Artillery versus Tanks

[mav1]

I read a osprey book about the fighting in lorraine 1944. The book says that artillery fire was effective in disturbing and breaking up german armored attacks. looking at the figures in the book, artillery fire was more useful in knocking out tanks than aircraft. So what do everyone else think about the effectiveness of artillery fire against tanks? Also is it represented realisticly in cm?

[ November 11, 2006, 03:12 AM: Message edited by: mav1 ]

[Kingfish]

If the calibur, and thus the blast factor, is large enough then artillery does have a decent chance of knocking out a tank or two. However, directly targetting tank with arty it is a waste of a valuable resource. You would end up spending an entire ammo load and *maybe* get one tank out of the deal. Also consider that tanks can move out of a targetted area faster than arty can adjust.

Arty is best used to strip the tanks of their infantry screen. Tanks will seldom continue the attack if they lose their infantry support, the exception being an A.I. controlled attack.

[dieseltaylor]

Difference between real life and the game. In the game wat too expensive for casual use. The tanks can be nailed through top armour and regardless of that have all external stuff like wireless stripped from the hull. No to mention track damage etc.

Of course it also tends to signify that the enemy know you are coming : )

[JasonC]

The actual effectiveness of the fire is about right, but the other characteristics of artillery in CM aren't accurate enough to show the real effects it had. It is too readily controlled in a fine tuned way on the one hand, and not nearly numerous enough in shells thrown on the other hand.

Shells available is above all too even in CM, at a low level. In the real deal, artillery occasionally intervene in a much more massive way, and when it did the general effect was to stop whatever was happening and separate the combatants.

On fine tuned control - when you place a barrage in CM, the center of the oval of shells that results is always exactly where you put the cursor, for any accurate mission. In reality, the FO and guns could only coordinate what they were talking about to the accuracy of a spotting round - so the real aim point when fire for effect was called would be scattered around the intended point of aim, in a 50-100m radius typically - occasional twice those figures.

The sheaf then used was typical wider than you see in CM. CM depicts the typical results of a converged sheaf. Parallel sheaf was much more common, precisely due to the difficulty mentioned above. That is more like target wide in CM - actually even target wide puts too many of the shells in the tightest oval around the cursor.

They made up for this by frequently firing by whole battalions. Missions were often extended in time as well, with shoots lasting 30 minutes perfectly common. Those were not typically at the max ROF you see depicted in CM, however. Maybe if you throw in 2-4 small adjusts.

Shells had to land quite close to have an appreciable effect on a fully armored AFV. Light armor was considerably easier because the larger fragments would still penetrate them. But e.g. a 105mm direct hit would KO a Panzer IV, or readily immobilize. 155mm direct hits brewed up Panthers, and near misses (talking quite close, as in crater touches the vehicle) broke tracks and the like.

In the course of studying how the US in particular stopped German armor attacks in particular (as opposed e.g. to going after them when the US was attacking), I've read numerous accounts of the effectiveness of US artillery fire in stopping the attacks. Sometimes 105s were also used direct in gun lines. Here are some of the cases.

At the end of the Kasserine fight, the Germans were stopped by gun line positions, which included tanks and TDs, but also included massed artillery in the ~100 guns range, firing indirect from behind the ridges being assaulted. The main effect of the artillery was to strip of infantry and soft vehicles and thereby deprive the attacks of combined arms - but they also clearly hit and destroyed some tanks. But we are talking about figures like a dozen or two perhaps awardable to the indirect arty, which was firing literally thousands of rounds all told.

At El Quettar the pattern was similar, with the difference that the Germans tried armor leading and then infantry leading tactics. The first got into the US positions but not in sufficient numbers to beat the forces reached. The latter was hopeless, the infantry was unable to advance into the artillery fire. Most of the AFVs actually taken out there can be credited to direct fire weapons.

At Gela in Sicily, there was a brief counterattack onto the beaches by PD HG and some supporting Italians in the first 2 days. As allied armor was not yet ashore, it was a tough fight for the infantry that was. Besides bazookas they had pack howitzers which they used direct and indirect and 4.2 inch mortars. More important though was naval gunfire, which played a large role in repulsing these attacks.

At Salerno the Germans tried the same thing, but with only one battalion of Panzer IVs near the beaches, initially with little infantry support. The forces ashore drove them off with loss using zooks, cavalry vehicles already ashore, light towed ATGs and towed 105s firing direct. Naval gunfire was there again.

A few days later the Germans had much more serious force of a major counterattack, but against Allies by then well ashore with all arms. The initial break in was successful, but was stopped at the artillery line by 105s firing direct and a few reserves. It was all renewed in greater strength the following day. The US had changed positions that night, though, and the attack was poorly coordinated as a result (half hit air, direction of advance was diagonal to the new US front, etc).

The gun line that stopped that attack included 105s ashore firing indirect mostly, and some naval again. But most of the known KOs can be accounted for by the direct fire weapons, with the SP TDs in particular scoring the best. There was the usual effect of HE stripping (and buttoning) the armor, and the intel and sighting differential that created helped the direct fire fight etc.

The next major German counterattack with armor occurred at Anzio. Mud restricted armor to a few roads for much of the battle, especially its later stages. Artillery contributed to that effect because the amount of HE used in a small area was enough to create a moonscape - in CM terms, set craters to heavy and ground state to wet to mud. US forces relied on indirect fire to stop heavier German attacks, routinely. It was aided by having only a modest number of roads to fire at. The allies as a whole also used naval and air support, including use of medium and heavy bombers on occasion.

The basic result was what I call a "logistics against tactics" stalemate. The Germans used night infiltration by infantry to grab ground, and then pushed into the soft tissue that created with armor at daybreak. Then they dug in infantry and sited PAK. The allies paid heavily to retake each piece of ground several times etc. Their response, to indundate the battlefield with HE, drove the Germans to cellars but did not destroy them all.

Under those conditions, there is no doubt arty (and other indirect HE) accounted for a significant portion of the German armor losses, probably half. The usual mechanism being immobilization leading to loss for tactical reasons.

In Normandy, the first few counterattacks on the US portion of the front got well into the US positions before being stopped, and arty was little use. It was mostly SP TDs and zook teams stalking. At Mortain, though, arty and air were used in a large way. Despite exaggerated claims for tac-air, though, few German tanks seem to have been KOed by it directly even then. SP TDs and a US armor division probably accounted for the bulk of the ground losses. Called artillery from a corps or more for days, from FOs left in the middle of the German position, definitely helped, but mostly against the soft vehicles and infantry supports etc.

There are a few cases in Lorraine in which 105 fire from Priests firing indirect, dropped continually on a German armor formation, made a large difference in the overall fight, and the same happened again at Celles in the bulge. But direct fire did most of it on both those occasions. Most of the Arracourt kills came from tanks and TDs.

In the bulge there is at least one position that held largely due to operational effects of arty vs armor - the Elsenborn position on the north edge of the bulge. I've studied that one in some detail. The Germans seem to have lost ~110 full AFVs, and 60 can be accounted for by ground armor on the US side. Another 5-10 were mines, few ~5 towed TDs, the former having some tactical effect beyond the kills. Zooks and infantry close assault finished off many and zooks definitely scored against runners, too. Hard to say as to amounts - there are risks of double counting etc - but 10-15 is the right range. Air was not effective - the weather was poor and when it cleared they went after logistic targets farther east and spearheads farther west. Artillery definitely got kills - some are reported eyewitness etc - and probably accounted for 20-30 of them alone. It may have assisted all but ~5 of the zook cases, too.

That was the tally over 3-4 days from a corps worth of guns. The number of pieces working from on and behind the Elsenborn ridge grew over time, finishing at ~350 pieces. The maximum rate of ammo expenditure hit 10,000 rounds in one 8 hour period, at the end of the fight. Battalion shoots were standard and they made regular use of divisional TOTs of 60 guns at a time etc.

What they are all saying is 100s of rounds expended can take out a tank, and as a side effect those 100s of rounds will make any attack it is taking part in hopeless. But the logistical scale is not, fire half of your 35 available 155 rounds and take out 1 of the enemy's 3 available tanks. The round to effect ratio is 10 times lower, even with larger targets than one typically sees in CM. But the rounds available are very very high, when artillery intervenes in a serious way.

So. In CM it is too easy to aim the battery exactly where the tank is. But there aren't as many batteries firing as many shells as there often were in the real deal. The real arty - armor match up was more random rain on larger dispersed targets, less FOs trying to adjust 20m left to get a 155 shell to land precisely "there". The rain was just heavy enough to be dangerous to tanks.

[ November 11, 2006, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[mav1]

A great effort in explaining things by you Jason C as useual. always welcome.

[Zalgiris 1410]

Excellent Jason C, likewise I find CMx1 handling of off- board Artillery unrealistic, in the sense that converged shiefing by all each and everybodies single batteries was neither then norm nor even a capacity of many a WWII spotter/battery team, especially where, to the best of my knowledge, they didn't ever funtion that way as in the case of Russian and backward Axis FOOs.

Where are the walls of curtain artillery fire falling latterally in front of my troops for protection? :confused:

Where is that TOT by whole Battalions and Regiments that I've read about?

OTOH designers please note that for all off-board spotter Artillery units in CM you can increase by 4 times the innitial ammount of ammo shells each unit has. This means that instead of having only 35 rounds of 150mm you can increase it to 140 rounds. Similarly 50 rounds becomes 200, 60 rounds becomes 240, 100 rounds becomes 400, 150 becomes 600 and 200 rounds becomes 800 rounds, etc. IMHO it always does help to have the extra indirect shell fire.

[John Kettler]

Zalgiris 1410,

The pattern orientation issue has driven me bats for years. Ditto the controllability issues, such as ROF, check fire, on my command, etc. And let's not forget no WP, no ability to register on the fly, no fuze options (PD only, no Delay), no HE MT, gutting one of the 88's nastier capabilities in both a direct fire and an artillery role (poor man's VT, if you will), no starshell, etc. Believe the 88's also missing HC, which combat accounts I've read say was used to strip off tank descents before blasting the tank proper.

You can design your own TOT demo by buying lots of FOs and RPs and running the whole shattering show as a prep fire. If you want a Pepperpot, though, you'll have to figure that out for yourself.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

Yes yes, all those would make guns more godlike, but the biggest miss in CM is simply that the center of the oval is always where you put the cursor, instead of being randomly distributed around it precisely as a spotting round is (or two averaged if you want to be nice about it).

If it were correct, people would use target wide a lot more, because the narrow shots would come "pre-dogged". And there would be a lot less fine adjusting every 3 minutes to put one more flight right -there- because a third of the time your add new miss and endanger your own men in contact etc.

Nearest we can get in CM is to use target wide exclusively. And then up the shell number modestly, or take them as conscripts and use for "map" fire, etc.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

While I take your point, the pattern orientation issue would seem to me to offset it to a considerable degree. The inability in many situations to get the fire parallel to friendly lines has, from CMBB on, really hurt artillery effectiveness, particularly when coupled with small ammo loads. I deliberately left CMBO out because of its near laser guided delivery and adjustment options, not to mention the accuracy of blind fire.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Harry Yeide]

There is one example that comes to mind that one could add to JasonC's excellent roster that shows, perhaps, that artillery fire could break up a combined-arms attack quite effectively (which is the real point) even if it did not destroy numerous tanks.

On 15 October near Aachen, the 3d Panzergrenadier Division, reinforced by the 506th Schwere Panzer Abteilung’s Royal Tigers, attacked out of the Würselener Wald and through the lines of the 12th Volksgrenadier Division toward Aachen. Generalfeldmarschall Model had ordered that the operation begin later in the day than usual because the tempo of fighting usually declined at that time, and he hoped to achieve tactical surprise. The 8th and 29th Grenadier regiments attacked abreast after an artillery preparation, with the Tigers on the right. By 1300 hours, the Germans had overrun two companies from the 16th Infantry Regiment, which reported that the situation was critical.

Massed artillery fire—capped by a dramatic appearance by American fighter-bombers—smashed the attack over the next hour. The 29th Grenadier Regiment reported, “The enemy artillery fire became stronger than we had ever experienced before, and shells fell almost uninterrupted for hours. Casualties climbed; weapons and equipment were destroyed. Artillery observation planes—as many as four circled constantly over the division—competently directed this massed fire.”

Panzers were burning across the battlefield, and division commanding general Denkert watched as the intense fire drove his infantry to cover, which left the remaining tanks without support. Denkert pulled back his tanks to good cover. His formation had suffered a pounding; one American company counted 250 two hundred fifty dead within and in front of its positions

I would add that, as JasonC noted, CM doesn't really capture the volume of artillery that often was directed at a single German tank. There are many accounts of barrages being called to take out a single panzer or handful of tanks sitting in a defensive position or stopped during an attack. If that didn't kill the target, ai generally convinced the crew to go somewhere else. Again, mission accomplished one way or the other.

[michael kenny]

Harry,

sPzAbt.506 do not list any losses for Oct. 15th but did send 2 very badly damaged tanks back to Germany on the 20th.

However on 17/11/44 they do say 3 Tigers were lost to artillery.

Did you every resolve the issue with the film of the TII's.

Lastly there is a photo I have seen. A close up of a TII turret with a couple of penetrations in the l/h side. I presume it was a bit of test shooting and wonder if you have come across it in your research.

[Harry Yeide]

Michael: No, sure haven't the photo of the turret penetrations. The film claims the Tiger IIs depicted were on the Roer front, but ultimately it's--literally--Nazi propaganda, so who knows? Likewise, my contact in Germany, a historian in the Aachen area, says the Bundesarchiv supplied the photo of the identical looking Tiger that I forwarded in response to a request for photos from his area, and that the Archiv identified the shot as vicinity Puffendorf. Denkert's account of the attack on 15 October does not break out whether his own or 506. vehicles were knocked out, nor did any of the corps or army records I consulted. (We do not have the actual 3d PzGr Div records at NARA.) Anyway, I'm one book and two manuscripts beyond that question now, so I confess I haven't pursued the matter!

[michael kenny]

his is the pic. It was taken from one of the TD sites but I can't remember which one. The remaining turret number style('2') say sPzAbt 506

[Harry Yeide]

771st TD Battalion perhaps? They claimed to have disabled five Tiger IIs on 20 November during the Puffendorf fighting.

[John Kettler]

michael kenny,

Don't know the range, but if it was appreciable, that's a pretty tight shot group. Nice pic! As for King Tiger losses, that makes an entire platoon taken out of action: 3 KOs from artillery fire and two ZI level repairs, likely to be weeks.

Harry Yeide,

Appreciate your sharing the incident near Aachen. Had never seen it before.

Regards,

John Kettler