attacking defensive positions

[emccabe]

Anyone have a more effective way of attacking a defensive line covering open ground my plan is usually call artillery and drop smoke and move up and use armor to cover my advance but what usually happens is there is a bunker or mines in great positions like corners if the map and it makes it inpossible to flank it plus so my troops are funneled down small passages i play soviets the men break so fast so they run away and get pinned really fast then they get tired from panicking and running back and attacking the line again then my special units like flamethrowers dont have anyone supressing. and they usually get massacured and they cant take the objtive and its very frustrating

so how should i attack bunkers without armor or when they are in a thick forest where armor cant hit them

[Oddball_E8]

You should pretty much always forget about flanking when it comes to a scenario that simulates a prepared defensive line since they usually prevent that with mines and the likes to represent that the defensive line carries on for alot farther than the scenario shows, thus making an actual flanking maneuver impossible.

What I usually do is to pick a point in the line and try to penetrate that with armour and my best troops while laying down as much supressive fire as possible on the rest of the line (and usually my tanks have to stay behind due to prepared anti-tank defenses like mines and tank ditches and the likes)

[JasonC]

Movement does not take ground. Fire takes ground. Never just rush onto live, intact enemies - badness will ensue.

The only time you want to physically move your infantry right onto an enemy position is when (1) the enemy is already clearly cowering, and even then preferable (2) come in from a flank, a direction they are not facing, through cover (e.g. woods interior fighting).

Bunkers have limited fields of fire and one way to deal with them is just to stay out of that field of fire completely. Then they are useless to the enemy and defeated by their own immobility. If you need to cross their line of sight, ask how long you need that path to be open. It may be that just masking the bunker with smoke while bypassing it, suffices completely. In short do not assume that you have to kill an enemy bunker just because it is there. If you win the war elsewhere you can come up behind it much later if you have to. A bunker that you have to attack from the front has already won its first challenge (to be relevant at all when immobile); don't make that victory free.

If you have to attack a bunker from the front, consider it like a tank that can only be hurt by the right weapon. You wouldn't charge a Panther with infantry in the open; don't mass infantry in the firing arc of a bunker, when you can't hurt it. You want AT type direct fire weapons - your own tanks, towed guns, and ATRs. A pair of ATRs firing at the embrasures do a reasonable job of pinning an MG pillbox; one tank can take it out in a minute or two. Right tool for the job; don't give the enemy his dream target for free. Don't fire indirect artillery at it; that is the one thing it is best at defeating. Fire the indirect artillery at any enemy infantry or machineguns covering its flanks and such, instead.

You are not going to take out that bunker with infantry as the first thing, but as about the last, if you don't have any of the above means at your disposal. That means you need to defeat all its surrounding friends and supports first. Once they are all dead or cowering, the formula to kill the bunker is to smoke it heavily for a short period while infantry gets past its firing arc into the blind spots to its sides and rear. From there they can kill it by close assault readily; it won't hurt them. At most its crew may bail out and lose a short range firefight - which just means don't send only 1 squad, but several, when you make that smoke rush.

But do not make that smoke rush while the bunker still has friends and supporters right around it. They will simply kill your men as they arrive. Again it is not movement that takes ground, it is fire. You first must establish so much firepower dominance on the area around the pillbox that all its friends and supports outside, are dead or run away or are very deeply suppressed and cowering. Not a few of them, *all* of them.

How do you get that firepower dominance? Same way you get it in all other contexts - you bring up all your weapons so they "bear" on the defenders, from positions of cover that let them apply their fire effectively. Sometimes that cover is what they are immediately in - the next wood line or buildings "opposite" the bunker position. Sometimes that cover is instead an LOS blockage, creating a *shadow* to the enemy shooters in which your men can shelter. This is a very important tactic against all immobile weapons, like bunkers and guns, and still useful against the relatively immobile teams like HMGs and mortars (which take time to pack up and deploy again if they adjust their position, even slightly).

You want your shooters able to see the bunker's friends, but the bunker not to be able to see them. How is that possible? Answer, you have to "peek around things". If I have a building I don't need to go into the building and look at the front windows and take fire from the bunker. I can instead stay outside, off to the left, and slightly behind the building, and then creep closer until I can just see the ground to the left of the bunker, but not the bunker itself. It will then see a building between me and him. But I will see everything to his left and can strip that side of his friends and supports.

But what about the right? Others on my team pick other spots behind other LOS blockages that "sweep" up to the edge of the bunker from that side. I want cones of observation and fire that cover absolutely everything *except* the bunker itself. Then the bunker can shoot at air, but I can shoot at anything supporting it, outside.

What can serve as such LOS blockages? I used a building example because it is the easiest to see the "shadow" effect with that case. But I can use the rise and fall of the ground for it. I can use how far back I stay inside some woods for it. As well as buildings. The fundamental principle here is called "differential LOS", meaning when I can see your relevant spots but some of yours can't see mine. Then use odds and other weapons to outshoot the supports. Don't rush. Don't panic. Don't think, "I am taking fire now, I must get this over with as soon as possible". You can instead just slink back out of LOS to break contact, recover safely, and take your time. You have all day. That bunker isn't going anywhere. You can send a 2 man scout team to check the spot precisely, using "hunt" to stop as soon as it can see the first enemy - and then move up your light mortar or heavy machinegun *if* the LOS set up is perfect.

Odds, right weapons, many on few, differential LOS - all just let you apply your force against the supports around the bunker - by fire - while not giving a damn that the bunker itself is still alive.

You need to adjust the way you think of the "movement" part of fire and movement as supporting methods, to the above framework. Movement helps by letting you pick your match ups, of who can see whom. Not by owning this bit of cover or being on top of the enemy, but dynamically - where is that specific enemy unit right the hell now, and where can I stand so that I can see and shoot him and none of his friends can see me back? We say, good movement *disarticulates* the enemy force. It makes each enemy unit fight you on its own. Once you suppress a given enemy, you can then "discount" it (ignore it as out of action) as you decide what places are safe spots to fire from to hit the next one.

Grind through the supports by fire. When they are all picked off, you should have fire dominance wrapped right up to the walls of the bunker. Leave that "overwatch" firing force ready to kill any enemies that have stayed hidden through all of this. *Then* put down your smoke, and run your assault team up to the sides of the bunker. Do not send more than you have to - leave most of your force on overwatch. That way if there still are hidden or new supports and they light up your assault team, you shoot back at them from safety and with power. The protection of the assault team comes as much from that overwatch as it does from the smoke.

That is how you kill pillboxes. It is slower with infantry than with a tank that can just park in front of it and fire until it is dead, obviously. But you don't need to rush into the open and let him shoot you, and you don't need to try to suppress the bunker by just firing at it with rifles - that won't work.

I hope that helps.

[Erwin]

Very helpful advice.

One thing tho'... the above assumes a significant amount of time available in the scenario so that one can do the above in the "relaxed" manner described.

That's a design issue. Personally, I think most designers don't penalize sufficiently for friendly casualties. The average scenarios tend to be won so long as you still have one man alive on a VL even tho' everyone else has been massacred.

I hope we get more scenarios that 1) penalize friendly casualties to a realistic level and 2) allow time for the sort of measured attack approach Jason describes.

[ColSaid]

Anyone have a more effective way of attacking a defensive line covering open ground my plan is usually call artillery and drop smoke and move up and use armor to cover my advance but what usually happens is there is a bunker or mines in great positions like corners if the map and it makes it inpossible to flank it plus so my troops are funneled down small passages i play soviets the men break so fast so they run away and get pinned really fast then they get tired from panicking and running back and attacking the line again then my special units like flamethrowers dont have anyone supressing. and they usually get massacured and they cant take the objtive and its very frustrating

so how should i attack bunkers without armor or when they are in a thick forest where armor cant hit them

Hi jerom 2142 !

What scenario are you playing, and is it in, "Quick Battle" or "Battle" ? Also what "Skill Levels" ( page 29, Game Engine Manual 3v) Basic Training, Veteran, Warrior, Elite, Iron. With that information I'll take a look see.

I'm not claiming I have the expert T's, mine you, just like to try myself . The AI works real good.

ColSaid Join Date Aug 2014

[emccabe]

I will find the name of the battle when i get home from work and its the one where the russians are attacking a german line but the germans have pretty good positions and my problem is that once i picked an objective i commit everything in have to it and get focused on it and must destroy or capture it before i can move on to something new then i cant micro other units on the rest of the battle And as i have said before i only micro a company but the russians usually have large numbers of men i cant manage it well and most of my units sit around and do nothing

instead of describing it i will record the battle again and post it here

[emccabe]

also my reason for calling 81mm mortars was it was just a wooden bunker and i was considering buying a russian field manual would that so i can get visual examples

[Michael Emrys]

my problem is that once i picked an objective i commit everything in have to it and get focused on it and must destroy or capture it before i can move on to something new then i cant micro other units on the rest of the battle And as i have said before i only micro a company but the russians usually have large numbers of men i cant manage it well and most of my units sit around and do nothing

Sounds like you play Real Time. Is that so? If it is, maybe you should switch to WEGO for a while so that you have time to give orders to your whole force and coordinate their actions. It also lets you replay over and over again during the Action Phase, so that you can view different parts of the fight from different angles and observe all that is going on. That can be extremely instructive as you notice things that you would not see in RT.

Michael

[AlexUK]

Great tips JasonC. I am starting to understand the importance of long suppression now. One of the disadvantages of the Russians is how quickly they burn through ammo.

[BLSTK]

Jerome, as urgent as the need may seem to "liquidate" that pillbox, you must never proceed without first consulting Jason. I have yet to read one of his posts where I didn't learn something.

Happy hunting!

[PanzerMike]

Jerome, sounds like you are playing Bunkers Burning?

[Trooper117]

Some good advice here