Truck Mounted Guns - a few questions

[Sgian Dubh]

Hi all,

First a question about how they are employed in CMAK. I noticed that the truck bed has a number of out-riggers. Having used large truck-mounted equipment a number of times, it is my experience that the out-riggers need to be 'set' before the equipment is used.

Yet in CMAK, I've seen time and again where a Truck Mounted Gun (TMG) move up to a position and fires within a 10-20 seconds - sometimes faster than 10 seconds.

So obviously there is no set up time being 'paid' for deploying the out-riggers, leveling the gun, etc.

It would seem to me that firing such guns without the out-riggers in place would impact both aiming and repeatability for hitting the same target.

Just some thoughts to start the discussion off.

Also, the AI seems to make terrible use of the TMGs. It often charges them forward with no support. I've had TMGS advance to within 100 meters of my trenches with no support around them. Of course, they die as soon as they enter the arc of the infantry in the trenches.

[fridericus]

in real live the 88s in nord africa fought most of time without the out-riggers, leveling the gun, etc. else they were never be able to fight with and follow the tanks on the move during battle. so the time of 4 min for getting the 88 ready for fire in cmak is total unrealistic. you can see these facts in the german handbook about flak-warfare.

but its ok, when planning good enough, you can ifhgt with them as well, but the only remaining unhisrical disadvantage is, that you cant place them to another position.

[Pzman]

I think he is talking about guns like the 2 punder on the truck? In which case I think there could be a delay, but I guess BFC didn't want to spend any more time coding that kind of stuff into the game.

[Mark Gallear]

If you are talking about the 2pdr/6pdr (and for that matter the 37mm [bofors 2pdr] carried Portee is just a method of carrying the gun rather than towing behind. I would imagine it took longer to get the truck off the back then to unhitch it but these are small light movable At guns.

They were used as adhoc SP guns - they could be fired from the truck from an ambush position, which could then speed off to the rear.

You certainly couldn't hit anything from a moving truck as one player keeps popping up and suggesting and the truck is of course very vulnerable.

This method resulted in the purpose built Deacon.

[Kingfish]

Unless I misunderstood Sgian Dubh's post, I think he is referring to the much larger Italian guns, such as the 90mm (or something like that).

[MikeyD]

The U.S. had its own truck mounted portee-style 37mm gun for a short while (not in the game) and found them to be practically unuseable. a 37mm pop-gun was bad enough, a 37mm gun perched high on the back of a truck was downright suicidal!

I have yet to figure out a decent way to deploy any truck-mounted weapon in the game. Their advantage of fast deployment is more than offset by the truck's utter and complete vulnerability.

Don't blame the AI for not knowing how to deploy these things I doubt there IS a proper way to deploy these things! :mad:

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

I have yet to figure out a decent way to deploy any truck-mounted weapon in the game. Their advantage of fast deployment is more than offset by the truck's utter and complete vulnerability.

Don't blame the AI for not knowing how to deploy these things I doubt there IS a proper way to deploy these things! :mad:

Anything can kill them. In a night engagement I played not long back some Italian infantry got too close and even they wiped 'em out.

I haven't used them enough to know what will work, but two ideas occur to me. The first is a really good ambush position. The enemy comes through one tank at a time, the portee pops off a couple of rounds and hauls tail out of there before the tank's buddies show up to avenge their dead comrades. Having a friendly mortar around to drop some smoke to cover your escape would not be a bad idea either.

The second thought would be to start them dug in. But if you are going to do that, you might as well just buy a standard 2pdr.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

FWIW, most of the US 3/4 ton 37mm AT combinations were converted in ordnance depots back to ordinary trucks before being issued. The few that were used in combat didn't last long and even then were only a stopgap while the Tank Destroyer Corps concept was being worked out.

I don't know much about the UK portees but it might have been feasible to fire them facing fore or aft, without need for outriggers; if one moved pronto after every shot, they might survive an hour or two on the battlefield...who knows? The outriggers would seem to be most necessary for shots fired perpendicular to the vehicle's long axis.

Any portee grogs standing by out there?

[JonS]

Artillery groggage. There are a number of descriptions of 2-pr. portees in action, in particular in the section dealing with Op CRUSADER.

2-pr. portees couldn't be fired forwards AFAIK, but they didn't need outriggers either.

Obligatory war-ry photos:

Sometimes things didn't go so well ...

... and the 6-pr.

[xerxes]

In earlier desert war the portees can be very nasty. The Italian 75mm portee is a terror against the Brit tanks. The Brit 2 lb can terrorize the Italian tanks.

The keys to using them are:

1. Keyhole, keyhole, keyhole. Since mgs are deadly to the portee, you have to avoid those like the plague. A portee with a wide field of fire is a burning portee.

2. Keep good range (at least 300m, preferably longer). If you're chucking HE from the portee stand even further back.

3. Once your portee has engaged you have to get out of that area before mgs/mortars can strike at you.

4. Crews, yes I mean crews, can kill a Portee from close range.

5. Portees with HE can put a serious hurt on infantry.

6. Try to stay on the roads, clear can be navigated slowly but rocky terrain is terrible.

[Sgian Dubh]

Hi all,

I apologise for being imprecise (although there is some interesting information being posted).

I was, in fact, speaking of the 75mm and larger truck mounted guns.

It just seemed to me that for the truck to drive up, stop and have the gun fire 90 degrees to the long axis of the truck with no set-up time for the outriggers seemed a bit odd.

I would think that the truck body, without the outriggers deployed, would experience tremendous twisting forces on the frame. Even if not this, if the truck was on any type of incline and the gun were not leveled with the outriggers then what would normally be a simple horizontal traverse becomes a 3-dimensional problem and thus should carry a penalty 'to hit'.

The other issue is that the AI treat them like tanks instead of an AT gun with wheels.

[gunnergoz]

Thanks for the photos, JonS. It's interesting that in two of them you can clearly see the unit is hull-down to the enemy. The other thing that strikes me is the awful vulnerablity of the damn thing; the crews are wide open to even a fly swatter. Big brass ones on those blokes, bless their hearts...

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Sgian Dubh:

I was, in fact, speaking of the 75mm and larger truck mounted guns.

It just seemed to me that for the truck to drive up, stop and have the gun fire 90 degrees to the long axis of the truck with no set-up time for the outriggers seemed a bit odd.

I would think that the truck body, without the outriggers deployed, would experience tremendous twisting forces on the frame. Even if not this, if the truck was on any type of incline and the gun were not leveled with the outriggers then what would normally be a simple horizontal traverse becomes a 3-dimensional problem and thus should carry a penalty 'to hit'.

That sounds reasonable to me. Even if lateral recoil wouldn't tip the truck over (I doubt that it would for 75mm or less), I would expect it to make relaying the gun a more time consuming operation. Long range fire would be more problematical.

Michael

[Carl Puppchen]

Does anyone have any photos or links r/e the Italian truck mounted guns? I am familiar with the 2 pounder portee and even the US ad hoc weapons but never heard anything about the Italian truck mounted weapons in the depictions of desert warfare I have read. I am sure they are legit since they are in CMAK just found it odd that I had never heard of them nor even seen photos in the various desert books I've been paging through since I was a kid.

[rune]

Go here and look at r040 and the one under it.

http://www.rjproducts.com/Catalogs/CriEl_Models/CriEl_Models.html

Looks like the drop to stabilize the gun would nto take very long to deploy.

Note: this is ths AA version, there was also a portee version I am trying to find, designated the Lancia 3RO portee.

Rune

[ June 18, 2004, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: rune ]

[rune]

Found this one, you can see how fast they could put down the feet for the gun. Photo 11 here:

http://www.comandosupremo.com/Photo11.html

Rune

[Carl Puppchen]

Wow that Italian WW2 site is interesting! Not that I believe everything on there, but it is very interesting to see it from the Italian point of view.

[Other Means]

pardon for the OT interupption but what is "Maffeys Halo" in the picture above? i can see the smoke ring, was this common enough to have it's own nickname?

[Letsbe Ave.]

Well, here's a lttle information, that doesn't really answer your question:

http://www.nzetc.org/etexts/WH2Tobr/_N90449.html

[Other Means]

thanks Letsbe Ave. seems to answer it quite nicely.

[Koenig]

I can spend a few of words on the Italian Autocannoni.

First, there were scores of them: many of them were not factory made but local conversions made in North African works.

Just to name the most important:

-The Fiat works in Tripoli made 7 Autocannoni da 102/35, using naval guns from Tobruk on the Fiat 634 truck, during spring/summer 1941. These weapons proved decisive during the battle of Bir-el-Gobi on 19th November 1941, where they engaged the Crusaders of the 22nd Armoured Brigade from a distance ranging from 1000 to 11000 meters, claiming the destruction of 15 of them. Although very effective against armoured targets, they proved not suitable to the desert warfare, and all the seven were finally lost owing to enemy air action, mechanical troubles and sanding up.

-The Autocannoni da 76/30 and 76/40, on Fiat 634 or Lancia 3 RO chassis, were maily used in their intended AA role, even if occasionally they engaged enemy ground forces, as it happened at Bir-el-Gobi.

-The most well known Autocannone was the 90/53. The first 30 were on Lancia 3 RO, the other 120 were on Breda 52, but it was the former to see most of the action in Africa. Even if very powerful it was also extremely vulnerable and with bad off-road performances.

All the above Autocannoni needed to be prepared in order to fire, or serious damage to the chassis was probable.

In the case of the 102/35 and the 90/53 damage after prolonged fire occurred even if the gun was properly emplaced!

I don't know the time necessary in order to put them on battery, but certainly several seconds, if not a few minutes, were needed.

In the case of the 90/53, there were 6 arms to be lowered, four fixed and two mobile to be rotated with a key.

They all needed a jack to be lowered, and two knives per arm had to be driven into the ground.

Two platforms had then to be lowered, after that the crew had a circular space to aim and load the gun.

THEN the gun could be fired, unless you wanted to lock the rear elastic suspension, which allowed the arms not to raise by 3 cm when firing. It was considerd useful but not indispensable and it needed a hook to be locked to the leaf springs before the arms were lowered. Clearly the hook had to be unlocked before movement was resumed...

That is: those large Autocannoni could not fire and move, and I seriously doubt they could even deploy under enemy fire.

Their normal use was AA, and when they fought ground forces generally did it from prepared positions.

Let's not forget that their 2WD chassis had poor off-road performances.

Other Autocannoni were different.

The Breda 20mm, the 47/32, the 65/17 and the 75/27, just to name a few, were fitted to a quantity of vehicles, including war-prizes; they all could fire without preparation, and most of them had a 360° mounting.

Expecially effective was the 100/17 on the Lancia 3 RO, which was monted on an M13/40 tank turret ring and could fire deadly HEAT rounds. This complex was not as mastodontic as the 90/53 and could be effectively fired without preparation.

An extract from field trials in North Africa:

'Trials were executed both with direct and indirect fire, at short, medium and long range, firing with different angles respect to the simmetry of the vehicle. The recoil of the vehicle was very small, and even less if simple wedge-brakes were put under the tyres. Because of the recoil, aiming was to be rectified after each shot and the rate of fire was slightly less than normally allowed; anyway 5-6 rounds per minute could be atteined with good results. Dispersion was not sensibly superior to the normal.'

Being ligher than the 90/53, the 100/17 Lancia 3 RO off-road performances were considered satisfactory, even if on sand the lack of four wheel-drive was a handicap.

The Autocannoni proved valuable support weapons in North Africa, however it should be understood that:

- many of them were intended for AA duties

- their normal use was long range direct or indirect artillery fire. They were remakably flexible in this role as they could move and deploy hastily according to the needs of the moment.

-in the instances they were employed in a Combat Mission-like scenario, they should benefit of the protection of a prepared position with a long range field of view, or they would probaly retire from the field as they were obviously not intended to engage the enemy at close quarter.

-In any offensive battle they should be represented by artilley support of the relative caliber.

Talking about CMAK, the 75 and 90 mm are not realistic as they can fire and move at will. They should be limited to scenarios where they fire from prepared positions. Even so, I don't think they are realistically featured as the chassis would be nearly impossible to hit in those conditions, and even if it's the case, that would not prejudice the ability of the gun to fire: the Autocannone should be very similiar to any emplaced large gun. And in CMAK the Autocannoni can not be dug in like they were in reality.

Smaller Autocannoni are better, but is should be remembered that if they are in a Combat Mission situation they are probably in the wrong place at the wrong time! Unless the map is very, very large...they were unlikely to fight at MG's range.

A very important observation: small arms fire hitting an Autocannone should often just immobilize it, not destroy it as it does now. Destruction would generally happen only if it was set on fire. Many Autocannoni had a shield that protected the crew, so they should be close to not-emplaced AT guns. Others had no shield and without doubt the crew was likely to panic and abandon the weapon under heavy small arms fire.

In conclusion Autocannoni in CMAK are very badly represented and, as they are now, far from reality.

A final note: the above survey on the Italian Autocannoni is only superficial and well far from being exhaustive; any way their definitive history is probably yet to be written.

Regards,

Koenig

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Koenig:

And in CMAK the Autocannoni can not be dug in like they were in reality.

In the scenario editor you can define if vehicles are to be dug in. You can also put them inside sandbag emplacements. Doesn't work for QB's with random maps, of course.

[Koenig]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Koenig:

And in CMAK the Autocannoni can not be dug in like they were in reality.

In the scenario editor you can define if vehicles are to be dug in. You can also put them inside sandbag emplacements. Doesn't work for QB's with random maps, of course. </font>

[JonS]

Originally posted by Letsbe Ave.:

Well, here's a lttle information, that doesn't really answer your question:

http://www.nzetc.org/etexts/WH2Tobr/_N90449.html

And here is a detailed look at a 2-pr portee troop (4 guns) in action during one day of Operation Crusader.

GUNS AGAINST TANKS L Troop, 33rd Battery, 7th New Zealand Anti-Tank Regiment in Libya, 23 November 1941 — E. H. SMITH.