"WWI Counter-battery fire" Topic

I've got "Steel Wind", about Bruchmuller's artillery techniques. Part of his preparation was having a portion of artillery reserved for counter-battery fire. This being before radar, I presume the spotting was done by balloon and airplane observers. The French, British and later Americans would all have similar resources.

I wonder if the less technically proficient powers like Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ottoman Empire, etc. had such resources? Were they able to have counter-battery fire worthy of the name?

And and all ruminations on Great War counter-battery fire are welcomed.

There was also a lot of work done using acoustics and sound ranging. Observers could determine the direction and distance from which fire was coming, and location of the battery could be determined by comparing different observations and triangulating.

An American acoustic locator

x42

I suspect the acoustic locator was for picking up aircraft. Sound ranging used multiple detectors spread in an arc. The 'sound' detection system was actually adapted to pick up the percussion wave rather than sound. This meant the receivers had to be specially protected within an enclosed structure.

Robert

Don't forget a lot of Aircraft 2-seater missions were dedicated to spotting artillery positions for artillery to bombard.

and shooting down observation balloons was, at least at certain periods, a common fighter plane missions

All countries did counter battery fire, it didn't need to be observed, and sound/flash techniques for battery location were very sophisticated.

Defensive artillery was quite capable of stopping an attack on its own, and unless it was suppressed, attacks had little chance of success.

Thank you Martin. If you were thinking of designing simple grand tactical (say a corps per player) rules, what chance would you give of dedicated counter-battery fire of silencing enemy batteries?

For my own simple grand tactical rules involving a Corps per side I borrowed the counter battery mechanisms in Great War Spearhead.

They have variations by nationality, year of the war, availability of gas shells etc. (Gas is really, really good for CB – inconveniences the gunners and kills the supply horses).

They seem to work well enough, an added thing I put in was air superiority (or not) on particular divisional sectors, which influences the overall effectiveness of divisional and corps artillery.

I won't reproduce the firing table here, but in general there is a good probability of some reduction in the effectiveness of target (-1 off their firing or whatever), a smaller chance of outright suppression (firing stopped) and a very small chance of complete destruction (battery destroyed). The latter is impossible for some periods/countries.

Also, you need to be a weight of gun heavier to fire CB e.g. heavies can CB field artillery, super heavies can CB heavies etc. Or just work out the battery locations and ranges (which will produce a similar effect).

The four horn setup shows that that is an aircraft tracking system, probably for directing anti-aircraft artillery fire. The two operators each had a tube leading from one horn to one ear to give the "binaural" effect that allows us to figure out what direction a sound is coming from. One operator listens to the top and bottom horns and has the elevation adjusted so that the volume is the same in both ears. The other operator does the same for left and right. You end up with the director pointed right at the aircraft … more or less. As the detector follows the aircraft, you plot a track to give you speed, altitude, and course.

Incidentally, this is the same principle used in monopulse radar.

for a good intro into CB fires see here link