Why German Gun Crews Learned to Fire Once and Run From American Artillery

#military history #wwii #ww2history Why German Gun Crews Learned to Fire Once and Run From American Artillery July, nineteen forty-four. The slope below Hill one ninety-two, in the hedgerow country east of Saint-Lô. In this video: A German gun crew east of Saint-Lo fires four rounds and starts a displacement drill that kept them alive in Poland, France and Russia. Four minutes later the entire sector lands on them at once, with no ranging rounds and no warning. They never work out how. The German artillery arm was not backward. The guns were superbly engineered, the crews rigorously trained, and the doctrine was intelligent. They were good, and it did not save them, and that is what makes the story worth telling. The real answer was not a better gun or even weight of shell. It was a Fire Direction Center worked out at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in the 1930s by Major Carlos Brewer and Major Orlando Ward, with a firing chart, a survey, a base point and a slide rule. Time on Target was British, not American, invented in North Africa in 1941 with BBC time signals. What the Americans built was the machine that made it routine, and American counter-battery took three to six minutes, not seconds. Both corrections are in the script. At Hill 192 on 11 July 1944, eight artillery battalions from three divisions plus corps fired one coordinated plan and a rolling barrage the 2nd Division used only once in eleven months. The Germans were fighting an American switchboard, not American guns. Get the American counter-battery fire in Northwest Europe Quick Facts PDF: [link to site] Explore more American Ingenuity the Enemy Could Not Explain: [playlist link] Like and subscribe for more history. Tell us what to cover next below. #ww2 #worldwar2 #artillery #counterbattery #normandy #saintlo #fortsill #timeontarget #firedirectioncenter #usarmy #militaryhistory #wwiihistory