Designing first scenario: question about historic forces

[Alsatian]

I'm trying my first design: 361st Infantry Regiment, 91st ID assault on Mt. Adone, April 45.

In the unit history, among assets listed for the assault are: "155mm howitzers," but also "155mm Long Tom heavy artillery." It also lists "105 mm howitzers" and then "105mm cannons."

What's the difference between howitzers, heavy artillery and cannons? Is there a reason they're all listed separately?

Also, throughout are references to U.S. assault guns. Does that refer to the SP Priest?

[Renaud]

The 'assault guns' might be priests or more likely the newer 105mm cannon-armed shermans. There were also some US gun-carriages that might quality.

Unfortunately 155mm isn't modeled on-board, only as offboard arty battery. So if they used those big guns for direct fire in that battle, you will have to simulate with direct fire from 105mm cannons (the ones in 'support' units).

You see that difference a lot in CM...same diameter gun is called cannon in one battery, howitzer in another battery. Sometimes even 'gun-howitzer'. The difference is mainly in the type of gun and how they fired. Cannons had longer barrels and fired on a shallow trajectory, usually with longer range. Howitzers fired high-trajectory plunging fire, shorter range but good at landing right on top of things. Whether this diffence is modeled in CM I never have bothered to check. I haven't seen the difference anyway.

Long Toms had super-long barrels, for really long range fire. Like the german 170mm Ke guns.

[Alsatian]

So it looks like little difference between howitzer and cannan as far as CM is concerned.

BTW, the unit history I'm using listed these gun assets as the artillery assigned to the regiment to soften the defenses, so no Long Tom mod needed for my on-board play

Thanks for the pointers.

[Kingfish]

Assault guns are either the M8 howitzer motor carriage, or the larger 105mm equipped Shermans. I believe the 105 Shermans started to replace the smaller vehicles sometime in Sept '44, at least in the ETO. M7 Priests would not be considered assault guns since they were rarely brought up to the front line for DF work.

I believe the 105mm "cannons" were the shorter barreled M3 guns issued directly to the regiments, 6 guns making up the regiment's Cannon company. Apart from the shorter barrel they differed little with the regular M2 105mm howitzers found in division arty units, and were more often than not used as an additional battery for IDF support.