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ORIGINAL: delatbabel

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas

Soviet artillery OTOH mainly used predetermined fireplans and rolling barrages WW1 style. There is much written in memoirs etc about horrible Soviet artillery fire, and Soviet artillery was plentiful and probably made a lot of impressive noise but not very effective in causing casualties. The original War in the East book, accompanying the original boardgame, had German casualties from artillery fire on the Eastern front at 50%, while the rate for all fronts was 75-80%.

Anyone who doubts the above should have a read of Antony Beevor's book on the fall of Berlin. In the approach to the city and the battles for the Seelow Heights, the soviets had concentrations of artillery approaching 1 piece per metre of front. In the hands of a capable and organised artillery system, that sort of artillery concentration should have basically turned anything in its path to shrapnel. The soviet doctrine, which was more or less a case of fire in the general direction of anything with a german accent, was a case of quantity rather than quality.

Seelow heights was a monumental cockup for a number of reasons, I don't think this was a failure in Soviet artillery doctrine in particular. (And Beevor isn't my idea of a fit source for anything, but that's a whole other rant.)

Massive Soviet artillery did more or less flatten the Germans elsewhere -- see the Vistula-Oder operation for a much more typical example than Seelow Heights. Quantity has a quality all its own.

Also, for all of this talk about German counterbattery, the plain fact of the matter is that German artillery was being outnumbered by increasingly huge margins as the war went on. They were buried. Not a whole lot counterbattery fire can do when the enemy outnumbers you 10-1 in artillery.

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

ORIGINAL: Tarhunnas
German artillery was very flexible, and it was possible to shift artillery from one target to another quickly, and to call down artillery on new threats within a minute.

Not many people know but finnish artillery had best doctrine and fire control tactics for artillery during World War 2.

True that Finnish artillery doctrine and fire control methods were at par with the best (US), but the lack of radios and variety of different artillery guns meant that in practice it wasn't quite there. Anyhow, the Germans copied the Finnish fire control system for their mortars, and Western Allied got the taste of it at Normandy and Hürtgen Forest. Interesting fact is that when the German 122nd Infantry Division supported Finnish forces at Viipurinsalmi, during the summer 1944, its artillery was given only preplanned targets, because it was known that they were not used to the fast response, time-on-target system the Finns had.

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

Not many people know but finnish artillery had best doctrine and fire control tactics for artillery during World War 2.

Better than US artillery doctrine? I don't think so.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
Also, for all of this talk about German counterbattery, the plain fact of the matter is that German artillery was being outnumbered by increasingly huge margins as the war went on. They were buried. Not a whole lot counterbattery fire can do when the enemy outnumbers you 10-1 in artillery.

Yup, in Finland, after the initial phases of the Soviet summer offensive 1944, it was recognized that counterbattery measures were waste of ammunition when dealing against the odds.

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

ORIGINAL: Jakerson

Not many people know but finnish artillery had best doctrine and fire control tactics for artillery during World War 2.

Better than US artillery doctrine? I don't think so.

As I wrote above, at par. Same methods, slightly different implementation.

Oh, and it has to be said that the Finnish system was not fully made use of until the summer or 1944. So it was a late war development.

My Sources BTW was mainly an article on German Artillery tactics in an old issue of Soldat und Technik. I did some more online research anf found a very good description of both German and Soviet artillery usage online here that describe among other things counterbattery using sound and flash location as well as balloons and aircraft.

Massive Soviet artillery did more or less flatten the Germans elsewhere -- see the Vistula-Oder operation

There was a huge difference between the effectiveness of the initial Soviet barrage at the Weichsel/Vistula, where the Germans had concentrated too much of their forces at the frontline and suffered badly, and at the Oder, where the initial Soviet barrage in most sectors hit positions that were either already evacuated or were evacuated before the barrage had really started, resulting in low losses for the defenders and an ugly suprise for the leading Soviet formations.

As a result, the Soviet crossing of the Oder was more costly, also due to the general chronic lack of bridging equipment and equipment for crossing rivers in the Soviet army (there was a general lack of specialist equipment to begin with), the assaulting divisions had to cross the rivers on anything that could float, with some divisions being forced to resort to chopping up furniture and trees to make makeshift rafts as there were too few boats and the boats that were there were quickly targeted by the defenders of by pre-registered artillery. The stories of what the lead formations went through are not pleasant reading.

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Like with a large part of German doctrine, the problem often wasn't the quality of the doctrine, but the lack of the means to employ it.

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As to US doctrine: it was effective in terms of fire control and the speed with which targets could be engaged, but the lack of area disruption weapons like rocket launchers was in my opinion a major handicap. Using hundreds of guns instead of a couple of dozen rocket launchers makes a big difference in terms of the ammunition that is expended, whilst the results can be the same. Still, US artillery was clearly a more combat capable arm than its citizen soldier infantry divisions with uncreative leaders at all levels.

The Canadians developed probably the first reliable ground based detection system to use against indirect fire during WWI.

Not to put the lie to what someone's father or grandfather told them but counter battery fire was regularly used in WWII. All artillery units me not have fire it however. Detection assets seem to have been concentrated at Corps level in US forces. Different types of artillery units had different missions and support respopnsibilities. There were batteries assigned to regiments, divisions, coprs, armies and a host of independend artillery battalions in the US Army. Missions and support assets varied considerably within these units.

Using a cluster of listening stations they employed a flash/bang detection system and repeatedly located enemy batteries positions within 25-100 meters in times as little as three minutes. It worked better at night since in daylight the locating system usually had to rely on sound alone.

The US detection assets loacted German railroad guns as far away as 55km. At Anzio railroad guns from 40-50km away. It was often ground detection assets locating those guns for air attack instead of the other way around. Indeed at Anzio US Corps artillery assets used sound ranging and bearings to direct 51.5% of all counter battery fire missions.

The US and the UK still use acoustic sensors to detect enemy indirect fire systems. Not quite as accurate as radar systems they have the advantage of being passive and thus undetectable to the enemy and cannot be targeted like radar detection systems.

I also trained in the 80's and 90's to use impact craters to get an azimuth to enemy weapons. Admittedly we new the locations of the many artillery training positions from which the rounds probably came but we were able to use this least accurate system to select between known choices with 100% accuracy. There would usually be a large range of error but we could eliminate most of a grid square.

Tactically, an assault without the smoke cover provided by mortars would have caused alot more casualties.

hmmm.... having first hand experience serving in a battalion level artillery fire direction control ( FDC ) unit, I have a hard time believing counter-battery fire rarely occurred in WWII. According to the following, it appears to have been a growing concern of the Germans -


Toward the end of September 1942, it was noted that the Germans in North Africa were increasing their precautions against British counterbattery fire. Among the methods used were these:

(1) Harassing missions by day were fired from roving gun positions in the open.

(2) Adjustments were made by using one or two guns sited on a flank.

(3) The fire of both light and medium batteries was directed into the same area at the same times in order to increase the difficulties of locating battery positions.

(4) Up to six batteries were fired simultaneously in order to confuse British sound-ranging. Dummy flashes are also reported to have been used, but this is not confirmed.

Another source of reference may be found here:

http://nigelef.tripod.com/tgtacqcb.htm

ORIGINAL: DorianGray

hmmm.... having first hand experience serving in a battalion level artillery fire direction control ( FDC ) unit, I have a hard time believing counter-battery fire rarely occurred in WWII. According to the following, it appears to have been a growing concern of the Germans

Who's claiming that it happened rarely?

Pelton kind of insinuated that. Don't really buy it myself, but I'm curious how it was actually done. Can't see it being totally dependent on spotter aircraft.

Indeed, wasn't the whole point of guns vs howitzers that the former were primarily for counterbattery and the latter for barrage?

ORIGINAL: Mynok


Pelton kind of insinuated that. Don't really buy it myself, but I'm curious how it was actually done. Can't see it being totally dependent on spotter aircraft.

Try a search for the Heer's Beobachtungsabteilungen. Up until December 39, they were divisional assets but then became Army assets. Sound ranging was a key part of how they identified enemy artillery positions. They also used light ranging - including sending men up in hot air balloons. They also functioned to help spot other targets for the artillery. Large range of specialised (including armoured) vehicles to move them and their equipment around the battlefield.

That's assuming that's what you mean. If you mean the math, something based around triangulation but math makes my head hurt and sure there'll be some artillery guys on here who can demonstrate the equations.

edit: this website might be of interest (now no longer in existance sadly). It's done by the grandson of a German soldier who served in two artillery observation units. http://web.archive.org/web/200605142232 ... index.html

ORIGINAL: Zebedee

edit: this website might be of interest (now no longer in existance sadly). It's done by the grandson of a German soldier who served in two artillery observation units. http://web.archive.org/web/200605142232 ... index.html

Great info on that link, thanks for posting!

Indeed.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

That would certainly account for most of the "surprising" combat results that I've trying to get grips with. And indeed a sIG 33 can certainly ruin your day. Have you find that to happen as well to assault guns?

Results with AFV's involved normally seem more reasonable, especially with some quality AFV's that have a good main gun. The defending mortars might still do a number on the accompanying infantry, though. StuG casualties are generally pretty low and they provide decent support, like most medium/heavy gun AFV's.

EDIT: How does the range close during tactical combat? I think it starts at 3000 yards and then starts diminishing. Perhaps the fire and maneuver model should be sampled at intervals which are more fair to heavy weapons.

I don't know the precise formula for how the range closes, but it depends in part on the type of terrain and the type of forces involved and even though the range might close to, say, 125 meters that doesn't mean that all combat in that particular segment is at that range. One of the reasons why the Germans lose at least one PaK 36 in most battles regardless of how good the result is seems to be that there's always something firing at it even as the range closes (the AT gun stays at a few hundred meters from the enemy infantry, but heavy weapons still try to target it).

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Perhaps one option would be to lower medium and heavy mortar accuracy to 100 (120mm mortars are now at 250, 50mm's are at 50 and ~80mm's are at 150)

Artillery should definitely be firing much more often than mortars, just because of range constraints. Unless f.e. a Division is actually being overrun, only part of the mortars would be able to be used at any one time. If this is not the case, Artillery should at least be much more effective. Lower mortar accuracy and increase Artillery accuracy might be a workaround.


Are any of the Devs looking at this?

ORIGINAL: MechFO
Artillery should definitely be firing much more often than mortars, just because of range constraints. Unless f.e. a Division is actually being overrun, only part of the mortars would be able to be used at any one time. If this is not the case, Artillery should at least be much more effective. Lower mortar accuracy and increase Artillery accuracy might be a workaround.


Are any of the Devs looking at this?

This is exactly what bothered me. It is harder to get mortars in combat when in need in high numbers because of their shorter range than artillery.

If army holds 50km front and all mortar battalions are deployed evenly in whole front then only one battalion can take part of combat when one part of front face offensive. Even if army have 2000 mortars and all of them are deployed south and enemy attack north none of them can take part of combat. While almost all artillery in army could support whole 50km front.

This is reason why mortar SU units should be a lot less chance appearing in combat than artillery SU units or a lot smaller partition of mortars shoot than artillery in combat.

Are any of the Devs looking at this?

We're currently (slowly) testing/working towards making the next batch of significant changes to the combat system/the game and how to make the effectiveness of mortars more historical is one of the things being studied currently.

Mortars have a number of significant advantages over field artillery

1) Significantly more bang for a given caliber
2) Higher rate of fire than field artillery (for a short time)
3)Assigned at lower level than field artillery and deployed further forward which gave significantly faster response for the Russians
4) Ranged about as deep into enemy positions as field artillery (at least for the 120's) due to forward deployment

And they had one really, really major disadvantage that no one has mentioned:

They were deployed further forward than field artillery [:D]. This meant that it was quite difficult to supply them with ammo; instead of trucks hauling tons of ammo into the gun positions, the mortar shells usually had to be packed in via human backs for at least the last mile or so.