Arty "Out of Contact" & The Bloody Forest

[Tommy]

We've all been complaining about how often our arty is "out of contact" and can't do fire missions. I've been reading Astor's book "The Bloody Forest: Battle for the Huertgen".

info here

It's starting to convince me that maybe our SPWAW arty is in contact too much! The army just didn't trust or use it's radios all that much, especially in urban, mountainous or forest terrains. They were very unreliable. They used mostly runners and wire connected phones. After every arty or mortar barrage by the enemy (and there were several per day) many wires were cut by the shrapnel. There were many cases where the FO just sat & watched, cut-off from HQ.

Tommy

[CaptainBrian]

Originally posted by Tommy:
We've all been complaining about how often our arty is "out of contact" and can't do fire missions. It's starting to convince me that maybe our SPWAW arty is in contact too much! The army just didn't trust or use it's radios all that much, especially in urban, mountainous or forest terrains. They were very unreliable. They used mostly runners and wire connected phones. After every arty or mortar barrage by the enemy (and there were several per day) many wires were cut by the shrapnel. There were many cases where the FO just sat & watched, cut-off from HQ.Tommy

How true! As a modern day artilleryman, I can further add that all too often we are still out of communication. This in spite of our comm equipment being 3-4 generations ahead of WWII equipment. Can't imagine how difficult it must have been to keep WWII era radio equipment in communication.

[skukko]

Just noted info of russian barrages: Batteries fired to the places they had last call or quessed where enemy was. They couldn't help at close range attackin SO-infantry because they had no comm line to the front.

mosh

[k1w1]

artillery is far too easy to get and too accurate.
Lots of friendly fire casualties from inaccurate fire during WW2