Lessons Learned By The British
The next major British set-piece opening barrage, before the Battle of Arras in April 1917, would concentrate 963 heavy guns at one every 21 yards, more than twice the concentration applied on the Somme, and supplied with much larger quantities of ammunition of higher quality, including the new No. 106 instantaneous percussion fuze. Hence it was only after the Somme experience that the British realised, and became able to bring to bear, the enormous volumes of artillery fire required to achieve any breakthrough in the prevailing siege-like stalemate. In conjunction with lessons learned on infantry-artillery coordination and counter-battery fire, and industrial quality-control, this led to far greater British opening-day success at Arras than on the Somme.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Albert (1916)
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