I found figures which showed that at Normandy german troops supllied from 15 to 35% of ammunition spent previous period. So...
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I managed to dig out one source on the motor transport situation for the Germans Referenced
Madej V, German War Economy - The Motorization Myth Allentown Publishing 1984
Agrees with the vehicle availability figures as at june 1941, Doesnt give a figure for total truck numbers in the west during the normandy campaign, but does say that lift capacity for the support echelons had dropped to below 1000 tons per day , and that the average supply distance by June 1944 for the forces in Normandy had increased to over 500 km, mostly because of the Allied Interdiction campaign. Somewhat offset by stockpiles that had been made prior to the campaign. However the average daily trip distance for german trucks, according to Madej was 150 Kms per day. Distance to supply heads 500 km. Thruput capacity of the supply echelon, about 1000 tons per day per div. Average load carrying capacity per truck might be about 2.5 tons tare (made low by the return trip to depot empty). To move that 1000 tons per day, you are going to need around 1500 trucks, just in the rear echelons, then there are the vehicles needed to get from the forward epoits to the front lines.....maybe 200-800 vehicles attached directly to the Div (say an average of 500 vehicles). On average, therefore, in June 1944, in the normandy front, you are looking at an average of about 2000 vehicles per Div. There are of course the Horse drawn elements, but these generally did not undertake the kind of long haul heavy lift supply efforts we are talking about. The majority of Horse drawn transport was used to get additional ammunition to the Artillery regiments and heavy weapons groups.
Saying that Normandy was a static battle is untrue, except for those Divs located within fortresses like Cherbourg. The Static did rely on stockpiled supply, but the units in the lines could not. and this was the majority of formations engaged in the battle. A better example of a static battle might be the Somme or Verdun, where front lines might change by a few yards every day. This was not the case in Normandy....front lines were constantly changing, Divisions were constantly moving about.....it cannot be viewed as a static battle from a logistics POV
At 1000 tons per day, in conditions of heavy engagement such as normandy, ammunition expenditure alone for a german infantry Div can be as high as 500 tons per hour, however according to Dunnigan on average you might expect a minimum of 1500 tons per day, plus about 500 tons per day for other consummables. I expect water and fodder for the horse drawn transport could be obtained locally (amounting to about 140 tons per day of that 500 tons ancillary items) . However its no wonder that the germans were on a more less constant restricted ammunition regimethroughout the campaign....they didnt have the supply capability to heavily engage their divisions all the time. The campaign had to have been a nightmare for them
Hi Parcifal
I will try to find out figures.
Now I can refer to "D-day deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy invasion" by Mary Barbier, p/191 - "Shortage of vehicles forced the germans to rely on french rail system which forced delays in transporting reinforcements to Normandy."
That's more or less correct. A German division relied upon about 6000 horses. Sweddish Military Historian Nikolas Zetterling has carefully analysed the Normandy action. Basically he has determined that the German CER (Combat Efficiency Ratio) was about twice that of the allied one. He also notes that the Germans couldn't even supply enough amunition to their troops and artillery; transport was by rail followed by horse or truck if available to the front. Air power did not knock out many tanks at all. It was well known that a typhoon with rockets was too inaccurate to hit a tank. Rockets have dispersion and falloff. Even if there were trucks its I would think fuel would be an issue.
Nice info Parsifal but you do realise how unfashionable you are thinking about logistics. Everyone on the internet knows that armies (particulary German ones) magically supplied themselves using Fairy Dust and magic carpets.
Do you have the figures for how much fuel the allied supply lines were using when the logistics tail stretched all the way across France. Getting a gallon of fuel and a round of ammunition to a Sherman tank on the Belgian border must have taken a frightening amount of juice.
Others have determinewd that the German CER was down to about 1.31 by this stage. But these figures (about 2, down to 1.31) are all highly misleading, because they dont incorporate all the factors that determine on field performance....like the force multiplier effect of airpower, the logistic shortages suffered by the germans, the effects of NGs, to name but a few. they are simply thoeretical comparisons of how a given force of men, devoid of any force multipliers, or external influences, could perform relative to an opposing group of men. This was not the case in normandy, it was anything but a 'level playing field" , which is why the heer, despite its inherent advantages (being entrenched, superiority in numbers, being attacked by amphibious forces, by an army lacking combat experience) to th4e 24 July, still managed to lose the battle and suffer over 100k more casualties than the Allies.
Man for man, because of these outside combat multipliers, the allies were several orders of magnitude superior than the Wehrmacht in Normandy.
I think I do, but at home (330 km away at this moment)
yes, we are witnessing classic revisionist history at the moment
SNIP
Some good images of tanks that appear to have been disabled by airpower and other causes
Axis History Forum • View topic - The battle of Mont Ormel and Das Reich's counterattack
There's something awry with the mathematics above; if 350 rockets achieve a 50% chance of a hit, it means that 175 rockets will hit the "small gun position," roughly equivalent to being hit by 175 25-pounder shells, and it would be one hek of a position that could withstand that.Allied air power was NOT effective at destroying tanks in anyway weather using bombs or rockets. In fac many kill claims were really multiple claims on the same tanks that had already been disabled by At guns, or generally simply run out of fuel.
[ For example in Joint Report No.3 titled "Rocket Firing Typhoons in Close Support of Military Operations" it was found that 350 rockets, involving 44 sorties, would have to be fired at a small gun position to obtain a fifty percent chance of a hit. If Typhoons were to be employed in a close support role they were best used to reduce enemy morale and raise the morale of allied infantry. Both doctrine and the manner of planning operations needed to be revised to take account of this.
I'm not sure how you can have .5 of a hit, and, if 349 rockets had missed, out of 350, there would have been some serious lapses in training.Edgar i thinked, i had read that, that with 350 rockets they got 50% (0,5) probability of a (one) hit not that they take 175 hit, but maybe i'm in wrong
The make-up of the rockets is irrelevant; this thread concerns gunsights, and four hits from four rockets is not 25%. For the Avranches strikes, the vehicles hit, at a rate of .5%, even allowing for 100% duplication, would have required 25,200 rockets, yet they used 2,560. Once they'd come up with the adjustable sight, to allow for drop, and used Beamont's method of having the sight reflecting straight off the windshield, accuracy improved over what had been achieved in the desert.Edgar that tank must have been hit by the 25 pound AP warhead but iirc the Typhoons in Europe fired the 60 pound HE warhead and relied on blast effect not penetration.
The make-up of the rockets is irrelevant; this thread concerns gunsights, and four hits from four rockets is not 25%. For the Avranches strikes, the vehicles hit, at a rate of .5%, even allowing for 100% duplication, would have required 25,200 rockets, yet they used 2,560. Once they'd come up with the adjustable sight, to allow for drop, and used Beamont's method of having the sight reflecting straight off the windshield, accuracy improved over what had been achieved in the desert.
Chris Lawrence, who is a member of the Dupuy Institute (and served as a US Army staff officer during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s) has analysed several models used to measure CERs, including those devised by Colonel Dupuy, Zetterlings model, that undertaken by the US military (with input from himself) , and several other models. The acepted term incidentally is Combat Effectiveness Values (CEVs), not Combat Effectiveness Ratios. CERs are a purely Zetterling invention. Nearly all other researchers, without exception, use the CEV terminology and adopt the same standards as Dupuy.
Whereas most of the models use a relative values, where values of less than 1.0 represent an axis advantage and values above 1.0 represent an Allied advantage, Zetterlings model is somewhat different in that it expresses its findings as a ratio, in favour of the germans. This mathemeatical model has been shown by others to naturally skew the results in favour of the Germans, and is not helped by Zetterlings failure to provide working details of how he arrived at his ratio. He does provide details, not to the actuarial level though.
Zetterling (also a member of the Dupuy institute) has subsequently tried to explain his position in his book in the following terms:
"In effect I can be said to have used the same methodology as shown in Numbers Predictions and War, page 99. I have used the overall casualties for the campaign and assumed an average allied theatre numerical superiority of 3-1. The choice of 1.4 rather then 1.3 to account for the advantage of defence was based on east front data. It must of course be remembered that the result I show is the "Score Effectiveness", which means that the "CEV" is the square root, which would suggest a German CEV superiority of about 1.5."
Lawrence and others have pointed out the numerous errors in the assumptions made by Zetterling, chief and most obvious amongst them being his assumptions on ratios at the front. Whilst the allies overall enjoyed combat numbers many times in their favour, the combat ratios at the front were seldom that high, moreover his defence adjustment for Normandy (which were based on east front studies) are hotly challenged by many other, more qualified scholars in this subject.
Man for man, because of these outside combat multipliers, the allies were several orders of magnitude superior than the Wehrmacht in Normandy.
Applying the TNDM to Normandy one comes up with typical CEVs of between 1.2 to 1.5, thats 1.2:1 to 1.5:1 in favour of the allies.
AFAIK that does not include FPF multipliers like airpower and NGS.
Historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event. Though the word "revisionism" is sometimes used in a negative way, constant revision of history is part of the normal scholarly process of writing history. However in most cases for WWII, it is the process of replacing well established, well researched historical facts and replacing them with historical fantasy and propaganda. that is what is happening here i am afraid.
Do you pluck your figures from thin air? The RAF had 5,252 aircraft, for the attack on Normandy, and the Americans had 5294, which I cannot make add up to 20,000.Indeed it doesn't include airpower. 20000 allied aircraft against 300 German ones.
Figures, please, and an indication of what "casualties" means, and includes (dead, wounded, etc.,) and no doubling up as you did with the Allied air power.The Germans were still outnumbered, they still inflicted casualties at a 50% greater level than they suffered, irrespective of whether they were on the offense or defense