Artillery smoke availability

[chuckfourth]

Hi PatG
Very excellent work on the trains I must say.
for what its worth from
http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/fireplan.htm
"Smoke screens, using base ejection (BE) smoke, were used in fire plans, they could be predicted, although a `tester' to confirm the local wind was often used. Screens could be multi or single battery and positioned about 250 yards from the enemy to be blinded. Gun aim-points were placed in a line, with the distance between them depending on the wind direction. If the wind was along the line of the required screen then points were 300 yards apart, if across the line they were 75 yards apart. Whenever smoke was used there were alternative HE targets in case the screen was ineffective. One technique was to create a lane for advancing armour a few hundred yards wide between two screens, these blinded defiladed anti-tank guns, if the wind was favourable these screens could be rolling. Smoke screens could be sustained for long periods, on at least one occasion all day. "
Best Regards Chuck.

[cbo]

chuckfourth said:
Hello
It seems all in-game off map and on-map aritllery can fire smoke. However probably half or more of these guns didnt have a smoke round. As an example look at http://www.tarrif.net/ This site only shows smoke for the German 105mm standard divisional field piece, one of the 150mm guns and the 120mm mortar. Leaving the German 75mm, 77mm, 17cm, 21cm guns and 81mm mortar all without smoke, which they do have in-game.

I dont think you should assume that just because tarrif.net and other webpages does not list a smoke round for a give gun, it couldn't fire or wasn't issued this type of ammunition. Tarrif.net does not list all available ammunition types for each gun, far from it. There were plenty of 75mm smoke shells available for German artillery, even for the 7.5cm PaK, at least when converted to a field artillery piece.

Mortars, even the smaller ones, could fire smoke rounds. The US 81mm certainly had smoke rounds as did the little British 2" weapon. I'd doubt the Germans were any different.

In any case, tarrif.net does list several 75mm smoke rounds for various German guns, including the 7,5cm IG

Claus B