BM-13 deployment

[vince hughes]

Looking at the SSR's for BM-13, they make no mention of the deployment of the BM-13 from the "moving" side to the "firing side". So the question becomes should the BM-13 be required to unlimber like a gun or just flip over after moving with a possible movement cost? Thoughts.

One historical point, it seems that the Soviet crews prided themselves on the ability to quickly fire the rockets are well as reload or be ready to move to avoid counter-battery fire.

The 'Stalin's Organ' is not greatly modelled in PG no matter what is decided here. You'll see why below.

My first thought would be that if there was no need for a flip of any sort, then it would not have a firing side and a moving side. So obviously something has to be done as far as readying to fire.

For deployment, we used the normal flip rules. It's worth noting that as well as the crews of the rockets, you also had the drivers, an equal amount of replen vehicles and some maintenace vehicles that actually followed the firing units around. If the unit moves, these guys would all have to jump out thereafter, get to the rockets, calculate arc to some degree and mechanically put the weapon in the ready to fire position.

Now I have heard that such batteries could be ready to fire on order within 7-8 minutes. Whether this includes the aiming, whether this includes driving to a spot and getting everybody out and priming the weapon, I don't know, but it would suggest that best case scenario (given a PG 15 minute turn) is that in any turn it 'flipped', it would only be able to move half its MP's for a total 4 MP's.

However, where the BM-13 is a bit 'mythical' in PG is the amount it does actually fire. It could deliever its rounds in seconds, perhaps 10-20 seconds dependent on the size of the racks and number of rocketsupon them (there were many variants). However, to re-load the thing back up could take up to 50 minutes.

Personally, with a flip side, I think at best, it could move 4 MPs and then flip over-and at worst, take a turn to flip over.