Should Fos be in cmbo?

[Cooper]

During WWII the germans were impressed by one area of army the amis had, the artillery. Any second lt. with a radio could call down artillery strike with any guns in range. Now shouldn't the amis be able to purchase these off-board guns or morters and the platoon and company HQs be able to act as the fo.

[Terence]

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

During WWII the germans were impressed by one area of army the amis had, the artillery. Any second lt. with a radio could call down artillery strike with any guns in range. Now shouldn't the amis be able to purchase these off-board guns or morters and the platoon and company HQs be able to act as the fo.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

FO units are in the game. And they are very effective.

[Cooper]

Let me explain. Your platoon is over a small hill an is able to spot a large number of germans. the lt. in the platoon HQ should be able to call a artillery stike on them. You shouldn't be dependent upon the 2 man fo squad. the platoon HQ should act as the fo.

[Cooper]

Also, if your 2 man fo unit happened to be koed, you wouldn't lose the support of those off board guns.

[Terence]

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

Let me explain. You shouldn't be dependent upon the 2 man fo squad. the platoon HQ should act as the fo.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I see what you are saying now. apologies for the misunderstanding. I have no idea if this should be the case, though. anyone else?

[The Commissar]

Im not very familiar with American arty doctrine, but if it was indeed done this way, then by all means it should be implemented.

However, since CMBO won't be updated anymore, Im afraid we will have to wait till another version of the Western front shows up. I dont think the Soviets had that much radios and were not very flexible with their arty. Pls correct me if Im wrong, of course.

[Jarmo]

FO's are an abstraction. BTS knows it didn't (nearly) always go like the way it's represented. This is not the only oddity in the way arty works, but overall it still works fine.

BTW, finns also used the same way as americans. Although most of the time there was no arty availlable anyway.

[Cooper]

one other odd thing about artillery is why it takes longer to target something you can't see. If you don't have a los you shouldn't be as accurate but it still should take the same amount of time. Maybe you would have to shot a few more spotting rounds but hey it shouldn't take long.

[Pak40]

It is true that U.S. platoon leaders had radios and were able to call down artillery with them but it is a lot more complicated than that.

The radios that the platoon leaders had were very unreliable. Terrain, buildings, trees often weakend the signal and they were not even able to contact the company leader. Also, these radios could take some shrapnel or a bullet and be rendered useless.

If the platoon leaders were able to contact the company HQ AND the company HQ still had contact with Batallion (usually via phone line), then they could put in a request for artillery. But this is even a longer process than what you see with the FO used in CM.

FO's were an organic part of a battery in WWII and they usually had bigger more powerful radios to contact them from a good distance.

Modeling those weak radios is a complicated issue due to the dynamics of how they worked. Instead of spending lots of time and resources modeling some sort of Radio Contact on the platoon level, BTS decided to just include FO's as the only way to call offboard artillery. It's not the most realistic solution but merely a logical one given the computer resources and time available to programming.

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: Pak40 ]

[Scott B]

I think the current system as implemented is an acceptable abstraction.

If I would make a change to the system in place I'd make purchases of FOs and off-table assets separate: you could buy an FO and have access to 2-3 batteries of artillery (or whatever's available on the fire support net)-- it's still an approximation of the FDC system that was in place at the time, though, and the current "hard and fast" rule works well enough as is. If changes are needed to fire support, the spotter/battery relationship is not where I'd make them first.

Scott B.

[Andreas]

The Commonwealth and the Germans had dedicated FOOs, this was not done on platoon HQ level in their armies. AFAIK the British army still has dedicated FOOs.

Oh, and they had the most effective artillery in the war, the Commonwealth did.

But it is correct that the one bty/FOO is an abstraction, but you can look at it to symbolise is the amount of support your HQ has allocated to you. Simply because you could call on more support did not mean you get it. There were 9 other battalions fighting, and only so many guns to go round.

[Stacheldraht]

If you want some details on how WWII arty and spotting worked, as described by an expert who took part in the proceedings and has written extensively on the subject, read Barrage: The Guns in Action by Ian Hogg (Ballantine, 1970).