No overhead cover?

Something that seems to be missing from movies about Infantry in WW2 is that you almost never see overhead cover in foxholes...

I was watching 'Bastogne' from Band of Brothers, and I was reminded deeply why you use 18' of overhead cover on a fighting position (foxhole)...

It seems that this is a remarkably obvious solution to enemy air burst artillery, yet didn't seem to be employed...

Actually, available artillery size in WWII was about the same as it is now. Every nation had 105mm and 150-155mm artillery available, or even larger (170-203mm). There were some light artillery (75mm) but they were phased out toward the end of the war. Modern artillery is still in the range of 105-200mm, but is much more accurate and lethal than comparable WWII weapons. As others have said, getting shells to detonate as an airburst was hard to do, but troops in wooded areas were very vulnerable to 'treebursts'.

John Lansford

I seem to recall that one of the lessons that the Allies learned the hard way during the Huertgen/Ardennes campaign was that you didn't want to get sprawled out across the ground in a treeline. The German contact fused shells would explode in the trees above, sending lots of wood and metal shrapnel down, and if you were sprawled out, hugging the ground like you would in a open field, you were a larger target. It was better to crouch, so that your helmet could shield as much of you as possible, is what I read.

Chris Manteuffel

{snip}

The March 1944 British Army Platoon Commanders manual specifies that once slit trenches have been constructed, overhead cover should be provided on one leg of the trench where possible. The main issue in WW2 was of course that the front was much more fluid than in WW1, and constructing overhead cover was time consuming - the main thing was getting in underground as fast as possible for protection from direct fire & shell splinters. If you look at the BoB Bastogne sequences, some of the foxholes do have overhead cover esp the OPs and battalion HQ.

In WW1 the threat from artillery fire was so great that trench consolidation parties would carry corrugated iron sheets to construct proper dugouts once a captured trench had been prepared for defence - but that was in an environment where a typical platoon or even a company only had a single objective in the course of a days fighting. On static fronts in WW2, trench & bunker positions could approach the complexity of WW1 trench systems - it just took time and a lot of digging.

Cheers

General Patton said in his Diary that he expoused troops to NOT build fighting positions just inside the treeline for just this reason. The Germans would shell the tree line and soldiers would be wounded by the explosions and splinters. If I recal he advocated building positions IN FRONT of the tree line.