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: Time on Target Questions
apoorexcuse    9/18/2007 11:47:27 AM
I am a bit confused regarding TOT and its use. My first understanding is that it was/is simply the precise timing of artillery fires on a target. Now, I have since then seen it applied to more specific and detailed uses such as: Precise and timed fires beginning at one point and then moving to a new (predetermined) point and so and so forth, so that as the intended recipient (such as infantry or armor) attempts to escape they continue to receive precise fires. Or in other cases it is described as a precursor to armor (or infantry or other forces) moving into a position. In one case it would seem to more a part of a defending force, in the latter an attacking force. My guess is that my original understanding is closer to what pure TOT is, and the subsequent examples are uses of TOT as a part of other action. And one other related question, who and when first formalized the concept of TOT (at least since modern artillery)? Thanks
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Pages: 1 2 3   NEXT
Carl S       9/22/2007 9:38:59 AM
Your line of thought is correct.  ToT as we used it refered to the time the initial rounds from all canon in the mission were to impact.  Nothing more or less.

Moving the impact points of the rounds about deliberatly fell under two other common labels.  Shifting Targets, which could be done at the command of the FO, or by a preplanned schedule/fireplan.  The other was called a Zone & Sweep.   This was a specialized mission designed to evenly saturate a area with projectiles.  In the first case the intial rounds for each target could be fired as a TOT.  In the second case the intial rounds would likely be fired as a TOT, but the subsequent rounds would either be 'When Ready' or on a time line or schedule.

So TOT as we used the term was a seperate item from shifting impact points or targets about.

The TOT thing goes back to ancient times. Cutting loose with all the guns at once makes for a more satifying big bang, can scare the enemy for a few minutes, and is susposed to gain a few more casualties due to suprise.  Think of musketeers firing in volleys, or a line of cannon cutting loose at once on a advancing mass of infantry.  For indirect fires it was used in WWI under other labels as well.
 
Quote    Reply

Sabre       9/24/2007 2:43:49 PM
Just to add to Carl's response -
Under usual conditions, the first rounds of artillery to land cause many more casualties than any subsequent rounds (humans having a normally healthy instinct for self-preservation tend to find cover very quickly).
Thus it is in your best interest to have as many rounds as possible land simultaneously, in that first volley, when everyone is still "hanging out".
 
Quote    Reply

Carl S       9/24/2007 7:57:55 PM
To put it another way 36 rounds simultaneously or in close succession from nine batterys are significantly more effective than 36 rounds from one four cannon battery.
 
Quote    Reply

apoorexcuse       9/24/2007 9:09:01 PM
Thanks for the answers.  A few years ago I read Citizen Soldiers (my first on infantry and mechanized forces, my interests mostly focused on the wild blue yonder...), and there was some new terminology there.  It seems there a quite often many opinions on who was first with a method, but it often comes down to formalizing the terms for the first time, or in a more clear manner.

 
Quote    Reply

Carl S       9/25/2007 7:37:03 PM
Thats interesting.  Can you summarize the several claims to 'first'?
 
Quote    Reply

apoorexcuse       9/26/2007 8:27:59 AM
Yeah, the Americans of course...in WWII (that was wiki I believe no reference, so I dont give that any credit)

The other was a Danish website I believe, suggesting something in the WWI time frame by the British.  It was in a link to a link from a somewhat unrelated subject (history of tank warfare in Western Europe I believe, it was a bit late at night...). 

Anyways, that was the one that got me thinking about TOT again.  As I was trying to find the site again there were a number of websites describing the other tactics as TOT. 


 
Quote    Reply

Nichevo       9/26/2007 2:04:09 PM

Yeah, the Americans of course...in WWII (that was wiki I believe no reference, so I dont give that any credit)

The other was a Danish website I believe, suggesting something in the WWI time frame by the British.  It was in a link to a link from a somewhat unrelated subject (history of tank warfare in Western Europe I believe, it was a bit late at night...). 

Anyways, that was the one that got me thinking about TOT again.  As I was trying to find the site again there were a number of websites describing the other tactics as TOT. 


As long as you don't mind limited substantiation...

in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, in the first book, Triplanetary, there is a vignette of WWI where Capt. Ralph K. Kinnison is show down in his ...uh, Spad?...and gets sent back to HQ with a message from a general in a forward position.  Among the other horrors of war , when he gets to the C.P. (Command Post), it has been pulverized, in what he describes as a micrometrically synchronized German barrage...I will dig into etexts and post if that's OK, because my memory does not do it justice...

next post.

 
Quote    Reply

Nichevo       9/26/2007 2:06:23 PM
               TRIPLANETARY (by Edward E. Smith, Ph.D)

      First serialized in "ASTOUNDING," Sep '37 - Feb '38;
           First book, Fantasy Press hardbound, 1950;



...


BOOK TWO
                          THE WORLD WAR

CHAPTER 4
1918

     Sobbing furiously, captain Ralph Kinnison wrenched at his stick-with half of his
control surfaces shot away the crate was hellishly logy. He could step out, of course, all
the while saluting the victorious Jerries, but he wasn't on fire yet-and hadn't been hit-
yet. He ducked and flinched sidewise as another burst of bullets stitched another seam
along his riddled fuselage and whanged against his dead engine. Afire? Not yet-good!
Maybe he could land the heap, after all!
     Slowly-oh, so sluggishly-the Spad began to level off, toward the edge of the
wheatfield and that friendly, inviting ditch. If the krauts didn't get him with their next pass
. . .
     He heard a chattering beneath him-Brownings, by God!-and the expected burst
did not come. He knew that he had been just about over the front when they conked his
engine; it was a toss-up whether he would come down in enemy territory or not. But
now, for the first time in ages, it seemed, there were machine-guns going that were not
aimed at him!
     His landing-gear swished against stubble and he fought with all his strength of
body and of will to keep the Spad's tail down. He almost succeeded; his speed was
almost spent when he began to nose over. He leaped, then, and as he struck ground
he curled up and rolled-he had been a motorcycle racer for years-feeling as he did so a
wash of heat: a tracer had found his gas-tank at last! Bullets were thudding into the
ground; one shrieked past his head as, stooping over, folded into the smallest possible
target, he galloped awkwardly toward the ditch.
     The Brownings still yammered, filling the sky with cupronickeled lead; and while
Kinnison was flinging himself full length into the protecting water and mud, he heard a
tremendous crash. One of those Huns had been too intent on murder; had stayed a few
seconds too long; had come a few meters too close.
     The clamor of the guns stopped abruptly.


..........




     He slithered away; resumed earnestly his westward course: going as fast as -
sometimes a trifle faster than - caution would permit. But there were no more alarms.
He crossed the dangerously open ground; sulked rapidly, through the frightfully
shattered wood. He reached the road, strode along it around the first bend and
stopped, appalled. He had heard of such things, but he had never seen one; and mere
description has always been, and always will be, completely inadequate. Now he was
walking right into it - the thing he was to see in nightmares for all the rest of his ninety-
six years of life.
     Actually, there was very little to see. The road ended abruptly. What had been a
road, what had been wheatfields and farms, what had been woods, were practically
indistinguishable, one from the other; were fantastically and impossibly the same The
entire area had been charred. Worse - it was as though the ground and its every
surface object had been run through a gargantuan mill and spewed abroad. Spinters of
wood, riven chunks of metal, a few scrapes of bloody flesh. Kinnison screamed, then,
and ran; ran back and around that blasted acreage. And as he ran, his mind built up
pictures; pictures which became only the more vivid because of his frantic efforts to
wipe them out.
     That road, the night before, had been one of the world's most heavily traveled
highways. Motorcycles, trucks, bicycles. Ambulances, Kitchens. Staff-cars and other
automobiles. Guns; from seventy-fives up to the big boys, whose tremendous weight
drove their wide caterpillar treads inches deep into solid ground. Horses. Mules. And
people - especially people - like himself. Solid columns of men, marching as fast as
they could step - there weren't trucks enough to haul them all. That road had been
crowded - jammed. Like State and Madison at noon, only more so. Over-jammed with
all the personnel, all the instrumentation and incidentalia, all the weaponry, of war.
     And upon that teeming, seething highway there had descended a rain of steel-
encased high explosive. Possibly some gas, but probably not.
 
Quote    Reply

Carl S       9/26/2007 8:24:23 PM
"Yeah, the Americans of course...in WWII (that was wiki I believe no reference, so I dont give that any credit)

The other was a Danish website I believe, suggesting something in the WWI time frame by the British.  It was in a link to a link from a somewhat unrelated subject (history of tank warfare in Western Europe I believe, it was a bit late at night...). 

Anyways, that was the one that got me thinking about TOT again.  As I was trying to find the site again there were a number of websites describing the other tactics as TOT.  "

Yeah, well... Like I wrote earlier the ToT is just the indirect fire version of the old muzzle loading era volley fire.  The 20th Century technical aspect is since the various batterys are at slightly (or greatly) different ranges from the target/s and may be different caliber or model guns the times of flight will vary.  So, the FO or battery officer has to calculate the time of flight for his (or her) battery and fire that many second before the 'Time on Target'.  And pity the USMC 2d Lt who miscalculates his ToF by five seconds : (

In WWI it probablly took the various artillery regiments a couple years to figure how to do this on multi battery scale and why it might be desireable.  I'd also be skeptical of any claim as first, as a lot of new ideas tested went unrecorded.  For all we know the japanese might have done it beore WWI in 1904, or perhaps someone in the Balkans wars circa 1912.
 
Quote    Reply

apoorexcuse       9/27/2007 8:36:34 AM

 And pity the USMC 2d Lt who miscalculates his ToF by five seconds : (

So the FO does the calculations for all batteries involved, or is it one FO per battery?  And how close is the timing by a good FO, 1 second, 100ms?
 
Quote    Reply
1 2 3   NEXT



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics