Recce jeeps are gamey? No way!!!!

[BadgerDog]

Just some food for thought.....

I've seen a few comments and threads here that using jeeps as recce vehicles is "gamey".

Well, it may be thought of as gamey, but if available, I do it all the time in CMBB.

Not only do I find them appropriate in CMBB, but we used them in real life exactly in that manner. During the mid 60's as part of our Sherman armored regiment, we all had to do a stint in our attached forward recce unit. The standard recce vehicle for us was the 1951-52 pattern jeep, complete with our personal weapons as a primary defensive tool. We were organized into 2 vehicle patrols and 4 vehicle troops. The joke was that our life expectance up against BRDM's was like about 30 seconds. The object wasn't to engage anything, but to sneak-n-peek, withdrawing to cover at the first sign of enemy forces while simultaneously sending a "contact report", better known here as borg spotting. In more modern times, they have been replaced with the Cougar and other armed vehicles, but I have to tell you.... the good old jeep had such a small profile, it was easy to park her at the side of the road, camo her up and set-up a nice OP to view the terrain in front of a AFV defensive position, or in the "advance to contact", move quietly with stealth along some very tight country roads.

Anyway, I find nothing unusual or wrong with using any jeeps I have available as recce vehicles, just as there were used by our forces in real life.

Just a warning for my PBEM opponents.

Regards,

Badger

[RSColonel_131st]

I too have been using Jeeps stuffed with Half-Squads for recon.

A modern austrian recon troop frequently uses the "Pinzgauer", a 3 axis, open, all terrain vehicle with around 4 or 5 crew, an LMG, and an Recoilless Rifle. That's hardly different from a jeep with a half squad in it.

I think it might be considered more gamey to use jeeps without additional crew, though - it's not like a single guy could do all the work.

But if you combine a jeep and a half squad, it seems resonable priced. Of course, additional bonus is that you can dismount the HS and use it to sneak up or recon locations where the jeep can't go - again, very lifelike praxis.

[Andreas]

Very lifelike practice today, or in the 60s. The amount of radios for communication was slightly more limited in Byelorussia in 1944 though. You are comparing Apples and Oranges.

We've been round this one before though.

[CMplayer]

I don't think anyone will complain if you do normal recon with a jeep. What they hated was exploiting the old speed of jeeps over open ground, and the difficulty of hitting the things, to do a thunder run through the whole depth and breadth of a defensive position, trying to reveal gun positions etc etc.

[ April 22, 2003, 08:46 AM: Message edited by: CMplayer ]

[BadgerDog]

Radio? What radio?

We were lucky to have one cheap WWII type walkie-talkie per every four vehicles.... and they were very unreliable. Our contact reports were either in-person (send other call sign back with report), or if you could locate a friendly unit with a vehicle mounted N-19 set (Russian markings and WWII desiged for export), then you could use it.

Most often though, we would travel within sight of the main armored body lead elements and use either hand signals or "DBC" reporting.

DBC = "death by contact" observed by main force so they could spot the location of enemy fire that killed their recce unit.

Now you know why they rotated regular AFV crews through that job.

Regards,

Badger

[ April 22, 2003, 08:57 AM: Message edited by: BadgerDog ]

[Sergei]

Gamey Canadians!

[Redwolf]

Jeeps were gamey in CMBO because CMBO had that bug that they couldn't be directly hit with tank (or gun) fire and tank (or gun) fire would not lead a moving unarmored target.

In CMBB they die as they should.

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by redwolf:

Jeeps were gamey in CMBO because CMBO had that bug that they couldn't be directly hit with tank (or gun) fire and tank (or gun) fire would not lead a moving unarmored target.

In CMBB they die as they should.

That's right - pre-patch CMBO, they were also unrealistically fast, even when not on a road, and were great at spotting, even when travelling at full speed cross country.

[laxx]

DBC - death by contact

nice acroymn!

[Max Tarcald]

Badger,

I was reading your comments and even before Sergei tell that your were canadian, I was sure you were one.

I was laughing because I was recognizing all the canadian army details! I've been part of a reserve recce regimen 10 years ago and let me tell you that almost nothing had changed at that time except that we had better radio and Iltis instead of Jeep.

They always told us that we were supposed to get machine gun in those vehicule...

Max

12 RBC

[securityguard]

in CMBB ive noticed its 2000x as hard to spot units in extreme FOW with jeeps. you usually get sound contacts of mg42's unloading on your jeep then all of a sudden your jeep explodes randomly, and all sound contacts dissapear. you have to be really careful with them to get any use out of them, unless you can seriously haul ass across the map.

[coldmeter]

Something I have been trying out lately and in theory it sounds great is having a kubelwagen carry a sharpshooter out as far as is practicable and dropping the sharpshooter off, leaving him to get in hiding and then (hopefully) wait for the enemy to pass by. My kubelwagen has done it's job and has returned to my lines and into safety. if the kubelwagen spots anything on the way, I consider whether it's worth having a further look or not by scouting on at a fast pace. But the primary objective is to leave a sharpshooter in my opponents rear.

I got the idea from a book I read "Hilters Mountain Troops" were the 6th SS "Nord" division perfected this tactic against the russians in the finnish forests and later used it with great success againt the US troops back on mainland europe. my own attempts have met with less success but it's still early days yet.

[YankeeDog]

I don't think most would object to the careful use of Jeep-loaded half-squads as recon, especially in CMBB. I know much less about the Russian Army, but the US Army certainly used Jeeps as forward recon/scout elements in WWII in a very similar manner to what BadgerDog describes.

Most objections I have seen about 'gamey' Jeep recon involve dramatic suicide runs into likely enemy held territory by one or more unloaded Jeeps as a way of exposing enemy positions. This is very different than the type of 'sneak and peek' tactic that BadgerDog descibes.

IMHO, in CMBO "Gamey Jeep Rush" tactics tended to garner more useful intel than it would have IRL for several reasons:

1. 'Borg' spotting. Often the Jeep(s) would manage to report back the positions of multiple enemy contacts in the few seconds that they lived under fire. Even with a radio, I sincerely doubt two guys in an unarmed and unarmored Jeep are going to get much in the way of useful transmission off once the bullets start flying before they jump into the nearest depression and start eating sod, especially if they're left hung out to dry well in front of their main body with no good avenue of retreat.

Borg spotting still isn't 'fixed' in CMBB, but there are a number of changes, such as the more-difficult-to-spot HMGs mentioned in (3) below, that mitigate the effects of Borg spotting considerably, at least as far as 'suicide Jeeps' are concerned. The end result is that, even with the Borg spotting, such tactics generally don't garner as much useful intel in CMBB as they did in CMBO.

2. The aforementioned 'speed as armor' bug. This bug made it very difficult for guns of any size to hit fast-moving vehicles, meaning 'suicide recon' vehicles sometimes lived for an unrealistically long time under HE fire, especially if the HE fire was coming from fairly long range.

This bug is fixed in CMBB, and unarmored vehicles in general die much more quickly if taken under fire by guns, even at long range. Since light to medium caliber guns are also less likely to be spotted when firing in CMBB (see (3) below), this makes a light to medium gun placed towards your rear with good overwatch one good way of dealing with lightly armored or unarmored vehicle recon - a gun in such a position can probably stop most 'suicide jeeps' before they get close enough to really learn anything of value.

3. Infantry units were too easy to spot at range once they opened fire in CMBO. In cost-effect terms, the best weapon to stop a charging Jeep with is probably an HMG. Other good options are ATRs and light ATGs. In CMBO, with the exception of the nearly invisible 20mm AA gun, these types of units could often be spotted firing on a rushing Jeep from several hundred meters away.

In CMBB, if an HMG or ATR opens up on an onrushing Jeep at, say 350m or so, it is extremely unlikely that the Jeep will live long enough to get anything more than a 'sound contact' to the weapon. Light ATGs need a bit more range to stay unspotted, but they also have more hitting power at range. Pointswise, exchanging Jeep for the knowledge that there is an HMG or gun somewhere in a general area is generally a poor trade. Exchanging a Jeep for the knowledge of *specifically* where a gun or HMG is more worthwhile.

4. Lack of Covered Arc-type commands in CMBO also presents difficult conundrums for dealing with suicide rush-type tactics. You really have three options as far as firing orders in CMBO: (a) Hidden, which means a unit usually won't open fire until they are fired upon, or is about to be walked/run over, ( Unhidden, which means the unit will open fire on any enemy unit it sees and can cause at least *some* damage to, or © Hidden or Unhidden while targetting an Ambush Circle, which in will cause the unit to behave similarly to (a), except that it will also open fire on any enemy unit it can damage that comes in close proximity (15-20m or so) of the Ambush point.

None of these options really allows you to deal with 'suicide rush' tactics properly, especially as regards to HMGs and unarmored vehicles. A savvy player will zip his Jeep(s) from cover to cover, always making sure that the vehicle ends the turn out of potential lanes of fire. If the defensive player leaves his HMGs and light guns on 'Hide', the Jeep(s) he may not have a chance to target them until they get very close to his MLR and so are more likely to gain useful intel. If he unhides his HMG and guns, he runs the risk of them opening up on more distant enemy units, such as overwatching armor and/or heavy weapons teams that they have little chance of damaging. This generally results in wasted ammo and revealed positions.

In CMBB, Covered Arcs nicely eliminate this problem, allowing you to order your HMGs and light guns to shoot at light recon vehicles (or infantry teams, for that matter) that start to get too close, but not needlessly toss ammo at enemy units on 'yon hill'.

So overall, I think the "Gamey Jeep Rush" issue is largely fixed in CMBB. Eventually, the addition of things like some sort of radio net modeling in CMX2 should make it even more a thing of the past.

Summary I think the careful use of light recon vehicles to scout and observe ahead of a main body as BadgerDog describes is completely realistic. In CMBB, due to Borg Spotting you still probably gain a bit more intel from this tactic than you would IRL (or perhaps gain the same amount of intel, but faster. . .), but it's dramatically better than in CMBO, and I expect that the benefits of such tactics will get even more 'realistic' in CMX2.

Anyway, that's my $.02.

Cheers,

YD

[Mr Byte]

Badger !!

Now you tell me you dont think the suicide jeep trick is gamey!!

As soon as I find where I parked it look out its coming to find out just how many of those bloody Tigers and panthers you have !!!

[CombinedArms]

It's already been said, but, to summarize:

1. I think it's generally agreed that the kind of park-jeep-and-send-infantry-to-scout reconnaisance BadgerDog describes is certainly not gamey.

2. On the other hand, the suicide-ride-to-death to trigger as many guns as possible that some favored in CMBO (reportedly, I never saw it myself) was gamey.

3. CMBB seems to take care of this problem thru cover arcs, harder to spot infantry in cover, and more lethal HMG and tank fire against jeeps. Someone trying this now might lose the jeep to a single unseen HMG when it trips its cover arc while still 300m from the enemy position. Not much payoff for the risk. Another gamey tactic bites the dust.

BTW, IIRC, BadgerDog came to CMBB first and missed out on the CMBO debate on this subject, so we're just dealing with a belated echo.