artillery

[barrett.t]

Please what's a battery of artillery

[Tom Houlihan]

It varied, but generally a battery would be 4 guns of the same size. Normally 3-4 batteries per regiment.

That help?

[vitara]

why ar the artillery never in a streight line they seem to be off set
like on a angle when fireing
cheers krieg

[MAGNA]

I take it you mean not lined up like cannons used to be. The simple answer - aircraft and return battery fire. Aircraft would have a field day with a straight line of guns, come in from the side and keep firing all the way along. More or less the same as why trenches had angles in them - hard to fire all the way along from the flank.

[TRDG]

Plus it sticks out less if anyone is watching the area for just that thing for a counter-battery fire mission!!

Cheers

Tom

[Vet]

In Desert storm it was eight guns. Thought I'd throw that out there because I was unaware it was once just four guns.

[DocCasualty]

I think it had to do with the size of the pieces in WWII. 155mm Howitzers were four per battery. 105mm Howitzers were six per battery. I don't know about other size pieces, but these are numbers I have run across for these two.

[Vet]

You guys know a lot. I'll learn a lot here.

[jwarrenclarke]

I am reading "A Blood-Dimmed Ride" now, a book about the Battle of the Bulge. This books talks about 105 mm howitzers batteries with 4 howitzers per battery. When I was in the field artillery in the sixties the 105mm and 155mm howitzers batteries had 6 pieces while the 8" howitzers batteries had 4 pieces and I believe that at time the 280mm atomic cannon had 2 guns per battery.

Jim C.

[Vet]

I am reading "A Blood-Dimmed Ride" now, a book about the Battle of the Bulge. This books talks about 105 mm howitzers batteries with 4 howitzers per battery. When I was in the field artillery in the sixties the 105mm and 155mm howitzers batteries had 6 pieces while the 8" howitzers batteries had 4 pieces and I believe that at time the 280mm atomic cannon had 2 guns per battery.

Jim C.

I was on the M-109 155mm self propelled in Desert Storm and we had eight. We fired 10,000s of rounds and traveled very closely with the Abrams tanks. I saw one taken out just forty yards away from me when we refueled. We destroyed some T-55s from several miles away and tried to take one back to our base in Germany as a trophy but things didn't work out.