"Instances of Artillery vs. Tanks in WW2" Topic

Aside from Anti-Tank guns are there any known cases of where artillery strikes were called in on advancing enemy tanks? Thanks.

Plenty of instances of armour v artillery in the Western Desert campaigns but mostly over open sights rather than indirect fire.

I think that Italian medium & heavy artillery featured in the battles around Tobruk and were directed at the advancing British armoured division.

After inexperienced American infantry failed, it was the artillery gun line that saved the day at Salerno, firing over open sights to turn back the panzers. Worth reading up on.

Audie Murphy's Medal of Honor was awarded for calling artillery strikes on attacking tanks and infantry. Alone. Under fire. On a burning M-10.

link

In one of my library of books on the Eastern Front, there is an account of German field guns being used to fire over open sights at a KV-1 that is rampaging through the rear areas. This is not the "KV at the crossroads" incident, but s different action.

Yes, both defensive fire and final protective fire tasks as well as concentrations against defending armour. Medium artillery generally had more destructive effect, but it all generated neutralizing effects. Still does, just think of those Saudi M60s retiring under pretty light Iraqi artillery fire in gw1.

Thank you!

Mortain is probably one of the best cases to look at of US artillery strikes being used to repel armored attacks. The defenders atop the hill had excellent visibility and the support of something like 10-12 battalion (not batteries, battalions) of artillery, including a number of medium battalions. Numerous advances by German Panthers and Panzer IVs were halted by artillery fires.

I've read of a number of other instances, but Mortain is always the one that stands out in my mind.

This from a recent thread I made,
TMP link

How Artillery Beat Rommel After Kasserine

"Two great feats of the US Army Artillery in World War II were the February 1943 emergency forced march of the 9th Infantry Division Artillery (Div Arty) into Tunisia, North Africa, and the division's resulting victory in the battle against a German panzer division of Field Marshall Irwin Rommel at Thala Pass. Furthermore, the 9th Div Arty fought without the division's three infantry regiments present. The 9th Artillery had been too far away to help stop the crushing German breakthrough of the Allied lines near the village of Kasserine and the mountain pass there. But it arrived in time to beat Rommel's forces near Thala Pass. "
link

It was not as rare as one would think, even though it was not generally doctrine. Even in the opening days of the Korean War '50-'53, US 105mm Howitzers had to take on North Korean T-34s with direct fire. After they had overrun and routed much of the US frontline units. They even had a few 105mm HEAT rounds in their ammo mix for just that situation.

German tanks in NW Europe would frequently attract ever increasing quantities of artillery until they simply stopped coming. For example, at Rauray in Normandy on 1st July 1944, the Panthers of 9. SS-Panzer-Division, launched successive attacks against 49th (West Riding) Division, attracting increasing levels of Allied artillery as the day wore on, with the Royal Artillery firing first Troop and Battery missions, then 'Mike' (a single regiment of 25pdrs), then 'Uncle' (all three regiments in the division)and 'Victor' (as above, but throw in the Corps AGRA) missions… The final attacks were broken up by 'William' and 'Yoke' missions in their forming-up areas (being respectively every gun within range from the Army and the Army Group, plus naval assets and neighbouring US units).

Reading the Green Book accounts I would have to say that artillery was the US Army's primary defense against German armor throughout the war. While the artillery didn't actually kill very many tanks they would often force the enemy armor to pull back. Tankers REALLY don't like artillery! So when the infantry saw tanks headed their way, they called in the artillery.

I seem to remember naval gunfire stopping several panzer thrusts at Anzio.

Yes – far more effective than scattered AT defences is a shedload of artillery rounds landing around your armoured trust. A single anti tank gun can be knocked out or bypassed but the artillery cannot be countered. It must be nearly impossible for tanks to be effective if under such fire and losses will mount up due to track damage and crew concussions.

Plus – unlike infantry in trenches – the tanks can run away to save themselves.

I read somewhere on TMP or similar that the British considered artillery to be the most effective anti-armour asset at their disposal.

In the movie Battleground one of the new men asks the old sergeant (James Whitmore) what they do if attacked by tanks. He says, we usually just put our heads down and call for artillery.

So it must be so!

Yes. Perhaps the most spectacular being the defense of Leningrad where the guns of the Baltic Fleet pounded the snot out of the 4th panzer army

My Bty from Telic 4:

It was at Alem Hamza in North Africa in 1941 that the Battery gained its honour title. Tobruk had been relieved by the Allies and the pursuit of the Axis Forces had begun in earnest.

As part of a combined force with an infantry battalion and a company of cavalry the Battery found itself isolated on the Alem Hamza ridge. After an extremely heavy enemy artillery bombardment and air attack an overwhelming German force, including approximately 400 tanks, attacked the Allied force. The Battery's 25 pounders fought on, gun detachments reduced to as few as 2 men. Eventually all had been killed or taken prisoner, but not before the British guns had taken their toll of German tanks and men. 42 (Alem Hamza) Bty RA

Tally Ho!

Think about it … you'll fire what you have at enemy armor if you think it will do some damage … 25 lbers., 105, 155mm, etc. … in direct fire mode most likely will cause some damage at the very least. And even maybe scare the out of the tank crews and force them to withdraw …

One thing to bear in mind is that indirect fire is more of a deterrent to armoured attack rather than physically knocking out lots of tanks. Concentrated artillery fire is at best capable of neutralising armoured targets (as in, making their lives uncomfortable, stripping off external fittings, being extremely noisy, forcing them to close up, reducing visibility etc) which can both seriously interdict forming up as well as the actual attack. Attacking dug in infantry and AT guns after being blinded by artillery is not very wise.

Conventional artillery fire is not however a nuclear weapon capable of laying waste to dozens of armoured vehicles. Tanks will of course simply drive right through a light barrage, that is what they were designed to do in the first place.

Some wargames rules reflect this better than others.

Direct fire artillery, particularly of medium and heavy calibres, can make a real mess of anything they hit. However, if tanks are overunning your artillery positions, then you are probably in trouble. It was not unheard of to use some guns explicitly for direct AT fire, German K18s were often used that way in 1941/42. 100mm high velocity rounds would demolish even KV2s. The Brtish of course pressed 25pdrs into service as ad-hoc AT guns, but more as they were scattered piecemeal amongst the various Jock columns haring around the desert, or the brigades they were supporting had been overrun by tanks…. Soviet 76.2mm divisional guns were dual purpose.

I have read somewhere a brief account from Winter War, in which a Finnish forward observer managed to spot a bunch of Soviet tanks moving slowly across open ground.

He called in for fire support, but unfortunately the supporting artillery was low on ammunition – so the only fire support he got was a single artillery piece firing individual rounds. However, the Soviet tanks were moving so slowly that he eventually managed to direct the gun to score a lucky direct hit on one of the advancing tanks, with devastating results (we are talking about lightly armoured early war Soviet tanks here). Cannot recall what the rest of the tanks did after that – probably retreated?

---------------------------------------------------------

On another note, didn't Band of Brothers feature an encounter where the paras spot a German tank disguised with pile of hay, and call artillery fire upon it – resulting on a devastating direct hit.

----------------------------------------------------------

On another note, one effect of artillery fire upon armoured formations is that it will make life difficult for any accompanying infantry, unless they are travelling in armoured carriers of some sort.

Martin,

Agreed. The artillery would disrupt, demoralise, suppress, damage, strip away infantry and other supporting assets. Then, if the artillery was heavy enough and if it was lucky, it might knock out the odd tank. The defending infantry, anti-tank guns and tanks were still required to stop the armour.

In the Rauray example given above, it still took an infantry battalion, a tank regiment, a heap of 6pdrs and a very hard battle to hold off the Panthers and panzer-grenadiers. The artilery support was invluable, but could not have achieved victory alone.

I think it's quite a subtle effect that some rules are capable of modelling while some are not.

AFVs should be at risk if under significant artillery fire and severely suppressed too.

I think (and someone says this above as I understand it) that the superheacy guns were less effective than the mediums. I suppose the key is landing a shell close enough to the tank for the blast to do some damage or the fragments to still have enough energy to break tracks and perhaps penetrate some of the weaker armour (this would need to be close or you'd have to be getting 'airbursts'.

The morale issue for tankers is sometimes totally ignored in rules. But the deafening roar, the sense of being deaf and blind to all around you and the inablility to communicate well (even the headphones would be drowned out and radio aeriels may be broken off) could lead to tanks breaking off and heading for cover if under heavy artillery fire for even a few rounds.

But you aren't going to see more than a few outright kills.

Which rules handle this effect well and elegently and which get it seriously wrong?

ASL (an old lady now) gets it totally wrong in my view with quite a high risk of knocking out an AFV and very little in the way of 'milder effects'. You can get immobilised or suffer shock (about a 50-50 OK-KO result) but if the hatches are closed there is no way to suffer any kind of morale effect. This is a symptom of the AFV rules being less detailed because of the 'ASL is an infantry game' mindset that pervaded the early developement. Now it is frozen in time because people like it how it is. Fair enough I guess but I am curious what sets get this right and how they do it.

PS – artillery can't do it all of course but I think that's a feature of combined arms warfare that applies to any arm. Tanks can't achieve much without infantry and will always achieve more at less cost with effective artillery support. Infantry can manage a lot alone – a case of having to mostly – but it is most effective with proper support from other arms.

On the occasions when a single arm achieves great results alone it is usually because the enemy have failed to emply combined arms tactics. All those Soviet armoured charges defeated by a few Tigers/Panthers seem to have lacked infantry and artillery support.

Skarp ,squad leader is only an infantry game if you let it be.

I seem to recall that in 1940 the British 140 Fld RA using 18lb guns at Cassel managed to knock out some German Czech made tanks(don't know which). Robert

"Which rules handle this effect well and elegently and which get it seriously wrong?"

I rather like Command Decisions approach where HE fire automatically suppresses (-2 to hit) things it is shoooting at, whether it damages them or not.

WRG 1925-50 also had a reasonable approach, tanks under the beaten zone for field guns were neutralised on a '6' (5 or 6 for mediums), and then a further 6 (5+ for heavies) to KO. Not hugely dangerous, but once you start overlaying multiple firing batteries….

It was certainly dangerous enough that tanks didn't often stick around under artillery barrages, and as an Allied player it was my preferred method for dealing with the wall-wall Tigers, Jagdpanthers, Elephants etc which tended to feature in 1970s wargames:)

Not exactly a miniatures game, but I tend to like the effect that artillery has against vehicles on Steel Panthers: World at War (turn-based tactical game of WWII combat). Since the computer is taking care of the book-keeping, the game can have quite detailed way of handling damage, morale and other effects of action.

In that game, artillery does not easily destroy tanks (though with lucky shots it can happen). What they usually do is:

1.) Cause physical damage on the vehicles, such as immobilisation, loss of weapons or loss of individual crew members, thus reducing the effectiveness of the vehicle in question. Sufficient cumulative damage can eventually lead to the vehicle becoming destroyed.

2.) Cause suppression (morale effect) on the vehicles. This will lead to the vehicle becoming buttoned up (reducing their spotting ability), and reducing their firepower and responsiveness to enemy actions (ie. their ability to opportunity fire). Sufficient suppression can lead to individual tanks retreating (which can further reduce the morale of other tanks), and the crews of immobilised vehicles can also end up bailing out of their vehicles.

3.) Alter the combat environment. All artillery fire produces clouds of dust and smoke, which restricts visibility conditions. It can also set vegetation and buildings on fire (causing morale effects on the burning hex and smoke in some adjacent hexes). Sufficiently heavy artillery can also crater terrain (slowing down movement), blow up bridges and collapse buildings. Also destroyed vehicles will leave wrecks on the map, and these will have negative morale effect on close-by units (burning wrecks will also affect visibility and produce smoke).

4.) Make life very difficult for accompanying infantry. Any infantry travelling as tank riders will be rather vulnerable to artillery. Same for any soft-skinned vehicles and their passengers. Infantry on foot may suffer less damage, but they are likely to get at least pinned if not driven off. Infantry on armoured half-tracks provide a decent level of protection, but they are still much more vulnerable than tanks, due to their lighter armour and open-topped nature.

The end result is that any tank formation that has driven through a proper artillery barrage is likely to have its effectiveness seriously reduced, at least for a round or two. On the other, bringing artillery barrage to bear on a rapidly advancing tank formation is not necessarily easy, since the artillery strikes need to be planned a few rounds ahead – thus requiring one to predict the enemy movements. Natural choke points on the map can help to channel enemy into good artillery target zones, though.

Just had an revelation: big artillery can bail tanks fairly easily. If you consider 'bail' to include thrown tracks or aerials shot off, it makes for a reasonable amount of nuisance to the tanks.

Top armor 1 for most tanks versus AT4 (normal for 105mm guns), 25% chance of destruction, 50% chance of bailing. If I'm doing my math correctly…

"The only serious fighting occurred in the American center, where Axis mobile forces tried to throw the Americans back into the sea before they had a chance to become firmly established. Fortunately for the Americans, the attacks were poorly coordinated. At Gela, the 1st and 4th Ranger Battalions, assisted by the 1st Battalion of the 39th Engineer Combat Regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 531st Engineer Shore Regiment, mortar fire from the 83d Chemical Battalion, and naval gunfire, repulsed two Italian attacks, one by a battalion of infantry and the other by a column of thirteen tanks. Nine or ten of the latter managed to penetrate the town before the Rangers drove them off in a confused melee. Meanwhile, at the vital Piano Lupo crossroads, those few paratroopers who had been fortunate enough to land near their objective repulsed a column of about twenty Italian tanks with the help of naval gunfire and the advancing infantrymen of the 16th Regimental Combat Team. Shortly thereafter they rebuffed a more serious attack made by ninety German Mark III and IV medium tanks, two armored artillery battalions, an armored reconnaissance battalion, and an engineer battalion from the Hermann Goering Division. Naval gunfire played a crucial role in stopping this German thrust. The worst event of the day occurred when seventeen German Tiger I heavy tanks, an armored artillery battalion, and two battalions of motorized infantry from the Hermann Goering Division overran the 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry (45th Division), after a stiff fight, capturing its commander and many of its men."

link

IDF, after numerous after action surveys suggested the 105mm was far less effective against armour than the larger guns.

The Russians claimed their rocket stikes could be devastating and suggested they were used on large concentrations of armour, though accuracy could be an issue. All Soviet artillery irrespective of actual role, calibre, was expected to become an anti-tank gun, though surely stopping the tanks being resupplied POL and ammo is the most effective anti-tank action artillery can perform?

Ardennes 1944-45 – many many instances

Tanks will of course simply drive right through a light barrage, that is what they were designed to do in the first place.

No it wasn't. Tanks were designed to carry a heavy weapon through the barbed wire of a WWI battlefield and have some degree of protection against small arms and machine gun fire. They were not shell proof, nor were they designed to be.

The best "Armored Carriers" were the Sherman kangaroos, but the same comments apply to them. None of the half tracks in WWII (less than 1/2 inch armor around the troop compartment) were even proof against MG fire. TMP link

This has been flogged to death many times on TMP already: indirect 105mm fire is dangerous to tanks, 155mm is positively lethal. That's why the enemy uses 155mm shells as IED's against armor today.

Results of a US Army test conducted in 1988:

"Researchers confirmed that the US 155-mm HE round was a reasonable surrogate for the Soviet 152-mm HE round.

An M109 155-mm howitzer battery using Soviet fire direction and gun procedures fired the test. The targets were manikins placed in fighting positions, US trucks, Ml 113 and M557 armored vehicles, and M-48 tanks.

Several different computer models were used to predict results. The test was fired three times using 56 HE rounds with point-detonating (PD) and variable-time (VT) fuzes.

The resulting effects on the trucks and personnel were close to model predictions. However, the effects on the armored vehicles and tanks were significantly higher than model predictions.

The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles, destroying critical components and injuring the manikin crews.

In addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels, and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire.

Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits-all the damage was caused by near hits.

This test confirmed that US Army models did not accurately portray artillery effectiveness. Direct hits were not required to damage tanks and other armored targets."

67% damage. Even if 105mm fire is less than half as effective, that still leaves a good 30% mission kill rate.

Who says dumb artillery rounds cant kill armor?

"Early in the afternoon of 23 May 1944, the 1st Canadian Division attacked Germans in defensive positions during the battle of Hitler's Line in Italy. Soon after the battle started, it was apparent the attack had failed. The Canadians had suffered high numbers of casualties; the Germans then counterattacked with tanks. The Canadian Army Group Royal Artillery (equivalent to a US Field Artillery brigade) proceeded to defeat the counterattack.
This was one of many battles in World War II where artillery defeated annor. Has anything changed since these battles to make artillery less effective against armored targets? Not really. "
link

"They were not shell proof, nor were they designed to be."

Certainly not against direct hits which went through them like butter, but reasonably proof against shell splinters. They were quite vulnerable to concentrated bombardment though, especially as they were so slow.

The case studies are interesting. 50% mission kills from conventional artillery is pretty good, although three iterations of 36 rounds per gun is a fairly heavy FFE by anyones standards. Still quite dangerous though.

I was watching the old Cold War British Army training films including the one on artillery effectiveness. It did include non lethal damage to AFVs, the Chieftans were getting fairly knocked around, but the APCs were just riddled by splinters from near misses. Again, it was quite a heavy and prolonged barrage.

The first tanks of WWI had a maximum armor thickness of 12mm – about the same as the mighty M3 half track (which only wargamers think is shell proof). It's designers were working under the accepted theory that their own artillery would silence the enemy batteries long before the landships crawled over the start line.

"Several different computer models were used to predict results. The test was fired three times using 56 HE rounds with point-detonating (PD) and variable-time (VT) fuzes."

Assuming a four gun battery was used in the experiment, 56 rounds comes out at 14 rounds per gun. But in combat, such a target would attract a lot more than four tubes, so the number of rounds is probably about right. If they were simulating a Soviet artillery strike, a LOT more than four guns would be used!

Those old training movies are great; I remember watching the first time around LOL

"Assuming a four gun battery was used in the experiment, 56 rounds comes out at 14 rounds per gun"

Sorry, I was looking at Kaoschallenged's link. Food for thought anyway.

I'm working on some Cold War grand tactical rules at the moment as I want to look at how British 'Task Force' organised divisions (1977-82) would fare, and I've been pondering how best to model the effects of artillery fire vs mechanised formations.

It was partly prompted by recently reading 'Chieftans', and they role artillery seems to play in mnay of the (fictional) battles.

The battle of the gembloux gap , french artillery was the predominant casue for stopping and blunting the armoured thrust.
At Amiens even the Heavies "237e RALD" were firing over open sites to stop the German panzer thrust

I was with a special observation unit in the mid 70's, spotting for the two M107 regiments. Armored formations were a priority target (for as long as the guns would have lasted under Soviet air superiority anyway)