Artillery effect weakened by snow in CM:BB ?

[Monty]

A quick search gave me no info so i asked here.

AFAIK snow dont weaken the artillery inpact when snow is on the ground right ?

Any changes in CM:BB ?

Monty aka Moose

[Monty]

Ok, anybody knows if snow decrease the artillery blast effect in CM:BO ?

[Sergei]

Why should it? You need meters of tightly packed snow to stop a 7.62mm bullet, so while I am not sure about artillery, it would seem to me that snow wouldn't have very much effect on that, either.

Unless CMBB will model The Great Snowball Wall of winter 1944-45, where Hitler's Schneefestung Europa bore repeated Soviet snowball bombardments until spring came.

[russellmz]

Originally posted by Sergei:

Why should it? You need meters of tightly packed snow to stop a 7.62mm bullet, so while I am not sure about artillery, it would seem to me that snow wouldn't have very much effect on that, either.

Unless CMBB will model The Great Snowball Wall of winter 1944-45, where Hitler's Schneefestung Europa bore repeated Soviet snowball bombardments until spring came.

BECAUSE snow doesn't stop an artillery shell it decreases its effects: the shell buries itself in the snow so the blast is lessened to anyone above ground.

i THINK cmbo models this.

[Mies]

What I can imagine is that soldiers good have difficulty digging in when the soil is frozen solid. If you look at it from that angle, artillery dropped on a newly taken position and therefore not build out shelter, could cause more casualties when it's extremely cold. When it's easy to dig a hole, like in summer for example soldiers have better cover in the same amount of time.

Mies

[russellmz]

Originally posted by Mies:

What I can imagine is that soldiers good have difficulty digging in when the soil is frozen solid. If you look at it from that angle, artillery dropped on a newly taken position and therefore not build out shelter, could cause more casualties when it's extremely cold. When it's easy to dig a hole, like in summer for example soldiers have better cover in the same amount of time.

Mies

yeah, snow and rock hard frozen ground are diffrent things.

[MikeyD]

Don't take this as gospel, bit I'd SWEAR I read a long time ago Matt saying deep snow already had an effect on artillery in CMBO. I can't recall what that effect was and I can't recall where or when I read it. Take it for what it's worth.

[CaptPigglesbeThe3rd]

I,m more interested in the effects in woodland.

When calling in a barrage fire?

Are Airbursts (Mechanical or Powder-Train Timer Fuse) included.

Going Prone would have little effect against these

and types of shell.Even if your dug in.

In shallow trenches, airbursts can be effective; ricochets usually don't have the right angles to penetrate the trenches; and impact fire is ineffective.

Or will it all be impact.."Make a Crater" affair?

[fortsumpter]

Airbursts are already included in Combat Mission, including VT artillery that has the vuses to create an airburst without requiring trees.

[CaptPigglesbeThe3rd]

Yep I know the Americans had VT.

Don't rem' the Germans having it.

Just didn't know if or what the Russians

and Germans would have in CMBB option wise .

[JasonC]

Snow definitely lessened artillery effect in the real deal. I think it will in CMBB, from past discussions of the issue here, but I don't know any of the details or with certainty.

To substantiate the effect is simple enough. There are plenty of combat reports about it, in particular ones from both sides in the battle of Moscow noting how 81-82mm mortars had become completely ineffective in the snow, and other forms of artillery support lessened in impact.

As for why it happens, that is not too hard to see. The key is noticing the importance of the grazing pieces of shrapnel to the effectiveness of ordinary artillery fire. When the shell explodes, shrapnel flies in all directions. But stuff directed downward buries itself in the earth harmlessly, and stuff going mostly upward flies very far from the point of impact, way over the heads of any infantry in the area, coming back to earth in relatively steep angles after a lot of slowing down. The size of the circle it then comes down in is huge, and only a tiny portion of it can be covered by bits of shrapnel.

But the bits that fly off mostly parallel to the ground are a different story. They stay under man height for a long flight path. They start in a tight circle (the shell itself), and cover an area that stays relatively small, where the number of fragments times the size of a man is still a high portion of the circumference of the circle. Thus a high chance of hitting anyone standing nearby. Therefore, the "business end" of an exploding shell is the fragments flying almost parallel to the ground - they are the ones that matter.

But in snow, even snow only 6-12 inches deep, let alone 2-3 feet deep, those parallel fragments have a long trajectory through snow. 6 inches of snow aren't going to stop or seriously slow a shell fragment. But only a fragment going straight up passes through only 6 inches. One going out at a 30 degree angle goes through twice that. And as the angle gets closer to horizontal, the amount of snow the fragment has to pass through keeps going up, more and more sharply (the assymptote of a tangent curve).

So, what happens when a relatively small artillery round - like a light mortar round - goes off in moderately deep snow? The fragments flying up or down hurt nothing. The fragments flying parallel to the ground plow through snow, slow, and fall. The spray out and up at a few meters may still be effective - clearing the snow but staying below man height. But that is a small ring and only a small portion of the potentially lethal fragments. The result is a damped shrapnel effect.

The bigger the round, the less of an effect that kind of damping will have on the casualty radius. The deeper the snow, the larger the effect, obviously. In 6-12 inch snow, light calibers will be strongly effected. In 2-3 foot snow, even medium calibers will be strongly effected, and light ones may be completely shrapnel ineffective (meaning only a hit so close the blast alone can kill is good enough).

For what it is worth.

[MikeyD]

Tree-bursts are the most lethal infantry killers in CMBO already and will no doubt remain so in CMBB In the regions there is tree cover).

As to air bursts, The U.S. was king of the air burst after introduction of the radar proximity fuze in late 44(?). This is modelled in CMBO. The Russians and Germans only had mechanical fuses which were much more tricky to use. I expect to see the use of air-burst artillery rounds to drop dramatically in CMBB.