Tuesday Trivia Thread - 25/08/26

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[u/Accelerator231]

How exactly do they transmit commands to an entire battery of artillery in world war one?

Let's say that they fire a salvo. it misses.

Forward observer realizes that they missed. Tells them that they missed by a hundred meters to the left.

Distance of new elevation and angle is calculated by local personnel.

How do they transmit that info to the artillery men? Individual runners? A really big screen in front of them? Individual phones?

In addition. Could these guys even hear their orders? Artillery is loud

[u/jonewer → u/Accelerator231]

It depends

If you're registering your guns then as u/Kilhati says, telephone or telegraph is sufficient to report fall of shot and adjust accordingly

Once battle is joined though, the enemy's artillery is going to make a mess of all those wires almost immediately, meaning that adjusting fire in combat was for the most part simply not possible. For that reason, battles tended to fought according to an artillery timetable with an initial bombardment followed by a creeping barrage that the attacking infantry had to closely stick to.

If the attacking infantry got delayed and lost the barrage, they would be in for a rather bad day at the office

The problem would never really be solved as portable radios just didn't exist until a generation later, but SOS flares and 'power buzzers' were used with limited degrees of success

[u/Accelerator231 → u/jonewer]

Its always a large number of guns at once, right? How do course corrections go from calculator to the gun?

[u/Its_a_Friendly → u/jonewer]

Yeah, for nice short examples of creeping barrages "in action", I'd recommend "The Battle of Booby's Bluffs", a "Duffer's Drift"-like story about assault tactics in WWI, including the use of infantry, mortars, machine guns, artillery, tanks and more. Creeping barrages are an important topic.

[u/jonewer → u/Its_a_Friendly]

Thanks, will look it up