7th
Medium Regiment, 12th Battery,
"A" Troop, fire on Germans
with 5.5 inch guns, Bretteville-Le-Rabet,
Normandy, 16 August 1944. |
| Photo
by Donald I. Grant. Department
of National Defence / National
Archives of Canada, PA-169331. |
|
By 1942 British and Canadian
artillery regiments came to be organized in
three eight-gun batteries, each composed of
two four-gun troops. Each regiment was affiliated
with, for example, an infantry brigade, with
the regimental commander attached to brigade
headquarters. Battery commanders, in turn,
worked from battalion headquarters. Troop
commanders manned the forward observation
posts, in close contact with the infantry
in the field, while the guns themselves were
commanded by subalterns. The dispersion of
artillery officers was made possible, of course,
by the development of reliable wireless communications,
which allowed a commander to work in close
liaison with his infantry counterparts at
battalion or brigade headquarters and still
remain in contact with "his" guns.
Canadian infantry and armoured divisions in
Northwest Europe typically included three
regiments of 25-pounder field artillery (two
for armoured divisions), one anti-tank regiment,
and one light anti-aircraft regiment, all
under the Commander, Royal Artillery (CRA).
The heavy artillery was organized into Army
Groups, Royal Artillery (AGRA) under the Commander,
Corps Royal Artillery (CCRA) at army or corps
headquarters. Each AGRA comprised, typically,
one heavy regiment of 7.2- or 8-inch howitzers
or 155-mm guns, three medium regiments of
4.5- or 5.5-inch guns, and one or two regiments
of 25-pdrs. AGRAs were employed for additional
support, and especially counter-battery fire
against enemy guns. Techniques for detecting
enemy guns included air observation, flash-spotting,
in which special observers were trained to
detect the flash of guns firing from concealed
positions, and sound ranging, where a series
of microphones were laid out at various ranges
to pick up the noise produced by enemy guns
firing. Analysis of the recordings allowed
bearings to be plotted that were, on average,
accurate to within 50 metres. Then-Lieutenant-Colonel
A.G.L.
McNaughton had influenced
the development of the sound-ranging procedure
as counter-battery officer for the Canadian
Corps during the First World War, achieving
effective results at Vimy Ridge and in later
battles.
 Observation
Post, "B" Battery, Royal
Canadian Artillery, in Potenza,
Italy, 24 September 1943. From
left to right, Gunner Chuck Drickerson
(rangefinder), Signalman Jim Tully
(telephone), Regimental Sergeant-Major
George Gilpin (plotting board),
Captain G.E. Baxter (field glasses),
and Signalman Hugh Graham (radio).
|
| Photo
by Alexander M. Stirton. Department
of National Defence / National
Archives of Canada, PA-177156. |
|
The chief principle of the Royal
Artillery, and thus the Royal Canadian Artillery,
was centralisation of control. Rather than
allotting small groups of guns-"penny
packets"-to individual units for support,
command was to be "centralised under
the highest commander who can exercise control"
(Field Service Regulations Volume
II, 1935, quoted in Shelford Bidwell and
Dominick Graham, Fire-Power: British
Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904-1945,
1982, p. 248). This principle, along with
the practice of affiliation with the units
being supported described above, allowed
the RA to bring devastating concentrations
of fire to bear within minutes when forward
observation officers (FOOs) called for a
"Mike", "Uncle", or
"Victor" target-the concentration
of all guns of the regiment, division, or
all guns within range on a single target,
respectively. One such impromptu request
for support in Italy early in 1944 was answered
by 600 guns within 35 minutes.
|
Canada in WWII
