The Commander Series Forum

I have been solo playing through several programmed scenarios to get a good working knowledge of the rules and hope to soon play through campaigns.
In a campaign situation, artillery will have an actual position rather than simply being 'off-table'. Consequently, I am wondering if anyone has already translated effective artillery ranges into game measurements.
My WWII wargaming is mostly mid-Eastern front with my current need (due to model availability) being game measurements for the following: German - le.FH-18 (105mm); and Soviet - 76mm and 122mm. However, if someone has calculated other measurements I'll certainly be interested in seeing a more comprehensive list.
Alternatively, if noone has calculated such game measurements, I would be interested in a referral to a reliable website on the effective ranges of German and Soviet artillery as I haven't had much luck in finding one.

A trip to Wiki for the raw data for each gun might help, then work out at 20 metre's to one centimetre for game range!

E.g. le.FH-18 at 10.6km max range is 533cm or so.

They don't have effective ranges for indirect fire, just maximum ranges, so here you go (all in yards, apart from a couple):

German

88mm Pak43, 11 miles
88mm Pak-43/41, 19138
105mm le.FH-18, 11675
105mm le.FH-18M, 13479
105mm sK18, 20861
128mm Pak44, 26684
150mm K18, 26794
150mm sFH18, 14490
150mm sFH36, 13451
173mm K18, 25520

If you want some reach, try the 211mm K38 which is 37000 yards! And the 211mm K12 railway gun... 93 miles!

Soviet

76.2mm Divisional Gun, 13326
76.2mm ZiS-3, 14217
100mm M1944 Field Gun, 22966
122mm M1938 Howitzer, 12900
122mm M31/37, 22747
152mm M10/30, 18700
152mm M10/34, 17717
152mm BR-2, 29500
152mm ML-20, 18898

All taken from Artillery - An Illustrated History of its impact by Jeff Kinard.

I think that I read somewhere that there was a 'standard' distance behind the front lines that artillery would deploy.

On the offence, most guns would deploy about 1/3 of their maximum range behind the front. On the defence, about 2/3 of their maximum range behind the front.

My rough translation: Assuming your artillery piece has a range of 12km, if on the offence, 4km behind. At usual game scale of 50cm = 1km, your attacking artillery would probably be just over one table* away from the gaming table. If your gun only had a range of 8km, it would be close to the middle/back edge of the table behind the gaming table.

The defenders guns would be twice as far back.

* assuming a table depth of 4'.

A 105mm leFH had a range of about 10km, a 25 pdr 12km. Careful siting of artillery could become important if counter batterry fire was to be minimised. If attacking the Germans, the British use 5.5' medium artillery (16-18km range) for counter battery fire could cause the Germans headaches!.

Steve

Thanks for the replies: exactly what I was after - and even down to the yard! For my purposes I'll probably round those figures down to the nearest 500 and call them metres which should give me reasonably accurate (and easy) figures to work with in a campaign situation.

In reference to Steve's reply, the 1/3 and 2/3 standard might be something for me to try as a workable tactic as I can see the sense behind the different ratios for attack and defence.

I hope to begin the first programmed campaign next month and if that works I'll move on to some small home-made campaigns from there.

Incidentially, the programmed scenarios (and first proposed campaign) are from 'Programmed Wargames Scenarios by C.S.Grant' which I bought for $AUS25.00 about 30 years ago and never used until late last year. I see that used copies start at a staggering $95 plus postage from Amazon. I also think I have a good system for home-made campaigns and if they work out I'll post an overview in the solo area of this forum (probably not until the second half of this year).

That sounds good, look forward to hearing about how you get on

There are some nice campaign rules here (http://www.battlevault.com/Campaigns/Bastogne%2... that have a section on artillery support. Worth a look

As a rough guide, I would say 2/3 is about max.
Don't forget, (if I remember right) 'barrel-life' is about 500 rounds. The longer the range (bigger charge), the shorter the 'barrel-life'.

Paul

"if they work out I'll post an overview in the solo area of this forum (probably not until the second half of this year)."

Quaama, I'd be very interested in the way you set-up your programmed scenarios, so when you're ready please do put something on the solo pages. I'm looking to follow the campaign route for my solo games (Romanian forces through the war); so any tips would be useful.

I have some data on ranges of Romanian artillery (from the national military museum), so if you need any specific guns, let me know and I'll see if I can track them down.

Robert

I'm keeping notes on the current C.S. Grant campaign I've just started so when it's finished I'll try to post an AAR as I'm learning a few things already (eg. the length of columns on-road is resulting in some units being two tables back from the front).
I'll use what I learn to improve method for the next campaign (also C.S. Grant but not as linear as the current one) and then post what I intend to do for my own design.

The basic premise for my campaign design is to use a Panzerblitz-style hex maps from the internet together with counters from another website. General placement of the defensive enemy is to regard the campaign map as one giant table and use various solo mechanisms to place them. Additional enemy forces may also appear subject to dice rolls. Enemy responses will be based on my estimate of possible actions (no way of avoiding that possible bias that I can see), allocating a percentage figure to each likely action and then rolling the dice.