Best Long Range Artillery Piece

[psteel]

Soviet employment of divisions and Korps was not the same as in the rest of Europe. I gather due to shortage of officers they employed echelons at a level below the western equivalents. So a Soviet Division was run as a 'Brigade' and Korps run as a 'Division'. So the proper comparison should be between Soviet Korps guns and German divisional guns.

To make comparisons more difficult; [Looking at data from TM9-1907] a shell landing at high angle [say 60°] usually has about 1.5 times the blast coverage as the same shell landing at low trajectory....which is why mortars infantry guns are so popular with infantry units. It also explains why Howitzers are preferable to guns for divisional artillery. Gun firing over obstacles usually have longer "no fire zones" than Howitzers again making howitzers preferable and Infantry guns/Mortars the best to employ as support in attack.

I also gather from the "USSBS" that the % of HE in German shells dropped late in the war, making comparison at that time difficult. Looking at data from TM9-1907, usually a 4" HE Shell has twice as much HE filler as a 3" HE shell. That suggests a 105 howitzer HE shell should offer nearly 3 times as much blast area as 3" gun He shell

 

[davebender]

Italy and Japan had small GDPs relative to the size of their armed forces and operational committments. Consequently they couldn't afford to modernize.

 

[Shortround6]

I am not doubting the points you made here but was pointing out that thr British did spend money between the wars on Artillery. The designs were almost all new and production picked up.

Money was tight in a number of countries in the 1920s and 30s, between the people who wished for peace and the economic times large sums of money for defense did not exist in many western nations. The US with it's isolationist policys and two large oceans to hide behind didn't start rearming until several years after France and Britain. Navies tended to get money for new ships because it can take years to build ships. around four for the big ones. The Air forces got money, they promised if war came it would not be like the nightmare of WW I. The promised that fighting could be done at a distance. They also promised what they could not deliver at the time. The promised they could defend against enemy ships, which it took them several years into WW II to actually do ( at least against moving ships) , they promised they could replace the expensive heavy artillery of the army, sucked some of the armies budget and spent it on planes that were useless for replacing the armies guns. Armies got the short end, they had lots of left over "stuff" from WW I. More than they could use with peace time manning. And every politician "KNEW" all you need for a large army was to draft a bunch of men, give them uniforms, rifles and a few weeks of training and you were good to go. SO they didn't worry about the army until the guns were about ready to go off.

It is true that 25pd production in 1939 had just started and I do not question your figure of 111, but in 1940 production stepped up and by 1941 they were being produced in serious numbers, 4,000+. Its also wrong to belittle the 18/25pd conversions, they were not lashups, they were put together after serious testing and for the time were very capable weapons.

The early 25lbs would have been a decent gun if not the much better the gun the MK II was but they were still built on end of war or slightly post war carriages. They were not what was wanted but what the financial ministers would pay for at the time.

Had the USA found itself at war in 1939 their situation would have been very difficult. It says something that the USA had to use British 4.5in ammunition. I don't know if the M1 105mm ever entered production but my understanding is that the M2 didn't enter production until 1941, so the British were if anything ahead of the USA in Artillery.

The Americans used a British designed shell because they actually used so few 4.5 in barrels it wasn't worth the effort to design a new shell and complicate the logistics. The Americans were already manufacturing the shell for the British. The M1 105 howitzer is a lot like the M2 except it was for horse traction and was standardized in 1928. 14 were made. by 1939-40 all the modifications had been made and the plans were gather dust on shelves waiting for congress to come up with the money. The American Army had come up with a number of new guns during the 30s and while few of them were outstanding in any one particular attribute they were solid designs that stood the test of time. The 4.7in gun may have worked or not, it was put aside in favor of the British 4.5 in for the above mentioned ammunition supply. With a 155mm howitzer, a 155gun and a 8in Howitzer the US also had covered a fair amount of the heavy field artillery range without getting into guns that needed to be transported in two pieces ( we got into those too and supplied the British with them but perhaps the less said about those models the better

The accepted exception being the Heavy Artillery where the 7.2in was a stop gap until given a modern mounting. Even here the US had 65 Long Toms in Dec 1941, had they gone to war in 1939 they would be using the WW1 derived 155mm 1917/18. again not a bad gun, but undeniably old.

Yes the US was little late to the party but again much of the work on the Long Toms had been done and the design standardized in 1938. Production, especially in peace does take time to get moving. The British army had not been doing much work on big guns because they had been sold a bill of goods by the RAF. When it was time to collect the goods weren't there and they had to scramble. Since a lot of production would have to be done in the US it was just as easy to use the big US guns.

 

[Shortround6]

Italy and Japan had small GDPs relative to the size of their armed forces and operational committments. Consequently they couldn't afford to modernize.

True but I am not sure what you are getting at. The Italians did use a number of 100mm Howitzers they got from A-H at the end of WW I and they did manage to produce a few of their own 105 Howitzers from about 1938 on. Likewise the Japanese had designed , built and issued about 1,000 of the type 91 105mm howitzer starting about 1931.
Maybe the Japanese couldn't afford to modernize completely but they did design and build (at least in small quantities) a new gun in every major category between 1925 and 1935. Perhaps their continued production of 75mm field guns had less to do with economics than it did with a perceived need by the Army?

 

[davebender]

Japanese had designed , built and issued about 1,000 of the type 91 105mm howitzer starting about 1931

During 1940 the Imperial Japanese Army had 41 divisions, 39 of which were operationally deployed to Manchuria and China. Plus a bunch of garrison units scattered across China. 1,000 light howitzers is not enough for a force this size even if none got worn out or destroyed in combat from 1932 onward.

 

[parsifal]

Italy and Japan had small GDPs relative to the size of their armed forces and operational committments. Consequently they couldn't afford to modernize.

I agree with you here, but there were some rather odd outcomes that arose from those economies.

The italian artillery experience in WWII was generally an unhappy one. Their 75/27 was an old gun, with unsatisfactory ballistics for its shell, and a maximum range of only about 7000m except if a pit was dug for its long trail. not particularly mobile, slow firing rates. The really striking things about the italian artillery were

the age of the park
the multiplicity of types and ammunition
the lack of a coherent modernization plan leading up to the war
lack of mobility in the older guns

However those guns that were new or modernized had quite good performance. The 75/18 mountain gun had quite good performance and mobility, whilst the 149mm gun was considered the best piece of heavy artillery available to the Axis in North Africa.

Japanese artillery also suffered as you say, yet its 75/24 mountain gun despite its age and antiquated appearance is considered by many to be the best performing piece of artillery available for the jungle for eithr side. It was probably better than the US 75mm pack howitzer in terms of range and portability, and was superior to the baby 25pounder in terms of portability. Plus it was available from the beginning of hostilities

The Japanese Pistol Petes were a much respected piece of artillery in the Pacific, especially on Corregidor and in the island campaigns.

Japanese got a lot out of their admittedly old artillery really, and the sort of war they fought didnt really require a lot of mobility. The Japanese suffered mostly from a multiplicity of types, and a lack of artillery, rathr than inneffective artillery

 

[Shortround6]

During 1940 the Imperial Japanese Army had 41 divisions, 39 of which were operationally deployed to Manchuria and China. Plus a bunch of garrison units scattered across China. 1,000 light howitzers is not enough for a force this size even if none got worn out or destroyed in combat from 1932 onward.

You have said that the Japanese continued making 75mm guns because they couldn't afford to upgrade. They spent the money to design and tool up a production line for a modern 105 howitzer. They built 1000-1100 hundred of them. 105 howitzers and 75mm field guns are very close in cost. In many cases they use the same carriage. If the Japanese had wanted more 105 howitzers instead of 75mm Field guns they could have built them. While the Japanese did build only about 1000 modern 75mm field guns (which was nowhere near enough) they built two different designs which indicates they thought there was a role for the 75mm field gun and didn't keep them because all they could afford were WW I left overs.

 

[parsifal]

a picture of the italian 75/27 in North Africa

http://www.ww2incolor.com/italian-forces/cannon-540144.jpg.html


And her is a link to an article, with photos of the main italian guns used during the war

http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=112&art_id=1019&kb_cat_id=33

Finally here is a link to a page that summarises the main Japanese artillery types for th war

http://www3.plala.or.jp/takihome/artillery.htm

 

[Shortround6]

Getting back to the original topic the German 17cm was probably the best long range gun of the war. Perfect it wasn't but then nobody else had a gun over 155mm that came close to being perfect either.

For long range I am considering guns that had ranges over 20,000yds.

Most countries (if not all) that went bigger than 155 jumped to the 8in category (203-210mm) which put the total weight of the equipment too high to move in a single load and required hours to emplace or get ready for movement. The Americans could supposedly emplace their 8 in gun ( not howitzer) in about 2 hours but that required the services of a 20 ton crane with a clam shell bucket to dig the gun pit. The crane also made assembling the gun much easier than using the winches on the tow vehicles.

Second best was was the American 155mm gun M1. It was faster in and out of action ( but long range guns are supposed to be a number of miles behind the front line) but fired lighter shells 5,000-7,000yds less distance.

No gun that fires shells that weigh over 33-35lbs and ranges more than 20,000yds is going to be much use in deep jungle or rugged mountains without near super human effort or mechanized assistance in building access roads or tracks. This why countries that had to operate in such terrain built special mountain or jungle guns instead of even regular field guns and becaseu of the weight limits imposed by such terrain, usually settled for 12-33lb projectiles and ranges under 10,000yds, in fact usually close to 6-7,000yds.

The Germans had a couple of 15cm designs that could match the American gun for shell weight and range but took a lot more effort to move (two loads) and emplace and pack up. The K 18 also had limited traverse without resorting to a turn table move like the 25pdr used. Harder to do with a 12 1/2 ton gun?

 

[parsifal]

what you are describing really are two categories of guns, each with definitive roles. K18s were Corps level weapons ideally suited to achieving or supporting breakthroughhs, or destroying fortified positions. Thats why they were never attached as divisional field artillery weapons. Field Artillery must necessarily combine firepower and mobility. Range is important, but less so than either of those first two. If your weapon is going to be used in counterbattery fire, you also need good accuracy.

In Jungle or rough terrain, which is about 50% of the time, or in conditions of poor mobility, like snow, or mud, or in desert conditions which decreases the usefulness of heavy guns even further, the issue of mobility becomes even more an essential item. This is something the germans got, but inexplicably did not develop in their artillery park. Americans were just not as attuned to the mobility issue, they always placed far greater importance on firepower, and as a result their otherwise exceelent artillery suffered in its usefulness and application. In particular getting mobility in rough terrain was something the Americans took a long time to appreciate. even as late as first part of Vietnam they were messing about thinking that artillery couldnt operate effectively in rough terrain. Eventually they did get the message, and now put great importance on the mobility of their artillery.

Super heavy artillery is very useful, dont get me wrong, but its application is limited. It really needs a massive logistic tail, and flat terrain to operate in. Because of its logistic needs, it cant really operate as it should anywhere except North america and Western Europe. The last great concentration of German artillery was at Sevastopol, and here it took three months to build up stocks of ammunition for an assault that lasted less than a week.

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[davebender]

IMO the German 17cm wasn't developed to it's full potential. Nor was it produced in large enough numbers (338 total) to have much of an impact. The 1960s era U.S. M107 175mm SP gun shows what the German 17cm gun could have been if mounted on a Panther tank chassis and produced in quantity.

The American 155mm Long Tom equipped 49 artillery battalions (per Wikipedia) during WWII. That should have given us a huge superiority in long range artillery over everyone else.

 

[Shortround6]

Actually I was addressing your concern earlier that the 17cm K 18 was actually a good long range artillery piece.

from your post #6 "An in rough terrain, like a jungle or mountain environment, it was basically useless.

There is no ideal long range artillery piece. The question needs to be refined in order to be satisfactorily answered."

Nobody had a gun that would shoot 20,000 yds or better that was any good in jungle or mountains as I said. Claiming that a design was useless because it wouldn't work in areas it was never designed to work in and that nobody else ever came up with design that would work in those conditions, isn't addressing the original question.
The other thing to remember about heavy artillery (which is not always the same thing as long range artillery) is that is available 24 hours day, 7 days a week in all but the absolute worst weather conditions. Something that certainly could not be said of air support in WW II and even for several decades later.

 

[Shortround6]

IMO the German 17cm wasn't developed to it's full potential. Nor was it produced in large enough numbers (338 total) to have much of an impact. The 1960s era U.S. M107 175mm SP gun shows what the German 17cm gun could have been if mounted on a Panther tank chassis and produced in quantity.

The American 155mm Long Tom equipped 49 artillery battalions (per Wikipedia) during WWII. That should have given us a huge superiority in long range artillery over everyone else.

WHat would you suggest as improvements to the 17cm gun do develop it's full potential?
Heavy artillery is expensive to produce, Nobody ever had as much as they wanted. and quantity of production does not really make up for deficiencies in design. Mounting guns on tracked chassis helps a bit with mobility of the gun but doesn't do much for actual fire power without a lot of tracked ammunition carriers. The Germans didn't have any production capacity to spare for such schemes. They couldn't come up with enough ammunition transport for the SP guns they did have.

 

[davebender]

Mounting guns on tracked chassis helps a bit with mobility of the gun but doesn't do much for actual fire power

IMO the German 17cm artillery piece required no improvements in firepower or range. All it needed was mobility and greater production numbers so every German army corps could have a battalion of them.

I agree that Germany could never afford this under the historical circumstances. From 1939 onward most of the German military budget was consumed in warfighting rather then to procure new equipment and build munitions manufacturing infrastructure.

 

[Shortround6]

"From 1939 onward most of the German military budget was consumed in warfighting rather then to procure new equipment and build munitions manufacturing infrastructure."

Strange, that is not what the production figures you provided in the link you posted show. While the Germans may not invested in as much new manufacturing infrastructure as perhaps they should have they were certainly procuring new equipment.

While the 17cm K18 was perhaps the best long range gun it was, as most long ranged guns are, a specialty weapon. To make use of the range you need targeting information. While the shells are heavier and land with a bigger bang, the extra size and weight of the shells means more transport problems (more vehicles to get the same number of shells.) AND, as with all long range guns, powder consumption was enormous. A full charge with the standard shell used 107.6lbs of powder. and extra 3 lbs with the light weight long range shell. The 15cm K 39 used 63.3lbs of powder for a full range shot while the 21cm Mrs 18 used just 34.25lbs for a full range shot. The 150mm sFH 18 used about 9.9lbs to fire it's 96lb shell 14,490 yds. Now, you can use a lesser charge on the long range guns but the lightest charge on the 17cm gun was 33lbs. This brings us to another fact of life with long range guns, short barrel life. If you use the range and heavy charges you are going to get a barrel life measured in hundreds of rounds instead of the thousands of rounds of the short range guns. If you plan on using 17cm guns as a replacement for some of the shorter ranged guns you better put an addition on the barrel factory to make replacement barrels for the carriages you do have.

Another point is that many artillery pieces have several rates of fire. While they can be fired fairly quickly at times, rapid fire can burn out barrels if used too much. as an example the US 105 howitzer has rates of fire of 8 rpm in the first 1/2 minute (4-5 rounds in 30 seconds) 4rpm for the first 4 minutes. 3rpm for the first 10 minutes and 100 rounds an hour sustained fire. The 105s barrel could last as long as 10,000rounds using low charges and slow fire. In the ETO after D-day a fair number of them needed barrel replacements in under 5,000 rounds. Trying to use a weapon like a 17cm K 18 as a general purpose field piece only bigger creates many more problems than it would ever solve. Worn barrels not only loose velocity and range they loose accuracy and also can actually become dangerous. Worn barrels can lead to shells exploding prematurely in the barrel.

 

[plan_D]

I don't know the answer to this question based on single gun vs. single gun because these are just numbers. From reading their operational experience it seems to me that the U.S. were dominant when using artillery purely down to their large numbers, and isn't this the important point of any artillery 'war'? The single gun is never going to be used, and a mildly inferior weapon in greater numbers is going to be supreme on the real-life battlefield. German accounts of Russian fire from almost undoubtedly their 122mm pieces highlights the overwhelming superiority of Soviet firepower (especially as the war went on) but gun for gun, I'm sure the Soviet equipment was considerably inferior to their German counter-part. (This does not take into account AT pieces, of which the Soviets built very capable weapons). And in the CBI , the British were using their 4.5 inch pieces in the jungle to great effect - it's great to be mobile, but sometimes fire supremacy is the winning card.

 

[Shortround6]

I think that is the trouble with a lot of these comparison threads. They get off track very quickly.

As a "design" the 17cm K 18 was the best "long range gun".
It was not the best heavy artillery design.
It was not the most efficient.
It may not have been the best use of resources.
There were a host of other German guns it could not replace. has lost

But if you needed or wanted a gun that could shoot to over 30,000yds and not be mounted on a railcar it was the about the best that could be done in WW II.

Once you lower the range requirement down to 25,000yds it gets several rivals and if you drop the range requirement down to 19,000-21,000yds it has lost it's reason for being.

No single artillery piece represents a countries artillery. By the end of WW II the British used what they called the "golf bag" approach. Instead of trying to use one or two guns to cover every situation they used a variety of guns and howitzers ( and mortars) , interconnected by extensive radio and field phone networks to bring down the right kind of artillery fire from the right number of tubes for any possible target, Up to and including every piece of ordnance in range if the target warranted it.

I am not claiming the British artillery system was better than any other, only that by the end of the war nations artillery "systems" had evolved considerably from the start of the war and a nations artillery "system' involved not only a variety of guns but doctrine and communication systems. A good artillery system depends on more than just guns, however good or varied they may be.

 

[parsifal]

Actually I was addressing your concern earlier that the 17cm K 18 was actually a good long range artillery piece.

from your post #6 "An in rough terrain, like a jungle or mountain environment, it was basically useless.

There is no ideal long range artillery piece. The question needs to be refined in order to be satisfactorily answered."

Nobody had a gun that would shoot 20,000 yds or better that was any good in jungle or mountains as I said. Claiming that a design was useless because it wouldn't work in areas it was never designed to work in and that nobody else ever came up with design that would work in those conditions, isn't addressing the original question.
The other thing to remember about heavy artillery (which is not always the same thing as long range artillery) is that is available 24 hours day, 7 days a week in all but the absolute worst weather conditions. Something that certainly could not be said of air support in WW II and even for several decades later.

So, are you suggesting that long range , efficient and heavy artillery is not required in all situations. Just because th parameters for long range and heavy in the jungle are measured to a different scalethan that employed on the central european plains, does not mean that such requirements are not important. in 1941-2, the concept of heavy artillery in the jungle only needed to be extended to the Japanese 70mm Infantry Gun, since no-one else had anything bigger than a light mortar that they could take into the jungle. From 1942, there was a race going on in the background that was no less fierce than the gunpower race for open terrain artillery. The point I am maling is that the thinking behind guns like the K-18 is so restrictive, so convoluted, that it is dangerous. it was a mindset that the Americans did not really overcome until well after the war. So it does not surprise that forum memebers from countries where mobility and adaptability of their artillery is not seen as the number one priority would be besotted by the sheer power of such a gun as the K-18. That its usefulness was so restricted, its mobility so limited, its all weather capabilities so dubious, are all explained away and lety go as issues to consider. All that matter s is the size of the shell and how far it can be thrown....that is probabaly a relevant standard for WWI, but we have developed warfare quite a bit since then. These pieces of "siege artillery" (which is basically all they were) were useful, and powerful, but they are not the only types of artillery that can have the term "Heavy" applied to them....it depends on the environment that the guns are operating in.

And inferring that you are "getting the debate back on track" only serves to confirm the narrowness in the theory behind the thinking. I there is no satisfactory definition of "heavy artillery" because the environments that the guns operate dictate what is heavy medium and light.

Note should also be made of the thread title "Best Long Range Artillery Piece". The basis of my argument is that the concept of "Long Range" is relative to the environment that your artillery is working in....just because artillery operating in the Central European Plain can operate at more than 20000 yards with super heavy shells, does not mean that those conditions predetermine what is long range. As I pointed out, in the context of 1942, in the jungle, a 70mm gun with a range of 3000m was "long range" relative to its surroundings and the opposition it faced. The other part of the thread....what is "best" is not necessarily restricted to size of the shell, or how far it can be thrown. These are factors, but they are not the only ones. If the K-18 is useful in say 20% of battlefield situations, but a 25pounder can be used in 90% of situations, and is the "long range" piece of ordinance in say 40% of those situations, which is the better piece of ordinance? certainly the K-18 is the longer ranged, and the heavier gun, but its application is so limited that I would suggest that the 25pounder would be far better as a piece of kit. if i can have 50 25 pounders for every 1 K-18, and i can use the 25 pounder in 70% more situations, and of those twice as many occasions as the long range artillery, which gun deserves the mantle of "best","long range" piece of artillery????

 

[psteel]

We are not discussing the best all round piece of artillery of the war, but the best long range gun. Artillery is often grouped into types based on role and there is a long range gun role. The 25lb doesn't fit into this category. The only criticism was the amount of resource wasted producing the ½ dozen other different designs that straddled heavy and super heavy guns.

 

[parsifal]

PS

I agree, that in the narrow confines of clear terrain, with good lines of communication, such as occur in Central Europe, the concept of LR artillery is that represented by the K-18. But in probably 80% of other terrains (and situations), the K-18 does not represent best LR artillery, because it is unusable in that sort of terrain. And when you stop to think about it, Central Europe is really a tiny proportion of even WWII battlefields. In many, many situations the best LR artillery available was artillery we might refer to as light or mountain, or field, or similar. in those "other situations" the best LR artillery is not "Heavy" artillery at all, its something else. If Dave wants to amend the topic to read "best LR artillery with ranges above 20000m on the Central European Plain, and nowhere else, except maybe North America, in good weather and with good roads and communications" or something similar, then my argument falls away to nothing. But whilst ever the topic remains so broad, we have to consider the best artillery for all conditions, and that inevitably means we have to make allowances for mobility, terrain, weather and the like, and that means, almost straight away that these behemoths you guys are so fond of, become instantly redundant....