Italian Grenades?

[pad152]

Were Italian Grenades really that bad?

I've had a couple of QB's where Italian Infantry were up against British Armored cars (Daimler Mk II & Dingo), they assault the armored cars with grenades and could not destroy one, in one battle two full squads fired 24 grenades on a single armored car yet failed to destroy it,  the after battle review showed the armored car had lost tries and radio but, the crew was fine.The only time I've seen one destroyed is if the crew bailed the armored car after becoming disabled. That's another strange thing, that 99% of the time the Brit crews of the disabled armored cars didn't bail?

 

 

 

 

[JoMac]

BF should realistically implement those same or similar Close Assault results against Armored Vehicles in all their WWII Titles 

Their are just to many instances where 1-2 Individuals ( not even a whole squad ) Close Assault an Armored Vehicle and immobilizing or KO'ing it out.

Joe 

[A Canadian Cat]

Nope. 

In real life tanks were very dangerous to infantry but even then they were not uber destroyers of all that opposed them. They did not just drive around where ever they liked. TCs were plenty causios about where they went preferring to take on enemy infantry from stand off ranges rather than driving around like they were impervious. So regardless of if the close assault feature is to powerful according to some  it has to stay that way or tanks would dominate the entire game even more than they do now.

I have not had much experience with Italian infantry close assaulting tanks so I cannot tell if it really is less effective than when other armies do it but making that feature harder for infantry would be a disaster for the game. IMHO

[pad152]

Well if this assault was against tanks I could understand but, armored cars? I agree, it should be very difficult to take out a anything beyond a light thank with a roof with just grenades.

[Michael Emrys]

6 hours ago, pad152 said:

I agree, it should be very difficult to take out a anything beyond a light thank with a roof with just grenades.

As has come up before, they aren't "just grenades". The grenades in the game are just graphic conventions. Most armies by this stage of the war had a variety of hand-held ordnance to use against armored vehicles with occasional success. Mind, they didn't always work as intended and were dangerous to deliver, which is why armies preferred some kind of standoff weapon. But they were around.

Michael

[MikeyD]

Italian grenades (the 'red devils') were reported to be pretty poor, if I remember my years-ago research correctly. They had a light metal body that pretty much evaporated instead of sending out shrapnel and, if I recall correctly, the explosive filler wasn't that much. US grenades, by contrast were somewhat too powerful, sending out big hunks o shrapnel much farther than a man can throw. I *believe* the game actually factors in the amount of explosive by weight for its calculations for these things.

[Noba]

22 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

Italian grenades (the 'red devils') were reported to be pretty poor, if I remember my years-ago research correctly. They had a light metal body that pretty much evaporated instead of sending out shrapnel and, if I recall correctly, the explosive filler wasn't that much.

In the Australian Official History of the Second World War, volume 1 - "To Benghazi" by Gavin Long; there are two references to the ineffectiveness of Italian explosive fillers, one concerning grenades and then Italian weapons in general.

 

"The Australians considered that nearly every sort of Italian weapon compared unfavourably to their own...    ... the red-painted, thin skinned grenade was far less lethal than the British equivalent."

There is a reference to a grenade exploding almost between a soldiers legs, wounding him only slightly.

Regarding field guns:

"...were of all sizes, shapes and vintages; shell fragmentation seemed poor and many men blown off their feet got up again."

"Major Macfarlane was blown over twice by shells bursting four or five yards away but was not injured."

If this level of detail is included in the game then perhaps yes, Italian grenades are reasonably well represented with peripheral damage possible but not penetrating enough to cause destruction.

 

Noba.

[pad152]

2 hours ago, Michael Emrys said:

As has come up before, they aren't "just grenades". The grenades in the game are just graphic conventions. Most armies by this stage of the war had a variety of hand-held ordnance to use against armored vehicles with occasional success. Mind, they didn't always work as intended and were dangerous to deliver, which is why armies preferred some kind of standoff weapon. But they were around.

Michael

I know CM2 games doesn't model specific grenade types, this is why I find it odd that Italian grenades seem so ineffective against light armor cars. I've see US, German and Russian infantry take out all types of armor vehicles including tanks using grenades.

Normally it seems, if a vehicle is disabled and continues to come under fire the crew will bail, this was not the case with the Brit armored cars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[womble]

On 3/25/2016 at 2:04 AM, Noba said:

If this level of detail is included in the game...

It is.

[pad152]

Maybe is this an issue with Brit Armored cars, I seen Italian infantry with grenades take out Stuart light takes but, still failing to take out disabled British armored cars?

 

 

[cool breeze]

They do model specific grenade types but only to a limited and abstracted level.  The different armies have different grenades with different strengths and weaknesses.  Some armies have special grenades simulated in addition to the regular ones, such as the Ruskies having some special "nerf football" shaped charge grenades.  But there is also the abstracted tank assault grenades, which represent grenade bundles and other random thrown antitank weapons.  These use the same ammo count as regular anti infantry grenades.  It is this way because the variety of official and improvised antitank weapons was too much to include explicitly (but certain important exceptions were included).  Now we don't expect the anti infantry explicitly simulated grenades to have the same anti tank power as the abstracted antitank grenades, but it does seem reasonable to expect the abstracted antitank grenades to be proportionately powerful to the average power of the antitank weapons it represents.  Meaning that just like a nation that has better AP grenades in real life has better AP grenades in game (such as Germany with its large amount of HE filler, and US grenades with their pineapple shaped fragmentation thinger), the nations with better average antitank grenades (improvised or other) should have more antitank-penetrative grenades.  Since the game already tracks HE/fragmentation (or is it HE AND fragmentation,  I think its AND)   and penetration separately (see sabot or AP shell vs HE shell), I assume each nations generic grenade (which represents the AP grenade explicitly and the AT grenades abstractly)  has separate numbers for each effect (HE, Frag, penetration).  So long story short I think BF purposefully made the Italian grenades poor performers in all three categories to represent both the ineffective AP results of the low frag low blast AP grenades, and the ineffectiveness of the official and improvised AT grenades.

On the other hand I don't remember ever being disappointed with the results of my Italian grenades being thrown at enemy personnel.  Despite being weak grenades, something about 20 guys throwing grenades works anyway   But maybe not against even thinnest armour, without luck, in game.

Edited April 6, 2016 by cool breeze