"Previous Artillery Defeat of Brigade River Crossing?" Topic

Has anyone ever defeated a brigade-level river crossing solely with artillery fire before this? I'm thinking it might have happened in WWI.

(The destroyed crossing force was a battalion, but apparently it was a brigade-scale operation with follow-on forces.)

(Note to mods--extensive cross-posting is to cover all 20th and 21st century battles to try to find a case where this happened previously.)

Note that the Ukrainians also called in aircraft, by some reports.

Since the development of QF artillery I'd be amazed if it hadn't happened already somewhere in the last 120 years, but I'd struggle to list specific examples, as we didn't watch the vast majority of those battles on TV.

It is unlikely that before that it was possible to conduct direct reconnaissance from space and from UAVs.

Don't know of any – largely I suspect because normally there would be ground forces opposing the crossing and calling in the artillery; plus normally the attacking force had a bit more of a bridgehead!

Modern weapons properly used in capable well trained motivated and lead troops. Can do a lot more damage than units of similar size in past conflicts. E.g. probably a US Mech Co. has as about as much firepower or more than a WWII Armored Inf Bn.

And as I mentioned before, did the FA fire direct or indirect and called in by FOs, etc. as usual ? Did I miss that somewhere ?

The initial release from the Ukrainian's seemed to suggest troops were involved – I assume containing the bridgehead. I think its fair to say at least on the basis of the video evidence that the Ukrainian's have got pretty good at directing fire using drones, which as previously noted are a pretty recent thing.

I can't recall any examples from the 20thC but knowledge is far from encyclopedic. It does ring bell for an obscure Napoleonic action, but I'm not sure that would really count anyway since that would be direct fire.

I would think with FA firing Indirect is generally SOP. Someone had to spot for them. E.g. Troops and drones it seems … Drones are the "new" member of the Combine Arms Tm. And can be pretty effective as we see. In a number of ways.