How effective was a German Artillery Batterie?

[The Adder]

Gentlemen,

Feldgrau has a great forum, with many good postings. Recently there was a posting asking the above question. I bring you the excellent answer from "Vinnie" here:

"Artillery shells fired at low angle (i.e., less than 1600 mils or 45 degrees) have a burst pattern where the side spray is greater than the depth, by perhaps 50%. The 105mm HE shell burst is about 30 meters across and perhaps 20 meters deep. In this zone 50% of the men standing upright when the shell detonates are expected to become casualties (perhaps 1/4 killed and 3/4 wounded). Individual fragments travel much farther than this, but the percentage of casualties falls off rapidly.

The burst for 150mm HE shell is about 50 meters wide and 30 meters deep.

The 4 guns of a 105 howitzer battery would then pretty well cover 120 meters of front, perhaps half the frontage of an infantry platoon. 6 pieces would cover about 180 meters. The bursts can be concentrated more or spread more openly if the fire direction center is willing to be fancy, but in general the shells will land in the same pattern as the guns are laid out at the battery.

The 4 guns of a 150cm howitzer battery would cover about 200 meters of front, still less than a single infantry platoon.

During WW2, the firing unit in the German Army was the battalion, not the battery. That is, the fire direction center was located at battalion headquarters and batteries were not capable of independent operation for indirect fire missions. This is not to say that batteries didn't occasionally compute and fire their own missions, just that they were neither equipped nor trained to do so.

Battalion HQ would send firing information to each of its batteries, or mass the entire battalion on one target and then rapidly shift the entire battalion to a new target. Modern artillery (i.e., since 1900) is massed at the TARGET, not at the GUNS.

"The German Infantry Handbook" by Alex Buchner says that a battery would take 45 minutes to occupy a position and lay the battery "after receiving instructions". This is an incredibly long time by post-war standards; an American battery in 1975 (when I was an artillery officer) had to occupy a position and have all 6 pieces laid in less than 5 minutes. I assume that the WW2 number includes perhaps 30 minutes to move to the new firing position.

WW2 artillery adjustments were quite slow by modern standards. 1 or 2 howitzers would begin firing at the calculated location of the target while the observation party recorded the fall of each shot and made adjustments. The time to recalculate the firing data (elevation, deflection (or traverse), and time of flight for time fuzes) would be a few minutes, perhaps 2 or 3. The firing data then had to be called to the guns by field telephone, the fuzes set, the powder increments counted and checked, elevation and traverse set by the assistant gunners and check by the section chief, and the order to fire received and executed. The rounds would then take perhaps 30-45 seconds to fly to the target, and the observers would need perhaps 1 minute to sense the rounds and announce their observation. One could then easily spend 15 minutes on the adjustment alone, before what Americans call "fire for effect" was opened. This would be the same for either 105mm or 150mm firing batteries.

Once a target had been centered in the bursts, the battery, or battalion or regiment, could fire quite rapidly at it. The 105mm could fire 6-8 rounds per minute; the 150mm 3-5 rounds per minute. This is actually limited only by the stamina of the crew; the guns can be fired as fast as shells can be loaded and the lanyard yanked.

A more practical consideration, however, is the rate of ammunition resupply. This might be as few as 5 rounds per gun per day (sometimes even less than that), meaning that a battery could fire only 1 mission. Management of the reserve ammunition, which numbered in the hundreds of rounds, was a critical task for battalion and regimental officers. There is also the problem that fuzes are also rationed, and so the battery might only get 1 time fuze per gun per day (and 4 point detonating fuzes). And the battery might get only 1 illumination round per gun per day (which must use the time fuze), or perhaps zero. And perhaps only 1 smoke screen round, or zero. Building an effective smoke screen without dozens of rounds per gun is impossible.

Clearly if the battery fired no shells at all on Tuesday, then they had 10 rounds per gun to fire on Wednesday, etc. I believe the Germans used the term "days of fire" (Munition fur einen Tag) to plan artillery consumption. For a major attack, batteries would be issued (or allowed to draw, since most artillery units had to use their own trucks and trailers to draw shells, powder, and fuzes) at least 5 days of fire. For the Ardennes attack in 1944 there was barely enough ammunition stockpiled to provide 3 days of fire to most battalions."

Reference link:

http://www.feldgrau.com/forum/messages2/11509.html

Best regards,

The Adder

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It is said, that civilised man seeks out good and intelligent company, so by learned discourse he may rise above the savage and closer to God. Personally, however, I like to start the day with a total dickhead, to remind me I'm best" - Edmund Blackadder

[Skipper]

Hmm... To say that 4 tubes will cover 120 meters of the front (that converts to 35 tubes per km) is okay as long as we are talking about one single trenchline only. The kind of concentration that was required to punch through prepared deep defense in WWII was about 3 to 5 times as much.

I've seen somewhere the then norms of shell expenditure per target. By the order of magnitude it's something like a hundred 75 mm shells per 100 m of trenchline and about same number for each bunker.

[Wayne]

As far as the time it took for a battery to occupy a position and lay the battery, don't forget that in WWII most German artillery was horse drawn so it probably took longer to move the guns around.

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Blessed be the Lord my strength who teaches my hands to war and my fingers to fight.

[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by Wayne:

As far as the time it took for a battery to occupy a position and lay the battery, don't forget that in WWII most German artillery was horse drawn so it probably took longer to move the guns around.

As my grandfather told me when I asked him about the horses - /shrug/ 'The gunners just had to cope' /shrug/

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Skipper]

Yup. Horses have their advantages, too. Like they don't need petrol, which was a deficit commodity. Plus much better cross-country abilities.

By the way, soviet grunts loved the 45-mm AT gun. All 570 kg of it could be (relatively) easily pulled around by hand - at walking speed. Together with a few (also not so heavy) shell boxes.

Therefore, the thing was commonly used like that in infantry assaults - an equivalent of SPG without the hassles of engine, petrol supplies etc.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

The problem with the fellow's calculation is he thinks he is bowling (only aiming in one dimension) and with laser-like accuracy I suppose, too.

A more practical calculation goes like this.

A battery of 4 105mm is given the order "battery, fire mission, 6 rounds, shell HE, fuse quick" etc. Each gun is going to fire 6 times, so a total of 24 rounds will arc over toward the target. And hit with a perfect pattern like the guns laid out on the ground? Ha!

No. Each shell will land in the same generally area, certainly. But they are going to go where they "want" to, each. There is air resistence, the shells are spinning and tunneling through a fluid, the powder burned slightly differently, it wasn't exactly the same amount in each powder bag from the factory, the guns have different degrees of "windage" and some are more "burnt out" than others, the gunners only aimed at the same angle to within a mil or two, etc. It adds up to the obvious practical result, that the shells are going to come down in a scatter-graph, not a neat pattern as the shooting guns are laid out in battery.

The distance from the aim point will follow a typical gaussian distribution. 2/3rds of the shells, for 105mm at typical ranges, will fall within 100 yards of the aim point on a good and tight shoot exactly directed by the FO. When a whole battalion fires, 200 yards is more like it.

So, 24 shells fires, 16 land within 100 yards of the aim point. It is just math them. The mean distance from the nearest shell going off is - 25 yards. Notice, that is the average for the burst (30x20 on his figures, close enough). The battery has to fire 6 rounds per gun to get that result, but it is the desired result. The targeted area is mostly blanketed with the "causalty zones" of the shell bursts. With some unevenness, of course, so not quite half the men can be expected to be hit by it. (Some will also have managed to leave the area between the time of the first shell, and the time of the last, or at least hit the dirt).

Fire a battalion and you will effect a larger area. Thus, 3 time the shells, roughly twice the error circle, and it works out to around 30 yards for the average place in the "beaten zone".

With 155s it will take somewhat longer to fire the same number of shells. With the larger blast radius, that may not be necessary. If you fire 3 rounds per gun in about the same time, you will get a similar average, but a wider variance. That is, with fewer shells landing it will be more likely that some areas aren't in even the larger causalty radii. But on the other hand, there will be portion of the beaten zone "hit" with a greater blast effect, because they happened to be as close to a bigger shell, etc.

And no, you can't then take 100 yard circles and "add them" linearly, as though you are going to paste over the entire enemy position with them, because the shells are not falling in neat circles. You either overlap them haphazardly, or you leave gaps.

Incidentally, if you want some interesting figures on overall ammo usage, the number of German 81mm and 120mm mortars deployed in the war divided by the shells they made and fired through them, works out to between 900 and 1000 rounds per tube. Over its entire service life. You can fire an 81mm mortar round and the second after it, in 10-15 seconds. Anyone think the rate of fire was the issue? It works out to 3-4 hours of max rate firing per mortar, for the entire war.

[Gremlin]

As an aside about horse-drawn arty pieces, you may find it amusing that the Gebirgsjäger resorted not only to horses, but also to mules, reindeer, and camels to lug their equipment and disassembled pack howitzers, depending on what region they were serving in. Too bad those won't be in CM2, at least for the amusement value

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[Guest Germanboy]

Originally posted by Gremlin:

As an aside about horse-drawn arty pieces, you may find it amusing that the Gebirgsjäger resorted not only to horses, but also to mules, reindeer, and camels to lug their equipment and disassembled pack howitzers, depending on what region they were serving in. Too bad those won't be in CM2, at least for the amusement value

German 1. Gebirgsjaegerdivision in Mittenwald still has mules in their TO&E.

As for the initial post: Real Life - calculations for counter-battery fire could take 1 to 15mins. At least three OPs first had to report the location of the target (from sight/sound observation) and then had to report the fall of the spotting round (MT fuse BTW, creating an airburst). Calculations would be made at their Observation Batallion CP, and relayed to the batteries by field telephone. The observation batallion would have complete control over the entire process.

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Andreas

Der Kessel

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by The Adder:

"The German Infantry Handbook" by Alex Buchner says that a battery would take 45 minutes to occupy a position and lay the battery "after receiving instructions". This is an incredibly long time by post-war standards...

But wasn't a good portion of this time spent in surveying and leveling the site, setting aiming posts, unlimbering the guns, unloading ammunition, etc.? Given all that, 45 minutes sounds pretty quick to me.

Michael