88's as off map arty

[rune]

Comment from user:

Depending on the range, and other factors such as the clearance of fires over trees, from defilade, weather conditions, etc., the 88mm could and did fire indirect fire missions using a low enough elevation which eliminated the need for high elevation/high trajectory fires. The US often used its 90mm AAA guns as indirect artillery weapons, and they worked just fine regardless of the elevation used. The use of the 88mm for indirect fire was a common practice. I can tell you that veterans, men who had been shot at and missed a few times, could tell exactly what type of round was coming in. Remember, indirect fire projectiles are always subsonic, and you can hear them coming. A 20 something pound shell sounds quite different than a 90 pound shell as it comes in, short or over. This is what makes identification possible. Artillery fire sounds very different than mortars, so there was no way they could be confused.

I hope this helps.

Don't be misled. Real combat veterans usually knew what they were up against at the time. The so-called after-action reports tend to bear this out.

Comment from artilleryman:

The variable here are the height of the masking feature you fire over, the range, and the projectile velocity of the cannon. I dont have a firing table or the trajectory chart for the 88 models at hand, tho I've studied them. beyond 3,000 to 4,000 meters it was not necessary to use 'high angle' fire (a elevation or tube above 45 degrees) to fire the 88 FLAK cannon over most masking terrain features. Not as flexible as a howitzer, but unless the masking feature is very close to the target or the howizer, or is very tall like a mountain theres no need to point the FLAK gun at the sky and lob the projectiles to 30,000 feet.

From an artillery officer's comments on armchair general.

Rune

[JonS]

Remember, indirect fire projectiles are always subsonic, and you can hear them coming.

Bullsh!t.

From an artillery officer's comments on Battlefront.com.

[rune]

Jon, out of context, I didn't add everything that was posted, the first part was from someone else, the second was the officer's reply. Sorry was cutting and pasting and didnt make it clear. He makes it quite clear rounds could be faster, I suggest anyone interested go to the thread and read it. The point was, indirect fire could occur without firing up to 30,000 feet.

Rune

[Michael Emrys]

It would be interesting to know at what point in its trajectory an 88's projectile becomes subsonic if fired at a angle of 30° above the horizontal, for instance. And what its maximum height above a flat and level surface would be.

Michael

[rune]

This may help, i searched til I found it as an apology to Jon. Jon can make more sense of it then I, as I am familiar with missles and radar.

So, Michael, Jon, here is the complete document from the Allies of the 88mm, which does state it can be fired in the indirect mode.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/TM/PDFs/TME9-369A_Germ88.pdf

Rune

[von Murrin]

I don't remember the source and am not an arty guy, so take it as you wish, but I remember reading the following:

A fair number of 1st ID AAR's off Omaha credited "indirect 88mm fire" with being a considerable PITA and generally causing some minor mayhem. They were told that the Germans had no 88's behind the beach and they were mistaken. It wasn't until sometime much later that it was discovered there was indeed an entire flak unit behind the beach, and it had been savaged by the prelim bombings that missed the beach.

[JonS]

Oh, I know it could be - and was - fired indirectly. High MV and fixed charge imposes some tactical limitations, as noted by MOz., although as you - Rune - note the impact of that really depends on the nature of the ground. Not all indirect rounds are sub-sonic - only the sub-sonic ones are. The 8.8cm Flak had an MV of ~3 times the speed of sound, so it'd take a long range before it dropped sub-sonic while in flight. I highly doubt that "veterans, men who had been shot at and missed a few times, could tell exactly what type of round was coming in." Some of them, some of the time; no doubt. All of them, all of the time; not a hope in heck.

Jon

[JasonC]

rune - the US certainly used their own 90mm AA for long range interdiction fires and other general indirect fire roles. (High ROF was good for interdiction of a road or bridge e.g.; 100 rounds an hour from a single battery was a common shoot). I've seen explicit examples in the unit histories of the 109th AAA battalion for example. Jackson TDs were also used that way, notably in support of the Roer river crossing operation (654th TD battalion unit history). Marines also used their 90mm AA for indirect fire support on Okinawa.

[Magpie_Oz]

Magpie, actually not...more on that in a bit.

Actually yes.

All of that stuff you quote does not indicate in any way that the gun can fire indirect in the true sense, i.e. as a true artillery piece.

All of the gun laying mentioned in the quote is simply the various ways it can get the data it needs to fire. Most of which is related to when a battery of guns is engaging a single target. Nearly all of the devices mentioned talk about the different visual ranging devices, i.e. they can see the target.

I think the key is to look at what the term "Indirect Fire" actually means. If you definition of it is "firing at a target it cannot see" then sure the 88 can do that, but so to can a rifleman firing into a hedge.

In the context of the OP question, that of OBA by 88's, the definition of indirect fire is more that the guns are able to engage a target that is defilade to them and they are in turn defilade to it. Put simply if you are behind a hill and can engage a target on the other side of the hill you are capable of indirect fire in all circumstances, ergo you can be used as OBA.

Flat shooters like the 88 have an enormous zone of dead ground behind any obstacle in their view so there would only be a few specific times they could fire over an intervening obstacle to drop fire on a target, a hill in between for example, provided the target and the gun are many hundreds of metres from it.

The situations in which an 88 ,or any other HV cannon for that matter, can provide fire support onto a target that is out of sight are so specific that modelling them in game terms would be difficult to say the least.

[MikeyD]

About whether 88s were capable of indirect fire, there's the famous picture of G.Is manning a captured 88 Pak43 firing ballistic trajectory missions back in the direction of the original owner. If memory serves the target was pretty much city-size so there probably wasn't much finesse involved in targetting. German engineers would probably be aghast at the idea of their Pak43 being used as field artillery.

[scottie]

I experimented with it quite effectively in a QB ...

Sorry , i thought you were talking about indirect fire from 88 flaks ?

Tried a test map last night , 4000m long with some 88s behind a hill. Could not get indirect fire to work via spotter or the unit itself. Are you saying this is possible ?

150mm inf guns work fine using spotter and a radio link.

[Sergei]

Tried a test map last night , 4000m long with some 88s behind a hill. Could not get indirect fire to work via spotter or the unit itself. Are you saying this is possible ?

You can't use on-map 88's for indirect fire, they would have too great a minimum range to be useful that way (plus various other reasons), but there is an off-map 88mm artillery module in the game.

[JonS]

The situations in which an 88, or any other HV cannon for that matter, can provide fire support onto a target that is out of sight are so specific that modelling them in game terms would be difficult to say the least.

The assumption, obviously, is that if they're present in a scen then the necessary pre-conditions have been met. For that scen.

[Baneman]

...

Flat shooters like the 88 have an enormous zone of dead ground behind any obstacle in their view so there would only be a few specific times they could fire over an intervening obstacle to drop fire on a target, a hill in between for example, provided the target and the gun are many hundreds of metres from it.

...

Surely as Flak guns capable of shooting practically vertically, they should have vitually no dead ground/minimum range ?

[JonS]

Surely as Flak guns capable of shooting practically vertically, they should have virtually no dead ground/minimum range ?

Theoretically true, by trying to actually get rounds that go up that high to land anywhere near where you'd like them to is a supremely non-trivial task. The effects of met - changes in air pressure/density with changes altitude and over time, changes in air temperature with changes in altitude and over time, changes in wind speed and direction with changes in altitude and over time ... ech.

[rune]

jasonc, yes, i also show the american 90mm used as counter-battery fire, which surprised me.

magpie, as both jon and the artillery officer said, 3000-4000 meters, they could easily shoot over a hill, depending on a lot of things I already stated. Saying the 88mm could not fire indirect is NOT correct. There are records of German units doing exactly that, Omaha Beach, Goodwood, Baattle of the Bulge. Bastables, Jon, and others have already pointed out the units.

So, for the original poster, yes, in certain circumstances the 88mm flak could and did fire indirectly. So did the American 90mm aa gun which is quite similar. The game allows these circumstances to happen, as last I looked, Omaha and Goodwood both took place in Normandy.

Rune

[TrailApe]

I can see where JonS is coming from, 88 carts are fixed – no increments, so every round goes of with the full Ooomph, therefore to drop a round over the next hill necessitates the round going one hell of a way UP and one hell of a way DOWN, thus exposing the shell to various layers of differing meteorology on its travels.

However, the easy way to get around this and take all of these variables into consideration – a sort of suck it and see approach – is to do a Registration Shoot.

Basically the observer gives the CP a really good grid on a very identifiable object, nearly always a building, than can also be easily placed on the map. The CP cranks the handle and comes out with firing data, they gun fires with the aforesaid data and is adjusted in on the target. This process is one of the few times the adjustment will go down to ADD/DROP LEFT/RIGHT 25 (usually its 50) before going into FFE. Once they are happy its on target, they can compare the original data with the end data and therefore work out the total of all of the variables that have effected the path of the shell from its initial start point. Depending on the changeability of the weather, this data can be used most of the day.

[Humble Badger]

Thanks for all of the fascinating input. I didn't realize it was such a controversial subject.

[JonS]

do a Registration Shoot. ... Depending on the changeability of the weather, this data can be used most of the day.

Sure. But the thing about weather - or met - is that even with the best met data in the world it's still constantly changing, and the more you expose your round to it, the more the impact point is going to vary from round to round. A registration point only really helps with the getting the first round of adjustment more accurate. After that your dealing with round-to-round variability - basically; random variation - and since an 88 at high elevation is going to have a LOT of 'hang time', it's going to have a lot of random variation introduced.

To be clear, I'm not saying it cannot be done. Of course it can. What I am saying is that high angle is always going to be imprecise (as distinct from inaccurate).

[Magpie_Oz]

The big , like HUGE problem with the 88 is what happens if you have to change range?

If you are sited to engage a particular target, which I think the examples of the 90mm and 88's firing "indirect" as talking about, that is ok but if the target moves or you need to engage another target in the same area but closer what can you do?

There are 4 things you can do to drop/increase the range:

- less/more charge to lower/raise MV and hence the point at which the round comes to ground, which the 88 cannot do

-lower the elevation, which will plough the round into the obstacle

-raise to the high elevation and put the round into the stratosphere which causes the met problems and also will most likely tumble the round

-Move the gun backwards or forwards which a ground mount cannot really do in game time frames.

[JonS]

The big , like HUGE problem with the 88 is what happens if you have to change range?

Eh?

You change the elevation. Or am I missing something?

[MikeyD]

jasonc, yes, i also show the american 90mm used as counter-battery fire, which surprised me.

A lot of American equipment got 'repurposed' because there was no call for them in their original role. Big 90mm AAA guns by the bushelbasket but no enemy aircraft. Towed 3 inch guns by the battalion and no enemy armor (I believe they only scored 6 armor kills in all of Normandy). For M10 to be 'repurposed' for indirect fire artilley the turret floor-mounted intercom box had to be cut away and repositioned so no to restrict gun elevation. I bet the gun crews felt like a high-priced limousine being used to haul potatos but you do as you're told.

[JasonC]

MikeyD - just so for towed TDs. For AA, they got a job close to their original purpose that only they could do, shooting at V-1s firing at southern England or (later) at Antwerp and Liege. The Luftwaffe wasn't much to shoot at, but there were German doodlies flying through the air...

Yes they were also used for ground combat roles as still underemployed. Early war planning, when both the Luftwaffe and German panzer forces had appeared so formidable, had produced scads of the things...

[normannobrot]

easy company of the 506th would know a thing or two about that....while waiting to assault the town of foy i think, believe it would be accurate to have that as a option.

would be devastating against your entrenched men tho.

[Magpie_Oz]

Eh?

You change the elevation. Or am I missing something?

Yes that is right, as I put in the list but the problem is that if you are having to clear an intervening obstacle, the flatter your trajectory becomes the less clearance you have, also the "dead zone" i.e. that area where you cannot land a round behind an obstacle is increased.

To get techo:

Using the JDM ballistics program

a projectile with a MV 0f 820m/s (88Flak)

If aiming to hit a target at 3000yds the apogee of the trajectory will be at 1800yards and will be 108m above the LOS

If aiming to hit a target at 2900yds the apogee of the trajectory will be at 1700yards and will be 97m above the LOS

So for a small change in in range the clearance has shifted by 100m and lowered by 11m

A 100m high hill is a small hill and the closest your target can be to the back of it is 1200 yds, all they have to do is run forward 100 yds and they are in the dead zone and safe.