Eliminating infantry that are in buildings.

[Squallion]

Boy, I'll tell ya. I'm working on the british campaign, and the german youths are the best of the best. One or two of them will sit in a building with an MG and take my men out 1 by 1 while I waste rounds not killing them all day.

Two squads and a LMG have been firing for two minutes straight and haven't cleared the second floor of this building. I'll run out of ammo before I even take over the first objective.

What am I missing? If I have no heavy guns, I absolutely MUST assault?

[sburke]

possibly. Do you have any demo charges, is there a blind side approach to the building? Lots of possible answers come to mind with no other data in the situation.

[womble]

Firing upwards at windows in heavy buildings is one of the most disadvantageous situations. Two minutes' fire is nothing; you'll get their heads down, probably, but you won't clear anyone out of a heavy building in 2 minutes of continuous fusilade. It also matters a lot how far you are away from the building.

However, absent any other influences, you have 3 Brens and 2 assault teams. The Brens should be enough to keep the Jugends' heads down while the assault teams get close enough to leapfrog each other into the building. If you've got a Sten-armed team on overwatch inside 50m range, when the jerries pop up to try and nail the other assault team, they probably won't last long.

I think what you're missing is that you have to have a purpose for your fires (or you'll, as you say, run out of ammo before achieving anything), and "clearing a building" isn't a purpose you can realistically assign to LMGs. "Supporting the movement of other elements" is, though.

Sometimes, you can sweep the enemy out of his defensive positions through morale effects, but generally I find that you need a few things to be true.

First, the target element needs to have taken at least one casualty. Only the very shakiest of troops will back off before taking losses, no matter how much suppression you stack on them.

Second, they need to be appropriately suppressed for an appropriate amount of time. The weight and length of the required suppression (oppression? ) depends on the quality of the target.

Third, they need the chance to run. If they're so heavily suppressed that they're "perma-Pinned", you will have to kill them in place, which is difficult.

So, slightly lighter suppression, which lets the defenders pop their heads up occasionally, the better for you to shoot one of them off, with gaps in the application of the suppression so the target can un-Pin and creep away from the windows.

[Pelican Pal]

I'm with Womble on this.

With just small arms you will generally need to have your lmg section pin the defenders down while you have another section move to finish them off.

Whether the defender will vacate their position solely based on your firepower depends pretty heavily on you causing casualties which isn't the strong suit of small arms.

If at all possible I would use a Bren section with target light to suppress the occupants and then have an assault section close and grenade them.

If that isn't possible target light should keep their heads mostly down while not burning all your ammo. So you can maneuver around the enemy without worrying about them for now.

And finally. Explosives are your friends.

[cool breeze]

I think I know what mission your playing... is this the one where you clear 2 towns and exit half your force? Are you talking about one of the first buildings you attack in that mission?

Either way I found that with the bits it was especially important to get a lot of angles to the fire. They seem to rely on, um, unimpressive small arms firepower to get thier jobs done. I think the plan was to win with their rifle marksmanship. So to get the critical firepower output I needed from them to break positions in a timely enough fashion to not run out of ammo, I worked extra hard with them to get those big angles of fire. even highly motivated toops dont like bullets bouncing off the ceilling from all or half the directions at once. You just need them to flee. I used my bren carriers to suppress at long range while a moved my infantry up and around to shoot from all over. You might be on a harder level than Im thinking of tho and you been flying through these campaigns you might be better than me already.

[Squallion]

I think I know what mission your playing... is this the one where you clear 2 towns and exit half your force? Are you talking about one of the first buildings you attack in that mission?

Either way I found that with the bits it was especially important to get a lot of angles to the fire. They seem to rely on, um, unimpressive small arms firepower to get thier jobs done. I think the plan was to win with their rifle marksmanship. So to get the critical firepower output I needed from them to break positions in a timely enough fashion to not run out of ammo, I worked extra hard with them to get those big angles of fire. even highly motivated toops dont like bullets bouncing off the ceilling from all or half the directions at once. You just need them to flee. I used my bren carriers to suppress at long range while a moved my infantry up and around to shoot from all over. You might be on a harder level than Im thinking of tho and you been flying through these campaigns you might be better than me already.

That's the one! I've been trying to completely avoid using B company. Trying to be precise and keep C company alive.

[Squallion]

Completed the mission with a total victory. C company wittled down to almost nothing. B company almost untouched.