WWII Divisional Artillery Doctrine

WWII Divisional Artillery Doctrine

Phil Gardocki

In my days as a game designer, I was faced, like others before me, the dilemma of how do you evaluate the strength of a unit.  I think about my early Avalon Hill games where many infantry divisions and corps were 4-4-4 (attack, defense, movement), and armored units 5-5-4 up to 8-8-6.  But where do these numbers come from?  Having known a couple Avalon Hill game designers, I realized they were just broad-ass-guesses, and just trying to produce games that gave the results they expected. 

For example, the Avalon Hill game D-Day.  A favorite of mine.  All the allied infantry divisions were 4-4-4, while all the armor was 5-5-4.  German infantry ranged from 1-2-2 to 3-4-3, while panzers ranged from 5-5-4 to 7-7-4.  How do they figure?  An American infantry division had 9 battalions of infantry, 4 battalions of artillery and about 5 other supporting battalions.  Their German counterpart had 6 battalions of infantry, 3 battalions of artillery and about 5 other supporting battalions.  So 50% more infantry, and 33% more artillery gets them 1 measly point of attack advantage.

But truth is, if an American infantry division has a meeting engagement with its German counterpart, it will shred the German.  Put the Germans in defensive positions, and the result will take longer, but the Germans are going to lose.  But Avalon Hill would rate that exchange as even odds.

Another game like this was France 40.  French Infantry Corps are 6-6’s, the Germans 7-6’s.  But in this game, the combat table results are not just a straight up result.  There was a result that forced a counterattack, in which the French then had to roll on the 1-2 chart, which risked destruction.  The end result was if the Germans attack the French, the French corps had a small chance of being destroyed, but the reverse was not true.  So if you take the Panzers out of the game, the Germans will still win.  So here a small advantage in the numbers skewed big results in a derivative combat matrix.

So what determines the power of a division?  A major factor is the artillery.  Referred as the King of the battlefield.  In WWI, artillery caused 60% of all combat casualties.  Despite all the problems with operating  artillery, the resources in creating the gun, manning, supplying, moving, communication. These were considered a necessary evil in order to throw down range shells that can kill everything with 30 meters.

During the interim war years, a considerable amount of thought was spent trying to make these killing machines even better.

The French:

The French were not in the war for very long.  And a lot of that had to do with being suckered in the first 10 days by the panzers piercing the Ardennes.  But there is a lot more to it than that.  Since the French won the last war, they were allowed to keep their equipment, and didn’t feel the need to spend as much updating it.  Which meant that their primary artillery piece was the fast firing 75mm gun.  It served them well in WWI, and as a direct fire weapon, it was hard to beat.  The French were not blind to the advances in artillery, and their division artillery park was expanded to include a battalion of 12, 105mm guns.  They didn’t fire as fast as the 75’s, but the blasting charge was 2kg, compared with .7kg of the 75’s.

There were two problems with this.  The doctrine was direct fire.  So while the 100mm gun could shoot 10 kilometers, there was no field where that kind of visibility existed, and doctrine supporting indirect fire for the main infantry divisions was still in the preliminary stages.

The French were beginning to develop indirect fire procedures, and started upgrading divisions to a heavier mix of artillery tubes to 36 105’s and 12 150’s.  But time ran out before this could be implemented army wide.

The Germans:

The Germans were not saddled with old equipment, and so had some luxury to think what would be better before implementation. They started with addressing the problems with artillery. Their first thought was to scale up the guns. The artillery park for a German Infantry division in 1940 was thirty-six 105mm howitzers, and twelve 150mm howitzers in four battalions. Each battalion had observer teams that would be assigned to the elements on the attack. Basically each infantry regiment would have an observer team at all times and be able to count on twelve barrels supporting its advance at all times. The howitzers had ranges of 12 and 13 kilometers. And with that range, the guns could support a comfortable advance before the guns themselves would have to move.

sFH 18

The pride of this artillery park was the German 150mm gun. Its blast radius was about double that of the 100mm gun, and it broke down into two parts so that it could be transported by standard horse teams. All other nationalities had to rely upon motorized transport to move their heavy guns of similar caliber.

In addition to the divisional artillery, each regiment was equipped with six leIG 75mm guns and two sIG 150mm guns. These guns had short barrels, L11, and so were considerably lighter then their divisional counterparts, 6 tonnes vs 2 tonnes in the case of the 150's, and were designed for direct line fire.

Sturmgeschutz C/D.  Image stolen from Wikipedia without permission.

A new concept, conceived by General von Manstein, was the Sturmgeschutz, or Storm Gun, a turretless tank designed for direct support of the infantry. These vehicles were operated by the Artillery department and totally separate from the Panzer department. They sported a short, L24 barrel designed for direct fire. Initially they deployed in batteries of 6 vehicles. This later grew to battalions of 21, then 30. But in practice in the early war, single batteries would be temporarily assigned to divisions for specific assaults.

In the end, the divisional “Throw-Weight” of artillery of the Germans was double that of the French, and their communications was more sophisticated which allowed for directed artillery on the spur of the moment.

The famous Panzer divisions did not have the huge advantage in artillery that the infantry divisions had. The evolution of this unit was still undergoing major changes as both experience, and equipment, was gained. In Poland, they started with just two artillery battalions, each with twelve 105mm towed howitzers. This supporting 3 combat regiments, 2 Panzer and 1 Infantry. For the Russian war, the design was changed to 1 Panzer and 2 Infantry regiments per division. This has been maligned with the thought that it diluted the strength of the Panzers from 300 per division to 180. But at the same time, an artillery battalion was added, changing the Panzer to tube ratio from 12:1 to 5:1, greatly increasing the support for each Panzer in combat.

In the later periods of the war, German infantry divisions were reduced in size from 9 infantry and 4 artillery battalions to 6 and 3, reducing the strength, but maintaining the ratio.

The British:

The British also was saddled with a large WWI inventory, but never felt the need to maintain the large standing army, and it was cheaper to upgrade the smaller army.  So old inventory was sold off and scrapped, and the BEF was a fairly modern army.  

Their answer to artillery fire direction did not look at advancement in radio communications, or rely on planned placement of the guns, or trained observers.  They changed the Process, and created one that was flexible, frugal, and unique.

British 25 pound (88mm) guns

Their thought was this, whatever we need to shoot artillery at, someone must have an eyeball on it.  Every company has a mortar team, and they are within a couple hundred yards of the enemy that needed shelling.  Every so many shells would be a colored smoke shell.  When the regimental guns, usually 25 pounders, saw that smoke, it would then add its guns to the fire.  They too would add a smoke shell into the mix.  The divisional artillery, with their 4.5 or 5.5 inch guns would then begin to pummel the spot.

There was one standard radio signal for this whole process.  “Cease Fire!”  And at that, everyone stops, and the front lines begin to assess what to do next.

Simple, and exceptionally effective on defense.

Later, the British developed their own version of "Time On Target", the concept was that when a target was being serviced, that the timing of the beginning of the barrage was timed to strike at the same instant.   In theory, most of the casualties occurred then, as no one has time to react and get under cover.  Timing was run off of the BBC time announcements.

The Russians:

The Russians started the war with their infantry divisions almost a direct copy of the Germans. This should not be surprising, as the Russians allowed Germany to test technologies forbidden by the treaty of Versailles in exchange for technical advisors. But Russia did not have any of the supporting infrastructure needed to make it work. 30,000 officers were purged from the Red Army late in the 1930's. So command structure was filled with untrained incompetents. Support services were understaffed in both equipment and personnel. So a division may have a battalion of 152mm howitzers, but it would not have the tractors required to move it, or the ammunition available to fire it, and certainly no one that could direct the fire beyond what the eyeball could see.

Like the French, the Soviets had adopted a doctrine of direct fire. Partially because that is the only thing they could do, and partially due to a study by the Soviet artillery expert, whose name escapes me at the moment, that stated that destroying a target with direct fire used 10 times less ammunition then indirect fire. To be fair, though, the Soviet steppes has a much longer eyeball range than western Europe.

But due to doctrine, most Soviet howitzers only had a range of 7km or so, well out ranged by the their German counterparts.

One of the first major steps taken by the Soviets in the summer of 1941, was to simplify everything. To that end, an entire caliber of gun was excised from the system. Why have 3 major calibers, 76, 122 and 152, when 76 and 122 is good enough. So all the remaining 152's were put in a depot, not to be used again until 1944. So the Infantry division’s artillery park were reorganized in late July to just eight 76's and four 122's, with a combined throw weight of about the same as a single German 100mm battalion.

The advantage shows, as about 90% of the Soviet casualties were by German Artillery, as opposed to the west where it was around 70%.

The Italians:

As I studied the Italian army, my conclusion was this.  There was a conspiracy to create an army that no sane man would go to war with.  Unfortunately...

Note the height, just 1.8meters. 

Every other nation was scaling up the size of their artillery from the nearly universal 75mm caliber (76.2mm, 77mm, 83mm) to 100's and 150's.  Italy?  It's too heavy, lets go with 65mm.  OK, we'll throw in a few 90mm in lieu of the 100's.

Every other nation looked at the lessons from the Spanish Civil War and decided the tanks were too light and needed more armor.  The Italians...

The Americans:

The Americans were late starting the war, and started from almost a cleaner slate than anyone.  By 1939, it was under 200,000 men, and a budget so low, that artillery men had logs on wheels masquerading as field guns.  They would do the calculations, and shout, "Boom!"  They got very good at doing the calculations, and had plenty of time of dreaming what could be.

What they came up with was called "Time on Target".  The concept was to fire every gun in range of the target available.  Give it a short, brutal barrage, then adjust the guns for the next target to be serviced. This was not limited by a specific organization.  When an army artillery battalion formed up, it would link into the local radio net, and be part of the overall fire plan.  So when a Regimental commander asked for fire support for a specific hill he would typically get 48 guns from his divisional artillery regiment, 2 guns from his regimental artillery section, 4 more guns from the adjacent regiments, a battalion of army artillery that happened to be parked near by.  The hill would be hit with 42 105's and 24 155's. They would work it over for a few minutes, then move onto the next target.

This got even better in November, 1944, when adjacent divisions could cross thread and now up to 144 guns of various calibers could join in.

The Germans regarded this as "unfair."  Probably because the Americans could do this, and they could not.