While thinking of artillery fire control the other day (as one does) I realised that the Rapid Fire rules have a flaw that leads to unrealistic results. I canonly speak for the Brits - and if anyone can complete the story for the US, Germans, or Russians I'd like to hear it. The problem is that we are encouraged to model the fire control capability as one 'spotter' per infantry battalion/armoured regiment, with a backup through battalion/regimental HQ. In fact, the fire control function for artillery was vested in the first placein forward observation officers (FOOs) or OP offcers (different name for same thing). There were not quite enough to go round to give one per company/squadron, but it would be usual to have three per battalion/regiment. The other major player was the Battery Commander (BC) who had better communications, who usually spent his time with Battalion/Regt HQ. His job was supervision and future planning of the observers' role and coordinating deliberately planned fire in 'fire plans' (a fascinating subject which I won't expand on here...). There was a secondary fire control system by which anyone who saw a target could send the details to a Gunner and get him to do the communicating with the guns (called 'Artillery Target Indication'). Therefore, the 'spotting' capability ran throughout the unit at every level. Vesting it in a single vehicle/group of figures that could be killed in one happy dice throw is just unhistorical. I have put up with this un-realism because it is in the rules and the games go pretty well anyway, but it has struck me that there may be a good way of modelling it properly without anybody having to paint any more figures... Let the 'spotter' vehicle become the Battery Commander, and deploy it as part of Battalion/Regt HQ. Give no more than 3 companies/squadrons perbattalion/regiment a spotting capability as good as the current 'spotter'. When there are any casualties in that company/squadron roll a die to see if the spotter has been hit (I suggest a 5 or 6 to hit). If he has, remove the spotting capability. Where there is nobody with a spotter within sight of a target, then anyone can use artillery target indication. This was a very uncertain activity. The following things can go wrong: 1) Can't get through to a Gunner on the radio. 2) Doesn't get the grid reference of the target accurately. 3) The target description is not good enough for its priority to be assessed as important enough to put guns onto it. Back to Frontline Vol. 3 Iss. 1 Table of Contents Back to Frontline List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Rolfe Hedges This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com