Squishy Landing Craft

[SteveT]

Just checking I’ve got this right…

I can find Landing Craft in a couple of Campaign Books. They have armour 6, except the big mechanised ones that have 7.

Now, it strikes me that the Armour 6 ones are going to take a hammering from any AT guns/tanks, and even a riflemen could destroy it with a single shot. Unless such craft don’t get treated as other soft skin vehicles?   And to make matters worse, they are open-topped. so the poor passengers are going to be heavily pinned before they even get sand on their boots?

Thanks

 

[Master Chief]

Soft-skinned vehicles (6+) are not automatically destroyed when damage is scored by small arms fire rolling a 6. Damage by small arms against soft-skinned vehicles also need to make the additional roll on the Damage Results Against Vehicles table (Bolt Action 2nd Ed, page 108) to determine the final outcome.

[SteveT]

Thanks Master Chief. But it still seems that even a lone rifleman, as far as I can see, can take out a massive landing craft with a good shot. A boat so big that it can fit 36 passengers.  This cannot be right?

This rule seals the deal brutally : “Remember that the superficial damage modifier only applies to armoured vehicles. Soft-skins suffer full damage as normal every time they are damaged,”

Plus the fact that it is unlikely not a single rifleman but a whole squad firing, these poor landing craft are going to get shredded aren’t they?

We are preparing for an amphibious landing game but its looks suicidal.

It feels to me that such craft should have more meat on their bones due to their sheer size.

 

 

 

 

 

[invisible officer]

With 36 men I think you refer to the LCV . A look in the contemporary ONI 226 handbook shows  it had no armor at all. The fuel tank was under the pilots position. Those with Diesel engines may be safe, those with gasoline – boom or burning.

Real world Riflemen are deadly, for example the typical German K98 user in Normandie had SMK rounds  to fight vehicles  (Spitzgeschoss mit Kern). These steel core bullets pierced the hull like paper. Going through some guys and often passing the other side of boat.

The MG crews had SMK too.

 

Add that many could fire from a cliff,inside the oppen topped craft and you understand why they lost so many men.

 

Only the smokescreens prevented a 100 % massaker.

[Master Chief]

We are preparing for an amphibious landing game but its looks suicidal.

Haha I have no doubt it is. I have always thought it was a miracle for a soldier to survive D-Day, as the odds of being killed were so high.

[Author]

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