1000 Guns on a 1000 Yard Front

[julia jeffries]

Our grandfather (RFA) used this phrase to describe this part of RFA strategy on the Somme (largely to describe the noise).

I think he would have been told this rather than it being his own estimate.

Would this be an accurate representation? I am struggling to compile the numbers from other sources.

Would anybody know where the 1000 yards actually started and ended, we would like to see if we could walk at least part of it.

Thanks in anticipation.

Julia

[MikeMeech]

Our grandfather (RFA) used this phrase to describe this part of RFA strategy on the Somme (largely to describe the noise).

I think he would have been told this rather than it being his own estimate.

Would this be an accurate representation? I am struggling to compile the numbers from other sources.

Would anybody know where the 1000 yards actually started and ended, we would like to see if we could walk at least part of it.

Thanks in anticipation.

Julia

Hi

According to Strong and Marble in 'Artillery in the Great War', page the British had about 3,000 field and heavy guns and 1,400 trench mortars for the Somme (1916). Johnson in 'Stalemate' page 60 states that there were: "...1,010 field guns, 182 heavy guns and 245 heavy howitzers, and added to this total there were 100 guns loaned by the French." They would be firing at different targets at different depths of the German defences, that is on a front of some miles (@18?) not yards..

Mike

[Phil Wood]

1,000 guns over 6,000 yards for the attack on the Bazentin Ridge (14/7/16) - I doubt that 1,000 over 1,000 was even achieved in a 1918 attack (I now wait to be corrected!).

[nigelcave]

The short answer is, no: it did not happen.

[julia jeffries]

Thanks all!

We did think it was a bit unlikely but everything else he told us has proved to be accurate so we wanted to double check.

I think it was probably something they were told and obviously he had no way to check! It was the noise that he remembered and so he may well have been able to believe it.

Thanks again.

Julia