Grenade Bundle Grogs please reply

[Strontium Dog]

I'd never heard of one of these before CMBB and I've just got to wondering about this apparently deadly device. In a recent scenario my vet troops took out 3 IS-2s with grenade bundles and in most cases from some considerable distance. I can see how a bunch of grenades stuffed through an open hatch might cause a few problems for the occupants but I'm a little surprised at how easily a casually lobbed bundle can cause a total system malfunction. I'd have expected most attempts of this sort to end with the said bundle bouncing off the target and exploding harmlessly in a muddy puddle. Presumably a non-shaped explosive device of this sort would have little to no armour penetrating power (?) so did they work by blowing up fuel tanks or something? Where were the fuel tanks on most tanks - I assumed they'd have been pretty well protected but perhaps not? Were the fuses on the grenades synchronised? Did grenade bundles have some sort of sticky gunk applied to them to make them latch onto a vehicle? etc.... Any info appreciated

Cheers

SDog

[gautrek]

DITTO

[SaTyR]

I see the bundle lobbing animation as an abstraction of a couple of guys creeping close to the tank and placing the charges where they would do the most damage, while the others cover from a distance with small arms. Ie. the others may be 30m away (the distance most infantry AT weapons usually "kick in" in CMBB), but the "lobbers" (this is a lobbely !) are close to the tank, maybe even on it.

As for the other infantry AT questions, I´ll let the grogs step in

[CombinedArms]

My experience, too, is that grenade bundles are almost always lethal even vs. heavy tanks. Russian molotovs, by contrast, are rarely effective. Their only good infantry AT weapons seem to be satchel charges and "anti-tank grenades," though I HAVE killed a Tiger (once) and a KT (once) with molotovs when it was isolated and simply mobbed by a couple of platoons. That doesn't always work, however, even vs. immobile tanks.

But what's with the grenade bundles? Why do they always seem to work?

[Moon]

I guess you will know the typical German stick hand grenade (Stielhandgranate). Well, take half a dozen one of those, remove the sticks from all except one, and bind them together. Voila - grenade bundle. It packs quite some explosive punch actually, and can fairly easily and realiably knock off even the strongest tracks.

When placed under a tank, due to the limited space the explosive shockwave can spread into, it can even be real nasty to the usually very weak bottom armor, which often has emergancy escape hatches and the like as well (literally, it picks up the tank and turns it upside down. A similar effect can be observed when you let a grenade go off in a closed room - the effect is MUCH stronger than outside. Don't try this at home!)

Grenade bundles *should* be a lot more effective in taking out tanks in this regard than Molotovs, because the latter need to hit some vulnerable part of the tank (vulnerable to heat/fire that is), and especially later in the war it was difficult to find those spots due to special protection measures. Let's face it, fire on the outside armor of a tank doesn't do much to the crew - it's when the cocktail gets into the engine or into the crew compartment that things get "hot".

Martin

[86smopuim]

Originally posted by Moon:

...A similar effect can be observed when you let a grenade go off in a closed room - the effect is MUCH stronger than outside. Don't try this at home!

Oooooh shi

[Strontium Dog]

Thanks guys - very informative answers. I must try and get out of the habit of thinking of the on-screen action as being truly representative of all the possible courses of action.

Thanks again

SDog

[MikeyD]

I remember back in the Beta days as the molotov effectiveness was being tweaked, the references coming in pretty universally showed they weren't very effective -- even less-so for the ampuloments! Basically, unless you got a VERY luck hit (smashing one over a TC's head for instance, or igniting leaking fuel and a Panther engine compartment)) the weapon was more a nuisance than a threat.

[ June 26, 2003, 01:53 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]