Artillery guiding two-seaters

[Olham 164]

I read somewhere, that the artillery was often guided by two-seaters, directly from the air.

Now, they had no radios. So, how did they do it?

Did they use flags? Did they wip with their wings? Does anyone know that?

[RAF_Louvert 101]

Actually Olham they did have radios Sir, first using morse code and later voice coms. And very early in the war they also would fly back and fourth over the lines and drop notes with the gun corrections written on them.

 

BTW, gun ranging was one of the very first uses of the airplane in the Great War. That and recce work.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

Edited August 29, 2009 by RAF_Louvert

[Olham 164]

Thanks for the info. So they even had voice com in the later war?

Was it too large for a fighter craft, that they didn't use it? Or did even fighters have it in the end?

[+Polovski 460]

There were various methods used, including dropping messages, firing flares, and radio later in some craft.

[Hasse Wind 46]

Now wouldn't it be great if the artillery spotting missions in P4 (or P14) were something completely different than what they are now in OFF... instead of flying passively over waypoints, I'd like to actually do something with my bomber/reconnaissance plane. :yes:

[Olham 164]

...like guiding the artillery with red, green and white flares?

Yes, would be a great addition, but since the basic CFS3 is a flight sim, I don't know,

if the artillery could be made to react to your signals.

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

I believe that after a period of trail and error, before the extensive use of wireless, that the favored method was using a signal lantern-- basicaly a big light inside of a box, fitted with a shutter-door so that Morse Code could be used to communicate to the ground.

 

the radios that were used later were pretty heavy-- it was not that uncommon for a flight crew to dispense with the (observer's) machine gun to keep the aircraft's weight manageable.

 

another problem that often happened is that if you had too many machines range-finding in the same area the signals would get overlapped. with the overlapping Morse code it could become impossible to distinguish which plane was directing which battery.

 

rules were put into place some time in 1917 to keep this from happening. balloons were always the preferred method of range-finding. when weather, enemy activity, or terrain made balloon usage impossible then fixed-wing aircraft were employed. aircraft were only allowed to work with one battery at a time-- and there were only so many aircraft allowed to operate in a certain sector at any given time-- to reduce the possibility of over-saturating the radio waves.

 

artillery range-finding missions usually took awhile to do properly. to make matters worse, you couldn't fly much higher than 3,000 ft and have any expectation of accuracy with your observations. the radio couldn't be flown too far away from the target or the signal would be out of range. so arty-spot missions turned you into a bit of a sitting duck. (low and slow, flying in circles)

 

on top of all this, there was a good chance that the enemy had listening stations for their own artillery flyers. if they were to hear the signal of an enemy wireless at work directing artillery-- they might radio/telegraph somebody on their side to send up fighters to intercept. so there was probably some incentive to get accurate fire ASAP-- because the longer it took you to range the target properly you put yourself at greater and greater risk of getting shot down!

[Mike Dora 171]

I read somewhere, that the artillery was often guided by two-seaters, directly from the air.

Now, they had no radios. So, how did they do it?

Did they use flags? Did they wip with their wings? Does anyone know that?

 

 

Hi Olham

 

In fact, as with many other things, the air services in WW1 were a lot more sophisticated than they are often given credit for nowadays. Artillery Observation, or "Art Obs", is a case in point. I recommend <http://www.firstworldwar.com/airwar/observation.htm> for an excellent summary of aerial recce development and practice during the Great War. The following discussion of Art Obs (mainly about RFC practice) is from this site:

 

 

Artillery observation also required a crew of two. It was a complex business. The wireless equipment was too bulky and heavy for planes to carry both a transmitter and a receiver, so the aircraft flew with a transmitter only.

 

A plane would service a particular artillery battery, and before takeoff the battery's target was confirmed. Once in the air the observer had to identify his battery and the target. He would then transmit a message ordering it to fire. He could usually differentiate shells that belonged to his battery by measuring the time from when they had fired till the explosion in the vicinity of the target.

 

From 1915 onwards the corrections, transmitted in Morse, were in the "clock code": a letter was used to indicate the distance from the target (the letters Y, Z, A, B, C, D, E and F representing distances of 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 yards respectively) and a number in the range 1-12 representing the direction from the target (with 12 indicating due north of the target, and 6 representing due south of the target).

 

The RFC pioneered successful artillery spotting at the Battle of the Aisne. A feature of this battle, which was quite typical of the entire Western Front, was that the Germans occupied higher ground. After the first two days the German gun positions were never visible to the British, being hidden behind the Chemin des Dames ridge. The daily reconnaissance and observation flights were an absolute necessity for the British gun batteries.

 

As in reconnaissance flights, artillery observation required the planes to fly steady, predictable routes. In addition to anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters, observation aircraft suffered a third danger, and this was from the artillery shells themselves. They typically flew at an altitude similar to the apex of the artillery shell's flight, and they flew along a line between the guns and their targets.

 

It was not unusual for the pilot or observer to actually see the shell as it stopped at the top of its climb before plummeting downward. It was not unknown for the planes to be hit by those shells.

 

Artillery observation became so important that part of Falkenhayn's strategy at Verdun was to blind the French artillery by knocking out their observation planes and balloons. At the time the Germans had control of the air, and the losses suffered by the observation aircraft were appalling.

 

Nevertheless they continued flying and the French artillery was not blinded. The bravery of the airmen in fulfilling this dangerous and unglamorous work is seldom remarked.

 

 

What this doesn't tell, is that typical British practice was for the pilot to make the observations, and tap out corrections to the battery using his Morse key. The gunner kept watch on the sky, not the ground, on the lookout for hostile ac. The spotting ac flew a figure-of-eight pattern between the target and the battery (which could be 10 miles apart for heavy field artillery, or even more for the big railway guns), with the latter signalling to the crew using a system of cloth panels laid out on the ground. The ac radio set used a long trailing aerial wound down beneath the ac, with a heavy weight at the end to keep it in position. It could be rather embarrassing if the gunner forgot to wind this in before landing!

 

Finally, although I have no details to hand, I believe that in late 1918 the RAF was experimenting with ac-to-ac voice radio communication (using Bristol Fighters I think). As I said, things were a lot more sophisticated than people often believe now - for example check out this reference to a WW1 German wire-guided air-launched missile! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_torpedo_glider>

 

Mike

[Waldemar Kurtz 1]

apparently the Germans, during the battle of the Somme, "had gained unquestionable superiority, to which the success of his infantry at the beginning of the Somme battle was due."

 

this is a paraphrase of "The War in the Air" volume 2 (H. A. Jones) page 468

 

"laid special stress upon the fact that ranging for the guns firing on targets lying beyond the possible ranges of observation from the ground and balloons was distinctly a duty for artillery airmen, as was also observation of barrage and destruction fire"

 

"wireless was the means of communication between the ground and the aircraft. up to the battle of the Somme reception in aircraft had proved impossible, the firing battery communicating with the airmen by laying out sheets on the ground according to a code"

 

"the experience gained on the Somme caused experiments with wireless-telegraphy reception in aeroplanes to be pursued with increasing activity. in October 1916 the Germans were ablt to state that the experiments to find a means of receiving, as well as transmitting, W/T signals from and to the ground, and also from and to other aeroplanes, had proved that the aircraft sets were perfectly suitable for service use. in the winter of 1916-17 the artillery aeroplanes were equipped with W/T sets for transmission and reception, whereby the efficiency of these units very considerably increased"

so the Germans had realized that they needed to be thrifty with their artillery cooperation planes. the fact that they specifically point out to their troops that aircraft should only be used when ground or balloon observation is inadequate is significant. this means that they're exposing fewer aircraft to danger-- this was also the spring of 1916 where the French and British were introducing the Nieuport 11, 16, and 17 into front-line combat. and the Airco D.H.2 and F.E.2b were formidable adversaries in their own right. so it makes sense that any potentiall frivolous or unnecesary deployment of aircraft for range-finding was to be avoided.

 

"The War in the Air" is a very solid reference book--but I haven't had any luck in finding out more about the German wireless for sending and receiving signals.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

Waldemar Kurtz,

 

Raleigh and Jones' "The War in the Air" is no doubt one of the definitive works on the subject. I know I've referred to my set often over the years. And, if you look on page 229 of Volume 1 you will find that in June of 1914 Lieutenants D.S. Lewis and B.T. James each flew in B.E. aircraft equipt with both sending and receiving wireless apparatus. They flew about ten miles apart, from Netheravon to Bournemouth, and were able to keep in close communication with each other the entire way. You will note that this was before the outbreak of the War. In fact, the first transmitting apparatus for use in aircraft was invented in 1912 by M. Lucien Rouzet.

 

As to German war development in this area, I found this in Wikipedia:

 

In late 1916, the Halberstadt D.II was the first known aerial platform for an official trial, with a special unit named the FT-Versuchsabteilung (Radio Telegraphy Experimental Detachment), with the "FT" possibly meaning Funk-Telegraphie, of in-flight communications using early radio communications (via Morse Code) in directing fighter aircraft. IdFlieg sactioned the test, which resulted in the creation of a radio-telegraphy transceiver for the flight leader's aircraft, weighing 25-30 kg (55-60 lb) along with the battery, aircraft engine-driven generator and aerial setup. Receiving-only gear for the other aircraft in a combat formation was similarly devised, with the radio receiver itself weighing 12.5-15 kg (27.5-33 lb). By early 1917, the FT-Versuchsabteilung was making its first combat trials with the radio gear with Halberstadt D.III and D.V aircraft, and by late September 1917 in concert with the famous Jagdgeschwader I unit commanded by Manfred von Richthofen, especially its Jasta 4 unit. Later trials, using the more advanced Albatros D.III and Albatros D.Va fighters involved using the gear to effect what could be considered the first attempts at an air-based version of ground-controlled interception of Allied bomber aircraft, using visual ground spotters as the ground component, by the home defense Kampfeinsitzerstaffel units within Germany's territory.

 

As Mike Dora noted in his post, they were far more sophisticated back then than we give them credit for.

 

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

[Olham 164]

Indeed, Lou, they where!

Even without historical knowledge, simply from flying OFF, you must realise the immense step,

aviation made in only four years of war - from a kite like the Eindecker to powerful aircraft like

the SPAD XIII or the DVIII.

Thank you all again - a lot of detail knowledge around here.