A note on military history

[fpb]

It is often said that the armies and the generals in World War One were not prepared for the effect of then-modern technology on warfare - that is, the way it made defence prevail over offence and turn the war into a long and bloody slogging match. And I do not say that is wrong. But that really reflects on the ability of humans to extrapolate

Comments

[ihuitl]

I realize this is coming in late, but these are all good points and I would like to add one thing if you will permit and entertain my attempt. I'm partially channeling Keegan at this point, since I read his book on WWI not too long ago.

One of the other issues facing a war of maneuver on the eve of WWI was the lack of proper communication advances. The academics envisioned artillery and infantry in close coordination, with the former supporting the rapid advances of the latter, and most importantly keeping up with them. The problem is, beyond light direct fire field pieces, heavy artillery of the time needed timely correction from forward observers. Wireless for ground use was too large and unwieldy to be utilized by forward units at the time (to say nothing of powering them), so all distance communication was by wired sets, the wires of which which proved vulnerable to enemy artillery and other battlefield factors. As a result, the rapid and timely correction of the fall of shot, and the radio infrastructure to keep up with infantry advances, was nonexistent.

Not only did this delay reports from the front to the headquarters, and orders in the other direction, but it also lead to artillery being used most effectively with pre-designated firing points: namely the enemy trenches and positions for preparing infantry assaults, or else defensive fights. In the end, this seems to have restricted the most powerful and casualty producing weapons to a defensive role, with a limited offensive one that could not sustain its gains easily. Hence, a war of maneuver turned into a war of attrition.

[fpb]

My posts, even those posted six years ago, are always open to comment, especially if intelligent and well informed. Yours is both. I did not quite realize that the massive growth in artillery production due to the industrial revolution was not answered by a similar growth in communication and control technology, so that the guns could only be used in simple and obvious ways, like two dim-witted giants just battering at each other with bigger and bigger clubs. I can tell you that as late as my military service - in the eighties! - I was trained to lay cables and work cable-based field telephones, and that Jack Kirby, who was sent as a scout because he could draw and make useful images of the ground ahead, was often issued with a huge roll of cable to lay phone lines as he went - this was in France in 1944. Practically yesterday.
On the other hand, I once read a story that showed that under certain circumstances things could be managed more precisely. During WWI, some Italian units were being battered by an Austrian battery they could not locate. Someone had the bright idea of summoning an officer whose name was, I think, Leone. Captain Leone said: "I have seen exactly where that last shot came from, and if you give me a few minutes I'll tell you how to aim your guns." He got out a pencil stub and some sheets of paper and started making calculations; then he handed over the result of the calculations to the battery commander, saying: "aim your guns as these figures specify". Within a few minutes the troublesome Austrians had been silenced. Captain Leone had been a great mathematics professor in one of Italy's leading universities before the war. So perhaps if every regiment had been issued one mathematical genius, the war might have been shorter. 8-)

[ihuitl]

Counter battery fire such as CPT Leone's case was easier because the proximity of the spotter to the guns (i.e. more or less embedded with the unit) allowed the gunners to correct their shot immediately, especially if you had someone who could estimate the enemy position with such precision. (The Austo-Italian front is, sadly, often glossed over for many learning about WWI...the western front with its trench warfare garners most of the study).

The main issue where communications came into play with artillery spotting, was in having the forward observer accompanying the attacking infantry relaying the correction calculations to the heavy artillery units further back. This was symptomatic of the problem of long range communication in general along the front and the delays with getting it to the rear - artillery or general staff. In the absence of wires cut by battle or effective wireless radio, pigeons and runners were still the order of the day.