Is the Sherman a tank?

[Vanir]

I think the only way we will resolve if the Medium Brigades are a good idea or not is if BTS makes a modern CM so we can try them out.

(Hint, hint )

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You've never heard music until you've heard the bleating of a gut-shot cesspooler. -Mark IV

[This message has been edited by Vanir (edited 01-25-2001).]

[Spook]

And now, Steve, disagreement to your disagreement to my earlier disagreement. The ante is now eight cents.

Starting off:

Which are not up to that big of a task even today. The problem with Desert Shield was that it took too long to assemble significant force in the theater. There was a lot of worry at senior levels that if Iraq decided to expand the war, right away, that our intial forces would be neutralized and we would lose the critical airbases that we used for staging the buildup. It can be argued that a much stronger, and quicker, deployment of troops would have reduced this risk and at the very least bought more time if Iraq decided it could handle the forces before it.

I agree in theory. The realistic practicality is another matter at this very point in time. (Leastways, I know a bit so on the USAF end.) A "stronger, quicker buildup of troops" is viable ONLY if the USAF Air Mobility Command (AMC) and the US Navy are up to snuff in being able to "project" a 1-2 brigade force in a rapid timeframe. As the US Navy has been reduced in half from its 1990 warship count (from 600 to about 300), the burden of "rapid deployment" falls to AMC. And while the C-17 is certainly a viable transport for the job of heavy lift and ability to get to "remote" sites, it would take time to get the C-17's assembled for the task. Right now, many C-17's have to pull the transport work from C-141's that get much more difficult to maintain with each passing year. (And C-5's can't get into "remote" staging areas.) The hope remains, of course, that the air transport bind might be remedied better in the next few years.

What the Russians learned is that urban warfare sucks. It doesn't matter WHAT you go in with, you are going to take massive losses. As far as I know the Russians didn't even engage their tanks in much street fighting for fear of losing them. So I would argue that if you don't think you can survive with a LAV that going in with an M1A1 is an even worse idea.

Grozny was an illustrative example. Let's consider instead that a light brigade's opponent doesn't have a built-up urban area to deploy in, but can still do so in "broken" terrain like scattered hills & woods; quite a possibility in the projected "bush war" theaters. The opponent thus has enhanced ambush opportunities. The M1/M2 force certainly isn't invincible to ambush situations, but it would be far less vulnerable than the light brigade. This is my alluded point from my earlier post---if you also have rapid and accurate real-time information of your enemy's positions in covered terrain (through enhanced information warfare techniques), THEN the light brigade force can be viable in this scenario. Otherwise, not to be presumed. Added air/naval fire support for the light brigade is another factor, of course, but a close-quarters ambush tends to nullify the ability to use this.

The risk of this is very low, IMHO. And for those threats we have various NASTY missles, including new kenetic energy missles that can probably go through both sides of such a tank. The one I have a demo tape of here shows the thing going something like 4 miles in a couple of seconds with pinpoint accuracy. And the launcer is highly mobile.

I'll have to yield to some ignorance here. Are you talking of an AT missile missile beyond the TOW series in specific? Was your noted missile used specifically against Kontakt-5 armor? Agreed, the likelihood of a deployed light brigade running into an opponent with the latest-Russian built tanks (like Black Eagle) is very low....except possibly in a Korean blowup. Furthermore, some Russian AT missiles now exist with a reach of 5000 meters. (I don't know if these are man-portable like the Spigot, though.) I don't think the LAV's planned 105mm gun will have comparable effective range. Anyway, please elaborate on your noted AT missile later on when you can.

Not by all standards. The first Apaches were grounded because they did not have the correct tollernece for sand, and therefore were useless. After they were still highly troublesome from a readiness standpoint. Yes, they were VERY effective once they were in combat, but it took a HUGE effort to get them there. This was, once again, the primary problem with their use in Kosovo from what I read. It took too long to get them deployed and ready for combat. Losing one in pre-mission training certainly did nothing to help their cause. And with the action widning down, you are correct, they weren't risked. This further proves my point. What is the purpose of weapons system that takes too long to get into place, keep in service, and then can't be used for fear of losing it?

Agreed a bit, but not entirely. Yes, yours is an added point to be weighed that future weapons systems have to be maintainable in the field. But a news flash: the Apache was hardly unique in Desert Shield in having maintenance problems. The Gulf country desert sand & dust was very fine & abrasive, and difficult to filter against, which weighed heavily against many mobile weapons & aircraft. USAF aircraft had windshields easily "fogged" by sand abrasion, particularly during takeoffs & landings. Remedies were eventually found for supporting the combat aircraft, but only with time, and through grabbing any & every highly qualified maintenance crewman to help out.

As to Kosovo, yes, the Apaches were held back due to political lack for commitment, but this can well be the circumstance also in the deployment of light brigades. What remains yet to be demonstrated is really how quickly the light brigade can be deployed.

On a quote from another post by you:

Best to embrace change instead of being screwed by it.

Well, I do agree with this. The light brigade concept is a compelling one in my view also. It deserves to be demonstrated how much better it can do over medium/heavy (M1/M2 mix) brigades in deployment time, logistics, and maintenance requirements.

But I always assign qualifiers. My hope always is that the politicians who commit such a force to a future crisis will have at least a basic understanding of the light brigade's projected capabilities AND limitations.

[This message has been edited by Spook (edited 01-25-2001).]

[CavScout]

Originally posted by Big Time Software: Which are not up to that big of a task even today. The problem with Desert Shield was that it took too long to assemble significant force in the theater. There was a lot of worry at senior levels that if Iraq decided to expand the war, right away, that our intial forces would be neutralized and we would lose the critical airbases that we used for staging the buildup. It can be argued that a much stronger, and quicker, deployment of troops would have reduced this risk and at the very least bought more time if Iraq decided it could handle the forces before it.

Maybe... if Iraq had decided to push on (I hate what ifs) you would have these light armor vehicles facing the heavy armor of Iraq. I am not sure if these weapons would have been any more effective than what was there.

[CavScout]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

Next, I have extended comments for the BTS moderator and his capsule story of the history of WW II and the role of tech and tank tank and German tank tech in that history, in particular. I know the standard historical spiel, which is reasonably close to the version you gave. I just happen to think, from long and close study of the histories available, that the somewhat cartoon version of events involved in that usually story, is quite wrong and misleading.

Yes, the Germans had great advantages in the early war years. Yes, better designed tanks were one of those advantages. *But better designed tanks does not mean thicker armor and bigger guns*. You acknowledge this is passing, but it seems to me you still underrate its importance. The early war German tanks were indeed better than many of the Allied ones, despite smaller main armament and thinner armor. The best tanks anybody had in the early war years, and in numbers, were however the better Russian ones, hands down. The Germans acknowledge as much every which way.

But the advantages the Germans actually had in tanks was more crewmen in them, and more radios, and bigger, roomier turrets laid out more sensibly. As well as lightness itself, tracks that lasted longer as a result, greater mobility off road and better road speeds than many heavier Allied types. The had better optics and better crew training, and soon enough more experience too.

Why can't people manage to wrap their heads around the notion, obvious enough to me, that the desirable features for a tank in WW II were well understood and acted upon in those designs?

The German advantage was more because of doctrine than anything else, IMO. The Germans concentrated their armor, while the Allies had them spred through out France so they could "support" the infantry. When and where Allied armor, like with de Gaulle, could be concentrated they gave the German tanks a good fight.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

To Scout -

Yes is was doctrine. But no, just concentrating wasn't the trick. Yes, the French spread their armor to support infantry and lost because of it.

But the Brits and the mid-war Russians concentrated their armor so as "not to tie it down to the speed of the infantry", with the result that they used mass armor formations without supporting arms. And the Germans beat that too, whenever they were allowed to use a mobile defense. They did so in North Africa against the British and around Kharkov in early 1943 against the Russians, among other occasions.

Tanks support infantry - tanks operate on their own - both were and are mistakes. Tanks should not operate on their own, but in combined arms teams or kampgruppen, which the "mass the armor" believers did not understand. And that means the tanks should cooperate with infantry indeed. But not the line infantry that is itself deployed in an even spread across the front.

The principle of concentration and the principle of combined arms are both true, and both requirements have to be met for it to work correctly. And this was not obvious. The complicating factor is that in practice, the *defensive* or front-holding infantry formations were and *had* to be, evenly spread along the front. So issues of spread vs. concentration, and issues of working with infantry or independently, were conflated with one another. It was thought that working with infantry meant being spread out.

In addition, the benefits of the German concentrated armor spearheads were misunderstood. It was thought, partially correctly, that their strength came from their operational speed, and then the false inference was made that what hampered armor when it was supporting infantry was that the infantry slowed the tanks down to a walking pace. This led to tank-heavy formations expected to operate independently, like the British armor brigades in the desert and the Russian independent tank brigades of late 1942 through mid 1943.

In addition to all of the above, people also made the error of thinking it was the power of the weapons themselves that was involved, and that therefore the way to maximize the power x time generated and thrown at the enemy, was to have armor in the front line as much as possible, or at any rate to assign armored formations their own sectors of the front on defense, between infantry formations, and for extended periods. Because they were more mobile and stronger, they were expected to hold a greater length of front. This error was extremely common in the late-war German army, among officers who did not understand the military revolution and even more so with the corporal running the show.

In terms of deployment, the tanks were most effective when #1 concentrated into armored formations plus #2 supported by all arms teams and "tasked" as need warranted, not rigidly and #3 kept out of and behind the line on defense until employed, and #4 on the attack given very narrow frontages but expected to operate in great depth forward and back, more or less at right angles to the axis of the main lines (aka in "column", not "line" deployments, or "in echelon").

A whole host of other tactics and techniques supported the above doctrines, from extensive use of radios, strong dedicated division-level recon assets, motorised forces for all arms to keep up with the tanks, tight artillery cooperation with other arms, meaning SPA where possible and towed guns marching right in the mobile columns, senior armor commanders forward in the columns themselves and granted enourmous operational responsibility to act as they saw fit.

As I have already stated, the only guys that really "got it" besides the Germans were the post-1943 Americans, after the revision of the armor division to 3 armor, 3 infantry, and 3 artillery battalions. The German system actually had more artillery and towed weapons per manuever battalion than that, which was a reduction for the U.S. and lower on the armor-heavy scale of things than any of the other allies. Otherwise put, they had fewer tanks per panzer division than all the standard enemy formations, not more.

Yes, the 1940 French mistake was different, and De Gaulle recognized the need to concentrate armor, and after 1940 everybody did. But they then got it wrong in that direction, toward pure tank formations which were not nearly as effective, and were especially not as effective for the same number of deployed tanks. Even though they were "more concentrated".

I hope this is interesting.

[Spook]

Not only was it interesting, Jason, but a good rush of deja vu to me. I had made the same type of argument on a separate forum three years ago, in that just concentrating tanks together (per UK or Soviet in mid-WW2) wasn't enough; they needed to be concentrated AND integrated into combined arms battlegroups.

Of course, though, terrain can impact the optimal balance in a combined arms team. In the desert, formations could be more tank-heavy. In the covered terrain of NW Europe, a greater proportion of infantry was needed than for the desert.

In a way, recent discussion about the modern-era rapid-response light brigade concept brings in an added question: Is the main battle tank, as a weapons system, now truly at a point of declining usefulness? For now, though, I think that question would be better posed as a separate forum topic.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Jason,

Wow... that was some lengthy post Which is EXACTLY why I only attempted to scratch the surface and talk in broad generalities in my previous post. We could discuss these issues for years, taking up gigabytes of storage space, and we would probably only still scratch the surface. That having been said, I don't think you and I disagree much, if at all. You simply, IMHO, took what I said far too literally than it was ever intended to be taken, and even more so read into things I did or did not say. Having said that, I don't think we disgaree about too much, although there are a few points I take issue with...

*But better designed tanks does not mean thicker armor and bigger guns*. You acknowledge this is passing, but it seems to me you still underrate its importance.

Not in the slightest. I just didn't feel like writing a thesis paper on this topic The Germans had MANY technical advantages over its early war counterparts. Some of these advantages, such as far superior gun designs, remained in place until the Third Reich was a pile of rubble. This was as true with planes, artillery, and infantry as it was with tanks. In fact, the Germans were probably the most inventive of all countries during the war, in practically all respects, which is why so much effort was made to grab their labs and scientists after the war. But over time these advantages IN THE FIELD where reduced as the Allies began to get the ideas firmly enacted in both terms of production but also use.

[qutoe]I lay far more emphasis, however, on doctrine. Your version has it that doctrine was easily learned and copied, particularly by the Russians, and thus the German advantage there went away.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Spook,

The light brigade concept is a compelling one in my view also. It deserves to be demonstrated how much better it can do over medium/heavy (M1/M2 mix) brigades in deployment time, logistics, and maintenance requirements.

As usual, we see more eye-to-eye than we disagree I have no more time for debates today (sigh... so little time in the day), so I will just end it here:

But I always assign qualifiers. My hope always is that the politicians who commit such a force to a future crisis will have at least a basic understanding of the light brigade's projected capabilities AND limitations.

And that is the really important bit. No matter HOW "good" the concept is, and how great the potential benefits might be, it is in the end just a flexible tool. It has its limitations. Let's just hope we don't have to find out what they are the hard way...

Steve

[Iron Duke]

Are you talking of an AT missile missile beyond the TOW series in specific? Was your noted missile used specifically against Kontakt-5 armor?

The missile he is talking about is the Hypersonic Line Of Sight Anti Tank missile or LOSAT. This is a true "acquire and shoot" missile that needs no further guidance because of its tremendous velocity. It achieves a speed of MACH 5 almost instantly and upon impact, transforms this tremendous energy into Kinetic energy, easily destroying its target. Some quick math. MACH 5 AT SEA LEVEL is 761 mph which translates into 5580.6 ft/sec or 1860.2 m/sec!!!

The missile that was designed to specifically destroy reactive armor is the Javelin. This is a shoulder fired weapon system that can be deployed and ready to fire in 30 seconds, then reloaded in 20 more. It has a published maximum range of 2500 meters and a minimum range of 70 meters. Top attack is its normal mode while a direct fire mode can also be had in order to hit targets undercover, bunkers, and aircraft. It has a tandem warhead that is specifically designed to defeat reactive armor by utilizing a "dual charge" system. The first smaller charge detonates and disrupts the reactive armor 'brick', then the main charge goes about the business of punching a hole through the plate. It also has a nice feature called a 'soft launch' which enables it to be fired from within a building.

Yet another new missile hitting our armories is the Enhanced Fiber Optic Guided Missile or EFOGM, this an enhanced version of the copper wired TOW I and II. It transmits an image back to the gunner of what its onboard camera is viewing thus allowing the gunner to make a precision attack on the target. "Like the Hezbollah has been able to do with wire guided missiles against the weak spots on the IDF Merkava tanks..." as one article put it.

It is important to note that the new Interim brigades will field ALL of these weapon systems in a combined anti tank and anti aircraft role...along with the 105mm armed LAV, not to mention the addition of almost 3 times the "on map" artillery in the form of 120mm mortar armed LAV's. When you examine the Heavy Armor bde vs the Interim bde, surprisingly, the Interim bde comes off as having MORE combat firepower and combat sustainability than the Heavy bde...which for me, being an old M1A1 advocate, is hard for me to even say!

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One shot...One Kill

[This message has been edited by Iron Duke (edited 01-25-2001).]

[jhtrickey]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

What everyone is missing is how true that doctrine was. The Germans conquered Europe in Pz IIIs. They lost it again in Panthers. The U.S. beat the Germans in Shermans. The Russians beat them in T-34s, which the Panther was specifically designed to outclass in tank-to-tank fighting. The idea that heavier tanks designed to defeat enemy tanks would work better, was not borne out by the strategic results.

I truly think some weight has to be given to the fact of overwhelming numbers. Just how many fast moving targets can one engage with a tank before lossing the numbers game. The mass production capability of both the US & Russia in fielding tanks and getting them to the front quickly led a long way to their victory in tank battles. When you have 5 or 6 tanks that you are willing to sacifice to take out just one panther or tiger, shows that the numbers are on your side.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Well, I can give several examples of the importance of combined arms in the desert from the 1942 battles, showing ways the German force mix worked much better. And the Germans were using combined arms in DAK, not just tank-fleets.

British tank-fleets - several armor brigades operating independently of other arms - ran into the German armor in a way they had planned beforehand. This was supposed to be their decisive battle to defeat and destroy the German armor.

The Brits were operating behind their line of infantry "boxes", mined in forts stretched in a line across the desert. The Germans had gone around the southern, desert flank of that line. The British armor was supposed to trap them against it on the far side. Well, the Germans did indeed settle in on the eastern or British side of the line of boxes, with the British armor fleets coming right at them, just as the Brits had planned. But then they broke through that box line, cutting it in half and isolating its southern portion, and re-establishing a supply line to their spearheads.

The Brits went in anyway, expecting the Germans to at least be low on fuel and supplies, after their long flank march and several days fighting, with supply lines only just re-opened. They hit a German "PaK front" of anti-tank guns, a linear version of the same sort of boxes the British infantry had been deployed in, but set up more rapidly and without much in the way of mines. It was also heavier on the towed guns, compared to infantry. This resulted in what is called in the histories the battle of Knightbridge, after a British map reference nearby (hardly more than a well, actually).

The German ATG front smashed entire formations of the unsupported British tanks. 88s in particular had a field day, exploiting their much greater range and the light HE rounds of the small British tank guns, which were mostly meant for anti-tank fighting.

As they nevertheless closed in and began to suppress and destroy ATGs, the German armor came up behind their own ATGs. It stayed at long range, in the dust and desert haze, so that only a portion of the attacking British tanks were in effective engagement range at any one moment in time.

Many of the British tanks were also buttoned by this point, because artillery HE was landing around them, fired from behind the PaK front. Trying to identify small tank targets in dust and haze at extreme range while buttoned, was very hard for the British tank crews. By comparison, the German crews had men in the PaK front radio-ing them distances and locations of identified British tank groups. The Germans crawled close enough to wipe out a group somewhere, then rolled up the line, in the sense of being at extreme range to first one group, then another, with the bulk of their whole tank force.

The British attack was also hampered by fuel and coordination problems between their formations. Part of this was due to the logistical organization of their units. being independent brigades, they fueled at night in different locations, and had to coordinate during the day by ad hoc back and forths between their commanders, often acting with old or innaccurate information. As a result, at least 1/3rd of the available British tanks attacked well after the others, creating a piecemeal effect.

Also, many of the British tanks were so tank-duel focused they carried no, or trivial amounts of small, HE rounds, relying on a few suppot CS tanks with larger howitzers for all HE fire. This obviously made them far more vunerable to the PaK front tactic.

Naturally, the British were slaughtered. The Germans lost some ATGs and about a company of tanks, the British lost two entire armor brigades with another reduced - in a single afternoon. Tobruk fell soon thereafter.

Now, it is instructive to look as well at the German attacks on the Allied infantry boxes. Because in many ways that was a reciprocal situation to the disaster at Knightsbridge, or would have been if the Germans had only British doctrine, or the British had German doctrine.

These desert forts were created out of large bodies of infantry, motorized, dug in and surrounded by mines - although the mine belts were thickest as mere obstacle areas between the boxes. These brigade positions had towed ATGs and field artillery integrated into them, as well as mortars and machinegun positions of course. Some of the ATGs were mounted on trucks, "portees" as they were called, to function as ad hoc tank destroyers. And a few supporting tanks were included, usually slower types less suited to work independently, which meant heavier armored ones.

The tanks were dug in, to hull down positions with rear-facing exits. Along with the portees they in principle provided some mobile or adaptable portion of the fortification, but in action the protection of a hull-down position was prized pretty highly by the crews and they did not move around much during firefights. The supporting field artillery was in the center or sometimes rear of the box (when it had a "rear", instead of being surrounded). It could thus fire direct at enemy vehicles, especially close in or as the enemy reached the edge of the box, as well as on-call indirect missions.

Why weren't German attacks on such positions one-sided shooting gallery affairs like Knightsbridge in reverse? How did the German armor formations manage to overrun these boxes for relatively light losses to themselves, with catastrophic losses to the dug-in defenders? And however they managed to do that, why couldn't the Brits do the same trick at Knightsbridge?

The Germans did have one technical edge, in that their 88s outranged the guns on the British tanks by a long way, whereas the British ATGs had ranges comparable to the German tank guns. This edge only applied to a small portion of the guns in the German PaK front, however, and when to ordinary desert heat-haze is added the dust kicked up by a hours-long battle by over 200 AFVs, the benefits of greater maximum range can easily be estimated too high. It is harder to exploit full ranges in the desert than many imagine, because sighting does degrade rapidly with range (especially without the modern IR sight toys our tankers have today, which the Iraqis for example did not have).

But the real reason is combined arms, and the way it made the difference can be explained easily enough when the German process of reducing an infantry "box" is explained. There are a number of fine accounts of what this actually involved, notably in a book on the Sidi Rezaj battles (which I have undoubtedly misspelled).

The idea of at first staying at extreme range to exploit heat-haze and dust is again fundamental to the whole German approach. The kampgruppe rolls to this extreme range point. Scouting vehicles - often light tanks - will come in a little closer, but back in and out of range of effective sighting over and over, at different points. As enemy AT assets open up, the scouting tanks call down artillery fire on them, and the kampgruppe as a whole crawls closer to take them under direct fire, en masse. The idea is to exploit the immobility of the defenders to have only some of them in range at once, while also suppressing them with artillery. That the ranges are so long the hit chances with each round are low, is practically irrelevant. Front armor and loss of kinetic energy with range are also working for the attacker.

As enemy positions in the box are silenced, the attacker's artillery shifts further into the box. There it soon winds up suppressing the defender's own tube artillery. Since that is in the box itself, to give the latter range and to protect the guns, they are far enough forward and easily enough located, that they wind up under directed counterbattery fire. Notice, by contrast, that at Knightsdbridge the Germany tube artillery was well behind the linear PaK front and thus able to fire unmolested (though indirect) the whole time.

The German armor keeps inching closer, staying in the dust and engaging suppressed AT positions in sequence. If the defenders try to mass fires to avoid this by manuevering, they find #1 that a truck-based portee (or open-topped vehicle period, for that matter) doesn't get around too well in an artillery barrage and #2, that their own heavily armored but not-very numerous supporting tanks, draw massed fire - some of it always from the thinner flanking angles -whenever they move.

About the only defender's measure that actually works is fire discipline - holding fire until the Germans have crawled within range of a number of AT weapons at once, then opening up simultaneously. This, however, calls for a high degree of coordination and discipline, and is hard to achieve ad hoc, especially in a barrage and with forward units already under fire (the next are trying to help those, etc).

Once the tanks have crawled to the edge of the box and its surrounding minefields, resistence inside has already nearly collapsed. The AT assets have been wiped out by artillery fire or tank HE. Only at that point does the supporting armored or motorized infantry come forward and dismount. With the tanks having reached the box, it is very dusty, and the description from defenders from this point on show extreme confusion and narrow focus on events immediately around the reporting officer. The infanrry is supported by heavy weapons (mortars, MGs, infantry howitzers) units that dismount farther out and fire at areas of the box the infantry will de-bus next to, from a different angle than the infantry's approach. The tanks, remember, are still at the edge of the box spraying everything that moves or fires. Artillery fire has either ceased or lifted to far corners of the box, always targeting AT weapons if any are still functioning. The infantry moves through the defending positions and mops up. Anything they identify as still resisting draws a hail of tank fire.

Game, set, match for combined arms. The accompanying artillery is essential to dealing with the towed ATGs. It also hampers enemy sighting by forcing heads down and buttoned up enemies. That works with long ranges. The mobility of the tanks is exploited to the fullest by using it to choose the range and to get massed local engagements of many-on-few. The entire approach is fully aware of the importance of *sighting* on the battlefield, one's own and the enemy's, and coordination of actions without assuming each unit knows what is going on.

Now, let us look at why the British could not manage something similar at Knightsbridge. First, they had no supporting artillery to speak of. The 25-lbers were in the boxes, some had been overrun, they were on-call for other units. The tankers themselves had essential zero ability to call down HE barrages on the German ATGs, to adjust the fire themselves, to work with dedicated artillery assets tasked to them for ages, etc.

This reversed the sighting differential that armor and mobility ought to have created. The British just did not think of the armor and mobility of the tank as things that improved sighting under battlefield conditions, instead of stopping enemy rounds or fighting several enemies in sequence.

Next, the linear deployment of the PaK front was superior to a box in preventing the enemy from getting many-on-one range matchups by staying at extreme range from one portion of the box. That linear deployment meant that flanks were open, however. It would therefore have been suicidal for units not cooperating immediately with their own armor, as they just would have been rolled up from one flank. Trying to do that at Knightsbridge (besides mines) would simply have pulled into range of the supporting German AFVs behind the PaK front. Instead, the way to get attempt many-on-one engagements with the German ATGs was only to bunch up at range, or to use small folds of ground while bunching up, so that many tanks were in a small area that could see a few ATGs but not more. But that meant a fine target for German arty and a buttoned group, which the German tanks could then roll up opposite and engage en-masse with better sighting.

Finally, since they never did get close enough it is almost immaterial that the Brits had no supporting infantry. But if they had somehow knocked out many of the AT weapons along the PaK front, they could not have actually occupied the German position. The dug in infantry around the German gun positions would have still been there, calling in artillery fire and radioing British tank locations to their own tankers. The British options would then have been limited to break off, roll through the German infantry for modest losses on both sides but no appreciable benefit, or try to root men out of trenches with small caliber HE shells, a few supporting CS tanks, and light machineguns. The CS tanks would run out of ammo (if they hadn't already, fighting the ATGs) and that would be that.

In all of the above, the Brits could get the impression that the Germans were still just using massed tanks against them. They noticed that the tank force hovering out there in the dust seemed to be the entire Afrika Corps in tank terms, and they did not see hordes of infantrymen running among them, nor trucks mingled in the tank fleet as it probed and withdrew,massed now here and now there.

But in fact, the tanks were being employed as part of a combined arms team. Their supporting artillery had marched right behind them and set up out of sight of the box they would attack or just beyond sight of their PaK front. The infantry waited in trucks or (much more rarely available) half-tracks until their debussing role on the attack, or dug in around the ATGs on defense - sometimes part of it around the artillery positions for security when attacking too. But some of it was there all the time, over the horizon and ready to go. They had their heavy weapons to add fire once the enemy AT assets were eliminated. The towed AT and AA were with the column on attack too, ready to turn any area taken into a PaK front defense in a matter of hours. The whole she-bang had its own dedicated transport and logistics, enough to fuel and supply itself for several days and several fights before restocking.

A darn sight more complicated than massing the tanks, and a darn sight more effective too. Even in the desert.

[Spook]

Thanks for the information on the LOSAT missile, Iron Duke. The added information you posted on other planned weapons systems for the light brigade is also helpful for further reference.

[Spook]

BTW, Jason, you should consider your latest post as a draft for an article on a "combined arms" case example. Then offer it to Madmatt for posting at CMHQ.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Michael,

In general, I agree. The transition is going to be the tough part. And if a BIG enemy force comes up to face us again, we had better be able to meet that threat too. Of course, we do still have our nukes for such cases (yes, scary but true).

Yes, I can't argue with any of that. I, for one, would heaps rather have a sufficient conventional force on hand than be backed into the corner of having to use weapons of mass destruction of any kind.

I don't know. I think this is more of a political thing than a military one. The military is trying to reinvent itself (or part of itself) because it figures there will be more smaller actions in the future. And if you aren't ready for one, you aren't ready for any (in theory of course). We have shown ourselves to have trouble with the few missions we have attempted, so change is not only wise it would be criminal to ignore.

So if we feel that we need a force to combat a once in a while conflict, but in order to do that it has to be standing in wait, there is the chance that it will be used MORE frequently, not less. At least all political things being equal. So instead of painstakingly figuring if we can actually get something in theater in time with enough force (like Ruwanda for example) BEFORE we even can decide if it is a mission we should take on, the capability will be there FIRST and the leaders can move right into "is it a good idea" phase of the decision making process.

And I see that as a good thing. Being ill prepared to meet these new challenges would be a grave mistake. If we opted out of a valuable task because we couldn't hack it, that would be bad. If we went in anyway and spent millions and millions of dollars to do nothing, that is bad. If we went in anyway, spent all the money, lost a lot of good people, and then had to run away... that would be criminal. Best to embrace change instead of being screwed by it.

I think this is true as far as it goes, but where it reveals a vital blind spot is that I am not confident that we are devoting as much creative energy as we should to finding non-military ways of resolving the world's conflicts. I know that this is certainly not just a problem for the US alone, there are several millenia of human nature to confront here. But still, we are part of the problem and we must be part of the solution.

Just my 2¢.

Michael

[jhtrickey]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

The Russians did indeed face the Germans with 5:1 odds in places by mid 44. But that does not mean the Russians defeated the Germans with just numbers. The Russians did not outproduce the Germans anything remotely near 5:1. They outproduced them more like 3:2 or 2:1, at best, and in only certain categories of weapons. In the winter of 1942-43, the overall forces were about even when the Russians took the initiative, and they never really gave it back. Why were the odds so much steeper 2 years later? Because Army Group South and Army Group Center were both dead, that is why.

If I make 200 of something and you make 100 of something, the odds are 2:1. But if I then trade 80 of yours for 100 of mine, the odds rise to 5:1, because you've only got 20 left. The German army was killed in the field, not in the factory. B]

I do agree with some of your points, but Germany was facing a two front war and the Russians were massing armor. The Germans on the eastern front were working with extended supply lines, a large front, and few and few of experienced tankers. From the war journels I have read from German units, most were facing incredible odds in tank to tank fighting. So of the production of tanks being manufactured in Germany, most were slated for the eastern front, but some units were being reformed and sent elsewhere. The Russians, only having to face the Germans, focused all their production at the Germans. The Russian tank design was based on ease of mass production. Their labor force could turn out more tanks than in a faster period of time and get those to the critical places on the battlefield faster than the Germans could.

------------------

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

"the war journels I have read from German units, most were facing incredible odds in tank to tank fighting"

Yes, certainly. But it was not production that brought about those local odds ratios. As I said already, in the critical period during which Germany actually lost the war in Russia (and I am not in the least talking "what ifs", but what really happened), from the last quarter of 1942 until the first quarter of 1944, the Russians did not field massively more of anything that the Germans did, simply because of factory output.

The Americans and British were only fighting in North Africa and Italy over that time period. The total forces involved in all of that fighting were tiny compared to the forces engaged on the Russian front. Incidentally, they would have stayed smaller still if the genius corporal hadn't insisted on reinforcing Tunisia when it was obviously already lost, but that is a quibble.

The Russians alone simply did not outproduce the Germans by much. And a lot of the excess in the overall production of the two for the entire war period, comes at the end of the war, after it no longer mattered. The Russians did not outproduce the Germans by more than 2:1 in anything, counting the last years and counting their focus on a few items to the exclusion of all else (so much so that undernourishment was an extremely serious practical issue - leave alone its humanitarian side - in Russian rear areas down through 1944).

At the start of the critical period, the German army in Russia was larger numerically than the Russian one, better equipped in most respects, and much more experienced and trained. During that period, the Germans ramped up their war output in every respect. The Russians did not outproduce the Germans during that period by more than 3:2 in most types of weapons.

The Germans introduced their most successful innovation designs for ground warfare, especially the Panther, in that period and fielded it in increasingly large numbers. They faced no fighting on other fronts of anything like the same scale (the scale of ground forces on other fronts is lower by a factor of 10). Industrial expansion continued strongly despite Allied bombing. The Luftwaffe was intact throughout the period. But by the end of that period, the German army was effectively defeated and it never really recovered. In the following six months, the army collapsed on both eastern and (new) western fronts, with catastrophic losses of up to half the force.

How and why did the Russians kick the Germans tail from October 1942 to March 1944? There is no mistake about it, the Germans got creamed, and from a starting position that was stronger in just about every respect. I am not considering "what ifs", about whether the whole war would have ended differently if yadda yadda, or how the Germans would still have lost because unga bunga. I know all that, but that is not what is in question.

What is in question is a military fact whose cause is sought, about an actual event not a hypothetical one. Rival hypotheses can be formulated, but then they must be tested against the known facts. And not the known facts about issues that do not bear, about U-Boats or V-2 research or Pacific island hopping. Just how exactly did the Germans manage to get their heads handed to them by the Russian army in those 18 months when they went from "ahead" to "back broken". Nor will wails about how hard it is to fight after your back is broken, address the issue of how it happened.

It is suggested that the Germans were extremely clever and inventive and had all the best technology and all the best equipment. OK, so we can rule *out* a technological explanation, one presumes. The data are pointed the wrong way.

Numbers, numbers, that is the all purpose explanation. The Germans were brilliant and had all the best equipment, but they were defeated by 5 and 6 tanks to one because the Russians just made 5 or 6 tanks to every 1 German one. Nope, the production ratio is probably more like 3:2 in this period and not above the 2:1 total war average, and the starting fleets are about equal size.

It is suggested that the Russians learned all the tricks of German armor doctrine so the advantage the Germans had before went away. But the Russians didn't learn German tank doctrine - they were using a tank doctrine that was more like British tank doctrine from 1940-1941, which is rightly and roundly condemned as hopelessly old-fashioned and missing the point. The Russian doctrine did improve over the period in question, but without achieving the level of sophistication of German armor doctrine in the period 1939-1942.

It is suggested that there was some residual problem from the leftovers of the German general staff system, a truly bizarre comment considering the fact that most consider is a great asset to them, which Stavka tried but failed to match in professionalism and efficiency of planning, and which George Marshall certainly sought to emulate. Perhaps Guderian just meant that not everyone agreed with him about everything. The most capable German armor commanders were, however, those who saw no conflict between the staff system and its "school solutions" and the new armor doctrine, an opinion by the way shared by the U.S. armor commanders and staff.

So far, we only have plausibly going one way that the Russians had a modest edge in new weapons production, to balance which the Germans have supposedly better technology, better tanks in particular, are more clever, better trained, far more experienced, with a capable staff and innovative armor commanders, and to top it off they start with a slightly larger force. Yet fast forward and there they are, kicked bodily out of the Ukraine with between 1/4 and 1/3 of the German army annihilated.

What a mystery, huh?

The Germans were not allowed to use their own armor doctrine in the second half of world war two. The first time I said that, it seems someone took me to be talking about some hypothetical new doctrine that was never practiced. No, not so. I mean the modern combined arms doctrines of mobile warfare invented by men like Guderian and Rommel, tweaked by others, and operationalized in a series of campaigns that conquered all of Europe in the preceeding 3 years. The German army was not allowed to fight in that manner in the second half of world war two. Why is this so hard to grasp?

The Germans lost their battles and took catastrophic losses during the critical period, despite their other advantages working in their favor - on their own probably enough to outweigh the modest numbers odds they were facing - they had beaten far steeper odds in the previous 3 years regularly - and in the process they lost Army Group South, rebuilt it out of new production, then lost it again. Why did they lose it?

Go to the histories instead of speculating. You can find the dates and places where the units died, and trace the military events back on the map to find out why things unfolded that way. They lost Army Group South twice, in each case to massive flanking breakthroughs by Soviet armor-heavy reserves that counterattacked. That counterattacked *after* the Germans had concentrated their available forces - and especially their armor - opposite a single fortress-like objective and failed to storm said position, despite stubborn and repeated essentially frontal attacks, which inflicted enourmous losses on the attackers, in return for results in no case better than even exchanges of men. While these storming operations were going on, the Russians refrained from committing large portions of their armor, and instead used it for the flanking counterattacks, which were delivered at weak infantry positions.

Stalingrad and Kursk are the names given to the two battles. Sometimes they refer only to the storming operations and their failure. Sometimes the terms are meant to include the subsequent Russian counterattacks and the catastrophic consequences thereof to the Germans.

Where in German armor doctrine as practiced from 1939 to 1942 does one find it the rule and desireable use of armor, to use it as a frontal battering ram against an entrenched enemy fortress position backed by strong reserves? Where in German mobile warfare practice among the masters of mobile warfare, on defense as well as attack (like Rommel and Manstein, just to name two), do you find a reason or an excuse for these plans and these employments of the available armor?

Nowhere. The Germans were not practicing their own 1939-1942 armor doctrines in the critical period. About the only exception one can find is a month or two - February 1943 e.g. - when they acted differently and got better results, typically during disasters and only until the use of better doctrine restored the immediate situation.

I am not talking about what ifs. Army Group South died twice, and it died because of military *mistakes*, which were recognizably *mistakes* from the standpoint of the German army's own successful doctrines. The Germans lost the battles in the critical period because they did things with their army and their armor in particular, that are recognizably *dumb*, not brilliant or clever or inventive. That have nothing to do with their own well-developed doctrine.

In other words, they lost those battles because they did demonstrably stupid things, even though some of them knew better.

The losing chess player says "he just had so much more material at the end, so I couldn't hold him", and it is true enough. But how did he lose his rook? He made a dumb move and he lost his rook, that is how. The rest was a consequence. It may be the fellow playing him would have beaten him some other way if he hadn't lost that way. But what actually happened is, the guy made a dumb move, and his opponent took his freaking rook.

In the case of Army Group South, twice. Both during the critical period mentioned.

And the "dumb moves" occurred because the Germans ignored their own discoveries about the principles of mobile warfare, and laid themselves open to mobile-warfare replies. Even if not expertly delivered with full-blown understanding of combined arms, yet delivered. Then the Germans met those replies with inadequate rigid defenses of exactly the same kind as their early-war enemies had used, with the same lack of success.

And that all happened, I submit, because the men in charge of the German army did not understand why their own doctrines had been successful. The men who invented those doctrines certainly did. But the supreme commander did *not*, and he threw the critical elements of the successful doctrine out the window without knowing it, because he had misidentified the causes of the earlier successes, and because he would not listen to anybody trying to tell him different.

And that misidentification is extremely common. Many people still make such errors *today*. It is not trivial to get this correct. Prominent historians with distinguished careers and numerous monographs under their belt, get it wrong regularly.

It is not a piece of common folk wisdom, that everyone can be expect to know, nor that everyone who looks into the matter can be expected to get right. The answers are not lying around in the open, such that one has to be an idiot not to see them.

The alternate, wrong explanations that typically deceive people about the subject are plausible on the surface and easier to grasp and remember. These and related errors mislead trained general officers whose careers were dedicated to getting it right, with hundreds of thousands of lives riding on the outcome, and many of them still got it wrong.

Yet somehow, the immediate reaction to any attempt to inform anyone of anything at all on the subject, is taken as some sort of personal insult. "Of course I understand all the principles of modern mobile warfare, you jackanape. Don't you know I've read 30 books?"

I wonder why most people don't have the same attitude about physics, as though they think they are Paul Dirac because they once listened to a tape by Feynman or took college physics.

It is not any kind of insult to suggest that perhaps knowledge of the principles of modern mobile warfare is not exactly common property, even among bright people who make it their life's business to know that subject to the exclusion of everything else.

But it is instructive to see the "don't call me ignorant" reaction, because that reaction was involved in the historical events as well. People did not like to be taught about this stuff. They thought they already knew it. They thought suggesting otherwise was commenting on their jockey shorts size or something.

Geez, imagine trying to teach it to a dictator in front of a bunch of high-brow generals whom he regarded as hopeless stick-in-the-muds. Yes, professor, I will now go to school professor, that is very interesting professor, Oh I see professor, I had misunderstood professor. With captains at an army war college that might work, or even young men at university. With a tyrant? LOL.

The Germans made bonehead moves and lost a rook. Some of the seconds and kibbitzers knew perfectly well it was a dumb move and said so, but the player himself was not as good, did not know it out of pride, and dismissed their advice.

After all of that, German doctrine actually used in practice still did not improve, but instead continued to go downhill, with brief upticks after disasters as the "kibbitzers" got their way on choice of next move.

Incidentally, I am going through all of this in the interest of explaining my ideas on it all, and in the interest of correcting what I consider common errors on the subject, made by many otherwise perfectly informed persons. I don't give a darn what anyone else thinks about me, and little about what others think about the war events, at least when it is another rehash of the standard versions I can heard a hundred times before rather than anything new.

I append to this, so that people can get a clear sense of my "thesis", ratings from 1 to 5 I would give the various powers on their practice of combined arms doctrine during various parts of the war. Not what the best men on that side knew (whether De Gualle or Guderian) but what the existing command structure actually allowed or made the fighting men do.

First I explain what the rank numbers are supposed to mean -

5 - fully understood and integrated modern mobile doctrine. Combined arms plus concentrated mobile power used operationally in the right manner, etc.

4 - minor deviations from the above or close approaches to it. Missing elements from coordination, partial errors in mass or operational uses, etc.

3 - operational use of massed armor, a half-measure. Combined arms missing or largely so, but armor is mostly concentrated and is employed for proper mobile operations at basically the right sort of targets, etc.

2 - dismal understanding or use of modern combined arms. Combinations are used, but the operational roles are misunderstood. Armor sometimes distributed, sometimes massed, but rarely used in its proper operational roles.

1 - mobile operations ignored or fundamentally misunderstood. Linear thinking, infantry thinking. Tanks as pillboxes and re-deployable machine-gun nests.

Germany, 1939-1942 - 5

Germany, 1943 - 2/3

Germany, 1944-1945 - 2

Russia, 1941 - 1

Russia, 1942 - 2

Russia, 1943 - 3

Russia, 1944-1945 - 4

France, 1939-1940 - 1

France, 1944-1945 - 4

Britain, 1939-1940 - 2

Britain, 1942-1944 - 3

Britain, 1945 - 3/4

USA, 1942-1943 - 3

USA, 1944-1945 - 4/5

One man's opinion...

[RMC]

Moreon the LOSAT.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/losat.htm

excerpts....

"The missile accelerates to 5000 feet per second, flies to maximum range in less than four seconds and delivers five times the kinetic energy of current tank rounds. Range of the LOSAT missile is about 5 km."

"Testing at White Sands Missile Range, NM examined the launch effects of the LOSAT on an expanded-capacity HMMWV. Under developmental test conditions, the missile is capable of defeating any known tank it hits."

I am curious about this Kontakt-5 ERA. I have seen claims that it will stop 120mm APFSDSDU rounds, but I can't see how the Russians would be able to test that empirically. Since those rounds have been shown to penetrate berms and tanks and then another berm, I find it hard to accept that this explosive reactive armor would be of so much benefit against a kinetic energy penetrator.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Jason, I only have a few brief moments to respond before leaving for the weekend. Forgive the rambling nature, but this the best I can do on almost 2 days without sleep

If your main point is that the Germans lost the war because they had restricted mobility, from a command decision point of view, I think you are completely, and utterly, incorrect to draw this conclusion. Sure, the operational restrictions from senior levels (and do not blame Hitler alone for this) but there were VERY real factors at play that greatly contributed to Germany's downfall.

For example, the Germans had absolutely NO strategic vision beyond taking out France. This is mostly the fault of Hitler. So it is any surprise that German forces and resources, significant and huge numbers, were scattered from Norway to Tobruk? Not in my opinion. No overall strategic planning meant this was almost inevitable.

While the bulk was fighting on the Eastern Front, for sure, the quantity of effort spent on guarding the Atlantic Wall and messing around in North Africa then Italy was enoromous. And it only got worse when they started taking losses. Remember, the bulk of the German armored forces in the summer of 1944 were NOT in the East, but in the West. And there they were destroyed. The cream of the crop, wasted away to practically nothing. Meanwhile, large forces (several hundred thousand strong) sat idle in Norway, and many more hundreds of thousands were in Italy.

It is also true that from 1941 on the German Army, as a whole, had an ever increasingly shrinking percentage of its forces motorized. This in spite of its doctrin calling for the kind of motorization the every day Allied infantry division enjoyed from 44 through 45. So I state very strongly that the kind of mobile warfare you speak of grew increasingly impossible due to shortages of practically EVERYTHING necessary for large scale maneuver warfare. Military decisions from the top weren't the only thing responsible for static warfare.

I have no idea what sources you have that show the Germans only having a 1:3 or less production rate versus the Allies. One quick source I checked showed that all Axis nations, including Japan, had 52,345 tanks and SPs. The Allies on the other hand had 227,235 EXCLUDING France. That is more along the lines of 4:1, probably 5:1 with France tossed in. And for artillery the Allies, again without France, had a nearly 6:1 production advantage. Trucks almost a 6:1 advantage with Japan and Italy producing almost 1/2 of that total. Aircraft production was 2:1 overall, although this is not totally accurate since in some categories the Germans were totally outclassed (long range fighters in particular heavy bombers). During the Battle of Britain Britain alone was outpacing German production by nearly 2:1, and Germany was supposed to be at its height of dominance at this point and Britain on the brink of disaster. And the Germans lost (no strategic plan again). The figures go on and on when one looks at things like precious metals, fuel, and other aspects necessary to feed a war machine.

And then there is historical realities that Germany SUPPOSEDLY learned from WWI and earlier -> Germany was incapable of fighting a protracted 2 front war. Well... Hitler got Germany in a 3 front war, or 4 fronts if you include the air. 5 if you include the Scandinavian front that was never challenged. In one sense, this encapsulates what what doomed Germany. It had neither the resources or the will to fight such a war, and therefore it was bound to lose unless some sort of unlikely event (USA or Soviet Union bowing out of the war) were to happen. It didn't, and therefore Germany lost.

One direct response here:

It is suggested that there was some residual problem from the leftovers of the German general staff system, a truly bizarre comment considering the fact that most consider is a great asset to them,

Not so black and white. If you are curious as to why I hold this opinion, you can check out "History of teh German General Staff" by one of Germany's most respected historians, Walter Goerlitz. Just as Nazi "efficeincy" was a total and utter myth, so to was the power and strength of the German General Staff. It was fantastic at operational level warfare. It was also very good at strategic level warfare, but only to a limited degree. Did you know that the OKW had NO plan in place in the event that Barbarossa was won OR lost? This is totally irresponsible, but it is the truth.

So all the Germans did for 4 years in Soviet Russia was to improvise. There was no clear case for victory, yet there was no exit clause either. The German General Staff did not think it was necessary. The big mistake that everybody knows about is the lack of winter clothing for 1941. This was not Hitler's fault. Not everything can be blamed on Hitler. The German High Command dropped the ball, and it probably lost them the war in the worst way possible (occupation).

Also... the evidence is all over the place that the Germans had grossly misplanned for the operations against the Soviet Union, not to mention the rest of the world. For example, the Germans used something like four times as much oil in the summer of '41 than was planned. And by September 1941 nearly 3/4 of the tank strength was out of service due to fuel and parts shortages. Doctrine can not be practiced if someone didn't think ahead enough to have enough spare parts available for long drives without roads or the chance of a quick victory. Engines don't run without lubrication, tracks don't work if there is no functioning drivetrain.

Most of the top EF critical thinkers feel that Germany lost the war, militarily, in the summer of 1941. Glantz being one of the biggest, and most respected of the lot. I for one agree totally. The German war machine showed all of its weaknesses from the start of the campaign until the winter disaster. It took the Allies some time to exploit them, but they were all there to see:

1. Underestimation of enemy capabilities in every way, from the solider to the industrial capcity. If you are starting out behind the eight ball, you had BETTER plan well. If you screw up your esitmates, you can't plan. Then the obvious follows, all things being equal.

2. Undestimation of the size of the task as a whole. The great scale of the country, the ground and weather conditions, etc. were all grossly misunderstood and/or shrugged off. See above point.

2. Overextension of then current German industrial capacity. It is a fact, plain and simple, that German industrial capacity was NOT sufficeint to meet the demands placed on it since the war started (1939), yet it was not kicked into high gear until 1943.

3. No sense of a strategic plan. Just going from one battle to the next with an ever changing vision of what would bring about victory is asking for defeat. And no vision about when to call it quits ensures it if the balance starts to swing unfavorably.

4. Weakness of "Blitzkrieg" doctrin when under prolonged stress. It was not called "lightning warfare" (by the British as it turns out) for nothing. All prior battles had been decided in days or weeks and concluded in a few months. In Soviet Russia the confict dragged on for YEARS with absolutely no indication of victory and no timely change in strategic thinking. Bad idea.

5. Weakness of numbers. The Germans had to scrape together everything they had or could loot in order to attack the Soviet Union. And many units were still understrengthed from the start. They also managed to get quite a large number of allied troops to help out. And it wasn't enough. The front was always thin and it only got worse as the war went on.

6. No unity of command or purpose. The infighting and competition between various levels of German command, not to mention governement in general, was astonishing. Mark Clark gets rightly blamed for the disaster of Rome, but Guderian certainly let his ego get in the way of operations in the summer of 1941. And these things had an impact on all the others. Goering wasting almost 100,000 able bodied men so he could have his own private land army after he got his air army shot out of the sky for example.

All of these things were evident in 1941, or EARLIER, when the Germans were SUPPOSEDLY winning. Hindsight shows that they were not nearly as close to victory as thought at the time (or in popular myths that still survive). And at this point Hitler's direct interference was minimal, as it did not start until the winter crisis later that year. So this can not be used as an excuse like so many German Generals wished it could be.

Yelnia stands out as a perfect example of the troubles the Germans had. They lost more ment defending a useless salient than they did in the Polish campaign. And by some accounts, the French campaign. When was this? Late summer of 1941 when they were supposedly at the height of mobile warfare.

OK, I guess I could ramble on for a long time like this

To sum up... NO ONE FACTOR brought Germany to defeat. Many very large "forces" worked together towards its eventual distruction. The lack of innovation of doctrin, or at least the impracticallity of practicing it, certainly played a very important part. But Germany was NOT defeated by this alone. The evidence of the mistakes and miscalcuations on and off the battlefield are very well documented and studied. Together they brought Germany down.

Steve

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

"the quantity of effort spent on guarding the Atlantic Wall and messing around in North Africa then Italy was enoromous"

Not true. In 1941-2, the entire committment in N.A. was 3 divisions. The occupation forces in France were used for refitting units worn out in the east that would have refitted in Germany otherwise. The forces of occupation in Scandanavia and the Balkans were tiny, and saw little action in the case of the latter until 1944. (There was fighting, but the proxy forces did it). The only significant exception was the decision to reinforce Tunisia after abandoning Libya, which I mentioned as a mistake already, and still amounted to handful of divisions. Kesselring held Italy successfully with minimal forces. Before D-Day, the occupation forces in France did increase to a more significant figure, but #1 that is after the critical period I mentioned and #2 they still were not engaged yet and the billet was still used for rotating units.

The eastern front was manned by hundreds of divisions, not tens. The Russians fielded 300 before it was over. In the period from fall '42 to spring of '44, the war in Russia was the main event in every respect, and for Germany everything else was a sideshow. Moreover, that is where they actually lost the war, which brings me to my next point.

You evidently haven't understood even the subject I am addressing. I am not talking about hypothetical what-ifs in which Germany supposedly might have won the war. In my opinion, there aren't any, and any leadership she might have had that would have started the war would have been incapable of winning it no matter what. But that has nothing to do with the question I am addressing.

The question I am addressing is how Germany lost. How. I illustrate with an analogy.

An average 14 year old chess player from some high school team might play an international grand master at a 50-game simultaneous expedition. There is not realistic chance he will win the game, even before a move is made, and everybody knows it. But it is nevertheless possible to watch their game, and to notice here at move 20 "that was a blunder", and to follow it up with "see, he does this and this, and you have no reply anymore", and to look ahead as it actually happened, and lo, five moves later the young man's position is hopeless. One can then say "that blunder on move 20 lost the game, that is how you lost". There is no implication whatever that the young man would have won had he not made that move.

Why does one conduct such an analysis? It is how the young man learns from his defeat. Not, learns not to play against international grandmasters. Not, learns enough to defeat the next one he plays. Simply, he learns what mistake he made, why it cost him the game, why it was a mistake, and he generalizes that perhaps, thus learning about other possible positions as well.

The German defeat in WW II is of no interest to me in military history terms, except for one reason. Their actual military defeat contains useful lessons. There are no useful lessons in their leader's raving and criminal idiocy in trying to take over the world. But there certainly are useful military lessons from the conduct of the war, both by and against Germany.

And the issue of central interest on that subject, is how it happens that the Germans went from kicking Russian tail in 1941 and the summer of 1942, to having the Russians kick their tail in the subsequent 18 months. Frankly, everything else about how the war actually happened, is militarily a few foot-notes compared to that passage of arms (for ground warfare I mean - obviously the Navy learned things about carriers, yadda yadda).

I do not study military history to speculate about what ifs, and I don't give a tuppeny darn for any of the characters in the affair one way or the other. I study the history, to learn facts, truths, about military realities. If the campaign between Germany and Russia from 1942 to 1944 had been fought by different countries in 1200 BC on Mars, I'd still study it (if I knew about it, LOL). The interest is entirely internal to the military art - what are the military lessons here?

And those military lessons don't have anything to do with the overdetermined question of Germany's eventual defeat. I am not asking the 14 year old's chess rating, because I don't give a darn. I am asking what happened on move 20 and did he hang a rook. And the fact is, that the German army was not beaten militarily in the fall of 1942. And the German army was beaten militarily by the spring of 1944. And the Russians did the beating, and the question is how and why.

As for the production theory, you are ignoring in your "all allies, all axis, all the war" figures, that the war was already decided by the time the U.S. and British ground forces engaged the German army for real. The stuff they had done through the critical period was a series of sideshows, that did not draw off any appreciable portion of the German army. The Russians did not outproduce the Germans by the ratios you discuss, and the Germans faced only the Russians, practically speaking, in the critical period. Lend lease added a trivial amount to the Russian war program in that period, although it helped with trucks and railroad equipment. The tanks and guns the Russians used to defeat the German army were Russian made ones, and the Germans deployed almost all of their ground weapons against the Russians over the period when they went from not beaten to back-broken.

The odds explanation fails to explain the data for the period when Germany was actually beaten. The odds explanation is perfectly adequate to show that Germany was outmatched strategically, or that the Allies combined rating was higher than the high school kids. But that is irrelevant to the question of how he lost. The odds explanation is also sufficient to explain things like the crushing of the German position after the U.S., Britain, and Russia were all fully engaged over broad fronts, from the fall of 1944 until the end of the war. But Germany lost the war militarily, its army was beaten, before then, so the odds explanation alone cannot explain the result. Like a chess game in which the end position on the board is 3 pieces of heavy wood against nothing but a king and pawns, you can conclude that loss of material mattered, but that alone does not tell you how the material was lost.

I can put it in the form of a prediction and a falsification. If odds were the only issue that caused the actual German military defeat in the field, then one woudl expect the Russians to get the initiative only after they had a large advantage in odds. You would expect the Germans to keep winning until they faced steep odds, and then to begin losing, and as they did so for the odds to steepen, and then eventually for the German position to collapse.

But that is simply not what happened. The Russians take the initiative when the overall forces are about equal. They do not have to wait until their have 3-1 odds. The Germans ramp up their production and field their technical innovations at precisely the point where the Russians ahve started winning. The odds move in favor of the Russians because the German forces are being destroyed, not simply because the Russian forces are building up. On the odds thesis, you might expect something like the Russian summer offensive of 1943, sometime in mid 1944 after the U.S. had opened a second front. But one does not see this.

I revert to my chess analogy for a second. The 14 year old winds up with a weak pawn structure coming out of the opening. Against a strong enough player, exploiting those weakened pawns will probably be enough to defeat him. On turn 15, someone looks at the board and sees the weak pawns, and after turn 30 and the resignation he hears the youngster lost. "Oh, he lost because of his weak pawns", he might think. "Well no, actually, he lost faster than that - he blundered on move 20 and lost a rook".

What actually happened to the German army was that it was militarily defeated in the field by a force with only a slight edge in numbers (and none at the start of the period) with comparable equipment and worse experience and training. And the reason why it lost, it because it made clear mistakes in the deployment and use of its forces, and the Russian high command exploited those mistakes and broke the back of the German army. That actually happened, and all the long-odds stories (or excuses) only come later.

And what were these mistakes? I have repeated them several times and in each reply you have avoided addressing them, as to their actual content, and instead have simply re-characterized them in broad terms (like "lack of mobility", which I presume is a euphemism for the idiotic "hold at all cost" orders). But the mistakes were much more particular than that. Yes, such rigidity was part of the problem.

But the part you have avoided addressing is the part that is truly interesting from the standpoint of modern combined arms doctrine. The Germans decided to try to take the city of Stalingrad, and a year later the Germans decided to assault the built-up Russian positions in the Kursk salient. They committed enourmous resources to both endeavors, and both failed with heavy casualties. And both were immediately followed by mobile, massed-armor counterattacks on weak infantry formations to each flank of the massed "seige" attack.

Why is this especially interesting? Because in the prior 3 years, the Germans had conquered Europe by doing precisely the opposite. Did they attack Poland from the western side only, in a massed attack at one prominent city or bulge? No. Did they attack France by seiging the Maginot line with a giant battering-ram of heavily armored assault guns? No. Did they attack Yugoslavia by street-fighting for every block of Belgrade? No. Did they achieve their successes in Russia in 1941 or the summer of 1942 by such methods, perhaps? No. How about Africa, did they assault Tobruk that way and take it and make their progress that way? No.

The Germans invented modern mobile combined arms warfare, and for the first 3 years of the war they practiced their new doctrine with stunning success against enemy after enemy, cumultatively racking up one of the largest strings of lopsided military victories on human record. And then the reverse happened, and they lost operation after operation. And at the precise turning point of these two series of events, one finds them abandoning the methods by which they had succeeded before, and adopting others that never worked once.

This is much more than some coincidence. Undoubtedly, the rationality of German decision making declined precipitously as soon as it became likely, and later obvious, that Germany was going to lose the war. The high command began gambling, there is no question that was involved. There is a portion of this which is simple delusion, hope defeating analysis. But the gambles were not even smart gambles, they were recognizably dumb ones. The geniuses who had planned the successes, whatever their own limitations, were off the case. They were no longer in charge. The truths they were peddling were not wanted (like, in the summer of 1943, a mobile defense was sound and a seige attack at Kursk was not).

And this is not just a matter of "lack of mobility" aka stupid hold-at-all-cost orders. The errors made were precisely about the operational employment of armor. The German employment of armor recognizably changed between the fall of 1942 and the spring of 1944, and it changed dramatically for the worse. Once does not even have to judge by the results. One can go look at the actual decisions, and if one knows anything about the modern combined arms doctrines the Germans invented, it is obvious that decision after decision was a mistake.

And exactly the mistakes to be expected from someone who had completely misunderstood the reasons for the military revolution, since WW I. They were the mistakes of a technicist - if I just put enough Panthers opposite their armor I will destroy it, e.g. Of someone thinking that the tanks themselves confered combat power of their own essence (therefore, put them right in the line and fight them as long as possible, as though "armor units" just have higher "combat factors"). Of someone who thought morale the essential factor in combat (no retreating, prestige objectives, elite formations given preferential equipment). Needless to say, also of someone who thought evil or ruthlessness was itself a secret source of power (the commissar order, 100 other things).

These are common enough errors that they are immediately recognizably. They will crop up automatically in some portion of any batch of military men, unless they are explicitly countered and trained out of them by truer notions, in the modern combined arms mobile era that is. They are also recognizably lessons from a previous war.

I really do not see the reason for your strong resistence to these notions. They are quite obvious to me, and I think they are convincing to anyone who hears them articulated plainly and knows the history in detail, especially the history of the east-front fighting in the critical period. Anyone who has faced the operational decisions about how to deploy German divisions or corps during the critical period, for example, knows exactly what I am talking about.

"Gee, he's got a ton of armor up here around Orel, and another batch of it down here south of Kharkov. I know! I'll put all my mobile divisions smack in between them, right on the front line, and then deplete them with frontal attacks on that dug-in infantry army! That's just the ticket!" And for my next magical trick, I will stick by neck in a noose and hang by it until dead.

[Guest machineman]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

The Russians did not outproduce the Germans by the ratios you discuss, and the Germans faced only the Russians, practically speaking, in the critical period. Lend lease added a trivial amount to the Russian war program in that period, although it helped with trucks and railroad equipment. The tanks and guns the Russians used to defeat the German army were Russian made ones.

I am curious on this point. I had always heard that the main success of Lend Lease (beside the direct supply of thousands of tanks and fighter planes, raw materials, telephone wire, etc) was providing the Red Army with virtually all it's truck transport, thus enabling Soviet industry to concentrate on tank production. My Janes book gives T-34 production alone as around 40,000. Panther is something like 6-8000? Likewise IS-2 is at 2250, compared to KT at 489. Now I realize that not all of this was made during that certain time period, but would not the proportions have been the same?

[PzKpfw 1]

Concerning Lend Lease w/o LL their is a very real argument that has been made that the Soviet war effort would have ground to a halt in 1943 due to lack of fuel.

The Soviets though producing vast quantaties of tanks etc, could not have done so w/o the supply of LL steel, materials & machine tools etc, that were critical especialy in 1942. Then their is the question of fuel Ie, the US suplied 95% of Russias Aviation fuel requirements during WW2 w/o that AV fuel the Soviet AF would have been in dire straits.

LL suplied well over 50% of the rail transport that allowed the Soviets to transport troops & material as well as the food & material required to feed the Soviet armies. LL suplied virtualy most of the Soviet vehichle park that transported supplies & troops etc.

The importance of LL to the Soviet war effort has only been aknowlged over the last 10 years & its staggering when one sees the ammounts that were delivered & their impact on the fighting. Sokolov wrote an very interesting article on the effects of LL in an issue of the JOSMS a few years ago, I had had no idea of just how important LL realy was till I read that article.

That said LL did not provide troops to fight but what it did provide was substance to carry on the fight in all aspects of the war effort until the Allies could open a second front.

Regards, John Waters

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"We've got the finest tanks in the world. We just love to see the

German Royal Tiger come up on the field".

Lt.Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. February 1945.

[jhtrickey]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

Numbers, numbers, that is the all purpose explanation. The Germans were brilliant and had all the best equipment, but they were defeated by 5 and 6 tanks to one because the Russians just made 5 or 6 tanks to every 1 German one. Nope, the production ratio is probably more like 3:2 in this period and not above the 2:1 total war average, and the starting fleets are about equal size.

Just so I follow you on this one point. The manufacturing complexity of making a T-34 was no greater than that of Panther? Given that they are equal in complexity of manufacter, than they could be turned out in roughly equal numbers?

I do agree with many of the points you make and most are "givens" for those of us who follow and study the military histories. And yes, facts are facts and how one uses those does make their arguement and opinion. I think all of us can do that and come up with varying opinions that still get us to the same final result. Given the scope of the entire conflict (IMHO), there are hundreds, if not thousands of factors that led to German being beaten on the Russian front. Many interlinked, some independant.

And like you said, one man's opinion.

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[jhtrickey]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

Stalingrad and Kursk are the names given to the two battles. Sometimes they refer only to the storming operations and their failure. Sometimes the terms are meant to include the subsequent Russian counterattacks and the catastrophic consequences thereof to the Germans.

Where in German armor doctrine as practiced from 1939 to 1942 does one find it the rule and desireable use of armor, to use it as a frontal battering ram against an entrenched enemy fortress position backed by strong reserves? Where in German mobile warfare practice among the masters of mobile warfare, on defense as well as attack (like Rommel and Manstein, just to name two), do you find a reason or an excuse for these plans and these employments of the available armor?

Here we differ. I think that the Germans from a planning point were following their own doctrine. If the plans laid out for the operations in the Kursk area had been executed under the orginal guidelines and timetables instead of the long delays and compromises, it would have played out differently. However, the delays gave the Russians in the Front area, time to plan, and prepare and tie in a massive summer offensive into their counterattack plans. Clearly, knowning where and when your enemy is going to attack gives you the advantage of moving men, materials, and supply production to a given sector to exploit and advantage in intelligence gathering. Germans lost operational security and the delays sealed their fate.

[Guest machineman]

Originally posted by PzKpfw 1:

The importance of LL to the Soviet war effort has only been aknowlged over the last 10 years & its staggering when one sees the ammounts that were delivered & their impact on the fighting.

Another way to look at it would be how would the Germans have fared if they would have had a "big brother" like that, supplying them with all the trucks, fuel, alloys, rubber, etc that they were desperately short of themselves? The Germans may have found themselves a lot more mobile. And what if this 'big brother' had also invaded eastern Siberia and was using its airforce to pound Soviet factories to mush with the additional effect of diverting a large proportion of Soviet artillery and fighter planes from the battlefield to the defense from these same heavy bombers?