Flamethrower usage

[zphil74]

What is the best way to use a flamethrower team in an assault? Usually my team gets killed before they get in range because they're so slow.

[Olle Petersson]

I've had the very same experience.

Not too long ago the overall usage of FT teams was discussed, and it seems they're most effective in defence. My conclusion for now is to have them as rear flank cover in an advance, waiting somewhere in cover for enemies to get within range.

Otherwise you'll have to use other means of suppressive fire while moving your FTs within range.

If I want to flame something, I opt to get a Churchill Crocodile. Lots of ammo, good range and decent protection (armour).

Cheers

Olle

[coralsaw]

IMO, flamethrowers have to get a bit more fire-resistant. While ambusing they are great, but in attack, if not hidden they are spotted out quite easily and terminated.

Having said that, when attacking through woods, in which case one moves rather than runs, a few times I have supported infantry with flamethrowers. Upon reaching an ambush in the woods, I took great pleasure in burning the hair and brows of the ambushers.

Always protect them with infantry. They should follow rather than lead. And make sure you don't move them in the open as much as possible.

[This message has been edited by coralsaw (edited 12-04-2000).]

[The_Capt]

Three words.

"Keep em mounted." On tanks, HTs whatever. Hold em in res and rush em forward when needed. Flamethrowers are optimum in built up areas as they can stay under cover of bldgs and still "fry" enemy strong points. So let the grunts break into town, secure a bridgehead and then push FTs up to cook out hard points.

Let's face it the best place for a flamethrower is mounted on a Churchhill (a la Crocodile) but hey we dont always get what we wish for.

[Olle Petersson]

Here's how (not?) to get your own flame thrower:

Calvin and Hobbes

Cheers

Olle

[Olle Petersson]

Oops! double posting.

[This message has been edited by Olle Petersson (edited 12-05-2000).]

[zphil74]

Thanks for the tips and the comic

[Matt the Paladin]

I've also found a very nasty tactic for flamethrowers. If you can get them near a probable flight path of demoralized enemy infantry, you can utterly massacre them. As to advancing with flamthrowers, you definately want to ride them on armor, or at least give very good fire support. Flamethrowers definately work best when they can get real close before people start shooting at them.

In general, you shouldn't get more than a few flamethrowers, you have more important things to spend points on.

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"War is like a cat, it is easy to let out of the bag, but hard as hell to put back in!"

-Me

[Sir Wamers Kahlenberg]

Best way to use a flamethrower in a assualt is to put them on a tank or Halftrack move them 50 m out and let them get the other 20 themselves with a smoke screen. This is what i do.

[I/O Error]

Occasionally crawling will keep them alive in terrain OTHER than clear-cut.

[Lacky]

Flamethrowers... they are prime if up close. My experience with them is mixed. Often when using them on defense and an enemy infantry unit runs into the same house occupied by the flamethrower, the flamethrower torches its own building. I ambushed a tank the other night with a flamethrower. The Sherman II ignored the flames and continued on its merry way. *sigh* It would have been a grand ambush! I was sorely disappointed.

Flamethrowering units appear to be classified as s high threat. When they light up from an ambush or move, they draw fire from all quarters of the map. The only successful way I can get a flamethrower up close in a knife fight is to use it past the mid point of a fight and bring the suicide squad in (which will indubitably torch the same building of the melee). Hahah

[Beer_n_Pretzels]

Flamethrowers in assault?

I have had some success using the following combination:

- British Pioneer Platoon

- 3 Ram Kangaroos

- WASP Flame Carrier

- MMG carrier

- Cromwell Close support Tank

For this to be successful you need to eliminate enemy armour / or use a judicious amount of smoke to isolate the target and prevent long range AT shots.

The whole idea is once the smoke has started to move fast onto the target with the MMG Carrier leading the way. The whole force should stop 150-200m metres from the target and (preferably in cover) and begin to suppress the target area. The MMG Carrier then whould advance within 60m of the target area with the WASP behind it. This is to potentially hide the WASP from Panzersreck shots. However a human opponent may not be that stupid and target the Wasp anyway. You shouldn't have to worry about Panzerfaust shots because you suppressed any spotted teams with the Rams and Close support tank, right?

After the WASP has hosed down a few areas, Move fast in with the Rams and disgorge the Platoon where they can have a covered advance onto the target. Do not charge unsuppressed German Infantry squads with your pioneers/ flame thrower. Their close range weapons (40m and under) will slaughter the poor Rifle-armed pioneers...

In some cases I have left the flamethrower team mounted on the Ram because there us just too much led flying around and have left the WASP to do the dirty work...

Please note this is an 'ideal' setup and if enemy has unengaged armour / AT guns, or you've miffed the smoke timing, your force could be crapped on from a great height!

On another note, there is no defense against the defending player dropping artillery on your assault force (unfortunately smoke doesn't stop artillery...)

I hope this helps.

[Doug Beman]

Flamethrower teams are, and should be, extremely vulnerable. They're slow, tire easily, and have only a few flame-shots. The way we should use them in CM is the way they were supposed to be used in real life. Their purpose was building/bunker busting, purposeful fire starting, and also the affect they had on enemy morale (death by fire is the #1 or #2 most-feared in the human race, IMHO)

They weren't supposed to expose themselves until their target was ready to get flamed. They weren't supposed to walk along with the line infantry in general firefights, and they usually weren't part of anti-infantry ambushes.

Keep them safe and warm until the path to whatever they're supposed to burn is fairly clear of bad things, drive them up in a vehicle, burn the thing down, and then drive the team to another safe spot.

DjB

[Guest Mikey D]

Being the flamethrower guy in the open is suicide. My most successful has been in forest conditions where flamethrower range better approximates visual range. The flamethrower also creates a nice impenetrable barrier if a unit is under attack in forest conditions.

[Clubfoot]

I agree with Doug that flamethrowers work best on "prepared" targets. You can usually pour enough lead on a particular(stationary) target with infantry and support teams to evacuate the location (be it a building, patch of woods, field gun or cluster of foxholes). But stubborn defenders (fanatics and/or vet. or better troops) need that extra boost. After, and only after, the aforementioned means of assault are being employed, bring in flamethrowers from the rear and jockey them into a favorable position. Usually in some protected vehicle (Brit 'roos work good!).

If for some reason you have flamethrowers and don't forsee a use for them(?!?), they can make smoke! Burn the woods (the crowd roars!). Burn a building (they howl with glee!). Burn trees on either side of a roadway (the fire will often spread across the surface of the road, making it almost impassable and obscuring everything behind it!).

Say, this all makes me wonder. Does anyone know if you can burn a wooden bridge?

I'm off to try! BURN BURN!!!!

Clubfoot.

[2B]

I love to use the German Flamethrower Half-Track (70 points for the regular version).

Here's a trick I use when defending a village: put your infantry in the second row of houses in the village and then right off the bat use the flamethrower to set the first row ablase via the area target option. Obviously the assaulting infantry can't enter the burning buildings and you can really give them a hardtime while they try to get to you without the aid of cover. This can work with woods too, but those squares are somewhat harder to set on fire than buildings.

[Croda]

I ran a great Flame ambush against the AI recently. I had 2 of them, and hid them in the woods along enemy lines of approach. They hid and popped up and let fly when the enemy inf was about 15m away. 3 blasts set the woods ablaze, and sent the enemy inf running. Ultimately, I held up a whole company with this ambush.

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[Popper]

Though I have used FT's several times successfully as ambushers, I have only ever succeeded in using them offensively once.

I used offboard 82mm's to smoke the heck out of a concrete pillbox (88) on top of a hill. It had already eaten up half a squad of infantry and my prized Sherman 105, so I wasn't in the mood to screw around with him.

After the smoke had successfully stopped him from firing, I fast moved an M3 HT with two FT teams up to near knife range and dismounted. The 88 opened up on on FT team before he got a shot off, but the other one put three blasts of flaming goo in through the slot and my 88 problem was solved.

[Horncastle]

I find FTs quite difficult to use, one time though they pulled one out the top draw for me. The battle ( cant remember exactly which one)is where the Brits have just landed and are moving to Caen and you have to stop them as the jerries, anyway theres a town and a huge forest area. Well after destorying the brit armour, I found the Brit inf advancing through the forest and they walked right on top of my recce pltn, I advanced my inf and the flamers and sent them scurrying quite quickly!

It turned a bit pear shaped though when the forest caught alight and the brits rained down some hefty artillery and air attacks ( virtually wiping out 2 pltns!), if it wasnt for this i could have massacered them a lot quicker than I did ho ho ho

[CombinedArms]

I did ONCE manage to set fire to an occupied building with a flamethrower. It was fun. Or was it twice.... I think the first time, the bad guys burned. The second time, they beat it out the back door. Plus, one of my flamethrowers once burned his own building under close assault (and lived to tell the tale.) That was fun, too.

But the most fun I ever had with a flamethrower was when (as Germans) I sent a shreck team out to get into an ambush position--then forgot about him after my Panther took out the AI's last Sherman . Later, I noticed him wandering toward an (empty, I thought) hillside in Allied territory and decided--just for the heck of it--to let him keep going and see what happened (victory against the AI was at hand anyway.) A couple of turns later the shreck bumped into a rather demoralized Allied flamethrower, down to one guy, who had previously been chased away by my AT gun and had hid in the woods for several turns, just out of LOS of the gun--far removed, anyway, I though, from any chance of action. I 'd forgotten all about both of these units but now my attention was drawn by this tower of flame in the midst of the uncontested meadow. The flamethrower, trying to defend himself against the encroaching shreck, and unable to run away, had created a great big funeral pyre of flames--remarkably square-- that enclosed the both of them.

I managed to extract my shreck (now down to one) and later he stalked and killed the flamethrower, who had somehow also wandered out of the pyre. But to find these two lonely and oddly useless units engaged in their own private little AI war provided a weird and sad (Keatonesque?) sidelight to the main battle.... Sometimes these little guys seem almost human.

[Skipper]

I've seen one chap (he was defending against my probe) setting ablaze several empty buildings in a village he was defending. The idea was to deny me good cover there. Well, if he'd also set up some decent defences on the alternative route, he could make me problems.

[Gremlin]

Flamethrower vehicles work well for that purpose (ditto when applied to trees).

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[Thermopylae]

One glaring flaw with the light empty buildings/trees on fire tactic. In RL, fire spreads, so lighting gigantic pyres near you MLR is a bad idea.

[Yaba]

I find them hard to use on the assault. However, I just recently had a bit of success with them on defence. I hid one FT unit in a building kitty corner to a building that I thought my enemy might use for cover. In another large building I hid a FT unit in the back/bottom floor. Both FT unit set up their own ambush markers and waited. As it turned out, on the exact same turn, my opponent came waltzing into both buildings. Whoosh. Both building went up in flames and a few squads of germans were set looking for some serious sunscreen. The FT unit that was in the building managed to extract himself without getting hurt (he lived a couple of more minutes before being gunned down). The other FT unit was set upon by just about every piece of armour that had HE. Dead in five. However, both buildings were denied to my opponent and he was forced to take residence in buildings that I had a good line of sight on with my infantry. Apart from that I think that the units that were torched ended up quite rattled. It worked quite well...

The only success I have had with FT units on the offensive supporting roles with the WASP. And that is only with some Allied infantry to hold the enemy infantry at bay while I scoot the WASPs into place.

[MOS was 71331]

I'm now a German defender with a 900 point force. I wanted to buy a pioneer company, but, remembering how much trouble I had had with flamethrowers in Valley of Terror, I thought the six (two per platoon) flamethrowers in the package would waste too many points. After I'd started the game without the pioneers, it occurred to me that flamethrowers might be a lot easier to use on the defense.

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Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)