bazookas remarkably effective against infantry :)

[argie]

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

HE rounds as well as shaped charge rounds (HEAT) were manufactured for the M1A1 and M9 Bazookas during the war. In addition HEAT is apparently very effective against troops in bunkers and buildings.

Someone know if the PIAT or Panzerschreck had HE rounds?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think the PIAT was DP... Not sure if rounds were DP or have specific HE rounds though.

[Gen. Sosaboski]

The vet I talked to commented that the bazooka could take down whole walls in some cases (most were light or previously damaged), or at least collapse part of them with a good sized explosion able to take a few Germans with it.

[Monty's Double]

Sorry to bring my grandad into this again, but he used to tell a story about trying to take out an enemy bunker with a PIAT which misfired. Although the propellant charge didn't ignite, the force of the firing pin was enough to propel the bomb twenty or thirty feet, where it lay on the ground in full view. Since it was their last round, my grandad and his friends drew straws to see who would have to run out and grab it for another try. This story may be apocryphal, but I'm sure I've read that PIATs were used as bunker busters and general support weapons, and could even be used as mortars at a push. I don't know whether there was a different HE round but I'd guess the shaped charge warhead would give out a fairly useful bang.

[CMplayer]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Monty's Double:

Sorry to bring my grandad into this again<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Bring him in as much as you want. Stories

like that are always welcome.

--Rett

[not another gamer]

"I don't think I'll ever forget how much we laughed that night, as the artillery rained down on the old hand/newbie.

He just said "F***, that artillery's pretty amazing. Is it always like this?"

We assured him it was. He wanted to play on... "

Damn your evil, damn that's funny.

[Tanaka]

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

...In addition HEAT is apparently very effective against troops in bunkers and buildings... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Anything that triggers the charge works, a dense bush, the ground it self, a car... after that, burned human flesh. Notice also that it has some advantages over the grenade, it has a better aim and longer hit range as well a much bigger penetrating power...

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Monty's Double:

...Although the propellant charge didn't ignite, the force of the firing pin was enough to propel the bomb twenty or thirty feet...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't know if you aware of this topic http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=020059

but I wander if your grandfather can/would enlighten us on the problem, specially the cadence of it...

would be much appreciated.

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

:...Don't you mean the Falklands?...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Let's leave it this way... they are British, but the name is Malvinas

[Red Dog]

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

Someone know if the PIAT or Panzerschreck had HE rounds?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I seem to recall that the Panzerfaust had an optional fragmentation sleeve which could be fitted over the warhead for anti-infantry use.

[Monty's Double]

Sorry Tanaka, but he is an ex-grandfather so he can't enlighten us further. I've read plenty of books on the PIAT though, and the "jam" problem of failing to recock the firing pin was definitely real. Whether CMBO models it or whether that's just a glitch I dunno. I'm just waiting for CM3 so I can recreate Grandpa Butler's exploits in the Western desert, and his crowning glory at Salerno, where he got a bit overexcited with a Bangalore Torpedo and it took them 2 years to stick him back together. Still, it didn't seem to do him any harm: he died last year aged about a zillion. I wish there were more stories to tell, but he was one of those guys who didn't talk about the war much. It was only in his last couple of years when he owned up to some of his exploits and selling his medals when he was skint in the fifties. Families eh?

[Tanaka]

Monty's Double,

Sorry to hear that, I should have guessed...

Just a small point, the question about the PIAT is not much if CM models the real problem, Charles said it does, the question is more if it is well modeled, namely the rate of "jam"...

[Michael Dorosh]

Wait until we get CM to cover Italy; the earliest PIATs had rounds that failed to detonate routinely because their warheads weren't hitting the target squarely enough. This was a big problem in Sicily, but was luckily corrected later in 1943.

Interesting posts in this thread; I especially like the first hand accounts of bazooka and PIAT use. "every tank a Tiger" - too true!

[Jeff Duquette]

I guess I do recall reading in C. Ryan’s “A Bridge to Far” that Frost’s Paras took out a bunker on Arnhem Bridge with a PIAT round. The bunker was apparently giving the British hell until the PIAT team put a round or two into the thing.

[CombinedArms]

Zooks, Piats & Fausts historically and in CM against buildings just goes to prove the general point that both CMers and real soldiers tend to use what they have for the purpose at hand, whatever it was originally designed for.

I find zooks for some reason to be good "routing" weapons in CM. Often a couple of zook rounds will cause already suppressed infantry to quickly rout or break, even if they cause few or no casualties. I noted that the original post said all the German infantry was routed or broken in short order, but not how many casualties were caused. I wouldn't be surprised if casualties were light compared to the routing effect.

On weapons being used for other than designed purposes, note the pre-eminence of the P-47 Thunderbolt as a fighter-bomber. If I understand the history correctly, the fighter-bomber role wasn't really dreamed of when this baby was designed. It just happened to have ideal characteristics for the job, and the P-51 made it less essential in the pure fighter (or "pursuit") role. On the other hand, the P-51 was thought of originally for ground attack. The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine--which boosted high-altitude performance-- and additional gas tanks transformed it into the great piston-engine fighter of the war.

[ 07-05-2001: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]

[argie]

Well, I looked into this book "Las armas modernas de infantería (Su evolución)" made for a Colonel of Argentine Army in 1958, based on test of weapons from every side in the WWII stored here in Argentina. He classified the PIAT in a category apart from Bazookas, Schreks and Fausts, as grenade launcher, and states that could use an AT, an AP and a Smoke grenade, in DF and IF, acting as light mortar. Not too much... Nothing more specific... He then goes with great detail in Fausts, as were copied for local production here.

Tanaka,

Malvinas is British de facto, not de jure

[Triumvir]

But posession is nine tenths of the law... so it's 90% de jure!

A classic case of why conscript armies don't do well in wars of aggression... but will smash regulars in defensive wars (at least ideologically)

See Victor Davis Hanson for more details (not that I agree with all of his work, to say the least, but he has a good core idea)

[BloodyBucket]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Interesting posts in this thread; I especially like the first hand accounts of bazooka and PIAT use. "every tank a Tiger" - too true!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Strictly second hand. I sat my father down with a video camera running and a bottle of Jack handy. Three hours later, I had most of his memories of the war recorded. He came close to tears recalling two close friends who were a bazooka "team", he couldn't remember the names, but he remembered how one had died trying to retrieve the body of his comrade, and of how they always looked after each other, even in death. That is the only other bazooka story I heard from him.

[Slapdragon]

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

Malvinas is British de facto, not de jure <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Of course Argie, they are called the Falklands.

(Estoy bromeando mi amigo. Conozco una Argentino que casi consiguió en una lucha concluído los Malvinas. No me tiene ningún sentido. Usted ve, todo es poseído por los Estados Unidos, así que porqué lucha alrededor de un manojo de "squateros" de todos modos.

My Brazillian wife claims Argentines never bath below the neck line, can't dance, cook, or play soccer. What is up between Argentina and Brazil?

[argie]

Triumvir,

I don't have the luck of to read the book you mentioned, but I think there is a flaw in what you said: the problem with losing the battle (the war is still over ) wasn't in the fact of having a conscript army, although of course trained troops do things better, but in having all the pros in the Military trained for repression and not to conduct a "conventional" war. All accounts I read from British sources said that Argentinian conscripts were at least a difficult pain in the ass to remove from positions, although they were in such positions frozed with the water to the chest and starved because the faults of their superiors. Must be noted also that because Galtieri (de facto president) make his service in some subtropical provinces, sent troops from those provinces instead of the troops equiped to fight in Patagonia...

The only troops equiped and trained to fight in cold terrain, the RI 25 and the BIM 5, put a lot of fight on their "proffesional" opponents. The RI 25 didn't fight as a unit, in fact, as was ordered to defend the airport, but some subunits of it fought in San Carlos and Goose Green.

Although all teh enterprise was conducted by an illegitimate government, made the worst way possible from any military or geopolitical stand point, every Argentine believe that Malvinas are Argentine... On this times, I think that very few could think that dying for the land is a solution, but nobody doubts that the land is our...

OTOH, you statement could be readed also as a luck for UK in not having a Conscript Army, but a very good proffesional one... Other way, the battle could have had a very different outcome

Slap,

Although there was a lot of hate between Latin American people from centuries (something actively fomented by UK ), I think today the things are changing... Although Argentines in general have a sort of hate for Chile, Brazil is loooked at more as a bad brother than with real hate

FYI, we are a people almost obsessed with the bath. I know that I take at least two showers a day in summer, and at least one every day in any other season, and nobody looks me as weird for that (in fact, I know a lot of people doing the same)

About dance, we can, but nobody in the world, except maybe some Africans, can dance as good as Brazilians, that is a hard fact.

Cooking... Argentina is more "multicultural" than Brazil, so we have food from a lot of countries very well done here, plus our own receipts... Maybe Brazilian tastes are too localist to enjoy that

Soccer... hehehehe... Say her that take a look on the Mundial's eliminatory table, or in the actual Sub 20 mundial... Ghana has eliminated Brazil from that one and will play the final with Argentina next Sunday.

I think is Maradona's envy

Did you said that you have a friend that fought in Malvinas? I don't fully understand that part in Spanish (as to everybody here must happen with almost all my Engish)

[Slapdragon]

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

Cooking... Argentina is more "multicultural" than Brazil, so we have food from a lot of countries very well done here, plus our own receipts... Maybe Brazilian tastes are too localist to enjoy that

Soccer... hehehehe... Say her that take a look on the Mundial's eliminatory table, or in the actual Sub 20 mundial... Ghana has eliminated Brazil from that one and will play the final with Argentina next Sunday.

I think is Maradona's envy

Did you said that you have a friend that fought in Malvinas? I don't fully understand that part in Spanish (as to everybody here must happen with almost all my Engish) <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Too much Cubano in my espanol. I do have such a friend, he claims to have fought in Islas Malvinhas (er, maybe fighting is a bad word. Waiting to surrender was how he put it), but I was just commenting on how it does not matter who owns the Malvinhas, since the Imperialist pig dog Americans own everyone through advertisements and McDonalds anyway. "Squateros" is a funny way of saying everyone else is just a squater...

Personnaly, I think you are dead on about Brazil. Since Pele left, they suck at soccer, their food is OK, but other Spanish countries have more eclectic fares, but dancing and all things physical such as that, they have no peers. God knows why -- I don't believe in "national idenity" very much, except as variables such as wealth and the like effects things, but no Brazillian I have ever met is not a born dancer.

[Trooper]

There were a few Amoured Car companies lying around, with AMLs, but they never seemed to do much.

It would have been interesting to see AML-90s go up against CVR(T)s, but I think the general terrain of the area would have been in favour of the tracks.

NTM

[argie]

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

There were a few Amoured Car companies lying around, with AMLs, but they never seemed to do much.

It would have been interesting to see AML-90s go up against CVR(T)s, but I think the general terrain of the area would have been in favour of the tracks.

NTM<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Absolutely right! They sent those wheeled Recon vehicles to a terrain which we call "turba", which is a kind of coal, very spongy, and with great humidity... No wheeled vehicle could make anything outside of paved roads there... except to sink

The CVR(T)s, on the other hand, were tracked vehicles with an incredible low pressure on floor, and even they got stucked a few times, being limited to a very few fire support missions.

I got a few ISP crashes today (they hate Macs) and can't wrote something about one of the Triumvir comments: "posession is nine tenths of the law... so it's 90% de jure!".

Hey, Triumvir! Could you borrow me your car!