Protection for PaK Gunners - the Truth...

[DesertMouse]

I just visited the Imperial War Museum in London recently.

There they have a number of howitzers and a 50mm anti tank PaK gun from WWII as well as an 88mm PaK gun.

I can tell you now that there would be enough protection behind those guns for 1 person each (if that). Any infantryman within 500 metres using a bolt action rifle could if he intended to easily pick off all of the gun crew. If he really wanted to he could also pick off the last crew member if he really tried.

The only protection these guys had would have been:

1, The ground, a hole

2. perhaps behind the ammunition and other equipment (not safe)

3. in a building or near trees where the gun was situtated

4. there is barely room for 1 man to enjoy protection from the gun shield on the 50mm gun and behind the vertical turret spine holding up the 88mm gun.

Your thoughts, gentlemen,

1. about how this is simulated in this game and

2. do you agree with my conclusion about the safety that the gun actually offers from small arms fire

[Sergei]

Hardly anything new. Anyone could tell by looking at photographs that the crew members didn't pack behind the gun shield. The gun shield was meant to give some peace of mind for the gunner and loader, and that's it.

[Bonxa]

I would have thought the gun crews dig in just as everybody else in the army, no? And if you have ever been out in the terrain trying to spot anyone/anything you know it's damn hard because of all the undergrowth and stuff in the way. Concealment is not cover but it's certainly very helpfull against the enemy infantry so long as you don't move anyways.

[FM Paul Heinrik]

500m is still a long way, you have to be an excellent shot to pick off guys hugging the ground. Anyhow, once the enemy infantry is in small arms range, the gun crew is about to be over runned and should think about leaving. In all likely hood the gun crew is not alone and would probably have other crews (MG, inf gun) over wathcing.

Didn't crews have small arms too? If not issued they were certain to aquire some during the course of war.

[Sergei]

Yes, they carried weapons. It was the task of the available crew members to provide protection to the gun with their rifles. But under normal conditions it would be the infantry doing the main job in this regard.

Here are some piccies.

In this one, four guys and a cameraman have squeezed behind the gun. For which I think it's just an exercise.

[Joachim]

Somewhere I read about the Soviet drill. Only one man at a time mans the gun. Loader runs to gun, loads, runs away. Gunner runs to gun, aims, fires, runs away. Loader... Ammo bearer brings new crate, runs away.

All others are in foxholes/dug in around the gun. So if a tank hits the gun, max one dies.

The big crew is to handle the gun when moved, carry ammo etc. - and to protect it. If you look at the German AT gun plts that come with several btns in CM, you'll notice that there are 3 ATGs and 3 LMGs. CM has no secondary wpns for guns, so the LMGs are extra units.

Gruß

Joachim

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Joachim:

CM has no secondary wpns for guns, so the LMGs are extra units.

Since CMBB, gun teams, sharpshooters etc. have had small arms which they use for close defence.

[Joachim]

Ok. No powerful secondary wpn that the player can use indepent of the main wpn.

Gruß

Joachim

[YankeeDog]

As noted, the gun shield only really needs to protect at most two people for the gun to be operated once it is in position and pointed in the general direction of the target; the gunner and the loader. The rest of the gun crew is there to carry ammo, help traverse the gun carriage when making a change of aim larger than aiming mechanism can handle, etc. From what I've seen and read, it was pretty much SOP in all nationalities for the gun crew members other than the loader to take up covered positions a short distance from the gun itself to reduce the chance of the entire crew being wiped out by a single shot.

Even so, it is true that the gun shield probably doesn't *completely* cover the gunner and the loader when they are actively aiming, loading and firing the gun - a bit of head, arm and/or leg probably gets exposed around the edges here and there.

However, I would dispute the assertion that "any infantryman with a bolt action rifle within 500 meters" could reliably hit such a small target. Most WWII infantrymen were not crack shots, they were average joes with a few weeks' marksmanship training. Furthermore, your average GI Joe, Tommy, Fritz or Ivan was shooting over simple iron sights. Even for a good marksman, hitting small, briefly exposed target (like part of a head or shoulder peeking out from around a gun shield) with just iron sights would be very difficult at 300 meters, let alone 500 meters. A good shot with a scoped rifle is a different matter entirely, of course.

And yes, gun crews did dig in when given half a chance. A prepared gun defensive position could include not only a shallow pit and revetment for the gun itself, but also slit trenches nearby to protect extra ammo and crew members not presently involved with working the gun. Even when not dug in, a decently trained gun crew would presumably take advantage of available terrain (a small rise or hillock, tree stump or log, etc.) to add a bit of additional cover to the gun's position. Keep in mind that even "open" terrain in CM is an abstraction and doesn't represent fairway-flat terrain -- IRL there would be small dips and rises, the occasional small tree or bush, etc. in open terrain.

If you want to see how quickly gun crews pin in the face of short to medium range small arms fire when they're relying *only* on the gun shield for cover, put a gun in the middle of a pavement tile and take some shots at it with infantry units; you'll find that even modest small arms fire will pin the gun crew in this situation very quickly. Actually, even a gun in open terrain pins quickly under small arms fire if it's not dug in.

So the level of exposure for gun crews seems about right to me in CM. Assuming the gun is dug in or in fairly good defensive terrain, long-range small arms fire suppresses gun crew to a degree, slowing down traverse & ROF and reducing accuracy, but only rarely causes casualties. Trained sharpshooters with scoped rifles are quite effective at both suppressing and causing casualties to gun crews. Finally, closer range small arms fire rapidly pins gun crews, and non-dug in guns caught in the open are very susceptible to small arms fire.

Cheers,

YD

[DesertMouse]

Great posts. Especially those photos.

I wish there were an atg/aaa gun simulator for the PC, with all of the paraphenalia and full crew those guns had, eg rangefinder, binocs, wind factors, temperature, trajectory calculus. You could really learn something about these guns and the role they played.

I mean, these guns played sometimes just as important role as armour did, right?

What is also interesting is the number of crew for a heavy MG42, sometimes as much as 6 men, right?

These pieces of equipment were pretty advanced for their day.

[Probert]

Picking them off at 500 meters? Have you ever tried to hit anything with a rifle at 500m?

You would have to be an Olympic level shot to pick the crew off one at a time. In addition to disregarding the chaos going on all around you.

[Corvidae]

Hey Oberst, Look, I'm close to the enemy gun emplacement,,, Hey Oberst, look, I'm dead,,

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by CousinPablo:

Great posts. Especially those photos.

I wish there were an atg/aaa gun simulator for the PC, with all of the paraphenalia and full crew those guns had, eg rangefinder, binocs, wind factors, temperature, trajectory calculus. You could really learn something about these guns and the role they played.

I mean, these guns played sometimes just as important role as armour did, right?

What is also interesting is the number of crew for a heavy MG42, sometimes as much as 6 men, right?

These pieces of equipment were pretty advanced for their day.

That would be a very interesting game(?). Lets have all types of support and artillery present. That type of simulator would actually have intrinsic value to the military. Or it might just be a boring mouse clicking game, it would have to be done right. I think it would have been cool option in Panzer Elite.

BTW, nice pics

[ August 02, 2004, 04:06 PM: Message edited by: FM Paul Heinrik ]

[DesertMouse]

Originally posted by Corvidae:

Hey Oberst, Look, I'm close to the enemy gun emplacement,,, Hey Oberst, look, I'm dead,,

OK OK I get it lol. 500 metres is an exaggeration. Perhaps 500 feet is more accurate a figure.

But how often did ATGunners use their weapons against infantry?

[Guest Manstein22]

Hi All

It is not the gunshield which is the issue whether PaK is realistically simulated in CMBB. We all know the thread of the unhitable gun.

Still I`m not happy and say it again that it is absolutly unrealitsic that a buttoned tank especially a T 34 with poor optics can detect a PaK short after it released it`s first shot and then KIAs that gun which is so small that only a single person can hide behind it with its first shot.

That`s nuts.

What it takes to spot a 1 square meter target in a distance of 500m I do not want to quack about.

The issue is not the safety of the gun crew but the size of the target the gun displayes and whether you can really detect a camouflaged Pak in a short time.

Manstein

[flamingknives]

Borg spotting strikes again.

[Joachim]

Close counts with HE.

The blast flipping over the PaK, shrapnel hitting the sights etc.

But I guess fk is right - the problem is borg spotting. I'd really be interested what happens without borg spotting.

BTW... what happens if the T34 and the PaK are alone on the map? (Add a sniper to close the hatches).

Gruß

Joachim

[YankeeDog]

Manstein - you are aware that the unhittable gun bug was fixed with patch 1.03??

I have to agree with you, though, that even without borg spotting tanks spot new threats a bit too readily.

I ran some tests about a year ago with a solo T-34 (no other units possibly in visual range) moving forward and getting engaged by various AT guns, tanks, etc. at various ranges and angles. I did tests both buttoned and unbuttoned.

My overall discovery at the time was that spotting in CM is *very* deterministic. For any given conditions, there is a very specific distance beyond which the gun never be spotted. Then there is a band where the gun will appear as a "sound contact" but nothing more. Finally, there is a specific closer range where the gun will be spotted within 2-3 shots.

I don't remember the exact distances involved, but overall I was very surprised at how quickly a tank crew (and especially a 4-man T-34 crew) could spot a gun that just opened up on them.

Furthermore, the whole deterministic aspect of it strikes me as quite unrealistic. IMHO, the spotting algorithms in CM should be *much* more randomized. I should be very rare that a T-34 crew manages to spot a 50mm ATG firing at it from 1200m, but every once in a while, the TC should get lucky and happen to catch a glint of sunlight off the gun commander's binocs or whatever. Conversely, the same gun opening up at 500m should usually be spotted much more quickly, but every so often the tank crew should just have bad luck and be looking in the wrong places, *especially* if they're buttoned.

Cheers,

YD

[FM Paul Heinrik]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

Borg spotting strikes again.

How do you get around the omniscient(sp) view pt? It would be very awkward for a player to see his flank about to collapse and not rush other reinforcements that in reality would not be aware of the enemy yet. Doesn't CM handle that situation by not allowing "borg targeting (los)", you know where the enemy is but your unit might not target until that unit actually spots it?

[YankeeDog]

Borg spotting exists on two levels in the present CM engine:

(1) As soon as any one unit spots an enemy unit, the player knows about it and can react accordingly.

(2) As soon as any one unit spots an enemy unit, all other units on that side also become aware of said enemy units, and the TacAI routines for said units will react accordingly, targeting said enemy if appropriate.

As you note, (1) is probably impossible to remove entirely without turning CM into a very boring game -- a big part of the fun in CM is actually watching your units fighting it out with the enemy. However, CM already limits the player's ability to react to 'borg' info to a degree with game features like command delay, and it might be possible to further limit the player's borg control in the new engine. For example, command delay could be expanded to include player-issued targeting orders. You could also examine the possiblity of more drastic changes, such as having units that get too far out of C&C becoming "lost" and dropping completely out of the player's view until contact was re-established. But it would be very difficult to completely eliminate this aspect of borg spotting without turning CM into a game that no one would want to play.

(2) is conceptually easier to deal with. Basically, every unit would need to be given it's own "memory" recording what enemy units it was aware of and wasn't aware of. The individual TacAIs would then react based on individual unit knowledge rather than the "borg collective" knowledge. You would also need to model communications in some way. For example, once one tank in a platoon spots an ATG, other tanks in the same platoon nearby would be much more likley to spot said ATG, since presumably the spotting tank would communicate the gun's approximate location by radio.

Conceptually, not too difficult to imagine. Unfortunately, a system like this is also technically extremely complicated to program and also increases the demands on the computing system exponentially. I really think this is the big challenge for BTS in CMX2. They are clearly aware of the borg spotting issue and judging by their comments improving the game engine in this area is one of their major goals. Some degree of abstraction will obviously be necessary, but I look forward to seeing what creative solutions they come up with.

Cheers,

YD

[flamingknives]

Part of the problem is that the TacAI (in this case the individual unit) hasn't spotted the enemy unit yet, but come the end of the turn, the omniscient god (the player) can manually order the TacAI to engage the enemy unit directly. Perhaps if this target was rather inaccurate area fire until the TacAI spots the unit.

[Runyan99]

Just wanted to mention that if you read Biedermann's book 'In Deadly Combat' he is a member of a PaK crew and makes frequent mention of a LMG 34 that is always set up by the crew.

And yes, since CMBB, gun crews do have a small ability to fire these weapons automatically. I like to think that was one of my personal bitches from the CMBO days that actually got implemented.

[Guest Manstein22]

Hi YankeeDog

Manstein - you are aware that the unhittable gun bug was fixed with patch 1.03??

Thanx, didn`t know it exists. Hope it helps.

Manstein

[MikeyD]

This won't help anyone with CMBB, but in CMAK there does seem to be a bit more of a lag time between the AT gunner's initial shot and the target tank eye-balling him. Two or three rounds land around the tank and you've got no smoke signature and no sound contact to focus on. Depending on the terrain, range, and the caliber of the gun the threat will eventually pops into view. But it makes for a nerve-wracking few moments for the tanker!

AT gun armor is trying to comply with two opposing rules 1: Be large enough to protect your crew, and 2: Keep an absolute minimum visual signature. Most gun shields if you look straight on at them will just cover the gunner and primary loader, sometimes with angled double-layer armor. But get just a bit off center-line and you've got a pretty good shot at them.

About the German 37mm gun shield, remember the similar American 37mm gun had a shield half the weight that wasn't angled at all!

[Mr. Tittles]

Heres a lineup of the main German ATG.

The shield also helps protect the crew from the guns blast effects. It also hides the crew who would attract attention just from its frantic movements.