McPherson
Banned
Nah. The fact that Bradley misused his road net, proves he could not even read a Baedecker. Not to mention Monty. (Notice Rouen?)
Fastest Allied victory with a POD AFTER December 7, 1941
- Thread starter Osorno13
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Nah. The fact that Bradley misused his road net, proves he could not even read a Baedecker. Not to mention Monty. (Notice Rouen?)
Nah. The fact that Bradley misused his road net, proves he could not even read a Baedecker. Not to mention Monty. (Notice Rouen?)
I often have real problems understanding what point you are making
Sometimes you pose some great insights but often I cannot get away from the suspicion that on other occasions you are using the Chewbacca Defence
This is one of those times
McPherson
Banned
Communications and CHOKEPOINTS. Rouen is a major one that made supply forward a major headache.
Here's a slightly more complete explanation:
Meanwhile this map shows Rouen to be in the 21st Army Group area. Last I heard Monty was making decisions there, not Bradley the commander of 12 AG.
Leaving aside the possibility of dyslexia causing confusion there is also the small matter of Lee, chief US logistician for SHAEF & commanding ComZ, or the communications zone the primary logistics organization for US forces in NW Europe. Lee was in no way subordinate to Bradly. Lee reported to Eisenhower, & leaned on his nominal senior in Army Service Forces Somervel.
Alternately there may be some confusion between Rouen & Rennes. The latter had been chosen much earlier as a collection/distribution point, a depot area. Material discharged into the Bereton & Biscay ports would be railroaded to depots scattered around Rennes, sorted, stored, the forward to the forward debts in the 1st, 3rd, 7th, 9th, & 15th Armies area of responsibility. Lee & his staff at HQ ComZ were all set to build the US logistics support system based on the French Atlantic ports, the railroad center at Rennes, & a railroad distribution system extending to Germany. For better or worse this never happened. The dastardly Germans kept the US Army out of the Bereton ports into September. It was impractical to execute the logistics plan & Lee made a decision to shift the ports & distribution further north.
Rouen did enter into US Army logistics in the autumn of 1944. The Brits agreed with Lee to let the US Army use Rouens port , during the autumn & winter of 1944.
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This has the knock-on effect of making the Atlantic Wall much weaker, especially around Normandy.
Even earlier, If the Hawaiians are a bit more suspicious during the Niihau incident, The might try to keep the pilot isolated until word can come from outside, which could see the American capturing an intact (if damaged) Zero right at the start of the war.
McPherson
Banned
We cannot assume that happens. Depends on the yoyo the Berlin maniac picks. Possibly the new guy can sell the paper-hanger on the Rundstedt defense plan?
The plane was torched during the botched escape attempt. No-one can say if it was restorable to flight condition at the time of the crash landing before it was torched.
A better PoD might have been in 1940 when the Zero makes its appearance in China and the ROCAF downs a couple. The British failed to pass along one they recovered.
Or this copy:
Crashed at Fort Kamehameha during the Pearl Harbor unpleasantness.
We cannot assume that happens. Depends on the yoyo the Berlin maniac picks. Possibly the new guy can sell the paper-hanger on the Rundstedt defense plan?
The plane was torched during the botched escape attempt. No-one can say if it was restorable to flight condition at the time of the crash landing before it was torched.
A better PoD might have been in 1940 when the Zero makes its appearance in China and the ROCAF downs a couple. The British failed to pass along one they recovered.
Or this copy:
Crashed at Fort Kamehameha during the Pearl Harbor unpleasantness.
Which one did the British recover prior to the Akutan Zero the only other one I am aware of is the one reconstructed by Herman the German with the Flying tigers
Runstedt's defence plan was sorely lacking in the area of fixed defences, which Rommel attempted to compensate for. It's a good guess that anyone without his experience and creativity will not know build up the defences in the same way.
Since it had flown 250 or so km after being damaged, it's fairly safe to assume it was in at least semi-flyable condition.
The 'Rundsteadt defense plan' had been in use since 1941. The war elsewhere caused Hitler to favor reducing the garrison in the west to the essential minimum 1941-42. When the attack on the USSR kicked off June 1941 there were hardly 20 divisions in France & the Low Countries. Those were all or nearly all static units, having ben stripped of most of their automobile and a large part of their horses. That was certainly not enough to occupy a 'Atlantic Wall' even if it had existed. The plan was for the static formations to defend the ports as long as possible, denying those essential points to the invader. Eventually a mobile army would be formed up out of reserves from Germany and the east and come to defeat the enemy with a reprisal of Dunkirk. This strategy was added by the use of French built forts defending the sports from seabourne attacks. The Navy reinforced the port fortresses with crews qualified to handle the heavy artillery, sea mines, & related items.
This condition continued into 1942-1943. Tho the number of men and units in France and Netherlands increased it was in no way sufficient to present a continuous beach defense between the ports. The main difference between 1941 & June 1943 is a mobile army of 15+ divisions had been gradually built up. So the mobile army that would drive out the invaders actually existed and was nearby in the interior of France. The defense of the ports was strengthened as well. The beaches were still largely undefended. When in October 1942 the naval fleets for the Easter & Center Task Forces for Op TORCH departed the UK the German forces in France were put on alert, & moved to their assembly areas to counter a invasion. The SS corps under construction in France was assembled in stand by position near Rennes & a similar army pz corps collected inland between Paris & Calais. The beach in front of the village of Madilaine, what was later known as UTAH beach was reinforced from a MG platoon to a company covering 4+ kilometers of sea front. Nothing more than a outpost. Phonon that the invasion was arriving then with drawn and observe. A single weak infantry division defensed the entire Contention peninsula in October 1942, in contrast to five in June 1944. the plan was for that single division to screen the enemy landing until those two panzer corps arrived. If the enemy first advanced inland this infantry division was to delay any advance of Cherbourg and reinforce the naval garrison if necessary.
This strategy of defending strategic points & then counter attacking a invasion is similar how Kesselring covered his exposed sea flanks in Italy. At Salerno it appeared to nearly work, at Anzio it seemed to be working. A powerful counter attack force had assembled, pinned the enemy a tiny beachhead, and was expected to soon destroy the enclave. In the German view the Italians had tried a sort of beach defense. Planting all the Sicilian militia and second tier formations among the sand dunes. The Allies went through that lot in hours & in the German view the serious battle was fought inland between Italian and German mobile forces and the invader.
So, in the context of insufficient manpower, and the Mediterranean experience the strategy of defending the ports and using them as pivots or anchors for powerful mobile counter attack forces made sense.
Rommels arguments derived from: 1. Allied airpower would make a mobile counter attack force a nonstarter. He understood what the intel reports of 8,000+ Allied combat aircraft in the UK implied in the autumn of 1943. 2. by then the garrison in the west had reached 45 divisions. With 'only' 25 more a continual beach defense could be constructed. This was not entirely original to Rommel. As the manpower and increased in 1943 the local commanders had extended the port defenses to adjacent beaches, and then to the next. Platoon outposts became a bit thicker along the shore. For what ever reason Hitler bought off on Rommels arguments for stopping the enemy at the waters edge, vs destroying them inland. Rundstedt was actually ok with spreading horse mobile infantry divisions out along the coast. They were increasingly less useful in mobile groups, and there was a impressive amount of concrete poured. The disagreement was in what to do with the motor or mechanized corps. Rundsteadt wanted to keep them in a ultra powerful reserve. He & most of his staff had never experienced Allied air power as Rommel had in the Mediterranean. His staff had most of their experience in the east & the Red air force. "They were all over us. Some days they put up 900 sorties, as many as the Luftwaffe!" Rommel who had observed the Alles consistently flying 2000 sorties a day over Tunisia, 3000 a day over Sicilly, and up to 4000 on good weather days over south Italy had a different view.
Even a burned out wreck could tell a thoughtful engineer a lot. Hmm no armor in this wreck, I don't see a radio either. Is there a vehicle scales handy? Lets weigh this junk, and take a close look at the size of the key structural components. Do that & you can start to see its a flimsy vulnerable airframe. Measuring the wing dimensions would give a idea about maneuverability. With enough measurements the performance can be roughly reverse engineered. A test pilot in a flyable bird is better, but sometimes its a harsh cruel world and you have to make the most of less.
McPherson
Banned
This was done with ALL the recovered enemy wreckage from Pearl Harbor, including a dud Japanese torpedo fired presumably from one of their mini-subs. It is one of the greatest WW II technological mysteries of the war why the technical intelligence gleaned failed to make it to the tactical forces who needed that information.
What about a coup? A much more moderate faction could overthrow the military government (could be the IJN who knows) and immediately tries to establish a ceasefire and tries to join on the side of the allies against Germany.
So if Rommel isn't there, the defences in and around Normandy are considerably worse.
That'd take time to work out, and wouldn't be nearly as listened to as a flight test. And that's not the only effect of saving the Niihau Zero either, that incident also had a major effect on the internment. If the pilot is kept in a more conventional prison, not only would the US get a working aircraft, but the Internment would probably be much less severe.
I've seen an argument that Rommel changed the defensive philosophy from an "outpost line" at the water's edge to the "main line of resistance", and so moved the deployment within the infantry divisions closer to the coast. This changed the emphasis from disrupting the attackers after they landed to before they landed, hence all the anti-landing craft obstacles.
This is distinct from the argument about the correct deployment of the armoured corps.
Very speculative. Any cross-Channel invasion is at least two years off, and the strategic situation may be radically different.
The Niihau incident was AFAIK irrelevant to the internment of Japanese-Americans in California five months later. The 10,000 or so Japanese who were actual security risks were all interned by the end of December. The later mass internment was the work of demagogic California politicians - some of whom at least were looking to steal the real estate and other property of the internees.
(They also pushed for similar mass internment of Italian-Americans, because Italian-American fishermen held valuable docking rights in Pacific ports.This particular scam got blown up when it was noted that one of the internees was Joe DiMaggio's father.)