Re: Enhanced mobility for infantry

"Arved Sandstrom" <asandstrom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:qsrug.49983$B91.1917@xxxxxxxxxxx

If you do go in for isolated guns you are taking chances. The Germans used
isolated guns in WW2 for spotting and also for drawing fire, and for misling
the enemy as to the actual battery position, but the Germans are Germans,
and they got away with a lot of stuff.

In real life, a howitzer is a half-squad at best, and a battery under
immediate threat is six to eight half-squads plus a few other fireteam
equivalents drawn from other people. As such, how much terrain do you want
to cover with perhaps two platoons worth of people that really translate
into eight or ten sections of folks that don't work together like infantry
do? Add in the fact that howitzers and gun-howitzers don't exactly have much
chance in mobile warfare to dig in, and they need to be in the open so as
not to shoot trees. I'd have a pretty tight battery layout myself.

What you discover, I would dearly like to know. I'd be particularly
interested to find out what Canadian FOOs are doing. I have some
questions
about why Goddard was in an armoured vehicle, and whether that's usual
practise. I don't recommend it. FOs should blend in - not be in
distinctive
command groups.

It was a mounted operation at that point and they were moving about in
LAV-IIIs. FOOs move in vehicles of the same type as the force they are
supporting (look for the extra antennae).

I do know this. I don't entirely agree with it, but it's not uncommon. I
actually put in a spec back in about '89 or '90 that said it was ridiculous
to have a grunt battalion brain - the Ops O, the Air officer, the arty LnO,
the NGF liaison, and the mortar dude - all jammed into a vulnerable AAV with
antennas sticking out all over, and a single RPG could have whacked the
entire thinktank. The argument was that with everyone of the key players in
the same vehicle they could communicate - which is actually horsecrap, since
you can't make yourself understood for screaming. My spec - helped out a bit
by a few other 0861s of various ranks, and encouraged by my major at the
time - was to modify hardshell HMMWVs to become Marine FIST vehicles, with
the idea that the FO would have pretty major SA and visibility.

There is a LAV-III variant FOO veh, AIUI. Apart from the extra antennae (and
the Golf C/S) it is much like the rest, right down to the 25 mm Buttsmasher.

I am not dissing the late officer. She was an FO, so was I, and we are all
of the same brotherhood (sisterhood). I do believe that she'd still be with
us if she'd hopped the LAV and done her thing from the ground. In the
Marines a spotter or observer rarely worked from inside a vehicle - the only
time I ever did was when attached to tanks. We determined then that it was
stupid to expect me to actually be able to spot fire from inside a tank, so
they made me the loader.

I know you weren't dissing her. I thought you might know Marmo. My thought
about his rant was, "You weren't on the ground and I doubt you have better
sources than I; you should not second guess her." (I had been talking to the
G4 of the Land Force, D Arty and a former RCR major who is now at General
Dynamics and who is in the loop for LAV product improvement purposes.) I know
the supported arm was still manoeuvring, and a FOO cannot effectively support
from foot a company that is moving away at 300 metres a minute and more
without being on a commanding height.

I have the feeling that if an artillery battery came under attack, to the
extent that they actually needed extra help, every other artillery unit
inside the range fan would drop all other missions and just start pumping
out rounds. To add to your Latin: NOSTROS SUBVENIMUS.

"We relieve ourselves"? ;^) I did three years of Latin -- Catullus, the
Aeneid, De Bello Gallico et cetera ad nauseam. I think I have a chit
somewhere
that excuses me from adding to that. I would construe it as "we come to
the
aid of our own."

You construe pretty accurately. "We come to help our own/we come to assist
ours". "nostri" means "our [people]"; "subvenimus" has the connotation of
arriving to assist.

Whose motto?

While we're at it, here's an old lie: "De Urbis Ottaviensis summus et vostros
subvenimus."

"We relieve ourselves" is simply "mingimus" :-) Churchill in WW2 might have
said that "in Rhenum minxi".

"Subvenire" also has the conotation of "to relieve" but is not, obviously, a
synonym of "mingere." What's a pun between friends?

UBIQUE QUO FAS ET GLORIA DUCUNT. [2 separate mottos, which fact many gunners
don't know]

And what are the odds that I did not already know that? :^)
--
Andrew Chaplin
SIT MIHI GLADIUS SICUT SANCTO MARTINO
(If you're going to e-mail me, you'll have to get "yourfinger." out.)


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