Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (Full Version)

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Sensei.Tokugawa -> Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (8/30/2011 10:28:14 PM)

Greetings gentelmen.

Having had a few scenarios already under my belt, fought in different theaters and eras and moreover having been studying subject in some more detail by the means of reading and watching some available sources I have grown to doubt whether it is indeed fair historically and technically to allow indiscriminately all units capable in terms of the game engine to do the demolitions. Should it not be more accurate solution to restrict that to engineer subunits exclusively or at least units with some engineering capability? Certainly that would not extend to scenarios in which the units are of divisional size as they mostly have some engineering capability assigned so it's absolutely normal to deem them virtually fully prepared to perform such tasks. Don't You think - am I making or missing a point? ...



Panama -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (8/31/2011 1:38:09 AM)

http://www.300thcombatengineersinwwii.com/bridges.html

This is an interesting site. Can't find my bookmark for the excellent Soviet engineer site I had.

As to your post. Lots of different kinds of bridges out there.



Erik2 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (8/31/2011 12:02:58 PM)

What I do in my scenarios is label the bridges that are destroyable or not.
For instance like this:

)*( = prewired major bridge, any unit can destroy it
][ = major bridge, only engineer units may destroy it.
# = another useful symbol for a (minor) bridge



fogger -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (8/31/2011 10:59:15 PM)

As an ex Ginger Beer (AFD) I have no trouble with small units destroying bridges. Many years ago my old sqn was tasked to destroy an old railway bridge and about 50 men took 4 days to drill and set up the charges. We droped two supporting columns as well as blowing the embankments. The bridge was about 20 meters above the old river bed and about 50 meters long (from memory). My beef is the speed at which bridges are repaired. A bridge across a major river which would take a couple of months to build yet in TOAW it can be repaired in one turn so in FITE that is 3.5 days. I would like to see bridges repaired at a % rate which could be attacked by air.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/2/2011 9:08:44 PM)

sorry to disagree - here an example, that bridges can be blown quickly, but also rebuilt quickly:

object: pont de livron-sur-drôme 44°45'56.68"N 4°50'23.63"E
road: route nationale no 7
operation: retreat of german troops in august 1944 (operation dragoon)

blown on 16 august 1944 by FFI SAP (Section Atterrissages et Parachutages) under the command of Henri Faure aka Gérard with approx 20 FFI.

result: http://livronavenir.hautetfort.com/media/02/01/1385679029.jpg
bridge unusable for the retreating german 19th army. they had to ford a bit downriver.

repaired by U.S. troops http://livronavenir.hautetfort.com/media/01/00/1496603223.jpg
another example http://www.warwingsart.com/12thAirForce/bridgebuilders.html

seems that they used bailey bridge elements to rebuild bridges quite quickly. AFIK a bailey of 30 m is thrown within one hour (without enemy fire)http://www.40thengineers.org/Bridgephotos.htm in WW 2 they spanned up to 350 meters with baileys (using auxiliary supports).

a bit further down all bridges across the rhône river were destroyed by the USAAF. the Germans simply used barges and pontoons to create ferrys and ferried troops across the river (would be done by engineers in TOAW). the issue was not the time they would have needed to throw a bridge across the large river, but the fact, that ferries can be hidden from aircraft during the day.

in the early 80s we expected the soviets to force a large river (like the rhine) with all bridges blown within 6 to 12 hours including throwing pontoon/PMP bridges within 3 to 6 hours.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/2/2011 9:27:23 PM)

some more information i found about bailey bridges in my library:
some of the bailey bridges were used in germany up to the 1960s as "permanent" bridges until the bridge could be re-built properly. e.g. in cologne the first bridge across the rhine (patton-bridge) was a bailey used until 1951.
the system is still extensively used today http://www.cnps.equipement.gouv.fr/article.php3?id_article=69



Panama -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/2/2011 10:35:49 PM)

Yeah, it probably doesn't take more than a couple of squads to blow up a major bridge if they know what they're doing. Does every engineer squad know what they're doing? Probably not.

It also doesn't take less than a day to throw a bridge across a major river. I have the numbers someplace.

Something mildly irksome is that a unit can fix a bridge and then another unit can move across it as though it took zero time to put it up. Maybe it should be more of a combat function where time is consumed for any unit crossing the bridge during the turn it's fixed or a river is bridged. Maybe.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/2/2011 10:41:25 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Panama
Something mildly irksome is that a unit can fix a bridge and then another unit can move across it as though it took zero time to put it up. Maybe it should be more of a combat function where time is consumed for any unit crossing the bridge during the turn it's fixed or a river is bridged. Maybe.

that's a good point. deducting the time required to build the bridge.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/2/2011 10:47:33 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Panama

Yeah, it probably doesn't take more than a couple of squads to blow up a major bridge if they know what they're doing. Does every engineer squad know what they're doing? Probably not.

a question of colateral damage probably. i only rarely saw bridges blown including their embankments during ww2. this made reconstruction easier. it is a pretty daunting task to reconstruct a bridge including the embankments. probably easier to throw a pontoon/PMP bridge next to it.
blowing a segement or two of a bridge is a question of the amount of explosives available. looking at the job the FFI did at livrol: they probably had one or two guys trained in handling explosives and detonators. the rest was responsible to carry the explosives and the security. so we would be looking at 10-20 men carrying 5-20 kgs of explosives. something between 50 and 200 kgs which would make already quite a bang. probably enough to blow this segment.



sapper32 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/3/2011 8:56:27 PM)

My take on bridge blowing is that it can be done quickly in fact as quick as driving a truck full of HE onto a bridge and detonating it massive waste of HE yes but quick,I think generaly it take a few hours for a troop of engineers thats say 25 trained men to set up a bridge demolition to a simple first stage then if time permits and the bridge dosent need to be blown immidiatly a couple more hours to set it up fully with multiple circuits and so on,
On the building side of things for modern scenarios bridges can be put across rivers in minutes that will take 70 tonnes plus the lenght of bridge can be quite long depending on the rivers depth and so on.WWII baily bridges and pontoon bridges could be constructed in hours and could span major rivers



Curtis Lemay -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/3/2011 10:35:22 PM)

I would consider a Bailey bridge to be represented in the game as a Ferry-Bridging unit.

Repairing the bridge hex would be building a true bridge. Think "Bridge Over the River Kwai". And note that in the case of a rail bridge it can't be repaired with pontoons or such.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/4/2011 10:05:21 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: sapper32
On the building side of things for modern scenarios bridges can be put across rivers in minutes that will take 70 tonnes plus the lenght of bridge can be quite long depending on the rivers depth and so on.WWII baily bridges and pontoon bridges could be constructed in hours and could span major rivers


PMP (Понтонно-мостовой парк) is a modern system which can take 60+ tons as bridge and 180 tons as a ferry and be built in a few hours.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/4/2011 10:12:40 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
I would consider a Bailey bridge to be represented in the game as a Ferry-Bridging unit.

Repairing the bridge hex would be building a true bridge. Think "Bridge Over the River Kwai". And note that in the case of a rail bridge it can't be repaired with pontoons or such.


The bailey system was something semi-permamnent - sometimes used for years. i think it is well presented with re-building bridges in TOAW.

the ferry-bridging unit needs to stay in place - could model, that you have limited amounts of bridge elements - although as an example the US built more than 89 kms of bailey bridges in Italy alone during WW2. a lot of those stayed there until some time after the war.

i remember also some provisional re-construction of railway bridges - still looking for some images and data for those. although you would not be able to run high-speed trains across, they could handle trains crossing very slowly.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/4/2011 10:16:32 AM)

here we go: a railroad bridge in italy. see figure 11 Three, double-treble 60 ft. Bailey Spans constructed by 160 Railway Construction Company, R.E. from 3 October, 1943 to 15 October 1943, under Job Nº. 86/2 to cross the River Ofanto at St. S. Margherita di Savoia Ofantino. The original bridge was a masonry viaduct.

so it took one company to repair such a bridge within 12 days.



winkelried -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/4/2011 12:11:47 PM)

just found this approx 7 minutes from arriving until first vehicle crosses :-) video PMP although there seems one or two elements missing to fully reach the other shore



sapper32 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/4/2011 12:32:59 PM)

This is the British armys latest close support bridging asset the Titan Armoured Vehicle Launching Bridge with a number 10 bridge which takes about 90 seconds to deploy and gives a max span of 24m and has a class of 70 tonnes

[image]local://upfiles/24932/49A7EC0E83FE4946B911D2F966E16318.jpg[/image]



Panama -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/4/2011 2:07:20 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: sapper32

This is the British armys latest close support bridging asset the Titan Armoured Vehicle Launching Bridge with a number 10 bridge which takes about 90 seconds to deploy and gives a max span of 24m and has a class of 70 tonnes

[image]local://upfiles/24932/49A7EC0E83FE4946B911D2F966E16318.jpg[/image]


This might be a lot of fun on a windy spring day. [:D]



sapper32 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/7/2011 9:08:28 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Panama


quote:

ORIGINAL: sapper32

This is the British armys latest close support bridging asset the Titan Armoured Vehicle Launching Bridge with a number 10 bridge which takes about 90 seconds to deploy and gives a max span of 24m and has a class of 70 tonnes

[image]local://upfiles/24932/49A7EC0E83FE4946B911D2F966E16318.jpg[/image]


This might be a lot of fun on a windy spring day. [:D]


Lol yeah they do wobble around a bit but never had to abort a launch in my career its a pretty versatile system for a fast crossing but wouldnt like to do it against a defended river crossing its a big target[:D]



Sensei.Tokugawa -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/18/2011 4:53:07 PM)

Therefore I think it would depend on the era, the theater and the OpFors involved,eh?



Sertorius1 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/21/2011 3:15:25 PM)

quote:

The following gives an indication as to how quickly German railway repair forces were able to make a destroyed line operable again:

11 July 1941 - 4th Pz Group reaches Porkhov;
18 July 1941 - 1st DRG train arrives same
23 August 1941 - 4th Pz Group reaches Luga;
23 August 1941 - as above
08 August 1941 - 16th Armee reaches Staraya Russa;
29 September 1941 - as above



This quote came from this website about the German state railroad in WWII. There is quite a bit of good information here.

http://www.feldgrau.com/dreichsbahn.html

Still, when it comes to repairing a railway bridge there should be a delay.

As a sidenote and I'm doing this from memory but I think it wasn't until June of 1942 the big railway bridge was repaired over the Lower Dnepr. The Soviets blew it back in September of 1941.



AceDuceTrey -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/21/2011 3:46:58 PM)

Let's also not forget that in Europe virtually all the significant bridges had "destruct wells" built into them to allow rapid emplacement of explosives at the right spots to drop them quickly. We tested and developed a fluid explosive at the Armor and Engineer Board, Ft Knox, KY, that would allow us to just "pull up and pour in".



Panama -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/21/2011 4:02:39 PM)

"This rather sparse network was fed by numerous smaller, single track, feeder lines whose transport capacities were far from optimal. In fact, the majority of the Soviet rail line network was the same as it had been for the Czars armies 20 years earlier. In some regions of the Soviet Union, single track rail lines existed for no apparent reason."

This is a puzzling statement since the Soviets had spent the past years upgrading the rail system with American and German help beginning in 1926. Secondary lines were still a bit of a problem but I certainly wouldn't portray the majority of the rail net as pre WWI. [8|]



Sertorius1 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/21/2011 8:57:19 PM)

Panama,

I think what the writer means here is that the net remained for the most part unchanged since the days of Nicholas II. That is to say the existing rail beds, etc were used. The remark made about rail lines that served no seeming purpose may have been ones servicing GULAG.

I have a 1940 book titled Economic Geography that compared with a 1908 atlas show little change with the rail lines. The main additions that I can think of off the top of my head were the double tracking of the Trans-Siberian, a line built from Grozny to Astrakhan, some lines built along the Iranian border and the one built to Vorkuta.



Panama -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/22/2011 3:48:09 AM)

Just looking at the rails on a map won't tell the story. Technical improvements such as unit trains, automatic blocking, centralized dispatching, stricter regulations on loading and unloading, regular inspection, automatic air brakes and automatic couplers were implemented. Heavier rails for heavier locomotives, four axle cars and reduction of grades and recurving with the technical improvements increased loads, higher average speed and faster turn around of rolling stock and increased freight from 93 billion ton/km in 1928 to 415 billion ton/km in 1940. Over a four fold increase. This was a major improvement.

Too bad so much of the rails fell to the Germans in 1941 and 1942. [:D]



BillLottJr -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/22/2011 12:25:41 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: burroughs

Therefore I think it would depend on the era, the theater and the OpFors involved,eh?


From the American Civil War...



The need to keep the trains running to the front resulted in some amazing displays of engineering prowess during the Civil War. This bridge in Virginia was constructed of "round sticks cut from the woods, and not even divested of bark" in May 1862.

The Army boasted that the bridge was built in nine working days, using the labor of the "common soldiers of the Army of the Rappahannock, under the supervision of Brigadier General Herman Haupt, Chief of Railroad Construction and Transportation."

The bridge may look precarious, but it carried up to 20 trains a day.

[image]local://upfiles/20504/66BDD1C4DB5F450DAF857CCBA8EBD157.jpg[/image]



Panama -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/23/2011 5:36:20 PM)

Great picture of a toothpick bridge. [sm=00000436.gif]



Sertorius1 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/23/2011 9:26:11 PM)

Easy now, Panama. I've had to build stuff like that in my career in construction. [;)]



sPzAbt653 -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/24/2011 4:55:17 AM)

If I had to build something it would look like that.

I'm a fan of industrial structures, and I like the way that bridge looks. The guy standing on top of the train has some guts. I guess he wanted the best view if the thing collapsed.



fogger -> RE: Blowing up the bridges - an engineereing house rule battalion level down (9/24/2011 5:26:06 AM)

It looks like it replaced a "stone / concrete and steel" bridge. The only problem is that in TOAW this new bridge would have the same rating as the bridge that it replaced. However, I think that a few near misses from an air attack would destroy it whereas the near misses would not have had the same effect on the original bridge. That is assuming that the bridge is in a game that has air power. Which brings me to the question, why can not artillery attck and destroy a bridge? Is this something for the wish list?



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