The Big Artillery Lethality Chart

The 1957 edition of FM 6-40, Field Artillery Gunnery, has these projected casualty figures for battery and battalion artillery barrages being fired at vile Circle Trigonist opponents. What makes this interesting is that it’s a time period that has all the calibers: The classic old 75mm, the 105 and 6 inch guns well known to later people, the big 8 inchers, and the really big monsters.

Now it’s important to note that these are in absolutely (to the point of being unrealistic) ideal conditions. There’s no cover whatsoever, the fuzes are proximity ones that will explode at the perfect height, and, for what it’s worth, it was made in an era where infantry body armor was far less prominent than it would later become. That being said, it’s still a great resource.

One thought on “The Big Artillery Lethality Chart

  1. Difficult to read the tables but I know that the US Army went through a fairly exacting reappraisal of the effects of artillery at Fort Sill in the late 1980s. I believe the results are still classified, which is an indicator. New metallurgy and accounting for more ballistic variables made the effects quite impressive.

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