Question about 60mm mortars

[Spectre 130]

As a Newbie both to CM and the board I ask for your indulgence with a question.

I have been rabidly playing my newly purchased CMBO trying to improve my gaming skills. While playing scenarios with American Airborne units I have been having problems with the 60mm mortars that are included in the scenario. Namely, I haven't been able to use them at all. I ensure that they are in command of an HQ unit but every time I use the target command with one it says "out of range". I can't ever get it to target and fire at anything. The minute I hit the target option I get the out of range message even if the range is 0 meters. Can anyone please tell what I'm doing wrong and how I can employ these assets? There have been plenty of times when some indirect fire support would have saved my bacon and I can't figure out how to get it.

Thanks in advance for any help you all can provide.

Spectre 130

[stoat]

60's have a minimum range and a maximum range. You'll get an out-of-range message and be unable to fire if you are targetting too long or too short. The exact ranges can be found in the unit info table. Highlight a mortar and hit enter to view these stats.

When using an HQ spotter, the HQ itself must have LOS to the target area, even though the mortars do not. Search the CMx1 forums for "mortar spotting HQ" and you should find some informative threads.

I hope this helps.

[Spectre 130]

Thanks for the help stoat, I will play around with it some more and see what happens. I was aware of the requirement for the HQ spotter to have an LOS to the target but I was unaware of the minimum range requirement. It didn't occur to me that this would be an issue, I guess I figured the message would say "danger close" if the target was too close. In my Airborne Infantry days our 60's were able to be fired from the hip if need be. It was a great impromptu AT weapon.

Thanks for the help,

Spectre 130

[Other Means]

Also, ensure the HQ isn't hiding.

[Wicky]

Originally posted by Other Means:

Also, ensure the HQ isn't hiding.

HQs can spot while hidden in CMBO - As you haven't got the covered arc it's the main way to ensure the HQ remains undetected

[crumber]

How did you get the thing to fire - get someone to shove the bomb down the tube with a stick?

[stoat]

Originally posted by crumber:

How did you get the thing to fire - get someone to shove the bomb down the tube with a stick?

Could you describe the circumstances surrounding your apparent trouble with the mortars?

[crumber]

As I understand it, a mortar is a cheap, light means of delivering a relatively large amount of explosive with good accuracy - it achieves the accuracy with a high trajectory ballistic arc, the lightness results from not having a high muzzle velocity (hence no need for a heavy barrel), nor a breech (it is a muzzle loader).

If the mortar is required to be used at the horizontal, or near horizontal, the projectile is unlikely to achieve sufficient momentum in its travel down the barrel to enable the percussion cap at the projectile's base to fire and ignite the propellant (thus, get someone to shove it down with a stick).

I can understand that modifications might be made to make a mortar into an AT weapon, but it would seem likely that this would at least involve a complete re-engineering of an already effective weapon, to make it multi-purpose.

[Spectre 130]

The 60's I had experience with were when I served in the 1st Ranger Battalion in the late 80's and early 90's. I was not a mortar man but a forward observer so I did spend quite a bit of time with the company Weapons Platoon where our mortars were assigned. The mortar round comes out of a crate with a number of round donut shaped powder bags on its base. This is the propellent. The base also has a primer that ignites the propellent bags when the round is dropped down the tube and the primer strikes a firing pin. When the round first comes out of the crate it has the max amount of propellent bags on it, if left like this the round would achieve it's maximum distance when fired. Individual bags are removed from the round to adjust the distance the round travels.

The firing pin in the bottom of the tube is generally locked in the extended position to ignite the primer when the round is dropped in the tube. However the pin also has a trigger mechanism that allows you to "fire" the weapon in the manner of a direct fire weapon as well as the traditional indirect mode. When firing in direct mode the firing pin in the bottom of the tube is locked back by the trigger mechanism. The round is slid to the bottom of the tube, and yes I do recall that our guys had a stick or rod of some sort to do this. To fire the mortar in the direct mode you just simply pull the trigger. Aiming is questionable at best and I only saw this done in a training exercise never in a real situation. With the anti-tank weapons already organic to an infantry company this is most likely a last resort type scenario. I can't say whether the mortars that I had experience with were unique in their ability to be hip or shoulder fired but I do know that I have seen this done.

[Spectre 130]

Crumber,

Here is a site with some great pictures and drawings as well as information about employing 60's in a direct fire manner.

http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/mortar/M224.html

Spectre 130

[crumber]

Thanks for the link spectre.

My ignorance is as the mountain, worn away over time by words of wisdom such as yours. Still, in the interests of maintaining an attitude of heakthy skepticism -

I reckon you'd have to be a marine or Steve Irwin to even consider the prospect of prodding the business end of live ordinance whilst its in the barrel. And the recoil on a 3lb round must just about dislocate a hip. Is the fuzing on these rounds only effective after the propellant fires (you know when they whack the mortar rounds on the steel plate in Saving Private Ryan - prior to pitching them at the baddies)?

cheers

crumber

[Spectre 130]

The rounds I remember became "live" after making a set number of revolutions. When it leaves the tube it is spinning which serves to arm the impact fuze. Before the fuze is live the round can actually withstand moderate impact without detonating. I remember the scene you are speaking of in Saving Private Ryan and I think those rounds were probably fuzed differently.

As for the recoil, I imagine it would be a factor, but I fired 40mm rounds from an M203 grenade launcher that had very little recoil. The time I actually saw a 60 fired in this manner was on a live fire training range and I was a good distance away from the individual so I wasn't able to observe the recoil.

Spectre 130

[Guest Mike]

the old 40mm is probably nothing like the 60mm - the 40mm has a very small propellant change that only takes up a small part of the casing. When this detonates if first pressurises the remaining empty space in the casing, then pushes the round out - so it has quite a low effective pressure and hence low recoil.

IIRC it's termed "hi/lo pressure propelleant", or something like that - last time I fired one was 25 years ago.

no such subtlety with the mortar........

[YankeeDog]

This is all off of the top of my head, but IIRC, the modern US 60mm mortar M224 has the capability to be fired DF "from the hip", and has special grips, as well as a firing lever that allows a round to be inserted into the tube and then fired later.

Not sure how often they do this, and I suspect it's only intended to be fired DF on charge 1. . .

But anyway, I'm pretty sure the WWII-era M2 did not have this capability.

AFAICT, the tube assembly of the M2 simply ended in a metal ball, intended to be inserted into the baseplate, and the tube also lacked any kind of handle or stock for DF.

I have actually read accounts of US SF in the PTO modifying the M2 for DF, by adding a simple post sight, and an improvsed stock that was designed to be butressed against a handy tree trunk. Not sure how they loaded and fired. . . but apparently, this worked pretty well for close-range jungle stuff.

Cheers,

YD

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Wicky:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Other Means:

Also, ensure the HQ isn't hiding.

HQs can spot while hidden in CMBO - As you haven't got the covered arc it's the main way to ensure the HQ remains undetected </font>