"Examples of real world tactics?" Topic

Just Jack and Last Hussar,

This has been interesting reading. I agree with you in that I have come to believe that machine guns are primarily a pinning weapon not a killing weapon to troops that are properly dispersed on the battle field. This is what makes WW II so different. How do you get troops to move? ( Such as in the example above?)
In my "Lazy TW&T" variant I gave them a 50% chance of pinning troops but reduced their killing power.

Joe

Last Hussar – I do believe I agree with everything you're saying, and it's always neat looking at real terrain. When you say laborer's cottages, are you talking about the two smaller buildings on the north side of Lannock Hill Road (directly north of the group of larger buildings)? That's where it puts my marker (for the postal code).

If you're talking about those huge fields north of Lannock Hill Road (up to the intersection of A505 and Hatch Lane), I'd say it's a prefect battleground in Napoleonic terms, but that's an indefensible position. Those fields to the north are about 1.5km deep in some places. Because it's all open, it's a great killing ground for artillery, but as its all open there are no likely avenues of approach, meaning no places to key limited your limited assets in on. Or it would be a great spot for an AT ambush, particularly if those roadways are elevated (forcing armor to skyline itself traversing/crossing it).

We'd put OPs out there, have them call indirect fire, then fall back to the main defensive line further south. The real line would be maybe around the Stonesly Wood area (assuming we have some reason to believe the enemy would be coming this way to begin with, as the highway is actually about three klicks the west). The idea would be to rain down indirect fire in the open fields, force some casualties on them, force them to deploy, they continue dismounted through the real tight terrain around the Manor, and just when they're feeling confident and mounting back up, you open up on them when they're about even with the Howe Wood.

The defense in depth concept would be to do that again, until they've become really channelized and overextended, then hit them with a full-on counter in the flank by your reserves. But I still think all this would be happening (on a north-south axis) over to the west on the A1(M).

I played my game today, put a batrep on the blog, and posted it a simplified version here.

V/R,
Jack

Joe – I've been toying around with that same idea for the past couple years. Like I said, the problem is, we want our platoon (and even squad)-level games where machine guns dominate, when it's not their place. At such short range it's nothing more than a big rifle that doesn't have to reload as often (especially now days where the rifle's are 5.56). But that's always what cracks me up when we differentiate between the MG-42 (bipod), Bren, DP, and M-1919 (bipod).

But the MG-42 can fire 1200 rounds per minute! No, it fires at that rate, but it can't fire 1200 rounds per minute even if you had a 1200 round belt. With both guns firing 8-10 round bursts, I'd imagine a Bren (with A-gunner) is not that far off an MG-42 changing barrels and throwing in new belts.

The rate of fire is actually works against you, making the cone of fire (and thus the kill zone) smaller. The point is to put 3 rounds each into ten guys, not 10 rounds each into 3 guys. So, I think at this range you're using bipod-MGs to put a bunch of rounds into one guy (or a few idiots that got bunched up), or you're firing a whole bunch of rounds in their general direction to keep their heads down.

V/R,
Jack

The difference with H&M is that units had well defined formations – we know 'x' men will take up 'y' paces. Formation changes are easy to accommodate, even though we have to gloss over some aspects because of gaming constraints- Maths tells you moving from a 2 deep line to a 4 deep square will halve your frontage, something that is not possible with 4 bases to the battalion.

But wouldn't the commanders maintain the spacing of the 2-deep line to the units on their flanks? That is, regardless of formation (square, columns, whatever), the commanders still 'occupied the same frontage'?

"The one thing that really puzzled me was when you mentioned beaten zone was only relevant when there was plunging fire."

I think you misunderstand: the idea is that both the cone and the beaten zone matter when you are firing at a shorter range, but only the beaten zone matters when you fire at longer range.

I see it like artillery.

At shorter ranges your barrel is not very elevated, so everything along your ballistic path is around man-height and so in danger of being hit. This is like your Napoleonic cannon (sort of). Of course they will still land in a beaten zone, but this is continuous with your "cone" and not represented separately, i.e. the last part of your cone of fire is actually the beaten zone.

At a longer range your barrel is elevated and the bullets arc, and for most of their flight they are above man-height, so they only become dangerous to troops when they descend to man-height. Again this means that the "beaten zone" actually represents the area when the bullets fall to below man-height and when they hit the ground, i.e. the first part of your beaten zone is actually the last part of your cone of fire. :) This is more like your Napoleonic mortar.

There is actually a wiki entry on this.

link

The MG34 and subsequently the 42 were developed with such a high cyclic RoF to make engaging fleeting targets on a busy battlefield easier. An MG firing 600rpm at range will have a bullet dispersion of X, and enough (if far enough away) to make missing a target more likely. The German MGs with 1.5 and 2 x that RoF would likely fill the gaps between bullets fired from other MGs. So a 4 ft wide area hit by 5 bullets from an MG with cyclic rate of 600rpm equates to roughly 1 bullet per foot width (I'm ignoring vertical dispersion to make the point easier to understand) would be hit by either 6 or 8 bullets from the MG34 or 42.

The issue there though is that the extremely high RoF results in barrel overheat, and so the Germans instilled a 5sec maximum burst time allowable for firing these weapons. This was trained into them as the longest burst that was permitted, at any time, under any circumstances. This makes the suppressive effects different from a slower firing cooled MG like an MG08, Vickers etc that could keep fire indefinitely as long as ammunition was available. The MG34/42 would be like a surgical weapon #needling' its way at targets, and with a much smaller area to fan their fire across. The slower firing MGs would have a larger fan area (therefore able to properly suppress larger and more formations of troops), but at specific targets they would have to fire twice as much on an MG34/42 to get the same volume of fire on them (the target).

This would make for a game trying to model both RoF (firing at specific targets) and suppressive ability (area effect). The ability of a German MG 34/42 could theoretically target (directly as you may with a rifle) many more targets. However its suppressive effects (area effect) should be much less than for slower firing MGs like the Vickers. The Germans did overcome this by their excellent overlapping fields and lines of fire (and hence why taking them on in the Bocage with narrow lanes of fire was so deadly)

With regards to the Beaten zone, Flames of War when I played it several years ago allowed the Brits to fire their MGs at extended range (over maximum range) any targets hit would get pinned more easily as it was simulating the bullets falling like raindrops on the target (the beaten zone) and making the targets dive for cover. A tactic I believe the British employed in the open spaces of the North African desert. This does mean, and to re-iterate the points above, that the gun would have to fire into the air enough to allow the bullets to land in this way, thus having no fire corridor between them and the target that an enemy (or friendly) units could be caught in.

Cheers

Ditto – Good on your boy, I spent three years at Lejeune myself, and floated with 26th MEU in the mid-90's. I was in AF in 01-02 as well, but not with 26th MEU.

I was never a vehicle crewman/trained in firing from a moving platform, but let me take a stab. This sounds to me like the difference between firing a gun from a tripod and firing from a bipod. The theory with a bipod is that you can't really do grazing fire as it's not a stable enough platform (the cone of fire will be too irregular to be a consistent killing zone), so you're taught to watch your tracers and walk the rounds onto your target, i.e., you put the beaten zone on your target.

On the tripod, sometimes you have to do that; usually once the target(s) is inside your PDF you are then manipulating the T/E to put the beaten zone onto a spot you think the bad guys will take cover behind. But, in accordance with the Plt/Company fire plan, your primary kill zone is on the PDF. So you try to set your PDF up (and generally it's not that hard to do; if you can't, you've got your gun in the wrong spot) so that you're conducting grazing fire on an axis down your PDF, meaning your kill zone is the cone of fire, not the beaten zone.

So let's say the spot you expect the bad guys to pop out is 550m away. My gun is grazing from muzzle to about 700m. As the enemy pops into view at 550m, and so long as he's charging me down the axis of my gun, I'm mowing him down using the cone of fire from 550m all the way in, because that's the tube my rounds are travelling through. But my beaten zone is somewhere out around 750-800m; so all the rounds that don't hit someone in the cone of fire are falling harmlessly in a field somewhere. I say that facetiously, you're supposed to scope out your beaten zone and well past (for ricochets, I can't remember how deep) to make sure you don't have rounds going somewhere they're not supposed to.

So I don't know about using a co-ax and if it's stable enough for grazing fire or not, but you're definitely using the methodology we used on the bipod because you probably couldn't make use of the cone of fire. Not to mention, if you're a tank and an enemy RPG pops up 200 yards away, they're not going to teach you to aim past him and try to adjust fire on rounds that are impacting at 700m. The quicker, easier thing to do is to walk the impacts onto your target.

But in the defense, we've got the gun in a tripod and we've walked all this off, got a range card set up, mils are already calculated for th T/E. I don't need to see the target or where my rounds are hitting. If they lay smoke to cover their advance, but we have reason to believe they're in the kill zone (PDF), I'm cutting loose and I know my rounds are going right where they're supposed to.

Pedrobear has got the mechanics of it, but like I said, I think you were taught to use the beaten zone as opposed to the cone of fire because of the relative instability of your platform and the timeliness of getting rounds on target without the lanes being pre-plotted.

I was thinking that the concept shouldn't be that foreign though. When you fire your main gun, you don't look for the fall of shot right? If you miss, it's going to be a mile past your target. So aren't you trained to see where the round was when it passed the target and make adjustments off that? I'd say that's pretty close to the 'cone of fire' vs. 'beaten zone' concept.

Hope this helps.

V/R,
Jack

Ark – I agree with everything you're saying. My complaint is with rules that make the MG-42 a super-weapon, when in reality (if we're talking about using it on a tripod at 500-700m) a gun is a gun. At range, with burst length, barrel changes, reload, manipulation of the gun, the difference in killing potential between 800 rpm and 1200 rpm is negligible (except maybe in terms of eating ammo). That's why you look around the world at every machine gun except the MG-3 (the direct descendant of th MG-42) and its rpm is 800-900.

A gun used properly is going to kill some guys (a whole bunch if they're not at proper interval) and make the rest of them think real hard about whether they want to keep moving. Good troops are going to keep moving, because it's just pre-registered arty, you need to get out of the kill zone.

A big issue here is whether you're shooting at a point target (a man) or an area target (a kill zone). Bipods are used for point targets, tripod mounts are used for area targets. The overlapping fields of fire in Norman bocage is a bit of a misnomer in MG parlance. From what I've read and what we were taught, what the Germans did was put tripod weapons sited down avenues of approach (lanes and roads between fields) and engaging targets at 400-600m. This forced the Allies into moving cross-country through the fields. Here the Germans used bipod MG-42s, putting the beaten zone on the entrance(s) to the field or using them as belt-fed automatic rifles to engage individual men as they popped over/through the hedgerow.

I'm not saying the Germans never used tripods in the fields, but my point would be, why would you when the bipod MG-42s would be just as, if not more effective. At 600m a platoon in skirmish line with 5m interval is a pretty packed target, ripe for a tripod MG. At 200m that same target is a nightmare for a tripod; those mounts are not set up to swing back and forth like you can do with a bipod (or even a vehicle pintle mount). And when you're swinging, you're not spraying Hollywood-style, you swing, acquire the target (a man or tightly bunched group), and let off a burst, swing, acquire, burst. That's the whole purpose of LMGs. Lastly, the bipod MG is much more portable, perfect for a bocage defense in depth. Allies popping through the hedge, swing that gun around, gun down as many as you can, then pack up and pull back to the next field. That's not fun for a tripod MG.

There's a reason units have tripods and bipods, they both have their place on the battlefield. So, my point is, the MG-42 is just as good as, but no better than, any other MG on a tripod. But where the MG-42 shines is on the bipod where the volume of fire vs. a point target gives is a clear advantage over other LMGs of the day. Now, the counter to that is mobility, where the Allies all seemed to think (DP, Bren, and BAR) that the magazine fed was much better suited. And I would agree with that assessment if you're on the offense.

Having said all that, in my games I tend to treat all MGs (of class, i.e., either LMG-bipod or MMG-tripod) the same, even the LMGs in terms of MG-42 vs Bren, because we tend to treat them all as little, portable tripod-MGs anyway.

V/R,
Jack

Ditto, as a civvie, I haven't had the experience of firing either a bipod, tripod, or a coax MG.

However, doing a quick search for dimensions on a Leopard, I got a 'firing height' of 6'-7" for a Leopard 2. Presumably fairly similar for a Leopard 1.

As noted in the Jack's initial differentiation on 'grazing' vs 'plunging' fire a weapon sited at elevation can only perform 'plunging' fire. When the firing height of your coax is over the top of the average man's head at point blank you can't get 'grazing' fire unless the tank is dug into a firing position.

Firing height for a bipod or tripod mounted MG is going to be somewhere between a foot and 2-1/2 feet(?) from the ground (depending on siting). Therefore 'grazing fire' is going to be a fairly flat parabola (depending on the weapons angle of elevation) from roughly those heights to about 3ft above out to seven hundred yards as per Jack's posts.

Hopefully I understood your question and this makes sense.

P.S. This probably won't format well -

M118 = M118 Special Ball – 173gr FMJ-BT (2550fps)
M118LR = M118LR Special Ball – 175gr HPBT (2580fps)
HSM 155gr = HSM 308-37 .308 Win 155gr HPBT (2860fps)

Bullet Drop (Inches)
100y 91m 200y 183m 300y 275m 400y 366m 500y 458m 600y 549m 700y 641m 800y 732m 900y 824m 1000y 915m

M118 +16.5 +30.0 +36.0 +34.0 +22.5 Zero -35.0 -80.0 -144.0 -230.0

M118LR +17.4 +30.4 +36.3 +34.2 +22.6 Zero -35.7 -86.8 -156.1 -246.7

HSM 155gr +13.8 +24.3 +29.2 +27.5 +18.2 Zero -28.8 -70.3 -127.2 -202.9

From this chart apparently the gun was sighted to have a zero at 600yd. For example a hunting rifle is often sighted to be 2 inches high at 100 to give a zero at 200.

P.P.S. Can't get that to format properly. Here is a link for anyone who cares -

snipercentral.com/308.htm

Goragrad – Good stuff. Hunting rifles hit the target at 100 and 200, eh? The M-16 hits at 100 and 300. Either way, like you said, it shows the rise and drop of the round. When I went to CQB, my first shoot I forgot to adjust my aiming point. You keep your rifle set for 300, but what that means is the round is coming out real high at point blank range (<25m). We were doing headshots and I sent my first batch of rounds well over the target's head. Quite embarassing….

And Ditto better come back here! He posted a question, he better come check the answer! ;)

V/R,
Jack

Jack – re Lannock – sounds like you got the right place. I thin the fields woul have been smaller, but you get the drift. The roads are level- from memory it's quite a flat hill top.

My point really was about the variability of Modern (post 30's) footprint – The napoleonics unit doesn't change, where the WW2 on expands and contracts as the terrain changes, making it hard to model on the tabletop. And you can drop all the arty you like, but sooner or later the PBI is going to have to go there and have a look!

No sweat Tim good luck.

And I'm with you on your point, Last Hussar, I look back at my post and I must have been in a weird mood because I sure had an infatuation with changing the subject, and being long-winded about it to boot! Your CoC QRS is fantastic, by the way. As a Lardies connossieur, I was expecting you to get involved with my questions regarding shock/pinning/breaking and close combat ("Thoughts on CoC Solo and Close Combat").

I think I'm enjoying all the discussion/debate too much and am getting addicted to hit, while everyone else is hoping I shut up! ;)

V/R,
Jack

Thanks Jack.

As far as I am concerned you may feel you were a bit long winded and off thread but it is definitely interesting.

Actually the 200 zero on the hunting rifle is for game in more vegetated areas where that is probably your maximum line of fire. Out on the plains hunting antelope (notably spooky) for example one might zero at 300 or more.

Hunting rifles hit the target at 100 and 200, eh?

No, the .308 is pretty much identical to the 7.62NATO round (actually, it can be a little hotter), but has a battle zero at ~30m (where rounds rise through the line of sight) for a normally measured zero of 200m (where the bullet drops through the line of sight). Other rounds, like the 6.5mm Swedish Mauser, are a bit flatter and can have a 300 yard zero (and will be within 6" of point of aim from muzzle to 350yards. IIRC, the 5.56 is 30 and 300. Interestingly, the 6.5mm Grendel has almost identical ballistics to the 6.5mm Swede, so a military that chose to equip with Grendel rifles is back to a 'full-power' rifle round. But enough of the digression.

About the MG barrages, only the Brits (and those forces trained by the Brits like the Greeks) still did MG volleys at extreme ranges in WW2.

The point about the difference between the MG34/42 and other, slower-firing MGs is interesting. But I do wonder, since you need to put rounds relatively close to the target to pin or suppress them, wouldn't the higher rate of fire give you a better suppressive effect, in addition to more hits?

"As far as I am concerned you may feel you were a bit long winded and off thread but it is definitely interesting."

Yes, I can never get too much of real world practice.

You have got me thinking we need to differentiate the beaten zones/fire cones of bipod vs tripod MGs now.

Squad Leader did this quite elegantly of course.

"The point about the difference between the MG34/42 and other, slower-firing MGs is interesting. But I do wonder, since you need to put rounds relatively close to the target to pin or suppress them, wouldn't the higher rate of fire give you a better suppressive effect, in addition to more hits?"

What I'm saying is, if you've got a Vickers, an M1919/1917, and an MG-42 on tripods next to each other, all engaging a platoon in open ground at 600m, the difference between a burst of 20 rounds in 3 seconds by the MG-42 and a burst of 20 rounds in 5 seconds (I'm guesstimating time here) does not have any appreciable difference on the target.

If anything, the target could be more affected by the slower firing gun because those 20 rounds will be more spread over the target area, as opposed to the higher rate of fire its rounds into a smaller portion of the target area. But, from a suppression stand point, I don't know that the difference there would be enough to matter either. I don't think it would be a matter of, "hey guys, look! All the MG-42's rounds landed in 1st Squad, we're good!"

"You have got me thinking we need to differentiate the beaten zones/fire cones of bipod vs tripod MGs now."

Sure. MMGs are for area targets, LMGs for point targets. The MMG is engaging a house or a platoon at 600m while the LMG is engaging a window or team at 150m. SOP with the LMG is to put the beaten zone on a the target and hold it there until the target is down/suppressed. If you think of a the beaten zone as a pattern, an LMG can't have a beaten zone at 600m because it's so unstable the rounds just fly all over the place. So doctrinally, you have engagement ranges (minus the FPF concept) you want to stick to, with MMGs hitting from 700 to 400m, getting less effective the closer the enemy gets (again, minus the FPF), and LMGs picking up from 400m on in, getting more effective the closer the enemy gets.

At close range on the bipod is where the MG-42 really had an advantage. We discussed earlier the bocage, and how you could have a couple MG-42s decimate a platoon/seriously delay a company by engaging individuals/small groups as they popped through the bocage into the fields. The tripod version would be too restricted by the T/E to quickly and effectively engage targets like that, whereas the LMG gunner is simply moving his body to shift the beaten zone onto the target, which is much quicker. With the high rate of fire at that range, your only concern is ammo. Of course, on the defense you can stock up on ammo, and in the bocage, you can simply walk away once its depleted, falling back to your next line, already stocked with ammo.

I will say the disparity, combined with the doctrinal concept of the Allies (primarily in the offense vs primarily in the defense, meaning you need to be as portable as possible), couldn't have been all that much or the Allies would have dropped the Brens and BARs.

I have never played Squad Leader. How did it handle MGs?

V/R,
Jack

A couple of things almost every wargame gets wrong. One, uniform terrain isn't. I live in farm country and hose places that look like flat, open fields are anything but. They have all sorts of dips and hummocks, big rocks, wet spots, etc. I can show you dry looking places that are wet enough even in a dry year to swallow a tractor to the axels. Not to mention "flat" fields with enough changes in contour to hide standing men. Likewise woods are not of uniform density, they have clearings, game trails, boggy bits and impenetrable thickets scattered through out. Little things which don't show up well on the wargames table, no matter the scale of game.

Iron Ivan and some other games account for at least some of this by giving a "cover save" even to troops in open ground, or factoring it into he to hit tables. There is a big difference between standing in the middle of a field or walking across it 18th Century line abreast style, and crouching and crawling from dip and hummock to dip and hummock. Same field, but very different experience.

The other thing that is lost on the wargames table is sound. Including some very distinctive sounds. "Sir, that is the AK-47 assault rifle. The preferred weapon of our enemy. It makes a distinctive sound when fired at us!" When I used to play paintball some of us got very proficient at imitating he sound of an exhausted CO2 cartridge venting the last of its gas as it was being switched out. The trick was to fool your opponent into thinking you were helplessly changing gas cartridges and therefor vulnerable.

Again, living in farm country, I can tell the approximate calibre of small arms fire around the neighborhood. A 12 gauge sounds quite different to a .22. Single shot vs semi-auto etc. I a, sure soldiers on he battlefield could detect differences in fire discipline as well as weapons by sound.

There is also the sound of engine noises. A tank does not sound like a jeep!

These are not accounted for in most wargames rules, nor are misidentifications. Once the enemy is detected the model is placed on the table and it is pretty clear what it is.

I will say the disparity, combined with the doctrinal concept of the Allies (primarily in the offense vs primarily in the defense, meaning you need to be as portable as possible), couldn't have been all that much or the Allies would have dropped the Brens and BARs.

If it wasn't for a draftsman's error in reverse-engineering the MG42, the US would have adopted the MG42 (rechambered for .30-06), NIH or not.

Heck, I'm surprised the FN Minimi was selected over the CETME Amelie (which is more or less a 5.56mm version of the MG42). I know that if I was in charge of procurement, I'd probably be buying the Amelie. Not least of which is because it's less than 12 lbs (ie, can carry more ammo for the same overall system weight)!

Dave- Depends on the farming. Arable has to be flat for the harvest. Its hard to model the undulating terrain where you can lose a man on the table- terrain suitable for standing figures while at the same time bumpy is difficult to model. IABSM and CoC have mechanisms where a unit can 'full cover' increasing cover level by one.

Arable has to be flat for the harvest.

For definitions of flat that don't include 'tangent to the earth's surface in two directions'…

Here, look at the shadows of all the hills in the area on this google map:
link

That's Moscow, ID, on the Palouse prairie. There are dips between fields there that can hide a battleship, let alone a tank. It's also one of the richest wheat-farming areas in the entire globe. 'flat enough to harvest' isn't anything like Kansas or Nebraska flat (and even those places have +-10ft changes all over the place!)

All those dips and LOS blockers creating dead ground are what Battalion mortars (~600m+), Company mortars (~300m+), and grenade launchers (out to 300m) are for.

If you've had time to plan your defense, and done it right, it's all taken care of.

V/R,
Jack

I live in the Fens, the flattest part of England, bar the sea! My son and I have just watched a Cat Challenger tractor (massive) disappear in the subtle, undulating ground.

Wargames are pretty hopeless at simulating micro terrain, effects of elevation and correspondingly the different levels of spotting and partial engagement (WRG had quite a good system where a DRM was applied to a partially spotted target, but unfortunately the end result still affected the entire team). The effect of elevation is nigh on impossible to simulate, unless in a military grade simulator.

For IABSM I've put very low 'hills' on- a few mm high. They are not 'terrain' as such, but block line of site. You can say anything in the 'lump' CAN be seen, but if you are lower and LOS crosses the centre line – go up by one cover level.

Some rules give a cover bonus to stationary units 'in the open' to reflect just this sort of thing.

Another approach might be to let units look for cover 'in the open', possibly based on skill and/or some rating for terrain complexity.

This was an approach used in the optional expansions for 'Tobruk', rating the otherwise featureless terrain with a hull down probability of 1-4 (on a D6) so very flat bits were a '1' and low ridge areas a '4'.

I tried to modify the WRG rules so that each number, above the base chance to spot, allowed an additional figure to be targeted. I then would subtract the number of casualties from the to hit role, trouble was it slowed the game down too much.

Combat Commander allowed units to go into improved positions, (no move, increased protection) if a tactical competency check was made. You needed to roll an aggression roll to get out though, so it was a bit of a double edged sword.

Some rules give a cover bonus to stationary units 'in the open' to reflect just this sort of thing.

That's certainly my preference for handling the problem.

I also like systems where the target's skill/training level determines how hard they are to hit. Whether that's the Flames of War system or the Ambush Alley one, it makes firefights between good quality troops long, and unequal firefights really short.

Just learned about this. Supporting Jack's extensive thread on LMGs and their role is the case of Tony Stein and the Stinger – an aircraft Browning MG repurposed as an LMG. It had 3x the rate of fire of the standard infantry Browning. Stein used it very successfully to assault pillboxes – point targets – on Iwo Jima where the overwhelming volume of fire suppressed the occupants.

Oh yeah – he was a marine too. ;)

Ditto The Abdominal Snowman, I was a tanker too and in my experience MG techniques by infantry and tanks is (almost) completely different. The Infantry techniques are much more involved. I was on M1A1's and it was simply a matter of "laze & blaze". As long as the coax was zero'd in nice and tight, rounds striking inside of the reticle circle, then the gunner (basically) had to lay the dot on the target and pull the trigger. As with most things on tanks the skill is boresighting and zeroing the weapons correctly well before.

Just Jack wrote up some really nice detailed posts on how an Infantrymen would setup an MG. He explained that in-order to sweep an area the MG gunner had to adjust the T&E (traverse & elevation) device, which IIRC isn't designed for large increments of movement. On a tank the gunner only has to move his hands a bit left/right, up/down and the turret can quickly traverse/elevate the coax around to a target.

We never learned any of the concepts: beaten zone, grazing fire, plunging fire…only time I ever heard "beaten zone" was when an old scout 1SG of mine chewed your ass, you were in his beaten zone…
On tanks it was all "point and shoot" gunnery, aim at the base of the targets, laze for a good range return, start firing sweeping back and forth until you got target effects. By the book "burst" were to be 30-50 rounds…but in all my gunneries I never saw "bursts", it was all continuous firing (50-100 rounds) until the target went down. (one thing the Abrams doesn't lack is Coax ammo storage)

If, for any number of reasons, the laser range was bad then the TC should press the "battlesight" button (mine was always set to something like 400m-500m) then the Coax would use that range. A setting of 400m IMO was best, at that input the Abrams Coax fired with almost no superelevation so the rounds fly straight into the gunner's reticle and he can adjust from there.
Usually you aim and fire at the base of the target (ground at feet) and slowly/smoothly elevate and sweep in a Z motion, firing one continuous burst to kill or pin. That's training gunnery, in Iraq we used the basic principles for getting a good range and initial strike of rounds on target but in urban environment you did whatever was required to kill the enemy. (sometimes arcing rounds over obstacles)

but in urban environment you did whatever was required to kill the enemy. (sometimes arcing rounds over obstacles)

Or saying 'the hell with it' and applying HEAT or Canister?

I've also heard a story of a nasty firefight in early Afghanistan where a platoon was pinned down hard by some MGs in a building. They were yelling for support, but couldn't get clearance to use the tank's 120mm on a building. Seems the TC decided that he had a fully functional bulldozer with 1500hp. Traversed the turret to the rear and plowed through the house like a wrecking ball at ~50mph. No more MG problems from that location, though my buddy who went to Astan said he preferred using a MICLIC for that job.

Marshal – You're absolutely right, the T/E is not for making broad or fast sweeps. First, you really can't manipulate a T/E very fast (while it's locked in), and second, you don't want to as you're not going to hit anything.

That's hilarious about having plenty of ammo and popping out 100 rounds at a time. I can't even imagine that. I'd never thought of it before, but how do you guys take care of the barrels in a co-ax mount?

Ditto – Regarding a 'stable' mount, forgive me as I'm not speaking (only) of the idea of how 'firmly' the weapon is held (I agree, there's still a bit of shimmy and shake, even using sandbags on the tripod)). I was speaking more of the totality of how the gun is employed.

By infantry in the defense I've walked the ground, selected the best position, dug the gun in, cleared fields of fire (that are maximized to take advantage of grazing fire, thereby extending my killzone as far as possible), shot the azimuths, done the range estimation, etc…

As a MG platform, a tank is mobile, meaning you weren't afforded the opportunity to walk the ground and plot your fire. This is the reason you're taught to put the reticle on the target and walk the rounds (beaten zone) onto it; without doing any of the other work, you don't have any other choice. Also, I'm not sure how you make micro-adjustments.

On a tripod I can click over 1mil on the T/E, which is a significant distance at 700m. Forgive me, I can't remember the distances anymore, but let's say 1mil moves the strike of the round 20m (laterally) at 700m. If you're speaking of slewing the turret (or can the co-ax move independently within a limited arc?), I can't imagine that that allows you to keep things very tight at that range. You're probably hosing rounds over a beaten zone measuring a klick by a klick!

Regarding your question about Battle, I apologize, I've never seen those rules. I can say categorically that if you have squad stands I don't believe you should have a cone of fire type device. I think at that scale a MG engaging a squad is probably about right, and I think the basing situation represents the squad as a target, regardless of its actual formation/interval (that's what Last Hussar and I were discussing above). The only consideration I might give a MG (at that scale) is allowing it engage multiple targets in a relatively narrow lane of fire (as opposed to a broad cone of fire) if all the targets are within grazing fire range.

V/R,
Jack

By infantry in the defense I've walked the ground, selected the best position, dug the gun in, cleared fields of fire (that are maximized to take advantage of grazing fire, thereby extending my killzone as far as possible), shot the azimuths, done the range estimation, etc…

And then 6 hours later they moved the regiment on?

Barrel?!?! wooah there, bad juju!…:-) Try not to mess with the barrel or coax once mounted tight and zero'd in right. Moving it in anyway will screwup the zero and you'll have to redo it, not that difficult but does require firing rounds and adjusting sights. To clean coax pull the backplate and remove bolt. No barrel changing if you don't have to (no fear of getting burned, you're not gonna carry it) and there should be enough time between firing that it can cool off. Of course you do have to be cautious of barrel wear and such, if rounds start going wild or for whatever reason you do have to change (there is a spare) or clean barrel just have to re-zero, again requires you to fire rounds so depending on situation that may not be possible (urban environment like Iraq)

Micro-adjustments: the gunner can slew the turret on a real tank more steadily and accurately than I can in a video game :-)…(heck that's why guys hated the gunnery training simulators, they weren't as accurate!)…as for accuracy/dispersion, you know those rifle range pop-up target silhouettes? can easily traverse and plink each one with a short burst (1-2 tracer) in fact that's exactly what we did on the first day of gunnery when screening/zeroing weapons, traverse down the line fire short burst plinking 5-6 targets to double-check accuracy…100 rounds (at the very high end, usually 30-50) isn't because of dispersion or lack of accuracy, it's to ensure the target is sufficiently suppressed because usually the tank has the ammo to spare.

To put another way, I always considered the coax as a point weapon, just like the main gun (.50cal & loaders M240 was area), IMO it was laser accurate at short ranges (<500m) even on the move…between 600m-800m there was a bit of arc so gunner skill was required to adjust…That's why I say it's two totally different worlds even for the same weapon, didn't use all the MG techniques mentioned in this thread because with a weapon system that accurate there really wasn't any need to over complicate it. The trick was (as everything on a tank) in the maintenance, the mount and ammo feed tray needed to be tight or it would jam, (really screwed me over first gunnery as young TC, almost bolo'd…)

Couldn't remember either so had to look it up: 1mil = 1m at 1000m….reticle is 1mil circle…I would have been ed if rounds strike outside of circle

Anyway, I'm talking about modern Abrams fire control system, maybe Dito's experience is more pertinent to WW2 tankers.

I find the modelling on World of Tanks (of the countryside) very good. Redshire is very English, the way the hills and wood look and act. Its easy to see how you can lose a tank.

Wow guys, I had no idea the T/E (or fire control) for your tank turrets was so fine. I thought the gun had a certain amount of play in it, separate from moving the turret, i.e., you set the turret in the general direction and then can crank the gun left or right in a limited arc, moving only the gun, not the turret.

The ability to make those sort of micro-adjustments sounds amazing. I gotta say that if they're that good, there should be no more foot-slogged MGs, they should all be vehicle-turret mounted. Amherst mentioned 1 mil= 1 meter at 1000m; maybe in these super calibrated co-ax mounts, but I can promise you clicking one over on a tripod T/E moves the center beaten zone a heck of a lot further than that at 700m. I swear I remember it being like 15 or 20m. But maybe I'm screwing that up too. It seems like maybe a click was 3 mils. Or was that for land nav? It sucks getting old!

Thanks guys, interesting stuff.

V/R,
Jack

One can go a long way towards establishing real world tactics by playing with an umpire and adding more hidden forces/rules into the mix. Often if there are just two of us, one plays as umpire while the other plays one side. If there are 3 of us, one plays the umpire and the other two work together. Its quite fun. Anything that limits the all knowing 200' high perspective and adds friction appeals to our gaming group, made up as it is of a number of ex military types.

Board edge rushes and last turn all out rushes are more a function of scenario design. Without operating in a campaign structure players don't have to worry about tomorrow, which is bogus for more realistic behavior.

Los