German 15 cm heavy field howitzer

[RodB]

Sir Martin Farndale writes in his Western Front volume of the Royal Artillery history of the early clashes in August - September 1914 between the BEF and German army : "... their [German] use of 5.9 inch howitzers and 8.2 inch mortars as medium artillery to support their field guns gave them a great advantage". Is he referring to the 21-cm Morser 10 and 15-cm sfh 02 ? Were many of the sfh 13 model available at this time ? Also, is this summary considered accurate today ? Pointers to available literature on the evolution and deployment of German artillery in the war ?

thanks

Rod

[CharlieBris]

I think he was referring to the 15cm sFH 02, the German Army had 416 of these in 1914. The sFH 13 was entering service at the outbreak of war. I haven't seen any references

to sFH 13s available at the outbreak of war but they were introduced fairly quickly - by May 1915 there were 252 in service.

The 21cm M1910 Morser (216 in 1914) may not have been much use in the early battles because of the logistical effort required to move these guns. The main use of the 21cm

Morsers seems to have been in the siege(s) of the Belgian Forts.

The point he seems to be making is that the German Army in 1914 had much better artillery coverage of the battlefield with a mixture of direct and high angle fire. The projectiles from the

15 and 21cm guns were much more effective in reducing strong points and in counter battery fire than the light field gun projectiles.

Ralph Lovett (www.lovettartillery.com) has articles on the development of the 10.5 and 15cm German howitzers.

A reasonably priced book on the development of WW1 German Artillery is "German Artillery of World War One" by Herbert Jager.

Regards,

Charlie

[Robert Dunlop]

It is a very good book. The author's surname is Jäger (alternatively Jaeger) but you will only find his book on Abebooks by using Jager, as Charlie noted.

Robert

[CharlieBris]

I knew that - haven't learned how to do special characters on this forum.

Amazon.com has the Jager(Jaeger) book discounted to $US29.67 - list price $US44.95 (6 May 11)

Regards,

Charlie

[RodB]

Thank you Charlie and Robert, I'll put it on my list.

regards

Rod

[Robert Dunlop]

Charlie, you have raised an important point as a brief aside. Some Forums that specialise in other languages have a drop-down list of the different characters. It works a bit like the emoticons drop-down list on this Forum. Pressing Alt then 0228 on a numeric keypad or equivalent will give you an ä. This is a pain to remember. I keep a list of these characters in Word, or type the word into Google and copy the result. The problem with this approach is that something like 'Jaeger' doesn't return 'Jäger' in the output because the former is the spelling used by a famous clothing company . I will put a request in to the Forum administrators for this new functionality.

Robert

[bob lembke]

Sir Martin Farndale writes in his Western Front volume of the Royal Artillery history of the early clashes in August - September 1914 between the BEF and German army : "... their [German] use of 5.9 inch howitzers and 8.2 inch mortars as medium artillery to support their field guns gave them a great advantage". Is he referring to the 21-cm Morser 10 and 15-cm sfh 02 ? Were many of the sfh 13 model available at this time ?

thanks

Rod

I'll run thru some terminology, but not offer any numbers. The German howitzers were called, in translation:

105 mm howitzer = light field howitzer

15 cm howitzer = heavy field howitzer (These two guns were part of the field artillery. The higher caliber howitzers were part of the heavy or "foot" artillery. But the 17 cm and 24 cm mortars, see below, were served by the Pioniere.)

21 cm howitzer = 21 cm Moerser = (to my calculation) = 21 cm howitzer

The German term "Moerser" (the "oe" is the Uemlaut "o", as per Robert's comments) and its use is complex, and can mean "howitzer" or "mortar". Sir Farndale's description of the gun as a "8.2 inch mortar" is incorrect, to my mind, the Germans had a 17 cm "medium mortar", the 21 cm howitzer, and a 24 cm "heavy" mortar. The Germans called any howitzer over 15 cm a Moerser, except the few 28 cm howitzers (supposedly).

The situation of the heaviest guns and the terminology is complicated by the extreme secrecy in which these guns were developed, and especially by the adoption of "cover names", that suggested that the 30.5 cm and 42 cm guns were coastal defense guns, which they were not. My tendency is to call the 30.5 cm guns "mortars", and the 42 cm guns "howitzers", but that is as much on the basis of how they look, as opposed to more objective criteria. (The 30.5 cm guns were almost always without a gun shield, the 42 cm guns with one, so one looked the mortar, the other looked the howitzer, but their angle of elevation, generally 70 degrees, were the same. German sources also sometimes refer to one as a mortar, and to the other as a howitzer.)

Is that clear?

One of the joys of studying the German Imperial Army is the extreme (and probably unneccesary) complexity of almost everything.

If you are seriously interested, I believe that the economics volume of the Reichsarchiv series Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 has elaborate statistics on the various models and calibers of German artillery at the point when the war started, and how they were distributed to the active regiments, and to the reserves. Much of the German heavy artillery units were not actually formed in August 1, 1914, but were quickly formed up, often in a few days, from warehoused guns and pre-trained reservists in civilian life, scattered all over Germany. As the war went on, a significant part of the growing German heavy artillery used captured artillery, in particular Russian. At the capture of one Russian fortress the Germans captured 1300 cannon (a large part junk, but some good guns) and 900,000 shells. I have an article written by a Feuerwerk=Hauptmann who, at another fort, supervised the selection, loading, and shipping out of 100 50-rail-car trainloads of Russian ammunition to the west in 50 days.

Bob Lembke

[ph0ebus]

Charlie, you have raised an important point as a brief aside. Some Forums that specialise in other languages have a drop-down list of the different characters. It works a bit like the emoticons drop-down list on this Forum. Pressing Alt then 0228 on a numeric keypad or equivalent will give you an ä. This is a pain to remember. I keep a list of these characters in Word, or type the word into Google and copy the result. The problem with this approach is that something like 'Jaeger' doesn't return 'Jäger' in the output because the former is the spelling used by a famous clothing company . I will put a request in to the Forum administrators for this new functionality.

Robert

That would be incredibly helpful, and most welcome. Right now, any time I need a German letter I launch a new tab and go to the LAGeSo main page, which has most of the characters right on it that I use. Clunky but effective. Maybe the menu icon for this new feature can have a smiley with a little pickelhaube on it:

Erm, to get this post on track, there is a lovely book I can recommend called (I believe) The House of Krupp that also is easy to find and an interesting read.

-Daniel

PS The Pickelsmiley is courtesy of Adler on the Pickelhaubes.com forum.

[bob lembke]

Erm, to get this post on track, there is a lovely book I can recommend called (I believe) The House of Krupp that also is easy to find and an interesting read.

-Daniel

Hi, Daniel;

The book you cite is probably The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester. Although I generally avoid secondary sources, I read this book and encorporated some of it into my on-going work. This was mostly because Manchester interviewed a number of surviving members of the Krupp family in detail, and got materials from them, etc.; these people now deceased.

However, the book is deeply flawed, with many obvious errors. In particular, I don't think that Manchester knew much at all about artillery, and you are on shaky ground to rely on anything technical that he says about the topic. But it is useful, if used carefully, because it has these irreplacable interviews, and generally is a good read.

I and a research/writing partner are working on a history of the big German and Austrian siege guns, and the Belgian, French, and Russian forts that they dueled with in 1914 - 1916, and are deeply immersed in this topic.

Bob

[RodB]

I'll run thru some terminology, but not offer any numbers. The German howitzers were called, in translation:

105 mm howitzer = light field howitzer

15 cm howitzer = heavy field howitzer (These two guns were part of the field artillery. The higher caliber howitzers were part of the heavy or "foot" artillery. But the 17 cm and 24 cm mortars, see below, were served by the Pioniere.)

21 cm howitzer = 21 cm Moerser = (to my calculation) = 21 cm howitzer

The German term "Moerser" (the "oe" is the Uemlaut "o", as per Robert's comments) and its use is complex, and can mean "howitzer" or "mortar". Sir Farndale's description of the gun as a "8.2 inch mortar" is incorrect, to my mind, the Germans had a 17 cm "medium mortar", the 21 cm howitzer, and a 24 cm "heavy" mortar. The Germans called any howitzer over 15 cm a Moerser, except the few 28 cm howitzers (supposedly).

The situation of the heaviest guns and the terminology is complicated by the extreme secrecy in which these guns were developed, and especially by the adoption of "cover names", that suggested that the 30.5 cm and 42 cm guns were coastal defense guns, which they were not. My tendency is to call the 30.5 cm guns "mortars", and the 42 cm guns "howitzers", but that is as much on the basis of how they look, as opposed to more objective criteria. (The 30.5 cm guns were almost always without a gun shield, the 42 cm guns with one, so one looked the mortar, the other looked the howitzer, but their angle of elevation, generally 70 degrees, were the same. German sources also sometimes refer to one as a mortar, and to the other as a howitzer.)

Is that clear?

One of the joys of studying the German Imperial Army is the extreme (and probably unneccesary) complexity of almost everything.

If you are seriously interested, I believe that the economics volume of the Reichsarchiv series Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918 has elaborate statistics on the various models and calibers of German artillery at the point when the war started, and how they were distributed to the active regiments, and to the reserves. Much of the German heavy artillery units were not actually formed in August 1, 1914, but were quickly formed up, often in a few days, from warehoused guns and pre-trained reservists in civilian life, scattered all over Germany. As the war went on, a significant part of the growing German heavy artillery used captured artillery, in particular Russian. At the capture of one Russian fortress the Germans captured 1300 cannon (a large part junk, but some good guns) and 900,000 shells. I have an article written by a Feuerwerk=Hauptmann who, at another fort, supervised the selection, loading, and shipping out of 100 50-rail-car trainloads of Russian ammunition to the west in 50 days.

Bob Lembke

Thanks Bob - is there an English translation available ? I searched but couldn't find one.

[bob lembke]

Thanks Bob - is there an English translation available ? I searched but couldn't find one.

No.

(My shortest post ever.)

Bob

[Latze]

Sir Martin Farndale writes in his Western Front volume of the Royal Artillery history of the early clashes in August - September 1914 between the BEF and German army : "... their [German] use of 5.9 inch howitzers and 8.2 inch mortars as medium artillery to support their field guns gave them a great advantage". Is he referring to the 21-cm Morser 10 and 15-cm sfh 02 ? Were many of the sfh 13 model available at this time ? Also, is this summary considered accurate today ? Pointers to available literature on the evolution and deployment of German artillery in the war ?

thanks

Rod

Rod,

according to Max Schwarte 'Die militärischen Lehren des großen Krieges' (Berlin 1923) The military lessons of the Great War which contains lots and lots of useful tidbits there was just one battalion of sFH 13 available. All others were equipped with sFH 02. The 'Ehrenbuch der deutschen schweren Artillery' (Berlin 1934) Book of honor of the heavy German Artillery contains a very nice table with all heavy artillery units and their equipment in August 1918 and at the time of the armistice in 1918. There no unit with sFH 13 is to be found... I personally think that no sFH 13 were deployed at the wars beginning. I found Jäger's book to be very much concerned with technical detail and neglecting the actual use of the weapons. The chatty style is not my cup of tea either. Unfortunately I cannot give a better recommendation. Except if you are able to read German.

regards

Matt