German field artillery gunlaying methods ?

[RodB]

In Storm of Steel, Ernst Junger describes leading a night raid against Indian troops in June 1917 near St Quentin. He describes how the supporting artillery barrage falls short, and blames himself because he had personally arranged the ranging of the guns earlier in the day, and had not known that "guns always shoot short at night" and hence he should have added some distance to the range.

This surprises me : I would have thought that his job as an infantry officer would have been to tell his artillery colleagues where and when he wanted fire support and left them to it... or was there more or less to the process ? Is he describing fire support from his own infantry support guns, for which he rather than field artillery officers was responsible ? Even so, I'm surprised the gunners didn't say something like "Sir, we'll need to adjust the range if you're attacking at midnight". Is this just his way of accepting overall responsibility for a stuffup ?

thanks

Rod

[nigelfe]

"guns always shoot short at night"

Not true, the cause would be the difference in non-standard conditions. Most likely lower temperature at night affecting air and possibly charges (depending on how they were being stored). It could of course be off-set by other changes in non-standard conditions that would tend to increase range, such as wind direction and speed and or barometric pressure. Hence the German gunners would not giving accurate advice. Of course there could have been seasonal patterns. Ranging targets many hours in advance and not subsequently adjusting the data for changes in conditions is asking for trouble one way or the other. The correct procedure is to reduce the as-fired data and then re-predict it later using current non-standard conditions.

Of course the Germans didn't really sort out their technical gunnery until the winter 1917/18, prior to that they had lagged behind the Royal Artillery.

[RodB]

Thanks Nigel. I was actually wondering why Junger, as an infantry officer, would blame himself for what appears to be the artillerymen's error... is this his way of accepting responsibility for something that went wrong that he had personally supervised ?

[nigelfe]

Maybe, but its useful to note that allied arty seemed to manage OK with their SOS and other DF targets.