Naval gunfire support (NGFS), also known as naval surface fire support (NSFS),Martin, B., Clayton, B., Welch, J., Bae, S. J., Kim, Y., Khan, I., & Edenfield, N. (2020, April 16). Naval surface fire support. RAND Corporation. Retrieved January 6, 2023, from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4351.html or shore bombardment, is the use of naval artillery to provide fire support for amphibious assault and other troops operating within their range. NGFS is one of several disciplines encompassed by the term naval fires. Modern naval gunfire support is one of the three main components of amphibious warfare assault operations support, along with aircraft and ship-launched land-attack missiles. Shipborne guns have been used against shore defences since medieval naval warfare.
Tactics Naval gunfire support is classified into two types: direct fire, where the ship has line of sight with the target (either visually or through the use of radar), and indirect fire, which, to be accurate, requires an artillery observer to adjust fire.
When on the gun line, ships are particularly vulnerable to attack from aircraft coming from a landward direction and flying low to avoid radar detection, or from submarines because of a predictable and steady (non-evasive) course.
History
An early use of shore bombardment was during the Siege of Calais in 1347 when Edward III of England deployed ships carrying bombards and other artillery.
Ottoman-Habsburg Wars
The Spanish made a wide usage of naval bombardments in the wars of the Mediterranean, with an early example featuring rudimentary armored ships in the capture of Mers-el-Kébir of 1505. During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the conquest of Coron of 1532 by admiral Andrea Doria employed a massive concentrations of gunfire from anchored sailing ships and mobile galleys to cover amphibious action. It made usage of the great carrack Santa Anna and other warships, complemented light guns placed in their rigging to achieve better fire angles.
The conquest of Tunis in 1535, directed by Doria and Álvaro de Bazán the Elder, also emploed extensively naval gunfire to cover the advance of ground troops and weaken the enemy positions. It featured the Santa Anna along with the bigger Portuguese galleon São João Baptista, with the assistance of galleys to tow them into position. They guns also proved able to outrange the Ottoman terrestrial artillery even whenever they could not approach safely. The fortress of La Goulette was eventually taken by way of a massive collective bombardment, which caused part of the building to collapse.Uceda Márquez, (2024) "Túnez y La Goleta (1535)". Revista general de marina, ISSN 0034-9569, T. 287, MES 2 (ag.-sept.), 2024, pp. 411-428
Gunfire support from galleys was also used by Doria in the relief of Nice, allowing to disembark their land forces directly on the Franco-Ottoman positions.Mark Fissel, The Military Revolution and Revolutions in Military Affairs, p.273-277 Another special class of vessel known as floating battery was devised by García de Toledo to bombard the shore during the capture of Mahdia in 1550. It was build over the hulls of two galleys.Santos de la Hera, F. (2023) "Don García de Toledo: semblanza de un marino español del renacimiento". Revista de historia naval, ISSN 0212-467X, ISSN-e 2530-0873, Año nº 41, Nº 160, 2023, pp. 143-166 A regular naval bombardment from sailing ships was also used by Luis Fajardo to cover a desembark in skiffs during the raid on Tunis of 1609. The ships also served as decoys to attract the enemy fire from La Goulette.Lomás Cortes, M. (2009). "La Armada del Mar Océano y la Jornada de Túnez (1609)". XLI Jornadas de Historia Marítima del Instituto de Historia y Cultura Naval
16th to 18th centuries Álvaro de Bazán the Younger also used the artillery of galleasses to cover the desembarking of galleys and landing craft in the conquest of the Azores in 1583.García-Torralba Pérez, E. (2021). Los ecos de Lepanto: las galeazas y galeras españolas en el Atlántico. Revista de Historia Naval, nº 153, pp. 9-38 ISSN: 0212-467X The Spanish used again artillery from galleasses to cover the assault and capture of Blavet during the French Wars of Religion.García-Torralba Pérez, E. (2021). "Los ecos de Lepanto: las galeazas y galeras españolas en el Atlántico". Revista de Historia Naval, nº 153, pp. 9-38 ISSN: 0212-467X
An early type of vessel designed for the purpose of shore bombardment was the bomb vessel, which came into use during the 17th century. The burning of Falmouth by the Royal Navy was among the grievances of the United States Declaration of Independence. These were small ships whose main armament was one or two large mortars that fired explosive shells at a high angle. They were typically poor sailing craft that were of limited use outside their specialized role. However, small vessels armed with large mortars saw use as late as the American Civil War, when the Union Navy used them in several attacks on coastal fortifications.
During the 18th century, gunboats were developed by Antonio Barceló to bombard enemy positions from the coast. His boats, along with floating batteries built by the French, were used during the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779–1782). During the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy commissioned several vessels of the and . These carried either naval long guns or carronades. Floating batteries were used by the French and British during the Crimean War and by both sides during the American Civil War.
World War I
During World War I, the principal practitioner of naval bombardment (the term used prior to World War II for what was later designated naval gunfire support (NGFS)) 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 enemy coastal defences (forts, shore-batteries etc.) were fairly unsophisticated; however, on the Gallipoli peninsula these still proved to be difficult targets for the navy's low angle firing guns. Here, the fortress outlines tended to blend into the hillside making identification difficult, and the guns presented small targets. Mobile howitzers on the plateau presented even greater problems, since these were higher still, and being completely shielded from view proved almost impervious to naval bombardment.Peter Hart 2011, Gallipoli, Profile Books Ltd
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. For this role, the Royal Navy frequently made use of specially designed vessels known as monitors. They carried extremely heavy armament for their size, often a single turret from a decommissioned battleship. With a broad-beamed hull designed for stability and a shallow draft to allow close approach to the shore, the vessels were slow and thus unsuitable for naval combat. Two s were fitted with BL 18-inch Mk I naval guns, the largest guns ever used by the Royal Navy.
The Germans constructed an extensive, well-equipped and well-coordinated system of gun batteries 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.
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.
World War II Indirect bombardment reached its zenith during World War II, when the availability of man-portable radio systems and sophisticated relay networks allowed forward observers to transmit targeting information and provide almost instant accuracy reports once troops had landed. Battleships, cruisers (including Bobtail cruisers, designed to support amphibious operations),U.S. Navy ships and Royal Navy Bobtail Cruiser on the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France during World War II Critical Past and destroyers would pound shore installations, sometimes for days, in the hope of reducing fortifications and weakening defending forces. Obsolete battleships unfit for combat against other ships were often used as floating gun platforms expressly for this purpose. However, given the relatively primitive nature of the fire control computers and radar of the era combined with the high velocity of naval gunfire, accuracy depended upon designated observer aircraft until troops landed and were able to radio back reports to the ship. Observation seaplanes proved vulnerable to land-based fighter aircraft during the invasion of Sicily so gunfire observers flew Spitfires in support of the Normandy landings.
The solution was to engage in longer bombardment periods—up to two weeks, in some cases—saturating target areas with fire until a lucky few shells had destroyed the intended targets. This alerted an enemy that a landing attack was imminent. In the Pacific War this mattered less, where the isolated defenders of island strongholds expected to be invaded at some point and had already committed whatever combat resources were available. The Japanese used battleships only once for shore bombardment, when two battleships bombarded United States Marines at Guadalcanal's Henderson Airfield in October 1942, inflicting minor damage.Stille, Cdr Mark (2008). Imperial Japanese Navy Battleships 1941–1945. p 19, Oxford: Osprey Publishing. Bombardment periods were usually shorter in the European theatre, where surprise was more often valued, overland reinforcement far more likely, and ships' guns were responding to the movements of mobile defenders, not whittling away at static fortifications.
Naval gunfire could reach as far as inland and was often used to supplement land-based artillery. Naval gunfire was used extensively throughout Normandy, although initially the surprise nature of the landings precluded a drawn-out bombardment which could have reduced the Atlantic Wall defences sufficiently.
Late 20th century
Naval gunfire support played a critical role in the Korean War; the conflict was ideal for this type of service, with much of the fighting taking place along the coast of the Korean Peninsula. The battleship and light cruiser provided heavy support, along with numerous light cruisers and destroyers. In particular were so-called "Trainbuster" patrols, working with spotter aircraft to destroy North Korean supply trains, as well as railway bridges and tunnels.
In 1961, the annexation of Goa by Indian naval gunfire support was provided by the Indian Navy's cruisers, destroyers, and frigates in support of Indian Army operations.