How to protect trucks from enemy aircraft

[JasonC]

Suppose you have 4 unarmed trucks and a single light machinegun team, and the enemy has multiple aircraft with bombs and strafing runs. How can you defeat the planes and save your trucks?

You can park the trucks in scattered trees and keep them motionless, and if you like, on "hide".

You can separate the trucks widely, so no bomb or rocket strike aimed at one of them, can hurt any of the others, even with a pretty wide miss and a pretty large explosion. Think 200 meters apart.

Although your LMG will not even fire at enemy planes, you can indirectly try to "protect" the trucks by drawing fire with it, by having it moving in the open at the moment planes pass overhead. Planes strongly prefer vehicle targets, but just might not see a parked truck, and instead go after your LMG moving in the open. Their bombs are likely to miss a small target like that. Strafing might only break the LMG and one man might survive, allowing it to draw fire again.

Under some circumstances, you might be better off simply exiting the trucks off the map. This protects them completely. While you won't have them to use, the enemy won't get knock-out points for them either.

In some other circumstances, you'd be more worried about the planes hitting your actual fighting vehicles and would even prefer they shoot at your empty trucks. Yes they will kill the trucks easily. Yes they will get knock out points that way. But they'd also get knock out points hitting your light armor, perhaps twice as many, and they will also reduce your fighting power that way. While loss of your unarmed trucks hardly matters for the remainder of the fighting, whatever it does to the ending score.

But the most basic thing to understand about protecting trucks from enemy aircraft with a lone LMG team, is that you can't. The weapon can't do the job. The job sometimes isn't worth doing, either, but when it is, you need something that can really do it.

2 37mm AA guns, or for the Germans, 20mm quad AA, are what you need for the job. If you buy a single halftrack as well, you can reposition these, too. They have high accuracy, ammo load, and firepower, and taking an AA section like this is a reasonable alternative to one more infantry platoon, tank, or FO. Especially when the enemy likes air support, but even if he doesn't they can pay for themselves in anti-infantry and anti-gun and anti-light vehicle firepower. 37mm AA can even wreck full tanks, either with flank shots from unspotted positions, or by accumulating gun and track damage even from non-penetrating hits.

So, the most important thing to know about the subject question, is that you can't, it is stupid. Run the trucks off the map if you are in that situation. Avoid getting into it in the first place, by adding an AA section to you force mix, in clear weather.

[Antman]

I'm personally enjoying this satirical, but nonetheless informative, series.....

I intend to collect the whole set.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

heh, yes they are funny, tho partly because of the obvious frustration and annoyance experienced by the author.

can't help but think of the right vs wrong pictures of WW2 manuals. someone should make CM versions of them.

[Guest Mike]

did anyone ever adapt "Jabo" for BB or AK??!!