Market Garden Urban Combat Improvements

[PhilM]

IMHO the correct way to enter a building through a window is to break the glass and toss in a five pound block of TNT. Then, when the dust settles, step in through the door.

Michael

After a five pound block of TNT ... Door? Was there a door?

[Oddball_E8]

I think exiting through the windows falls under the "in extreme circumstances only" folder along with the picking up and using of enemy weapons and other things that did happen, but was so rare that it should not be modeled in the game.

(although I am a bit miffed that the 82nd do not use panzerfausts)

[YankeeDog]

I usually don't bring up Paintball/Airsoft in comparison to actual combat because I think the comparisons are mostly worthless, but back in my younger days I used to belong to a paintball team. We had the luxury of having access to a large, abandoned old rail yard with lots of warehouses & outbuildings to play and practice in. Looked like something right out of Stalingrad. Dangerous as hell, but great fun.

Anyway, most of the guys I played with were older Vietnam vets; myself and my friend were the 17-year old kids who thought we could outrun, out-jump, and just plain out-athletic the combat vets. Occasionally, this actually turned out to be true. And the vets were usually more than happy to let us try to run through a hail of paintballs while they sat back and laid down the covering fire.

Anyway, we'd also sometimes come up with creative ideas like trying infiltrate or exfiltrate a building via a window rather than a door, something the vets almost never did.

Trust me, it rarely ever goes well. More often than not, trip and fall flat on your face on the way through, make huge amounts of noise, and then you get shot and/or fragged as you're trying to get back up.

Lesson learned: You shoot and toss grenades through windows. Your ass goes in and out through the door.

[Buzz]

Lesson learned: You shoot and toss grenades through windows. Your ass goes in and out through the door.

Could be a tattoo of truth and survival

[Pete Wenman]

There will be others here that will have done this real, but I was lucky enough to do my FIBUA training in the days when the Red Army invading West Germany was the perceived threat. As such all FIBUA training revolved around fighting in German villages, and towns.

It was some of the hardest soldiering I ever did, physically tiring, stressful and hard on the body. The drills were simple and taught well, but it was apparent to all that in actual combat it would be meatgrinder.

Clearing basements in total darkness, bursting through doorways to find the room absolutely filled with barbed wire from floor to ceiling. Throwing grenades into windows only to have them bounce back because the window was covered by chicken wire. Lobbing grenades up stairs only to have them drop into the room next to you, where the squad was waiting to assault up the stairs, because the floor boards had been removed.

And yes getting stuck trying to climb in through a window. Something always catches and it all goes to rat****. The guys inside want more fire power, the guys in the street are taking fire (and simulated casualties) and Pte Numbnuts is stuck in the window. This was in houses, buildings and rooms that for the most part were empty of furniture or any kind of objects. I can’t imagine how much harder it would have been with houses full of the everyday stuff of life.

The problem with FIBUA is that if you clear every house it takes forever, and often the houses searched are empty. If you move too quickly in the streets you will eventually hit an ambush, and point units can be pretty much written off. Rinse and repeat and you soon run out of ammo and warm bodies.

You can’t throw a 5lb TNT charge into every room or building as you just don’t have enough.

If you have time and are attacking then you can prepare X frames and source ladders, smoke, lots of ammo and heavy weapons, but its then likely the defender will have fortified key buildings, established kill zones and chock points and mapped exit routes.

We did a combined arms exercise at Copehill Down with both armour and air support. The sense of chaos, lack of understanding as to where enemy fire was coming from, and noise was something else.

MILES casualties on both side were horrendous. Glad I didn’t have to do it for real.

What we did learn was that a house to be attacked had to be covered by units that could provide good and sustained covering fire.

Entry via the roof and clear the building from top to bottom was the preferred method.

Bullets will pass through floors and walls.

Crossing streets is dangerous.

Smoke is your friend

Use armour or direct fire against strongpoints/fortified buildings.

Direct assault is often not the right course of action.

[agusto]

IMHO the correct way to enter a building through a window is to break the glass and toss in a five pound block of TNT. Then, when the dust settles, step in through the door.

Michael

If there is anything left of the door. But i usually clear buildings exactley the way you described it: i hit them with large amounts of HE and then send the infantry in to count the corpses.

[db_zero]

I get about 16-24 hours and shoot off 700-1200 rounds of ammo every 6-8months in a shoot house and I don't really know squat about the subject other than I hope I never have to do it for real. I've already had a few incident with guns and that was more than enough without adding all the elements that come with the urban environment.

Kinda scarry to think that in WW2 many had absolutly no training in urban combat and it was all on the job training. Easy to see why if given the choice many just preferred to bypass or surround built up areas, but there were time when that wasn't possible.

[Wodin]

RPG's can be fired from buildings with possibility of causing friendly damage..now confirmed by Cpl Carrot.

[Dynaman216]

Very good news indeed.

[agusto]

RPG's can be fired from buildings with possibility of causing friendly damage..now confirmed by Cpl Carrot.

I even saw videos of Syrian opposition fighters firing SPG-9 recoilless rifles from rooms no bigger than my toilet. Sure, the blast looked like it proibably deafened the gunner, but he was able to walk away on his own feet at least.

[Vinnart]

Sounds good. It should give the infantry a bit more of chance against armor now. I think this is a step in the right direction. I missed this from Cmx1 along with still many things. If I had to choose of risking getting burned by a backblast, or getting blown up by a tank I would take the shot from indoors no matter what. The smart squad would hit the deck and cover face while the AT guy shoots minimizing effect. The key it sound like will be to separate the AT to be in a building on their own to fire.

[womble]

If I had to choose of risking getting burned by a backblast, or getting blown up by a tank I would take the shot from indoors no matter what. The smart squad would hit the deck and cover face while the AT guy shoots minimizing effect.

Hopefully the smart developer has made the chances of mishap somewhat dependent on troop experience and leadership and included a chance not to fire based somewhat on those factors and morale...

The key it sound like will be to separate the AT to be in a building on their own to fire.

Most of the time, splitting into teams for urban combat seems mandatory, for me, since many buildings will cram too many troops into too tight a space if the squad is intact.

[Michael Emrys]

There will be others here that will have done this real, but I was lucky enough to do my FIBUA training in the days when the Red Army invading West Germany was the perceived threat.

Thanks for posting. Your description sounds totally right on to my inexperienced ears. For me, attacking into a defended BUA would have been the last thing I would have wanted to do as a soldier...and it probably would have been! :eek: The funny thing is, having watched a number of movies as a kid that portrayed exactly that, it was something that I used to play at, to my great enjoyment. Obviously, in my fantasy play it was always the other guy who got shot/fragged.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Pete Wenman,

A most useful description of some clever defensive tricks! Another good one I saw was large truck tires placed in the stairwells and interlaced with barbed wire. Talk about mobility impediments! One entry technique I have seen is the use of hoisting men to fairly high windows atop a planks held aloft by two other soldiers per soldier lifted. Getting in is half the fun!

Regards,

John Kettler