It was in the 'book' for both UK and US arty during WW2, I originally thought it was a US peculiarity until I found a Brit pamphlet mentioing it!  Obviously it needs a fairly flat angle of descent (or a favourable slope), which limited its use.  For UK it required a 'graze' action fuze, or delay for US. 

" but I've read in a few books that British and Commonwealth tank crews (and presumably US too) in Sherman tanks would use HE on delay and skip the round in much the same manner when facing entrenched Axis positions in North Africa."

I suspect instruction on it stopped at the end of WW2, VT made it redundant.  IIRC it was called 'richochet fire'.

"This was done by setting the M48 Fuse on delay, rather than point detonation. When the shell struck the ground it rose into the air and burst above the target with devastating effect. I have fired three loads of 75mm HE shell in one action. I have killed an 88mm anti-tank gun at more than 4,000 yd with HE. This method is equally effective against enemy in trenches or slits"

This technique is vaguely like our MG training.  Making the initial aimpoint a bit short of the target had the advantage of scattering the rounds across the target & being easier to spot the fall of shot.

Not really the same thing.  Richochet HE aimed to get bounce that would activate the fuze, then get the shell into the air where it burst.  Ideally you'd want the shell at 20 or 30 feet above the ground when it burst.  In relity there wouldn't be many opportunities for the right circumstances for all this with fiekd artillery.

As for field artillery not being used in this manner, towed field artillery was more commonly used in the direct fire role in WW2, especially against fortified strongpoints.

On a Russian web site I gleaned the following refrences to Soviet artillery use of ricochette fire.  Translating is a bear, but it seems the practice was not uncommon with the 76.2 divsion guns.  They may have been low priority for time fuzes.

.feldgrau.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=24167

Well thats interesting.  The Strategy Page substituted question marks for the Cyrillic lettered words in my last post.    

Follow the post of 11 Feb here:  to the mention of the Soviet Artillery ricochette fire.

battlefield.ru/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=2;t=477

Richochet HE really only made sense before HE fzd mechanical time became generally available, and MT was not notably convenient to use because of the need to adjust the height of burst as well 'ground zero' of the burst.  The great attraction of VT was that adjusting the HoB wasn't needed.

 

As for field artillery not being used in this manner, towed field artillery was more commonly used in the direct fire role in WW2, especially against fortified strongpoints.

 

As I pointed out before, richochet fire by field arty was in both US and UK doctrine.  I doubt that there is any evidence to support the contention that fd arty used direct fire more than richochet fire.   There was a bit of towed gun direct fire in Burma from time to time including using 6-inch Hows at Mandalay and a bit at Walcheren and Wesel in Europe.  UK at least provided 17-pdr with HE for the express purpose of dealing strongpoints, particularly in Italy.  I doubt that there was much on the East front because both sides used assault guns, the Germans also used infantry guns. 

 

Here is another realatively obscure refrence for richocet fire with time delay fuze, nearly identical to the quote given for the US ranks in WWII.  I am guessing the nature of the Sturmgeschutze's mission made the fuse with the delay feature standard in its ammo load.

The Sturmgeschutze in World War II 1939-1945 A Photo Chronicle, Wolfgang Fleischer with Richard Eiermann,Schiffer Military History, ISBN 0-7643-0693-6, Page 74.

also includes a paragraph about the use of richocet firing with shells with a 0.15 sec delay .