Discussion Counter-Battery Fire

MikeyB

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Sep 13, 2018
In the movies, you typically see exploding shells take out gunners and cannon with dramatic explosions and men flying.

My question is - would gunners ever use solid shot in counter battery fire? Or were exploding round the only effective munition in artillery duels?

mike
 
Was there a preferred round, or standard per the field artillery manual? Did it depend on circumstances? Or was it whatever was available?
It usually depended on what the gunner or officer saw was needed for the job at hand.
 
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Was there a preferred round, or standard per the field artillery manual? Did it depend on circumstances? Or was it whatever was available?

The manuals don't stipulate a preferred round. However, what counter-battery fire usually tried to do was put the enemy's guns out of commission (i.e. rather than just kill the crews which could be replaced) and either solid shot or, if using rifled guns, shells with compression fuses would have done the job. If using smooth bore guns I'd think exploding rounds wouldn't have been as desirable as solid shot as it would have been very unlikely they'd have been able to set the fuse perfectly so as to get detonation at the moment of impact (timed fuses were the norm for smooth bore guns). Such rounds might, though, have been employed to kill the horses which were often a chosen target as without horses a battery couldn't move.

Just a few thoughts based on a lot of reading.
 
Late question (looking to clean up some artillery rules for a game): how probable was it to take out a gun with counter-battery fire as opposed to killing crew or horses? It seems information on casualties is easier to come by than "numbers and reasons for guns lost" (other than when captured because they couldn't be moved).
 
Late question (looking to clean up some artillery rules for a game): how probable was it to take out a gun with counter-battery fire as opposed to killing crew or horses? It seems information on casualties is easier to come by than "numbers and reasons for guns lost" (other than when captured because they couldn't be moved).
Good question. And you read of crews abandoning their guns so was the gun knocked out, i.e. broken carriage, or just simply captured? Not always clear.
 
Good points.
I guess, for the purposes of abstraction, I would need a reasonable probability for
- battery unable to fire temporarily (guns OK but replacement crews needed)
- battery able to fire but unable to move (horses killed)
- battery destroyed (guns smashed, whether tubes or carriages)
with the last the least likely, I would think...
 
I can't assign probability or percentages to what happened to batteries but will add another possible outcome:

battery is forced to retire or re-locate which might also result in one or more guns being abandoned (due to lack of horses or crew) and spiked.

And I can add that I've never seen the term "counter battery fire" used except to mean one battery shelling another.
 
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