FO's or On Map Guns?

[JasonC]

To Ratzki - the 75mm infantry guns were usually used for direct fire. But they were also used more extensively in the first half of the war than later, when the Germans were attacking rather than defending. In the second half of the war, their life expectancy in the field was short and they didn't much matter.

The main German artillery weapons were the divisional artillery 105s and 150s and the 81mm mortars at battalion and company levels. Everything else was an afterthought by comparison, as the ammo usage figures make clear. As in, over 100 million 105 shells fired, 75 million 81mm shells fired, 30 million 150 shells fired. Nothing else get into 7 digits and only a few items hit the million mark.

The 81s were used at both company and battalion from mid war. Initially they were used mostly at battalion level but they were pretty quickly pushed down to company level in 2 tube sections, while a battery was retained at battalion level in addition.

The range of an 81mm is only about 2 kilometers. They were most often used indirect from defilade, but that is short enough they were always in the tactical zone. Incidentally the blast effect of 81s is considerably underrepresented in the game - while the blast effects of the largest HE (150mm plus) is overrepresented.

In real life, a modest number of 81mm rounds indirect would pin all infantry in a wide area. Pin more than actually directly kill or wound, to be sure, but 30 meters or so around each round, and an area of several hundred meters on a side, easily, with a modest barrage.

Also, the rate of fire of light mortars is so high, the number of tubes provided at a given tactical level is almost immaterial for the firepower achieved. 2 tubes can throw all the ammo you can get to them, in a matter of minutes. Having 4 or 6 tubes in a full battery may increase the impact of the first few rounds or, more often, just cover a wider area. But it doesn't increase the number of rounds that can be thrown, since that is always set by the number of rounds available, which is a supply issue not a tubes issue.

Ammo per mortar in tactical deployments tends to be limited because they are typically man-packed to the tubes, at least over the final mile or so.

Ammo to div arty can be trucked in, or for the horse supply part of the German and Russian armies, railed to dumps safely behind lines and horse wagon "lighter-ed" to the guns themselves. The second does limit the thruput to the guns compared to trucked ammo, of course. But both greatly exceed what can be man packed to mortars up in the tactical zone. The mortars then make up for limited ammo getting to each by lots of opportunities to use them.

In CM, the problem with the FO representations is the undermodeled shells. You wind up plastering a very small area for 2 minutes solid to inflict realistic levels of suppression, and then run dry quickly as a result. There is no question the on map mortars hit harder per shell in the game, because they will typically put 1 shell out of 3 very close to the point of aim, and that is what the low blast shells need to inflict pins. A single minute of on map fire by one mortar can thus pin a single point target. With a typical load, a medium mortar can hit 4 targets in succession this way; a pair of them can thus suppress a company-sized force in about five minutes.

It is much more MM work, though...

Personally I don't take the light mortars as FOs if ever given a chance. (The Brit 3 inch module in CMAK is the only exception - it is the only affordable allied FO in many cases). FOs under 105mm caliber just aren't worth it, they don't act as FO artillery needs to in a tactical sense. If a scenario designer bumped the ammo on a light mortar FO by a factor of 2 or more, it would be effective, but not "as is". (It'd be most realistic if that were combined with "area wide" targeting, required).

The medium mortars on map, on the other hand, I find very effective, and 2 of them per company - along with HMGs of course - form the basis of all my CM heavy weapons groups. Their highest value is pinning or killing guns, but even used a minute each on ordinary infantry targets they give sufficient bang for the CM point buck and are quite effective.

One man's opinion...