Mines?

[AR]

I have searched the forum and read the manual but I still do not understand how AP-mines are supposed to work in the game.

I played two QBs the other day and the same thing happened. I placed my AP-mines in the perfect spot but nothing happened. One battle made me very confused. I had put the mines in scattered trees and i had one SMG-platoon and a 75mm inf-gun covering the end of the minefield. I thought that if they manage to walk through the minefield I am going to send the AI right back in screaming for mercy.

I saw at least two platoons + some zooks and .50 cal walking towards and through the minefield and there was no way around it (except open ground and they did not go there). I opened fire as soon as they had cleared the field and my forces were really kicking ass. The AI's forces were running around like crazy, panicing or routed, in the field but nothing happened. Not one single mine exploded even though atleast 75 enemy soldiers were there and moving around. I must point out that I looked at the movies time and again to detect explosions but no, I could not see any blasts (I expect mineblasts to be much louder and bigger than handgranades, right).

So my question is. What's up with AP-mines?

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It gets better each time as long as it's never with the same woman.

Al Bundy

[Jarmo]

The mines work, but usually kill only few. They will pin the

first squad coming in.

As I see it, there's only about a dozen mines buried. Not enough

to kill all trying to cross.

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Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of

our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir?

[Oddball_E8]

The blasts are not that big actually... more like the blast from a ap-shot from a 75mm cannon.

[Minnesota Joe]

Minefields are far more effective at halting/slowing an enemy advance or protecting your flank or a narrow passage than for killing enemy troops.

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Ah scheist.

[Guest Germanboy]

Could this be a FOW issue? Sounds like it. If you only have scanty observation you may not see what is happening there.

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Andreas

[Kingfish]

What's your scale set at?

Re-play your movie at realistic scale to see if the units actually do cross over the field.

[AR]

Gentlemen,

There was no way around the mine field except moving in the open ground and I would have seen that for sure. I had this flank covered very well, I thought, with a hmg-team in a nearby building + some other units. But they walked right through it. It would actually have been even better for me if they had moved into the open.

I realise the pinning down effect of mines, but they need to explode to have that effect. Since my smg-platoon was approximately 75 meters from the mine field so I think they should have heard an explosion. I mean, you can often hear a zook even if your closest unit is a bottoned up tank 100 meters away.

I might have been really, really unlucky or perhaps something happened that I was not supposed to see because of FOW. I don't know.

Jarmo, do you know that a mine field is only about a dozen mines or...?

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It gets better each time as long as it's never with the same woman.

Al Bundy

[Jarmo]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AR:

[bJarmo, do you know that a mine field is only about a dozen mines or...?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope, I just assume it, since there's usually only 2 or 3 explosions

when a platoon moves through. And sometimes none.

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Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of

our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir?

[AR]

I always considered mine fields as an area where infantry would not be able to pass (which requires more than 10-15 mines). But I guess you are right about this one, Jarmo. However, when the first one goes boooom no other squad should walk into that area before it is cleared. Is it so in the game? In my case it should have forced them out in the open for an easy kill, but that didn´t happen so I had to kill them the hard way.

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It gets better each time as long as it's never with the same woman.

Al Bundy

[Stoffel]

these mines do work.

I did a little experiment and let 3 platoons(34man) walk trough 3 ap minefields in a row.

When they ran trough it(they did not slow down) there were about 6 explosions per field which killed 15/13 and 12 man per platoon.

The explosions were very hard to see just small bits of earth jumping up.

Hope you are satisfied?

[tss]

AR wrote:

I always considered mine fields as an area where infantry would not be able to pass (which requires more than 10-15 mines).

Digressing from CM representation, that is a quite dangerous assumption to make in the real life.

In particular, Soviets were experts in attacking through minefields that the defenders thought were impenetrable. They would send a team to clear a pathway a couple of days before the attack. Of course, all armies did that to some extent but Soviets were the best. I have read accounts where Soviet mine-clearers spent two or three days inside a minefield, working at night and lying motionlessly in cover during days.

One Soviet trick was to work with bare arms so that it would be easier to feel tripwires.

- Tommi

[coe]

Can you disable minefields with intense

artillery, and is there a chance that

AP minefields might immobilize a tank or

disable a small vehicle like a jeep?

[tss]

coe wrote:

Can you disable minefields with intense

artillery,

Clearing minefields (and barbed wire) with artillery requires either _a lot_ rounds and a competant FO or a great amount of dumb luck.

A 1936-vintage Finnish artillery field manual ("Tykistön taktillinen toiminta") quotes that with 75 mm guns it takes 250-350 rounds to clear a 10x30 meter area of obstacles. (The figure is for wire, but the text implies that it applies to minefields also).

With intensive fire, a 75 mm gun can fire 10 rounds in a minute (but only for a short time because the barrel will otherwise be ruined). The guns in CM fire with much slower rof. I've not checked but I think that they fire less than 5 salvos in a minute. So, to clear that small area would take at least 15 CM turns.

In practice, obstacle clearing was much slower since intensive fire couldn't be used and the results of each shot had to be observed. The artillery manual gives the figure that a 2-gun section can clear a breach in 3-4 hours, so a battery would need 1.5-2 hours, the effective rof being somewhere around one shell a minute per gun.

Also note, that according to an older Finnish manual (early 20's), it is not possible to clear obstacles that are placed in marsh with artillery.

- Tommi

[coe]

hmmm, the allies did try to clear pathways

with shells that burst slightly above ground

as to not crater but to provide enough

of a force to set some mines off? Perhaps

a heavily shelled area might have a reduction

in mines (an american 105 barage is scary

y'know)....

[tss]

coe write:

hmmm, the allies did try to clear pathways

with shells that burst slightly above ground

as to not crater but to provide enough

of a force to set some mines off?

Yes, minefields were cleared by artillery. But it took more time than would be available during a CM scenario. (If someone has a counter example to this, I would be interested in hearing it).

WWII era artillery was not a surgical weapon. If you had to destroy a small target (less than 100x100 m), you would have to either fire a long barrage with many guns and hope for a few lucky hits, or use only one or two guns with the FO issuing corrections after all rounds.

Airbursts certainly help in mine clearing but they are not without their own problems. Proximity fuzes would be pretty much ideal to mine clearing job but if they were not available, the airbursts would have to be created using mechanical time fuzes. It will take a number of spotting rounds before the fuzes are set up correctly (the flight time calculations have always some random errors and mine clearing relies for the blast effect, not shrapnells, so the errors matter more than when firing at soft targets).

Perhaps a heavily shelled area might have a reduction in mines

Perhaps, but that effect is pretty difficult to quantify.

(an american 105 barage is scary y'know)....

Yup. Of course I forgot to check my notes to see what the obstacle clearing figures were for heavier guns, but I seem to remember that 105 guns would need about 1/3 - 1/2 less ammo than 75 mm ones.

And while American 105 mm barrage was scary, so was a Finnish 105 mm artillery strike. The strike would last only one minute, but in that time 96 shells would land in a 100 m x 100 m target area, each gun of the batallion firing 8 times with first 12 shells landing within two or three seconds. (A 75 mm strike would have 120 shells in a minute, a 120 mm strike 60, and a 150 mm strike 48).

- Tommi