Battle of Albert (1916) - British Counter-battery Fire

British Counter-battery Fire

In this battle there tended to always be enough highly-trained and motivated German survivors after barrages to man their defensive weapons such as machine-guns, field guns and howitzers. In addition the Germans had paid extraordinary attention to battlefield communication means and procedures, such as very deeply laid telephone lines, carefully coordinated infantry-artillery liaison procedures, and signaling procedures to ensure that frontline troops were usually able to call for and get supporting defensive artillery fire when called upon. Again, the British counter-battery fire in many cases failed to suppress German gun batteries and hence they were available to answer calls for assistance once the main attack had begun. There were communication problems between the British Army and the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) :

"... when army pilots had been closely linked to guns, all was well. The removal of these pilots to the more rarefied atmosphere of the RFC did not help this co-operation. However, on Zero-Day 1 July, the enemy guns had not been silenced and were able to bring down heavy defensive fire on the attacking infantry ... Though an attempt had been made to co-ordinate the counter-battery fire, its effects had varied from being extremely successful to almost non-effective III Corps... they were let down by shortages of and inadequate equipment and communications".

German guns appear to have survived the initial long bombardment by not firing and hence not revealing their positions :

"...there was an unbroken stream of calls for assistance from the front line to engage these terrible means of destruction with counter fire. The artillery declared that it was unable to respond to the wishes of the infantry if it was to preserve its guns and so remain ready to fire defensively once the general attack came..." : Landwehr Leutnant M. Gerster, Reserve Infantry Regiment 119, speaking of events about 29 June near Beaumont Hamel.

The result of few German guns being destroyed in the preliminary British barrage, together with "at least 17 field howitzer batteries and 36 smaller guns" brought up in reinforcement, was that on 1 July the Germans had 598 field guns and 246 heavier guns available to saturate No Man's Land and the British front line when the British attacked. Hence the Germans had 844 guns with a much simpler task than that of the British guns - they had merely to concentrate on the relatively narrow area between the opposing lines in general, against men unprotected above ground, rather than the British guns' task of attempting to strike belts of barbed wire and specific targets, both camouflaged and under heavy cover, many imprecisely located, between the German front line and up to 2,500 yards beyond.

The telephone lines between the German front lines and their artillery support was in fact cut in many places, but the front line troops were still able to use signal flares to request effective artillery support. The main effect of German artillery fire on 1 July was to saturate no-man's-land and the British front line with fire and hence prevented the British from sending forward reinforcements to consolidate the small gains that surviving attacking troops made. The result was that small groups that managed to capture German positions, such as the 36th (Ulster) Division at the Schwaben Redoubt, could not be reinforced, and hence were soon killed or captured by German reinforcements.