Opening Moves

Meanwhile, free from interference and harm, the American reconnaissance troops were presently flanking him towards Darstadt.

With typical Russian black humour, he congratulated himself on passing the problem to Drinkov’s 1st Battalion who were placed there, and reminded himself he would be accountable to the Colonel for wasting ammunition.

However, his more immediate problem now was sorting out his own battalion after the disruption, confirming his orders in the light of this changed American threat and silencing the artillery. The latter two would prove difficult without a useable radio so he swiftly moved to his command carrier where he was found a perplexed radio operator trying to do something useful with an uncooperative radio.

The urgency of the situation became more apparent as more artillery joined the barrage, brought in by officers who believed that the silence meant that the 279th Rifle Division was in trouble.

Which of course it was but did not yet know it.

573rd AAA Btn [Motorised] was an unremarkable anti-aircraft unit that had enjoyed a reasonably low risk and trouble-free war through to May.

This morning it made history.

For some time it had been known that the radar sets used to monitor low-level aircraft raids such as the ones 573rd was designed to repel had another unsuspected capability.

They could read mortar round trajectories and, by a relatively simple process calculate the point of origin of a round in flight.

Artillery had not been trackable, but today they tried a new combination of radar information and experienced artillery personnel using maps and good old intuition.

The batteries of 494th and 495th Artillery Battalions were locked and loaded, just waiting for the right coordinates to visit hell upon Stalin’s Organs and hopefully start hitting back heavily at one of the Soviets greatest assets; their artillery.

2nd Lieutenant Rodney W. Chambers watched as his operators did their work and he passed accurate data to the 494th’s Captain Maynard, seconded to the radar section.

Based on the number of tracks, the Captain’s decision was to put down a twelve round barrage from all forty guns on the location identified by the radar.

Twenty-six M7 Priests spat their 105mm HE shells in the direction of the fields west of Erlach.

Accompanying them were 155mm VT fused shells from M40 Gun Carriages, specifically for airbursts over the target designed to kill valuable artillerymen.

1st Regiment, 3rd Guards Rocket Barrage Division was an experienced unit and no strangers to combat casualties, having more than once picked up their rifles for closer combat work against the Germans, the last example of which had been the day before when they suffered seven wounded in a guerrilla attack outside of Estenfeld.

However, the casualties visited upon them on the morning of 10th August 1945 destroyed them as a fighting unit.

The men and women were struggling to reload their charges, humping around ninety-two pounds of high-explosive and propellant in rocket form, at sixteen reloads to a vehicle, twenty-three vehicles in total to be serviced, Mixed in amongst them were the ammunition trucks and the officers and non-coms, chivvying their crews into greater efforts.

American shells arrived and took lives by the dozen as shrapnel cut into bodies and explosive shells did their horrible work. Secondary explosions from rockets and vehicles added to the slaughter and, in truth, the final four salvoes did no great additional damage, as there was little left of note.

Every launcher was useless, ranging from unserviceable through to completely destroyed. Less than twenty personnel struggled through the smoking carnage recovering their wounded comrades. Given the previous evenings combat strength of two hundred and eight personnel, the maths suggested more dead and wounded than were actually recovered from the field.

The second part of the shoot was trickier and required judgement and intuition on the part of the experienced Artillery Officer attached to the 573rd.

^{Fig#15 – Reichenberg/Rottenbauer battleground.}

As the 76.2mm shells continued to rain down on the churned ground in front of Goßmannsdorf, radar tracked as best it could. Artillery shells had a different type of trajectory, one not dealt with easily by the radar.

However, it did offer up enough information to get a flight direction and so the artillery officer waited for some input with a map and ruler.

Chambers carefully recorded the details and double-checked the results, not that he didn’t trust his Corporal.

Moving over to the Captain’s map table, he annotated it with a single line. Commencing at the point of shell arrival and departing in the direction indicated by the radar.

He then stood back and let Maynard do his part.

It took a few seconds before the Captain found what he looked for and he marked a simple X on Chambers contribution, in an area just off road north-east of Reichenberg.