"Destroying Barb wire via artillery" Topic

How capable was WW1 artillery in doing so? And was it possible to do it without creating craters so deep tanks had a hard time crossing that terrain?
Also: are there sources you recommend that deal with the capabilities of WW1 artillery?

link

Did you really recommend an AI answer? Cause that is what I got in the first place, second was youtube.

Yes

LOL. Thanks anyway, cheers!

Results vary.
Each country may have had artillery shells designed for specific carnage like shrapnel or fragmentation.

Simplest thing to put it is that if you use enough that it destroys the wire defenses, it will probably create such cratering that it makes the terrain just as difficult to cross as it would have been with just the wire.

Specific ways to deal with it would be more effective.
Bangalore torpedoes.
Grapnel hooks on rope.
A tank.
Troops with cutters protected by night, ground fog or smoke.

The main reason I specifically ask about artillery is that I want to introduce some kind of pre-game mechanic where you chose how many available dices you put into air reconnaissance and the following artillery bombardements. Those bombardements can be targeted against barb wire/trench lines or artillery with different ammunition (gas/explosives).
Does anybody know if "Steel Wind" from David Zabecki would shed a light on my questions?

Using artillery to cut wire was never fully reliable, from my reading. Sometimes it worked well, but usually it partially- even fully- failed. It's one reason why cutting parties and breaching parties were being used throughout the war. The Entente had Britain's Bangalore torpedo to help, and the Central Powers copied/developed their own (used at Verdun).

The other impression I get was that the gunnies' assessment of how well the wire would be cut was very optimistic- more optimistic than WWII bomb damage assessments.

It depends upon how the wire works in your rules, dogtail, and how many dice rolls you can bear. If wire slows the troops down then roll to see if each base has found a gap, and set the odds the scenario (eg- find a gap on 3 to 6 in 1918, on 5 or 6 in early 1917, 6 for any earlier.

An easier way would be to roll a die for each fire mission and then adjust the effect of the obstacle. For example, if untouched wire takes a full move to cross then die rolls could change that to 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 move delays. Wire is an absolute bustard to get through and even breaches slow you down because of bent pickets, bits of wire and pickets hiding in the dirt, and the compulsory curl that wraps around your leg and won't let go. That was only in training in the '70's and '80's, not in action in WWI, where wire wasn't in short supply.

There were two mechanisms for cutting wire with artillery. The first was air-burst shrapnel. Given the trajectory of the bullets that were ejected by the airburst, the timing device had to be set to explode before the projectile reached the wire. It was a very effective method provided there was good direct observation of the effects and the wire was on flat ground. If wire was on a steep forward slope then the bullets landed perpendicular to the top of the wire, which was less effective. Reverse slopes were a major problem. Aerial observation was not sufficient to enable the constant feedback on the wire-cutting process.

Contact fuses enabled the second approach. High explosive rounds could be used, which exploded on contact with the wire. This avoided creating a crater. The shrapnel spread laterally and cut wire accordingly. Before the widespread introduction of this fuse-type for artillery shells in 1916, the British used 2" toffee apple mortar bombs to achieve the same effect. The huge problem with this approach was the relative short range of the 2" mortars. Nonetheless, the combination of 2" mortars and airburst 18-pounder shrapnel could cut wire under direct observation very effectively in about 3 days. As a side note, in early 1915 the barbed wire was not as wide or as dense as mid-1916. During the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, British artillery cleared the wire along the whole attack front except on the left flank in 30 minutes.

Tanks changed the whole dynamic. Massed tank assaults could be launched without preparatory bombardments as the tanks tore holes in the wire.

Robert

Cratering could be very helpful to infantry assaults, provided the craters were not filled with water or wire. Specialist German stormtrooper units would sometimes get the artillery to generate craters if there weren't any in the sector. This facilitated fire and movement. The problems arose for support teams, especially heavy weapons teams trying to get forwards.

Craters and wire were a problem. High explosive shells that did not explode on contact would drive into the ground. The explosion would cause a crater and lift up the wire, which then dropped back uncut into the crater.

Robert

Great War Spearhead has decent rules for pre game bombardments, including wire cutting (and the risk of associated catering).

Munk, that sounds a lot like the kind of artilleryman optimism used to sell their usefulness.

If you used enough to gap the wire, then the cratering would be severe. The typical problem then is that no one recognizes the very ground that they are on. This can be quite the serious problem too. Wrong direction or objective and sure enough, there are always survivors of artilley stonks that are more than happy for revenge.

Now add the problem that the cratering left behind moonscape that no logistics can get through to support or limited follow on troops because of difficult terrain or even getting lost in the cratering too..

Might go a long way in explaining how in 1944 Normandy, the advice was, "follow the bofors traces, that is your night time route of advance".

There's a very detailed history of the evolution of British/CW artillery during the Great War that's available online. Sorry, I can't remember the name and I don't have access to my computer.

In 1916 (I believe) the British did live fire tests using shrapnel against realistic barbed wire fields. They were absolutely shocked by the results. The number of shells specified in the fiels manuals for cutting fire with shrapnel fired from low-angle guns was too low by an order of magnitude or so. Essentially, there was no realistic way to reliably cut a path through wire.

This is why tanks were so important for breakthroughs. They could roll over the wire, helping clear it for the following infantry. If wire snagged and was dragged behind the tank, so much the better for the infantry (although someone would eventually have to free the tank).

troopwo, my comments are based on many years of detailed studies of WW1. Here is an analysis of the effectiveness of wire-cutting made 5 days after the opening of the Battle of the Somme. Re July 1 1916, a Major General John Headlam produced a report entitled 'Notes on Artillery Material in the Battle of the Somme', reproduced in 'Battlefront: Somme', introduced and selected by K Bartlett (ISBN 1 903365 25 2). The report was dated 6 July and covered his analysis of the effects of the preliminary artillery bombardment before July 1. I quote:

'7. Wire cutting

The German defences on this front were known to be very carefully wired and the specimens attached will show the formidable character of the wire itself. In most cases, it was on iron uprights though in some cases wooden stakes were used.

Wherever it had been possible to obtain direct observation it had been destroyed as an obstacle by artillery fire, and many infantry officers and men told me that they had never been in any way retarded by the wire or ever had to use the cutters on their rifles. The difference in the effect of the different natures of shell was, however, very marked. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that 18-pdr shrapnel is far the most generally effective projectile for this purpose. It sweeps the wire away completely with damaging the surface of the ground and so substituting another obstacle. This was very marked in front of the second line where 18-pdr fire had been used exclusively.

Next to the 18-pdr comes the 2" trench mortar with the Newton fuse. This is also very effective, but not so much as the 18-pdr for the wire is heaped up. In some cases 18-pdr had been employed to sweep away the wire which had been so heaped up by the 2", and this combination is extremely effective.

But the 18-pdr is not effective against wire on a forward slope (there was a very marked case of this near Fricourt where the fire had been very accurate, but little or no damage had been done to the wire), and there will also be those places where it cannot be reached by a flat trajectory gun and which are beyond the range of a trench mortar. Against such howitzers must be employed, and I was able to examine the effect of this in several places. The 6" howitzer is quite effective in removing the wire, but the craters left are a considerable obstacle to movement. The 4.5" does not appear to have a sufficiently violent explosion for the purpose, the wire being only blown away for a very small radius around the crater, so that there is considerable danger of the result being to increase the obstacle rather than the opposite. But this appears to be due to the effect of the explosion being confined to the crater. With the new instantaneous fuse (No. 106) I imagine that the effect will resemble that of the 2" trench mortar with the Newton fuse, and if so the power of the artillery to deal with wire will be materially increased.

As regards the nature of wire, it had been anticipated that iron uprights would render the task of the artillery more difficult. I am inclined to think that this is not so. Certainly in several cases the wire was cut away more cleanly and completely from the iron than from wooden stakes – possibly on account of the greater rigidity of the former. I am inclined to think that the most difficult wire to deal with is that on the iron knife rests as these are simply blown aside by the explosion without being broken up. Gaps can of course be made, but that is all.'

emckinney, you may be referring to the paper by Sanders Marble 'The infantry cannot do with a gun less'. Here is the link to the page on wire-cutting in the lead up to the Battle of the Somme. The other pages are accessible from this one:

link

Robert

Monk, no problem.
You have to be careful on a lot of what ex leaders wrote about post battle. Quite often extremely defensive about either themselves or their particular branch.

Like I said, result vary and not always a guaranteed thing. usually just as disruptive as useful.

Reminds me of the national and annual excuses.

1914- Germans and British blame it on machine guns
-French blame it on lack of elan and executes men for cowardice
-Russia blame it on (name ethnic minority in repute this month)
-Austro Hungarian blame it on no one understanding the orders as spoken in High German, Hungarian, Polish or Italian

1915-Germans and British blame it on lack of production
-French and Italians Blame it on lack of elan and executes men for cowardice
-Russia and Turks blame it on (name ethnic minority in repute this month)
-Austro Hungarian blame it on no one understanding the orders as spoken in High German, Hungarian, Polish, Italian or even Marine Sprak

1916-Germans and British blame it on overproduction of artillery
-French and Itaians Blame it on lack of elan and execute men for cowardice
-Russia and Turks blame it on (name ethnic minority in repute this month)
-Austro Hungarian blame it on no one understanding the orders as spoken in Low German, Hungarian, Polish or Croatian

1917-Germans and British blame it on the French
-French and Italians blame it on everyone but their own execution squads
Russia and Turks blame it on (name ethnic minority in repute this month)
-Austro Hungarian blame it on no one understanding the orders as spoken in High German, Hungarian, Polish or written Latin

1918-Germans blame the Americans
-Commonwealth blames the British
-French resort to talking in arabic hoping no one understands why they are apologizing to their troops so desperately
-Italians accepts a new General thinking maybe he's a Mexican rather than a butcher
-Russians blame each other
-Turks blame anyone not turkish or sporting a big enough mustache
-Austro-Hungarians finally get fed up with fourteen official languages and decide to go home en masse

Have I missed much of the bame game?

I don´t think that "blame" is something that should be talked about in historical discussion But as this is the internet and the original discussion of this thread came to a halt, I give my 5 Pfennig of opinion to it anyway
I only care about the western front to be honest, so:

Pre-War: Tirpitz is to blame for alienating Britain

1914:
Schlieffen-Plan is to blame for
-inviting England into the War
-overambition without considering logistics enough
-underestimating exhaustion

Moltke is to blame for everything cause he died

1915
-Falkenhayn is to blame for knowing that Germany was fuqued

1916
-Falkenhayn is guilty of having a good plan (Verdun) but being to timid, as he did not commit enough troops at the start of the battle
-the bad harvest is to blame for losing the War

1917
-the U-boats are to blame for bringing the USA into the War

1918
-the Allies are to blame for not going into Germany, laying the foundation for the Dolchstoßlegende, therefore poisoning the young democracy