This led to the desire and the development of a technique to have maximum possible impact immediately, and the complex arithmetic and coordinated firing of many artillery pieces in many different locations such that all their shells will arrive on the designated target at exactly the same time. After which point all the soft targets are either dead, left the area, or have taken hard cover, and there is little point in a long barrage after that point other than wasting ammunition. American military strategists observed that virtually all of the casualties of an artillery strike occur in the first second or two of the strike. In part he commented “an observation plane directed the fire of numerous batteries on all worthwhile targets throughout the zone.” See article comparing US and Wehrmacht artillery.Īnother important example is the unique American artillery innovation is of the Time on Target (TOT) fire. Rommel was very impressed with the devastating impact of American artillery even early in the US' involvement in the war when these innovations were recent "In an 18 February 1943 letter to his wife, he described the fighting in and around what American historians have called the Battle of Kasserine Pass. With the US forces the focus on logistics and relaying target communications meant a smaller number of tubes were far more active with plentiful ammunition, and could be continuously active against tactical targets rather than employed in massed pre-planned fires as other armies were doing. Especially ammunition and communications, allowing very timely fires upon request and abundant usage of artillery even if their actual number of tubes was not as great as the USSR's absurd deployment of hundreds of thousands of artillery pieces, as many as 300 guns per kilometer of front. In contrast with the Soviet approach of simply building higher caliber guns, the American approach was to employ massive resources in the support systems for the artillery. The United States in WW2 was in fact notable for its prolific, accurate, and timely use of artillery compared to all other armed forces in the world at the time. It is ridiculous that the US as currently designed has absolutely no artillery.
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