Montgomery as Battlefield Commander

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Yeah, that counts too. One other thing is that the friendly fire that Bradley and Montgomery were concerned about was not small arms fire, but artillery, which is harder to control under these circumstances. First of all, somebody who has a line to the firing batteries has to notice that the shells are falling on friendly forces, which is a neat trick in itself. Then he has to call in a cease fire/retarget order, which may also take a little time. Meanwhile, death and mayhem are falling on the good guys. And a lot of arty was being used at Falaise.

Michael

Heavy bombers were what did McNair in, but you are correct about the dangers of friendly artillery in the circumstances of the closing of the gap (whatever artillery could keep up to the Americans, anyway ); tac air too I suppose was having (reputedly) a field day over the gap. Post war analysis of kill claims doesn't bear this out fully, but the danger of having Typhoons and P47s shooting up American armour was, I would guess, fairly real?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

...tac air too I suppose was having (reputedly) a field day over the gap. Post war analysis of kill claims doesn't bear this out fully, but the danger of having Typhoons and P47s shooting up American armour was, I would guess, fairly real?

While they weren't awfully good against armor, they could put a certain amount of hurt on soft targets. Although it later turned out that they hadn't done as much damage against those as was claimed either, that wasn't known at the time and they were certainly unleashing enough ordnance to give one pause.

Michael

[Ed B.]

Ummmm, an interesting question...

I would suggest for the 'armchair' generals to read two books - Carlo D'Este's Decision at Normandy (50th anniversary edition) and Montgomery's Memoirs.

Eisenhower had this to say 'Monty is a good man to serve under; a difficult man to serve with; and an impossible man to serve over'.

He was an interesting individual and served his country, to the best of his ability...As did many others.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

The Russians and Americans met in a quiet sector though, not one in which the remnants of an entire army was trying to flee through a narrow gap!

I agree, and I think one only needs to look at the Berlin battle to see another example of that problem of friendly fire. In this case it was the co-ordination between two Fronts (1st Belorussian and 1st Ukrainian) that took a bit of working out, when the planned advance time-schedules went out of the window at Seelow.

[Determinant]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

Yeah, that counts too. One other thing is that the friendly fire that Bradley and Montgomery were concerned about was not small arms fire, but artillery, which is harder to control under these circumstances. First of all, somebody who has a line to the firing batteries has to notice that the shells are falling on friendly forces, which is a neat trick in itself. (snip)

Michael

A very good point indeed. I'm reminded of the blue-on-blue that 3 PARA suffered just after landing in the Falkland Islands. Two patrols from the same battalion got into a nasty firefight with each other. It wasn't until each patrol commander called in a fire mission from mortars that the penny dropped in the fire planning cell that what they had thought was two separate firefights was actually both sides in the same fight: each commander gave grid references for the other patrol.

If that had been an inter-unit, or worse still an inter-formation, blue-on-blue a lot of indirect fire would certainly have been fired at friendlies...

[crowbar]

I guess the topic seems to have split into 2 items now

"bagging a retreating enemy "

in all the examples quoted so far it seems to me that the psychology of the encircled troops is going to be the main factor in its success or failure

eg german troops in the ruhr - given their situation how many are going to fight hard to breakout and retreat eastwards?

eg france 1940 - most of the troops encircled by german forces could have broken out if their mindset allowed - it was more a lack of political will and understanding of new warfare methods

"montgomery"

there have been some very interesting posts in the thread - though talk of him being a political animal (along lines of say Eisenhower)seem dubious.A general trait of his seemed to be good man management at lower levels but terrible relations at times with those the same rank or above. He certainly understood motivation, & training troops (who lets face it change from being a small professional force to a national conscription army)- my reading of him would be as a bloody good divisional or corps commander having to work with the restrictions of his forces. Uk infantry or armour rarely had huge amounts of initiative or drive (barring their adventures in the desert early on)but they could hold their own when defending. By Normandy most planning of this time seems to me to be trying to find any new strategy to allow forces to advance into a position that the germans will want to take back (do night drives or mass aerial bomardment ring any bells)

Having said that Montgomery's planning of the Normandy invasion to my mind is far and away his best moment. Yes Market Garden was poor but a poor, badly planned Normandy (think Dieppe magnified by a few thousand)was well within the planning grasp of the vast majority of ALL allied commanders in 1944. When looking back from hindsight the one thing often not considered is how much worse it could have been

[CombinedArms]

On Overlord as Monty's finest moment--first of all, I agree. And, as crowbar points out, this was a critical moment in the war for the Allies. It's also worth pointing out that the British/Canadian planning/performance on their specific beaches was better than the American. The US lucked out on Utah by hitting an undefended stretch of beach by accident (plus the airborne troops took out of lot of inland arty batteries). But the implementation of the Omaha landings was a botch--poorly planned and executed air bombardment, naval bombardment that was too short to be effective, DD tanks launched too far from the beaches in rough seas, so they drowned, refusal to consider Hobart "funny" tanks that proved effective on the British beaches, etc., etc. Only the grit and valor of soldiers and commmanders on the company, platoon or squad level, plus the initiative of destroyer commanders who closed in to the beaches to support the floundering infantry, saved the day there. The US planners refused to listen to those US generals who had amphibious attack experience in the Pacific and who had tried to tell them that Omaha planning was inadequate.

By contrast, the attacks on the British beaches were much better organized--longer naval bombardment, better use of amphibious tanks, better air bombardment, more organized handling of troops ashore, etc. Though the Brits didn't reach Caen, they got much further inland than the Ami's and they even got enough armor ashore in organized units to repel a German armored counter-attack.

I would say Monty deserves some credit for this. The overall planning of Overlord was excellent, and then the part over which Monty had direct oversight (the Brit-Canadian half) went extremely well. The American landing--on the level of effective planning of elements where the US had direct responsibility--was much more problematic. And this suggests that Monty was more than just a good Division or Corps commander.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by CombinedArms:

The US lucked out on Utah by hitting an undefended stretch of beach by accident (plus the airborne troops took out of lot of inland arty batteries).

I would say that the importance of the airborne troops was not in taking out artillery batteries (I don't recall that they actually did an awful lot of this) but in engaging German reserves and preventing their movement to cover the beach exits, which otherwise they might have easily done.

Michael

[ November 13, 2003, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: Michael Emrys ]

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by CombinedArms:

DD tanks launched too far from the beaches in rough seas, so they drowned

I believe the reason they sank was because they were launched at the wrong location, and attempted to change course to land at the correct spot, therefore turning their broadsides to the tide and as a result becoming swamped.

[Nick Legh]

I've lurked on this excellent site for far too long and this very well informed thread on Monty has stirred my ancient(British Army in 1970s so I am ancient) stumps into keyboard action.

Whatever Monty's personal flaws and

[Andreas]

What happened? Ike got your tongue? :confused:

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Andreas:

What happened? Ike got your tongue? :confused:

It's his ancient stumps. They retired.

[Nick Legh]

Apologies, ancient stumps hit send key too soon!

I just wanted to offer a additional perspective on Monty. Sure he had some character defects and not all his battles were glorious victories but his outstanding achievement was,I believe, to create a warfighting model to enable Britain and the Commonwealth wartime army to take on and beat the Wehrmacht. Don't forget that until Monty turned up in 1942 to command the 8th Army, the Germans had outfought and outthought the Brits on virtually every occasion( France, Norway, Greece, Crete and North Africa). Part of the model was in effect a pact with Britain's conscripts few of whom were motivated by a burning desire to close with the enemy (memories of the carnage of WW1 saw to that). The pact was that Monty would train them properly but would not send them into battle until they had been provided with all the resources necessary for success. Monty's killer resource was artillery(augmented by airpower when available)almost the only area where we had qualitative parity, let alone superiority over the Germans. You will all know that for most of the war much of the British Army's combat equipment was measurably inferior to that of the Germans(Tigers, Panthers, 88s, MG42s and Panzershreks vs Shermans, Cromwells, 6 pounders, Bren guns and Piats etc etc). Monty knew he could not ask his soldiers to commit suicide to make up for the kit deficiencies. Another driver for Monty's model was that by D-Day the Brits were running out of men and could not afford to take risks with ever dwindling manpower resources. US Normandy forces in July 1944 totalled 23 Divisions and rose to 60 Divisions by the end of the war in Europe. By contrast Monty only had 18 Divisions at the start and the number never increased. Add to that Churchill's worry that the shrinking size of Britain's army would threaten influence in the Anglo - American alliance, it is unsurprising that Monty used tactics which placed a premium on minimising casualties - massive artillery/air bombing preparations,tightly controlled advances on narrow fronts with limited objectives etc etc

Ok so was he any good? Monty made an enormous contribution to the Allied war effort, developed the means to employ effectively the weapons they possessed to exploit the enemy's weaknesses and the soldiers under his command responded to his leadership. Perhaps you could just compare British Army casualties in both world wars - nearly 1.9million in ww1 against just 670000 in ww2: I reckon Monty did all right.

Regards

[flamingknives]

I'd have said that British Arty was as good or better than the Germans' stuff.

25pdr - good gun. Fire control - good. Radios -plentiful

Plus the British infantry was far more mobile (if that counted for much) due to the number of vehicles they possesed.

6pdr - capable infantry ATG

17pdr - very good ATG

Other than that, agreed that Monty did well to turn the army up a gear, if not around.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Nick Legh:

Don't forget that until Monty turned up in 1942 to command the 8th Army, the Germans had outfought and outthought the Brits on virtually every occasion( France, Norway, Greece, Crete and North Africa).

The Germans were beaten twice in NA before Monty arrived, in Crusader and First Alamein (although I suppose you could count the latter as a draw if you want to be tough about it). Then there was their successful defense of Tobruk the first time around. That ought ot count as some kind of victory. Credit for the first two goes to Auchinleck and the last I would give mostly to Wavell.

The rest of your post I find unexceptionable. Welcome to the Forum.

Michael