WW1 artillery question

[marathag]

Some nations on the Eastern front even had used muzzle loading cannons from the 19th Century in the beginning

My favorite old gun story from WWI was after the attempt on forcing the Dardanelles, HMS Agamemnon was being repaired, and crew discovered a roughly 500 pound stone cannonball.
It was placed in a place of honor on 'A' turret till the ship was scrapped.

Now that gun had been around for a long, long time.

 

[fastmongrel]

Very interesting info from Carl Schwamberger. We are often told that the BEF was short of Artillery and MGs but from the figures it seems the BEF had roughly the same levels of equipment as the other two Armies on the Western Front. It was just that the 1914 BEF was so small about two Corps sized.

 

[Riain]

Very interesting info from Carl Schwamberger. We are often told that the BEF was short of Artillery and MGs but from the figures it seems the BEF had roughly the same levels of equipment as the other two Armies on the Western Front. It was just that the 1914 BEF was so small about two Corps sized.

Before WW1 the British Army at home was organised somewhat to fight in Europe with 6 infantry divisions, these were about half regulars and half reserves of recent servicemen. I believe the official compliment of artillery was available for these units.

By September the 7th division was formed and in October the 8th was formed from battalions gathered from garrisons around the Empire. These were all full timers, but as scratch divisions may not have had the full compliment of artillery allocated to them in peacetime.

The 2 Indian infantry divisions which arrived in France in October had almost no artillery, so relied on the artillery of the first 6 BEF divisions.

Thus I think the artillery which was OK for 6 divisions in August was covering 8 to 10 divisions by October.