Romanian Artillery Doctrine at Odessa, Observed Fire

[BobM]

Gents

A friend just sent me this:

"the Rumanian artillery did not use observed fire, despite German urging, they insisted on using only map fire. This is from the after action report on Odessa by the German advisory mission."

would anyone care to comment?

Cheers

Bob

[mabadesc]

Bob,

Strictly from an amateur who hears this for the first time, it sounds like an absurd tactic.

[dragos]

Conclusions of Romanian after action reports for the battle of Odessa, regarding the Romanian artillery :

- poor equipment for communication and observation
- 75mm field guns are ineffective against dug-in infantry or wooden shelters
- the fire of artillery was too dispersed, ammunition was wasted without desired results because the fire was not concentrated on important objectives
- the fire of mortars was not observed, and the units were using "safe high elevation" in order not to hit friendly troops
- the artillery preparation was not exploited by infantry
- AA defense should be assigned to battery instead of battalion, artillery battalions are lacking light machineguns for close defense
- lack of workshops for repairing radios and telephones at regimental level, and light reparations of artillery pieces at army corps level

[Victor]

My grandfather was the forward observer officer (FOO) of the 1st Battalion/2nd Heavy Artillery Regiment during the 1941 campaign. I have in front of me his evaluation for 1941 (made by the regimental and corps COs). It clearly states that, from the forward observation point, he personally directed the fire of each battery in order to obtain "tune" the fire of the whole battalion. He also directed the fire of the entire battalion against different targets on the map.

What the German report probably criticized was the overuse of the map by Romanian artillery officers. I have a 7 page article written by my grandfather in 1937, probably for a military magazine, which presents the obsolete way of thinking in the training of Romanian artillerymen, in which the map played a key role. I suppose things did not change much until 1941.

[dragos]

The situation was aggravated as the maps of artillery unit commanders were at the scale 1/100,000, 1/75,000 or 1/200,000, and most often the planimetric details were missing. Names on the maps were in German or Russian language, which made the orientation more difficult.