without the author's name. And, yes, the
descriptions of what the phosphorus
munitions accomplished against the
Nazi bunkers at Normandy (nothing
much else even scratched them)
is eye-opening.
Would that be Holger Eckhertz's book? Some grim stuff in there. My uncles never said a word about the use of white phosphorus in the ETO, but the Germans weren't so reticent. Uncle C was often asked by German POW's - he used to move them around and also had a few that did maintenance jobs - about "American semiautomatic artillery." Some of them were convinced that the volume of fire/ accuracy were due to some sort of "repeating" heavy artillery.
Mr. niteowl77
That’s another aspect of American battlefield victories in WWII that is not well understood by the average person - battlefield artillery fire direction control.
The red legs at Fort Sill had developed a system where by it was easily possible for a single forward controller to fire all the division’s artillery on a single target, and even bring in fire from the artillery of adjacent divisions. Since an infantry division had 36 x 105mm howitzers and 12 x 155mm howitzers, this could be devastating.
They had also developed TOT, Time On Target, techniques, so a planned barrage could arrive literally at the same moment from all locations. This required calculating time in flight for the shells from each gun. This made initial barrages more effective since enemy troops didn’t have time to take cover, knowing something was starting because of the impact of shells a few hundred yards away. Everything got plastered at once.
Add these capabilities to the huge mobility advantage of being completely motorized, when much German artillery was still horse drawn, and you had a really significant battlefield advantage for the U.S., one that is largely unknown to most folks.