
Artillery Practices by the Major Combatants of WWII - bluegate010
http://etloh.8m.com/strategy/artil.html
======
lmkg
As always, the fastest way to perform a calculation is to as much work as
possible when the clock isn't running. In this case, pre-compute every
possible solution months ahead of time, and have a cabinet full of look-up
tables.

Another historical sidenote: the American approach to artillery directly drove
the development of modern computers. ENIAC, the first digital computer, was
originally commissioned as a project for computing gunnery tables. Although,
because von Neumann got wind of it, its first actual computation was (I think)
numeric integration of fluid dynamics for the H-bomb.

------
eldude
WRT American pre-calculation and its relationship to software...

One of the great personal epiphanies of my professional career was the
discovery of data pre-computation FLOABW. More specifically, what I'm talking
about is data denormalization.

I had always been aware of caching techniques, but beyond that, data
normalization was so ingrained into my mindset, that storing any piece of data
that could otherwise be derived from another seemed like heresy, something
only an amateur or fool would do.

What really opened my eyes, was when I was forced to build a social network
atop MongoDB (ouch), and I had to resolve the incompatibility of relational
data, but with atomic write, with no join or transactional support. What I
discovered, was that if care was taken to create a canonical representation of
the data, a multitude of query-able denormalized derived tables could be
utilized, and could in fact offer dramatically _superior_ performance compared
to its RDBMS equivalent. What was especially shocking, was how obvious this
was in retrospect and how blinded I was by the assumption that perfect data
consistency was a requirement for all software.

I now view most tasks with the consideration, "What would this look like if we
ignored efficiency in favor of raw performance and might that be worth it?"

~~~
toast0
> I now view most tasks with the consideration, "What would this look like if
> we ignored efficiency in favor of raw performance and might that be worth
> it?"

Raw performance is efficiency. You must consider space efficiency, CPU
efficiency, network efficiency, time efficiency, developer efficiency, etc

~~~
eldude
> Raw performance is efficiency.

Efficiency is analogous to velocity, with gains analogous to distance. Highly
efficient developers must still travel non-trivial distances to achieve
performance gains, and therein lies the core of my epiphany, that performance
_is not_ efficiency, and highly efficient developers must spend non-trivial
amounts of time to achieve performance gains that may in fact undermine
development velocity, CPU efficiency per task, architectural efficiency (DRY),
time efficiency (latency), etc...

------
ChuckMcM
Not a very well developed thesis on Artillery. If the author is reading,
please get a copy of Dunnigan's How to Make War which describes in detail how
to calculate the various effectiveness of different artillery strategies. I've
got a dog eared copy of the 2nd edition I was using while writing my 'ultimate
replacement for Bright's empire' game (unfinished :-) But overall, in the
context of war gaming it is an excellent reference.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Fourth-Edition-
Comprehensive/...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Fourth-Edition-
Comprehensive/dp/006009012X)

~~~
dmix
Do you recommend any war games that are playable on Linux? (web or otherwise)

Reading this article makes me want to play one.

~~~
dripton
I really liked Unity of Command. Operational-level, Eastern Front, WW2.
Available for Linux.

~~~
jsnell
Yes, Unity of Command is one of the best light wargames ever created. It's all
about supply; balancing the need to advance quickly to capture the objectives
within the uber-optimistic schedules vs needing to protect your supply vs. not
wanting to outrun your logistics vs. trying to surround enemies and easily
eliminate them when they're inefficient and out of supply.

The AI is excellent especially when playing the defense (which is nice, since
for the human playing the attacker is the more interesting role). It's great
at noticing when the player has overreached and mercilessly punishing those
mistakes.

I can't recommend it highly enough if you have any interest at all in
wargames. It works as an entry level game, but is also deeply satisfying for
the grognards.

------
AYBABTME
Comparison point, top of line modern artillery round (Excalibur [1]) can be
used for somewhat precision strikes nowadays. Often a limiting factor in the
feasibility of a fire mission is the proximity of friendly forces, so those
kinds of guided artillery shells are useful in that context.

The only issue is the cost. Back in the military, firing excalibur shells (or
hellfires from drones) was compared to throwing Ferraris on the head of
farmers. The device costs more than the cost of paving the road they're
digging their IED into. When you're doing those fire missions and thinking
about the absurdity... it's an odd thing.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M982_Excalibur)

~~~
sitkack
It would be cheaper to send them a money gram to stop.

~~~
wtbob
Yeah, but once you start paying the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane.

Also, in the particular case of Islamists, paying them jizya is likely to
encourage them in the long run.

------
vacri
Strange article. "Any good tactical game must account for the difference in
artillery practices - based on notes I can't find, a speaker I can't remember,
references I can't source, and throwing in some of my own guesswork and
conjecture."

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It appears to have been originally posted in June 2000. The internet was still
quite a ways from the "all human knowledge within five clicks" state that we
take for granted today, along with the assumption that any reasonable
statement should be immediately supportable with links.

~~~
vacri
I'm not demanding links and references - everything I mentioned above was
mentioned by the author.

------
stcredzero
The fact that we in the US had put so much effort into researching and
implementing artillery coordination techniques shows how our military was part
of a huge national effort to play the international strategic game at the top
level, in the early 20th century. Both Churchill and FDR were products of
organizations (Navy) that made these ruthless and cold calculations based on
technology and pragmatic geopolitics. Whoever put together the requirements
for the artillery system, the M1 Garand, the Fletcher class destroyer, and the
Flying Fortress was out to build world-beating weapons. In the context of when
they were developed, these things read a bit like sci-fi.

~~~
meatysnapper
I'm curious what the differences were for naval support fire between the
various combatants.

~~~
stcredzero
The US had better RADAR and automated fire control than Japan.

------
PhasmaFelis
The link seems to have exceeded its bandwidth. The Internet Archive has a
version here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20141026151912/http://etloh.8m.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141026151912/http://etloh.8m.com/strategy/artil.html)
(And it appears to be basically unchanged since June 2000, which explains the
lack of sources that some commenters have objected to.)

------
IgorPartola
I love that this comes from the perspective of game development.

Also, I am surprised elevation wasn't taken into account more by the British
and American forces. You'd think that would be one of the bigger issues when
doing ballistics.

~~~
hackcasual
Elevation was corrected for by the Americans. They used the British system,
but had massive artillery correction tables printed into books based on the
myriad of factors.

------
chernevik
I wonder if the Americans' books of tables were generated by automated
computers.

You'd think the Germans would find their own way to such a dominant approach
-- especially as it was so suited to mobile warfare, which they were
reinventing early in the war. An absence of the technical resources to
generate the tables would be one explanation for why they didn't.

~~~
hackcasual
I did a little digging, as I'm a huge WWII nerd after reading this article,
and it does seem like the Eniac was used to generate artillery tables, but
it's not clear if those were the same as used by the centralized firing
control.

~~~
chernevik
Answer, from a link on another comment, seems to be no.

[http://99div.com/olddirect/american_and_german_field_artille...](http://99div.com/olddirect/american_and_german_field_artillery_in_the_battle_of_the_bulge+cb01biggio+416d65726963616e20616e64204765726d616e206669656c6420617274696c6c65727920696e2074686520426174746c65206f66207468652042756c6765)

The chief factor seems to have been an American reorganization of artillery in
the 20s and 30s, chiefly intended to support centralization of battery fire at
a battalion level.

~~~
dmichulke
Note how Tesla chiefly intends to avoid central battery fire today.

