Naval Gunfire Support - History

History

World War I

In World War I the principal practitioner of Naval Bombardment (the term used prior to the Second World War for what was later designated Naval Gunfire Support - NGS) was Britain's Royal Navy (RN); and the main theatres in which RN ships fired against targets ashore were the Aegean - Dardanelles/Gallipoli, and later the Salonika Front - and along the Belgian Coast. In the Aegean the problems were not especially challenging, and enemy coastal defences (forts, shore-batteries etc.) were fairly unsophisticated; but for RN ships bombarding German targets along the Belgian Coast the situation was altogether different from the autumn of 1915 until the enemy withdrawal in October 1918. The Germans constructed an extensive, well-equipped and well-coordinated system of gun-batteries etc. to defend the coast - and especially the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge. Those ports, and the canals linking them to Bruges, were of major importance to the U-Boat campaign in the North Sea and English Channel - and for that reason were frequently bombarded by RN monitors operating from Dover and Dunkirk. The RN continually advanced their technology and techniques necessary to conduct effective bombardments in the face of the German defenders - firstly refining spotting/correction by aircraft (following initial efforts during the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign), then experimenting with night-bombardment and moving on to adopt Indirect Fire (in which a ship can accurately engage an unseen target, which may be several miles inland) as the norm for day- and night-firings. Finally, in the summer of 1918, monitors were equipped with Gyro Director Training (GDT) gear - which effectively provided the Director with a gyro-stabilised Artificial Line of Sight, and thereby enabled a ship to carry out Indirect Bombardment while underway. This was a very significant advance, which basically established a firm foundation for Naval Bombardment as practiced by the RN and USN during the Second World War. Between 1919-39 all RN battleships/battlecruisers and all new-construction cruisers were equipped with Admiralty Fire Control Tables and GDT gear, and from the early-1930s (probably earlier) were required to carry out 'live' Bombardment Practice once in each commission. In 1939, therefore, the RN was quite well prepared for this particular aspect of Joint Warfare.