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


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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.

if you want the numbers, just do a search on this forum (CMAK). i recall the weekly army totals & breakdown by causes being listed and discussed.

the non-penetrating hit stuff comes from a book called "Tank Tactics - From Normandy to Lorraine".

Allied tank losses were researched by OR guys already during the war & especially just after it. much better than anything i have seen coming from the German side.

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I must now destroy pakmak's post a few back, in which he recited the Dupuy slanders pretty accurately, without the least empirical check or reflection. I refer to the one starting with the line "we have drifted". (Incidentally the "we" is rather generous - I've been inundated with red herring and I've minced all of it, then the red herring sowers denounce the change of subject they introduced. Which is incredibly tiresome, as usual).

The post claims that US TD doctrine sacrificed AT protection for speed and that this led to tactical failure, citing the need to advance to contact presumably under enemy observation and AT fire which supposedly medium tanks can accomplish while TDs cannot. Supposedly this caused US TDs to fail in their tactical mission of defending against German armor attacks.

Here are the problems with this endlessly repeated but hopelessly false mantra. One, US TDs did not fail in their tactical mission of defending agaisnt German armor attacks. They succeeded at it every time. The only example to the contrary that the claimants can cite is a halftrack battalion at Kasserine, not even in US purpose built TDs. This is rather like claiming every German SP gun fielded over the whole war was a mistake and failure because the 47mm PzJgr I SPAT was a weak weapon. That isn't US TD doctrine, it isn't what they were building and fielding and shipping to the theater. It was an early stopgap in action for all of one month before M10s arrived. Which had been in production for a solid year to the tune of 7500 vehicles (including M18s), that just needed to be shipped to theater etc.

Second, neither the M10 nor the M36 sacrificed any meaningful AT protection for the sake of their stronger gun, or speed. They were the same speed as Shermans on the same chassis. Their armor sufficed to stop the same German AT weapons. The most one can say about any AT armor difference with the Sherman, is that late model uparmored W Shermans could deflect a 75L48 round hitting the upper hull (not turret or lower hull) at long range. Early Shermans, couldn't. Later ones, at the ranges actually seen in ETO, couldn't. If W tanks had been around while the fighting was still in North Africa, or if the ETO had been the Russian steppe, this might have mattered at the margin - but none is true. Even this doesn't matter against German heavies - the heavies all carry guns that can hole any of them, Sherman or TD, from the front and at long range.

The only dedicate TD that even comes close to the description is the M18 Hellcat. They were 1/4 of the US TD fleet, built in 1943 for the most part. They also had an entirely successful operational history and outscored M10 equipped units, and by meaningful amounts.

As for the notion that medium tanks are needed because you have to advance to contact under fire to defeat enemy armor attacks, the problem is, yes some US tankers believed that and acted that way but no, they weren't any better at it than TDs and it didn't work and it got companies to whole battalions slaughtered in hours. The first US combat command that met the original Kasserine break in was entirely equipped to full TOE with "best in the field" Shermans, dutifully advanced to contact under fire to meet the penetration and was annihilated in less than 4 hours, without inflicting the slightest loss or check on the Germans.

Or take the combat command that was similarly used to meet the Lehr counterattack in July. It lost only a company and change to German SPAT trying something similar, again in a hour or two and again without any impact on the German at all.

Meanwhile, the TDs that actually defeated the German Panther and Panzer IV columns that had penetrated the US defensive zone, won their engagements the usual way - by getting first shot. Sometimes by tactical defensive stance, sometimes by superior situational awareness over buttoned tanks. Sometimes just in wild west shoot out fashion, trading off who was faster to the draw. And often at ranges as short as 200 yards for initial LOS. Some Shermans also did this; it was the stance that mattered more than the weapon, though the M10s were much better at it because they killed Panthers through the turret front at such ranges, reliably.

There is a more basic problem with the whole notion. It is an utter fantasy without the slighest empirical support. You can't cite a single example from one end of the war to the other, in which US purpose built TDs failed to stop a German armored counterattack because they were shot up attempting to do so during a move to contact. And it is even worse than that. You can't cite a single example from one end of the war to the other, in which US SP TDs failed to stop a German armored counterattack.

It is not like the observational history is infinite. There weren't that many German armor counterattacks against US forces in WW II, of any scale, or period that might matter. Here is a pretty complete enumeration -

Kasserine - pre US TDs, not relevant

El Guttar - first use of M10s, entirely successful

Gela beachhead - no armor ashore yet, not relevant

Salerno beach (first day) - only light armor ashore yet, not relevant

Salerno counterattack - major use of M10s, entirely successful

Anzio beachhead (long) - long attrition slog rather than one attack, ground state prevents mobile use, eventually successful but largely firepower-HE arm driven

Cotentin 17SS - not TDs, but successful defense by armor CC flocking to site

Lehr July - entirely successful TDs, advancing Shermans cause most US armor loss

Mortain - entirely successful TDs (3 battalions to wound site), mostly successful Sherman counterattacks too, but they take the only significant US armor losses

Lorraine - entirely successful TDs, mostly successful Shermans too when well handled including mobile defensive employment.

Bulge - entirely successful TDs, from a scale of a few Jacksons stopping a whole column to an entire battalion of them, massed and on defensive ground, at Elsenborn

Alsace - about the same as the Bulge.

Where are the cases of US TDs destroyed and ineffectual because they lack sufficient AT protection? Where are there any cases of US Sherman formations advancing to contact or counterattacking into the enemy thrust and being successful at it because their armor shrugs off enemy AT fire?

The only failed TD battalion behind the notion is in halftracks mounting short 75s at Kasserine, not in purpose built TDs. And it never happens again. Shermans got spanked even worse on the same occasion, precisely by making the doctrinal error you claim is a tactical essential.

Then there is the hopeless charge that the US and TD guys in particular didn't understand combined arms. Coming on top of the claim that "waaa, waaa, the US defeated better German tanks by having better artillery and an air force, waaa", this is a bit rich. Eyewitness verdict of the last successful stand that broke the Kasserine period offensive "our artillery crucified them". Elsenborn is a byword in what massed 155mm artillery firing at surge rates for up to a week, can do to armor attacks. American infantry isn't Russians with ATRs; they have bazookas and they go hunting. Every time the German make a major armor counterattack they break through the front line infantry regiment initially hit, and then they take losses inside the American defensive zone, from all arms. Tell Peiper, abandoning a whole column of Tigers and Panthers, that the Americans who surrounded and destroyed him with 2 infantry divisions, blowing all his bridges and cutting all his roads, didn't understand combined arms.

It is crap, start to finish.

But maybe the claim meant, because the Germans will have artillery support when attacking, open topped TDs cannot possibly withstand a German armor assault. OK, find me any instance in the entire war in which it played out that way. You can't, there aren't any, I've studied every single one of them.

The US TD force takes the same personnel losses as the US tank force, as a percentage of manpower for time in combat etc. Being in an armored anything eliminates most of the slow attrition losses from enemy artillery fire, that dominate overall wounded rolls. The Germans are not conspicuously successful at maintaining artillery armor coordination past the initial break in; they are pretty good at maintaining armor infantry coordination unless and until defending artillery crucifies the infantry and strips the tanks, most one can say.

The actual downside of open tops for TDs comes in long static fighting or in offensive infantry support fighting, in the long periods when the Germans don't have any armor to speak of and therefore are not counterattacking with any.

US TDs simply did not fail in their doctrinal role; they accomplished it fully. The US defeated every major German armor counterattack with heavy loss, and US purpose built TDs were the heavy hitters in that result, at all times. US firepower arms and overall operational factors certainly made major contributions, always in the combined arms sense.

But those did not account for the majority of actual armor kills. Pilot claims notwithstanding, and not worth the ink spilled on them; on that score, light flak shot down at least 4 and in some periods more like 10 fighter bombers for each tank they ever took out. Air to ground anti tank doesn't become effective until Korea, using napalm not rockets or cannon. I trust this point has been hammered often enough by enough people here, that everyone acknowledges it by now.

In every detailed survey, the majority of actual armor kills come from ground AT fire and in every period and account, the US TDs are scoring those way above the rates achieved by the Shermans. Which reflects their doctrine and therefore tactical employment (usually defensive, more likely to get first shot as a result, etc), which is much more attrition-efficient than the more offensive minded armor doctrine in the Sherman formations - and obviously their superior AT firepower from all being upgunned.

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My point is just that. The tactical level stuff was pretty screwed up for the Western Allies but their operational superiority saved their bacon.

if we are talking about US in Normandy & beyond, i think they did relatively well on tactical level. their morbid operational slowness, if not outright reactionary paralysis, comes from that strange strategy of theirs.

i think JasonC is flattering that strategy way too much by calling it attritionist. for a guy who sometimes seems to value Clausewitz, i don't get how he can speak positively about a strategy that totally lacks any concept of center of gravity.

i think the strategy was just wimpy, simple as that. they were scared about flanks etc and allowed politics etc get in the way. where as their doctrine on higher levels was decades behind Soviet operational art, i think they did much better on tactical level.

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".

i find your ideas strange. mind telling me more how you have reached your conclusions?

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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.

because you are being far too careful. you don't want deep blitzkrieg style penetrations, you want the whole front to move together. it's bound to be slow.

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?

first hand accounts tend to come out the same for all sides and nations, especially if accounts come from defensively minded or less experienced men.

i'm not aware of any German qualitative superiority of armour in Normandy.

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.

by 1944 Russian armour is not inferior and German divisions are typically far from "combat proven" (unless you mean it in humoristic sense).

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.

i'm betting all my money on the superiority of Russian operational/strategic art. they are the polar opposite of the allies in Normandy. deep, fast, narrow penetrations.

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@ Jason

In one post you talk about all these other factors unrelated to the equipment specifications that determine outcome and in your last post you use outcomes of battles to justify the quality of equipment .

You are aware that even towed AT guns countered successfully the German tanks in many of these battles you mentioned. I guess according to your logic which continues to stick to the big picture and end results, towed AT weapons are not vulnerable to HE fire in which case you should start a thread trying to convince battlefront that they have to do something with the very unrealistic model they have in their games which permits players to use even mortars to silence AT guns.

The point is not to find the case of German artillery destroying TDs. It is difficult to do so under the presense of air supremacy. However as i said a doctrine should apply also when no army has any significant other advantage.

The point is that we can still use some type of judgment seeing a picture of a TD . The point is that we can claim that the need to combine arms and mix tanks and artillery was not in the vision of the guys who built the TD doctrine (to their defense, many others missed it also).

That is why i said from the beginning that i look this all thing from a more theoritical point not sticking to specific battles. I may not be able to find mass German artillery fire killing Tds, but i can find the trend of advanced armies using combined arms concept and i do find cases of having the operational reserve forced to execute a movement to contact and even having to attack in order to counter a threat. Yes TDs were never used centrally as an operational reserve, but remember that the doctrine DID visualize them under this concept.

The fact that this doctrine was not executed in practice, does not mean that we should not examine the soundness of it based on the above observations.

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You can't find any instance of the TDs actually failing. Their imaginary failures are entirely theoretical and occur between your ears against an equally imaginary standard and equally imaginary combat practices by opponents. Out in the real world, they worked.

All that remains is to point out to you that the imaginations between your ears are not reality and men's lives depend on reality and not your imaginations.

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You can't find any instance of the TDs actually failing. Their imaginary failures are entirely theoretical and occur between your ears against an equally imaginary standard and equally imaginary combat practices by opponents. Out in the real world, they worked.

All that remains is to point out to you that the imaginations between your ears are not reality and men's lives depend on reality and not your imaginations.

Funny how cheap and tested solutions which worked were finally abandoned.

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Next to the ridiculous slander that US strategy or operational handling was inferior to that of the Russians, or indecisive, or appallingly slow.

The US had a very clear idea of the center of gravity in the war. The center of gravity was Germany rather than Japan, Germany's army and Ruhr centered industrial output, and the way to achieve decisive victory was to put a big honking mechanized army ashore in France and drive straight through the Ruhr into Germany. In case everybody just forgot, they had to fight the Brits tooth and nail over the issue - they wanted to dance around from Normandy to the Greek islands and stay away from the German army on a major front as long as possible, or completely.

Someone better tell Patton that he took France with a slow broad front offensive, because he seems to have imagined he took all of it in a month through a narrow breakout corridor and an encirclement battle called "Falaise". As for the notion that Ike was later guilty of broad front lack of focus an unwilling to take risks to end the war faster, the magical refutation phrase is "Market Garden". He was entirely willing to take major operational gambles when they had sufficient upside, even if they were longshots, and to attack on a narrow front using every available technical means. Such gambles just don't always succeed.

The rest of the pacing was set, once again, by logistic factors. The Russians never crossed an area the size of France in a month without an operational pause and stabilized front further on, either.

Meanwhile, the greatest Russian operational success story of the entire war, Bagration, managed to lose more men and tanks on the victorious attacking side than it destroyed on the outfought German defending side. And naturally resulted in the usual operational pause afterwards as logistic limits were reached, etc. Don't get me wrong, Bagration was indeed a strategic success. But the loss rates were poor even at the best, and in the more usual case were simply appalling, and not something for the western allies to emulate or learn from.

I find it hysterical that we have people on the same thread lambasting the US for supposedly unimaginative attrition fighting, citing (apparently, they are less than specific) the single month of fighting in July in Normandy (a bit less actually, more like 3 weeks) in the "push to St. Lo" to Cobra, which ground the German infantry in the sector to powder - citing Russian operations as supposedly superior examples. The Russians lost 5 times as much routinely. Frequently without so successful a result. The Russians lost 2-3 times as much in just the final 2-3 weeks pushing into Prague and Berlin as the US lost in the Bulge or Normandy, for example, with every conceivable advantage in odds and operational positioning.

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pakmak - the only failure seen in US TDs during the war was failure to have a mission, because the Germans so frequently didn't have any armor to speak of and when they did threw it away so quickly and to such limited effect, in time and space. The TDs spent 80% of the war used in other roles because there wasn't any Blitzkrieg left to tame. Far from being so outclassed by German armor they were useless, they were practically unemployed because it was dead as a doornail.

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pakmak - the only failure seen in US TDs during the war was failure to have a mission, because the Germans so frequently didn't have any armor to speak of and when they did threw it away so quickly and to such limited effect, in time and space. The TDs spent 80% of the war used in other roles because there wasn't any Blitzkrieg left to tame. Far from being so outclassed by German armor they were useless, they were practically unemployed because it was dead as a doornail.

I was talking about something i mentioned earlier. That is the death of the TD doctrine at a time when it could easily have a mission against Soviet armor after wwii. It seems the army could not justify the existence of Tds even then.

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the only failure seen in US TDs during the war was failure to have a mission, because the Germans so frequently didn't have any armor to speak of and when they did threw it away so quickly and to such limited effect, in time and space. The TDs spent 80% of the war used in other roles because there wasn't any Blitzkrieg left to tame. Far from being so outclassed by German armor they were useless, they were practically unemployed because it was dead as a doornail.

Well there you have it. Spent 80% of their time doing jobs that tanks could have done. Fitted a percentage of tanks with the bigger gun earlier and all those extraneous TD battalions would be unnecessary field units. So 100% unnecessary in that case.

Which leads to why did TD's die out.

I do wonder when TD losses, or lack of them, are cited whether anyone asks how many crewmen died in the action leading them to vacate the position before the vehicle became a casualty.

Movement across France:

I have no doubt that superior logistics and intelligence aided the Western Allies crossing France in a month. Superior road net, air recon and friendly natives providing detailed information of German positions does make it easier. Fighting in an environment where all your moves are potentially given away immediately does recommend a speedy retreat to home soil. Where the Germans continued tio fight on enemy soil there are numerous stories of civilians providing assistance to the Allies.

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I was talking about something i mentioned earlier. That is the death of the TD doctrine at a time when it could easily have a mission against Soviet armor after wwii. It seems the army could not justify the existence of Tds even then.

I think you have been misinformed. While it is true that the Tank Destroyers as a separate branch were disbanded at the end of the war, and those particular vehicles were scrapped, the mission continued and a variety of vehicles were proposed and tested and sometimes adopted. One of the most interesting of which was the M901 ITV. This is a lightly armored, tracked TD intending to fire its missiles from ambush in extreme defilade and then retire to its next firing position. The same tactic as employed successfully by the war era TDs (except for the extreme defilade part). They are simply organized in a different way than was the WW II practice.

Michael

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dt on mission kills by personnel rather than vehicle TWO, if that were any substantial issue it should appear in higher personnel casualty rates in the TD arm. No such higher personnel casualty rate is seen. TDs and armor consistently show personnel losses running at the rates seen in the artillery, a third to a quarter the rates seen in the infantry, and right in line with each other. Being off the line accounts for the lower rate in the artillery, being under armor accounts for the lower rate in tanks and TDs. Any difference in armor protection against arty for the tanks vs. the TDs is offset equally in the other direction by more dangerous average roles for the armor (more likely to be in offensive stance etc).

The reality is the open top but still under armor is still something like 80-90% protected against artillery shrapnel; airburst is a very small portion of total shrapnel, in practice. Under heavy enough artillery fire over long enough periods, even tankers take gradual casualties to exposed crew, because mission fufillment requires unbuttoning, and around the clock tankers are not in practice inside the vehicle and buttoned at all times. In addition, in practice the TD crews used field expedients (fitted roof panels etc) if left in the line in static positions for an extended period, under sustained artillery fire.

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I think you have been misinformed. While it is true that the Tank Destroyers as a separate branch were disbanded at the end of the war, and those particular vehicles were scrapped, the mission continued and a variety of vehicles were proposed and tested and sometimes adopted. One of the most interesting of which was the M901 ITV. This is a lightly armored, tracked TD intending to fire its missiles from ambush in extreme defilade and then retire to its next firing position. The same tactic as employed successfully by the war era TDs (except for the extreme defilade part). They are simply organized in a different way than was the WW II practice.

Michael

It is important though to point that all these tools were not supposed to be the answer countermeasure of a breakthrough, which was what the TD dogma was supposed to be. Beefing up infantry with AT or making many of them mobile following the trend of a mech infantry is one thing. Expecting those things to act as an operational reserve and counter breakthroughs is different.

The belief was that the best antitant is another tank. All of these things like ITVs or even At guns in jeeps were seen more as a tool to free more tank assets from the need to support infantry. At the end the main armor thrust would be met by tanks

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I think the inability to make TD's battlefield worthy in respect of gas, nuclear dust, and improved airburst also helped make them redundant. Also given the advent of ATM to draw cash at, sorry to mount on small very nimble vehicles also provided an even more versatile [cheap] weapon system.

TD's vulnerability to airburst - and lets include rocket and mortar here - may not be excessive according to the stats but I suspect some of the time they bugged out where a tank would have stayed and provided support. I am not suggest cowardice or anything just a sensible appreciation of the weakness - now statistically the crews may not have realised how unlikely the chances of a hit would be but that is post-war work.

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I think the inability to make TD's battlefield worthy in respect of gas, nuclear dust, and improved airburst also helped make them redundant. Also given the advent of ATM to draw cash at, sorry to mount on small very nimble vehicles also provided an even more versatile [cheap] weapon system.

TD's vulnerability to airburst - and lets include rocket and mortar here - may not be excessive according to the stats but I suspect some of the time they bugged out where a tank would have stayed and provided support. I am not suggest cowardice or anything just a sensible appreciation of the weakness - now statistically the crews may not have realised how unlikely the chances of a hit would be but that is post-war work.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/lineage/M-F/chapter8.htm

page 224

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Next to the ridiculous slander

Patton's drive was indeed great. i really like it. too bad his superiors forced him to stop it. there was no shortage of supplies as such. logistics was artificially made an issue by sending the supplies elsewhere, thus reinforcing failures.

i'm not asking for gambling. i'm aware that Allies tried to create deep penetrations a number of times. there's just such a huge gap between a fail and a win.

i'm not of the opinion that Germans would have performed well in Normandy. on tactical they did very well when they were defending, but their counter-attacks, especially on operational level, were highly stupid and ordered by cowardly yes men. i'm rather of the opinion that Germans helped Allies get along easy in Normandy by being so bad on operational level.

what comes to your armor numbers, even if we look at the whole June-August period, German total armor losses, of all types, are somewhere around 1500-2000 pieces. meanwhile Western Allied losses for the same period, just for M4 only, are 1700 pieces.

what comes to Bagration, Soviet irrecoverable losses were smaller than those of Germans and if we are talking about tanks they lost less tanks than Western Allies in June-August.

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dt - in practice, the post war army still had an AT doctrine. The new weapon for it was the recoilless rifle, especially the jeep mounted 106mm (75mm RR in the infantry took over the bazooka role, though in Korea copies of Panzerscrecks were found more effective). There was a brief period using French designed first generation ATGMs, before the TOW became the new AT arm standard. Once there are TOWs, dedicated AT units and subformations reappear.

In AFVs, the army kept light tanks in the form of the Chaffee, and then found them undergunned. They solved that with the Walker Bulldog, a high velocity 76mm armed light tank. Which has about as much in common with a Hellcat as with a Chaffee. The top got closed, the eggshell with hammer plus speed design principle survived. They were too late to see much use in Korea (where the Chaffee had been outclassed by T-34s), but ARVN used them in Nam. They beat T-55s and PT-76s handily in the Laos operation, and later did fine against T-55s in the invasion at the end of the war.

The army continued to need light AT weapons especially for airmobile ops. This led to vehicles like the Scorpion (unarmored tracked SP 90mm gun) and the Ontos (6 tube 90mm recoilless monstrosity used by the Marines), then the Sheridan. Eventually ATGM firing light armor got the AT weapon role, and this migrated to the standard APC with the Bradley. In formations using other mounts, there continue to be dedicated ATGM mount vehicles for AT work (ATGM LAVs, etc).

In short, all the claims that the TD was abandoned without successors are rather exaggerated. The most one can say is that the army at first wanted to use just medium tanks, found this a bit restrictive for special needs and roles, ad hoc vehicles clearly worse than WW II era TDs (but lighter than e.g. a Jackson - a Hellcat is only 18 tons) got the job for a while, and finally ATGM tech brought it back.

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URC - there most definitely was a shortage of supplies as such. Both in gasoline and in artillery ammunition. Patton wanted all of it dedicated to him, Ike choose the Market Garden attempt instead as more likely to penetrate the Ruhr quickly. He couldn't pick both and that is exactly not falling into the broad front mistake. A lot of the artillery supply went to the Aachen battle less because of command priority from the top, and more because of demand pull and system gaming from the bottom; the QM types in that sector were just successfully more aggressive in scarfing up what 105mm ammo there was, for example. That led to rationing to ensure it didn't happen again.

The underlying issue in both cases was simply that over the beach supply could not keep 50 divisions punching at full strength at the westwall. It took a month to get Cherbourg in operation and a month just to clear the Brittany ports of their garrisons. By the end of September the initial "scramble" supply situation for gasoline had eased up, because the race across France was over and consumption dropped, pipeline to Paris got laid, etc. But artillery ammunition became the bottleneck instead and it was still tight. Very tight in 3rd Army clear through to December. And it was a good thing such artillery ammunition stocks as there were, were kept on as tight a rein as they were, because releasing them helped win the Bulge battle.

There were entirely real logistical constraints against the proposition that Germany could be taken in one go without a pause of months at the westwall. The western allies took their one shot at it in Market Garden.

Overall, the campaign in the west was not seriously misplayed at the operational level. The execution of Market Garden left something to be desired - so did Patton's execution of the campaign against Metz, which featured way too much wild hammering and stubborn frontal attacks on fortifications, and the execution of the Hurtgen fight. Those, not "broad front" or "failure to appreciate combined arms" or any of the usual slanders, were the errors that can be put down to western commanders. And they are all minor. The Russian commanders of the highest reputation did worse eight times before breakfast, and so did the German high command from mid 1942 on.

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: )

Cutting humour!

Regarding TD's. The Chaffee Bulldog line seems to me to be the Honey concept continuing rather than the Hellcat etc. Its been an interesting wander through the events and without spending months on the paperwork/memoirs/ etc of McNair and those around him I will have to stick with my suspicion that he made some errors that could have been avoided. We all make errors its whether his views on TD's, and future gun requirements were sound.

This memo does refer to tactical success for the TD and I was wondering on what basis it was said. The general thrust of the memo does sound OK - but then the devil is in the detail. After al the tank battles where the British, French and Germans duked it in 1940 out seem to be ignored - deliberately or in ignorance. Surley they deserved some comment.

MEMORANDUM BY COMMANDER ARMY GROUND FORCES, 23. Jan 1943 for CSA

1. The basic memorandum presents clearly, and impressively a broad picture of tremendous significance--one which, in my view, we have not yet faced adequately.

2. It is believed that our general concept of an armored farce--that it is an instrument of exploitation, not greatly different in principle from horse cavalry of old--is sound. However, some particularly armored enthusiasts, have been led away from this concept by current events which have. been misinterpreted. The German armored force of 1940 was organized for a particular situation, and was brilliantly successful for that reason. It was used at the outset as a force of exploitation, since it was well know, that nothing in Europe at that time was capable of stopping it; the antitank measures then in vogue were wholly and hopelessly inadequate.

3. The struggles in Libya--particularly the battles of late May and early June 1942--demonstrated conclusively that armor could not assault strong, organized positions except with prohibitive losses. The German 88 ruined the British armored force, which was employed unsoundly. The German armored force then exploited the success obtained and ruined the entire British force.

4. The battle of El Alamein demonstrated the correct employment of the British armor, which was held in reserve until the infantry, artillery, and air had opened a hole. The British armor then exploited the success and destroyed the German force.

5. Thus, we need large armored units to exploit the success of our infantry. We need small armored units also, in order to assist the infantry locally. The Russians appear to have devoted their armor largely to the latter principle, influenced undoubtedly by the fact that until recently they have been on the defensive strategically. It seems doubtful that they will need large armored units in the near future. If they do, such units can be formed readily.

6. It is believed unwise to adopt the hybrid infantry-armored division of the British, since a division normally should contain organically only those elements which are needed in all situations. Armor is not needed on the defensive under our concept, tank destroyers being provided for the defeat of armored attacks, and having demonstrated their effectiveness for this purpose. Our GHQ tank battalions are sound for attachment to infantry divisions on the offensive where terrain and situation permit their effective employment.

7. It is believed that our 1943 troop basis has entirely too many armored divisions, considering their proper tactical employment, and too few GHQ tank battalions. It is particularly important that the latter be available in quantities to permit all infantry divisions to work with them freely and frequently. Such training has been impracticable in the past and probably will be so in 1943. This matter was brought up in connection with consideration of the 1943 troop basis, but the view presented by this headquarters was not favored by the War Department.

8. A reorganization of the armored division will be proposed in the near future, in accordance with your memorandum of January 26, 1943.

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