Vehicle smoke

[michaelk]

Hi all,

As I understand it vehicles can generate smoke. I have been using my British desert armored cars to generate a line of smoke so that infantry can approach an objective.

I am wondering what others think? Is this gamey? Am i meeting the letter but not the spirit if the rules?

Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

In the real world infantry would have relied on their own resources or a planed smoke barrage. The 2" mortar was really for popping smoke and Mk II universals had a smoke mortar in the front compartment.. so yes a little gamey.

[sultanbev]

This is completely incorrect.

There are three ways of making smoke in real life from vehicles in WW2.
a) German and Russian cartrdge dispensers on the hull rear of certain tanks, which indeed can lay a trail of smoke behind the tank for the distance the tank has moved, providing a screen for those behind, or protecting a flank. Note it doesn't cover the laying vehicle unless it reverses into it. These generally have 5 cartridges so you can do it 5 times maximum. In gaming terms probably less than that as the vagaries of wind may mean you need mutliple cartridges to make one effective screen. Sometimes called smoke candles.
b) smoke dischargers on the turret/hull side of AFVs, typically mid-late war German and British tanks and armoured cars. This merely creates a small screen 50m in front of a tank behind which it can reverse to safety, or at least count as in cover when in the open. It would not provide cover for other units, especially in BKC terms where one model is a platoon. They can only be fired once before someone has to get out and reload them manually, not something to do under fire. Tanks carried plenty of reloads inside, Vickers IICS had 30, other cruisers perhaps 12, so can reload often as you are able in game terms. These are the smoke generated by your armoured cars.
c) 2" smoke mortar - uniquely British late war, possibly also in US Shermans - fitted into the turret roof of tanks and breech loaded from inside. Similar to the infantry 2" mortar, it can lay a screen up to 500m in front of the tank - we allow a 90x 30m screen using 6 bombs - most tanks carried sufficient to lay 3 such screens.

d) in addition there are smoke generators - big drums mounted on lorries or horse-drawn or lorry-drawn trailers. These can lay a 1000m long screen for quite some time - probably the length of a typical wargame. They are pre-positioned before battle and are not generally seen in mobile battles that are typical wargames. Being bulky, unarmoured and immobile they wouldn't last long under small arms fire.

I won't get into aircraft and artillery laid smoke screens, which is something else again.

[michaelk]

It kinda felt that way too but I always welcome input from the forum.

Fun idea though!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Shedman]

The rules from the March 2020 version (Page 15) say that "Any AFV unit can generate a smoke screen to hide itself." 

So if you have a line of several a/cs touching base to base then that's fine

If you have the a/cs spaced out then the enemy can see through the gaps

[sultanbev]

Not really, because your base is bigger than the real world frontage of the individual vehicles within that base - smoke dischargers will cover the frontage of a vehicle and a little bit either side for about a minute. At the ground scale of 1cm = 20m each vehicle in a 3-4 vehicle platoon is 1.5mm wide (for a 10' wide tank) regardless of the actual size of your model, so while the screens may protect each individual vehicle they wouldn't make a full screen across the 40-80m representing your platoon frontage. It's not like an artillery barrage smoke screen.
The smoke dischargers are meant to protect the vehicle in an emergency, not form part of a tactical operation. Even the 2" smoke mortars mentioned above were only used to screen individual tanks, it was just one tank could now screen an entire troop/platoon if necessary, and throw the smoke bombs much further.

By allowing the methodology being described, it gives the smoke dischargers far too much effectiveness, so it's not only gamey, it's historically impossible. As the rule says
"Any AFV unit can generate a smoke screen to hide itself." 

[fred.]

To further illustrate the point of the low density of tanks within a base used in the game - I made this model many years ago.

It shows 4 x 10mm tanks from a troop deployed on the area (in 10mm scale, ie the same as the vehicles) of an in game base



Some more photos and words here http://www.kerynne.com/games/BaseArea.html

[hammurabi70]

Hi all,

As I understand it vehicles can generate smoke. I have been using my British desert armored cars to generate a line of smoke so that infantry can approach an objective.

I am wondering what others think? Is this gamey? Am i meeting the letter but not the spirit if the rules?

Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I should have thought a short drive in the desert would throw up a lot of sand dust.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Most AFV's with the exception of SPG's carried some form of local defence smoke, In the British case the discharger or mortar projected it forward (it was a reloadable external projector on stuff upto Matilda II, then a 2" bomb thrower on Crusader or later) US tanks upto the Lee didnt carry anything - so the British added external projectors to their M3 Honeys, Shermans and Grants had the bombthrowers. Not certain about the M26. Germans mounted rear firing projectors on most of their vehicles, doctrine being to fire it off when retreating. Russians injected desiel into their exhausts, so the lead tanks laid a smoke screen behind them.

Infantry can only speak directly for the British army here, but suspect most would be the same. Each man in a section carried 2 grenades, mostyly Mills Bombs but 2 or 3 would be WP, used both as a smoke screen and to clear buildings and bunkers. (WP is very dangerous, so much so that it is only used by DS on peacetime exercises). Coloured grenades were for signalling purposes.

For set peices smoke would laid by artillery or possibly aircraft, and artillery carried around 10% of their rounds as smoke which could be used for emergency screens.