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But does artillery need to be heavy? What about the sIGs and the 12cm mortars?
Kris
If they were rested it was because they were awaiting transport and refit. Refitting was done not to bring the unit back up to strength but because moving the heavy equipment wasn't worth it. For instance, the SS Leibstandarte was moved from Kursk to the Italian front with a stop in Austria to get their new equipment. They did not fill up their ranks but did get a chance to rest. It's however a different thing that they were drawn back for rest until they were ready to move to France.When shifting troops from the East to West and vice versa, they were rested. Even on the Russian front, when permitted, the German troops were rested.
At times units had to move a thousand kilometers along the Eastern Front. Yet they weren't given R&R though it could take weeks for them to get there. And these were cases where it wasn't the same offensive. (Kiev and Moscow wouldn't be part of the same offensive IMO)When Hitler ordered units from, say, in front of Moscow to attack Kiev they didn't rest because it was all part of the same offensive
But Malta had radar, didn't it?British fighters were flying off Malta in the same fashion and achieving success against the Luftwaffe and Italians. The Luftwaffe escort doctrine was flawed so any interception would always take place around the bomber formation, causing losses to the bombers.
So the allies weren't surprised to find that new German elite division?Operation Market Garden had no intelligence sources clashing. Dutch resistance, ULTRA and aerial photography all showed that there were SS Panzer Divisions in and around Arnhem.
I didn't really have counterfire in mind as the Germans couldn't match the British accuracy and numbers. I would use the artillery for fire support, and that's why I was thinking of the 7,5 cm leichte IG and 8 and 12 cm mortars. These were light enough to be towed by their crews.It certainly does if you plan on matching British heavy guns.
I didn't really have counterfire in mind as the Germans couldn't match the British accuracy and numbers. I would use the artillery for fire support, and that's why I was thinking of the 7,5 cm leichte IG and 8 and 12 cm mortars. These were light enough to be towed by their crews.
sIG 33 was almost 4000 lbs. I'm not sure what the 120mm mortar weighed, but I'm guessing that it was no less than 500lbs and not able to be manpacked.
The sIG 33 would be indeed a bit too much, but there was also 7,5cm infantry guns which were rather compact and light at around 400 kg, and can be easily manhandled even on tough terrain.
A possible invasion's first wave would be probably supported by 8cm and 12cm mortars (the latter has wheels, and weights 285/600kg, so it can be manpacked as well), the usual 7,5cm IGs of the infantry, and recoil-less rifles that were first used on Crete, submersible tanks and such. That should suffice for the first waves, after all, the Allies landed and broke through MUCH more fortified defenses than the British would ever manage to build with lighter gear.
400kg may not be much in terms of weight of arty, but it certainly is not light. Easily manhandled across tough terrain, like mud, sand, and the like? I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but the tactical efficiency of such action makes it impractical. Again, the delays involved in staging and deploying weapons in such an action is not going to be effective.
Manpacking 120mm mortars is also just, tactically speaking, ridiculous. we train manpacking our 60 and 81mm mortars today, and the increase in fatigue and strain they cause is rough. And what about all the ammunition? We're humping them too...
My whole point is that this is the worst fire support plan, and horribly ineffective. The issue of british counter battery fire has not even been brough up.
Is Western Europe the same as France?
As I said before, having more fighters doesn't result in winning air battles. In the end, the Bf 109 shot down more British fighters than lost,
I don't know where you got that from but I have accounts of Luftwaffe units flying up to 5 missions a day on the Eastern Front.
Van Creveld is interesting. I read his work back in '03. It really opened my eyes as I had never really considered logistics to be important. Since then I have adopted some other views and have noticed that Van Creveld is an expert on logistics but is not really accurate when it comes to German doctrine and capabilities. For all the criticism he puts down on them, the Germans still managed to advance at a speed unmatched in WW2.
They weren't fully motorized and lacked pretty much everything, yet they arrived near Moscow and Leningrad in a matter of weeks.
Rommel moved 644 km in 36 days. His troops were exhausted and out of fuel but he got there and held the initiative.
You say he had to be supplied from Tripoli yet I wonder why you leave out Benghazi and Tobruk. Don't worry, I'm not going to accuse you of deliberately giving false information again.
There were two closer ports, Benghazi and Tobruk, but both had very low capacity, and couldn't handle many supplies.
Von Creveld states that Tripoli had a "comfortable" capacity of 50,000 tons per month, Benghazi had a theoretical capacity of 81,000 tons per month, and Tobruk's capacity is put at 20,000 tons per month, out of a
theoretical capacity of 45,000 tons per month when the Italians
were using it.
This was Tripoli, the largest Libyan harbour by far, capable of handling - under ideal conditions - five cargo ships or four troop transports simultaneously. Its capacity, as long as no unforeseen explosions wrecked the quays, and the largely local labour-force was not driven off by air raids, amounted to approximately 45,000 tons per month.
Though theoretically capable of processing 2,700 tons a day, Benghazi was well within reach of the RAF and suffered accordingly. With an unloading capacity of 700-800 tons only exceptionally reached
The port was theoretically capable of unloading 1,500 tons a day, but in practice rarely exceeded 600. When consulted about its use, the German navy dismissed it as a disembarkation port for large ships, and bluntly told OKH that it would do well to rely exclusively on Tripoli and Benghazi to keep Rommel supplied. Since in this period (July-August 1941) insufficient coastal shipping was available even to utilize Benghazi fully, Rommel's scheme for solving his supply difficulties by capturing Tobruk seems highly impracticable.
hat's really strange is that they stopped doing this when it was already too late: after the Allies landed in Algeria. Suddenly they moved and supplied 300,000 men to Tunisia only to get their ships sunk by the new warships and aircraft and the ones from Malta.
After the war in North Africa was over, Rommel bitterly commented that, had he received but a fraction of the troops and supplies that Hitler poured into Tunisia in a hopeless attempt to hold it, he could have thrown the British out of Egypt many times over. This claim has since been echoed by many other writers. However, it ignores the fact that the Axis' presence in Africa had been put on an entirely different basis by Rommel's retreat and by the Allied landings in North West Africa. Having seized both Bizerta and Toulon, as well as the French merchant fleet, the Axis now possessed the means with which to send reinforcements to Africa at a rate Panzerarmee had never known. Even so, however, they did not succeed in maintaining them there for very long.
But Rommel did manage to get to El Alamein and get his troops supplied.
Given that in early 1942 Rommel would have gotten more resources and two extra divisions (practically doubling his force!) he would have taken Tobruk much earlier and could have advanced towards El Alamein when the British were unprepared and weakened.
The only way out of the predicament was to attack and capture the port of Tobruk. However, Rommel had to concede that his requirements for such an operation would be no less than four German armoured divisions - precisely the number originally envisaged by von Thorna. This, however, was an impossible demand. Not only were Germany's forces now fully committed against Russia, but to grant Rommel's request meant that DAK would need another 20,000 tons a month, for which unloading facilities were not available.
Look at the record of Stuka operations against Britain, which were well escorted, but still suffered horrendous losses.
Horrendous losses? How many did they lose? 40? 50?
What do you base this on? Does this also apply to the American 8th AF?
That should suffice for the first waves, after all, the Allies landed and broke through MUCH more fortified defenses than the British would ever manage to build with lighter gear.
Hop said:Is Britain the same as the Channel Coast? The RAF had fighter squadrons in Northern Ireland, the north of Scotland, Wales, the north of England etc that didn't participate at all in the fighting.
But the British target was the bombers. As Bungay points out, the German fighters achieved about a 1.2 to 1 victory rate, whereas the British fighters achieved 1.8 to 1. They had different tasks.
It was 69 on operations, and another 18 not on operations.
And how many sorties did they fly?
If you look at the final nail in their coffin in the BoB, the raid that convinced Goering to stop using them in the main attack, 109 Stukas escorted by 150+ Bf 109s.
8 109s were lost, 17 Stukas, with another 7 Stukas damaged.
The RAF lost 5 fighters.
That's a loss rate of about 15% for the Stukas. Sustainable losses would have been on the order of 2 or 3%.
Flexibility? I think it will be hard to beat the Finnish and the Americans in that sector.British Artillery was as good as the best overall and some say the best in WW2 in terms of flexibility.
The 120mm was an excellent mortar gun and very light for its calibre, about 400 lbs. The 120 could be taken apart in three pieces and had a special two-wheel carriage. As such it was a very mobile weapon.Mortars have a role but anything over 81mm isn't man portable in practical terms.
Ok. Plenty of time to rest. But you can forget that only full-strength divisions were committed. If the unit was largely wiped out, sure. But Germans didn't care that much if a unit didn't have their full strength. This is all the more strange as they did form new divisions instead of bringing the old ones up to strength. This became even worse in 1944/1945 when they didn't even bother to strengthen the old ones leading to several good commanders to stick to shrinked little units which could do nothing but watch those new divisions being ripped to pieces. But that's another thing...In terms of time, it's the exact same. It took weeks to move from the East to the West, fact. And it would take even longer to move from the East to Africa.
BBC - WW2 People's War - Keeping the Radar Functioning in the MedI've never seen Malta has having radar, the Royal Navy around it had radar which could be used to direct air support. The same would apply for Crete.
According to Galland's memoirs, he had to give in to Göring as he got complaints from the bomber crews. So what Galland did was keeping 1/3 of his fighters close to the bombers where they would have been useless (his own words) while the rest stayed above and in front.The Luftwaffe never adopted the escort doctrine that prevented the fight taking place around the bomber formation; roaming escort. Galland encouraged more fighter sweeps but, as you say, Goring made it close escort and Goring told the Luftwaffe what to do, not Galland.
Why weren't they informed?The only people surprised to see two SS divisions in Holland were the poor paratroopers who hadn't been warned. All of High Command knew about them, as I said, ULTRA, Dutch Resistance and Photo Recon had told them.
That's why I'm going for mobile mortars and light artillery. The British could only give suppressing fire over a large area. A thousand guns isn't enough to completely kill off the German forces. During Zitadelle the Russians had sectors of 450 guns per km though the Germans still advanced through it. A 1000 guns may seem a lot but given the large area (100 miles wide, 5 miles across) which they have to cover it isn't something which the Germans can't withstand for TWO days!Well, mkloby and Glider had pointed out the flaw in this. The British couter-battery fire would destroy your artillery positions with ease, as they would out-gun and out-range you.
That in this scenario Rommel would be advancing towards El Alamein half a year earlier. Several British units would be pulled back to defend England leaving behind a weakened force while the Germans will have two extra divisions and more Italian logistical support. The British would not have those American guns, tanks and Desert AF.What obvious reasons?
What do you mean by poor excuse? They held their own and could definitely take the fight against those Kittyhawks and Blenheims.The Italian Air Force was a poor excuse in 1941-1942 and their numbers would hardly grow because of a Soviet victory.
The problem is with your figures, that the British admitted the loss of 1140 of their fighters, whereas the LW curiously only knows about 1385 of it's combat aircraft of all types (even coastal aircraft and such counted) being lost to enemy action during the Battle of Britiain, no small number to ship and land AAA, balloons and not fighters.
The Luftwaffe lost in total 663 fighters (in comparison 1140 Fighters lost by the RAF, Cat.3).
502 of these fighters were due to enemy action on operation, further
98 on operations, but not related to the enemy, and
63 not on operations.
As for the LW fighters record, they lost something like 502 s-e, and 224 t-e fighters to enemy action of all kinds
As for the LW fighters record, they lost something like 502 s-e, and 224 t-e fighters to enemy action of all kinds, vs. the said 1140 British fighters lost (not counting damaged).
(not counting damaged).
Read : The LW was loosing 59 Stukas during the whole BoB due to enemy action, the rest is just pumping the numbers up.
Overall during the two month period the Ju87's suffered a 7.9% loss rate - hardly the massive losses the British claimed.
When the targets changed from coastal targets to inner-Britain targets, the Ju 87 groups were redirected to attack the coastal merchant ships, since they lacked speed and range.
He believed the Ju87 units should be held in reserve for when air supremacy was gained
From September to December, the Sturzkampfgeschwader flew some dawn and dusk attacks on coastal shipping in the Thames Estuary and along the southeast English coast, but mostly they trained and waited for Seelöwe and then their next assignment.
This is supported by the fact that up to 18 August, 33 Stukas had been lost; however, some 51 were lost on operations in total up to the end of August, and 2 more on operations in September etc.
1385 of it's combat aircraft of all types (even coastal aircraft and such counted) being lost to enemy action
502 s-e, and 224 t-e fighters to enemy action
59 Stukas during the whole BoB due to enemy action
some 51 were lost on operations
The 18th saw more than just the Stuka operations. The RAF lost 5 fighters against 109 stukas and 150+ 109s, the rest were lost in other actions. In total the Luftwaffe lost 71 aircraft that day.The RAF lost 5 fighters.
RAF records tell of 22 for that day.
Flexibility? I think it will be hard to beat the Finnish and the Americans in that sector.
The British artillery could start firing fast but this was at the cost of accuracy as they didn't take external factors into account as the Germans did like height, wind, temperature, etc. This lack of accuracy can also be deducted from North Africa where British artillery failed to take out the feared German 88mm guns.
The 120mm was an excellent mortar gun and very light for its calibre, about 400 lbs. The 120 could be taken apart in three pieces and had a special two-wheel carriage. As such it was a very mobile weapon.
The 120mm was an excellent mortar gun and very light for its calibre, about 400 lbs. The 120 could be taken apart in three pieces and had a special two-wheel carriage. As such it was a very mobile weapon.