Defeat at Kasserine--A meaty, groggy Master's thesis

[Michael Emrys]

...why did the allies take so long to achieve their objectives?

I've heard rumors that the Germans may have had something to do with it.

Seriously, Allied leadership at all levels was spotty whereas the Germans' was less so. And the Allies all through the war tended to underestimate the skill and determination of the German soldier.

Michael

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Then again so far I have not come across any source or research which would have presented Allied armour loss figures and breakdown of them in anything like what you have on the German armour losses which are extensively and exhaustively researched.

i guess you haven't looked too hard, then :confused:

there are good Allied reports that show loss figures and offer breakdowns on cause and caliber. i have even seen reports that go down to listing non-penetrating hits.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

why did the allies take so long to achieve their objectives? If the Germans were so overmatched, who let the side down?

the folks sitting on the biggest chairs on the Allied side. their overly careful strategies. i.e. France 1944, the only thing stopping Patton is his superiors.

if you want technical reasons, Patton runs out of gas. he's not stopped because his Shermans face Panthers and such. when Panthers show up, they are defeated. his Shermans do not need bigger guns, they need higher fuel capacity. if something, Patton should have had lighter & more economical tanks so that he could have kept up operational tempo.

but of course JasonC has been telling you this all the time, so there's nothing new here.

though what comes to Patton, i doubt his superiors would have allowed him to get into German soil anyway. would have been too embarrassing for the Brits, once again.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Yet the Red Army managed to lose during three months fighting in the Karelian Isthmus front 3179 tanks of which 1904 were combat losses, 1275 were mechanical failures.

what little Winter War has to do with the discussion, in my eyes, is that it's obvious that Soviets wouldn't have done any better if their tanks would have had bigger guns. they had those in summer 1944 and their tank losses were still about the same as in Winter War.

the lesson is not to have bigger guns in tanks, but to have better operational doctrine (though in case of WW it's more the tactical level that is totally screwed up).

[Michael Emrys]

if you want technical reasons, Patton runs out of gas. he's not stopped because his Shermans face Panthers and such. when Panthers show up, they are defeated. his Shermans do not need bigger guns, they need higher fuel capacity. if something, Patton should have had lighter & more economical tanks so that he could have kept up operational tempo.

I assume you are joking...in that weird Finnish way that no one else finds amusing.

Michael

[undead reindeer cavalry]

I assume you are joking...in that weird Finnish way that no one else finds amusing.

i'm being serious. he is stopped only because he runs out of gas, right? then when he has stopped, German panzer counter-attacks at Arracourt are defeated easily, right?

where's the joke?

[Vark]

Yes, the enemy has a plan as well, but if you outnumber him with equivalent tanks, outgun him and have total air superiority why take so long. Why do all the first hand accounts I have read state the superiority of German armour (when it was encountered) was a given, if not in terms of purely size of gun but optics etc. Why the problem? Compare the rapid advances of the Russians with inferior armour, artillery (apart from numbers) and only partial air superiority against, as Jason has pointed out, the majority of the German tank park and combat proven divisions. Numbers cannot be the reason as the allies had similar operational ratios so that leaves terrain or Russian operational/strategic superiority, over their allied counterparts.

Still confused, so much intuitively does not make sense, so either it is my failing intellectual/analytical faculties or something is screwy with the analysis. Does anyone have the distribution data for 76mm armed TD's or Shermans serving in fronline armoured units? What proportion did they make up of smaller tactical combat formations . I know the 1 to 4 ratio for Fireflys to basic M4's but how many 76mm M4's saw operational duties. Anecdotally, photographs taken in 1945 still show large numbers of 75mm models.

[Tero]

i guess you haven't looked too hard, then :confused:

there are good Allied reports that show loss figures and offer breakdowns on cause and caliber. i have even seen reports that go down to listing non-penetrating hits.

But you can't be bothered to list even one such source by name ?

And all the sources I have read list German losses in great detail but Allied losses as "heavy" without going to any detail.

[Tero]

By undead reindeer cavalry

what little Winter War has to do with the discussion, in my eyes, is that it's obvious that Soviets wouldn't have done any better if their tanks would have had bigger guns. they had those in summer 1944 and their tank losses were still about the same as in Winter War.

Indeed.

The point of bringing up Winter War is the fact that heavily mechanized forces with absolute superiority in every cathegory of materiel you care to think up went against a prepared enemy with 2 (two) 37mm ATG's per infantry regiment and no armour to speak of and still managed to rack up an impressive armour loss tally to show for its victory.

the lesson is not to have bigger guns in tanks, but to have better operational doctrine (though in case of WW it's more the tactical level that is totally screwed up).

My point is just that. The tactical level stuff was pretty screwed up for the Western Allies but their operational superiority saved their bacon. That means that, just like the Red Army, the Western Allies had to resort to keeping a fleet of adequate models like the Sherman and TD's in such numbers the undisclosed but reported as "heavy" losses in the tactical level could be made up for (as well as undisclosed losses incurred during transit to U-boats).

The British and the US army focused on the big picture. The British "minor tactics" infantry training was not much more than a joke compared to the German infantry training and the US forces managed to rack up a divisions worth of infantry losses due to trench foot during the winter of 1944. The only difference between the Red Army and the Western Allies is the fact that the Arsenal of Democracy was in the West and Western histography does not allow any guestioning the Western decision makers decisions while Stalins strategies concerning manpower losses are labelled as "typically callous befitting such a tyrant".

[Cuirassier]

Yes, the enemy has a plan as well, but if you outnumber him with equivalent tanks, outgun him and have total air superiority why take so long. Why do all the first hand accounts I have read state the superiority of German armour (when it was encountered) was a given, if not in terms of purely size of gun but optics etc. Why the problem? Compare the rapid advances of the Russians with inferior armour, artillery (apart from numbers) and only partial air superiority against, as Jason has pointed out, the majority of the German tank park and combat proven divisions. Numbers cannot be the reason as the allies had similar operational ratios so that leaves terrain or Russian operational/strategic superiority, over their allied counterparts.

It was the German army after all. They weren't pushovers, and it took actual fighting to retake Europe. And how do you define long? The Western Allied performance was quite good overall, particularly from Overlord to the pursuit that last until September. The Allies advanced further and faster than the Soviets did, at considerably less cost. It was the unanticipated breakdown of logistics and the German decision to pull out the manpower stops, send new armor to the west, etc that let them stand at the west wall.

First hand accounts say how tough it was because they are first hand accounts. Such accounts always go on an on about how hard war is, how higher ups never understand anything, and how they persevered and did it anyway. This occurs on anyside.

As for the difficult, attrition portion of the fighting in NOrmandy, there are a couple reasons. First of all, the Western Allies never had the odds superiority (initially at least) that the Soviets enjoyed. They did have absolute superiority in the air (though this was not as decisive as often claimed, read Zetterling, loss reports on the German side, etc). They also had ungodly artillery. But the infantry and armor odds were not much above parity.

More importantly, Normandy provided the Germans with excellent defensive terrain. The US had to contend with the Bocage, which allowed relatively meager and immobile infantry/airborne formations to fight much more evenly than they might have. THis is because bocage creates all sorts of combined arms coordination problems for the attacker, and even successful attacks are very difficult to exploit (limited road net, choke points, limited deployment space, etc).

In the British sector, the terrain was more open. But in this sector the German committed most of their armor, particularly the heavies, and often stood on the defensive. This multiplied the effectiveness of the German armored force. British tactics were also poor at times, especially during the attack, which showed with poor infantry-armor cooperation, sometimes ineffective use of artillery and overly aggressive tactical employment. Nevertheless, the British did get better at it and were not complete stuff ups. They were constantly attacking and attriting the Germans.

[Cuirassier]

Tero,

Actually there was a huge difference between the Western Allies and the Soviets. The Western Allies didn't lose 20 000 tanks per year, like the Soviets did, for example.

And the allies weren't screwed up tactically. They had some problems, but these were sorted out and they were well within the German league of tactical proficiency ( arguably the Americans were even ahead, since US armored divisions and TD's routinely spanked their German counterparts).

The Germans were not way ahead of everyone tactically, despite what many histories attempt to make us believe. Nearly every German armored counterattack that occurred in the west was a fiasco that just caused heavy losses in tanks and panzergrenadiers for the Germans. With Falaise included, the Western Allies had a superior kill/loss ratio during the Normandy campaign, and at best, the Germans only exchanged evenly in armor terms.

[JasonC]

The western allies killed about as much armor in the west as they lost, certainly within 1.5 times. Their losses and the US losses specifically were very low - the US lost under 4000 mediums in the entire ETO campaign for instance. The US lost less armor in Normandy than the Germans did, absolute numbers. The US lost less armor in the September fight in Lorraine than the Germans did, absolute number. The US lost less armor in the Bulge than the Germans did, absolute numbers. The Germans lost very little at other times because they had very little to lose anything from, and gradual losses in the less intense periods (and automotive-mechanical attrition losses in the breakout period, which were quite significant) put the total losses higher for the allies, but not by much. The Germans did outscore the Brits in Normandy. They never had significant amounts of armor against them later (low hundreds max, never into the thousands).

The Germans were beaten handily throughout, in all their major engagements with the US, using significant amounts of armor. They did stuff the Brits pretty well, by concentrating more armor against them and because Brit tactics left a lot to be desired. Notably however, the Brits already had their upgunned vehicles and it made little difference to that relative performance. Storming enemy held ridges lined with hidden 88s with tanks up and way ahead of any combined arms support isn't any more sensible in Sherman Fireflies than in short 75mm Shermans.

The Germans never had any prospect of stopping the American attritionist attacks in the west side of the front. It just took a month to chew threw their infantry, which fought very well and used the terrain to the utmost. Beating them required the US edge in firepower arms operating for a sufficient time period to bleed them white of infantry. The German attempts to alter that outcome with armored counterattacks failed miserably, on multiple occasions and scales from brigade to corps. US TDs in particular outscored the Germans on every such occasion and by large amounts.

In Lorraine, the Germans again threw away large amounts of highly capable armor in a short period. Their standing error in all of it was an overly aggressive tactical doctrine on the use of armor, which led to reckless counterattacks at negative odds. These always had the same outcome - initial break in through the front line defenders goes fine, then a brawl inside the defender's defensive zone with all high cards in the defenders hands, net result half of the attacking armor thrown away in a day or two.

In the Bulge they upped the scale to several armies and got one week of success, and a couple more of even straight ahead brawling both ways, as a result. But the end was quite similar - the attacking armor exchanged off for even numbers of the defending armor, and this left the Germans without any tank fleet and the Americans with as much armor as they could man, plus enough in depots and arriving on ships and coming out of their ears to not sweat the loss of metal, only the loss of trained men. Individual armor formations heavily committed needed a couple of weeks off the line to be built back up but none was impaired in any way, longer term.

I find it striking and silly that the fanboys believe their own propaganda so much they appear to still be under the impression that the Germans won the war in the west or something. They got their asses handed to them. Yes the Panther is a way better tank than anything the US fielded and properly handled the fleet of them sent west might have been tougher to deal with. They were very improperly handled, both on a large scale operational level (stand to be attrited in Normandy, premature counterattacks at the westwall, throw everything away on a reckless deathride in the Bulge) and tactically (employed too offensively e.g. Lehr in Normandy, the Mortain gamble, the Panzer brigades in Lorraine, Peiper getting himself cut off - all the same arrogant stupidity that advancing would win by magic as though "the initiative" were a talisman).

Whenever the Germans committed thousands of AFVs, it required fighting to burn through them certainly. But it was burned through and in quite short order, every time.

Their biggest outperformance actually came in stubborn defensive fighting by their infantry formations when the line was static. Those had to be ground to powder by HE arms and it took time and cost blood.

Western logistical limits had more to do with the time the whole campaign took than any such factors. Limited over the beach supply could not keep 50 motorized divisions punching at the German border. Opening the ports and repairing them and upgrading the whole supply and transport infrastructure took time; that gave the pause at the westwall. The same is seen in practically every operational offensive of the war - a breakthrough gets a certain distance and then it hits logistical overstretch and it stops until the ground taken can be digested and the forces involved refitted and resupplied etc.

As for the general snark level, it is par for the course and a reason I haven't been here for months. Keep it up guys, you are such peaches.

[pamak1970]

We have drifted away from the original issue.

I am sorry but I do not accept the logic that the winner did everything right because he simply won. The issue is as somebody else said “what if he could win faster or with less cost”. I am pretty sure you can defeat any system by swarming it with many more weak and cheaper ones, but this does not prove that you did the right thing nor it shows the cost of an alternative approach of accepting less material superiority in exchange of better quality. Nor you can use the favorite subject of “average numbers” of exchanging weapon systems or ratios of losses because all these are affected by many parameters irrelevant to US antitank doctrine and quality of US antitank or German tank systems.

If Americans after a certain point had chosen to use as an antitank weapon a jeep throwing darts, they would have won with a reasonable “kill ratio” of tanks to “dart throwing jeeps”. That is because in all situations where US companies of “antitank” jeeps would had the misfortune to encounter a few enemy tanks, they would most probably abandon the mission after having a few of their jeeps destroyed and simply accept a passive secondary role letting other much more capable systems dealing with the threat. In fact after a while, seeing their obvious inability to perform any antitank mission, they would not even bother to attempt to knock out any tank. They would simply execute other secondary tasks which would be safer and tailored to their weakness to withstand fire. The end result would be to have after the end of the war, a favorite comparison of “average numbers” of US jeeps to German tank casualties.

Right now we are talking about a specific thing which is the US antitank doctrine and effectiveness of US tank destroyer weapons. So let’s focus on these things and their opponents which were the German Panzers. Here are my first thoughts, saying from the beginning that I have no desire to claim that I know everything or that I am an expert but I would appreciate if somebody has issues with my thoughts to attack them with arguments instead of me with slant and nasty adjectives.

The US antitank doctrine, failed in my opinion. The reason was that it made wrong assumsions which led to an overreliance on speed at the expense of protection, coupled with suboptimum armament.

Let’s start first with the armament. It is wrong to make comparisons with the situation of T34’s and inability to penetrate Panthers. Everybody can understand that systems develop and naturally even the best systems may have issues in penetrating newer tank models. However let’s put things in perspective. First the T-34 was a very good design which came as a shock to Germans when it was first deployed. In this case we had the Soviets acting instead of just reacting. They gained an advantage in armament which was followed by a German answer to recapture it. Americans though seem more like reacting trying to “catch up”. So I cannot put their effort (in this specific category of armament), at the same level with the previous mentioned ones.

In addition when we talk about American tank destroyers, we have a totally different demand for armament. I mean the idea behind the antitank concept is that you sacrifice in protection in order to gain an advantage in another area (like armament). If you come in the battlefield naked You better come not with just an equal or marginally bigger gun. You should come with something sufficiently big to justify your original decision to sacrifice protection and give you better chances overall to defeat an average at least German tank at the usual battlefield ranges

The point is not if a tank destroyer had a bigger gun. The point is if your compo of gun armor give you a longer effective battlefield range compared to the enemy tank. If the latter in the average case scenario is still able to penetrate you at longer battlefield distances then you have a problem to accomplish your primary mission. The Americans I believe did not see it that way. They thought that speed could compensate. It could let them arrive first and engage the enemy from favorite defensive positions which could negate any possible tank advantage. Well things seems to work different .

First Americans (I am talking about the antitank branch only) were incapable to understand the full effect of combined arms. It is not just tanks against tank destroyers. Where they are tanks there is going to be artillery too and infantry and a pack of different weapon systems and tank destroyers have an open turret vulnerable to every airburst . Although you as a tank destroyer expect as a member of a combined arms group to see a fellow weapon system dealing with your problem, you must still be able to protect yourself all this time which is nessesary to eliminate or neutralize at least the threat.

In addition all this mobility sounds good on paper but it is difficult to materialize in practice At an operational level and as a part of a compo group you tent to move at the rate of your slower members of your team which accompanies you and at the tactical level, fire and protection matter a lot. You can not dance all around an enemy when he can still rotate his turret shoot and kill you at longer distances or when airbursts follow you

Besides it does not follow in operational or tactical level that you as a reserve have some “inherent advantage” of choosing your location and wait for the advancing enemy who broke through your defense to come at a place and range of your liking.Sometimes the above may happen, especially in places where terrain restricts choice of axis of advance , like mountain terrain and the like.

Very often though the enemy has simply too many choices and you can not guard against every possible course of enemy action. “He who defends everything, defends nothing”. IF you become inactive, you give the enemy the opportunity to make your position irrelevant. Fix your position with a minimum of force and maneuver to get an advantageous position towards your open flank or rear. You try to counter this by maneuvering, possibly trying to do the same thing to him.

Other times the best way to stop a penetration, is by forcing the enemy to relocate forces from his original axis of advance in order to counter an unexpected threat somewhere else chosen by you, the defender(in operational terms) who decides to attack trying to get the initiative. It is much easier this way instead of trying to read the enemy’s intentions (bypassing fog of war and mirrors by his deceptive operations) and move towards his potential destination faster than him waiting to confront him there. Other times it is simply a matter of confronting him when he is exhausted not letting him time to recover from his previous effort to break your defense.

The end result of all of the above is that as a tank destroyer reserve, you often have to execute a movement to contact operation at the operational level, or restore your breached defense by a swift counterattack before the enemy has time to consolidate his gains. However your tank destroyer system is not effective when it is not camouflaged or hidden waiting for the first shot . In a movement to contact environment when both forces move against each other, surprise can come easily at anytime to any of them (assuming there are no issues of air supremacy)while in a counterattack tactical scenario it is probably the attacker who is waiting for you.

The reason I wrote all the above is because I wanted to show my reasoning regarding why the American antitank dogma was poor from a theoretical point of view. It is not that all of the above things I described happened in practice. Some of them did not because of other factors unrelated to the “genious” of people who gave birth to this doctrine and who were not in a position to foresee them anyway . The tank destroyer could be effective only in very specific situations against a tank. This is a very poor result for a system designed specifically to deal with enemy tanks and be vulnerable to almost everything else.

As a last comment I am going to point the obvious double standards of explaining the result of a battle where tank destroyers did not perform well, in terms of “bad tactics from American commanders in the field” while taking the result of another battle like Mortain as a proof of the soundness of the American dogma. The more experienced members here can recall in other threads the arguments against the silly tactics and dogma which led to hopeless attacks against Mortain and the like.

And by the way, by criticizing certain people, I do not claim that I am a “better man” or tactician or strategist than them. Same when criticize Napoleon at Waterloo, Darious at Issus and the list goes on and on…….

[Kingfish]

The US lost less armor in Normandy than the Germans did, absolute numbers. The US lost less armor in the September fight in Lorraine than the Germans did, absolute number. The US lost less armor in the Bulge than the Germans did, absolute numbers.

Are we talking about complete write offs as a direct result of ground combat?

[Kingfish]

First Americans (I am talking about the antitank branch only) were incapable to understand the full effect of combined arms. It is not just tanks against tank destroyers. Where they are tanks there is going to be artillery too and infantry and a pack of different weapon systems and tank destroyers have an open turret vulnerable to every airburst . Although you as a tank destroyer expect as a member of a combined arms group to see a fellow weapon system dealing with your problem, you must still be able to protect yourself all this time which is nessesary to eliminate or neutralize at least the threat.

This is not solely an American problem. The Germans continued to field Marders in their OOB well into '44 (maybe beyond), as did the Russians with the SU-76 and British with the Archer. All were lightly armored, open topped and far more vulnerable than the American counterpart due to their fixed gun design.

[pamak1970]

This is not solely an American problem. The Germans continued to field Marders in their OOB well into '44 (maybe beyond), as did the Russians with the SU-76 and British with the Archer. All were lightly armored, open topped and far more vulnerable than the American counterpart due to their fixed gun design.

Critisizing Americans does not imply that i applaud Germans or English. I simply talk about Americans because the thread is about them. At the end neither approach was adopted after wwii.

I assume the longer the range of the effective gun range which came as a result of tank progress, the more difficult to justify less protection for even bigger range (tank destroyer idea). After a certain theshold it does not make sense because of other factors like small likehood of finding free LOS to greater distances or identify vehicles.

[Tero]

By Cuirassier

Actually there was a huge difference between the Western Allies and the Soviets. The Western Allies didn't lose 20 000 tanks per year, like the Soviets did, for example.

Nor did they have as many tank-vs-tank engagements as the Soviets.

And the allies weren't screwed up tactically. They had some problems, but these were sorted out and they were well within the German league of tactical proficiency

When it comes to infantry training and unit casualty replacement/replenishment procedures the Allies were both screwed and out of league with the Germans. They had to make up the difference by using their superiority in sig-int, artillery firepower and aerial superiority.

( arguably the Americans were even ahead, since US armored divisions and TD's routinely spanked their German counterparts).

The few times these encounters occurred the US armour spanked the Germans only when they were in defense and after the German units had been depleated by aerial interdiction. The rest of the time they were against infantry and did not make any head way until they reached terrain favourable for armour.

The Germans were not way ahead of everyone tactically, despite what many histories attempt to make us believe.

True. But for some reason after the war most, if not all armies, modelled their small unit tactical doctrine after the German and not the Western Allied (ie. for example use of high powered light weight belt fed SAW with automatics for the rest of the squad).

Nearly every German armored counterattack that occurred in the west was a fiasco that just caused heavy losses in tanks and panzergrenadiers for the Germans.

True. But the Ardennes campaign showed just how dependant the Western Allied success was on the heavy artillery and aerial support being available.

With Falaise included, the Western Allies had a superior kill/loss ratio during the Normandy campaign, and at best, the Germans only exchanged evenly in armor terms.

Assuming ALL the engagements were armour-vs-armour. Which they were not. And AFAIK these favourable exchange rates do not take into account all KO'd vehicles, only write offs.

[Tero]

By JasonC

Their losses and the US losses specifically were very low - the US lost under 4000 mediums in the entire ETO campaign for instance. The US lost less armor in Normandy than the Germans did, absolute numbers. The US lost less armor in the September fight in Lorraine than the Germans did, absolute number. The US lost less armor in the Bulge than the Germans did, absolute numbers

How many combat casualties did the US armour forces sustain during these periods ? The number of total write off's is not indicative of their combat performance or efficiency, given their reliance of heavy artillery and aerial support to be able to gain and hold ground.

The Germans lost very little at other times because they had very little to lose anything from, and gradual losses in the less intense periods (and automotive-mechanical attrition losses in the breakout period, which were quite significant) put the total losses higher for the allies, but not by much.

And how many automotive-mechanical losses did the US numbers include ? The number of total write off's does not indicate their mechanical reliability.

And this brings up nicely the point I'm trying to make: for the Germans you can find all types of loss cathegories by model and type down to a single vehicle down to a single engagement level while US armoured units apparently lost only absolute numbers during entire campaigns. And I really can not believe this is only because the Germans were anal about keeping records.

The Germans did outscore the Brits in Normandy. They never had significant amounts of armor against them later (low hundreds max, never into the thousands).

IIRC the only German armoured unit (21st Panzer) engaged initially in Normandy was directed at the British. That makes your statement a bit dubious since US armour was not engageing German armour initially (AFAIK the British faced some 70% of German armour present in Normandy).

Notably however, the Brits already had their upgunned vehicles and it made little difference to that relative performance. Storming enemy held ridges lined with hidden 88s with tanks up and way ahead of any combined arms support isn't any more sensible in Sherman Fireflies than in short 75mm Shermans.

Yet it was not the short 75mm Sherman which punched the hole through which the US poured out of Normandy. It was the heavy artillery and aerial bombardment which paved the way.

US TDs in particular outscored the Germans on every such occasion and by large amounts.

Given you only use absolute numbers I'd like to see real day-to-day force return figures to see just how effective the US armour was against the Germans.

But the end was quite similar - the attacking armor exchanged off for even numbers of the defending armor, and this left the Germans without any tank fleet and the Americans with as much armor as they could man, plus enough in depots and arriving on ships and coming out of their ears to not sweat the loss of metal, only the loss of trained men.

The Bulge showed again the presence of aerial and heavy artillery support accompanied the US armoured success.

[JasonC]

So I start with calling "moving the goalposts" as a formal fallacy and we go on from there.

One, the proposition being defended is that gun-armor specs did not matter at the operational scale, total combined arms power and doctrine did. It isn't an argument against this to say "waaa, no fair, they won because they had better artillery not better tanks, waaa".

France 1940, Russia 1941, and Russia 1942 showed that the presence of aerial and all-arms support accompanied German armored success. Who is the one maintaining that overall combat power, operational factors, and doctrine, drive campaign outcomes? Who is the one denying that gun armor spec details do so?

If anyone wants an object lesson in how irrelevant the frontal superiority of a Panther over a Sherman 75 can be in the presence of such factors, please review Cole's description of the battle of Dompaire in his "the Lorraine Campaign", pages 199-200, between 112 Panzer brigade and CCL, French 2nd Armored division. Green new formations, reckless premature offensive commitment, poor battlefield reconnaissance, terrain, flanking positioning and possession of terrain features, command of the air, and effective use of SP artillery - matter. As a result, 112 Panzer has 4 Panthers left at the end of its first day in action, and is spent. Armor numbers on the ground even at the start, wipe out to losses of less than a company for the side with the lesser tanks. "But but, Sherman 75s are Ronsons and death traps and we've got 40 spanking new Panthers, they should just be fresh meat for no loss". No. How you use the weapon at the grand tactical scale, operational factors, and overall combined arms power dominate outcomes.

The same thing happened to the French in Char-Bs and the Russians in early war T-34 formations. If a capable all arms force (includes, with medium armor etc) catches an enemy formation in the sense of attaining superiority in those other aspects, it slaughters that formation and doesn't give a damn what the tank specs are. And yes it happened to the Germans too, there is nothing national anything about the principle involved. Which is merely that important military factors at a larger scale dominate relatively minor technical factors at a lower one. In the grand scheme of things, "I can only kill him from the sides by using teamwork" is a minor technical factor and not an outcomes-driving, dominant one.

Next, we have on this thread people directly claiming that the US was stupid in not foreseeing the upgunning cycle and that the Germans would eventually improve on the Panzer IV long - when the US fielded 76mm TDs in greater numbers than the Germans fielded heavy anything and did so about as fast as the Germans fielded *Panzer IV longs*, let alone Panthers, and half a year faster than they fielded uparmored anything. They had them in action half way around the world 4 months faster than the Germans had the first unit of teething Panthers in action. The upguns are there before the uparmor is. Who wasn't forseeing whom?

Then we get the moved goalposts of TDs supposedly being too vulnerable to HE and artillery, when the debate was over the supposed lack of armor vs. armor fighting ability of the US force as planned. As a fact, personnel losses in the TD forces ran below those in the regular armor (tactical doctrine and typical use more than matching any protection difference) and personnel losses in both ran less than a third the rate seen in the armored infantry, which was already lower than the regular infantry. Nor is this remotely surprising; being behind armor of any sort protects against the cause of 70% of all personnel casualties, which is artillery shrapnel.

Then we get irrelevant red herrings about TWO accounting practices that only effect loss recognition timing and not actual loss. I realize it will come as news to the Signal magazine set, but the Germans don't still have a fleet of 25,000 AFVs running around central Europe. German AFV losses equal all German AFVs ever deployed, fully written off. When apportioning those losses to fronts, it runs 80-85% east, certainly. But the US only lost 4000 medium AFVs over the entire ETO campaign. If you add in light armor and Brits you might get to 10000, at the outside. The Germans can't outscore by any significant margin in the west.

Nor do the month long battle, or the tactical fight reports, tell any different story. The Germans lost everything sent to Normandy save a couple hundred vehicles - 90%. The US lost less than 1000 medium AFVs in Normandy. The Germans lost over half the armor committed to the Bulge. The US lost 500 medium tanks in the Bulge (471 to be exact); TDs added may raise that to 650 or so; even with lights is was under 1000. The story is the same in the Lorraine - the Germans lost entire fresh and full TOE Panzer brigades in 1-2 days on several occasions, and ended September with less than 30 runners in the whole region, out of 250-300 sent. US losses were around 200 medium AFVs.

The scale doesn't matter, as long as the engagement is not cherry picked one sees at best exchange off at even levels on both sides.

In contrast, 80-85% of German AFVs fought and died in the east, where the Russians lost not 4000 mediums or maybe 10000 AFVs of all types and in all allied armies, but 100,000 AFVs. In the east the Germans achieved overall loss ratios of 2.5 to 1. In the west they didn't. In the east, the Germans had a period - 1943 - in which they had as many uparmored AFVs or more, as the Russians had upgunned AFVs to handle them. They lost the decisive battles of the war in that period anyway, but they had an unanswered gun-armor spec edge for an operationally meaningful period of time. They never did in the west, and they lost that edge in the east by 1944 - to upgunned answers, not uparmoring.

Everyone in the entire war mixed tank destroyers and SP guns of every description with fully covered turreted tanks, for reasons of production, role specialization, and doctrine. The only thing different about the western allies in this respect is theirs were turreted in the TD (rather than say SPA) role. Everyone in the entire war continued to field a lighter half of their AFV fleets that had about the gun and armor standards of main battle tanks at midwar, and never went above that level. And naturally everything made before the late war upgunned stuff was still used until lost, by all concerned.

[JasonC]

For the sake of brevity, I'd also offer a single word response to some of the notions running around this thread.

Nashorn.

[pamak1970]

Then we get the moved goalposts of TDs supposedly being too vulnerable to HE and artillery, when the debate was over the supposed lack of armor vs. armor fighting ability of the US force as planned. As a fact, personnel losses in the TD forces ran below those in the regular armor (tactical doctrine and typical use more than matching any protection difference) and personnel losses in both ran less than a third the rate seen in the armored infantry, which was already lower than the regular infantry. Nor is this remotely surprising; being behind armor of any sort protects against the cause of 70% of all personnel casualties, which is artillery shrapnel

THis is the only thing i want to comment on since my belief is that for the most part anything you said related to average numbers and those types of grant statistics shows nothing about the details related to AT doctrine and machines. Talking about moving goalposts................

My understaning is that the debate is about the effectiveness of AT dogma and of the machines used to put it in practice. So vulnerability should be a part to consider in this debate.

I seperated this remark because it shows once more how those types of statistics you mention are totally irrelevant to what we discuss.

First of all tactical doctrine and typical use of a fighting machine ARE formulated in practice based to some extend on the vulnerability-protection of the system. So if you are naked , most probably you will not be assigned a mission putting use in the middle of heavy fight which will help you have acceptable casualty rates.

In other words you can not use just the casualty rate as an indicator of level of protection without knowing the mission profiles

I am pretty sure that casualty rates among artillery men or many specialists in the rear areas were lower to those of combat troops. THis does not mean of course they had better protection.

You can not just compare Sherman and TD casualty rates unless you have data showing that they were assigned the same missions at similar percetages, exposed to similar levels of lethal fire.

What was the percentage of overall TD missions related to indirect fire. Same question for Shermans and continue until you construct the whole mission profile. Obviously things are more complicated than you want us to believe

[pamak1970]

continuing the previous post

since a lower casualty rate does not show anything about the level of protection against enemy artillery (a Sherman has obviously better protection that a TD and still has higher casualty rates according to your words ) what is the point of mentioning it in the first place?

If you attempt to compare armored infantry to TD i fail to see the point. The armored infantry was not supposed to seek find and destroy enemy tanks. and its enemy was equally vulnerable to artillery and air inderdiction fire.

In addition since you yourself mentions that the TDs did not have many opportunities to put in practice the doctrine they were supposed to follow, then why you use their overall casualty rates to argue that they were actually capable to do what they were supposed to do?

Again let's not confuse things. The situation in west and the results there can not be used by themselves without a deeper examination to justify doctrines.

Forget the arguments of air superiority , material advantage and the like. The thing is that overall at the end you have an army which can perform operational moves freely and be fully mechanized against an army which has to hide half of the day and still use mules and horses to move the rest of it. Under those conditions you have plenty of room to make mistakes as an Ally and still end up on top.

I do understand your position that Germans enjoyed similar advantages of air superiority or mobility against Polish, French, Russians and so on which is of course irrelevant to the evaluation of the AT doctrine.

I tent to see the latter in broader terms because the people who formulated it in the beginning were not supposed to assume that it would apply under air supremacy or any other huge advantage. A sound doctrine should apply successfully with good results even when things are on parity in other fields

[JasonC]

I mention it because men write entire books with screaming yellow journalism headline titles like "death traps" pretending that to be in a US armor unit was a death sentence because the equipment was hopelessly outclassed by the enemy's, and this is an outrageous lie, start to finish. Please pay attention. When a "death trap" reduces your chance of dying by a factor of four, somebody is making things up.

[pamak1970]

since i have free time tonight i continue

If anyone wants an object lesson in how irrelevant the frontal superiority of a Panther over a Sherman 75 can be in the presence of such factors, please review Cole's description of the battle of Dompaire in his "the Lorraine Campaign", pages 199-200, between 112 Panzer brigade and CCL, French 2nd Armored division. Green new formations, reckless premature offensive commitment, poor battlefield reconnaissance, terrain, flanking positioning and possession of terrain features, command of the air, and effective use of SP artillery - matter. As a result, 112 Panzer has 4 Panthers left at the end of its first day in action, and is spent. Armor numbers on the ground even at the start, wipe out to losses of less than a company for the side with the lesser tanks. "But but, Sherman 75s are Ronsons and death traps and we've got 40 spanking new Panthers, they should just be fresh meat for no loss". No. How you use the weapon at the grand tactical scale, operational factors, and overall combined arms power dominate outcomes

You are beating the strawman here, because i do not believe that there is a disagreement . I do not think anyone here said that better armor and guns matter more than Green new formations, reckless premature offensive commitment, poor battlefield reconnaissance, terrain, flanking positioning and possession of terrain features, command of the air, and effective use of SP artillery combined as it was the case in the battle you mentioned.

THere is still though expectation that having doing my part as a member of a military unit, and having done proper training and recon and the rest against an equally capable opponent, that i am not backstabbed by a poorly designed doctrine or machine.

My belief about the failure of this doctrine does not come because of the end result of particular battles since all of these factors you mentioned were present and influenced outcomes . This is why i prefered to explain from a theoritical point of you the obvious decline of the tank destroyer concept.

In order to avoid misunderstandings, the above does not mean that it is useless to study those battles. On the contrary, as long as we are not fixed at seeing only the final outcome of casualty or exchange ratios and as long as we are willing to examine various other details, they can still teach us many things about proper doctrine, or arming the force.

For example someone else mentioned an excellent book "the blitzkrieg legeng" and i am going to use a case from there to make my point.

It is on chapter 6 dealing with the French attempts to counterattack at Sedan after the breakthough.

Time is of essense for the French who have to counterattack soon since the bridghead is still fragile. Of course they do not know it yet since their reports do not give the magnitude of the problem

At the end their attempt to counterattack with tanks is terribly slow. If i stop my description of events here someone might simply point to surprise or inept command and control and the like arguing that there is nothing wrong with the Char tank or the French doctrine

but then the book reveals more details. Although surprise and broken communications do exist there are additional challenges because of technical and doctrinal issues. French have Char and Hotchkiss tanks and of course they want to combine them in the upcoming counterattack. However the Char tank presents some challenges.

Since French saw this tank in a tactical mission role supporting infantry, it had limited range. The compo of armor (weight) fuel capacity is tailored for wwi enviroment.

At the end a Char B tank needs refueling every TWO hours when it operates in difficult terrain ( The book actually gives a reference for the above). When Brocard, the commander of the 3rd Armored Division is assigned the mission to counterattack with extreme haste, he has to refuel his tanks ,( assuming the supply columns survive the German airforce), move between 14 to 18 km in two hours (among others the Char is terribly slow) and then needing another two to three additional hours to refuel again!

Then the final blow comes when French hesitate to attack fast. While they advance (at wwi rates) they see French troops fleeing and talking about hundreds and even thousands of German tanks. At the end they do not have the nerve and raise to the demands of the specific situation. They decide to stop, spread and wait for the Germans , probably counting on engaging them from advantageous defensive positions.

Unfortunately for them, The German effort is not pointing towards them. The Germans have already turned and advancing towards the sea at wwii rates, in a perpedicular direction to the one French are waiting. They have also the time to bring more troops on the other side and strengthen the bridgehead. The French position has become irrelevant to the demands of the situation and since they do not care on pursuing the initiative through an offensive action, they seal their fate.

Of course today it is easy to talk about ineffective French commanders but taking in consideration the fog of war and the like, it is not difficult to understand even the most horrible decisions. Because if in an alternative universe the French commanders were moving with haste and happened to bump on strong German units waiting for them in the bridgehead instead of rushing towards the sea leaving a weak cover behind in the bridgehead, the same people would accuse them for inadequate recon, or stupidly aggressive attacks against a well placed enemy.

Anyway my point was not to talk about the French, i just wanted to show how we can still dig for details of military operations and try to draw certain conclusions about the challenges presented by the military equipment used, in spite of the fact that we have other parameters of operational significance which are certainly responsible for the final outcome.

[pamak1970]

by the way, a little bit off topic but i would appreciate if someone has information to verify if CharB needs refueling every two hours when it operates in difficult terrain (not road movement).

It is clear that the French commander asks additional time for refueling after moving just 15 to 18 km in a two hour period, but this might well be not a case of having the tanks empty. It might just be a very cautious move from the part of the tank commander who wants to be sure that he has topped his vehicles, 100% before starting the attack.

On the other hand as i said, the book does talk about the high fuel consumsion of this tank when it operates in difficult terrain, giving a figure of two hours and a reference to back it up. It is just that i could not check the reference and it is possible that this number which seems very low might be the result of faulty analysis of events (the commander asks to refuel after moving for just two hours , therefore the tank needs refueling every two hours )