THE FIELD ARTILLERY SYSTEM

Last updated 12 April 2002

A brief introduction to indirect fire and mobile firepower

For about the first six centuries of its existence artillery was limited to direct fire.  The cannon was pointed directly at a target that its gunners could see.  The required amount of gunpowder was loaded and some adjustment was made to the elevation of the barrel.  The gunners observed the impact of their cannon ball (not always easy due to the smoke) and adjusted their aim for their next shot.  In essence, this sort of procedure continued until the German invention of the 'richt-fläche' in the early 1890s.  Over the following 20 years or so artillery became an indirect fire system and direct fire was only used in exceptional circumstances or by infantry and assault guns.

In English the 'richt-fläche' was called the 'dial sight' (UK) or 'panoramic telescope' (US).  It enabled a gun to be aimed without its target being visible from the gun area.  The original intent of this indirect fire was probably no more than to allow guns to engage targets to their immediate front from behind the cover of a local crest.  Some not very effective methods for this had been devised in the years before 1890s.

However, the effect of indirect fire was that any target that was within range of a gun could be attacked by it, by day or night whatever the weather.  This meant that all guns within range of a target could attack it.  The means for mobile firepower had been created, where the guns of many batteries could attack one target and then a minute or so later attack another many miles away.

Of course making the most effective use of indirect fire meant that a system had to be created.  Apart from efficient communications equipment, most of this was done in World War 1.  The main components of this mobile firepower system are:

• Command and control.
• Target acquisition.
• Gunnery.
• Ammunition and guns.

In addition the various artillery units have to be suitably organised and equipped with vehicles, fire control instruments and other necessities, and it all requires very substantial logistic support stretching back to the ammunition factories.  Underpinning the entire system are well-developed procedures, effective communications and trained soldiers.  The following figure illustrates the basic process for an attack on a target.

Figure 1 - The Basic System

All the components have to be combined in an effective and efficient system, and this does not necessarily mean having the best guns or best target acquisition or best anything else (whatever 'best' means!).  None of these components in isolation or aggregation is the same as having an effective and efficient system.  Furthermore, in effective armies this artillery system does not exist in isolation, it is properly integrated with the other fighting elements on the battlefield.  

Indirect fire enables clear differentiation of command and control.  Command of artillery concerns the allocation of resources, primarily units and ammunition.  Control is the allotment of firepower.  In an effective artillery system batteries do not have to be transferred between commanders for their firepower to be available to them.  In the British Army artillery command and control became characterised by the maxim 'command at the highest practical level, control at the lowest'.

The basic building block of artillery is the battery with between 2 and 8 guns.  Batteries are organised into battalion sized units of 2 - 4 batteries.  Batteries have their own observers who deploy with infantry and armoured units to acquire targets.  There are also specialist target acquisition batteries and air reconnaissance provides a further capability.

Target acquirers may either order or request fire against a target.  Requests always go through a fire control HQ that allots guns to engage the target.  The techniques of gunnery and its control procedures enable targets to be efficiently attacked with controlled indirect fire.  A defining feature of the British artillery system is that target acquirers routinely order fire to the guns, in contrast to the US system where they always request fire.  This is neither a trivial nor a semantic distinction, and is reflected in organisation and tactics.  The British system implements the previously mentioned maxim of devolving control to the lowest practical level.

Some armies, including the British, regard the shells fired by the guns as their actual weapons.  It's useful to have an idea about the range to which guns can fire their shells and the weight of these shells.  Figures for range have to be treated with caution.  It can increase or decrease by hundreds of yards depending on the 'non-standard' conditions, particularly weather and other sources such as the wear of the guns.  For this reason the British generally used a 'maximum planning range' at about 90% of range table maximum range.

Even making comparisons between 'text book' ranges can give wrong impressions because these ranges are based on 'standard conditions', and different armies used different 'standard conditions' in WW2.  For example, in WW2 the maximum range for a 25-pdr was 13,400 yards.  In the 1950s UK adopted new NATO standard conditions, whereupon the 25-pdr maximum range became 13,600 yards.  Another national variable is the criterion used to select the standard MV, a gun's MV rises with initial use then falls as the gun wears.  Traditionally the French used the peak MV, others use the new gun MV and UK used one in a worn barrel.  

The following table shows many of the most widely used guns of WW2, UK used the ones in blue.  None have been adjusted to standardise standard conditions or the point in a gun's life for the standard muzzle velocity, therefore their precise maximum ranges do not give the true relative picture.  Of course in the end this standardisation would fairly meaningless in practical terms because if weather conditions favour one side of opposing artilleries it will disadvantage the other, and guns will all be at different stages of wear!

This leads to the question of the importance of such features as range in the artillery system, students of the tabloid press will have noticed their presentation that longer range gives an advantage against shorter range guns because they can engage them while out of their range.  The reality is different.

Indirect fire means mobile firepower, to fully exploit its potential three things are required.  First the command and control arrangements had to enable batteries to shoot across formation boundaries.  This sounds simple but was never achieved by the Red Army, who adopted a cruder approach of physically massing lots of guns where they thought they were needed.  Even in the US Army theory did not always work in practice because of 'proprietorial' attitudes by some commanders.  The next is range, clearly the longer the range the greater the area that could be influenced by mobile firepower (control arrangements permitting).  The last, and usually forgotten, is traverse.  If guns can't quickly and easily traverse between widely separated targets then they are very restricted in using their range laterally, even if the control arrangements enabled them to fire across boundaries.  In WW2 most heavier and self-propelled guns were limited in this way.  

However, the final but first question is 'what is artillery fire trying to achieve'.  Many if not most people would probably say 'kill and destroy the enemy', perhaps adding 'casualties and damage'.  These are undoubtedly desirable effects in some circumstances.  However, by the middle of World War 1 the British and Germans had realised that this was not the complete story, bombarding the enemy to destroy them before an attack did not work.  The British and Germans (the latter in the shape of Colonel Georg Bruckmüller) realised that neutralisation was the key to success.  In essence neutralisation meant that the enemy was prevented from doing what they should be doing, it negated their effectiveness.  The critical circumstance was during the attack, effective neutralising fire forced the enemy to 'keep their heads down' and so left the assaulting troops unmolested.  The practical problem was that neutralisation and its essential integration with the infantry or armoured assault was difficult - timing was crucial. 

 Copyright © 2001 Nigel F Evans. All Rights Reserved.