Why are 20mm Flak so hard to spot?

[flamingknives]

I mean, come on, it's an automatic weapon, firing in bursts and, from what you see of it in historical sources, firing tracer.

So why can't I see the damned things until I get within 300m (in clear weather)

This happens when I'm using them too, the enemy just cannot see them until they're right on top of it. I don't have them in command at all, and they're still invisible.

Any explanations appreciated

[Stoffel]

its a weapon that is not to big.

specially the single barrel weapon can be easily dug in.

take in account that the barrel is almost on top of the weapon and you have something that is hard to see from a distance.

[Mattias]

It would take someone who has seen all the different weapons in action to say if they are all treated equally. Personally I think the 20mm's are too hard to spot though, particularly when seen in relation to some of the other guns available.

I have not seen an IG 18 or a Pak 38 fire but I have seen a 20 mm Flak sibling, used until recently in Sweden, and though it might be less conspicuous than a 88 it is still by no means "discrete".

Its only a matter of degrees though and BTS has no doubt put some though into it for CM:BB.

--

M.

[Brian]

Originally posted by Mattias:

It would take someone who has seen all the different weapons in action to say if they are all treated equally. Personally I think the 20mm's are too hard to spot though, particularly when seen in relation to some of the other guns available.

I have not seen an IG 18 or a Pak 38 fire but I have seen a 20 mm Flak sibling, used until recently in Sweden, and though it might be less conspicuous than a 88 it is still by no means "discrete".

Its only a matter of degrees though and BTS has no doubt put some though into it for CM:BB.

--

M.

If anything, I suspect that the LIG18 would be perhaps the hardest weapon to spot firing. It's usually used at high angle and if truth be known, indirectly. Its signature would be small because is both a small weapon and its propelling charge is quite small.

One factor which is missing from the game, which does tend to reveal small weapons like the Pak38 and the Flak38 is dust. Both are built close to the ground, both fire directly, both would tend to kick up dust. The Pak38, much more so than the Flak38 which is a smaller calibre weapon, I admit but the Flak38 makes up for that by firing bursts. I'd also suggest that the sound signature of the Flak38 would be pretty distinctive, just as the MG42's is. The MG42 would draw attention to itself because of that ripping cloth sound. The Flak38 because of its thudding burst.

I think the clincher would be that every second or third round in the Flak38's magazine would be tracer. Nothing like a nice straight line of tracer to tell you were an automatic weapon is.

[kmead]

When you are on the recieving end, particularly during daylight, tracer is much less noticeable. So as an indicator of shell track to weapon it is not always as obvious as you might expect.

[Olle Petersson]

We're discussing firing guns, right? Not stationary and silent...

Then let's see what the 20mm gun has for it;

- No muzzle flash, because the ammo (propellant) was optimised for a much shorter barrel (the Italian Solothurn ATR). The propellant was burnt out before the projectile exited the barrel. (This as opposed to the 20mm AAG previously referred to by Mattias.)

- Small profile.

I guess the 75mm IG had a much more visible flash at the muzzle, but those too are hard to spot in CM...

Cheers

Olle

[Mattias]

I have read stories of guns firing pretty much all day long without being spotted so there is no doubt in my mind that under certain conditions virtual invisibility is plausible.

The only thing that has me wondering a bit is if the 20mm isn't just a little too inconspicuous when compared to the other guns in CM or, on the other hand, if not the other guns are a little to easy to spot.

Again, a matter of degrees.

--

M.

[PiggDogg]

In CM, it seems that those German 20 mm guns are much harder to spot (in fact, nearly invisible) when compared to the German Mg42 HMGs or LMGs. I find this peculiar. :confused:

Comments? :confused:

Cheers, Richard

[aka_tom_w]

The german 20 mm gun is VERY hard to spot no question about that.

What I find interesting is that the game is designed so well as to keep them REALLY hard to spot.

They seem to be an order of magnitude HARDER to spot than any other unit on the battlefield.

I know ahistoric play balance is not a consideration here, but why don't the allies have some similiar weapon that is THAT hard to spot?

Do they? I don't think so.

Maybe other guns and weapons should be harder to spot like the German 20 mm gun?

It sure is a VERY effective weapon, it has a distinct sound and it scares the CRAP out of me when I play the Allies and I hear that distinctive rat-a-tat-tat!!

What do the Allies have that can do what the 20 mm German gun can do?

-tom w

[Stoffel]

well,I based a scenario on operation switchback

I have read a lot of stories about that battle.

the one thing that keeps coming back is the accounts of whole squads of infantry man killed by rapid firing cannons and by Infantry guns of various types

they were always wel concealed and camouflaged and hard to spot and hit

The germans had 100's of those guns packed together in the area where the canucks crossed the channels

no big surprise the initial attack failed badly

[Michael Emrys]

There seems to be some feeling that the German AT guns are a little too easy to spot in the game as they were specifically built for low profile. Somewhat the same to a lesser degree may be said for the Allied guns as well. Anything over 75mm-76mm was pretty big though with the exception of the very rare low profile 88mm.

Michael

[CombinedArms]

I recently had a Chaffee about 50 m from a 20mm gun. 20mm bounced repeated shots off the Chaffee's front for a whole turn, and I never did spot it. I finally pulled the Chaffee back behind a building. Next turn the game ended and all was revealed.

It does seem true that they are an order of magnitude harder to spot than anything else in the game. Virtually any other ATG will give it's position away with it's first shot or two. Whether this degree of spotting difficulty is historically accurate or not, I don't know. But if heavier ATGs were this hard to spot after firing, no CM attack would ever get anywhere, so in pragmatic game terms it's probably right that the bigger guns disclose their positions when they fire.

[ April 07, 2002, 11:20 PM: Message edited by: CombinedArms ]

[Redwolf]

For the record, the Bofors AA gun is much easier to spot than even normal big AT guns. It is even spotted when it doesn't fire. The 37mm flak seems to be almost as hard to spot as the 20mm.

There is certainly room for improvement. I just noted that a tank which was spotted once, then disappeared (leaving the "nation marker"), is always spotted with extact position when it fires again. In my test case however, the only Allied unit was at the other end of a heavily wooded map, not just out of LOS, really away.

Regarding the infantry guns, I always thought these are very easy to locate because of their low initial projectile speed. The discussion is buried in here somewhere, I can dig it up if anyone is interested.

[Brian]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

There seems to be some feeling that the German AT guns are a little too easy to spot in the game as they were specifically built for low profile. Somewhat the same to a lesser degree may be said for the Allied guns as well. Anything over 75mm-76mm was pretty big though with the exception of the very rare low profile 88mm.

Michael

Comparative Heights for various guns:

20mm Flak38 1.81 m

75mm LIG18 1.10 m

37mm Pak36 1.17 m

50mm Pak38 1.10 m

75mm Pak40 1.26 m

88mm Flak36/37 2.41 m

88mm Pak43 1.73 m

88mm Pak43/41 1.93 m

I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to just how small a silhouette these weapons had.

[Mattias]

Slightly doubtful is the fact that the Flak Vierling seems just as hard to spot. That thing weights 2200 kg with the shield and is as tall as a man, yet you have to be "on top of it" too to see it.

A fact that my estemed PBEM opponent no doubt has cheered every second of the last 22 turns

M.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Brian:

Comparative Heights for various guns:

20mm Flak38 1.81 m

75mm LIG18 1.10 m

37mm Pak36 1.17 m

50mm Pak38 1.10 m

75mm Pak40 1.26 m

88mm Flak36/37 2.41 m

88mm Pak43 1.73 m

88mm Pak43/41 1.93 m

Thank you for the numbers, Brian.

So in other words, the Flak 38 was almost two feet taller than even the 75mm Pak 40. I would call that a significant handicap for trying to conceal on the battlefield, especially in any kind of fairly open terrain. But at least it should be no easier to conceal, which is the whole point of this thread.

Michael

[Brian]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

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

Comparative Heights for various guns:

20mm Flak38 1.81 m

75mm LIG18 1.10 m

37mm Pak36 1.17 m

50mm Pak38 1.10 m

75mm Pak40 1.26 m

88mm Flak36/37 2.41 m

88mm Pak43 1.73 m

88mm Pak43/41 1.93 m

Thank you for the numbers, Brian.

So in other words, the Flak 38 was almost two feet taller than even the 75mm Pak 40. I would call that a significant handicap for trying to conceal on the battlefield, especially in any kind of fairly open terrain. But at least it should be no easier to conceal, which is the whole point of this thread.

Michael</font>

[Wilhammer]

Could this have anything to do with the Flak HT invincibility problem?

It is strange that you can pick a bazoka team out of crowd easier than a 20 mm flag gun blazing away.

[K_Tiger]

Dont forget, At Weapons were allways placed in dug in positions. I have here a nice Pic from the East-Front. On it, you see two 88 Flaks dug in in a downhill position. They r so deep in cover, the barrel is just only around 5cm over the ground (yes, with shilds). The all around hight messured from the ground is aprox. 80-100cm.

Also i doesnt like the way At-guns r implemnted in the defend. The standard prozedure was to dig the gun until the barrel into the ground. Then holes for the ammo and a mini trench were the crew can hide if they r in danger true Arty.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by K_Tiger:

Dont forget, At Weapons were allways placed in dug in positions.

Er, always? Could you substantiate that statement? I'm sure that whenever time and circumstance presented itself, all sides including the Germans preferred to dig their guns in, but time and circumstance were not always favorable.

I have examined scores of photos of AT guns and the great majority of them were not dug in. Some few were surrounded by sandbags or other kinds of cover, but actually the great majority that I saw were out in the open, at least one in the middle of a street.

I don't know what conclusion one ought to draw from this. Perhaps the guns I saw were a statistical fluke and digging in was actually more common in practice than the camera recorded, or perhaps the editor just chose the more exciting photographs. Perhaps some of them were staged and represent nothing more than someone's imagination.

But I doubt it. AT guns were not just static defenses. The Germans were particularly enthusiatic about pushing their guns forward (that is to say, they towed them forward) to be an integral part of the attacking force firepower. Or alternatively, on defense they might be moved hastily into position to counter a penetration. In either case, the guns were placed where they could get a shot. That was their job. And while you wouldn't want to expend them recklessly, if you lost one but bagged a tank in the process, that was seen as a good rate of exchange.

Michael

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by K_Tiger:

Dont forget, At Weapons were allways placed in dug in positions.

No. I have plenty of German AARs from the Allied armor attacks in Normandy, where allied AT guns have been caught when they were pushed into firing positions at the German tanks.

[K_Tiger]

Sorry redwolf..i mean the germans..I did only have one surce about a AT-Fibel (or part of it)from a 3,7cm Pak.

Michael:

I know too the "offensive-defense" the germans practice sometimes but i mean too the situation in CM terms and the "normal" orders german at-teams have wen it comes to bring her weapons to a defense-line.

Sure, they didnt everytime dig in, maybe they cover a retreat or something else. In the first years they learned it the hard way...i saw also alot of pictures were at-guns stands in the open ground sometimes on streets. A other factor in this time period were the few tank-killing AFS, so they must bring At-guns to the ennemy tanks.

You must agree with me, so many arty the german faced, there was a good reason for them to dig in what they want. I would dig like hell...

After the introducing of JagdPanthers...the crew on the eastfront startet to dig them in too Until Guderian himself forbid this practice.