Warning !!! Smoke rounds

[womble]

That's some awesome info, Chad. Thanks for testing that.

It looks to me like there is a bug with WP as well as normal smoke. No way should WP be injuring guys 125m away. It almost looks like smoke is getting HE blast values.

I would have thought the chances of even a 105mm HE round injuring someone over 100m away from the burst point (ground or airburst, really) would be so slender as to be inconsiderable. AIUI, the trailing distance of 100m for 'leaning on the barrage' was in case of the odd slightly short round.

[Tactical Wargamer]

HE will still be more effective I believe

Strange I thought WP was deadly and worse than HE.....never mind didn't read harrisons post

[gunnergoz]

That's some awesome info, Chad. Thanks for testing that.

It looks to me like there is a bug with WP as well as normal smoke. No way should WP be injuring guys 125m away. It almost looks like smoke is getting HE blast values.

WP rounds spread their contents very vigorously. I can envision a potential casualty occurring 125 yards away, particularly if wind drifts some of the particles about.

This is a WW2 image of an artillery WP round going off. The Sherman's 75 would not have quite that much filler, but the explosion dynamics would be much the same:

Here's another image, more recent, but still same bursting characteristics:

[Boche]

wow it would be great to have those explosions in game!

[GreenAsJade]

Thanks Chad! That sort of testing takes time, much appreciated.

One thing that would be helpful to clarify: I think that you were describing the _round_ and not the smoke itself? So it seems that your experiment confirms that normal smoke rounds are as deadly as HE.

What about the smoke itself? Is it definitely deadly to run through WP smoke after it is floating around in the game? What about normal smoke?

On a separate related topic, it seems to me that in general HE is too effective at distance from the blast. It's almost as if all those little pieces that explode from the blast are being modelled as if they travel without slowing down to their final destination, making it as deadly to be 100m from a blast as next to it. I have to say I totally doubt whether blast shrapnel is being modelled piece by piece, so it's actually an abstraction that's out of wack, right?

GaJ

[Chad Harrison]

GaJ

Yes, I was refering to the actual round itself, not the smoke. I have not tested it, but I have never seen a casualty to smoke *after* the round has impacted - ie. there is no danger of wounds from moving through smoke, having smoke drift over you, ect. - its the explosion/impact of the round, and your troops proximity to it, thats the killer.

From my quick tests, normal SMOKE rounds was easily as much of a killer as WP - especially the 105mm artillery rounds. One round of normal SMOKE impacting and causing 11 casualties, even up to over 100 meters away, is very deadly in my book.

Hope this all helps. Moral of the story: use SMOKE or WP on your foes to eliminate them, not just obscure their view.

Thanks

Chad

[gunnergoz]

I understand that this is data for HE, not smoke, but I thought some of you might like to see what size shrapnel a 75mm round makes and how far out it can inflict casualties. It is from the Office of the Chief of Ordnance, Volume III of Terminal Ballistic Data, 1945.

[GreenAsJade]

Am I right in saying that the table on the left says that by about 80 feet out, which is less then 30m, there are stuff-all fragments-per-square-foot, and so the chance of being killed by one is slim-at-best (if you do get hit it will be heavy and fast enough to hurt a lot, there just aren't many).

At 100m, 300ft, there are 0.0002 fragments per square foot. Like "no way you're gunna get hit"...

GaJ

[gunnergoz]

Am I right in saying that the table on the left says that by about 80 feet out, which is less then 30m, there are stuff-all fragments-per-square-foot, and so the chance of being killed by one is slim-at-best (if you do get hit it will be heavy and fast enough to hurt a lot, there just aren't many).

At 100m, 300ft, there are 0.0002 fragments per square foot. Like "no way you're gunna get hit"...

GaJ

Depends. You feelin' lucky, punk?

It seems so, to be serious. Close in - sure death or at least grievous wounding. Farther away, less so. Real far away...only a bad day will KIA or WIA you. But in wartime, lots of bad days happen to people, statistically.

[Magpie_Oz]

Am I right in saying that the table on the left says that by about 80 feet out, which is less then 30m, there are stuff-all fragments-per-square-foot, and so the chance of being killed by one is slim-at-best (if you do get hit it will be heavy and fast enough to hurt a lot, there just aren't many).

At 100m, 300ft, there are 0.0002 fragments per square foot. Like "no way you're gunna get hit"...

GaJ

So what did you test of the game show? that there were lots of cas @ 100m? 100m does seem quite a long way from an explosion as small as a 75mm ground burst to be a real danger.

[gunnergoz]

So what did you test of the game show? that there were lots of cas @ 100m? 100m does seem quite a long way from an explosion as small as a 75mm ground burst to be a real danger.

Magpie, he wasn't testing the game, he was simply responding the chart I put up regarding HE fragmentation for general information.

My impression of this chart is that the 75mm HE round is mostly going to have a decent chance to be lethal within say, 10M where the is almost almost a one in 10 chance of a given square foot catching a potentially lethal fragment, and after that lethality drops off considerably. Lots of fragments beyond 10M and all the way out past 100M but the area they cover goes up so much that the odds of being hit drop exponentially.

There can always be someone's unlucky day, though, that's what I was commenting about.

[Magpie_Oz]

Magpie, he wasn't testing the game, he was simply responding the chart I put up regarding HE fragmentation for general information.

My impression of this chart is that the 75mm HE round is mostly going to have a decent chance to be lethal within say, 10M where the is almost almost a one in 10 chance of a given square foot catching a potentially lethal fragment, and after that lethality drops off considerably. Lots of fragments beyond 10M and all the way out past 100M but the area they cover goes up so much that the odds of being hit drop exponentially.

There can always be someone's unlucky day, though, that's what I was commenting about.

Yes I got all that, thought he had tested in game as well but it was Chad

[gunnergoz]

Yes, didn't intend to derail the thread with the HE data - I'm still trying to find equivalent terminal ballistics dispersal data for WP but so far no joy.

[Speedy]

A standard (non-wp) 105mm smoke round injuring an infantryman 130 metres away does not sound right to me.

[gunnergoz]

A standard (non-wp) 105mm smoke round injuring an infantryman 130 metres away does not sound right to me.

I have to agree with that. WP is quirky and dangerous but regular smoke? I'm looking at my references to see what they say and I'll post any findings here.

[GreenAsJade]

Even regular HE: at 100+ meters?

[Speedy]

Well I just did a quick test, fired 8 105mm howitzer standard smoke rounds.

Seriously injured - 7 infantry within 5 metres of impact, 2 infantry within 15 metres, and 1 at roughly 50 metres.

Numerous light injuries that I didn't keep track of.

Those results seem more acceptable to me but of course it is a very small sample.

Map was a grass billiard table 1km x 1km with a grenadier battalion minus their vehicles and hmgs and schrecks.

After the arty I rolled a sherman out from behind the spotters 8 story building and fired it's complement of WP with result that all rounds either dropped short or overshot the target by 100 metres+ for a grand total of no casualties.

[gunnergoz]

Even regular HE: at 100+ meters?

That would depend upon the size of the projectile wouldn't you think?

Well, you can look at the 105mm data yourself and decide:

Lots more fragments of shrapnel, but its still a big world to fill up if you keep expanding the range circles outwards. At 20M you have about a 1 in 5 chance that a particular square foot is going to catch a fragment, so it is definitely more lethal at at a longer distance from the point of impact than is the 75mm, which is logical.

My understanding of how they did these tests was to detonate a shell remotely above the ground or at ground level, depending upon the predicted fuzing, and then came by later and recorded the fragment numbers, locations, weights and spray patterns.

Here's one example of the shrapnel patterns from the same source:

[Chad Harrison]

If I had more time this week I would be very curious to run a test of firing 75mm HE, SMOKE and WP into troops and running this same test under good contorl about 10 times and comparing the casualties. From playing the game and the quick tests that I did, I would say off the top of my head that you would find that all three were inflicting about the same - with maybe HE a little in the lead.

But I just want to add that this is all a drop in the bucket and should in no way be taken as a complaint against CMBN or BFC. I am absolutely, completely enjoying the world out of CMBN. Stuff here and there needs to be tweaked, but for me, none of it detracks from the experience. Slope of the German helment means nothing to me

Chad

[Chad Harrison]

Regarding those tables, which are extremely interesting by the way, at 300 feet a 105mm shell is going to put one effective fragment into 2500 sq. ft. of space - so if you put a football field in the air 300 feet from a 105mm shell going off you would get 23 effective fragments in it.

So yeah, you get hit by a fragment 100 feet from a 105mm shell and you have bad luck

[TrailApe]

However, put into the context of 5 rounds FFE from a 6 gun battery - thats 30 shells exploding all around (if the method of fire is 'dispersed'), so if this is all happening in the same football field you and you buddies are sitting in, well - if you are not dead or seriously injured, I think you might feel you were on helluva lucky punk.