An Army Group Royal Artillery (or Army Group Royal Canadian Artillery) was a British Commonwealth military formation type during the Second World War and shortly thereafter, generally assigned to corps

Corps

A corps is either a large formation, or an administrative grouping of troops within an armed force with a common function such as Artillery or Signals representing an arm of service...

. An AGRA was mainly composed of medium artillery regiments but heavy regiments and field regiments were also used. They were moved at need from corps to corps within an army.

They were created during the war as artillery theory evolved. After the British Expeditionary Force

British Expeditionary Force (World War II)

The British Expeditionary Force was the British force in Europe from 1939–1940 during the Second World War. Commanded by General Lord Gort, the BEF constituted one-tenth of the defending Allied force....

 was expelled from France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in 1940, the need for flexibility in the control of artillery above the division increased. The idea was to group all artillery above the division in formations which could be switched within the field army at will to meet needs for fire concentration on different parts of the front. For the most part each corps in the line was assigned an AGRA but when especially heavy fire support was needed one corps area could be stripped of its AGRA to support another as happened at the battle for Calais in 1944

Operation Undergo

Operation Undergo was the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division's operation to take the fortified French port of Calais in September, 1944. A subsidiary operation was executed to silence and capture the heavy batteries at Cap Gris Nez, which threatened the sea approaches to Boulogne...

.

AGRAs made their debut in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations and the concept was further used during Operation Overlord

Operation Overlord

Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the operation that launched the invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II by Allied forces. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings...

 and the ensuing campaigns.

List of AGRAs

Where known, with area of operation and dates formed and disbanded.

• 1st AGRA
  British 1st Army Group Royal Artillery
  1st Army Group Royal Artillery was formed in September 1942, with its headquarters located at Glasgow.In January 1943 the AGRA went overseas to Tunisia. It operated with V Corps, under First Army. In October of that year it entered the Italian campaign, operating with V Corps again, only this time...
  
  ; Tunisia
• 2nd AGRA
• 3rd AGRA
• 4th AGRA
• 5th AGRA; Italy, north-west Europe
• 6th AGRA; Italy
• 7th AGRA
• 8th AGRA
• 9th AGRA
  9th Army Group Royal Artillery
  The 9th Army Group Royal Artillery was flexible British Army unit used to command artillery units at corps level during and shortly after the Second World War. It provided a coherent command structure that could be switched between divisional or corps actions en masse...
  
  ; north-west Europe; formed 1 May 1943.
• 10th AGRA
• 11th AGRA
• 15th AGRA
• 16th AGRA
• 17th AGRA
• 59th AGRA
• 60th AGRA
• 61st AGRA
• 1st Army Group Royal Canadian Artillery; Italy
• 2nd Army Group Royal Canadian Artillery; north-west Europe