Artillery related questions

[Stimo]

1. Can an FO inside a moving vehicle efficiently call in a mission on a TRP?

2. What does the screenshot below mean? Tubes are too hot and fire will resume in 13 minutes, or something else ?

Thank you

[Bearstronaut]

1. On a TRP? Yes.

2. 13 minutes is the total time for the entire fire mission.

[Vanir Ausf B]

And yes, the red dots mean reduced rate of fire because of hot barrels.

[Erwin]

5 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

And yes, the red dots mean reduced rate of fire because of hot barrels.

It was probably firing HEAVY for a too lengthy period.  

[Ultradave]

1 hour ago, Stimo said:

1. Can an FO inside a moving vehicle efficiently call in a mission on a TRP?

2. What does the screenshot below mean? Tubes are too hot and fire will resume in 13 minutes, or something else ?

Thank you

1. In real life - absolutely. Just need the map with the references on it and a radio. You don't have to see anything. 

Dave

[Grey_Fox]

1 hour ago, Stimo said:

1. Can an FO inside a moving vehicle efficiently call in a mission on a TRP?

2. What does the screenshot below mean? Tubes are too hot and fire will resume in 13 minutes, or something else ?

Thank you

Fire missions will always be called in faster on a TRP. Depending on the specific unit and game, an FO calling in fire missions from say an artillery observation vehicle may have shorter call-in times due to the better communication links available.

The "FIRING 13 min" text means the length of time remaining on the fire mission - the current barrage will last another 13 minutes.

The red circles indicates that the barrels are hot, which will affect rate of fire. When all the dots are red, the battery will hold down its rate of fire to a "sustainable" level. If they're green, they'll use the maximum rate of fire.

If you check the manual it will tell you the maximum and sustained rates of fire for each artillery unit. In the case of the 2S1 (the unit in the screenshot), the maximum rate of fire is 5 rounds per minute, and the sustained rate of fire is 2 rounds per minute. And that's per tube.

Edited January 29 by Grey_Fox

[Stimo]

3. I understand blue "general" artillery rounds are dual purpose, while red ones are not. Will an armored vehicle (tank or ICV) drive safely across a red barrage?

[Centurian52]

6 hours ago, Stimo said:

3. I understand blue "general" artillery rounds are dual purpose, while red ones are not. Will an armored vehicle (tank or ICV) drive safely across a red barrage?

I don't recall the type of rounds or barrage being color coded. Do you have any interface mods?

If you're asking if armored vehicles will drive safely across 'personnel' barrages, the answer is yes, as far as I've seen. They probably shouldn't. All that shrapnel flying around wouldn't be able to penetrate them, but it should still do a lot of damage to subsystems.

In a personnel barrage the rounds are fused to airburst, spraying shrapnel over a wide area and normally inflicting much greater casualties on infantry. In a general barrage the rounds are fused to explode on impact with the ground (or the first thing they hit). 

A personnel setting will inflict higher casualties on infantry in the open, in woods, in foxholes, or in trenches. A general setting has a chance of scoring direct hits on tanks, will kick up far more dust than a personnel barrage (giving you some of the benefit that you would get from a smoke barrage), and is much more likely to inflict casualties on infantry in buildings.

[Anthony P.]

Preferably though, driving AFVs through an anti personnel bombardment (not that I'm too sure how you'd determine that it is indeed that) should be avoided. Not all shells will air burst, some seem to be impact fused. You'd also be in a tight spot if any of your AFVs are knocked out inside of the barrage as that would force the surviving crew to dismount in rather an unpleasant environment.

I also believe that the concensus is that fire missions should be set to impact fuses ("general") if the target is in a forested area. The trees cause many proximity fuses to detonate prematurely, whereas impact fuses are made to burst in the tree tops.

[Stimo]

I meant

47 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:

I don't recall the type of rounds or barrage being color coded. Do you have any interface mods?

I meant blue/US, red/USSR.

21 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Preferably though, driving AFVs through an anti personnel bombardment (not that I'm too sure how you'd determine that it is indeed that) should be avoided.

I am considering advancing through my own (Russian) barrage.

[Anthony P.]

Well, in that case I'd assume the area subjected to the barrage is occupied by the enemy, which would make it a questionable idea regardless. You might as well bypass the area then.

Again, not all shells airburst, so it's an unnecessary gamble.

[Centurian52]

3 hours ago, Stimo said:

I meant blue/US, red/USSR.

Ah. In that case no. It is not 100% safe for armored vehicles to drive through a general artillery barrage regardless of which side fires it. But, while there are no guarantees, they are pretty likely to make it through, especially if they are dispersed and keep moving, since it takes a direct hit or near-miss to knock them out.

Since an artillery barrage would have to be falling over a wide area to have a decent chance of catching moving vehicles, it wouldn't make any difference if the barrage is being fired by NATO or Soviet artillery. So the chance of an armored vehicle being destroyed in that case is pretty low whether it's a NATO artillery barrage or a Soviet artillery barrage. It will make a much greater difference if it's a point barrage fired against a stationary target. In that case the NATO artillery, being so much more accurate, is much more likely to destroy the target.

But either way, it's still probabilistic, not deterministic. There is still a chance that the Soviet artillery will hit, or that the NATO artillery will miss. Even WW2 artillery can get lucky. I was playing the Welcome to Sicily campaign for CMFI not so long ago. My first Sherman to land had to drive through a very light and scattered artillery barrage to get off the beach. The chances of it getting hit were very low. But, I just had monumentally bad luck that day. It got hit just as it was about to clear the last sand berm. It was a one in a million hit, but such things do happen from time to time. My second Sherman, which had to drive through the exact same artillery barrage, did not get hit.

Edited January 30 by Centurian52

[Centurian52]

3 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

Preferably though, driving AFVs through an anti personnel bombardment (not that I'm too sure how you'd determine that it is indeed that) should be avoided. Not all shells will air burst, some seem to be impact fused.

Depends on the era. Modern fuses are more reliable than WW2 fuses. So some WW2 shells set to airburst will explode on impact with the ground instead. Modern shells set to airburst will pretty much all airburst as intended.

3 hours ago, Anthony P. said:

I also believe that the concensus is that fire missions should be set to impact fuses ("general") if the target is in a forested area. The trees cause many proximity fuses to detonate prematurely, whereas impact fuses are made to burst in the tree tops.

Free Whisky tested this. The difference in infantry casualties between a 'general' and 'personnel' fuse is narrower in forests, but the personnel fuse is still more effective. The general fuse detonating in the treetops is effectively just converting some of impacts into airbursts.

[Anthony P.]

Seen others run the same experiment here on the forums and on YT, reaching the conclusion that proximity fused shells against forest targets are very prone to exploding too early to do much serious damage.

[Centurian52]

52 minutes ago, Anthony P. said:

Seen others run the same experiment here on the forums and on YT, reaching the conclusion that proximity fused shells against forest targets are very prone to exploding too early to do much serious damage.

Interesting. Maybe Free Whisky's small sample size meant that the personnel fuse just randomly performed better for him in his tests. Or it could be another era-dependent effect. He only tested the personnel fuse in the modern titles for his video (probably to ensure that all the shells he tested would actually airburst). The greater variability in when WW2 personnel fuses burst could mean that more of them are exploding too early.

Edit: A lot of stuff in CMCW falls somewhere in between WW2 and modern. I've noticed that US artillery is very modern in terms of accuracy and call-in times. But I haven't fired many (possibly any?) personnel barrages in CMCW (there are usually vehicles around that I want a chance of hitting). So I'm not sure if the personnel fuses behave more like modern fuses or more like WW2 fuses. Modern personnel fuses will all explode pretty consistently at the same height, while WW2 fuses will explode at varying heights, some on impact with the ground.

Edited January 30 by Centurian52

[Halmbarte]

I preferentially use VT fuze unless I'm targeting a vehicle or building. Given I've had friendly fire hits from VT at 200m I'm suspecting that VT gives a much wider area of coverage than impact fuze. 

I have had near misses from arty punch thru M113 & BTR armor. I don't remember seeing fragments ever make it into a tank, although I have had plenty of tanks immobilized by arty near misses or direct hits. 

H

[Ultradave]

VT fuses of the CW worked great, but we didn't have a large amount of them. I don't know if we had a WW3 in Europe if we would have been provided a lot more or not). You can't fire them over water because they'd get a very strong return off the water and explode too early. And by firing over water, you're probably ok if the body of water is at the apex of the trajectory. If it's closer to the target you may get premature firing. A small stream isn't going to do it. A wide river, small lake definitely would. The same can be true over forested areas if the tree cover is very dense. Strong return off the forest canopy means the fuse can fire too soon - above the canopy. A snow covered canopy would be even more likely to prematurely trigger the fuse. Firing at personnel in heavy woods we would have used Time fuses so that the fuse explodes at a preset time of flight. That flight trajectory is adjusted when computing data so that the shell explodes in the air about 7m above the target rather than impacting the target (basically lifting the trajectory so the point of impact would be behind the target). With time (Mechanical Time) fuses, there's no "radar" component, just a clock, so no chance of that VT premature triggering. You can also use "Quick" fuse (point detonating/impact) and get good results because some of them are going to go off when hitting a tree, creating an airburst in the middle of the woods. (think of the Bastogne perimeter episode of Band of Brothers where they are in their foxholes and trees are "exploding" around them.)

So that tracks pretty well with the in game results above with VT fuses into woods. The game doesn't model mechanical time fuses at all. It's either HE Quick or VT, or later, some time of precision munitions. 

Pretty good but very short article on US designed fuses. The mechanical time fuses I saw were the MTSQ-564 - first pic, left hand fuse. Rotate the top to select the time. They'll still go off on impact if for some reason the time doesn't work - either failure or hitting something before time expires. 

http://www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usa6/fuzes/index.html

Dave

Edited January 31 by Ultradave

[Centurian52]

2 hours ago, Ultradave said:

I don't know if we had a WW3 in Europe if we would have been provided a lot more or not

I'd say you'd have about 18 months* of severe shortages and making do with whatever you can scrape up. And then more VT fuses (or whatever else you need) than you could ever dream of.

*This based entirely on how long it took the US to spin up full-scale wartime production in WW2. It's a good thing we got that process started in 1940, before we actually entered the war. Factory automation was already having a noticeable impact by the 1970s, so perhaps the production spin up time could have been shortened a bit for a WW3 in 1979. Probably not to anything less than 12 months though. Even if you don't have to spend as much time training workers, because most stuff is automated, you still need to build the factories and make the machine tools. And actually, I generally assume that if a major war involving the US were to break out today it would take a full 2 years before we started seeing WW2 levels of war material being churned out. Because I assume that we'll spend the first 6 months holding out hope that it will be a short war.

[Halmbarte]

10 hours ago, Ultradave said:

VT fuses of the CW worked great, but we didn't have a large amount of them. I don't know if we had a WW3 in Europe if we would have been provided a lot more or not). You can't fire them over water because they'd get a very strong return off the water and explode too early. And by firing over water, you're probably ok if the body of water is at the apex of the trajectory. If it's closer to the target you may get premature firing. A small stream isn't going to do it. A wide river, small lake definitely would. The same can be true over forested areas if the tree cover is very dense. Strong return off the forest canopy means the fuse can fire too soon - above the canopy. A snow covered canopy would be even more likely to prematurely trigger the fuse. Firing at personnel in heavy woods we would have used Time fuses so that the fuse explodes at a preset time of flight. That flight trajectory is adjusted when computing data so that the shell explodes in the air about 7m above the target rather than impacting the target (basically lifting the trajectory so the point of impact would be behind the target). With time (Mechanical Time) fuses, there's no "radar" component, just a clock, so no chance of that VT premature triggering. You can also use "Quick" fuse (point detonating/impact) and get good results because some of them are going to go off when hitting a tree, creating an airburst in the middle of the woods. (think of the Bastogne perimeter episode of Band of Brothers where they are in their foxholes and trees are "exploding" around them.)

So that tracks pretty well with the in game results above with VT fuses into woods. The game doesn't model mechanical time fuses at all. It's either HE Quick or VT, or later, some time of precision munitions. 

Pretty good but very short article on US designed fuses. The mechanical time fuses I saw were the MTSQ-564 - first pic, left hand fuse. Rotate the top to select the time. They'll still go off on impact if for some reason the time doesn't work - either failure or hitting something before time expires. 

http://www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usa6/fuzes/index.html

Dave

Barring access to VT I'd take ICM. ICM works for a lot of the same applications I'd pick VT for, plus I might get lucky and actually hit an IFV with one. 

H

[Ultradave]

Oh, I would too, but at the time it was more rare than VT fuses! Maybe there were huge stockpiles of it somewhere but we got very little for training. 

Dave

[Halmbarte]

12 hours ago, Ultradave said:

Oh, I would too, but at the time it was more rare than VT fuses! Maybe there were huge stockpiles of it somewhere but we got very little for training. 

Dave

Not shocking considering the tendency for ICM munitions to turn into minefields due to UXO problems...

H

[Ultradave]

5 minutes ago, Halmbarte said:

Not shocking considering the tendency for ICM munitions to turn into minefields due to UXO problems...

H

No one goes into the artillery impact areas. They are not normal training areas.

Dave