Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

180 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
support. In the battle for Manila the same year, primarily Army field artillery,
tanks, and tank destroyers cleared the city. 39
Triangularization of the divisions had led to the use of task-organized formations
for flexibility, and this concept was subsequently extended to nondivisional units. By
the end of the war, task forces or regimental combat teams (RCT), whereby combat
and support units were grouped temporarily around an infantry unit to perform a
particular mission, were employed more and more. A typical one might include an
infantry regiment, a 105-mm. howitzer battalion, a combat engineer company, a
medical collecting company, and a signal detach ment. Other units could be attached
or detached as necessary. The flexible nature of the RCT in adapting to terrain and
combat conditions made it particularly useful, and the grouping could be discontinued
when the mission was over. 40
On the Battlefield
Advancements made during World War II in target location played an important
role in the success of field artillery employment. Methods for locating targets
included sound and flash ranging; ground and aerial observation; photo interpretation;
prisoner of war, military intelligence, and “shell rep” (report on enemy shells
fired on Allied positions) analyses; radar sightings; and other intelligence means.
Except for radar, all had been used in World War I.
The tables of organization authorized the field artillery observation battalion in
the corps artil lery two sound and flash batteries in addition to its headquarters and
headquarters battery. 41 In Septem ber 1944, the War Department authorized additional
observation battalions at the army level in Europe, where they were normally deployed
by bat tery to support divisions. Of the twenty-six observation bat talions active on 30
June 1945, nineteen were in Europe, four in the United States, and three in the Pacific.
When a corps operated as a unit, the observation battalion was to main tain centralized
control of its batteries. When the divi sions in the corps acted indepen dently, the
observation batteries were to be detached from the corps to support the divisions.
Additional support in 1944 in Europe came from the field army observa tion battalions.
More success was achieved with centralized con trol in stabilized conditions
than with decentralized control during periods of rapid movement. The observation
battalions were supposed to provide their own position and target area sur vey and to
tie into a general control survey net pro vided by topographical engi neers. Artillery
survey require ments were underestimated, however, and the observa tion bat talions
had to improvise to achieve higher order survey control in the field. After the war,
39 Weathersby, “Field Artillery Group,” thesis, pp. 93–96, 112–33; Bernard S. Waterman, “The Battle
of Okinawa, An Artillery Angle,” Field Artillery Journal, September 1945, pp. 523–28; Robert Ross Smith,
Triumph in the Philippines (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1963), p. 291.
Approximately 75 percent of the field artillery groups served in Europe; the rest were more or less evenly
divided between the United States and the Pacific. Only one field artillery brigade went to the Pacific, and
it was disbanded in Australia in 1943. In Europe, 53 percent of the field artillery battalions were divisional
and 47 percent nondivisional. In the Pacific, 73 percent were divisional and 23 percent nondivisional.
40 Mahon and Danysh, Infantry, p. 67.
41 TO 6–75, 1 Nov 1940; TOE 6–75, 9 Mar 1944.