Why German Infantry Said US Artillery Was Impossible To Survive

In the summer of nineteen forty four, on a small French hilltop above the town of Mortain, two American lieutenants and a nineteen year old corporal from Texas held off elements of three German panzer divisions for five days with nothing more than a radio, a map, and a list of pre calculated grid coordinates. By the time they walked down the hill, the southern arm of Hitler's Operation Lüttich had collapsed, and German officers up and down the Western Front had begun reporting the same impossible observation in their after action records. American artillery, they wrote, was unlike anything they had ever encountered, including the massed Soviet barrages they had survived in Russia. There was no warning. There was no time to take cover. There was no protection that worked. This investigation traces how the United States Army quietly built the most advanced field artillery system in the world during the lean budget years at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in the late nineteen twenties and early nineteen thirties, and how that system, in the hands of ordinary American teenagers and young men with radios, broke the back of the Wehrmacht in the final year of the Second World War. From Major Carlos Brewer's quiet revolution in fire direction, to the legendary defense of Hill three fourteen by Lieutenant Robert Weiss and Corporal Frank Denius of the Two Hundred and Thirtieth Field Artillery Battalion, to the introduction of the variable time fuse during the Battle of the Bulge and General Patton's famous letter calling it the weapon that won the campaign, this is the story of how the men with slide rules in Oklahoma built a system that the men with the most professional army in Europe could neither match nor escape. Featured topics include the Fire Direction Center, Time on Target fire missions, the M1 105mm howitzer, the Battle of Mortain, Operation Lüttich, the Hürtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, the defense of Bastogne, the Panzer Lehr Division at Operation Cobra, and the postwar testimony preserved in the United States Army's Foreign Military Studies project. If you are interested in the real history of American artillery in World War Two, the men who served in it, and the doctrine that made it the most lethal branch of the United States Army in the European theater, this is the full story. Sources : The Army Historical Foundation, "U.S. and German Field Artillery in World War II: A Comparison" https://armyhistory.org/u-s-and-germa... National WWII Museum, "The 30th Infantry Division's Heroic Stand at Mortain, August 1944" https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war..., "Hallowed Ground: Hill 314, Mortain, France" https://www.historynet.com/hallowed-g... History Network, "Desperate Days On Hill 314" https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/art... History Network, "Operation Lüttich: Hitler's Bold Attack at Mortain" https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/art... History Network, "The Proximity Fuse: How the Gunner's Dream Finally Became Realized" https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/art... History Network, "Operation Cobra: Normandy Breakout" https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/art..., "The Allies' Billion-dollar Secret: The Proximity Fuze of World War II" https://historynet.com/proximity-fuze..., "World War II: 463rd Parachute Field Artillery Battalion in the Battle of Bastogne" https://www.historynet.com/world-war-.... Naval Institute, "Tiny Miracle, The Proximity Fuze," Naval History Magazine https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-... States Army Field Artillery School, Fort Sill official history https://sill-www.army.mil/usafas/Battle of the Bulge Association, "Proximity Fuse Use Prior to the Bulge" https://battleofthebulge.org/2013/10/... Eisenhower Foundation, "Frank Denius" http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.net/i... Weiss, "Fire Mission! The Siege at Mortain, Normandy, August 1944," Burd Street Press, revised edition 2002Memorial chapel and battlefield site, Hill three fourteen, Mortain, France