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Cedat Fortuna Peritis

A History of the Field Artillery School

Boyd L. Dastrup, Ph.D.

Combat Studies Institute Press US Army Combined Arms Center Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

Cedat Fortuna Peritis

(Let Fortune Yield to Experience)

A History of the Field Artillery School

By Boyd L. Dastrup

Field Artillery Branch Historian's Office US Army Field Artillery School Fort Sill, Oklahoma

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dastrup, Boyd L. Cedat fortuna peritis (Let fortune yield to experience) : a history of the Field Artillery School / by Boyd L. Dastrup.

p. cm. ISBN 978-0-9837226-0-1 1. Field Artillery School (Fort Sill, Okla.)--History. 2. United States. Army. Field Artillery--History. 3. Artillery, Field and mountain--United States--History. I. Title. II. Title: Let fortune yield to experience, a history of the Field Artillery School. III. Title: History of the Field Artillery School.

U428.F53B68 2011 358.12'5--dc23

2011024277

FIELD ARTILLERY SCHOOL

Brigadier General Thomas S. Vandal

Commandant

Colonel Matt R. Merrick

Assistant Commandant

Dr. Boyd L. Dastrup

Field Artillery Branch Historian

Foreword

From its humble beginnings as the School of Fire for Field Artillery in 1911, the Field Artillery School emerged as a worldwide leader in training and educating field artillerymen and developing fire support tactics, doctrine, organizations, and systems. Recognizing the inadequate performance of the Army's field artillery during the Spanish-American War of 1898, the emergence of modern field artillery, and indirect fire, President Theodore Roosevelt directed the War Department to send Captain Dan T. Moore of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment to Europe in 1908-1909. While there, Moore observed European field artillery training and found the German Artillery School at Juterborg with its emphasis on practical exercises, new methods of shooting, and testing new material to be particularly impressive. Based on this, Moore enthusiastically encouraged the War Department to develop a field artillery school along the lines of the German school and received the mission to establish the School of Fire for Field Artillery at Fort Sill.

Although the School of Fire experienced a few rocky years after opening in September 1911, the passage of time validated its efforts. During World War I, the school trained officers in observed and unobserved indirect fire for duty in France using classroom instruction and practical field exercises. According to the Chief of Field Artillery, Major General William J. Snow who served as commandant of the school in 1917, the school produced officers who performed with distinction in France and provided the core of the Army's field artillery training.

Following the war, the school, redesignated as the Field Artillery School in 1919, continued employing innovative training techniques in the classroom and the field in the 1920s-1930s. While the classroom instruction provided theoretical training, practical exercises honed the skills of field artillerymen in realistic field settings. Besides providing classroom gunnery training, Major Carlos Brewer and Major Orlando Ward, who were directors of the Gunnery Department early in the 1930s, pressed to make observed indirect fire more responsive by developing the fire direction center. Along with the graphic firing table introduced in 1939 and the portable radio, the fire direction center provided unprecedented, flexible massed fires during World War II.

After the war, the Field Artillery School retained its leadership in training and participated in key combat developments. While undergoing name changes in the 1940s and 1950s, the school trained officers and enlisted soldiers on emerging conventional and nuclear field artillery systems as part of The Artillery Center, which included the Antiaircraft Artillery School at Fort Bliss, Texas, renamed the Air Defense Artillery School in 1957. Such training complemented the school's involvement in the development of the Field Artillery Digital Automated Computer to make the school a leader in Army automation and the airmobile artillery concept used in the Vietnam War of the 1960s.

Although the Vietnam War caused the Field Artillery School's operational tempo to increase and to focus on fire support in counterinsurgency warfare, it returned to conventional warfare in the 1970s. Through the remaining years of the 20th century, the

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school introduced counterfire and the fire support team, among other doctrinal and force structure changes, and played a key role in developing the Multiple-Launch Rocket System, the Paladin M109 self-propelled howitzer, and other field artillery systems.

As it helped modernize the Field Artillery, the school updated its classrooms and instructional methodologies. It adopted advanced information technology for classroom instruction and distributed learning to deliver instruction beyond the school house, introduced small group instruction to develop adaptive leaders, and strengthened its ties with the reserve components through the Total Army School System.

As the school moved into the 21st century, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom shaped more change. To support those operations, the school introduced practical exercises on counterinsurgency warfare, trained students in precision fires to minimize collateral damage, and trained officers and soldiers to employ non-lethal effects, such as electronic warfare and tactical information operations, to complement lethal effects.

During the Field Artillery School's centennial year of 2011, it carried on the traditions established by the School of Fire for Field Artillery many years ago. Constantly adjusting to meet the nation's defense requirements, the school trained Army and Marine field artillerymen and other nations' field artillerymen to be technically and tactically proficient and to provide lethal and non-lethal effects in support of full spectrum operations. As a key member of the progressive Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, a product of the Base Realignment and Closure 2005 which collocated the Air Defense Artillery School on Fort Sill, the school became a partner in producing fires officers and soldiers for the 21st century.

Artillery Strong!

Thomas S. Vandal Brigadier General, USA Commandant

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Preface

Over the years, the Field Artillery School transformed itself to meet the needs of the Army. During the 20 years preceding the opening of the School of Fire for Field Artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1911, the War Department candidly acknowledged the requirement for trained field artillerymen, but training had been sporadic and ineffective since the American Civil War because artillery schools opened and closed with regularity and furnished little training even when opened. While the Artillery School at Fort Monroe, Virginia, renamed the Coast Artillery School in 1907, focused on coast artillery training, the garrison schools concentrated on drill and ceremony and rote memorization but not firing.

The Mounted Service School at Fort Riley, Kansas, was created by the War Department in 1907 to replace the ineffective School of Practice for Cavalry and Field Artillery at Fort Riley that had opened in 1892. It operated under several names over the years with the mission of teaching equitation and field artillery tactics, but it failed to fill the void created by the Coast Artillery School's decision to furnish coast artillery instruction exclusively.

Inadequate training, modern field guns, indirect fire that was supplanting direct fire, and the Field Artillery's poor performance in the Spanish-American War of 1898 prompted the War Department to organize a school devoted to training field artillerymen. On 15 September 1911, the School of Fire for Field Artillery opened its doors.

Outside forces continued shaping the school following World War I, which caused the school to expand its operations. Facing the imperative of improving indirect fire tactics, techniques, and procedures to make fire support more responsive on a more mobile battlefield, the school developed the fire direction center to facilitate massing and shifting fires more rapidly than ever before. The school also participated in testing motor-drawn and self-propelled artillery, and played a role in the adoption of organic field artillery aerial observation.

During the four decades after World War II, pressures beyond the school reinforced the need to adapt. The shortage of field artillery and antiaircraft artillery officers and the Army's push to save money generated the need for flexibility in officer assignments. This caused the school to conduct cross training in the late 1940s to the 1960s during which field artillery and antiaircraft artillery officers were trained in both artillery branches so that they could serve in either. Meanwhile, the Army entered the atomic and nuclear age, forcing the school to develop courses and doctrine for a conventional and nuclear battlefield. Subsequently, the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s prompted the school to shift its focus from conventional and tactical nuclear warfare to guerilla warfare, while the Army's return to Europe in the 1970s rekindled interest in conventional and nuclear warfare and suitable weapons and equipment.

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National and international events during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century once again sculpted the school. Fearful that the Army would become irrelevant in the small wars springing up around the world, General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army, tore the Army and school away from a Cold War orientation with its emphasis on heavy units and moved training to lighter and more mobile units for fighting throughout the world. The War on Terrorism following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 pulled the Army and school even further from the Cold War moorings.

Although the school trained soldiers and officers to fight on the conventional battlefield, non-standard missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan ? patrolling, civil affairs, and psychological warfare, among others ? during the early years of the 21st century eroded field artillerymen's core fire support skills. Nonstandard missions also stimulated the school to emphasize resetting (retraining) the field artillery force in its core field artillery competencies and to adopt non-lethal effects ? tactical information operations and electronic warfare ? as core competencies.

Although outside forces drove the school's program of instruction and involvement in combat developments, individual efforts did not go unnoticed in an organization devoted to team play. Against tremendous odds, Captain Dan T. Moore opened the School of Fire for Field Artillery in 1911. Years later in the 1920s and 1930s, Major Carlos Brewer, as a director of the Gunnery Department, reformed gunnery techniques to mass fires more rapidly, while his successor, Major Orlando Ward, created the fire direction center. Lieutenant Colonel H.L.C. Jones, director of the Gunnery Department, subsequently improved upon the center and paved the way for its acceptance throughout the field artillery community. Starting out as an early advocate of cross training late in the 1940s, Major General Thomas E. de Shazo, the Commandant of the US Army Artillery and Missile School late in the 1950s, became an outspoken opponent of cross training after witnessing its deleterious impact on officers and unsuccessfully pushed to revoke it. Only the Vietnam War ended that disastrous program.

Major General David E. Ott developed the fire support team to facilitate coordinating fires from attack helicopters, tactical aircraft, mortars, naval guns, and field artillery and counterfire to engage enemy indirect fire systems in the 1970s to overcome the numerically superior ground forces of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Years later, Major General David C. Ralston initiated reset efforts to retrain field artillerymen in their core fire support skills that had deteriorated after serving in non-standard missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) during the first years of the 21st century. These individuals and others met the changing demands placed upon the school to train high quality field artillerymen and develop new field artillery systems.

This book starts with the school at the beginning of the 20th century and carries the story through the first decade of the 21st century. Although the school's early years fell short of Captain Dan T. Moore's vision of creating a field artillery school comparable to the German one at Juterborg, the ensuing ones saw the rise of a first-rate institution that fulfilled the captain's dream.

I would like to thank Mark Megehee of the Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, Dan Scraper who has played a key role in developing training for field artillery officers, and

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David A. Christensen, the Air Defense Artillery School historian, for taking time to read the manuscript and offer suggestions for improvement. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Donald P. Wright and Jody Becker of the Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for their outstanding attention to detail and advice during the editing process. Any errors in fact are mine.

Boyd L. Dastrup, Ph.D. US Army Field Artillery School

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