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Chapter 3 Tactics
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Specific tips for weapons are as follows:
• Don’t order your mortars to fire at infantry hiding in bunkers or buildings
because bunkers have very thick roofs; you can expend all of your mortar
ammunition trying to blast your way through without killing or wounding the
enemy. While you might be able to blast through the roofs of buildings, this
still isn’t an efficient use of ammunition.
• Because mortars lob a shell in an arcing rather than flat trajectory, you should
use mortars against troops in the open, troops under trees (where airbursts can
be deadly), or troops with protection only on one side (behind a stone wall).
• Don’t order your antitank teams to fire at infantry. You’ll want to save your
antitank weapons (American Bazooka, German Panzerfaust and
Panzerschreck) for enemy tanks and other vehicles. However, you may want
to use an antitank team occasionally if the enemy infantry is hiding in a
building or bunker.
• If you’re the American commander, don’t order an infantry team armed with
rifles to fire at a tank and expect the tank to be disabled. Remember, Close
Combat reflects the reality of the Normandy Campaign; you’ll need either
numerical superiority or superior firepower to engage German tanks.
• Don’t order your machine gun teams to fire at a fixed target too long when
you want suppression fire. You should switch the target at least once to
maximize the effect of the suppression fire.
• If cover for both sides is equal, the team or teams with the most firepower
wins. For example, if American and German rifle teams are both behind stone
walls and firing at each other, the Americans will win (all other things being
equal). This is because they are armed with Garand semiautomatic rifles,
which have a faster rate of fire (rounds per minute or rpm) than the Gewehr 98
bolt action rifles the Germans use.
• When a mortar team is out of ammunition, you can send them to the front line
to throw their smoke grenades and use their carbines.
• When you want to place a smoke screen, use your mortar teams first to place
smoke for their ability to lob smoke over tall terrain. Smoke screens are the
most useful coverage for open areas.
• Keep your antitank infantry teams (Bazookas or Panzerschrecks and
Panzerfausts) spread out; deploying them too closely means one shell could
wipe them out.