FO's or On Map Guns?

[Dog Soldier]

I had a neighbor when I was a lad who used to tell stories of his time in the supply services for the US Army in Italy. He was at Salerno and the breakout after that. Common wisdom he recalled was when running a column of trucks along a narrow road in the hilly Italian county side was what he called "88 snipers". If the first shell was short; the next shell was the opposite, long. Everyone had by then stopped their vehicles and bailed out because they knew the column was bracketed. The third shell always hit the column somewhere. He thought the German 88mm crews were very work man like in they followed this pattern every time he was attacked.

Sounds a lot like indirect fire with an FO. I have no reason to not believe his stories. He was there.

As for the track mounted 105mm guns in direct fire roles, I remember a vivid account of their use this way in a book I read years ago about the fighting around Nancy in the fall of 1944. The Germans were using old fortifications (part of the old WW1 forts that ringed the city?) to stop Patton's 3rd Army. The 105mm guns were called up to help blast the Germans out of these structures. IIRC the account correctly, in the narrator's sector the 105mms appeared behind the American infantry and began systematically destroying strong points one at a time. After the third German position was destroyed by this direct fire, the German infantry began abandoning the more rearward positions when it was obvious they were next on the 105mm gunner's list. As someone else mentioned in this thread, a 105mm shell packs a hell of a punch. Even if you survived the blast, you would be stunned and unable to defend yourself. The impression I got from this was that before bringing these monsters up in a direct fire role, the infantry had to suppress or at least identify any enemy AT that had the range to engage the 105's.

These guns in a direct fire role were not used in a "run and gun" role. The targets were well identified, the artillery commander or his aide had consulted or reconnoitered the area with the friendly infantry, and they knew where to position their guns and what were the priority targets. In all cases there were no surprises as the infantry has already been engaged for some time without success, thus the need to bring up these big guns to "plow the road".

Dog Soldier