"Tanks and civilian traffic" Topic

In the WWII movies I've seen, civilian vehicles are always conveniently on the side of the road. In the Cold War era, I recall reading that civilian traffic jams would be a problem for NATO (for obvious reasons). What about the Warsaw Pact? In an urban area, where you cannot easily go off road, would abandoned vehicles present a tactical challenge for tanks and BMPs? Is it easy to run over a mass of cars or push them out of the way? Would vehicles create a temporary roadblock? I don't know that I've seen a game deal with this issue.

Wouldn't it depend on the size of the tank? BIG tanks would jut go right up and on over small cars. Trucks, any large vehicles, would prevent that, of course….

Conventional vehicles don't fare very well vs. heavy armor, especially tanks.

The crushed aluminum beercan analogy seems pretty appropriate here, from pics I've seen.

I suspect BMPs could easily push some out of the way, or climb over them too.

corporal-schmitt.blogspot.co.uk

An example of aggregate filled lorries as road blocks,

Tally Ho!

I can't think of a modern tank that couldn't crush it's way through all manner of civilian vehicles. My beloved M113 could do so as well. Everything from compact cars to semi trucks. The idea of using a large truck filled with gravel as a road block might impress some. But I don't think it would represent much of an obstacle. Now, maybe vehicles such as Striker could have problems. But for tanks a traffic jam in a real serious situation is just a change in the nature of the top layer of pavement.

Tanks dont actually drive long distances, they typically are brought to the battle on truck trailers or by train. In modern battlefields, major roadways will skirt dense urban terrain so tanks wouldnt use cities for passage. They'd only enter for assault.

In addition, they have the support of advance troops, logistics teams, engineers plus civil & military police to clear the way.

What cant be cleared will be pushed out of the way. 2 tons of car isnt much of an obstacle for a 50-60 ton tank. Semis bottlenecking the roadway? -nothing a 120mm shell cant remove.

Crushing the vehicle isn't the problem. Every time you do that, you're at a greatly elevated risk of shearing one or more track pins and separating a track. That's the part Hollywood never shows you.

Driving over vehicles is fun, but you can also throw a track or crap can get jammed inside the road wheels or drive sprocket. You could do it in a pinch, but that is why we have engineering vehicles and put bulldozer blades on a few tanks in each unit.

A better, game-related question: In a company-level game, would a massive traffic jam in the town square or on a bridge make that area impassable to everything but infantry, or is it even worth the bother?

My dad told me that in occupied Japan, right after WW2, the law of mass obtained: tanks always had right-of-way, followed by half-tracks, large trucks, small trucks, cars, carts, and finally people. He advised me that it's wise to act as if this is always the case!

In SciFi games always put an explosive charge in the civilian cars. For some reason people love to step or run over them and then they go up with a bang.

As someone who almost got run over whilst taking photos of tanks in a training event, I have to say that they wouldn't want to run over or through challenging obstacles if they could go around them. Watching crew repairing a bust track at an angle whilst some senior bawls at them for messing up his tank in the first place, would suggest that most crew would learn this lesson.

Of course a tracked vehicle can crush a car, or knock it about.. but a dozer equipped one can push or nudge it out of the way..

A couple of thoughts. Would`t the MPs keep civilian traffic to the autobahns? If I was told to get out of my town Russian were coming I would head for the nice wide 6 lane motorway. I would be heading west while NATO heading East.

We used to drive our 432s through towns even during rush hour never had trouble. Okay we did not go down the real narrow roads, but why would the Russian Army. Unless NATO troops dug in and defending just go round it.

In a campaign more of an issue as supplies and replacements delayed.

Even if Russian did go down the road, I suspect they might place fast and loose with highway code. If the west bound lane is grid locked drive then drive west on east bound lane, not like they are going to get a ticket.

I can not remember which year it was but on large exercise, my commander stopped enemy while we were moving through a town, he told me to avoid them. So I indicated to turn right , turned left the wrong way up a one way street. Got away from enemy and no ticket. So am guessing in war time rules of road would get ripped up

Watched a bit of video tonight, of British Cold War and other vehicles on maneuvers.

One, I think it was a Chieftain, ran over a little Euro car, without even slowing down. Provided about as much resistance as a plastic scale model might.

Tanks are not to be fooled with.

If people are evacuating areas, due to hurricanes, etc., sometimes the freeway lanes in both directions are converted to one-way use, so normal directional protocols don't always exist.

I suspect that would definitely be the case if a well-armed enemy force had invaded the region.

"Tanks are not to be fooled with", but should never be taken for granted!

In the build up to war most areas likely to be under threat would probably have been evacuated well before the balloon went up,

Tally Ho!

There were plans for evacuating civilians hopefully before the balloon went up. I have seen those plans for the ROK. Their evacuation routes usually were NOT the main highways. Those were reserved for military traffic. Traffic laws go out the window when the time comes. One of the MPs' primary missions was to keep civilians off the Main Supply Routes (MSR). We always suspected the Soviets would resort to forceful methods of keeping their planned MSRs open, like strafing civilians until they took the hint. Glad that theory was never tested.

An evacuation prior to war is different from a natural disaster. First, heavy traffic would be going both ways. In most countries like Korea and, IIRC, FRG, the medium and heavy civilian trucks also had reserve military roles and would be unavailable. Most of the male population would not participate in the evacuation, since they would be called up.

Yes, a tank can crush a car in its way, even 2 or 3 in a row. And it is fun. But that just created an obstacle for the wheeled vehicles coming behind you that will take the engineers longer to clear. It can be done, but we preferred to avoid it in favor of just shoving the vehicle out of the way.

Remember when…. the Soviet Union was breaking up. Video in Moscow, as I recall, where civilians park cars, truck around a large Gov't building. I remember a BMP pushing up against a bus. It was backing up and bumping to push it aside. Sure 5 minutes later got around the bus, did I push it into other auto? But I am making a path, only 400 more yards to go. The more auto the bigger the mess, possibly exponentially. Boris Yeltsen was holed up in the building and the national troops were trying to oust him and his guys.
Wish he was back running Russian.

It didn't stop this British tank very recently when a German teenager accidentally turned the wrong way into the path of a convoy and the tank driver couldn't stop in time…

Dad is going to be ed about that insurance claim!

Well, if a truck full of gravel wouldn't slow down the tanks, how about several trucks half full of gravel and then filled the rest of the way with raw sewage? Wheels removed and up on blocks, of course. Now, if you're going to occupy the town, that's something you'd want to be very careful about running over or cranking a 120mm shell through.

At Ft.Drum, NY, in like '82, I saw a US ARMY CUCV, which is basically a Dodge Pick Up Truck. That the front end was run over in the woods along an intersection of a dirt trail and fire break, by an M60 MBT. Woods were pretty thick. By the time they saw each other it was too late it appeared. The front end of the CUCV was crushed to about less than @ 10 – 12 inches. Missed the driver's legs by a foot or so !

@Mute Bystander: Nah, visiting forces in Germany are usually pretty good about paying insurance claims. Helps keep the locals happy.

Car driver is lucky to still be breathing!

Kind of begs to do uppsome MPs to accompany your miniaure commands. Afterall, they were attached…..

It didn't stop this British tank very recently when a German teenager accidentally turned the wrong way into the path of a convoy and the tank driver couldn't stop in time…

Did you see this? :)
link

The one thing you didn't want to knock down in Germany was a tree. They were numbered and Hermann would go balistic!!

Some people were doing a thorough research of the subject:

YouTube link
YouTube link
YouTube link
YouTube link

Car driver is lucky to still be breathing!

Good thing his car had airbags!

Yea, I was thinking the same thing, seeing that it had fully deployed, not that it'd do any good against a 50 ton tank.

My Cold War games will include refugees which appear at random, head west and get in the way of everybody. NATO has to work around them and the Soviets can do likewise, or blast them out of the way and risk an appropriate German response.
A recent visit to my local recycling centre (or rubbish dump, as we called them when I were a lad) resulted in a great find of old Matchbox cars – including a VW camper. All they needed was a repaint and some model railway figures and I now have a decent force of frightened civilians.
I don't think this period can be gamed without the ation factor civilians can give, so they have to be represented and their mistreatment suitably punished.
Mind you, this is also a good reason for getting some Elheim RMP and German police!

Barin1, they researched the hell out of that.

Here are some BTR's doing it. So wheeled APC should have know problem.

YouTube link
YouTube link

And a MTLB

I got mw a BMW one night during Reforger-81 with my M-113. I crushed the lft side of it with no problem.

One thing must be remembered. During WW-II most of the Refuges were on foot with carts or with horse drawn wagons. By the 1980's most Germans had a car so the Autobahns and all of the other roads headed west would be clogged with civilian cars and buses. The NATO units on the Boarder would not have that much of a problem getting to there GDP positions. But the Reinforcement 3rd and 8th ID, 1st and 3rd AD and the foreword Brigades of state side Div. would be fighting the traffic the hole way to there GDP positions.

When the DDR opened up there boarder crossings it was like an invasion of refuges. There were Trabant's from hell. The roads were bumper to bumper. It was not as bad as what we are seeing in Europe at this time, but bad. If the Warsaw Pack did it then it would be somewhere in between the two.

YouTube link

I always use civilians in my ww2 and cold war scenarios they move en masse and use a D20 for movement with a direction dice so it is entirely random, on foot, some in cars and trucks, horse drawn vehicles and animals also, makes for interesting times especially in BUAs and choke points like bridges.

cheers
Matt

Yea, I was thinking the same thing, seeing that it had fully deployed, not that it'd do any good against a 50 ton tank.

Airbag will probably keep the driver from feeling all the gees as his car beer-cans into a 50-ton tank. Keep the G-load under something like 50 gees and it becomes a survivable accident.

Assuming the track doesn't turn you into human pudding.

Nice models blue !

When I was stationed at Ft Knox there was an accident involving an M60. There was this small hill we used for radio transmission classes. We'd park an M60 there and train the troops. After a bit, there would be a break. During that time we'd run the engine to re-charge the batteries, without anyone in the driver's seat. Standard procedure at the time. One unit (not us thank goodness) was doing just that and the tank took off. Down the hill, through a chain link fence, over the rear of a parked car, crossed the street, went through a semi trailer (they're not very sturdy) full of mess hall supplies including large cartons of milk, and into the side of a concrete barrack. The tube was in travel lock position (reversed and secured to the back deck) so the tube wasn't damaged. Got to see the photos afterwards. The tank was partially buried into the side of the building (about 3-4 feet into it). It had pieces of fence hanging from it. There was debris everywhere including spilled milk, more chain link fence and pieces of the trailer. We all thought it was fantastic.

However, the brass didn't. After that we couldn't leave a tank unattended with the engine running.