JasonC on the dynamics of Hedgerow Hell

[LongLeftFlank]

I know JasonC has made not a few enemies on these board with his prickliness and disdain for quoting sources, but the guy is unquestionably brilliant and a great (if voluminous) writer. I have collected 150 single-spaced clippings of some of his best posts.

Attached for the interest of those who weren't here or don't recall, are some especially magisterial observations (c2005) on the essential dynamics of the July fight for the hedgerows, pre-breakout. Brutal stuff!

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=598821&postcount=68

The pre-breakout Normandy campaign is another textbook example of attrition warfare. Half a dozen German infantry divisions assigned to the area were devoured by two US corps in nasty attrition fighting, within 2 weeks.

In June the US is just going after Cherbourg. July they turn south.... Between July 11 and July 25, they chew through the whole German defense. They lose 300 men per division per day doing it, and they fire off a million and a half rounds of heavy arty (plus mortars, tanks, etc). But the Germans are the ones that run out of infantrymen. When the front is so thin the battalions are the size of platoons, several US divisions attacking at once still take two days to pick their way across the carpet bombed moonscape. But there is nothing adequate left to stop them....

It happens by battalion after battalion on day after day following this drill: One company in reserve. One company probes. One company support by fire from the start line. Reserve relieves probe company and defends anything taken, if anything is taken. Nibble. Nibble.

No serious threat in that at all, except it takes place under the barrage. 6 US IDs on on-line, with 2 corps artillery groups. That is roughly 300 105s and 200 155s firing every day, on *observed* targets, on *manned, forward* defenses.

The Germans go into crisis management mode within days of the start of the US July offensive. They send division after division into the front - some from the Brit sector, most off the march from Brittany etc as they arrive. They arrive and get thrown in and a few days later cadres are left. Lehr has 10 infantry battalions subordinate by then, and still can't man a line they are all so weak. Divisions report trench strengths of 700 men.... They had to fight off probe after probe, and every time they did so they got another helping of directed arty.

The Germans have a defensive doctrine of defense in depth, dug in MGs and registered arty, and instant counterattack. They are tigers at it. It is meant to defeat immediate breakthrough, to screen the front with modest forces (not thick arty targets) when things are quiet, and to intimidate the heck out of attackers. You are supposed to stick your fingers in there once or twice, get burned, get intimidated, and back off. The Germans have to pay a bit for each of those intimidations. But they pay, and if you back off then they stop paying any more.

The German defenses in Normandy did not need to defend every field, and in practice did not. You put a strong point in this field, and mines in that one, register arty on a third. You make a checkerboard of such positions several kilometers deep, and sortie to counterattack as isolated bits of the attacking infantry get into the defense. As a result, artillery shot into the whole area will hit empty fields a lot of the time.

In more open terrain, the same defense scheme would be readily penetrated. The enemy would rapidly detect the gaps. In the hedgerows, your dispositions are a complete mystery, everything beyond 200m is a complete guess. The defense gets away with an uneven concentration across its front.

When the GIs would climb through a hedgerow into a field, they would come under fire from German MGs hidden in the opposite hedgerow and hit the ground. Once the MGs had fixed them, mortar rounds would begin dropping on them. The longer they stayed down, the more casualties they took. Even though standing up made them more vulnerable to both mortars and MGs, it was found to be better to either withdraw back to cover or advance and capture the enemy position. The worst option of all was simply to lie there and die.

Well the US in Normandy just refused to be intimidated by it....When the line is thinned, held by OPs, company sized probes drive in the OPs. They take ground, sometimes hurt the OPs as well. That triggers doctrinal instant [German] counterattacks. Which may well succeed - like as not. But even when they do, they put the counterattackers on a known bit of ground out of their deep shelters and in contact. The place they take back blows up.

An active, aggressively counterattacking defense in depth makes very high demands on the defenders, if it is actually expected to operate daily. If it only has to work 2-3 times and the other guy gets the message and backs off, that is one thing. But if the defenders are expect to operate it every day against a superior force for weeks, they take losses. If they are very good at it, maybe they inflict even higher losses on the attackers. But they *will* bleed. And rapidly. That is what happened to the Germans opposite the US sector in July. And they flat ran out.

[LongLeftFlank]

Here's some more good stuff on the lethality of the German 81mm mortar.

Mortars are the precision munitions" of WWII. Mortars are best used against point targets. They have the advantage of being able to fire on the enemy without return fire hitting them, and they are relatively accurate and lethal enough to knock out enemy support weapons.

The 81mm mortar is about as heavy as a weapon can get and still be regularly man packable (broken down), thus able to reach any terrain. It has enough range to hit MGs without reply, and the mobility to move after firing to avoid counterbattery (which was rudimentary at finding them in that era). The casualty radius of an 81mm mortar round is not much below that of a 105mm round. However, it is much less effective against men with cover, because it is getting that effect from smaller fragments.

The effect of the shell is quite high, when a target is caught moving. Infantry mortared in the open will be stuck there like cement as long as your ammo holds. You watch them, when more than two get up you drop another several rounds on them. The German combination was MG42s if you leave cover and 81mm mortars if you stay in it but try to move around at all. The typical result is simply paralysis - the targeted formation will not move. Net result is, a targeted platoon is lucky if half of it can continue the mission half an hour later. If they are under immediate attack, maybe they can fire back with 2/3 to 3/4 strength in five minutes.

[tagge]

Here's some more good stuff on the lethality of the German 81mm mortar.

Well, can't really disagree with any JasonC quotes here. It's all spot on.

And beeing a mortar squadleader during my service I have to totally agree with the 81 mm mortar stuff he wrote.

Infact our instructor (sergeant major in americano I think) said that if we can't put a cucumber (slang for moratry grenades, both 81 and 120 mm) in a bucket 3 kilometres away we were all a bunch of retards that had no business in the service at all...

[scottie]

really interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

[ChrisND]

Yeah, thanks for sharing that.

[LongLeftFlank]

Yes, reading this just makes my flesh crawl thinking about what it must have been like to be a doggie stumbling around in those hedgerows getting hammered on and not able to do anything much about it except kill the Krauts and cower in their scrapes. 2 weeks @ 300 casualties a day. Would I have lasted a day?

No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--

The odds are on the cheaper man.

[sand digger]

Don't know much about the subject matter of the first quoted post but my bet is it was the US artillery that inflicted the most casualties and caused the most disruption, their infantry etc were basically there to draw the Germans out even if that was not an official tactic. As for automatic German counterattacks, in a lot of situations it was a silly tactic, particularly against an experienced and capable opponent. Overwhelming artillery will win every day, that was shown in WW1.

[Dietrich]

I'm posting this mainly to elicit a grognardly rebuttal/correction from someone more knowledgeable (or with more authoritative sources at their fingertips) than I; but I've heard/read that on the Western Front, about 90% of the casualties were inflicted by artillery. On the Eastern Front, despite the Soviets' fondness for massing guns, the figure was about 50%.

[LongLeftFlank]

Don't know much about the subject matter of the first quoted post but my bet is it was the US artillery that inflicted the most casualties and caused the most disruption, their infantry etc were basically there to draw the Germans out even if that was not an official tactic. As for automatic German counterattacks, in a lot of situations it was a silly tactic, particularly against an experienced and capable opponent. Overwhelming artillery will win every day, that was shown in WW1.

I think that's consistent with what was in the post; the arty was/is the primary man killer on an ongoing (attritional) basis. Kind of like that WWII infantry vet who characterized his function as securing the next OP.

And if you reread Jason, he notes that the Germans couldn't let the Amis just sit in their defenses; they had to eject them via counterattack, which in turn put them at risk from arty.

[Sequoia]

So in the game, will infantry be able to slowly weasel their way though the hedgerows or do they have to blow a hole in it?