"Towed Gun: Bugging Out of a Position" Topic

My rules require line of sight to get a hit, so people behind cover, even moving, would be protected. They might get partial cover if they were standing and the berm was short. Limbering takes one turn and then you drive away the next. No firing on the turn you are limbering.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

Limbering becomes problematic when the gun is partially buried due to the movement caused by firing. One turn to limber, drive away the next is better than limbering and moving (2 steps) in one move. Consider 3 turns/ steps: prep to limber (digging out), limber, move. Normal cover modifiers if the gun is protected/ shielded. If it takes 3 turns, and the crew is under fire, they may decide the best option is to leave the gun.

related question:

How many turns in a game? If it takes 2 turns to move the gun, and game is 6 turns, I am not going to move a gun.

But if the game is 10 turns, it might be worth it.

If you get more points for getting the gun off the table than leaving it behind – or are playing a campaign where you need the gun for the next game…

Depends on the gun: 37 and 45mms can be pulled out by hand relatively quickly, anything bigger needs a tow, and a move to limber up. 3" M5's, 17 pdrs and 88's ain't going anywhere in a hurry.

My impression is that gun crew tended to fight their guns or run away and leave them.
Mid to large sized guns anyhow.

The popularity of Portees is probably an indication of the difficulty.

Pretty much. Hooking up and moving a gun under fire needs heroic courage and considerable luck to achieve. Mostly they would fight the gun until killed or scared off. Either way the gun is lost.

One vet I used to write to (he has sadly since died)told me AT gun crews were called 'Onecers', as they got one chance to knock out the enemy before they 'got it'.
I wonder how many AT gun crews fired the odd shot and withdrew before return fire got too hot?
In Normandy, I have been told the Germans often put AT guns in the edge of woods allowing them to pull the gun back by its trails into denser cover(assumedly the limber and prime mover were further back?)
I guess its all down to training/courage/luck how they would act in self preservation!

My brother was in the Royal Artillery and maintains that the tradition is that as the RA does not have standards like other units the guns were their rallying point. Where possible the guns were withdrawn before being overrun.

I realise that this relates to "traditional" artillery and not the AT guns that will be right at the front.

I was just reading several books on the Ardennes Offensive. It seemed like the US towed tank destroyers (3" AT guns) mostly just got destroyed in place. OTOH, there were a number of times where US 105 howitzer batteries came under direct attack and the 105s not only managed to hold off the attackers with direct fire for a good long time, but also managed to limber up and get away, even under fire. So go figure.

The German woodland trick was also because they fired and hell in a hand basket from allied artillery and air cover would follow, so get out of los as fast as possible.

There is a classic action in Normandy where a British 6pdr caused carnage despite being unsupported and alone, as the attacking German Armour was coming out of a smokescreen less than 500 yards from them, seeing 3 (dead) shermans, firing at them and having the AT gun able to take time and return fire. None of the tanks lasted long enough to report its position back so the nextone came out of the smoke and…

At least looking at after action photos it seems to me that crews of mid-size or larger guns would bug out sans gun, especially when the guns were dug-in; after all, part of concealing the guns means having the prime movers being out of sight

It was certainly possible to move AT guns under fire irl. The Germans often moved their guns both forwards and backwards in battle, either by manhandling or by using tows covered by fire & movement to make sure the enemy were suppressed before making the next tactical bound. I also came across one instance of a 6pdr battery being manhandled forward by bounds, again gun sections taking it in turns to cover each other.

I suspect it is different if the gun is dig into a huge great hole in the ground rather than a mobile battle. Much WW1 artillery was abandoned when breakthroughs occured as the crews couldn't get their guns out of the pits ot even fire, let alone pull them back.

My experience of wargames is that generally once the guns are unlimbered, they stay there for the rest of the game. The exception being manhandling, which player are often quite happy to do if the rules allow. Just the same in Napoleonics really. irl Nap artillery moved around a fair bit, in wargames it just sits in its starting position blasting away. Not sure why.

In grand tactical games players seem more likely to move their AT guns around, often because the transport stands are integral to the stands and limber/unlimber is just a movement penalty and there is more manouvre anyway.

In operational games I've often seen towed AT battalions spearheading the advance in true 1941 'Schnell Abteiling' style, as they are often the most mobile element of otherwise horsedrawn and marching infanty divisions.

The Russians would probably abandon their guns first as many were horse drawn tows.

They did employ a defensive tactic of grouping guns together in clumps and normally dug in to boot. They were also highly rewarded( from a Russian point of view)with pay rewards and extra vodka rations .In this formation there wern't often abondoned ( safety in numbers ?) and forced the German armour into a funnel between the gun clumps so they could hit the side armour. I suppose its one of those tactics that may have worked in reality but not on the table top . For some strange reason you always hear the "I ain't falling for that one!" when its is tried .

I imagine AT guns are harder to move because they fire directly at targets and give away their positions. Heavier guns usually fire indirectly and probably get ready to bug out if they can actually see the enemy. Anti-tank 88's usually fired at ranges the targets could not reply at effectively.

Whatever terrain the gun is in will be the modifier, and if dug-in, they wont be as soon as they attempt to start moving it. As for how many turns it may take, how long are your game-turns?

It would seem possible that a small(ish) anti tank gun might set up on a street corner, fire and then be manhandeled or even linked to a tow vehical by a rope and then towed out of position round the corner. In the 6 day wat Isralies got out their tanks to attach tows to an immobilised vehical so this scenario has a modicum of plausibility depending on circumstances.

I don't remember where, but I've read a WWII USMC manual that recommended the emplacment of smoke pots, 200 – 75 yds in front of the guns to allow them to be dislaced under concealment.

I know the Germans designed a late-war AT/IG gun that used the high-low pressure system specifically because the PAK 40 couldn't be easily manhandled. They lost a lot of guns because they couldn't get a prime mover up to save the gun when the situation got sticky.

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The Flak 88mm was different in that they could be fired from the limbered position. It wasn't the preferred method, but if the battle was fluid, like in North Africa, the ability to bug-out in a hurry I'm sure was appreciated.

One vet I used to write to (he has sadly since died)told me AT gun crews were called 'Onecers', as they got one chance to knock out the enemy before they 'got it'.

Here's a bit from Slaughterhouse 5, describing the main character's experience in the war. Since the main character (Billy Pilgrim) is a stand-in for Vonnegut, one can assume this describes his experience in the war as a crewman of an AT gun:

As part of the gun crew, he had helped to fire one shot in anger — from a 57-millimeter antitank gun. The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty. The gun lapped up snow and vegetation with a blowtorch thirty feet long. The flame left a black arrow on the ground, showing the Germans exactly where the gun was hidden. The shot was a miss.