Quote:
Originally Posted by RERomine
To a certain extent, I agree with you Cross. Using a 1-gun MG-34 team as an example, they have 90 ammo points. The question is how many rounds does an ammo point equate to. Given a 3-man team, I'm going to take a SWAG at 3,600 rounds, which is probably high given they the machine gun, tripod and other personal arms and equipment to carry. For the machine gun ammo alone, that gives us over just 200lbs. The math of 3,600 rounds/90 ammo points gives us 40 rounds per ammo point. Assuming the rounds distribute evenly between the target hex and adjacent hexes that gives us 5-6 rounds per hex. In just one shot, it is questionable how much suppression would be caused by 5-6 unaimed rounds. There is an intangible factor to consider, however. Is the mere sound of an machine gun firing cause suppression? More than likely, yes. The US Army had a training film about the MG-42 during WWII because of its reputation. Soldiers hear machine guns firing and they may go to ground first and then try to find out if it is firing at them. This is the equivalent of suppression.
|
The ammunition issue you bring up here is interesting.
Let’s assume you are right, that 90 ammo units equals 3,600 rounds. Then one ammo unit equals 40 rounds.
Suppression
If one ammo unit equals 40 rounds of ammunition then that’s a two second burst by a MG42 firing 1200 rpm or a 3 second burst by a 800 rpm MG34.
That burst would give the target hex about 13 rounds of ammo and the other hexes about 4 rounds each. Each round would roughly translate to a suppression point.
A MG can suppress 7 hexes with the use of one ammo unit.
The target hex gets about one third of that suppression and the 6 splash hexes get 2/3.
With six bursts, this would be a total of 12-18 seconds of firing over the course of a 2-3 minute turn.
I don’t think that’s unreasonable. The sound of a HMG firing in my direction would be enough for me to get my head down, or go to ground if I was moving, regardless of the fact that it’s not aimed fire. And even though it may be only a few rounds coming into your area, it’s not like the suppression is high.
Ammunition load-out
The other issue raised is ammunition load-out.
If a 3 or 4 man MG section is carrying 3,600 rounds, then that is a bit high. [/BritishUnderstatement]
German MG ammo boxes were 250 rounds per box. Each box weighed 8.35kg or 18.4 pounds. That’s 14 boxes of ammo weighing 117kg or 258 pounds.
The MG probably weighs about 25 lbs the tri-pod about 45 lbs then there’s extra barrels, rifles etc.
I would say that each man wouldn’t be carrying more than 2 boxes of ammo, and the guys carrying the MG and tri-pod could only carry one.
This means realistic ammo carried for 1 MG:
3 man crew: 1000 rounds (25 ammo units)
4 man crew: 1500 rounds (38 ammo units)
6 man crew: 2500 rounds (63 ammo units)
Perhaps a solution to the incessant chatter of MG z-fire is to bring down the ammo load-out to a more realistic level.
If someone really wants to lean on constant MG suppression then make them pay for additional ammo canisters or ammo trucks.
Cross