Indirect fire Cannister and other goodies . . .

[Gpig]

SPOILERS!!!

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Oh man, what a fantastic game!

I was playing the Germans in "a deadly affair" (I think that's what it is called) versus the A.I. (playing the role of the partisan scum).

This was so much fun, I tell yah. I pretty much handed the A.I. it's digital buttocks 96 to 4, but it was still quite exciting.

One amazing occurance early on was seeing a partisan Maxim gunner surrender and then be cut down the next turn as my MG's sprayed his comrades (who were near by). Poor fella.

Then later, I had a couple of those SPW 250 halftracks with the short 75mm gun on 'em. One of them I had ordered to area fire some HE on a distant wooded hill top crawling with partisans. Later, as I was watching for the HE rounds to hit the target, I noticed they WEREN'T. I could hear the report of the gun, but couldn't see any impacts.

I went back to the 250/75mm and watched from the beginning of the turn. After loosing his last HE round on the target, the gun elevated and fired again. This time it was shooting C rounds with the gun at about a 45 degree elevation! It was SOOOOoooo awesome. The cannister cloud went shooting up skyward and then fell back to earth on target (mightily dispersed).

Amazing!

(Of course, you all may know about this feature already . . . in that case I'll just quietly join your little club.)

GPig

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Gpig:

I went back to the 250/75mm and watched from the beginning of the turn. After loosing his last HE round on the target, the gun elevated and fired again. This time it was shooting C rounds with the gun at about a 45 degree elevation! It was SOOOOoooo awesome. The cannister cloud went shooting up skyward and then fell back to earth on target (mightily dispersed).

Hmmm. I might be wrong, but I don't think this should happen. Cannister rounds were a pretty short range affair and I seriously doubt that they would retain enough energy to be useful as a high-arc weapon. Could be annoying though, I suppose.

Michael

[ October 14, 2002, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[Gpig]

I thought it was odd, as well.

It would be like falling steel acorns I guess.

(In fact, I often wondered why there was always casualties resulting from people firing their weapons into the air in celebration. Wouldn't the rounds just fall earthward with little or no remaining energy? I mean a little bit of lead on the noggin would deal out an ouchie, but would it kill you?)

Back to the topic; It must have been coded with that intention however, since the gun actually ran out of HE rounds and (while still under the area target order) elevated it's gun and let loose 3 rounds of Cannister in a high arcing trajectory.

It was amazingly cool.

You should try it out!

Put some suffering infantry in some woods and area target said woods with a cannister equipped 250 (75mm) from at least 400m. (The target area was also at a higher elevation though not by much.)

Sit back and watch the fun!

Gpig

[Dirtweasle]

I'm thinking this is wrong too. I have not seen the canister round fire yet though in any game I've played so far. Anyone have a good rule-of-thumb on cannister range?

[offtaskagain]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

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

I went back to the 250/75mm and watched from the beginning of the turn. After loosing his last HE round on the target, the gun elevated and fired again. This time it was shooting C rounds with the gun at about a 45 degree elevation! It was SOOOOoooo awesome. The cannister cloud went shooting up skyward and then fell back to earth on target (mightily dispersed).

Hmmm. I might be wrong, but I don't think this should happen. Cannister rounds were a pretty short range affair and I seriously doubt that they would retain enough energy to be useful as a high-arc weapon. Could be annoying though, I suppose.

Michael</font>

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Gpig:

I thought it was odd, as well.

It would be like falling steel acorns I guess.

(In fact, I often wondered why there was always casualties resulting from people firing their weapons into the air in celebration. Wouldn't the rounds just fall earthward with little or no remaining energy? I mean a little bit of lead on the noggin would deal out an ouchie, but would it kill you?)...SNIP

If you drop a .30 cal bullet from an elevation of 5000 ft say, just shy of 1 mile, )aprox 1/2 the extended range of a 30-06 IIRC) and that .30 cal bullet struck you on the head - I contend you would be very much impressed by the amount of energy. Impressed that is for the next few fractions of a second as your lifeless body fell to the ground.

[Peter Cairns]

The thing with the shotgun pellet depends on "Terminal Velocity""". All objects in air reach a maximum speed depending on shape and weight. That's why you can find mice at mile down a mine shaft. After about 20ft they reach full speed and don't get any faster, but can survive a fall at that speed. Unfortunately people who don't have the benefit of a parachute reach a fire higher speed and tend to splat when they hit the ground. Whether canister would hurt when fired indirectly as discribed would depend on the size shape and composition of the bits. I remember doing calculations on this in Physics at school almost 30 years ago and thinking " What a waste of time who needs to know this"...

Peter.

[Dirtweasle]

Exactly, the figure I think is 22 mph x per second of the fall untill reaching terminal velocity. Since a .30 cal bullet is capable of supersonic flight it's going to be moving at great speed and carry some striking power at impact. A shotgun pellet is not, and if a canister round is made of dozens of ball bearings they may have a good wallop to them, though not nearly as much as I would guess they have when fired directly from the cannon.

[Bullethead]

Long-range, falling cannister would be very nasty if it hit you. Birdshot, as mentioned, slows way down and is harmless at very long range. However, don't try standing under falling buckshot. Even the relatively small increase in sectional density from #6 shot to 00 buck is enough for the latter to be fatal when it comes back down. It's about like a 9mm pistol bullet in that regard.

[Ex Bellator]

*Peers around nervously*

Errrr, I think I may have pushed BFC a bit in the Weather thread already today, but the Canister issue relates to a thread I started a while ago. Sorry guys - here I go

I ran tests to see at what ranges tanks were using their Canister against infantry out in the open. They regularly opted to fire it at long range right up to 200m. It might look impressive but it is almost completely ineffective, causing one or no casualties.

When they fired Canister at sub 75m range it was horrendous, 6 plus casualties in the target squad. This is not a problem regarding performance as you would expect it to improve the closer the target is.

Unfortunately it is a problem with wasting sparse Canister ammo at long (for Canister) range when they have plenty of much more effective HE on board. Also it allows the target to get off lightly.

I would like to see a tweak in the AI for Canister to use it for close work, or only as a last resort when HE has run out at targets over 100m.

Well, in the grand scheme of things it may be trivial and probably difficult to program, but you gotta ask!

[Frunze]

Every year in New Orleans people get hurt because of idiots who fire their guns in the air on New Year's Eve.

[Lobodejesus]

What about them quad 50.cal AA-machineguns? Is there any documented evidence of anyone ever getting hit with a descending bullet from one of those things?

[Guest Mike]

IIRC terminal velocity is related to shape - you may not remember this, but one Leonardo da vinci showed this by dropping 2 spheres off the Leaning Tower of Pissa - bot hteh small one and the large one hit the ground at the same time.

A bullet's terminal velocity will almost cerainly NOT be supersonic - anything can travel supersonically if you apply enough force to it - that's got nothing at all to do with terminal velocity!!

In WW2 there were many, many cases of people being injured by falling shrapnel and bullets from AA guns.

[offtaskagain]

Originally posted by Lobodejesus:

What about them quad 50.cal AA-machineguns? Is there any documented evidence of anyone ever getting hit with a descending bullet from one of those things?

Quad .50 cal mounts were ocasionally used for indirect interdection in korea. The denied an area approximately a football field in size. The british also used indirect MG fire in both world wars.

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Mike:

IIRC terminal velocity is related to shape - you may not remember this, but one Leonardo da vinci showed this by dropping 2 spheres off the Leaning Tower of Pissa - bot hteh small one and the large one hit the ground at the same time.

A bullet's terminal velocity will almost cerainly NOT be supersonic - anything can travel supersonically if you apply enough force to it - that's got nothing at all to do with terminal velocity!!

In WW2 there were many, many cases of people being injured by falling shrapnel and bullets from AA guns.

Ok this is getting pretty far off from the orignal topic... Yes terminal velocity is related to shape. I never said the bullet would *have to* be travelling supersonic, just that since the shape of a .30 cal bullet is capable of supersonic flight it's terminal velocity would be in the supersonic range. I've never had a chance to experiment with dropping balistic shapes but my guess is that they move through the air quite smartly. It would be intersting to see if gravity could pull a bullet to supersonic speeds.

I think more pertinent to this would be to know what makes up German WWII canister rounds. If it's ball bearings, bits and pices of metal castings or what.

Yes MG fire can in Real-Life be used as indirect fire.

[Subvet]

A bullet fired straight up into the air has been known to come down and kill someone. That isn't theory; tragically, it has been proven. I don't know how big the "shot" is in a canister round though.

[offtaskagain]

Originally posted by Subvet:

A bullet fired straight up into the air has been known to come down and kill someone. That isn't theory; tragically, it has been proven. I don't know how big the "shot" is in a canister round though.

Usually it's about .5 inch in diamter. Not sure if they were lead balls or steel. Either way that would pack one hell of a wallop.

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:[/qbOk this is getting pretty far off from the orignal topic... Yes terminal velocity is related to shape. I never said the bullet would *have to* be travelling supersonic, just that since the shape of a .30 cal bullet is capable of supersonic flight it's terminal velocity would be in the supersonic range. I've never had a chance to experiment with dropping balistic shapes but my guess is that they move through the air quite smartly. It would be intersting to see if gravity could pull a bullet to supersonic speeds.[/QB]

I've done a quick web search and can't find anythign about it - but I think bombs do not go supersonic unless specially designed for it - and they're designed to fall smoothly throug the air - sreamlined and with finds to keep them pointing the right way, etc. - so it seems to me to be extremely unlikely that a bullet is going to be a better aerodynamic shape than a bomb, and hence unlikely that a bullet will free-fall as fast as a bomb.

So IMO there's no chance at all of them being supersonic at terminal velocity.

Which won't stop them killing you of course should they still be going fast enough to crack your (or my) skul!!

[akdavis]

More important than whether or not the cannister shot could kill you at long range is the dispersion that is going to occur past 100m or so. I've seen many a duck fly right through clouds of shot when pushing the range on a 12 guage. If canister shot produced an effective grouping at 200m, I would expect it to be almost worthless at ranges less than 50m. The grouping would be so tight, I'd think an HE round would have more AoE. Might tear the hell of out one guy, but probably do nothing to his buddies nearby. Much like shooting ducks that are too close. Does so much damage, the meat can ruined.

I'll have to agree that tanks engage a bit early with canister. I'd like to seem them save it for that optimal 50-100m range.

[FEBA]

Even bullets flying horizontal go subsonic from air resistance after flying a while. I too doubt they are supersonic when just falling. But a fist is subsonic and can still hurt you.

Excerpt from website where the author seems to know what's what:

John Carmichael has recently masterminded a wonderful set of ballistic measurements in which he and his team have measured the down-range velocities of a variety of bullets at ranges of up to 1200 yards. The results for the 190 grain Sierra are shown in Table I. It can be seen that despite running at chamber pressures of 50,000 psi, (quite stiff!!) velocities at 1200 yards were still subsonic. It is easy to see why people thought they were supersonic at 1200 yards when we look at the predictions using Ingalls tables based on the Mayevski drag curves. (So why are the Mayevski drag curves still used? - See my article in the 1995 Spring NRA Journal).

Scroll to section on

-COMMENTS ON LONG RANGE SHOOTING-

http://www.gunnerynetwork.com

[akdavis]

I ran some test involving a couple of Stug IIIEs vs a company of partisans without AT weapons in wide open ground. I have to conclude that the AI's use of canister is pretty flawed. I determined that the AI will readily fire its first canister rounds out to 200m IF it has more than 3 rounds, but once it gets down to 2 or 3 rounds, it will unreasonably horde them, refusing to fire even at infantry squads less than 50m away.

Even more troublesome is the effect of canister at 200m. Practically nothing. Every once in awhile, a lucky kill would be scored, but in test after test the Stugs fired their first canister rounds out to 200m with no effect. Even at 100m, when the Stugs would more readily use their rounds, casualties were fairly light. When the infantry got in around 50m, the results were devastating, with entire squads being wiped out. Unfortunately, even when being close assualted by 3 or more squads of infantry, the Stugs refused to use their last 2 canister rounds, choosing instead to fire HE.

[ October 15, 2002, 02:49 AM: Message edited by: akdavis ]

[Ex Bellator]

Your test pretty much agrees with mine. Firing canister over 100m is a waste of time, especially when you have HE on board.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Mike:

IIRC terminal velocity is related to shape - you may not remember this, but one Leonardo da vinci showed this by dropping 2 spheres off the Leaning Tower of Pissa - bot hteh small one and the large one hit the ground at the same time.

Galileo Galilei it was.

[Dirtweasle]

Ah, the TacAI is still holding onto special ammo. This is, as many will recall, a problem with tungsten rounds in CMBO...

[Tha_Field_Marshall]

I haven't seen the AI use tungeston rounds properly yet either. At long range when there are needed my Mk IV will hold on to them. Usually not getting a second chance to use them, I might add.