The Sharp End of an Artillery Barrage - Shrieking Shell Fragments Video

Now that's something that might make one moisten their fatigues! Now I have a better idea of why artillery is so intimidating. I've heard 155s and 8-inch Howitzers fired before, but have thankfully never been on the business end.

 

Rather them than me-
"Dramatic video has been released to demonstrate the power of an artillery barrage - with cameras placed just yards away from targets.
The Finnish Army filmed its troops blasting artillery cannons into the remote countryside in Rovajärvi, Lapland.
Cameras tucked away in bunkers capture the moment a wave of shells hit home, obliterating their targets in a cloud of smoke."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3674748/Experience-like-hit-artillery-barrage-Finnish-military-place-cameras-targets-happens-shells-explode-you.html

 

Writing as someone who has faced enemy barrages in both Sicily and Italy can I just add that quite apart from the obvious ear shattering noise and the showers of debris that followed every shell, there was an immediate sense of the breath being sucked out of one's body.

Even worse was being subjected to mortar fire, simply because one immediately realised that those responsible for producing the fire power were literally "just around the corner"

Ron

 

I can only imagine, Ron.

 

Dad reckoned that advancing as close to your own shells as possible, in a creeping barrage and then your own shells falling short, was a far worse experience!!! As was said,"I can only imagine". Amen to that!!!

 

Had a look through my memoirs to see if I'd mentioned mortar fire and found only this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/21/a2509021.shtml

Somewhere on the internet is the tale I told of my brother Mick's creeping barrage falling short and arousing my tank commander's wrath, give me time and I'll find it

Ron

Ps
Knew I would find it !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/47/a2352647.shtml

 

Here is a video made with my old regiment as extras. The Battery Commander and FOO were both from 38 battery RA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrubDDcygb4

In July 1980 we sat in tanks while they brought 105mm fire within 30m. Some of them landed behind and one 105mm HE hit a tank. No one was injured but much outside the tanks were shredded. Vision blocks cracked and aerials broken.

 

Yup. Sheldrake just means "gunner" without specifying or appointment

Listening again I think it might be 4RTR Battle group, hence the Scots accents on the battlegroup net. The film was made because 35 years after the end of WW2 the British Army had forgotten about the "effects of artillery fire".....

The holes in the FV 432 APC were made by detonating a 155mm L15 round suspended 10m away and above the vehicle. This was a modern HE round and much more effective than WW2 ropunds of the same calibre,

Much of what we trained to do in the event of WW3 sounds daft in retrospect. 72 x 105mm HE rounds f (3 rounds FFE from 40 Field Regiment Regiment of 24 Abbot guns) probably wasn't going to do much to three PT76s or a column of T62s or BMPs. But sooner or later the battle has to be won on foot.

 

I doubt you're hearing the "sound of the angry shrapnel whizzing by".

That's the sound of fragments whizzing by.

I'm surprised you didn't catch that Sheldrake.

 

Too busy dwelling on old comrades on the bottlefields of the cold War. The only shrapnel was the change from a DM5 note ...

 

At first I thought that was a typo...

 

It depends on the war. I spend a lot of time discussing the First World War when the British (and Canadians) became expert in using the strengths of shrapnel, as opposed to airburst HE to provide covering fire for the Infantry. I wrote a piece about shrapnel on 1st July 1916 here http://www.theobservationpost.com/blog/?p=1598

The Germans never really understood the creeping barrage. I have just been reading Panzers in Normandy: General Hans Eberbach and the German Defense of France, 1944, based on Eberbach's debrief. He describes how the British and Canadian infantry advanced behind a bombardment of "glass rounds" - "scheingrenaten" that make a noise but have no effect and quotes a report by Hamal from II SS Corps. They simply did not get it. The RA and RCA fired barrages of 25 pdr HE rounds about 100m in front of the advancing infantry, and battle wise infantry would push forwards until they were taking casualties themselves.