War becomes deep

The Photos are of Big Bertha (German gun that smashed the Belgian Forts), the French 510mm Gun, two captured German Rail Road Guns (actually from WWII), a Canadian 16 Inch Super Heavy Gun, and two photos of US Navy 14 Inch Guns.

This is the next part on artillery evolution. I have hit on some lessons learned by both sides in the First World War. Mostly doctrine which is really important for being able to effectively use your artillery (or any military equipment). Both the Central and Allied blocks learned various lessons and adapted a great deal. Be it the impacts of improved survey methods, the effects of weather, planning, the benefits of centralized control versus much to decentralized control (key point here to be addressed later), and one item that doesn't actually get much attention due to it being somewhat of a flash in the pan. For a short time it was VERY important, but was shut out by another technological advance, the airplane.

This item is heavy artillery. I am not talking 155mm guns or howitzers which were division heavy artillery back then. I am talking the MONSTER guns, the railguns, the dismounted naval guns and mortars, the Paris Guns, the Big Berthas, the US 14 inch Battleship guns that were put on huge rail cars. For about 3 years these guns were at the level of cruise missiles in importance and level of control (i.e. they were controlled and received targeting orders from Army level or higher, not a division FA HQ). In about 1918 though, newer bombers began to replace them.

The reason I am discussing these monsters (aside from the fact that they are incredibly cool) is that they added the element of DEPTH to the modern battlefield. WWI changed many definitions, tactical and strategic being two. What was considered the realm of tactical changed considerably with the advent of a howitzer or cannon that was able to shoot out of visual range accurately. With the new 75mm gun (and its like), the tactical battlefield was now no longer just what you could see in front, right and left. It now included what was way in front of you (out to about 6 or 7 kms) and BEHIND you (the enemy can also do unto you). Think of the questions this added to the mix. How can you move troops and supplies safely? Can you store your ammo and food without it being blown up? Can you have your reserves close at hand (and risk them being blown up before you can use them?) or do you keep them farther back (and risk them not getting up in time or being seen and then blown up on the march in). Depth also impacts time, because if you start spreading out and back to avoid the artillery, you now have to factor in more delays and time spent moving things around or time spent digging stuff in so its safe.

No one had really given this a whole lot of thought prior to WWI so tactically speaking it was a bit of a mess as everyone fumbled around figuring out what was up and how to make changes. Eventually they did and what you got was a type of defense in depth to offset the artillery (you had your main defenses back so artillery couldn't see it to be accurate, or was out of range).

Enter the BIG GUNS. The Germans actually had the first big, mobile, monster guns and they were used to reduce Liege and various forts in Belgium. They were slow moving, but the fact that they could be moved at all was amazing. The Belgians had built their forts with the idea that their own big emplaced guns could out range anything the Germans could bring up (155mm being the biggest) and were emplaced in so much concrete that what guns the Germans did get there would be ineffective. The Germans had two designs (one a straight up cannon, the other a howitzer) which were able to smash the forts flat. After the first year, everyone began to use the big guns for something else.

The monster guns were first real operational or strategic (the term operational and the level of command really came into existence in WWI, but not in a formal sense so both terms work for this) weapons that were really hands on for ground combatant commanders. The huge range of these weapons (20 plus miles, some as far as 26 miles) allowed commanders to hit targets well beyond the front lines. But the big guns were slow to load, hard to move (usually took several dozen train trips to move one), and there were never that many. So you couldn't just use them on any target that happened along, you had to do targeting. In today's Army, targeting is a matter of course. It is simply deciding what you must hit and how you hit it, and what order the targets go in. Targeting has moved from just artillery to general concepts like "targeting the enemy's morale, or the support of the local population", but in WWI it was artillery only. You have x number of big guns, you have y targets (usually more than you have assets to hit with), so who gets hit first, with how much, with what endstate (i.e. are we trying to destroy, neutralize or suppress the target?). This was a critical development in artillery doctrine, and it moved from big guns down to all guns eventually (took about 2 years to be standard practice for all countries involved).

Since you were going for the biggest bang for your limited buck, the big guns came under the control of Army level command who were looking at the big picture. A Corps sized ammo dump is obviously going to be a bigger loss than a company of Machine Gun Troops so the Army FA commanders would work off of the Army (or Corps on occasion) plan and angle the monster guns to hit operational/strategic targets deep in the enemy rear that would effect more than just a narrow front. The rear areas became more dangerous and the actual battlefield became much more two dimensional with depth becoming a major factor. Where the tactical issues of moving troops and supplies and digging them in and time involved had been impacted, it was now an army level problem. Its tough enough when you are only worried about a regiment, how do you space out and protect 5 division worth of troops and all the support requirements? How do you fix roads and rails for all of that? Hide and dig in the supplies? Where do you keep your replacements and reserves? How about your Army and Corps level HQs? You can't go left or right, you have to go back. Space required by armies increased massively. To use a WWII example, when the Germans Blitzkrieged into France 1940, the armored thrust was in three echelons. One on the border, one going back to the Rhine River and the final one was on the other side of the Rhine in Central Germany.

Now for the funny part. In order for these monsters to be used effectively, map firing was used. But intel on exact locations was needed for proper targeting. Since recon units could get through the lines, observation aircraft were used to photograph positions. Using the new survey and map firing techniques, the monster guns then could hit the targets. But over time the planes got better and someone figured out that rather than use the big guns you could use bombers instead. Which then led to even deeper missions and eventually to true 3D warfare. You could make more bombers and bombs for the money than the big guns and hit targets further out, so the big guns were replaced during the 1920s and 1930s by more modern aircraft. The last of the Allied monster guns were in the Coastal Artillery units and those were abolished in 1946 (the Coastal Artillery became instead the Anti-Aircraft Artillery). None of the Allies used the big monsters in WWII (other than the coastal defense guns in certain areas, mostly against the Japanese), but the Germans certainly did.

Which is another funny part. The monsters spawned the idea of depth, the targeting process, the concepts of operational/strategic level weapons used by combatant commanders, and some more monster guns (such as the 420mm gun the Germans built in WWII). The three key concepts (depth, targeting, and operational/strategic weapons) were picked up by the Allies (especially the US) who ran with them like a bat out of hell. The Germans, who actually started the mobile big gun ideas and had concurrent developement of the same ideas, ended up ignoring the three good ideas and instead focused on the dead end idea of making bigger guns.

And some more

Due to size restrictions I had to add these separately. One historical note: The one about the Sullivan Brothers is a true story. 5 brothers enlisted in the US Navy and all 5 were on the same ship (USS Juno). All five were KIA in 1943 when their ship went down. Also included is a picture of a radical "tea party member" attempting to disrupt a meeting with his Congressman (yes I am joking, but not so much).

Why it pays to invest in your military

Here is something you should keep in mind when wondering why we spend so much on the military. We are coming up on nearly a full 10 years of war (we are at about 7 and a half). We have over 4000 dead in that entire time in two theaters of war against some rather tough opponents fighting us in a way that is as much as possible focusing on our weaknesses.

In the Battle of Antietam, in 1862, we lost 3600 dead in one day, with another 19500 (approximately) wounded.

When you invest in a professional military and make them constantly study and work and change and think, you go from two mobs slaughtering each other to nearly 8 years of war with roughly 500 dead a year (and that includes accidents and causes other than combat).

Money well spent? I think so.

Here's a more modern comparison. Russia in Afghanistan offically lost 15000 soldiers in 9 years. Recent studies have shown that number was grossly understated (new estimates by the Russian military (surpressed by the Russian government) put the number at 45000). We have been there for nearly 8 years now, we have less than 1000 dead including losses other than combat.

And not one of our losses was a draftee, everyone volunteered for this.

Japanese Addendum

This is an add on to the other post. Japan was the other country on the Allied side that had some input into the artillery fight in WWI, but not in the way you might think.

The Imperial Japanese Army had fought the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War in the early 20th Century. Despite the fact that they had older weapons than the Russians, the Japanese were actually one of the first countries to develop the concept of Indirect Fire. This is the idea of having your guns/howitzers firing from far enough away that you cannot see the target from the gun. Observers must be used to successfully determine if you are hitting the target and to make adjustments as needed. The Japanese didn't use range so much as they used terrain. They would position guns behind hills, folds of ground, in forests, anything that concealed the guns from the Russians seeing them. Often the guns were very close to the fight. But the Japanese used their Battery Commanders to go forward with phone/telegraphs and flags to signal back to the guns adjustments needed. The Japanese were able to maximize their guns and beat the Russian Army in artillery in just about every battle.

Now, this had two impacts. One was that the Japanese got a very poor opinion of European artillery. Even when the Japanese used guns in direct fire mode, the Russians were often unable to knock them out. The Japanese started using their guns in more direct fire modes as they could greatly assist the infantry against dug in Russian positions. In WWI, the Japanese fought limited actions against small German forces in China, and again were able to use guns in direct fire mode without issue (the Germans had very small forces and couldn't stand up to the Japanese attacks). Then when fighting the Chinese in the 1920's and 1930's the Japanese again had zero counterfire threat and pretty much moved to close in support of the infantry via having the guns close in. They never developed the concepts of massing guns or centralized control due to their experience.

The other impact: one country was highly impressed by the Japanese ability to use indirect fire effectively and going into WWI had this as their key concept for artillery deployment. This country would build on it and combine it with the centralized fire concepts of the French.

That would be the US Army.

The Allies

Greetings all, this is the next part on my little series on artillery evolution. This focuses on the Allied Forces. We are mostly discussing the British and French, with a bit of Japanese. No Russians (they really didn't add much for this war in anything, but learned a lot), and not really anything from the US (I'll hit the Yanks later for a special reason).

The Allied forces were mobility focused in their artillery concepts. Lighter guns, rapid firing, able to keep up with the maneuver forces. When you hit the enemy you smother him with firepower allowing your infantry (sometimes cavalry) to then rapidly overwhelm him. This concept had developed from two main experiences. For the French it was the concepts of Napoleon and the experiences of the Franco-Prussian War. Maneuver was the key to victory, massed firepower allowed you to break through and keep moving. So the guns had to keep up, and you had to use them to provide DIRECT support to the infantry. If you study Napoleon, you see his use of artillery in mass as key in many of his fights. For the British, the concept was similar. Mobile guns, direct support. This concept came from the "Small Wars of Empire" that they had been fighting for decades. Artillery slaughtered the natives in direct usage because they had nothing to hit back with.

As the saying goes "Works in Theory"...

The sad part of this whole concept is that both the French and British had some very close examples of why this theory was no longer the case and that they were dangerously behind in artillery theory, if not actual equipment (their guns were actually quite good). For the French, the reorganizations that followed the Franco-Prussian War were not actually very good in certain areas. The big point the French completely missed was that their new rapid firing guns still needed to be massed for maximum effectiveness. The French created a huge army with a reserve system, but they did not create an integrated method to fight it. Once you got down to it, the French were fighting battles like they were hundreds of little regiment on regiment fights with almost zero coordination. You could have three units within a few miles of each other and would be in a practical vacuum, unable (or unwilling) to help the flank unit. Now, the communications problems still existed for everyone (no radio, phones were crude) but the Germans continually worked on these issues so they had an understanding of what they faced. Not so much the French. The really bad part for the French was that because of poor coordination, their wonderful artillery was parcelled out and unable to mass to support the key operation. There were some seriously bad strategic thinking going on too but that goes beyond what I am looking at.

The British were in the same situation. No centralized fire control for artillery, and an absolute archaic theory on its use (drive it to the sound of firing, roll up to the front of the lines, and start shooting direct fire and whatever moves). Worse, the British had very recent experience with the Boer War against people who were as well equipped as them (the Boers had Krupp artillery, Mauser Rifles and Machine Guns) and had seen what that theory got them (lots of dead artillerymen and lost guns).

Both the British and French lacked in heavy artillery and had no concepts about using deep fires to disrupt enemy forces beyond the front lines.

But as learning curves go, the British and French actually outpaced the Germans in this case. They started farther back in theory, weapons and development and they pulled even and even ahead by the wars end.

First, the Allies rapidly learned that the concept of firepower usage had changed. Simply rolling up the guns and blasting the nearest front line no longer worked. Even rapid breechloading guns could not win the firepower war against hidden machine guns in a direct firefight. So they rapidly learned that the new long ranges had to be used to make the guns survivable and effective. More guns were needed to hit an area, even with 15 rounds a minute a battery could not effectively support a regimental attack. So habitual relationships (battery to a infantry regiment) were broken up and artillery centralized control was set up to mass and control the growing numbers of guns needed.

With the creation of Central Fire Control for the Allies, the next big developments were in observed and unobserved firing. With newer phones, the Allies set up OP (Observation Posts) that could spot artillery and adjust the rounds on to target. Ground units alone could not see everything so the airplane (equipped with new wireless radio) and the balloon were used to spot artillery (this led to more air to air combat as each side was trying to shoot down the other sides observers, but that is another story). The Allies got to be very good at this as the Germans stood on the defensive for 3 years and had dug in on the best defensive terrain (highest ground).

As this was going on the Allies started bringing in heavier guns. The French had the 155mm howitzers and the British had the 4.7 in and 6 in guns and howitzers. These heavier guns led the Allies to discover the concepts of depth in the battlefield. These guns could hit the German rear areas and disrupt transportation and the movement of reserves. But often this was in areas they could not see or get observation planes over. Which led to the development of Map Firing.

Map Firing was simply the process of hitting a target using a map only. Sounds simple but it is actually VERY complicated. The Germans never quite got it, but the Allies did after much trial and error. First, the Allies fixed surveying problems and designed new mapping methods that finally created maps with modern levels of accuracy. In doing this, they discovered the issues involved with making a square map work when you are dealing with a round area (the world is round remember?). Azimuth adjustments, curvature of the earth, height of sea level (for both the target and the guns), actual versus magnetic north. And once these were fixed the Allies then discovered how weather effected long range firing (wind direction, air temperature, the possiblity of different wind directions at different altitudes). The Germans also did some work on this, but the Allies were the ones that really ran with it. The Germans focused this on their heavy guns, the Allies realized that this effected ALL artillery and used it as such.

The final problem that the Allies (as well as the Germans) ran into was the tying in. Making your artillery hit where and when it had to sounds simple enough, but how do you do that without a radio? ONce the infantry moved out, they were almost immediately out of contact with higher HQs. There were no man portable radios, runners were slow and had a bad habit of dying, wire got cut or shorted out or ran out, and pigeons often times got lost. So what happens if you are 10 minutes late to a location and the artillery fire has stopped firing suppression? You get mowed down by unsurpressed MG fire. Various Tactics were developed to deal with this. The "Creeping Barrage" was an Allied invention that more or less worked, but still had issues. A Wall of Artillery fire moves forward at so many meters per minute, the infantry walks behind it and in theory arrives at the target just after the FA fire lifts. But what happens if you get delayed (happened a lot), or you missed something like a concrete bunker that wasn't knocked out? You fall behind and your artillery fire outruns you. And you get mowed down. This problem was never quite solved in WWI by either side.

The Allies ended up with a huge learning leap in WWI in terms of artillery. Becuase of this the artillery became the key component of the War for them, the French Army went from being insanely gung ho to incredibly methodical (which bites them in WWII). The British were much slower learners and it wasn't until 1917 that they really started getting the ideas down. And this was actually lost lessons in many cases due to some rather stupid attacks in 1917.

Next time we start talking about the end of WWI and what everyone started taking away from it for the next round.

Initial Lessons Learned

This is the next bit on artillery evolution in WWI.

In my last post I discussed the initial doctrines of the various world powers going into WWI. 1914 saw the only true bit of maneuver warfare on the Western Front until late 1918. For the rest of this time, it was "static" or "trench" warfare. It was in this arena that the concepts of true modern artillery came to be as the various grey areas that had been discovered were eliminated through often painful real world experience. We are going to talk about the Central Powers first (aka Germany).

For the Germans, the major breakthroughs were actually not many. Their concepts of centralized fire planning (that is artilley planning) were actually very much ahead of the allies and given the large battles being fought (we are talking whole armies worth here numbering in the hundreds of thousands), this was actually very successful. Being able to control and mass your artillery to support the decisive effort (the main push if you will) was often key in the German victories. It also greatly helped the Germans that they were on the defensive on the Western Front until the spring of 1918. In defending, the Germans were able to avoid the communications issues that still plagued the offensive (they had dug in phone lines).

Where the Germans did make advances were in Chemical Warfare. The Germans were the first to use Poison Gas, and rapidly discovered that artillery shells were much more effective in dispersing it. Just releasing gas from a cannister only made a cloud that could blow back on you or dissipate rapidly. But with artillery shells you could keep pumping gas into the cloud, put the chemicals were you wanted them and you could put them FAR to the rear of the enemy. The biggest military benefit of Chemical weapons isn't actually their killing power, its their staying power. Soldiers can function in protective gear in a chemical environment, but everything takes longer and you tire quicker. But the Gas is persistant, even stuff like Chlorine gas can linger for over 24 hours in certain places. When confronted with this, often time military units will just place the area off limits or go around it. This great for area denial, or for helping cover your flanks or rapidly plug gaps. Or for contaiminating a logistical node or railhead. Even 12 hours can be critical if the area off limits is a key road intersection for instance.

In utilizing gas, the Germans discovered the weather played a huge roll in how this weapon was used. Not only in how the chemicals were effected, but in how accurate their deep artillery fire was. Meteological data (or MET as we call it) has a major impact on how artillery shells fly through the air and even how the shells react (i.e. go boom or not). First there is the wind, which the Germans (and also the allies) discovered can be at different directions at different altitudes. This can throw a shell off by hundreds of meters at long distances (such as in a deep chemical strike). There is temperature. This can also effect the shell's trajectory, but it can also effect the mechanics of the shell. Certain mechanical timers would freeze or become brittle in cold weather which would make a dud or might set the shell off early (bad that). Certain shell loads could melt or freeze which would effect the shell's rotation and cause it to literally spin off course (this mostly happened in White Phosphorous Rounds, but also chemical rounds). And of course the weather in general would effect how well the chemicals would work. Rain would wash away most persistant agents, but cold, snow and even sun effected them. Rain could even set off shells early if the fuze (set for point impact) hit a raindrop when flying through the air.

The Germans discovered that by gathering accurate MET data, they could adjust the artillery computations using mathmatical formulas in computing firing data. Through some trial and error, they learned certain methods of storing ammunition that would cut down on weather effects (such as covering ammo when it rained, keeping it off the ground, not stacking it but placing it on its base). They also fixed the mechanical problems for most fuzes (although the rain drop one was only fixed in 1986).

In fixing these issues the Germans refined their methods of Map Firing. Map Firing is basically shooting blind without someone observing where your artillery actually landed. The Germans had figured out by late 1915 that with a accurate map and accurate data, you could do this successfully (more or less, we are not talking 1 shot with a Tomohawk missile, we are talking 500 guns taking out a square mile or two). Since they were standing on the defensive, they could survey in all their controlled territory, and zero their targets. This was one of the main reasons why the Western Front was so bloody, the Germans were often times shooting fish in a barrel.

The other major area of German Artillery development was in heavy artillery. While the Allies were focused on the lighter, more mobile stuff. The Germans focused on the BIG guns. The Germans had more heavy artillery per division than any Allied division, and they had corps and army level artillery commands to use it properly. Krupp (those lovable German arms makers) specialized in heavy guns. 6 and 8 inch guns and howitzers were the norm in the German Army of WWI. Please note I said howitzers. Unlike the Allies, the Germans liked using howitzers because of the range and ability to hit entrenched troops. The Germans quickly learned something with their heavy guns and that was DEPTH. The German battle plans throughout the war (and this includes the early years) always had artillery hitting the enemy key areas as far back as they could. While the Allies intially had a very short view of the battlefield, the Germans realized that with long range weapons you could hit things behind the lines that would effect the actual battle. This was one of the driving forces to get Chemical Weapons modified for artillery use. The Germans were really the first group to get a truely 2 dimensional view of the battlefield (length AND depth). And this led to the REALLY big guns.

I am going to stop here as the really heavy artillery I am going to cover separately (the Big Berthas and so on). Next time we will hit the Allies (no pun intended).

Into the Wilderness

After a bit of hiatus, I am going to continue with my artillery historic posts. I am picking up with the start of WWI.

August 1914 saw the start of the First World War. Artillery-wise every major combatant (even the US) was equipped with roughly the same types of artillery. Recoilless, long ranged (as in over 6 kms), rapid firing, and using self-contained ammo (i.e. you put in one shell at a time and fire away instead of loading powder, then shell, then primer). Everyone was WAY short on ammo stocks (everyone was thinking a short war). Where the difference lay was doctrine and number of gun types.

The Allies (Britian, France, Russia and a host of smaller nations) had a focus on lighter, more "mobile" rapid firing guns. Heavy guns and howitzers existed, but were much rarer. The British actually had to use dismounted naval guns for heavy artillery (4.7 inch and 6 inch) due to the shortage. The basic tactical doctrine for the allies was to splice out your artillery to maneuver units (usually the regiment or a brigade) and have them provide on the spot artillery in support of the tactical maneuver unit. Great for small unit warfare, bad when its not just small units. Where this system had problems was when you attempted to mass your fires of several artillery units on one target. Without a higher artillery headquarters or a doctrine for controlling hundreds of guns (and we do mean hundreds) you had major issues of command and control, and it was an absolute mess getting the guns to obey you instead of the local commander.

The Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) were pretty much the exact opposite. Centralized control and massed fires were their method and it was pretty damn effective too. The German General Staff was arguably the only military group who had actually been working on war plans that focused on whole armies instead of smaller units. They were very much "Big Picture" guys and their fire doctrine reflected it. An operations order would contain very detailed instructions on how to use your artillery and it was massed to provide the maximum amount of fire support for the key operations and the decisive (or main) effort. Instead of everyone getting some fire support, the most important effort got everything and then some. This worked great but its weak spot was in being able to adjust when things went wrong. If some defensive points were missed, it was incredibly hard to get fire support to take them out if it was not in the plan. Since a couple of machine guns could hold up entire regiments, this was not a minor problem.

Both sides had one shared major issue: communications. Fires could be adjusted, new targets plotted and changes made IF YOU COULD TALK. But this was very hard in an era of no radio and unreliable telephones. Once battles started, unless you could keep up with messengers (not bloody likely), pigeons (yep, they were used), flags, or phone, you were gong off the plan. If you were allied you couldn't help nearby units in trouble and if you were central you couldn't get help to knock out a missed machine gun nest.

So how did everyone do and how did they adjust?

That will be in the next article.

Happy Birthday!!!!!

I am a day late, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

to the CANNON!

Erm, maybe.

On August 26th, in 1346 AD at a location know as Crecy (Yes Russ, right up your alley this one is), the Genonese crossbowmen had the very distinct honor to be the first soldiers in history to be taken under cannon fire.

Maybe.

There are two other possible uses of cannon prior to this (one in approximately 1250 AD by Muslims against Mongols, and in 1339 by the French against Edward), but neither was well documented and cannot be verified. Edwards the IIIs army had records and even some pictoral records of the cannons.

So Happy Birthday to the CANNON my fellow Redlegs and other lesser creatures...

Speech

I just got back from speaking to the Oklahoma Chapter of the "Friends of Ukraine" in OKC. They paid for my lunch (Porogi, similar to cheese raviolli) and I gave a short 20 minute speech on my trip to Ukraine and my impressions as a "true" American.

The speech went well and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The lunch was great too.

The best part was this guy I met. I can't pronounce his name (never mind spelling it), but he had some awesome stories of his own. This gentleman was from around east-central Ukraine. I told him what I did and he really lit up. He told me repeatedly how much he loved US soldiers and the US. After we talked more I found out why.

This gentleman was liberated from a concentration camp/factory in the Hartz Mountains by US soldiers in 1945.

When he was about 13 or so, the Germans invaded the USSR. They had driven to his area of Ukraine with a couple of SS Panzer Divisions. The Red Army had been smashed up pretty bad and was trying everything to stop the Germans. The Soviet Commissars rounded up every male 14 and older and marched them to the front to fight. No training, equipment (other than rifles and ammo) or support. The man said that he lost one brother in this fight. The other brother survived and retreated with the Red Army. He heard after the war that his brother had been wounded 11 times during the war and the last time they sent him back in before he had healed and he was killed. Since this gentleman was not old enough he stayed in the village and ended up behind German lines. He told me how the next village over was wiped out as a reprisal for a Insurgent attack on some SS. They rounded up 180 people, herded them into a church and burned it down with everyone inside. THey took him and all the other boys and impressed them into a forced labor battalion. They were the ones who dug the tunnels were the ME262s were built. Another crew they were barracked next too dug and ran the V2 tunnels and another one was working on the German Atomic Bomb program (not much was really done other than dig some work areas, the Germans were way to far behind in development to do much more). US troops liberated him and about 15000 prisoners (his count).

Talking with him made my whole day worthwhile. Its nice to hear nice things about US troops and to hear someone make the point that US troops have never herded people into churches and burned them down, or impressed young boys as slave labor to dig tunnels for weapons projects, or gathered a bunch of civilians together, tossed them rifles and said "Charge those Tanks" (although our militia troops have ended up doing about that good, difference there is that all the militia volunteered). This guy had some great history to share and I am really glad he did.

Hearing stories like this make me glad to live in the US and prouder to be defending it.

This is more than we bargined for.

This is the next artillery evolution piece. The post I wrote previously on this dealt with the French 75mm and its capabilities. This post will detail with how the various powers started to work with the new capabilities.

The biggest and most important thing the French 75 brought to the table of artillery was its ability to shoot accurate indirect fire rapidly. Which is really three items, but they combined into one whole that was so much more than the sum of its parts. With a range of around 7 km, and recoil system that allowed the gun to stay inplace and not have to be re-aimed for every shot and a breechloader that allowed you to shot as fast as you could stuff a new round in, the artillery world was in possession of a weapon it was mentally not ready for. All artillery doctrine to this point had been dealing with only direct fire (i.e. you shoot at what you see), and a vastly slower action time due to having to either a slow reload, or having to reaim the gun. In one swoop, everything holding up artillery rates of fire vanished with the added bonus of such a long range the gun crews could no longer see where the round landed.

This occurred in 1897 in France and within about three years every major power had its own version of the French 75mm with more or less the same capabilities. Where everyone had a chance to be different was in HOW they used these guns. The French had wanted a peice that could use rapid firepower to blast enemy lines into plup which would allow the infantry or cavarly to break through. The British also wanted mobile guns that could keep up with rapid movements and be used to overwhelm forces with firepower (especially for duty in the Empire). Most other powers wanted the same thing initially, but some (the ones with a much more professional outlook) started to think beyond the smaller units (regiments or brigades). Germany was argueably the first major power to realize that with the increased range you could effect the battlefield with artillery without having the guns actually there.

Longer range meant DEPTH. Germany realized that these new guns (and even bigger ones on the drawing board) could be used to influence the battlefield from a distance. Either their own guns could be safely away from the actual bullets (unlike what the British and French were doing) or they could be knocking out targets behind the enemy so that while the initial fight was going good the follow on was already lost (reinforcements, lines of communications, HQs, supplies could be destroyed or delayed via this long range artillery fire).

While this rocked in theory, it led to other issues. How does one control these fires? How can you make sure that your rounds are hitting the right place? How do you adjust the fire, how do you move it if you find out that the target moved, or if a new one shows up? The Germans used a top down plan to control the fires. "Top Down" means that the higher HQs made the plan, controlled the artillery and selected targets to support the ground forces. The problem with this was that for a fluid situation adjustments were hard make on the fly and the Germans discovered that COMMUNICATIONS were now a major issue. Remember, the French 75 came out before radios did.

The French and British did not have a very professional approach to their artillery control. Their focus was on the mobility and firepower aspect. In short, keep the guns close to maneuver forces, when the battle starts you move up to the unit you support and take commands from the guy on the ground. Now this works great on a small scale battle. For the British in the Empire this was a perfect method for fighting (also the French). But the breakdown was when you were NOT fighting in the bush leagues. Battles against another Great Power involve hundreds of thousands of men over huge areas and lasted days. Being subordinated to a infantry brigade meant that you could not easily bring one set of artillery to aid another. No cross-talk, no real higher artillery HQs to coordinate, no method of communicating. Worse, the artillery was often pushed up to the front with the infantry for direct fire use.

Now, some may say "WWI had not happened yet, so how could anyone know any of this?" True, the BIG ONE had not kicked off, but there had been several smaller wars that gave excellent pointers as to how this stuff could work. And everyone had observed them. We had the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Balkins War. All of these wars involved major powers and the modern weapons and every one of them hinted to the problems the new artillery faced and also its new strengths.

The really interesting thing is that everyone did learn something from these wars. No one was able to put everything together for a perfect setup (that wouldn't happen until 1940 when the US Army finally got everything set up), but the contrast as to how everyone envisioned the use of the new artillery was VERY educational.

The British and French didn't really learn a whole lot. One could argue that the British actually unlearned artillery lessons from the Boer War and tried some ideas that had been proven WRONG during the fight (namely: don't use direct fire on a dug in enemy you can't see). The Germans learned that a centralized fire plan was doable, but you had major issues in adjustments and that you needed LOTS of ammo. The Russians learned they needed better coordination and more modern gear, but they had Czar Nicholas and he was a moron so no fixing got done. The Japanese started with a great artillery plan, focused on indirect fire linked to forward observers. But the Russians were so inept that the Japanese learned that using new artillery in direct fire would work and that they really didn't need to coordinate outside of the immediate unit (that would bit them badly in WWII).

The Americans amazingly learned a huge amount. From the Russo-Japanese War the US determined that Indirect Fire would work, and that it was preferable to direct fire. The US then started a heavy focus on the communication problem (flags, phones and eventually radios) and the idea that if you can communicate with ANY unit, you should be able to support them regardless of what maneuver unit you belong to. Which meant that some type of central HQs would be needed. Where the US really differed was in the fact that they were actively seeking the "happy medium" between the British/French direct support for maneuver (great for the commander on the spot), and the German "Top-Down Plan" (great for the greater whole or overall scheme of maneuver). The US realized it wasn't there yet. Further doctrinal devlopment in the US was hampered by the small size of the US Army and the fact that anything bigger than a Brigade didn't exist so much of what was worked on was pure theory. But they were the only ones thinking that going into WWI.

One thing which everyone did miss (except Bulgaria if you can believe that) was that ammunitions supplies needed to be drastically increased. The Germans realized that some increase was needed, but were still way short going into WWI.

A Truely Great Saying...

From my AOWC readings:

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

42 equals the 75mm Gun

After all the work up, we now finally get to the actual artillery piece. The Gun that started the revolution, broke the 1000 year box and made a whole profession go "hmmmmm".

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the French 1897 Mle.

An actual, functional French 75mm in action at Fort Sill (photo complements of the author).

A close up picture of the French 75 Mle, slightly modernized with rubber tires for towing with motor vehicles (also from the author).

Okay, so its a cannon. No, its not. This is the FIRST MODERN CANNON ever created. The older black powder weapons had been brought to their evolutionary end in the late 1880s with several changes and developments.

First, we had improvements in metalluragy which had led to new alloys, better steel and therefore stronger guns capable of taking greater pressure and force. Which was great due to the second development which was the development of new chemical propellents which replaced black powder. Black powder was dirty, corrosive and didn't work well in the damp and wet. Several types of new propellent and explosives were developed during this time, the most commonly used being cordite (which we still use). These propellents would have blown older bronze or iron guns apart unless they were built with heavier barrels which in turn meant you couldn't move them. With steel guns, you could use this stuff and still have a mobile gun with the added bonus of increased range, less smoke and greater reliability.

The other two improvements were mechanical in nature. Number three development was the invention of a easy to use and reliable breech loading system. This was called the "Nordenfelt Essentric Screw" and it allowed the use of fixed ammunition (i.e. a shell, its propellent both put together in a brass shell casing). You rotated a lever and moved a solid breech block either down and out of the way to eject and reload a shell, or move the block up and lock the breech closed to fire.

But it was the fourth development that really rocked the artillery's world and was a pure work of the French Army. This was the Long Recoil System (or if you want the technical jargon, a hydro-pneumatic recoil system). Although the original idea had been worked on by Krupp, they were unable to make it work due to leaks of the hydrallic fluid and loss of air pressure. The French hit on the design and assigned several engineering officers to work on it starting in 1892. They fixed the issues by 1896 and started production in 1897. This system allowed something that had never been done before in artillery history and that was the ability to shoot without having to relay and reaim the gun for every shot. The long recoil system absorbed the increased blast and pressure and allowed only the gun barrel to move backwards on the rails with the force being absorbed by the air pressure and hydrallics. The carriage remained motionless and when the gun moved back into firing position it was aimed in the exact same spot.

So, what does all of this translate into? Well, here is some raw data: 75mm caliber (roughly a 3 inch shell, weights 5.5 Kgs), max range of 6860 meters (compared to about 3000 meters for a Napoleon), a self traverse (i.e. the barrel could be moved left to right without moving the gun carriage) of about 6 degrees (not much, but remember this was the first gun that could move AT ALL), and a elevation of about 29 degrees. Most importantly (for the French) was its rate of fire: maximum theoretical rate was 30 rounds per minute, actual sustained rate (what you can shoot over a long period of time) was 15 per minute.

Pardon the pun, but this gun blew away it competition. The first truely modern artillery piece.

But here was the rub, it fit the designed need of the French military. The French wanted a rapid firing, accurate artillery piece that was mobile enough to keep up with the infantry and cavalry and could swamp the opposing enemy with firepower, usually in a direct fire (i.e. we can see them from the guns as we shoot). The French got that. But if you look at what they actually built it was a lot more that that. It could shoot accurate INDIRECT fire (shooting at something you can't see from the guns). For the first time, an army had actual artillery that could really reach out and effect the battle from a real distance. Or, if your mind had a sneaky twist, you could effect things outside the immediate battle area (the rear, units moving forward, supply dumps, road intersections, headquarters and so on). These guns added DEPTH to the battlefield and made the battlefield a whole lot bigger. And made artillery a whole lot more complex with a whole lot more problems.

Which I will hit on in the next post.

(source of technical data is "Allied Artillery Of World War One by Ian V. Hogg)

Making the Leap

This is the next part of my little series on evolution of artillery. I keep saying that I am going to hit on the 75mm next post, but I keep remembering the stuff I need to hit on earlier. This post is no different. Another part of the build up to the 75mm gun and its brethren, I am going to hit on the driving factors behind the development of this gun.

One of the biggest driving points behind many weapons is something called doctrine. A military doctrine is simply a standardized guide to how that military is supposed to fight. Does it focus on infantry, artillery or cavalry? Does it combine them? How fast does it expect a war to be fought? Guerrilla or conventional? Heavy or light? Both? And so on. Once you have an idea on how you want to fight you are supposed to figure out if you can actually fight like that, and then build weapons to support your endstatement. Note the use of the word "supposed", this is not always the case. In the 1890s/1900s the worlds militaries were really running into a frightening situation of technology outpacing their understanding of how it effected their doctrines and some did not study how they wanted to fight, but declared how it was going to happen and then designed weapons to support it, evidence or not. The 75mm gun was a product of this thinking.

Numerous technological advancements had occurred that were drastically changing artillery technology. Better materials such as steel alloys, chemical propellents, and hydralic systems were making guns stronger and more powerful and allowing some interesting perks such as actually being able to have an effective breech-loader (i.e. you can load from the rear instead of ramming it in from the muzzle). The real question that started this ball rolling was asked by the French Army starting after the Franco-Prussian War. The French accepted that there would be another war with Germany. The question was how do we win it? Obviously their old tactics were a complete failure, especially their artillery which hit a big nerve as the French had always considered themselves the best artillerymen in the world (Napoleon was an artilleryman).

Old muzzle-loaders obtained effects by massing large numbers of guns in one location and blasting a hole in the enemy's line. This was no longer effective with the new breech and bolt action rifles which would mow down artillerymen firing Napoleon-style cannon before they could cause enough damage. Also the French felt that they had been unable to maneuver and mass guns quickly enough to be tactically decisive. So the conclusion reached was this: artillery for the next war needed to be maneuverable on the field, survivable, and could bring lots of firepower to bear quickly without having to have lots of guns (i.e. rapid firing guns).

History recognizes this theory as the "maneuver" arguement. Light guns, capable of keeping close to infantry, but having enough firepower that they can help to rapidly overpower the enemy forces without having to mass in large formations that became easy targets. This system is very decentralized and puts the decision in the hands of the infantry or cavalry commander on the spot as to how he needs the guns used. It is great if you are fighting smaller units (brigades or regiments), fighting people who have a lower tech level or are poorly trained and equipped. It breaks down in large scale operations against opponents of equal ability. The key to victory is being able to mass your effects in the location it is needed when it is needed. A decentralized system where your assets are parcelled out among smaller units makes massing difficult, and almost impossible to do quickly. This is especially true when you do not have radios or other means of reliable and rapid long distance communication.

This maneuver theory spelled out the doctrine for the French Military. With these requirements they designed a gun to meet the need. The Mle 75mm Gun.

Now we get to the fun irony of this situation. The French did design a gun that meet their specified requirements. But the problem was that they built a gun that went WAY beyond what they had been looking for. And it doing so caused a whole bunch more questions that eventually didn't get worked out until WWII. The next post will be on the actual French 75mm (HONEST).

The Napoleon

No, not the short little Corcisan who helped reinforce the concept that invading Russia is a bad idea. We are talking the cannon:

This is the next article on artillery evolution I am undertaking. Before diving into the "42" (aka the French 75mm), I feel it necessary to hit on some background. This is a recap of a short field trip I take my LTs on at Fort Sill to get them into the idea of innovation and how the army/military adapts to change and transformation. Before we talk French 75mm, we must talk Napoleons.

The Napoleon is a 12 pound cannon capable of shooting both round shot (aka cannonballs) and actual shells that can be set for timed explosions or point detonation (i.e. they hit the ground and go BOOM!). It is a smoothbore (no rifling) cast out of bronze (which is why it doesn't have rifling, bronze won't take the pressure a rifled shot would generate). This weapon system is horse drawn (usually 6 to 8), and has a cassion which carries its internal ammo supply of mixed types (ball, shell, grape and cannister, think shotguns). It had a crude system of elevating the tube and aiming. It had no internal recoil absorber so when it fired the gun rolled back and you had to manually reposition and aim it. Crew of 6, usually 6 guns per battery. Range varies: max with cannonball was out to 3000 yards (rarely used), usually used at 2000 yards or less. If you were less than 500 yards out you used cannister or grape. It could be fired using an open flame (if you were ghetto) or a percussion cap. It was a muzzle-loader, which meant you rammed the powder and projectile in from the front.

This gun was the high water mark for the black powder cannons, the pinnacle of black powder cannon technology for field artillery. This may be argued by some other cannon enthusiasts, but I am using a certain range for determination. It was as mobile as these systems ever got, it had decent range, reasonable reloading time (under a minute if you were quick), if was a flexible system that could shoot a variety of munitions and it was fairly dependable. It was a great example of "the box".

This is "the box". The first recorded used of black/gunpowder was in China around 800 AD. The first record of a type of firearm was dated in the 1100s. This was a type of hand cannon: metal tube, open on one end, apply flame at other, projectile blows out the other end. The point I made to my LTs is a simple one. A early user of the hand cannon could have figured out how to use a Naploeon cannon with little trouble. Boiled down, there was no massive difference in how either system worked just the overall size and range (even the most powerful black powder field artillery was still a direct fire weapon that was only used on enemies you could see). This leads to a "box" when it comes to thinking about how this type of weapon can be used. A box that was 700 years old. How do you think outside a box that is 700 years old? That is a hell of a box to try and disregard.

I bring this point up to set the stage for the arrival of what we recognize as modern artillery. The development of the French 75mm and its brethren destroyed a 700 year old box of military thought. Literally overnight, everything everyone thought they knew about how artillery worked no longer applied.

Welcome to Challenge 101.

Next post in this series will detail the French 75mm, its capabilities, and why it was different enough to literally change existance as it was know for every artilleryman on the planet (and why some of them didn't realize it).

And how everyone reacted to this.

My growing interest in WWI

This doesn't deal with Ukraine. This deals with some military history and a topic that I am finding myself more drawn into recently: World War I (aka "The War to End all Wars" and the "War that would Never Happen").

Now, why would this war interest anyone? Well, major shaper (if not the defining shaper) of the 20th century aside, it is the massive changes in technology and how the various countries dealt with them that has completely captured my interest. What is lost on so many people due to the huge bloodletting and the completely jacked up ending (I have started to call this the war no one won thanks to the peace treaty that promised a rematch or our money back), is the absolutely perfect example of military transformation and impacts of technology on how militaries do business.

In a short period of time (20 or so years), every aspect of how a first class world military did business was changed. Infantry got machine guns and bolt-action rifles. Artillery got the rapid firing, recoil-less, long ranged cannon, aircraft were invented, the cavalry had motor vehicles/armored vehicles (Armored Cars to start, tanks came in the war), transportation had trains and motor vehicles and so on. And this was the first war which the medical science really started to be effective.

A very common word in the recent decade in the US Army has been "Transformation". We are talking about how the army/military is transforming due to new developments. This started as cyber/technology focused impacts, but after 9-11 it has included all kinds of asymetric threats and has started overlapping into all other areas (a good thing too, id Wilson had been smarter than he thought he was and had tied the military and polical parts together maybe WWI woudl have had a different ending).

I am not so big on the political aspects of this stuff. I will never be a general, so I am not trying to pry into that part. For me, the big one is the impact of new ideas or technology. Or the ideas that come from the new gear or the gear that comes from an idea or any other combo. And WWI (or the time leading up to it) provides a wealth of this stuff. Especially artillery which will be the center peice of this thread.

My thesis was actually on the impact of new artillery systems on doctrine in the US Army prior to WWI and how well did the US Army crack the code on the new rules. Or rather, its failure to do so even with 3 years of sitting on the sidelines while Europe provided examples on "how to NOT do things". But I realized something while studying this, this question is so complex and has so many factors influencing it that the answer wasn't that everyone got wrong. The problem was that everyone hadn't figured out what the exact question was.

Yes, to use a Hitchikers Guide reference, everyone got 42 and didn't have the question.

This discussion is way to long for one post, so we are going to do it in chunks. Next time I will discuss the "42" of this problem: the French 75mm.