The Effectiveness of Flanking MG Fire

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Saw an interesting documentary by National Geographic last night: "Guns: Machines of War". The focus was on the development of the MG from the early Gatling gun to the 1 tonne 7 barrelled (each barrel about 21Ft long) 30mm found in the A10 Warthog.

One issue they raised was the importance of 'flanking fire'. They demonstrated this with a Vickers and 250 helium filled balloons, tied down 6ft off the ground and spaced like a WWI company advance (I think 50 balloons line abreast by 5 balloons deep about 6-8ft between balloons). The Vic had only 250 rounds of ammo and at several hundred yards tried to 'kill' as many as possible. They did this twice, once with the MG in front of the "advance" and once with the MG in a flanking position.

The Vic scored 37 'kills' from the front and 240 from the flank. The reason was of course that bullets traveling the length of the company (about 50 balloons deep) had far greater chance of striking someone than bullets going through the depth of the company (about 5 deep). Some individual bullets clearly went through several balloons; as would be the case -to a lesser extent- with powerful ammo going through people.

For me, this raises a slight SP improvement opportunity. I like the more recent tweak that has MG fire wandering into adjacent hexes. But I wonder if this would be more accurately modelled if the MG fire strayed into the hexes directly in front and behind the target hex, perhaps even 2 or 3 hexes in front or behind, but always in 'line of fire' rather than drifting off to the left or the right which is just not as realistic.

This reminds me of the SP improvement made way back, when artillery used to come down in a predictable 4 hex zigzag line, but now comes down in a more realtic random pattern.

But for MGs isn't it more realistic for bullets to wander into and hit those areas directly in line of fire? MGs don't nearly as often miss way off to the left and right.


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