pamak1970

Hello to everybody I can not find The TOE and the number of personel for an ordnance maintenance company ( part of the ordnance maintenance battalion) of a US armored division (1944) I know that for a US infantry division,the ordnance company is 147 men. However things are different in the armored division. The ordnance maintenance battalion (1944) for a US armored division has a strength of 762 (all ranks). Other than that i can not find details for the ordnance company and the specific allocation of personel to the various platoons or even the total personel strength. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you P.S I know about the material and vehicle composition of the unit. I miss the personel data. [ July 18, 2007, 04:53 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

thank you for the reply. I see next to it the russian text and from what i understand the lines are for different thickness of armament (20,25 ,30 mm) Am i right?. I do not know the first two ones wich mention something like Dmin and Dmax. Any idea ?

thank you for the reply. I see next to it the russian text and from what i understand the lines are for different thickness of armament (20,25 ,30 mm) Am i right?. I do not know the first two ones wich mention something like Dmin and Dmax. Any idea ?

this whole thread is really very informative. May i ask some questions about the article? Do you speak Russian or did you use a translation site? I tried to use a traslation site but of course the text is not accurate. So i have a few questions. First one is ,what is the sourse of this article? Who wrote it and what is his proffession? The second question has to do with a diagram i see ,which i can not traslate. What is this diagram about? Thank you .

this whole thread is really very informative. May i ask some questions about the article? Do you speak Russian or did you use a translation site? I tried to use a traslation site but of course the text is not accurate. So i have a few questions. First one is ,what is the sourse of this article? Who wrote it and what is his proffession? The second question has to do with a diagram i see ,which i can not traslate. What is this diagram about? Thank you .

according to http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:KsPO4ia-B-oJ:www.ada.asn.au/defender/Sum02all.pdf+%22rounds+per+kill%22tank+wwii&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6 there are about 17 rounds per kill in wwii tank battles. I have seen the same number in other military oficial publications also. For Sherman tank fans there are some more interesting details in the following link http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/download/csipubs/swain3/swain3_pt2.pdf

Abatis and mines and blown bridges delaying everywhere and everyone,including your covering force or your reserve which find a blown bridge cause of a general command "destroy the bridge!!s" These things do not happen and it is this detail that often helped attacker capture bridges acheiving surprise. To deal with all that, he has to deploy. He has to get out of column, off the road. He has to send infantry ahead to scout, or conduct several iterations of recon escalation over several roadblocks and then pick one to hit. All of which keep him from getting as many miles a day as he would, with nobody left in front of him. Which will be the predictable consequence of trying to hold too rigidly everywhere Registered arty, arty delivered bomblet mines, blown bridges, blown trees, etc. The maneuver elements are doing ambush and fall back drills, which they should know how to do in their sleep. (All the ACRs did). Sure, again classic delay and an expected rate of advance for Soviets double the one expected during normal defence according to planning factors taught in military stuff schools. How about if I don't have any main forces, just a sea of covering force skirmishers layer after layer deep? You double his expected rate of advance .You preserve your forces,not risking engagement that can lead to high amount of casualties but at the cost of not being able to inflict also high amount of casualties for the attacker during a long lasting battle.. Actual numbers for the advancing force are higher,compared to yours but this is half of the story. If the initial ratio is 3 to 1 this means that casualty ratio should also be 3 to 1 in order to maintain the original ratio. In addition, absolute numbers are important.The casualty ratio is meaningless if 3 to 1 is translated to an overall low casualty level for both sides.You do not project enough power in terms of force or time commitment to slow his advance. You can not have everything.You can not expect to play safe not risking your force, backpeddle to safety farther back and not being rigid too farward, expecting that such type of fight will slow him down to the level you imagine considering the few hundred KM of operational depth that Europe offers you. If the war remained conventional, in the long run the US would win it. It led a bloc with 10 times the economic potential of the Warsaw Pact, better tech, and a vastly larger population. Even if portions of the last were subjugated, it would not change the ultimate outcome. Only nukes might, really. Which is probably why it didn't need to be tested, in the event. Part of the US dominance though was the acceptance of global responsibilites as one of the superpowers of that time.When you have an ideological war between US and Soviet Union and when you want to project influence to the most part of the world,which leads to establishment of pro US parties, capitalist economies,friendly markets and ultimately profit ,then you can not project yourself as someone that is not reliable. If the US attitude was that "i am sorry, we stay safe on the other side of the Atlantic trying to win a war of attrition in the long run", i am pretty sure that the Soviet influence would be much more stronger through out the world and i doubt if Soviets would have collapsed under those circumstances.

I decided to put these comments on a seperate post since they are more about cold war doctrine Yes, exactly. Advances with an intact defender ahead of the attack are slow, sometimes only a couple of miles a day, sometimes five miles a day. Not 30 or 50 miles a day. No "on the other hand" about it, the way to have an intact force remaining in front of an attack is to not stand forward too rigidly. And the way to be broken through inside 48 hours, after which the attacker can indeed get 30 to 50 mile per day rates of unopposed advance, is to "hold at all costs" all up, online. An intact defender maybe a one that wants to hold ground or one that wants to delay or one that wants to counterattack or whatever.You might have an intact platoon or an intact company trying to delay an enemy battalion.We can not make such gross generalizations about the capacity of a defender to delay In addition, you started about covering forces that delay the Soviets.Now you seem to talk about forces that actually are part of the main line of defence since you seem to refer about historical examples that describe such cases. If you want to see an enemy to advance a couple of miles a day,then you have to confront him in major defensive battle with a reasonable combat ratio. Delay operations by covering forces do not force an enemy to so low rates of advance.The force is much weaker and becomes even more weak when the force is split between elements that start to withdraw and elements that keep contact covering the withdrawal.The frontage is much wider, the distance from superior commands limits the support it gets and the need to start withdrawal before there is a decisive engagement against much superior troops ,limits the time of actual fight.The relative low combat strength of the delaying units , does not force the opponent to spend time to gather and synchronize a big amount of force. Sure there is delay,sure you deploy obstacles although organic enginner support is not sufficient enough for extensive work along the front and if you attach higher level enginner support you degrade the capabilities for the preparation of the main force defence. Anyway, neither historical data neither norms desccribed in current operations manuals and guides about staff planning data point to such small rates of advance. The intelligence-preparation of the battlefield manual is a good start for this subject. Why does it work this way? Well, attackers seek breakthrough by concentration at chosen points. In other areas they are screening or conducting holding attacks, only. A defender dead set on holding all ground will see all the places those are defeated as great triumphs, and wish to retain them. To retain them he will leave many forces opposite the thin attack areas, and thus retain most of his initial line. This counts as "standing too far forward too rigidily". ...... Then, act the second, at one or two of his points of chosen concentration, the attacker gets some sort of force past the defenders in that areas, annihilating some and simply driving past others on either flank - because those are "standing too far forward too rigidly". Again you seem to see the battlefield as too transparent and it is one of the main reasons you underestimate initiative.The defender does not leave many forces oposite the thin attack areas cause he is stupid. It is the fog of war that forces him to do that.I will put it in more detail. First of all The attacker does not just stage a faint attack.Speaking about Nato and Soviet doctrine there is a main attack and a secondary or supporting attack in addition of any other deceptive operations.That concept apply to most level of commands from battalion to corps.Speaking about corps let say level, the secondary attack will not have of course a deep echelonment and it will not be able to cut through the whole depth of defence.Still even if it penetrates through only the first line battalions defence without acheiving breakthough , it is still accheives the objective of keeping the opponent commander uncertain about the direction of the main attack and the commitment of reserves there. Now the brigade or divisional reserves of the defence engage the forces of the first wave of the secondary attack.Similar level reserves engange the forces of the first wave of the main attack in a neighbour command .The defender corps commander up to that time is still unable to decide about the enemy intentions and still reluctant to commit his reserves.After some time he gets reports about difficulties in one sector to hold the offence,while the other sector may report that he threw enemy offence back. This is the first time he gains siginificant indications about enemy intentions.The penetration in the main sector already exists and batallion and brigade level defences have already been breached . The divisional reserve will try to hold the offence in the main sector until the arrival of the corps level reserves denying the offence a breakthrough.For the defence and according to manuals in direct contrast of what you beleive,they try to lure the offence to places of high density of fire.These places must combine obstacles for increasing the time for the attacker to cross them and direct and indirect fire.This kill zone or fire sack can only be effective when it is located inside the defence zone and not forward of it.This is what will permit the defender to maximize the use of all his weapons along the whole depth and inflict major attrition. Sometimes the defender is eager to give ground or maneuver his forces around this predetermined kill zone (since there is no time to arrange such things and deployment of weapons during the heat of the battle. Now the attacker might be a victim of this kill zone, or he might avoid it , or he might be able to pay the cost and still advance.In any case, the point is that if attacker bypass some defending units in modern warfare ,it is partially exactly because the latter does not try to hold some line on the ground as you imagine.It is a combination of defence that in some places holds ground while in others gives ground willingly and the combined effect is to lead the offence on ground of choice.Still this ground will be inside the defensive zone with defending units around it combining their firepower towards it. Your idea of defence when you try to apply power in front of the position ready to fall back when enemy apporaches, is not defence.It is delay which certainly does not attrit attacker as much as a defence and certainly permit him to advance much more rapidly . You use a much smaller portion of available fire (since you are afraid that you will be too rigid forward if you let the atacker come too close, you do not fire against him from multiple directions and you are ready to evacuate positions when attacker comes too close "forward" . Now if you feel that your artillery will be able by itself to anihillate the enemy in front of your position preventing your force from a risky close engagement , i will give you some numbers from calculations used during wargaming by staff. 150mm+ 24 tubes with icm/dpicm against an enemy Soviet motorzed unit in obstacle.Fire is planned , bmp vehicle are high pay off targets .The enemy was detected in the predicted Named area of interest. Result is 4 bmps per 15 minutes. Needless to say that all these tubes are unavaliable for some time after this fire mission which will actually be less than 15 minutes. So now we are during a situation where the attacker has acheived penetration inside battalion and brigade defensive areabut he has not acheived breakthough yet to start an exploitation. The duration of the battle is a few hours up until now.The national training center ,if i recall right estimates an average duration of the main battle at brigade level at 3.5 hours. The battle between security elements is seperate of the above . This is a good indication also of how difficult it is for friendly units of near sectors to disengage and fall back so that they will not find themselves too far forward against a penetration during a main battle . For a regimental type force of example, the time nessesary for passing from an assembly area to column ready to march is more than an hour. For transition from defence where you have disembarked and set materials all over the place ,the nessesary time is much more. Counting also the fact that an order for retreat will have to come from a superior HQ ,counting the lag of time for the superior HQ to monitor the developments since forward leaders will be occupied with directing their battle instead of giving updates every few minutes,not to mention damaged phonelines ,EW or leaders KIA and needing a replacement and so on, we can see that retreat must actually start before even the start of the main battle (for some logistical elements al least ) or during the very early stages. So now we are talking about a delay operation again,not deliberate defence. Returning to our previous example ,the defender simply does not have the option to order a massive withdrawal expecting to do it without lossing a significant amount of forces. Not to mention here that withdrawals of such level,division and above are executed during night to minimize the impact of enemy airforce against thousands of convoys marching in column plus they need specific time consuming requirements before the start of such major movements. According to one map excersize, time nessesary to deploy traffic regulation posts and redirect antiair assets to deploy in such a manner to cover the road net and especially choke points, was 3 hours for a tank division movement. Now under these conditions, the defender either tries to establish a new line of defence at a local level to contain the penetration , either tries to push it back . The first option supposely setting all hopes to the superiority of defence ,is problematic. For every km of penetration the defender is obliged to set a front to oppose farther advance, and flanks left and right to oppose flanking or envelopment of neighbour commands.Trying to establish such arrangements during combat is extremely difficult .Neighbour commands need to coordinate.Try to do this in a electronic warfare enviroment, between commands that operate in different nets ,that do not have (at least for the cold war period) ability to send electronicaly pictures and maps with coordination lines and graphics and so on.In addition when you command a regiment or brigade you need sufficient time to distribute commands , meet person to person with subordinates for close coordination and study of maps plus give subordinates sufficient time to issue their orders to lower echelons. In addition breach of battalion level defence or brigade means that hills and observations posts crucial for directing artillery near the front has already been lost.The artillery of the attacker starts to gain advantages in addition of its numerical superiority since it gains better observation and of course against a standing defender ,observed fire is adequate enough and does the job very well.Preplanned fire is mostly important when you seek surprise and when you want to kill a moving target where you do not have enough time for corrections and the like.The attacker of course has to commit forces for the sides of the penetration ,but against a passive defender who does not understand the importance of counterattacking ,he has many options.For example he can just set a screen towards the defender and turn 90 degrees left and right with the remaining of his force.He can have the time to advance artillery to be under coverage for farther operations and of course time to reorganize the attacking force of the first waves which will be scattered all over the place by then . Meanwhile the defender reserves will wait somewhere to oppose the farther advance .He will be defeated exactly the way French were defeated in Sedan!! The other option is to counterattack exactly when the first wave is mostly weak using the divisional reserve. and we continue with your next comment This sets off act the third, whose logic is parallel pursuit. That is the Russian term for the race for the defender's rear that commences as soon as any force it through the defender's tactical zone. Which will be lost by default if the defenders are "standing too far forward too rigidly". At this point, act the fourth, the ground loving defender, unwilling to relinquish his precious ground holding victories at all of the points the attacker didn't bother to hit him anyway, tries to retrieve the situation in the one or two other embarrasing areas, by "seizing the initiative" (in his own mind - actually, gambling in denial). He scrapes together what he can and tries to cut off the penetrations from their flanks, feeling all maneuveree and clever that he isn't just fighting them head on. But the attackers have all their depth behind the break-ins by now, and the result is a brawl between the defenders' only reserves and the attackers 2nd or 3rd echelon, while his 1st or 1st and 2nd combined, keep playing parallel pursuit First of all the counterattack force is close coordinated with the rest of the blocking force.Second the counterattack might be appropiate in many cases to be launched head on.An example is when the attacker shifts his main effort 90 degrees left or right for exploitation. Third the first wave can not do both penetration,breakthrough and exploitation without major reorganization.In the mean time, retreatng elements of the defender also reorganize. The parallel pursue is a technique of exploitation trying to cut off retreating units.It is not relevant with this discussion. Fourth the brawl between defender's only reserves is actually in favor of thedefender if these reserves are local.They will buy time for teh higgher ecelon reserves to come. If the brawl is between the last reserves of the defender, then in the worst situation they buy time for other less maneuverable units and artillery to start retreat. If the most maneuverable units of the defender ,jump back cause they feel they are too forward to the most maneuverable forces of the attacker, then a lot of the units which are less maeuverable for the defender will be in trouble. If the defender's reserve do not retreat and just wait to defend ,then they have to overextend to cover every possible direction of the potentional exploitation force and on ground which will not have the extensive preparations of the tactical defence which was penetrated,which is a sure way of failure . If you beleive that the less maneuverable units would have already be retreated before the start of the attack or sooo after, then again you do not talk about defence but about delay operations Not the way to defend. The way to defend is, screen where he screens and mass where he masses. The irony is that this is basically what the defender is trying to do according to the established doctrine and this is the debate of attritionists against maneuverists. However both accept that attack is the only method for bringing decisive results.The best possible thing with this type of defence can do is to stall an attack and according to your opinion win the war if the opponent continously losses battles through out the war as an attacker. However,If there was transparency and instant reaction that woud be indeed the safest way but neither of these exists and it is interesting that according to a historical database by the dupuy institute of hundreds of battles, 75% of them are won by the attacker and for modern wars the percentage is even more. The reason of course of such a difference is that the attacker would not start a fight if he did not feel that he had better chances to win which among others includes mass concentration. Everybody backpeddles to stay tolerably on line only in delay operations were you use the high mech force .In defence when you use your whole force and set out everything from ammo to wires, you have differnt levels of mobility to have everybody backpeddle. In addition,everybody backpeddles quite well when things are prearranged,again a sign of delay operations. During defence such a backpeddle for some of the defending units at lower levels is possible only when the enemy is driven towards your preselected engagement area inside your defensive zone,following an action you anticipated. Coordination and specific details for such movements,like start times and so on will be prearranged and rehearshed. If on the other hand you are forced for some reason to deviate from such scedules, for example when the enemy is simply too strong for you to destroy inside your zone ,or for whatever other reason , things are much more difficult. For a higher level, say division or ACR, the frontage is so big that there is no meaning to talk about units backpeddlee to retain some form of line. Geographical features that help the defender will not be in some form of a geometric line. A battalion in one place in a favorite position might already be 1 km up or backwards compared to the neighbour one even without any type of penetration. The next most advantageous position might also differ in distance and time nessesary to jump to the next available position might also differ which also means that some times coordination reasons might force different times of departures from the initial line. So the phrase that everybody backpeddless to stay in some form of line is much more difficult than you imagine. [ January 16, 2007, 04:45 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

I am sorry for the delay ,but the last weekend and holiday was the only available time for me . First, as an aside - this is a fine discussion and I thank you for holding up your end of it. It brings out my points quite well I agree and i will point that the result is cause of an effort from both sides. Against the NK forces this is true, expect it didn't achieve statemate is won. Against the Chinese it is much less true. There was some tactical counterpunching in 1951, but after that no operational offensive of any scope. The UN forces defended and bled the Chinese to the tune of a million men, and the Chinese called it a day. Gee, they didn't think "since we have the initiative, we are sure to break through and win decisively on the next attack or the one after", did they? Because against enough heavy HE firepower on the limited space of the Korean penisula, they never, ever would have. The chinese decided to go in,only when they saw that US forces were advancing ready to occupy the whole Korea.Sure they would not mind if they were able to occupy the whole peninsula At the end both compromised with the middle solution.That is what both sides were willing to pay for.Neither was seeking for a full mobilization of economy and military power for a total war and that is why i am not linking this case with the one we are talking about . Ignoring the add ons, we have 27.4 million Russian casualties vs. 7.2 million German ones, or about a 4 to 1 ratio. there are many problems with these numbers as the site also points. .For example feldgrau provides total MIA for wwii for German army of about 2,8 million but the number we find by adding the MIA for each campaign is about half of it.Similar problems exist with the strength of german army since it gives total in strength of up to more than 12 million till 1944 ,but the number of people in service for 1944 is just more than 1 million two hundred.That begs the question of where are the rest of the 12 million people recruited up to 1944..Sure there is a small portion which reached an age of "retirement" each year, but for 7 years and for a combined population of 80 million ,this can not be more than 4 million in total and that is assumming that all members of a certain class survive to retire from the army and ignoring the fact that during the last stages of the war ,German army was forced to have classes that under normal conditions were not fit for service. I base all this on assumming that a male population of 40 million will provide around 500,000 males that reach age of recruitment each year and a similar number of people that retire . So the, point is that the given casualties are too low to justify an army that recruited 12 millio people, seeing itself with a strength of 1,2 million in 1944. Regarding the Soviet official deaths of 8.3 million ,you missed the following The official total of military deaths is 8,668,400; including 6,330,000 killed in action/died of wounds and 556,000 dead from non-combat causes[7,85] plus an estimated 500,000 MIA and 1,283,000 POW dead out of 4,059,000 total POW.So this figures actually combines kills ,MIA and one fourth of the POWS that actually died in captivity.Under these conditions we can not really say much ,unless we have more accurate data. Glantz gives estimates of Russian military casualties as high as 35 million In what book?Are you sure he does not talk about overall casualties ,including civilians? From what i know 35 million was about the total amount of men drafted in Red army ,so this figure can not be right. The number of people drafted in Red army seems logical since for a nation of 169 million people ,it represents about half the number of male population. As for my point that even when the Russians won overwhelmingly and were fighting only German infantry formations they still took higher losses, it is readily illustrated by the two cases of Bagration and Prague-Berlin. Bagration was the Russian operational masterpiece and a military success of the first order. They destroyed 30 German divisions and took White Russia etc. But they also managed to sustain 765,000 casualties doing it, against figures for the German side that start at 300-400,000 "permanent military losses" and go as high as 625,000 counting wounded, non-battle, etc. But in no case reach the Russian figure. Similarly, the Germans lost 2000 AFVs in Bagration, but the Russians lost 2800. This counts as about the most successful Russian operation of the war because it got within a factor of 1.5 on the loss exchange ratio - but it did not pass unity. so since we are talking now about 1944-1945 ,i assume you do accept that we see a lower german perfomance compared to previous years and an exchange ratio of less than 2-1 which does not surprise me. As for AFVs in the east, I estimate it at 40,000, mostly just by estimating AFVs elsewhere over the whole war and taking them out of the German total available. Russian tank losses I know are over 100,000, since their production was 102,500 and the fleet expanded, net, by only the amount they received lend lease (confirmed by year by year Russian AFV loss figures, which run 20000 and up). So the AFV exchange ratio ran about 2.5 to 1, to 3 to 1 at the highest - less than the manpower ratio but far above unity. It also means if the rate held and the Germans got the extra 20000 tanks faster mobilization could readily have given them, the Russians would have needed 50000 more, or would have run out first. Nor have prewar anythings, anything to do with it - all the NCOs that count are made in action, and Germany got them by the boatload. (She even had plenty of NCOs for 2nd line division who were WW I veterans) First i was talking about the officers and you can not expect to train an officer in six months expecting to see him be as efficient as the rest of the proffesionals. Second ,the combat efficiency of the German army during the opening stages of Barbarossa was of course linked also to the German NCos of that time who had already a long term training and combat experience. If they were introducing new blood trained during the period you are talking about , the average efficiency of NCos would be certainly affected depending on the level of the numbers introduced. Of course war lessons and real experience can train much faster people at lower echelons at least, but this does not change the fact that new German formations would have started a war with green and less efficient troops than the ones deployed historically in Barabarossa. Now this does not mean that a bigger tank army was not preferable.I accept that a stronger inittial punch (in terms of more numbers) would have given him better chances to exploit the initial shock, and even if additional troops would not have the efficiency of the existing ones,they would still add something extra to the overall force. The point i make is that when you examine "what ifs" there are many parameters that change.So it is very dangerous to calculate alteranitve scenarios using the same value of parameters. Hitler might had enough force to avoid Salingrand in 1942 or advance even farther or even capture Moscow.Still it is far from obvious that all those things could win the war against Soviet Union and when i see combat perfomance difference between the two sides becoming more narrow as the time passes. Sorry, that predicts that the early war formations and the late ones that had all their first pick of recruits would continually rock, and the later infantry formations would all suck. While equipment mix may further that impression, it is not in fact observed. Instead many an infantry division formed in 1944 gives an excellent account of itself. I do not get the whole logic of what you are saying.My argument can not be supported or refuted by comparisons between different periods,about different armies against different enemies and so on Yeah well, the war with Russia started in 1941 and German had access to just a little more terrritory by then, and she drafted men out of that territory, too. Indeed, but should they be rewarded with a German Reich efficiency and should we reward Germans with all casualties inflicted to Russians by all participants that aided Germany in Eastern front and who were a few millions? Of course I did, I pointed out they ran 50 mobile division at the end and twice the tanks they attacked Russia with, even without ramping synthetic oil capacity. And that they could have, and should have, so ramped said capacity, had they planned on a long warI also along the war showed how being better prepared for the attritionist war that actually happened, would have made it materially more likely for them to lastingly solve their oil problem inside Russia. Baku stuff could have been coming west by mid to late 1943, if there had been 5000 extra tanks for southern Russia by 1942. You also said that the Russian tank casualties in 1941 were about the same with the casualties inflicted during the next years when the Germans deployed twice the number of tanks they employed the first year.Regarding personnel losses you said that they were higher in 1941 and especially the number of POWs captured during the first year,represents the biggest portion of all Soviet POWs during wwii. In other words the historical numbers provided by Germans in Eastern front during the peak period do not lead to more Soviet casualties while the casualty exchange ratio is reduced. If the overall exchange ratio for the whole war is say 3 to 1, that is cause the 6 and 7 to 1 of the first year ,was followed by much lower exchange ratios afterwards , certainly lower than the total average of 3 to 1. So after a certain time, Germans could not win a war of attrition I do accept though that if Germans had the ability to deploy a larger fleet during the first year, they could have win the war in 1941,before Russians become more effective or secure Caucasus and oil as you point in 1942 ,but i do not know if they could produce the number that could have given them victory instead of just an extra gain of some hundreds of km,nor i beleive that avoidance of Stalingrand means strategic victory for Germans, or Stalin's actions that could have influence results like acceptance of more risk against Japanese by transfering even more quantity of troops (or more quickly) and so on. As a side notice,it is interesting that all these high Soviet casualties happened when Germans were attacking with fewer forces compared to the later stages of war when they deployed more troops and had a more passive stance assumming defence. So as an end , the way i see it, blitzkrieg can put down bigger but less effective opponents , but there is a limitation regarding the theater war depth and size difference that can be negotiated with such an approach. For each pair of values of theater war depth and size difference there is a "critical mass" that the lower size must have in order to acheive victory. Hitler had the nessesary critical mass to conquere France ,but he did not have it to beat Russia. Partially cause from what we know he underestimated the power and numbers of Red Army and the willingless of communists to fight for their country. Oh OK, I guess I missed that then. Mars. Next argument please I lost you.Did not they counterattack using operational reserves and eventually trapped numerous Soviet penetrating forces there? The defensive is the stronger form of combat. Firepower kills Which does not contradict the statement about the role of inittiative and attack as the tools that are prerequirements for victory,at least according to the manuals that include both statements about the defence and the attack Regardless if you agree or not with the above,i point that your theory is actually not linked to any other proffesional one described in any army publication. "Neither Rommel nor Germans in France could count on prevailing against Allies through attrition If you can't count on prevailing through attrition, then you can't count on prevailing, because nothing else actually does " First of all neither Rommel nor other German generals decide about allocation of forces in a theater. If you want to blaim Hitler ,that is fine with me .In fact even Hitler did not want to start a campaign there.He interfiered only after the Italian collapse and the real possibility of seeing British establish a new front in Europe while Germans were going to fight deep inside Russia. Second , you can certainly win a campaign or even a war even if you are inferior in numbers. That does not mean that you can do it against a much bigger enemy or the rest of the world as Germans tried to do. There are of course limitations and cases where you can not ignore numbers for sure. No, they really didn't. You can't point to a war they won that way, unless you want to count beating up minors they could have smashed with attrition. Brief single operations, sure. Those just don't settle anything against first rate powers. Attrition does. Of course i can.The win against France in wwii was a win against a first rate power that they could not defeat with attrition during ww1. "there was no hope for Rommel to count on anything else other than qualitative advantage." Actually, there was British lack of skill at combined arms and use of armor, the limited armament of their tanks, his own men's thorough understanding of gun fronts, 88 Flak, a deep park of perfectly effective Italian artillery, equal infantry manpower, etc No, to hold. The Allied punches get weaker away from the beach due to logistical difficulties. It is also easier to defend giving ground than trying to keep everything (on which more below). It is also easier to defend if most of your infantry artillery and service stuff gets away, than if it gets outrun east or shot to rags. How does this benefit them? Simple, they get men out of Normandy, they get men out of Biscay, they get men out of the south of France, that they don't get to keep if they try something stupid like Mortain. Then they get replacements and reinforcements as the allies sort out their supply difficulties. All of which means more tanks etc can be sent east to deal with Bagration etc In essense your argument is that avoiding the Fallaise encirclement would have given Germans more additional troops than what they had historically to oppose allies and Soviets later. Sure, it is logical but i think not valuable way to study history. Germans would also agree if they knew beforehand the result of their counteroffensive. What is more important though is that they did not have such type of knowledge for the future. They did however saw that they could not stop Soviet army even when there was not a western front at all.So from their point of view, it did not make any sense to hope for victory against Soviets when at the same time had to defend the whole front of France. [ January 17, 2007, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

Attrition works in limited wars as well as total ones I disagree .The political implications and the willing of participants to pay a certain cost is much more important.If these wars was a matter of attrition then Vietnam would have been a triumph for Americans. As a side note it is interesting that Americans did not stop the North Koreans and Chinese by buying time and be on the defensive .They had to inititate an offensive of operational proportions to acheive the stalemate and push the North back. The statement that they could not have achieved such levels of performance if they a larger army cannot withstand scrutiny. They did have a larger army later in the war and the outperformance compared to the Russians did not go away. In previous posts you talk about a Soviet to German casualty ratio of 3 or 5 to 1 and now you claim that you beleive that a bigger army would not affect the perfomance or quality of Germans by focusing on historical experience later in the war. Now i am going to ask for the numbers that can back up your opinion. In fact i will ask you to provide numbers similar with the ones you provide for ETO when you defend the American perfomance compared to the German one. For example, since we talk about attrition and we focus on strategic implications ,can you give me the number of German tanks or AFVs destroyed in eastern front? Is the Soviet number 3-5 times higher than the German one? Same with personel (military) including KIA MIA and POWs since all of them are casualties and lost for each side. I doubt you will find such a ratio and i doubt that during the second half of the war the germans showed a similar perfomance compared to the earlier years. As for the idea that superior German equipment is a result of a quality over quantity focus, it does not stand scrutiny either. The Germans continued to produce lower quality stuff throughout the war, precisely to use all available productive capacity I thought you were saying that germans did not feel the need for full mobilization of economy till it was too late (which i accept). Now you are saying that they produced lower quality stuff throughout the war to use all available productive capacity. By the way, even the light German tanks had radios while for Soviets and for a big part of the war ,this was restricted to command vehicles. Things become even more confusing when earlier you say that German equipment was on the whole excellent from midwar on, and probably did provide some portion of their margin of outperformance. continuing The Germans had a better, more professional officer corps at the middle and lower levels, better professional staff work, resulting in better employment of the right weapon for the right jobs in a combined arms sense. They achieved higher unit cohesion and developed superior NCOs at the tactical level. The manpower of the army was better educated, was pushed to excel by a long military tradition, etc. and i say that all these high standards could not be maintained if they had to employ a much larger army .It is similar with the modern idea of smaller proffesional armies compared to bigger ones by utilizing drafting. For Germans the officer and NCO pool was very limited cause of the treates after wwi and inpite the fact that there were breaches of these treates, they did not train and educate a high quantity of officers. Some numbers are very instructive. After 1935 when Hitler introduced the compulsory military service and during this time span he was able to train only 4000 officers while the French army had a pool of 39000 active duty officers. All this is from the book "the blitzkrieg legend". You do not just recruit people expecting to have a bigger army maintaining quality. Attrition would be first felt on the level of officers replacements. Assumming that Hitler could take up his time trying to build and train a larger army before invading Soviets and gain victory is total speculation. Soviets would not stay idle and they could recover for the massive army persecutions of 1937, British could certainly recover and always look for the opportunity to start a second front (they did it in Balkans during wwi -do not confuse it with the Dardanielles failure ),not to mention the Africa problems and the failure of Italians to stop them. Next you are simply factually wrong about the manpower ratio. Russian population in 1941 was only 150 million, not 165 million. And German population was 80 million The first number is 169 million for January 1939 according to http://www.aaabooksearch.com/ISBN/5020134791 which is actually a book about demographics. As to the German population it is 69 million within the 1937 borders. The figure you provide includes population after the annexation of certain provinces which were not part of the German Reich . As for supplying them, the Germans were running tank fleets twice as large throughout 1943 and 1944, and did so without any problems, until the bombers smashed the synthetic oil plants and the Red Army seized Rumanian First of all it was not without problems .They had to be strict in allocating oil to their units and any loss during transportation cause of air activity was not easily replaced. Second You do not address the argument of their situation if they had to produce and sustain a much larger fleet of what they deployed historically. Answering another argument here from another poster that larger fleet would result in similar consumsion cause of less movement of reserves , i will disagree unless you want to commit reserves piecemeal or in general advance retreat or move a portion of the fleet simply because you want to maintain lower levels of consumsions ignoring the operational nessesites. If by standing on the defensive, I can destroy a whole enemy army for even the loss of a whole corps worth of casualties, IF you could do that ,then i would agree. I asked You to give me such cases during wwii where you could annihilate the enemy army by simply defending without seizing inititative through an attack or counterattack of operational proportions and you did not come with anything particular. "You have confused the debate of attritionists and maneuverists. All beleive that it is only the attack that brings victory." Wrong. I don't believe that statement. And I am an attritionist. If you do not beleive that statement is that you are not familiar with the debate in proffessional community i am talking about. You,like me are just amateurs that love to read about such stuff and have different opinions. I would like you to give me sources from American Soviet German or French manuals that diminish the value of attack not accepting that it is the only method that brings decicive victory. In fact French infantry regulations of 1929 state that the only form of operations that can bring decisive results is the offensive. This is the army that was far behind in formulating a blitzkrieg concept and maneuver warfare American army manuals of 1950s ,even before air-land doctrine mention in a paragraph about defensive operations, that the basic aim should be the destruction of the enemy through counterattack or counteroffensive. When Rommel dashes for the wire or runs to El Alamein or counterattacks at Kasserine, he is worshipping the initiative. Salerno is worshipping the initiative. Lehr counterattacking straight into a full corps advancing on St. Lo is worshipping the initiative. Mortain is worshipping the initiative. Arracourt is worshipping the initiative. The Bulge is worshipping the initiative. Hungary 1945 is worshipping the initiative. They do it all the bleeding time. Neither Rommel nor Germans in France could count on prevailing against Allies through attrition,therefore they had to find another qualitative factor if they were aiming to win. Inittiative and surprise was their only hope and threy actually made it happen often against superior numbers. If Axis stood for so much time in Africa it is exactly because they were aggressive, otherwise the Alamein type of defeat for the Axis would occur much earlier somewhere around West Lybia.Whenever the british got the offensive posture ,the Axis found itself in difficult situation and inspite skillful defence they could not match the numerical superiority of British.Since Hitler was not paying too much attention to this theater while for British it was the only and naturally more important theater of operations against Axis , there was no hope for Rommel to count on anything else other than qualitative advantage. The deep advances were not of course aimining to capture ground. They were aiming in destroying the retreating armies and transform them in thousands of thirsty men hoping actually to become prisoners and save their lifes in a matter of few days,not giving them any time for possible regroup and organization of a new defences, retreave tanks and trucks laying on the battlefield,both German and British and so on. There is no such thing as proffesional comanders that do not do mistakes or wrong judgments. All will do mistakes and did .It is more a matter of who is going to do the most critical ones and who will be able to take the most advantage of enemy's mistakes. The only ones that do not do mistakes are the armchair generals. And no it was not at all a stalemate, it was an outright and complete military victory achieved by sustained bloodletting You have a strange definition of complete military victory. The Germans were simply not able to take advantage strategically of any military success there .Maybe if it was only Russia against Germany in wwi ,they could be able. Maybe if Russians did not have the civil war between whites and reds and the general anarchy inside the state ,would be more efficient. Maybe if Germans were trying to push farther deep into Moscow, they would encounter similar problems like Hitler or Napoleon .. We do not really know and it is bizarre that you are so sure about "what ifs" in history. What we do know however is the irony of you talking about the sucess of Germans in wwi in Eastern front which was actually a result of offensive actions and not a product of defence and delaying actions . Visualize an entire extra army group complete with panzer armee romping through southern Russia and the eastern Ukraine in 1941, on top of all losses to the forces that move on Moscow being fully replaced I see ,speculations again. Since you have the crystral ball,can you tell me what you visualize about the proficiency of Red army officers if Soviets had additional time to train and replace the officers that fell victims during the army persecutions? You claimed it, but it is not so. Once away from the beaches, the allies encounter their own logistical problems Are you going to claim now that this period of time gave more advantages for Germans for initiating a counterattack ? I thought that Your main beleif up until now,was that Germans are simply stupid whenever they try to attack nomatter if it is Mortain or Bulge. Even if Allies encountered logistical problems, how would this benefit Germans if they were staying idle ,waiting for the Allies to solve their logistical difficulties and assume the advance again? But then they rarely achieve the rates for which they planned. 10km per day against an intact defender, that "upsets their timetable" quite enough. They hoped to break through and get the 50 km per day figures that come from exploitation drives in the country. The easiest way to get them that is to stand too far forward, too rigidly - that is what causes breakthroughs in a defensive doctrine sense. Are you familiar with the Soviet operational research? No the numbers are not just about exploitation. Same with american research. In any case an no matter about which method you prefer, there are things you do not clarify .On one hand you talk about a number of rate of advance against an "intact defender" ,on the other hand you talk about a force that does not stand forward too rigidly. Rates of advance are depended on many factors according to both Soviet and American view. They are certainly educated estimations,based in large part on historical data from history and sure they are open for debate for both Soviets and allies but we can not pick an number just because we like it without clarifying some things . If you beleiev that defence should not be too far forward and not to rigid (which actually begs a definition of what you accept as rigid or too far forward), then you can not apply advace rates of Soviets against an intact defender all the way from the borders to the main line of defence. In theory at least, you apply advance rates against a delaying force which is different (more) compared to advance rates against an "intact" defender. Second, you do not talk at all about the ratio of combat power which again according to theory affects the rate of advance. Since the delaying force would have a much less combat power compared to the attacker , this will add to the advance rate of Soviets.A 4-1 advantage can lead to 30-40 km per day advance against a delay or hasty defence (American perspective ). Sure you can debate about the accuracy of the number but it is interesting that you do not have problem to accept the American calculations for the arrival of American reinforcements in the theater nor you mention the arrival of Soviet reinforcements rates in the theater during the first weeks of the war. Third, you ignore political implications.You can not convince German army to abandon their country in order to win the war at sometime at someplace other than inside Germany. Then what is the purpose of having Nato?. You also can not prepare elaborate defences and minefields during piecetime away from borders in the middle of countries that live peacefully and have a normal economic activity.When you want to have a deep territory of many dozens of miles full with successive defensive positions , you need a lot of time and manpower,not to mention the material restrictions. Soviets did not prepare Kursk salient in a few days. There are numerous other things i can say in addition of the above. The covering force for example can not be too far away from the main forces and expect that it will be capable to perform its mission well . You certainly do not want to see the enemy force approach your main defence the moment the covering force has lost cohesion and being unable to link its actions with the main defence. You certainly can not expect to move large units envisioning some type of shoot and scoot actions. Withdrawal is the most demanding form of maneuver and always difficult to execute ,especially if it involves disengaging from the enemy. Stuff work for large units operational movements for withdrawal is more demanding regarding synchronization compared to large units movements during an advance . The force that withdraws has much less room for timetable upsets compared to the force that advances and so on. As a last point,nomatter if the line of defence is already prepared before the arrival of the forces, there will still be the nessesity for the defender to have much available time to organize his defence after his arrival, and many day light hours. [ January 09, 2007, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

continuing the discussion from another thread I will not look at Korean war which was certainly not a total war . Regarding the kill ratios of Germans and their ability to win an attrition strategy i will disagree. First of all the kill ratios that they acheived was a result of their "bold agressive" attitude going for the "cheap win" as you put it. Second their quality superiority that permitted them to be more efficient could not be retained to such levels if they were going to employ a bigger army going for attrition. The German army cause of the restrictive treates after wwi had trained a much smaller group of proffessional officers and it was a part of this group that permited them to employ a doctrine and gain advantage in battlefield. If they were going for the attrition strategy then they had to trade quality with quantity and it is wrong to assume that under these conditions they would acheive similar kill ratios . If they were not risking carelessly as you say for the "cheap victory" which you do not accept as a realistic expectation and instead they were following your advice, they would be much less efficient. If they were not building superior equipment and focused on less sophisticated ones in larger quantitites ,they would not have the kill ratios they had historically. Germany ws oupowered by Russians more than 2 to one .The Soviets had about 165 millions compared to 65 millions of Germans ,so their potentials were much greater and it is pure speculation to beleive that germans could start a massive program of expanding their army before invading Soviets ,while the latter would sit idle watching them. In other threads you claim that some times the restrictive factor is not the number of tanks but the number of trained troops. As to the industrial production , the potential ability of each country is limited by the weakest link. For some countries it might be oil,for others it might be some type of another nessesary raw material. You talk about the ability of Germans to produce oil from coal but you ignore that this was not some type of final solution. If you compare oil production of Soviet Union and Germans ,the first has an advatnage of around 5 times more. The Germans had always to be carefull in oil consumsion and that is for feeding an army and equipment much smaller than the one you propose. I wonder what would have been the situation if they were producing an armor or truck fleet double the size of the one they had historically,going for the attrition strategy you propose. Your claim that being on the defensive will not lead to defeat if you are a competant opponent, might be accepted as long as you talk about a defensive posture which is "offensive oriented" . A defensive posture can still count on maneuver warfare and the belief that only an attack can bring victory. Otherwise no matter if you are equally competant with your enemy , if you constantly leave him the opportunity to have the inititative and assume an offence of operational dimensions ,you will be defeated. Initiative is an advantage that can make your equal opponent more effective at some point. You have confused the debate of attritionists and maneuverists. All beleive that it is only the attack that brings victory. The difference is that some beleive that this attack should aim at destroying the enemy's strength while the others beleive that they can defeat the enemy by aiming at his weakness avoiding collission with his strength. As some put it , the center of gravity is for some the enemy's strength while for others it is the enemy's weakness. You talk about the operational dimensions of the first battle of Alamein that stopped Rommel to justify how defence can bring victory. In fact this battle was decisive only because it let British the time to organize and initiate their OFFENSIVE that actually defeated Germans. Without this type of offensive , the first battle of Alamein would not mean anything today. Regarding the number of handfull AFVs do not prove anything without seeing the situation on the other side of the hill.Cyrenaicca was conquered by Rommel with a handfull of tanks during the opening stages and against a victorious enemy (Wavell). Everything is a matter of judgment of your situation compared to the one of the enemy. That is why i asked you to give me any details regarding the intelligence estimation of German stuff before the attack . It is this type of information that can lead me to describe the whole desicion as simply a wrong judgment or stupidity. If someone knows that he has not fullfilled some nessesary conditions to stage an attack and inspite of that he attacks anyway, then i can understand hard critisism. However in most cases real commanders do not have the full picture that armchairgenerals have and in this case ,even if things are uncertain i can understand a decision to go for an attack and accept high levels of risk when you are in a desperate situation Unfortunately i do not have so much free time to study every case is discussed in this forum but i think it is a reasonable expectation to ask for details as i try also to do. Regarding the Russia knocked out by attrition during ww1 we disagree again. You forget the communist revolution and civil war in Russia or the fact that the situation between Germans and Russians was actually a stalemate, or the fact that at those years The Charist Russia was actually much more behind regarding industrialization . I will agree though about the underestimation of Soviets by the Germans ,or the overestimation of the blitzkreig effectiveness against an opponent of that size , or the slow rate of fully mobilizing the German economy. Our argument is that i do not see how Germans could beat Soviets counting on attrition. If you do beleive that,then you actually do the thing you blaim the opponents do. You assume that the opponent would not be competant enough to avoid defeat although he posseses greater numbers. So as you see, whatever strategy you choose whenever you are a smaller guy ,you have to assume that you have some type of advantage in order to gain victory against a bigger guy. This is not a characteristic of the offensive doctrine you blaim.It is shown in your own version of doctrine also. If your argument was that the Germans should not start a war against Soviets in the first place ,then i could agree but you actually seem to beleive that it was the inferiority of their doctrine that led them to defeat and i am not going to agree with that. The other thing i want to comment about is the contradiction you seem exists when i claim that you can temporary give the inittiative and my argument that retreat from Normandy would mean defeat. First of all when we talk in general terms we can certainly claim that you can surrender the initiative and accept a defensive posture and still acheive desicive victory (always through an attack). That does not mean that you SHOULD do it always or that you are able to adopt such an approach in every case. In each particular situation you have to see the specific situation and decide accordingly. Both options (offensive or defensive posture) are available in general but for every situation the optimum one may be different.In some case you might not even have a choice at all and be restricted to only one approach. The concept of preemptive strike for example,which is very expensive politically is accepted exactly because in some cases the leadership judges that there is no option of defensive posture. Regarding the especific example of Germans in France i told you that it was irrational for them to acceet that they had better chances to stop allies all along the France when they could not do it on a much more smaller front in Normandy , when a successful German attack would require a much shorter operational depth for breakthough and exploitation for desicive results and when the Allies were much weaker since they had captured limited numbers of ports . As to the comment about reforger and the plans for sending troops in Europe, you talk about a field that i know quite well. When you mention about 6 weeks time to double strength of US forces or two weeks to send signifficant amount of troops , you choose to ignore the plans of the other side. The Soviets were planning for a 500-800 km advance in two weeks. That is actually a depth that includes western Europe reaching Atlantic. A 40 -50 km advance per day is sustainable for a campaign of two weeks duration according to Dupuy historical data and quite beleivable for a modern war of 24/7 operations. This is relative with the argument that there was not big operational depth for Nato initial forces to buy time without engaging and going for an operational victory which would upset severely the Soviet timetable. . [ January 06, 2007, 11:53 AM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

continuing the previous post This is obvious, it was obvious at the time, any professionally competent officer should have seen and urged it No. Proffresional officers realized that it was either fighting and beating Allies in Normandy or defeat. Maybe cause they had some experience from wwi which you seem to ignore. Since actually that is what they got, this is hardly credible It is very credible considering that the approach you defend made them lost wwi .At least their approach paid them on many occasions during wwii . If he has a properly balanced doctrine and two legs, maybe, but you just finished saying that unless he attacks he has no hope, so if he stalls the attack he is admitting defeat, because there is no way he can win unless he can keep up the attack. Unless you are not American or English, I can not really understand how you say these things when you read my comments. Yes, I said that attack brings the victory. If you do not attack ,it does not mean that you have lost or admit defeat.That is only in your mind. What does mean is that for various reasons, you are not capable yet to go for the kill blow . In front of Nancy, a German commander who continued reckless negative odds attacks until 90% of his force was gone, was formally reprimanded for "lack of offensive spirit" because he went over to the defensive with 30 AFVs left. First of all I do not know the details ,so for example I do not know how much aware the German commanders were of reckless negative odds. Second Rommel was pursuing the British with similar attrition levels of his AFVs. The number of tanks he had when he arrived in Alamein for the first time were a few dozens . So I am not eager to talk about stupidity on behalf of German officers by seeing the above numbers. If they thought That the enemy side was also on the edge of collapse , it might make absolutely sense to remove an officer for lack of offensive spirit when he goes to the defence having 30 AFV left. Since the doctrine teaches that only the attacker can win and that loss of the initiative is catastrophic, any situation in which the initiative seems like it might be lost is formally believed by the doctrine to be a "desparate situation". Thus, whenever its adherents see a transition to the defensive coming, they gamble instead. In your mind. As I said before you can not attack just because you want to.There must be certain conditions and if these conditions do not apply ,or if you need time to prepare them ,you certainly accept defence as a way to buy time or even conserve forces that you will mass in another sector. By the way, I did not say that loss of initiative is catastrophic. I said it is not adequate but it is a prerequirement for a decisive victory. The latter implies that when you lose it ,it does not mean that you are defeated. Yes, but that just removes his odds and makes an even odds fight ahead of both side's screened main bodies. The odds are not just part of number of units opposing each other. It is also a matter of supporting assets, from electronic warfare, to engineer and air support or artillery. Also, when a ACR has to screen a huge area in front of a corps sector and the enemy advanced units aim to penetrate the screen at any point ,they can certainly achieve odds favorite to them to the location they choose to penetrate He will therefore press behind his recon screen regardless, and do so hard, along his chosen main avenues. The defender then only needs to show weakness along some of these, by choice, and channel the attack by obstacles and terrain and where ground is given first, to lead said main body to his chosen kill sack. The defender's advance force has to cover a very big area , the defender forces as a whole will certainly have less support at first from higher command since the axis of the main advance or attack will not be clear, plus his advantage in preparing terrain and restricting mobility for the attacker by obstacles and so on will not give him a greater mobility since the enemy air intediction as a product of an initial air superiority over a certain battlefield during the time the attacker choose , will isolate the battlefield or at least restrict the mobility of defenders reinforcements. If you choose to describe the defensive actions with the certainty of achieving their objectives as described in manuals, I will do the same for the offensive side to point that it is really pointless to repeat paragraphs from manuals in order to support attack or offense. At least we might agree that it is not so easy to concentrate fire as many believe by reading just manuals but without knowing anything about common survey. In adiition ,of course observed fire is not affected by such things but try to give directions towards multiple batteries (with what equipment and direct links between those units and the observer?) without knowing which fire corresponds to which battery and against a rapidly advanced armored force. Good luck!! [ January 03, 2007, 07:00 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

I've read the manuals, sorry. They studiously avoid admitting that defense happens. It is presented as an anomoly, something that might occasionally be forced on a few subelements of the army while others are attacking. They then falsify the description of defensive tactics to avoid imputing strengths to it that their offensive doctrine pretends do not exist, and even just to avoid lessons that turn around when your stance does. E.g. they can't bring themselves to say reserves must move to the enemy's strength, because the attack doctrine is to hit weakness. I have read the manuals also ,including French ones of 1920s. We obviously interpreter things differently. Defence is not an anomaly.You can not attack everywhere.Attack and defence go as a pair . There is nothing wrong with attacking enemy’s weakness ,on the contrary that is the most sensible thing to do. Still even then, manuals for example might declare the counterattack at the flanks of a penetration but they also declare the necessity to stop or slow it down at least temporary.Otherwise a counterattack against the flank of a penetration that is free to go even deeper in defence territory is risky for the defender as well. A doctrine that stammers when it speaks of defense cannot teach men how to attack either, because it cannot realistically describe what the opponent is trying to accomplish or how. Instead the opponent envisioned by the attack doctrine is a passive cartoon with his power all upfront and online and all his rear areas vulnerable and full of high value targets that cause paralysis and victory without fighting if they are dislocated. I disagree. An advocate of the type of doctrine I describe may very well apply the same principles for conducting a defence and there is nothing that can prevent him from assuming that the enemy may apply similar approach as a defender. If there are cases of underestimations of the enemy,it is the fault of personal beliefs or general culture,not a fault of doctrine. I also believe that rear areas are vulnerable and full of high value targets and destruction of this area does cause paralysis. I've read the manuals, and yes they do. They claim that being on the offensive in itself has decisive moral effects - which is straight out of the blue pants school that lost a million frenchmen in a month in 1914. "you can seize initiative only when you attack" The word "ambush" concisely refutes that ideological bromide. Of course you can seize the initiative when you defend. You can also be smart, anticipate the enemy, get inside his decision loop, paralyze him, cause blind panic etc. None of the special virtues claimed exclusively for the offensive stance by maneuver theorists is actually exclusive to the offensive stance. It is sheer slander, that's all. Nor is "the initiative" a "prerequirement"(sic) for victory. Plenty of battles in history have been won decisively simply by shooting down the attackers to the point where they came apart in rout, from Knightsbridge to Fredericksburg to New Orleans to Agincourt. It is an ideological dogma and not an observation, and it isn't true. Misinterpretation again. Being on the offensive itself does not bring decisive moral effects. The decisive moral effects come when the offensive strikes fast and successfully deep in the enemy territory A successful defence does not produce such decisive results, except in small tactical level where numbers are relative few and morale can be affected overall for the whole unit after a short time of sustaining casualties. The above is also relative when you talk about ambush and the decisive results it might have for initiative or victory, you actually shift the whole subject from the operationa field to small tactical one. You can not have decisive results by staging an ambush of operational dimensions, trying to kill your enemy firing from your superior defensive positions. Russians had plenty of time and warning waiting for the Germans to attack at Kursk but things are different in the operational level .You are not a platoon waiting ,ambushing and destroying an enemy one in a short period of time. Defence has to be linked with aggression in order to gain decisive results. You give examples of the past forgetting that the vast majority of losses in most battles ,was during the pursue . The bowmen in Angicourt used swords to attack the flanks of the men at arms and shift the battle in favor of their side. The defender had at some point to shift on offence to gain a decisive victory. Germans were stopped in front of Leningrand by a successful defence but the disaster for them was in Stalingrand and it was not cause of the successful defence of the city itself.It was cause of the attacks that isolated them. I gave you also the examples of Patton and Bulge or Normandy and Falaise or Kursk and so on. This is something which is accepted by both maneuverists and atritionists and it should not be really part of this conversation. You seem to confuse some concepts thinking that some people claim that someone can not expect to win by assuming an operational defensive posture since they believe that only offence brings decisive victory ,while actually you can certainly do so and combine an operational defensive posture with aggressive attacks. "since the attacker has the initiative, he will most likely acheive a local force superiority" Temporarily, yes this is true, that is why there are screens for warning time and reserves etc. As all the cases under discussion show, however, that local odds doesn't last very long - reserves simply counter-maneuver - and achieving local odds by physical concentration also creates its own vunerabilities (multiples the effects of area weapons, of obstacles, of logistic bottlenecks, etc). Obviously I am not saying that each attack is going to be victorious . As to the warning time ,let’s not forget that most of the times it is the interpretation that it is difficult,not the gathering of information and not forget that air intediction will disrupt the timetable of defence even if it does not isolate the battlefield. Since the defender does not know which attack is the main one and which one is just a faint or supporting one ,it is difficult for him to decide with confidence about his counteractions. French had indications and warning about Mech movement in Ardennes but they thought that this was actually a German deception ,so eventually the defender will cancel the initial odds but it is far from obvious that he will succeed in doing that before the attacker achieves a decisive advantage. If the battlefield was transparent ,maybe the defence had better chances but during fog of war ,it is the offence that benefits more from the situation. False. If successive defensive battles move the global odds ratio of remaining effectives to 10 to 1 in his favor, he is going to win. If they break the enemy in dissolving rout, he is going to win. If after a period of defensive successes he chooses to attack here and there, not even seeking breakthrough but merely grinding through the enemy forces broad front with a pure attrition strategy, he can also win. Yes he might win but if you build a doctrine which forces you to win successive battles in a raw in order to win and choose it compare to one that needs only a single one ,then you do not make a rational choice,especially if you have a smaller army. And if you choose an approach of actually attacking in order to kill all enemies instead of attacking in order to defeat them ,then again it is not a rational approach. In victorious battles, the amount of people captured as prisoners cause of successful attacks that penetrated the rear and were not directly aimed towards them ,is much more than the amount of actuall kills. As to making the enemy rout (which actually applies in small tactical level) ,you need to exploit it by pursuing him,otherwise he will regroup and will be ready to fight you again another day. In operational terms however the enemy corps or army does not simply attack mindless till they collapse and route. It is instructive to see Rommel’s case in Afrika where frequently he continued the offensive to the point of finding himself with very limited resources and 20 or 30 operational tanks but as long as British could not assume the offensive and press bold and hard ,it was a matter of stopping the attack and let time regroup and regain his strength or even retreat controlling the pace of operations until he regained strength to strike again. Anyone notice how he can't bring himself to admit that offensive action can be a cause of loss? Again misinterpretation. I did not say that. An offensive action can bring someone to decicive defeat as long as the enemy is ready to take advantage of it by shifting to offence. Again we are talking here about operational art and I showed You that decisive victories from any side was a product of attacks at operational level, from Stalingrand to Bulge. We have many cases of attacks stopped by successful defence but the attacker did not collapse cause of that , since it did not have to retreat hastly abandoning massive equipment or seeing the bulk of his no motorized , in dozens of thousands become prisoners of war. Weapons much improved since WW II, especially smart weapon tech, which drastically raises the importance of firepower and drastically reduces the survivability of armor in particular, compared to WW II conditions. Much as machineguns made riflemen vulnerable in WW I, multiple smart weapon platforms make armor vulnerable. Witness forces as large as those used at Kursk reduced to scrap metal in less than a week (Iraq I, etc). Would losses against the much better equipped and trained Russians have been higher? Certainly. But there is every reason to believe the tank killers that smashes acres of T-72s then would have sold themselves for lots of smashed T-72s in Europe, too. The usual attitude of the crowd that was convinced after Yom Kippur that the guided antitank weapon put an end to the tank warfare. They were wrong to assume the end of the tank era,cause they fail to see the changes in a broad form. You do have more firepower and guided antitank weapons but you also have better armor protection, more dispersion , more intergration of combined arms warfare and suppresion .They forget that modern firepower does not kill more easily the attacker,,it suppress also more easily the defender and that ultimately limits the effectiveness of these weapons or affect both offence and defence So the antitank weapon were not really the machine gun of wwi. Farthermore the casualty rates and tank rate of destruction during Arab Israel wars were comparable with loss rates of wwii inspite of the more lethal weapons. Since some might want to challenge it ,I give the sourse. Table 13-3 Dupuy, understanding war. In fact according to Dupuy , historically speaking ,although lethality of weapons increase, casualty rates during battles decrease cause among others dispersion for both attacker and defender grows much more steep than lethality of weapons . He does mention that there are arguments for supporting the modern type of conventional war will have a higher rate of casualties but they are not supported by historical data. Now I am not going to see Iraq as a useful case for any observation.It is like using the German attack in Poland or Greece to talk about the attrition levels during wwii,not to mention that one of the main ojectives of coalition force, the destruction of Republican guard was not completed.It was achieved partially and there is much critisism about that in modern literature . Also, it is much more sensible to backpeddle and attrite those numbers while flying in new forces to meet their equipment, planning on the whole thing being a long attrition fight, than it is to imagine a 1 to 5 counterattack driving across eastern Germany etc. It is completely silly to expect that would have worked in any way shape matter form etc. But the Wehrmacht envy maneuverists were so offensive minded they actually planned such a charge. Bakpeddle for how long? You do not have vast area behind you like Russians did in wwii. The operational depth is more shallow, plus you have a modern enviroment of 24/7 operations day and night,plus you have to figure out how to maintain combat effectiveness of the limited forces you have there for a considerable amount of time under constant stress. How long do you think even a 100% intact ACR can be combat worthy ,before sleep deprivation and fatigue make their presence against constantly new Soviet formations. What do you think is the rate of arrival of American reinforcements coming from US compared to Soviet ones coming in central Europe from Soviet union? Just look at the amount of time it took for Americans to build a big force during gulf war in peaceful conditions. As a last what is the problem with the Germans trying to defend their country against a Soviet invasion? You ignore political enviroment. Why would Germans want to be a NATO member ,when your proposition is to let the country overrrun by Soviets so that NATO can earn time ? "It is Goering's fault". Utter rot. Also, you simultaneously say that the US should have had an offensive doctrine against the Warsaw Pact, and that the latter with numbers and initiative would have had air superiority. No, it is one of the reasons though. Another problem is the difference of level of mechanization between Allies and Germans. Another problem was the fuel supply situation and so on… How many horses did Allies use compared to Germans? Also, the German doctrine failed in Russia where the Russians lacked air supremacy. Reserves in depth and global odds are quite sufficient to stop it. So is greater mobility and odds edge as seen in the west. It stopped working as soon as enemy defensive doctrine improved. Actually in the East many argue that the doctrine did not really apply as it should partially cause of Hitlers interfierence and belief in defending ground instead of going for a more mobile defence. It is similar with the argument you use when you say that French lost not because of superity of German doctrine but cause they did mistakes. Anyway I can agree that there are cases of so much difference in numbers and great operational depth ,that you can not expect victory under any doctrine ,including the German one and the German attack against Russia can be such a case but it is difficult to be sure about those things no matter if you talk about the German collapse in East or the French collapse in west. It means that the German belief that attrition processes could be avoided and wars won without total war odds issues mattering decisively, was faulty. And that only an overall attrition context (the acknowledgement that odds do matter, and that annihilation battle is the way to decision) and a doctrine able to both attack and defend, is remotely sound. The German belief was justified against a similar size opponent in France and failed against Soviets. So, it was partially true or fault. However it would be totally crazy for the Germans to count on victory based on attrition . They were not big enough, they did not have a navy strong enough ,they could not maintain their supply communications battling the English Navy ,nor access to most oil supplies of the world and they had also the experience of WWI where it showed obviously that they simply could not win during the type of war you propose. Actually German strategic production was fully equal to Russian, in 1944 Instead of going to statistics and data ,it is better to start with a simple question to make our life easier. Do you agree that Germans could not achieve the strategic production of Soviets trying to win an attrition type of war, even if they had chosed to build less sophisticated equipment? Do you agree that they had less population?I point here the fact that no matter how many tanks you produce ,you still need crews to operate them ? Why did the Germans fail to match Russian production, when they had all of Europe as their base, and their own pre-war industrial output fully equalled Russian prewar output, and they moreover occupied 40% of Russians pre-war industrial areas by output, as well as millions of her population etc? Because they had victory disease and believed an overly aggressive doctrine that told them they could avoid attrition and win despite odds. Partially true what you say, but certainly not the only reason. Partially cause of the British Navy ,partially cause of strategic bombing,partially cause of limited access to critical resources including oil of middle East (or Caucasus which seemed very attractive for Hitler). Similar resons except strategic bombing , were present in wwi when the German economy again could not match the allies. Which was caused by the prior collapse of German fielded armor strength to 33% of what had originally been sent, due to attrition processes, and of trench infantry strength in the US sector, likewise. Breakthroughs follow from successful attrition fighting, not the other way around Breakthrough can happen even if there is not an attrition process .You can mass assets and achieve local superiority instead of trying to achieve this by gradually reducing the defender . The Germans as you say saw their armor destroyed during attrition fights with allies. So why you blaim their doctrine when they try to avoid attrition ? They know that they are too few compared to allies to accept such type of war. Yes once they occur, they are also a cause of further material loss. The driver of that further material loss is the decline of remaining armor strength below the levels needed to stop attacks by reserve commitment. They actually cause a much more material and personel loss (prisoners) than the actual attrition during a battle where there is no breakthrough. As to the driver of the breakthrough which is the decline of remaining tanks, you speak from your point of view which does apply for the kind of war you talk about. However for the opposite side, the driver for a breakthrough is the rate of arrival of tanks in the area of interest. You can not say that one is wrong or the other is right. However for a smaller force or country , the second approach is the only choice they have. In the specific case of Normandy, this was also aided by a disasterously stupid use of what German armor did remain at the time of the breakout. That disasterously stupid use of the remaining armor was dictated by Germany's overly aggressive doctrine on the use of armor. Instead of using the Mortain force as a "linebacker" trying to contain the US breakout to the east (letting them have Brittany, say, but screening a withdrawal to the Seine), it was plunged into an overly ambitious counterpunching offensive mission. Which predictably failed, and also positioned that remaining armor at the far end of the Falaise sack, instead of outside it or near its eastern exit. The Germans either had to concede defeat or go for an overly ambitious offensive operation . It is easy for historians to predict during the aftermath. If Germans were defeated in the Ardennes against France , everybody would point how stupid they were to choose such a difficult ground for their armor force. First of all, when you judge a certain military leader , you have to know the pieces of information he possessed at that time.Do not judge someone by comparing the TOE of forces that actually fought. Things that are obvious to armchair generals in the aftermath are not so during the fog of war in real situations. I do not know how close enough was the estimation by the German high command of the overall armor forces of allies in Normandy. If the overall allied armored force was underestimated, I could see a ground for having hopes for victory in Mortain assuming that the the allied armor had shifted to south. This type of information needs more than finding a TOE. Can you give me the intelligence estimation by the German stuff officers before the Mortain attack? Then we can talk about either stupidity or simply wrong judgment . Second , for the Germans ,if they could not hold allies and win victory in a much smaller front in Normandy with more restrictive terrain and less ports available,,how exactly they were going to do so by establishing a front all along France.? If trying to throw allies back in the sea ,meant that they had to gumble, then they had to do so. It is no coincidence that around this time ,we have the plot against Hitler.Everybody knew that it was either victory in Normandy or defeat .A retreat was not an option . They could not win victory in France during wwi and they could not expect to do so during wwii with much more particiaption of Americans and Soviets approaching from East. That this piece of wanton stupidity is advanced as supposed evidence in favor of an offensive minded doctrine, because gosh, when they retreated they lost stuff so you can't ever even think about retreat or you will lose stuff, is the epitome of ideological folly, and exactly the criminal stupidity that led to that misuse in the first place. LOL, actually the above paragraph is a clear example of the gross misunderstanding you have. An offensive doctrine does not exclude retreat.It incorporates together with defence as a tool that can prepare the ground for a successful attack and surprise. The retreat is not making you “lose stuff” as long as you control the tempo which is closely linked with initiative. Now imagine men who think that was are in charge in central Germany an a breakthrough looms. Are they going to sensibly slide what reserves remain in front of the breakout in a defensive stance, buying time for other units to pull back and reforger units to arrive? Or are they going to gamble on some offensive deathride just like Mortain Buy some time? You mean until the bulk of the American forces come inside Europe? How much time is that ? This is relative of what I said before about the lack of operational depth, slow arrival of reinforcements from the other side of Atlantic and inferior number of defenders against multiple enemy divisions coming in waves The Americans did not think about Mortain for countering such type of threat. They were thinking of Manstein and the third battle of Kharkov and they were certainly ready to retreat not because they could buy time for the US reinforcements to arrive (they just did not have such space for such big amount of time), but for stretching the enemy and make him more vulnerable to an attack that could produce an operational victory and restore the ground they lost temporary. Such type of operational impact for the Soviets, could save them the necessary time . Losing entire tank armies without gaining anything is an operational consequence. But the comment reveals the ground gain focus underlying the whole thought, lightly masked by the mystical importance of "the initiative". If the attacker merely throws away his army but does not lose ground, he is not thought to have lost anything. Ground is conceived as the index of victory, and forces irrelevant and replacable means. This is dumb and always has been dumb. An attrition focus is however the only analytical frame in which the much greater importance of fielded force strength over irrelevant issues of ground control, is readily apparent. I am Confused with the way you see things Yes I say that you force opponent to lose entire armies and often with low cost ,if you mix defence with an operational offence. That is how the German army was lost in Stalingrand. Just executing a successful defence does not produce decisive victories.That is why Leningrand did not become Stalingrand for Germans, First and second Alamein did not make Rommel collapse and so on. This is cause of the ability of the atacker and basic intelligence to stall the attack before he is depleted .Then he regroups, reorganizes , retrieves and fixes his equipment and at the end his losses are much lower than you really think. Yes, during a period of long time, with successive defensive victories against a smaller opponent ,you might attrit him to the point of admitting defeat or collapse, but this way is much more difficult since it requires more time, a smaller opponent and a string of successful operations while you often risk to be knocked out by your opponent in a single blow, if he is aggressive enough. .This type of warfare is certainly not the favored one for the smaller side or even one which combats an enemy of similar size. The right thing to do when Cobra succeeds is to retreat to the Seine, with the armor on the outer, southern wing, fighting withdrawal stance, to buy time for the infantry heavy components to get back across the river. Then blow all the bridges and reform a line. Evacuate the Biscay area at the same time. …………and then lose in a wwi style,establishing a front of trenches along the whole France! The right thing also for Germans was to not create marching armored columns of dozens of miles among the narrow roads of Ardennes. It is easy for you knowing the results to decide what is stupid and what is not. In reality it is not like that. [ January 03, 2007, 04:56 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

i wish happy new year to everybody. For my part i will continue the discussion after the holidays,hoping that some people may find interesting these facts although the subject is not related with the TD discussion.

No, but remember that it was you who got confused about how to suck eggs and i tried to explain to you. Since your initial comment was "why count on engineers since we the artillery men do our own survey?" ,i had to assume that you are pretty ignorant on the subject of common survey. By the way ,this is not an insult since nobody knows everything .

JohnS if you find something confusing ,please tell me and i will try to explain. I will give a first try. Since earth is a sphere and since this surface is projected to a 2 dimentional map ,there are distortions . A clear example is if you observe the longitude lines on a topographical map that seem to be parallel ,althouhg in reality they are meeting each other on north and south Pole . The survey for laying a gun for example might be adequate for establishing its relative position to an enemy unit in a certain map sheet to calculate an azimuth. However a distant unit which uses a different map sheet can not use this type of information to extract its own azimuth and relative position against the same enemy unit. That is why we have the procedure of common survey which establishes a "common Language" and that is why we get into so much trouble to have special units at higher levels that work for the establishment of the common survey ,instead of doing the obvious thing of counting on the independent surveys by the artillery commanders.

I think the obvious response is that the Soviets won cause simply they had a much greater output of production than Germans that during the long run turned the table in favor of them. If they had to compete against US that would not be the same case. For the Nato the problem was how to survive the initial stage with the overwelming Soviet material superiority and until sufficient US reinforcements come to Europe . If they could survive that, they could certainly expect that the US industry could compete with Soviet one in the long run.

Predictable answer . Gunners do their own survey but this is different from establishing COMMON survey. The survey they do is nessesary to engage targets in areas of their interest but it is not sufficient for exchanging targeting data . Two units can do their own survey but still they may not be able to exchange targeting data or use data from a third unit or sensor to concentrate fire on a common target.

actually you do admit that you do not imply that offensive action is always useless but you blaim the other side that they somehow disregard defensive action although it is clear that they do not. Sure you can not expect to win just because you decide to attack and noone says that attack has some types of mystical powers. However you can seize initiative only when you attack , you can not seize initiative during defence and although inittiative is not a guarantee to decicive victory, it is still a prerequirement. Indeed ,but it also remains true that since the attacker has the initiative ,he will most likely acheive a local force superiority aiming in negating the advantages of the defensive force No argue with the above with the important clarification that the defender MUST not only choose where to defend but choose also where to attack .If he lays his hopes in attrition during successive defensive battles ,he will not be able to enforce a decicive victory and at the end he will eventually be the victim of a successful deep penetrating attack. Even you in other discussions admit that the casualty ratio between the Americans and Germans is not really in big favor of anyone and let's not forget that a big portion of the German casualties is not due to defensive action but due to hasty retreats and abandoned equipment. If under those favorable conditions the Americans could not acheive a very favorable ratio of casualty exchanges, how the hell they were going to be successful against the Soviets when they need a much more favorable ratio of causalty exchange cause of the overwelming numbers of Warsaw Pact? Actually when someone does not have operational mobility due to various reasons including enemy air supremancy ,it is not a surprise that the German doctrine can not work. On the other hand this does not mean that the defensive doctrine is superior to the German one. If the Germans were not forced to retreat , they would not have abandoned the numerous tanks they were forced to lose and this hastily retreat was the final product of Allied thread to isolate them.It was not a product of defensive actions at Mortain. Additionaly if their strategic production was comparable with the American one, the casualty exchange ratio in Normandy would not kneel them and force them to defeat. When Americans were facing Soviets ,they had to consider such things . Actually the first sentencse does not make much sense.Let me put it differentely since i did not say anything like that. The Germans lost a lot of material and figting power as a result of their retreat which was caused by the allied thread to trap them inside the Falaise pocket .It was not cause of mass casualties against the solid defence at Mortain. Retreat is not defeat as long as you control the pace of it. When you LOSE inititative cause of a successful attack , the retreat can be equal with defeat. This is the main difference between your side and mine. No, they do not just matter too, they are absolutely nessesary,otherwise the attacker will have plenty of time to reorganize and replace casualties after a failed attack and resume actions again without any operational consequencies. Actually the whole German situation was desperate. There was not any "logical solution" for them other than capitulating to their enemies and many were realizing that . So i am not going to critisize actions that seem desperate. We have many cases of big armies being destroyed by inadequate command that panicked at a critical moment of an enemy action and this enemy action will be an enemy attack. If the Germans were fighting with any hope to win,they had to initiate an attack somehow at somepoint. Accepting a practice of fighting withdrawal trying to attrit the more vulnerable attacker, was a sure way of slow agonizing defeat for the Germans. To me it makes much more sense fighting having some hope than fighting knowing for sure that you will be defeated. The attacker is not going to be such a fool to press his attack to the point of seeing himself having just bare hands. He will stall the attack much sooner. The exception will be only when the attacker is willing to take a gumble and play "all or nothing" but this scenario implies that he is already in a desperate situation. Really? What about the execution? You know that the attacker has a plan also which is to use recon and advanced parties to protect his main body ,defeat the enemy covering ACR and establish contact with the main force of the defender. I think you did not get it. I talk about common survey which is a prerequirement for targeting corps level artillery with decent opportunity for effective fire. When the former has taken place, then distant assets can exchange target data. Now the actual procedure of one unit giving targeting data to another unit and requesting fire, will take some time which is a total different thing than the time that was spent for common survey that permitted the units to exhange data in the first place. Now if you served in the corps of engineer doing topographical survey at a coprs level, you could have some experience of what i am talking about. Being in an artillery battery getting targeting data does not really give You access to the much complicated procedure that made it possible .

there are many things i can comment on .I will give some thoughts. If i understood it right ,the core beleif of one side (Jason) in this thread ,is that it is dangerous to count on a German style aggressive doctrine and it is more preferable to count on attrition through a well executed more defensive oriented doctrine. Of course i assume that nobody beleives in some pure form of attack or defence.Anyway here are some observations. I do not beleive that the defence against the counterattack at Mortain or the defence against the counterattack in Ardennes or the defence against the attack at Kursk was the main reason for the German defeat or German high casualties. The germans lost a high number of tanks and war machines in general when they were forced to retreat. The retreat was not a consequence of seing Germans smashing their face against a well organized defence. It was a consequence of indirect threats coming from other directions ,forcing them to redeploy before they were cut off. It was the flanking manouver in Normandy that threatened them to be trapped inside the falaise pocket, or Third army attacking their flanks or the Soviet counterattacks far away from Kursk that forced them to redeploy . In general it is a misconception to assume that even under the most favorable conditions , you can attrit dececively the attacker to the point where he will collapse against your subsequent attack. The attacker that experiences a heavy casualty exchange ratio against him will simply stop pushing the attack before he is depleted to the point of collapse. The only case that might be an exception is if the intial overall force ration is so heavily against the attacker ,that he simply can not afford to accept casualties but in this case nomatter the doctrine used ,the outcome will be the same . Still for all cases where there are decent chances for both sides to win , a successful defence will not attrit decesively the attacker to the point of acheiving overall victory. It will just make him stall until the next time he will decide to attack somewhere else. That is especially true ina cold war scenario between Americans and Soviets. It makes much sense to have an American doctrine emphasizing attack. Surrendering all hopes for victory through attrition by "active" defence is like saying that West does not have any chance at all to win in such a scenario (which could be true by the way) and they just try to make the cost of victory for Soviets as high as possible. On the other hand IF there was any chance of acheiving victory against Soviets, you could not expect to do that by attrition through a successful defence. Recall the attrition rates of Americans Soviets and Germans in supposely succesful defensive actions in Normandy , battle of the bulge or Kursk. You can not attrit decesively a huge Red army in such a way. You need to "dislocate" this army somehow,you need to make its position invalid and force retreat, make Soviet rear echelons and support abandon positions and equipment and the only way to do that is by an operational level attack similar with what Patton did for example during the bulge ,or the Soviets at Orel during the battle of Kursk or even Bradley during the Falaise pocket (although for many critics he lost the opportunity for a complete victory). To put it more general, in wwii and modern war it is much more probable that the attacker who has the inititative will acheive or be able to exploit surprise, rather than seeing the defender exploiting his "inherent" advantage as a defender to win through attrition against the vulnerable attacker. The latter implies that the defender can anticipate the attackers plan and "wait for him" every time, while the most common situation will be that both sides will be blinded by the fog of war and the much quicker pace of operations. Sure the defender will have a covering force initiating a withdrawing fighting fighting luring the attacker against "terrain of defenders choice". On the other hand the attacker will also have a covering force protecting the main body and trying to "feel" the battlefield and the defensive positions. Yes the defender will have ATG and Apaches but the attacker since he HAS THE INITIATIVE has already acheived a local air superioiry (or time oriented superiority) ,has massed artillery and weapons and so on. In theory it is easy to say that the defender can "concentrate" fires in areas of engagements,in practice when there is enemy air superiority or artllery superioiry and counterbaterry fire,things are not so easy. Not to mention other technical problems. For example the fact that in order to have distant assets exchange target data ,you need to have them under common survey which is a very complicated procedure especially when we talk about a cold war scenario. If i remember well it took about 12 hours to have artillerry at corps level be under common survey and be able to direct fire against targets pointed by other corps sensors or units. If the defender is forced to occupy a position that is not prepared he will be able to concentrate a much smaller portion of fire available in lower echelons. Division level common survey for example was acheived after 6 hours and similarily again if the defender did not have this time allowance he would have to count on fire support at smaller level ,perhaps regiment or just only battalion level. All these together with the ability of the attacker to start an attack in a much quicker tempo , make defence less powerful than many think. This is not ww1 where the attacker sended a message a week before about his "area of interest" by applying massive artillery bombing to soften the defence. In such cases ,the defender had plenty of time to move reinforcemnts and "wait for him". That was not the case in wwii or cold war and French learned this paying a high price. Pointing cases where one side had a huge advantage in force ratios, air power and logistical support does not justify any type of doctrine. I guess under similar conditions French would have beaten Germans in 1940. There is a reson why American war academies developed almost a "fetish" about the German doctrine. They showed them the way of how to fight effectively against a much larger enemy like the Soviets which was the American enemy during the cold war. Since US did not have the disadvatage of Germany regarding strategic resourses nd production, the American concern was how to outperform the Soviets on the battlefield. If they could show a german type of efficiency, they could successfully engage the Soviets.

somewhat relative with the topic Sometimes German scouts used tricks to trigger fire from a suspected position other than recon by fire which is not always suitable during recon missions. One of the intelligence reports mentions the following. The german vehicle approaches woods . It stops at some distance ,stays there for a while and then retreats back at full speed. The idea was to give the impression that enemy activity was detected and force the enemy to actually open fire thinking wrongfully that he was already detected and reveal his position for sure.

I think that is the case with tanks in general. I do not see up to now any evidence sugessting that T-34 required more maintenance man hours than other tanks. Today many people consider the M1 Abrams to be the best MBT ,still the earlier model required 2,67 maintenance manhours per one operating hour and the figure for the new model is 0.85. I do not have similar data for T-34 and other wwii tanks. I do know however that according to cooper who had first hand experience with recovery of Sherman tanks , quote "an armored force of 50 tanks moving 30-40 miles a day will have between 15-20 drop out during the day just for maintenance and repair."

Nice post bigduke6 and good information. The operational radius is still defined as Jason said The essential part is that preventive maintenace is going to add much more miles in actual practice compared to tests where You drive the machine till it breaks down. I would be curious if Your manual has specific time points for common tasks like cleaning filters ,oil replenishment and things like that. As an additional information , i found the next link which gives some interesting data about the modern M1 Abrams from US army logistics management college http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/SepOct99/MS441.htm "Abrams main battle tank reliability improved approximately 25 percent between the original vehicle and the second block improvement. Additionally, maintainability improved threefold. When originally fielded, the M1 Abrams tank demonstrated 304 mean miles between combat mission failures. This increased to 403 for the M1A1 and to 419 for M1A2. The fact that reliability grew at all is phenomenal because each successive block improvement made the tank much more complex, thereby introducing many more opportunities for failure. Even more significant than reliability improvements, maintainability in terms of maintenance man-hours per operating hour decreased from 2.67 for the original M1 to 0.85 for M1A2."

nice tool dieseltaylor As You see i edit the post Thanks

A relative article from call site can be found here. It is about the antitank doctrine in US during wwii and the debate about the scope and role of TDs to combat enemy tanks. http://tinyurl.com/yx46v6 P.S any idea how to make the link short ? [ November 10, 2006, 12:26 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]