Small caliber mortars Artillery on map

[mav1]

Because of the range of small mortar off map artillery like 60mm mortars, shouldn't they be on the map. Or is because they are invisible.

[YankeeDog]

Do you actually check the in-game stats before you post this stuff?

The smallest caliber mortars available as an off-map asset in any CMx1 game are in 3in/81mm/82mm range. 60mm and less are available only as on-map assets. And no, on-map mortar teams are not invisible.

For most nationalities, medium mortars (stuff in he 3in/81mm/82mm mortar range) are available either as an off-map asset, in battery, or as an on-map asset, purchasable as single tubes.

So you have your choice. On map or off.

Mostly, I think this abstraction works reasobably well.

Off the top of my head, the US WWII-era 60mm had an absolute max range of a bit less than 2km, so keeping as a solely on-map makes sense.

The exact range of 3in/81mm/82mm caliber systems varies a fair bit depending on nationality and type of bomb being thrown, but in most cases the longest-ranged HE bomb usually has an absolute max range of between 3-4km.

These are WWII era stats. Modern 81mm mortars can reach a bit over 5km.

Anyway, for most small to mid-size CM scenarios (maps 2km or so on a side), medium mortar parks would probably be far enough back from the main line of contact that they would be off-map.

On the larger maps, the mortar parks might well be on map. But even in these cases, it would only be the rare blowout game where one player's forces would penetrate far enough behind the other player's MLR overrun a mortar battery even if it was, on map.

So IMHO, 98% of the time, CM's one-or-the-other, on-map or off system with medium mortars works just fine. In 2% of scenarios, especially large maps and long time limit games, it gets a bit rough around the edges. But I can live with that.

Cheers,

YD

[JasonC]

Actually typical ranges for the 81s ran about 2-2.5 km.

Also it is not entirely true they are the lightest in the game - though in blast rating that may be accurate, in reality they were heavier than a number of other weapons that have indirect fire allowed. The Italians have a 65mm mountain howitzer FO for example, given a rather generous 32 blast in the game.

[Corvidae]

Mav1? the 60mm mortar IS on map, and ONLY on map,,, And they are VERY highly visible

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Actually typical ranges for the 81s ran about 2-2.5 km.

Also it is not entirely true they are the lightest in the game - though in blast rating that may be accurate, in reality they were heavier than a number of other weapons that have indirect fire allowed. The Italians have a 65mm mountain howitzer FO for example, given a rather generous 32 blast in the game.

Well, yes. But the question was specifically about mortars, not howitzers or other types of guns.

And yes, typical ranges would generally be less than maximum range. My layman's understanding is that "ideal" range for both mortar and gun artillery is on the order of 50-75% of maximum range.

So your figure of 2-2.5km "typical" range, and my figure of 3-4km "maximum" range, would seem to mesh well.

One thing that CMx1 does not model is that many medium mortars have a "Heavy HE" bomb, with reduced range, but considerably higher HE load.

IIRC, the Heavy HE bomb for the US 81mm has an HE load close to what a 105mm howitzer shell has, but a max range of only 1300m or so.

Availability of such a shell in CM would make on-map medium mortars an even more attractive unit.

Cheers,

YD

[mav1]

Originally posted by Corvidae:

Mav1? the 60mm mortar IS on map, and ONLY on map,,, And they are VERY highly visible

I meant 60mm mortars being used as map artillery being invisable. If you have a map larger than 4km then off map small calibre mortars should be visable on the battle map. I played a game 4km long, with 60mm mortars off map when there was no mortars on the map, so the mortars must have been invisable on the map.

I get the feeling I have made a mistake.

I better find out before people read this and find out that I have made an arse out of myself.

Yes, what I meant was 80mm not 60mm off map mortars being on the map when the map was longer than 4km. Please forgive my earlier statement as an unfortunate cock up.

[ October 11, 2006, 05:26 AM: Message edited by: mav1 ]

[YankeeDog]

Mr. Picky would note that you probably mean 81mm, or 82mm mortars. As far as I know, none of the major combatants fielded a 80mm mortar in WWII.

But that's me being an anal grog. Close enough.

Anyway, yes, you have a point. As I noted before, the absolute maximum range for most WWII-era medium mortars was between 3-4km. And as Jason noted, practical useful range is usually a fair bit less than the absolute max.

So if you're playing a larger map, it's quite possible that, IRL, a medium mortar battery would be on-map, and/or wouldn't be able to reach the entire map.

In my experience, this only this creates major realism problems on long advance scenarios where the map is, say, 1 km wide by 4km long, and your goal as attacker is to advance along the entire length. If you have support of an 81mm mortar battery at your jump-off point, you would almost certainly out-run its range by the time you reached the far end of the map.

Of course, batteries could pull up stakes and move forward with the advance, but I doubt even a completely motorized battery could move forward 1km, dismount, set up and register a new firing position within the time allowed by most CM scenarios.

CMx1 simply doesn't represent on-map batteries of any kind attached to a spotter, so this is an abstraction we have to live with. The scenario designer can use on-map mortars instead, but then they lose the ability to do called in fire from a spotter.

Cheers,

YD

[Hammer-n-Sickle]

I'm in the middle of a game right now. Opponent opend up with 1200 round of 81MM motor in target wide. Pretty cool to watch but not to terribly destructive in the trees.

[Corvidae]

Mav1, your resounding "OOPS" is duely noted

81mm. yes they are both on map and off map,

and an 81mm spotter can be hard to see if he is in trees or bushes,

[Zalgiris 1410]

60mm mortars, 81mm mortars; cock up the arse, WTF. :eek:

Take a look at the Rumanians they have both Brandt 60mm & 81.4mm mortars, with only the 81mms availiable as off the board battery mode. Curriously the range of their 60mm mortars is about 1800 metres while their 81mm mortars is only 1900 metres! So my 1st question is why with only a one hundred metre differrence does the Brandt 81.4mm mortars get to be off map while the 60mm martars do not? Secondly, why couldn't there be a way to actualise a mortar battery or the more usual case of a section of two mortars being employed and deployed on map, controlled by a fire control leader or HQ unit with or without a rangetaker or 'spotter'?

Likewise I would love to see Infantry Guns in use in the manner that they were usually employed, esp by the Germans, which was mostly in the indirect fire role. For both their 75mm leIG and the 150mm sIG the minimum 'over the heads' of troops in front of them was about 200 metres. This is well with in the ranges that CMx1 is all about. Same goes for the Russian L/17 75mm IG, the Italian 65mm IG or mountain gun as CMx1 has them or the Rumanian 47mm 'very' light IG, represented along side their unshielded ATGs of the same calibre, although I don't have any information regarding these IGs safe minimum 'over the heads of own infantry' range, however someone did a calculation of the Russian IG and come up with a figure similar to the Germans ones above.

I think that this would have added something to the game, while at the same time being historically acurate and realistically authentic. The IGs could then be used for direct fire as they are only allowed to be in CMx1, or indirect, like on board mortars can be when using a commanding HQ unit in a substitute spotter role. Now that would not only be fantastic, but tactically very interesting I reckon. It could even have been modelled with the ability for any Pltn or Coy HQ unit or relavent spotter / rangetaker to be able to 'call in' the IGs or 60mm/81mm mortar section via their own controling, coordinating HQ unit where this was historically technically achievable, while not allowing such a process to take place when forces were not up to the technical capacity. (Lacking the signals equipment capable of facilitating such fire control.)

[JasonC]

If you want to use IGs indirect you take the corresponding FO. That is what those 2, 4 and 6 tube German 75mm FOs are, and the 2 tube 150mm FOs. (The 4 tube is the divisional howitzers, the 2 tube is the regimental IGs). The other powers also have their light arty. Just isn't terribly useful. As for why not show 60mm off map as FOs, because they are ineffective as wide area weapons. You can do it with a HQ and a bunch of on map ones but you won't find it very effective.

[Zalgiris 1410]

Point taken on the 60mm mortars Jason. I don't know much at all about the SOP of a Rumanian Company battery of 2-3 60mm mortars, especially as to wheither they were past out to the platoons individually or bunched up and controled like an actual battery or not or what! However given that they were origional organised on a 2 per Company basis for full strength Battalions (as for 41 type Battalions) I'm making the assumption that they were controled (or were attempted to be) like a battery even given their short range and slight blast effect. The increase to 3 per Company in 42 seems to have been done as an increase in fire support rather done to ensure that each Inf platoon has its own 60mm platoon mortar.

Just because the 60mm mortar fire effect is not that great doesn't mean that they shouldn't be treated differently from what was historically correct as BF has set out to achieve and as we all like about CM so much.

An example is the Italian L/17 65mm Mountain Howitzer, which with a 1.1 metres long barrel length IMOH is for all intents and perposes an Infantry Gun, in CM it comes with the 4 tube spotter provided battery option, even though while the blast effect is 32 and higher than what some posters believe accurate for that calibre, it is still well low below what a lot of players would like to get from a spotter unit for their games.

[i think of the Italian L17 (1.1 metres barrelled) 65mm Mountain Howitzer as an Infantry Gun because the Russian 76.2mm Infantry Gun is also an L/17 although that means that it is 1.3 metres long. It also falls between the German L/11-12 75/150mm Infantry Guns (including SP versions) and the L/24 75mm gun on the short PzIVs & Stug IIIs have barrel lengths of 0.8 metres to 1.8 metres, the 'Stumpels' were given to some late War SS units in stead of the 0.8m 75mm light IGs.

If pressed on it I would refer to the Japanese who had both a 75mm IG as well as an L/10 70mm 'Howitzer Battalion Gun' or 'Pack Howitzer', with a barrel length of just 0.72 metres! Both of these Japanese Infantry Support artillery pieces had initial velocities of 198 metres per sec. This is similar to the 210 metres per sec initial velocities of the German Infantry Guns. ]

Those two tube German Infantry spotter batteries that you mention Jason are another good example in terms of gaming design to reflect historical realism as well. Again some players might not like having only two tube spotter units but that is what is historically accurate, what is not is that there aren't any 6 tube 150mm Infantry Gun spotter batteries, which is what some PG Regiments had latter in the War! Hmmm, 6 tube 150mm spotters...ahhh :cool:

O'h while still on the subjuct of Infantry Guns, those L/32 47mm guns that CM has classified as Anti-Tank guns for both the Romanians and the Italians were actually Infantry Guns, or purhaps meant to be Infantry Support Guns origionally. The Rumanian 47mm gun is the origional Austrian Bohler version, while the Italian 47mm gun is the Breda copy of the same origional version built in much much greater numbers. Both are actually in reality very light Mountain or pack guns, being break down able into 11 man or donkey portable parts and could come with or without a shield. The 'anti-tankness' capacity is derived from the fact that they are provided with an anti-tank round, as a secondary funtion AIUI. Their indirect fire range was about 7000 metres and here was their intended role IIUOC. Even though their blast effect is woefully low that gives these very light guns a much greater range than those German Infantry Gun handled properly in CM as intended.

Interestingly, coming back to the mortars I've recently read that Rumania also had 50mm Brandt mortars as a platoon mortar, 60mm Brandt mortars (with a range of only 1000 metres!) as the Company mortar and 81mm Brandt mortars (with a range of either 2500m or 3000m IIcouldRC) at Battlion level. There ranges are very different than what we have in CM. I'm not sure how accurate these figures are and while I would like to extend the range of the 81.4mm mortars I don't actually want to bring to the attention of BF the 1000m range limit for the 60mm Brandt mortars!

Also I have sources that say that the Rumanians were equipt with Schneider L/53 47mm Anti-Tank Guns, which are not in CM for the Rumanians and certainly would suit to replace the Bohler L/32 47mm guns in an anti-tank capability. Fair enough the Schneiders are not going to stop a horde of T-34s or KVs but probably eliminate the lighter obsolete stuff at a greater range than the Bohlers which might matter for some thing over the flat wide steppe in Southern Russia where they were. I must admit though that I can't find any direct examples Scheider 47mm ATGs in Rumania TO&E that I have; except for the inspecific mentioning of 47mm ATGs with out stipulating as to wheither they are Schneider or Bohler. OTOH I've got plenty of Bofors L/47 37mm ATGs and 2 tube 47mmIG per Inf Btlns, which can only mean the low velocity Bohler.

[JasonC]

Z - company mortars were used against point targets and that is properly simulated in CM by having them on the map and directing them with an HQ. Sure you can fire both at the same target and call it battery.

Russians used 82mm at company from quite early on, Germans likewise. Germans dropped the 50mm as not useful quite early, as ammo usage shows. Both also used batteries of 81mm at battalion - the difference is not battery of 2 or battery of 6, but firing at a point target or firing an area sheaf.

Romanian 47mm ATGs were in fact ATGs and were issued to ATG companies in each division. They also were not the main AT means Romanian divisions had - that was their div arty 75mm pieces used in a direct role. Russians made the same use of their 76s and Italians the same use of their 75s, French likewise, Poles as well, etc. It was a standard practice dating clear back to WW I.

German leIGs were meant to be used direct for the most part. They weren't always in practice simply due to the difficulty moving them into direct fire position in the course of a fluid attack.

As for their 150s, those were almost always used indirect and were rarely present to TOE anyway. Later in the war they were often replaced by 120mm mortars. The Russians used 120mm mortars at regiment for organic heavy fire support from the get-go.

I really fail to see what you are quibbling about or the point of continuing it. There is much nothing wrong with CM treatment of this stuff. One might have a minor quibble about how shoots that lift from observed locations to unobserved dead ground get inaccurate to readily - but equally, the center point of called barrages is too precisely where the player wants it when the location is observed.

[Zalgiris 1410]

I'm not saying that any of this is really a bug in CMx1, but... well it just bugs me!

[ December 29, 2006, 04:55 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Zalgiris 1410]

No Jason the Rumanians had two differrent 47mm guns, which were intended to serve different perposes, one light shorter barrelled version (which was also pack/man portable) and a longer version which was an Anti-Tank gun with a limited light support capability.

The differrence is in the initial velocities produced between the 1.5 metres barrel length on the Bohler and 2.5 metres barrel length on the Schneider. While the Rumanians had plenty of 37mm Bofors ATGs to go around, they did have some 47mm ATGs (Schneider)in ATG units largely with the Cavalry Divisions. OTOH there was the 2 gun Infantry Gun batteries equipt with Bohler 47mm guns and were provided as a unit per Battalion, just like the German & Russian light 75/76.2mm IGs usually were.

Origionally, Rumania ordered 300 Schneider L53/47mm Anti-Tank Guns to form a 12 gun mechanised* ATG Company per Division during the late 30's as a response to Hungarian tankettes and light tank developements. Before the fall of France, France had deliverred 160 of them and the Concordia factory had built 140 under licence and it continued to build them afterwards.

*The French Renault UE Chenillette fully tracked supply carrier was to provide all terrain mobility and 300 of them were also orderred. A total of 126 had been built under licence by the Malaxa factory in Bucharest, however a vehicle return for 22 June 1941 records that there were 178 Senileta on strength. The extras came from German captured stocks while a few may have actually been interned Polish TK/S Chenilettes.

The majority of the Bofors L47/37mm ATGs that the Rumanians have on the Eastern Front were supplied by Germany as barter for oil contracts. These largely came from captured Polish stock with a figure of 669 deliveries of that gun, which was still the most common ATG in Rumanian service in June 1941. Later Germany was unable to find any more of them and started to deliver her own PAK to Rumania including at first the PAK 36 L45/37mm.

Origionally Rumania received 275 Breda L32/47mm IGs from Italy, calling them Bohlers of which they are direct copies, while Germany supplied 545 actual Bohlers from her inherited Austrian stocks, also for oil.

My point is that the 700+ Bohlers were origionally intended to serve as an IG in an infantry support role while the 300+ Schneider 47mm gun were dedicated ATGs. They were later superseded in numbers by 669 Bofers 37mm ATGs in Rumania service, but that is only by about a 2-1 ratio. So where are the Schneider L53/47mm ATGs in CM and why don't the Bohler L32/47mm guns act like Infantry Guns with an off board option to simulate indirect fire support capability?

PS: BTW where are the Rumanians during most of 1943? They were still fighting on the Eastern Front and still had troops in the Crimea and never less than two Divisions on the Front with the 17th Army in the Kuban Bridgehead at Rumania's lowest level of commitment.

[ December 29, 2006, 05:00 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Sgt AA]

Originally posted by JasonC:

... and the 2 tube 150mm FOs. (The 4 tube is the divisional howitzers, the 2 tube is the regimental IGs).

It seem to be the opposit in my game - the howitzer has the 2 and 4 tubes FO and the IG has only 4 tubes?

[JasonC]

Not so, look at the formation level listed. The 2 tube 150 is listed as "regiment" because it represents the pair of 150mm sIGs on the regimental gun company TOE. The 4 tube 150 is listed as "division" because it represents a div arty battery of the usual 150mm howitzers.

In the 75mm, the other type that shows IGs firing indirect, the 4 tube divisional type represents the relatively rare case of div arty of that caliber, as in mountain divisions for example. While the much more common 2 gun and the 6 gun show the regimental gun company 75mm leIGs firing indirect.

As for the other poster's silly idea of pairs of 47mm IGs firing indirect, it is so pointless it barely merits comment. Even the 75mm does essentially nothing with just a pair and indirect fire. Best used for a modest smoke mission. They would be used direct or they wouldn't so much as mess up the enemies hair.

[Zalgiris 1410]

Jason is right about what the different spotters represent. Each German Infantry Regiment had a 13th Company with 1 2 gun 150mm heavy Inf Guns Platoon/Battery and 3 2 gun 75mm light Inf Guns Platoons/Batteries. Later in the War the 150s were either retained or replaced with a 4 tube 120mm heavy mortar Platoon/Battery, while the 75s were either retained, or shall we say lengthen by being upgraded to L24/75mm guns (origionally on short barrelled Panzer IVs & Stug IIIs) or again they were replaced by twice their number by 81mm mortars; for 12 extra 81mm mortars.

All German Divisional and above Artillery batteries were of four piece units and almost always in 12 piece / 3 batteries Battalions (oddly called Detatchments) on paper! The German Army had always used 4 tube Artillery batteries from before WW1, though I'm not sure if that pratice goes back to the Franco-Prussian War and further back or not.

IMHO the 6 tube 81mm mortar & 75mm IG spotter units are very unreallistic. I don't think that it was even an uncommon practice let alone a regular thing the Germans did to combine the 2 tube units together like that. These units were always attatched as a single pair to sub-formations. The 81mms to Infantry Companies while the 75mm IGs were assigned to Battalions and not massed as a Regimental 6 tube indirect fire asset. BTW those 4 tube 81mm mortar batteries would mostly, over the time length of the War, represent all those replaced 75mm lIG batteries, since otherwise it was quite rare for the Germans to employ them in fours except for in very extranious Battalions before that organisational development.

OTOH I think that both of these support units were much more accurate in the indirect fire role than the CM off board artillery dynamics simulate. One point that I would like to make is that these light support units ought to be considered different to the heavier stuff and the fall of their shells should be spread into a smaller area than the 'Divisional' stuff. I constantly read about their accuracy and the effects of their fire missions, from sources from both sides. Jason os right about the lack of effect by the 2 gun 75mm IGs spotter units and I hold that the same goes for the 81mm mortars as well. I find that I have to go with the 6 tube verieties just to achieve what I want to achieve with these calibers of spotters and what I assume was achieveable with 2 tube verieties in real life. I'm not expecting them to be as accurate in the game as direct firing (as in the case with the IGs on the map) but IMHO I think that they ought to be as accurate as on board mortars are, when their shells land in a thinner shorter tighter pattern even with a HQ providing the spotting function for them.

This is what you want, light indirect fire support assets that will take out individual HMG posts and identified guns & anti-tank guns etc. Personally I can't phathom why a HQ unit providing spotting for an out of LOS mortar or more in an ad hoc manner has better fire results than the dedicated spotter teams are. I can understand the time delay differentials due to communication time consumption, but definately not the accuracy difference that CM has especially for the same weapon!

Now as I said earlier it is a matter of historical realism as to having 47mm Infantry Guns avaliabe as an indirect firing asset. Quite frankly Jason you might be right that they are so ineffective at it that the Rumanians didn't even bother to use them indirect. OTOH possibly it might be the case that they couldn't do so because they lacked the spotting ability. I mean that they simply didn't have enough of the range taking equipment and the means of communication for their 2 gun very light Infantry Gun batteries to be fire controlled indirectly. For instance I've read that a single German battery was better equipt with the means of fire co-ordination than the regular types of whole Rumanian Artillery Battalions. Still, if they did use their Bohler L32/47mm IGs as a two tube indirect fire battery then I would at least like to have the option available to me to see the result or lack there of by using them as such. (H'mmm much like finding out how ineffective 2 tube 81mm mortar & 75mm IG batteries are in CM hey Jason.)

Likewise I would like to have the Schneider L53/47mm ATGs for the Rumanians as well. This is all connected in my kind of logic Jason!

[ December 31, 2006, 05:31 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[JasonC]

Um, no it was common enough to group all the regiment's 75s to firing them together, I've read AARs where it was done, as early as Poland.

And the Germans certainly did use 4 or more 81s together in battery. The 81mms of a battalion occurred in 2 different places - a pair at each company in its company level heavy weapons platoon, and a battery of additional 81s in the battalion level heavy weapons company. It is the latter that is meant by the FOs. A typical German battalion had 10 to 12 81mm at the two levels combined.

I have never heard of 75s at regiment being replaced by 81s.

While pairs of 75m leIG - a firing platoon - were indeed often assigned to a battalion as direct fire, they were controlled by regiment and sometimes remained there in battery etc.

The 81s delivered a vastly larger quantity of fire, as ammo supply figures prove. Similarly, div arty 105s and 150s provided the bulk of the artillery fire, much more than the regimental level IGs or medium mortars.

On the heavies, the standard TOE was 2 sIGs at regiment, and yes some formations substituted 4 120s. Late in the war these were both frequently just missing altogether. In the Panzer divisions, instead you would find 6 Grille Sf 150mm sIGs later in the war.

As for German battery sizes, 4 guns was standard but the Sf types, Hummels and Wespes, used a 6 gun battery. This allowed for some to be out of service for maintenance reasons and still let the battery fire effectively. It was also common enough late war to find 3 gun batteries due to losses, or detachments of single pieces as "roving guns" (low volume counterbattery and interdiction or harassment fire, delivered from a position away from the main battery to avoid giving away its location).

IGs date from WW I and their purpose was direct fire at enemy point targets, typically single MGs. They were meant for a basically positional form of warfare, on static fronts where you had forever to get them where they were wanted to neutralize this or that MG nest (or in CM terms, log bunker). Russians used their 45mm ATGs in a similar way. (Axis minors used captured 45s, too).

The barrages in CM by FOs are if anything too accurate, not too inaccurate. The main unrealistic aspect is that the center of the shell impact pattern is always where you place the cursor, for an accurate shoot. In reality that center would itself be "smeared out", randomly positioned somewhere within 50-100m of the aim point. Because real patterns could not be centered so precisely, larger ones were used, and point target precision was not the leading characteristic of a called barrage.

The other unrealistic aspect, though, is that CM makes the largest shells hyper effective and the smallest ones too ineffective. The 81mm in particular is short changed. Its actual CZ was not much inferior to a 105mm shell and was superior to that of a 75mm shell (mortar rounds with their lower velocity can use thinner walls and thus carry more HE per unit of weight).

In addition, the effect of the lower blast shells in CM is confined too closely around the impact point. In reality there was a lower danger spread over a wider area. An 81mm mortar barrage would pin everyone in the area and hit men up to 30m away from the points of impact. Going to ground cut the risk 90% and getting underground another 90%, but men caught moving in the open were quite vulnerable, more so than CM shows.

In CM, the light mortar barrages fire far more frantically than they did in the real deal. As though the purpose were to put a round very close to each point in the target zone in the shortest possible time. That is not what they were after or how they were typically used. Instead, a few shells per mortar per minute would suppress everyone in a wide area and keep them pinned. The fire would then pause and resume at will, if anybody moved.

[Zalgiris 1410]

And the Rumanians used their Breda/Bohler L32/47mm IGs likewise.

I will have to admit that I have no evidence that they used them indirectedly. I'm just assuming that they did based on the fact that they could have, given their 7000 metre range, which is abviously not within direct flat tragectory LOS fire.

I agree that AFAIK IGs date from WWI with the origional German conceptional form of them being a 37mm caliber infantry fire support 'assault gun', which was to perform the tasks in the manner that you lay out above in an attack. They were to advance with the infantry and provide fire support when they most needed it, once the forward infantry had effectively outrun their less mobile field and heavy artillery support. However at the time that they were introduced (I'm not exactly sure when) there was the threat posed by tanks a plenty to be countered and it feel to these guns to cover that mission in a dedicated anti-tank fashion, a role which their light weight and mobility helped them to fulfil. IINM they were doing this by or from the battle of Chambrei and onwards and were provided with an anti-tank round.

Um, no it was common enough to group all the regiment's 75s to firing them together, I've read AARs where it was done, as early as Poland.

While pairs of 75m leIG - a firing platoon - were indeed often assigned to a battalion as direct fire, they were controlled by regiment and sometimes remained there in battery etc.

I haven't read any actual AARs especially mentioning the employment of 75mm leIGs in 6 gun Regimental batteries but I can't say that it's not possible. It ought to have been, even if the 2 gun platoons were set up in widely seperate platoon positions, but all within range of a respective target area. I mean it takes the platoon half an hour to set up in a postion, it therefore stands to reason that they were spending all that time setting up fore control for something. If what you say is true it would make me feel better about using the 6 tube 75mm spotter team in CM.

OTOH haven't you been saying in this thread that the Germans usually used their 75mm leIGs in a direct fire role, as in almost always. If you stick to that, are you now saying that these 6 gun batteries of light Infantry Guns were used as some sort of Regimental direct fire sledge hammer?

I'm just taking the piss here Jason.

But seriously it really would be good to read any of those AARs if you could help me access them Jason, they'd be awesome I reckon maaite.

And the Germans certainly did use 4 or more 81s together in battery. The 81mms of a battalion occurred in 2 different places - a pair at each company in its company level heavy weapons platoon, and a battery of additional 81s in the battalion level heavy weapons company. It is the latter that is meant by the FOs. A typical German battalion had 10 to 12 81mm at the two levels combined.

I have never heard of 75s at regiment being replaced by 81s.

Auh, Jason, here's the thing, by you not having heard or read that it became a standered thing for 75mm IGs to be replaced at Regimental level with twice their number of 81mm mortars, it is perfectly understandable, permisable and forgivable that you then over emphasize the inflated number of 81mm per German infantry type Battlions.

It is not that you are deliberately or ultimately misguildedly exadurating the ratio of 81mm mortars that German infantry type Battalions had availiable to them as assets on a regular basism especially from mid-war onwards. It's just that you, amoung others no doubt, arn't realising just what exactly is going on in the German TO&E and what it means in the field, as it were, with regards to the 13th Company of the Regiment.

Yes the Battalions 6 tube mortar platoon was usually divy'd out to the Inf Companies in 2 tube section pairs, and when they were 2 gun 75mm leIG Platoons they were likewise dished out to the Battalions as such. The thing to understand is that things didn't stay that dull and boring way though out the length of the War and as you very well know Jason, German formation stuctures changed, and changed in hodge podge & ad hoc fashions and flirtations. Over time the 13th Company became more of and more than likely to be a mortar Company rather than an Infantry Gun Company.

The 75IGs, if Regiments were to still retain them were handed down to become organic units of the Battalions, while actually repaced in the 13th Company organisation with 81mm mortars in lieu at a two for one rate, just like as when the 2 gun 150 IGs were repaced with a 4 tube 120mm heavy mortar platoon/battery. Often the 75mm IeIGs were lost altogether and just substituded with the 81mms.

Thus, while Infantry Battalions still had their origional 6 81mm mortars, the Regiment could provide them with 4 or 6 more in much the same way that they had previously provided a 2 gun light or heavy IG platoon/battery in the old organisation. Bear in mind that the Regiments were usually reduced themselves from formations origionally with 3 Battalions to 2 in the second half of the War and it is obvious that counts of 10-12 81mm mortars per Inf Battalion are encounted, but that is not how they were officially organised and equipt.

[ January 01, 2007, 08:56 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]