![]() The guns must have effective prime movers or be mounted on tracked vehicles. Those fire direction centers must be able to co-ordinate with other artillery units to mass fires as needed. Effective artillery requires fire direction centers that can accurately place fires and rapidly shift them from one target to another. It must have a good means of identifying and accurately locating a target and needs well-schooled forward observers who are in close contact not only with the batteries, but with the troops they are working with. ![]() There must be a sufficient supply of standard guns so that the units being supported can know what fires they can expect. To be fully effective, an artillery arm must be well supplied with suitable ammunition. Nevertheless, evaluating an army’s artillery requires a good deal more than looking at the standard guns that it deploys. Army to equip two of its field artillery battalions with captured German pieces to take advantage of the enemy ammunition stocks captured in France. The German 105mm was sufficiently similar to the American 105mm howitzer, and there were enough similarities overall between each army’s guns to allow the U.S. The American guns were a bit heavier than their German counterparts and generally had a longer range. ![]() Army and German Wehrmacht in World War II. (National Archives)Īt first glance, there seems to be little difference between the artillery branches of the U.S. ground forces entered combat in 1942, both of these pieces were being replaced by modern and much more effective guns. Army’s primary field artillery pieces were the French-designed M1897 75mm gun and M1918 155mm howitzer (above). At the beginning of World War II, the U.S. ![]()
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