Artillery Ranging

[Jim Gordon]

In the days before pre-registering of an artillery barrage had reached the advanced state that it had in late 1917 onwards did each artillery piece, due to take part in a major action, register individually ?

Regards

Jim Gordon

[Edward_N_Kelly]

Of ahnd I don't know but would have thought that it would have been by "fire unit" eg battery (for the BritCom), company ? (French/German), etc . They would only be looking at the "beaten zone" of the fire unit as they recognised that the idividual gun was too inaccurate to be effective.

With the introduction of field survey units, meteorology, efficient measurement of indivual gun and ammunition batch characteristics (and the necessary quality control), larger fire units could be plotted from one weapon's registration to eventually being able to do it all by "silent registration" or off-the map.

Edward

[182 CEF]

For the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the Canadian Arty ( using sound and flash) registered EVERY German gun in the area long before the Battle. The Arty Commander had worked out a new way of finding German guns by sound, it proved very effective. He also work out the differance in muzzle volocity of our guns so they could be aimed with far more acuracy. He determined Barrel wear realy threw off the guns aiming, far more than thought. In the book Vimy, by Berton, he goes into great detail about this.

Dean Owen

[Greg]

I suspect Edward is right. Modern practice is to use a single gun in a fire unit and apply the corrections to all guns within registration limits- but modern guns are calibrated ( hopefully)- Hogg uses the line somewhere 'gone were the days when the battery commander calculated the corrections of the day from the drift of his morning cigar smoke'. Modern practice would be to apply a standard registration correction and then adjust individual guns normally at (Battery right or Left) if the target area was non standard.

Greg

[bmac]

I have researched the available records of the batteries used in the bombardment of Gommecourt on 1st July 1916 and it seems that individual guns were registered, as far as possible, on each of the targets allocated. However, as most of the batteries involved came straight from the UK, they had little time to do this and, for some, it involved less than a dozen shots fired with desultory aerial and FOO observation for correction. For others it was one or two shells.

The inadequacies of the shells, the failure to use wind, temperature and pressure information and the wear on the barrels over seven days meant that the accuracy, never great, got worse as the attack came closer. Aerial photographs taken on the day before show very little damage to the trenches except for where concentrated fire was used on particular strongpoints.

There was something of a contradiction in the way that preparations were made for the diversionary attack on Gommecourt. Whilst the infantry were told to make preparations as visible as possible in order to draw away reserves from the main attack, the artillery were very much kept 'under wraps' so that the bombardment would come as a surprise. Not a lot of logic there.

[AndyHollinger]

I don't know how many of you have actually done this ... but I have. In the days before computers the FCC (fire control center) would listen to me and use slide rules and reported wind stuff and fire a register round. Since they were firing from my map reading (JOKE: What's the most dangerous weapon on the battlefield at any time in any epoc? A Second Lt with a compas!) I would try to spot the round (easy) and plot it on the map - okay that's the theory ... what I'd really do is figure out where the shot was in relation to where I was trying to put it and call a correction. Once I had the shots fairly good, I'd call FFE! and we'd be off.

That was with optimal communications and not being shelled myself using "modern" equipment (though my VN era stuff wasn't that much different than WWI ! (Today it's very different) ... The FO's job was and is very hard. A couple of things off on the map and you're in the soup. One of the things we used to do was give an original coordinate of where WE were so the FCO (Fire Control Officer) could make sure he didn't drop one on us because we'd screwed up the coordinates on the map.

Putting indirect fire on anything was a matter of skill, luck and how long the 2ndLt lived to get better ...

Hope this helps ....

[Greg]

Hmm! I think I have been guilty of anachronism.I have been thinking of a method called registration which is used to obtain the corrector of the moment. A single gun fires at a known target until it is hit. The difference between the initial information and the final information can then be used as a standard correction and applied to all guns within limits. It takes account of all the errors possible.

What people seem to be getting at here,would now be called adjustment for future engagement and you would record rather than register it. Mea culpa!

Incidentally Andy were you M2A2?

Greg

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

I know that the German artillery used the artillery survey sections in 1915/1916 to register individual guns and specific targets. At first the old artillerymen were skeptical but when they saw the accuracy of the fire using the new charts they were quickly won over.

This was especially important on the Somme front where the guns of the 26th and 28th Reserve Divisions had every major target and target area fully mapped out before the 1 July 1916 attack. This allowed prompt and extremely accurate artillery fire when it was needed the most.

Ralph

[rflory]

While not an expert on WWI gunnery, I was a field artillery battery commander for three years and a Battalion Fire Direction Officer for a year in the US Army in Germany in the early sixties and at that time we registered only one gun in the battery. Because the firing point was surveyed in and all the other guns were laid parallel to the registering gun (using a BC scope) the Fire Direction Center (FDC) was able to plot the battery and calculate the azimuth and elevation for each of the other guns of the battery using the corrections derived from the registering gun. I suspect that the lack of calibration, the poor quality and consistency of the ammunition and propellent and the lack of accurate weather data in WWI had something to do with the need to register each gun, but my guess is that the fact that most firing points were not surveyed in at that time and that the guns were not accurately laid parallel to each other was more important in requiring the registration of each gun. Only a guess.

I completely agree with Andy's comment that a 2nd Lieutenant with a compass was dangerous but I would also add that a 2nd Lieutenant with a gun was even more dangerous!

Regards. Dick Flory

[Steve Bramley]

Hi All,

By no means an Artillery student, but thought i might offer an extract from the 5th Leicestershire History to illustrate Ralph's comment;

'...again relieving the Sherwood Foresters, who extended their line to the left. Unfortunately, they still retained the Doctor's house in Kemmel as their Headquarters, and, as Lindenhoek Chalet was now too far South, Colonel Jones had to find a new home in the village, and chose a small shop in one of the lesser streets. We had scarcely been 24 hours in the new billet when at mid-day, the 4th June, the Boche started to bombard the place with 5.9's, just when Colonel Jessop of the 4th Lincolnshires, was talking to Colonel Jones on the road outside the house, while an orderly held the horses close by. The first shell fell almost on the party, Killing Colonol Jessop...'

The German artillery on the Messines Ridge were over a mile and a half away.

A comment about the same incident from another publication states:

'...three officers going into an area under German observation on horseback in broad daylight!'

Steve.

[AndyHollinger]

Hmm! I think I have been guilty of anachronism.I have been thinking of a method called registration which is used to obtain the corrector of the moment. A single gun fires at a known target until it is hit. The difference between the initial information and the final information can then be used as a standard correction and applied to all guns within limits. It takes account of all the errors possible.

What people seem to be getting at here,would now be called adjustment for future engagement and you would record rather than register it. Mea culpa!

Incidentally Andy were you M2A2?

Greg

I can't remember what I was ... but small unit Cav and small unit Armor was my MOS ... spent most of my active duty at Ft Knox working for the Armor Development Center as a Test Platoon leader in the "Black Days" of the US Army during the middle 1970s ... Got to play with some Great Toys though ... although these toys are long obselete, then they were hush-hush secret weapons ... now used by the Chilian National Guard!

[Greg]

Just wondered- we did our basic on them in OZ back in the 1980s!

Greg

[AndyHollinger]

Just wondered- we did our basic on them in OZ back in the 1980s!

Greg

If you're asking about the curious dinosaur (as we called it) the M60A2 - I was ... was a master in the towed tank in attack formation (slight problem with the torsion systems!)