I am searhing for original sources on the artillery of the armys of WWII and the preceeding years. Specifically items concerning the

1. Procedures for the battery & forward observers, and computation of firing data.

2. Details of communications

3. Doctrine and actual practice for massing multi battery and multibattalion fires.

4. Studies or tables concerning the effects of artillery fires. ie: 'X ammount of ammnitions is required for Y casualties.'

If you have any military documents for any army decribing these details, or have expert knowledge please contact me here or directly by email.

Thanks

Carl Schwamberger

You may find something of interest here http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/index.htm

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Thanks. I've read that site extensively & will continue to do so. However these internet sites are not the original material I'm looking for. I've gotten quite a few usefull leads off them. To clarify: I'm searching for training manuals, field manuals, letters & similar documents by veteran artillerymen; that might be squirreled away in the closet, in a personal collection, or buried in a local library. For the level of research I'm at secondary sources are of much less use.

Again thanks, & I do appreciate your response

You're going to want War Department FM 6-40: Field Artillery Field Manual, Firing. Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, February 11, 1942.

I couldn't find it online although I did find newer versions of the manual. Maybe the National Archives would have it.

This site might interest you as well:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/FM/index.html

The library at Ft Sill has copys, but it is far away & is not available by interlibrary loan. 6-20 would be nice to have as well & a couple others. Unfortunatly the local library has none.

You can find FM 6-20 right here in PDF format:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...DFs/FM6-20.PDF

I see what you mean. I'd be glad to make available to you my father's course work in artillery officers school (unbelievable load of maths), plus his 25 pdr documentation (I lost his 3.7" AA manual), but I doubt you could read an entire shelfload in Portuguese...

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"You can find FM 6-20 right here in PDF format:

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...DFs/FM6-20.PDF"

About half the docs I get from that site d.l. in corrupted form, including that one. We are working on it....

Portuguese might be a interesting challenge. Back in January I was photgraphing a old 57mm gun in front of the 4th Regiments barracks near Beja (sp?). Where are you located, Europe of Brazil?

Europe. What the heck were you doing in Beja Where I live there is an house where Marshall Massena had his headquarters during one of the French invasions, plus there is still an infantry regiment nearby in Abrantes (with another 6pdr at the gate), and the armour school at Santarem, with some museum pieces at the gate too.

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My step daughter & her Brit husband are chiropractors & live in the Algarve, treating wealthy retired Europeans for their aches & pains. We visted them over the Christmass/New Year holiday. Laurel wanted to see the castle in Beja.

Where exactly do you live?

Take a look at the "Obsolete Military Manuals" section of

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/contentdm/home.htm

There may be some manuals of interest there. PDF downloads for which you have to wait patiently to complete, but some might be worth the time and trouble.

For example there is a really nice 148 page 1932 vintage field manual for a howitzer company.

Rich

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I wonder what this button does . . .

Thanks. It seems I had that one flagged a couple years ago, but had not been back to look for this project. Must have assumed I had already. The costs were reasonable too.

Be nice it it will be as easy for other armys as for the US.

I live in Torres Novas, 100km up from Lisbon.

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Wow, great resource Rich, thanks! This will eat up at least a few hours!

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Hello. I have a pretty good stash of records for the 997th FA BN from the National Archives. It includes payroll rosters, unit history, a lot of orders and AAR's. Its about 150 pages if I remember right. I could mail them to you if you can use them.

I am looking for information on replacement/reinforcement battalions in the Glastonbury England and Marseilles France areas.

Rob

Rob. Great! I'll email you about this.