During the period when smooth-bore artillery ruled the battlefield, fire control was very simple. A commander of all the artillery of the force was appointed. Sometimes he was the commander of one of the units, extracted for the purpose, leaving his second in command in charge of the particular battery, company, or battalion. At Minden in 1759 Capt Phillips was put in command of the British artillery leaving his ‘second captain’ in charge of the company. In large armies during the Napoleonic wars command became more complicated. The French put the artillery commander of the Corps d'Armée in charge, and he had authority to take any divisional artillery under his command whenever necessary. At Waterloo the British placed Col George Wood in command of all the British and King's German Legion artillery, with subordinate commanders in charge of field artillery and horse artillery—the latter the mobile reserve. The next level down was the commander of the fire unit—the horse artillery troop or foot artillery company—equivalent to modern batteries. The battery commander, usually commanding six guns or howitzers, led them at all times, and, since virtually all fire was direct, was with them in action. Below him came the ‘number one’—the commander of the individual gun. He personally ‘layed’—aimed—the gun.
The advent of indirect fire, with guns engaging a target invisible from the gun-line, exploded this beautifully simple system. Adjusting the fire of a group of guns requires training and experience. In some armies the battery commander, as the most experienced officer, acted as the observer; in others, he was with the supported-arm commander to provide advice and co-ordinate fire support. The former system continued in use in Warsaw Pact and successor armies until the present. The gun position itself is commanded by the ‘battery senior officer’ (in the Warsaw Pact tradition) or ‘gun position officer’—either the second in command or, in the British army, a very senior subaltern.
The indirect-fire techniques evolved before WW I and used during it enabled an enormous amount of fire to be concentrated on a single target or group of targets by a senior artillery commander. The fire of individual fire units—batteries—was controlled by command posts which calculated the range and bearing to the target and gave the necessary orders to the guns. But only a senior officer, in command of all the artillery, could concentrate its fire and the development of specialist artillery staffs to plan and control the barrages which became such a marked feature of WW I was crucial to the effective use of artillery.
During WW I there were enormous advances in firing techniques. Counter-battery fire—hitting the enemy's artillery—which had never been seen as a very profitable operation in the era of direct fire—became artillery's main job. Since the enemy's guns were usually invisible from the front line, as well as from the gun positions, techniques of flash-spotting, sound-ranging, and air photography were rapidly developed. In 1916 came the first use of the registration point. Adjusting fire onto a target by corrections sent by the observer until the target was hit and the command ‘fire for effect’ given often gave away surprise. The guns would instead adjust onto a point whose position relative to the target was known precisely. When everything was perfect, fire was suddenly switched to the real target. This meant tight control over all the firing units, giving all the necessary data but with the holding command ‘fire by order’ now replaced by ‘at my command’.
Between 1929 and 1941 a most important development took place in the USA. The US field Artillery School at Fort Sill developed a means of concentrating any amount of artillery available on a target of opportunity. This centred on the exploitation of the new, more reliable radios instead of field telephones. More importantly, procedures were developed enabling adjustments to be recorded as if seen from the observer's position, instead of the battery position. Graphical firing tables in a fire direction centre (FDC) compensated for the different locations of firing units, and a common reference point was established for all artillery in a divisional area. This also meant that supported-arm officers—infantry and armour—who might have no idea where the artillery was—could call for fire and give corrections. As a result, the fire of an entire battalion or multiple battalions could be brought down on the direction of a single forward observer, whoever he or she was.
The French retained the pre-planned bombardments of WW I, much to their disadvantage. In 1936 it took French artillery half an hour to engage a target whose range, bearing, and altitude still had to be assessed. This was not good enough in an era where targets might be armoured and highly mobile, and could move a long way in that time.
The Red Army retained the system where a senior artillery officer personally directed the fire of all his guns throughout the war on the eastern front, but infantry units, down to regiment, had their own artillery also. In essence, the Soviets had two artillery forces: first, 76 mm field and anti-armour guns, 122 mm howitzers, and 122 mm mortars with the advancing infantry for close support and direct fire, and secondly, army and corps artillery with heavier guns and howitzers and multiple rocket launchers—the latter at army level—which fired the big, pre-planned bombardments.
The next revolution was the fire control computer. By the 1970s the US and British armies were using computers—the latter the Field Artillery Computer Equipment (FACE) --to do the sums, although Graphical Control Instruments (GCIs) were retained as back up. More recently, new generations of computers, for example the British Battlefield Artillery Target Engagement System (BATES), have arrived. These computerized systems are now linked to create surveillance and target acquisition systems, such as the US Stand-Off Target Acquisition System (SOTAS) or what the Soviets call ‘reconnaissance fire and strike complexes’ (ROK, RUK). In combination with the Global Positioning System, which means the observer knows exactly where he or she is, and laser rangefinders, which give the exact range from observer to the target, it is now expected that indirect fire artillery will hit the target with its first round.
Bibliography
- Bellamy, Christopher, Red God of War (London, 1986).
- Bragg, Sir Lawrence, Dowson, A. H., & Hemming, H. H., Artillery Survey in World War I (Field Survey Association, London, 1971).
- Hughes, B. P., Open Fire (Chichester, 1983)
— Christopher Bellamy
