"Do you use Amphibious capability " Topic

Tonites game is for fun, an Airbourne assult by the Russians on a German held bridge behind the lines. BMP2's (proably) droped off table with the said river being navigable and some access in and out of the river.

I must admit anphibious vehicles are not normaly my thing as rivers can be navigable but the banks virtually impossble to get in or out of without heavy engineering. However there is alwas room for a bit of fun.

So who has done it, why, do you give full defile for the vehicle in the river as its obscured by the banks to all except those on the immediade edge of the bank or on higher ground? Do I give BMD 2's a few milimeters of extra hull armour as its below the water line? Its only got 10mm so an extra few mm's would be significant for marginally penetrating weapons. Does water count as spaced plate for RPG fire or just count as hull down?

Does the attacker risk landing a few yards from the bridge using the rocket assisted parachute landing system? If it goes wrong its bad news and a decenting tank on a volatile rocket pallet is not that hard a target to hit.

Our rules allow easy rapid tailoring of effects without breaking the system. However estimation of the real result you are trying to model is much harder.

I would probably give a swimming vehicle ha hull down rather than a few more millimetres of armour, depending on how the ruleset otherwise handles things. This due to the fact that the few millimetres can extend to a rather large amount of water depending on what area is hit. The water also risk damaging the primer for any heat warheads, negating them, quite like spaced armour. It all depend on how the rules as a whole treat these different things I would say. You could also make a case for slow moving swimming vehicles to be easier to hit and risking more catastrophic effects if hit, since they are slowly and predictably swimming across "open" terrain.

The main reason for having the BMD-vehicles was to give the VDV the ability to land on a safer site and then have the mobility to get where they needed to be. They were not good fighting vehicles especially since the crew landed on their own and would have to find and enter a BMD on landing. That is hard enough knowing that there is a QRF approaching, and probably not too realistic an event. It is -possible- that plans would have been made for a more heroic pegasus bridge.

UshCha:
River crossings have been a staple of my modern and WWII micro-armour and 15mm games for thirty five plus years. These crossings and other amphibious assaults have usually been heavily supported by artillery and smoke because vehicles and boats are really sitting ducks while wading/swimming across water obstacles.
The largest river-crossing game we ever played was a modern scenario set in the late 1980's in Germany. A reinforced Soviet Motor Rifle Regiment was trying to force a crossing against a West German reinforced battalion of Infantry supported by some armour and lots of artillery and air power. The Soviets managed to get across in force at high cost and this set up the next game which was a German counter attack against the Soviet bridge-head. Lots of engineering kit and four regiments of artillery plus helicopter and fixed wing support were used by the Soviets.
For crossing vehicles being targeted while in the water, LOS was always a problem. The high banks of the river often obscured units seeing the assaulting troops directly in front of them except where a bend in the river made observation possible. Smoke cut down on observation quite a bit and mixing WP with smoke shut down thermal imaging too. Targeting vehicles was done as if they were hull-down and moving slowly. When ever we used armoured airborne assets like BMD's and ASU-85's they came on already landed as a flank or rear march.
In smaller actions, at the 15mm scale, battles for bridges and causeways have featured tactical amphibious operations. My favorite ones at this scale have been Canadian WWII operations against Germans in Holland's Wallcharen Island and against the Breskins pocket. These games involved 8-12 Buffalo LVT-4's carrying reinforced company strength forces over open water or flooded polders into contact with surprised but quickly reacting German forces. The look on the German force commanders' faces when they realize the attack is coming from the one direction they thought the attack could not come from was always great!
Cheers and good gaming.
Rod Robertson.

I've also done a fair few river assault scenarios, but they have generally been at regimental level (or higher) so worrying about a few mm of armour hasn't really been an issue.

For warpac operations, masses of artillery and air support are the order of the day, along with DF gunfire support from the regimental tank battalions with vertical envelopment provided for helicopter air assault battalions. Engineer support is usually required to get the BMPs into the water, but even then (demolished) bridge sites are preferred due to ease of road access.

Landing BMDs and such-like is usually reserved for captured airfields or suitable stretches of autobahn.

My gaming group just did it. The Soviet APCs could only cross where the river sections joined. That represented spots where the bank was not so steep. But they still had to make a bog check. The NATO forces mined those crossing points. So, it was quite interesting.

link

Here are some pictures from that game last Saturday.

Thanks for the interest. Interesting whether the water could get into a warhead inside the milliseconds it would be in the water before detonating. The point about difficulty seeing vehicle while in the water was an interesting confirmation of my opinions. As RPG are different to solid shot in our rules I was looking for what should happen not how to set the rules, that's the easy bit. Interesting the actions defined are rather larger than the one I defined which is sort of inspired by the Dicky's Bridge from WW 2 updated to be a surprise attack on a small number of enemy. Certainly BMD 2 can land crewed due to the rocket parachute, whether that is sensible is not for me to say.

Player stupidity is allowed at all times as representative of some high commands. Sometimes the stupid works. As long as the simulation holds good the tactics are the generals sole preserve.

"Interesting whether the water could get into a warhead inside the milliseconds it would be in the water before detonating"

Its more a question of whether the weapon impacting water would initiate the fuse and set the warhead off on contact – which it is quite likely to do. And water is a very effective stopper of SC jets

We practiced swimming our M113s in the ROK, '85-'86. But it took a little time to prep them for river crossings. Something to consider for rules, etc. … Plus regardless, we used a Dangerous Terrain Test rule for entering and exiting deep rivers when we gamed. After I got out of the Army. Like roll a 1d6 = 1 – the AFV is stuck and had to roll at the end of the turn to get "unstuck". 1d6 = 4-6 you're "free". If you roll a 6 both entering and exiting, your AFV sinks. Unfortunately that happened to another Bn's M113 crossing the Imjin. And lives were lost … As far as rules for RPG fire, etc. … give the vehicle a cover bonus. It's a smaller target and the water may affect the round one way or another …

Oh yes river crossings are a standard with my group.

Always wondered about this. Would the Soviets be faster to transition to river crossing operations?

Something I've noticed in a lot of rules is that while amphib capability is often listed for vehicles of various types, there is then no mention of the time needed to prepare a vehicle for amphibious movement. Some vehicles (such as Buffalo and M2 Amphibian) could do this with minimal prep, but some vehicles took literally hours to rig them for crossing (and then some time afterwards to de-rig).

There are also 'amphibious' vehicles that might be amphibious in theory, but in reality were not. For example, CVR(T) had a DD-style flotation screen (that could be erected in about 15-30 minutes). However, as soon as the British Army started using CVR(T), the crews needed increasing amounts of stowage and the Army itself wanted to add new bits of kit. All of this new stuff obstructed the flotation screen, which was then removed.