How did forces with artillery that had lower range try to cope with Said lack of range back in the days?
They would wait for a tailwind before firing.
>>64727043Move closer.
was spotting and accuracy even good enough to use max range shots back in the day?
It was usually the decisive factor for why attacks/defenses failed.
>>64727043They didn't. Artillery sat several miles behind the trenches and shelled the other side's infantry while remaining safely behind some hills out of range of the other side's artillery.
Greater mobility which was the main advantage of French cannons like this one compared to German siege artillery
>>64727249That's what observation balloons were for.
>>64727043By building longer range artillery.
>>64727043Push into range and shoot back. Engineering is all about tradeoffs so if you didn't have the same range you might have a faster rate of fire or guns that are easier to move.
>>64727043It was very difficult, but there existed several ways to extend the range if you were in a desperate situation. You could disengage the ground fixture and have the crew push the cannon forwards while firing. The added momentum could extend the range by several hundred yards, but it was tiring work and came at the cost of accuracy. Another system that was attempted was to have your assigned machinegunners fire perpendicularly to the cannon barrel, but slightly angled. If several machineguns were arranged in this manner then thr bullets would hit the artillery round mid flight at regular intervals and thus add their momentum to its velocity.
>>64730602NTA but I heard of another method where the battalion would all start shouting towards the muzzle of a cannon and the sound waves created enough turbulent air it reduced drag on the round for the first couple yards of travel.
>>64727043The range of the guns usually wasn’t the problem. It was observing and adjusting the fire.
Counter-battery was a serious and still a serious business. Before a large offensive, you usually want to suppress or destroy enemy artillery. But first you must locate them, they are heavy and normally a close to roads, you just can't move them through forest and swamps specially the heavy.
>>64727249More a question of how fast and how organized the kill chain was between the observer and fire direction officer (back in the day it was the battery commander).If the guy has to first be in a position stable enough to run telephone wire and then ask for fires from all the way up at division level or higher before it makes its way down to individual battalions you're neither getting fast nor accurate fires unless you're hitting static emplacements. The vast majority of successful artillery actions in the first world war were map-plotted on surveyed targets and put on very strict time tables. There was no active communication between the infantry and the artillery once the operation commenced. It either went off without a hitch or the infantry hit an unexpectedly hard target, got delayed, and the creeping barrage outpaced them or they advanced too fast and got killed by their own guns. Fun fact: forward observation wasn't its own billet until 1935 in the US Army. Up until that point the artillery of most nations tended to throw their most mediocre and expendable officers at it because all of their career progression was centered on being part of the firing battery.
>>64730602>Another system that was attempted was to have your assigned machinegunners fire perpendicularly to the cannon barrel, but slightly angled. If several machineguns were arranged in this manner then thr bullets would hit the artillery round mid flight at regular intervals and thus add their momentum to its velocity.Damn for real? You just made that up huh?
>>64732068>they advanced too fast and got killed by their own guns.Grim. Did that happen alot?
>>64732088So long as their officers knew the fire plan and didn't walk themselves into a divisional mass the casualties they sustained hugging the curtain were generally deemed preferable to lagging behind and missing that golden moment when they could take forward trench line with effectively zero resistance.
>>64732113Damn. So they knew some of their men would get blown the fuck up by their own shells but deemed it as an acceptable loss for what they could gain?
>>64732159Yep. The joys of command.
