The Making of a Modern Army and its Operations in the Field: A study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917)Radiguet, René-Louis-Jules
History
The Making of a Modern Army and its Operations in the Field: A study based on the experience of three years on the French front (1914-1917)
Radiguet, René-Louis-Jules
Armies; Military art and science; World War, 1914-1918
At the time of the attack our battle-planes, by driving the enemy’s
aircraft far beyond their lines, allowed our scout-planes to direct
accurately the fire of our 75 mm. guns, and permitted the aircraft
accompanying the assaulting waves of infantry to fly close to the
ground and attack the enemy in their very trenches.
To such a co-ordination of all our efforts is due the seizure, with a
minimum loss to our troops, of most important positions.
The Germans have a way of attempting to regain lost ground by
counter-attacks in mass-formation, which has cost them terrible losses.
Field artillery has a capital part to play in the repulse of these
attacks, which are usually broken up by the rapidity and power of
the barrages. The guns of 75 mm. are assisted by the groups of 105
and by the destruction groups of 155, and also by counter-battery
or neutralization fire from the heavy artillery, according to the
necessities of the moment.
=4. Anti-aircraft artillery.= Airplanes are the most reliable and
effective weapons against airplanes and Zeppelins, but it is impossible
to command at all times a sufficient number of machines to prevent the
enemy’s incursions.
Behind the lines have been placed special sections of anti-aircraft
guns of different sizes (75, 47, and 37 mm.) mounted on special
carriages that allow vertical fire. Without entering into details, we
may say that the fire of these guns has been rendered so accurate that,
though every airplane thus attacked may not be destroyed, projectiles
shower so close around them that they are forced to fly away at all
speed. A certain number of aircraft are brought down by these guns
every month.
One of these sections hit and brought down a Zeppelin near Verdun in
February, 1916; another shot down, near Compiègne, in the spring of
1917, a large Zeppelin on its way back from England. Quite recently
five Zeppelins returning from a raid on London were brought down
in France by airplanes and anti-aircraft cannon. We mention these
well-known events as indicating the unquestionable superiority of
the airplane over the dirigible, which, we repeat, has been of real
military service only at sea. They also demonstrate that by increasing
the number of anti-aircraft sections both behind the front and in
proximity to the whole enemy line, the raids on open towns can be
rendered impossible.
The Germans have recently invented a new gun, probably a mortar, which
projects with great accuracy and to a high altitude a big cluster of
whirling balls of fire, each having a potential diameter of five or six
feet of fire. The whole cluster has an apparent radius about as great
as the spread of an airplane from tip to tip. These new projectiles,
known as “flaming onions,” have been used principally on the British
Front, and do not appear to have done much actual damage, but should a
great number of them be discharged at large, slow-moving planes, they
might become dangerous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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