A few questions about mortars and artillery in WWII

I'm always curious about how mortars are portrayed in games.

I assume standing around and waiting for your superiors to tell you to move your artilerry piece o.05 inches to the left wouldn't make a great game, so we don't really get to see much of them in games.
In some games, we don't see a mortar at all. We just hear the characteristic whistle and the explosion that can't really hurt us because "plot"

And in some games, we get to utilize friendly mortars in the form of flares or signalling smoke. I remember playing the new COD campaign and the artillery hit the mark with 100% accuracy. I imagine before shooting the operator jumped into the air and spun 360 degrees.

So with that, can anyone give me some stats about artillery (mortars particularly)? How effective were they in an active battle? How were they even aimed and fired? How can someone look at a particularly colored plume of smoke and say "welp, gotta shoot over there."?

Thanks for any answers.

I'm not an expert, but I believe the short answer to how they were aimed is "math". My understanding is that mortar teams had a spotter that would gauge the distance to a target and then the mortar team would adjust the angle of the tube to aim and hone in on the target. But that's mostly what I gleaned from watching Band of Brothers - The Pacific which largely follows a mortar team for the plot.

(This is all as far as I'm aware):
Most long distance weapons (especially indirect fire), were eventually zeroed onto their target. The initial rounds fired would usually land far from away from their intended targets. Progressive adjustments were made after each round of shells were fired in order to become more and more accurate and "zero" onto their target.

As for the initial aiming, I, as well, point to the answer "math."

I'm always curious about how mortars are portrayed in games.

I assume standing around and waiting for your superiors to tell you to move your artilerry piece o.05 inches to the left wouldn't make a great game, so we don't really get to see much of them in games.
In some games, we don't see a mortar at all. We just hear the characteristic whistle and the explosion that can't really hurt us because "plot"

And in some games, we get to utilize friendly mortars in the form of flares or signalling smoke. I remember playing the new COD campaign and the artillery hit the mark with 100% accuracy. I imagine before shooting the operator jumped into the air and spun 360 degrees.

So with that, can anyone give me some stats about artillery (mortars particularly)? How effective were they in an active battle? How were they even aimed and fired? How can someone look at a particularly colored plume of smoke and say "welp, gotta shoot over there."?

Thanks for any answers.

It gets more complicated than the below description, but that is a good starting point. For the rest you can start with the linked wikipedia article.

Circular Error Probability:
If the CEP of a weapons system is 100 meters, then: "if a given bomb design has a CEP of 100 metres (330 ft), when 100 are targeted at the same point, 50 will fall within a 100 m circle around their average impact point."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_error_probable

From what I have been reading, modern artillery can probably manage 10m at over 10km with well maintained equipment and a good Forward Observer. This equipment did not exist in WW2.

Remember that projectiles are affected by the environment, and air has different properties at different temperatures and humidity, plus wind, etc. Also, the quality control of the mass production in that time was not as good as today, and that would go for all sorts of relevant factors that affect CONSISTENCY of results; the manufacture and wear of the weapon tube/sights/mounting, of the shell, of the propellant. (The Germans had a lot of quality issues with the products of slave labor, despite lots of QC inspections. The slave laborers, many of whom expected to die anyway, were motivated to find ways to sabotage material in ways that would still pass QC. There are a lot more stories by allied soldiers of German "duds" than vice versa.)

Calculations of the environmental effects and of trajectory had to be done for each fire mission. The Germans had a high degree of training for their officers for this, but it meant that they were accurate but slower to respond. And they were organized at a lower level of command, which in one sense sped up response but also made larger fire missions harder to coordinate.

The US on the other hand had the organizations of artillery higher up, but sped up the response with technology. Myriad fire solutions were cranked out beforehand using mathematicians in the US (and later with early computers) and printed onto "tapes" that were kept in a book. A fire officer could take out the premeasured tapes for the given (or close) conditions, lay them out on the map between their location and the fire coordinates, and have the required firing solution already calculate (including time-to-target). This meant fast response and great accuracy if the maps and the locations were good to begin with.

What it also allowed was a decentralized (and thus very fast) coordination of time-on-target solutions. If a mission is required on a certain coordinate at a certain time, each unit could independently determine their own fire solution to achieve that. 80mm mortars, 105mm, 155mm and 203mm howitzers could all arrive at the same time even though they each would have a different flight time.

Germans soldiers do not have fond memories of allied artillery.

Here are some threads on these topics:

https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-unguided-artillery-fire

https://armyhistory.org/u-s-and-german-field-artillery-in-world-war-ii-a-comparison/

Another thread discussing accuracy and artillery:

http://ww2f.com/threads/how-accurate-is-a-105mm-howitzer.54716/

Here is a video on how to use a mortar in ARMA (realistic).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ozn4GNBLG0

Mortars could be very effective particularly if target positions were pre-sighted. For many of the defensive battles in Western Europe for example where the Germans had time to prepare they were able to plan target spots and range the mortars in advance including for example likely positions (hollows etc.) where the Allied troops might set their own mortars up.

I'm just reading in more detail about Monte Cassino which was a perfect example of prepared position - even as the Germans were pushed back on the mountain they knew the Allied troops would be occupying their old trenches and gun pits so they knew exactly where to fire.

Another factor was that as opposed to artillery shells the mortar rounds come down in a near vertical trajectory that meant they could land straight in the slit trenches and foxholes. After the disastrous first attempt to cross the Rapido river a truce was organised for the Americans to recover their dead from the bridgehead that had been destroyed. Many of the corpses lacked head, shoulders or arms where they had been hit by mortars whilst standing in their foxholes/slit trenches. Very few had bullet wounds.

When u are able to read german you can read this book here:
"ZEITGSCHICHTE - Mit dem Eliteverband des Heeres "Großdeutschland" tief in den Weiten Russlands".
This are the memoirs of a german soldier who was part of the mortar units of the elite division Großdeutschland.
But i think there is no english version.

But so sum up his story: The mortar is a light and deadly weapon. It can be produced en mass. Sometimes it was the only option for combat units to get indirect fire support in combat. Mortar teams could follow the infantry. They could set up a fire position in no time (compared with towed guns). Experienced mortar teams can fire with a high precision. They were often used to stop enemy's infantry assault and to support the own infantry.

I like your use of the word "when".

So with that, can anyone give me some stats about artillery (mortars particularly)? How effective were they in an active battle? How were they even aimed and fired? How can someone look at a particularly colored plume of smoke and say "welp, gotta shoot over there."?

Thanks for any answers.

effectiveness: fragmentation is responsible for the great majority of causality in war (50-80%). In another word: very. Even today artillery and explosive are responsible for most of the death and wounded in war.

artillery sighting:

essentially both the gun crew and the spotter would be using identical map. Since the both of them had identical map it make the relay of information a matter of math and science.

artillery generally fire at location instead of specific target. Both the Gun crew and spotter would be using identical map and it provide a common point of reference.

The gun crew would usually know of their own location, and once they know the location of the enemy it's a simple matter of math. Any well trained crew will know the degree of fire and the amount of propellant necessary to fire a certain distance.

The spotter (forward observation officer) is typically trained with the use of a map and will ideally have a radio close by.

Targeting smoke is usually done for the benefit of the FOO, who might not have an immediate knowledge of the location of the enemy. occasionally the mortar crew would themselves have a direct line of sight to the enemy.


Note that this is largely the "American" system, who were and still is the master of artillery mission (now extended to air strike). In WW2 they had the best map, the best calculation equipment, and the most radio to call and plot artillery mission at a moment's notice. British being the second best.

German and soviet were basically distance third and forth in terms of artillery coordination. They just lack the equipment and institutional knowledge of both the US and British. The Soviet didn't use wireless radio equipment at all and basically rely on pre-planned barrage.

Both the German and soviet favored rocket artillery because it was cheap, easy to use and portable. However, it was impossible to achieve the accuracy of tube howitzer using the soviet and german style rocket artillery.