[WarInEur] Artillery Fire across the Channel

[sgminfo at aol.com]

CarlAugustRuppSr at aol.com wrote:
> From a timing perspective, we are talking late 1943, The soviet union 
> has fallen, and only England stands against me. So we are talking 
> later in the game in terms of weapons development, if that makes a 
> difference.


Probably not...

..unfortunately....


The big problem for our gunnery from the big ships in Normandy was 
getting any sort of result against anything that wasn't on a direct fire 
task plan....

The floating naval artillery was, as with most ship borne weapon 
systems, primarily a direct fire system....

The methods naval artillery used to improve on using the precision range 
takers  from the ships, were specially trained spotters with the ships' 
naval air arm. These people were  almost brought up with the guns,
took  their place at live shoots, and practised regularly with 'guns', 
intimately familiar with their own naval ordnance, and on first name 
terms with the people on board...

The evidence seems to show from Normandy, that as a direct fire support 
weapon system, they were without challenge,
but in indirect fire they had major problems...both with relating to 
land targets...and correcting for fall of shot.....a slightly different 
skillset.


As Normandy went on...so the techniques gradually improved, experience 
telling heavily....

The resulting improvements culminated in such fire suppression tasks as 
hit Panzer Armee headquarters with highly accurate 15" salvoes...

But such preplanning took time and a lot of experience,
and was rarely of a nature to take the sort of immediate advantage seen 
in a normal battle...

 From a land battle pov, the FOO is in position at the start of the attack,
he has already worked up his guns with registration of his targets and 
corrected previously for error factors with registration...


In a normal naval assault, the ordinary FOO has yet to get into position 
in the terrain,
and has not yet worked in concert with his artillery so solving his trio 
of errors,
of position as an observer, and  position for his guns, and finally his 
errors for the target....

With land based coastal artillery, he's got one of those variables 
neatly solved for him....but the other two are just as difficult to 
solve for his gun crews, as they cannot see the target...and cannot 
simply position him accurately...(of course with today's GPS..,.)

Once he goes in with the assault, there's a lot to get done and set 
up...at considerable risk...in a very short  time...


If he's already in position...and the artillery is able to 
register...then the gunnery support issue is the same as in any 
situation.....

Then, you're back to the serious problem of volume of fire to achieve 
the objective....

as a general rule, the larger the gun, the fewer there are....

So if we are talking serious long range gunnery...we are in the Anzio 
Annie / Paris Kanon situation, neither of which turned out to have much 
tactical significance...

Such systems did not start to have tactical significance until the 
advent of larger payloads...such as atomic shells...


Had the normal field artillery found operating at these ranges to be 
practical, in both sides' case, the results would have been a no man's 
land of defensive bunkers in a pockmarked verdun-like landscape on both 
sides of the channel...

Since this did not take place regularly, one has to conclude that with 
the normal inventory of ordnance it wasn't that practical....


-|steve|-
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