"Smoke - typical or atypical?" Topic

I've absolutely no idea where you get that idea. The British Army had numerous smoke-delivery methods (grenades, 2-inch mortar, 3-inch mortar and 25pdr to name four) and made great use of them.

I've yet to come up with a good answer to this question. First-person accounts don't seem to include many instances of smoke being used, but smoke shell production figures were considerable.

The U.S. Army's post-Great War book of combat stories points out that smoke can completely disorganize an attack unless preparation is made ahead of time, such as laying tapes during the preceding night.

I suspect that a lot of use of smoke was to cover flanks, rather than to shield assault units from defenders on the objective. That's just supposition, though.

It was used all the time…at low level, I.e. Platoon, the British carried more smoke rounds than he for the 2".
3" would be used both for screening attacks and withdrawls on request.
Larger calibre artillery probably was a little more planned, but mixed smoke and he barrages were commonplace.
As still taught in the British army today:
"when in doubt, attack the left flank, and use bags of smoke!"

In the History of the Funnies (good digital book and quite cheap. Holbart went to talk to his men about tactics. This they said acme downt use smoke and use more smoke!

Wargamers don't seem to use appropriate amounts. In the amounts needed cotton wool is a bit of a farce (maybe not at 6mm). At MG we use a series of slightly bent flat templates smoke shaped and painted. arranged in a box formation. Actually looks good and above all is practical.

UshCha…that sounds good; any chance of a picture or two?

I think one reason players use smoke too little is because there is no easy way to mark it on the table. Cotton wool is a fiddle and looks wrong. I had some fake spider webs stuff that looked great but snagged on everything and was seldom used.

UshCha's idea sounds great.

For smoke I use cotton balls glued down on metal discs. Others use much more nicely done versions of the same idea. This allows the smoke screen to be sized according to how much is used and it stays put.

I use filter floss for aqaurium filters or some of the synthetic pillow fillers works well.

It's my belief that many gamers would rather shoot rounds that cause damage. I played in a Pegasus Bridge game at an HMGS con and when I suggested putting smoke down -- to keep the German side from shooting us off the bridge -- one of the players on my side said "That will obscure the enemy so I can't shoot at him."

OP: "Just wondering – is the use of smoke to obscure enemy fire for an assault or clean getaway typical or atypical?"

1st Response: "I've absolutely no idea where you get that idea."

I agree with the sentiment in the OP. I've been reading commercially available military history since my youth in the 1960s. Whether by design, omission, editorial decisions or what have you, the use of smoke is not overly referenced in materials. I have not done a survey of the publications that I own but definitely can say that the use of smoke is not a topic heavily covered in most books. Newer publications do refer to its use much more often than older ones.

The lack of reference to the use of smoke does not give the impression that the troops had it and just didn't use it. Since it is often not referenced to, the impression is that it was not used or not a factor.

Similarly, a story that involves troops assaulting and capturing a position after fierce hand-to-hand combat implies that it was a fist fight. Little or no mention of knives, pistols, entrenching tools, etc. seems to exclude them from being used in the struggle.

Rightly or wrongly, what you don't convey in the story of what actually happened has as much impact as what you do say.

I use the Litko ones. Or rather my friend who plays the British uses them… I just bitch about it.

Here is a good video showing screening effects of WP: YouTube link

Notice at 2:45 he says enough rounds to generate a smoke screen for 18 minutes allowing troops to move 1200 yards and get within 300 yards for the final assault when fire is lifted. Smoke will remain effective for 30-60 seconds longer allowing troops to get within about 200 yards which would be about when enemy return fire would begin. This could be the point when the game would really begin.

Pre-assault barrages were intended to be suppressive, not destructive. Suppression includes blocking observation. There is no point in the enemy remaining above ground as he won't see any targets to fire at with few exceptions of bunkers and pill boxes.

Yes, smoke means not being able to shoot at the enemy – until he gets very close to you.

Wolfhag

Perhaps smoke goes unused in games because the lethality of HE/AP is exaggerated?

If the HE/AP or indeed MG/Small Arms fire was ineffective beyond causing suppression [as indeed seems to have often been the case] then smoke would be a more viable option.

Smoke was tricky to get right in organisations without the stacks of radios modern troops have.
My understanding is that it was much more likely to be used in set piece assaults where pre-organisation was possible.
Outside of that, I think smoke use was unusual to rare.

So small scale tactical use would be less common than some games [SL/ASL being a case in point] would have it?

But smoke grenades were issued and part of the supply chain so they must have been useful.

I'd like a more definitive answer based on something more than a few anecdotes or absence thereof. But perhaps that's is all we have to go on.

For GI's, weren't 1 smoke grenade per soldier the typical (assuming they were available in the supply chain that particular day)?

A grenade burns for a very short time, which means, for a prolonged battle, the amount of smoke is going to be relatively limited. One or two uses for the squad, most likely.

@WEASEL – that was my impression.

TMP link

Old thread on TMP covers some of this…

This is a Smoke discharger screen from 3 tanks. Hence 3 screens. This lasts just a bound. It aimed to screen the tanks as they passed the critical roadway seen in the distance. You get the idea. The tank to smoke scale is the same for 1:72 as it is for the 1:144 shown here. It looks better for a serise of screens for gun layerd (the box I described) but this seemed optimum for fast bloom smoke.

link

PS. this was intended to be a training scenario. Trouble was it was actually a complex scenario needing folk to play lots of tricks to get past very limited but leathal suspect zones. The tank showing between the buildings was realy a dummy marker so in reality it may not have been a tank. Just put there to illustrate the point you do not take risks where its not to your advantage.

ZOC,

Contemporary British accounts, op orders, training manuals, histories, etc are full of the use of smoke. As Christot says, 'Two up, left flanking and bags of smoke' was and still is a British Army training mantra.

Smoke can be seen through a bit close in. Emerging from a smake screen I read silowettes you so you are an easy target. At platoon level the sort of thing you would use it for would be to obscure a crossing of a street at a cross roads. Fire would then be indirect and hence potentially less lethal. Throw one and don't run, then will they waste ammo a second time?

FWIW, in Command Decision 4, the rules go so far as to limit the action of British Close Support tanks to firing smoke and thus diminishing the effects of direct enemy fire. There really isn't a regular HE effect from CS tank fire factored into the game mechanics at all.

typical or atypical?

I think the choice should be….

a damn good idea or compulsory

Of course these things are dependent on game scale too.

If your stands are platoons, we can assume that the platoon commander is handling all that business and that smoke is already factored in.

It maybe a case of so frequently used that WW2 writers didn't bother making a comment about it. They took smoke as a given and assumed that the readers would too.

Grumble,

Is that for all CS tanks or just the early war 3.7-inch CS tanks?

For what it's worth the prevailing wind speed and direction plus the general weather would be factors in deciding to use smoke. So would any buildings or vehicles already on fire.

From a game perspective, I can't recall if the smoke generated from burning objects is covered in many rulesets.I'm generalising here but I think this tends to end up in the optional rules section. It is a lot of overhead and detail to manage in games.

I had this crazy idea of using something to physically obscure the player view of the table instead of using markers, like glasses covered in a heavy layer of dust or a thin veil of curtain fabric. Has anyone else tried something like this and did work well for you?

Bullant – not a ww2 game but the only one I recall specifically addressing smoke from fires is Striker (and ASL :-) )

Thanks Weasel,

I guess some of what we are discussing here could apply to night fighting too. Replicating these sorts effects in game without impacting on playability is perhaps a holy grail.

CD and battlefront WWII deal with burning vehicles very simply from what I recall

I was thinking about this topic. We did have the privaledge of playing ,I guess a 90's Pltoon comander. He took every opertunity to use smoke to avoid difficult threats he did not want to engage at that time. This implies that was standard practice as he never did bother with the rules. He just told us what he wanted to do and we did it for him. Worst bit was he usually won. Proably as he picked out key positions we had nevere recognised till fat to late.

There are differences between general battlefield application, and micro tactical use by subunits. I have repros of a number of barrage maps which clearly show desperate artillery screening missions with persistent smoke screens, as well as a moderate mix of smoke in the main barrage in order to increase its obscuring effect alongside its suppressive effect. This sort of thing is also covered by e.g. the divisional CRA manual.

Outside of formal fire plans, all we really have to go on are tactical manuals and personal accounts. The sorts of things recorded in personal accounts and even war diaries is hugely variable, although some memoirists do record extensive smoke use, e.g. John Foley mentions two occasions in Normandy when the battlefield was a blinding fug of smoke, and on one he suspected the Germans of thickening the screen up themselves, as they launched a counterattack straight into it.

Ultimately, all the manuals and drills stress that movement was to be covered, cover can be from terrain, or by using fire. Smoke is just artificial terrain, limits on its tactical use mainly being means of application and limits to the ammunition supply. One two minute smoke per infantryman doesn't go very far, and prior to Arras iirc One division managed to fire off the entire Army stockpile of smoke ammo!

Bear in mind that part of the difficulty in hitting Veteran units in FOW is because it is implied that veterans are more likely to incorporate smoke grenades in their over all squad tactics.

Differing prioritys. Gamers want to win the game. Soldiers want to survive the battle. Gamers also get impatient fgaster. Soldiers are willing to let thingds develop more.

Indeed. Surviving the battle. Let some other begger take the risk – we'll just keep our heads down and see what happens…

I think it's a key issue when modelling WW2 and later combat that the small unit nature and widely dispersed battlefield leaves a lot of scope for skulking and skiving. This is often missed out in rules.

Well trained and fresh units don't do this as much and get stuck in more. USMC with their Gung Ho! ethic, Paratroops – pretty much all nations – Commandoes etc are all several times more effective than the normal infantry due to this effect.

Time is also very limited in games. Either simulation time because if you allowed 3 hours to take a position the defense would have no chance or real time because the players have to get home before their wives file for divorce.

If their is down time with very little happening this problem is reduced.

I was under the impression that the smoke rounds for British 2" mortars were more for marking things than for obscuring them.

The manuals I've seen make clear they were for screening. There are some excerpts of one on Bayonetstrength.

link

All I know is when I'm not the British I really miss it. Nothing like jumping the Hun from out of a smoke screen!

CoC allows some serious smoke barrages if you take it in the force list

The tactical nafziger books seem to referance cover it well. Its uses and failings seem to be well noted. It would seem that supply might be a problem. I find it referenced more with vehicles and artillery than infantry use. Vehicles using it to cover their retreat.

Considering that British AFVs went from external smoke dischargers early war to 2-inch mortars mounted in the turret roofs of the later tanks, it would appear that smoke was used rather frequently.

As I recall the stowage in a Churchill was for 30 rounds of 2-inch bombs.

Amusingly my question in the past was whether the AFVs were issued any non-smoke rounds for their mortars as an option for a close-in situation (HE) or for illumination.

Germans certainly had ports in their turret roofs for flare, illumination, antipersonnel discharge. Not sure if they had smoke there, but they also had dischargers.

Seem to remember that some tanks (Soviet?) were fitted to spray oil on the exhaust to generate smoke.

Well in a modern view of the topic, when I was in the U.S. Army I used smoke all of the time. When I was in the Cavalry, I had a 4.2" mortar in my platoon and we fired more smoke and flares than explosives. The same was true when I was the XO of a armor hcc and controlled the mortar platoon.
When I was in the Cav. I had 3 M551 which had six smoke grenade launchers on each one. Smoke was essential any time you conducted withdrawal operations. Not much organic smoke on the attack since we left that up to direct support artillery.

When I get home I'll dig out some British WW2 op orders that I've got on file – they go into great detail re the artillery fire plan and smoke screening.

Hmmm. I read _Island of Fire_ about the final drive to eliminate the Soviets from the bank of the Volga in Stalingrad. Fortunately the Hitlerites failed!

I'd have to go back through it, but there were lots of reference to the use of smoke from the German side, iirc. There was some stuff about an assault group getting kitted out with smoke grenades that I recall pretty clearly. I did not come away with the impression that people did not use or talk about smoke.

One quick way to find out about USA use of smoke is to contact the U.S. Army Chemical school museum. It used to be located near me at fort McClellean as was the MP museum. I provided many of my uncles actual photos in England to it.
They have contributions from many citizens as does the university of Tennessee program called War and Society. A lot of first person narratives.
Anyway the staff from the chemical museum will be able to help you.