Counter bombardment is defined as the location, destruction and/or neutralisation of enemy artillery and mortars. The strategy of counter bombardment was first used in WWI and was credited with significantly reducing casualty rates on the Western Front. The increased use of aircraft greatly assisted in this regard. Airborne artillery observers were able to direct the fire of a battery in a counter bombardment role. Alan Smith reveals that while 'the AIF was a major beneficiary of counter bombardment developments by the British, it ended the war without any corpus of knowledge to nurture. Few Australian officers were privy to its innermost workings'.
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