Economic way of generating a smoke screen

[Tcao]

Hi
wondering if the smoke screen thickness and duration in the targeted hex is associated with number of smoke rounds fired upon?

smoke.jpg (71.84 KiB) Viewed 1384 times

Can a one round with one minutes fire mission generate a good smoke screen ?

thx

[IronMikeGolf]

During testing, I settled in on 1 rd/tube over a minute. My test was a Bde doing a deliberate attack vs a battalion defense that included 2 minefield belts. I put in 4 to 6 lanes and laid about 10 km of smoke (an entire valley).

It took a 155mm bn and one mortar plt to do that. The batteries and plt were all 6 tube units. I laid in using missions of three adjacent targets per firing unit, with each firing unit having 2 groups of three. I started laying it before the two breaching companies actually found the mine belts.

I usually ended up with each firing unit shooting each target twice (1 to 6, then start again). I occasionally had a minute or so gap in the smoke here and there that would last a minute.

Something to keep in mind is the Order Delay between arty missions. For US, it's 5 minutes. Add another minute for actually issuing the order and it's 6 minutes between rounds landing from hex to hex for a firing unit.