● ● ●
The artillery had always been
considered the elite branch of the Russian army and this
tradition persisted into the Soviet era. In 1941 the Red
Army possessed a powerful artillery arm, with guns and howitzers
of excellent design and impressive performance. The
1939
Rifle Division had two field artillery regiments with 24 x
76.2mm light field guns, 36 x 122mm light field howitzers
and 12 x 152mm howitzers, compared with 36 x 105mm light
field howitzers and 12 x 150mm medium field howitzers in the
field artillery regiment of the
German 1939 Infantry
Division. The Army also had a large number of nondivisional
medium and heavy artillery regiments. The division artillery
was mostly equipped with modernized versions of guns and
howitzers originally produced for the tsarist army, such as
the 76.2mm M1902/30 field gun, but more modern weapons were
in large-scale production.
However, the Army’s ability to
employ all this ordnance with maximum effect was doubtful.
Of the various deficiencies afflicting the
artillery, the most serious was a shortage of technically trained personnel. Modern artillery fire control
methods required such specialists in considerable numbers
and though the Soviet state had made progress
in the field of education, it could not supply sufficient
men with the requisite educational background. Another
deficiency was a shortage of radios. An efficient
communications net was the sine qua non of effective
artillery fire control, especially in conditions of mobile
warfare. But the Red Army’s artillery was over-reliant on
the field telephone, which though adequate for static
defense and set-piece attacks, was too cumbersome and
unreliable to support a fast-moving mobile battle.
The first, disastrous stage of the
war laid these deficiencies bare. In the emergency
reorganization of the Red Army that followed, Stavka, the
high command, decided to concentrate the artillery—and the
available technical specialists—in large single-role
divisions and brigades. These would be held in reserve by
Stavka or the operational
fronts (army groups), to be
allotted to the field armies as required. The rifle
divisions were stripped of artillery specialists and heavy
ordnance, leaving them with just 24 x 76.2mm field guns and 12
x 122mm howitzers, which for the most part could only be
employed for direct fire on targets within visual range. The
new tank corps and
mechanized corps had no real field
artillery at all.
A battalion of 76.2mm
field guns in action (Photo: Red Army)
At the end of 1942 there were
26 artillery divisions, usually with four brigades, for a
total of 168 guns, howitzers and mortars. By mid-1943 there
were around 70 such divisions and their average strength had
risen to six brigades and 288 weapons. The so-called
breakthrough artillery divisions were augmented with
additional units and could have over 400 weapons of various
types. A breakthrough artillery division typically had one
brigade with light field guns, one with medium guns, one
with light howitzers and medium gun-howitzers, one with
heavy howitzers, and one with heavy mortars. A brigade
embodied from two to four regiments or battalions, depending
on the type of weapon.
Artillery observation,
communications and fire control were centralized, usually at
the division level, in an artillery reconnaissance battalion
and a signal battalion. As far as possible all artillery fire
was pre-planned, aiming points and targets having been
located and allocated in advance. Fire missions were
assigned to whole regiments and brigades, reliance being
placed on weight of fire rather than pinpoint accuracy. This
system was adequate for defensive operations and for the
set-piece attack, but it was unable to cope with the demands
of mobile operations.
The rocket artillery was separately
organized in divisions, brigades and regiments. Rocket
artillery had been under development in the Soviet Union
since the 1930s and during the war there were three types:
the light 82mm BM-8, the medium 132mm BM-13 and the heavy
300mm BM-30. The light and medium launchers were usually
truck mounted. When first introduced the heavy rocket was
fired from a ground mount; a later version was truck
mounted. The medium BM-13 was the most numerous type, arming
roughly half of all rocket artillery units. A BM-13
battalion had eight ten-rail launchers and could fire an
80-rocket salvo in a matter of seconds—equivalent to the
weight of shell that a battalion of twelve 122mm howitzers
could deliver in ten minutes. But the BM-13 rocket had only
half the range of the howitzer, was less accurate, and the
launchers took considerable time to reload. Moreover, the
rockets’ prominent backblast gave away the battalion’s
position, compelling it to move after each salvo to avoid
counterbattery fire. Thus the rocket artillery was most
effective when massed to deliver a saturation bombardment,
for which purpose a division could embody up to sixteen
battalions.
The Stalin Organ: BM-13
rocket artillery (World War Photos)
By late 1944 more than 70% of the
Red Army’s artillery was concentrated in non-divisional
units: 94 divisions and 149 separate brigades. Late in the
war the breakthrough artillery corps appeared, usually
consisting of two or three divisions and as many as eight or
nine brigades and regiments.
Infantry and shock armies
participating in major offensives generally had one such corps
assigned to them, and usually it controlled the army
artillery as well as its own units. Thanks in large
part to Lend-Lease, which supplied almost 500,000 US and
British trucks to the USSR during the war, all these
non-divisional artillery units were motorized.
Of necessity given the shortage of
trained artillery specialists, lack of flexibility was a
built-in feature of the Red Army’s massive artillery forces.
And though concentration in large units represented the most
efficient use of artillery possible for the Red Army, it was
significantly less efficient than the German field
artillery. Respective casualty figures illustrate the
difference. On the Eastern Front, 50% of German Army battle
casualties were caused by enemy artillery. On the other
hand—though precise figures are hard to come by—an estimated
80% of the Red Army’s battle casualties were caused by enemy
artillery—this showing the much greater effectiveness of the
German artillery.
Once again, however, it was sheer
weight of numbers that negated the German Army’s qualitative
advantage. Once the Red Army evolved tactical and
operational doctrines suitable to its capabilities, its
numerical superiority over the enemy proved decisive. As
Stalin himself once put it, quantity has a quality of its
own—a truism borne out by the performance of the Red Army’s
artillery in the second half of the war.
● ● ●
