Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Artillery Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: Historical Question: World War II Artillery
PaulG    6/2/2005 3:45:44 PM
In World War II, what prevented Allies from snooping on German radio transmissions from forward observers sending coordinates to indirect fire artillery units? And what stopped the Allies from mimicking the forward observers and sending the German artillery the wrong coordinates? Were the transmissions done in some sort of code? Thanks for any advice/insight.
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Pages: PREV  1 2 3   NEXT
AlbanyRifles    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/6/2006 8:17:46 AM
If I may be so bold..... My understanding is it was a combination of all of those factors plus an ammunition shortage. This was partly due to approx. 1,000 British 3 cwt trucks being unserviceable due to cracked cylinders (2 US infantry divisions which had just unloaded had to give up their 2.5 ton trucks which were loaned to the Brits.) I remember reading about this in Geoffrey Perrett's "There's A War To Be Won". I'll see if I can find the exact citation.
 
Quote    Reply

Carl S    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/6/2006 12:42:57 PM
Albany.....that would be greatly appreciated. I forgot to ask Morris whence the question comes from. Maybe he is working on a game variant or a magazine artical or something. The other possibilities that come to mind are some sort glitch in the Brit artillery comd & control, or just plain bad planning. But those are just guesses. Anyway I'll pass these on to Morris.
 
Quote    Reply

neutralizer    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/8/2006 5:12:02 AM
Not sure about ammo vehicles, presumably 3 ton or 30 cwt rather than 3 cwt. I'd guess the former which would have been mostly RASC. Given the distance to the beaches then battery vehicles would have been able to collect but that would certainly increase the number of vehicles trips and hence road space utilisation. However, I don't think its relevant. I've looked at MORU Report No 23 - Battle Study - Op GOODWOOD. Total casualties 4011 in categories X, Y & Z (KIA, WIA, MIA) of which about 770 were KIA. It gives the daily totals by unit and I haven't totalled precisely. (Same with tk strs in P, Q, R categories). The report is based on 120 unit and fmn war diaries, plus Op Orders and Bde narratives. It also states that these contain mainy errors and inconsistencies (not surprising war diaries were written as the battle progressed from whatever information had come in) but that facts had been verified as far as possible. Also references other official reports. Unfortunately its map doesn't reveal the gun areas, all it says is that formations reported arty fired according to plan and it gives the density of fire in 25-pdr equivalence. The main firepower was the bombers operating from 0545 until 0900, together with the type of bombs used on the various areas. Arty was used after bombing on the same areas for continued neutralisation, although in some cases areas were missed by the bombing, this was particularly the case in 8 Corps sector. There was no way the arty fire does much damage to troops well dug-in underground. However the report states that extended demoralistion was achieved but that it wore of as the day progressed. From the map and narrative the arty barrage stops at about the CAEN-VIMONT line. This seems consistent with 25-pdr max range from what seems the likely gun areas. There were congestion problems on the ground at the beginning due to the bottlenecks of the lanes through 2 Army's defensive minefields. Reading between the lines GdS Armd Div inexperience showed in that their battle procedures were sluggish. However, the interesting comment is that the GE were able to move their SS Pz reserves forward and they arrived in good condition, in other words air interdiction and area bombing wasn't successful.
 
Quote    Reply

Carl S    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/8/2006 7:56:42 PM
Passed that one along as well. My own question at this point is what effect did the medium & heavy artillery have? I'm guessing the Brits had artillery spotters in aircraft (correct?) & they had a decent system for coordinating corps and army artillery fires with divsion level. Was substituting non divsional artillery at the longer range impractical?
 
Quote    Reply

neutralizer    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/9/2006 5:36:07 AM
Interestingly the MORU report only looked at the the War Diaries of 16 field regiments (but there were 18 bdes so there may have been some army troops regts as well) and 3 AGRAs. A corps was normally assigned an AGRA, and GOODWOOD involved three corps. The MORU report only refers to the barrages covering several areas, I'd have expected some concentrations as part of the time programme as well. The preliminary fire seems to have been left to air. Then there would have been on call targets, mainly DFs and possibly including some standing barrages or more probably 525yd Stonks. Known HBs would also have been attacked if they started being a nuisance. Each corps had an AOP Sqn but there's no mention of their War Diaries in the MORU report. Arty/R could have been a possibility as well to deal with targets in depth (AOP weren't allowed to fly beyond own FDLs). Normal tactical fire control would have handled Uncle, Victor and Yoke targets, mostly using CRA/CCRA/CAGRA representatives (which could have included AOPs in addition to BCs and AGRA regt COs) but unauthorised observers could have requested although I doubt that it would have been necessary. However, I suspect that not a lot would have been in range of the BOUGEBUS area which is where the real problems started, and the AGRAs would have been behind the div regts.
 
Quote    Reply

AlbanyRifles    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery-Neutralizer   1/9/2006 9:08:05 AM
I missed the 0...should have been 30 cwt. Yup, they were RASC. The timing may have been later...I am not sure. As I said, I needed to look it up and I haven't had a chance though. Good analysis. What was max range of the 25 pdr? The US Standard 105mm field gun (M2A1/M101) was 11,200 meters.
 
Quote    Reply

Carl S    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery-Neutralizer   1/9/2006 7:01:10 PM
"What was max range of the 25 pdr? The US Standard 105mm field gun (M2A1/M101) was 11,200 meters." 13,400 meters is on my quick refrence card. Nuetralizer...could you maybe please unravel the acronyms when you post. It slows reading down a lot on this end and does nothing for accuracy of interpretation.
 
Quote    Reply

Carl S    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/9/2006 7:05:33 PM
Whats your recomended reading list on this subject, Brit artllery in WWII & specificly for GOODWOOD? Or are you drawing from original sources for this?
 
Quote    Reply

jellicoe    RE:Historical Question: World War II Artillery   1/9/2006 7:18:58 PM
In World War II, what prevented Allies from snooping on German radio transmissions from forward observers sending coordinates to indirect fire artillery units? And what stopped the Allies from mimicking the forward observers and sending the German artillery the wrong coordinates? Were the transmissions done in some sort of code? Thanks for any advice/insight. -snip- Most FO's had hardlines back to the cannon ers....
 
Quote    Reply

neutralizer    RE: Question for Nuetralizer. World War II Artillery   1/10/2006 6:50:46 AM
13,400 yards was the range table (RT) max range for 25-pdr in WW2. However, note that UK and US used different standard conditions and the effect of this was to inflate the FT range of US guns by a few hundred yards compared to UK guns. UK also took RT standard MV as their estimate of where the MV would be about halfway through the first quarter of barrel life. Other nations took a more optimistic figure, the point is that comparing max ranges doesn't mean much unless you know what you're talking about. However, it's ofter forgotten that 25-pdr tended to overheat after 40 or 50 rds at Charge Super. Abbreviations, hope I've picked them all up: AGRA - Army Group Royal Artillery, basically a brigade usually 5 or 6 regiments mostly medium (5.5-inch and 4.5-inch Guns) in NW Europe but including a heavy regt (7.2-inch How and 155mm M1 Gun). Commanded by CAGRA - Commander AGRA, a brigadier. CRA - Commander RA, div arty commander, also Brig, he also commanded div LAA and ATk regts which were all RA. CCRA - Corps CRA, commanded corps arty regts including LAA and ATk. BC - battery commander CO - commading officer (regimental commander) Uncle, Victor, Yoke - phonetic alphabet - Uncle Target meant fire mission division (using the post 1965 term), Victor = Corps, Yoke = Group (ie AGRA) HB - hostile battery FDL - Forward Defence Lines (basically FEBA in modern terms) AOP - Air Observation Post - Austers flown by RA officers but in RAF sqns (commanded by RA major) where the maintainers were RAF but non-technician ground crew were RA. (Being ecumenical the RA also ran mixed units with sailors - the Combined Operations Bombardment Units, RA naval gunfire observers with RN telegraphists). I don't think the RASC (Royal Army Service Corps) tranport companies used 30 cwt to any extent (they lost half the 1939 stock in 1940) the basic vehicle was the 3 ton 4x4, although third line companies may have had larger vehicles as well. Field batteries had a few 3 ton, medium and heavy batteries more as their unit ammo vehicles.
 
Quote    Reply
PREV  1 2 3   NEXT



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics