MOUT

[von Lucke]

Pardon if this has been discussed before, but I don't seem to remember it:

Just been reading "Black Hawk Down", and it struck me that the Rangers involved in this tragedy blatantly ignored the first rule of city fighting: Stay off the streets! Advance from building to building by knocking holes in the walls, climbing through windows, etc.

This made me wonder if you could do this in CM? I've seen several POTD's that show up to four 2-story buildings all clumped together. Do you have to go out into the streets and re-enter the building next door from the outside?

[Bamse]

Gimme the link please.

I've lost it.

Björn Elfström

[medlinke]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by von Lucke:

This made me wonder if you could do this in CM? I've seen several POTD's that show up to four 2-story buildings all clumped together. Do you have to go out into the streets and re-enter the building next door from the outside?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

How would you enter a building otherwise? Through the sewer system? Seriously, don't you always have to dash across a street to run into a building? I mean in CM you can get into a building from any where on a wall. How much more could ya want?

Keith

[Los]

There are a few ways to stay off the street but only IF you have the means to do them, such as mouseholing, (Blasting holes in between building walls w/ C4 and moving through that way). I do not believe you can do mouseholing in CM. (At least I haven't seen it) and in the case of a block of houses you can't move from one to the other without exiting one and going through the other.

It's one thing to stay off the streets in a real MOUT fight when you are fighting in a totally trashed city with walls knocked down and whatnot. But in a relatively undamaged city (ala M),unless you are carrying around rucksacks of C4 (Having it prerigged really helps) it's not so easy one may think.

Los

(just got back from almost three weeks of MOUT 16 hrs a day)

[Guest KwazyDog]

I wondered where you had been LOS

[James Bailey]

von Lucke,

Don't believe everything you read in Black Hawk... it may read well, but a lot of the book is hype. I was there with the 10.ID and, altough we were outside of Moga-city, we would run operations into it. It really was not a city in the sense that we think of cities and, as such, MOUT really didn't apply there.

Also, those Rangers were travelling light (like we all did there) without much more than rifles and SAW's. Speed really was their only advantage - and I think they leveraged that pretty well.

I was in the Bn TOC the night the ambush took place... radio was cracking that night for sure. We woke the Bn, put everybody on the line, and got sniped at the rest of the night. We were about 30 klicks outside of Moga and that's a long drive in Humvee's at night through indian country.

[Username]

What Los describes was a tactic the US Army used in WWII. They would use axes, picks, sledges and dynamite to breach walls. They would sometimes hack a hole just big enough to throw a grenade in, then proceed to make a large enough hole to get entry.

If it was known there were enemy in the next room, or beyond the next wall, then an explosive charge could kill two birds with one stone. Make a hole and clear the next room.

"Streetfighting" is actually a misnomer. Its a battle for control of buildings and blocks of buildings. Buildings on corners that allow you to dominate the streets are usually reinforced.

The american arty would fire delayed action fuses so that after penetrating the roof/walls, they would explode inside rooms/cellers so as to clear out the enemy and blast holes in the interior walls again.

LOS is correct that it was a slow process but the alternative of moving about in the streets where the enemy would have weapons sighted and being in close range was suicidal.

Lewis

[Los]

"LOS is correct that it was a slow process but the alternative of moving about in the streets where the enemy would have weapons sighted and being in close range was suicidal."

That's why god made smoke and suppressive fire. Unfortunately battles are very rarely fought without constraints of some sort such as time, equipment available, or the right troops for the job. All these get in eth way of the deliberate book method of applying every principle of city fighting. Fact is, only rarely are full blown city fights fought where everyone has got the time or resources to move in a manner that is absolutely the safest "book" way (remember there's always a "book" counter too) and certainly vehicles don't have the luxury of staying indoors. There is no way around heavy casualties in city combat even if there are things one can do to increase survivability. Sooner or later you have to cross that last hundred yards. And sooner or later somebody has gotta go through the door. And the defenders don't have it any easier than the attackers...

But anyway WRT out beloved game, I imagine that many of these issues will be looked at much closer once CM is out the door and CM2 starts getting scrutinized.

Cheers...

Los

[Guest Ol' Blood & Guts]

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

(Blasting holes in between building walls w/ C4 and moving through that way)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Isn't that Composition B? (From SPR? ie Sticky bombs)

And forgive me for asking, but what is MOUT? Haven't heard of that one before.

------------------

"Why don't we say that we took this one chance, and fought!"

"Stupid humans. Hahahahahahaha!"

--from the film Battlefield Earth

[This message has been edited by Ol' Blood & Guts (edited 05-04-2000).]

[Username]

Military Operations in Urban Terrain. Or something like that?

C4 is plastic explosive. I dont think they had it in WW2.

[Guest Ol' Blood & Guts]

Thanks Lewis. That makes sense.

Yeah, C4 is plastic explosive. I believe the WWII equivalent was Composition B. (C4's predecessor, I pressume.)