Technically the US Army/Marine Field Manuals we used were not for public distribution.  But, I routinely run across old versions printed any time from the 1920s up to the 1990s in used book stores, museums, or on the internet.  In the Field Artllery Basic Officers Course @ Ft Sill we had Indonesian,  Thai, and a enourmous contingent from the "Puerto Rican National Guard" 2d Lts attending.  So the FO & Fire Direction methods were not exactly any sort of secret.  A Russian coorespondent told me he found a set of US FMs in a old Soviet era military school library.

I only remember a few things reading about using artillery in mountains.

- That it is a huge pain in the but to haul artillery up a mountain, but once it's placed it gives large advantages.
- That recoilless artilery or artillery with less recoil is better for use in mountains, because to much recoil could cause the damn thing to move and fall of the mountain.
- That mortars with their high trajectory are also effective in mountains.

"http://www.vwam.com/vets/marble/mountain5.html"
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Maybe some better qualified people can comment?

I don't think that a RCL that seems to be fitted with a ranging MG and no sign of indirect fire sights has anything relevant to do with artillery fire in mountains!  Similarly providing field artillery is capable of high angle fire then it can be fired from valleys or anywhere else that offers suitable gun platforms.  Carrying guns up mountains may have been an issue 75 years ago when there were specialist mountain howitzers that tended to be relatively short range but that's not the case today.

 

Crest clearance is an issue with low angle fire anywhere where there are hills sufficiently high to 'intercept' the trajectory.  Pre-computers there were several ways and various instruments for determining whether or not a trajectory cleared a crest (and some nations have 'national data' appended to the NATO standard Tabular FTs for this).  In some armies it was standard to increase the height of a crest if it was occuppied, this gave an additional margin for PE.  Computers simplified this significantly because while computing the trajectory they continuously checked to see if they had met a crest.  The early computers (late 60s') may have only allowed a few crest lines (storage was very limited) and these had to be manually entered.  Successive generations of computers allowed more but more recently three dimensional digital terrain databases have become standard fit.  This means the observer (or whoever originates a target) doesn't even have to enter the target height, the system finds it automatically from the coords and finds all intervening crests.  With computers some nations adopted crest confidence factors that provide a percentage assurance that the trajectory will clear a crest.  Obviously there are then SOPs about the minimum CCF for occuppied or unoccuppied (or any other status) of crest.

 

Adjusting fire in mountains follows the same procedures as anywhere else, target grid corrections using OT or GT (or any other direction, which in mountains might sometimes be a crest line if it was sufficiently defined).  Reasonably trained observers should know enough about their job to know how to apply the normal procedures to suit the circumstances.  I'd suggest that an army that needs special procedures in mountains either needs to review its normal procedures or put more effort into training its observers to a basic level of competance.

 

Against some targets, notably those of narrow crests particularly when using guns with significant PEr with the line off ffire across the crest then you might need to take greater effort in confirming the short bracket, you'll also need to allow more ammo for fire for effect because a lot is going to be wasted. Targets on a very steep reverse slope relative to the line of fire may be unreachable and may need guns with a different line of fire, and there could be an early burst problem with proximity fuzed shells.  Bracketing for height is not really worth the bother and the combination of height and range adjustment is more complicated for the observer to keep mental track of, if you have computers you can happily keep splitting the range bracket (25, 12, 6, 3) if necessary.  However, the elevation angle change may reach the point where it doesn't alter the position of the fall of shot (ie the value of 1 mil as a distance on the ground at the target).

 

However, the real question is 'who still routinely uses conventional adjustment'.  Some armies have issued LRF to every arty observer for 30 years now, and although the early ones were a bit big the modern hand held binocular type can be used anywhere, GPS means an observer always knows where they are.  Given the accuracy of arty fire (at least in those armies using continuous calibration, good met data, and electronic self surveying gun sights) then opening rounds are going to be close to where they're needed a

I have got another clue from an old hand. I've been told that there is some procedure calling "Ladder Fire". This is used in mountains where it is not possible giving accurate target grid correction due to substansial apex angle and sloping target area. All I know is that the observer, after getting a round on OT-line, orders a ladder of fire on OT-line  from the whole battery; he then sees that which gun fired the closest to the target and records the target on that data or else engages by ordering other guns to apply that gun's data.

 

Does any of you have any knowledge about the details of this procedure???? I'll be looking forward to your worthy inputs

 

Unless ther's been a back to the future change its never been in ABCA or NATO procedures.

 

However, UK introduced 'ladder ranging' for field arty during WW2 (1943/4), whether it got much use is unclear but I've never come across any references to it being used in action.

 

The procedure was to fire a series of rounds at a series of ranges (IIRC 200 yard gaps) without ordering each range.  Off hand I cant remember whether it was all rounds by the same gun or each gun in a troop firing a differnt one, IIRC there was a interval, eg 10 secs between each.  Note that at this time UK (etc) used section ranging (2 guns) as standard.

 

IIRC it was originally a naval procedure but may have been used by coast defence arty as well.

 

There's probably something about it on  members.tripod.com/~nigelef/index.htm  and searching for 'ladder'.