Guest Babra Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 (Tightening chin strap and checking mags...) Fire lanes. If I use a MG for area fire (say down a long street) what effect, if any, will that have on enemies (or friends) crossing the line of fire? This was a standard drill in battle school (if the decades haven't dimmed my memory), the idea being that if you hit something, great, but the primary goal is to make people not want to cross that street. ------------------ Floreat Jerboa ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goanna Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Babs, I beleive this is called grazing fire and it is already in the final game from info posted by Steve a few weeks ago. So start practicing NOT lining up your units for target practice now. All part of the unlearning some of us will have to do from too much beta-demoing. ------------------ desert rat wannabe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Hehe... Jason is correct. There aren't too many nasty surprises for you Beta Demo Junkies to adjust to with the final thing (I mean core game engine wise), but this is one. I tried to sprint across a street guarded by a MG pillbox. Dang... shouldn't have tried that! Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babra Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Ah... found it. I would never have found that using search. "Grazing fire" isn't an expression I've heard before. Okay, then, thanks. Better close the thread before the MST3K crowd find it... <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Team MMG/HMG units will have grazing fire effects. So if there are 3 enemy units in a line (front to back), and you shoot at the rear one, the first two will probably at the very least keep their heads down. At the most they will take a couple of casualties... Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> ------------------ Floreat Jerboa ! [This message has been edited by Babra (edited 02-10-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ARCHANGEL Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Goanna: Babs, I beleive this is called grazing fire and it is already in the final game from info posted by Steve a few weeks ago. So start practicing NOT lining up your units for target practice now. All part of the unlearning some of us will have to do from too much beta-demoing. Please understand, I am not looking for trouble, but I thought "grazing fire" was not LOS firing. My memory of it is that it is(for example), firing over a small hill hitting on the other side, but with an MG not a mortar. Of course, it has been a while since I was at Benning or Levenworth et al., so I may be remembering badly and my manuals are in storage. Thanks....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarge Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 AS I RECALL: grazing ( as in a bovine grazing the grass ) taking off the surface at an even trim.... what Archangel refers to i think is called PLUNGING fire...actually at great distance rounds impact in a cone similar to hosing your garden at the furthest reach of the water. you would be firing over medium distance targets if there were any. make sense? sometimes words are so difficult.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Herr Oberst Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 IIRC, an excellent example of grazing fire is the practice of the Germans in the Hurtgen Forest. MG42 position is sighted so the barrel lies 8 inches off the ground. Once advancing troops are sufficiently within the kill field, a short burst from an MP40 is enough to get all the advancing troops to go prone. Then the MG42 really opens up and drills the troops at ground level. Mix in some tree burst from mortar and artillery fire, and you can literally shred an attacking force. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanE Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Herr Oberst: ...MG42 position is sighted so the barrel lies 8 inches off the ground. Once advancing troops are sufficiently within the kill field, a short burst from an MP40 is enough to get all the advancing troops to go prone. Then the MG42 really opens up and drills the troops at ground level.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ouch! I hate to think of the carnage the above situation could/did create. It's amazing that anyone survived encounters like this. "Kill field" would be a very appropriate term. ------------------ Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Dan, it really is amazing, but guys did. I think this is why so many wargames get weapons lethality wrong, especially for automatic weapons. Although I hold my nose when I say this, but most Hollywood action flicks have a bit of realism when you see guys blazing away at each other with nobody getting hit. I think most wargame designers look at RoF and say "wow, that thing should be killing everything in sight!" and crank up the lethality too high to reflect a misperception of how frequent hist are. In the US we had two bank robbers (BA in LA) with AK47s take on about 50 cops. Litterally hundreds, if not a thousand plus, rounds were expended but there were only about a dozen hits. And to top it off, the bank robbers were standing out in the open and shooting. So even with a hail of close range fire from multiple directions, all of it full or semi auto, there were very few that hit home. Fortunately, the only ones that REALLY hit home were the ones that hit the robbers and cars. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ARCHANGEL Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sarge: AS I RECALL: grazing ( as in a bovine grazing the grass ) taking off the surface at an even trim.... what Archangel refers to i think is called PLUNGING fire...actually at great distance rounds impact in a cone similar to hosing your garden at the furthest reach of the water. you would be firing over medium distance targets if there were any. make sense? sometimes words are so difficult....<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Right you are Sarge...thanks for the correction...and no !! words aren't difficult. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Steve, I've read some very interesting analysis once about firing effectiveness during war. IIRC, statistically only 1 out of every 100,000 small arms rounds during WWII was recorded as a hit. Funny enough, during the Vietnam war, the number went up to something like 1 to 1 million rounds - partly because of the wider use of automatic weapons, I guess, but partly because of the terrain features... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 I've read those studies... During Napoleonic era a couple of pounds of ammunition (either small arms balls or cannonball) had to be expended for each casualty caused by firearms/cannon. During Vietnam I read that between 20 and 25 TONNES had to be expended . I mean, seriously, if I just flew over North Vietnam and dropped 20 tonnes of bullets onto ANY random location from a bomber I'd kill dozens of people just due to their kinetic energy as they rained down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ARCHANGEL Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Moon: Steve, I've read some very interesting analysis once about firing effectiveness during war. IIRC, statistically only 1 out of every 100,000 small arms rounds during WWII was recorded as a hit. Funny enough, during the Vietnam war, the number went up to something like 1 to 1 million rounds - partly because of the wider use of automatic weapons, I guess, but partly because of the terrain features...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Moon, There was a study done after RVN, that concluded that normal troops would blow thru thier basic load ( 200-odd rounds), VERY quickly. This was attributed to the lack of fire disciplne afforded by having a selector switch on every rifle. That is why the doctrine went back to having an "automatic rifleman" in each fire team...like the BAR man in CM...and removing the "rock n' roll" switch like on the M16A1. My observation, which I think might be borne out by the facts, is that MOST combat injuries are caused by fragments, from actual shells, grenades etc., as well as from chuncks of tree's or rocks etc. that are propelled by explosions and made dangerous from the force behind them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Babra Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 My favourite is the police in-car video of a highway patrolman and a car thief blazing away at each other from about 6 to 8 feet. Both standing upright, both sidestepping a bit after each shot. Neither was hit. ------------------ Floreat Jerboa ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanE Posted February 10, 2000 Share Posted February 10, 2000 Steve, You are right. If the real weapons were as deadly as other games made them out to be, there would have been no/very few survivers. Very few shots were actually on target, but you wouldn't know it by the way some games "model" the weapons. PS: I do remember that shootout. What made it worse was the fact that the cops were all outgunned and the robbers had better armour. IIRC, the cops had to get guns/ammo from a local gun shop during the fire fight. ------------------ Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionn Posted February 11, 2000 Share Posted February 11, 2000 I saw that video actually recently. IIRC the robbers had body armour and that's why the police had to go to a local gunstore to get high powered rifles to punch through it... The robbers were stupid to stay and fight as they should have used their minutes of protection to get the hell away from the area since they should have known the police would uparm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Seimerst Posted February 11, 2000 Share Posted February 11, 2000 "grazing fire" is a military term mostly associated with machine gun-- it is defined as the part of the bullet's trajectory that would striking a standing man. All else being equal it is within the weapons effective range as opposed to the maximum range. At the maximum ranges the muzzle elevation required to get the bullet to strike the ground (countering the effect of gravity) has to be so high that the arching path of the bullet results in "plunging fire". High velocity weapons have a flater trajectory and this longer stretches of grazing fire. Think of grazing fire as the fire from a pill box built in the end zone of a football field-- grazing fire would cover all the playing field and then some. Clearly grazing fire is very desireable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pirate Posted February 11, 2000 Share Posted February 11, 2000 There were few survivers in rifle companies in World War II. Only 10% of the men who landed with British divisions at D-Day were still with their units at the end of the war. But it is true, most games are way to bloody. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 Apropos of the grazing fire discussion, it is worth noting that the plunging fire described is technically indirect fire, such fire made possible by tripod mounts with built-in traversing systems. This allows a unit to defend a forward slope while protected from direct fire by the reverse slope. John Kettler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 The BA robbers were killed, at least one anyway, by a shot to the face. One thing I couldn't understand (besides their utter stupidity) was the fact they didn't have kevlar helmets. Well, they weren't very smart and thankfully Darwin's apply to humans as well. As for the retention rate from D-Day to VE Day, yes... the percentage was quite low. Most of the US units that landed and fought to the end had 200% + casualties. One or two had 300% or so. However, this included two massive operations (beach landings and Bulge) and several brutal battles (St. Lo, Aachen, etc.) Because of this the laws of averages come in to play in a huge way. You might "only" lose 20% of your men in a stiff fight, but it only takes 4 or 5 of those to nearly wipe out everybody that started with the unit. If we look at lethality in some other games it only takes one fight Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moriarty Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 Isn't it amazing how fire discipline goes to hell when somebody's shooting back at you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ARCHANGEL Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Moriarty: Isn't it amazing how fire discipline goes to hell when somebody's shooting back at you? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yes it is !! But it is exactly the time that is shouldn't go to hell. From personal experience there, some units adhered to it, others didn't. [This message has been edited by ARCHANGEL (edited 02-12-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gen. Sosaboski Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 The 4th Inf. Div suffered a 252.3% turnover rate-total of 35,545 casualties (Source:Closing With the Enemy). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Captain Foobar Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 I actually started practicing fire control AFTER using german SMG squads,and whizzing all their ammo down their legs. "Don't fire until you see the whites, iris,cornea, and pupils of their eyes..." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hakko Ichiu Posted February 12, 2000 Share Posted February 12, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gen. Sosaboski: The 4th Inf. Div suffered a 252.3% turnover rate-total of 35,545 casualties (Source:Closing With the Enemy). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> What was the ratio of KIA/WIA? Ethan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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