AA question

[Lanzfeld]

Is the only American AA units the 40mm and the 90mm? I thought the US had a halftrack with Quad-Fifties on it but I cant find it in the game.

[Colin]

Not in the game.

Conspiracy suspected.

Search.

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And if we abandon any platform, I can assure you it will not be the Macintosh.

-Steve

My website!

A major source of Wild Bill scenarios!

[109 Gustav]

Yeah, the quad fifty track does seem to be missing. (Explanation, anyone?)

AA in CM is a bit odd. 88mm and 90mm guns will not shoot at fighter bombers, so they're only useful for antitank work.

Vehicles with flexible machine guns, such as halftracks and Shermans, will shoot these guns at planes, but only if they are not buttoned up.

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No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. -Ender's Game

[russellmz]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by 109 Gustav:

AA in CM is a bit odd. 88mm and 90mm guns will not shoot at fighter bombers, so they're only useful for antitank work.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

im not sure how useful the 88 AA gun was against fighter bombers, they were used against high-flying b-17 and -24's.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Vehicles with flexible machine guns, such as halftracks and Shermans, will shoot these guns at planes, but only if they are not buttoned up.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

not sure if u were counting this is odd, but if they were buttoned up their view would be too bad for firing at the sky. sorry if you knew this and was just sharing info...

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"They had their chance- they have not lead!" - GW Bush

"They had mechanical pencils- they have not...lead?" - Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

[Gen. Sosaboski]

Continuing my campaign for equal Allied SPAAA assets rights the eve of Election Day.

Quad 50s, sometime, please?

[Olle Petersson]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by 109 Gustav:

Yeah, the quad fifty track does seem to be missing. (Explanation, anyone?)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The official explanation is that Allied air defence was definately low priority in the game design, and the M15 and M16 didn't make it to the finish line.

Reasons;

- German aircraft supposedly less common in the game than Allied.

- Allied vehicles have plenty of flex MGs, that work quite nicely in AA mode.

- Allied AA units were rarely used in ground combat (although there are a couple of well known examples from the Battle of the Bulge.)

In CM there is more need for German AA guns, since there are no(?) flex MGs on German vehicles.

Cheers

Olle

[Guest Madmatt]

American M16 Quad 50 halftracks (and the other variants) are not in the game.

Two reasons, other than in a few instances during the Bulge it appears that American AA assets were usually assigned to rear echelon defense and not in the front lines where most of the action in CM takes place. Obviously during the Bulge the rear echelon WAS the front lines so you hear about them employed there more than anywhere else.

Now, that in itself is not enough to for us to have excluded its admission, the real deciding factor was one of time. There was not enough time to get the texture, model and texture map all done in time to make it in the final release.

A decision was made to leave it out so time could be spent on other issues. Add in the fact that German Airpower was marginal during most of the time period of CM and the inclusion of other Allied AA elements and it became unfortunate but necessary to leave it out.

Madmatt

[This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 11-07-2000).]

[Bruno Weiss]

Their in the same place as German trucks. If ya find em, lemme know.

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)

[tss]

109 Gustav wrote:

88mm and 90mm guns will not shoot at fighter bombers, so they're only useful for antitank work.

Let's do once again some off-the-hat calculations.

Suppose that a fighter-bomber is flying across a 500 meter wide map at a speed of 400 km/h 500 meters away from an AA gun and that the a line drawn from the AA gun to the middle point of the flight path forms a right angle.

Now, the plane needs 4.5 seconds to cross the map. Its entry and exit points form a 60 degree arc with respect to the AA gun, giving a trajectory as 13.3 degrees/second. So, to keep the plane in its sights the AA gun has to be able to turn with the same rate. Incidentally, with the 13.3 degrees/second speed it will take 27 seconds to traverse the full circle. I didn't follow the turret speed thread closely but I believe that Tiger I's motored turret traverse rate was slower than that. Of course, an AA version of the 88 mm gun doesn't have the weight of the turret to slow it down, but I still think that you would need some pretty good men to achieve those speeds with hand cranks.

Supposing that it would somehow be possible to aim the gun quick enough. The next problem is then to set the fuze correctly. You can't hope for a direct hit so you have to use timed fuzes. A 88 mm round has the velocity of approximately 1000 m/s, and to hit the target at 500 meter you have to quickly set the fuze to 0.5 seconds. The Germans had an automated fuze-setting machine that would do it automatically, but the machine has also to be set correctly.

I'm not certain about lethality of 88 mm AA rounds against airplanes but let's assume that the round has to explode within 30 meters to seriously damage the plane. With a speed of 1000 m/s that gives you an error margin of 0.03 seconds. So you need a gunner who can estimate the range of the plane accurately enough, set the fuze more precicely than the available technology allows, have a loader that can achieve sub-second consistency heaving heavy objects around, and do this all in less than 5 seconds.

As others have pointed, heavy AA guns were used against large bomber formations. A radar would give the first approximation for the altitude of the enemy planes and then the crew would pump round after round against one slowly moving target trying to first get the altitude correct and then the deflection. Or both at the same time, if the crew was good. Germans had _a lot_ of flak guns defending the Reich, but they still had relatively few hits.

Some sources claim that German heavy AA practice was to put enough shells in some given airspace in hope that some of them will hit. However, an old flak veteran confirmed in soc.history.war.word-war-ii that this was not the case and the guns always aimed at a specific target.

- Tommi

[tss]

I came upon an interesting AA quote and thought to post it here.

This is from an interview of private Saanio who fought in Finnish KvItPsto 21 (light AA batallion) during the Soviet 1944 offensive:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

It was difficult to down bombers, as they flew too high. We disturbed them and managed to get a few but our real war was against Sturmoviks.

Our light AA gun (either 20mm or 40mm, I don't know for sure --tss) was very suitable against Sturmoviks. We had a continuing conversation with them. They always knew where our AA guns were located. They always attacked straight against us. We in our turn gave back to them so that they couldn't sting our troop transports or men going to front line. They had their own rules and we had our own rules. They flew low and always had from six to nine planes in one formation. Like I said, they always tried to knock AA guns out first. The result was that our own infantry tried to avoid our firing positions because Sturmoviks always knew where we were. The Sturmoviks didn't like that we tried to disturb them in their work.

In the end it was the question of whose guts could take incoming tracer rounds longer, we or the Sturmoviks. Sometimes we broke first and run to a foxhole to cover if our ammo run out or for some other reason. Sometimes they had to fly away to repair damage and to count how many planes they had left.

We downed 16 confirmed Sturmoviks that Summer.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

There was also another interesting quote. Finnish armored AA battery (6 Swedish Landsverk-Anti armored 40mm self-propelled AA guns) were protecting the troops that were assembled for a counter attack against Kuuterselkä June 14 1944. One whole squadron of Soviet level bombers dropped their bomb load on top of the battery in an effort to knock the battery out.

As the battery got covered by a huge cloud of dust that was roused by the explosions, the commander of the counter attack forces got worried about their fate. However, one runner came soon from the battery and said:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Sorry for the unplanned cease-fire. We will continue firing as soon as we can pour sand out of gun barrels.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

And he run back to the battery.

- Tommi

[This message has been edited by tss (edited 11-09-2000).]

[Warmonger]

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

Is the only American AA units the 40mm and the 90mm? I thought the US had a halftrack with Quad-Fifties on it but I cant find it in the game.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Is this one:

http://www.geocities.com/alt_games_combat_mission/Half_Track.jpg

[Guest Germanboy]

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

109 Gustav wrote:

88mm and 90mm guns will not shoot at fighter bombers, so they're only useful for antitank work.

Let's do once again some off-the-hat calculations.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nicely done Tommi - the short end of this being that there is a jolly good reason why light AA guns use automated fire and (in my time in the army in the 1980s) had a predetermined range and fired a combo HE/Incendiary round.

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Andreas

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/greg_mudry/sturm.html">Der Kessel</a >

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 11-09-2000).]

[Degrees of Frost]

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

American M16 Quad 50 halftracks (and the other variants) are not in the game.

Two reasons, other than in a few instances during the Bulge it appears that American AA assets were usually assigned to rear echelon defense and not in the front lines where most of the action in CM takes place. Obviously during the Bulge the rear echelon WAS the front lines so you hear about them employed there more than anywhere else.

Now, that in itself is not enough to for us to have excluded its admission, the real deciding factor was one of time. There was not enough time to get the texture, model and texture map all done in time to make it in the final release.

A decision was made to leave it out so time could be spent on other issues. Add in the fact that German Airpower was marginal during most of the time period of CM and the inclusion of other Allied AA elements and it became unfortunate but necessary to leave it out.

Madmatt

[This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 11-07-2000).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It still seems odd given the presence of the Ostwind and the Wirbelwhatever. Those two portable AA guns had a total production run less than 100. Weren't most of the Ostwinds conversions of Wirbs ?

Surely these rarer-than-hens-teeth vehicles were seen right at the frontlines less than the M15 and M16's (and what about the M19 or was it T19 and the British Crusader conversions ?).

Those of us who have experienced air attack from an Axis player have to endure the German flyboy whizz around until he runs out of ammo while our aircover is driven off by a single 20mm cannon may not be particularly impressed with the abilities of flexible MGs.