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Sound ranging ,flash location


poppy

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Regimental level? That would imply that it was deployed in support of an artillery regiment. Infantry battalions were raised as part of a regiment and deployed as part of an infantry brigade.

There would be one artillery regiment per Brigade as part of a divisional organisation, meaning one battery (8 guns) per battalion.

Of course, that's if it was deployed with a field regiment. As part of a medium or heavy regiment, which were more likely to be deployed in a counterbattery role, it would be a Corps asset

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There were RA sound/flash ranging regiments from the beginning of the war. Actually, the British had them as early as 1916, but that's another story ...

Typically, one Survey Regt (the chaps who did the sound/flash ranging, as well as figuring out where on the globe the guns are) would be allocated to each corps. A partial exception is 2(NZ)Div who had their own Survey Bty to do this work for them.

36 Survey Bty, NZA

RA Survey Regts

Flash Spotting & Sound Ranging, part of the CB battle.

FS&SR is well outside the scale of CM.

Regards

JonS

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Originally posted by JonS:

There were RA sound/flash ranging regiments from the beginning of the war. Actually, the British had them as early as 1916, but that's another story ...

Bah - Johnnycomelatelys. The Germans had them from the middle of 1915.

Blimmin' copycats, that's what the Britisher Tommy ist, ja.

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not directional. They used a number of mikes laid out along a base. The time differentials between the same sound arriving at different mikes was used to deduce direction. 4 mikes on a base was standard.

@Andreas,

learn to read blockhead. I said 'as early as 1916', which doesn't rule out earlier! ;)

(However, apparently a Russian first demonstrated the principle in 1910, and a Germerman was granted a patent on it in 1913. Luckyily patents the enemy holds don't carry much water in wartime ... tongue.gif )

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Hello tar, I have been campaigning to have on map indirect fire included in CMx2. I think that it would round out CM even if nothing else was done to change the game. Idirect fire was the determining factor in WW2 and I think that a "resonablefacsimili" could be included in CMx2.Hey that sounded like a "GERMAN" word. poppy

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Actually, you can already engage in CB fire CM, at least against on-board mortars.

Just watch the shell pattern and draw a line though the long axis of the imagary oval. The mortar will lie somewhere along this line.

Often you can then guess where the mortar is just based on likely locations along the line of bearing. You can also get some rough idea of how far away the mortar is based on how dispersed the shells are along the line of bearing -- the more "streched out" the oval is, the farther away the mortar is. If a mortar fires on two separate locations from the same spot, you can actually gauge the location of the mortar pretty precisely -- it's at the cross of the "X" created by the two bearing lines.

This is not usually all that useful information, though, since a single on-board mortar is usually not worth wasting artillery on, and by the time an on-board mortar has fired enough shells to get a good fix on it's location, it's probably just about out of ammo. If your opponent actually sets up a battery of on-board mortars (esp. if they're the high ammo load brit 3"), it might be worthwhile to throw some arty back at them if you can get LOS close enough with a spotter. I can think of exactly once when I used this technique to any real effect, and that was because I happened to have a piece of light armor pretty close to where I thought the mortar battery was; I popped the AC over a small rise and ended up surprising group of three mortars. A very nice catch.

At any rate, assuming CMX2 is at all similar to CM in the way the player can view the battlefield, it's a reasonable conjecture that this technique will work against indirect on-board howitzer fire, if such a thing is allowed in the new engine.

I suppose some might consider this way of fixing the location of on-board mortars gamey, and I can see their point -- real-life commanders don't get the benefit of a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, where fall of shell patterns are quite obvious. OTOH, there are other ways to get a general idea of a mortar battery's location in real life that CM doesn't model all, including the aforementioned sound-flash ranging. You can actually do rough sound-flash fixing with nothing more than a stopwatch and your own ears.

Cheers,

YD

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What if an on map battery of 75mm howitzers had an ammo supply of say 400 rounds and 50 rounds per period could be fired. That would give a counter battery unit say two periods to detect the 75mm batt and say two periods of return fire and if the return fire silenced the 75mm battery it seems to me that that would be fun to do and the 75mm batt would have been limited to 200 rounds. poppy ??

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Good question. A sound or flash ranging unit would have to be on map and of course would have cost points. They also would have had to have been placed correctly in the "setup" mode in order to detect the location of enemy batteries and would provide range and direction to your counter battery which would have to be in command range of your ranging units?? poppy

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Poppy - I have serious doubts that CM could do more then deal with sound/flash ranging in an abstracted manner. Certainly there is no reason to have a unit on map, and to place it correctly. Sound/flash ranging systems were quite complex, and arranged on a broad front (10km not unusual, I think).

Also, there appears to be a very low chance to actually make sure of the ranging with sound, and while flash is better, it also works better at night.

Check my site to learn more www.beobachtungsabteilung.derkessel.de

Really, there are about a gazillion other things with CM's artillery model that need attention first.

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Hello Andreas,You are probably correct,if there has to be a 10km spread for the ranging equipment to function correctly then it would have to be an abstracted counter battery feature. Is there another thread that has or is discussing other suggestions for CM/CMx2 arty modeling? Thanks poppy

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