I've not come across anything coherent, there's odd bits tucked away in books such as Hogg's German Artillery of WW2 and IIRC Engeleman's book (the consolidated one not the various narrow focus ones). There are allied intelligence assessments but I've alway had the impression that these concentrate of equipment and tactics not technical procedures.

Try This one

Thanks to both of you. Who is Engelemann & what are his titles? The web site looks extremely valuable. Out of the 200+ I've looked at it appears to be amoung the 2 or three of real usefulness. While I can get a fairly accurate picture of US, Brit, Soviet, and French arillery performance from the few primary and many secondary sources I have the sources of German artillery, such as Hogg, leave key details out and present some suspected errors. I suspect the Wehrmacts artillery had some fundamental systemic flaws but have not collected usefull data for proving this one way or another.

Engelemann has written several books, try Amazon. Another, which touches useful on some interesting stuff, is Bailey's 'Field Artillery and Firepower'. However, finding technical and procedural detail is difficult. For example I still can't find a definitive source on how the Germans divided up a circle - I think it was 400 grads (also had other names) I used to assume these were then metric (ie 1/10ths), however I've also come across a pre-WW1 reference suggesting it might be 1/16ths (ie NATO mils)!

Traveling to Germany to do research is beyond my means, but part of what we are looking for may be at Ft Sill, or in the mouldering archives near DC. Still it would require a enourmous ammount of time. Two years ago it took me the better part of a day to snag a few relelvant pages from the library in Quantico.

Have you researched what's available in US archives? Obviously there'll be US (and UK?) int assessments/reports although how correct they are and how detailed they get in gunnery matters is another issue. However, are there not 'captured enemy documents' in US archives? Two examples, searching the Aust War Memorial online catalogue I found what I think may be the original GE WW1 document (in German) on the 'Pulkowski Method', I haven't ordered a photo-copy but the do a prompt service. Very recently a researcher in London found almost complete technical documentation on the WW1 GE 38cm 'Paris Gun', it'd been deposited in the Imperial War Museum in about 1990 by the widow of a Brit arty int offr who'd found them in the ruins of Krupp's Essen offices in 1945! (they were naturally in a 'Misc German Papers' file and yes the researcher is writing/written a book, the first based on correct data instead of supposition).

I've done a limited ammount of that. It is time consuming and expensive to travel to those locations. I used to have the leasure many years ago, but alas now I'm a business owner & have no time for such frivolities. Inter library loans dont work very well for these sorts of documents. Few librarys will let them out of the building and getting usefull photocopies is a fantasy. Beyond that I've found many librarys dont have their collections of such documents adequately cataloged. Two years ago I went to the Breckenridge library in Quantico Va. A modern state of the art research facility. None of the periodicals I was looking for were in the librarys cataloge. After an hour of ransacking the stacks I found every journal I thought was there. But, even with the proper titles and call numbers printed on the binders the library staff was unable to find any entry for these documents in their files. Unfortunatly this is not a uncommon occurance. The data is there, or somewhere, but one has to spend many hours, even several days plouging through endless pages. I'd love to do this, but earning a living takes priority.

Sorry, I got a little negative there. The 'easy' methods get a tad frustrating at times. What is the name of the researcher for the Paris Gun? I'd like to watch for the title when he publishes.

Thomas Fegan