Artillery support is of decisive importance for the preparation and the successful conduct of a tank attack. A unified command for the entire artillery controls the artillery fire as long as the infantry and tank units are fighting on the same line. When the tanks break through the enemy forward defence lines, the self-propelled artillery or any other artillery battalion designated for the support of the tank unit is placed under the command of the tank unit commander.
The Germans believe that the artillery fire must not check the momentum of the attack. Consequently the heaviest fire must fall well ahead of the tanks or outside their sector.
The mission of the artillery preparation before the attack is to destroy, or at least to neutralise, the opponent’s anti-tank defence in the area between the line of contact and the regimental reserve line. Continuous counter-battery fire prevents the enemy from shelling the tank assembly area and from breaking up the preparation of the tank attack.
The artillery has the following missions before the tank attack:
Counter-battery fire on enemy artillery located in positions which command the ground over which the tank attack is to be made.
Concentrations on enemy tanks in assembly areas:
Harassing fire on all areas in which the anti-tank units are located or suspected. Fire is heaviest on areas in which tanks cannot operate but from which they can be engaged effectively.
Adjusting fire with high explosives on probable enemy observation posts commanding the sector to be attacked. These observation posts are blinded with smoke as soon as the attack begins.
Experience has taught the Germans that the flanks of a tank attack are vulnerable. Therefore they assign to the artillery and the rocket projector units the task of protecting flanks by barrages using high explosives and smoke shells.
The artillery has the following missions during the tank attack:
Counter-battery fire.
Blinding enemy observation posts.
As the attack progresses, engaging successive lines of anti-tank defence, especially areas to the rear and flanks of the sector attacked.
Screening the flanks of the attack with smoke and neutralising the enemy’s infantry and rear areas.
Delaying the movement and deployment of enemy reserves, particularly tanks
The Germans stress that this wide variety of tasks must not lead to the wholesale dispersal of effort. The main task of the artillery is at all times the destruction of the enemy’s anti-tank weapons, tanks, and artillery.
Liaison between artillery and tanks during the attack is established by the commanding officers and the artillery liaison group, which normally moves with the first wave. Artillery forward observers, if possible in armoured observation posts, ride with the most forward elements. A German field expedient is for the tank unit to take along a forward observer in one of its tanks. It often happens that the tank man himself has to take over the observation for the artillery. He himself can request artillery fire and shift concentrations when the situation requires such changes.”
Assembly workers hard at work producing Sturmgeschtze in January 1942. These machines are equipped with the short-barrelled 75mm which had already proven to be ineffective for many of the tasks faced by the Stug.