FIELD ARTILLERY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1939, Page 19

FIELD ARTILLERY

A NEW WARFARE

CONTRAST WITH OLD WAYS

HEAVY AND ACCURATE

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(By Air Mail, from "The Post's" London Representative.) LONDON, November 3. Weapons of modern warfare have greatly improved since 1918 both in deadliness and.accuracy, and, in common with other sections of the British Army, great strides have been made by the field branch of the Royal Artillery. The ranges of both guns and shell fire are much greater than in the last war and they are much more precise. It is, of course, an established fact that there is an "error" in each gun, that is to say, that if it is aimed to throw a shell 3000 yards, the first will carry that exact distance, but the subsequent shells may be 20 or 30 yards further on or behind that mark. This "error" has been greatly reduced in the latest guns. One og the biggest developments in field artillery in the post-Great War years has been the more general use of "predicted shooting." . This takes into account atrrfbspheric conditions, the presence or absence of wind, and the temperature—all factors which influence accurate shooting. is what is known as "survey" shooting, Briefly, and speaking in non-technical language, this means that if one of a group of guns registers a target, all the other guns can fire directly, at that target without having observed it. This is done by all guns in the group knowing their exact relative positions so that when one finds a target the others can work out their range by a system of mathematical calculations in which the right-angled triangle of schoolboy fame plays a prominent part. THE GUN-HOWITZER. One. of Britain's latest weapons is the gun-howitzer, which, as its name implies, fires both a long range and high range shell, weighing 251b, which in military circles is regarded as being "fairly heavy." It is a great improvement on the eighteen-pounder, and is regarded as something in the nature of a "maid of all work," having become the main field artillery weapon. Another interesting point is that the use of the shrapnel shell is dying out. This is a shell which, when exploded in the air by a time fuse, sends splinters in every direction. Gunners have found some trouble in setting the time fuses, which tended to go' off too soon or too late. Shrapnel is being replaced by a shell which explodes instantaneously on striking the ground, the splinters radiating laterally. There is also a greater use of a shell with a delayed fuse. It is employed chiefly in demolishing buildings or set positions, and its efficiency lies in the fact that it buries itself in the objective before exploding. There has also been an improvement in the use of smoke shells, which can provide a useful screen for infantry. The old type of shell tended to send up a pillar of smoke instead of forming a cloud which hung low to the ground. The latest type of smoke shell bursts in the air and drops three canisters which explode on the. ground and form a^m-dch more 'efficient smoke screen. LOCATING ENEMY BATTERIES. * Another development has been the more extended use of "flash spotting" | for detecting enemy batteries. This is the observation of the flashes from the enemy guns and the deduction of their position by angles. An ingenious sound range has also been developed which j is similar in construction to a seismo- j graph, by which the vibration of earthquakes is measured. With the aid of i these sound ranges the exact distance of and location of an enemy battery i can be worked out to within 10 or 20 | yards. One of the greatest developments! since the last war has been the; mechanisation of the field artillery. Itj has brought both advantages and disadvantages, but the advantages are much more numerous. If for no other reason, increasing mechanisation has become the rule because the world's horse population is nowhere near as great as it was in 1914. The most obvious advantage of motor-drawn artillery is the fact that a heavier gun, which fires a much heavier shell, can be drawn, while ranges in some cases have been almost doubled; the field artillery is no longer limited to a journey of about 20 miles a day. STILL. A PLACE FOR HORSES. On the other hand, lighter horsedrawn artillery can take up positions impossible to the mechanised units. In Poland it was found that the German horse artillery, aided by men hauling on ropes, was able to get into positions regarded as almost impossible. Again, mechanised units are very dependent on bridges, and petrol is an all-import-ant item. Horse-drawn artillery, when hard pressed, can always graze the animals on the surrounding countryside; an empty petrol tank cannot be so easily satisfied. Wireless is being used most efficiently for observation. Gunners often have great difficulty in observing the effect of their artillery in flat country, while poor visibility is another impediment. Wireless equipped observers can assist greatly in overcoming both these problems, although one of the lessons j of the Polish campaign was that the enemy could take a bearing on headquarters with the aid of wireless direction-finding equipment. In view of these various developments it is obvious that the gunners' job is becoming more and more complicated, and every year the demand is for men with a higher standard of intelligence.

'received from the experience and practical knowledge of Lord Camrose. SIR E. GRIGG REPLIES. Sir Edward Grigg, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Information, said that the debate gave sufficient evidence that whatever war regulations had done to the liberties of the country they had not restricted the liberties of the House. ■ ,<.„ "I am not going to speak tonight, he continued, "as a penitent in a white sheet for the Ministry or for the staff of the Ministry which I represent. Much of the criticism has been salutary and sound and much of it, I think, is deserved, but I entered this Ministry as an absolutely independent person and I think I have better opportunities of judging its organisation and personnel than anybody else in this House. I am satisfied that this Ministry is necessary and in the main rightly concerned." It contained the right type of men. It was possible to alter and revise the I personnel where it was unsuitable for the task, but he hoped that criticism of the personnel would not be repeated in the House. He hoped all criticism would be directed in future at the responsible Ministers and not at those Who were merely subordinates andj

2.45 p.nu.