Will CM Normandy have this?

[Michael Emrys]

I think another problem with smoke grenades in games is that if they are provided, they usually prove more effective than they were in real combat and players, given a chance, will load up on them and use them almost constantly. In the real world, there are problems with using smoke, such as dispersal by even a light wind, and grenades just don't put out as much smoke as artillery delivered smoke. This is on top of the rarity issues that Sergei raises. So unless designers can accurately model the problems of using smoke, there are serious questions concerning their use in games.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

From the memoirs of a British soldier with the 1/Middlesex Regiment, in Normandy:

“In 1944 we entered Cheux by a sunken road which we eventually discovered . . . [and] we encountered a German armoured car heading straight for us, the German crew were as equally surprised as we were, although obviously not so green, as they grabbed the initiative by lobbing smoke grenades, and disappearing literally in a puff of smoke in reverse at a fair rate of knots back in the direction they had come from. “

My suspicion is that this refers not to hand-thrown grenades, but smoke bombs fired from the built-on mortars on the vehicle. That's what they were there for and recce vehicles used them a lot.

Michael

[HighlandLaddie]

Sergei, I am not a game designer, and my comments and anecdotes were not directed at helping in the design of this game. I was expressing scepticism at the reported conclusion that there was scant evidence that smoke grenades were used for concealment, and my anecdotal evidence was aimed at refuting that. You say "it's quite obvious that smoke grenades of different types existed and were used," but the opposite was being said: “Right, I remember Steve saying they never found any evidence of smoke grenades being used for cover in WWII. They were too ineffective at it. They were only used for ID purposes.” It is that misconception that I was addressing.

As to the details of how different units were equipped, and how and when they employed smoke grenades for concealment -- well, I'd love to be able to provide the details, but, alas, I have my own day job. At least a misconception about smoke grenades won't prevent the game designers from taking up the task.

Michael Emrys, you may well be right about the smoke used by the German armoured car.

[Lanzfeld]

That is interesting Michael. I wonder if they (BFC) reduce the amount of smoke the nades produce (less dense) then the players wont rely on them so much.

[John Kettler]

cabal23,

Good stuff! Think I read that on Lone Sentry some time ago. Would guess the tank in question was either a Panzer III or Panzer IV. The reported results make eminently good sense (little air influx if engine's not running), and the the last method is clearly seen here. Sequence begins at 1:23 with Blendkorper attack, followed by smoke grenade bola later on.

Men Against Tanks, Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kxeGXHcYK8&NR=1

Sergei,

ISTR the engine compartment and the fighting compartment in a T-34 weren't completely sealed off from each other. Believe I read that in the SU-100 Armour Profile.

HighlandLaddie,

Welcome aboard!

Splendid post full of groggy goodness! Am curious as to your search phrase, seeing as how mine yielded more technical data and tactical schemes than combat accounts?

Sergei,

Fair point on the game developer side of the problem. We do know what the elite troops had on D-Day, for that's on record. GI issue is more of a challenge. From what I can tell, GIs carried a few frag grenades and a smoke typically, but loaded up for things like fighting patrols, street-fighting and similar. Would expect SLs and ASLs to carry colored smoke.

Apropos of this discussion, Chapter 9, Smoke in The Chemical Warfare Service: From Laboratory to the Field is a must read. This is where we learn WP production for the Chemical Warfare service was far more than any other smoke agent in the war (p. 198), that five million WP hand grenades were manufactured, along with two million rifle grenades, and that five million colored smoke grenades were produced from 1942-1945, together with 1.5 million color smoke rifle grenades (p. 221). That same chapter has a good discussion of Japanese and German smoke weaponry. The book also has chapters on incendiaries and flamethrowers.

Michael Emrys,

Am inclined to agree with you regarding the German armored car, but as I've shown light AFVs, at least ours, do carry smoke grenades. Bellona Handbook No. 2, Part 2 covering SdKfz 250 and others shows a bunch of vehicles explicitly listed as carrying as many as 8 grenades. Nor, for example, do SdKfz 222s sport smoke grenade dischargers in any pics I've seen. Here's a fully restored one from the renowned Jacques Littlefield Collection.

http://www.mishalov.net/military-vehicles/pictures/img_1987.html

Or this beauty from Beltring

http://www.warwheels.net/images/Sdfkz222Beltring2005Trowbridge1.jpg

This one MAY have some sort of smoke screen generator on the bow plate, but it's nothing that can fire forward. It's a model.

http://hsgalleries.com/gallery04/sdkfz222sp_1.htm

Nothing in FM 30-40, the wartime AFV recognition manual. BTW, the sidebar's full of goodies!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23738738/Fm-30-40-recognition-Pictorial-Manual-on-Armored-Vehicles-3-November-1943

Regards,

John Kettler

[Battlefront.com]

Sergei said it best...

It's quite obvious that smoke grenades of different types existed and were used, but it's the blurry details that tend to cause the most trouble for the game developer desperately trying to draw accurate tables of organization and equipment. Just like the debate about MP 43/44 in Normandy.

As I stated before, we know two things:

1. Smoke grenades were produced

2. Smoke grenades were issued

The question we have is how frequently were they used in a tactically relevant way? Frequency can be determined by such things as steady supply, battlefield constraints, enemy counter measures, etc.

Considering the thousands of tactical battles I've read in my days, I've seen very few mentions of smoke grenades being used. Yet every Rifle Platoon likely had at least some on hand. Therefore, it would appear that their use was limited. Not non-existant, for sure, but not something that should be happening many times within a single tactical battle. Or at least that's our impression.

As I think I said earlier, we are going to allow smoke grenades in CM: Normandy. But we're trying to figure out how WW2 usage may differ from modern usage.

Steve

[John Kettler]

Rats,

Left out a page citation! Page 199 for the number of WP hand grenades, and that's two million WP rifle grenades.

Special for Steve,

The Germans hated our WP grenades, which suggests they got used with fair frequency. In turn, this reflects what I posted earlier that WP was by far the most common U.S. smoke agent of the war.

To get some sense of the split between smoke and frag, I'm going to dig out my Ordnance volumes in the same series and see what I can turn up. That should provide a good first order approximation of what we're trying to learn.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Elmar Bijlsma]

The Germans hated our WP grenades, which suggests they got used with fair frequency.

John Kettler

Well, WP is of such a nature that you'd only have to seen its use once to hate it.

The big trick is to get smoke grenades, and I'm thinking of WP mostly here, in their proper place in a CM battlefield. Give each squad just one WP nade and we'll be having a veritable WP deluge, because that's the kind of people we are. WP would be the new Javelin.

There seems no doubt it was used on a passably frequent basis to obscure a road crossing or some similar movement. But that probably doesn't justify handing them out to every squad.

What's the thinking on WP smoke and incendiary effects for tank shells? A lot more basis for inclusion, I'd think. Me, I'm just doubtful if we should be seeing the whole WP v tank thing simulated.

[John Kettler]

Steve,

From The Ordnance Department: Procurement and Supply, page 152, Table 14--Major Types of Ammunition Procured, 1 July 1940-31 August 194...Grenades 87,320,000.

We know how many WP grenades were produced (5 million +) , how many WP rifle grenades were produced (2 million) and how many colored smoke grenades were produced (5 million). Already, I can say that WP grenades in both hand and rifle form amounted to ~8% of total grenade production. We still need to know how many AT rifle grenades were produced, how many non WP smoke grenades were produced, along with a few other things. Speaking of U.S. rifle grenades, here's a nice listing of the types the U.S. used and when introduced.

http://users.skynet.be/jeeper/page69.html

Someone else now needs to find out how much of that production went to our various allies. I did find out something remarkable. According to this British produced analysis covering 1942 and 1943, the British provided our troops with 500,000 hand grenades.

http://www.archive.org/stream/britainspartinle00brit/britainspartinle00brit_djvu.txt

"Military Equipment

Most of the arms used by the U. S. Forces are American-made,

but any British-produced arms for which they ask are supplied free,

and Britain has also supplied large quantities of miscellaneous war

supplies. The list of military equipment transferred includes several

hundred Spitfire planes, 32,000 bombs ranging from incendiaries to

"block-busters," 7,000 sets of armor plate for heavy bombers, 1,000,000

anti-tank mines, 70,000 six-inch shells, many millions of rounds of

small arms ammunition, electric batteries at the rate of 500,000 a

month, 500,000 hand grenades, 43,000 gasoline tanks, about 5,000

collapsible rubber dinghies and about 1,300 parachutes."

It's unclear to me, though, how this does or doesn't get double counted in what was provided for Torch.

"D. MUTUAL AID IN NORTH AFRICA

In no field of war was Mutual Aid more strikingly illustrated than

in the North African landing by the United Nations Forces in Novem-

ber, 1942. In his report on Lend-Lease operations from March 11,

1941, to December 31, 1942, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Lend-Lease

Administrator, gave the facts as follows :

"This action has been from the beginning a combined

operation in which Lend-Lease and Reciprocal Aid have played

their part. Great Britain provided two-thirds of the warships

10

and transports employed in the original landing operations.

60% of the ground forces were American and the Air Forces

were equally divided. Of the landing craft employed most were

American-built. Some had been Lend-Leased to Britain and

were manned by British crews. U. S. Fighter Squadrons, on

the other hand flew 160 Spitfires provided by Great Britain

under Reciprocal Aid. Most of the equipment used by U. S.

Forces came from American factories, but supplies Lend-

Leased by Britain to our Armed Forces included such items as

100 miles of portable airfield runways, more than 500,000

anti-tank mines and grenades, 130 reconnaissance boats, 4

complete 1,000-bed field hospitals, and medical supplies for

100,000 men. One United States division was completely

equipped with British 25-pounder (guns)."

Regards,

John Kettler

[TheVulture]

One reason that smoke might be used much more in-game than in real life is that game smoke is a bullet-proof barrier. In real life, if someone throws a smoke grenade into a street to cover movement, then a) watchers will likely see enough to know roughly when someone is moving through smoke, and will then fire into the smoke. All it does in effect is turn aimed fire into area fire (unless you use a lot of it, so the enemy has no real idea where they ought to be shooting).

In-game though, there is no way to area fire through smoke, and in turn-based played someone can often throw smoke grenades and get across a street in a single turn anyway, so you have no chance to plot any kind of fire order. Conceivably you can fire at the action spot in front of the smoke, and since the fire is aimed at body height, hopefully rounds will pass through the smoke and might cause causalties. NB in WeGo throwing smoke grenades and moving through them in the same turn is a bit of a gamble, since you don't know exactly where they will land or how the smoke willd develop; sometimes if you try it you end up running out into a completely clear area and getting slaughtered.

But the combination of not targetting smoke clouds, and reaction time in WeGo, make smoke much more effective in game than in reality.

Maybe new TacAI behaviour can mitigate this somewhat (usual caveats about not knowing how easy anything is to do in the game code apply). Give units watching the smoke a chance to detect movement in/close behind the smoke and area fire in the right general direction accordingly (subject to target arcs, other targets being assigned, hiding etc. as per usual). It might mitigate the more unrealistic uses of smoke, and tone down the value of infantry smoke grenades.

[Thomm]

All the time I can only think of the scene in "A Bridge too Far", where a pillbox gets blinded by a smoke grenade. I tried to dig it up on YouTube, but failed to do so.

Best regards,

Thomm

[John Kettler]

TheVulture,

A most astute analysis! In actuality, a smoke grenade is better modeled as rapid progression toward opacity, followed by a gradual decay thereafter, with all stages subject to atmospheric conditions, wind, weather, etc., not to mention random chance. Smoke is best in still or light air, drops in efficiency as the wind speed rises, doesn't handle rain well, etc. The major issues are in the relevant FMs and strike me as something the AI could handle via a simple set of criteria in a look-up table, say.

Particularly for MGs on FPLs, the means exist to reliably deliver fire in all conditions. That's what walking the ground, grazing fire (no more than 1 meter high, per this http://usmilitary.about.com/od/glossarytermsg/g/g2700.htm ), limit stakes and such are for, after all. Smoke can help, but a prepared defense can severely punish an attack at new moon, in a snowstorm--if there are ways of knowing someone's in fact there.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

Nor, for example, do SdKfz 222s sport smoke grenade dischargers in any pics I've seen.

Hmmm, looks like you may be right. I did some searching too and so far this is the only picture I could come up with that shows smoke mortars.

http://www.lg-c.dk/uploads/panzer8-4.jpg

And clearly this is not a typical recce vehicle.

Michael

[John Kettler]

Michael Emrys,

That's exactly what I found to be the case! Hadn't seen that pic of a SdKfz 234/2 Puma before. Here's the one I'm used to seeing.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/votw/234_2.htm

There were 101 produced, and they fought at Normandy! I think the Puma's a fabulous recce vehicle, and so did the British and the Americans. Indeed, the basic design carried over to the FRG's Luchs, which made my brother and his buddies, then in the 2/11 ACR on M3 Bradley CFVs, green with envy. Quiet, double ended, armed well enough for its job but not enough to encourage dueling with tanks and fast into and out of position, not to mention tiny compared to the hulking, roaring Bradley.

http://www.rodenplant.com/HTML/705.htm

Spahpanzer Luchs

http://uwemilitaria.org/1-Wheel/Puma/17.html

Nice Puma in context set, from which I pulled the Spahpanzer pic.

http://uwemilitaria.org/1-Wheel/Puma/index.html

This is the standard late war 8-Rad AC, the SdKfz 234/1. It, like its little brother the 4-Rad SdKfz 222, is devoid of smoke dischargers.

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/votw/234_1.htm

Here's the most I've ever seen on OOB and tactical organization for the 234 series, particularly who had Pumas at Normandy, complete with division and recce unit names.

http://hem.passagen.se/plasticwarrior/gerforce.html

Regards,

John Kettler

[Gromit]

Chiming in on the handthrown smoke issue... seems the only way to be fair and square with it (at least in CM:N) is to severely limit it at the squad level. Maybe 5-10% base chance or less, modified upwards by a unit in the "assault" company of a regiment. In a scenario context, an assault warrants a slightly higher chance than others, etc.

All in all, due mostly to the fact that if it's there, people are gonna use it, to prohibit smoke turning into a "gamey" tactic it has to be rationed severely.

Artillery smoke is a whole 'nuther separate issue.

[Sequoia]

Do we have any idea of the amount of smoke a 1940s smoke grenade produced in comparison to a modern one? I always assumed the infantry smoke command in CMSF represented more than one grenade.

One could argue that every incident mentioned so far was a special circumstance where the user had access to an abundance of smoke discharging devices and improvised rather than doctrinal use, but it makes one wonder since soldiers don't like to die, why, especially in the US Army which was casualty adverse, well supplied, and initiative was encouraged, weren't they used like today?

Even today I assume smoke grenades are not used to advance across an open field but would be handy in screening a quick street crossing when the enemy is already well suppressed. That's how I use them in CMSF.

My own limited experience with smoke grenades in the late 70s on exercises is they are larger and heavier than hand grenades and just one of them does not produce that much smoke. It's more of a warning to the other side of "here I am coming-shoot this way". End of my ancedotal evidence.

[Battlefront.com]

One of the German infantry manuals I have (IIRC pre war vintage) says, basically, "if you see someone pop smoke, flood the smoked area with MG fire because obviously they are up to something". Which, as been stated above, is probably why they were used sparingly.

The best uses for smoke grenades are to blind a specific position rather than to mask your own movements. There are two reasons for this:

1. It requires only 1 smoke grenade

2. It denies the enemy the ability to focus on a specific area

In other words, if you drop a single smoke grenade in front of a bunker the bunker can be effectively blinded by it *and* have no clue where to aim its gun. It could just do sweeping fire, but that's going to be largely ineffective compared to it seeing a puff of smoke 200m away and being able to focus all fire on that.

Steve

[pad152]

Weren't smoke grenades used more for signaling and as markers vs. cover?

http://users.skynet.be/jeeper/page64.html

Allied Phosphor grenades?

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, smoke has been traditionally used to mark things. However, I am not sure when that became commonplace.

Steve

[c3k]

Will it become possible to fire INTO areas without LOS? If I see smoke billowing up, will my CM:N men be able to shoot through it? Obviously accuracy would be poor - to non-existant.

Thanks,

Ken

[gunnersman]

Will it become possible to fire INTO areas without LOS? If I see smoke billowing up, will my CM:N men be able to shoot through it? Obviously accuracy would be poor - to non-existant.

Thanks,

Ken

As it is now LOS can go beyond the crest of a hill, but not very far. I would imagine, ney, I hope LOS for area fire will be able to go into smoke.

[John Kettler]

BFC,

Maybe this'll help sort out the problem. Why do the research twice?

Battlefield Obscuration Model (Smoke & Dust)

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA080459

Regards,

John Kettler