"Are machine guns more deadly the closer you get to them?" Topic
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Foxgamer | 17 Feb 2016 11:51 a.m. PST |
We had another go at my home spun WWII rules last night. One of the questions that came up was Are machine guns more deadly as you get closer to them? Thoughts for – yes, because they become more accurate Thoughts against – no, because they are still firing at the same rate of fire, particularly if they are being used in a suppressive role.
If you want to know a little more about the game, check: link |
79thPA | 17 Feb 2016 12:02 p.m. PST |
A little bit of both. They are more accurate when engaged in direct fire up close, and they have a larger beaten zone farther away. If you are simply asking if it is easier to hit a target one square away as opposed to five squares away (assuming you are crossing range bands) the answer is yes. |
Just Jack | 17 Feb 2016 12:32 p.m. PST |
The biggest determinant would be how you're using the gun. If you're on a tripod, once targets get inside 150m or so you're looking at individual men and it's nearly impossible to manipulate the T&E fast enough to get onto them. These guns look to do their work between 300 and 900 yards, the rifle squads are there to protect the guns inside 300 yards. Aside from manipulating the T&E, targets will get so close that they will actually be out of your line of fire, requiring you to pick the tripod up and re-position it. Then guys tend to unlock the gun, at which point you've lost all semblance of a stable firing platform and you're not hitting anything. Having said that, tripod mounted MGs are very deadly at extreme close range, if sited and used properly (in what we called the Final Protective Fire), though at this point we're really talking about you getting overrun. You put riflemen in the center, a gun (on tripod) on each flank. When the enemy gets right on top of you you unlock the guns, push them all the way over, then stand on the trigger. Each gun is pointing inward, so really you're just putting a wall of lead across the front of the riflemen. You're not aiming, you've got it pre-sighted so that the left or right lateral limit for your tripod puts you across the front of your lines, and the rounds are at grazing level. If you're on a bipod, good luck hitting anything (in combat) beyond a couple hundred yards. The closer the enemy gets, the easier they are to hit, but if you're aiming at individual targets (point targets) you've really lost what the whole purpose of having a machine gun. So, with a bipod you're literally simply walking the beaten zone onto the target (by changing your body position). At that point you're really just a rifleman (i.e., engaging individual targets at short range), albeit a rifleman that can put 10 rounds onto a single target at a time and doesn't have to reload as often. In most games, certainly skirmish games, a tripod mounted MG doesn't have any place on the table, and the only real way to handle it (relatively accurate to real life) is to mark a fire lane on the table, and anyone that walks into that stands a pretty good chance of getting whacked. V/R, Jack |
Andy ONeill | 17 Feb 2016 12:52 p.m. PST |
Bipod mg are generally less stable than tripod or pintle mounted ones and therefore the latter are easier to hold on target at longer range if you're shooting individuals. What is much more significant is the gulf in effectiveness between a rifleman and a machine gun team at ranges over about 100 yards. Of course whether your players will want shooting to be as ineffective as reality in your game is pretty doubtful. The further away you are, the harder to spot and the more opportunity to hide in a fold in a ground or behind something. Even though you can see your little men from your god like position, the real equivalent would be crawling around and that flat table would be full of undulations, ditches and whatnot. Even when things are pretty much totally flat like the desert, you're a lot less likely to get hit. In "Something about a soldier" ( Christopher Bulteel MC ) the author describes experimenting by exposing himself to german machine gunners. They missed. Whether they felt shooting one mad Englishman hanging about hundreds of yards away was unsporting or whether they just couldn't hit one bloke unless they were lucky is unclear. |
79thPA | 17 Feb 2016 12:52 p.m. PST |
Old School rules like those from Charles Grant use a MG "cone." You put the base of the cone against the MG, and you roll to hit everything that is in the beaten zone. |
sidley | 17 Feb 2016 12:54 p.m. PST |
Ideally a tripod mounted (sustained fire or SF) MG would fire from 800-1100 metres. 800 as that put it outside small arms range and 1100 as that is tracer burn out making it much harder for accurate fire to walk onto a target or gauge accuracy. |
Who asked this joker | 17 Feb 2016 12:57 p.m. PST |
Yes. The closer you get, the more likely you will be hit multiple times. Therefore, the more likely you will take a fatal wound. |
Weasel | 17 Feb 2016 1:05 p.m. PST |
How close is "close" ? It seems at 100 yards you;d be toast, but if you are right up in their faces, you might be able to move before they can react and swing the gun around. The further out, the less movement it takes to traverse a given distance. |
The Beast Rampant | 17 Feb 2016 1:21 p.m. PST |
Yes, because the spread is tighter. They're not inherently accurate, you rely on ROF to up the chances to hit/suppress. Firing on closer targets (assuming they are not really spread out) means a greater likelihood of them being hit one or more times. Think of it kind of like a shotgun. you might be able to move before they can react and swing the gun around. Unless the target is really right on top of the shooter, that means an awful lot of shots in a very narrow arc (assuming the gunner keeps a cool head). Re-roll ones and twos! -But that's what grenades are for. |
RavenscraftCybernetics | 17 Feb 2016 1:33 p.m. PST |
yes. they are deadlier at 50 yards than say 5000 yards. ymmv, |
cosmicbank | 17 Feb 2016 1:57 p.m. PST |
The round may carry into and past more things and people closer you get also. |
Gaz0045 | 17 Feb 2016 1:59 p.m. PST |
Closer to the muzzle means the bullets are more concentrated, spreading the further out they travel…..you might get get hit by more the closer you are……increasing the chances of a mortal wound. Our SF gun was tagged for 300-1000 metres…….hitting potential choke points and denying ground to the enemy…….the riflemen were our 'close protection' (& ammo mules) as we were meant to keep the enemy a long way out …….. As an aside….. I met a veteran of Normandy who had been shot in both ankles by a German mg from the other side of the street he and his section were advancing down, being in the middle of the group, he survived as did the blokes immediately in front and behind, the fellows nearer the ends of the line caught rounds in the stomach and chest …….apparently the mg 'dipped' its firing line as it pivoted on its bipod……. |
Weasel | 17 Feb 2016 2:03 p.m. PST |
Beast – I meant "right on top of" literal as you might see in a skirmish game :-) |
Mako11 | 17 Feb 2016 2:45 p.m. PST |
As above, yes, due to less dispersion at close range, not to mention a slightly higher muzzle velocity (not sure the latter is that important, since bullets are still traveling fairly fast downrange as well, but E = MC-squared, so….). The chance for multiple hits on a single man also increases at short range too, unless the firer is spraying his bullets across an arc. The old Tractics rules had a good system for accounting for this, reducing the To-Hit values of machine guns and other weapons with range (similar to other systems), but then, also taking that final number, and then letting you choose the number of targets you were aiming at as well, and dividing that number into the To-Hit value at range, in order to come up with a chance final percentage chance to hit your target(s). There was a maximum circular, and/or oval beaten zone you could fire against, that targets had to be in, in order to prevent abuse of this rule. Can't recall if they used a D20, or not, but I think they did. So, if you have a 30% chance of hitting at say long range with a MG, you can fire at one target at 30%, two targets at 15% each, or three targets with a 10% chance of hitting each. You, as the "firer" get to choose how to spread your fire, or not spread it, just as in real life. |
14Bore | 17 Feb 2016 3:52 p.m. PST |
One thing I often read of personal accounts is when someone sees another getting hit it is by multiple times. |
Just Jack | 17 Feb 2016 4:23 p.m. PST |
All, AONeill – "Bipod mg are generally less stable than tripod…" Nah man, firing on a bipod is incredibly less stable than on a tripod, and explains a whole lot of the 'less accurate than wargames' issue. 79thPA – You're confusing cone of fire with beaten zone. Cone of fire is the 'tube' the rounds travel through on the way out to where they land, which is the beaten zone. On the tripod you look to kill with the cone of fire, and also the beaten zone if you're lucky. With the bipod you're aiming to kill with the beaten zone, starting low and walking the strike of the rounds onto the target (dealing with muzzle rise and also hitting him with rounds ricocheting off the ground). Sidley – I think you guys are missing out a bit if you're not using a tripod on less than 800m ;) Regarding tracers, from my standpoint tracers were only an issue for guns on a bipod, back to having to walk the beaten zone onto the target. For the tripod you don't need the tracers, you've done a range card and you've got the T&E locked onto the various targets. All you've got to do is manipulate the T&E, don't even need to see the strike of the rounds. Joker – "Yes. The closer you get, the more likely you will be hit multiple times. Therefore, the more likely you will take a fatal wound." That is true if: -the gun is on a tripod and the enemy walked in front of it; but it's very hard to get the gun on target on guys inside about 150m. Or - -you have a gun on the bipod that has an extraordinarily high rate of fire, such as the MG-42. Anything less (lot of guns now are rated around 700 RPM to conserve ammo, rather than the MG-42's 1200 RPM) and the gun is bouncing around and the cone of fire has expanded exponentially, well behind the height/width of a man. Ivan – 100m on a tripod is 'in your face,' and you're better off either displacing or moving the gone off the tripod, not including the FPF. I feel like we were just talking about this ;) Beast – "Yes, because the spread is tighter." Again, depends, see above. Raven – "they are deadlier at 50 yards than say 5000 yards." There aren't any guns that fire out to 500 yards, but again the point is it depends on how you're using the gun. The tripod will hit a target at 700 yards easier than at 50 yards (assuming we're talking about people that are moving, which they tend to do when machine guns are nearby). The bipod doesn't stand a chance of hitting a man beyond a couple hundred yards (I'm not saying that dumb luck doesn't exist and hit hasn't been done, and it had better be with the first round because there's no telling where the rest are going), but can cut a man in half at 50 yards, if the shooter is in really good position to muscle the gun (prone). Gaz – Same deal, rifle squads take care of anything inside of 300m (that's why we have SAWs, they've taken over the machine gun on bipod role, leaving the guns to be used the way they're supposed to). If you're referring to the GPMG/MAG-58, we used the M-240G, which is the same gun. Regarding the Normandy story, I have no idea how a guy on a bipod dipped the gun ;) Mako – On a tripod there's really not that much dispersion of rounds within the cone of fire. Like I said, at close range (inside 150m) the hard part is getting the gun on him. I think people don't realize the gun is locked into a traverse and elevation mechanism and so to move the strike of the rounds you have to turn a knob to move the gun left and right and turn another knob to move it up and down. When a target is at 700m the corrections are very quick and easy (up to clicks, right two clicks); trying to track a moving man at 100m is pretty much impossible on a tripod. That's when you go to the bipod, but the problem with the bipod is that there really is no cone of fire because the gun is not stable, it's jumping around too much. That's why you point the weapon at 6 o'clock on the target, fire a three-round burst, watch the tracers, then adjust and fire again. You literally walk the beaten zone (where the rounds are landing) onto the target. If you aim AT the target on a bipod you're going to scare the hell out of him by firing 5m over his head, but that's about it ;) 14Bore – Nowadays when I've seen/heard of guys getting hit multiple times it was by riflemen at very close range, with the training now for double-taps/firing until the target goes down. Now they shoot every time the sights come level. V/R, Jack |
Yesthatphil | 17 Feb 2016 4:44 p.m. PST |
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FABET01 | 17 Feb 2016 4:51 p.m. PST |
One man getting hit multiple times is not uncommon. James Doughan who played "Scotty" on the original Star Trek was Canadian Artillery in WWII and came ashore at Gold Beach. He was hit with five rounds that ran up his leg, over his hand and up his arm and chest. His metal cigarette case stopped the last round. The round that hit him in the hand took off a finger. If you watch the old episodes you can occasionally see the damage. |
dBerczerk | 17 Feb 2016 5:18 p.m. PST |
So, Scotty was a hero in two universes. How very interesting! |
79thPA | 17 Feb 2016 9:19 p.m. PST |
Just Jack: Thanks for that. It didn't sound right when I typed it, but I couldn't remember the proper term. What do you think about laying down a casualty cone as a game mechanic? |
Martin Rapier | 18 Feb 2016 12:13 a.m. PST |
A brief observation, the Bren manual asserts that the weapon is as effective at 600 yards as it is at 100 (for a bipod mount, not firing on fixed lines). I would hope the authors had some idea of what they were talking about. Similarly the Vickers manual on tactical employment of the guns is pretty casual about range as a consideration, apart from indirect barrage fire. A ww2 MG specialty which seems to have died out. Targets which are further away are harder to spot of course, but if you are just dialling preset firing data into a tripod it doesn't matter if you can see the target or not. |
Foxgamer | 18 Feb 2016 12:56 a.m. PST |
Thanks guys, a very thoughtful and full discussion. So, how would this equate in a game? MMG and HMG – same effectiveness at any distance, except at close range with a slightly reduced effectiveness LMG – reducing effectiveness over distance |
FABET01 | 18 Feb 2016 4:35 a.m. PST |
How about: 1)Put down a cone shaped template for area of effect 2) Roll 4 dice 3) Distribute hits among all in the cone. The closer the target gets to the gun, fewer individuals will take all the hits. 4) Roll one less die at medium range and two less for long. |
ScottyOZ | 18 Feb 2016 5:35 a.m. PST |
"MMG and HMG – same effectiveness at any distance, except at close range with a slightly reduced effectiveness LMG – reducing effectiveness over distance" I think you should make your MG rules represent enfilade fire, basically an MG has the ability to hit anything within it's cone of fire out to a give range. Obviously the cone covers a smaller area the closer you are to it, it is less effective. LMG's on bipods have a shorter effective range than a tripod mounted one and a lesser weight of fire. Things like beaten zones and plunging fire can come in later if you want a more detailed model of MG fire |
GreenLeader | 18 Feb 2016 6:23 a.m. PST |
I agree that the impact of enfilading machine gun fire should be represented: it is an order of magnitude (well, maybe not, but close to it) more effective than 'head on' fire. There was a brilliant demonstration of this in some documentary or other, in which the presenters fired 100 rounds from a Vickers gun at 100 party balloons (spread out to represent an attacking infantry company) first from head-on, then again at an oblique angle: the difference in the results was staggering. The clip might be on YouTube somewhere, I suppose. |
Andy ONeill | 18 Feb 2016 8:38 a.m. PST |
I think it varies from weapon to weapon how MGs ought to behave. Like for example the Bren had a problem with being "too accurate". Which might seem a bit odd but you want area coverage rather than all holes grouped in an inch. Bren gunners were trained to wiggle the thing as they shot. There's a statistical analysis of wounds from German mg somewhere. It was indeed quite common to get hit by numerous rounds. That could be related to high RoF but as Bulteel observed, both mg34 and mg42 bursts had a marked tendency to rise as they fired. He thought that should have been addressed by an officer observing fall of shot and calling correction though. Whilst firing at range. Maybe that's a feature you would want to add. The leader add to effect is for both morale and observation. The German practice of holding fire until targets were at very short range could well be another factor. And of course the training was short bursts so maybe the gunner focussed on someone unlucky. No fun in reality. In gaming terms though, players tend to like national characteristics and the odd fiddly bit. Machine guns are a pretty big factor in a platoon's death dealing capability. Maybe they're a good candidate for special rules. Depends how flavour of fiddly you like for your shooting. There's also weapon pull / push and a big or fast firing gun ought to have more morale effect. A large part of shooting effect ought to be morale effect. What with it taking a ridiculous number of shots down range before anyone is likely to actually be hit. |
Wolfhag | 18 Feb 2016 9:24 a.m. PST |
If you get close and the defenders use an effective final protective fire it is much more deadly. However, being caught at long range flanking fire can be just as dangerous. My Grandfather was a Machine Gun Company Commander in France in WWI with water cooled M1917 heavy machine guns. They were always set up on tripods, too heavy for bipods. He set them up to fire on the German trench lines from 1200 to 1500 meters away. At that range it was like indirect fire raining rounds down into German trenches. I still have the binoculars he used. As a measure of the effectiveness and reliability of the Vickers weapon, during the British attack upon High Wood on 24 August 1916 it is estimated that ten Vickers fired in excess of one million rounds over a twelve hour period. It took an entire company of infantry to run ammo and water to keep the guns firing. All guns were operational the entire time. In the Pacific the Marine Weapons Company had about 12x M1917 HMG's that they used to replace the M1917 air cooled LMG's at night. The water cooled HMG were much better for sustained fire especially for FPF during Jap assaults. As Just Jack mentioned FPF does not involve targeting individuals or a specific target. The squad or platoon commander will give a signal or shoot a flare and MG's and individual rifleman point the weapon in the preassigned diagonal direction and perform grazing fire across their front whether they see a target of not. Any assaulting enemy will be caught in a vicious crossfire before getting to your position. It's a pre-planned and pre-arranged drill that very few war games take into account. It takes training and discipline to perform it correctly. During the FPF the 60mm mortars will be dropping a linear barrage only 25-50 yards in front of the defenders. An effective FPF should last no more than 60 seconds. In the Pacific the Japs would probe the Marine lines in an attempt to get the HMG's to open fire knowing that once they located them it would be hard to relocate and they could target them before the Banzai charge. Sustained fire HMG's were especially useful in interdiction. They could keep an avenue of approach under fire for hours keeping the enemy from attempting to move through the area. They fired even if there were no targets. It was a form of interdiction firing preventing enemy maneuvering across an open area of flank. At long ranges (700+ yards) tripod mounted MG's were locked and traverse and elevation were limited so it was more of an area fire weapon with the beaten zone being impacted and targets under 700 yards not being affected because of the elevation. Grazing fire could be effective out to about 700 yards. If you want a really cool John Wayne type weapon check this out: link Use in a game: Grazing Fire – Tripod or Bipod: Out to about 700 yards hitting all units out to 700 but no effect over 700 yards. Use for FPF. For non-flanking fire I'd expect you could target only 1-2 enemy troops per burst. Flanking fire could engage an entire squad. Area Fire – Tripod: Effective over 700 yards using the beaten zone size. No effect under 700 yards. Use for interdiction of movement. Sustained suppressive fire on an objective can be performed by firing over the head of advancing troops. You really need an observer with binoculars. Tracers burn out at about 1200 yards making fire control more difficult. Under ideal conditions you may be able to engage enemy units out of LOS on a reverse slope. link Beaten Zone Size: link Looking at the beaten zone widths I'd say a single burst might affect only 1-3 men in an infantry unit unless using flanking fire. Flanking fire could engage an entire squad. Wolfhag |
Who asked this joker | 18 Feb 2016 11:38 a.m. PST |
I will say this, most guns are more deadly at close range just because they are more accurate! This axiom is not limited to machine guns! |
Just Jack | 18 Feb 2016 1:24 p.m. PST |
First, let me apologize for the long post everyone. But I do enjoy discussing these types of issues ;) 79thPA – I like the idea of something representing the cone of fire, but I've got to tell you I haven't really had much success with accurately representing MGs in rules. It's something that's been discussed quite a bit (here on TMP and elsewhere) and it's tough. My best opinion would be, if you want to accurately portray tripod-mounted machine guns (or "MGs in the sustained fire role") you need to play at the company or battalion level and your table needs to be about 1500m wide by 2000m deep. Me? I do like everyone else: I play skirmish, platoon, and even reduced-company level games and just give MGs more firing dice ;) Martin – "A brief observation, the Bren manual asserts that the weapon is as effective at 600 yards as it is at 100 (for a bipod mount, not firing on fixed lines). I would hope the authors had some idea of what they were talking about." I have no doubt they do. I also have no doubt they were talking about using the Bren as a machine gun to engage formations, and not as an automatic rifle engaging individuals. "Similarly the Vickers manual on tactical employment of the guns is pretty casual about range as a consideration…" My understanding was (and is currently) that British doctrine is to use infantry to protect the guns at close range, just like us Americans, even down to the use of the guns in an FPF (though Brits call it something different). "Targets which are further away are harder to spot of course, but if you are just dialling preset firing data into a tripod it doesn't matter if you can see the target or not." This has kind of been my whole point regarding tripod mounted machine guns. You've emplaced the gun, done a range card (listing the T&E settings for the various target areas/avenues of approach), and the gunner doesn't really see anything. The gun leader sits up with field glasses calling out which target area to engage, the rate of fire, and whether to continuous burst or use searching, traversing, or searching and traversing fire, which informs the gunner how to additionally manipulate the T&E in order to best engage the enemy target. From experience I can tell you that once the enemy gets to about 150m you are no longer engaging formations, you are engaging individuals, and manipulating the T&E to engage individuals at that close range is damn near impossible (unless you can convince them to stay still for several bursts) ;) Scotty and Greenleader – "I think you should make your MG rules represent enfilade fire, basically an MG has the ability to hit anything within it's cone of fire out to a give range." I think the cone of fire concept is what Foxgamer and FABET01 are getting at. And the enfilading fire concept is tough to get at; in theory the idea is shooting along the long axis of the target. But where the long axis is depends on when you engage the enemy, as well as your posture, with the point being in both cases you want to engage the enemy before he has deployed for combat. If he's 800m from our positions, or if we've cleverly laid an ambush along the turn of a trail, we have the enemy in a head-on situation where we are firing on his long axis because he has not deployed to skirmish line from column. Again, this is kind of the point I've been trying to make with (tripod mounted) MGs being far more deadly at long range: we're engaging a formation, where my initial bursts are at long range and I am firing along their long axis. As they get closer they have changed formation (if I have failed to disrupt their attack) and I'm no longer firing on the long axis. People can now talk about having guns in enfilade, but what that means is you have a huge bulge in your line. Furthermore, in practice what enfilade (enfilading fire) meant to us was an offensive term where we're head on with an enemy in cover (defile). We would build up a base of fire while another element maneuvered to the flank of the enemy, around their cover, to fire on their exposed flank. Which, incidentally was probably along their long axis as they would be in line behind the cover ;) I hope that makes sense; I fear that in all my typing I may have lost my point… I think it was that 1) firing along the long axis of the enemy formation is the most desirable, but 2) most folks are going to associate that with fire from the flank to fire along a line formation, when 3) MGs hope to begin the engagement at such ranges that the enemy hasn't deployed out of column yet, trying to break up the formations and disrupt the attack. Once the enemy has deployed into line the MG loses much of its effectiveness (as evidenced by the balloons in Greenleader's story). The gun keeps firing of course, primarily targeting bottlenecks, but getting on the flank for enfilading fire really isn't an option in the defense (in most cases; the only ones I'm familiar with are areas with lots of ridges). "Things like beaten zones and plunging fire can come in later if you want a more detailed model of MG fire." I would say that for wargaming purposes there really is no difference in modeling the beaten zone vice plunging fire. The big deal with tripod MGs is modeling the cone of fire AND the beaten zone, meaning you've got a round that leaves the barrel and can hit anyone between it and where it lands at 750m (using 700m as an average length for grazing fire), when most of our tables are only 200m long! Meaning you could put the MG on one table edge and the enemy on the other, but they'd already have fanned out into skirmish line. We've already taken the MGs out of the role they were designed for; if the guns did their job, the enemy wouldn't have gotten to 200m! AONeill – "Like for example the Bren had a problem with being "too accurate"." I've heard that too, but I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, if operating in a traditional machine gun role, that is a huge plus in terms of providing stability to the inherently unstable bipod as a shooting platform at long range (as Martin was suggesting, shooting out to 600 yards). On the other hand, when in close terrain, more in the automatic rifle mode of engaging point targets, that super accuracy (and the MG-42's extraordinarily high rate of fire) is how one troop ends up with multiple holes in him. Which is a good thing at close range. Now, if the gunner was 'wiggling it around' when firing at 500m, I'd say he wiggled those rounds over half of Egypt/Italy/France ;) And I know that several sets of rules give some form of 'bonus' to machine guns if they have a dedicated assistant, but I'd never thought of plussing the gun up for having a dedicated assistant and a gun team leader (who is observing and directing the fire). That strikes me as a great idea, but the only problem I see is you're now back at a skirmish/platoon-level game where you are tracking the actions of every individual person, and those games typically occur at ranges far less than out MG team would be useful in. Wolfhag – He and I pretty much see eye to eye as we were trained by the same folks ;) Though I must disagree with the MGs not having effect under 700 yards; you gotta make it at least 400, though my recommendation would be 300. For us, 300 yards and in was the rifleman's fight, and we were looking to displace to alternate positions (as cool as the FPF was, if you had to use it your stuff was in the wind). And regarding Terrible Tony and The Stinger, I think that's what most folks want from their machine guns on the gaming table. That's not what machine guns are for (doctrinally), but we just want something that's mobile and spewing lead in every direction. On Iwo Jima he was engaging the firing apertures of bunkers and pillboxes from 75 yards and less, pouring rounds as he advanced on them and literally stuck the barrel inside and hosed it down. Doctrinally speaking, that's a belt-fed submachine gun, not a machine gun. Joker – Accuracy has nothing to do with it man, we're talking about tactical employment of the weapon. And with a tripod mounted gun you just cannot keep up with a human at that close a range, not to mention the gunner has such a limited field of vision, and the gun team leader is going to have a hard time relaying accurate fire commands. If you're opposing infantry, you want to get close to tripod-mounted machine guns, they are helpless without supporting infantry. I've always thought the scene in Saving Private Ryan (where they rush the MG on the hill) was pretty accurate; they took out the (unsupported) gun, one of their men got hit. That's what happens if the gun lets enemy infantry get too close; those Germans should have pulled the gun off the tripod and left the gunner to it (the fight wouldn't have lasted longer than one belt of ammo) while they picked up their personal weapons and defended themselves. Again I apologize, but hopefully someone finds all this machine gun talk interesting. I was just commenting to a buddy the other day that my head is crammed full of so much information that is now useless to me ;) V/R, Jack |
number4 | 18 Feb 2016 2:18 p.m. PST |
I must have missed the bit about affecting a "wiggle" when my troop trained on the NATO version of the Bren; must be a WWII thing – George Formby and all that………. Thanks for the input Jack, always good to get the 411 from somebody in the trade ;) To summarize then, MG's are more lethal to the individual at close range, but cause fewer casualties to groups. In gaming terms, tripod MG's should be handled more like artillery with it's 'blast templates' than small arms, and penalized if they have to engage at short range? |
christot | 18 Feb 2016 4:02 p.m. PST |
Fascinating thread, and lots of solid information. I love it when a thread like this crops up, and it appears that the fumbling around one has been doing, turns out to be actually going in the right direction. Thanks fellas |
Lion in the Stars | 18 Feb 2016 7:22 p.m. PST |
I'd pick up a copy of This Quar's War (it's free), they have a great tripod MG rules model: Fire Resolution Heavy Weapons work differently than other Ranged Weapons. They are still tied to an activation card but also affect their field of fire during the entire turn. At the start of the game the controlling player must set the initial lines of fire by placing two touching, 5-inch wide counters a specified distance away from the weapon. This creates a cone that is considered the weapon's field of fire. Any model within that cone suffers from the effects of the Heavy Weapon, losing one action.HMG The two counters are placed 12 inches away from the weapon. The field of fire for the longer-ranged HMG extends past the counters to a maximum of 96 inches. |
Andy ONeill | 19 Feb 2016 3:02 a.m. PST |
They changed the design of the bren in later marks in order to increase the cone of fire. A worn barrel had a similar effect on the early marks. At least that's what I was told. Wiki seems to agree, altho of course that's not always totally reliable. I think one of the earlier changes in barrel design marginally improved accuracy instead of dispersion as intended. |
Martin Rapier | 19 Feb 2016 4:24 a.m. PST |
"I must have missed the bit about affecting a "wiggle" when my troop trained on the NATO version of the Bren; must be a WWII thing – George Formby and all that………." I think also the L4 was firing a much higher powered cartridge than the .303 (as you have to set the gas settings right to the minimum), so a bit more kick may well lead to rather more dispersion. Like Jack, the science of machinegun fire fascinates me. I was very excited when I saw one manual with a tripod mounted MG34 set up for _indirect_ fire (one of its arcs was over a ridgeline, while the rest were standard flanking arcs), something I thought only the Brits did. Much of this stuff depends on the level of game you are aiming at of course. |
ScottyOZ | 19 Feb 2016 4:50 a.m. PST |
"n gaming terms, tripod MG's should be handled more like artillery with it's 'blast templates' than small arms, and penalized if they have to engage at short range?" Not really as a tripod mounted MG can still fire grazing fire. Beaten zones etc only come into play at longer ranges. I don't think I've ever played a game where beaten zones are modeled a large reason for that is that they are very terrain dependent and it's not often you get that level of detail. A simpler model is to allow MG's to fire lane (hit everything that crosses the line of fire) out to their normal range and to attack single units out to double their normal range with half fire power. That's more of less how the Advanced Squad Leader rules work. |
Just Jack | 19 Feb 2016 10:29 a.m. PST |
I really don't have anything to add; I think you guys have hit the salient points with the lane/cone of fire. But just to put a finer point on a couple things: 1) play with element based rules, probably company level (with one stand= one squad), maybe battalion level. 2) the table has to be wide enough to give the attacker multiple avenues of approach, and deep enough to allow the guns to work between about 300m and 900m. 3) Tripod MGs use the lane/cone of fire, with every unit that moves into it getting rolled on for effects. When the MG stands activate, they can shift the lane/cone of fire a few degrees left or right. 4) Bipod MGs are folded into the rifle squads, not separate stands. They allow the rifle squads to engage out between 300m and 500m, but really it's just harassing fire. Under 300m the rifle squads should get progressively deadlier. 5) I really like AONeill's concept of bonus for guns that have a dedicated team leader watching the strike of the rounds and calling corrections, but it's really beyond the scope of a game that is the scale where MGs are actually used (i.e., you don't track individual gun team leaders in a game where the stand represents an MG squad, or a whole rifle squad). 6) To throw a curveball at everyone, don't forget that machine guns in the defense are there to move people, to break up formations before they can close with your defensive positions. The real killers are the mortars! Mortars and guns work hand in hand: the guns force the enemy off the avenue of approach, to take cover in dead ground, then the mortars pound the hell out of them! What do you guys think? Anything off base, anything to add? V/R, Jack |
Weasel | 20 Feb 2016 12:37 p.m. PST |
7) If it's a world war 1 game, make sure to include a rule for the fabled " in the water tank when the cooling water has evaporated" operation :-) (Have trouble going when someone's with you in the bathroom? Now try doing it while angry Krauts are hucking grenades into your foxhole) |
UshCha | 20 Feb 2016 2:58 p.m. PST |
Just Jack, Not sure about the Mortars bit. They will put everybody on the grond but not sure they will kill everybody. In the falkland the Brits got heavily hit by thre own artillet but eventually shook themselves out and continued their attack. Certaily did not work even in WWI. To completely kill an advance would proably use more ammo than the battery would have. Troops have a nasty habit of finding low spots to minimise casualties. Thre are exceptional cases one was where a field was hit by 15" shells but that is not typical and of no interest to wargamers. |
Wolfhag | 20 Feb 2016 5:20 p.m. PST |
I'll have to go with Just Jack on the mortar issue. I've talked to Vietnam vets that have told me a mortar barrage was the most terrifying thing during their entire tour. You could hide in a trench from small arms fire. However, mortars rained down on you and there was no hiding. The worst thing was a walking barrage coming towards you as you had the feeling any second the next one would land on your head. The German defensive tactic was to sight in mortars on areas they expected the enemy to cross that had minimal cover. When they were in that zone the MG would open fire pinning down the unit and then the mortar barrage would drop right on top of them. It was not unusual for 60mm mortars to have direct observation on their barrage and make immediate adjustments. I'm only mentioning this because the suppressive/pinning effects of MG fire can be more than just causality causing no matter what the range. Ushcha does have a point about the diminishing returns in ammo expenditure in an attempt to kill everyone. However, the main goal was to stop the advance, not necessarily kill everyone. The mortar team would most likely want to relocate after firing a barrage before the enemy had a chance to return fire. The mortar barrage also gave the MG team a chance to displace too. Displacing to avoid observation by the enemy, not exactly something we do in war games. I plead guilty. Wolfhag |
Just Jack | 20 Feb 2016 6:28 p.m. PST |
Uscha, First, nothing kills everyone. But mortars do most of the killing on the battlefield, are designed doctrinally to do most of the killing on the battlefield. If you ever look at a regimental or battalion fireplan, air and arty kills at the FEBA and beyond (for example, look at all the WWII memoirs talking about the attack being broken up before it even began, before a unit even crossed the LOD, because arty fell on its assembly area), while MGs break up formations and send them to cover, and mortars pound them. So mortars do the killing on the battlefield, not machine guns and certainly not small arms. Or, as Wolfhag put it: "However, the main goal was to stop the advance, not necessarily kill everyone." With all the talk of maneuver warfare, getting inside the OODA loop, etc…, no one really talks about killing everyone anymore (if they ever did). And Wolfhag, I'm with you; there's plenty of stuff you're trained to do in real life that you don't do on the tabletop, for the simple reason that 1) it's not fun, and 2) it doesn't make sense to given the limitations of the rules and the table. On our 6' x 4' table, we whack all the guys on the other team, we don't worry about what's going to happen next, or to our left, right, or rear. V/R, Jack |
uglyfatbloke | 20 Feb 2016 6:39 p.m. PST |
Is LOD what we used to call the Start Line? and OODA? You're so right about wargames versus real life. |
Just Jack | 20 Feb 2016 7:48 p.m. PST |
Uglyfatbloke, Sorry, LOD is Line of Departure. You have an Assembly Area where you do your planning, briefing, rehearsals, take care of admin stuff, then you move (usually basically an admin move vice a tactical move) to the LOD (some units called it the 'attack position'), which is the last covered and concealed position before you're into the assault. You halt, check timing, comms, weapons and ammo, any special gear, then when you receive the signal you're up and over in a combat formation. Does that sound like your Start Line? You want to have the LOD as close to possible to the objective area, because moving in combat formations (vice tactical and admin move formations) really throws off coordination of movement at every level. And this is where all my talk about machine gun employment comes in where I'm talking about having a table large enough to engage out to 900m or so. In a perfect world the MGs are engaging the enemy while still in movement formations, before they've assumed combat formations, because they think they've found covered/concealed avenues of approach to their LOD/attack position, but we've done our recon and placed our guns to cover those areas, breaking up those formations before they even get to the LOD. You never see that in wargames, because in games we will happily have our units based in fireteams, and deploy an entire battalion into line (three companies of three platoons of three squads of two fireteams, so 54 stands), and have no problem with command and control, no problem keeping them on line, no problem with gaps opening up between squads/platoons/companies, no problems with a subordinate commander doing something totally unexpected when he runs into a terrain feature not shown on the map and not noted by reconnaissance. I always laughed that you could grab any five civilians off the street, tell them to get in their cars, get in line, and we're driving 200 miles to another city, and we'd do it with no problem. But you do the same thing in the military, and one vehicle breaks down, another gets a flat tire, then one doesn't see the vehicle in front of him make a right turn and misses it, while the next vehicle follows him but the one behind him makes the correct turn! That's real friction; how do you model that? OODA is basically the human decision-making cycle: Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. So, if you're a battalion commander your scout platoon reports enemy armor to your west. You get the details (Observe), plot it and make certain assumptions as to their intent and impact (such as 'most likely course of action, most dangerous course of action,' this is the Orient part), and you have to quickly do a review of your assets (anti-armor capability, in this case), come up with several courses of action, then pick one, and plan it (Decide), then issue the order, assemble, recon, rehearse, and execute (Act). It takes a certain amount of time to do all that; in the Marine Corps we worked on Crisis Action Planning (I won't bore you with all that went into it), and our goal was four hours. That is, something happened, we convened the Crisis Action Team, went through the OODA process, and four hours later helos full of Marines (as an example) were winging their way to do something. So, the idea of 'getting inside his (the enemy's) OODA loop is this: you keep things ultra simple and rely heavily on battle drill and canned plans so that you can move so fast that you seize the initiative and never relinquish it because the pace of your operations is so fast he can't keep up. So, he sees (Observe) your battalion attacking him on the left flank, he Orients, he Decides, but before he can act on the initial attack, you are now attacking his center. He halts his current line of planning because it has been overtaken by events; now he sees you attacking his center (Observe), he Orients, he Decides, but now you're attacking his rear area. He must again halt his current line of planning because it has been overtaken by events. Getting inside his OODA loop is simply acting so quickly on the battlefield that he can't react to your action before you're on to something else. Of course, no one can keep doing that forever, and so the concept of getting inside the OODA loop gave birth to the concept of The Operational Pause ;) Hope that helps. V/R, Jack |
Mark 1 | 21 Feb 2016 12:09 a.m. PST |
…one vehicle breaks down, another gets a flat tire, then one doesn't see the vehicle in front of him make a right turn and misses it, while the next vehicle follows him but the one behind him makes the correct turn! That's real friction; how do you model that? Was that a rhetorical question, or do you want to know how to actually model that in a game? I ask, because those kinds of things happen in my games. Not every time, but often enough to be a realistic part of the gaming experience. It's easy to do. Doesn't require tables and modifiers for frequent die roles or drawing cards to determine "friction events". It happens rather naturally, and the guys it happens to get whopping mad or frustrated when it happens … and then we all laugh at their misfortune. The mechanism I use is very simple to execute, and allows the game to flow almost without a hitch. It also provides many other benefits to the gaming experience, but here I will address only the issue of "friction". I use hidden units. Across the board. Both sides, attacker and defender. To execute on this I use paper "chits" to represent the units. Each player gets a number of paper chits. One each for every unit he has, with the unit's identity written on it on one side. Each player also gets about 20 – 30% more blank chits. The players place these chits face-down on the game board, and move these chits just as they would models, until the chits are spotted under whatever spotting rules your ruleset provides. At that point the spotted chit is replaced with the model.
Here is a game pic from about 13-15 years ago. In this particular game the German player has blue chits, the Russian player has tan chits. It is early in the game. The only units spotted so far are some T-34s moving quickly up a road in the upper left. Most of the board is covered with chits. Some represent real units, some represent blanks. Over time, players will start to presume they remember correctly which chits represent which units, and will turn the chits to look under them less often, and start relying on their recollections as they move their chits or set them to defend some crossing or zone of fire or something. And … they will occasionally remember wrong, presume wrong, whatever, and suddenly mid-game you'll hear one of the players gasp and say "%#$^#&@!!! Where did my [insert: Pz IVs, T-34s, StuGs, SU-85s, AT guns, etc etc.] go???" I can clearly remember several occasions. A modern game where a US infantry-heavy combat team advanced to take advanced positions to delay a Soviet motor rifle regiment's forward detachment. The US player was SURE he had the road column organization clear in his mind, and turned one set of four chits down a fork in the road fully confident that those were his M60A3s going to fire positions he had picked out for them. Imagine his surprise four turns later, when T-62s emerged from cover and he tried to spring his trap, except "Hey, wait, THOSE are blanks? But … but where did my TANKS go???" A 1940 scenario with Italians vs. French in an alpine valley, where the French tried to cover a withdrawal by creating a distraction with a bold move by some blank chits, only to find, when a spotting role was made, that "Wait a minute, those were not supposed to be my Panhards! No really, they were supposed to be blanks!"
Here is a pic from a Barbarossa scenario I ran. I was the Soviet defender in a small village in the baltics. My German opponent managed to get a lucky spotting throw on an infantry stand along the edge of the village.
I quickly pulled the platoon back, leaving a blank chit in the house closest to the edge, to keep my opponent's attention focused on that spot. It worked perfectly, he called all his artillery down on the edge of town for 2 turns. The only flaw in my approach was that the chit I left behind was NOT a blank, it was the platoon CO stand! Anything that clouds the vision of the God's eye view, and confounds to-the-milimeter perfect control in gaming is a good thing, in my way of thinking. -Mark (aka: Mk 1) |
Eclaireur | 21 Feb 2016 3:08 a.m. PST |
@JustJack I am very much enjoying your posts, and the insights born of your experience. What a refreshing change to find someone here writing from proper military training, and I assume combat experience, rather than the projection of theories and emotional certainty that quite a lot of posters here tend to fall back on! EC |
Wolfhag | 21 Feb 2016 6:27 a.m. PST |
Machine guns dangerous at long range: You may not think that forcing attackers to deploy from march columns to a linear/tactical formation is a big deal. However, remember that in reality a planned attack relys on timing and units being in a specific position at a certain time. This is especially true when using a large scale prepared bombardment (regimental, division and corps level). The prep barrages were normally lifted at a specific time and not always under control of the commander at the front. If the timing was right the attackers would be a few hundred yards away from the enemy lines and the dazed enemy just emerging from their underground protection. This would be a good coordinated attack. Just delaying the enemy infantry advance by a few minutes would leave the attackers 300-500 yards away when the prep barrage lifts leaving the defenders enough time to recover and meet the defenders. Trying to advance a long distance deployed in a tactical/linear formation will slow down the units and they will not have a concentrated attack. Like Jack said it very difficult keeping organized and moving when not in a column. Another thing long range MG fire accomplished was stripping Russian infantry from their tanks. Long range MG fire forced them to take cover or slow down leaving the tanks to advance without them. This left them vulnerable to tank hunting teams and AT gun ambushes. Here is another excerpt from my Grandfathers diary long range MG fire. Just behind the German lines about 1500 yards away was a water well. They could not get to it during the day and assumed they'd attempt to get water from it at night. He sighted in all of his M1917 tripod mounted guns on the well. Throughout the night the guns took turns firing off bursts. The next day the infantry unit captured a prisoner that said they lost 12 guys during the night attempting to fill canteens from the well and were unsuccessful. Wolfhag |
uglyfatbloke | 21 Feb 2016 7:54 a.m. PST |
That's what I thought; LOD is (at least in essence) the same as the Start Line…cheers. Wolfhag…you GFs diary sounds fascinating – is it possible to get a shufti at more of it? |
Wolfhag | 21 Feb 2016 8:21 p.m. PST |
ugly, This is a little off topic but hopefully is interesting. Otto P. Leinhauser was the first from the German side of the family born in the US (Philadelphia). Two of his uncles were body guards for Kaiser Wilhelm back in Germany. The family left Alsance-Lorraine because of the Kulture Kamp. He was in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive as a Captain and Company Commander of the 313 Machine Gun Battalion of the 80th Division. When he was advancing off to his left flank he saw hundreds of dead Yanks all blown to pieces from the 79th Division which had the toughest objective of Mountfaulcon. One day he was in a trench looking over the parapet with his binoculars towards the German lines. He saw a flash and immediately ducked down. A split second later a shell (probably a German 77mm) blew up right where he was standing a moment ago. One day he observed three German observation balloons going down along the Meuse River. It turned out to be the final flight of Frank Luke. One night he saw a German Gotha bomber shot down and got to see it the next morning. He was a Mechanical Engineer and when the first Whippet tanks came to his area he was asked to evaluate and ride in one. He was on Dead Man's Hill near Verdun. The ground was still littered with bones and skeletons from the battle in 1916. One day two men from his unit that were sent to bring back some hot meals were killed by German H&I artillery fire while walking back along a road in the rear area. A number of times he underwent extended artillery barrages that included mustard gas. The third day into the Meuse-Argonne Offensive he was wounded by artillery shrapnel in the leg. He came back to the US with a new Browning Automatic Rifle which he kept after the left the Army. My mom said that he'd fire off a 20 round magazine into the ground in the back yard on the 4th of July. They lived in Deleware Country outside of Philadelphia. My cousin has it now and it is still in shooting condition. During WWII he built Liberty ships for Sun Shipbuilding in Baltimore. He died before I got to meet him. After the war his unit, being from the same geographic area, stuck around. They had frequent get togethers and had their own club in Erie, PA until 1970. I think this is how they supported each other as after WWI there was no care for combat stress and PTSD. My grandfather led his old unit in many Memorial Day parades right up until his death. Somewhere on the German side of the lines were 12 of his first cousins. There were 6 German Leinhauser's from our village killed in WWI and two killed at Stalingrad in WWII. No record of any SS or war crime types. People from the Alsance-Lorraine were not considered reliable Nazi's. I'm still in touch with the German side. I wanted to name my son Otto but my wife said no way – we settled on Wolfgang. He's a Corporal in the US Marines and deployed in the mid-east with the 1st Radio Battalion. Both he and his great grandfather are 6'5" tall. Wolfhag |
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