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Remembered Today:

Ineffective British Artillery


RammyLad1

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So going back to the original question ,can you answer in one paragraph?

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So going back to the original question ,can you answer in one paragraph?

Maybe not a paragraph bit a few thoughs after a visit to the Somme a few weeks ago looking at the Battle from an Artillery perspective.

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?app=blog&module=display&section=blog&blogid=436&showentry=1305

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Great blog Ian,would agree with that ,as regards to Loos too few spread to far in my opinion.

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I don't think that a FOO could adjust the HOB (Height of Burst) of a shrapnel round 4 feet off the ground no matter how good he is, consider the fuze was being set by the use of a fuze key and the good eyeball MK 1. You must take into account the zone of the gun between 81 to 92 yards and with a very shallow angle of descent between 3 and 4 degrees. I can see why the 4 feet was required at this HOB there would be a very narrow cone of dispersion but I don't this feasible.

By the way Pete1052 if I remember the delay on a M557 fuze was 0.05 secs

John

John

Having adjusted mechanical time fuses on an area targets with laser range finders, calibrated guns, tested fuse setters, high quality engineered fuses, up to date meteorological data, good observation and many years of experience, one still struggled to achieve optimum height of burst. Others may have been more proficient in this task, however my thoughts are the same as yours.

To achieve an optimum burst so close to the ground, with a specific target and the limited technical gunnery developments of the time I believe the adjustment of the height of burst would be difficult.

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Perhaps we are getting too hung up on the 4 feet issue. My points are that the experiment didn't replicate either:

1. the true velocity of the shrapnel bullets, i.e. velocity of shell plus velocity caused by shell explosive;

2. it wasn't set up at a height likely to cause much damage according to the Artillery Notes of the time; and

3. the exploding of the shell on the ground did not replicate how 18 pdr HE would behave at this time.

As some people know I am prepared to accept criticism of senior officers in WW1 well beyond the current norm but I am not sure I accept the concept that the BEF organised test firings in order to discover the best way of cutting wire only to falsify the results so that the shell type of which there was the largest quantity became the 'best of way of cutting wire'. Frankly, I do not understand why everyone is so keen to second guess the men responsible for the tests as well as the General Staff in their publication 'Artillery Notes Number 5, Wire Cutting, June 1916'. In June 1916 the instantaneous graze fuzes did not exist within the British Army to cut wire using HE. The French had them and cut the wire better. We did not and used the only shells that BEF tests showed could cut wire, even if it required 5, 10 or more shells to cut a yard of the stuff. It is for this reason, for example, that the 56th Division fired more than double the number of 18 pdr shrapnel shells at the wire in front of Gommecourt than General Staff calculations suggested was necessary (and still the wire was not cut in several key places!).

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I totally agree with Bill, FWIIW. The experiment did not replicate the effects of shrapnel bullets on wire-cutting. The official observations made on the pre-July 1st wire-cutting programme were clear. The observations confirmed the test-firing exercises that Bill has referred to. Shrapnel bullets from 18 pounder shells were effective but not in every instance.

Robert

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I was surprised at the size of ball used. They seemed smaller than suggested by cut-away drawings. If that was true, their individual momentum would have been less so their impact on the wire would have been lower.

Keith

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In the 18 Pr the bullet size is 0.5 in in diameter with 364 bullets in the MK 1 Shell and 375 in the MK II & III shell and there are 41 to the lb. Shrapnel Bullet composition 87.5% lead and 12.5% antimony. The same data applies to the 13 Pr but with only 236 bullets in MK I shell and 234 bullets in MK II and MKIII shell.

John

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I was surprised at the size of ball used. They seemed smaller than suggested by cut-away drawings. If that was true, their individual momentum would have been less so their impact on the wire would have been lower.

Keith

Having found loads of spent shrapnel balls in the fields I've never been convinced of their wire cutting ability. They seem too soft and many are distorted from hitting harder objects. As German wire was very tough I think in many cases the ball would have either flattened or been deflected.

If you look at the attached photo, you will see some of the balls have thin indentations like they had hit wire. This is a personal conclusion from first hand research. Not general theory.

John

post-8629-0-11866000-1304085255.jpg

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Yes, PD sans delay = DA, I'd argue that DA is actually as more explicit and accurate term than PD but its a semantic point.

18-pr had a very flat trajectory, hence the 1800-2400 yards frame. It's not the same as the 4 in the air out of 6 with later MT fuzes and HE and reasonably steep angle of descent. 18-pr did the business against wire within its limits, range was important because that determined the angle of descent, flat bwas needed to maximise the number of bullets going theough the fire as close to horizontally as possible (use your brain to do the mental model), obviously fuze length while important was not as critical as it is with a steep angle of descent aiming for a 10 metre HOB.

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Nigelfe

I have been looking at the 18 Pr Range tables at ranges between 1,400 and 2,400 with regards to drop off in Remaining Velocity,Fuze Length and the Angle of Descentand have found the Remaing Velocity and Fuze length are linear but there are two abnormalities regarding the angle of descent at 1,700 yards and 2,100 yards, your thoughts please.

John

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Having found loads of spent shrapnel balls in the fields I've never been convinced of their wire cutting ability.
John, Major General John Headlam produced a report entitled 'Notes on Artillery Material in the Battle of the Somme', reproduced in 'Battlefront: Somme', introduced and selected by K Bartlett (ISBN 1 903365 25 2). The report was dated 6 July and covered his analysis of the effects of the preliminary artillery bombardment before July 1:

"7. Wire cutting

The German defences on this front were known to be very carefully wired and the specimens attached will show the formidable character of the wire itself. In most cases, it was on iron uprights though in some cases wooden stakes were used.

Wherever it had been possible to obtain direct observation it had been destroyed as an obstacle by artillery fire, and many infantry officers and men told me that they had never been in any way retarded by the wire or ever had to use the cutters on their rifles. The difference in the effect of the different natures of shell was, however, very marked. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that 18-pdr shrapnel is far the most generally effective projectile for this purpose. It sweeps the wire away completely with damaging the surface of the ground and so substituting another obstacle. This was very marked in front of the second line where 18-pdr fire had been used exlusively."

Robert

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John, Major General John Headlam produced a report entitled 'Notes on Artillery Material in the Battle of the Somme', reproduced in 'Battlefront: Somme', introduced and selected by K Bartlett (ISBN 1 903365 25 2). The report was dated 6 July and covered his analysis of the effects of the preliminary artillery bombardment before July 1:

"7. Wire cutting

The German defences on this front were known to be very carefully wired and the specimens attached will show the formidable character of the wire itself. In most cases, it was on iron uprights though in some cases wooden stakes were used.

Wherever it had been possible to obtain direct observation it had been destroyed as an obstacle by artillery fire, and many infantry officers and men told me that they had never been in any way retarded by the wire or ever had to use the cutters on their rifles. The difference in the effect of the different natures of shell was, however, very marked. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that 18-pdr shrapnel is far the most generally effective projectile for this purpose. It sweeps the wire away completely with damaging the surface of the ground and so substituting another obstacle. This was very marked in front of the second line where 18-pdr fire had been used exlusively."

Robert

And he was wrong. Like any senior officer he was spouting the staff policy. His comment that shrapnel 'sweeps away the wire completely' is rubbish. It didn't as witnessed on 1/7/16. I must have read in a dozen accounts 'when we reached the wire it was uncut'.

Look at the logic. Would you try to cut steel wire with lead balls? Does paper cut a knife? It is clear the best way to cut wire in a graze fuze and an HE shell that breaks into large fragments. The combination of large steel fragments and blast does the trick.

John

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John, don't ignore the effect of speed and momentum. Things don't necessarily behave the same way when moving rapidly or being impacted by something moving rapidly. Think of putting your hand into water in a sink and doing a belly-flop off a diving board. One of them hurts like H-e-l-l......

Keith

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Headlam, of course, was reporting on those parts of the German wire where it was possible for him to inspect it without having his head shot off, i.e. areas to the south of La Boisselle where the British had advanced and where a detailed reading of the reports will show that the wire was, in the main, very well cut. In addition, his report would also show that the heavy howitzers had a distinct effect on German defences including dugouts. As Ralph Whitehead's book indicates the German defences were far less robust at the southern end of the British front for a variety of reasons. Further north they had little or no effect.

Issues of uncut wire were more regularly reported by the 46th Division at Gommecourt and by VIII Corps. The 56th Division, however, found the wire well cut except for in one key location (they did, however, fire 2.5 times as many shells at their wire as the neighbouring 46th Division). The 36th Division found the German wire very well cut in front of the Schwaben redoubt. In front of Maontauban and Mametz it was very well cut. In short, wire cutting was variable, success or failure depended on numerous contributing factors some out of the control of the attacking artillery. Where the wire was cut it was cut by 18 pdr shrapnel with, in places, the assistance of French 75s firing HE with their instantaneous graze shells. This combination of instantaneous graze shell and HE would have been (and was later) very successful for the British gunners but this was not available on 1st July. Where the wire was cut well it was cut by 18 pdr shrapnel. Equally, where the wire was badly cut the 18 pdr shrapnel failed for a number of reasons. Headlam reported on what he saw within the German lines and, personally, I have no doubt he saw what he saw and the conclusions he came to, at the time and given the available technology, were correct.

Lastly, if you want to know my sources for the information above then can I say I have nearly completed transcribing the entire infantry and artillery war diaries (Corps to battalion/battery) for the British and French war diaries for the period up to an including 1st July. As there were wide variations in local tactics on 1st July so there were wide variations in results. The popular image of 1st July is of the PBI walking to their deaths to be hung up on the wire and machine gunned. This may have happened in places, in other places (as earlier pointed out) the German artillery was the main means of the destruction of the attack and in other places it failed for other reasons. On the fronts of the XV and XIII Corps there were good local successes where neither wire nor the German artillery were the deciding factor.

It is, frankly, nonsense to suggest that 18 pdr shrapnel could not cut wire. Just because you cannot imagine it does not make it impossible.

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Nigelfe

I have been looking at the 18 Pr Range tables at ranges between 1,400 and 2,400 with regards to drop off in Remaining Velocity,Fuze Length and the Angle of Descentand have found the Remaing Velocity and Fuze length are linear but there are two abnormalities regarding the angle of descent at 1,700 yards and 2,100 yards, your thoughts please.

Sounds odd, does it appear in different editions of RTs? Does it correlate in any way with the speed of sound? You can get odd behavious around transonic although I wouldn't expect it to affect AoD.

None of the three are linear, they are all curves. You can see a set of curves for 60-pr in Fig 4 on my ballistics page http://nigelef.tripod.com/fc_ballistics.htm ToF curve will be much the same shape as the fuze length curve.

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I note that some of you keep banging on about 'graze fuzes'. In British service graze fuzes were or little or no use against wire, except to clear away the debris. They also caused craters, which the infantry regarded as an obstacle. It was the DA fuze, No 106, that made the difference.

To effectively cut wire you have to maximise the number of bullets/fragments passing through the entanglements to maximse the chance of a bullet/fragment hitting a strand. (Most gunnery is based on probability theory, it is the only true religion.) (Another point shrapnel bullets weren't lead (ie soft), they were lead & antimony.)

The problem with HE was (and is) that the fragments are projected at right angles to the tangent of the external shell body, affected by terminal velocity (it's a vector sum). This means 50% go into the ground whatever happens and any cratering absorbs more (if you can't visualise all this try sketching), and the very unstreamlined shape of WW1 shells meant a greater proportion was projected forward into the dirt than with later streamlined shell designs. Add to this that fragmentation was poor for the shell designs of the period, by this I mean the tendency was fewer and larger frags than later periods, not least because the HE content of the shells was quite a small proportion. So in the end there weren't a lot of useful fragments for wire cutting, compare this with shrapnel where if you got the point of burst right all bullets would pass through the entanglements.

Interestingly, in WW2 trials were conducted using HE against both mines and wire. The conclusion from the trials was that it was prohibitive for both. And bear in mind this was with effective fuzes, better shape shells and better fragmentation.

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Headlam, of course, was reporting on those parts of the German wire where it was possible for him to inspect it without having his head shot off, i.e. areas to the south of La Boisselle where the British had advanced and where a detailed reading of the reports will show that the wire was, in the main, very well cut. In addition, his report would also show that the heavy howitzers had a distinct effect on German defences including dugouts. As Ralph Whitehead's book indicates the German defences were far less robust at the southern end of the British front for a variety of reasons. Further north they had little or no effect.

Issues of uncut wire were more regularly reported by the 46th Division at Gommecourt and by VIII Corps. The 56th Division, however, found the wire well cut except for in one key location (they did, however, fire 2.5 times as many shells at their wire as the neighbouring 46th Division). The 36th Division found the German wire very well cut in front of the Schwaben redoubt. In front of Maontauban and Mametz it was very well cut. In short, wire cutting was variable, success or failure depended on numerous contributing factors some out of the control of the attacking artillery. Where the wire was cut it was cut by 18 pdr shrapnel with, in places, the assistance of French 75s firing HE with their instantaneous graze shells. This combination of instantaneous graze shell and HE would have been (and was later) very successful for the British gunners but this was not available on 1st July. Where the wire was cut well it was cut by 18 pdr shrapnel. Equally, where the wire was badly cut the 18 pdr shrapnel failed for a number of reasons. Headlam reported on what he saw within the German lines and, personally, I have no doubt he saw what he saw and the conclusions he came to, at the time and given the available technology, were correct.

Lastly, if you want to know my sources for the information above then can I say I have nearly completed transcribing the entire infantry and artillery war diaries (Corps to battalion/battery) for the British and French war diaries for the period up to an including 1st July. As there were wide variations in local tactics on 1st July so there were wide variations in results. The popular image of 1st July is of the PBI walking to their deaths to be hung up on the wire and machine gunned. This may have happened in places, in other places (as earlier pointed out) the German artillery was the main means of the destruction of the attack and in other places it failed for other reasons. On the fronts of the XV and XIII Corps there were good local successes where neither wire nor the German artillery were the deciding factor.

It is, frankly, nonsense to suggest that 18 pdr shrapnel could not cut wire. Just because you cannot imagine it does not make it impossible.

Bill I think the only definitive way to prove this would be to match the artilley plan per area to the locations where wire was cut and un cut. As the German wire and trenches were heavilly shelled with both 18 pdr shrapnel, 4.5 Howitzers and larger guns along the 1/7/16 line there is no proof that the 18 pounders cut wire in any consistent way. It could well have been the howitzers or larger calibre guns that cleared the wire. The conclusion has to be that the strategy of using 18 pdr shrapnel against wire was a failure.

John

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John,

I am sorry but I completely disagree with you. If you could provide some evidence to support your theory then we would, at least, have something to discuss but you are making an assertion that something could not happen mainly, it seems, because you don't believe it could happen. As I mentioned, I have c. 700,000 words of transcriptions of war diaries up to and for 1st July. If I thought there was any point I would trawl through them to retrieve the evidence, however, right now, I have other things to do. Certainly, as far as I am aware, there has never been a detailed analysis of the local infantry and artillery tactics employed up to and on 1st July which is odd as I fail to see how one can properly understand any battle, especially in WW1, without a detailed analysis of the objectives, tactics and performance of the guns. It is for this reason that I have been compiling my research for the past four years. What is clear, though, is that on many stretches of front the wire was cut and that wire was cut by 18 pdr shrapnel. Howitzers of various sizes may have fired into wire on occasion but it was by accident not design and could not have been the cause of the methodical removal of wire in front of the 56th Division or at Montauban, for example. Aerial photographs from Gommecourt, for example, clearly show the scouring of the ground where the shrapnel was fired into the wire. There is barely a shell crater to be seen in these areas where the wire was cut. In fact, as mentioned, heavy shells falling in uncut wire made life more difficult for the infantry. They created craters, piled the wire into impassable heaps and did not cut the wire because they exploded under it not in it, thus the crater.

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I have also been studying the effects of both artillery and trench mortars in the lead up to the July 1st attacks. The 2" mortar helped in those areas where it could be used. But I wholly support Bill's review, as did Sanders Marble. John, I appreciate why you think shrapnel bullets could not work but, with respect, this does not counter the evidence. If you have other evidence then it would be great to see this.

Robert

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Bill , Robert

I think we are now in circular argument time where none of us either has the time or avaiable resourses to prove our positions either way. My assertions come from:-

A. logic , Soft lead / alloy balls do not cut heavy steel wire easily and I think the video shows how ineffective it can be. Perhaps you would like to repeat the test under your own control? I've also seen many shrapnel balls from the Somme where there is a clear indent seemingly caused by hitting wire (the target) or a linea object - proof that the target was harder than the projectile. Shrapnel balls were an anti personnel weapon and were not designed to cut wire. If there were, the shell would have been filled with hard steel shards.

B. The repeated comments in books and personal diaries from soldiers and officer who took part in the attack, indicating that millions of shrapnel shells did not cut the wire as planned on 1/7. That is a fact.

C. Statements from the staff at the time cannot be regarded as accurate, as they clearly wanted to justify their plan in the face of huge casulaty lists. I've not heard any arguement in this thread to confirm the exclusive use of shrapnel shells to cut wire actually worked.

This is a discussion forum and in time I'm happy to be proved wrong as I am sure you would be if the evidence supports your or my position. We are all entitled to an opinion even if wrong. The fact that after 90+ years nobody has come up with a clear reason why millions of shrapnel shells clearly did not work on the Somme makes me feel that in time my position will be proved right.

John

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John,

I agree that this discussion is pointless just as much as I disagree with your assumption "that millions of shrapnel shells clearly did not work". There is nothing clear cut on this subject but, in order to justify your comments, I feel you have to explain how British troops carried several lines of trenches south of Gommecourt, in front of the Schwaben redoubt, at Fricourt, Mametz and Montauban when the methods used to cut the wire were the same the entire length of the line (though there were clear variations in the results). The only other guns used to cut wire were 60 pdrs firing shrapnel at more distant targets. I have gone through field and garrison artillery diaries by the dozen. Nowhere (with one exception) do they talk of heavy or medium howitzers being used to cut wire (which might, according to your thinking, explain the places where it was cut). That exception is the 46th Division where some attempt was made by 6in howitzers to cut wire in front of the second and third lines in front of Gommecourt Wood. It is impossible to tell how effective this was as no-one got there on the day.

I am normally more than happy to point the finger of blame at senior officers where I think it appropriate (and am known and loved for it in certain circles :rolleyes: ) but I'm afraid I do not accept your criticisms of staff reports in this case as their comments are born out by the entries in the relevant war diaries.

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Great blog Ian,would agree with that ,as regards to Loos too few spread to far in my opinion.

Given that all available artillery was employed, do we think that some stretches of the attack front should have been given no artillery support or reduced artillery support, in order to give other areas the required amount? How would we decide on the allocation?

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Bill , Robert

I think we are now in circular argument time where none of us either has the time or avaiable resourses to prove our positions either way. My assertions come from:-

A. logic ,

edit.....................

This is a discussion forum and in time I'm happy to be proved wrong as I am sure you would be if the evidence supports your or my position. We are all entitled to an opinion even if wrong. The fact that after 90+ years nobody has come up with a clear reason why millions of shrapnel shells clearly did not work on the Somme makes me feel that in time my position will be proved right.

John

Logic needs to proceed from sound premises. In this case, the actual, physical evidence. Are you aware of the pictures on the web, ( they are much older ) which show an ordinary candle being fired from a shotgun through wooden planks? The physics is fairly standard. I can cut a soft lead bullet with a rib bone but that does not stop the bullet from penetrating a rib cage when fired.

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Given that all available artillery was employed, do we think that some stretches of the attack front should have been given no artillery support or reduced artillery support, in order to give other areas the required amount? How would we decide on the allocation?

That was the problem at Loos,Tom .In Nick Lloyds book Loos 1915 chapter four his final assessment was that in spreading his guns,Haig effectively neutralised his own artillery.

Duncan

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