Vehicle/gun movement improvements?

[Tero]

Originally posted by Philippe:

Tero, any chance you could comment on the limbering/unlimbering process?

But of course.

Are you satisfied with the CMx1 model ?

Not completely. The guns work pretty well when static but if you need to move them the realism is not complete.

Can you make any specific recommendations?

Realistic reverse, shoot'n scoot, related dedicated and enhanced gun emplacements, "turret down" spotting also for guns as well as vehicles.

If a carrier is going to unload its ammunition completely, how quickly should it happen and what is the range of the time-frames?

I'd say it would be more realistic to have variable ROF for the guns where they could have, say, 20% of the total ammo load available for rapid fire at a time and a period of slower ROF to represent bringing up more ammo from the limber/vehicle/cache.

Should large caliber shells unload at the same rate as small?

No. But that could be counted in as longer set up/slower ROF time for the larger caliber guns.

[roqf77]

also Britain had specific, artillery and anti tank artillery companies, both about 16 guns each. but i dont know how this broke down the the battalion level.

[Zalgiris 1410]

Please roqf77 or anyone else could you provide greater details on the British and Commonwealth ATG TO&E which is well sourced? Thanx.

[roqf77]

ill try but im speaking form meory at the mo.

[flamingknives]

Right:

From George Forty's "British Army Handbook, 1939-1945"

Infantry divisions, 1944.

3 Field Regts (24 guns in each, 25pr.)

1 Atk regt (48 guns, 17pr.)

1 LAA regt (54 guns. 40mm Bofors)

The same source recounts apparently true stories of British artillery tractors pull-starting Sherman tanks up hills. This implies some serious power - far more than a horse team could ever achive.

There were three Brigades in an Infantry Division, each consisting of three battalions. So 1 battery from each regiment would be near-permanently attached to each battlion. A battlion would rarely fight 'all-up', so that's 1 battery between two companies on the line. The FOO was able to call up the full Regiment, and request fire from every gun in range, which is an unusual degree of flexibility.

The "sniping with an 8" Howitzer" was, IIRC, against a town from a gun outside it.

DF gun Vs. FO - one against another and you can have as much ammo as you can get to your guns.

The terrain where you would use pack mules, you could not, under any circumstances get a horse team into it, much less through it. If you can get a horse team down a track, you ought to be able to get a vehicle easily capable of towing the same gun down it too.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Zalgiris 1410:

I'll tell you who JonS, both the US/CW Rgmts/Bgds.

Your figures for the amount of anit-guns organic to the 14th Company of normal German Infantry Rgmts are completely understated.

You should have had it according to their TO&E:

13th Company- 2x 150mm sIGs and 6x 75mm leIGs.

14th Company- 4 Pltns x 3x PAKs each, total: 12 ATGs.

So great, 18 plays 20 plays 27. Which is shortchanged again?

As a side point, it's probably worth noting that the German TOEs were somewhat mythical things that commanders giggled to each other about. Allied TOEs, esp for eqpt, tended to be fairly closely followed.

That's more than the figure for CW Infantry Brigades while AFAIK their Infantry Divisions had nomally no more than 2 ATG Regiments each similarly of 18 ATGs. Thereby giving the CW Infantry Division a total of 90 ATGs to which should be added their three Regiments of Artillery.

You aren't Finnish are you? 48 A-Tk guns in the A-Tk Regt, plus 18 in each Bde, so a total of 102 6- and 17-pr in a div.

AFAIK the CW never had more than 40x 3inch mortars per Infantry Division, while the US I'm not sure about though I think somewhere between 24 & 36 81mm mortars though they also had 60mm mortars as well. [/QB]

Finnish tendancies showing through again? 6 x 3-in per bn, so 54 in the div. Plus some more in the recce regt. Plus 16 x 4.2-in in the MG bn.

And as FK pointed out, there's also the LAA regt available, plus the 72 guns in the fd regts.

[JonS]

Originally posted by flamingknives:

The terrain where you would use pack mules, you could not, under any circumstances get a horse team into it, much less through it. If you can get a horse team down a track, you ought to be able to get a vehicle easily capable of towing the same gun down it too.

Oh FK, don't be silly. Everyone knows that horse-teams are the be-all and end-all of military transport. That's why all modern militaries prefer to use horse-teams instead of motor vehicles

[ September 13, 2005, 02:29 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[JonS]

http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/

[flamingknives]

That is rather a good site, IMHO.

[Wubbits]

On the topic of manhandling guns arround here is a link to a news item on some Aussie gun punchers who had to cover 11kms.

Clicky

Wubs.

[Zalgiris 1410]

WTF makes you think that I'm Finnish JonS? :confused:

I was born in Melbourne, Australia but with no Finnish ancestry that I know of.

Thanks for the link, it's something that I've been looking for since I obviously don't have good information with regards to British & Commonwealth TO&E.

I stand corrected on that issue completely and I must agree therefore that it was because they were mostly on the defensive that the German DF well accounted for itself in combat.

BTW I did say that the German TO&E was not maintained properly throughout WWII. But to add to this I'll provide the tables as I know them for the offical 2 Btln per Rgmt Infantry Division:

13th Company 2 Pltns each of 3 ATGs.(3 Rgmts of 6 ATGs)

Panzerjager Btln of 2 Companies both of 4 Pltns 3 ATGs ea.

Its 3rd Company was replaced by one of 12 20mm AAGs.

The Reconaissance Btln and its ATG Pltn was replaced by a Fusilier Btln without its own ATG Pltn.

So the new kind of German Infantry Division had a total of just 42 ATGs and a maximum of 14 75mm leIGs and 6 150mm sIGs.

[JonS]

You seemed to be channelling Tero.

BTW, and AIUI, very few divisions after the first wave (?welle?) ever got the 150mm sIG.

[junk2drive]

Someone is starting to remind me of someone...

[Zalgiris 1410]

However many IDs it was that got their full 6 sIGs there was the tendancy towards replacing the 2 gun Pltns with batteries of 4 120mm mortars.

[roqf77]

well according to ospreys british anti tank artillery, the uk id's consisted of 110 atg's.

78 6 pounders and 32 17 pounders.

6 pounders were usualy towed by bren carriers and the like.

and the 17 pounders by morris c8 and quay ant tractors.

[ September 15, 2005, 12:30 AM: Message edited by: roqf77 ]

[A.E.B]

I can once one question.

I have footage from a Documentary on the fall of Berlin that showed Guns (76mms and those big mothers on tracks) being used by the Russians in street fighting.

The best clip was a 76mm in action. It was being pushed down a street (so was on pavement) slowly with its trails spread but not spiked. It fired twice, and each time the gun moved.

There were three crew behind the splinter shield. However, guys (whether other gun crew or infantry - they had slug rifles and SMGs) kept running up to the gun carrying ammo.

What wasn't shown was where the ammo was coming from, but given the delay, probably 100 yards or so behind the gun.

So my guess is a gun is deployed in its Form-up area, complete with ammo stock. The whole crew pushes the gun forward to a new location, probably carrying minimum ammo. Once the gun is relocated, part of the crew operates the gun while the rest ferry rounds forward from the original FO loc.

The speed at which ammo could be delivered would depend on size, whether it was fixed case or bagged charge, and whether it required fusing.

The other possibility is that other infantry could be roped in to carry the ammo forward as well.

How you could represent this in CMX2 I don't know. Maybe an abstract "just-moved" gun should have no or very limited ammo, and then rounds are received over time. If the area between the gun and the ammo became unsave?

A.E.B

[tar]

Re: Limbering & unlimbering.

I would like to see more variability in this. There are lots of things that can go wrong and delay the process. Having more variance would nicely simulate that, not be particularly CPU intensive, and would take some of the control (or at least predictability) away from the players -- perhaps encouraging more cautious play.

Of course increases in variability could also be applied to many other areas (i.e., command delays -- if they still exist).

[edward_n_kelly]

Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann:

I can imagine the adrenalin rush to achieve that feat would have been pretty significant. I'd also bet he couldn't repeat the effort if not under duress and fire once the battle was over.

Regards

Jim R.

Suggest you get MUZZLE BLAST - A history of the 2/2 Machine Gun Bn (available on inter-library loan and through many of the cheap jack bookstores/remainder piles) - not a bad round up of how they used them in NA and NG/Borneo.

Edward