What air/artillery assets can be called in?

[phil stanbridge]

I'd like to know what artillery/air assets can be called upon in the game. Is it possible to have a list?

[MikeyD]

I checked the website TO&E section and was surprised to see air/artillery assets weren't listed! Well, without divulging any secrets suffice to say all the 'usual suspects' are in there, with the one stipulation that new equipment is date-sensitive, like in CMx1. No getting VT fuses in this timeframe for example. And try as I might I couldn't convince 'em to bring in B24 Liberators for the opening of of Operation Cobra. Instead you can just scatter huge craters around the map and start the game with heavy casualties on both sides!

[finalcut]

Ahh,can't wait to call in some P47 love on thoses Whermact bastards.lol.

[Michael Emrys]

And try as I might I couldn't convince 'em to bring in B24 Liberators for the opening of of Operation Cobra. Instead you can just scatter huge craters around the map and start the game with heavy casualties on both sides!

The US did not suffer heavy casualties. But that there were any at all was a shock and a disappointment to a lot of soldiers.

Soldiers tend to take a very, very dim view of friendly fire accidents, although my own thought is that it doesn't really matter where the bullet came from once it has hit you. They all hurt.

Michael

[Battlefront.com]

Good point. I'll see what I can do about getting a list together. But as a preview, for the entire game there are 53 different types of Artillery that can be called in (a couple are simply variations of Battery/Platoon size, IIRC). There are 18 different Air Support options for the game as a whole. And yes, it's not just the Luftwaffe that is in the game, we even have German Air Support as well (tongue in cheek joke for you Grog types).

Steve

[MikeyD]

The US did not suffer heavy casualties.

General McNair might beg to differ.

[Michael Emrys]

General McNair might beg to differ.

Yeah, but he had a personal ax to grind.

Michael

[Ankh Morpork]

Will we be able to see the actual airplanes dive and fight in the air this time? And get more statistics once the game is over? (would love to see stats on how well the planes did).

/Ankh

[Battlefront.com]

No, as with CMx1 and CM:SF there is no 3D representation of aircraft. Too much work for too little benefit to the game.

We're actually talking about the Kill Stats issue with off-map support stuff right now. Currently it's not giving the sort of information you request, which is definitely desirable to have.

Steve

[phil stanbridge]

Yeah, that sort of info would be good to have at hand. It was fun in the old days to find out that 4 shells of your heaviest naval artillery had killed 2140 men and knocked out 3 tanks and 2 trucks All within the space of 10 minutes or so (the time it took to call it in IIRC).

[Lethaface]

2 battalions with 4 shells?

[Gryphonne]

I did these experiments in the early days too make a tiny island (so they can't run or rout away), cram as much stuff on it as you possibly can and fire away It's a very sadistic process

[phil stanbridge]

2 battalions with 4 shells?

It was a totally unbalanced QB - just the way I like them. If I recall I gave myself 10,000 points and managed to select a vast array of artillery. I built up a very basic map, and stuck as many enemy troops as i could in the centre - then I targetted it with everything I had. I was curious to see what effect the heavier artillery would have on closely grouped units It was pretty impressive to say the least :-)

[Lethaface]

I can imagine that

Can imagine that combined effects and shockwave of 4 uber large shells on a 100m by 100m square can be quite deadly. Especially if it's a 'Schwerer Gustav 800mm'

[phil stanbridge]

Absolutely! I can't remember exactly what the shells were now, but I do remember watching the replay over and over, and seeing whole companies of men wiped out in an instant. And buildings were totally flattened too as you'd expect. It did make me think about the real life situation for a while after. The devastation these big guns must have inflicted. (or could have if they were used properly).

[Michael Emrys]

It was pretty impressive to say the least :-)

Yeah. Early on in CMBO I set up a QB that had a village defended by a couple platoons of German inf and attacked by a company of US paratroops supported by heavy naval arty. Really rocked, especially when I moved the camera into the center of the bombardment area.

Michael

[Jaws]

The US did not suffer heavy casualties. But that there were any at all was a shock and a disappointment to a lot of soldiers.

Soldiers tend to take a very, very dim view of friendly fire accidents, although my own thought is that it doesn't really matter where the bullet came from once it has hit you. They all hurt.

Michael

For a Blue on Blue situation its a lot of casualties imho;).

Once again the attack on the ground was preceded by an aerial attack. The US 8th Air Force had been tasked with carpet-bombing German positions to neutralise them before the US ground forces got to them. As with July 24th, some bombs were dropped on US positions with the result that 111 soldiers were killed and 490 wounded.

[Michael Emrys]

Jaws, to our eyes that may look like a lot, but remember that something like 2,000 US soldiers died on D-Day alone. And a lot of those were paratroopers who landed in water and drowned. The scale of casualties in WW II was something that we now find hard to countenance, but in turn was small on most days compared to WW I.

Michael

[Blackcat]

Jaws, to our eyes that may look like a lot, but remember that something like 2,000 US soldiers died on D-Day alone. And a lot of those were paratroopers who landed in water and drowned. The scale of casualties in WW II was something that we now find hard to countenance, but in turn was small on most days compared to WW I.

Michael

I think your figure for US KIA on D Day is a bit low (if I remember correctly some work was done on this relativly recently which suggested a figure of around 2.5k to which should be added about 2,000 posted as MIA).

Comparisons with the casualty numbers with those per day in WWI are not meaningful, however, given the realtive number of troops involved. Taken in percentage terms, D-Day was less expensive than 1st July 1916 but in the late autumn of 1944 the US army fought some offensive battles in which the casualty rates, for the units involved, were just as high as most offensives on the Western Front in 1915 - 1918.

The other thing to remember in comparing casualties between the two big European wars was the ratio of "teeth" to "tail" elements. The teeth army of the US army post D-Day was at peak about 300,000 out of a total of 2million plus men. In WWI the situation in the British army was almost exactly reversed (the same applies to casualty percenages in Afghanistan in the present day, somthing the UK government and press seems to forget - the numbers actually doing the fighting are an even smaller percentage than ever before).

[Michael Emrys]

I think your figure for US KIA on D Day is a bit low (if I remember correctly some work was done on this relativly recently which suggested a figure of around 2.5k to which should be added about 2,000 posted as MIA).

Okay. The point still being that high casualty figures were considerably more tolerated than today. Didn't the Germans lose something like 30,000 men dead in the six weeks that the campaign in the West took in 1940? They considered that cheap.

Michael

[Jaws]

Jaws, to our eyes that may look like a lot, but remember that something like 2,000 US soldiers died on D-Day alone. And a lot of those were paratroopers who landed in water and drowned. The scale of casualties in WW II was something that we now find hard to countenance, but in turn was small on most days compared to WW I.

Michael

You cant compare a WWI situation with a WW2 situation like you cant compare a ww2 situation with Afghanistan. If that many Blue on Blue causalities would fall in Afghanistan I think even Obama could leave. My point is while there were a lot of warnings and requests by ground forces the Air Force didn’t listen because they were afraid to lose their planes and by ignoring the warnings they inflicted 700+ casualties by US Ground Forced. Even if it was just one US soldier who died by Blue on Blue it was one to much.

Anyways it feels so good we can discus about WW2 again

[Michael Emrys]

My point is while there were a lot of warnings and requests by ground forces the Air Force didn’t listen because they were afraid to lose their planes and by ignoring the warnings they inflicted 700+ casualties by US Ground Forced.

Specifically, for those who are interested, Bradley et al requested that the bombers fly parallel to the highway and south of it. That way, any longs or shorts would still fall on German positions. The Air Force rejected that as it would mean flying over German positions for a longer time thus exposing them to more AAA. In hindsight, this was an instance when SHAEF should have intervened to order the Air Force to accept the ground pounders' plan, but of course they didn't have the benefit of hindsight that we do, and SHAEF may have felt that they were already interfering with the bomber guys as much as they were entitled to.

Michael

[Field Marshal Blücher]

If that many Blue on Even if it was just one US soldier who died by Blue on Blue it was one to much.

I think you're right, but another issue to consider is that IIRC the missed bombing affected some American units disproportionally. Some companies were rendered almost completely combat-ineffective while others were unscathed, making the effects of the bombing actually pretty catastrophic for some, and negligible for others.

Again, IIRC. Last book I read about Cobra was a while ago.

[scottie]

Spotted the TO&E was updated with the following Phil (you have probably spotted it by now too) but just for reference:

----------------------------

Air Support (Various loadouts)

----------------------------

--------------

German

--------------

FW-190A8

FW-190F8

--------------

American

--------------

P-47D

P-51B

P-51D

----------------------------

Artillery Support

----------------------------

--------------

German

--------------

81mm sGrw 34 Mortar

120mm sGrw 42 Mortar

75mm leIG 18 Infantry Gun

150mm sIG 33 Infantry Gun

75mm FK 38 Field Gun

170mm K 18 Cannon

105mm leFH 18 Howitzer

150mm sFH 18 Howitzer

210mm Mrs 18 Howitzer

88mm Flak 36 Flack (as indirect artillery support)

150mm Nebelwerfer 41 Rocket

280mm Nebelwerfer 41 Rocket

210mm Nebelwerfer 42 Rocket

300mm Nebelwerfer 42 Rocket

--------------

American

--------------

60mm M2 Mortar

81mm M1 Mortar

4.2in M2 Mortar

155mm M1A1 Field Gun

4.5in M1 Field Gun

75mm M1A1 Pack Howitzer

105mm M2A1 Howitzer

105mm M3 Howitzer

155mm M1 Howitzer

8in M1 Howitzer

240mm M1 Howitzer

4.5in T-27E2 Rocket

4.5in T-34 Rocket

US Navy Destroyer (various calibers)

US Navy Light Cruiser (various calibers)

US Navy Heavy Cruiser (various calibers)

12in US Navy Battleship

14in US Navy Battleship

Cant wait to see the 355mm shells falling

[phil stanbridge]

Already spotted but very much appreciated all the same. There's a helluva lot of ordnance there. More than I expected actually. You won't see the 355mm shells falling, but you'll certainly HEAR them God, and remember all that friendly fire from those fighter bombers! AAArrggghh.