Rocket Artillery to inaccurate?

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

First you want to make out every variable of the firing process to be deterministic and forecast.

Which of the variables does not comply with the laws of propability ? If the variable complies with the laws of propability then it must have elements that can be determined and forecast. You can not control barrel wear but by monitoring it you can determine and forecast the shell flight path in all conditions.

Any variable you can determine and forecast you can incoroprate into the firing solution.

Then you need to bring in a backdoor concession, downplayed as much as possible, that actually the targeted area has to be larger for rockets.

No. The firing method of the WWII rocket arty has not been revealed. What is the difference betwwen the number of rounds a rocket battery can deliver in 10 seconds compared with the number of rounds a tube arty battery can fire in the same time ? Round for round the tube arty is more accurate. But if both fire at exactly the same target area the rocket arty can, with the proper firing method, get the same results as a regular arty battery can, only faster.

You try not to notice that the two contradict each other.

I have not assumed bigger area for the rocket arty target. An area target is an area target is an area target.

It is you guys who assume you can only target a larger target area with rockets.

The rocket is an area weapon. But so is any field arty piece.

The reality is that every term effecting the firing has not only a value but an error bar.

Yes. But careful peparations, solid database on all the HW and associated variables and solid working methods the effect of the variables can be minimized. But not weeded out alltogether. Says so in my arty manual.

The pretended value is really just a mean or expectation. The error bars are the practical reality.

Yes. But is the first ranging shot fired a "virgin" without any regard to the known, determined, forecast and expected variable deviations ? The FO just gives a heading and range and the calculations are done according to where the round lands ? No battery site preparation is done, nothing.

Each factor winds up more or less normally distributed about the mean expectation.

Actually the Gauss curve applies to the deviation effects.

The size of all the error bars multiplies out to one overall error bar, which is far larger than the bar for the ballistic properties of the gun system alone, since that is not the only factor with error involved.

Sorry, lost me there completely.

No, you cannot reduce all of these error bars to nothing by knowing things beforehand.

But you can minimize their effect. When you try to hit a target you deliberately aim off according to how the known variables affect the equation.

Each shot in actually different from all of the others, and where is lands is not deterministic beyond the placement of the error bars.

Yes. But can you explain how you can take down a bridge with indirect fire with only one gun ?

HINT: Luck has very little to do with it.

As for the confusion about what the battery is really pointing at, it is really pointing at an *actual* aim point, which is distributed somewhere around the *intended* aim point because of the error bars of the FO and the spotting rounds.

You obviously have no first hand experience with arty.

There is no confusion. The firing method is a way to determine how the individual fall patterns overlap (or not as the case may be) and what kind of density is gotten as a result.

What you are talking about is true. But a barrage is not just a bunch of individual shells flying willy nilly and impacting totally at random all over the place.

As for the idea that there never is any significant difference between those, tell it to men who lost limbs to friendly fire.

Hmmmmmm.... how many of those incidents were results of human errors on the FO's part (known also as "****ed up fire mission") rather than simple cases of shells flying in totally unexpected directions ?

And the ballistic properties of the rockets themselves are far less accurate than tube artillery shells, as the original figures showed clearly enough.

I am not contesting that. But being statistics the results are cumulative.

"They are pointed in the same way" does not remove a lick of that extra dispersion.

But "they pointed at the same spot" puts the center of the dispersion pattern in the same location for each mount, making that the epicenter of all 4 (or what not) mounts and their respective 50% zones. "They are pointed in the same way" disperses the 50% zones across the landscape.

It occurs due to random variations in the actual flight of each rocket, as each wobbles about its fins, tosses this way and that, has a motor that burns for a slightly different length of time, facing in slightly different directions over the course of the burn due to the aforementioned wobble, etc.

Yes.

And you are wrong that accuracy (well below 50-100m that is) is the be-all of indirect artillery fire to begin with.

You better contact the Finnish army in that case so you can correct the erroneous experience and doctrine.

If the target is of an appropriate size (a battalion, a regiment, a division), the accuracy only has to exceed a threshold level, and all of the rest can be accomplished just by dumping in enough rounds and letting the random spread of the fall of shot do the rest.

Making the fireworks a typical US Army display. Armies with less resources have to device more economical methods. Like concentrating all fire to a tighter area and hitting the enemey where it hurts, not making the entire scenery suffer for its transgressions.

Missing a 10m grid square doesn't mean diddly when you are aiming at a battalion deployed over a square kilometer, and are throwing total numbers of shells with 3 or 4 digits.

Which means most of your fire is ineffective if the battalion is concentrated to one or two key terrain locations.

Which is what rockets were meant to do, and did. The idea that they are ineffective in CM is due entirely to people expecting to hit single platoons with them. Which would be a waste, because most of the blast thrown would do nothing. But it is equally true that the tightest sheaf and most accurate fire is a waste against large targets, because most of the blast again does nothing, because the center-point of the barrage is already dead.

This is why most people call for limited round barrages. The way CM models barrages is totally unrealistic, if adequate.

Did people sometimes use concentrations with that in view in the real deal? Of course. US field artillery sometimes fired 200 guns at a single spot in time on target shoots. From wide angles, up to a full semicircle (which results in a circular impact of overlapping "long-short" lines). But what were the targets of such industrial strength shoots? Not a platoon position, whole enemy-held villages. Some "point target". They certainly called them that, but they are nothing like what a point target means in CM - a single MG.

Don't you wish you could break up a tight SMG force rush with a short, well timed and and concentrated arty barrage ?

[JasonC]

Deterministic is in contrast to statistical. You know this; don't play dumb. The issue is whether each variable can be forecast exactly, or only within tolerance limits, giving only a statistical distribution as a prediction. The latter is the case, and the former is not. Don't get hung up on the semantics of it. The fall of a die is deterministic physics, but the face that comes out upright is statistically random - indeed, is the basis of the idea of practical randomness to begin with. The wobble of a rocket after it leaves the tube is every bit as random as the fall of a die.

P.S. normally distributed and Gaussian mean exactly the same thing.

P.P.S. no, claiming I "obviously" have no "practical" experience with artillery won't help your case. I was in the US field artillery, on 155mm and 8 inch self propelled.

Oh, and try telling the guys up front that every artillery friendly fire incident was their fault, and it was never the red-legs that screwed it up. Ever.

Oh, and I'd like your diagram of a battalion deployed on only 2 10x10 meter grid squares. Sounds like a "how many can fit in this sub-compact automobile?" contest.

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: JasonC ]</p>

[Urban Shocker]

I was watching "The color of war" on the history channel a couple of weeks ago and this is what they presented regarding rocket artillery.

A Department of Army study concluded that rocket artillery caused few casualties. Were the casualties caused in proportion to their use...who knows?

Perhaps more telling were the quotes from several G.I. diaries and letters sent home on the psychological effects of being in or near a rocket artillery attack which to put it mildly were terrifying. What effect did this have on combat effectiveness...who knows?

[Iron Chef Sakai]

tell that to the germans ducking for cover under unrelenting barrages of katyushas. they were effective. if they were not effective, they would not have been used.

[Bullethead]

tero said:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>There is no way to compensate for random inaccuracies, which is what rockets have.

Increased weight of fire is one compensatory measure. <hr></blockquote>

Which is just another way of saying that you can't make individual rockets very accurate so you have to shotgun a large, area target with them instead of hitting point targets with a smaller number of rounds. Which is what I've been saying and you've been objecting to. Now you've switched sides?

Forget it. You are arguing for the sake of arguing. I ain't playing that game. I will, however, answer you're non-accuracy-related questions

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Which model where you subjected to ?<hr></blockquote>

Katyushas of some sort and also the Brazilian Astros. Plus I've fired a lot of MLRS.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Rocket launches in the day make HUGE clouds and trails of smoke and at night make bright flames in the sky.

Then again so does regular arty. If the rocket propellant burns out in the tube then there is less flames in the sky. Also, if the terrain is not open steppes or desert then the horizon will mask most of the smoke and flames anyway.<hr></blockquote>

Rocket arty does NOT burn out in the tube. If it did, it would have no more range than a bazooka. So when a rocket battery fires at night, you see multiple streams of huge (they look like 50' in diameter), ascending fireballs like Gawd's Own Machinegun Battalion firing 100% tracer ammo. It also takes anywhere up to 30 seconds for this fireworks show to end. So all told, it's very catching to the eye--you can't help but notice it . These fireballs rise thousands of feet into the air and can be seen through fairly thick clouds. It thus takes real mountain ranges to hide them. Hills and trees won't do it.

In the day, each rocket leaves a dense smoke trail. When a launcher ripple-fires, these trails merge into a very wide stripe of smoke climbing thousands of feet into the sky. So again, you need a mountain range to hide it, unless there's a low cloud ceiling. And even then, you still usually have the lower several hundred to 1000' feet of the trail visible. This all hangs in the air until dispersed by the wind, which usually takes several minutes. Plus, the backblast from the rockets creates a huge cloud of smoke and dust around each launcher. This blob can easily rise a couple hundred feet and, like the rocket trails, hangs in the air a long time.

Surely you've seen video of MLRS firings from the Gulf War? Or footage of Nebelwerfer firings?

Anyway, combined, these effects eliminate the surprise factor of rocket bombardments. They also paint HUGE arrows in the sky leading directly to the launchers. This is why individual rocket batteries usually can't do sustained bombardments. They have to immediately move a considerable distance from where they fired or they'll get smacked with counterbattery. To get a sustained rocket barrage, you either have to have total air and arty superiority so there's no counterbattery threat, or you have to have skads of batteries firing in sequence from different positions.

Arty OTOH has a much lower signature. Shells leave no towering trails of smoke, nor do they look like gigantic tracer bullets. So that leaves the gun itself. And this is very, very difficult to spot even when firing, which is why armies have dedicated counterbattery observation units with highly sensitive and specialized equipment.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Incoming rockets also make much more noise for a longer time than shells do.

How much longer ?<hr></blockquote>

To clarify, I'm talking about the time between knowing, from judging the sound, that the shell/rocket is going to land near you, and the time it hits.

With shells, sometimes you don't hear them coming at all. Either they're supersonic or other battlefield noises drown them out. When you can hear shells well enough to know they're coming for you, it's usually only a couple seconds before they hit. Just enough time to hit the deck where you stand or dive behind a nearby rock.

With rockets, however, you generally hear them 5-10 seconds before impact and they're loud enough to be heard over a tank battle raging only a couple hundred meters away. You actually have time to run a dozen yards and dive in a hole.

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Deterministic is in contrast to statistical. You know this; don't play dumb.

You started with the fancy footwork. Dance the jig out.

The issue is whether each variable can be forecast exactly, or only within tolerance limits, giving only a statistical distribution as a prediction. The latter is the case, and the former is not.

There is no way to state absolute certainties when statistics are involved. But you can work out the procedure so that you can forecast the results with acceptable accuracy.

Take the statement The relative difference between standard deviation and propable deviation is r = 0,675 s. for example. Somebody must have done a lot of firing and statistics to find this consistency and correlation out.

The fall of a die is deterministic physics, but the face that comes out upright is statistically random - indeed, is the basis of the idea of practical randomness to begin with. The wobble of a rocket after it leaves the tube is every bit as random as the fall of a die.

Yes. However, to be able to calculate and verify the existence of a 50% zone there needs to be consistency.

And the 50% zone is a zone where at least 50% of the shells/rockets land. The number can be anywhere up to 100% but the quaranteed number of hits in the zone is 50% of the shots/rockets fired.

P.S. normally distributed and Gaussian mean exactly the same thing.

By deviation effects I meant also propable deviation.

P.P.S. no, claiming I "obviously" have no "practical" experience with artillery won't help your case. I was in the US field artillery, on 155mm and 8 inch self propelled.

It does not help my case. But your adherence to the mathematical purity and seeming disbelief in the human mind and its ability to overcome or counter the established systematic effects of deviations made me think you never dabbled with the tools of the trade.

Oh, and try telling the guys up front that every artillery friendly fire incident was their fault, and it was never the red-legs that screwed it up. Ever.

I repeat: How many of those incidents were results of human errors on the FO's part (known also as "****ed up fire mission") rather than simple cases of shells flying in totally unexpected directions ?

Granted, an individual gunlayer can make a mistake. Or an isolated case of mechanical malfunction. But for an entire battery to make a mistake that places the entire fire mission in a totally wrong place the mistake has to be either in the coordinates given by the FO or in the math of the direction/conversion team at the battery site.

[ 11-28-2001: Message edited by: tero ]</p>

[Tero]

Which is just another way of saying that you can't make individual rockets very accurate so you have to shotgun a large, area target with them instead of hitting point targets with a smaller number of rounds. Which is what I've been saying and you've been objecting to. Now you've switched sides?

Hell no. I have never maintained the rockets are ideal for point targets. But the thing is you just simply do not fire individual rockets. When talking about barrages.

The single projectile 50% zone for (US) 105mm at 2740m is 33m x 3.6m, the 28cm Rocket Projector 50% zone at 1500m's is 120m x 60m. What is not taken into account is the fact that the 50% zone gives you the area where at least 50% of the rounds fired land. If we fire 20 rounds of 105mm and 280mm from one 4 mount battery and have an exceptionally good day and (assuming overlapping zones) both batteries land 90% of the rounds in the 50% zone then it would mean you have 18 105mm rounds in a 33m x 3.6m square and 18 280mm projectiles in a 120m x 60m square.

At which point does a point target become an area target ? Regular field artillery is generally also directed at area targets. If you have an area target of 100m by 50 meters

Rocket arty does NOT burn out in the tube.

I always thought WWII rockets in particular expended their propellant before leaving the rail/tube. The German 280mm has a max range of 1925 meters. That would indicate the propellant is in fact burned out at the tube.

If it did, it would have no more range than a bazooka.

For some curious reason WWII rocket projectiles tend to be bigger than bazooka rounds.

Surely you've seen video of MLRS firings from the Gulf War? Or footage of Nebelwerfer firings?

Yes, both. And Katyusha too. And I am frantically trying to remember if the Nebelwerfer fired the same way MLRS fires. The number of tubes per mount is different (duh ! ) so the amount of dust from the back blast is bound to be different in favour of the Neberlwerfer. What about the propellant burn out. IIRC both the Katyusha and the Nebelwerfer burned out the propellant at or very near the mount.

Anyway, combined, these effects eliminate the surprise factor of rocket bombardments.

In modern times, I agree. But I am not sure about WWII.

They also paint HUGE arrows in the sky leading directly to the launchers. This is why individual rocket batteries usually can't do sustained bombardments. They have to immediately move a considerable distance from where they fired or they'll get smacked with counterbattery. To get a sustained rocket barrage, you either have to have total air and arty superiority so there's no counterbattery threat, or you have to have skads of batteries firing in sequence from different positions.

Thinking in WWII terms here: The Germans could use sustained rocket barrages in the first half of the war. The Soviets could use sustained rocket barrages in the latter part of the war. In the West in 1944-45 the Germans could not use sustained barrages. Yet the Nebelwerfers seem to have rated quite high in the Allied hate/notoriety list. The Western armies did not use rocket arty in the same scale the Soviets and the Germans did during the war. After the war it took some time to get them to accept the rocket as a viable supplement to the field arty. I can make it sound like the rocket arty was just like the SMG to the Western Allies, undervalued and misjudged.

Arty OTOH has a much lower signature. Shells leave no towering trails of smoke, nor do they look like gigantic tracer bullets. So that leaves the gun itself. And this is very, very difficult to spot even when firing, which is why armies have dedicated counterbattery observation units with highly sensitive and specialized equipment.

I wonder why ? Jason has made it sound like the fall of the shell is as random as the fall of a dice.

[JasonC]

"Somebody must have done a lot of firing and statistics to find this consistency"

Um no. It is pure math. One of them refers to a 50% line, whereas one standard deviation is about a 68% line. The distribution is assumed to be normal (Gaussian) in both cases. Your lack of knowledge of what the terms you are confidently citing even mean to begin with is not exactly inspiring.

And no, the 50% zone is not "quaranteed" (sic). Nor does it mean "at least that many" will land there; if it did, and more landed within it, they would just increase the value slightly and still have it be true that half land inside a somewhat larger area. What it means is that on average, half of the rounds will land within that area - just like a fair coin does not ensure 50% heads, only that on average half the flips will be heads.

They just use a 50% figure instead of standard deviations, because it is easier for planners to use without knowing much statistical math. The same reason is behind using mils (1/6400 part of a circle) instead of radians or degrees - because it makes miss distances easier to calculate, since the sine of 1 mil is 1/1000 (hence the name), for small angles.

As for shells landing where they aren't supposed to, can you have been in the artillery (any nation's artillery) and not know what a short round is? Besides that, I already explained one way it happens, without FO "error" - the spotting round happens to go longer than the average shot from the battery, and the FO properly responds with "drop 100, fire for effect". The battery lowers the range 100 yards, and most of its shells fall 100 yards closer again (some, "short" by random variation, still closer), and that may put them too close.

And yes, I have seen short rounds. I have had them go off within 50 yards of the gun I was manning, when a battery firing over us had a short round. (Fortunately we were inside the M109). One time, a week after I left Fort Sill, 6 guys were clobbered by a short round (they were lined up for chow and it landed in the field next to them). Tell your stories of infalliable redlegs to someone in the bloody infantry, not to someone who has seen the business end.

[ 11-28-2001: Message edited by: JasonC ]</p>

[Bullethead]

tero said:

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>I always thought WWII rockets in particular expended their propellant before leaving the rail/tube. The German 280mm has a max range of 1925 meters. That would indicate the propellant is in fact burned out at the tube.<hr></blockquote>

Your range for the 280 is off by a factor of 2-3, depending on source. But it could not have reached even 1900m if it burned in the tube. This is because rocket launchers are open at the rear so most of the initial force of the propellant is used just overcoming the inertia of the stationary rocket. If that was all there was, there would have been nothing left to accelerate the rocket to the speed required to reach 1900m.

Consider the panzerschreck. It burned in the tube and so could barely, even with a small, light projectile, reach 200m. Put the same projectile in a weapon with a sealed breech, the Puppchen, and it could go to 800m. Simply because this made it work more like a gun (or at least a mortar due to the gas lost around the loose-fitting projectile). But the 280mm was fired from open steel frameworks. No sealed tube, so no way to reach more than a couple hundred meters if the propellant burned instantly.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Surely you've seen video of MLRS firings from the Gulf War? Or footage of Nebelwerfer firings?

Yes, both. And Katyusha too. And I am frantically trying to remember if the Nebelwerfer fired the same way MLRS fires. The number of tubes per mount is different (duh ! ) so the amount of dust from the back blast is bound to be different in favour of the Neberlwerfer. What about the propellant burn out. IIRC both the Katyusha and the Nebelwerfer burned out the propellant at or very near the mount.<hr></blockquote>

Nebelwerfer footage I've seen shows rockets going far downrange and high into the sky with motors burning and belching huge clouds of smoke. In fact, the trail of individual Nebelwerfer rounds was MUCH bigger than from individual MLRS rounds because the former were spin-stabilized by angled rocket jets. So the smoke wasn't blown just straight back, but also out to the side, forming a much wider trail per rocket.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Thinking in WWII terms here: The Germans could use sustained rocket barrages in the first half of the war. The Soviets could use sustained rocket barrages in the latter part of the war. In the West in 1944-45 the Germans could not use sustained barrages.<hr></blockquote>

And these time periods correspond to the times when the necessary preconditions for sustained rocket fire were applicable to the respective nations. Namely, when that side had air and arty superiority.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Yet the Nebelwerfers seem to have rated quite high in the Allied hate/notoriety list.<hr></blockquote>

This is because rockets get your attention. They make it abundantly clear that somebody over there is trying to kill you with big, nasty things. And you have longer to appreciate this knowledge as you grovel in your foxhole waiting for the blast than you do with conventional arty, because of how noticeable rockets are.

This does not mean, however, that rockets were more effective or caused more damage. You yourself have noted how they didn't cause many casualties. It's because it's not pleasant at all to lie there sucking mud with time standing still while wondering if you're about to be blown limb from limb and knowing you're powerless to affect the outcome. You're not likely to think back on the experience with fondness when telling war stories later.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>The Western armies did not use rocket arty in the same scale the Soviets and the Germans did during the war. After the war it took some time to get them to accept the rocket as a viable supplement to the field arty. I can make it sound like the rocket arty was just like the SMG to the Western Allies, undervalued and misjudged. <hr></blockquote>

Rocket arty wasn't really worth anything until the development of submunition rounds. Until then, it could only produce results in sustained bombardments, when the strain of the worry described above would build up enough to sap resolve. A few scattered salvos wouldn't do that or inflict many casualties.

Nowadays, however, you can put 1 rocket with very good accuracy over a target, dump hundreds of submunitions from it, and get a destructive effect equivalent to a dozen gun firing several rounds each. Now that's worth something.

[offtaskagain]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Bullethead:

Nowadays, however, you can put 1 rocket with very good accuracy over a target, dump hundreds of submunitions from it, and get a destructive effect equivalent to a dozen gun firing several rounds each. Now that's worth something.<hr></blockquote>

Nothing like a little Steel Rain.

[Jeff Duquette]

This may be of some interest to folks following this thread. Some reference material I have laying around here. A Military Intelligence Report circa-March 1945 regarding German Rocket Artillery. Of particular interest are the final two pages that discuss accuracy.

http://www.geocities.com/jeffduquette/stuff2/rocket.html

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Um no. It is pure math. One of them refers to a 50% line, whereas one standard deviation is about a 68% line. The distribution is assumed to be normal (Gaussian) in both cases. Your lack of knowledge of what the terms you are confidently citing even mean to begin with is not exactly inspiring.

I was talking about the consistency, not the math. According to you there are precious little variables that can be manipulated so their affect is minimized to a degree where the barrage 100% zone for the battery is 100m by 50m.

And no, the 50% zone is not "quaranteed" (sic). Nor does it mean "at least that many" will land there; if it did, and more landed within it, they would just increase the value slightly and still have it be true that half land inside a somewhat larger area. What it means is that on average, half of the rounds will land within that area

So, on average the 50% zone contains 50% of the hits, but the number of hits can be greater ? The difference between my statement and yours is what ?

- just like a fair coin does not ensure 50% heads, only that on average half the flips will be heads.

If you really think this is relevant I must reevaluate my opinion on the US arty and its esteemed accuracy.

I trust you are aware of the Fininish research on the the phenomenon where the slice of bread almost always falls to the floor with the side with the butter on it facing the floor. It was established the slice indeed falls that way statistically and the reason is the placement of the center of gravity.

They just use a 50% figure instead of standard deviations, because it is easier for planners to use without knowing much statistical math. The same reason is behind using mils (1/6400 part of a circle) instead of radians or degrees - because it makes miss distances easier to calculate, since the sine of 1 mil is 1/1000 (hence the name), for small angles.

Also, at 5-10 km a degree is too big a value for corrections.

As for shells landing where they aren't supposed to, can you have been in the artillery (any nation's artillery) and not know what a short round is?

They should also know what is the propability for a round hitting that far from the target point. That is why you always double check for human errors first if the round hits a 1,5% propability grid instead of the 50% propability grid.

Besides that, I already explained one way it happens, without FO "error" - the spotting round happens to go longer than the average shot from the battery, and the FO properly responds with "drop 100, fire for effect". The battery lowers the range 100 yards, and most of its shells fall 100 yards closer again (some, "short" by random variation, still closer), and that may put them too close.

That is why you always fire spotting rounds

with all the guns of the battery simultaneously and not single spotting rounds from a single gun.

Tell your stories of infalliable redlegs to someone in the bloody infantry, not to someone who has seen the business end.

And you can tell your "practically no ****ed up fire missions by the FO, almost all are technical or statistical faults, not attributable to human errors" to anybody who has not been in the service at all.

The infantry does not order fire missions in every army as a part of procedure. The FO is a part of the redleg organization so the FO error falls in the lap of them, not the infantry (even if the infantry suffers casualties because of the error).

The FO can give the infantry a pretty song and a dance about windsheer and of Mars being in the house of Venus during the eclipse but the truth is at least 90% of the short rounds are short because somebody ****ed up, not because the statististics played an unfortunate number on the service.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:

This may be of some interest to folks following this thread. Some reference material I have laying around here. A Military Intelligence Report circa-March 1945 regarding German Rocket Artillery. Of particular interest are the final two pages that discuss accuracy.

http://www.geocities.com/jeffduquette/stuff2/rocket.html

Interesting.

I found some interesting insights at

http://riv.co.nz/rnza/tales/raskin1.htm

It seems this might evolve into a debate of the SMG proportions. Just because the US Army said they were inaccurate (without any specifics about how inaccurate they were) there is a need for the German POV and specs on the firemissions themselves. How often were the incendiaries used ?

[John Kettler]

Jeff,

Your scanned rocket intel booklet is a great read. It would be much better with the complete pages present, though. Many are clipped at the bottom and apparently lost several lines of text per page.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Cauldron]

At the risk of making this sound all too simple........

Rockets in CM are BOTH too inacurate and MOST DEFINATLY too "weak" on impact zone. Rockets in many ways were a terror weapon - you see whole trees fly over your head and most people think bad thoughts.

NONE of this is indicated in CM.

end of story

eric

[Iron Chef Sakai]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC:

Here is an example of a CM nebelwerfer barrage, used as they were intended. The target was a green US rifle battalion with various attachments and modifications. The line companies were deployed in a wedge, each in a diamond formation with the weapons platoon the rear corner. In the center of the formation, behind the lead company, there was a road column of trucks and jeeps carrying the recon platoon, MG platoon with attached jeep MGs added, ATG platoon, and a platoon of engineers attached. Off the road to the left was the battalion mortar platoon, and off the road to the right was an HQ position with trucks, jeeps. The total frontage was around 1400 yards, and the total depth was about half that. There were 22 vehicles in the road column, and 12 more in the mortar and HQ positions off the road. The total manpower, including drivers, was 858 men.

The Germans had 4 regular 150mm rocket FOs, with the ammo for each nudged to 27 rounds. Thus together the salvo would be 108 rounds, which is one "ripple" by a nebelwerfer battalion (6 rounds each of 6 launchers in each of 3 batteries, firing together), and the way they were actually meant to be used. There is a bit of lead time for the rockets to start landing, and some time dispersion from random variations from the FOs. Once the first rocket landing, it was a two minute affair. The targets had about 45 seconds of recovery on the last turn after the barrage, then both sides (hot seat of course) agreed to cease fire and I examined the results.

The US force lost 89 men including 19 KIA, which was slightly over 10% of the force. In addition, 21 out of 34 soft vehicles were knocked out, including about a dozen burning. 2/3rds of the road column was knocked out, and the road completely impassable due to burning vehicles. One 57mm ATG was dismounted in the roadway. 3/4 of the vehicles of the HQ section were also knocked out, but the 81mm mortar position was spared.

The flank companies were mostly alright, though one platoon lost 7 men and another lost a bazooka. The center company was slightly harder hit. But the largest losses happened in the column, with the recon platoon (at the point of it, which was an aim point of 2 of the 4 FOs) cut in half. Broken drivers were scattered here and there, pinned MGs crawled about, a few HQs were eliminated and others reduced to 1 man, the engineers lost 1 FT and a couple of zooks were gone as well.

A spoiling barrage like that would not KO the battalion fired upon, but it certainly inflicted attrition losses and disorganized the unit. In this particular case, the loss of vehicles was also important, and realistically would have stopped the column for the day - though the infantry might have advanced without their heavy weapons for a klick or two.

In addition, each rocket fired inflicted on average 5/6ths of 1 casualty. Now, the Germans were making and using 1-2 *million* 150mm rockets each year (1 million in 42 and 43, 2 million in 44). Anything like that rate of attrition per rocket fired would mean truly important levels of overall losses. If they got targets of the right density and size, accuracy was irrelevant. They could just keep chucking the things and rack up wounded enemies.

Since some targets were thinner or smaller, some misidentified, some missions harassment or at targets that had already moved, or were dug in, etc, the actual losses per rocket fired were considerably lower in the real deal than in the above CM test shoot. What it shows is that the level of effectiveness they can have in CM, used on the right target, if it had actually been achieved historically would have made the German shooters very happy.

The impression of uselessness comes simply from trying to use a weapon meant to shoot at battalions, against single platoons. And from trying to use 25 rounds instead of 100. A salvo of 100 rockets costs in CM about what a US 105mm battery with the same number of shells costs. The 150mm rockets have twice the blast and arrive in under 2 minutes of firing, instead of 8.

As long as the target is large enough, they therefore give considerably more bang for the buck than US 105mm batteries. But they do not do tight targets, one platoon at a time. If you aren't going to dump an industrial load of HE onto a large target covering a wide area, they are simply not the right weapon for the job. But if you are, they will do it well, and cheaply.

Which after all was the real historical point of the things...<hr></blockquote> the german army in 1944 to say the least, did not have enough of anything or anywhere close the numnbers they needed, you did not comment of the katyusha tactics, look up how they were deployed, say in 1944 when the russain war machine was rolling.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Cauldron:

At the risk of making this sound all too simple........

Rockets in CM are BOTH too inacurate and MOST DEFINATLY too "weak" on impact zone. Rockets in many ways were a terror weapon - you see whole trees fly over your head and most people think bad thoughts.

NONE of this is indicated in CM.

end of story

eric

You love being a wet blanket, don't you.

[Andreas]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Cauldron:

At the risk of making this sound all too simple........

Rockets in CM are BOTH too inacurate and MOST DEFINATLY too "weak" on impact zone. Rockets in many ways were a terror weapon - you see whole trees fly over your head and most people think bad thoughts.

NONE of this is indicated in CM.

end of story

eric<hr></blockquote>

I happen to disagree.

I just tried something - 1 regular British Rifle BN with MG Platoon, fairly concentrated (assumed to get ready for an attack), a force of 2,613 points. In the opposite corner, one TRP (in the concentration area, which was partially wooded terrain), and four elite (for speed of testing) 150mm ricket FOOs, a force of less than 400 points. These guys simulate a four launcher battery firing four salvoes before PUFOing to avoid CBF.

2 turns into the game the Germans surrender because I order them to. 100 rickets have gone in. The game ends a draw, the Brits hold the only VL. Score is 45 for the British 55 for the Germans.

British casualties:

102 (30 KIA)

2 Mortars

5 Vehicles (carriers)

1 gun

534 men okay

IRL, I believe that this battalion would not have made it off the startline, due to the very heavy casualties. Bit arbitrary test, but it seems alright to me - based on the account of a Soviet infantryman in Lucas' 'War on the Eastern Front'. I think the Nebelwerfer works almost exactly like it says on the tin.

[Iron Chef Sakai]

play with green troops.

[Andreas]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Iron Chef Sakai:

play with green troops.<hr></blockquote>

Even better - in that case the battalion would never make it off the startline

[Iron Chef Sakai]

i can't wait for vehicle morale in cmbb.

[JonS]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andreas:

...150mm ricket FOOs...<hr></blockquote>

Rickets huh? I didn't know the Germans used biological warfare in WW2

Edit: Because I'm not ashamed to admit the odd mistake

[ 12-02-2001: Message edited by: JonS ]</p>

[Iron Chef Sakai]

the allies were going to use chem warfare on the germans, but the ships that were storing them were destroyed by stukas at anzio if i remember correctly.

[Stuka]

No I didn't

[argie]

He said "stukas", not "Stuka". Must have been another/s member/s of your family.