CM:Normandy - Bocage?

[bitchen frizzy]

There's no mystery to it, really. The planners just flat underestimated bocage. They saw it in the aerial photos, and it looked like hedges, so it didn't register as being anything more significant than rows of bushes.

There was no previous experience in that terrain to draw upon, or to consider using hindsight.

They did consider the ground - they meticulously plotted the flooded areas, the marshes, each and every bridge, individual hills, etc., etc. They just didn't realize that the bocage was a significant terrain factor.

[JonS]

There was no previous experience in that terrain to draw upon, or to consider using hindsight.

The Brits had fought a very brief campaign there in 1940, but the main thing they took away from that experience was that it was excellent country for infiltration tactics - that is, they assumed it'd be easier to attack in the bocage than to defend. One of the things they overlooked, and which led to that deduction, was the rather different force densities between 1940 and 1944.

You're right about the aerial photos though - the maps made for 1944 often indicated hedgelines where there was actually roads and tracks (because in teh photos the hedges on either side reached up and over, to show solid foliage from above). The Germans were therefore able to move reasonably unhindered along those tracks, while the Americans assumed certain areas were impassible (See: "Fighting in Normandy", by Isby, esp some of the sections by the chap from the FJ Div north of St Lo).

Jon

[GSX]

This map shows how the expectation was to capture Caen on D day and get past Avranches by D+20. No wonder In reality it took two months for Avranches, and Commonwealth still hadn't gotten further than Caen.

One of the interesting things about that bigger map is that the plan for D Day plus 90 wasn't that far off actuality.

[JonS]

Not far off? It was freaking perfect.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that -Montgomery's post-hoc reasoning aside - that particular map was created as a guide for the logistic services.Obviously at some level it reflected how Montgomery expected the campaign to go, but he was resistant to comitting himself to paper in this way, and this map was only put together - quickly - because the Loggies needed something they could use to plan their requirements against.

For example, looking at the map, up to D+20 not too much fuel and transport capacity will be required, but after that there's going to be explosive growth in the need for fuel and transport companies, and probably a corresponding reduction in the requirement for ammunition. Also, from about D+80 there is going to be a large and grwoing need for heavy, long-span bridging materials.

[Sgt Joch]

Indeed, although the bocage chapter is based on a thesis(?) Doubler did at the US CGSC, and is available in full and online from there. In fact, I think the thesis is - perhaps not surprisingly - more in depth than the equivalent chapter from Closing.

this one, I presume:

http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/doubler/doubler.asp

German Hedgerow defence

The 29th Infantry Division's hedgerow tactics

[sand digger]

"It was perfect defensive terrain, the americans had to develop new tactics and specialized equipment to fight effectively in Bocage."

What I have never understood is how this situation came about. Did nobody look at a map or some ariel photo's before the invasion? The bocage had been there for hundreds of years, so surely it should not have come as a surprise.

Seems like the French were never consulted either. Its hard to believe that there were no free French, or the Resistance for that matter, who were not familiar with bocage.

[JonS]

Seems like the French were never consulted either. Its hard to believe that there were no free French, or the Resistance for that matter, who were not familiar with bocage.

The Resistance? WTF? What possible relevance does a couple of beret-wearers posing for photos with their grenades and Sten guns have to industrial-scale conventional operations? You might as well ask Al Qaeda to write the plan for the invaison of Iran.

I wonder why no one thought to ask the Russians, after all they were there in 1814, so I'm sure they must have had some light to shed on the subject

Sgt Joch:

Yes.

[Michael Emrys]

There was no previous experience in that terrain to draw upon...

That's not exactly true. In addition to what Jon mentioned about the Brits fighting there in 1940, there were also some areas on the English side of the Channel that had hedgerows of a remarkably similar character. It's just that no one took note of the fact at the time. Cest la guerre.

Michael

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Seems like the French were never consulted either. Its hard to believe that there were no free French, or the Resistance for that matter, who were not familiar with bocage.

Another possibility to consider was that Allied intelligence didn't want to risk the chance that a member of the Resistance be captured by the Gestapo and interrogated with specific drilling down on why his/her Allied handlers wanted to specifically know about fighting in bocage country.

Just a thought.

Regards

KR

[Roach]

That's not exactly true. In addition to what Jon mentioned about the Brits fighting there in 1940, there were also some areas on the English side of the Channel that had hedgerows of a remarkably similar character. It's just that no one took note of the fact at the time. Cest la guerre.

Michael

Absolutely. In the area around Slapton in Devon which was specifically cordoned off and emptied of the populace for US training purposes, the terrain is virtually identical. Consequently it always amazed me that the Normandy bocage came as such a shock to the allies later on when they'd been training in the same 'stuff' for months.

[Sergei]

I wonder why no one thought to ask the Russians, after all they were there in 1814, so I'm sure they must have had some light to shed on the subject

Replace Montgomery with Zhukov and Bradley with Konev, and either of them would have been in Paris by end of July.

[LuckyDog]

Replace Montgomery with Zhukov and Bradley with Konev, and either of them would have been in Paris by end of July.

But with the losses they would have taken, too few infantry left to continue! As it was the British army was running short of manpower, hence the large armour battles to break out near Caen. I think the American armies had shortages, but nothing like the British. The French had an advantage and were able to recruit locally

[dieseltaylor]

Replace Montgomery with Zhukov and Bradley with Konev, and either of them would have been in Paris by end of July.

Being captured doesn't count.

[bitchen frizzy]

Absolutely. In the area around Slapton in Devon which was specifically cordoned off and emptied of the populace for US training purposes, the terrain is virtually identical. Consequently it always amazed me that the Normandy bocage came as such a shock to the allies later on when they'd been training in the same 'stuff' for months.

AFAIK, the Slapton area was used for beach landing exercises, not training for inland fighting. If you have further information, I'd be interested.

Also, after the Operation Tiger ratf*ck, the participants weren't even allowed to discuss it, much less share their experiences.

The 1940 experience was short duration and mostly light infantry. Not much to go on in developing combined arms assault tactics. Also, for the information to be utilized it would have to occur to someone to collect it from the soldiers who were there, which would first require someone to wonder if there was something unique about bocage. Again, the mindset was that bocage was just rows of bushes.

Same goes with the French Resistance. It didn't matter if they knew enough about bocage to fill volumes on the subject, if no one thought to ask them about it because no one had apparent reason to.

I remain unsuprised that the Allies lacked information on bocage. A limited amount of incidental contact with the stuff does not automatically lead to widespread dissemination of information complete with developed tactics. Military intelligence and training is not a borg collective with instant sharing of the smallest bits of information.

[dieseltaylor]

To be honest the Germans fighting so hard in Normandy may have surprised the Allied High Command as the Germans were fighting at the longest extent of supply and the Allies at the shortest.

It is interesting to conjecture whether the German armour could have delivered a devastating example of proper armoured warfare if they had allowed a rapid expansion of the front - sans Cherbourg. Still Hitler would not countenance it and the German Home Front may have taken the news badly. Replacement dictator anyone?

As for the bocage. You will see that Doubler refers to small fields of 400 * 200 yards which is 80,000 sqare yards or slightly over 16 acres or 6 Hectares. This is not a small field now compared to the UK average and certainly was not in 1944 before mechanisation took hold.

http://www.gwynedd.gov.uk/upload/public/attachments/558/Arable_Field_Margins.pdf

takes a figure of 3 hectares as the average arable field in 2004. This excludes orchards and small commercial woodland.

So one might think Doubler with the opportunity to put matters straight has, apart from saying the fields are irregular, does nothing but provide a single field size figure which is wrong.

Curiously the matter of using the "Funnies" which the British had invented and offered to the US is not covered. One might think AVRE and Crocodiles would have been very effective in firing from one small field into another - or perhaps there are drawbacks I have not considered.

One nice thing about Doubler is that the success is attributed to better combined arms though I am sure that also the German Army basically bled to death in Normandy and then could hold the line no longer.

[dieseltaylor]

Most English officers I would have thought would have been familiar with the scenic lanes of Devon [narrow high sided] and its tiny fields so it is either everyone assumed it was being covered elsewhere, a monumental cock-up, or training for that specific terrain would be seen as defeatist.

However we are all using the benefit of hindsight and given armoured warfare and bocage had not met before it may have been collective group think that the Germaans would retreat and if not would be massively overwhelmed.

[Roach]

AFAIK, the Slapton area was used for beach landing exercises, not training for inland fighting. If you have further information, I'd be interested.

Ah, a good point, and I'm afraid that I don't have any specifics re training in the area. However, I'm aware (with no handy proof to back it up!) that the training didn't just involve getting onto the beach and leaving it at that; training exercises were conducted inland (again, a proof-free claim!) and to that end a significant area around the beach area was evacuated to enable that. The only map of the evacuated area that I can find after a very quick search is here:

http://www.submerged.co.uk/slapton%20six%20big.jpg

It's a significantly sized area so, again, it's hard to imagine why, when they encountered the same sort of terrain in Normandy it came as such a surprise. But, having said that, I suppose that in an exercise the 'enemy' wouldn't be fighting quite so hard in their defensive role and therefore it would be a lot easier for an attacker to climb over hedgerows and find a gate in a field for vehicles etc. Therefore I guess it's less likely that there would necessarily be a perceived problem.

As DieselTaylor has correctly stated, with the benefit of hindsight on our side, it's much easier to pick holes. And without any proof to back up anything I'm saying, I'd best be quiet!

[Sgt Joch]

Here is a quote from the Doubler article. From what I can see, all the U.S. leaders were more or less aware of Bocage, but since they were all focused just on D-Day itself, no one realized the implications until they were actually in it:

The formidable barriers presented by the hedgerows and the military characteristics of the Bocage seem to have taken First Army by complete surprise. Despite Allied planners' awareness of the nature of the Bocage, American commanders had done little to prepare their units for fighting among the hedgerows. Preoccupied with the myriad problems of the D-Day landings, American leaders had failed to see the battlefield in depth and had paid little attention to the potential problems of hedgerow combat. As early as 8 June, General Bradley called the Bocage the "damndest country I've seen." General Collins of VII Corps was equally surprised by the nature of the hedgerow terrain and told General Bradley on 9 June that the Bocage was as bad as anything he had encountered on Guadalcanal. Brigadier General James M. Gavin, the assistant division commander of the 82d Airborne, best summarized the surprise of the senior American leadership: "Although there had been some talk in the U.K. before D-Day about the hedgerows, none of us had really appreciated how difficult they would turn out to be."2

The junior leadership within First Army shared their seniors' surprise. In a survey conducted after the Normandy battles, not 1 out of 100 officers questioned stated that they had prior knowl edge of the nature of the hedgerows. A summary of these interviews stated that the officers as a whole were "greatly surprised" by the Bocage. Captain Charles D. Folsom, a company commander in the 329th Infantry of VII Corps' 83d Infantry Division, admitted that the hedgerows presented a problem his unit "had never before encountered" and that preinvasion training had "not taken the hedgerows into consideration."3

[dieseltaylor]

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps

Put in Gara Bridge Devon UK. Travel eastwards and you will see the old field pattern quite clearly and a host of irregular fields and most of them looking to be in the 100ft+ region.This smay work

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&t=h&ie=UTF8&ll=50.364682,-3.763976&spn=0.012511,0.027595&z=15&lci=com.panoramio.all

[Sgt Joch]

...and this quote is for Sergei...

Interrogation of German prisoners during the hedgerow battles revealed that even the Germans detected a lack of aggressive drive among the American infantry units. Prisoners stated that the American infantry moved too cautiously and consequently failed to take weakly held positions. They were surprised that artillery barrages were not followed up by determined infantry assaults. An experienced corporal in the German 275th Infantry Division summed up German attitudes: "Americans use infantry cautiously. If they used it the way Russians do, they would be in Paris now."11

[dieseltaylor]

What to do after the invasion? Mmm.

From Wiki -

By early 1944, Hobart could demonstrate to Eisenhower and Montgomery a brigade each of swimming DD tanks, Crab mine clearers, and AVRE (Engineer) tanks along with a regiment of Crocodile flamethrowing tanks.

Montgomery considered that the US forces should use them, and offered them a half-share of all the vehicles available, but take-up was minimal. Eisenhower was in favour of the amphibious tanks but left the decision on the others to General Bradley who delegated it to his staff officers. None of the other designs were used, because it was thought that they required specialised training and an additional support organisation.[1]

[edit] Designs

The majority of the designs were modified forms of the Churchill tank or the Sherman tank. Both were available in large numbers. The Churchill had good (though slow) cross-country performance, heavy armour, and a roomy interior. The Sherman's mechanical reliability was valued.

Among the many specialist vehicles and their attachments were:

• Crocodile - A Churchill tank modified by the fitting of a flame-thrower in place of the hull machine gun. An armoured trailer, towed behind the tank, carried 400 Imperial gallons (1,800 litres) of fuel. The flamethrower had a range of over 120 yards (110 m). It excelled at clearing bunkers and it was a strong psychological weapon (see Flame tank).
  
• AVRE - Armoured Vehicle, Royal Engineers was a Churchill tank adapted to attack German defensive fortifications. The crew included two Royal Engineers who could easily leave and enter the tank through its side hatches. The AVRE had the main gun replaced by a Petard Spigot Mortar. This fired a forty pound (18 kg) HE-filled projectile (nicknamed the Flying Dustbin) 150 yards (137 m). The "Dustbin" could destroy concrete obstacles such as roadblocks and bunkers. This weapon was unusual in that it had to be reloaded externally - by opening a hatch and sliding a round into the mortar tube from the hull. AVREs were also used to carry and operate equipment such as:
  • Bobbin - A reel of 10-foot (3.0 m) wide canvas cloth reinforced with steel poles carried in front of the tank and unrolled onto the ground to form a "path", so that following vehicles (and itself) would not sink into the soft ground of the beaches during the amphibious landing.
    
  • Fascine - A bundle of wooden poles or rough brushwood lashed together with wires carried in front of the tank that could be released to fill a ditch or form a step. Metal pipes in the center of the fascine allowed water to flow through.
    
  • Small Box Girder was an assault bridge that was carried in front of the tank and could be dropped to span a 30-foot (9.1 m) gap in 30 seconds.
    
  • Bullshorn Plough. A mine plough intended to excavate the ground in front of the tank, to expose and make harmless any land mines.
    
  • Double Onion two large demolition charges on a metal frame that could be placed against a concrete wall and then detonated from a safe distance. It was the successor to the single charge device Carrot.

Armoured bulldozer.

• ARK - Armoured Ramp Carrier was a Churchill tank without a turret that had extendable ramps at each end; other vehicles could drive up ramps and over the vehicle to scale obstacles.
  
• Crab - A modified Sherman tank equipped with a mine flail, a rotating cylinder of weighted chains that exploded mines in the path of the tank.
  
• DD tank - from "Duplex Drive", an amphibious Sherman or Valentine tank able to swim ashore after being launched from a landing craft several miles from the beach. They were intended to give support to the first waves of infantry that attacked the beaches. The Valentine version was used only for training.
  
• BARV - Beach Armoured Recovery Vehicle. A Sherman M4A2 tank which had been waterproofed and had the turret replaced by a tall armoured superstructure. Able to operate in 9 foot (2.7 m) deep water, the BARV was intended to remove vehicles that had become broken-down or swamped in the surf and were blocking access to the beaches. They were also used to re-float small landing craft that had become stuck on the beach. Strictly speaking, Sherman BARV's were not 'Funnies' as they were developed and operated by the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, not the 79th Armoured Division.
  
• LVT "Buffalo" - British version of the American LVT4: an armoured amphibious landing vehicle.
  
• Armoured Bulldozer - A conventional Caterpillar D8 bulldozer fitted with armour to protect the driver and the engine. Their job was to clear the invasion beaches of obstacles and to make roads accessible by clearing rubble and filling in bomb craters. Conversions were carried out by a Caterpillar importer Jack Olding & Company Ltd of Hatfield.

[Sergei]

...and this quote is for Sergei...

FWIW Roman Jarymowycz in his Tank Tactics from Normandy to Lorraine devotes a whole chapter to the topic of Stavka in Normandy and comparison of western, German and Soviet armoured breakthrough doctrines and their development (which are also discussed throughout the book).

[Michael Emrys]

Military intelligence and training is not a borg collective with instant sharing of the smallest bits of information.

Yes, this is all too true, and one of those facts that wargamers overlook, along with the fact that in the real world ammunition and fuel do not magically appear at the front in unlimited quantities as long as a line free of enemy zones of control back to the mother country exists.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

To be honest the Germans fighting so hard in Normandy may have surprised the Allied High Command as the Germans were fighting at the longest extent of supply and the Allies at the shortest.

I have also begun to wonder if SHAEF didn't also over-estimate the effects of the aerial interdiction campaign. Certainly it greatly hindered the ability of the Germans to strike a decisive counter attack and was one of the factors that made an Allied victory possible. But despite it, the Germans were able to move formations and supplies to the front and mount a very respectable defense for almost two months.

Michael

[Sgt Joch]

What to do after the invasion? Mmm.

There was a large amount of snobbishness and conservatism on the part of U.S. Army officers in Europe. Some officers freshly transferred in from the Pacific in early 44, wanted LVTs to be used for the landings rather than the LCVPs which were in fact used:

LVTs landing at Tinian, July 44.

LCVP

The LVTs, which are tracked and can go up on the beach, would certainly have reduced casualties on Omaha, but the feeling among U.S. officers at SHAEF seems to have been that there was nothing useful to be learned from the Pacific....or from the British.

The Canadians used the Crocodile and the AVRE throughout the Normandy campaign and found them very useful to clear out german strongpoints.