The Tactical Wargamer

...was to assist the infantry in every way in establishing a superiority of fire over the enemy. This meant it was used principally for immediate infantry support and provided close barrages that enabled the direct advance of the infantry. It was also utilized to harass trench systems and small defence systems, and to cut barbed wire. Field artillery concentrated on swift movement and speed in coming into action. Howitzers, by reason of their steep angle of descent of powerful projectiles, were specially adapted for attack on shielded guns, or enemy behind cover or in entrenchments. Howitzers were particularly adapted to supporting infantry in later stages of an attack, where their higher angled trajectory allowed continuous firing until the infantry had almost reached its objective.(1)

Though gunners had experienced the need for indirect fire in the Boer War, they never organized the necessary communications networks to make this effective. By 1912 British signal units were capable of setting up networks incorporating telegraph, telephone, and dispatch riders. Telephones were provided to the artillery, but since they were not connected to switchboards, no more than two telephones could be linked on a single line. Also, the instruments tended to break down. In the 1913 manoeuvres (in England) the gunners acquired their targets by direct observation (not from the map), did no night shooting, carried out no calibration or adjustment for atmospheric conditions, and had almost nothing to do with the infantry, whom they were supposed to support.(2)

Lieutenant-Colonel A.G.L. McNaughton, who kept in close touch with changing developments in the Royal Artillery, added the task of clearing no man's land of obstacles: 'You had to get some way over - to be able to smash your way through the barbed wire. And the only possible way to do it in the time available was by gunfire.' Unlike the infantry...the artillery had some opportunity to train under realistic conditions, using the enemy's trenches as targets for practice shoots, but they could do this only if ammunition was available, and often it was not. (3)

There were other “firsts”...These, with modifications, characterized almost all subsequent attacks in the War. Air photographs revealed the disposition of the enemy and particular targets. The issue of an artillery timetable gave each battery a definite purpose and target for each phase of a bombardment. An elementary system of shooting by the map replaced the crude visual air signals of air observers with wireless corrections. Objective maps with their “Red Line,” “Green Line,” and other coloured lines came into being. With attention paid to barometric pressure, temperature, wind direction, strengths, accuracy improved.(5)

It was also at Neuve Chapelle that British and Canadian gunners used the clock method of calling fall of shot for the first time, allowing gunners to zero in on their targets thousands of yards away with little loss of time. Added to (British General Sir Douglas) Haig's insistence that each round be accurately observed, the technique was one of the first steps towards 'scientific gunnery.' the bombardment also lifted from objective to objective, the first time British artillery had attempted to protect the troops throughout the advance. (A) member of the 1st Battalion...on the left flank of the British assault...reported on how the barrage helped the infantry get forward:'For about a half hour this merciless bombardment went on, the range was lifted and under protection of a creeping barrage, British infantry climbed out of trenches into No Man's Land. This was the first time this form of barrage had been used, and, in spite of the big guns, advancing Tommies went too fast and ran into their own artillery fire.'(6)

Artillery had proved itself in breaking up German attacks, and...would swear by the eighteen-pounder until after the war. The gunners' reliance on initiative, which had been bred into them since the turn of the century and before, stood them in good stead in defensive battles, but it was not sufficient that infantry advances could be pressed home without heavy casualties. The(y) had to find some way to make their infantry weapons more effective, liaison between infantry and artillery more efficient, and the artillery's guns more accurate.(7)

The oldest and simplest form of artillery survey is registration by shooting, in which the gun itself is used as a rangefinder. Its disadvantages are twofold. Firstly, its results are immediately applicable only to the gun - or at most the battery - that did the ranging. Secondly it eliminates, or reduces, the possibility of surprise. Hence the development of instrumental methods, beginning with the battery or troop director and rangefinder, and ending with the theodolite of the surveyor.

Owing to the conditions under which artillery survey was initiated, the relationship between these various instrumental methods was not at first fully appreciated. During the stalemate on the Western Front from 1915-18, large-scale maps were plentiful and topographical detail was usually ample for the purpose of resecting a position.(10)

...the eighteen-pounders (would fire) a shrapnel barrage for three minutes as close to friendly lines as was considered safe, then creep towards the enemy front trenches and remain there for about ten minutes. Heavy artillery, at the division commander's discretion, could either be superimposed on the eighteen-pounder barrage or used in a counter-battery role. After some initial problems, in which British units expended masses of ammunition on false alarms, the British decided to use the SOS only in case of imminent attack.(12)

The leading battalions (of the 36th (Ulster) Division) had been ordered out from the wood just before 7.30 A.M. and laid down near the German trenches . . . At zero hour the British barrage lifted. Bugles blew the "Advance". Up sprang the Ulstermen and, without forming up in the waves adopted by other divisions, they rushed the German front line . . . By a combination of sensible tactics and Ulster dash, the prize that eluded so many, the capture of a long section of the German front line, had been accomplished.(17)

At Gommecourt . . . Attacking from the south, the 56th (London) Division had performed brilliantly. Making use of the new trench they had dug in No Man's Land and a smoke-screen, four battalions had captured the whole of the German front-line system.(18)

Shortly before the assault, the gunners fired an intensive barrage on the enemy's front trenches, infantry companies left their positions, and the barrage would lift and drop on the next trench, continuing in this manner to the objective. For the most part, this creeping barrage did little to help the infantry on 1 July, except on the right; for, lifting from objective to objective, it did not protect troops advancing across no man's land or between German trench lines. Major-General Ivor Maxse, the innovative commander of the 18th Division, ordered his men to lie out in no man's land close to their first objective so they could jump enemy defences the moment the standing bombardment ended. They then made their way to subsequent objectives by following the barrage as closely as possible. (The 7th Division used similar techniques.) The creeping barrage was probably the logical successor to the linear barrage, though its origin is subject to debate, since the French claimed to have used it first. In any case, it emphasized the return to covering as opposed to destructive fire, the artillery concentrating on protecting the infantry instead of killing the enemy. Though the 18th Division lost 30 per cent of its troops, it reached all its objectives on 1 July. By the time of the second offensive on 14 July the technique had become accepted as part of the solution to the problem posed by German defensive skill.(19)

The idea that you could actually pinpoint the position of an enemy gun and then knock it out was considered radical nonsense by the old-line British gunners. “Is there some kind of Free Masonry between the artillery of both sides?” (Canadian general) Arthur Currie asked his artillery adviser in 1915. “They fire at the opposing infantry but never at each other.” A young Canadian, Harold Hemming, a McGill graduate serving in the British 3rd Army, had been experimenting with flash spotting, a method of locating a gun position by triangulating its muzzle flashes; but his general was not impressed. As he put it to Hemming, “You take all the fun out of war."(22)

Platoon tactics had evolved in trench raids and cooperation between infantry and artillery had made some progress, but these developments, even taken together, were not sufficient to ensure success at low cost in a major battle. German artillery was still, essentially, unassailable and thus able to shell Canadian troops before and during battle, often inflicting casualties before the soldiers could leave their trenches. Wire proved a serious obstacle difficult to remove; the British and Canadians tried to cut it with artillery, but shell fuses were not sensitive enough to detonate within the wire or just as they hit the ground. Thus shells exploded deep in the earth, where they did no more than move the wire obstacles around somewhat. Enemy machine-gunners, if they were quick enough, could take their positions after the barrage had lifted but before the assaulting infantry could reach them. Between them, (German) artillery, wire and machine-guns ensured that failure would be common and even limited successes would be costly.(23)

It took two years of war for the British to develop an artillery command system higher than a division, so that all the guns in range could be brought to bear on a single target. A jealous rivalry between the “bow-and-arrow gunners” of the Royal Field Artillery and their staidly scientific counterparts in the Royal Garrison Artillery did not help.(24)

Canadians who visited the French army came back dismayed that the wisdom of senior officers bore no relation to the sloppy, inaccurate gunnery in the field. Still, if the need was stated, the solution could be found. Good British officers, frustrated by their own service, found Canadians to be eager pupils. The best of them was a peacetime professor of electrical engineering at McGill, Lieutenant Colonel Andy McNaughton. Disillusioned with the French, he found a mentor in...a British mountain gunner with good ideas about how to locate German guns. Observers or microphones linked by telephone or wireless made it possible to locate enemy guns by their flash or the thump they made when they were fired. Once located, they could, in due course, be pounded into silence. Science and engineering skill helped McNaughton create a Canadian Corps counter-battery organization.

By 1917, Canadian Corps artillery staff also insisted that calibration, meteorological reports, and surveying were no longer “siege gunner fandoodle” but possible, practical, and necessary. The Somme had taught that inflexible fire plans, set up because communications so often failed, usually left troops unprotected. Rolling barrages often rolled far ahead of troops caught in heavy shelling, unbroken wire, or even a stubborn machine-gun crew. Canadian gunners began to experiment in coordinated fire.(27)

...given carte blanche to focus his scientifically trained mind on the twin problems of pinpoint intelligence and pinpoint accuracy. The post was a new one. McNaughton would have to develop the techniques of counter-battery work from scratch. But before the war was over he would be acknowledged by both the Allies and the Germans as the best artillery officer in the British Empire.(30)

But the novel idea of carrying a delicate device similar to an electro-cardiograph into the lines, setting it up, and depending on a photograph of the vibrations to identify the enemy gun emplacements was, in McNaughton's own words, considered “treason, literally treason.” The scientists were virtually ignored by the British.

Both sound ranging and flash spotting are complicated procedures. The latter required a series of posts all along the front, each equipped with telephones and surveying gear and a reporting system back to a panel of lights at headquarters. So accurate did this system of lights and buzzers become that the Canadian artillery was able to locate a German gun position to within as little as five yards.

The sound-ranging technique was even more complicated. When an enemy gun opened up miles away an entire sequence of events took place. A man in a listening post, often out in No Man's Land, pressed a key activating a recorder at McNaughton's headquarters. A series of microphones, placed all along the front a mile and a half back of the forward line, picked up the sound in turn as it traveled. From the time intervals between the microphones the gun's exact location could be spotted. Similarly, the sound waves sent out by a shell bursting on the Canadian side, and picked up by a succession of microphones, could locate the target.(31)

The men on the ridge stared helplessly at the enemy soldiers, fleeing out of their reach to the rear where no barrage could reach them. “Jesus Christ Almighty!” cried a Forward Observation Officer with the 27th (Battalion). “For two ****ing years, I've been waiting for a chance like this and now I can't use it."(35)

With new technology and techniques, gunners began to shell neutral and enemy territory, a large area that can be separated into four main sectors. The first was just forward of (their) - the barbed wire obstacles similar to those that had caused so much trouble on the Somme; the second consisted of the German defences proper - the trenches, strong-points, and machine-gun nests (the infantry) were to attack; the third was actually the enemy's defences and consisted of his artillery position; and in the last area the gunners shelled roads, ammunition dumps, and assembly areas behind the German lines to hinder the movement of reserves, food, and ammunition to the front. This final task was also supposed to lower German morale by interfering with reliefs and preventing deliveries of hot food. Each presented its own particular problems and so was allocated its own artillery batteries chosen in accordance with their calibers and thus with what they could best achieve. Often, a few days of experimentation preceded particular tasks to determine which type of trench mortar, gun, or howitzer would obtain the best results.(37)

“The great lesson to be learned from (the Vimy) operations is this,” boasted the 1st Division. “If the lessons of the war have been thoroughly mastered; if the artillery preparations and support is good; if our Intelligence is properly appreciated; there is no position that cannot be wrested from the enemy by well-disciplined, well-trained and well-led troops attacking on a sound plan.” The “ifs” were large and the arrogance was premature but the conclusions were fundamentally correct...A solid, unequivocal victory...told Canadians - and their allies - that the secret of successful attacks had been unlocked, if not fully extracted. The futility of the Somme had been overcome.(42)

Their butcher's bill was enormous, far higher than that of the British, and it was this savaging, coupled with the knowledge that the American army was coming on stream, that persuaded Ludendorff to chance all on the 'Kaiser's offensive' of 1918 - a decision that cost Germany the war.(44)

In 1918, gunners were still learning. For three years, attacks had literally bogged down in ground churned to a morass by long bombardments. Scientific gunners insisted that shells could hit targets if officers took technique seriously. By 1918, guns could be calibrated by shooting through a canvas screen. Six times a day “Meteor” reports gave wind direction and velocity and temperatures at set altitudes, data needed for ballistic science. Maps were good enough to plot a target, without even a preliminary registration.(45)

The artillerymen worked very hard, as manning the guns became a twenty-four hour task. Unlike the infantry, whose soldiers were regularly rotated out of the line, a division's guns remained in position as long as any part of that division was in the line, and manpower had to be increased to ensure that there were always crews ready and able to man the guns. Even when a whole division was taken out of the line, the guns were often left in action before being sent off to rejoin their parent division days or weeks later.(46)

...Brigadier H.J. Parham...began to look for a better and quicker method of engaging targets. Parham decided that, in mobile warfare, pinpoint accuracy would be hard to attain and, in any case, it was not really necessary – the same result could be obtained by simply drenching the area of the target with fire. It was his feeling that “the shock of a large number of rounds arriving simultaneously was far greater than that of a prolonged bombardment” and his solution was “to fire every gun that could bear as soon as it could be laid and loaded.”

The key to the Parham system was an efficient communications system based on radio. The gun positions would be fed target information from static OP (Observation Point) officers or mobile FOOs (Forward Observation Officers), located with the forward troops, or AOP (Air Observation Post) aircraft. Connected by radio with their regiments and batteries, these relatively junior officers would identify the target, give its approximate location (often based on a six-digit map reference) and could order a level of fire (that is, the number of guns to be used and rounds to be fired). This information was sent to the GPOs (Gun Position Officers) of each battery who would direct the guns under his command to fire on that target. A troop of four guns was generally the smallest fire unit used in the Parham system and a battery of two troops, or eight guns, was the most common. Parham developed a method which, if the situation warranted, could very quickly bring down heavy fire on the enemy. An observation officer, if authorized, could call for a “Mike,” “Uncle,” “Victor,” or “Yoke” target. A “Mike Target” – the one most commonly used – would be engaged by the 24 guns in a field regiment; an “Uncle Target” by the 72 guns in the three field regiments of an infantry division; a “Victor Target” by all the guns in a corps, as many as 250 weapons; while a “Yoke Target” would receive the fire of every gun within range which, during the last years of the war, meant that it might be fired at by upwards of as many as 500 weapons.

The Parham system began to be introduced in the Royal Artillery in late 1942 and in the Royal Canadian Artillery in 1943. (51)

(After the First World War) and (in) the absence of any indication of where the next war might be, the large-scale map could no longer be relied on (for survey). In 1925, attention was drawn to the importance of “silent registration” - with the aid of a rangefinder, a director and an artillery board - as a means of locating possible target areas where no large-scale map was available. At the same time a campaign was started for the popularization of survey methods and the extermination of the belief that survey itself was a “black art.” In 1929 the regimental surveyor became a recognized part of the unit establishment, and a simple drill was worked out for the application of artillery survey to really mobile operations. The first step in this process was to be a combination of registration by shooting, registration by instruments, and such rough survey as was possible at the O.Ps. of batteries already in action. Starting from this foundation, a complete survey system would gradually be built up with the help of regimental survey parties, the R.A. survey company, and the field survey companies, R.E. To speed up the development of the specialist superstructure, arrangements were made in 1937 for small observation parties from the R.A. survey company to accompany the leading artillery regiments in an advance.(52)

“Grid” refers to the numbered grid lines overprinted on the large-scale military maps by which the position of each troop pivot gun (the right-hand gun of four) can be spelled out in eight-figure coordinates and plotted on the gridded paper of its own troops artillery board, allowing ranges between guns and targets, and switches from a zero line, to be measured and read off by command-post staffs for application to the guns. Getting the guns on “regimental grid” - establishing the position on the face of the planet of each “pivot gun” by using triangulation on distant identifiable aiming points such as church steeples - is carried out by the Regimental Survey Party. At the same time they ensure the guns are parallel on the zero line (a grid bearing, pointing along the axis of advance) by passing a reverse bearing from their director (survey instrument) to each troop director. Divisional Grid arrives later with more accurate survey data to be applied to the guns (in the case of the bearing on which they are laid) and to artillery boards where pivot-gun plots have to be adjusted. Finally the ultimate in survey data accuracy, starting from bronze “benchmarks” imbedded in rock, is brought forward across hill and dale by “chaining” and directors laid and relaid on survey flags. This establishes “theatre grid,” ensuring all guns in all regiments...are accurately oriented with each other, so that any unit can join in a fireplan, or defensive fire, on any front within their range. (53)