Indirect Fire: A guide to curving your shots with low-velocity howitzers

[RwdSeb 44]

 

What if I told you, there's already an effective way to perform indirect fire with some slight means of accuracy? What if I told you, you could get some hits, and maybe a kill, with your Ho-Ro or Sturmpanzer II without ever leaving your spawn?

 

A nice location to artillery-snipe from

 

Here's how you master your artillery!

 

1) Using a physical ruler, and your rangefinder in-game, get a good ratio of distance to length on your mini-map.

If you don't know how to use your rangefinder, simply bind the command to any key on your keyboard via the Controls menu (I bound it to X). When in-game, switch to your gunner sight, and press the rangefinder command. A popup will appear, saying "Measuring Range", and when the popup disappears, it will be replaced by a number showing approximate range between you and what your reticle is pointing at, in meters.

 

As you can see, the distance between me and this grass is 45 meters

 

I prefer doing this with a ruler. Hold the ruler up to the screen, and measure the length between your position (typically your spawn point, as you have likely just spawned in) and some random landmark. At the same time, use your rangefinder in-game and measure the distance to said landmark.

For example, on my 1366x768 15" screen, with Tactical Map scale at 75%, 1cm on Carpathians roughly equaled 400 meters.

 

 

2) Now that you've established a good ratio between distance and mini-map length, be sure to tell your allies to mark enemy positions. Once one is marked, you must quickly get to work!
Pull out the ol'e ruler and measure the distance between you and the marker's position. Using your ratio, convert that distance to in-game meters quickly, and then position yourself to fire.

Now, to elevate your gun. Using the distance to the enemy you worked out, lift your gun so that your distance matches with the numbers in your scope. Each of those little ticks in the scope represents 200 meters, with the numbers counting in hundreds of meters. So, if the distance between you and your enemy was 800 meters, lift your gun barrel so that the number "8" points approximately at the target.

 

Someone's marked an enemy; get to work!

 

3) FIRE!

 

If all goes well, you're likely going to get a hit! Remember, this isn't exactly the easiest or best way to kill, and I wouldn't recommend it for grinding. However, it's a nice fun way to get away from "normal" gameplay and try something new, and how cool is it to tell your squadmate, "Hey, mark on the map and within seconds there'll be a boom there!"?

 

It works best on maps with many hills, where curving your shots would actually provide a neat advantage compared to simply spamming Dicker Maxes and Nashorns, and sniping the targets. It may also work with some urban maps where the buildings aren't especially tall, and with hills around the general area to give you a good vantage point.

 

I also recommend choosing a firing position that is flat and level, to minimize any corrections needed for your target being at a different elevation. 

 

BOOM! (side note, as you can see in this image, I got into a position where I could see the target. This isn't exactly "indirect fire" per se, but I did this to minimize confusion. A good artillery player makes his hits from behind a hill)

 

If you guys have any tips and methods of improving these tactics, be sure to explain in a reply!

Edited April 23, 2017 by SkyEye_MCCIX

[gomine123 391]

which tanks can you do this with

[Theoask79 190]

Hello,

 

I tried your tutorial with the  Sturmpanzer but I never hit any enemy tank. Do you have another method to be more accurate please?

 

Regards

[Bull_Halsey 2]

There is no real good way of doing this in War Thunder; unfortunately, and it is made even worse by the fact that the mini maps in war thunder, and the coordinates placed over them, are not set and consistent. You would think that each map square would be 1km by 1km, but no, and this varies on every different map and game mode. To really do this effectively, you need to form a bit of a battery with other people and have someone else flying in an observer aircraft (and if you know how to make a custom artillery sight to help fire indirectly). Possible lineups could consist off: 3 Sturmpanzers or StuH 42G or Brummbär (the Brummbär is almost purpose built for this) and a He-123 or He-51, or Ju-87, 3 BM-13s or Su-122s (or even a Kv-2, and an IS-2, but an IS-2 is only really effective in very VERY extreme ranges, as in, from the tank spawn to the enemy airfield, since the IS-2's gun is too high velocity to lob shots effectively) and an I-153 or I-16, 3 Ho-Ros (or Chi-Has with the naval gun) and a ki-43 or A6M, 3 75mm M3 GMC or M8 or M4A3 105 or even with the normal 75mm Shermans and the M10 and a F3F, or SB2C. The idea is, you get a battery vehicles with a very big gun that packs a lot of HE filler into a shell and is capable of lobbying that shell (or rocket) a great distance in a big arc, with a slow aircraft flying overhead spotting targets, giving bearings and possible rages, and observing the fall of shot. The British, French, and Italians, as of now, have no real vehicles that fit this purpose, and the best the Americans have is a few 75mm and 105mm howitzers and low(ish) velocity guns (though M10s were used in the indirect artillery fire role, and did a decent job, since a 75mm HE shell would do the job of a larger shell in terms of clearing out machine gun nests, but also didn't make the roads useless afterwards). Another thing that is useful is to print out larger images of the maps, and labelling positions for artillery, and the ranges from those positions to various landmarks.

Even with all that, this is not a particularly accurate way of playing the game (even though I find it fun) and that is probably why Gaijin is not really making it easy or rewarding to play this role in the game. That is why you have to get a division of 3 artillery pieces, and even then results might be mixed. I would recommend using something like the Soviet Bm-13N, as it can salvo 16 rockets in a very short amount of time, and a battery of these on a map like Kursk or Mozdok, sitting in a base point for armament reloads launching massed salvos and then reloading, with an I-153P, as it has cannons so it can hold its own, spotting and judging the fall of shot.