unlimber time

[drroov]

Just a minor one:

Unlimber times for towed arty pieces seem way too long for me. In a QB ME I raced an 88 to a hill, hoping that it would prevent any armor movement in its sight, but it was unlimbering... 5 mins.

I read somewhere (sorry I dont remember where exactly, but I think it should be easy to check) that an experienced 88 crew could put in in firin position (anti-aircraft, however) in 20 secs!

Another is a report from a historical polish battle, where a convoy was attacked with infantry fire when entering a town, and after a minute or so the towed guns did their job. Any comments?

[Bone_Vulture]

20 seconds to unlimber the gun's base support, haul the ammunition, seat the crew and form command contact? Talk about übermensch...

[Quintus]

Are talking about the 'conventional' 88 a/t gun or the A.A. mount on the cruciform base?

IIRC the A.A. mount took ages to set up.

If you've ever watched the Royal Horse Artillery at the Edinburgh tattoo, they can get their little popgun into action pretty fast but I'd wager that it'd be a rare field unit that could man-handle an 88 into action in under 'a few' minutes.

[drroov]

Originally posted by Quintus:

[QB]Are talking about the 'conventional' 88 a/t gun or the A.A. mount on the cruciform base?

IIRC the A.A. mount took ages to set up.

If you've ever watched the Royal Horse Artillery at the Edinburgh tattoo, they can get their little popgun into action pretty fast

Could you please name the time? What's 'pretty fast', what's 'ages'?

[Bastables]

Wait a min, 81mm mortar teams today will not be able to achieve a 20 sec set up. Yet you have new info that shows 8,8cm Flak being un limbered with a shot down range in 20secs? Len Dehighton has motorised leFH 10,5cm howitzers taking 15 mins (bah actully 30mins) to having the first shot downrange during the campaign in France 1940. leFH are designed for rapid deployment ie firing while on its carriage/wheels.

If 20sec set up times were true all those PIIIs tasked to attract the attention of "road block" KVs as 88s setup, was a dangerous and wasteful practice.

Really think on how mortars, Infantry weapons will not achieve setup times of 20secs yet crusfixed 88s can? Bollocks more like.

[ October 30, 2002, 07:40 AM: Message edited by: Bastables ]

[gnuif]

In WW2online you can go from full-speed tow to shooting in less then ten seconds with an 88

88 is l4me in this g4me. please fix or somfink

[Brightblade]

Unlimbering seems to take much too long. After all, gun crews are quite numerous. The 88 Flak was crewed by 10 men, later by 8 men. All of them were trained to do their specific part of the job.

If a gun is going to be used for artillery purposes (indirect fire), it will certainly take some time to get ready to fire (determine the position), but what does it take to get ready for direct fire? The twenty seconds they say here don´t sound too far off.

And what´s that time it takes until a gun can fire after it´s pushed or pulled only a few meters? Is that realistic? What is there to do for nearly one minute to get the gun ready to fire?

Are there any artillerymen here with some experience with field guns (I guess SPA is something completely different)?

[Tanaka]

We could start to talk about 88 (AT role) in Africa korps service... Maj Bach in Halfaya, or yet during the formidable DAK retreat from El-Alamein.

For me what is important to notice is the time to dismantle the gun and go away to another defensive firing position...not the time to put it up. Some times the gun was fired still attached to the gun tractor… if we could do that in CM…

On other hand, I bet most of the LW 88 crews weren’t that combat expert… So, to model it in CM, would be kind of “gamey”

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Tanaka:

We could start to talk about 88 (AT role) in Africa korps service... Maj Bach in Halfaya, or yet during the formidable DAK retreat from El-Alamein.

For me what is important to notice is the time to dismantle the gun and go away to another defensive firing position...not the time to put it up. Some times the gun was fired still attached to the gun tractor… if we could do that in CM…

Firing from the "tractor" could only be done with a narrow field of fire (along the tractors line of travel) or risk tipping over the gun. Maj Bach's I.Abteilung/Flak Regt 33 split into battery’s fired from static prepared positions during Battle-Axe.

[Nolloff]

Originally posted by gnuif:

In WW2online you can go from full-speed tow to shooting in less then ten seconds with an 88

88 is l4me in this g4me. please fix or somfink

In UT2003 I´d own your elitist grognard a** (less offense intended than what might come across)

Nolloff

[Tanaka]

Originally posted by Bastables:

Firing from the "tractor" could only be done with a narrow field of fire (along the tractors line of travel) or risk tipping over the gun. Maj Bach's I.Abteilung/Flak Regt 33 split into battery’s fired from static prepared positions during Battle-Axe.

I mensioned the Maj Bach Rgt because it was a good exemple of an uber use of a 88mm Flack gun

Obviouseley if he was defending the alfa Halfaya passage, he couldn't go far away from it

PS- You have to slow down answering my posts, has I actually have to do some work today

[Andreas]

Some information on angles of fire and procedures in this thread, on page 2.

The gun could apparently be fired in a wide arc even when limbered.

[Bastables]

Originally posted by Tanaka:

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

Firing from the "tractor" could only be done with a narrow field of fire (along the tractors line of travel) or risk tipping over the gun. Maj Bach's I.Abteilung/Flak Regt 33 split into battery’s fired from static prepared positions during Battle-Axe.

I mensioned the Maj Bach Rgt because it was a good exemple of an uber use of a 88mm Flack gun

Obviouseley if he was defending the alfa Halfaya passage, he couldn't go far away from it

PS- You have to slow down answering my posts, has I actually have to do some work today </font>

[gnuif]

Nollof, challenge accepted. Buy me a copy of UT2003 and we will see.

P.s. Is there a DoD (or something similar) mod coming for UT2k3? If not someone do somefink

(apologies for OT talk)

[Foxbat]

Just imagine.. if you could only fire the 88 while limbered.. that would make the shoot&scoot command doubly usefull!

>Lost?

Yeah those 88s kept flanking my tanks.

> What about your infantry?

Tried fixing them with infantry. But he would just unlimber the gun somehwere to get a good field of fire and relimber before my mortars could hit it.

[JaegerMeister]

I posted this elsewhere to a similar thread but here it is again:-

, i found this text from an article on 88's on the Achtung Panzer site!

" I am told that a well practiced crew could dismount a gun and be ready to fire in 20 seconds and remount the gun for traveling in less than a minute." endquote.

[Andreas]

That 20sec is certainly only when firing limbered. Please see the other thread I linked above regarding this.

[Bruno Weiss]

I thought it was unlumbered?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

I thought it was unlumbered?

Weren't the German Uebercrews Unlumberjacks, and okay?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Brightblade:

[snips]Are there any artillerymen here with some experience with field guns (I guess SPA is something completely different)?

Not I, but my father did his national service in the Royal Artillery a couple of years after the end of the war. Although he went to a survey battery, everyone had to learn to shoot the 25-pounder in basic training. A well-drilled detachment of RA recruits moving into a surveyed battery position could get their first shot off 30 seconds from the wheels on the Quad stopping. I don't doubt that this involved various tricks and short-cuts; one of the reasons my father liked this practice was that, as gunlayer, he was seated (and making the coarse adjustments to sight in on the ranging-pole used as the gun position reference point) while the rest of the detachment were struggling to get the gun up on the traversing platform.

How representative this might be of other guns being brought into action in other circumstances is left as an exercise for the reader.

All the best,

John.

[CRSutton]

You have to remember that you are talking drill vs combat conditions. Usually the most ideal conditions are in practice. Rarely do times made in drill reflect reality in combat. In the field, with combat conditions, there are many other factors to consider. For example terrain. Getting a gun unlimbered in woods and into a suitable firing position would have to take much longer, as naturally those dang trees become a factor. Much the same for any other terrain other than absolutely pool table flat ground. (and we don't see that too often). What about mud, snow, rain, incoming fire, the odd green replacment, sad sacks and **** ups, cowards, lost or damaged equipment, fatigue, morale, snakes (ok not snakes) or any number of things that can delay the deployment of a gun.

Remember we are stuck with one set time per gun and this has to be an abstract of many types of conditions and enviroments. Actually, I think that the set up times are fairly generous and most likely done so for game play.

[Andreas]

Another issue is that the time here includes the time it takes to transfer the ammo to the gun. IRL™ you would not need to do that if you just wanted to deploy quickly. So if you wanted to have the 'fire from the march' possibility, it would need a new type of code for guns, divorcing ammo from the gun, and treating it separately. That is done to some degree now (when you move after having incurred crew losses, you lose ammo), but this would go further. I would hope the engine rewrite can address the issue. (some engine rewrite that will be...)

[Silvio Manuel]

Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

I thought it was unlumbered?

It's unlimbered. Jeez, these newbs can't spell!

[Bruno Weiss]

Why you impudent whipper snapper. I was trouncing em on CM when you was just a vitamin E capsule. And, it ain't newb, it's n00b except in the case of a newbie snob whereupon it is a sn00b.

[ October 30, 2002, 05:42 PM: Message edited by: Bruno Weiss ]

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by CRSutton:

You have to remember that you are talking drill vs combat conditions. [snips]

Yes, I'm sorry if it wasn't clear, that is part of what I intended to convey with "How representative this might be of other guns being brought into action in other circumstances is left as an exercise for the reader."

I cannot imagine that something like a 6-pdr, with the weapon weighing more than a third less than the 25-pdr and the projectiles weighing two-thirds less, with no firing platform and simpler sighting arrangements and gun controls, could not have been brought into action in less than 30 sec.

Unfortunately, I seem to be able to find very few references giving expected times into action, for guns of any type.

Although he doesn't give a time, I expect that about the quickest time into action possible would be on a shoot as described by Shelford Bidwell on p. 42 of his "Gunners at war". Here he describes the use, in action, of the order "Halt, action front without unhooking ammunition supply". With an 18-pdr battery, this means that all you do is unhook the gun, drop the trail on the ground, and start banging away, with the limber still hitched to the horses who are close at hand for a quick getaway. This technique was used to shoot at pursuing German infantry at 500 yards range.

Ellis & Chamberlain's "The 88" gives, for the Flak 18 using a six-man detachment, times of approximately 2.5 minutes to change from travelling to firing position, and approximately 3.5 minutes to change from firing to travelling position.

Chris Foss' "Artillery of the world" says that it takes "less than one minute" to change the 105mm light gun from travelling to firing position or vice-versa, using the firing platform.

I rather doubt that the much-quoted delay for German 10.5cm field guns mentioned by Len Deighton was due to unlimbering the guns; to me it seems much more likely that this was due to communications delays or getting the guns on the grid (or whatever the German equivalemnt is). 30 minutes is enough for the detachment of a 105mm Light Gun to re-assemble it from the two loads it breaks down into for helicopter transport (if you can't just take it as an underslung load).

All the best,

John.