"Towed Gun Sizes for Manhandling & Limbering" Topic

How far are they to be manhandled? I saw a 105mm Marine gun battery manhandle & turn their guns several hundred feet in 1972. The helicoptors had dropped them in the wrong end of the landing zone, I guess. Or it might have been part of an exercise to move the guns out of the LZ into a better position. Anyway, they had about 8 men to a gun, it was a 6 gun battery. And it was on a hillside in Corsica… or was it Sardinia? …NATO wargames. In the 1970s, the 105mm howitzer was the smallest artillery piece the Marines had compared to the 155mm, 6" & 8" guns.

I think guns such as the Pak38, Pak40 and the Zis2 should be able to be manhandled readily. They may need more men than just the guncrew to do the job. So maybe enlist the nearest friendly rifle squad to help.
Some guns of the same caliber were noted for being 'extra' heavy. In particular the Soviet 76mm Crashboom A/T gun, I think its model number is F22. They may need not only more manpower to move, but rather more time than other types as well.
We're both old soldiers. How important is the movement of the gun to the mission? How motivated are the troops in question?
As for limbering guns in a game. I use a rule of thumb that it takes a full movement phase to limber up a gun up to 76mm. That's assuming the towing vehicle is right at the rear of the gun.
Of course, sometimes it may be desirable to manhandle a gun to the towing vehicle. Might I suggest that light guns as you defined them should move at half normal inf. movement. Heavier guns no more than an inch a movement phase.
Hope this helps.
Robby

What is often forgotten is you have to manhandle all of the ammunition as well. This would certainly limit the distance moved if you were expecting to fire again any time soon.
It's one thing having a five man crew move a 75mm infantry gun a hundred yards but they have to move enough ammunition for it to be worth it. They could do it in relays I suppose but I think it would take some time and that might be outside the scope of a company level or lower game.

Agent Brown makes a very good point.

I find this really interesting, especially when looking at the PAW 600 and PAW 1000 low-pressure guns. The PAW 600 is 600kg, and more-or-less uses 81mm mortar shells. And, it will punch 140mm of armor at any range up to 750m with the HEAT round.

600kg is a really light gun, it seems, and that makes the PAW 1000 really terrifying. It's about the weight of a 6pdr, and will punch any armor under 200mm?!? YIKES!!!!

I think I'll need to have a definitive characteristic for light towed guns in my stats. Perhaps <600 kg and calibre less than 50mm. The long 45mm above is close to the limit and under the calibre, but to my mind, that weapon's really long barrel would be a hindrance to pushing it around.

I would say that long barrel is actually an advantage when it comes to manhandling a gun, since the long barrel provides for extra leverage and provides for more space for the crew to spread around the gun. It might make it trickier to turn the gun in really tight confines, though.

While in the military, I got to participate in manhandling light AA-guns (ZU-23-2). These weighted around thousand kilograms, and with a full complement of six crew they could be pushed around for moderate distances at a walking speed. Even with four crew, they could be man-handled around, but with fewer crew than that it could get tricky.

Notice that this was an AA-gun, and had a different carriage compared to AT-gun. The long trails typically seen on AT-gun probably helped a bit on the man-handling.

I would say that with most guns it should be possible to man-handle them around, presuming that the ground is firm enough. It is just a matter of having enough crew around – let's say one crew per 200 kg of weight, plus gun commander to coordinate the work.

That said, Agent Brown made a good point about the need to handle also the ammo around. The gun has wheels under it, making it easy to move – ammo crates don't, unless you manage to get an ammo cart that can be manhandled around (US paras actually had one, though that would not hold many ammo crates).

much of the ability to manhandle equipment depends on the terrain. Yes weight, ammo type of gun and size of crew matter but the big deal is how rough the terrain is. In the 82d ABN Div they regularly move 105mm howitzers several hundred meters off the DZ.

In my civilian job single employees often move dollies 2,000 lbs, tru it is on flat concrete but they do it alone and the wheels are small. Wheels are a great tool for moving things.

Wheels and tyres on varying terrain will grant more or less movement too, modern balloon tyres are great in comparison to trying to push a wooden spoked wheel or narrow solid tyre like on a PAK any distance over soft ground….older weapons are more likely to be heavier and have narrower wheels -if they have pneumatic tyres at all….

The Tank Museum in Virginia has a PaK 40. While visiting I asked the owner how difficult it was to move that thing around the facility. He said they could do it pretty easily with a bunch of guys over the hard concrete surfaces. Over even an open, but bumpy, field was a real you-know-what and, in his opinion, not a practical way to move such a piece. In his opinion, in the absence of motor or horse transport, the PaK 40 should be considered a "stationary" weapon. He confirms Gaz's comment about tires: you can reposition slightly it slightly using its basic crew but you're not moving it any significant distance.

To complicate matters, the British 2-pdr ATG and the German 88mm FLAK were both taken off their wheels when put into firing position (though both could be fired with the wheels on).

As for picking things up: I remember when I was in college several of us guys once picked up a VW Bug and set it on the concrete porch of the girls' dorm. (We put it back a few mintutes later.) Don't know how much it weighed -- maybe 1500 pds? -- but it wasn't hard to do at all, for 6 or 8 healthy young men. The porch was only 2 or 3 feet higher than ground level. But I think we could easily have carried it several yards over a level surface (if no one was shooting at us).

I'd put in a plea for a category of about 6-pdr 7cwt size, obviously a bit harder to manhandle than a PaK 36 or Bofors 37, but still capable of being moved in tactically useful ways by blokes on their flat feet. The point about needing to move the shells too is a good one.

I know that "anecdote" is not the singuar of "data", but I do recall on a Normandy ditch-hike beng told of an action in which a couple of 6-pdrs were manhandled forward through thick woods to beat up some German positions on the other side of the Soulevre (I think it was).

Guns of PaK-40 size, or even worse 17-pdr, can I think be safely regarded as immobile for manhandling purposes, even though I seem to recall one AT Battery Comd telling one of his troop commanders to "stop doing a Prince Rupert" -- with towed 17-pdrs.

All the best,

John.

Yes, there are quite a few instances where 6pdrs were dragged for miles, through bloody horrendous terrain. The Soulevre episode was performed by the Irish Guards, while 15th (Scottish) Division had already done something similar on the Odon during Op Epsom. Most notably, 2nd Division's AT Regt dragged a pair of them over jungle-covered mountains to provide close, bunker-busting support to 1st Royal Norfolks at Kohima.

As you say, 17pdrs were apparently utter bastards to move and were essentially immobile once the tractors had moved to safety. This was noted by 15th (Scottish) Division's AT Regt during two incursions by Panthers – by 2. PD's Panthers at Cheux in late June 1944 and by 9. SS-PD's Panthers in the same area a few days later. On both occasions they lost guns because they simply could not moved them quickly enough to meet or evade new threats. The 6pdrs supporting 49 (West Riding) Division in the same area meanwhile, had a field-day, as they were able to re-deploy between alternate positions, without the aid of tractors.

I have manhandled a number of 105mm and 155mm howitzers over the years. 105mm can be moved for a ways if the griound is firm and flat. 155mm you are looking at yards only.

In addition to all that heavy assed ammo, you have all the soldiers normal gear to move as well. So you are looking at what an infantryman has to pack about, plus all the gear needed to operate the gun.

Not to mention the potential to make part of your crew casualties. Gun suddenly gets loose from what it was hung up on and squish a foot. As in broken. Trip while carring a 155mm projectile is likely a broken shoulder. I saw one guy get dragged down a slope when the gun twisted and he could not turn loose fast enough.

But crap they built the pyramids right? So yes you can move some pretty amazing things when you really need to. But I dont see it happening on much of a regular basis. Not much point to get into position and your gunners are to exhausted to shoot straight.

Owen

Griefbringer, interesting point about the long gun 45mm. My reasoning was the lifting the trails to push or pull the weapon would be a delicate balancing act to avoid having the barrel drag or stick in the ground, even at high elevation.

Moving a gun gets easier when you spread the crew around the gun, rather than having everyone grabbing the trails. Having one or two guys holding to the gun from the barrel should solve the balancing issues (that said, if the gun has been firing a lot recently the barrel might be somewhat hot to hold). Other crew members might also be grabbing the gun shield or even trying to push the wheels themselves.

In any case, the guns themselves are supposed to be balanced so that they can be motor-towed without a risk of the barrel hitting ground. I don't think that man-handling the gun would incur bigger problems in that respect.

That said, I just remembered that the local military museum actually has a couple of guns on their parking lot, I think including at least one anti-tank gun. Perhaps I should take a closer look at those next time I pass around.

"But that's hard to represent in Crossfire's impulse system where you keep moving for as long as you can until the enemy stops you with reactive fire (or you fire and fail to kill or suppress the target)."

Why not limit the move actions to a set number per initiative?

I wouldn't go nuts with manhandling great heavy bits of equipment around under fire, but where it was actually done (and it clearly was with with light AT, infantry guns etc) then it seems reasonable to represent it.

Griefbringer, the ones I have worked with all are balanced to be towed, but….

The tube has to be at towing angle, cant be just any old where. And, the trails cant be any higher than the tow pintle is. Lower than that and it is trail heavy. higher and it is muzzle heavy. On smaller guns this probably doesnt matter alll that much, but the bigger they get the more it is important.

I bet those guys that RMD mentioned talked about moving those six pounders for the rest of thier lives.

Owen