Wild guess for CM Bulge - Piper Cub spotting

[rocketman]

Since we now hav UAV spotting in CMBS, maybe that feature can be fitted into Bulge as Piper Cub spotting airplanes. What do you think? Possible? Appropriate? Would it make the game more interesting/enjoyable?

 

Just read through Beevor's new book on Bulge and Piper Cubs were mentioned on more than one occation.

[General Jack Ripper]

That's an interesting idea, of course the presence of any anti-aircraft would make using a light aircraft for spotting a risky proposition.

[Bulletpoint]

I don't particularly like that idea, as I don't think spotting from these aircraft would feed directly into intel for low-level commanders on the ground. It would go to the higher-ups, whom we don't play in this game..

 

When we start a game and we already have some intel, I think of that as coming from sources such as light aircraft etc. but trickling down through the chain of command.

[Agua]

Given command delay, I think that's well outside the scope of CM battles - it's the kind of information that would be included in

briefing.

[ChrisND]

Definitely won't be in Bulge. They aren't really appropriate for a tactical setting. If CM were an operational level game where the player is commanding battalions, regiments, and divisions, they'd be a must-have.

[ridethe415]

You must be referring to this very historical portrayal of Pip Cub scouting.

I know, it gets even better at about 6 minutes.

[womble]

Aye, I think we've already got the closest we'll get to that in TRPs. Really abstracted, sure, but passing actual spotting information to the player is a bit of a stretch.

[rocketman]

Definitely won't be in Bulge. They aren't really appropriate for a tactical setting. If CM were an operational level game where the player is commanding battalions, regiments, and divisions, they'd be a must-have.

OK, fair enough. But just for the sake of argument - let's say a mission is on a 4*4 km map and lasts for 3 hours. Wouldn't that border on being more than a tactical engagement? Maybe Piper Cub spotting could just give visual icons, and not used for artillery spotting?

[Wicky]

OK, fair enough. But just for the sake of argument - let's say a mission is on a 4*4 km map and lasts for 3 hours. Wouldn't that border on being more than a tactical engagement? Maybe Piper Cub spotting could just give visual icons, and not used for artillery spotting?

 

Then the scenario creator can choose to toggle the prebattle intelligence of enemy deployments percentage visible for the allies.

Edited July 11, 2015 by Wicky

[ChrisND]

OK, fair enough. But just for the sake of argument - let's say a mission is on a 4*4 km map and lasts for 3 hours. Wouldn't that border on being more than a tactical engagement? Maybe Piper Cub spotting could just give visual icons, and not used for artillery spotting?

 

Perhaps, depending on the nature of the engagement itself, and the terrain. But we aren't interested in Combat Mission doing a feature creep into pseudo-operational battle territory, so the focus stays firmly on the tactical setting, regardless of the new map sizes and scenario lengths are. Those scenario parameters were increased because players wanted to the freedom to depict a wider variety of tactical battles, and although some people may take that expansion and try to make an operational battle out of it, it's definitely not what the game is designed to do.

 

As Wicky says above, you are better off just setting a pre-battle intel for the scenario and explaining in the briefing where the intel came from. WW2 communication nets are not going to often support NRT aerial surveillance anyways for a tactical line unit in combat, if ever.

[Thewood1]

For any old-timers out there...

 

When I saw the thread title, the first thing I thought of was the old SNL skit, "What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub".

[Wicky]

http://donmooreswartales.com/2014/05/25/john-johnson/

Johnson wasn’t impressed with the Air Force’s capabilities during the Battle of the Bulge.

“The Air Force stood down during the German advance at the Bulge. But we were out there flying every day at 500 to 600 feet,” he said, “weather be damned.”

What made the L-4 Piper Cub the perfect plane for artillery spotting was its versatility. They could not only fly low and slow with ease so an observer had time to take a good look at the enemy terrain below, but they could also land and take off in very little space.

“Given the wind conditions, I could land and take off in 19 inches,” Johnson said. “If the wind was blowing at 30 miles an hour, I almost had enough lift to take off just by pulling back on the stick.”

It was somewhere along about six months before the end of the war that an SS Mountain Division was playing havoc with segments of Patton’s 3rd Army. They were capturing American units, taking prisoners and disappearing.

“Finally, the Army got word to do something about the SS Mountain Division. The word came down to the 12th Corps, which came down to the 12th Corps Artillery, which came down to Brig. Gen. John Lentz (the artillery commander) who told me to go find the SS guys,” Johnson said. “I just happened to fly over a German town with a number of U.S. Army trucks, but I couldn’t see any American soldiers. Usually when we flew over, our guys would come out and wave at us.”

There was something wrong.

“I circled over the town and then I flew over a nearby wooded area where I started getting German machine-gun fire from the woods. I climbed up to 10,000 feet and tried to call my unit that was 20 miles away on my 5-mile radio.

“I couldn’t get them, but I could see the U.S. 71st Division going along a road off in the distance. I landed (near the 71st) and waited for a captain to come along in a Jeep. I told him about the SS unit in the woods and explained that the Germans were pulling out and heading southwest away from the Americans.

“The 71st Division sent a whole string of men and guns after the SS Mountain Division. They chased the Germans through the town, up over the hill and captured the whole outfit,” he said.

“When I flew back and told Gen. Lentz, he was ecstatic. He said he was going to put me in for a Silver Star, but I never received it. I found out later that the medal was only awarded for ‘exceptional bravery under fire,'” Johnson said.