Street fighting..*sigh*

[Tank Ace]

What is the best way to conduct a street battle? Infantry 1st or Armor 1st? Im not sure i like going both at same time and blasting the living crap outta the krauts.

[Redwolf]

Position fire support units so that they shoot down lanes between the houses. Usually that means they can be outside the town.

The goal is that nobody can move in the town, no more rushing from house to house. Mortars and vehicle MGs can fire permanently to keep up supressive effects if you have the ammo.

At that point the enemy is either in small isolated cells or bunched up. So you send in infantry to figure out what it is. Always one unit first to get shot at and somebody to report behind them. Vehicles or guns with good optics looking down the streets also help a lot.

Isolated cells will be taken by moderate fire support already in place and rushing infantry in.

Bigger bunches of enemies will be pounded with HE. You will typically be able to bring the direct-fire HE vehicles to suitable positions cleared in the previous step.

Or not, because there are countertactics. A defender knowing all this will set itself up so that his strongpoints are only visible from spot which are dangerous themself. He will likely have movement lanes not simply closable by a bunch of tanks shooting from outside the town. Everytime you move somehwere somebody will shoot into your side and when you attack that place you will be shot in the back. Also, long-range AT weapons are usually not subject to elimination by the first step above (the cleaning of isolated pockets) and may hurt you when you move your HE shooting units in. Mines can be part of nasty defenses, too.

[SFJaykey]

Infantry definitely leads. But they don't do all the fighting....hopefully they just locate enemies for support weapons and tanks to blast. Redwolf is right on: position tanks and support weapons to fire down the streets, but outside the range of enemy's short-range AT.

[Slappy]

Small caliber artillery, although it will not take down buildings, is also very helpful. Use 81mm HE to further restrict movement (target behind the strongpoint you are focusing on to prevent retreat or resupply) or 81mm smoke to cover your advance through those inevitable open spaces and to storm positions.

[YankeeDog]

Some thoughts specifically on attacking into an urban environment, as I have recently spent some time playing with this very situation.

In general, I try to minimize the area I actually need to clear of enemy presence in street fighting. Basically, if I don't absolutely have to go there, I don't.

Assuming it's a 'combined arms' city fight where I have sizable infantry and armor forces working as a team, I move my tanks in groups of at least platoon size down streets - losing a single AFV to an enemy ATG firing down a street I can live with; it's losing multiple AFVs to one gun that I hate. If I plan things right, with infantry units somewhat ahead of the tanks and scouting around corners, any ATG won't get a second kill as all my other tanks will immediately open fire on it the moment it is spotted. Often, if I have reasonably thick-skinned armor, I can get the ATG before it actually manages to score a kill this way.

Ideally, I'd love to be able to scout ahead/to the side of my armor far enough to be able to see ATGs before they open fire so I can take it out with mortars or whatever. Practically speaking this usually just isn't possible, though - you end up throwing your infantry so far ahead of your armor that it is without support and vulnerable to ambush. A good opponent will see this weakness and 'strip' the infantry away from your force, leaving your tanks with a insuffient infantry screen and therefore vulnerable to destruction in detail.

The infantry, then, forms a relatively tight 'bubble' around the armor to protect it from close assault. The infantry scouts buildings only as much as they need to in order to protect the armor from IAT weapons. This means that if I am playing early war, or even late war Germans, my infantry often stays VERY close to the armor since the max range of enemy IAT weapons is 50m or so. Against late war Germans, you have to scout considerably farther ahead/to the side of your armor (especially down side streets) as Shrecks and Fausts are a real danger. ATRs are generally not a problem unless you make the mistake of leaving your tanks' flanks exposed for long period of time, and/or your force has a significant amount of light armor (HTs or ACs).

I always leave some infantry behind my armor to watch for enemy infiltrators trying to sneak up behind me - since I am often only clearing 1-2 buildings deep along my line of advance, there is a real possibility of IAT teams sneaking in behind me.

The whole goal of this formation is to get quickly to my objective with a minimum of casualties, and then clear and secure the objective. If at all possible, I avoid doing any more fighting than I have to in order to clear my line of advance. To keep moving and avoid fights that eat up valuable time, I will freqently do things like use DF smoke (or even Arty smoke, as noted above) to block LOS down cross streets interdicted by enemy MG or ATG fire, and then race all or part of my force across the intersection under the cover of the smoke. I also don't bother with finishing off enemy units - If a few rounds of HE fire panicks an MG long enough for me to bypass it, I don't bother sending forces out to finish it off and make sure it's dead. Basically, if I don't have to take out an enemy gun or MG to get by it, I don't. I just keep moving to get to the objective.

Once I have the objective, I set myself up in a good defensive perimeter and make the enemy come to me. Given that the defender generally is at a numerical disadvantage, if you can get a large proportion of your force onto the objective(s) in good shape, his chances of forcing you off of them in such defensive-friendly terrain are slim.

Note that infantry MGs have relatively little role in the advancing force iteself, but they can be useful elsewhere. I either leave them behind in positions where they can overwatch and interdict enemy movement down long streets, or if I have transport for them, some can ride along and become part of my defending force around the objective(s) once I get there. If I am doing this tactic correctly, infantry MGs will not have the time to keep up with the pace of advance on their own. Especially with the setup time involved for MG teams (at least 30 sec.), there is rarely time for an MG to actually move forward on foot, set up, and support an attack on the way to the objective.

Other infantry heavies, especially Flamethrowers, and to a lesser extent mortars can be very useful on the advance, but again you have to be careful not to allow them to slow the pace of your advance. This is why I love having 1-2 armored transport vehicles coming up just behind the tanks on an urban combined arms attack - this allows my FTs and mortars to keep pace and therefore be useful. Loading them on the backs of tanks is generally risky as just a burst or two of long range MG fire will make them jump off, and usually pin or panic. Since HTs are quite vulnerable to ATR and mortar fire, if I have them they generally stay back a bit, out of LOS behind a corner of a building in an area known to be secure if possible, and waiting to zip forward with the Heavy Weapons teams when they are needed.

Generally, though, on the advance I rely on the firepower of my tanks to deal with any enemy strongpoints. The one special case here is open-topped and/or lightly armored vehicles with big guns, such as some SP guns. These can be very useful in dealing with strongpoints, but they are also quite vulnerable in the urban environment - I usually leave them back in overwatch to look down long streets, of if I do have to bring them forward, they stay a bit behind, and ideally secure behind a corner much like the HTs mentioned above until they are really needed.

The two biggest dangers to this plan are:

(1) Arty, especially Big Arty with TRPs - your force is very concentrated and therefore vulnerable to a well-aimed barrage. I try to avoid top floors except for a few scout/OP units for this reason, and I keep at least some of my infantry deep inside heavy buildings where it is unlikely to be hurt by arty. I also keep my armor as spread out as I can and still keep the tanks in more or less the same LOS situation. Also, once you have the objective, make sure to keep your perimeter as wide as practicable - this helps counter the 'let my opponent have the objective, and then blast the crap out of it with Arty' trick.

(2) Enemy armor - If the defender has even one tank, this can be very dangerous. Armor can flank or come up behind your advancing force and engage your armor from a very advantageous angle, and then scoot away before you can hit back. In addition to having trailing OPs to the rear of my 'bubble' to watch/listen for enemy armor, I also try to place other OPs in positions where they can observe important intersections that any counterattacking enemy armor would have to move through. Note that assuming LOS conditions are good, these OPs can be quite far away as armor is easily spotted when it's on the move - I have often placed them outside the town entirely on some convenient high piece of ground.

The worst problem with enemy armor is if your opponent has armor that is heavy enough to shrug off frontal hits at close range from your armor. This is always difficult to deal with, but it's especially bad in an urban situation. If it's early 1943 and you've got T-34s, and you think your opponent might have a StuG (or worse, a Tiger!!) or two, you've got a big problem - he can just swing that StuG around a corner and take your advancing force on frontally. You have little chance of taking out the StuG from the front with your T-34s, while the StuG can make short work of your tanks. In this case, you have to resign youself to a much slower pace of advance, with the infantry clearing a much larger area (at least two avenues wide) relying more on it's own support weapons (especially FTs) to advance. Your tanks have to stay hidden most of the time (some quick forays out to support infantry are possible, or careful keyhole engagements), and then you use the area you've cleared with your infantry to maneuver and try to flank the enemy armor with your tanks, or close assault it with IAT team. This kind of advance is much slower and more costly in terms of infantry casualties, but if your armor is seriously inferior in a head-to-head fight, it may be your only option.

Attacking into urban terrain with a primarily infantry, or an infantry-only force, is a totally different animal. But I've procrastinated way to long in writing this post. Time to go get some work done.

Cheers,

YD

[ July 01, 2003, 12:59 PM: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

[Beta1]

In BO the crocodile is a great urban weapon. Apart from the ability to torch half a city with its huge flame fuel tanks its really hard to kill.

As mentioned earlier if your going to bring armor into cities shrecks are one of the biggest dangers. An ambush from a long range AT gun firing down a street combined with shrecks covering the ambush point and any likely withdrawal routes can really ruin your day...