http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=134997

Regarding artillery--and acknowledging that there is may not be a direct comparison to the Napoleonic era--I have spent a day or two studying the capabilities and concepts of Soviet and Russian fire support from the Great Patriotic War onwards, including reading artillery manuals and professional journals in Russian. Moreover, I have spent a day or two attempting to portray--in praktik--those capabilities and concepts realistically in military training, in training simulations, and in exercises and simulations used in the development and selection of U.S. weapon systems.

If there is one single thing that has become very clear to me, it is that those trained in Western principles and techniques of fire support have a very difficult time recognizing (first) that the two systems are in fact different, and (second) that neither is innately superior to the other. It is a significant cultural difference to overcome.

A second thing that has become very clear is that the same cultural divide makes it very different for Westerners to conduct research in military-technical Russian, even in translation. I cannot say if the same thing holds true for material written two centuries past, but modern Soviet and Russian military literature uses a very precise, scientific form of language, with a very precise, scientific vocabulary. A reader who has not yet absorbed the conceptual differences is bound to misinterpret the scientific-technical terminology at almost every turn.

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http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/Toofatlardies/message/31623

>>> Yes - the Soviets had tons of artillery, but it was inflexible. Not
called in much during a battle like German or Allied guns.

I have to disagree with that assessment. The Soviet system of controlling indirect fires was very different from that of the "Western" armies, but it was no less responsive, and I believe it could be argued that once experience was gained, it was even more responsive. But the system is unfortunately poorly understood in the West.

Rather than relying on forward observers, or requests for fire from maneuver units, Soviet artillery *commanders* provided the "eyes forward" and directed--commanded--the fires of their own units. The commanders of artillery and mortar subunits organic to a maneuver unit or formation traveled within "collar-grabbing" distance of the maneuver unit commander; if the maneuver unit received additional artillery subunits in support, their commanders would also be in very close proximity to the maneuver commander.

If a unit was lavishly supported with indirect fire assets, the artillery and mortar commanders could set up lateral and alternate artillery command observation posts, and coordinate among themselves. But the most important assets' commanders would usually be right beside the supported unit commander.

This ensured that units which had been allocated indirect fire assets had immediate priority for the fires of those assets. There was no waiting around or prioritization of calls for fire. If a target needed to be neutralized, the artillery commander (personally observing the target) directed the fires of his own unit to achieve the effect, and he himself assessed the effects of his fires.

Now the allocation of fire assets at formation level and above, right up to "front" level, and their centralized control for preparatory fires, is another subject. For that purpose, organic fire assets could be temporarily stripped from second-echelon formations and controlled by the higher commander, in addition to the masses of higher-level assets reserved for this part of the battle. But even here, the assessment of fire effects and shifting of fires to follow-on targets was accomplished by direct observation by artillery commanders and specialized reconnaissance assets.

Preparatory fire strikes are probably as ill-understood in the West as accompanying fire support, particularly because the German victims of the fire strikes did not survive to write about them. This of course, makes battles in the main strike sectors inappropriate for company-level wargames, as it's not much fun to have a Soviet company with nothing to do but advance across a wasteland.

I'm waiting for Dave Glantz, who was originally a gunner, to do a specific work on Soviet artillery and rocket troops in the GPW. But a survey of his "Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941-1943", particularly the chapter on artillery, may open some eyes. His "When Titans Clashed" is also a revealing work. If you look at some of the later operations (such as Jassy-Kishinev or Lake Balaton), the flexibility and responsiveness of Soviet artillery, mortars and rockets approached (surpassed?) anything the West can do today, even with our vastly greater degree of technology.

The Soviets had the techniques to provide outstanding fire support, from the German invasion right up to the end of the Soviet Union. But it was a very different set of techniques from ours, and as a rule, U.S. and British military personnel failed to understand what they might be up against during the Cold War.

The defeated Germans we hired to write the histories of the Eastern Front knew little of what the Soviets could do, as their survival to write the histories meant that they had not faced what the Soviets could throw at them. They consistently misrepresented the actions in their secondary sectors as the peak of Soviet effectiveness. And we believed them, and so gained an inaccurate stereotype of Soviet operational art and tactics.

It's been only through the efforts of a very small circle of specialists based around Ft. Leavenworth in the U.S. and RMA Sandhurst in the UK, that the Soviet side of the story has begun to be examined. Colonel Glantz is the premier of those specialists, and I have been privileged to learn at his knee, as well as from some of the others in both locations.

Sorry for the rant... If you need specifics, I will be happy to go over to storage this weekend and try to pull out my boxes of Soviet manuals.

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>>> I am extremely interested in your comments. Are there any published
papers on this subject? If so where could I access them?

Monographs on Soviet artillery in the GPW are rare as hens' teeth. That's why I'm hoping Col. Glantz or others will address the shortfall at some point before they shuffle off this mortal coil.

You can get some glimpses in his Combat Studies Institute Report Number 11, "Soviet Defensive Tactics at Kursk, July 1943", found in PDF and HTML formats here:

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp#papers

While you're at it, you might browse the papers on Nomonhan, winter operations, night operations, the Petsamo-Kirkenes operation (all Leavenworth papers); Dave's research survey on the Soviet airborne (and the following survey on German defence is interesting); and there may be other things to distract you.

Chris Bellamy (on your side of the pond) did a single book on the subject, "Red God of War" in the '80s:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0080312004/002-2031669-6943231?v=glance&n=28315\5

Much of it is focused on then-current doctrine, but it had a healthy dose of GPW experience. Unfortunately, it needs to be brought up to date using the archival materials available now.

The Soviets put out a series of "Fighting from Combat Examples" manuals, all meant to teach the Cold War era officer using documented examples from the GPW. I believe that as well as an original, I have a copy of a translation (of the artillery volume) done by U.S. DoD machine translation. Somebody (Greenhill?) has produced part if not most of the series commercially in translation, but they are astonishingly expensive.

One good resource to whet your appetite is an online collection of issues from "Voyenno-Istoricheskiy Zhurnal" (Military History Journal):

http://www.redarmystudies.net/index_sort.htm

Portugal'skiy's article in issue 3/1982 is a classic. You can download the issue there in a JPRS translation. Just a warning: the language may sound like boilerplate to someone not well versed in Soviet military-technical language. But it actually a very meaningful article.

I'll try to dig up some more, and feel free to pester me off-line if you don't consider the subject of general interest.

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>>> Don't know anything about their supporting fire methods but I
read "Steel Wind" about Bruchmueller's artillery technique in WWI.
The book says that WWII Soviet prep barrages were basically
Bruchmueller technique minus gas.

The main difference between the more sophisticated sorts of Great War barrages and what the Soviets sorted out after the initial period of the GPW was a closer calculation of the fires required to achieve the desired result. The Soviets believed (and the Russians still do) that you can effectively calculate the rounds required to achieve specific effects on targets. In the West, we tend to shoot, observe the effect, and then shoot some more until we get what we want. This takes time, and that's not a good thing.

So whereas in the Great War, a concentrated barrage might consist of as much ammunition as could be fired in the designated space of time by the artillery assets available, the Soviets would calculate that to annihilate, say, 27 dug-in infantry positions (and a specified number of PaKs, and some other stuff), it would be necessary to fire 127,832 rounds (and further broken down by caliber). (That's a number pulled out of my butt, but it would be that precise.)

To achieve that end, the quantity of artillery assets (tubes, batteries, battalions, regiments) necessary to fire that quantity of munitions within the time frame allotted would be accumulated and given the task. And the result: a German infantry regiment would disappear, so that a tank corps could drive unmolested through the space it previously occupied, and get on with the proper business of destroying the enemy's ability to fight by getting into the rear and buggering his artillery, support services, and supply depots properly.

Very scientific, very technical, and very goal-oriented.

>>> Overly simplified it means truly ferocious barrages of about 2 hours
duration, since much more than that allowed the survivors of the
barrage to start recovering. 2 hours also gave little strategic
notice.

And that was also characteristic of Soviet fire planning. Concentrating the effects within a shorter period of time achieved greater results, as once the rounds start landing, the target tends to take cover, which causes effectiveness to drop off over time. And ending the fire prep as close as possible to the assault minimizes the defender's ability to recover, as you say. Naturally, great efforts were taken to conceal the concentration of fire assets through maskirovka, in order to achieve surprise.

>>> So much fire was done during the 2 hours that the gunners of
the initial batteries were physically used up. Reserve batteries were
then brought up for supporting fire.

This was of great concern to the Soviets. You can see clearly in the article by Portugal'skiy which I cited to Rich the effort involved in coordinating the preparation. But just as important, and far, far less frequently mentioned in open-source material, was the effort to maintain continuous operations: to have the necessary assets (tubes, ammunition, transport, and fresh personnel) to be able to maintain fire support as the offensive continued. A far more difficult and dynamic problem than simply calculating the desired destruction for the initial prep.

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Mmmmm...

There's a possible difference between "Western" and "Eastern" military doctrines on this point.

The Soviets had a specific term--"fire with direct aiming"--for situations in which what we would normally consider indirect fire weapons could place fire on the target through direct observation from the firing points: without having to rely on forward observers, artillery/mortar command observation posts, fire direction centers, and all that. Just shoot--adjust--shoot.

Just a thought...

But then, the Soviet practice of indirect fires being *directed* by artillery commanders who were forward with their eyes on the target, rather than being *requested* by observers or supported units, is rather alien to us Westerners, too...

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I would not be quick to discount either the presence of radios in Soviet artillery command observation posts, or their ability to lay astounding amounts of wire very rapidly.

But to achieve the desired densities of fires, it was indeed very common to line up numbers of artillery in sight of the enemy, in a way we would find incomprehensible.

But then, we generally do not appreciate the sheer volumes of indirect fires that the Soviets calculated to place on German defenses when they wanted those defenses to simply go away. Not that that sort of scenarios make particularly good wargames, mind...