What killed the artillery

[JonS]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

... From the little I've read about Canadian arty in Normandy, they spent a lot of time on defensive fire missions just keeping the panzers off the front line, ...

Mike,

If you refer to Blackburn, then what you say is unsurprising. He was in a 25-pr. regt which would typically be engaged in the kind of work you describe, and not CB. Blackburn is, IMHO, an excellent read because he 'stays in his lane' (unlike Belton Cooper, who wanders all over the place), but that means what he descibes and documents is necesarily limited.

Miligan may be a better source on British CB since he was in a 7.2-in. battery. However, it's been a while since I read his series so I don't recall for sure. What you will have to do is figure out the actual from apocraphyl

Regarding what Jason has been saying about the effectiveness of CB. His comments about the purely destructive effects of CB are on the money. The 21st Army ORS studied the effects of CB-type activities with some care given the effectiveness of artillery in causing casualties. At Boulogne the Germans lost one (or maybe two) guns detroyed, out of a total of around 75, to CB over a period of about seven days during which the German guns were outnumbered on the order of 5- or 6:1. During Operation Varsity, several thousands of bombs were dropped on German AA positions as a prophalactic for the following airborne forces. One bomb fell into gunpit.

However, this overlooks the effectiveness of CB as a suppressive. Just like infantry smallarms fire is more useful when fired to acheive a suppressive effect (rather than trying for outright kills), and field artillery in support of attacks works best when planned for suppressive effect (rather than trying for outright destruction), so too does CB work best when the intention is transitory suppression rather than complete detruction. Your gunners can't detroy the enemy guns? Fine, don't even try. It doesn't really matter, as long as you can stop them from firing. If they have to regularly displace, or stay silent for fear of relatiation, then you have achieved the same effect as if you had physically destroyed the guns.

The effectiveness of this can be seen in the results of the fireplan in support of the Op Varsity air borne assault. Despite destoying just that one gun, casualties amongst the transport aircraft and gliders were very low in the initial waves when the German AA was suppressed. Unfortunately, the fireplan stopped when the first waves of aircraft flew over for fear of friendly fire incidents which gave the AA a chance to recover. Thus, the latter waves faced un-suppressed AA and sufferred accordingly.

Incidentally, one further method of detecting enemy batteries that was developed in 21st Army Group during 1944 and 1945 was the use of radar to 'back track' the trajectory of enemy shells. This has since become the standard method of detecting targets for CB (it also has lots of other nifty uses the gunners can take advantage of).

Regards

JonS

[Andreas]

Originally posted by JonS:

Incidentally, one further method of detecting enemy batteries that was developed in 21st Army Group during 1944 and 1945 was the use of radar to 'back track' the trajectory of enemy shells. This has since become the standard method of detecting targets for CB (it also has lots of other nifty uses the gunners can take advantage of).

AIUI, unlike the Mercedes, this was actually a Canadian invention. Also AIUI, to say it was developed in 21st AG is not quite correct, ISTR it was a bunch of mad Canuckians at the RA school back in blighty who invented it. Is that in Blackburn too? Been a while that I read it.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Is that in Blackburn too? Been a while that I read it.

Blackburn and others, incl Pemberton and Evans' site. The School started work on it and proved the feasibility in late 1943 or early '44, then dropped it for some reason (ordered to I think). Then the Canadians picked it up again in approx August '44 and formed a battery that saw some use in the latter stages of Normandy. The British subsequently developed their own capability based on the Canadians work, which saw service from the Rhineland onwards.

Regards

JonS

[Michael Dorosh]

Didn't we also pioneer the Land Mattress?

Hmm, well, the Germans probably did it first, but I mean didn't we do it instead of the vaunted RA?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Didn't we also pioneer the Land Mattress?

Hmm, well, the Germans probably did it first, but I mean didn't we do it instead of the vaunted RA?

Q: How does a Dominion man console himself?

A: By being ahead of the Pommies.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Q: How does a Dominion man console himself?

A: By being ahead of the Pommies.

Q: How does a Pommie man console himself?

A: By sending a Dominion man for a day on the beach in France.

Meanwhile, the world asks...

Q: How does a German man console himself?

[JasonC]

Yes JonS, CB suppresses. But it is questionable how effective that suppression is for the effort expended on CB. Some speciality guns firing CB was probably useful, forcing the other guy to "stay honest" about things like battery emplacement times, regular moves, fire discipline to avoid early ID, etc.

But large scale CB attempts by massive numbers of shells were regularly tried and the results were disappointing. Arguably, the same shells fired at the forward areas instead would have had a greater impact.

The target density in the rear areas where the guns live is quite low. The guns don't have to be that concentrated. Some promixity is necessary for fire coordination, to make use of scarce communication, command, and supply assets. But all of these targets can be "hardened", all are only located roughly, there is no real time adjustment of fire (or it is from the air and imprecise, obscured by smoke and dust once rounds fall, etc).

If the guns were far more vunerable targets than front line infantry positions, it might still be worth it. But they aren't, particularly. In the case of the St. Lo campaign, it is pretty clear what actually worked. The front just chewed apart 3 battalions worth of infantry a day and the Germans could not replace them, not that fast. As long as fresh formations were reaching the front continually, they held - barely. Once that reinforcement stream gave out, in a matter of days the front was too weak in infantry terms to hold out anymore.

What chewed up those 3 battalions a day of infantry was all the howitzer fire directed at the front line areas, the first 2-3 miles of depth, not the deep counterbattery fire. Infantry inflicted some of the losses too, of course.

But as usual, shellfire inflicted the majority of the casualties. This wasn't annihilation fire either. It did not blow a hole through the line in a few hours and allow a breakthrough before anyone had time to patch the hole - nothing like that. It just bled the defenders every day, and their numbers did not hold out while the numbers of shells being thrown at them did.

There is something between annihilation and suppression, in other words - both of them really maneuver force concepts (get 'em out of my way or pin them for a few hours while I do something). Just plain bleeding them. Over a long enough time scale - which is measured in days or weeks, not years - and with enough ammo, you can just shoot and shoot until the defenders are too weak to hold any longer.

Something similar was of course happening to the US attackers, even with the lower ammo available to the Germans. The Americans were losing men to the German infantry, to mortars, mines, and to the German artillery. It was not cheap, and it was a natural temptation to use the strength of the US artillery trying to lower "own side" losses by suppressing and silencing the German guns, instead of using it to drive German side losses higher, by targeting their front line infantry with all the heavy stuff.

But probably it just prolonged the bleeding period, by sparing the German infantry the attentions of a sizable number of 155s (and some 8 inches) It certainly did not truly silence the German guns. The tactical narrative is full of instances when the German guns intervene in force and break up an attack, with German infantry commanders singing its praises.

From an attritionist, artillery point of view rather than a manueverist, infantry or armor point of view, the key question is simply where is the shooting better? Which target will give the highest number of enemy hit for the shells expended? Everything else is tactical "noise", and a month later won't have made much difference.

Whether it is a month later or two weeks later that enemy manpower gives out, on the other hand, may well turn on how good the shooting is, how well located and packed the target area was with enemy forces, of any kind. You look at the whole question differently if you expect the decision to be reached by the continual application of firepower, than if you expect the decision to depend on whether this or that portion of the enemy force is neutralized for the right two hour window.

For what it is worth...

[Andreas]

Actual ammo expenditure etc. from my website:

To help understand the relative effectiveness of sound or flash ranging, here is some data from B17 22.June 41 - 1.August 41 (source: Froben):

Targets acquired:

Sound - 1,363 targets

Flash - 188 targets

Targets engaged:

Sound - 214 targets = 15.7%

Flash - 130 targets = 69.2%

Rounds fired: 9,279 rounds = 28rounds/target

The low number of flash targets could be because of the very mobile nature of the battles at this time.

Clearly 28 rounds per target on average is not a lot, and probably more aimed at keeping the guys moving, than anything else.

[JasonC]

That fits, Andreas. The Germans were using single batteries of 4 long range guns for CB. So that would be 7 rounds per gun from 4 10 cm longs (most likely). Perhaps 150 or 170. Any way you cut it, a few minutes at most, a little "raid". In CM terms, between half a module of 105s and a full module of 170s. This sort is clearly worth the ammo for the disruption effect ("keeping them honest"), but any serious destruction is likely to be limited.

The report from the St. Lo period from the US has a much higher average number of rounds per mission, up to 10 times as high. (25-45 missions per day from a division's worth of arty, total rounds in the thousands). Those are probably battalion shoots, and significantly longer. Like 3 105 or 155 FOs, same aim point, wide sheaf - with full ammo. That is an attempt to actually take out the guns, or to suppress them for a long period.

[ May 28, 2003, 11:48 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Andreas:

"Mounted on these mechanical spiders, our Stosstrupps will be unstoppable."

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

But large scale CB attempts by massive numbers of shells were regularly tried and the results were disappointing. Arguably, the same shells fired at the forward areas instead would have had a greater impact.

True. This why the Red Army used considerable portions of its CAS in an effort to suppress the enemy artillery. At least in the Finnish sector that is. The max range of 67% of the Finnish arty was at most 12km's and the Red Army CAS was almost never employed in deep interdiction but was limited quite close to the front line the firing positions were in constant danger of being attacked from the air as well being subject to CB missions.

The Finnish army lost a total of 267 guns during the 1944 campaign. Of these 151 guns were lost in the Isthmus and of these 151 guns 92 (28% of the inventory in the sector at the time) were lost during the first few hours of the offensive as they were overrun, mostly due to lack of transports. Also, losses were heavy with the IG's used in direct support of the infantry.

The reported number of damaged guns widrawn for repair was 182. Of these only 26 were damaged by enemy fire (the source does not specify if the enemy fire was aerial or CB). Most of the rest of the damages were due to worn barrels.

The main reason for the disruption of fire missions were due to gun crew casualties.

(source: Field guns in Finland 1918-1995 by J. Paulaharju, ISBN 951-25-0811-7)

The target density in the rear areas where the guns live is quite low. The guns don't have to be that concentrated. Some promixity is necessary for fire coordination, to make use of scarce communication, command, and supply assets. But all of these targets can be "hardened", all are only located roughly, there is no real time adjustment of fire (or it is from the air and imprecise, obscured by smoke and dust once rounds fall, etc).

Since annihilation is not the main objective of CB in most cases all you need to do is get a fix on the battery and let it rip to make the opponent gunners duck even for a minute or two. The type of fire mission and how accurate it is is down to the respective arty branch and its firing methods and pre-made preparations.

It just bled the defenders every day, and their numbers did not hold out while the numbers of shells being thrown at them did.

The fact the German tactics, both in the West and in the East, was the same (ie not an inch back) did play a considerable part in this equation.

[ May 28, 2003, 05:29 PM: Message edited by: Tero ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by JasonC:

But large scale CB attempts by massive numbers of shells were regularly tried and the results were disappointing. Arguably, the same shells fired at the forward areas instead would have had a greater impact.

Arguably, yes, but my comments were directed at the original question which was 'what killed (or silenced) the artillery', and not 'what is the most efficient use of artillery.'

Regards

JonS