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Artillery airbursts

LemoN

Grizzled Veteran
Feb 26, 2006
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Well, I thought that I would be pretty cool to have airbursts from mortars and artillery. Basically airbursts greatly increase the lethality of a round, especially against lightly entrenched positions and foxholes.

There were two ways to achieve this in WW2, timed fuses and grenades hitting an obstacle like a tree.

Timed fuses:
All armies in WW2 used (by modern standards) crudish clockwork fuses to achieve airbursts. Of course this would mean that quite a few rounds would impact into the ground or explode too high. Only in late 1944 did the US start using crude radio fuses, basically detonating the round as soon as it detects some obstacle to it's front.

Treebursts and similar:
Impact fuses on grenades were normally set to go off at the slightest breeze in order to detonate the round as soon as it hits something. A strong branch or tree trunk would do just that, although this would also count for telephone poles, houses, etc. This would of course require the actual ballistic tracking of the projectiles in HoS.


This would be truly epic to have. :IS2:
 
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I wholeheartedly agree, it's not something that's shown very often and if it's in the game it'd be awesome, but I think there's not enough time to make it unless it's already in the game which I doubt.

I doubt it too, especially seeing as they're in a feature lock already, but heck, it would be an epic feature to have! :D
 
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Sounds like a good idea. What other types of rounds did artillery typically have back then? Did they have and use smoke rounds? If so it can be interesting for large combined arms maps where hand held smoke grenades are too small. I don't think WWII tanks had smoke grenade launchers (correct me if I am wrong). And since the crew can't exit the tanks it might be necessary for tank only maps assuming the tanks don't have smoke launchers.


At the least, WP rounds and whatnot can be interesting for In Country and other mods.

I doubt it too, especially seeing as they're in a feature lock already, but heck, it would be an epic feature to have! :D


Mods. :D
 
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Sounds like a good idea. What other types of rounds did artillery typically have back then?
Battalion and divisional level artillery (81mm mortars and 105's usually) normally only had HE (different variants though, like deep penetration bunker busting, etc) and smoke, with a couple of different fuses for the former. I'm not too sure about regimental artillery above 155mm having smoke rounds, could someone clarify on this one?


Rearding tanks and smoke launchers/rounds. Tanks with super high velocity guns usually didn't have smoke rounds, but most medium tanks like the M4, T34 and Pz4 had them. The Germans had smoke dispersers, as had later US and British tanks, not too sure about the Soviets actually. Also remember that smoke rounds can be quite nasty for infantry, given that they're WP.
 
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I would like to see this as an ability for commanders to call in a round of airburst artillery (fused). Maybe once a map, or even rarer than that.

It would be interesting if it demolished houses differently. It'd also be really cool to see an artillery round hit the ground, only to go off a second later.

This could also do less damage to tanks (i'm assuming airburts don't damage a tank as much as a shell landing directly on a tank), but more to infantry, and be used to turn the tide of battle when there's a heavy amount of infantry in the map.
 
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I would like to see this as an ability for commanders to call in a round of airburst artillery (fused). Maybe once a map, or even rarer than that.

One round once a map? That would be a *bit* low. Looking at your comment about houses I don't think you realise the difference in lethality of airburst and normal rounds. All that an airburst will do is explode the round 1-10m above the ground making it far more effective against infantry in the open or against lightly entrenched inantry (anything that doesn't offer top-cover). If the infantry has top-cover then the lethality is near zero and you'd have better chances with a direct arty impact.

Heck, I suggested implementing Shrapnel shells for Iron Europe, seeing as they were by far the most common rounds in WW1, with some guns only being able to use shrapnel shells. This would make moving in the open a nightmare, but would make entrenched infantry nearly unaffected. I hope they implement it, since Shrapnel shells is the primary thing that made WW1 arty different from WW2 arty.
 
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