M26 tanks in US Armoured divisions

Discussions on all aspects of the United States of America during the Inter-War era and Second World War. Hosted by Carl Schwamberger.
RichTO90
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#31

Post by RichTO90 » 20 Oct 2006, 18:50

Carl Schwamberger wrote:Your work is clearly defined then!
Yeah, of course my real interest is the Normandy Campaign as a whole, but I keep wandering down interesting sidelines. Which slows things up since I also have to work for a living. :(
Yes I'm very familar with Ward & the US artillery. I spent ten years of my USMC career in artillery units. Locally there is a collection of the Field Artillery Journal going back to 1919. I've waded thru 15% of that.
Have you read "Fort Sill and the Golden Age of the Field Artillery"? It is an unpublished manuscript by Russell A. Gugelar, who was working on a bio of Ward circa 1976-1981. A copy should be in the library at Sill. Not a lot of technical info, but a lot on the people involved. A lot of sharp people, but a few duds too (Jay McKelvie was one).
Also located a complete set of the Journal of the Royal Arillery. That illustrates a large part of the problem. On my third pass thru that library in 2003 I found it was no longer listed in the librarys cataloge. It was still on the shelf, but whoever was responsible for converting the librarys indexes from card to computer blew it. The libraians were nonplussed when I showed them three periodicals absent from their records. This was the Breckenridge Library at Quantico, which has been a research & archivial library for many decades. Its a common problem I've found in the last decade. Enough of that back to topic.
Yep, this country seems to specialize in destroying its archival memory. AFAIK the old ORO Library (the 1950s Johns Hopkins group that include Van Loan Naisawald - speaking of artillery history - amongst others, that then became RAC) was disposed of when RAC was acquired by ATT. And yes, "disposed of" means in a dumpster. Of course considering how much of that stuff was still probably classified it makes you wonder about security procedures too. Anyway, the upshot is that there is no single complete collection of that body of work left AFAIK. Sad really, that's why we're always reinventing the wheel.
Specificly what I am looking for are the technical details for the computation of firing data, communications, and survey. Then, both the doctrine and actual battlefield practice for the tactical procedures. A couple examples of what these questions cover:

a. Did the Werhmacht artillery automaticly extend telephone wire communication circuts between the battalions of the corps artillery & the divsion artillery, or was this done only on order? When done which units were responsible for placing the wire & switchboards?

b. Was the French Group Post established at the battalion level only, or at the larger groups of divsion & corps artillery?

c. What were the real differences in response time between the Rumanian & Wehrmacht artillery? (This question is connected to the previous two.)

Thats a tiny sample. I'm planning a vist to the library at Ft Sill, hopefully next year. The librarians seem to have identified some original documents (translating titles from Russian & German is problematic) so we will see.
I'll be interested to see what you find.
I've still a long way to go in reviewing books on the subject, but none so far have the necessary depth. Plus I'm finding too many technical errors to have any confidence in most of them. Your remark about popular historiesrepating cannards applies here too. Biographys have some usefull bits but thats just a handfull of pieces from the 1000 piece puzzle box. Web sites are proving useless. Lots of vague soft data & little hard information, plus a thousand & one suspected errors. I've turned up just two with usefull information.

Thanks for listening to me whine. I'm going to find some cheese to have with it.
Beware of websites, 90 percent are useless through either through inadvertant or deliberate errors AFAICS. Well, I did my whining too, so we're even. :)

Carl Schwamberger
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#32

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 20 Oct 2006, 19:11

Archivial losses....all the more reason for you to publish some solid statistics on tank & other equipment losses in Normandy, ect... Hunnicutt is long gone & there dont seem to be many others publsihing solid research on these subjects.


Gugelar is on my 'to read' list, tho it is a published item I think. There are fourty or fifty items on the list to check. Below is the URL to one of the only two artillery web sites worth a damm.

http://members.tripod.com/nigelef/


This link takes one to a list/review of some others. None research grade, but magazine artical quality, ok for background, but beware quoting them. A bunch of other artillery realted sites & discussion there as well.

http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?14@70. ... 1dd06ccc/0


Carl Schwamberger
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#33

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 21 Oct 2006, 13:47

Rich...now I'm curious. What interesting bit have you run across concerning artillery in Normandy?

RichTO90
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#34

Post by RichTO90 » 21 Oct 2006, 21:04

Carl Schwamberger wrote:Rich...now I'm curious. What interesting bit have you run across concerning artillery in Normandy?
Interesting bits?

That the last Naval Gunfire support shoots were conducted circa 22 June.

That the DIVARTY commander of the 90th ID was a FO during the advance on Alencon.

That the first M12 battalion to land was attached to the 50th - British - Division. They thought it was really keen.

I'm not sure what other interesting bits there are aside from OB stuff? I've spent most of my time so far nailing down the opposing forces, personnel strengths and losses, and armor strengths and losses, I haven't really dove into the arty yet.

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#35

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 22 Oct 2006, 05:14

A truly valuable bit or bits would be times elapsed for fire missions. Anecdoatal evidence or offcial record of the time it took for specific missions, from initial call for fire to fire for effect. Accurate descriptions of this on the battlefield are vanishingly few.

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Kingfish
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#36

Post by Kingfish » 22 Oct 2006, 16:13

RichTO90 wrote:
That the last Naval Gunfire support shoots were conducted circa 22 June.
Are you referring to NGS for US forces, or in Normandy as a whole? The Royal Navy fired in support of Operation Charnwood, which kicked off on July 7th.

RichTO90
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#37

Post by RichTO90 » 22 Oct 2006, 16:58

Kingfish wrote:
RichTO90 wrote:
That the last Naval Gunfire support shoots were conducted circa 22 June.
Are you referring to NGS for US forces, or in Normandy as a whole? The Royal Navy fired in support of Operation Charnwood, which kicked off on July 7th.
That was RN, according to the AAR of Eastern Naval Task Force, but I will double-check. That may have been the last day in June, although that was not my impression.

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#38

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 22 Oct 2006, 18:44

At the opening of the Siege of Cherbourg the US battleship squadron closed in and fired some shots. That counts somehow, tho the date needs to be checked.

RichTO90
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#39

Post by RichTO90 » 23 Oct 2006, 15:16

Carl Schwamberger wrote:A truly valuable bit or bits would be times elapsed for fire missions. Anecdoatal evidence or offcial record of the time it took for specific missions, from initial call for fire to fire for effect. Accurate descriptions of this on the battlefield are vanishingly few.
I see what you are looking for. I may eventually be able to develop some of that for Elsenborn, depending on if the battalion journals logged the requests, I do know that we have virtually all of the fire missions plotted for the 2nd and 99th DIVARTY and attached and for most of V Corps and I believe 1st Division too. I'll ask my artilleryman friend the next time I see him, but that may be a week or so, I have personal matters to attend to this week.

And I haven't gotten into that for Normandy yet, but it is an interesting line of research, I'll see what I may find.

RichTO90
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#40

Post by RichTO90 » 23 Oct 2006, 15:24

Kingfish wrote:
RichTO90 wrote:
That the last Naval Gunfire support shoots were conducted circa 22 June.
Are you referring to NGS for US forces, or in Normandy as a whole? The Royal Navy fired in support of Operation Charnwood, which kicked off on July 7th.
Thanks for bringing my attention to this. It turns out it was my missreading of the Eastern Naval Task Force report. It turns out that on 30 June the naval bombardment task was taken over by the Flag Officer, British Assault Forces, and the Commander Eastern Naval Task Forces returned to Portsmouth. So his report ends with the bombardments conducted on 29 June.

Oh well, I knew I was going to have to make another trip to the PRO anyway. :D

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#41

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 24 Oct 2006, 03:32

", I do know that we have virtually all of the fire missions plotted for the 2nd and 99th DIVARTY and attached and for most of V Corps and I believe 1st Division too."

Where is this located? A couple sample pages would be very usefull in evaluating this source. If that is not trouble for you. If the time elapsed on these fire missions is clear I'll have something solid to work with.

RichTO90
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#42

Post by RichTO90 » 24 Oct 2006, 05:43

Carl Schwamberger wrote:", I do know that we have virtually all of the fire missions plotted for the 2nd and 99th DIVARTY and attached and for most of V Corps and I believe 1st Division too."

Where is this located? A couple sample pages would be very usefull in evaluating this source. If that is not trouble for you. If the time elapsed on these fire missions is clear I'll have something solid to work with.
Well the fire missions were extracted by the retired FA officer I'm working with, who was a battery Exec in the 99th Division during the period in question. He's copied all the battalion journals for the period and has a pretty firm grasp on what was fired. The problem is that the journals don't usually record the calls for fire that I can recall, even though they do log the fire missions. He may have more on that. I'll see if I can check, but it will be a week or so, I have to go out of town.

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#43

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 24 Oct 2006, 12:06

Thanks, I'll be gratefull.

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