or bigger will clear a mined action spot.

[Freyberg]

The manual says 150mm guns and bigger can destroy minefields, however....

The above was a dense field of mixed mines shelled 'heavy': short, medium and long by British 183mm howitzers. All the tanks, even in the moonscape box on the left, were destroyed or immobilised (usually destroyed). The infantry in the left box got through with minimal casualties, in the middle box with moderate, and the ones in the right box (short heavy bombardment), were pretty much wiped out.

The bombardment was linear, diagonal across the box. the movement paths tried to follow the shell craters.

[Freyberg]

Less densely sown minefield, same bombardments but over a wider area.

All the tanks were destroyed or immobilised. Most of the infantry were massacred, though a couple of men in the top box (the least heavily shelled) miraculously made it through.

[womble]

Even "green" minefields remain risky to cross. The only time I've consistently successfully crossed a minefield with vehicles was when it had been sympathetically detonated by a demo charge used to breach some wire placed over it.

And just because you've shelled the area, that's not a guarantee that you've hit every mine AS directly enough to completely clear it. Those screenies are hardly surprising: only one of the immobilised tanks is in a shell crater (and that could have been a result of the destruction or subsequent fire/cookoffs). If you'd got a continuous line of overlapping craters to drive along, you might have a more reasonable expectation of safety.