[German] What do you do with your 50mms ?

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by Cross

Hi John,

Yes I've heard some of the disdain for the 2 inch. I recall Andy saying that he had a trainer who suggested something like, 'its only use may be to club the enemy'.

However, when it was in trained or skillful hands, I've also heard it could very effective. I heard a claim that it could be accurate to 6 feet at 500 yards! This sounds exagerated, but perhaps its possible - with observed fire - to get pretty close after you've fired a couple of shots to adjust your aim.

The 2 inch could also be fired directly, supposedly, like a grenade launcher.

Here's an interesting excerpt:




cheers,
Cross

Originally Posted by DRG

The squad integrated versions don't have smoke becasue there is no way to assign smoke rounds to a "mortar" in that case but the regular version of the 2in mortar certainly do have smoke rounds. 7 - 9 of them in most cases which averages to 66% of their total ammo load


Don

smoke is not "ammo" in the game - there is no way to mobhack it. It is an attribute that is added to an element by the code, for weapon slot 1, and not the weapon.

The problem with the 2 inch was that it took up 2 men (if the platoon assigned the appropriate crew), for a marginally useful device. The main problem was humping the ammunition (and HE was only rarely issued, it was meant for smoke and illuminating). A dozen or so rounds between the 2 guys would be about all that could reasonably be carried. Sights were just a white line painted on the tube, so anyone skilful with the thing did it through a lot of firing practice!

Those 2 men could be used for more useful tasks in the rifle platoons, which were always short of manpower. Sometimes then the platoon sergeant humped it and a very few rounds in his backpack instead.

The PIAT or later the 84mm MAW however, were seen as useful and justifying the manpower assigned to the beasties and their weight, and that of their ammunition.

However, by 1975 our 2 inchers sat and festered in the armoury and were only brought out for the annual recruit training course where a few rounds of smoke and illum were fired to demonstrate it to the newbies. (We had the Shermuly single-shot flare that could be assigned to any grunt by then, and decent smoke grenades ditto.)

Apparently though the new 51mm has had a good response - as it had sights (a simple bubble level) and a useful range - 750 metres or so, plus HE was regularly issued (And that had a pre-fragmented case). And it seems the new 60mm commando mortar is popular as well.

The 2 inch in UK platoon HQs was really only added for those players that think it was some sort of "super duper giant grenade launcher". It was not - it was a smoke and flare thrower that many units simply left in the rear line transport and only brought forwards for the formal assaults. HE ammo for it was like hen's teeth.

Cheers
Andy