I've always wondered about surveyors for the military. I understand the surveyors for the engineering units building bridges, roads and buildings, what I don't understand is the artillery surveyors. Artillery surveyors survey for coordinates for the cannon fire? Is that right? So they have to survey in enemy territory? Is that correct? So the enemy allows you to survey where you are going to fire your cannon shells? Doesn't make sense. Maybe someone who worked as an artillery surveyor can relate what they actually do in combat conditions.
The surveyors tell the Fire Direction Center where the guns are and provide an initial orientation for the guns. A Forward Observer calls in to FDC with coords of the target. FDC calculates direction and elevation difference from guns to target, then from ballistics, the horizontal direction from the gun's reference direction, the powder charge if changeable, and the vert angle of the gun tube.
In my days, the FO usually got coords from a map but I'm sure there are other techniques now too.
I worked for a PLS for years that started his career in Vietnam doing just this. He was drafted, but got what he described as a great job because of his math skills. What he said was, there are maps and a lot of guess work for the first two shots, but after receiving information from the observes on those shots, someone is going down on the third.
He described it as a "great job", because he was way back from the real action and was the only American in a unit of Australians that knew how to have a good time?
Tyler summed it up. We used to set two control points for orientating the artillery and gave the info to FDC. FDC then instructed the artillery or missile launch platoons what angle, deflection and etc to point their guns/missiles based off of the FO's information or pre determined targets.
We used Wild T-16's to establish 5th order control for 8 inch, 155mm and 105mm howitzers and Wild T-2's to establish 4th order control for Lance and Pershing missiles.
Theoretically the surveys were done behind the grunts on the front line. 5-20 miles behind the front line for the howitzers and even farther for the missile batteries. One thing we had to do was be able to set up an instrument using a plumb bob instead of optical plummet in less than 2 minutes. The Recorder while recording the horizontal and vertical angles in the field book also manned a M60 to cover the IO while they were setting up the instrument and turning angles.
When I was stationed in W. Germany at a Lance Battalion back in the early to mid '80's during the cold war, we actually went out to the field and set actual points so control was already established if war should happen to break out. The criteria that we had to use to set the points were: The land had to be open with no trees pointing towards the east, (towards the Soviet Bloc countries) there had to be less than 2% slope, (so the missiles wouldn't tip over when raised into their firing position, and there had to be some woods or forest to the west plenty big enough where the launch platoons could hide and set up their camouflaged nets before they launched their missiles.
Lance had a max range of about 60 miles. Pershing had a farther range.
Anybody else with "surveyor war stories" ?
Interesting stuff. I've been reading alot about WWII lately and I've often wondered about those "artillery surveyors". Thanks for the replies.
If I understand correctly, Desert Storm was the first war where GPS was used to direct artillery.
I have heard that the bottom to top note taking format is a convention that has its roots in artillery surveying, I have only run across it a couple of times and never really understood the rationale. Would be interested in hearing it if someone wants to chime in.
I should have said that the FDC computes the direction, distance and elevation difference from the guns to the target.
Computers called FADAC (Field Artillery Digital something) were new when I was in the Artillery. Big old things that were programmed by a paper tape. The operator entered coordinates and elevations on a keypad and the thing displayed the firing data. Wind direction and speed at different altitudes could be entered to improve the data. We ran a manual backup all the time using a map chart and slide-rule looking devices to compute the firing data.
My experience was all on the big artillery - 8" howitzers with a 200 lb projectile and max range of 16km, and 175mm guns with a 175 lb projectile and 32km max range.
Anybody else with "surveyor war stories" ?
> Interesting stuff. I've been reading alot about WWII lately and I've often wondered about those "artillery surveyors". Thanks for the replies.
Quite a few of them on this board, myself included.
Cheers
Have taken notes that way when chaining down some routes or proposed routes by using station offsets as the way to get the data on paper. Draw a centered line from top to bottom and just draw in the stations and offsets to wanted points from the bottom up as you go showing angle points in the line as you came to them. Collect a lot of data that way and it is easy to take that data to a scaled drawing. Usually used 8 1/2" X 11" gridded paper on a clipboard, if windy a clip was needed to hold the bottom of the pages down, rain turned the paper into mush unless you could keep it dry, usually better to find something else to do while it was raining.
jud
> I What he said was, there are maps and a lot of guess work for the first two shots, but after receiving information from the observes on those shots, someone is going down on the third.
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Even today when we are having an issure setting a point dad will quote" One over, one under... and one for effect!"
Anybody else with "surveyor war stories" ?
Have had a number of Army and Marine artillery vets in classes. They always start thinking little of what they did will apply. Always are very pleased when they begin to understand nearly all of the skills transfer. End up being some of the best survey techs and a few have decided to try for registration.
