JasonC Posted December 15, 2001 Share Posted December 15, 2001 What happened to the Lorraine Panzer Brigades? As most are aware, after the Cobra breakout the collapse in France was total. The Germans were left with hardly more than 100 operational AFVs at the front in the west by the end of the Falaise fighting. Despite the ongoing crisis in the east as well, the Germans reacted in part by shifting their new AFV production, which in June and July had gone east to try to patch together a front behind the collapsing Army Group Center, to the west in August and early September. But against staff recommendations, the high command ordered many of these AFVs used to equip brand new Panzer brigades instead of reinforcing the depleted Panzer division cadres retreating in the west. At firs, existing rear area armor - not much it is true - was sent to the Aachen area in an effort to hold the city and the gates to the Ruhr. Rundstadt wanted to continue that concentration, but he was overrulled. In September, instead, the focus of the armor reinforcement stream was directed south at Patton's Third Army, just effecting its junction with US and French forces advancing from southern France. The overly ambitious goal of this move was to counterattack Third Army and destroy its extended armored spearheads, which were crossing the Meuse and Moselle rivers. In the course of September, four Panzer brigades - the 106, 111, 112, and 113, were sent to Lorraine fully equipped to further this goal. They were not the only elements of the armor concentration, but they were the main body of it. Two veteran Panzergrenadier divisions from Italy - the 3rd and 15th - were sent to the sector as reinforcements. The 21st Panzer division, reduced to a kampgruppe, was also in the area, and the 11th Panzer division, also reduced but less so, was coming up from the south, having acted as rear guard against the southern France advance. The 17th SS Panzergrenadier retreated through the area, absorbed two regiments worth of SS Panzergrenadier replacements in the rear (the 49th and 51st), and went back into the line soon afterward. Despite the impressive role call of units, however, these division level formations numbered less than 150 AFVs between them, probably more like 100 operational AFVs. About half these were recent arrivals with the divisions from Italy, mostly StuG. The main uncertainty concerns a KG left by 11th Panzer in the south - including one Panzer company and its StuG battalion - which may or may not have managed to rejoin the division intact during the September fighting. There were occasional single companies of armored TDs in the local infantry divisions, but they were comparatively rare. The new Panzer brigades contained a high portion of Panther tanks, right off the assembly lines. Each of the brigades had a Panther battalion, with a vehicle strength of 40-50, plus a single company of around 10 Jagdpanzer, usually the L70 variety (occasionally StuG instead). In addition, the 111, 112, and 113 also each had a second battalion of 40-50 Pz IVs (the 106th did not). These Lorraine brigades represented about half of all tank production for the month of August - a significant commitment indeed when both central Russia and all of France were in a state of collapse. In all, the September armor force for Lorraine thus amounted to around 500 AFVs, plus or minus 50 or so. If the production stream had been used to top off understrength units in the divisional formations sent to the area, they could have brought them up to near TOE strength. Two Panzer divisions and three Panzergrenadier divisions at TOE would have 7 Panzer battalions and 5 armored Panzerjaeger units, with around 350 tanks and 150 SP guns. That is similar to what the Panzer brigades brought to the theater. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of the total were Panthers. By any process of estimation, it was the largest German armor commitment since Normandy, and exceeded the armor used at Mortain. The American force these units would face swelled over the course of the campaign, as troops transfered to other commands reverted to Third Army and forces left behind in France rejoined the command. In early September Patton had 2 ADs (4th and 7th) and 5 seperate tank battalions with a total of 670 Shermans, plus around 200 armored tank destroyers. Over the course of the September fighting, the French 2 AD and the US 6 AD rejoined Third Army, bringing with them around 300 more Shermans and some additional TDs. The overall armor odds the Germans faced were therefore about 1 to 2 initially, and rose to about 2 to 5 by the end of the September campaign. The Shermans were about 10% 105s and virtually all the rest were vanilla 75mm versions. Improved uparmored W models and improved 76mm gun models had not had time to reach Third Army. The TDs were mostly M-10s, which were about as numerous as the Panthers. In a pinch the US side could also call upon around 200 Priests to perform direct fire, and there was also US light armor (Stuarts and M-8s), about as numerous as the German tank force. Defending behind river lines, from the uneven rises that mark Lorraine, over wide agricultural fields, the German armor force might well have proved formidable on the defensive. Especially if incorporated into the full mobile divisions in the area, with their experienced cadres. The 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier divisions fought particularly well throughout the campaign, as indeed they had in Italy before. The 17th SS had been brought up to strength in infantry terms, and its cadres were veterans of the hardest Normandy fighting. 11th Panzer (the "Ghost" division) and 21st Panzer (Rommel's old core DAK formation), though certainly fought out at the moment, were among the best in the German army, in terms of cadre experience. The overall commander in the area was Luttwitz, up from command of the 2nd Panzer division, though he was pushed from above and the counterattack mandate came straight from the top. Instead the armor was sent to the green new Panzer brigades and committed to offensive "maneuver", counterattacking the flanks of Third Army and its foremost spearheads. It was also committed piecemeal, a brigade at a time, two at the most for the famous Arracourt battle. Many are familiar with that portion of the whole affair, running from 19 to 22 September. But the Panzer brigades were first committed to counterattack on 7 September, and kept it up until the end of the month. Arracourt was one espisode in that month-long battle, not the whole thing. The result was an object lesson in the futility of the cult of offensive maneuver with armor, when the conditions do not exist for it. And show the importance of husbanding scarce armor reserves for their proper mobile defensive use, instead. The first unit committed to counterattack was the 106th Panzer brigade. This unit had only a Panther battalion (about 40 tanks) and a company of Jagdpanzer-70s (about 10). Its lone Panzergrenadier battalion was armored however (with nearly 100 SPWs), and a second battalion was provided in the form of a Pioneer battalion. A single artillery battalion rounded out the brigade, effectively a kampgruppe of half-division strength, such as German Panzer divisions commanders often used in practice. On the night of 7-8 September, this formation was sent down a single road to counterattack the advancing left wing of Third Army, west of the Moselle. The leftmost American unit was the 90th Infantry division, advancing against weak and scattered German infantry defenses of a battalion here and a battalion there. The 106th passed straight between two US infantry regiments in the night, and at 2 AM found itself attacking the 90th division command post. Some of the tanks went beyond the American positions entirely, evidently unaware what they had succeeded in doing, and later turned back to help the rest of the formation. A wild night melee ensued, with the Americans fighting with bazookas, 57mm ATGs, and individual SP TDs. The Germans were still inextricably tangled with the Americans at dawn - with only 2 battalions of infantry, smack in the middle of an entire US division. The Americans counterattacked at first light, with two battalions from two of the nearest infantry regiments coming in from opposite directions, while a third from one of the same regiments blocked the road back out. The attached armor and TDs of the division joined in, in company and platoon strength, here and there. By noon the fight was over. The 106th Panzer brigade had 9 running AFV left. They left as total losses over 30 tanks, and also lost at least 60 SPW and 100 soft-skinned vehicles. Between 1/4 and 1/2 of the infantry made it out again. The advance of the American left wing had been delayed for a single day - an accomplishment equalled the day before by 450 infantry in a village strongpoint. The US history of the incident says in part "The (Germans) had found it easy to break into the American lines but lacked the weight to exploit his gains or extricate himself." Offensive commitment had ensured that the valuable Panthers fought at knife range, completely surrounded by AT weapons, few if any of which could penetrate their front armor but all of which were more than adequate from any other facing. The second formation thrown into the path of Third Army was the 112th Panzer brigade. This formation had a second battalion with Pz IVs in addition to the Panther battalion. It had 38 running Panthers at the time of its commitment, and around 40 Pz IVs. On 13 September it was sent in a probe toward the advancing Allies, with the bulk of the brigade moving through several villages along a creek-made draw, while the Pz IV battalion advanced by a second road to its left, supposed to reach a village that would secure the main body from anything coming up behind it. Unknown to the Germans, this move was made just ahead of CCL, 2nd French armored division, advancing into the same area. The French were informed of German movements by local civilians. CCL had around 50 plain Shermans, a dozen M-10s, 18 Priests, about 20 light armor, and a battalion of armored infantry in halftracks. It was divided into two task forces, with tank heavy force on the left with the SP guns, and an infantry-heavy force on the right. The second of these passed the village the Pz IVs were headed for before they got there, turned up the road toward the main body of the Germans, and thus wound up hooking in between the two German formations. Meanwhile the tank heavy French task force came upon the German main body frontally, and reacted more rapidly to the first skirmish (between a TD platoon and a few Panthers). It sent part of its force around to its left, forming an "L" on two sides of the village where the German main body was located. Then they called in the Tac Air. The Germans were caught at the bottom of a narrow valley, with the French on three sides. The French also distracted them with a feint from their armored infantry prong before cresting the hills and opening fire, with tanks, TDs, and Priests firing direct. The fighter bombers swept over the small pocket in four different waves over the course of the afternoon. During each sweep, the French bounded in closer, restricting the livable terrain for the trapped Panthers more and more. Meanwhile, the Pz IV battalion tried to hit the right French column from the rear to break the parent unit out of the trap, but was anticipated. The French outshot the Pz IVs along that road too, KOing 7 at the first clash. The Germans gave up the relief attempt there after losing 26 Pz IVs. The slaughter of the Panthers in the draw continued. That night, the Germans in the tiny pocket abandoned their remaining vehicles and escaped on foot to the east. The 112th Panzer brigade had 4 Panthers left alive, and the Pz IV battalion was cut in half as well. French losses were nominal. The whole affair was cited by the US commanders as a perfect example of air-ground coordination. The German commanders incredulously confirm their tank losses, remarking that they were "unbelievably high". The remaining tanks of the brigade were subordinated to 21st Panzer for the rest of the campaign. Advancing into enemy territory created an intelligence differential that the French exploited with elan. With numerous direct fire AT weapons on three sides of them, the Panthers could not crest the hills anywhere without being shot in flank or rear. Staying in the draw left the fighter bombers free to pick over the isolated and stationary target at will. Hiding from the Jabos in trees or near the houses of the village left the French AFVs free to creep closer and pick off the outermost vehicles from multiple angles. On 16 September, CCV of the French 2nd AD blooded the advanced guard of the 111th Panzer brigade (a company of Panthers and a Pz Gdr battalion, advancing in two prongs) in a head on clash just across the Moselle. The French brought up the bulk of the combat command; the outnumbered Germans lost 5 Panthers and withdrew. All those came before the famous Arracourt battle. In which the slightly weakended 111th Panzer Brigade and the newly arriving 113th fought CCA of the US 4th armored division, in foggy mornings and Jabo filled afternoons. The fight ran several days, involving numerous seperate clashes of armor, typically in company strength. The box scores read things like 3-0, 7-3, 8-2, 8-0, 9-3, 8-0, 8-12, 5-3. Rarely did the Germans outscore, despite the advantages of the Panthers superior gun and armor. CCA lost 7 TDs and 25 Shermans; the 111th Panzer brigade was reduced to about 10 runners and the 113th was about cut in half. This is one of the most famous fights of the war, so I suspect little needs to be said about it. Initially the Germans did have an odds edge - perhaps as high as 2 to 1 - and they certainly had superior tanks. US reinforcements and German losses soon brought the odds down to more like even. The US benefited from a defensive posture, tac air when the weather was clear (with about a dozen tanks claimed and others forced to disperse, etc), and from equalized point-blank shoot-out conditions when it wasn't. The US also threw in heavy artillery (up to 6 battalions worth) to strip the limited supporting infantry off the German tanks, and on one occasion was even firing 155mm howitzers direct. The terrain included many small valleys and hills, channeled roads to cross the streams running through some of the valleys, through all of which the tank platoons and companies stalked each other, ending in hull down duels or surprise "crestings" from unexpected angles. Positioned on dominating terrain and used defensively, or acting as fire brigades behind threatened sectors of a continuous infantry front, the superior German tanks would undoubtedly have given a far better account of themselves. Concentrated into spearheads they made better targets for tac air. Attacking against an enemy superior in artillery with little of their own, they quickly lost the sighting differential. Attacking through hilly country necessarily left flanks open here or there, if someone managed to exploit them. The Germans initially tried to use the fog to negate US airpower, only to find point blank duels negated their superior guns as well. The German crews also showed themselves slow on the draw. The American tankers report getting off numerous shots before any reply, over and over, from a combination of better sighting (buttoned Germans without infantry, a side effect of the artillery differential), slower turrets, and greener crews. The Arracourt battles ought to have finished any pretence of a German armor counterattack in the Lorraine. But they did not. The Germans persisted in their local offensive attempts in the last week of September, despite their dwindling supply of available AFVs. They were down to 50 runners by 25 September, even after the arrival of the advanced guard of the 11th Panzer division added 16 more to the total. Coordination with the artillery was improved by using the divisional organizations instead of the wrecked brigades. But the remaining force was far too meager to dislodge whole regiments of Americans from numerous mutually supporting positions. On 27 September they were down to 25 AFVs and the 11th Panzer's recon battalion, but kept on attacking stubbornly. The weight of fire support could not be denied, however. Six artillery battalions fired on the attacking KG. On the 28th the Americans were sending 100 Jabos at a time after the dwindling German armor force, following up with whole tank battalions. It was obviously hopeless; indeed, it should have been obvious far earlier. Ironically, the one successful German counterattack in this period of the September Lorraine fighting was launched not by Panthers but by the enthusiatic young infantrymen of the 559th VG division (with veteran cadres, and many recent Luftwaffe transfers for the line strength). At the forest of Gremecy they first threw back CCB, 4 AD - the sister formation of the unit that wrecked both the 111 and 113 Panzer brigades. The US ADs were chronically understrength in infantry, and faust-SMG infantry in foggy woods was not exactly their forte. Later the same division mauled the US 30th ID sent to relieve CCB. At one point the American corps commander proposed to withdraw behind the next river line to get clear of this counterattack. Patton threw in massive supporting artillery fires and then the 6th AD instead, on the flanks of the attack, and forced the German infantry to pull back. In Lorraine the Germans got a lot more bang for their buck out of experienced cadres leading young men with SMGs and fausts, in the woods, than they got out of the brand new Panthers of the Lorraine Panzer brigades. The decision not to use the new tank production to re-equip experienced units was obviously a gross mistake. The tanks were committed in groups too small, with inadequate support from other arms, as a direct result of their undersized parent organization. The tanks would also have been far better employed as a defensive reserve than in wasteful counterattacks. The armor that broke the back of Operation Goodwood in Normandy was less numerous than the force thrown away in these attacks. Why did the Germans waste their scarce armor like this? Their armor doctrine believed in offensive maneuver as the proper employment of tank power. They thought that massing tanks to defeat numerous enemies in sequence, by picking the point of attack oneself, was the right way to exploit the combination of firepower and mobility that armored forces represented. This was quite clearly wrong, when the overall conditions for such successful employment did not exist. The technical superiority of their tanks could not come close to making up for this doctrinal error. Used carefully as a mobile defensive reserve asset, the technical strengths of the German tanks might have made them very valuable, even at 2:1 to 3:1 armor odds. The Allies had such odds in Normandy, but did not achieve any breakout until they had attrited them down to more like 5-6 to 1. But attacking at 1:2 or 1:3 odds, and expecting concentration of the spearheads and technically superior vehicles to make up for it, was foolish in the extreme. This foolishness was an obvious and a direct result of a German armor doctrine that was still too offensive minded. Indeed, at various points during the Lorraine attacks, subordinate commanders complaining about the fighting conditions and what was being asked of them, were regularly lectured by senior generals about the need to possess "true offensive spirit". In fact, they were dying of an overdose of that item, as clearly as the boys in blue pants had in the 1914 battle of the frontiers. I hope this is interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kipanderson Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 JasonC, hi, “I hope this is interesting.” It is yes, very interesting. This was an offensive on a scale well above that of CM. The Second World War was fought on such a massive scale that even during the last nine months of the war there were counter attacks by the Germans. This in turn means that it is realistic to model the Germans as the attackers in CMBO in any period up the end of the war. Huge potential for scenario builders. In my view this adds greatly to the fun. For me the most interesting battle, on the western front, was The Bulge, just four months before the end of the war. Illustrates the point very well. All the best, Kip. PS. Tomorrow, I and a few others, including Germanboy and PeterNZ, are off to the Ardennes for our very own battlefield tour/ private beer festival. Should be fun. I have been before at this time of year, “the” time to go if one can manage to escape for a few days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dirtweasle Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 Yes very. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott B Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 Interesting post. Thought I'd throw some comments at you. <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC: Why did the Germans waste their scarce armor like this? Their armor doctrine believed in offensive maneuver as the proper employment of tank power. They thought that massing tanks to defeat numerous enemies in sequence, by picking the point of attack oneself, was the right way to exploit the combination of firepower and mobility that armored forces represented.<hr></blockquote> Emphasis in bold on the massing of tanks - this is something they distinctly failed to do; according to your post, their commitment of forces was in a piecemeal manner. If this is the case, they weren't following their own doctrine! And I'm not sure I completely disagree with the statement that "offensive maneuver is the proper way to employ armor." At the very least, as a mobile reserve, tank-heavy formations are used in counteroffensives, which are primarily going to be attacks of some sort, or at least meeting engagements with enemy mobile forces in the depth of one's own defensive zone. Yeah, this is a tangent discussion - some other time, maybe; I don't want to distract this from the main issue. <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>This foolishness was an obvious and a direct result of a German armor doctrine that was still too offensive minded.<hr></blockquote> If "the counterattack mandate came straight from the top," as you mentioned, how much can be blamed on doctrine? I'm a big critic of some areas of German operational art, but I think that the lion's share of the blame for this series of engagements has to rest on the shoulders of those who improperly used the resources available to them; this battle was half lost before operational art even came into play - it was poor strategy. I hate applying the "Hitler's Fault" defense, because it's overused and too convenient in so many cases, but it's probably an important factor here. Which isn't to say there weren't failures all the way down to the tactical level, but the odds were stacked against these units from the moment they were created rather than being used to fill out existing, combat-tested formations. The Germans in this situation suffer from another problem, in that they have a marked disadvantage in firepower. They faced an opponent with far more effective field artillery and air support than they, making massing of forces for an offensive immensely difficult. I wonder whether their piecemeal commitment of the Panzer Brigades reflects their realization that one big mass of tanks is just a bigger target for allied artillery and air power. I can't see that the relative armor strengths of the two sides can have made as big a difference as the total disparity in available firepower. Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warmaker Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 Interesting, good read. Reading about the squandering of any good force of any nationality can make me whince and quietly say,"ouch." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ligur Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 Very good read. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunnergoz Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 When I think of the post-Cobra events, I imagine streams of defeated (but not yet beaten into submission) German soldiers heading by foot back to the boundary of the Reich, well beyond Paris. In these masses of men, some under unit leadership, some walking alone or in ad hoc groups, were tankers and stug crewmen. It would be many weeks before units could be reconstituted from these experienced, if weary combat veterans. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising to me that the Germans would resort to the alternative of making up new units with newly issued AFV's and crewmen fresh from the tank troop schools. With leavening from instructor cadres and some returned wounded, these units would pose some threat, though perhaps lacking the elan and unit cohesion of the pre-D-Day formations. Jason makes some interesting and valid observations here and we are left to ponder what might have happened had the Whermacht & SS panzer/pzgdr divisional structures not been shattered and scattered in the days before, during and after Cobra. Had they been pulled back, reinforced and placed ready for counter-attacks, (instead of being thrown into Mortain or left to run the gauntlet at Falaise) they might have had an entirely different impact upon the coming battles as the Allies approached the frontiers of the Reich. [ 12-16-2001: Message edited by: gunnergoz ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PiggDogg Posted December 16, 2001 Share Posted December 16, 2001 Jason, Quite interesting, useful, & informative. Thanks. When do you sleep? Also, provide us with some more of these historical pieces. I, & I assume others, will find these a pleasure. Also (& I don't want to sound like a drooling idiot, but I will ), you do not have permission to stop posting on this board on any subject. You are hereby ordered (& politely requested) to continuing posting your well thought out & supported tomes. Cheers, Richard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 17, 2001 Author Share Posted December 17, 2001 The reason for the Panzer brigades was not a lack of cadres from the formed divisions, as though they had not yet reached Germany or reorganized. I will discuss the real reasons behind it below. But first to substantiate, for the case of the Lorraine formations, that re-equipping the existing mobile divisions was a real alternative. The 3rd and 15th Pz Gdr divisions, both of which combined had only about 50 AFVs vs. a TOE ideal of 160-240, were not coming from western France at all, but up from Italy. 17th SS had time for a spell out of the line which it used to absorb two new regiments of infantry, but was left with only about 10 running StuG, as it received no replacements on that score. It too could have used 50-100 replacement AFVs. (Note that Pz Gdr Division TOEs have one armor battalion and a divisional PzJgr battalion, thus 80-120 AFVs at TOE, depending on the size of the armor battalion). 11th Panzer came up from the south, not from the west, and had thus largely avoided the disintegration involved in the Falaise period - but was well under half of TOE in vehicle strength, under 50 AFV, with about 2/3rds of them left in a southern KG when the unit first made the swtich to the west-facing 3rd Army front. 21st Panzer comes closest to the picture envisioned, of a truly shattered unit broken by the western fighting and without time to reform yet. But it still had 11,000 men on the ration strength, and 20 Pz IVs, on 1 September. It had fought on the outside of the Falaise pocket, not inside it. Its combat elements were seriously depleted and its remaining force had about the fighting power of an American battalion-level armored task force, but most of the "tail", and the HQ, was alive and functioning. During the Lorraine battles it wound up acting as a defacto command organization for the remnants of the shattered Panzer brigades, and provided limited artillery support for them. There is no reason it could not have done so as a formation, before the Panzer brigades were shattered. If necessary, it could have incorporated whole new battalions, which had to be formed for the Brigades anyway, into its structure. There was thus no technical inability of these formations to absord the available armor replacements. Staff officers (trained panzer officers) saw this, and recommended that use of the replacement armor (Rundstadt wanted to concentrate on Aachen and the gates of the Ruhr, as the largest threat, as well), but were overruled by the high command. Why then was this use of the armor rejected, in favor of the green armor brigades in the Lorraine? The primary reason appears to be a desire to control the commitment of the reinforcements, and in particular a desire to ensure that the armor would be used to counterattack, offensively, rather than to fight defensively. The decision is thus part and parcel of the whole doctrinal error under discussion. The high command was trying to "seize the initiative" somewhere. Anywhere. There was in this an element of grasping for any spark of good news. But it was also due to the cult of the offensive as the doctrinal purpose of armor. From the standpoint of the high command and its armor doctrine ideas (many of which were cruder than those of practioners in the field, more aware of contemporary realities of mobile defense), the idea of using the armor as replacements held few attractions. It seemed obvious that what would happen as a result would be a period of stiffening defensive action by the mobile divisions, but no grand offensive victory. The re-equipped mobile divisions would probably all have frontage assigned to them, if not immediately then very soon. For example, 17th SS came out of the line to take its replacements, but was pressed to send a KG back into action after a pause of only one week. Obviously, stronger mobile divisions would mean more successful defensive action. But probably not a reserve held out of the line. Now, the realities of the military hierarchy were such, that local commanders had effective control of everything done by their divisional troops. A division might be issued an order to accomplish something, direct from OKW, but ordering around its sub-elements was quite out of the question. The higher ups could be kept on tighter leashes by OKW, and typically were. A formation in the line could always successfully plead the immediate situation on its front, and its critical role in maintaining a front at all, against any diversion of its resources to other tasks. But anything off the front could be and often was scarfed up by the higher HQs. Reinforcing the mobile divisions thus meant a decision to use the armor defensively to form and maintain a line, because that is how the divisional commanders would decide to use it. Seperate formations initially in the rear areas, meant that higher HQs could push the new formations around as they saw fit, and could order their use for attacks. There may have been an additional element of illusion in all of this - the high command not wanting to face the depleted condition of the full sized unit names on the situation maps, and comparatively reassured by having additional formations. But that is not necessary to understand the primary motivation. The tanks were purposefully withheld from the mobile divisions because those had frontages assigned and would therefore use them defensively. And by doctrine and faith in "true offensive spirit", and a desire to seize the initiative somewhere on the gloomy situation map horizon, the high command believed an offensive use of the armor was preferable. Another fellow is "not so sure that is wrong", or words to that effect. Well, that is sort of the point of the example. It clearly was wrong, but this clarity is not the result of mere theory, and it wasn't clear enough to the commanders at the time that they avoided the disaster that resulted. It is an empirical point at least as much as a theoretical one. Believing the doctrinal story about successful employment of armor, and remembering the glory days of success in the first three years of the war, the high command and many below them thought that a slashing and brilliant operational handling of a few armor spearheads could baffle superior enemy numbers. The operational handling wasn't particularly brilliant, but that was the least of the difficulties. The requirements for "multipliers" from offensive armor action did not exist. And the commanders wasted their scarce armor because they did not know (or notice, or admit) this. Perhaps because they hadn't really understood everything that had gone into the previous successes, so they could not tell when critical elements were missing. Nor was this the first time such mistakes occurred. They were wired into German doctrine and entrenched in beliefs among the high command that resisted all empirical evidence. A month earlier, half the remaining armor in the west had been thrown away in another doomed overly ambitious offensive scheme at Mortain. When von Kluge finally convinced Hitler to call off that one, he lost his job over it and a few days later committed suicide. Even among the better German armor commanders, there was a general failure to admit or to analyze what was unsound about such failures, which were often ascribed to allied airpower - the "blame everything on Goering" defense. Like empirics, many German commanders (especially above division command) frankly did not really understand why the formulas had worked previously, they just noticed that they had and tried to reapply whatever seemed most striking about those cases. The sharper among them had learned how to conduct a mobile defense with armor, more recently, from the school of hard knocks. But remember that Manstein practically invented that art less than two years prior, in the retreat from Stalingrad. It was not exactly common knowledge how to do it well. And those who tried to explain it to others found themselves regularly castigated for their "defeatism" and "lack of offensive spirit". The St. Cyr crowd said the same about Petain, because he told them that "firepower kills". It is worth examining some of the reasons why offensive maneuver is not essential to the combat power of armor, and why in many circumstances its use as a defensive reserve can be more useful. The empirical evidence is pretty clear from the case before us, but some will remain "not sure it is wrong" without the theoretical aspects being spelled out, too. The first proposition is to realize the offensive employment does not refer to the tank being in a forward gear. An offensive is a military reality, not a mechanical one about drive trains. If you send your armor in mass across no man's land into the heart of the enemy defended zone, in an effort to destroy his local forces in sequence or cut a path through to his rear areas, then you are using armor offensively. If you are positioning your armor behind your own front opposite a point the enemy is attacking, and in the course of doing so drive tank in the direction of the enemy and shoot at them, this does not make "that too" an "offensive use" of the armor. A defensive use of armor does not mean being shot at and not shooting back, either. Leave the straw man semantics out, and pay attention to the military realities. Is your armor on your side of the start line where the rival infantries began the local fight, or on his? If your tanks charge in tight a column into the space between the two armies in a meeting engagement, rather than feeling him out with a few scouts and then taking up a linear position ahead of him well shy of close engagement range, then you are also employing your armor offensively. The cases discussed above of the uses of the German panzer brigades were all offensive uses. The 106th reached the HQ of the US 90th ID. The 112th had a meeting engagement with CCL, 2nd French AD, while it was pushing into a no man's land area. The 111th and 113th attacked CCA, 4th AD from front and flank. What is a defensive use? Tanks in combined arms teams working to support defending infantry positions. Tanks roving behind the front or stationed on dominating terrain, picking off enemy vehicles at range. Tanks in larger formations shifting to the sector an enemy is attacking to "backstop" the front line units, kill enemy that try or succeed in penetrating the line there. Tank-infantry teams on instant counterattacks on a tactical scale, well inside one's own defended zone, restoring the front or eliminating intruders into the defense. Tanks springing kill-sack traps on intruders in or beyond the initial defended zone. Meeting engagements or counterattacks well behind one's main line of resistence, to wipe out enemy penetrations before they can grow large enough to outnumber the defending reserves. All of which involve shooting and many of which involve moving toward the enemy, some even involving actions recognizable as "locally offensive" in some sense. But all of which are definitely defensive uses of armor, and completely different in their logic and goals from massed spearheads launched at weak points in an enemy line to achieve breakthrough or defeat isolated bits of the enemy in sequence. The defensive uses of armor seek to (1) attrite the attackers, especially his vehicles, (2) seal off penetrations, allowing the rest of the formation to continue fighting and cooperating, even if forced to give ground, (3) gain the multiplier benefits of combined arms, by having the right tool handy for each tactical job presented by the enemy force or his actions, and (4) do all of the above while preserving the force, especially the armor itself but also the other elements of the combined arms team. The focus is not on initiative, seizing or even retaining ground, fighting limited enemies in sequence (except insofar as the endurance provided by survival brings that about on its own), being firstest with mostest, razzle dazzling flanks (though sometimes tactics involve some of that), etc. It is a different role - mobile reserve not schwerpunk. From the standpoint of gaining or losing ground, a defensive use of armor looks like defeatism, because it seems to be dedicated to losing less rather than more ground, but never to gaining it. This leads maneuver minded believers in the cult of the offensive to say silly things like "the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare", and image that means attacking all the time is the way to win, and only sissies defend. But from the standpoint of attrition, the question is which use of the armor is likely to kill more of the enemy before losing the tanks? If the conditions are favorable to offensive maneuver, then the answer may well be "by offensive maneuver". But when they are not, the answer is going to be "by mobile defensive reserves" - while attempted offensive maneuver will throw away the asset while accomplishing practically nothing. What favorable or unfavorable conditions? Overall odds ratios in the supporting arms, meaning besides the armor. Overall armor odds. Supply state and the level of logistic support, especially artillery ammo, as one of the key components in practical odds for that supporting arm. Who controls the air, for the same reason. Intelligence differentials and surprise. Terrain. And the operational disposition of the rival forces - who has interior lines, whose lines of communication are threatened. Predictable coming changes in force ratios, from production or reinforcement. Etc. The primary point is that expecting offensive maneuver to outweigh such factors is impractical and unsound, and will lead to incorrect decisions about how to use the armor. Which will waste its combat power. Look at a few of these and how they change whether use of the armor inside the enemy's defensive system is more or less likely to work than using it inside your own. Suppose the enemy has a large artillery edge. Then your infantry is unlikely to manage to keep up with your tanks deep into his defensive zone, while it may well be able to survive inside your own, using cover and dispersion and depth techniques. Therefore, the combined arms effect will be available for a defensive use, but not for an offensive one. Similarly, the same can create a sighting differential - inside the enemy defensive zone you have to expect to be buttoned, while the enemy needn't be unless you have lots of artillery to dump on him during your attack. This can be reinforced by information passed to his tanks by his infantry. A sighting differential will dramatically effect the success or failure of tank duels, and especially will go a long way toward redressing technical inferiorities in the tanks themselves. How? By choosing angles targets are tackled from, denying unfavorable engagements before being spotted in return, etc. Fighting inside the enemy defensive zone will minimize the usefulness of strong frontal armor not matched by equally strong side armor, because it is much harder to present just the front plate while passing through the enemy defenses. The usefulness of superior range can also fall when attacking and rise when defending, because it is harder for the enemy to get past your other arms to close with a defending tank at range. If your infantry does not outnumber the enemy, or at least equal it, then the difficulties of attacking will be further multiplied. Your tanks are likely to wind up ahead of your infantry line instead of behind it, while his tanks will have the reverse. This leaves your tanks more restricted in their movements by close AT weapons. If the enemy infantry is significantly stronger, you can also be certain any attackers will remain under artillery observation, as you won't have the strength to root the defenders out of difficult terrain areas. When can offensive maneuver work, then? When you can bring at least as much infantry to the point of attack, seriously threaten enemy lines of communication, and have at least significant artillery support if not outright artillery superiority. When a Panzer corps of three divisions attacks on the frontage of a single enemy infantry division, it is 12-15 infantry battalion equivalents against 6-10. With artillery weight likely even or better as well. Even artillery and 3:2 to 2:1 infantry odds at the point of attack will cover a multitude of difficulties. But a Panzer brigade with two infantry battalions attacking an entire infantry division, in any kind of terrain with some cover available, hasn't got a chance, no matter what the armor odds or how superior the tanks are. Look at what happened to the 106th Panzer Brigade. It got right to a US ID HQ, the finest front-line C3I target they could have hoped for, with total surprise to boot. Did the defenders collapse from "shock"? Not remotely. 5 to 1 local infantry odds against them meant total destruction in less than a day, to little purpose. The requirements for offensive maneuver by armor spearheads did not exist in the Lorraine. But the conditions for successful mobile defense were excellent, once the September reinforcements arrived in the theater, if they had been properly used. The armor odds of 2:1 against could have been more than covered by a high portion of Panthers fighting defensively, behind intact infantry positions, at long ranges. They would have been nearly invunerable in such a role, and would have knocked out far more tanks over time than they did with their death-ride offensives, which got them all knocked out in days. The infantry odds were only about 3:2 against the Germans, and they had difficult river lines, large cities, and eventually prepared lines of fortification to help them. Artillery and ammo were initially scarce, and the surge capacity of the Americans on that score was certainly impressive. In brief, sharp fights of a few days - as long as the tanks lasted while attacking - the Americans were very strong. But their supplies were coming all the way from Normandy by truck after being unloaded across an open beach. Supply shortages would soon bring 3rd Army to a halt, in fact. The Germans were on their own border, with a function rail net, despite the interference of Allied air. The artillery situation would thus rapidly redress itself in extended fighting. The US couldn't keep up the drumfire the attacks encountered for months on end, and eventually the rail net would deliver new guns and more shells to the German defenders. Provided they were alive to use them, and used the division organizations that made effective use of centralized artillery fire direction. It was a clear case of a poor use of a valuable and scarce military asset, due to a false doctrine (and some desperation). It is not the case that offensive maneuver is the only, or the best, way to use the power of armor in mobile warfare. The error was avoidable, and indeed the armored staff officers counselled against the seperate brigades in favor of re-equipping the mobile divisions. Several of which fought very well in the mobile defense they were forced to attempt without armor to speak of, after the failure of the Panzer brigades - notably 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier. They would have done even better if they had Panthers really helping them, use defensively. Thanks to several others on their kind comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott B Posted December 17, 2001 Share Posted December 17, 2001 JasonC, please define 'doctrine' for me, such that we can at least attempt discussion from an appropriate frame of reference. Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 17, 2001 Author Share Posted December 17, 2001 I don't have to, the dictionary will do it for you. "a principle or position or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief : DOGMA". Why not discuss history and its realities instead of semantics? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott B Posted December 17, 2001 Share Posted December 17, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC: I don't have to, the dictionary will do it for you. "a principle or position or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or system of belief : DOGMA". Why not discuss history and its realities instead of semantics?<hr></blockquote> It's not merely semantics - I want to be precise in my usage of the language, because so far we're talking past each other. I am in no way disputing your research - it is sound, and backed up by what little I've been able to dig up on these units from my own resources. I am disputing certain points of your analysis, based on my assumption that you would prefer that what was obviously a time consuming effort on your part generates some discussion. I applaud your effort, and am attempting to 'reward' it in part by giving you what every historian should want – a chance to defend your analysis. Unfortunately, I have not been quite precise enough in my wording, and will attempt to get my point across better in the following paragraphs. <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Doctrine, according to US Army TRADOC Regulation 25-36: The fundamental principles by which military forces or elements thereof guide their actions in support of national objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgment in application.<hr></blockquote> This is the definition of doctrine that I was trained to use, and may explain in part why I have a problem with your analysis. It's also important to make the distinction clear because if you'd been applying doctrine in, for example, the Soviet sense (which assumes a policy-level application of knowledge of the nature of war - essentially at the grand strategy level) you'd arguably be more correct. Different military systems use it to mean different things. <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC The tanks were purposefully withheld from the mobile divisions because those had frontages assigned and would therefore use them defensively. And by doctrine and faith in "true offensive spirit", and a desire to seize the initiative somewhere on the gloomy situation map horizon, the high command believed an offensive use of the armor was preferable. Another fellow is "not so sure that is wrong", or words to that effect.<hr></blockquote> This is not quite what I was intending to convey. I agree that forming new Panzer Brigades rather than filling out existing formations was a mistake. I don't think it necessarily follows however that had they been assigned to those existing formations, that they'd not have been squandered in similar counterattacks. In other words, I'm not drawing a direct line between the creation of the Lorraine Panzer Brigades and their use as separate offensive assets in combat. Had each Panzer Brigade been assigned to beef up the defenses of an Infantry Division, for example, you'd have a pretty strong defensive capability. This would have been a far more effective use of these formations, although again probably not as good as just sending them out to needy line units. Using them intact, however, you're probably best off employing them offensively. Tank heavy units are wasted holding a section of your defensive zone - their strength is in exploitation and pursuit. That's What I meant when I said, "And I'm not sure I completely disagree with the statement that 'offensive maneuver is the proper way to employ armor.'" I failed to be precise enough here, because I was thinking 'armor formations,' and more to the point, 'tank heavy' formations. I didn't intend that my comments be misinterpreted to read that "tanks should not be used defensively," although in retrospect I did phrase my wording poorly. Anyway, the important part is I don't buy that this failure can be written off as due to a fundamental flaw in German armor doctrine. Rather, it's a misapplication of their armor doctrine, as a result of poor judgement by the responsible commanders. They shouldn't have been counterattacking in that area under those conditions at all, no matter where they'd sent those tanks and men. Like you said: <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>The primary point is that expecting offensive maneuver to outweigh such factors is impractical and unsound, and will lead to incorrect decisions about how to use the armor.<hr></blockquote> I completely agree. And that's why if you apply your doctrine without the proper judgement as outlined in 25-36 above, you're misapplying a sound doctrine rather than correctly applying an unsound one. German Doctrine more than most required the sound judgement of subordinate commanders, and removing them from the equation was the primary fault of high command, which in turn made it probably the leading factor in losing those Panzer Brigades. Creating them at all was the first mistake, but sending them to counterattack in such abysmal conditions for offensive commitment of armor was the critical error, and whether it had been refurbished Panzer Divisions or brand-new Panzer Brigades attacking, the results would likely still have been negative. Scott [ 12-17-2001: Message edited by: Scott B ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 17, 2001 Share Posted December 17, 2001 Jason, this is a reply for the first 1.5 postings of yours, up to but not including where you present your conception about what defensive armour use looks like. Sorry for putting this piecemeal. As you point out, OKW was afraid -probably correctly- that giving out the newly produced armour to existing units would have had no effect. "No effect" as defined in "no effect in newspapers or strategic maps". That doesn't mean the strategic map wouldn't have looked differently, mostly probably it would have had the Allied frontline further west by a mide margin. However, no single event on that map would have been visible as "success", much less "success because of the newly produced armour". OKW needed visible, or better, identifiable effect from the resources committed. And that is not only for German politics, but for Allied homeland newspapers. A frontline's exact position has no chance to reverse a decision to fight a war to the end. That's the same issue as later with the Ardennes offensive, it has more than military goals. The desired effect of both offensives could possible be achieved even if the military operation fell short of its ambitions. That doesn't mean I share the impression that the Western Allied leadership could have forced to end hostilities at the German border by either action, but it was what they Nazis thought they could do with a (real) democracy. And I agree, the absorption into the existing divisions would have had few visible effect (see below). The defensive battles on the Western front had shown that even badly depleted formations, especially when depleted in armour, could hold frontlines quite well. Except for very strong attacks, either in numbers or with very strong artillery (maybe naval) or air support. But those attacks that were strong enough to break though any front, even one made of depleted units, were so strong that a few AFVs for the frontline units wouldn't have made much difference except for loosing more AFVs. Following that, the obvious way to go would be to concentrate the new AFVs in few (not necessarily new) formations and place them in reserve. It occurs to me that an Allied attack by the forces you describe - 75mm Shermans, M10, few infantry in halftracks, with artillery and air support - would be very vulnerable to counterattacks by large tank formations, supported by Faust and Schreck carrying infantry. The situation you describe would work the other way round, with Allied armour in a valley with Germans on high ground, positioned on several sides. While the Germans would not have airplanes to do the actual attrition, they had the long-range weapons to do it themself. And they would have much better AA coverage than on the attack and they could opt to close in with the Allied armour to make artillery and air use against them hard. And of course real tanks and thick TDs make a good mobile defensive reserve because they are less vulnerable to air attack as any other weapon. Or in other words: I agree with only half of what you say. Giving the new AFVs to existing formations would not have been a good idea, IMHO. I think that many of the local commanders at that time did not understand the realities of armour usage better than those higher up, just in another direction of misconception. I doubt they would have made effective use of the AFVs, this time not for throwing them away in counterattacks, but by having them decimated by parceling them out in defensive lines and/or by reinforcing hopeless situations in too low numbers. I guess my impression is from the US defense in the Ardennes: well, the infantry line breaks, so let it, it will still be awful for the attacker and we have our armour in large concentrations further behind, either for smashing attackers that really break through, or to attack at another place now proven to be armour-deserted. It always strikes me that the Americans had the nerve to do that - without having read about the campaign I would assume that American infantry commanders would successfully demand more AFVs for the frontline to hold them. But in reality the US had the nerves to let the infantry alone and do whatever was required to make their armour most effective, and the Germans -for whom the clichtype would fit better- did not, putting lots of StuGs, Hetzers and Jagdpanzers into the frontline (the Jagdpanzer only in cases where they couldn't pull armour formations out of the frontline, another nail in the coffin). And even designing and producing expensive new vehicles for that role, see Guderian's opposition to the Panzer IV/70. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 17, 2001 Author Share Posted December 17, 2001 "Using them intact, however, you're probably best off employing them offensively. Tank heavy units are wasted holding a section of your defensive zone - their strength is in exploitation and pursuit." I understand perfectly what you said, and that it is based on this principle or piece of dogma. They thought exactly the same thing. The problem is, this piece of dogma is completely false. Which is the point. You want to chalk this up to a "misapplication" of doctrine, but there was nothing misapplied about this piece of it. Applying this piece of doctrine is misapplying, because this piece of doctrine is wrong. It was wrong then for them, and it is wrong now for you. Armored units (with proper combined arms, which are easily obtained since the other arms are not scarce) are *not* "wasted" when used defensively. They are wasted when they are lost completely in a matter of hours, when they are thrown away in recklessly aggressive attacks. The cause of which was precisely this belief, that the only proper way to use a new asset of several hundred capable AFVs, was for armored counterattack. It is the cult of the offensive that *wastes* combat power, not the use of armor for mobile defense. Mobile defense is not stupid or a waste, it does not squander combat power compared to using armor offensively. The cult of the offensive wasted combat power in at Fredericksburg, and in Pickett's charge, and in the battle of the frontiers, and by the British at Knightsbridge, and at Stalingrad, and at Kursk, and at Salerno, and in Banzai charges on many a Pacific island, and for Lehr in Normandy in July, and at Mortain - and in the Lorraine, as described. It wasted it again in the Bulge. Manstein did not use armor wastefully when he used it as a mobile reserve in a flexible, retreating defense in southern Russia. The Russians did not "waste" their armor using a huge reserve of it to stop the Kursk attacks. The 7th, 9th, and 10th ADs were not "wasted" when they helped halt the Bulge attack - particularly the "fire brigade" combat command inside the Bastogne perimeter. Walker did not "waste" his armor using it as his defensive "swing" asset inside the Pusan perimeter. Ridgeway did not "waste" his armor using it for mobile defense as well as counterattack against the Chinese in Korea. The art of mobile defense by use of combined arms reserves, critically dependent on a living body of armor not ticketed for ridiculous glory-seeking death-rides, is not a mistake but a correction of an erroneous impression of the role of armor in modern war, which the early developers of modern armor doctrine suffered from, before they had to defend anything. The cult of the offensive - a much older piece of stubbornness and stupidity - infected modern mobile doctrine in its formative stages. Despite the development of modern systems of mobile defense later in the war, these have still not been erased from its "code". I would not have gone into the subject at such length and in such detail, if it were only a matter of "application", or if the errors involved were ancient history. There are definite lessons from the history of mobile warfare that only the best among its early practioners truly absorbed, and which did not make it into the populizers and historians (like BHLH), nor into the modern field manuals. They also never penetrated the sycophantic unreality of OKW. Men like Manstein and Ridgeway and Walker knew things that BHLH and the field manual writers either never knew, forgot, or dropped as overly complicated nuances. Much of the misunderstanding of modern combined arms warfare has stemmed from popularizers and their cartoon versions of the change involved, and their often woefully confused misunderstandings of the failings of prior doctrine. Avoiding the mistake of the French in 1940 and the Russians in 1941 is sometimes turned into a belief in massed armor used independently of other arms (the mid-war British mistake, which the US 1942 AD design and Russian practices of 1942 to mid 1943 still suffered from). That one is based on misunderstanding the answer to the question "should armor work with infantry or not?" The French mistake is thought of as "tying" the armor to the slower and defensive infantry. It was therefore assumed that massed armor used alone was the German secret. The result was disasters like Knightsbridge, where three armor brigades killed themselves in a single afternoon on a German PAK-front in the Libyan desert. People eventually realized that combined arms are necessary, and that combined arms is not a repeat of the French mistake. This error was directly related to the influence of residual cavalry thinking - to the idea that speed was the essence of armor and the problem with infantry was that is was slow. But the next mistake was to assume that offensive use of the armor was the thing the French were missing. Their problem was not that infantry and tanks were meant to work together, but that they lacked "true offensive spirit", and thought of using them together at an infantry pace and for infantry purposes, mostly defensive. Almost every attempt of the masters of mobile defense to educate other commanders in its elements met the same misunderstanding. "Lack of offensive spirit", "defeatism" - that is what men said to Manstein when he advised standing on the defensive in the summer of 1943, and taking the Russian offensive "on the backhand", with intact armor reserves instead of ones cut in half and out of position due to failed prior attacks. You say, "it is a waste to use armor just to hold part of your defensive zone". Poppycock. The proper defensive use of armor is to "hold" the part of the defensive zone behind the infantry portion, and to react to developments as a "fire brigade". After restoring any given part of the front, back into reserve. But not to attack, to defend. And no, restoring part of the front does not mean regaining lost ground - ground has nothing to do with it (the perennial cult-of-the-offensive mistake). It means restoring the integrity of the defensive system. Allowing forward elements to get back "on-line" by withdrawls, allowing reserves to shift in front of the threatened sectors, ambushing and falling back to delay and attrite attackers, providing the multiplier effect of combined arms (the right tool present for each tactical job), etc. The key to defensive use of armor is to keep it alive and fighting for as long as possible, providing its aid to lengthen the life-span of the other defensive arms. Flexibly. This is not at all a waste of the combat power of armor, and nothing else can do it so well. And the reason it works is patently obvious from the example before us. It is darn hard to knock out 15-40 Panthers on distant hill-tops behind an intact infantry-artillery defense, shifting in company to battalion strength to each point the attackers try to mass in front of, and blasting the attacker's armor support to kingdom come. Without any loss to speak of, and repeated day after day for a month, at each successive position carried, as the infantry falls back wherever pushed hard. But killing 40 Panthers that thrust themselves smack into the middle of a US ID or a French armored Combat Command is trivial. The same would be true for M-1s today. Especially if they come out for stand-off "hunts" at night, but refuse to get close. Using the screen of other arms that they are "supporting" as a shield to maintain the range. No, that would not at all be a "waste" of their combat power. It would give any enemy fits. "But it is not decisive, because the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare". Poppycock - "firepower kills", and dead enemies do not fight another day. Make the conditions for the tanks to get kills, and to survive themselves, as good as possible - and do not worry a lick about who has the supposed "initiative" or which way the lines are moving on the maps or the cult of the offensive. When the enemy runs out of armor - when the local armor ratio hits 5-10 to 1 - you can be darn sure the front line is going to move in your direction. By enourmous amounts. Combined arms against none, and a defense without any armor reserves to perform the adaptive, "self-sealing" mobile defense role, will see to that. It is not spearhead concentration that is decisive - that was only true before the defenders knew defense-in-depth and mobile defense doctrine. It is not picking the point of attack - because the defender can get his reserves there as easily as you can get your spearheads there. It is the defender not having any armor reserves to meet a combined arms attack, that is decisive. If his doctrine is very bad, he won't have them because he won't know he needs them (French come to mind). Or because he threw them away in failed counterattacks (like Mortain and these Lorraine fiascos. Check?) If his doctrine is good, it will only happen because you killed them all. So see to it you kill them all, under the best conditions of "exchange". Which will often be defensive conditions - especially if he obliges with a stupid cult of the offensive and throws away what he has. What did Hitler and the boys at OKW think they were doing in the Lorraine? They thought they were going to duplicate Manstein's performance in February 1943, in the Kharkov counterattack. They thought, "collapsing front, overextended mobile pursuit, armored spreaheads thrust forward recklessly, nearing their logistical limits. Armored counterattack to cut off the heads of the intrusions will find them blown, poorly supplied and poorly coordinated, too spread out. Just be sure you stay tight and keep moving, to hit them in sequence one after another, and the overall odds in the area won't matter. Offensive action by massed tanks will prove magically effective once again." They misdiagnosed Manstein's success in early 1943 as due to "regaining the initiative", by moving the little flags on the map in the right direction for a change. They thought they were at least as much in touch with realities on the ground as Manstein had been, and after all he had showed signs of wavering and defeatism when he later counseled defensive use of armor. Whereas their offensive spirit was unshakable - they'd throw away anything into the maw of 3rd Army. General Mantueffel wanted the whole thing called off after 19 September, when they still have around 150-200 AFVs left in the theater (35 Panthers and 8 Pz IVs were lost on the 19th, for only 8 US mediums and TDs KOed), and got lectured on his lack of offensive spirit. Mantueffel. You know, the guy who ran Grossdeutchland in Russia and who surrounded Bastogne and got his armor to Celles after Dietrich got stuck from Elsenborn to St. Vith. He must have just "lacked offensive spirit". Of course, in southern Russia Manstein first had to do the hard part - getting the infantry divisions to form a line (alive), along the Donets basin, behind which he could unleash the counterattacking armor. But that was (to OKW) obviously unnecessary, since it was not commitment inside a defended zone that mattered, but merely offensive commitment. Because obviously (to OKW) the multiplier effect of armor was due purely to which way it was moving on the map. Now, the Germans did form a line along the Moselle, and if they had used their armor in the divisions that did so it might even have held. They had already thrown away 2 out of 4 Panzer brigades by then, but something might still have been salvaged by using the remaining two properly. One of the two remaining Panther battalions was lost on the 19th, but there were still two battalions of Pz IVs and one of Panthers, and remnants from other formations about equal to a fourth armor battalion (mixed types from StuG to Panther, in platoon to company sized driblets). But the third collosal loss was not a charm, and Mantueffel got his lecture on being too defeatist and defensive *after* 2/3rds of the armor in the theater had been thrown away in failed counterattack attempts. He got it from the army group commander, Blaskowitz (hand-picked by Rundstadt), as well as from OKW (meaning Keitel, Jodl, and Hitler). It was erroneous doctrine, the cult of the offensive as the "proper" use of armor. There is no avoiding it. The smell of that cult is as strong as among the French in the 1914 battle of the frontiers. It was repeated before at Mortain and after in the Ardennes, not at all an "isolated incident". It wasn't just a misapplication of their armor doctrine, it *was* their armor doctrine. And it was wrong. [ 12-17-2001: Message edited by: JasonC ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 18, 2001 Author Share Posted December 18, 2001 The high command believed in the transcendent importance of the offensive, and in never giving ground on the defensive, precisely because it thought such things decisive as representative of magical and mystical qualities of will. Which as the principled military thought it pretended to be, was mind-over-matter, crystal-healing, abada abada abada, loony tunes, stark raving mad. Pretending it was a political necessity is called lying. A more accurate assessment would be that generals preferred not having their heads lopped off because the leader was in a foul mood and one of his towering rages, and therefore wanted sweet somethings to brighten the day in order to see the end of it without being arrested and offered a pill. It wasn't *regime* surivival they were worried about. But in addition to these obvious practicalities of sycophancy, many senior German commanders agreed on the importance of always using armor offensively. Which Hitler believed as well. Only a few senior commanders disagreed, along with a larger portion of the division-level officers who had dealt with the practical realities of mobile defense in the second half of the war. (Many of the seniors had been promoted above division-level command before the switch to defensive fighting, and lacked first hand knowledge of its practical realities). Despite mobile defense being literally illegal, by special order - a three-star general needed OKW approval to withdraw a single division two miles. The cult of the offensive as the proper role of armor, though, was not merely a centralized fantasy at OKW. It was German armor doctrine, and a hand-picked appointee of Rundstadt, as far as possible from the OKW atmosphere, can be found lecturing experienced panzer generals about it. It wasn't just a screwy regime on its last legs, is was also an incorrect, sober armor doctrine. Which is still around, while the regime's idiocies are not. You say that the defensive battles in the west show that even badly depleted formations could hold. This is simply false. Before receiving reinforcements, the men in front of 3rd Army had to feed it a battalion a day on each advancing division's front to slow it below road-march speed. At that rate, 3rd Army would go through a force equal to itself in size in less than two weeks - and the Germans didn't have a force of equal size to put in front of it. Piecemeal commitment in inadequate strength and without a planned overall defense is every bit as ruinous with infantry as with armor. The Germans could not afford to take losses like they took in August for another two months - they wouldn't have a field army left at all. The first pause at the begining of September was entirely a result of the gasoline transport shortage, not of depleted formations "holding". And holding the line after that was not a result of depleted formations holding, but of fresh reinforcements arriving in the theater. As follows - 3rd and 15th Panzergrenadier divisions from Italy. 553 and 559 VG divisions newly formed, by using Luftwaffe transferees, the newest young ages classes, and cadres from the eastern front. The 553 had additional numbers from school units and nearby Luftwaffe ground units, equal to about an additional regiment. No. 462 division formed from rear area comb-outs. The 19th and 38th VG were also sent from reserve to behind the front, but were diverted to other areas before being committed in the Lorraine. 17th SS received two regiments of replacements from newly formed units. Panzer Lehr to the north, and 21st Panzer to the south, later joined by 11th Panzer from southern France, just fought on as severely depleted units. Notice - those were not the infantry division but the armor divisions. The depleted armor divisions got away because their "tails" were motorized. Most of the infantry didn't, and what did was in the north (along the sea-coast, or debris from Falaise collecting around Aachen). The only previous infantry division fighting in the area was the 48th. In all of 1st Army, there were only 9 infantry battalions, 10 tanks, and 30 towed guns that came from the west instead of from reserves. Their were also depleted infantry formations from southern France - 19th Army - but they were the south-facing front, not facing 3rd Army, and their losses were mostly from their rapid retreat (including virtually all the artillery, because it wasn't motorized). The infantry force that held at the west-wall was not primarily worn-out units from Normandy. The 15th army positions in Pas De Calais and up into Holland had not been engaged in Normandy, and they provided the bulk of the northern wing. The rest came from the manpower scramble, in the form of new divisions - 18 ordered in July, and 25 more in August. These were the original VG divisions. They came from the replacement army, including school units and wounded men returning to front line duty, from naval and Luftwaffe personnel, the young age classes, rear area comb-outs, and pull draft exemptions for some classes of industrial workers. Cadres from divisions burned out in the east were used for some of the VG formations, while others were brand new. The Germans lost half a million men in August alone in the west, roughly 2/5ths bottled up in the fortresses and the rest casualties or PWs in the Falaise debacle. Most of the infantry did not get away, precisely because there had been no armor left hold open escape routes and the like - contrary to your statement that depleted units without armor can hold on just fine. The guys that held at the westwall were new formations from Germany, not remnants. In the infantry, understand. The cadres of the mobile divisions mostly did get away, because they were motorized. Only a few of the Mortain formations didn't, because they started so deep inside the Falaise pocket. You say, "a few more AFVs in the front line units wouldn't have made much difference". But 500 AFVs is not "a few", and that was the size of the armor force committed to the Lorraine. That is twice the size of the armor force that proved sufficient to make Operation Goodwood a bloody shambles. It is three times the size of the force that managed to hold open the north side of the Falaise gap, mauling the Polish armor division in the process. And the divisions it would have supported - 3rd and 15th Pz Gdr, a replenished 17th SS Pz Gdr - were hardly "blown" or pikers. Even the green 553rd VG, as already mentioned earlier in the thread, was tough enough to beat CCB 4th AD and then the whole 30th ID, in sequence. Defensive use of the armor would certainly have made quite a serious difference. As it was instead, two thirds of the Panthers sent to the theater were lost in three one-day affairs, on 8th September, 13th September, and 19th September. Each an offensive fiasco. Then you say "It occurs to me that an Allied attack by the forces you describe - 75mm Shermans, M10, few infantry in halftracks, with artillery and air support - would be very vulnerable to counterattacks by large tank formations, supported by Faust and Schreck carrying infantry." Hello there, anybody home? That is exactly what happened, that is just what the historical commanders who ordered these things thought, and they did not prove to be "very vunerable" to such attacks. They ate the attackers for breakfast. Then you allow that "real tanks make a good mobile reserve because they are less vunerable to air attack". Um, that is hardly why, and incidentally dispersed infantry is far less vunerable to air attack because the fly-boys can't even find it half the time. No, armor is not a good defensive reserve because it was all Goering's fault. Armor was a good defensive reserve for Ridgeway inside the Bastogne perimeter, facing no air superiority at all. It was a good defensive reserve for Walker inside the Pusan perimeter, with a thousand modern aircraft supporting him against a couple dozen Yak fighters. Tanks are a good defensive reserve because combined arms teams are mobile and have great combat power, which the defender can apply as needed to maintain and recover the integrity of his defensive system, rapidly, attriting the attackers seriously in the process, and without undue loss. They remove the attacker's ability to choose the local odds ratios he wants at the locations he wants, in order to disarticulate the defensive system. They can remove the combined arms multiplier otherwise available to attackers, by winning a local armor firefight or by restricting the movements of attacking armor. They help a defense in all sorts of ways, but believers in the cult of the offensive aren't impressed by this, because they still believe "the offensive is the only decisive form of warfare", just like General Pickett believed. "General, where is you Panzer brigade?" "Sir, I have no Panzer brigade". Defensive firepower on the part of the forces you said "would be very vunerable to counterattack", killed them all, in a matter of hours. Panther side armor is not proof against short 75s, TD 76s, Priest 105s, bazookas, or 5 inch rockets. Firepower kills. When the strict conditions for successful use of offensive maneuver are not present, the cult of the offensive wastes combat power. With armor or not, from flanks or not, striking for C3I targets successfully or not. And no, superior vehicles technically, will not make up for this doctrinal error - which I took was the idea behind your "would be vunerable" comment. Armor tech specs become far less important when trying to drive, buttoned, through the enemy's defended zone, than they can be while sniping away from hilltops 2 km behind your own intact line, at advancing Shermans trying to get at your dug in infantry. [ 12-17-2001: Message edited by: JasonC ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wreck Posted December 18, 2001 Share Posted December 18, 2001 An irony here is that armor is a good defensive reserve because it is maneuverable. Yet that very fact is the reason why maneuverist offensive cultists believe that it should be attacking, not defending. Only maneuverable elements can get the proper force-multiplying fung-shui of neatly sequenced battles. Another thing that does not completely make sense to me about the use of Panthers described here, is that Panthers seem rather obviously designed for defensive use. The Germans obviously understood that defenders need big front armor but they could skimp on the sides; that's why the jadgpanzers were as they were. And the same thing is true of the Panther. Did they think it "should" attack because it had a turret? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 18, 2001 Share Posted December 18, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JasonC: Then you say "It occurs to me that an Allied attack by the forces you describe - 75mm Shermans, M10, few infantry in halftracks, with artillery and air support - would be very vulnerable to counterattacks by large tank formations, supported by Faust and Schreck carrying infantry." Hello there, anybody home? That is exactly what happened, that is just what the historical commanders who ordered these things thought, and they did not prove to be "very vunerable" to such attacks. They ate the attackers for breakfast. <hr></blockquote> I appears to me you mistook this paragraph of mine. I said an Allied attack with said units into a German defense would face the same fate as the Germans faced, in spite of air superiority. And hence that the first part of your message is correct. However, I think that you are wrong about the size of defending armour units. You seem to think that small units very near the front, at the point where they directly contribute to first-line defensive fire, would make best use of the armour. That is wrong, IMHO, because the Allies would come in such great numbers that you would have to use a reserve with a large numbers of AFVs, and they must not already be committed in front-line activity. Yes, that means delay and by the time the big unit arrives the attacker may be pretty far into your territory and your infantry partly overrun. But IMHO it is neccessary when the attacker comes in such large numbers and it may work to the defenders advantage. Apply Ardennes comparision here. And I didn't mean to leave the infantry at 10% TO&E men and without AT guns. I say if they have 10 StuGs for a division, then don't "reinforce" them with 5 Panthers, that is useless. Give them whatever they need, except small numbers of AT-capable AFVs. [ 12-17-2001: Message edited by: redwolf hates artillery ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 18, 2001 Share Posted December 18, 2001 Before we get into useless back'n'forth because of misunderstandings, I have the following questions on your position: I am uncertain about your definition of defensive armour use. Do you mean a AFV on/in each favourable terrain position, but close to the frontline and contribution their weapons in initial stages of enemy attacks? Or do you mean concentrating way behind the frontline in large formations and counterattacking whatever actually makes a breakthrough? Related question: would you think that by September 1944 the Germans should have primarily produced StuGs, Hetzers and Jagdpanzer IV (and maybe Jagdpanther downgraded to a medium TD role) instead of turreted tanks? The following comments are mostly in the assumption that you answer yes: Manstein used armour in his (defensive) counterattacks in a very different way from having tanks with heavy front plates dominating from high ground, or sneaking around in plants behind defending infantry. The scale of his use of armour is such that the number of AFVs in this defense probably isn't much lower than in an attack as the one in Lorraine. And in this role I think you gain much from having turrets, although more in the M10/M18 form than in the Panther form. The whole action has more of an attack, although in friendly territory. I also don't think the comparision of Lorraine with Kharkov 43 (or Kharkov 42) applies. Because both Kharkovs were cutting off forces by advancing short straight lines to do the cutoff. They did not have to make a half-circle to reach friendly lines again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 18, 2001 Share Posted December 18, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Wreck: Another thing that does not completely make sense to me about the use of Panthers described here, is that Panthers seem rather obviously designed for defensive use. The Germans obviously understood that defenders need big front armor but they could skimp on the sides; that's why the jadgpanzers were as they were. And the same thing is true of the Panther. Did they think it "should" attack because it had a turret?<hr></blockquote> It occurs to me that the Germans made the Panther's front "accidentially" so strong. It was clearly meant to be an offensive tank for the next Smolensk or Minsk. They put big resources into the thing. By late war, a Panther cost twice as much as a Panzer IV/70 (Guderian quote in Jentz' Panzertruppen), although it has about the same front robustness and the same gun. They really wanted that turret, the MGs and the mobility. However, it strikes me that the Panther's design is lead by the German's believe in the superiority of their men and hence tank crews. The Panther's design is such that it doesn't need to avoid other tanks, but engage them. Doing that when trying early-war tank drives requires assuming that the tank opposition will be eliminated in no time, which in turn requires that the crews are in fact vastly superiour. Otherwise, the delay will be inacceptable. The only thing in defense of this theory is that a Panther had less problems when meeting huge armoured reserves inside enemy territory - however in practice against the Americans they likely met opposition primary against their support or if armour then TDs which you still don't want to duel. The Germans tried to use the Panther like a Tiger at Kursk, like it could just stand and slug it out against T-34 and AT guns, and they were soley diappointed that it didn't work. What they failed to see is that this failed not because the Panther was so much worse than a Tiger 1, it failed because the Tiger wasn't invincible either. The better Tiger crews knew by that time and used "normal" tactics against T-34 and AT guns, using cover and similar cowardish stuff. While some of the early Panther crews seem to behave like power-crazed kids. So, returning to the original question, I do not think that the Panther's strong front is an indication of intended defensive use, I think it is a failure to recognize certain realties, namely that AFVs are always vulnerable or at least quickly become so after fielding, and that soldier's superiority doesn't last long either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 18, 2001 Author Share Posted December 18, 2001 "I am uncertain about your definition of defensive armour use." Fine, I will explain in any level of detail you like. "Do you mean a AFV on/in each favourable terrain position, but close to the frontline and contribution their weapons in initial stages of enemy attacks?" Not simply, but *when* a portion of the reserve armor is committed to a sector, this is often the tactical form it will take. The key is to keep such commitments to the threatened sectors, and to make them temporary, while the threat remains high. In practice, some portion of the defending armor will thus be in such positions *while* it is under attack (sometimes "inital stages", sometimes when he continues or resumes an attack, etc). But they don't "live" there, all the time. "Or do you mean concentrating way behind the frontline in large formations" There are two answers to this, which turn on ideal vs. practical reality, and on the meaning of "large". Ideally, full panzer (or Allied armor) divisions would be initially in a kind of second line on the order of 10-25 miles behind the infantry line - out of artillery range and direct ground observation but within minutes or at worst hours, not days, of a large portion of the frontage - when no heavy attack is in progress. When committed to an area, the Panzergrenadiers come along with the tanks, of course, and typically are needed to take over the immediately threatened sector (where the original infantry is often dead, or severely reduced). In practice, conditions are rarely so ideal, and often a portion of a Panzer division's Pz Gdr force is in the line, typically one regiment at the place last committed to. But the basic idea should be tolerably clear. The combined arms team, "armor" force type in CM terms and in WW II division designations, basically has the role of a linebacker in American football defenses. The infantry divisions act as the linemen. "and counterattacking whatever actually makes a breakthrough?" No, the action of the reserve armor is not simply to deliver counterattacks, let alone to wait until a breakthrough is complete before reacting to a heavy attack. Nor does it wait to be used offensively, only, in corps size groups or larger. Linebackers don't blitz on every play. Nor is a linebacker a safety, to continue the analogy. The ordinary, constant use of reserve armor is to move in front of the most threatened sector and intervene with combined arms teams. Usually this intervention will be locally defensive in nature, not locally offensive, but that can change by the hour with local opportunities. The teams that go in are combined arms teams, and the tanks will often go on locally dominate terrain as already described. In practice, such deployments will go down to a company of armor. Against an enemy without significant air superiority, especially if he is using massed tanks, sometimes a full armor battalion (Russia rather than the west e.g.). The overall commitment will be by battlegroups from a mobile division - US task forces or combat commands, German KG from battalion to regimental size. All the elements of the division should be used in close proximity of course, but not all of them will be in the line at a given moment. Local reserves is a principle of all successful mobile defense, and continues down through the echelon levels, via 2 up 1 back deployments and the like. The whole defense stays flexible, meaning willing to retreat when necessary to preserve the force. Keeping the defenders in being is the first priority, attriting the attackers is the second. The whole toolbag of defender's tactics is obviously to be employed. For the reserve armor, the key is to commit it in positions the enemy needs but on the tactical defensive. This maximizes defending firepower, while maintaining the survivability of the armor. When the threat to a sector is relieved, as soon as possible afterward, the combined arms team reconstitutes its local reserves. Often the infantry and support elements will remain for the moment while the armor is freed, and goes back to the rear, where it mates with a different unit (e.g. company of armor coming out of the line reforms on the "1 back" infantry battalion in the area, instead of pulling out the battalion it "came with"). This flexibility is key to division organization and to "fighting the division", "working" its sub-elements, with tasks and reliefs, etc. The key command tasks of the operational staff and of the commander, are gauging the various enemy attacks, anticipating his plans, and allocating reserves sparingly as to occasion (to keep a strong one in being) but forcefully when committed (to win the engagements it is sent to). In other words, "read" the attacker's "play", and adapt the whole defensive scheme to it by shifting the reserve contribution. Such shifts occur in space, in time, in sequencing, in offensive or defensive employment, in echelon used, etc. Mobile, flexible defense, using the well known principles of reserves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 19, 2001 Share Posted December 19, 2001 I am sorry, I still think that the reserve placement and the tactical positions don't fit together. If the defensive armour formations are far enough behind the front to be concentrated in large numbers, then I don't think they can take defensive positions like historically Jagdpanzer did, than means being in plants concealments, using houses, high but difficult to reach spots. All these require time to get into, more time than these reserves would have. The best the units could hope for would be the side of the battle that is standing while the other is moving. But the positions wouldn't be much better than any tank in non-chosen terrain can take while not under actute, but threatend fire. The whole situation opens a can of worms about identification of friendly units and generally communication, especially finding the enemy tanks if they already broke the line and moved on or if the exact sector threatend is not clear. Reinsert remark about turret again. This situation looks a lot like it would be useful to have a turret. Although a full tank would be of no additional value, a M10-class vehicle sounds much better suited for this than the Jagdpanzers. I would be interested how the Jagdpanther-equipped heavy TD units fought. The Guderian order posted here lately was very interesting, but it doesn't answer the key question: did they actually meet the enemy at such a long distance that the long 88 payed off and the turret wasn't missed? (In the West) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted December 19, 2001 Author Share Posted December 19, 2001 The defensive benefit of AFVs does not come, like infantry, from being dug in. It takes about 2 minutes to set up a camo net (5 if the crew has no sense of urgency), which is the only thing a tank needs besides being in the right spot. The attackers are coming to you. You pick a good piece of ground ahead of them and set up your stand, coordinate the placement of each AFV, and then you clobber them. If you have the time and space to get fancy you can add an L shaped ambush or second tank force ready to "crest" from a different direction, or whatever nasty item from the defender's bag of tricks you please. Also, they are likely to be announcing their presence rather loudly by shooting up your infantry in sector, distracted by that task, and they are also likely to be buttoned - which you only have to be if heavy enemy arty is already falling where you want to make your stand. They don't know where you are and you do know where they are, because they are in your defended zone and already fighting, and you are neither. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manchildstein (ii) Posted December 27, 2001 Share Posted December 27, 2001 i've designed a scenario involving the german 111th panzer brigade and 2111th pz grenadier regiment versus the american 42nd cavalry squadron (battalion). it's 'southeast of luneville.' the date of the scenario is 18 sep 1944. it's called 'tank trap' and is at the scenario depot. there are 'tank trap (huge)' and 'tank trap (small)' versions. andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted December 27, 2001 Share Posted December 27, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Pillar: Bump. (This is one great thread)<hr></blockquote> I think it's in a kind of deadlock between Jason and me. Radioless TDs approaching from far behind, will they be able to choose the ground against the attacking force. Obviously not like they could if they were placed in line before the attack, but to what extend? Will they fight from basic cover besides the road or will they have time to go into concealment unobserved and then await the attacker? How exactly will they know where the enemy will come from and how broad will the enemy line be? Will they be able to tell friend from enemy infantry? For me, it still looks like a situation that resembles more of an meeting engagement tank battle (and you want turrets, but no thick armour) than a defensive Jagdpanzer fight. It might shed some light on the situation to research engagement of the Jagdpanther units, which were supposed to be used like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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