page_title: Battle of Le Transloy
section_title: Tactical developments
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Le Transloy / Background / Tactical developments
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte de Cassini
context_page_description: The Battle of Le Transloy was the last big attack by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force in the 1916 Battle of the Somme in France, during the First World War. The battle was fought in conjunction with attacks by the French Tenth and Sixth armies on the southern flank and the Reserve/5th Army on the northern flank, against Army Group Rupprecht of Bavaria created on 28 August. General Ferdinand Foch, commander of groupe des armées du nord and co-ordinator of the armies on the Somme, was unable to continue the sequential attacks of September because persistent rain, mist and fog grounded aircraft, turned the battlefield into a swamp and greatly increased the difficulty of transporting supplies to the front over the roads land devastated since 1 July.
  The German armies on the Somme managed a recovery after the string of defeats in September, with fresh divisions to replace exhausted troops and more aircraft, artillery and ammunition diverted from Verdun and stripped from other parts of the Western Front.
context_section_description: German artillery on the Somme slowly improved in its effect, when Gallwitz centralised counter-battery fire and used aircraft reinforcements for artillery observation, which increased the accuracy and efficiency of bombardments. The 2nd Army had been starved of reinforcements in mid-August, to replace exhausted divisions in the 1st Army and plans for a counter-stroke had been abandoned for lack of troops. Reinforcements for the Somme front in September began to reduce the German inferiority in guns and aircraft. Field artillery reduced its barrage frontage from 400–200 yd (370–180 m) per battery and increased its accuracy by using one air artillery flight (Artillerieflieger-Abteilung) per division. As the Germans had been pushed out of their original defences, Loßberg established new positions based on principles of depth, dispersal and camouflage, rather than continuous lines of trenches. Rigid defence of the front-line continued but with as few soldiers as possible, relying on the firepower of machine-guns firing from behind the front-line and from the flanks. The area behind the front-line was defended by support and reserve units, dispersed on reverse slopes, undulations and in any other cover that could be found, so that they could open machine-gun fire by surprise, from unseen positions and then counter-attack swiftly, before French and British infantry could consolidate captured ground.
  The largest German counter-attacks of the Somme battle took place from 20 to 23 September, from the Somme north to St Pierre Vaast Wood and were destroyed by French artillery fire.  Rather than pack troops into the front-line, local, corps and army reserves were held back, in lines about 2,000 yd (1.1 mi; 1.8 km) apart, able to make progressively stronger counter-attacks. Trenches were still dug but were no longer intended to be fought from, being used for shelter during quiet periods, for the movement of reinforcements and supplies and as rallying points and decoys. Before an attack, the garrison tried to move forwards into shell-holes, to avoid Allied artillery-fire and to surprise attacking infantry with machine-gun fire. Opposite the French, the Germans dug new defences on a reverse slope from the Tortille stream at Allaines to the west end of St Pierre Vaast Wood and from there to Morval. The fourth position, R. I Stellung, was dug from Sailly Saillissel to Morval and Bapaume, along the Péronne–Bapaume road. French agents also reported new construction 22 mi (35 km) to the east. Ludendorff created fifteen "new" divisions by combing-out troops at depots and by removing regiments from existing divisions; the new 212th, 213th and 214th divisions replaced worn out divisions opposite the French Tenth and Sixth armies.
caption: Old relief map showing of Allaines and vicinity
exif: {}