Artillery spotters now "slow". Why?

[Bruno Weiss]

What a minute here, "connected to what precisely" at the other end?

The map size of CMBB would I should think be prohibitive in imaginary logic to assume that there's a wire running all the way back to where exactly? If that is the case, as I'm sure it is, then why isn't the "what" included in the game as an object. Like a field telephone truck or somefink?

[ September 26, 2002, 01:14 PM: Message edited by: Bruno Weiss ]

[KNac]

In reality, non-radio FOs shouldn´t be able to move around (just retreat if over-run by enemy forces).

They would be in Observation Posts, already prepared where the cable has been placed by signal section.

In reality FOs were not going around during battles, they usually were behind the frontline, in a favorable position to observe the enemy and call fire from there. Off course, they were not placing cable all around, that was done by the signal guys (usually carried in trucks, ironically).

For a "almos-perfect" representation, FOs should be placed in the set-up phase (or fixed in scenarios), they would be very very very diofficult to spot (because camuflage) and couldn´t be moved around. They can only run/withdraw and then lose fire call abbility,(fire plans/on call targets already in action would be completed.

[Elmo]

Why do I keep picturing the scene from Enemy at the Gates where the captured Russian soldier is put in a German uniform and given a spool of wire to drag across the open ground?

[KNac]

bump.

however the Enemy at the gates scene points out very clearly what I said, that guy is not supposed to eb a FO but a guy from a signal section (regimental/divisional or from battallion) lying cable for comunication (maybe from a HQ to other HQ)

cheers

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by KNac:

In reality, non-radio FOs shouldn´t be able to move around (just retreat if over-run by enemy forces).

They would be in Observation Posts, already prepared where the cable has been placed by signal section.

In reality FOs were not going around during battles, they usually were behind the frontline, in a favorable position to observe the enemy and call fire from there. Off course, they were not placing cable all around, that was done by the signal guys (usually carried in trucks, ironically).

Very well, but you'd have to have units of wirelayers moving to and fro to connect them. And without extra functionality (like hardline communications between HQ's for example) it is not really worth the extra bother, and we'll just have to live with the abstraction.

I'm all for wireguys btw, especially in a possible future MMP enviroment with relative spotting etc.

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by KNac:

In reality FOs were not going around during battles, they usually were behind the frontline, in a favorable position to observe the enemy and call fire from there. Off course, they were not placing cable all around, that was done by the signal guys (usually carried in trucks, ironically).

Not exactly. Often, the local company commander would have a field telephone line running from his front-line CP back to a battalion operator, who could dispatch artillery requests to the appropriate units.

In areas where the front lines had settled for a bit, the company would also have field phones out to the platoon CPs, too.

Read MacDonald's "Company Commander", first three or four chapters, to see how this worked.

For a "almos-perfect" representation, FOs should be placed in the set-up phase (or fixed in scenarios), they would be very very very diofficult to spot (because camuflage) and couldn´t be moved around. They can only run/withdraw and then lose fire call abbility,(fire plans/on call targets already in action would be completed.

I would agree with this. The time it would take to repair a broken line or broken field phone is out of CM's scope. Heck, if you want to be REALLY accurate, there should be a chance that any enemy artillery barrage or any enemy or friendly vehicle movement between the field-phone observer and the nearest friendly map edge will break the line, eliminating the FO's ability to call in artillery support.

But, as to whether the inability of the FO to run fast and therefore avoid death is realistic, you should keep in mind that you only lose 30 points if the unit is overrun and killed. You could reconcile that as the cost in points of losing your artillery support until a new field phone could be requisitioned or the wire repaired.

Steve

[Conscript Bagger]

Originally posted by MrSpkr:

Not exactly. Often, the local company commander would have a field telephone line running from his front-line CP back to a battalion operator, who could dispatch artillery requests to the appropriate units.

In areas where the front lines had settled for a bit, the company would also have field phones out to the platoon CPs, too.

Read MacDonald's "Company Commander", first three or four chapters, to see how this worked.

It's been a while since I read that, but IIRC, MacDonald served in the U.S. Army... Did the Germans or Soviets use those kind of comms at platoon level as well?

[Battlefront.com]

Guys,

Before I detail this a bit, I want to reassure you that we had two real life artillery "experts" as Beta Testers. Several others had personal experience with FO duties while in the military, but not specific to it.

Bascially there are two types of FOs:

1. Radio

2. Wire

In real life neither of these moved around much during a battle because neither were very mobile. However, the Wire FO was (basically) static for the duration of the battle. Only under exceptional circumstances did such a FO team move during the fight. And when they did so it was generally to a prepared secondary "fallback" observation point, not some random point on the map. Now, why is that?

First, laying down wire is for the most part the responsibilty of a signals unit, not the FO itself. Depending on the year, nationality,and formation the signals unit might be organic to the battery, artillery battalion, or some level of organization (like Infantry Battalion HQ). Therefore, the notion of hopping your Wire FO in a Jeep and tearing around the map is not at all realistic.

Second, speciality vehicles which were designed to lay wire, which were assigned to signals units, did not have the ability to push the accelerator down to the floor and drive wherever the heck they pleased at top speed. Instead the vehicle would creep along an already established path with one man playing out the wire and perhaps a third guy walking be hind it to weigh it down, unsnag it, camo it, burry it, etc. This was not a quick nor easy thing to do and it was absolutely not done "on the fly". Wire is a finite resource and field phones can only communicate over a set distance so these things had to be planned out if they were to work correctly.

Third, wire laying by vehicle was often not possible or practical. Therefore a team of at least two men (not the FOs!!) would walk the path. One man would have a spool on his back and the other would play it out. Again, this is a slow process going along a predetermined route. The spool was generally only good for about 200m tops. After that another spool would have to be brought forward, spliced together with the end of the previous spool, and the process of walking it forward started again.

Fourth, a FO team probably had a small spool, of perhaps 50m, which could be used to allow the FO to move around a bit from his preestablished, static position. Then again, maybe not. Since these positions were deliberately selected and a lot of energy spent setting them up, they were likely to be the best spots on the battlefield already.

OK, so where does that leave us?

1. Moving a wire FO is, in generaly, totally unrealistic. However, an FO should be able to relocate a little bit within a small radius from his initial setup point. However, CM has absolutely no way of keeping track of such movement (i.e. where did he start and where can he go) and therefore we could not code this in. So instead we kept the movement speed realistically slow and that should keep abusively large relocations to a minimum.

2. Moving a wire FO by vehicle is totally unrealistic within CM's scope. This sort of tactical/strategic deployment was not done in the heat of battle except to extract the team to safety. Wire would NOT be laid as they went, and therefore this would remove the FO's functionality from the battle once moved. Unfortunately CM isn't coded up to allow units to "abandon" equipment like radios, so there is no way we can simulate this in CM. Yes, we even thought about the "if ammo = 0 then allow faster movement" but even that was not possible. In any case, a FO with zero ammo isn't worth much from a game calculation standpoint.

3. Laying down "on the fly" connections between FO and its parent signals unit is unrealistic at CM's level of simulation. Period.

Now... about Radio FOs... simply put they should be slow due to the size and delicacy of their radios. Most man portable radios required two men to transport, and even then both were pretty weighed down. It was difficult to do much of anything with the radios while walking because one guy had to adjust the controls on another guy's back. And no FO could ever call down artillery from a vehicle unless it was stopped and he had enough time (about 5-15 minutes) to orientate himself to the target and the battery, then do the calculations for fire control.

What is the use of radio armored cars? Pretty much nothing except to act as HQ units for other armored cars. CM is not designed to allow vehicles to call down artillery and therefore this functionality wasn't possible to add.

Hope that helps!

Steve

[KNac]

Not exactly. Often, the local company commander would have a field telephone line running from his front-line CP back to a battalion operator, who could dispatch artillery requests to the appropriate units.

In areas where the front lines had settled for a bit, the company would also have field phones out to the platoon CPs, too.

Read MacDonald's "Company Commander", first three or four chapters, to see how this worked

Yep, I knew that, but we are talking about "full-time" dedicated FOs What you described was Coy HQs calling supporting fire or oportunity fire over targets, something is not modelled in CM (Coy/Bn HQs abbility to call fire, usually from organic units, many times on-board mortars, or guns, like batteries formed by IGs or ATGs used as indirect fire artillery). Coys didn´t have permanet 24-h support from a divisional artillery battery/battallion. What they could do is demanding direct fire support missions and such, and maybe pass oportunity targets as you said, but th bombardement wouldn´t be executed 100%. However I suppose u knew that.

From my POV FOs, actually represent FOs in artillery posts or movile FOs (with radios) with assigned batteries to them for the actual battle or for X hours/days (that´s beyond the scope)

Very well, but you'd have to have units of wirelayers moving to and fro to connect them

probably not in the CM game scale, they wouldn´t be moving around UNLESS very important broken links were, well, broken

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by Offwhite:

It's been a while since I read that, but IIRC, MacDonald served in the U.S. Army... Did the Germans or Soviets use those kind of comms at platoon level as well?

Dunno about the platoon comms (the US always had scads of extra stuff, so these comms were probably more common with US forces than others -- though I have no source for that), but I am relatively sure that, on the company level, this is how all the major combatants conducted business.

Except the Finns, of course, who used their inherent mental telepathy powers, and the Italians, because the Germans gave them two tin cans and a long string and told them to deal with it.

Steve

[KNac]

It seem that from what Steve said I was almost right in all

Thanks for the aclaration Steve

[Lt. Kije]

KNac, I grew up with a Dad who went through the WWII forward observer experience. He did not describe a life of being in a safe place, well concealed, calling in fire from a position of peace and quiet. He was not a man given to drama, neither in his day to day life nor in his telling of stories. And he never presented himself as particularly brave or exceptional. Yet the stories he told painted a picture of a forward observer being on the move, finding himself under sometimes withering fire, and seeing the kind of amazing events you only see when you are in the thick of things. Sounded to me as though a forward observer moved with the infantry, by and large.

Just reporting one man's memories.

(Two of my favorites involved 105 or 155mm incoming shells that happened to not explode. The first story featured a cow standing in a field and what appeared to be a 105mm shell. This was viewed from far enough away to be in the role of a spectator, not a participant. The second involved a 155mm shell incoming on a low trajectory which came to rest, spinning in flat circles, a few yards away.)

-- Lt. Kije

[KNac]

Kije, I think u didn´t understood me well. I didn´t say in any pharse that a FO was safe or something, but is a fact that they usually weren´t in the trenches. In a war noon cannot feel save, even divisional HQs units or evven corps and armies HQs were over-run sometimes.

But FOs didn´t fought as regular infantry if not neccessary. Off course they moved with and like infantry, they were attached to other units and such. If the impression of ebing a FO I did was that one, my apologies. As I said FOs should be able to retreat, and we they should have that option is because they could come under fire.

Being a FO wasn´t the best, they were as slepless or more than other infantrymen, same fear, same tiring walkd many times, etc. But they weren´t usually in the frontline trenches, just a few meters back, in good positions with good FOV if possible, but not safest positions in anyway (other than not in the front, but if an enemy atack breakthrought they get under danger pretty quickly). Off course all depends of what type of FO is, is not the same a FO serving for the bn mortar platoon than for a divisional battery, probably the bn fo will be much near to the front-line than the other,e tc.

I hope I make it clear now.

[Lt. Kije]

Yes, KNac, I think I get what you are saying and I think you are correct. You have an especially good point when you note that there were different types of FOs, who led different lives.

Good points!

-- Lt. Kije

A man, a cow, a 105mm incoming shell. Pure poetry.

[Aacooper]

My brother was an FO for the 82d Airborne a few years ago, and when he took the job, he told us the FO's life expectancy in combat was measured in seconds. Now, I'm sure that was an estimate based on Fulda Gap-type combat vs the Warsaw Pact, but there are plenty of WW2, Korea, and Vietnam combat histories of FO's getting wounded, killed, or otherwise losing their commo equipment.

Maybe a future enhancement would be a close shellburst taking out the radio or telephone wire?

[Swift]

Originally posted by Aacooper:

My brother was an FO for the 82d Airborne a few years ago, and when he took the job, he told us the FO's life expectancy in combat was measured in seconds.

Well, I recently did a quick "fire observer" (direct-translated from Swedish, we separate the duties of the FO to the "fire leader" who talks directly to the artillery unit and decides what kind of fire should be used and the "fire observer" who only reports target position and type to help the "fire leader") course and they didn't tell us that we had seconds to live

The job was mostly laying prone at a good OP with a compass, laser-rangefinder (if we go hi-tech) and a radio prepared to send coordinates. It didn’t feel so deadly. I assume that if the enemy finds out where we are we are smoked but with all radio communication in the air I don’t think they will get our location.

I for one would love to see that the next CM game is completely dedicated to wire-laying featuring all the latest über cable laying units...

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Lt. Kije:

Yet the stories he told painted a picture of a forward observer being on the move, finding himself under sometimes withering fire, and seeing the kind of amazing events you only see when you are in the thick of things. Sounded to me as though a forward observer moved with the infantry, by and large.

That could be very true. I have been reading the memoire trilogy by George Blackburn, who was an artillery officer with the Canadian army and who saw action from early July '44 to VE Day. In his descriptions it is very clear that the FOOs were right there in the very front lines indeed, and many of them became casualties.

As to the kind of equipment they used, he makes some revelations that were new to me at least. An FOO and his crew (an assistant, a driver, and a signaler if I have it right) rode forward in a Universal Carrier until they were a couple hundred meters behind the leading troops and then they parked the carrier in, preferably, a concealed location. The driver remained with the vehicle, which also contained a pretty good-sized radio that connected directly back to the battery (eight guns) and could be patched to regiment (24 guns), division (72 guns), corps or army. This, in turn, was connected by wire to a headset that the FOO and his assistant carried with them to the position from which he intended to observe. If the wire got broken, the signaler or the assistant would have to find and repair the break. But this system allowed them a fair amount of mobility. That is, on attack, they could manage to keep up with the troops.

Well, this apparently was how it was done in the Canadian army (and presumably the other Commonwealth armies) in Europe in 1944-45. Since that army will not be appearing in CMBB, it of course has no direct bearing on that game. I only present this information to balance some of the more dogmatic generalizations made in this thread.

Michael

[Battlefront.com]

Michael,

That is basically a combo radio/wire arrangement. I am sure that this was done quite often with higher level FOs to various degrees. It is obvious that they came up with system to get around the problem of lugging around a radio set and not being saddled with all the problems related to wire sets. Spooling out 50m of wire isn't a big deal, and abandoning it isn't a problem either.

The main problem as I see it is the range and effectiveness of the radios. The range of man portable sets was very limited, so to get significant range you needed a dedicated vehicle. Even for "rich" Armies late in the war there was always a shortage of such sets. Breakage was common and interference was also a serious issue in the terrain along Germany's borders. So the arrangement you mentioned might zoom into place and find they couldn't reach HQ. A wire set is foolproof. Well, until the wire breaks

Also keep in mind that the Soviets had a DEEP mistrust of radio communications. They realized that the Germans were technically superior in terms of message interception and decoding. So even in 1945 their artillery was still using wire based communications for the most part. From what I know this paranoia continued well into the 1960s and possibly later.

Steve