by Peter Brune
The Battle of the Somme was preceded by a seven-day British artillery bombardment designed to achieve three outcomes. The first was the destruction of the German front line of trenches and to thereby inflict heavy casualties or at least severe trauma upon its occupants. To some measure the sheer volume and prolonged duration of that bombardment did have an effect. The second aim was to cut the German wire. This was a failure. As some of the German wire belts were 50 yards or more deep and well staked, the British shrapnel shell proved unable to breach those barriers consistently. The third aim was to limit the supply of rations and reinforcements to the front line. In terms of cutting the German supply line, the artillery bombardment on the Somme was significant, but its efforts to both reduce and hamper their infantry response were limited. It should be remembered that the Germans had been on the defensive for around two years, and had, therefore, used their time and manpower resources to dig intricate, deep dugouts in the first and particularly the second line of trenches. Thus, although they did indeed take significant casualties and also suffered the distress and strain of a seven-day shelling, vast quantities of safely stored ammunition supplies and infantry in those dugouts were able to spring into action when the bombardment lifted.
In the end, the shocking losses during the Battle of the Somme for little ground gained were the consequence of a voluminous but crude quality of firepower that failed to destroy or even retard a powerful German response to infantry forced to cross open ground. Hence the tragic comment of an infantry soldier after his battalion’s demise: ‘We were two years in the making and ten minutes in the destroying.’ Further, the devastating artillery fire employed during that four-month series of battles greatly negated Field Marshal Haig’s desire for a break-through and a resumption of mobile warfare, since the landscape became a shell-cratered barrier to any speedy movement of men, guns, shells and supplies. And the problem was often compounded by rain and the resulting mud.
However, amid the slaughter and seeming futility of the Battle of the Somme were hints of artillery initiatives, which were gradually identified, refined and employed during the period 1916 – 18.
One of the most significant advances involved the status and influence of artillery personnel at GHQ, and at army, corps and divisional staff levels. We have noted the meagre acceptance of artillery applicants into the Staff College before the war. In 1914 the senior artillery officer at a formation HQ was no more than a subservient consultant who possessed no responsibility nor significant input in the planning of an operation. But by the Battle of the Somme in mid-1916, the sheer scale and resulting attributes of a detailed battle plan—involving such considerations as types, numbers and roles of guns, shell supply, movement and logistics, the need for joint tactical planning and liaison with the infantry, the Royal Flying Corps and later the Tank Corps—forced GHQ to have a Major-General Royal Artillery (MGRA) on that staff, while all Army and Corps HQ contained a General Officer Commanding Royal Artillery (GOCRA) and his nominated staff. In simple terms, the complexity of static, massed-infantry trench warfare now demanded an artillery level of specialisation and technical expertise not previously contemplated.
One of the most enduring and ghastly images of the Great War is the spectacle of grotesque corpses who had endured the horrendous crossing of no-man’s-land only to be checked, and then hit by shell, machine gun or rifle fire, and left strung out on the obstacle of barbed wire.
By mid-1916 the BEF had learnt that 18-pounder shrapnel was often ineffective unless it could be burst close to the wire and the ground; that as many as six rounds of shell fire per yard were needed up to a range of around a mile and a half; that the longer the range after that distance, the more shells were required; and that the use of trench mortars was helpful, but was limited by their short range. Further, the process of breaching the German belts of wire was time-consuming, in that frequent infantry patrols were needed to both identify the nature and depth of the wire, whether or not the often ongoing shelling had in fact achieved its purpose, and, lastly, whether repeated shelling or patrols were needed to inhibit the German capacity to mend that obstruction.
Two inventions gave efficiency and sophistication to the process. The first was the invention of the 106 fuse. It was first used in April 1917 during the Battle of Arras, and ‘fulfilled the stringent requirements of the British Army for safety, simplicity in manufacture, and instantaneous detonation’.11 The 106 fuse caused HE (high-explosive) shells to burst the moment they hit the ground, which reduced the time needed for repetitive firing, and, most of all, the amount of ammunition required. Guy Hartcup, in The War of Invention:
. . . experience showed that the shortest range at which it was safe to fire was 1,550 yards when the fuse acted correctly and the best effect obtained against personnel and wire entanglements . . . Some 20–30 million of the new fuses were made and used by various calibres of field gun.12
The second was the advent of tanks. As they became more numerous, tanks were at times able to crush wire or drag sections of it away.
By far the toughest artillery challenge of the Great War was the gradual development and implementation of predicted fire: the ability to accurately locate unseen enemy targets, be they guns, troop concentrations and movement, transport routes, villages, HQ and communications, and to do so with the intention of preferably destroying them or at least neutralising them, by pinpoint fire from one’s own artillery, without an initial registration and excessive adjustment of that fire. The objectives of predicted fire were thus two-fold: to restore the Principle of War ‘surprise’ to operations, and thus, by means of accurate and telling firepower—not just manpower—facilitate an efficient and less costly infantry crossing of no-man’s-land; and then, as a consequence, restore some form of mobility to operations.
An early innovation in locating German artillery was the use of flash spotting. This involved an observer watching the muzzle flash from enemy guns and then recording the bearing of the flash and reporting it to the Plotting Centre. On receipt, other bearings were also plotted from other observations, and the enemy gun was located by cross observation.
The potential for locating enemy guns by sound ranging had been recognised as early as 1915 by German, French and British scientists.13 Introduced in mid-1916 and gradually enhanced and expanded from then on, listening stations, each with six Tucker microphones (named after their inventor, Corporal W S Tucker, a young physicist from the Imperial College), made it possible to record the sound of guns firing and then calculate the map coordinates. There were two negative aspects to sound ranging. First, communication lines were prone to damage from hostile artillery; and second, during any significant forward movement the process of redeploying survey to determine new map coordinates and implementing the use of the sets of microphones and communications became time-consuming. Up to December 1918, 13 540 microphones were delivered to sound-ranging sections, each section manned by four officers and 24 other ranks. In all, 37 sound-ranging sections saw service in France.
By late 1917, aerial photography and spotting had surpassed the effectiveness of flash spotting and sound ranging.
In terms of ‘spotting’, the Royal Flying Corps could identify such enemy targets as artillery batteries, the ongoing accuracy of trench and counter-battery bombardments, relatively accurate and current infantry advance locations, and signs of enemy counter-attacks. And just prior to and during the Battle of the Somme, the zone call system and the use of kite-balloons came into operation. By dividing the ground to be assaulted on a map into relatively small grids (around 3000 square yards each), where each battery was assigned one grid, aeroplane spotters could call down a blanket of artillery fire on specific targets with often telling results. Kite-balloons, which were linked to artillery batteries by wireless, complemented such target identification.
But it was the employment of aerial photography that proved the most effective means of target acquisition. F M Cutlack, The Official Australian Flying Corps Histor
ian:
Earlier in the war, before the value of photography-reconnaissance was properly appreciated, the pictures made were but scantily distributed to divisions in the line . . . perhaps two to three or half a dozen; if one copy were occasionally sent to an infantry battalion in the line, it was an act of grace and goodwill . . . The value of a constant flow of intelligence from rear to front of the army, as from front to rear, did not easily win recognition . . . Staff officers would collect aeroplane-photographs as souvenirs of ‘sections of the front where we have been engaged.’ . . . The science of ferreting out what was called ‘hostile intelligence’ in the front line was not in 1915 and early 1916 the enthusiastic and unending work which it became later . . . As soon as the army had grown to accept the view that fighting the Germans was a problem as much about science and intelligence as of rude force, these old notions underwent a change. If the date for such a change must be named at all precisely, it would probably be the spring of 1916. Towards the close of that year front-line intelligence of the enemy had become almost a fetish with staffs of army corps . . .14
In order to provide accurate maps of the front, a topographical section was established at every Corps HQ. In March 1916 four Field Survey Companies were established as a part of the Royal Engineers and consisted of an HQ, a mapping section, an observation section and a sound-ranging section. Their work became of such importance that in May 1918 the companies were reconstituted into five Field Survey Battalions, each allotted to one BEF Army. This Royal Engineer expertise enabled constant updating, overprinting of changing detail, and special maps at varying scales of the many individual map sheets. The Royal Engineers also introduced ‘artillery boards’ for the BEF artillery. An artillery board had a scaled, coordinated topographical map or gridded plotting sheet fastened to it. With the aid of a range arm and bearing arc, the bearing line of fire from gun to target and the range could be determined graphically.
With regard to the guns, specific meteorological data such as wind velocity and direction, air temperature, barometric pressure and humidity—as well as wear in the gun barrel—were all factored into calculations for predicted fire. To ensure a consistent performance of any given battery, calibration sections were formed, and by ‘firing through screens the exact initial velocity of each gun was ascertained, and compensation could be given on the sights which ensured the uniform shooting of every gun in the battery’.15
Such knowledge and skill played no small part in the critical development of predicted fire, because without this work, such fire could not have been introduced and refined. It must, however, be accepted that for the purposes of this work, descriptions of these technological advances have of necessity been much simplified.
The acquisition of artillery intelligence from sound ranging, flash spotting, RAF reconnaissance, other sources of ground observation and reports, and prisoners of war was constant by the middle of 1918. In conjunction with the results of Royal Engineer survey and mapping, the Counter-Bombardment staffs at the various higher headquarters were able to collate, assess and disseminate this information in Hostile Battery Lists—which contained the location by map reference, the type of enemy equipment and the numbers in each location—to the various artillery headquarters. Here the lists were converted into Task Tables for the batteries. From these tables, Gun Programmes were prepared and issued for each gun or howitzer, which showed the time of firing, range, bearing, type of ammunition and fuse, rate of fire, duration and the number of rounds to be fired. The located enemy batteries were fired on by dedicated guns and howitzers allocated specifically for counter-bombardment using the recently developed techniques of predicted fire.
The succinct and painstaking combination of all of these initiatives gradually facilitated the ability of the BEF’s artillery to provide predicted fire plans on accurate maps without the necessity for ranging or registration of guns. This tremendous expertise would, by late 1917 and during 1918, finally enable the key Principle of War ‘surprise’ to be imposed on a battle plan. During the Battle of the Somme in mid-1916, the ratio of heavy to medium guns was one to three, while during the Amiens offensive just over two years later, it had grown to seven to twelve—more guns, more firepower, more range, and, above all, more accuracy. As a consequence, there was a greater elimination or at least a neutralisation of distant enemy artillery batteries, troop concentrations, logistics and communications. For the field guns, these qualities aided a growing prowess in terms of their creeping, standing and lifting barrages, designed to assist the assaulting infantry to arrive within a short distance of the enemy trenches, to shell objectives, and then to lift to the next one in sequence.
There were two critical battles during 1917 that are noteworthy concerning the development of the artillery. The Third Battle of Ypres, or Passchendaele, was a tragic reminder of the tactical shortcomings of the Somme. When the wettest winter in around 30 years descended on the Ypres battlefields, those heavy, concentrated and lengthy barrages had turned the landscape into a mire of water-filled craters that not only slowed the infantry’s progress, but made the task of moving guns and shells a nightmare. In short, the artillery’s aims of shattering the German trenches, killing his infantry and destroying his logistic capacity provided short-term gains, but severely impeded the ability of the infantry and artillery (and their logistic support) to move forward at anything other than a snail’s pace.
During the Third Battle of Ypres the Australian 1st and 2nd Divisions fought in the battle of Menin Road on 20 September 1917, which saw them reach the shattered remains of Polygon Wood near Zonnebeke. Six days later the relieving 4th and 5th Divisions resumed the offensive and, despite some positions being taken, there were about 11 000 casualties for little ground gained. On 4 October the Australians captured Broodseinde Ridge, and then, forestalled by rain and the resulting mud, a 3rd and 4th Division attack on Passchendaele resulted in an early gain that could not be held. The AIF was forced to withdraw, sustaining heavy casualties. The Canadians relieved them in mid-November.
The Battle of Cambrai (20 November to 7 December 1917) was a landmark battle on the Western Front. From an artillery perspective, the feature of the battle was the determination and drive of Brigadier-General Hugh Tudor, CRA of the 9th Scottish Division, who, in the absence of his corps commander, convinced his superiors to allow him to forgo the usual long, preliminary artillery bombardment and, by the use of predicted fire, achieve surprise and the priceless chance of an early break-in of the German defences. This was not an entirely new plan. Colonel Bruchmüller had used predicted fire on the Eastern Front during the recent Battle of Riga (3 September 1917). But the Germans had not perfected predicted fire to the BEF’s extent: whether their calibration techniques or their ability to employ the same diverse number of mapping procedures were to blame, is hard to know, but in the end, their predicted fire was not as sophisticated. In the event, the BEF’s counter-battery fire and its ability to interdict the German defences proved decisive in the initial stages of the Battle of Cambrai. That fire also employed a telling mixture of shrapnel and smoke, which aided the movement of the great number of tanks used during the start of the battle.
The surprise barrage at Cambrai, its use of smoke, and its accurate counter-battery fire—in unison with the success of tanks—caused a BEF break-through of the Hindenburg Line across a six-mile front to a depth of some five miles. Although that initial stunning success was to be shattered by a brilliant German counter-attack and a subsequent BEF withdrawal, the potential for predicted artillery fire, resultant surprise and infantry–tank cooperation had now been realised.
By early 1918, the BEF’s artillery had become a weapon of intricate sophistication. The sheer volume of fire that had been so crudely employed during the Battle of the Somme in mid-1916, and repeated during the Third Battle of Ypres during July 1917, had, if anything, been increased in just over two years; but by 1918, with the priceless added quality of accuracy, it could screen its always vulnerable infa
ntry and tank advances by smoke and debilitating gas concentrations; and, most important of all, its much more numerous medium and particularly heavy guns could now precisely bring counter-battery fire to bear and also disrupt German communications, troop concentrations and supply, which inhibited their ability to do what they had previously done so well: counter-attack.
The BEF’s artillery had always been a brutal weapon. By 1918 it had become a brutally accurate one.
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If the development and eventual sophistication of the BEF’s artillery during the Great War was a monumental achievement, then the conception, production and tactical evolution of the tank was no less astounding. D G Browne, in The Tank in Action:
The Tank Corps was the only arm of the service equipped with an entirely novel weapon which was formed while the war actually was in progress. Everyone had to learn everything from the beginning. There were no traditions, nor any experience of any kind to draw on until the first battle had been fought. The corps suffered at the outset from a surfeit [excess] of parents. For months it was governed in turn or together by a number of departments; and often the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing.16
Most creative military inventions usually require the foresight and drive of both a professional and a political identity.
In mid-1914 Hugh Marriott, a mining engineer, gave Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Swinton, an engineer officer, his opinions as to the potential of the Holt Caterpillar Tractor as a means of transportation in remote country, and that this tractor might have a military potential. Swinton was not without influence. As a recent Assistant Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), he had access to Colonel Maurice Hankey, who was the Secretary of that committee. Influenced by Swinton, in December 1914 Hankey wrote a memorandum for the CID outlining his concept of a future mechanical war. Guy Hartcup, in The War of Invention: