Smoke Dischargers

[Col Deadmarsh]

I'm curious as to how many smoke rounds are available per tank in CM Normandy and if it differs per tank.

 

[Xorg_Xalargsky]

It differs per vehicle. Especially in the modern-era titles, there is a great variety in terms of smoke dischargers. 

[A Canadian Cat]

Some like the panther don't even have any

[MikeyD]

If you're talking about 'reloads' external smoke dischargers don't get them. Sherman and Brit tanks use a roof-mounted smoke mortar that is reloadable from the interior. I just ran a test on M4A3 75mm in CMFB and it was able to pop smoke 6 times, three rounds each.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

The roof mortar was a Sherman (or German) thing and not all Shermans had them.....The usual British smoke launcher for a large part of the war was essentially a tin can and the workings of a .303 rifle.....Here's a pair on a Firefly (the turrets were probably allocated for conversion prior to the introduction of the mortar on the US assembly lines):

The gubbins:

I believe this is the ammo:

Here's the Sherman's turret mortar:

Edited December 26, 2018 by Sgt.Squarehead

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎12‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 6:26 PM, MikeyD said:

If you're talking about 'reloads' external smoke dischargers don't get them. Sherman and Brit tanks use a roof-mounted smoke mortar that is reloadable from the interior. I just ran a test on M4A3 75mm in CMFB and it was able to pop smoke 6 times, three rounds each.

Time-coded above is an example of using the turret-mounted smoke mortars to lay down a linear smoke screen to cover the advance of infantry.

It's a bit of an "Out of the Box" type of thing.

[bruno2016]

is there any turret mounted smoke mortar (eg the Shermans mod. 75) which can fire up to 150 yards in CM2? I cld only see the "pop up smoke" command which is basically a smoke discharger for very short distances. Of course there are smoke shells but it takes much more time to lay and get to full effect.

In other games (eg ASL), tank smoke mortars are present for the relevant vehicles and u can use them during your movement for instance to bring some cover when facing tough opposition, and if u have enough capacity u can "hop" like this from smoke screen to smoke screen. Similar tactics can be of good effect to protect moving infantry by laying some smoke ahead of it from your tank.

Edited April 15 by bruno2016

[A Canadian Cat]

On 4/15/2024 at 9:19 AM, bruno2016 said:

is there any turret mounted smoke mortar (eg the Shermans mod. 75) which can fire up to 150 yards in CM2? I cld only see the "pop up smoke" command which is basically a smoke discharger for very short distances.

Yes, you found the command. The way it is modeled is the smoke discharge goes off at a set distance. That distance can vary per vehicle but I am not sure it does much (one example is BMPs throw their smoke lots further than 20m). Do you have sources that show the smoke mortar discharge distances and if / how they were controlled for a Sherman?

[Brille]

Soviet/russian vehicles are more likely to throw their smokegrenades much further to give room for maneuvre.

However it takes longer to build up, while western smoke dischargers are quicker in that regard.

 

In any case I believe those are fixed charges in most of the cases that are set at a certain angle with a certain distance in mind.

And while it probably was used to give infantry a helping hand, it is first and foremost a defensive capability of the tank/vehicle to escape unfavored situations.

For the game I prefer those vehicles with internal smoke mortars over the external smoke dischargers.

You have plenty of smokebombs and you actually can use them for offensive purposes as well.

When you know that there is no serious AT threat in the area or you have a Tank that cannot be harmed by it, you can set up some short waypoints and set on each one a "Pop smoke" order. With this you could rush a tank infront of the infantry and lay a wall of smoke to conceal their movement.

Here is an example of it from one of my games: