Interesting, I’d not heard of that before, though it sounds feasible. Do you have a link or titles for those studies? I’d be interested in looking at them. The psychological impact of cluster munitions is also something I’d not heard before. I had thought the reason for their introduction was to make sure a damaging or lethal impact could be spread out over a wider area for the same amount of explosive. Sort of the same logic behind MIRVing an ICBM payload rather than relying on One Big Boom. But I hadn’t heard before that just increasing the number of explosions had an effectiveness all by itself. Ignorance fought.
General Seigfried Westphal described Allied naval gunfire as being the worst suffering the German soldiers had to endure at Salerno.
Apparently battleship gunfire from the British & Americans off Normandy repeatedly broke up German armored forces assembling to launch counterattacks. I’m sure some Japanese commanders, if they survived, would have said something similar to Westphal’s statement.
Both in WW2 and WW1 artillery was a victim of being overhyped. In both wars (possibly for very good morale reasons) there was a tendency to tell attacking troops that the pre-assault artillery was so intense that “nothing would be left alive”
Needless to say plenty of were enemy troops were left alive by the bombardments of both wars, so there is a tendency to consider them as failures. But in both wars (particularly by the end of the war) artillery was very effective and had a very real effect on the ability of German and Japanese troops to react to the assaults in question.
Not beating on you again but we’ve had this discussion before in other threads. Optimum range for artillery shells comes at an elevation of around 56 degrees. A 155mm shell spends a looooong time in the air. The first shell of a fire support mission is fired then everyone waits around for 2 - 3 minutes for a result and corrections.
Air temperature, altitude at the gun site and target, and winds aloft all come into play.
Earlier naval rifles like on the Texas didn’t have the elevation capability of later battleships. Hit probabilities and spotting were dramatically lower at long range with maneuvering targets. The later ships had improved fire control and better observation capabilities so increased range through elevation had higher accuracy. Also don’t discount the mechanical engineering required for fitting a higher elevating gun in a turret.
- It’s not 45 deg typically in the atmosphere only in a vacuum, true. However it’s not any other particular number either in the real atmosphere. It all depends on the gun and its projectiles, even besides atmospheric variation.
For relatively smaller guns, where the surface area and thus drag of the projectile is relatively greater compared to the shell’s weight, firing above 45 deg dissipates too much energy on the longer trajectory through denser lower altitude air to ‘profit’ from the reduction in resistance in less dense air further up.
Also for a given caliber a higher muzzle velocity or lower sectional area (longer) shells will tend to increase that angle. That’s why the firing angle of the ‘Paris Gun’ was so high (slightly over 55 deg): very high muzzle velocity. Features like rocket assist or ‘base bleed’ in modern 155mm artillery shells also increase the angle for more normal muzzle velocities.
See this booklet of abridged firing tables of USN WWII guns. The relatively low velocity 3"/23 (a WWI era gun still used on some vessels) had an elevation for max range of only 42 deg-30’. The 5"/38 (standard main armament of destroyers among other types and secondary on cruisers and BB’s) had an elevation for max range of 43 deg-18’ firing the typical ‘AA Common’ shell. The longer barrel 5"/54 (used in ships under construction late in WWII in manually loaded version, better known as postwar gun in automatic mounts) 47 deg 24’, because of higher mv and a longer, heavier shell of the same diameter. For the 6"/47 (main armament of light cruisers) it was 47deg-29’. It’s not given for larger caliber guns because no naval mounts of the time for those allowed elevation past 45 deg*, while the ones quoted had at least some mounts which did.
*some US Army coast defense mounts did, and sometimes max range for those is also quoted in the high 40’s.
- But yes for unmodified USN pre-Washington Treaty battleships like New York and Texas the mounts only allowed 15 deg elevation though that still gave a range of ~21km, considered more than adequate in view of their main role of fighting other battleships at the expected battle ranges when they were designed. Subsequent USN ‘old BB’s’ had their elevations increased to 30 degrees prior to WWII (some published references say NY/TX did too but obviously TX is still around and it’s not true of her guns). The new generation US battleships of the 30’s (NC>IA classes) had main battery max elevation of 45 deg. As above, those guns could have fired slightly further if the mounts allowed it.
Funny, that video appears to be edited to imply something that didn’t happen. First, there is a shot of six rockets being launched and then they cut to a target and you see, what appears to be, two direct hits. No nearby misses or explosions from the remaining four rockets. The P-47 (or whatever that is) does show launch to impact but you have no idea if any particular target was hit. I call BS.
HMS Belfast, a WW1 battleship currently moored in the River Thames has 6" guns firing 112-pound shells. At 45 degrees of elevation, these shells would comfortably reach target over 18½ kilometres away.
Yes, that video shows planes firing rockets, and then it shows tanks getting blown up. It does not show planes destroying tanks by firing rockets at them.
The Japanese conducted at least on very successful bombardment. They used two old battlecruisers to bombard the only airfield on Guadalcanal. This destroyed most of the American planes and Avgas, which allowed the Japanese to ship troops to Guadalcanal the next day.
Related story that I find amusing:
The morning after the bombardment, US reconnaissance from Guadalcanal spots the 10 Japanese ships heading their way. The commander of the airfield is desperate get the remaining dive bombers in the air, to stop the ships. But the fuel dump had been blown up. Eventually he remembered his secret gasoline stash. For months, he’d been ‘padding’ his fuel expenditure reports, so the Navy would send him more gas than was being used. He’d ordered the extra barrels to be hidden in the jungle, in case of emergencies. The gas was retrieved, and some of the planes were able to sortie.
It is a propaganda film. It makes the USA look powerful and cool to reassure the folks back home.
Another element in the effectiveness of preparatory bombardment that seems to be seldom focused on is the timing of the infantry assault following the bombardment. A persistent problem in World War One (possibly because radio communication was barely in use) was plans that contained a significant gap in time between the bombardment stopping and the infantry moving forward, to prevent “friendly” fire. The problem is the enemy always seemed to recover quickly and get machine gunners ready again before the infantry moved in. The problem persisted well into WWII. Part of the effort to break out of the post- D-Day positions (Operation Cobra) involved a massive air bombardment by strategic bombers used directly against frontline troops. This bombardment has been described as turning the German positions into “the surface of the moon” and flipping tanks upside-down. But the stunned Germans recovered quickly while the Americans tragically waited before moving to the attack, largely wasting the spectacular effect of the bombing.
One instance of very effective naval bombardment combined with better timing of the assault was Operation Archery, a British commando raid in Norway. The small island of Maaloy, described as “less than 500 metres by 200 metres” in area, was the site of 4 coastal defense guns, and associated ammunition and troops. The Royal Navy brought HMS Kenya, sporting 12 six-inch naval rifles, and four destroyers. The bombardment, delivered at close range by surprise, dumped 500 shells into the small area in ten minutes.
The results (from my link above):
Just stopping by to say this is a relatively short thread that somehow is both one of the most hijacked–I lost count of the sub-threads–and coherent I’ve ever seen.
There were plenty of effective naval bombardments. The answer to the original old question 'WWII Did Allied naval bombardments EVER do anything?" is obviously yes. Depending on a variety of factors, so IMO it creates too many more tangents to expand it to either artillery fire in general or further to aerial bombardment, as in use of strategic bombers for tactical battlefield bombardment.
Anyway one common factor illustrated in the Archery operation and many others was the difficulty in assessing exact results against enemy shore batteries. However if they were rendered ineffective for the required duration, the mission was accomplished.
So in that case per the German war diary the Kulen battery, of 4 M1897 75mm (‘French 75’ field guns) captured from Belgium, just across from Måløy at the harbor entrance, was wiped out by an aerial bomb hit. That could be mistaken, but it’s obscure. Also the Germans at Måløy were completely surprised at first (though their infantry bounced back to give a good account of themselves, as they usually did), the guns were not manned. The other battery in the area MKB Nordfjord on Rugsundøy island east of the landings, had at the time two 13cm M1915’s from the Russian battleship Imperator Aleksandr III. It fired only 35 rounds but two hit Kenya plus a damaging near miss. The battery area was surrounded by 150-180 shell holes from British guns and bombs but accounts differ as to whether either of the guns was damaged, as opposed to one being put out of action by technical fault. RAF a/c also bombed the battery. A few casualties were suffered at the battery. The British naturally thought they’d destroyed it, because it stopped firing. And the battery failed to prevent the landing or cause serious damage to the British ships.
This small vignette again was pretty typical. WWII Coastal guns heavily outweighed in weight of fire by opposing warships and supporting a/c could often be suppressed, forced to stop firing. This happened to a number of French batteries in Morocco during the US landings there and other cases of German batteries, cases where both sides’ accounts are well known (Japanese accounts of their coastal gunnery are harder to come by). Actually destroying them was a lot more difficult, dispersed gun batteries were far smaller and less obvious targets than ships. But it was not unheard of.
Cool link, thanks for posting it.
Also, Belfast is a WW2 cruiser, not a battleship.
What would they be shooting at with the guns elevated -5 degrees?
Depressing the guns was done for cleaning them. A crew would stand on the deck in front of the turret, and run a humongous Q-tip in and out of the barrels.
Since this thread has been resurrected, I’ll drop in the comment that they were putting rockets on biplanes as early as 1916. (Just not for ground attack.)
Also, if the ship has been hit and is listing it can continue to fire at a range of somewhat suitable angles until …
Again, as this thread has been reopened 
may be worth pointing to thisrecent article on the Gallipoli from Gary Sheffield. It is primarily about British and ANZAC soldiers’ experience but he has this to say about the reasons for failure:
My grandfather flew Tempests and once destroyed a train by rocket attack.
(A few weeks later another train returned the favor with antiaircraft fire. He made it back eventually, but his Tempest didn’t.)