A Question about US Artillery

[Carl Schwamberger]

This isn't really true. The comms links will tend to follow the command and control links. Since the Germans had a different approach to command and control, it follwos they had a different implementation of comms.

The notion that the Germans had a different command and control approach is often claimed, but at best half right (if not completely wrong) nevertheless. Once you start to study the German artillery doctrine and organisation, you will note many similarities, especially with US artillery, sometimes it almost seems as if they have copied from each other. IMHO it is safe to say that there were as many differences between the British and US artillery systems as between any of these systems and the German system.
And even if the communication networks were differently organised, this is no proof that the British or American way was inherently more flexible. The Germans did one or two things to keep their networks flexible as well, and I have repeatedly stumbled over examples showing that flexible, radio linked fire direction of large artillery units was successfully implemented.

The Brits certainly experienced it in 1940, when the first ever multi regiment engagment of an opportunity target was conducted ... by the British.

That is what the British sources use to tell, but never prove. First it was a fire strike of just one, not multiple, regiment, and it seems to have been an exceptional example (as it is always the same example that is described).

I'm curious if this example is the description appearing in the Journal of Royal Artillery. It is a excellent snapshot of what one reigiment did for a fire mission in 1940, but it is always dangerous to draw general conclusions from a single data point. It would be usefull if the original source for the 'multi regiment' attack could be found.

Second, AFAIK, the French did such things regularly in 1940, and there are also German reports of divisional (multi battalion) concentrations fired on enemy attacks duing the Polish campaign (Germans had trained such things before the war).

It appears that the French 3rd DLM artillery in the battle near Merdorp 12-13 May was rapidly concentrating fires from five battalions on battle groups of the 4th Panzer Div as it manuvered. Details of ammunition fired and exact timing are as always absent, but Gunsbergs & other descriptions do describe the Germans assualt commanders as frustrated and suprised by the volume and rapidity of the French artillery fires on their manuvering tank companies.

The 1938 article in the JRA describes a different & more complex system of observation and control than I've understood for any other army of the 1930s & 1940s. What caught my eye is the British writer was impressed by the speed of the French fires, & implying the British were significantly slower.

Third, had the British artillery unit of that story been subject to a heavy German artillery preparation or air attack just before its action?

The attack described in the JRA suggests not. No refrence is made to any enemy air or artillery attack. There is the implication in the text the German main body was just arriving and assembling preperatory attacking the Brits.

[JonS]

First it was a fire strike of just one, not multiple, regiment, and it seems to have been an exceptional example (as it is always the same example that is described).

Of course it was exceptional, but that's not really the point since the first time anything is done is exceptional. Parham was an exceptional gunner, and his method, modified and streamlined, became the basis of British artillery doctrine for the rest of the war.

Second, AFAIK, the French did such things regularly in 1940, and there are also German reports of divisional (multi battalion) concentrations fired on enemy attacks duing the Polish campaign (Germans had trained such things before the war).

AIUI, Parham's attack on the refuelling panzers in the forest was of a quite different nature.

Third, had the British artillery unit of that story been subject to a heavy German artillery preparation or air attack just before its action?

Are you going to argue that France 1940 was a stroll in the park for the Allies?

[Michate]

Of course it was exceptional, but that's not really the point since the first time anything is done is exceptional. Parham was an exceptional gunner, and his method, modified and streamlined, became the basis of British artillery doctrine for the rest of the war.

Very nice, and I do not doubt it, but it still tells you nothing on the contemporary methods of other nations.

AIUI, Parham's attack on the refuelling panzers in the forest was of a quite different nature.

Well, it is quite clear from contemporary literature that the methods for comparable things were known in both the French and German armies.
As to the Germans, I found a couple of examples of firing concentrations against Polish counterattacks in rather fluid battles, after switching from advance to hasty defense.
As to the French, i cannot say, but given their flexible and oncentrated artillery fire in a number of cases, if it was all pre-planned, they must have had remarkable ability at pre-planning fires indeed.

Are you going to argue that France 1940 was a stroll in the park for the Allies?

No, rather to the contrary, but I won't be overawed by their fire control either. I am going to argue that heavy German air, or artillery preparations, like that preceeding the crossing of the Meuse, had a pretty damaging effect on Allied communication networks in the areas subject to these attacks as well.
Which still leaves my first question unanswered, namely whether the British unit firing this concentration had just been subject to a heavy German artillery or air attack prior to its action.

[gambadier]

UK, Aust, Cdn, NZ, SA, India all used the same training pamphlets. Not sure of the extent to which some (eg gun drills) were translated into Urdu (the language of the Indian soldiers).

For a review of the evolution of UK massed fire see http://nigelef.tripod.com/p_massfire.htm

Note that the introduction of the QSTAG in the 1960s officially recognised two different systems - 1 and 2. 1 being the US, 2 being everybody else. The difference was that for US all calls for fire by an observer were 'requests', for everyone else they were 'orders' unless it was multi-battery and the observer was not authorised. The two systems were a formal recognition of a long standing basic difference.

For UK the observer was king, this is why the establishment was 2 capts per bty as observers (actually it went up to 4 in Burma in the last 18 months or so of the war), obviously casualties meant observers were often Lts, but normally it was the most senior who was sent forward.
In at least the second half of the war for btys in what would now be called 'Direct Support', the BCs positioned themselves with the supported battalion commanders. An important consequence of this arrangement was that a FOO could get his troop shooting to suppress a target extremely quickly.

[Carl Schwamberger]

UK, Aust, Cdn, NZ, SA, India all used the same training pamphlets. Not sure of the extent to which some (eg gun drills) were translated into Urdu (the language of the Indian soldiers).

For a review of the evolution of UK massed fire see http://nigelef.tripod.com/p_massfire.htm

I'd be care about Citing that web site. I cant say anything about its take on British or any other artillery, but the descriptions of the US artillery dont quite match my direct experience or the research I did.

[gambadier]

Having had a quick search I can't find anything much about US artillery doctrine and practice on that site. There's enough references to UK documents to suggest that the site accurately describes UK arty doctrine and practices. Furthermore there is every reason to believe that these were generally followed in technical and procedural matters because of the 'quality management' provided by the UK 'gunnery staff' system. This ensured that gunnery procedures were followed (overseas schools of artillery were staffed by the gunnery staff and refresher training ensured proper practices were followed, updated if there had been procedural changes). Obviously unit variations emerged and some were officially adopted, but these were probably tactical.

There were significant differences between UK and US artillery in WW2. By mid war the UK etc system was pretty clear. For the divisional arty the regt COs and bty comds went with their affiliated bde comds and inf/armd bn comds respectively, they were nowhere near the guns. The AGRAs were superimposed on this. Observers had authority to order fire, requests for fire were only used with regimental or larger concentrations when the observer was not authorised - and perhaps indicated an unexpected situation. For deliberate operations then fire planning could be appropriately centralised. All these arrangements meant that arty command was well integrated with the manoeuvre arms and control was generally forward and positioned to respond to the tactical situation.

This meant that massing fire against opportunity targets was fast and simple, and the affiliation of arty comds with supported comds meant good tactical integration and responsiveness to the tactical situation. This was nothing like the official US arrangement, it doesn't mean that there were not significant local US variations, but quite clearly the official US arty system was markedly different to the UK. What's more it didn't change after the war, and as my previous post pointed out was formalised in the 1960s QSTAG and I believe continues in the current NATO STANAG. The obvious deduction is the US Army considered that its WW2 arty system worked just fine, and that any local variations were not justified.

There's another point that is sometimes forgotten. UK did not use VHF radios, they used HF, which gave greater comms range and I'd suggest may have been another important element in enabling authorised observers to order divisional and corps concentrations. Of course it also meant that there was a significant investment in training time for signallers.

[gambadier]

Scanning through previous posts reviewing concentrations of arty fire, there does seem to be a real 'beginner's mistake' implicit in many of them. Well I'm assuming its not deliberate obfuscation.

For artillery there is a huge difference between planned and impromptu engagements. The former were well developed by the end of WW1, basically the target list. All fire units had one or more target lists developed and distributed by an artillery staff somewhere. The targets could be defensive, counter-battery, on call against expected enemy positions during a rapid advance, etc, etc.

The alternative to the distributed lists of planned targets was what UK variously called 'impromptu' or 'opportunity' targets, ie it had not been previously planned and was not listed anywhere. From an arty C&C, procedural, etc point of view they are very different things.

In WW2 UK units did not maintain 'log-books'. The continuous document in the operational record (to use the modern term) was the War Diary, written and maintained by units and formation HQs specifically as a historical record. Of course things like OpOrders were attached to it. These records are held in the National Archives at Kew for all units, in addition the library a Firepower in Woolwich has most of the RA ones. There are also RA War Diaries available on-line for the units fighting in the Netherlands.

[Carl Schwamberger]

....
This meant that massing fire against opportunity targets was fast and simple, and the affiliation of arty comds with supported comds meant good tactical integration and responsiveness to the tactical situation. This was nothing like the official US arrangement, ...

There is a old joke that there is no use studying US Army doctrine as they do not follow it. The past eight years I've been locating and interviewing the last surviving US artillery veterans of WWII. Not many still able to give coherent accounts so I'm not sure my little survey could pass muster as a statistical study. But, their descriptions mostly contradict the book doctrine. The one clear exception was from a Corporal specialist in a US 4.5" M1 cannon battalion in Italy. What he described was fairly close to 'doctrine' or what folks describe as doctrine. Still, even with him there were some differences.

Sifting through the eyewitness accounts in the books is trickier as there are gaps in the descriptions I can not clarify with questions. Still they lean strongly towards contradicting the conventional wisdom, & book doctrine.

This trend extended to the Viet Nam war. It is possible the role of the fire support coordination structure confused the issue. The fire support coordination role of the manuver brigade, division, and corps operations center was seperate from the artillery internal command structure and procedure, tho it overlapped the artillery (& air and naval gunfire) command in coordination of fires.

Circa 1988 I had a Australian artillery officer start to lecture my self & company on this subject & it was clear he had neither read the current doctrine nor gathered much while observing our battalion CP operations. It would have been anoying, but the Kiwi officer with him gave us a wink and a grin showing he thought his companion not to be taken seriously.

If all the exact procedures were laid out & we could follow them through step by step something might be determined one way or another. Until then I'd recommend everyone be careful with their opinions.

[gambadier]

Which invites the question 'If everyone was doing it, why weren't the procedures changed to reflect reality?' Fundamentally it's a procedural matter. Perhaps it was the implications for training and rank structures.

[Carl Schwamberger]

One of the published accounts by a artillery officer describes how his regiments staff wrote up a detailed description of their methods developed in Europe during 1944 & sent it to the gunnery school at Ft Sill. Some time later they got a scolding letter from the school staff telling them to desist & use the book methods.

I am hoping to resume researching this subject again soon. Have not been able to accomplish much the past two years but organizing a few pages of notes. The US Field Artillery Journal of the 1920s has proved a extremely useful source, but the real meat of this subject seems to start circa 1932.

[gambadier]

I reckon the UK system evolved along the following lines:

1. Direct fire, the battery commander was pretty much entirely responsible for tactical fire control, he probably had some instructions from above at the beginning of a battle but once it started didn't get much more.
2. Early indirect fire left the BC in tactical control, but it was assumed he'd be close to the guns (on a nearby hill), and he deployed an 'observing officer' if necessary.
3. WW1 saw increasing distance between guns and observers and sustained operations meant observers rotated. There was not a lot of attempt at affiliating btys with infantry battalions. BCs commanded on the gun position when they were there, accounts refer to the BC's CP on the gun position and it appears the more complicated gunnery calculation were sometimes left to him.
4. Official WW1 docs state that whoever was the observer decided at what and when the bty fired, they inherited the BC's authority (ignoring the major centrally organised fire plans for major offensives).
5. 1938 reorg of field arty from the 4 x 6 unit to the 2 x 3 x 4 unit. It created an observer for each troop for tactical fire control, and a CP officer to run technical fire control on the gun position, this meant there was no need for a 'hands on' BC either forward as OP and back at the gun position.
6. The change back to a 3 x 2 x 4 unit meant there was a bty per infantry bttn in a brigade. COs and BCs realised there was no need for them at the guns (the regt's 2 i/c and adjutant were in that area and that was enough), and that they couldn't effectively command by being observers, they gravitated to bde HQ and bttn HQs from where they could command (improving communications) and ensure that arty was properly integrated into and able to support brigade and bttn plans. Their rank meant they could speak with authority to the bde and bttn commanders and outranked the principle 'staff officers' at these HQs (Bde Major and Adjutant respectively).
7. This set-up worked well and became the norm.

[Carl Schwamberger]

Nos. 5 & 6 are fairly clear in the pages of Journal of Royal Artillery I collected. There is a eye catching bit from a early 1943 issue describing how a tank commander 'in the desert' was able to direct artillery fire without the aid of a FOO. The author was much excited about this radical step. Given the time lag in writing, transmission, and publication I'm guessing the description is of actions in the Alamein battles of the summer/autum of 1942

The second hand literature places the principle alterations in the US methods circa 1932 & 1940-41. As I dig deeper I'm becoming skeptical of those sources. In the US Field Artillery Journal from 1919 through 1930 the focus is largely on refining the gun-target computations, and on projectile effect. Cannon development runs third place. Fire control & coordination or tactics in those years does not show much more than a few articles about planning/scheduling, and the potential of radio. Hopefully the later volumes of the 1930s will reveal some clues.

[gambadier]

The perennial problem of a shortage of observers meant that the supported arm often had to do their own shooting. The key was comms into the artillery system.

[Delta Tank]

To all,

I hope this has not been covered, but I was reading WWII History Magazine, December 2018 issue that a friend gave me. I found this in the article entitled “Eyes in the Sky” by Arnold Blumberg, page 28, “ From D-Day to V-E Day, they(aerial observers) performed 97 percent of all Artillery adjustment missions in the European Theater.”

That seems like a very, very high percentage to me, is this true???

Mike

[Carl Schwamberger]

..., “ From D-Day to V-E Day, they(aerial observers) performed 97 percent of all Artillery adjustment missions in the European Theatre...

Probablly a misinterpretation. I've two sources indicating air observation was common in two different 8" cannon battalions. Little else for others. Probablly there were some long range cannon battalion that leaned heavily on air observation.