Balm for unhappy Allied players & a thought for BTS

[Bullethead]

John Kettler said:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Based on veterans' accounts I read years ago in AFV-G2 magazine, it was standard practice on the Eastern Front to do just that by firing first an MT round to remove the infantry, then the armor piercing projectile to kill the tank underneath. Note that this was in a direct fire role<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

While I'd very much like to see indirect MT airbursts for FO to go along with VT airbursts (a glaring omission IMHO), the thing I most want to see is direct fire airbursts such as you mention here. This is exactly what I was talking about the other day in that thread about 88s, airbursts, and "TRPs".

The direct fire airburst is a tactic of very long standing. It was noted very early in the history of cannon, no later than about 1500, that an exploding shell, especially one exploding in the air, was very effective against troops without overhead cover. So gunners have been causing such airbursts for centuries. And up until the end of the 1800s, all battlefield arty was purely direct fire, so that's how they did these airbursts. In fact, direct fire airbursts were so popular that in the early 1800s a guy named Shrapnel invented a special shell that gave better fragmentation in airbursts than the standard hollow roundshot-type shells used up to then. Even with the advent of battlefield indirect fire, the direct fire airburst has remained a standard tactic right up to the present day if the situation calls for it.

Of course, a necessity for an airburst is a time fuze of some sort. So naturally, these have been available in one form or another for all this time as well, evolving along with gun technology. Up until the mid-1800s, guns remained essentially the same as they were when first invented: smoothbore muzzleloaders. For these, a sort of firecracker fuze sufficed. Gases from firing passed around the shell and ignited the fuze on its way out the muzzle. These fuzes were made with marks on their side indicating either ranges or times and the gunners just cut them on the appropriate mark before firing.

In the mid-1800s, rifled guns started coming into widespread service. But the shells for these early rifled guns had external lugs fitting into the grooves, and these were loose enough that gases could still get around the shell and ignite the fuze. By the latter part of the 1800s, however, shells started getting modern-type driving bands for increased efficiency, which sealed off the gases behind the shell. This necessitated the invention of the clockwork MT fuze, which the overall industrialization of the world's powers now made practical to produce on a large scale.

So basically, all through the 1800s, guns were using Shrapnel's shells for direct fire airbursts. In the 1st 1/2 of the century, they used the old firecracker fuzes, but then got MT fuzes and fieldguns took this combination into WW1. But by then, improved metalurgy and the development of stable HE had made thin-walled HE shells just as deadly in airbursts as Shrapnel, so classic Shrapnel shells gradually faded away, but the direct fire airburst tactic remained. In fact, it was given a new battlefield role in the form of flak, which originally was just standard fieldguns on special high-angle mountings firing standard Shrapnel or HE shells with standard MT fuzes.

WW2 saw the highpoint of the direct fire airburst tactic. There were still a lot of the classic direct fire fieldguns and IGs around using the tactic, as well as flak guns and modern-style arty pieces pressed into front line roles. Even ATGs and tanks used direct fire airbursts via ricochet fire (see thread from last week) using a slight delay on their impact fuzes in lieu of the MT fuzes supplied to other weapons.

It's somewhat different today. Classic field guns and heavy flak are largely extinct species so most airbursts are fired indirectly. And although the VT fuze is available, radar jammers can greatly reduce their effectiveness, so the old MT fuze is still very much alive and well.

But arty still uses direct fire airbursts for self defense. They start with the shortest possible setting and gradually increase it with each round fired, working the fragment storm further and further out. This is more flexible than using cannister

One thing to note about all this. It is MUCH easier to get the fuze setting right for direct fire airbursts than for indirect. This is naturally because the gunners can see the target themselves, determine the range, and quickly tweak the setting (if needed--a wide variety of rangefinders are and were available to the gunners) based on their own observations. Plus, one of the biggest problems with indirect fire airbursts, that of allowing for ground elevation changes, is not a factor at all with direct fire. So IMHO any gun on the CM map with MT fuzes should be able to get its airburst in the right place almost all the time with the 1st shot, and certainly by the second.

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-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

[Guest Germanboy]

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

One thing to note about all this. It is MUCH easier to get the fuze setting right for direct fire airbursts than for indirect. This is naturally because the gunners can see the target themselves, determine the range, and quickly tweak the setting (if needed--a wide variety of rangefinders are and were available to the gunners) based on their own observations. Plus, one of the biggest problems with indirect fire airbursts, that of allowing for ground elevation changes, is not a factor at all with direct fire.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Indirect fire airbursts were used by the Germans as spotting rounds for counter-battery fire. This way the target would not be alerted to what was going to happen to them. As far as I understand, around Leningrad the OPs that called the shoots were sited and registered in relation to the gun emplacements, so that all the variables were known of the OP and the emplacement were known to the officers doing the calculations. That should have made it easier. Of course, that was also in a siege situation and the Germans had a long time to do the ground survey. According to my grandfather, time from firing the spotting round to getting the confirmation from the three to four OPs (Meßstelle) required could be from one to 15 minutes.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

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