The 18th Artillery Division (II)
Armies of the Second World War
Early in November of 1943, the 18th Artillery Division found itself in the path of a major Soviet offensive. Thus, while the soldiers of service and support units (to include the observation battalion) fought as riflemen, individual battalions and batteries defended themselves as best as they could. To make matters worse, nine the artillery battalions serving with the new division were detached for service with other formations.
Saved from an inevitable disaster by the timely intervention of German armored troops, the 18th Artillery Division managed to rebuild itself to the point where, two months later, it could go into action in a manner befitting its original concept. Subordinated to an army corps, and placed behind infantry divisions of that corps, it was able, on a few occasions, to command (but not mass) the fire of sixteen or seventeen artillery battalions (nine of which were organic and seven or eight of which belonged to the aforementioned infantry divisions.)
In the same period, the 18th Artillery Division simplified the structures of some of its firing battalions. In one case, that of the mixed heavy battalion of the 88th Field Artillery Regiment, this was a matter of replacing eight heavy (150mm) field howitzers with an equal number of 100mm heavy guns. In five cases, a battalion disbanded one of its three four-piece batteries in order to convert the two remaining batteries into six-piece units.
As a result of this reform, while the total number of artillery pieces remained the same, the number of firing batteries in the 18th Artillery Division dropped from twenty-seven to twenty-two. This meant that, at any given time, nearly all of the batteries in the division (eighteen out of twenty-two) could be connected to the fire control battery.
The Artillery Batteries of 18th Artillery Division
1 January 1944
Before the 18th Artillery Division was able to make the most of its new organization, the situation that had provided its reason for being had changed. In 1942 or 1943, the concentrated fire of fifteen or so artillery battalions could reliably a Soviet attack. In 1944, however, the Soviets began to attack on a much larger scale. In particular, rather than conducting attacks along fronts were ten or so kilometers wide, the Soviets were attacking along fronts that measured, from one end to the other, twenty kilometers or more.
In order to deal with such attacks, the 18th Artillery Division would have needed twice as many batteries as it had and, at the very least, a second fire control battery. As such units were not available, the 18th Artillery Division soon found itself reinforcing sectors so wide that the massing of the fires of two or three battalions, let alone those of nine such units, had become impossible.
In July of 1944, the Army High Command gave orders for the dissolution of the 18th Artillery Division and the use of the surviving elements of the formation to create three “army artillery brigades.” In honor of the regiments of the 18th Artillery Division, the latter were given the numbers “88,” “288,” and “388.”
Sources: Wolfgang Paul, Geschichte der 18. Panzer-Division 1940-1943 Mit Geschichte der 18. Artillerie-Division 1943-1944, (Reutlingen: Preußischer Militär-Verlag, 1989), pages 288-291 and documents of the 18th Artillery Division on file at the U.S. National Archives, Captured German Records, Microfilm Series T-315, Roll 704.