LCVP carrying?

[Plain Ian]

I'm still playing or really reading Robert Kershaw's excellent book The Fury of Battle and looking at the PzB Battles of Normandy.

In the Omaha scenarios I wondered why there were 'extra' LCVP units on the map which were not carrying units? I've realised that they can be used to pick up units which have been mysteriously deployed in Water when they arrived as reinforcements and carry them to the beach.

However when I try to pick up the mortar units I receive an error message? These are strange units which are small 60mm sized but are labelled as Towed but Foot? It looks like I can't load them? Yes?

2024-03-26_12h24_07.png (555.59 KiB) Viewed 189 times

[RickyB]

I designed each of the landings based on what that beach was like. So for Omaha, the initial landings were such a fiasco, so it uses scatter to place those initial units, and I always thought it gives a good feel for the randomness that occurred, with some stretches of the beach nearly empty and others crowded, but overall units were not landing together. Hence the units randomly ending up in the water, and the landing craft to pick them up - which also represents some of the landing craft damaged on the way in and other craft coming to the rescue of men abandoning the sinking boats.

Anyway, for the mortar unit, even though the rule seems to state a single unit could carry 4 guns, maybe try a larger unit. From memory I seem to remember that it is a 1 to 1 relationship so it may take 3 landing craft??? As to the towed/foot, I don't recall that. I will check it out and see if something is off. I assume this is with the latest release of PzB Normandy, correct?

Rick

[RickyB]

In checking things out in the game, I do think the manual is wrong and it takes 1 landing craft per gun - or likely per vehicle/tank also.

Regarding the Towed Guns/foot, that is how the mortars are set up in the OOB. I suspect the Mortar types are automatically towed guns, not configurable - but the mortar has foot speed etc so I believe it works okay. At least I don't recall ever having an unexpected issue playing with them.

[Plain Ian]

Scatter for units is fine.

I've checked and yes you are right that it takes 3 LCVP's to load 3 60mm mortars? So 1 tank/vehicle/mortar? requires 1 LCVP.

I think what confuses things is if you look at scenarios like Getting Started, LCVP units start the scenario 'overstacked' as I see 1 LCVP units carrying 3 60mm mortar units or say 2LCVP's carrying 5 or 6 M4's?