What did the 660 artilliry battalion do in world war 2?

Answer 1

The 660th Field Artillery Battalion (660th FA Bn) was an 8 inch gun battalion. Its guns were pulled behind trucks until they went into battery to fire their weapons. The 8 inch gun was among the very largest artillery pieces deployed by the US Army for service in the field. The artillery was America's most effective combat arm in WWII. Every US infantry division had four artillery battalions in it - three of 105MM howitzers and one of 155MM howitzers.

In addition to this powerful divisional artillery the army created hundreds of "separate', or "independent" artillery battalions. These were to provide additional firepower. These "independent" battalions were independent because they were not an official permanent, organic part of any larger formation. They were assigned to higher HQs than a division - to a corps, or a field army. The idea was that the corps or army commander could move the "independent" artillery around to supplement the firepower of the divisions as needed. In practice the corps commander would often "attach" separate artillery battalions to divisions, sometimes semi-permanently. The separate artillery battalions under the control of the corps commander were often referred to as the "corps artillery".

The 660th FA Bn was an independent artillery battalion. Compared to a division, which had thousands of troops, an independent battalion had generally somewhere around 800. Most divisions published their own history after the war; very, very few independent battalions did. It can be though to search out the history of these independent battalions.

The 660th FA Bn was assigned to the US VII Corps. This corps was one of the two whose troops landed in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the corps artillery would have come ashore as soon as they had room enough to deploy behind the lines. The VII Corps spent the entire European Campaign (if memory serves) in the US 1st Army, commanded by General Courtney Hodges. VII Corps was commanded by Lieutenant General J. Lawton "Lightening Joe" Collins. Collins was one of the outstanding US corps commanders of the war, and went on to be the commanding general of the US Army (Chief of Staff) in the 50s.

The VII Corps participated in all the major campaigns in Europe - Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace ("The Battle of the Bulge"), and Central Europe. As part of the VII Corps artillery the 660th FA Bn would have been involved in all.

Any good history treating the US 1st Army, or VII Corps, might have more details. There were war memoirs of General Collins published under the title "Lightening Joe".