Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

154 THE ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY OF FIELD ARTILLERY
direction team to prepare tech niques that could be used throughout the entire
Army. Using five personnel (vertical control operator, horizontal control operator,
67 and three computers to calculate data for laying and firing pieces), he tried
to find a way to apply graphically the adjusted elevation to the measured range in
order to reduce the amount of time required to perform computation. After several
demonstra tions in late November 1940, one of the com puters, Capt. Abbot Burns,
suggested the loga rithmic plotting of scales, thereby inventing the graphical firing
table. At this point, the basic concept of the battalion fire direction center, which
would handle both observed and unobserved fires, was established. 68
The development of a division artillery fire direction technique closely followed
that of the battalion. In April 1941, Gen eral Marshall visited Fort Sill and
was given a four-battalion “shoot” demon stration, fired from map data but not
including the massing of fires based on observ er adjustment. Marshall doubted
the ability of the school to mass divisional artillery fires without a map, and the
school devised a system to meet the challenge. The vertical con trol operator of
the experimental fire direction team, Maj. Einar Gjel steen, developed a method
of concentrating battalion observed fire charts by having one gun in each battalion
register on a division artillery check point. This permitted the massing of
division artillery fire by any observer, regardless of the chart’s being based on
survey adjustment. 69
General Danford approved the new concept in 1941 after witnessing a demonstration
in October of that year, and the new field artillery manuals describing the
technique appeared the following year. The 1942 manuals showed the fire direction
center comprising gunnery and communications personnel, along with their equipment,
located at the battalion command post. Five soldiers served under the battalion
S–3, with telephone and radio as the primary means of communication among the
officer adjusting the fire, the battalion fire direction center, and the firing batteries.
Visual signs, voice, or voice relay were alternate communication means. 70
The main principles of the fire direction center had been established, although
improvements and refinements were made later. In time, this new technique gave a
superiority to American artillery by enabling commanders to con trol the fires of many
battalions accurately and rapidly. Assisted by efficient networks of field telephones
and radios, both of which were essential to the center’s opera tions, field artillery
had the “capabil ity of applying overwhelming masses of firepower on targets, either
instantaneously or in accordance with split-second time sched ules. . . .” 71 Having the
officers in the fire direction center control artillery fire rather than forward observ ers,
69 1st End, Gjelsteen to Comdt, FA School, 15 Mar 44, FA School files; E. B. Gjelsteen, “Fire
Direction Technique for Groupment and Division Artillery,” Field Artillery Journal, March 1942, pp.
184–94; Ratliff, “Field Artillery Battalion Fire Direction Center,” p. 119; Sunderland, “Massed Fire and
the FDC,” p. 59; Thomas H. Miles, “Notes on the Development of the Fire Direction Center,” Fort Sill,
6 Nov 1972, copy in CMH files;
70 1st End, Gjelsteen to Comdt, FA School, 15 Mar 44, FA School files; FM 6–40, 1942, pp. 68–69,
288–91; “Fire Direction,” Field Artillery Journal, May-June 1941, pp. 278–87.
71 R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, Military Heritage of America (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1956), p. 642.