"Medium/Heavy Artillery in 1914" Topic

Hey all,

Just wanted to start a little discussion regarding medium/heavy artillery in the opening battles of 1914. As I've been reading quite a bit on these early battles, I'm getting the sense that due to how difficult it was to move medium and heavy batteries, they didn't come into action as much as they did once positional warfare started. Is that accurate? If it's not, could someone point me to a good text or primary document on the use of these types of batteries?

Thanks so much!

J

May I recommend WWI Artillery Tactics from Osprey? Here is a link where I found the title on sale. Bought mine at a hobby shop and paid a lot more….but got to read it the same day!

auction

It discusses the difficulties you describe, but was used early on anyway. Hope this helps.

v/r
Tom

Martin Farndale. History of British Arty in WW1
Becke The Royal Regiment of Artillery at Le Cateau
Balck development of Tactics in The World War
Lloyd Loos 1915
Various Tactical Osprey books on WW1

That's a few

I've been doing a similar thing over the last couple of years to try and 'fine tune' some rules for the early battles. So far it has surprised me how little mention there is in many sources about WHICH artillery is doing the firing. Most can be worked out as field guns but it isn't easy to find from info that I have what weapons a particular unit had.

You don't seem to hear much mention of the British 60pr guns in action. Considering their range I'd have thought they would have been quite useful.

The information about medium batteries is around but it takes effort to get to it. There were very few 'heavy' batteries by comparison to later in the war. Sticking to the Western Front in the first instance, the main alternatives to field guns were the 60 pounders (British), 15cm 'heavy howitzers (German), and the 12cm (with a smattering of 9- and 15.5cm) guns (French). There are many battery- and regiment-level war diaries across all three nations, though the latter two are written in German and French respectively.

In all three cases, the medium artillery was able to move with the main body in an advance. Mobility wasn't a big issue but the big guns were rarely in the advance guard elements. They were too exposed for one thing. In movement and engagement battles, therefore, the lighter more mobile field guns would be brought into action first. If recon had provided very strong evidence of the enemy's dispositions then there were examples of the medium guns being pushed forward. Otherwise the bigger guns tended to arrive later in a battle.

It is quite easy to understand the impact of the German medium howitzers because of the characteristic 'Jack Johnson' explosions – large HE impacts with black smoke and deep craters. British and French anecdotal accounts can be found that give a clear impression of the effect. The biggest impact was in those situations where medium howitzers were able to take enemy trenches (these did exist before the start of positional warfare, e.g. Le Cateau) or were able to take enemy batteries under fire. The latter situation was particularly devastating if successful. The Germans used something akin to window (reflective strips dropped from aircraft), which was dropped by aerial observers over enemy battery positions, to enable targeting of batteries in defilade.

Robert

Robert,

Is it fair of me to assume that in a lot of the cases where sources say that field batteries had barely been able to deploy before being targetted by HE, it was in fact the bigger medium guns doing the job? Especially since they had the range to target them (as long as an FO found the targets) from so far away?

J

Howitzers were the main users of HE in 1914 and I'd have thought that shrapnel was more effective against a battery.

Most howitzers were part of the divisional artillery so technically 'field' rather than 'medium'. In German and British divisions approx. 25% of the artillery were howitzers. (4.5" and 105mm), the French had none.

What you are probably getting is the mixed HE/shrapnel effect of the German combined ammo which was a bit of both effects.

I would be cautious with that interpretation. The German field guns could fire HE. It depends on the scale of the explosions and how close the target battery/s were to defilade cover. 15cm howitzer HE was significantly more powerful. Plunging fire plus big impacts definitely point to the medium howitzers. Explosions with shrapnel bullets, bringing down horses but not damaging the guns quickly point more to field guns.

Robert

Robert has given a very good summation of the way I understand things as well. I would add that for an east front battle it was very similar. The Russian 120s were very effective when in use, but they tended to miss many of the engagements (I am referring to battles against the Austrians). The Austrians suffered from two effects of their medium 15cms and that was they were older models with less range that one would hope for and so often could not engage in the same sort of counter battery work that the Russians used against the Austrians. As well they were not as mobile as the field artillery.

Again as with the west neither had their medium guns in the vanguard as mentioned. They were available for positional battles but in fluid situations they arrived late if at all.

Shawn

The Germans pushed ahead with their medium howitzers programme pre-war because the evidence showed that HE was more effective in counter-battery fire. Following the Sino-Japanese War, it was recognised that batteries would operate in indirect fire roles. This reinforced the need for plunging fire and HE effects, as shrapnel bursts did not plunge downwards but at an angle that could not overcome the protective effects of defilade cover. Plus the weight of HE in a howitzer projectile was significantly greater, given the use of separate propellant charges. A 15 cm HE shell could burst large shards of metal across a much wider area, in addition to the direct concussive / blast effects.

Robert