"U.S. and German Field Artillery in World War II: A" Topic

… Comparison

"At first glance, there seems to be little difference between the artillery branches of the U.S. Army and German Wehrmacht in World War II. The American guns were a bit heavier than their German counterparts and generally had a longer range. The German 105mm was sufficiently similar to the American 105mm howitzer, and there were enough similarities overall between each army's guns to allow the U.S. Army to equip two of its field artillery battalions with captured German pieces to take advantage of the enemy ammunition stocks captured in France.

Nevertheless, evaluating an army's artillery requires a good deal more than looking at the standard guns that it deploys. To be fully effective, an artillery arm must be well supplied with suitable ammunition. There must be a sufficient supply of standard guns so that the units being supported can know what fires they can expect. It must have a good means of identifying and accurately locating a target and needs well-schooled forward observers who are in close contact not only with the batteries, but with the troops they are working with. Effective artillery requires fire direction centers that can accurately place fires and rapidly shift them from one target to another. Those fire direction centers must be able to co-ordinate with other artillery units to mass fires as needed. The guns must have effective prime movers or be mounted on tracked vehicles. There must be a sufficient supply of all of the above to meet the needs of the maneuver units or other forces the batteries are supporting. Finally, the guns must be protected from counter-battery fire or other interdiction…"
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Armand

Very interesting. Sadly the chance to describe how the forward observers of both countries actually were organised and worked has been missed. Nevertheless, a good find Armand.

Would the b news relay section from this page be what you mean Artilleryman? link
From here. link

The link to the piece gets posted routinely on this board. It is extremely vague and does not actually contribute much on German artillery practises.

For US FA I would recommend the various reports in the "Reports of the General Board, U.S. Forces, European Theater" series, which are available at;

link

/they offer far more detail and acknowledge shortcomings as well as successes in terms of equipment, employment and communications.

Gary

Machinehead, thanks. I have seen the linked information but I would still like more on deployment and processes i.e. who did what. There seems little on line.

The link to the piece gets posted routinely on this board.

I presume you are referring to these past entries:

TMP link
TMP link
TMP link
TMP link

He does seem to like to constantly repost it.

Nice find

Thanks.

Armand

The link to the piece gets posted routinely on this board.

Yes, it is certainly a high rotation record along with the Nigel Evans RA site and the D. Povey artillery piece.