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WWII Allied JTAC Anyone?


SUNTSAG

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I would certainly have nothing against having a jeep you can drive around in :)

 

I don't know that much about JTAC in WWII, but from my understanding, it wasn't someone driving around and picking targets.

 

Since aerial ground support was pretty much in its infancy back then, there were a whole lot of methods used to direct ground attacks, not just colored smoke.

 

I recall reading that they actually had something like a yellow poncho that some poor soul had to wear and stand out in a field with his arms outstretched to present as large of a visual as possible, to give the pilots a visual reference. I guess the ground support pilots were then instructed attack some visible landmark in some direction from the guy wearing the yellow poncho, like a crossroad or a farm or whatever at a distance of a couple hundred yards from the yellow poncho.

 

At any rate, it was very difficult to designate a target, and friendly fire by ground support was not terribly uncommon.

 

Going from Bunyap's campaigns, in Normandy there was a command center (Kennway IIRC), which allocated flights to ground targets of opportunity and vectored them to detected enemy aircraft incursions, based on intel from units in the field.

 

How to implement that into DCS, I have no idea, but it is something I think not only ought to be implemented, but would be fun to have in missions.

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I would certainly have nothing against having a jeep you can drive around in :)

 

I don't know that much about JTAC in WWII, but from my understanding, it wasn't someone driving around and picking targets.

 

Since aerial ground support was pretty much in its infancy back then, there were a whole lot of methods used to direct ground attacks, not just colored smoke.

 

I recall reading that they actually had something like a yellow poncho that some poor soul had to wear and stand out in a field with his arms outstretched to present as large of a visual as possible, to give the pilots a visual reference. I guess the ground support pilots were then instructed attack some visible landmark in some direction from the guy wearing the yellow poncho, like a crossroad or a farm or whatever at a distance of a couple hundred yards from the yellow poncho.

 

At any rate, it was very difficult to designate a target, and friendly fire by ground support was not terribly uncommon.

 

Going from Bunyap's campaigns, in Normandy there was a command center (Kennway IIRC), which allocated flights to ground targets of opportunity and vectored them to detected enemy aircraft incursions, based on intel from units in the field.

 

How to implement that into DCS, I have no idea, but it is something I think not only ought to be implemented, but would be fun to have in missions.

 

To be fair it is simply an option that can be made available within the constraints of DCS as it currently stands.

 

JTACs or FACs call them what you will were implemented during WWII at a basic level by the British particularly during the North Africa campaign. The Australians also used this facility during the Pacific campaign.

 

Wiki Info:

 

However, forward air control during World War II came into existence as a result of exigency, and was used in several theaters of World War II. Its reincarnation in action was a result of field expedience rather than planned operations.[13]

 

 

British Mobile Fighter Controllers operating in North Africa during World War II

In the Pacific Theater, 4 Squadron of the Royal Australian Air Force began forward air control at the Battle of Buna-Gona, New Guinea in November 1942. The RAAF continued forward air control in the Pacific for the rest of the war.[14] By November 1943, the U.S. Marines were using forward air control during the Battle of Bougainville.[citation needed]

 

On the Allied side in the European Theater, British forces in North Africa began using the Forward Air Support Links, a "tentacle" system that used radio links from front line units to the rear requesting close air support from the next "cab rank" of on-call airborne fighter-bombers. The requesting unit would direct the air strikes. The U.S. Army would not copy the British system until the invasion of Italy, but adapted it for use there and in France after the D-Day Invasion of 6 June 1944.[15]

 

The United States would end World War II still without an air control doctrine. When the U.S. Air Force split from the U.S. Army in 1947, neither took on the responsibility for forward air control; the U.S. military thus had no functional forward air control when the Korean War broke out.[15]

 

An added dimension to mission building was my thought. :thumbup:

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I think my point is, that it shouldn't be represented by a jeep scooting about the battlefield looking for targets.

 

I think the first major issue is that we can't even come close to representing what the Normandy battlefield on the ground looked like. From my reading you could expect about an infantry regiment covering about a mile of frontage -- ofc with a thousand variation of an ever changing battlefield -- and especially in bocage-country, there was no way for it to even happen.

 

Something similar, which the US Army did implement, were Forward Observers (FO's) for artillery; often officers from regimental artillery command, attached down to brigades. But other than in dire situations, they cleared any fire missions through the battalion commander, or implemented the battalion commanders requests for artillery support. So mostly they were translating the infantry's requests into terms the artillery could quickly react to, and were better able to communicate to the artillery adjustments to fire missions, which were practically always necessary.

 

I can't really imagine it working much differently with FAC's.

When you hit the wrong button on take-off

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CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D PSU: Corsair HX1200 PSU Monitor: ASUS MG279Q, 27"
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Please don't try to read more into that paragraph, than what it says.

 

In modern military terminology, you would say that the R.A.F. pilot was attached to an infantry unit.

 

What is described, is that they moved with the infantry, and not that they were independent. So the "car" was simply the carrier the radio set for the FAC to use. IMHO nothing more specific can be said of the situation.

 

I'm not saying the jeep ought to be omitted, but that it ought not be independent.

When you hit the wrong button on take-off

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System Specs.

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System board: MSI X670E ACE Memory: 64GB DDR5-6000 G.Skill Ripjaw System disk: Crucial P5 M.2 2TB
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D PSU: Corsair HX1200 PSU Monitor: ASUS MG279Q, 27"
CPU cooling: Noctua NH-D15S Graphics card: MSI RTX 3090Ti SuprimX VR: Oculus Rift CV1
 
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Having an Allied WW2 vehicle that could be player controlled, would be perfect as a forward operator/director, reconnaissance unit or simply as an airport marshal. The Jeep would be great for that task. Having it integrated into Combined Arms would add a lot to our missions.

 

 

 

 

Examples and references:

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RAAF_controllers_Tarakan.jpg

 

http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/Duggy009/media/bWVkaWFJZDo5Nzk4NzI3Nw==/

 

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/R5FOYmv6Ra4/hqdefault.jpg

 

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/ea/4e/3aea4ed357de43abf9f2fd9f949d2779.jpg

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_air_control_operations_during_World_War_II

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  • 5 years later...

 Captain Orso: "don't know that much about JTAC in WWII, but from my understanding, it wasn't someone driving around and picking targets."

I am trying writing some JTAC missions for a Normandy P-47 campaign I am building and found this post in my research..

You're right, Cap, you don't know much (anything?) about JTAC in WWII. The 9th US Air Force used it used it and they rode in  Sherman tanks, not jeeps. They coordinated the tactical aircraft directly with the supported ground unit in real time. The technique was designed by Gen. Pete Quesada, commander of IX Tactical Air Command. To test it, he personally took a borrowed Sherman tank outfitted with radios on multiple bands so he could talk to both ground and air units. The tank rode in the van of an armored column. Above, a flight of four P-47s flew as scouts for the tank column, rotating the duty every half hour. Other P-47s were ready to scramble if the patrol needed help. The tactic was called "Armored Column Cover" (ACC).

The first ACC mission was flown on 26 July 1944, the day after the launch of Operation Cobra, with 75 ACC missions flown with more than 300 P-47s. The next day more than  100 missions were flown. ACC remained a mainstay of IX TAC and later XIX TAC through the rest of the war. Doctrine was changed and TO&Es were modified so that units had a designated tank for tactical air control.

"

“Normandy operations, typified by Quesada's armored column cover and Broadhurst's contact cars, thus fulfilled a concept born a quarter-century earlier, amid the mud of Flanders: the notion of the airplane as a partner of the tank, as a "counter antitank" weapon. In that war, then-Colonel J.F.C. Fuller, Great Britain's greatest armor advocate, had recognized that cooperation between air and armor forces was "of incalculable importance.”

 Richard P. Hallion, D-Day 1944 - Air Power Over The Normandy Beaches And Beyond [Illustrated Edition]
 

Edited by HotTom

Exceptional engineering...and a large hammer to make it fit!

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