|
The Development of
British Artillery and
Tactical Wargames - Part I
This is a mirror of
an article original appearing at this link:
http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/blog.php?b=559
Comments may still be active by
clicking that link and registering at the gamesquad site.
Artillery conquers
and
infantry occupies.
- - Major-General John Francis Frederick (J.F.C.) Fuller
The
reaction to my blog entry on the Machine Gun in Tactical Wargames
raised some questions regarding the tactical relationships between
infantry and artillery, and highlighted some common misperceptions
about the development of artillery in the Great War. It is easy to
assume that artillery entered the First World War as a fully
developed arm, but in fact, such things we take for granted today -
indirect fire, for example - were comparatively new in 1914. What
this entry will attempt to do is trace the timeline of technical
innovation and development in British Commonwealth artillery. The
focus is on British artillery as they are the example I am most
familiar with - having published a unit history on a Canadian
artillery battery - and also because they arguably moved the ball
forward the furthest of all the combatants of that war. Once we've
explored how artillery was developed in Part I, we can examine what
this means to tactical wargaming in later articles.
Like all
my articles, I will focus on my own definition of "tactical" - 20th
Century, land based warfare as my primary area of interest.
Artillery Development up to 1915
British
combat experience in the Boer War revealed the spade and spring
recoil system in use on guns of that era failed to prevent movement
of the gun carriage during firing; the 12 pound shot of these
breech-loaders was also too small to be effective. In 1900, small
numbers of German 15-pounders were added to the arsenal, but the
British adopted the 18-pounder as standard, boasting many technical
advantages such as improved recoil system, screw breech, and rate of
fire. The gun did not have to be relayed between shots as with the
older guns, and rifled barrels increased both range and accuracy.
The other
armies of the world were (or already had) developing similar
technologies, such as the famous French 75. But technology and
employing sensible tactics to use them are two different things.
Rifled muskets were still being used in massed infantry formations
in the American Civil War to devastating effect, and indeed, in 1914
infantry equipped with bolt-action rifles were still organized into
companies of 100 to 200 men and committed to costly battles in 1914
using the ancient tactics of concentration of force and linear
battle lines.
In the
Great War, field artillery's role
...was to assist the
infantry in every way in establishing a superiority of fire over the
enemy. This meant it was used principally for immediate infantry
support and provided close barrages that enabled the direct advance
of the infantry. It was also utilized to harass trench systems and
small defence systems, and to cut barbed wire. Field artillery
concentrated on swift movement and speed in coming into action.
Howitzers, by reason of their steep angle of descent of powerful
projectiles, were specially adapted for attack on shielded guns, or
enemy behind cover or in entrenchments. Howitzers were particularly
adapted to supporting infantry in later stages of an attack, where
their higher angled trajectory allowed continuous firing until the
infantry had almost reached its objective.(1)
But at
the start of the war, it was not uncommon for the artillery to be
used in the old-fashioned way, for direct fire support, firing over
open sights and employed in the front line, either in direct support
of the infantry, or simply to shoot at targets of opportunity. The
impossibility of using guns in this manner became quickly apparent,
however, and the use of artillery indirectly became the norm.
Though gunners had
experienced the need for indirect fire in the Boer War, they never
organized the necessary communications networks to make this
effective. By 1912 British signal units were capable of setting up
networks incorporating telegraph, telephone, and dispatch riders.
Telephones were provided to the artillery, but since they were not
connected to switchboards, no more than two telephones could be
linked on a single line. Also, the instruments tended to break down.
In the 1913 manoeuvres (in England) the gunners acquired their
targets by direct observation (not from the map), did no night
shooting, carried out no calibration or adjustment for atmospheric
conditions, and had almost nothing to do with the infantry, whom
they were supposed to support.(2)
While the
First World War did see a revolution in artillery practices, the
learning process - as it was for all the combat arms - was slow.
Imperial troops in the UK in 1914 suffered through the rainiest
winter in memory and competed for scarce range space, some gunners
firing just 50 rounds per four-gun battery from mobilization
in August 1914 to the end of January 1915.
True
education came in the trenches; in early 1915 attacks were generally
done by battalions of infantry rather than larger formations. While
at first, scouts were called on to find passages through No-Man's
Land, losses were so high due to inability to deal with barbed wire
and enemy machine guns that scouts were soon dispensed with in local
attacks. The artillery's role was to fire at enemy trenches during
the attack, then lift fire to prevent enemy support from reaching
their front line:
Lieutenant-Colonel A.G.L.
McNaughton, who kept in close touch with changing developments in
the Royal Artillery, added the task of clearing no man's land of
obstacles: 'You had to get some way over - to be able to smash your
way through the barbed wire. And the only possible way to do it in
the time available was by gunfire.' Unlike the infantry...the
artillery had some opportunity to train under realistic conditions,
using the enemy's trenches as targets for practice shoots, but they
could do this only if ammunition was available, and often it was
not. (3)
Neuve Chapelle
At Neuve Chapelle from 10-12
March 1915, the artillery began to modernize and fight set-piece
battles. Shrapnel shells were fired to bar enemy movements, and for
the first time, "This added the French word barrage to the
military lexicon." German reinforcements were prevented from
reinforcing their front, though it wasn't enough to result in a
victory.(4)
There were other
“firsts”...These, with modifications, characterized almost all
subsequent attacks in the War. Air photographs revealed the
disposition of the enemy and particular targets. The issue of an
artillery timetable gave each battery a definite purpose and target
for each phase of a bombardment. An elementary system of shooting by
the map replaced the crude visual air signals of air observers with
wireless corrections. Objective maps with their “Red Line,” “Green
Line,” and other coloured lines came into being. With attention paid
to barometric pressure, temperature, wind direction, strengths,
accuracy improved.(5)
Although the battle did not
result in a victory, it was a sign that battles could be more than
futile charges at bayonet point.
It was also at Neuve
Chapelle that British and Canadian gunners used the clock method of
calling fall of shot for the first time, allowing gunners to zero in
on their targets thousands of yards away with little loss of time.
Added to (British General Sir Douglas) Haig's insistence that each
round be accurately observed, the technique was one of the first
steps towards 'scientific gunnery.' the bombardment also lifted from
objective to objective, the first time British artillery had
attempted to protect the troops throughout the advance. (A) member
of the 1st Battalion...on the left flank of the British
assault...reported on how the barrage helped the infantry get
forward:'For about a half hour this merciless bombardment went on,
the range was lifted and under protection of a creeping barrage,
British infantry climbed out of trenches into No Man's Land. This
was the first time this form of barrage had been used, and, in spite
of the big guns, advancing Tommies went too fast and ran into their
own artillery fire.'(6)
The artillery had not yet
abandoned the old ways; during the 2nd Battle of Ypres, when Germans
used poison gas for the first on the Western Front and the Canadian
Division hastily attempted to seal the line in the wake of a French
rout, guns were once again employed over open sights as they had
done on Salisbury Plain. And the technique worked, at least
temporarily. But the open warfare that temporarily prevailed at
Ypres by the use of gas went back to trench warfare soon enough, and
it became clear that the Allies and the Royal Artillery needed to
find solutions to this tactical challenge.
Artillery had proved
itself in breaking up German attacks, and...would swear by the
eighteen-pounder until after the war. The gunners' reliance on
initiative, which had been bred into them since the turn of the
century and before, stood them in good stead in defensive battles,
but it was not sufficient that infantry advances could be pressed
home without heavy casualties. The(y) had to find some way to make
their infantry weapons more effective, liaison between infantry and
artillery more efficient, and the artillery's guns more accurate.(7)
Weight of Fire
The initial solution was to
simply fire more shells, and so 4.5-inch and 6-inch guns added to
the din, along with trench mortars, an upgrade of the old idea of
siege engines. Bombardments of several days' duration became
commonplace as a preface to infantry attacks, an idea that was
already 15 years old. But artillery wasn't accurate enough to be
able to pinpoint individual positions, and the shells in use weren't
big enough to ensure the destruction of defensive works. Shrapnel
shells which burst metal shards lacked the power to cut through
barbed wire and fortifications. Shell shortages restricted the use
of the larger guns, and imprecise timing of barrages meant that
enemy machine gunners and riflemen could man their parapets in the
few minutes between the end of a barrage and the appearance of
British infantry in No Man's Land - plenty of time to lay down a
curtain of small arms fire. And since the shell fuzes weren't
sensitive enough to enable the British artillery shells to explode
above the barbed wire, the shells simply exploded in the mud without
effect, leaving the wire intact. Festubert in May 1915 highlighted
these disadvantages to great effect.
The barrage had been a great
boon, and the artillery did its best work when the objective was
taken, throwing down a gauntlet of steel through which enemy
reinforcements would have to try and counter-attack. In theory, the
artillery was also busy firing on the enemy's guns, keeping him from
shelling the newly won objectives. But before that happened, the
infantry had to get there.(8)
As stalemate settled over
the British front in mid-1915, links between the infantry and
artillery were strengthened, by telephone wire, signal lamps, and
having artillery observers actually living with the infantry.(9)
Early telephone exchanges sometimes became congested, meaning
the infantry was unable to contact their artillery. Artillery
commanders also went to great pains to make clear to the infantry
that the larger the gun in support, the less ammunition would be
available. Infantry brigades (four battalions) had their artillery
support standardized, with three 18-pounder batteries per brigade,
with an additional battery of 4.5-inch howitzers. The 18-pounders
remained in direct telephone communication with the front line
trenches, while the heavier guns could only be contacted by going
through the artillery brigade's headquarters or the infantry
brigade's headquarters. In case of an emergency, such as a German
attack, 6-inch howitzer batteries could also be contacted via the
artillery brigade headquarters. Deciding which guns were most
suitable for a particular mission was left to the artillery
commander, with the infantry being responsible for shell reports -
plotting as best as possible where shells were falling, what type of
shell the enemy was using, the direction and distance of the enemy
battery, and the time the enemy shells fell.
Small field guns were sometimes employed
directly in the firing line in the early days of the war. Library
and Archives Canada photo.
Accuracy of Fire
The Shell Crisis of 1915
toppled the government at home in Britain, but there were also
military reasons to want to be able to fire artillery accurately;
four main missions were identified for the artillery in battle:
covering fire during attacks, defensive fire during enemy attacks,
counter-battery fire against enemy guns, and predicted instead of
observed fire against particular targets.
Accurate fire began with the
survey:
The oldest and simplest
form of artillery survey is registration by shooting, in which the
gun itself is used as a rangefinder. Its disadvantages are twofold.
Firstly, its results are immediately applicable only to the gun - or
at most the battery - that did the ranging. Secondly it eliminates,
or reduces, the possibility of surprise. Hence the development of
instrumental methods, beginning with the battery or troop director
and rangefinder, and ending with the theodolite of the surveyor.
Owing to the conditions
under which artillery survey was initiated, the relationship between
these various instrumental methods was not at first fully
appreciated. During the stalemate on the Western Front from 1915-18,
large-scale maps were plentiful and topographical detail was usually
ample for the purpose of resecting a position.(10)
As raiding became a feature
of life on the static front, the "box barrage" came into vogue.
Historians are divided on who invented them; what is clear is the
important role artillery played. The Germans also eventually
employed them; they used exploding shells to cut off specific areas
of trench from enemy support in order that friendly troops might
raid a section of enemy line.(11)
As a further aid to
immediate assistance, the British Army developed the “SOS barrage”;
upon seeing an emergency signal from their infantry (rockets or
flares of predetermined colour or sequence), the artillery would
fire on pre-registered targets.
...the eighteen-pounders
(would fire) a shrapnel barrage for three minutes as close to
friendly lines as was considered safe, then creep towards the enemy
front trenches and remain there for about ten minutes. Heavy
artillery, at the division commander's discretion, could either be
superimposed on the eighteen-pounder barrage or used in a
counter-battery role. After some initial problems, in which British
units expended masses of ammunition on false alarms, the British
decided to use the SOS only in case of imminent attack.(12)
The
Battle of the Somme
The July
Drive of 1916, known to all now as the opening of the Battle of the
Somme, is best known for the death toll on the first day of the
offensive, 1 July, when nearly 20,000 British and Newfoundland
servicemen lost their lives. Another 38,000 men were wounded or went
missing on that single day. In the cold light of historical context,
however, the battle was yet one more stepping-stone on the way to
unlocking the mysteries of tactical success on the Western Front.
It is
true that the majority of casualties inflicted in the First World
War was by artillery (statistical analysis of British casualties
yielded figures of 2% of all wounds caused by grenades, 39% by small
arms (both rifles and machine guns), and 58% by artillery or trench
mortars, with 0.32% attributable to other means, including
bayonets). Statistics don't often tell the whole story. The barrage
on the Somme lasted from 0600 on 24 June to 0600 on 1 July, firing
1,508,652 shells; that was seventy one shells for every single yard
of front line trench, or 7,857 shells along the front every
hour.(13) For all that firepower, the artillery was
powerless in many sectors to appreciably ensure success of the
infantry, and the opening days of the battle represented in many
sectors several steps backwards in what had been learned to that
date about how to use the modern technologies and tactics.
One of
many myths surrounding the first day of the battle is that the
infantry was ordered blindly forward mindless of the futility of the
bombardment. This is not true; trench raids were mounted nightly
specifically to alert the British to the effects of the artillery
preparation. Reports were mixed; some raiders reported that the wire
was indeed being cut. Aerial photos were also used to gauge the
effects of the bombardment. When one corps reported that the wire
wasn't being cut, General Sir Douglas Haig, commander of all British
forces in France, was disinclined to believe them, noting that the
corps staff had little experience of the Western Front (and in fact,
he was correct, as that corps had recently come to France from
Gallipoli.) Haig noted that fires were reported in the German rear
areas.(14)
For their
part, the Germans were content to remain on the defensive; their
bunkers and dugouts were as many as thirty feet below ground. On the
morning of the battle, the key would be in keeping them away from
the firestep. Again, the artillery played its role here. Deception
was used to fool the Germans into the exact timing of the actual
attack. Every day would bring an intense period of bombardment for
80 minutes; repetition of this pattern was intended to fool the
Germans into thinking prolonged bombardments would always be of
eighty minutes' length - and on the actual day, the “hate” would be
shortened to sixty-five, hopefully allowing the British infantry to
cross No-Man's Land before the Germans could occupy their own
firestep.(15)
The
majority of infantry on the British front were inexperienced, adding
to the burden of the artillery. The “New Army” divisions were filled
with raw soldiers recruited from off the street, unlike the
divisions of regulars (pre-war full time soldiers) and territorials
(British Militiamen) who had at least some small knowledge of
service life before 1914. Their instructions were simple: do nothing
fancy. Walk across No Man's Land in ordered waves and rely on the
artillery to have killed the Germans beforehand. The orders came
straight from Haig, who noted that “officers and troops generally do
not possess that military knowledge arising from a long and high
state of Training which enables them to act promptly on sound lines
in unexpected situations."(16)
As
unpalatable a thought as it is now to many, Haig was right; at the
very least, he had accurately described the state of training in the
New Army divisions. Even so, on the day of the attack, some division
commanders permitted their subordinates leeway in how they assaulted
the enemy trenches.
The leading battalions
(of the 36th (Ulster) Division) had been ordered out from the wood
just before 7.30 A.M. and laid down near the German trenches . . .
At zero hour the British barrage lifted. Bugles blew the "Advance".
Up sprang the Ulstermen and, without forming up in the waves adopted
by other divisions, they rushed the German front line . . . By a
combination of sensible tactics and Ulster dash, the prize that
eluded so many, the capture of a long section of the German front
line, had been accomplished.(17)
And in another sector:
At Gommecourt . . .
Attacking from the south, the 56th (London) Division had performed
brilliantly. Making use of the new trench they had dug in No Man's
Land and a smoke-screen, four battalions had captured the whole of
the German front-line system.(18)
And the
artillery was not idle that first day, either:
Shortly before the
assault, the gunners fired an intensive barrage on the enemy's front
trenches, infantry companies left their positions, and the barrage
would lift and drop on the next trench, continuing in this manner to
the objective. For the most part, this creeping barrage did little
to help the infantry on 1 July, except on the right; for, lifting
from objective to objective, it did not protect troops advancing
across no man's land or between German trench lines. Major-General
Ivor Maxse, the innovative commander of the 18th Division, ordered
his men to lie out in no man's land close to their first objective
so they could jump enemy defences the moment the standing
bombardment ended. They then made their way to subsequent objectives
by following the barrage as closely as possible. (The 7th Division
used similar techniques.) The creeping barrage was probably the
logical successor to the linear barrage, though its origin is
subject to debate, since the French claimed to have used it first.
In any case, it emphasized the return to covering as opposed to
destructive fire, the artillery concentrating on protecting the
infantry instead of killing the enemy. Though the 18th Division lost
30 per cent of its troops, it reached all its objectives on 1 July.
By the time of the second offensive on 14 July the technique had
become accepted as part of the solution to the problem posed by
German defensive skill.(19)
For many
divisions, however, the battle was simply catastrophic. Artillery
was powerless in many cases to support the infantry due mainly to
poor communications. Not only could additional fires not be called
down but barrages could not be slowed when the infantry fell behind.
Telephone lines were cut, flags and lamps were useless in the dust
and haze of battle, pigeons were confused by the din of gunfire, and
runners were at the mercy of German artillery, mortars, snipers and
small arms.(20) Manning their firesteps with plenty of time to
spare, the Germans in many sectors managed to obliterate entire
battalions with machine gun and rifle fire. The butcher's bill was
long and dreary; 32 of the battalions engaged suffered more than 60%
casualties. Some, like the 1st Newfoundland Regiment, were all but
wiped out.(21)
German
artillery, too, was still a real threat in 1916 and indirect
counter-battery fire still in its infancy.
The idea that you could
actually pinpoint the position of an enemy gun and then knock it out
was considered radical nonsense by the old-line British gunners. “Is
there some kind of Free Masonry between the artillery of both
sides?” (Canadian general) Arthur Currie asked his artillery adviser
in 1915. “They fire at the opposing infantry but never at each
other.” A young Canadian, Harold Hemming, a McGill graduate serving
in the British 3rd Army, had been experimenting with flash spotting,
a method of locating a gun position by triangulating its muzzle
flashes; but his general was not impressed. As he put it to Hemming,
“You take all the fun out of war."(22)
What the
Somme had done, however, was helped push infantry tactics into the
20th Century in its aftermath. The basic unit of maneuver in 1915
had been the company; waves of 200 men under a single commander that
were unwieldy and exposed to automatic weapons and German artillery.
After the slaughter of July 1st, the King's soldiers in France
rediscovered platoons; splitting their infantry into small groups of
about 40 men, permanently constituted under the same officer and
NCOs, and trained to use the principle of fire and movement on the
battlefield.
Platoon tactics had
evolved in trench raids and cooperation between infantry and
artillery had made some progress, but these developments, even taken
together, were not sufficient to ensure success at low cost in a
major battle. German artillery was still, essentially, unassailable
and thus able to shell Canadian troops before and during battle,
often inflicting casualties before the soldiers could leave their
trenches. Wire proved a serious obstacle difficult to remove; the
British and Canadians tried to cut it with artillery, but shell
fuses were not sensitive enough to detonate within the wire or just
as they hit the ground. Thus shells exploded deep in the earth,
where they did no more than move the wire obstacles around somewhat.
Enemy machine-gunners, if they were quick enough, could take their
positions after the barrage had lifted but before the assaulting
infantry could reach them. Between them, (German) artillery, wire
and machine-guns ensured that failure would be common and even
limited successes would be costly.(23)
While the
year 1916 has seen revolutionary changes in infantry organization,
it saw major changes to the artillery as well. Gun shortages had
caused the British to reduce the size of a battery from six to four
guns; they now changed back and a divisional artillery jumped from
52 guns to 76. High-explosive shells, scarce until mid-1916, also
became available in quantity, a large improvement over the shrapnel
shell. The separate howitzer brigades were broken up and directly
assigned to the 18-pounder batteries.
Communication also had been a problem before the Somme:
It took two years of war
for the British to develop an artillery command system higher than a
division, so that all the guns in range could be brought to bear on
a single target. A jealous rivalry between the “bow-and-arrow
gunners” of the Royal Field Artillery and their staidly scientific
counterparts in the Royal Garrison Artillery did not help.(24)
Field
artillery before the war “concentrated on swift movement and speed
in coming into action rather than on accuracy, while garrison or
coastal artillery, being anchored to a fixed site, worked at being
as accurate as possible."(25)
By the
latter half of 1916, light wireless sets were beginning to connect
eyes in the air with artillerymen on the ground, and batteries were
being linked to produce larger volumes of fire.
The British never
completely overcame their communications problems, but they learned
to link scores of batteries with garlands of wire on poles, or
stretched on the ground, or, ideally, buried four to six feet under
the ground. Once linked, a single fire plan was possible. At
Festubert, in 1915, Canadian artillery signalers had learned to
“ladder” their telephone lines, digging parallel trenches to bury
two sets of wire and linking them at intervals. If one section were
cut, the circuit might survive until the break could be found and
repaired.(26)
Problems supplying the final
necessity - shells themselves - were finally addressed by late 1916
also. While a quarter of the shells at Loos in 1915 had been duds,
and many others had been “shorts” falling on friendly troops or
“prematures” that exploded in the gun barrels, the takeover of
private business brought the quality of ammunition production to an
acceptable standard.
Post-Somme - Creeping Barrages and Wire Cutting
General
Robert Nivelle, France's hero of the nine-month battle at Verdun,
had become an exponent of the artillery. He promised what Haig had
promised before the Somme - bombardments so devastating that the
infantry would be left with little to do.
Canadians who visited the
French army came back dismayed that the wisdom of senior officers
bore no relation to the sloppy, inaccurate gunnery in the field.
Still, if the need was stated, the solution could be found. Good
British officers, frustrated by their own service, found Canadians
to be eager pupils. The best of them was a peacetime professor of
electrical engineering at McGill, Lieutenant Colonel Andy McNaughton.
Disillusioned with the French, he found a mentor in...a British
mountain gunner with good ideas about how to locate German guns.
Observers or microphones linked by telephone or wireless made it
possible to locate enemy guns by their flash or the thump they made
when they were fired. Once located, they could, in due course, be
pounded into silence. Science and engineering skill helped
McNaughton create a Canadian Corps counter-battery organization.
By 1917, Canadian Corps
artillery staff also insisted that calibration, meteorological
reports, and surveying were no longer “siege gunner fandoodle” but
possible, practical, and necessary. The Somme had taught that
inflexible fire plans, set up because communications so often
failed, usually left troops unprotected. Rolling barrages often
rolled far ahead of troops caught in heavy shelling, unbroken wire,
or even a stubborn machine-gun crew. Canadian gunners began to
experiment in coordinated fire.(27)
The creeping barrage,
especially, was a form of coordinated fire that proved most useful
in the last two years of the war. Found to be useful in its
rudimentary form on 1 July 1916 by the British 18th Division,
British gunners refined the technique later during the Somme battles
(which had dragged on until November 1916), planning them to drop
curtains of steel along pre-set lines, then “lifting” or advancing
forward 100 yards every three minutes. “The gunners thus made no
attempt to destroy the enemy's defensive positions, which was mostly
a matter of luck in any case, but concentrated on keeping defenders
from their machine-guns and parapets until it was too late."(28)
New fuses for shells began
to arrive in early 1917, causing HE shells to explode on contact
with barbed wire “tearing it to shreds and ripping great gaps
through which the attacking troops could pour."(29) January also
brought McNaughton to his new post as Counter-Battery Staff Officer
for the Canadian Corps, where he was
...given carte blanche to
focus his scientifically trained mind on the twin problems of
pinpoint intelligence and pinpoint accuracy. The post was a new one.
McNaughton would have to develop the techniques of counter-battery
work from scratch. But before the war was over he would be
acknowledged by both the Allies and the Germans as the best
artillery officer in the British Empire.(30)
Sound ranging and flash
spotting techniques were both developed and fine-tuned up to the
moment of the assault, which took place on Easter Monday, 9 April
1917. Sound ranging relied on the use of the oscillograph, something
McNaughton had used in University at McGill.
But the novel idea of
carrying a delicate device similar to an electro-cardiograph into
the lines, setting it up, and depending on a photograph of the
vibrations to identify the enemy gun emplacements was, in
McNaughton's own words, considered “treason, literally treason.” The
scientists were virtually ignored by the British.
Both sound ranging and
flash spotting are complicated procedures. The latter required a
series of posts all along the front, each equipped with telephones
and surveying gear and a reporting system back to a panel of lights
at headquarters. So accurate did this system of lights and buzzers
become that the Canadian artillery was able to locate a German gun
position to within as little as five yards.
The sound-ranging
technique was even more complicated. When an enemy gun opened up
miles away an entire sequence of events took place. A man in a
listening post, often out in No Man's Land, pressed a key activating
a recorder at McNaughton's headquarters. A series of microphones,
placed all along the front a mile and a half back of the forward
line, picked up the sound in turn as it traveled. From the time
intervals between the microphones the gun's exact location could be
spotted. Similarly, the sound waves sent out by a shell bursting on
the Canadian side, and picked up by a succession of microphones,
could locate the target.(31)
Many variables came into
play, including air temperature, air pressure, wind velocity, ground
contours, and other atmospheric conditions. Accuracy nonetheless
allowed for an enemy gun to be spotted, its calibre determined, its
target calculated, and its positions fixed to within 25 yards - all
within three minutes. And other information constantly filtered in,
from maps and prisoners taken during trench raids, intelligence from
secret agents, and aerial photographs from both aircraft and
observation balloons.(32)
They were so good at it,
that at Zero Hour, the starting time of the attack, 83% of the
German batteries defending Vimy Ridge had been located and
silenced.(33)
The seven day prepatory
barrage - the “Week of Suffering” as the German defenders called it
- dropped 50,000 tons of explosives on the Ridge, and the 106 fuse
made short work of much of the barbed wire impeding the way.(34) But
it was the creeping barrage which enabled the infantry to get on top
of the enemy and use their new platoon tactics to full advantage.
Only one drawback manifested
itself from the artillery's fury; all the shells from the 983 guns
that had fired on Vimy had created such a morass that the artillery
could not move forward, and the Germans were retreating steadily
over open ground - and tantalizingly out of range.
The men on the ridge
stared helplessly at the enemy soldiers, fleeing out of their reach
to the rear where no barrage could reach them. “Jesus Christ
Almighty!” cried a Forward Observation Officer with the 27th
(Battalion). “For two fucking years, I've been waiting for a chance
like this and now I can't use it."(35)
Looking out at Vimy from the newly captured heights. Library and
Archives Canada photo.
The artillery had improved
its performance in other ways also. Expending more ammunition than
ever before, it was also “doing so more accurately; adopting French
principles, gunners observed each round in the preliminary phases of
each bombardment, until batteries could get on target."(36)
With new technology and
techniques, gunners began to shell neutral and enemy territory, a
large area that can be separated into four main sectors. The first
was just forward of (their) - the barbed wire obstacles similar to
those that had caused so much trouble on the Somme; the second
consisted of the German defences proper - the trenches,
strong-points, and machine-gun nests (the infantry) were to attack;
the third was actually the enemy's defences and consisted of his
artillery position; and in the last area the gunners shelled roads,
ammunition dumps, and assembly areas behind the German lines to
hinder the movement of reserves, food, and ammunition to the front.
This final task was also supposed to lower German morale by
interfering with reliefs and preventing deliveries of hot food. Each
presented its own particular problems and so was allocated its own
artillery batteries chosen in accordance with their calibers and
thus with what they could best achieve. Often, a few days of
experimentation preceded particular tasks to determine which type of
trench mortar, gun, or howitzer would obtain the best results.(37)
Even with the 106 fuse, the
18-pounder had not been the best weapon for cutting German barbed
wire due to the small explosive charge in its high explosive shell.
Experimentation on the Vimy front found that light mortars were just
as inadequate as the artillery, despite their higher rate of fire.
The larger howitzers were found to produce the most satisfactory
results, firing shells with the 106 fuse. The experiments that had
lasted from 2 to 5 April resulted in a large expenditure - a waste,
in fact - of ammunition.
Attempting to clear wire with trench
mortars - May 1917. Library and Archives Canada photo.
There were other scientific
improvements also by this time; thermometers were employed to to
measure the temperature of the ammunition; the muzzle velocity of
guns were tested at frequent intervals, and the observation and
reporting of fall of shot of the spotting rounds all permitted more
accurate artillery fire than in the past. Guns were moved forward to
temporary positions when necessary in order to hit “dead ground”,
and artillery observers were sometimes located in No Man's Land
itself in order to report on fall of shot into this previously dead
ground, formed by ridge lines or other terrain blocking both line of
sight and line of fire from friendly lines. As well, concentration
of fire on specific points rather than widespread random shelling
paid dividends when the infantry went into the attack. The supremacy
of Allied counter-battery work meant that friendly guns and mortars
could shell the Germans with lesser fear of retaliation, and some
artillery brigades reported very low casualties as a result.(38)
The battle did not end with
the taking of the Ridge as “(t)here had been previous engagements
when objectives taken at great cost had subsequently been lost to
the enemy's strong counter-attacks." At Vimy Canadian gunners
struggled to move their artillery forward though axle-deep mud; some
artillerymen also trained to use captured German pieces and
together, these guns all helped break up German counter-attacks.(39)
The 106 fuse, in addition to its job as a wire-cutter, proved
invaluable at breaking up counter-attacking infantry, since it
exploded at ground level among clusters of unprotected soldiers.(40)
After Vimy Ridge
The system of artillery was
good, but shortcomings were still being made obvious in the weeks
after the victory at Vimy; there were more requests for artillery
counter-battery fire from the infantry than there were guns; it was
especially difficult to carry out counter-battery work when complex
fire plans were being shot in preparation for operations. The need
to move guns up to support advances over newly won ground was also
apparent; sited well to the rear away from German machine-guns and
trench mortars, the artillery generally operated at extreme range;
as the infantry advanced the guns had to go forward, and they needed
roads. Engineers were usually tasked with rebuilding captured German
trenches and building entrenchments to hold against enemy
counter-attacks. It was resolved that labour battalions were needed
to support these advances, building roads for horses to bring up
guns and ammunition to be able to continue supporting fires to
protect the infantry in newly won ground.
Nonetheless, the pattern had
been set for the battles following Vimy; complicated artillery fire
plans coupled with the new infantry tactics, with prior periods of
both planning and, where possible, rehearsals, all created the
conditions for several impressive, though costly, victories.
Messines Ridge followed in June, with meticulous planning by British
and ANZAC forces highlighted by the spectacular explosion of several
mines (tunneling had been part of the preparations at Vimy as well)
and a nearly flawless victory. The Canadians took Hill 70 in August
1917 at the cost of over 3,500 casualties. The bulk of these losses,
tellingly, occurred after the capture of the objective. While the
successful template for offensive operations ensured that Imperial
troops could now reasonably expect to take any given objective,
German artillery fire and counter-attacks ensured that the process
would always be costly.(41)
“The great lesson to be
learned from (the Vimy) operations is this,” boasted the 1st
Division. “If the lessons of the war have been thoroughly mastered;
if the artillery preparations and support is good; if our
Intelligence is properly appreciated; there is no position that
cannot be wrested from the enemy by well-disciplined, well-trained
and well-led troops attacking on a sound plan.” The “ifs” were large
and the arrogance was premature but the conclusions were
fundamentally correct...A solid, unequivocal victory...told
Canadians - and their allies - that the secret of successful attacks
had been unlocked, if not fully extracted. The futility of the Somme
had been overcome.(42)
Passchendaele
The war was far from over,
however; the guns suffered during the battles known collectively as
Passchendaele in late 1917 as much as the infantry; for the first
time the Germans subjected the Canadians to intense attack from
aircraft operating in a tactical role, bombing and strafing, and if
the battle became synonymous with mud and misery for the infantry,
it was no different for the artillery. When guns needed to be
repaired, they had to be taken from the gun lines by teams of
horses, and at Passchendaele, this was not possible. Of the 308
18-pounders in the British 2nd Army's field brigades, over half were
out of action. Men were nearing collapse from exhaustion, working in
muddy conditions hauling ammunition. Those batteries still in action
found it was difficult to plan elaborate creeping barrages to
support the infantry because no one knew how long it would take them
to advance through the slop. “The gunners relied on close liaison
between artillery observers and attacking troops and hoped they
would be flexible enough to make whatever modifications changing
conditions required.” Manhandling ammunition in quantity through the
mire was another concern, and even firing guns located in mudpits
required the gunners to dig out the field pieces after each shot and
re-lay the gun.(43)
The misery of Passchendaele,
also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, was forced on the British
armies in France by often misunderstood mutiny in the French Army
(most of the mutinous conduct happened behind the lines and did not
involve widespread abandonment of front line trenches) and surrender
on the Eastern Front freeing German troops for the West. The
declaration of war by the United States was welcome, but material
aid was not available in strength until early 1918, meaning that the
British Army was forced to take offensive action in the autumn of
1917. As impressive as Messines and Vimy had been, the momentum was
lost in the mud of Ypres despite the continuing development of
artillery, infantry and other technology and tactics. The battles at
Passchendaele began in July and lasted into November. Remembered in
some quarters as purposeless bloodshed, the British Army (including
the Canadian Corps) managed to maul some 88 divisions - more than
half of the total number of enemy divisions on the entire Western
Front. For the Germans
Their butcher's bill was
enormous, far higher than that of the British, and it was this
savaging, coupled with the knowledge that the American army was
coming on stream, that persuaded Ludendorff to chance all on the
'Kaiser's offensive' of 1918 - a decision that cost Germany the
war.(44)
While the infantry had
improved their tactics to a theoretical maximum limit of efficiency;
In 1918, gunners were
still learning. For three years, attacks had literally bogged down
in ground churned to a morass by long bombardments. Scientific
gunners insisted that shells could hit targets if officers took
technique seriously. By 1918, guns could be calibrated by shooting
through a canvas screen. Six times a day “Meteor” reports gave wind
direction and velocity and temperatures at set altitudes, data
needed for ballistic science. Maps were good enough to plot a
target, without even a preliminary registration.(45)
Those engaged in the less
scientific aspects of gunnery - the common gun numbers who simply
manned the weapons - had much asked of them.
The artillerymen worked
very hard, as manning the guns became a twenty-four hour task.
Unlike the infantry, whose soldiers were regularly rotated out of
the line, a division's guns remained in position as long as any part
of that division was in the line, and manpower had to be increased
to ensure that there were always crews ready and able to man the
guns. Even when a whole division was taken out of the line, the guns
were often left in action before being sent off to rejoin their
parent division days or weeks later.(46)
Canadian gunners, like their
British counterparts, had also increased in number by the last year
of the war. In their first year in the trenches, Canadian units had
6.3 guns for every 1,000 infantrymen; by early 1918 that number had
doubled.
The Final Months
In the last months of the
war, the Canadians continued to perfect their craft, incorporating
tanks and aircraft into the artillery-infantry team. The Germans,
for their part, began to defend in greater depth, and so lengthy
preliminary bombardments became wasteful. The field batteries
continued their role of protecting the infantry as they moved
forward during full-scale attacks, as well as harassment of the
enemy, firing on both his front lines and his rear areas. The
beginning of the end for the German Army began with the Battle of
Amiens in early August 1918, marking the start of The Hundred Days.
Artillery observers, usually battery commanders, went forward with
the infantry to ensure that fire support was called down swiftly
when necessary. By 1918, artillery patrols were also an important
feature; as the infantry advanced, new locations for batteries were
scouted so as to not waste time when the guns were brought up in the
wake of an advance. By Amiens, they were ordered to move as soon as
the front was outside their range. At Amiens, smoke screens fired by
the artillery proved effective, and the program of counter-battery
fire so successful at Vimy was continued.(47)
Even the successful actions
of the Hundred Days were costly - From 8 to 20 August, Amiens cost
the Canadians 11,725 killed, wounded and missing. Other battles
followed at Scarpe, the Drocourt-Quéant line, Cambrai and the
Pursuit to Mons with a return to open warfare where “it had become
obvious that artillery had a major role to play in the new style of
fighting.” When the battlefront widened, gunners used “relay
barrages” to keep up fire support while simultaneously moving
batteries forward into conquered ground. Artillery was now being
used to silence individual machine gun and anti-tank gun
positions.(48)
Sir Douglas Haig
described the Hundred Days, between 8 August and 11 November 1918,
as the last round of a long contest in which the British Army gained
a technical knock out...(but) after the war writers and
politicians...emphasized the grinding misery of the earlier years
and remained silent about the Hundred Days...Yet the British Army
suffered over 110,000 casualties in the victorious fighting on the
active fronts in August 1918, whereas they lost under 70,000 in the
notorious Ypres fighting in August 1917. Clearly, then, it cannot be
that there were fewer casualties in the fighting of the Hundred Days
that is memorable. Quite the contrary. Rather it is that in
suffering them the (Commonwealth armies) won the war; and, more
important, that they won it in a style that presaged the future, not
by attacking 'in the same old way.'(49)
Post-war
Theory
The artillery had
consequently acquired for itself a reputation as being a war-winning
arm in 1918 - or should have. The British Army tended to view the
First World War as an infantryman's war to which the artillery had
simply lent assistance. The battles of 1918 had demonstrated a need
to evolve a common tactical doctrine for all arms - tanks,
artillery, infantry, and the use of tactical aircraft. The
Commonwealth armies failed to do this by 1939. “In truth, the Army
directors did not look further than the infantry to determine the
meaning of the Hundred Days. They accepted the infantry ordinance
that the principles of 1914 had triumphed and that the infantry of
1914 ought to be restored speedily. All other Arms were auxiliaries,
as they had been then."(50)
My Final Word: There are only two
tactical combat games dealing with the First World War that I'm
aware of; Soldiers by SPI, produced in 1972 that dealt with
company-level fighting in the 1914-1915 era that does a good job of
capturing the flavour of the doctrine of the time, and Trenchfoot
by GDW, which was about as serious a game as the name implies, being
a man-to-man offering of trench warfare and easily discounted as
having anything significant to say about the portrayal of artillery.
Issue no. 4 of Moves talks about the rules for Soldiers,
however, and is worthy of quoting, and I'll do so below.
My Question To You: Why has there been so much reluctance to
portray the First World War in tactical terms in any genre at any
level in wargaming (board, PC, console, role-playing, man-to-man,
squad-level, platoon-level, company-level)? There was clearly a high
level of tactical and technological innovation on a par with that of
the Second World War, certainly with respect to such things as small
arms, tanks, artillery, and aircraft.
-
Love,W. David A Call to Arms: The Organization and
Administration of Canada's Military in World War One (Bunker
to Bunker Books, Calgary, AB, 1999) p.155
-
(Rawling, Bill Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the
Canadian Corps, 1914-1918 (University of Toronto Press,
Toronto, ON, 1992) p.15)
-
Rawling, p. 23
-
Duquemin, Colin Stick to the Guns: A Short History of the 10th
Field Battery, Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, St.
Catharine's Ontario (Norman Enterprises, St. Catharine's, ON,
1996) ISBN 0-9698994-2-4 p.23
-
Ibid, p.23
-
Rawling, Ibid, p.27
-
Ibid, pp.35-36
-
Ibid, pp.40-43
-
Ibid, p.46
-
Ibid, p.46
-
Ibid, p.46
-
Ibid,
p.46
-
Corrigan, Gordon Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the
First World War (Cassell Military Paperbacks, London, UK,
2003) ISBN 0-304-36659-5, p.116
-
Ibid,
p.262
-
Ibid, p.261
-
From “Training of Divisions for Offensive Action”, issued by Haig
on 8 May 1916. Quoted in Rawlings.
-
Middlebrook, Martin. The First Day on the
Somme (Penguin Books, London, UK, 1984) ISBN 0-14-017134-7
-
Ibid
-
Rawlings, Ibid, pp.69-70
-
Ibid, p.70
-
Middlebrook,Ibid, p.330
-
Berton, Pierre. Vimy (Penguin Books Canada, Markham, ON,
1987) ISBN 0-14-010439-9 p.164
-
Rawlings, Ibid, p.71
-
Morton, Ibid, p.131
-
Rawlings, Ibid, p.94
-
Morton, Ibid, p.151
-
Ibid, pp.166-167
-
Rawling, Ibid, p.77
-
Berton, Ibid, p.108
-
Ibid, p.109
-
Ibid, pp.163-164
-
Ibid, pp.165-166
-
Morton, Ibid, p.168
-
Ibid, p.168
-
Berton, Ibid, p.242
-
Rawlings, Ibid, p.108
-
Ibid, pp.108-109
-
Ibid, pp.110-111
-
Nicholson, G.W.L. The Gunners of Canada: The History of the
Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery Volume II 1919-1967
(Royal Canadian Artillery Association, 1972) Volume I, pp.285-286
-
Rawlings, Ibid, p.132
-
Ibid, p.142
-
Morton, Ibid, p.169
-
Rawlings, pp.149-151
-
Corrigan, Ibid, pp.338-355
-
Morton, Ibid, pp.171-174
-
Corrigan, Ibid, p.127
-
Rawlings, Ibid, pp.190-197
-
Ibid, pp.203-210
-
Bidwell, Shelford and Dominick Graham Firepower: British Army
Weapons and Theories of War 1904-1945 (Pen & Sword Military
Classics, Barnsley, UK, 2004) ISBN 1-84415-216-2 pp.132-133
-
Ibid, pp.145-146
Artillery in action in September 1917.
Light, fast, mobile batteries were no longer needed so much as heavy
siege batteries with long range and accuracy. Library and Archives
Canada photo. |
