Field Artillery And Fire Power

J.B.A Bailey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780850668117
• eBook ISBN: 9781135478117
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This definitive overview of the development and use of artillery makes the complex artillery systems of today understandable, while at the same time showing how they have evolved and how they are likely to change in the future. The author, until recently chief of artillery for the British Army, is considered one of the world's foremost experts on the subject. Unlike other books that either describe the technical aspects of present-day firepower or outline its history during specific wars, this work provides both a detailed explanation of the modern artillery system and a history of its development over the past six hundred fifty years, identifying its enduring principles and changing practices against an ever-changing background of technology, tactics, and strategy. When an earlier version of this book was published in 1989, it became known as the best single source on field artillery in the English language. This new edition has been fully updated and substantially expanded to cover a wide range of contemporary military debates and the role of firepower, and is certain to be regarded as the ultimate work on the subject for years to come.

J. B. A. Bailey assesses major developments over the past decade, analyzing artillery operations in airborne, urban, littoral, desert, jungle, mountain, artic, and nocturnal environments. He examines direct fire, counterfire, the suppression of enemy air defenses, and force protection methods. He explains field artillery from its primitive beginnings to its dominance as an art in World War II and its potent utility in operations since 1945 and into the future. The book will be of particular interest to military historians and those engaged in debating firepower's future. Published in cooperation with the Association of the United States Army. 15 photographs. 8 line drawings. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 7 x 10 inches.

PART I:
OPERATIONAL CONCEPTS

Chapter 1:

INTRODUCTION

Purpose

Many books have been published on military subjects, and demand for them shows little sign of abating despite the times of relative peace in which we live. Yet little of this literature is concerned with field artillery which, this book will argue, has been the primary means of combat over the last hundred years.

There are, it is true, a number of historical works which offer a “snap-shot” of artillery over a limited period; there are histories tracing the development of a particular nation’s artillery over the centuries; and there are also technical reference books which catalogue equipments and their capabilities. It is, however, hard to find a book which presents the principles of field artillery tactics, how these have developed with experience against a background of changing strategy and technology, and what the future may hold as a consequence. This book attempts to provide such an analysis.

Its purpose is to explain why artillery is the most important branch of a field army and why it will remain so for the foreseeable future. As procurement “lead times” for funding and technical development grow longer, it becomes even more important that the roles of different arms and technologies are seen in a substantiated perspective. Without this, the case for commensurate manning and equipment may be lost by default.

This book is directed at the military and civilian reader alike; and therefore treads the narrow path between an explanation of the commonplace and an assumption of prior knowledge. It is intended both to inform and, through its extensive footnotes and bibliography, to aid in further research.

Organization

Part One will outline the development of equipment and munitions, the nature of firepower and deployment on the battlefield in different theatres. Part Two deals with what have loosely been termed “ancillary services”, comprising command, control and communications (C3), logistics and training. Part Three studies the specialized artillery missions and operations in special environments. Finally, Part Four traces the development of artillery support over the last hundred years and into the 21st century.

This study is concerned with modern field artillery practice, based on the principles and experience of the past and the opportunities of the future. It examines the many functions of gunnery which have changed in fashion as politics, strategy and tactics have jerked in and out of step with the burgeoning of technology and the ability to exploit it. It is a large field and the study must be focused at the expense of a number of important subjects.

Some omissions may seem severe. Although the term artillery is often taken to include air defence (AD), the latter is not considered here in its own right. In some armies, such as the British Army, air defence units form an integral part of the artillery organization. In most other armies of note this is not the case. Air defence is generally a separate arm which, while closely integrated with other arms at a low level, is more clearly identified with the broader scope of the air battle than the problems of field gunnery. But while air defence is not treated here as a discipline in itself, the suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD) by field artillery is discussed in Chapter 10.

No attempt is made to state the precise battlefield deployments and missions of artillery formations around the world. Such details date rapidly, detract from the attempt to identify changes in ideas and arguments, and may have been overtaken by events by the time of publication, such is the speed of technological and strategic developments.

Neither does this constitute a tactical aide mémoire for the breast pocket of artillery officers in the field. Nor is there a systematic specification of artillery equipments, save where this helps to illustrate a significant concept in artillery practice. This is not a history of particular units or national forces, and historical episodes are used only to illustrate principles. Inevitably the forces and thinking of NATO and the Warsaw Pact (WP) attract the most attention, but from these studies points of broader international interest should emerge.

This is essentially a study of modern field artillery practice; yet even within that description there are other omissions, namely chemical and nuclear gunnery. The advent of chemical warfare was one of the most significant developments in artillery and in warfare as a whole during the First World War. While the subsequent use of chemical weapons has been limited, their threat has remained constant and is a major factor in the design of modern equipment, in the training of soldiers and in the planning by all sides in conflicts around the world. In particular, chemical weapons would be likely to play an important part in a future war in Europe. While their relevance and consequence is therefore not disputed, their effect on the conduct of field artillery tactics is probably marginal. Along with aircraft, artillery may be the means of delivering chemical agents, but aside from the narrow functions of planning chemical strikes and surviving them, field artillery practice is not significantly affected.

Just as the advent of chemical weapons in the First World War marked a new era in land warfare, so the atomic bomb in 1945 and its rapid development into artillery weapon systems was the Second World War’s awesome contribution to the military matrix. Nuclear gunnery has its own procedures of target acquisition, fire planning, weapon release, survivability and logistics. It is also the subject of serious controversy, which by its nature blends tactics, strategy, politics and morality. Conventional warfare should equally be considered in the light of politics and morality, but these arguments, while scarcely less profound, have been well rehearsed over two thousand years. Nuclear issues are by contrast relatively novel, the stakes are higher and the debate is more acerbic.

The horror of the use of nuclear weapons on the battle field speaks for itself, and their advent has affected the design of equipment and the deployment of troops. As with chemical weapons, the effects of nuclear warheads on conventional artillery practice are nonetheless slight. Their greatest significance lies in the debate over whether nuclear firepower should take the place of conventional firepower on the battlefield, and whether it has now become inappropriate at some, or all, phases of a future war. The answer will help to determine the scale and sophistication of resources devoted to improving conventional artillery. So far as this is concerned, therefore, the significance of nuclear weapons is not so much the effect of their possible use on gunnery, as the perception of their comparative importance in peacetime; and this debate is examined in the latter sections of Chapter 18.

Historical Perspective

Before proceeding, the reader may find it helpful to be given a brief historical perspective of the subject, pointing out the major developments in artillery tactics, and where the substantiating argument may be found in the main body of the text.

Artillery developed as the means by which an enemy could be hit at longer ranges or with a greater effective weight of fire than those which infantry, cavalry and, later, armour could achieve. Artillery has been most prized according to its ability to undertake this task relative to other arms. As a result, at different periods of history artillery has been seen either as the decisive arm on the battlefield or, more often, as the arm which merely supports the front line troops who will decide the outcome of the battle.

From the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, artillery is judged to have accounted for perhaps 50% of battlefield casualties. In the sixty years preceding 1914, this figure was probably as low as 10%. The remaining 90% fell to small arms, whose range and accuracy had come to rival that of artillery ⁽¹⁾. The development of artillery before 1914 is explained in Chapter 13.

It was not until the First World War, with its mostly static, soft infantry targets, that artillery was transformed through the use of indirect fire, improved target acquisition, C3, and heavy equipments and munitions. This primacy was reflected in the relative allocation of manpower to the artillery and the accounting by artillery for more than half the casualties inflicted in that war ⁽²⁾. The evolution of artillery in the First World War is analysed in Chapter 14.

In the Second World War, artillery still played a major role; but to some extent, the mobility and protection of targets overtook the ability of artillery to acquire and destroy them with concentrated, indirect, high explosive (HE) shellfire. The most important targets were armoured, and these were eventually mastered by new direct-fire artillery guns. Indirect artillery was losing its relative potency; but its residual importance could nonetheless be seen in the resources allocated to it. In the British Army, artillery, including air defence, accounted for 40% of manpower. In the Soviet Army, the number of guns increased fivefold between 1941 and 1945, and 33% of its men were gunners. Artillery was rightly seen as the Soviet Army’s prime means of destruction ⁽³⁾. The development of artillery in the Second World War is examined in Chapter 16. The role of artillery in the limited wars which have occurred since 1945 is discussed in Chapter 17, while developments in Europe after 1945 are explained in Chapter 18.

As important targets became more mobile and heavily armoured in the postwar period, the ability of the little-improved HE shell to do damage decreased, and improvements in range and acquisition were not sufficient to compensate. On the other hand, accuracy did improve, the 155mm shell was preferred to lighter calibres and automatic data processing (ADP) was introduced into command posts (CPs).

Although the relative power of artillery was waning, its major role throughout the 1970s still lay close to the forward edge of the battle area (FEBA), that is, between 500 metres and the furthest range of assisted vision. The role of depth fire in this period showed little sign of rejuvenation, there being few improvements in target acquisition, range and accuracy, which might have enhanced harassing and counter-battery (CB) fire. The effectiveness of depth fire depended on the resources put into it. In the case of NATO, compared to the WP, this was not very great, with the result that NATO’s artillery faced a more serious threat to its survival at a time when its ability to fulfil its traditional role in close support was diminishing. CB fire is examined in Chapter 9. The relative post-war decline of artillery is reflected in the manning figures ⁽⁴⁾.

The Yom Kippur War revealed how field artillery had been neglected. The suppression of anti-tank defences was clearly of even greater importance than before, but there was little immediate prospect of artillery’s regaining a major antitank role. Without improvements in target acquisition, range, munitions, command and control—and in battlefield tactics to take advantage of these developments—its further decline seemed likely.

The technological pendulum swings back and forth, There is now a happy coincidence of technological and tactical change that will secure for artillery a unique position, if not primacy, on the battlefield for the foreseeable future. Heavy indirect-fire weapons, based on the immense potential of emerging technology (ET), will become the most important on the battlefield, giving artillery a decisive role. By contrast, the infantry may hope to achieve some improvements in protection, mobility and the ability to destroy what they can see, but little of revolutionary change can realistically be expected. Only in the indirect fire of the mortar is there significant scope for change, and there is no reason to suppose that mortars will become the preserve of the infantry. The possible demise of the tank has often been predicted prematurely, and while it would be rash to exclude, as some have done, a tank of some design from future military equations, the parameters limiting that design are identifiable. On the other hand, the possibilities for artillery equipments and their employment are hard to limit except by lack of imagination and the resources needed to realize them. These arguments and ideas on the future of field artillery are presented in the latter sections of Chapter 18.

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⁽¹⁾ Dupuy (1983). At the battle of Gravelotte in the Franco-Prussian War, for example, a Prussian battery was destroyed by French machine guns: Bellamy (1982a). The main reason for infantry weapons’ ranges increasing to that of artillery was the advance in industrial technology which by 1850 had made a breechloading rifle possible. A reliable breech-loading gun was not produced until the 1880s. This delay was partly due to an inability to produce a rifled barrel to the required tolerance, and either a screw or sliding breech mechanism which would not seize up during high rates of fire.

⁽²⁾Strobridge & Schriefer (1978). The British Royal Artillery, at over one million men, grew to be larger than the Royal Navy. Bellamy (1986), ppl–7, cites the percentage of casualties caused by artillery in various theatres since 1914: First World War—45% of Russian casualties, and 58% of British casualties on the Western Front. Second World War—75% of British casualties in North Africa, 51% of Soviet casualties (61% in 1945), and 70% of German casualties on the Eastern Front. Korean War—60% of US casualties (includes those caused by mortars).

⁽³⁾ In June 1941 the Soviets had 37,500 guns and mortars: Larionov et al. (1984), p29. By July 1943 this had risen to 105,000: ibid, p199.

⁽⁴⁾ The most extreme case, that of the British Royal Artillery, showed a fall to 8% of army strength, excluding air defences, by 1980. The Bundeswehr field artillery stood at 15%, and even the Soviet artillery had fallen to 25%: Smith (1983).

Chapter 2:

EQUIPMENT AND MUNITIONS

The definition of field artillery is imprecise. At different periods of history it has encompassed direct and indirect firing guns ⁽¹⁾ and rocket launchers, delivering a variety of munitions spanning a range of calibres, at targets acquired by numerous means. Each type of equipment has advantages and disadvantages.

Guns and rockets

Guns have been in common use since the 14th century. They contain the force of the propellant charge at one end of the barrel; and as the power of the charge increases, so must the strength, and generally the weight, of the gun, and the robustness of the carriage to withstand the shock. Heavier guns have therefore generally been able to achieve a greater range than lighter guns, or to deliver a heavier projectile. As a result, long-range guns have usually lacked mobility, and their logistic support has been less flexible.

Recoil systems were developed to absorb the backward thrust of the barrel. These rely upon springs or hydraulic devices, and allow lighter guns to achieve greater range without undue strain. Light alloys and composite materials, as strong as steel or stronger, enhance the mobility of guns; but their lack of mass could reduce a gun’s range were it not for improvements in recoil systems.

Another way of increasing range, without increasing the weight of an equipment, is to deliver a warhead by rocket. The rocket has been in military service for more than 200 years, but has been an effective battlefield weapon only since the Second World War. By not containing the backblast of the projectile, the rocket launcher is in theory inefficient; but it can compensate for this loss of energy by employing a greater charge. Rocket launchers tend therefore to be lighter than guns, but to have a heavier munition, or at least a smaller warhead in relation to the rest of the projectile, much of which will be engine, or propellant burned during flight.

Attempts have been made to increase the range of shells by giving them rocket assistance in flight. This reduces the proportion of the projectile taken up by the warhead; but if an overall increase in weight is accepted, equal terminal effect can be achieved, and at greater range.

Because the rocket launcher suffers minimal effect from the recoil, it is able to fire rockets simultaneously or in rapid succession. Rocket launchers therefore tend to provide a high rate of fire, yet find difficulty in supplying and loading their heavier munition to match potential consumption. Rockets tend therefore to be used sparingly to achieve maximum shock effect at specific phases of battle, or against particularly vulnerable targets. Their time of flight and their smoke/light signature on launching may also be greater than those of the gun. This may force rocket launchers to move, and so to be out of action more often than guns, or to leave themselves more vulnerable to enemy attack.

Because rockets use powered flight, their warheads do not have to withstand such high acceleration as do shells on firing. Greater emphasis therefore can be placed on the lethal effects of rocket warheads. These do not need such heavy metal casing as shells, and they can deliver more explosive, in relation to weight of warhead. A lighter warhead increases range still further, or helps to compensate for the additional weight of the rocket motor or fuel.

Rocket launchers also tend to be cheaper than guns, and in terms of costeffectiveness have often seemed more attractive; but guns are st...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• Part I: Operational Concepts
• Part II: Ancillary Services
• Part III: Specialized Missions
• Part IV: The Development of Fire Support
• Appendix A: A Selective Historical Comparison of Artillery Concentrations and Ammunition Expenditure
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• References