barrage

A static or rolling barrier of fire put down in front of defending troops or moving at a pre-planned rate in front of troops in the assault. The creeping barrage was first used in 1915 to protect attacking infantry who were most vulnerable from the time that the bombardment of enemy positions lifted to the moment that they reached those positions. The barrage maintained a wall of fire as close as possible in front of troops while they crossed no man's land and then moved on into the enemy's deeper defences. It would then halt to form a protective barrier against any enemy counter-attack. Planning a barrage required high level co-ordination by the newly created artillery staffs, but its control was most effective when delegated to the lower level commanders being supported. Early barrages often failed when their rigid, pre-planned timetables were overtaken by the unforeseen. If troops were held up by the enemy, the barrage would move on regardless, leaving them exposed; and rapid success often went unexploited because they could not advance through their own slower moving barrage. The ideal was to achieve tactical control over a flexible barrage, but until WW II radios were too primitive to permit this. In the latter years of WW I, barrages became ever more sophisticated. Instead of advancing in straight lines at a constant rate, they were designed to match the shape of enemy trench lines and often dwelt on enemy strong points for longer periods before moving on to the next. The enemy would try to outwit the expected barrage by withdrawing from their front line or by placing machine-gun posts in no man's land. Sometimes a barrage would pass over sheltering enemy troops who would emerge only to find it rolling back over them.

An effective barrage required technical skills which only reached maturity in late 1917. Accuracy was all important and this required the guns to have precise survey data of their individual positions, friendly trench lines, up-to-date meteorological information, data of each gun's barrel-wear and muzzle-velocity, and measurements of propellent charge temperature and variations in shell weight. The closer the barrage could be safely placed to friendly troops, the fewer casualties they would suffer from the enemy, even if they were occasionally victims of their own guns. This principle was also held to apply in WW II. During the Vietnam war, US army firebases such as that at Khe Sanh in early 1968 fired elaborate barrages. Long-range heavy artillery and aircraft delivered walls of fire to seal off the battlefield while lighter artillery raked up and down like a piston. The barrage survived in Soviet Cold War armoured doctrine with the 122 mm 2S1 designed to deliver fire directly onto enemy positions in the assault.

Bibliography

• Bailey, J. B. A., Field Artillery and Firepower (Oxford, 1989).
• Griffith, P., Battle Tactics of the Western Front (London, 1994).
• Johnson, C., The Big Guns Go to War (London, 1975).
• Zabecki, D., Steel Wind (Westport, Conn., 1994)

— Jonathan B. A. Bailey