Accuracy of Nebelwerfer Strikes?

[von Paulus]

Anyway I think that my new signature is better ...

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Although, if you watch the World at War series, you do hear his voice in English, and on at least one occasion, he said (as near as I can remember....)

"This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

That pretty much sounds like the version he quotes in his memoir. Probably the tv series is playing a recording of the original speech. Unless it was an actor dubbing the speech.

Michael

[MikeyD]

"Against dug in troops in an infantry line, it is more a terror weapon. Direct hits being needed..."

I've heard nasty reports on the effect of big HE bursts near infantry. Ruptured eardrums, disorentation, nausia, internal damage, even suffocation as the burst scoops up all the surrounding oxygen! The reason why normal artillery has such thick-walled shells is so the projectile will survive firing. Those Nebelwerfer rockets were much more bang-per-pound and correspondingly more efffective.

[flamingknives]

It's worth noting that the British Army switched from Shrapnel shells to high trajectory HE shells during WWI, when there was most definately a need for taking on dug-in positions.

HE overpressure and secondary projectiles were found to be more effective than shrapnel and fragmentation. Put something fairly insubstatial between yourself and a shrapnel round and you'll be entirely protected. Pure HE has a nast habit of getting around such obstacles.

[GoofyStance]

What form did the US Army's VT-fused 155mm artillery shells take - pure HE, or fragmentation? From what I understand, these shells were highly effective against soft, dug-in targets because of their airburst mode. Seems to me if they were fragmentation-type, they'd be ineffective against bunkers and dugouts with substantial roofs.

[JasonC]

Shrapnel is a different round type than HE. Fragmentation is not. HE shells produce fragmentation as a matter of course. Shrapnel proper was rarely used in WW II - the Russians had some for their 76mm, tank and towed, but that is about it. It was used in WW I but was ineffective.

Shrapnel proper means a round in which the casing includes a large number of steel balls intended to act as secondary projectile. They take up space inside that could be used for more explosive payload. Therefore, the HE carried by a shrapnel round is much less than that carried by an HE round.

Both produce fragmentation from the shell casing. The idea with shrapnel is to ensure that a significant portion of the secondary projectiles are large enough to inflict serious wounds and to carry over a significant range. They worried that the bits of shell casing from HE would be too small, or a few large and many very small, unevenly spread, etc.

Actual WW I experience showed that wounds could be inflicted by much smaller secondary projectiles than they had thought, if driven with sufficient velocity. The same fact was behind later flechette rounds incidentally (3mm size is enough, if going fast enough). Against upright men in the open, shrapnel was about as effective as HE but not significantly more so. Because the extra HE drove shell casing fragments at a higher velocity, making a portion of the small bits effective from an HE casing but not from a shrapnel one.

But against men in cover the shrapnel was much, much worse. The lost HE charge was a pure overall loss. Because much of the effect of HE vs. men in cover uses shockwaves to make secondary (or tertiary) projectile far from the explosion. A trench wall is thrown at somebody. Catching fragments is easy, but when you catch a shockwave the catcher moves in turn. The full effect is much lower than against men in the open. But it is the HE component that does the work.

The net result is that shrapnel was about as good as HE against men in the open but only a tenth as good (roughly) against men in trenches. That is why it was basically abandoned during the war. (They used it for a while because they already had stocks of it, and production lines set up to make it, etc).

Why did the Russians continue to use it? They thought it was more effective in the open than HE, for small enough rounds, if fired right. WW I experience in the east featured more fighting in the open and less extensive trenches etc than in the west. Also, getting the same effect from less explosive was valuable to the Russians, who were constrained by the explosive component of ammo manufacturing. (They had the metal but lost a lot of their HE filler production capacity in the Ukraine, in 1941).

155mm airburst is definitely doing its work with fragments. But is an HE round. Indeed, larger rounds typically have more HE filler to weight ratios and US rounds had higher figures there than most. Airburst obviously increases the portion of the fragments that can be effective, since in a ground burst half are lost (downward trajectories that just bury in the earth). And reduce the amount of effective cover, at least against men lacking overhead cover, in shallow holes, etc. Against better fortifications (even slit trenches, if not right overhead) it is less effective, though, because transmitted blast is reduced (earth transmits shock waves better than air does).