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Smoke munitions

12 May 2015, 20:13 PM
#1
avatar of Vuther
Senior Moderator Badge

Posts: 3103 | Subs: 1

In my time looking up military stuff, I noticed something about smoke munitions in World War 2...

WHERE'S THE STUFF ON IT!? Just about anything I can find on the matter is quite scant. Perhaps it has to do with said munitions being relied on infrequently from wind simply blowing the things away, but I can't even find the designations of nations' smoke grenades. Anyone already knowledgeable on the topic got something to share about it?
12 May 2015, 21:50 PM
#2
avatar of somenbjorn

Posts: 923

Not sure if Im much help here. My point of interest is the Soviet-German war but not the military things, others will help you on that, but rather the social, political and economic side of things.

When it comes to designating Soviet munitions the old GAU index is uses.

So 53 for artillery shell. D for Dymovye (smoke). And three numbers making it unique. (Shells of same caliber are placed next to eachother.)

As such the smoke for the ML-20 is: 53-D-530, and WP is 53-D-540.


Edit: I see I misread and have been no help at all. Sorry about that. But maybe you have more luck in your search with just the name of the shells.
12 May 2015, 22:53 PM
#3
avatar of turbotortoise

Posts: 1283 | Subs: 4

yeah! the exact same thing happened to me last month after i watched an episode of band of brothers, crossroads. before charging an embankment Cpt. Winters chucked red smoke, as a "signal" not sure what, or why.

what little i could find was an "infantry manual" stating what the smoke could be used for. it seemed it wasn't specific as to x was used for y. it leads me to believe that, that was decided at the operational level and varied quite often, especially when examining the episodes of mis-identification and friendly fire from misunderstandings.

i think the material i found was here: http://www.lonesentry.com/intelbulletin/tt_trends.html
a ctrl+f "smoke" should bring up some cool articles, generally involving axis tactics:

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt/german-smoke-tactics.html
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt09/smokescreens.html
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/smoke-combat-troops.html
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt08/attack-cover-area-smoke-screen.html
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt/german-area-smoke-screen.html

13 May 2015, 18:16 PM
#4
avatar of MarcoRossolini

Posts: 1042

There's fleeting footage of Soviet soldiers using it in Berlin, but likely it's staged.

There were cases of airdropping smoke to support an assault.

There's this marvellous memoir by Anna Egorova who specifically details a mission she and her unit was given when they had to drop smoke to cover an assault at a specific point on a specific schedule to cover an assault.

According to the memoir it seemed to work.
14 May 2015, 15:52 PM
#5
avatar of coh2player

Posts: 1571

In Stalingrad, the use of smoke was frequent. I have read directives/best practices documents about the employment of smoke. A typical way to clear out buildings was to methodically toss smoke and explosives into them.
14 May 2015, 16:08 PM
#6
avatar of Kobunite
Patrion 15

Posts: 615

yeah! the exact same thing happened to me last month after i watched an episode of band of brothers, crossroads. before charging an embankment Cpt. Winters chucked red smoke, as a "signal" not sure what, or why.


IIRC, in "Beyond Band of Brothers" Dick Winters himself talks about that incident and explained in more and less-dramatised detail what happened there. Worth a read. I can't remember what he said, but I'll try and look it up later.
22 May 2015, 13:15 PM
#7
avatar of squippy

Posts: 484

Yes indeed well worth it; I read that too and found it fascinating. I had more or less assumed that the BoB characters were composites, and to a degree they still are, but they also leaned heavily on direct, specific, personal experiences much more than I had anticipated.
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