Radio FOs

[jacobs_ladder2]

I was playing CMAK last night and I realized that I have no idea why the game includes FOs with and without radios.

Feeling pretty dumb, I slept on it, but the new day didn't bring enlightenment. How does an FO without a radio do his job? Does he send someone running back to battalion HQ with coordinates written on a piece of paper? Or does he simply limit himself to targets that are not likely to move much?

Cheers

Paul

[mike8g]

A FO with a radio can embark a vehicle/tank.

A FO without a radio (he has a telephone wire running back to his battery) cannot and he moves much slower.

Marcus

[dieseltaylor]

Many accounts of the Second World War record units becoming isolated as the wires were cut by shell fire - or infiltrators. Summoning of reserves, supporting artillery etc. hten became tricky : )

Keeping your comms. operating was vital and a enormous amount of effort went into it. Obviously as the war went on radios for infantry become available but were restricted in range and ruggedness. Also ,depending on the army, what level they came down to.

[General Bolt]

Carrier pigeons!

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

How does an FO without a radio do his job?

Field telephone. Flares (Very lights). Colored smoke (rarely; it was more common in air-to-ground). In a pinch, a runner.

Michael

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by mike8g:

A FO with a radio can embark a vehicle/tank.

A FO without a radio (he has a telephone wire running back to his battery) cannot and he moves much slower.

Marcus

So, the only issue here is mobility? Are FOs without radios limited as to what kind of fire missions they can call? I mean, if you are tied to a field telephone, how do you move around to observe from different positions and still call and adjust fire?

Cheers

Paul

[Joachim]

Yes, radio and wire FOs are only different regarding mobility. Radio FOs are faster and can board vehicles - that's it. Both can call fire missions.

The job of the second guy is to lay the wire. They are slow because the wire is on a roll and must be handled carefully. So everywhere the FO goes, the assistant lays wire. There are exemptions like calling from a tree down to the assistant using the telephone. As it is rather valuable the cable is rolled up when moving back.

Movie examples:

IIRC there is a PTO movie where two or three men as FOs or scouts lay a wire and discover an imminent Japanese counterattack in GI uniforms. The counterattack is shot up by planes after HQ receiving the message thru the wire. Shows their job nicely. Especially the threat of being discovered thru the wire.

"Enemy at the Gates" has wire laying parties as sniper targets.

Gruß

Joachim

[ September 25, 2005, 04:00 AM: Message edited by: Joachim ]

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by Joachim:

Yes, radio and wire FOs are only different regarding mobility. Radio FOs are faster and can board vehicles - that's it. Both can call fire missions.

Interesting. Much appreciated.

Incidentally, anyone know of any good reading on signals technology in WWII? I have never taken the time to really have a look at commo stuff from the era and it's about time I did.

Cheers

Paul

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

How does an FO without a radio do his job?

Field telephone. Flares (Very lights). Colored smoke (rarely; it was more common in air-to-ground). In a pinch, a runner.

Michael </font>

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

How would they use flares?

AIUI, this works within a previously established fireplan. Somebody at the front fires one or more flares with an assigned color that signifies that, say, a creeping barrage should halt, proceed, or switch to a different phase of the plan. Just exactly what each signal meant, and the color and number assigned to it, was one of the things that had to be worked out in the fireplan. It allowed some degree of flexibility and control from the front when other forms of rapid communication were not available.

Michael

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

AIUI, this works within a previously established fireplan. Somebody at the front fires one or more flares with an assigned color that signifies that, say, a creeping barrage should halt, proceed, or switch to a different phase of the plan. Just exactly what each signal meant, and the color and number assigned to it, was one of the things that had to be worked out in the fireplan. It allowed some degree of flexibility and control from the front when other forms of rapid communication were not available.

Michael

Far out. That must have been a real pain in the ass.

Cheers

Paul

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

That must have been a real pain in the ass.

Probably no more than most things in war. It seems to have worked well enough at what it was designed to do. In a lot of ways of course radios are better, which is why all armies that had them used them. But in some ways, radios were a pain in the ass too. They were almighty heavy to lug around (the British and Commonwealth forces mostly kept theirs in Carriers, and ran the headset out on a wire), their batteries could go out just when you needed them the most, they could be jammed and even if they weren't jammed transmissions could get garbled. You get your choice of plagues, as it were. But yes, most of the time, radios were preferable if you had the proper organization to utilize them.

That latter point about organization is important. Just dumping a job lot of radios into the Soviet army in 1941-42 wouldn't have made it any more flexible or efficient. They were pretty much compelled to rely on rigid fireplans because of a lack of men back at the batteries capable of quickly performing the necessary calculations to aim the guns where targets were sighted.

Michael

[Aco4bn187inf]

Has anyone ever found that radio FO's are less accurate that wire ones? I recently had a US radio 81mm spotter, late '44 scenario, regular, who couldn't hit the enemy no matter how many times I adjusted. Like, 4, 5 times.

Maybe it was just a run of random bad luck?

Emrys is right about radios often being a pain in the ass. A friend once asked me what the range of the PRC77 I used to carry was, and thinking of its foibles, I said, "Do you mean just thrown by hand?"

I heard the Swiss army, even up to a few years ago, depended on wire rather than radio commo because of security reasons.

[GreenAsJade]

Sounds like you might have had a LOS blockage right at the critical time. In CM there's a critical moment (either 60 or 30 secs before firing) when the spotter must have LOS. If it is blocked for a moment at that time you miss. If it is not, you hit. That's the only reason I'm aware of that contibutes to FO's missing.

GaJ

[von Churov]

Originally posted by Aco4bn187inf:

Emrys is right about radios often being a pain in the ass. A friend once asked me what the range of the PRC77 I used to carry was, and thinking of its foibles, I said, "Do you mean just thrown by hand?"

I heard the Swiss army, even up to a few years ago, depended on wire rather than radio commo because of security reasons.

Yeah! And that's exactly how the Serbian Army was communicating during the NATO air raids back in '99.

I did my military service in 2003. in a signal unit, and once I just complained to the sargent like "why do we have to cary those painfully heavy loads of rolled wire through the woods, marshes and all imposible kinds of terrain, when modern technology is at disposal (radios, computers, etc.)". He looked at me and answered with a question: "What do you think, how did we communicated during NATO air strikes, and not being detected? Wire rules my boy!"

So...wire rules!

[ September 28, 2005, 03:00 AM: Message edited by: von Churov ]

[Sergei]

The same in Finland (and in many many more). Of course there are radios, but those are intended to be used when the wire doesn't work or is way impractical. With wire, it is harder to spy on you, pinpoint your location or to jam the communications. You still need the radios, though, for backup, because artillery can and will break wires. From what I've read, that was also how it worked in WW2: during the defensive phase of Continuation War, there were cables drawn all over the front, but there were also radios.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Aco4bn187inf:

Has anyone ever found that radio FO's are less accurate that wire ones? I recently had a US radio 81mm spotter, late '44 scenario, regular, who couldn't hit the enemy no matter how many times I adjusted. Like, 4, 5 times.

Maybe it was just a run of random bad luck?

If a barrage is unspotted during the spotting round, it will always be unspotted, no matter how often you adjust. You have to order a new barrage - with a blue line to the target.

More here: Arty synopsis by TB155

Gruß

Joachim