Grog question: bocage & Germans

[Joshik]

(Note: Yes, I tried "SEARCH", but I couldn’t find any satisfactory answers!)

As an armchair historian, I’m stumped by the question of bocage and German armor. Let me see if I have my facts straight:

Soon after the Normandy landing, the Allies were surprised to discover these almost impenetrable hedges. Within weeks, a plan was devised (literally by one or two guys... a private and his sergeant? I can’t remember the details) whereby scrapiron from beach obstacles were cut up and welded onto the fronts of the Shermans, creating "hedgeclippers" that could mow right through the high bushes.

The Germans never used this, and as a result, were restricted to narrow roads, leading to the destruction of many of their tanks.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the Germans didn’t employ similar measures on their tanks. I’ve tried to come up with some reasons, but none seem very good.

Idea 1:

The Germans were not innovative, and never made use of Allied innovations.

Come on! Rocket technology, jet engines, assault weapons, night-vision, etc… And wasn’t the Panther based on the T-34?

Idea 2:

The Germans just never came up with this particular idea.

But they must have eventually seen an American tank using this device!

Idea 3:

Being a totalitarian army, commands were issued from the top down. Individual tank crews could not take the initiative express their creativity.

Is this true? I don’t know if this is analogous, but weren’t they given a pretty wide swath of freedom to paint their tanks how they saw fit? If that’s true, you mean to say that they were free to do frivolous things like paint their tanks, yet they couldn’t install devices on their tanks that could have saved many lives?

Idea 4:

The Germans were defending the area and had it well mapped out. The bocage served as an integral part of their defense.

Even so, wouldn’t they want their tanks to have the ability to crash through it, if need be?

Idea 5:

Hedgerow country was in such a small geographical area, the Germans figured it wasn’t worth the time and effort to fix up any tanks.

Is this true? How big was "bocage territory"? And this doesn’t make sense… the Americans found the time to make these changes.

Another related question:

Why were the allies totally surprised by the presence of bocage? They had commando raids at Normandy to test the quality and composition of the beaches. I would think Allied air would have overflown the area and taken recon photos. And hell, even without all that, the Allies were there during WWI. Did they just forget about it? What about the French underground? Was it just one of those things that got overlooked?

Any grogs out there with information, thoughts, comments, etc?

-Joshik

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: Joshik ]

[JonS]

My guess would be that by the time the germans figured it out after seeing the Allied tanks so equipped, the need for it had passed.

The Americans started using it for Op Cobra, and within a week or two (no references handy, sorry) the bocage fighting was pretty much a thing of the past.

BTW, there was no fighting in Normandy in WWI. Its fair to say that a fair few lessons from WWI were forgotten (or the wrong ones taken on board - but thats a whole different matter), but I don't think fighting in the Bocage can be grouped in there.

A disproportionate amount of the Allied training pre-Overlord focussed on just getting ashore. Quite what they were supposed to do, and how they were going to do it, seems to have been treated almost as an afterthought.

The Bocage area was recognised as potentially good defensive ground, but it was blithely assumed that they would be through it before it became an issue.

The area of true Bocage was relatively small - the entire Battle of Normandy fits in an area of something like 100km x 100km and the Bocage was only part of that. Now its even smaller. Like tanks, tractors don't take kindly to impenetrable hedges and 6 foot earthen banks ...

Regards

JonS

[JasonC]

From overhead, bocage looks like small ordinary hedges, or the lines between fields. That they would prove such an effective military obstacle was guessed by neither side before the event. The Germans proved adept at devising ways to use it, and found out by experience how effective fausts became in such conditions, etc.

The Germans weren't attacking, and what armor they had available was heavily concentrated on the British part of the front, which was relatively more open, flatter, with larger fields. The Germans did try one large armored counterattack in the US part of the front in mid July, by about 1/2 of one Panzer division. It penetrated the front, but then the tanks quickly got lost, isolated, and knocked out by US TD teams rushed to the area.

Also, the German Panthers had the thick front plates, so blocking the lanes was fine by them - while the US tanks with thinner front armor and guns incapable of getting through the front of a Panther, needed to get off the main roads and out of the sunken secondary lanes, into the fields, much more urgently.

[SGT_Gold]

The allied forces knew about the bocage, but the battle plan didn't call for them to have to fight through it for an extended period of time. According to the D+ a few weeks plans, the allies were susposed to be well through that part of France. The germans were defending and the ability to cut through the middle of the bocage wasn't really necessary to their mission. The invention of the hedgegrow plow, aka the 'Cullen device' is named after the SGT who invented it. Belton Cooper's book 'Death Traps' has some good info on this and Cooper was an ordinance officer who was involved in the tank conversions. Both Cooper and Steven Zaloga have noted that most tank crews didn't want to bust through a hedgegrow and face flanking fire from the dug in germans. The history channel really plays it up, but most historians who have studied the Normandy campaign have noted that it was a useful but sparingly used device. An interesting set of stats on the Normandy tank losses can be found at:

http://www.nymas.org/

[Guest Babra]

German field workshops were also well aware that welding face-hardened armour plate weakens it.

[Andrew H.]

One reason that the US had to go through the bocage in the first place is because the Germans were able to pretty effectively interdict large scale US movements on roads in German controlled territory.

That is, with a StuG or AT gun and a handful of infantry, the Germans would be able to halt largish US columns from advancing on the roads. Sometimes a single StuG would delay a large column for an entire day (in large part because of inexperienced US commanders who couldn't quickly devise alternate plans).

To avoid these kinds of delays, and to be able to make use of their numerical superiority, the US troops had to get off the roads, spread out, and advance through the bocage.

Even with hedgerow cutters, tanks weren't great things to have in the bocage, as it usually put them in shreck range, if not Pf range.

Also, given the thin German defense and the few number of tanks, it would make sense to keep the tanks on the roads so that they could be quickly rushed to whatever part of the front seemed to need them.

[Marlow]

Doubler's book "Closing with the Enemy" has a good account of the use of various methods for busting hedgerows.

The Cullen device didn't come from just a couple of guys who came up with something completely new, the hedgerow cutters were a development from earlier efforts to figure out ways to get tanks through the hedgerows (and more broadly, efforts to develop tactics for fighting in the hedgerows).

Early efforts to get tanks through were either to use bulldozer equipped tanks to lead the way, or to just drive over/through the hedgerows. Both of these methods had problems as there were not enough dozer tanks for the first, and the second was too slow and exposed the tank's underbelly armor.

The next steps were to use engineers to blow a gap with demolitions. This worked fine, except that digging a hole to emplace the demolitions took too long to sustain a reasonable rate of advance since new hedgerows would need to be crossed every 200 yards or so. Somebody then had the bright idea to use a tank to dig the hole, and pieces of pipe were welded on to the front of the tank. The tank would push the pipe into the hedgerow, and then back up, and Presto! A hole was born.

Next, some bright tanker discovered that often a tank equipped with the welded pipes could not only cut holes for demolitions, but that it could quickly drive strait through the hedgerow entirely. The Cullen device was developed as simply a more efficient method of doing the same.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Andrew Hedges:

Even with hedgerow cutters, tanks weren't great things to have in the bocage, as it usually put them in shreck range, if not Pf range.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If Doubler's account of the effective hedgerow fighting tactics that the U.S. eventually developed is accurate (and I have no reason to believe that it isn't), tanks were essential in the hedgerows. The close coordination of infantry/tank teams, using purpose developed drills was the key. Units that had the time and leadership to develop and practice these tactics did very well. Those that did not took high casualties for little gain. When properly employed the tanks did not face inordinate risk.

[ 08-09-2001: Message edited by: Marlow ]