Artillery: Schools of Thought

[Xavier_1986]

In my three to four years of playing Combat Mission I have noticed two different schools of thought regarding the use of indirect fire.

The first seems to be the most widely used. Opponents will often use artillery at the beginning of a battle to "soften up" the defenders and fortifications.

I have never liked this method. It seems to me a relic of World War I, and I have never seen a defensive line severely weakened by artillery (short of high caliber and accurate naval barrages that is). I understand that with weapons like Russian Katsyushas or the German Nebelwherfurs (forgive misspellings), the shells are too inaccurate to use in any other method. That's all well and good, but I wonder why people constantly waste their perfectly good 81 mm - 150mm barrages?

I was reading the CMAK Companion last year and came across a passage by a U.S. officer stating that artillery was useless unless it was -immediately- preceeded by infantry. As soon as the shelling lets up (or even before) the infantry are right there, killing the enemy while they're still pinned down. He said this caused friendly losses, but not nearly so much as it would have if they'd attacked without following the barrage.

I used that technique in a Cassino scenario for the first time, after my New Zealanders took heavy losses trying to take a hill. I dropped four 270mm shells directly onto the German position while my men were less than 50 meters away. This caused two friendly casualties, but when the troops attacked again they -easily- overcame the resistance.

Since them I've been trying to impliment this method more and more. It causes some friendly losses, but it does seem to work quite effectively.

Since I consider you all experts on things like this, I wonder how you use your own artillery? And what do you think of the two methods I described above? Can preparatory fires be effective? Is it right to cause friendly casualties or risk serious damage to your forces from a stray shell?

[Kingfish]

Originally posted by Xavier_1986:

I used that technique in a Cassino scenario for the first time, after my New Zealanders took heavy losses trying to take a hill. I dropped four 270mm shells directly onto the German position while my men were less than 50 meters away. This caused two friendly casualties, but when the troops attacked again they -easily- overcame the resistance.

270mm?!? What game are you playing? Thats a 10" diameter weapon, far bigger than anything available to the Kiwis.

[JasonC]

In general, shells are more effective when immediately followed up, of course. You don't have to be 50m away, though. Firefight distance is fine, meaning close enough for full IDs. That typically means 150m or so from your leading infantry.

But there are national differences, terrain differences, weapon and target differences, attacking style differences. You don't try to walk in shells from a Russian 152mm gun-howitzer FO ahead of a platoon.

I mentally divide all my artillery into map fire and reactive fire. The former does not mean simply "prep", because I delay the shoots with QQQ, but the earlier stuff, turns 5 to 10 typically, is effectively a form of prep fire. Some map fire will be right on key objectives on a timetable, 5 minutes before I expect infantry to clear the position. That is closer than it sounds, because map fire is always a whole module, typically taking 4 minutes to land.

When doing pre-battle artillery planning I think in 5 minute intervals. 1st 5, approach. Scouts out, maybe taking a little fire, most of the defense hidden, nobody close enough yet to worry about needing real fire or taking occupied ground.

2nd and sometimes 3rd 5s, closing. My infantry is trying to get into cover just shy of the defender locations. Prep fire at that time is meant to reduce the incoming I am taking, during a vulnerable part of the approach, at least as much as it is meant to take ground. I may not be able to follow it up directly. But I will be grateful position X and Y aren't spitting lead at me. Yes most of the men will rally within 3 minutes of the last shell, that are going to anyway. If I've got companies of infantry in cover 150 yards away in return, though, and messed up a few squads, that's fine.

3rd and occasionally 4th, the latest I will fire prep, is about entering the enemy position. Meaning, getting my infantry into specific areas of cover I expect the enemy to have set up right on. Which requires ejecting him, breaking him by fire and then following up with infantry assault. This is closest to what the original poster meant. My preference is to do this with "reactive" modules, but for some nations, periods, and force types I will use relatively large caliber conscript FOs using a fire plan (e.g. Russian 122mm or 152mm guns, or German 170mm).

More often, the reactive modules take over from the map fire ones once actually in contact and trying to enter enemy held ground. If I've got a side with excellent reaction times for its sizable arty, I may use reactive FOs for the preceding period as well.

The drill here is to aim the FO at the first expected enemy location as soon as there is LOS to it, counting down the time. If I haven't reached it when the time reaches 1 minute, shift the aim point to delay the barrage. If I scout it and there is nobody there, lift the aim point in 100 yard increments to the next set of cover. The goal is to have heavy shells 2-3 minutes out at the moment of heavy contact.

Then I set up and firefight, infantry to infantry, in the meantime. Everybody gets into cover, weapons set up, no charging. It is a fire contest, not "wrestling". Then the big shells land for a minute and a half, typically. I expect them to suppress the defenders, and send a platoon in right behind, the rest of its company (with weapons etc) overwatching the attempt.

A company and attached FO, medium caliber or better, is expected to clear 2-3 positions this way before ammo gives out. Both FO ammo and squad infantry ammo, from the different platoons taking their turn going first. Typically one of them also gets ragged out, fighting hold-outs or hit by something larger during final approach, or by a counter-barrage on the secured position etc. Overall, a company-FO pair can inflict company scale damage taking platoon sized losses, the remainder of the trade being ammo for blood rather than blood for blood.

[Xavier_1986]

Originally posted by Kingfish:

[

270mm?!? What game are you playing? Thats a 10" diameter weapon, far bigger than anything available to the Kiwis. [/QB]

[Zalgiris 1410]

Back when I was a Newbie I tried to use Arty Spotters on the defense as I had read that the Germans did (somewhere) to break up a Soviet attack and separate their infantry from their tanks by firing at them as they approached. I found this method or rather my employment of it didn't really work at all, because I would end up having fired off all my Arty support and have nothing left for reactive fire support later on when I needed it the most!

On the defense against the AI it is pretty easy to use your arty to break up his infantry since it funnells them through terrain. I hit them as they mass through that last bit of cover (hopefully trees for airburst) while whatever survives that gets cleaned up by a multitude of my infantry squads, HMGs and guns firing from as close enough as possible, the more the merrier! It's always a good slaughter.

So on the defense IME reactive defensive fire is much more effective than prep fire although I must admit that I'm against the idea of firing on the start line or set up zone.

IMO reactive fire on the attack is just as effective as on the defense especially for taking out or suppressing guns and HMGs but best used for properly preping fortified zones just before immediately following up with an infantry assault.

That said, I'm in the middle of playing that huge operation senario "To the Volga" and I'm still in battle one especially cos I gave the Russians a 100% increase in force size which means that I'm attacking against 6 infantry btlns, 2 Engineer & 2 SMG Companies, 34 tanks and 58 guns. I set up with everthing thing hiden so the AI didn't have any targets while I used all of my eleven arty spotters on the furtherest 20% of the map specifically to hit as many of those guns as possible while my 32 Panzers, 6 SPs, 6 20mm Armoured cars and 27 out of my 29 guns have provided me with direct fire preparation in lieu of all that indirect stuff. A slight variation I allowed myself but it's a game who needs to stick to a single formular!

[kenfedoroff]

I've gotten so frustrated with the CMAK artillery model (Shooting in the wrong location, with good LOS), that I now almost always use a first turn fire mission plan for my FO's (and delay with QQQ).

I haven't experienced any off-target problems with CMBO and CMBB (as long as I have good LOS).

While first-turn fire missions might be a relic of WW-I, they were still used aplenty in WW2 (from what I've read, anyways...)

Cheers,

Ken

[Redwolf]

In the CM artillery model you cannot hold fire that is targetted and you cannot specify a fixed number of shells for a volley.

The realism is over at that point.

[JasonC]

Redwolf - on holding fire, just shift the aim point less than 10m. Bumps the delay a minute or two, target still ready. On specifying number of rounds, you can time it to half minute increments with the previous procedure. With TRPs you can call down individual flights of shells on alternate minutes if you want to. No actual WW II FO had it so good.

Players have godlike perfect control of their arty in CM. Then they don't get very much of it. The real combatants had lots more shells fired with precious little control over them. No borg spotting, higher ups calling half the shots, batteries reassigned on whims, snafus of every variety, etc. Germans in Russia often waited 15-20 minutes for a defending barrage and called that effective support.

[walpurgis nacht]

Originally posted by Zalgiris 1410:

Back when I was a Newbie I tried to use Arty Spotters on the defense as I had read that the Germans did (somewhere) to break up a Soviet attack and separate their infantry from their tanks by firing at them as they approached. I found this method or rather my employment of it didn't really work at all, because I would end up having fired off all my Arty support and have nothing left for reactive fire support later on when I needed it the most!

Never spend HE on anything, unless you're in a position to completely destroy it.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by walpurgis nacht:

Never spend HE on anything, unless you're in a position to completely destroy it.

I doubt you had MEs in mind, but I have found in ME's that some delaying fire early in the game (e.g. 81mm hitting turn 3 on an enemy's route of advance) can make a huge difference - even though you dont kill the target.

[JasonC]

I'm not as perfectionist about it as WN. I agree with the principle, shoot to kill things for good, not just to "tickle" them. But a looser version of that works OK for me -

Don't spend HE on nothing, and never spend squad infantry ammo on things you aren't going to break for good.

But on-map HE chuckers can fire every time they have an appropriate target, early and often. They want to deliver their full ammo loads while still alive, and aren't certain to live the whole scenario.

FOs, as long as the target is reasonable for them and there are units of your own in LOS of the enemy (thus a reason to want to suppress enemy fire), that's fine.

It is the first 5 minutes stuff that the enemy recovers from completely before you engage at all, or the shots at empty space, that waste FO firepower.

MGs and such can fire at longer ranges to keep people suppressed. But squads need to hold theirs for killing ranges or they will run out.

I'm probably looser with the HE than WN is, while trying to stay tight with the infantry ammo. I find that spends shells to save bodies, which is what I am after.

[walpurgis nacht]

Yeah, I skipped most of the exceptions in order to throw a nice black and white rule out there.

Like any absolute, it's one of those deals where you can say, you should never do this, unless you should.

There are probably hundreds of exceptions. Some important ones have already been pointed out. So, never spend HE on anything unless you're in a position to completely destroy it . . . .

-unless slowing down your opponent is more cost effective than killing your opponent.

-unless you have an abundance of HE . . . . t34/76s for example---when's the last time you lost one that was out of HE? It almost never happens, so slather everything you can with HE before you start taking risks.

I can think of many others. The main reason I even brought it up is I'm continually amazed how many players toss HE at my HMG positions (for example), when their closest infantry units are still 600 meters away. An absolute waste of HE. Take the pain, get close, then spend it.