Army Group Royal Artillery
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The Army Group Royal Artillery was a British military formation type during World War II and shortly thereafter. It was, as its name suggests, a field army level formation. Each AGRA mainly consisted of medium artillery regiments, but heavy regiments and field regiments were also allocated to them. They were flexible formations, being moved at need from corps to corps within an army.
They were developed during the war as artillery operational doctrine evolved. After the British Expeditionary Force was expelled from France in 1940 the need for flexibility in the control of artillery assets above the divisional level came to the fore. The AGRA was developed to address that need. The idea was to group all artillery above the divisional level in formations which could be switched about with the field army at will to address the varying needs for fire concentration at different parts of the front. For the most part each corps in the line was assigned on AGRA but when especially heavy fire support was needed one corps area could be stripped of its AGRA to support another.
AGRAs first saw use in the field during the campaign in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations and the concept was further used during Operation Overlord and the ensuing campaigns.
[edit] List of AGRAs
- 1st AGRA
- 2nd AGRA
- 3rd AGRA
- 4th AGRA
- 5th AGRA
- 6th AGRA
- 7th AGRA
- 8th AGRA
- 9th AGRA
- 10th AGRA
- 11th AGRA
- 15th AGRA
- 16th AGRA
- 17th AGRA
- 59th AGRA
- 60th AGRA
- 61st AGRA
