John Huston's quiet 1945 masterpiece of a documentary about the desperation of the pspychologically maimed by war. It was suppressed by the Army for something like 35 years, I believe.

If you want something a little more conventional in documentaries, but still excellent, try Huston's The Battle of San Pietro:

The Battle of San Pietro

Thanks for the recommendations of Vicksburg-any body know a good book on the 30 Years War?

Thanks for the recommendations of Vicksburg-any body know a good book on the 30 Years War?

I would also be interested in that.

I just read a couple books I'd recommend highly, one was This Kind of War by T.R. Fehrenbach on the Korean War and the other was the Crimean War by Orlando Figes. Both taught me a lot about conflicts I didn't know much about.

Didn't the Russians roll into what was then Czechoslovakia in the late sixties?

Yes. There's a very old Doonesbury that has a General complaining that the Soviets have an unfair advantage becuase they could invade their allies. He wanted to invade Luxembourg.

A good friend of mine left Prague at 16 in front of the tanks. Ended up in a camp in Italy.

What happens if the Allies are even partially organized and manage to hold France for a couple of months, or a year?

For that matter, what if the high command actually keeps a meaningful mobile reserve. Maybe the stop the initial break through in its tracks. More likely the buy enough time to extricate the forces in the Netherlands (at which point it becomes a very hard slog for both sides)

On the list of bad decisions through history Gamelin's decision to leave no reserves has to rank up there. Churchill wrote about meeting Gamelin shortly after the battle began, seeing a map which made the problem rather obvious:

He asked, "Ou est la masse de manouvre, he demanded ("Where's the strategic reserve"), only to be glumly answered by the French Chief of General Staff, General Gamelin, "Aucune" ("There is none".)

One of the low points of his life.

I'm sorry, that's sounds like a Soviet apologia.

and I'm sorry that historical reality doesn't always accord with your obsessions.

The Russian Empire/Soviet Union did not expand in 1918-1920 as you claim, it contracted,
it contracted because you may have noticed that some parts of the Russian Empire, like Finland, managed to become and stay independent, other parts, like the Ukraine did not.

But you are somewhat right, the Baltic states did manage to liberate themselves and remained free until WWII, when the Stalin lead Soviet Union conquered them in act of aggression.

The Gulag was every bit as murderous as the Nazi death camps, and on a larger scale for longer. Solzhenitsyn estimates 66 millkion victims of the massacres and the Gulag. The only difference being they extracted more forced labor out of their victims before their deaths.

The Gulags were an abomination but they were not nearly as bad as the Nazi camps, in act people like Solzhenitsyn survived, were freed and wrote about them, no one was freed, no one was ever gonna get freed from a Nazi camp until Germany lost the war- of course it is possible that had Stalin not died no one would have survived the Gulag either.

We've had this discussion before, but aside form the Stalin days the behavior of the Soviet Union from beginning to the end fit right in with the behavior of the Russian Empire from Ivan the Awesome to 1917, and hell since the counterrevolution through to Putin - being Russian has always been pretty bad by western standards, and being one of Russia's neighbors has always been pretty scary,

it's a pity the Russians are a very productive people, but culturally the strains of paranoia and authoritarianism are a bad mix that they can't seem to get past.

For that matter, what if the high command actually keeps a meaningful mobile reserve. Maybe the stop the initial break through in its tracks. More likely the buy enough time to extricate the forces in the Netherlands (at which point it becomes a very hard slog for both sides)

On the list of bad decisions through history Gamelin's decision to leave no reserves has to rank up there. Churchill wrote about meeting Gamelin shortly after the battle began, seeing a map which made the problem rather obvious:

He asked, "Ou est la masse de manouvre, he demanded ("Where's the strategic reserve"), only to be glumly answered by the French Chief of General Staff, General Gamelin, "Aucune" ("There is none".)

One of the low points of his life.

I think this was a doctrinal issue, no?

I.e., Allied doctrine of 39/40 still had armor to be used wholly as infantry support, rather than the spearhead/blitzkrieg approach that was then being rolled out by Germany.

There were multiple instances where the panzers were actually in serious danger of being cut off - and a fair number of German generals were aghast at the risks of the ultimate Fall Gelb plan.... ultimately, though - the allies fell for the northern feint, their best forces were completely disorganized, and there wasn't enough left to take advantage of Guderian/Rommel's aggressiveness.... In fact - if memory serves, the German command had actually ordered a pause to strengthen and reinforce at the Meuse crossing, but the panzers under Guderian and Rommel essentially demanded (and got) permission to 'scout' further ahead, but turned the 'scouting' into a full scale penetration.

With the Luftwaffe holding supreme in the air, that was pretty much all she wrote...

#557 Not talking about the use of armor. I'm talking about the decision to have absolutely nothing in reserve. That's just stunningly stupid. The bad guys have an annoying habit of breaking through some place inconvenient.

So did the French just not have enough troops or did they just mass them all along Maginot line? Weren't the massed tanks supported from the air going to run over anything the French put in front of them due to the British/French using outdated tactics?

#557 Not talking about the use of armor. I'm talking about the decision to have absolutely nothing in reserve. That's just stunningly stupid. The bad guys have an annoying habit of breaking through some place inconvenient.

In some ways having reserves and not using them is worse than not having them at all. McClellan at Antietam is an example of this. Also I am rusty on my D-Day history, but weren't the Germans having problem getting their reserves rolling out to help defend against the invasion force?

#559 The had plenty of troops. They just opted to send all of their top quality troops into Holland -- and hold the Ardennes area with 10 of their worst divisions. (All understrength and under-equipped)

The tanks rolled over the defenders in no small part because they were of low quality. After that it was primarily an issue of meeting engagements which the Germans were better prepared for.

What was needed was a couple of good divisions that could be pushed into the line to contain the damage long enough to extricate the forces in Holland. We're not talking huge amounts of time required.

I don't insist that the Germans wouldn't have won. As noted, they had a big edge in the air. The Germans caught the wave of modernization just perfectly, while the best the French could do in terms of fighter was probably P-40Bs. Absolutely no match for the Germans (didn't help that a lot of planes got caught on the ground) and the Brits only stationed Hurricanes in France (they did use Spitfires at Dunkerque) and again, absolutely not a match for a 109.

But the armored forces got pretty beat up as it was (an awful lot of the armor was Panzer II and it was junk) and they had things pretty much their own way.

The Russian Empire/Soviet Union did not expand in 1918-1920 as you claim, it contracted,
it contracted because you may have noticed that some parts of the Russian Empire, like Finland, managed to become and stay independent, other parts, like the Ukraine did not.

Invading independent countries is expansion, whether you used to own it or not. The first damn things the Reds did after the Civil War was invade Poland. Then planned to keep going, but the Poles beat them. Don't mistake weakness for lack of intent.

The Gulags were an abomination but they were not nearly as bad as the Nazi camps, in act people like Solzhenitsyn survived, were freed and wrote about them, no one was freed, no one was ever gonna get freed from a Nazi camp until Germany lost the war- of course it is possible that had Stalin not died no one would have survived the Gulag either.

Read the book.

I would vastly prefer a bullet in the head, or a quick death by gas, to 10 years in the Gulag, The death rate was well above 90%. There is no functional difference between working on the White Sea canal, or a death camp. A tiny fraction survived death camps (escapees, trustees, collaborators) and a tiny fraction survived the Gulag.

I.e., Allied doctrine of 39/40 still had armor to be used wholly as infantry support, rather than the spearhead/blitzkrieg approach that was then being rolled out by Germany.

I think the French used armor wholly for infantry support, even though they had officers (including DeGaulle) who had by the mid 30s worked out a pretty good armored division doctrine.

the Brits had a really confused tank doctrine before WWII, they divided Tanks into "infantry tanks" and "cruiser tanks"
Infantry tanks were heavily armored, slow and undergunned-
The Matilda 1 had very good armor protection for the day, but was painfully slow (couldn't reach 10 mph on the road- after all an infantry tank supports infantry- so it didn't need to be an faster than a human...) and it main armament was a 50 cal machine gun- which meant it couldn't take out other tanks... but then gain most German tanks couldn't take out a Matilda either (but all could outrun one) The Matilda II was a little more useful, it's gun 40 mm) could at least take out early version Panzers...

In essence the Brits had tanks that could take punishment, but couldn't really dish it out- or move very well, then they had Cruiser tanks which could move, but were woefully under-armored, and didn't have much better guns than the Infantry Tanks, either way they were woefully mismatched against the much better rounded Panzer IIS and IVs.

The Russians actually divided their tanks up the way the Brits did, fast light tanks (the BT tanks), and heavily armored slow tanks (the KV tanks)- but a poor plan executed extremely well is better than poor plan executed poorly - the BT tanks evolved into the T-34 series, and while the KV Tanks were based upon the same operational idea as the Matildas, the KVs were much better simply because they went with a more is more philosophy, even more armor and size and a bigger gun.

362. spankz Posted: December 21, 2012 at 07:02 PM (#4330590)
I would recommend "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradley as he goes into some of the history of America's involvement in the Pacific before and after the Spanish- American war and how he feels that some of the decisions that Teddy Roosevelt made led directly to our war with Japan. Although you can take issue with some of his conclusions in that regard, the chapters dealing with our treatment of the Phillipines after we "liberated" it from the Spanish was defintely eye-opening.

Missed this earlier. I happened to stumble upon this book recently and am listening to it on my commute. It covers a portion of our history I barely knew existed. I knew about the Span-Am War, but mainly about the Cuban portion. Family legend said that my greatgrandfather was a Roughrider, but I looked it up. His militia unit served in South Carolina. Did the US fear a Spanish attack on the coast?

Did the US fear a Spanish attack on the coast?

The Spanish-American War, like the Mexican War, was primarily about US expansion - one could make a good argument in both cases that the US went out of its way to find a casus belli. The Spanish weren't out to attack anything, but to defend their interests in Cuba and the Phillippines.

-- MWE

#559 The had plenty of troops. They just opted to send all of their top quality troops into Holland -- and hold the Ardennes area with 10 of their worst divisions. (All understrength and under-equipped)


The French were very keen on not fighting the next war on French soil. It's why they built the Maginot line and why they planned to fight the war on the lowlands. The problem wasn't a lack of reserves but that the Allies couldn't properly account for the tempo of the war. They were operating on a timetable that simply did not work against the speed of the German invasion. A good chunk French forces either never fired a shot or barely engaged the enemy by the time France capitulated. I don't see how reserve forces that were poorly trained, under-equipped, operating under out dated doctrine, and have nobody else coming to their aid would do anything but be a mosquito on the back of an elephant.

Also I am rusty on my D-Day history, but weren't the Germans having problem getting their reserves rolling out to help defend against the invasion force?

Well, irony or ironies, Rommel made the same mistake that the French made. The Atlantic Wall was the Germans version of the Maginot line. The problem with trying to stop the invasion at the beaches is that they had massive naval artillery support. If they had done what Runstedt suggested, having a deeper defense set farther back from the coast, they might have had a chance to stop it.

There were many reasons for the slow reinforcement response, not the least of which was Hitler's unshakable belief (planted by Operation Fortitude) that the invasion would come to the Pas De Calais. They only realized they had been had until well after the invasion was already a success. Hitler demanded that it was only he who could mobilize the panzer reserves, and he never gave his approval until it was too late. And part of the invasion plan was to either blow up or secure key transport facilities like bridges and rail hubs. For the most part, this was a success.

Another huge ####-up by the Wehrmacht.

The Spanish-American War, like the Mexican War, was primarily about US expansion - one could make a good argument in both cases that the US went out of its way to find a casus belli.

More accurately, one would be hard-pressed to make a good argument that they were about anything else but US Imperialism.

Well, irony or ironies, Rommel made the same mistake that the French made. The Atlantic Wall was the Germans version of the Maginot line. The problem with trying to stop the invasion at the beaches is that they had massive naval artillery support. If they had done what Runstedt suggested, having a deeper defense set farther back from the coast, they might have had a chance to stop it.

There were many reasons for the slow reinforcement response, not the least of which was Hitler's unshakable belief (planted by Operation Fortitude) that the invasion would come to the Pas De Calais. They only realized they had been had until well after the invasion was already a success. Hitler demanded that it was only he who could mobilize the panzer reserves, and he never gave his approval until it was too late. And part of the invasion plan was to either blow up or secure key transport facilities like bridges and rail hubs. For the most part, this was a success.

Another huge ####-up by the Wehrmacht.

Except regardless of what tactic was used the Allies were getting a beachhead and the Atlantic Wall kept the Allies bottled up for almost two months despite whatever failings one wants to ascribe to it. Rundstedt's defense in depth wouldn't have done it any better and was likely to be unworkable given German shortages.

Oh, I don't know about that. The Allies were very lightly armored those first few days. If the Germans had mobilized a lot of tanks to the area, I think it could have gone either way.

Oh, I don't know about that. The Allies were very lightly armored those first few days. If the Germans had mobilized a lot of tanks to the area, I think it could have gone either way.

That was Rommel's plan. Rundstedt's plan was defense in depth. His plan didn't have everything at the beach but instead had the tanks stationed around Paris and they wouldn't be called into action until the invasion point was identified. This strategy poses some problems. For starters time would be a problem, getting the tanks into action would be another, and supplying those tanks would be a third problem.

In the end neither really got what they wanted. Rommel got barely any tanks and was allowed very few in the Normandy area and Rundstedt didn't get his tank reserves as the armor was spread out throughout all of northern France and the lowlands. You can't really say Rommel's plan failed since he didn't get to implement his plan both because Hitler over-rided him and because the Atlantic Wall wasn't completed. But again despite all of that the invasion was a close run thing and the Germans kept the Allies bottled up in the vicinity of their beachhead for almost two months.


If superior naval and air support means the Atlantic Wall wouldn't work I'm not sure how sending a bunch of tanks against that was going to work either.

What do you mean by "bottled up"? The allies had the entire Cotentin peninsula within 3 weeks, including Cherbourg. If that isn't a permanent foothold, I don't know what is.

Rommel got barely any tanks and was allowed very few in the Normandy area and Rundstedt didn't get his tank reserves as the armor was spread out throughout all of northern France and the lowlands.

Well, sure. My argument is, what if he, or Runstedt for that matter, had the flexibility to move the tanks where they thought best. If there had been a more speedy response, things would have been very difficult for the allies, especially is the tanks were close enough to the beach where they could have been used as mobile artillery to contest the landings. Runstedt's plan was to have the defense set back far enough so that the opponents naval artillery was not a factor, and, as you say, to allow for a more flexible counterattack, once the identity of the invasion location was clear.

What do you mean by "bottled up"? The allies had the entire Cotentin peninsula within 3 weeks, including Cherbourg. If that isn't a permanent foothold, I don't know what is.

I mean bottled up. It took the Allies two to three months to achieve the objectives they were supposed to achieve on the first day. They were stuck in Normandy for two months and were contained so well in Normandy that the Allies would face serious shortages until the Fall/Winter of 1944. The objectives of DDay were not to take a peninsula in 3 weeks.

Runstedt's plan was to have the defense set back far enough so that the opponents naval artillery was not a factor, and, as you say, to allow for a more flexible counterattack, once the identity of the invasion location was clear.

And again air and naval superiority meant those tanks were never going to be effective against the beachheads. They simply weren't. Germans tanks were dangerous and deadly in the Norman countryside where they could be concealed from the air and hedgerows and narrow roads funneled Allied arms into confined spaces.

Anyway, German armor "set back far enough" means the Allies keep the beachhead and do so with even less causalities and less chaos. Perhaps the allies achieve some of their first day objectives on the first day instead two to three months laters if the Germans don't contest the invasion as heavily as they did.

No counterattack was going to throw the Allies off the beachhead. If anything a German counterattack, like the Bulge, would exhaust the Germans of their men and resources allowing for a quicker Allied advance.

And again air and naval superiority meant those tanks were never going to be effective against the beachheads. They simply weren't.

Naval artillery can't be used against tanks, for obvious reasons. And given the stakes, the Germans would have risked their tanks against air attacks, if it meant giving them a fighting chance to stop the invasion. In all the post-action reports by the airborne troops, they all said they were thankful they didn't have to face much armored opposition.

Naval artillery can't be used against tanks, for obvious reasons.

What are these obvious reasons that the entire military establishment is unaware of?

And given the stakes, the Germans would have risked their tanks against air attacks, if it meant giving them a fighting chance to stop the invasion

I'm not sure why that matters. Risking almost certain annihilation isn't a game changer.

In all the post-action reports by the airborne troops, they all said they were thankful they didn't have to face much armored opposition.

Well, yeah, I'd expect they would say that. Airborne units are light infantry they don't want to face armor but airborne units were a minor part of DDay and the Normandy invasion.

The French mostly divided their tanks between their infantry and cavalry branches. They had tank battalions (mostly composed of slow Renaults) that were assigned to support infantry formations. Then they had their best fast tanks (Hotchkiss & Souma) organized into Armored Cavalry and Light Mechanized Divisions that were assigned to the Cavalry Corps and used for screening and reconnaisance. Finally at the last minute they organized 4 armored divisions (the 4th being under DeGaulle) which barely had a chance to get organized before the Germans attacked.

What are these obvious reasons that the entire military establishment is unaware of?

They have the ability to move away from the spot you aim the projectile.

Well, yeah, I'd expect they would say that. Airborne units are light infantry they don't want to face armor but airborne units were a minor part of DDay and the Normandy invasion.

Minor? Eight divisions were landed on D-Day. Three of them, or 37.5% of the landing force, were airborne. You call that minor? I don't.

Did the US fear a Spanish attack on the coast?

The US public did (steady diet of misinformation from politicos and the press)
Popular opinion in Europe was that we were going to get our clocks cleaned by the Spanish Navy

The Spanish Navy itself was under no such delusions, their commanders knew they were going to lose, it was only a question of ho badly, no thought was given to sending their major units across the Atlantic, they stayed put in home waters or the Canaries.

Well, irony or ironies, Rommel made the same mistake that the French made. The Atlantic Wall was the Germans version of the Maginot line. The problem with trying to stop the invasion at the beaches is that they had massive naval artillery support. If they had done what Runstedt suggested, having a deeper defense set farther back from the coast, they might have had a chance to stop it.

No, their ONLY hope was to throw the invasion back in the Channel immediately, once ashore in force, bottled up or not, it was game over. The only way they could possibly have thrown the initial invasion back is if they had armor there the first day and/or significant close air support from the luftwaffe...

Runstedt's plan had a chance of making the slog across France more difficult but a zero chance of success (winning the campaign)

Naval artillery can't be used against tanks, for obvious reasons.

If the tanks are in range and within the line of sight (or within sight of forward artillery observers) they most certainly can be-

in fact Naval gunfire devastated German armor at Salerno and may have saved the landing.

There's a photo I've seen of a Tiger flipped upside down- a near miss from a large caliber naval gun

Minor? Eight divisions were landed on D-Day. Three of them, or 37.5% of the landing force, were airborne. You call that minor? I don't.

Yes.

About 10% of troops were airborne on DDay and they were scattered around the countryside and mostly failed to achieve their objectives on DDay. Airborne played a minor role on DDay.

They have the ability to move away from the spot you aim the projectile.



Um, okay.

I would vastly prefer a bullet in the head, or a quick death by gas, to 10 years in the Gulag, The death rate was well above 90%. There is no functional difference between working on the White Sea canal, or a death camp. A tiny fraction survived death camps (escapees, trustees, collaborators) and a tiny fraction survived the Gulag.

FWIW, according to Wikipedia the highest end estimate is that 10 million of 14 million gulag prisoners died, so 71%. This is way above most estimates: archival studies estimate about 1.6 million deaths (11.4%) when you include prisoners who were released on the point of death. Bloodlands estimates about a million gulag deaths, you'll see other numbers in the 1 to 1.5 million range. So in all likelihood, at least 75% of the prisoners in the gulags survived.

The point isn't that Stalin was a nice man, but that Stalin and Hitler had very different methods of killing people. If you went into one of Hitler's death camps it was because they wanted to kill you and dispose of your body as efficiently as possible. You went in and you died and that was that. The gulag was more a form of terrorism. Nobody much cared if you died, but the larger goal was to completely break you and then let your friends back home see what happened to a person who got on Stalin's bad side. If Stalin wanted you dead you were usually rounded up and shot without ever making it to a camp (or if he wanted your group dead then you died in a famine or got forcibly exported to Siberia or something like that).

So in all likelihood, at least 75% of the prisoners in the gulags survived.

Take the absolute WORST thing that's been written about the USSR- and that's Gospel Truth to Snapper-
he hates himself some Reds... You have to remember this is someone who claims that Franco's group were the lesser of evils in the Spanish Civil War.

Anyway, arguing who was worse, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Abdul Ruzibiza... is kind of depressing.

If the tanks are in range and within the line of sight (or within sight of forward artillery observers) they most certainly can be-

They wouldn't have been in the line of sight. And if they didn't know it before, it wouldn't have taken 15 minutes for the panzer crews to figure out that, if they fired and then moved to a new position, the naval artillery would not have been able to pick them off except by an occasional lucky shot. The picture you saw was either of a lucky hit, an inept panzer crew or of an alternative reason, like a large landmine, booby trap or field cannon. The naval artillery was accurate against stationary batteries, not mobile ones, again for obvious reasons. At an average muzzle velocity of about 1/3 of a mile/second for a projectile fired from, a tank can move about 30 ft/sec driving at 20 MPH. A shot fired from 5 miles away would land 450 ft away, if the naval firing crew fired the shot the moment the tank started to move. If you have to hit a tank with a 2000 lb shell within a distance of 30 feet or so in order for your artillery to be effective against them, it isn't going to be.

About 10% of troops were airborne on DDay and they were scattered around the countryside and mostly failed to achieve their objectives on DDay. Airborne played a minor role on DDay.

.

I don't know where you got your figures but Britticana's guide to D-Day states there were two major invasion groups- the British Second Army, tow which the Canadian and French forces were attached and US first Army. The British contingent, out of 83K total was 10% airborne. But of the 73K American, about 16000 were airborne, or about 22%. And most post-action reports cite the importance of the airborne to the success of the overall operation. While an accident, the scattering of the airborne units helped confuse the Germans and delayed and diluted their counterattack. The main objective of the airborne was to distract the Germans from seriously challenging the beach landings and they did that successfully. The Germans also flooded the lowlands around the Omaha and Sword in response, inadvertently protecting the Allies flanks. We'll never know what would have happened if their drops had occurred with more cohesion and they were less scattered. But nevertheless they played a critical role in the success of the operation.

It seems we're going off on tangents upon tangents. My statement which you are disputing is that tanks were not going to be effective against the beachheads which they weren't. Quotes from airborne units, or % of total airborne units, or whether or not confusion among airborne units creating confusion among the Germans was worth it is besides the point.

If tanks attacked the beachhead they would have gotten annihilated as they did before when attempting to go up against a beachhead supported by naval units. If the plan was to simply wait for the invasion to land and then counterattack the tanks would get mauled by air units and possibly naval units as well if the armor was within the range of naval guns. Furthermore when we talk about armor attacking we aren't simply talking about 50 tanks attacking but 50 tanks and supporting troops attacking. Tanks without infantry are largely useless and very vulnerable.

We know this because we saw this all throughout the allied invasion of Europe. Armor out in the open and attacking got destroyed. Armor worked against the allies as hidden mobile artillery pieces and it worked especially so in Normandy with its hedgerows and narrow roads. But if we flip the battle on its head and have the Germans be the attackers in Normandy while the Allies were the ones defending then it would be the Germans who got mauled and would get worse since they wouldn't have the big guns of the navy or planes in the sky to protect them like the Allies did and in fact would have those tools used against them.

As for Tiger tank mentioned earlier, it is indeed true that at Salerno two American destroyers badly mauled German armor. The Brooklyn and the Mayo were credited with destroying 46 tanks and artillery pieces in a single day and the Mayo was nicknamed the Tank Buster ever after. Using spotters and planes to direct the fire the Mayo was firing a 5" shell every 4 seconds during the height of the battle and all of the barrels had to be repaired after the battle.

or field cannon.

Yep, your typical WWII field piece was capable of flipping a 57 ton Tiger completely upside down.

a tank can move about 30 ft/sec driving at 20 MPH

WWII tanks generally did not fire while moving
and the German heavier tanks were not exactly agile when accelerating from a standstill

plus a forward artillery observer would radio in naval fire and the ships would fire a spread of shells- sure if your target is one(1) tank it's pretty inefficient, but at places like Salerno Naval gunfire was devastating to a massed armored formation and elsewhere basically deterred it afterwards.

You are simply wrong in believing that the threat of naval gunfire had no or should have had no effect on tank operations.

Here's what you need to know, PP thinks the military treats artillery like sniper rifles. That about explains all you need to know about this discussion.

From wiki on Normandy armor:

"With the Invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the 503rd was transferred to the command of Panzergruppe West. The first company was equipped with 12 Tiger II tanks. It was the first Pz.Komp to be equipped entirely with the Tiger II. The detachment fought well in combat against Allied tank forces during the battles around Caen. On the launch of Operation Goodwood, the 3rd company, which was based in Cagny, was caught in the preliminary bombing raids and completely wiped out, with bomb impacts powerful enough to turn even a 68-ton Tiger completely upside down. Only one Tiger was operational at the end of the day. During the first day of "Goodwood," the unit reported the loss of 13 tanks. On July 18, a remarkable incident took place when a M4 Sherman tank under the command of the Irish Lieutenant Gorman rammed a Tiger II of the I/s.H.Pz.Abt 503 and disabled it.
On the next day the two remaining companies were in defensive positions around Cagny and helped to halt a British advance. The Wehrmachtsbericht reported 40 enemy tanks destroyed, many of them by the 503rd. At the end of July, the 3rd company received new Tiger II tanks. Heavy aerial attacks destroy most of the equipment of the Tiger II company. Only 2 "Kingtigers" were brought back to Germany, the tanks with turret number '314'/annelise and '323'. The 503rd, along with the Panzer-Lehr-Division's 316th Funklenk Panzer Company, were the only formations in Normandy to operate Tiger IIs. The 101st SS Heavy Tank Battalion got Tiger II tanks in late August but they saw no action.
The severely depleted 503rd managed to escape the horrors of the Falaise Pocket and was engaged in a fighting withdrawal to the German border. In late August the detachment was pulled from the line for a complete refit with Tiger IIs."

WWII tanks generally did not fire while moving
and the German heavier tanks were not exactly agile when accelerating from a standstill

And German tanks generally did not fire their cannons and then just sit there like a dodo bird waiting for a forward observer to call in the coordinates so a gunship could blast the crap out of them. They gave their tanks diesel engines and track treads for a reason.

Yep, your typical WWII field piece was capable of flipping a 57 ton Tiger completely upside down.

Only the very largest of the naval cannons could have been capable of flipping a Tiger too, and only then with the shell landing practically right on top of it from several miles away. The allies had relatively few of those deployed. Only the battleships and, perhaps, cruisers could lob shells big enough to do that.

You are simply wrong in believing that the threat of naval gunfire had no or should have had no effect on tank operations.

We'll have to agree to disagree. The principle value of that tank, a heavily armored form of mobile artillery, was that it could avoid decimation by fire and move tactical principles. This is armored tactics 101. Jeesh.

McCoy, if you read the whole section on Operation Goodwood, you will note that it occurred between July 18-20, well after the D-Day landing, and involved 3 British armored divisions. The initial bombardment also involved a massive bombing raid by Lancasters, B-26s and fighter-bombers. Those were more likely to have hit the tanks than the naval artillery. If you want to argue that air-based attacks were effective agains the German tanks, I'll agree with you wholeheartedly. Here:

The bombing put both the 22nd Panzer Regiment and the III/503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion temporarily out of action, causing varying degrees of damage to their tanks. Some were overturned,[127] some were destroyed outright,[132] and 20 were later found abandoned in bomb craters.

The quote wasn't in support of anything about DDay but about the fact that tanks would have gotten mauled if they concentrated their forces and attacked the Allies in Normandy.


high level bombers, artillery barrages, and naval barrages have all been used against armored units and there isn't a tanker alive that would want to be in the middle of any of them. As I also said before, armored units traveled with infantry and support units. Without which armor isn't really effective and extremely vulnerable. Even if somehow a sustained barrage on an area managed to not knock out a single tank the sustained fire would be withering to infantry and support units caught out in the open. Attacking armored units spotted by the Allies would quickly find their offensive stalled and on the defensive.

Yep, your typical WWII field piece was capable of flipping a 57 ton Tiger completely upside down.

Yeah most people just don't have a handle on how big/powerful naval guns are compared to field artillery.

The smallest gun that would be in use in naval support is 5 inches. That's about 127 mm. The largest field piece (155 mm) is about the same size as a 6 inch gun (ie light cruiser main guns)

But it's not just about size of round. Naval guns are much longer. Leading to much higher muzzle velocities.

And it worth noting that yes, the targets can move but:

a) naval gunnery assumes a moving target. An individual tank is a smaller, more maneuverable target than a ship, but big naval guns don't need to hit to be devastating.

b) simply forcing them to move continuously sharply reduces their effectiveness. WWII era tanks couldn't fire with anything approaching accuracy while on the move.

Still, I think Rommel was likely correct. The only chance to win was an immediate counterattack. It just wasn't likely to succeed.

The problem for Rommel was that he didn't know where the Allies were going to attack and he didn't have the time and resources to cover all the possible areas of invasion.

These battleships were used on D-Day:

USS Arkansas, BB-33 (12-inch)
USS Texas, BB-35, (14-inch)
USS Nevada, BB-36 (14-inch)
HMS Ramillies (15-inch)
HMS Rodney (16-inch)
HMS Warspite (15-inch)
plus HMS Nelson (16-inch), which was held in reserve until June 10.

From wikipedia's page on the Iowa Class armament (yes, I know they weren't used on D-day):

For unarmored targets and shore bombardment, the 1,900 lb (862 kg) Mk. 13 HC (High-Capacity—referring to the large bursting charge) shell was available.[25] The Mk. 13 shell would create a crater 50 feet (15 m) wide and 20 feet (6 m) deep upon impact and detonation, and could defoliate trees 400 yards (360 m) from the point of impact.[25]

None of the big guns used on D-day were quite as powerful as the 16-in/50cal's on the Iowa's, but, they weren't far off from that destructive capability.

None of the big guns used on D-day were quite as powerful as the 16-in/50cal's on the Iowa's, but, they weren't far off from that destructive capability.

You wouldn't necessarily have to kill many tanks to blunt the efficiency of an armored formation. In addition to the tanks, an armor battalion would contain numerous "regular" vehicles devoted to resupply of ammo, fuel, food, etc. These would be easy targets not only for HE shells but could also be put out of action by strafing; it wouldn't take many .50 caliber rounds to disable a truck. In addition, armor formations have support personnel devoted to the functions mentioned above, even if they weren't killed or wounded in an attack, it isn't likely they will become somewhat demoralized, especially if under attack for long periods. No armor formation can sustain operations if they aren't constantly resupplied with the materiel it requires.

#595 The topic of a German counterattack has come up before. Worth noting that the Hitler Youth did launch an attack against the Canadians. Broken up primarily by allied air power (after initial success).

A front of 5 infantry (reinforced) divisions with an outer screen of 3 airborne divisions takes an awful lot to destroy. Tedder expected 70-90% casualties among the airborne forces precisely because he expected a counterattack and they'd be the one to bear the brunt.

Very unusual for Tedder, he was happy to admit he was wrong. Casualties were far lighter than he anticipated. And while it's true they mostly failed to achieve their objectives, their primary role was actually to buy time to organize the main landing. Not truly needed and everybody was glad of it.

If you have a 4x6 table, several dozen hours, and an affinity for high pressure arithmatic, there is a great new game on the 1940 invasion of france called "The Blitzkreig Legend". From mmp, Schillings company.

Isn't naval bombardment and artillery effective against an area and not individual (mobile) targets? I thought a spotter would call in a grid and then a bunch of ships or a battery of artillery would then fire. The spotter would then call back in and have them adjust. I may be wrong but I don't think any one destroyer would ever actively engage one tank. I don't doubt most ships guns would take out a tank, especially since tanks are generally not as well armored up top.

Dive-bombers were pretty accurate in those days and I guess would be the most effective at taking out individual tanks.

Rommel's experiences in North Africa made him extremely fearful of Allied air power. Thus, he wanted to position his forces so as to neutralize that as best he could. Rundstedt knew the invasion would be fast and hard, and he wanted to maintain a flexible response, and he feared naval bombardment. In truth, the Germans were between and a rock and a hard place. They were at the choose your poison stage, podnuh.

#598

That's my impression - they would lob a bunch* of shells at a fairly small area, and it may or may not be close enough to take out an individual tank. Of course, the targeting would likely be for areas with any sort of concentration of tanks. If the Germans combated it by spreading their tanks out instead of having them in any sort of formation, that would make the tanks more vulnerable to other attacks. And the naval artillery only has to narrowly miss a tank once to take it out. And they would have plenty of time. Not to mention the whole aspect of tanks having to navigate around the suddenly appearing craters. Naval artillery likely wouldn't destroy all of the tanks, but it would likely destroy some, and diminish effectiveness of them significantly.

*sorry for throwing out technical terms.