collapse cloud kills - blast rating?

[M Hofbauer]

I made a search on this but although there are some remotely related threads/posts none really address my question. One post hinted that collapsing buildings create an expansing dustcloud but that it is only smoke etc. harmless to soldiers touched by it. My experiences are quite different.

I've noticed people (soldiers) dieing from the blast-shockwave created when a building collapses. I am not talking about harm to soldiers INSIDE the collapsing building but OUTSIDE. In some instances they were even at the very outer rim of that shockwave, and in another building. I should still have a replay of that since it was a PBEM.

Now, I don't have a problem per se with the collapse-cloud killing things, but my question is: blast / HE weapons are given a blast rating. Is there such a blast rating for collapsing buildings? Do the blast ratings for collapsing buildings depend upon size (single/2-level) or quality (light heavy bldg.)?

[David Aitken]

M Hofbauer wrote:

> In some instances they were even at the very outer rim of that shockwave, and in another building.

Umm, are you sure it wasn't something else that killed them - something you didn't see?

[Disaster@work]

I would back up the original poster. Last night I pounded a two story building with an AVRE (very satisfying experience!) until it blew up. The shockwave caught a running enemy who died just as the wave hit him. Poor fellow.

[Jeff Heidman]

Why would a collapsing building have a shockwave? Did someone store a bunch of TNT in the basement?

Maybe the same people who stick nitroglycerin in the trunks of cars when they go over cliffs in the movies?

Jeff Heidman

[cward]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

Why would a collapsing building have a shockwave? Did someone store a bunch of TNT in the basement?

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe the chimney fell on him...

[XPav]

Ever see Iron Eagle 3?

Louis Gossett Jr took his air show squadron flying World War 2 vintage planes to fight the evil drug dealer. They blew up a church, and the church bell went flying through the air about a mile or so and crushed the Big Bad Guy.

Maybe this is what happened?

[David Aitken]

I could imagine units just outside the perimeter of the building being hit by falling debris, but I don't think there's any blast involved - I was the person who "hinted that collapsing buildings create an expansing dustcloud but that it is only smoke etc."

Sure, the building is taken down by an explosion, but that's not going to send debris flying through the air in all directions. The bulk of the building collapses downwards and sends up a dustcloud. Notice that the dome of a collapsing building in CM is slow-moving, whereas the dome of an explosion is almost instantaneous.

David

[M Hofbauer]

ah... I found the file again.

David, of course I checked for any other cause. But I looked at the footage again and again, looking for grenades, small arms, bow machine gun of the sherman, etc. None.

The german squad consisted of only 1 man alive before the incident, and was "eliminated" the moment the Sherman blew up the other house.

picture one shows the Sherman targetting another building with indirect fire. Notice our squad in question is just barely visible almost in the center of the picture, on the forward edge of the 2-level building.

pic 2 shows the sherman destroying / collapsing the other building through indirect fire:

pic 3 shows the collapse-cloud at the time of furthest expansion, as you can see the german squad has been eliminated and is just barely inside the dust-cloud radius. the 2-level building has become opaque againm as there is nobofdy else in there but the corpse of the eliminated squad:

pic 4 is meant to give another, better view at how the squad is just barely inside the radius of the dustcloud:

pic 5 is yet another picture showing the general setup of the scene and the dimensions of the dustcloud and the location of the units involved.

Now, the german squad in question *was* being targetted by a british AB rifle squad, but that was on LOW ammo, and I watched them all the time, the last time they had fired a volley at the german squad was 40 or so seconds before the elimination.

The next possibility wa that maybe the german squad was machine-gunned by the bow gunner at the same time that the main gun engaged the area fire target. Although unlikely, I checked for that, and indeed the MG ammo dropped from 218 to 217 at the same time the main gun was fired at the other building. However, when I checked for the machine guns in the footage, it is clearly visible that that burst was also aimed at the other building. Besides, the Sherman did not have LOS to the german squad due to a small bump in the terrain bnetween the two.

I will ask my PBEM opponent when he is available again, but I doubt that he will come to a different conclusion.

so, gentlemen, here are the facts as I see them. what I want to know now is,again, can the building collapse be given an equivalent in a blast rating value? hello? BTS? anybody? hello?

(p.s.: sorry but server provider failed me. hope the images work now.)

[This message has been edited by M Hofbauer (edited 08-14-2000).]

[M Hofbauer]

oops it seems the images don't work... :-O

[Disaster@work]

Oh the images work all right. Are you trying to make a Zapruder film? Have you looked at the grassy knoll? Maybe the magic bullet came from there?

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To download my scenarios: go to

http://www3.telus.net/pop_n_fresh/combatmiss/index.htm

[L.Tankersley]

They work here, just fine.

I strongly suspect that the lone survivor of that squad became a casualty from some other cause. [Maybe grazing fire aimed at some other target. ] With a low volume of fire, tracers don't always appear in my experience; maybe somebody else threw a couple of shots his way and got lucky. Any other examples of this phenomenon occurring?

Of course, it's impossible to prove anything one way or another from our end. If you get Charles interested in this he might be able to delve into the turn file and dig out exactly what happened to that guy.

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Leland J. Tankersley

[David Aitken]

Maybe he fell over and sprained his ankle.

Seriously though, I would be extremely surprised if his elimination was due to the collapsing building. As Leland says, you can't rely on what you can see - we're talking about a single man here, and his spotting ability would be limited.

I played a test Quick Battle a while ago, with an FO versus two Wirbelwinds. At one stage I ran him across a patch of open ground (which he'd already been over), and just before he reached the treeline, suddenly one of the Wirbelwinds materialised inches in front of him. Not amongst trees or anything, but right out in the open - it couldn't have come out of the trees either, 'cause they were woods. It was bizarre, but it illustrates how, when you're dealing with single men, spotting can be quite erratic.

Your man could have been taken out by someone standing behind him that he just didn't see. I'm not unwilling to believe that the collapse did it, but it would take a bit of explaining to justify how a cloud of dust could have this effect.

David

[Echo]

I dont know how its modelled in the game, but in reality a collapsing building has a potential collapse zone (kill zone) equal to 125% of its height. Its all dependent on whether the collapse is an outward, inward, cantilevered, or pan-cake.

You can look at pictures of whole fire brigades during the bombing of London being wiped out by outward collapses.