How is real life artillery so weak?

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How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/2/2016 8:12:08 PM

Jakers123

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In pretty much every game I ever played, once the artillery hits, everything dies, no exception, then I saw somewhere on the internet that someone said that 70% of ww2 deaths were caused by artillery, although I haven't searched for the original source, so don't know if that's legit, but still. Then I saw this, from ST 100-3 , ,,The 155-mm HE shell has a killing radius of 50 meters" and that all seems logical.

However..I follow the war in Ukraine since day one and since the Minsk agreement started, more than a year ago, the cities on both sides have been shelled from time to time, mostly by 82mm mortars and 120mm artillery, both howitzers and mortars, but almost no one died, not just civilians, but even the soldiers. How? There's a bunch of photos of destroyed houses, shells on the roads, in the grass,etc, even Grad rockets, all from that period after the start of the peace agreement, there are even a lot of videos showing actual shellings, but still there is maybe 1 death per week or two.

In Armenia and Azerbaijan the same thing is happening, officially there is peace, but in reality every day 82mm and occasionally 120mm mortars are used, but even there very little people die.

So if artillery is so powerful and kills everyone in the range of some 10 to 20 meters, then why are there almost no deaths, despite every day shellings?

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 1:21:17 AM

Ranger33

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I'm purely speculating here, but I would think that the use of artillery in Ukraine is not on anything like the scale of WW2. We are talking about millions of soldiers firing tens of million of shells at each other. Also, the shelling in those places is probably not as accurate and concentrated as it would have been in WW2. Probably a lot of the rounds are blindly fired in the general area of the enemy, as opposed to heavy fire directed by trained spotters onto large enemy formations.

< Message edited by Ranger33 -- 2/3/2016 2:23:45 AM >

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 2:31:28 AM

JEB Davis

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IMO the games you're playing that have everybody die when artillery hits are way off from reality. Just because a 155-mm HE shell has a killing radius of 50 meters does not mean that everyone within 50 meters dies when a shell lands.

The 50 meter radius means that if men are STANDING in the open on flat ground with NO COVER then they will likely get hit by the shell because either the blast effect or shrapnel is effective within that radius against standing targets. These kill-radius statistics were developed by detonating a shell in the middle of man-sized wooden silhouettes placed at incremental distances from the blast point.

How many times in a real conflict do men stand in the open with no cover while artillery is raining down on them? Obviously NEVER. The only time this happens is if they are completely unaware, and then only with the first artillery shell of the bombardment. As soon as that one hits, they seek cover. And how often does the first artillery shell score a direct hit? Not very often.

If there is any cover, or if the men have hit the deck (laying down), or if they are in foxholes or inside a building, then you get few to no casualties from the shell.

I learned this many years ago from the original boardgame Tobruk by Avalon Hill (not Tobruk II), which had a very detailed explanation of this subject taken from military documents.

You might want to try Steel Panthers: World at War, which is a game that treats artillery much more realistically than the games you are talking about.

Of course, there are situations where heavy casualties DO happen with artillery bombardments. You can use your imagination... no cover available, leaders that prevent their men from seeking cover, troops driven onward into a bombardment, men caught inside buildings when shells collapse the structure, men in a truck that is hit by an artillery shell, etc, etc...

< Message edited by JEB Davis -- 2/3/2016 3:41:26 AM >

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 7:12:35 AM

Jim D Burns

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I linked 3 old discussion threads about artillery in post #7 of this WitP AE thread:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3931278

You will probably have to use the forums pull down menu to display all instead of only posts for the last 365 days for the forum as most of the threads are over 5 years old. Lots of good info about artillery buried in these old threads though definitely worth reading.

Jim

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 12:14:23 PM

Jakers123

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quote:

ORIGINAL: JEB Davis

How many times in a real conflict do men stand in the open with no cover while artillery is raining down on them? Obviously NEVER. The only time this happens is if they are completely unaware, and then only with the first artillery shell of the bombardment. As soon as that one hits, they seek cover. And how often does the first artillery shell score a direct hit? Not very often.

True, but I am asking mostly because of the actual cities that are being hit, where civilians walk, go to work, shops,etc, they don't have places where to hide in the first few seconds of the shellings unlike the soldiers that usually have trenches or something. Plus the smaller villages like Shirokino, Zaytsevo,etc. are being hit every day and you can see houses being destroyed, but still it appears that a ordinary cheap house can ,,stop" a big shell and not get people killed, even though people still live there.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 1:05:44 PM

charlie0311

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The small towns may have been abandoned or could be the arty is just to prove a point, as in, we can do it and you can't stop us, but, in such a case, the arty could be scheduled such that the remaining civilians know when to hide. Maybe no reason to kill a lot of civilians and risk even more "fun" further down the road.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 4:43:02 PM

Poopyhead

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The U.N. estimates civilian casualties at over 9100. The German intel has the number at over 50k. They claim that someone may not be telling the truth.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 5:51:04 PM

CGGrognard

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Ukrainian citizens caught in the conflict hide in root cellars basements and the like when the shelling starts according to interviews by NGOs.
But as noted in a previous post, most artillery used in this conflict is random and erratic leaving civilians to either leave the area or adapt
to this new reality.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/3/2016 7:14:23 PM

Kuokkanen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: JEB Davis

How many times in a real conflict do men stand in the open with no cover while artillery is raining down on them? Obviously NEVER. The only time this happens is if they are completely unaware, and then only with the first artillery shell of the bombardment. As soon as that one hits, they seek cover. And how often does the first artillery shell score a direct hit? Not very often.

I have information from reliable sources that Finnish Defense Forces stopped last of the Red Army assaults just like that and very often. Every gun, cannon, howitzer, mortar, and anything else with indirect fire capability within range could be aimed and fired at spotted enemy within 5 minutes and all shells hit the ground at the same time. Let's just say that it effectively cleared trees within 500 meter radius

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/4/2016 3:33:43 PM

Capt. Harlock

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When infantry is caught in the open, or when the targets are precisely located, real-life artillery can indeed be devastating. In WWI, multiple lines of trenches had to be dug because artillery could obliterate the first line (though it took over an hour of bombardment and thousands of shells). In the Third Battle of Wonju (February 1951) David Halberstam estimates that 5,000 Chinese infantry were killed outright by a three-hour artillery barrage, with thousands more wounded. In WWII, it was found that 155mm howitzers were the best way to deal with German "pillboxes". The difficulty was that a direct hit was needed: instead of the usual high-angle fire, the howitzers were bore-sighted squarely at the pillboxes from relatively close range.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/5/2016 4:48:57 AM

nicwb

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You may also need to think beyond deaths and wounding.

Sustained artillery barrages can have a powerfully debilitating psychological effect. "Shell shock" was a condition not really seen before WW1 but it became common during that war. The condition could render an otherwise physically fit soldier incapable of fighting. Sometimes the effect was permanent.

In the situation you are talking about ie the Ukraine the other issue is probably accurate casualty reports. Probably neither side is currently accurately reporting casualties.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/5/2016 4:31:24 PM

Kuokkanen

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quote:

ORIGINAL: nicwb

Sustained artillery barrages can have a powerfully debilitating psychological effect. "Shell shock" was a condition not really seen before WW1 but it became common during that war.

Someone has mentioned (possibly in another forum) that condition happened also to artillery crews who weren't at the receiving end. Though possibly with some difference which nowadays would be labeled as PTSD. Any truth in that?

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/5/2016 9:02:47 PM

nicwb

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quote:

Someone has mentioned (possibly in another forum) that condition happened also to artillery crews who weren't at the receiving end. Though possibly with some difference which nowadays would be labeled as PTSD. Any truth in that?

Honestly Matti, I don't know - I've not heard that before. however some of those bombardments in WW1 went on for days at a time. I could well imagine that repeated loud noises and lack of sleep may have left their mark on gun crews.

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RE: How is real life artillery so weak? - 2/8/2016 1:34:10 AM

Revthought

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Matti Kuokkanen

quote:

ORIGINAL: nicwb

Sustained artillery barrages can have a powerfully debilitating psychological effect. "Shell shock" was a condition not really seen before WW1 but it became common during that war.

Someone has mentioned (possibly in another forum) that condition happened also to artillery crews who weren't at the receiving end. Though possibly with some difference which nowadays would be labeled as PTSD. Any truth in that?

The problem is that every type of what we would now classify as PTSD was labeled "shell shock" during the Great War; however, if you confine the definition to only the trembling and seizures in many Great War soldiers experienced, this was most likely either a type of PTSD brought on exclusively by artillery, or a real pysiogiclal ailment caused by brain injury suffered as a result of prolonged exposure to the explosive shock waves present in heavy artillery bombardments.

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Post #: 14