A Wargame Lacuna: Artillery FO Procedures in WWII

From Jonathan M. House, Combined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century, pp. 99-100:

During World War I, massed fires were usually the result of carefully planned artillery concentration, in which known targets were predesignated well ahead of time, their positions plotted on maps or overlays. If the infantry needed artillery fire on an unexpected target of opportunity, however, it was difficult to bring more than one battery to bear on it. Each artillery battery had its own forward observer, who had to be able both to see the target and to communicate with his battery. . . . Even if the forward observer could adjust his own battery’s fire to strike the target, he had no accurate way of guiding other batteries, unless the target’s map location was known precisely. Thus concentrating or massing the fires of different batteries usually meant that each battery had to have its own forward observer in a position to see the target.

Between 1929 and 1941, a series of instructors at the [United States] Field Artillery School . . . . developed forward observer procedures and a firing chart that together would allow an artillery headquarters to record adjustments to the impact of artillery shells as viewed from the observer’s location instead of from the battery’s location. Graphical firing tables compensated for differences in the locations of different batteries. Ultimately, the precise location of one artillery piece in each battalion was surveyed in relation to a common reference point for all artillery units in that division area. The resulting fire-direction centers (FDCs) could provide infantry units with an entire battalion, or even multiple battalions, of guns firing on a target that only one observer could see. The different batteries could fire together even when they were dispersed over a wide area, reducing the target they presented to enemy counterbattery fire.

By contrast, throughout World War II German artillerymen had to use well-known terrain features to adjust on a target of opportunity; massed fires of multiple batteries remained extremely difficult and time-consuming.

A few World War II tactical games pay attention to forward observation, but I cannot recall any that reflects this important American advantage in ability to concentrate and shift artillery fire. Reasonably accurate outcomes are probably obtained by sub silentio reduction of the effects of German guns, but it would be interesting to see a direct representation of the difficulties of getting separated batteries to fire at a single point.

Comments

[David Grahl]

Check out Battlefront WWII by Fire and Fury (NOT Flames of War by Battlefront). They have US Time on Target artillery, pre-registered fire,mixed shell and smoke, barrage, rolling barrage, concentration,interdiction, etc., differentiated by nationality.