AH Challenge: Make trench warfare the standard means of combat

Cook

Banned
Would Paratroopers have been an effective way to break trench warfare if the technological and theoretical prerequisites were developed before/during WWI?



I get the feeling that they wouldn’t.

Paratroops aren’t dropped directly on top of enemy troops because they’d be massacred. They are generally dropped in locations to cease and hold key terrain for more powerful ground forces to link up with. They are lightly armed and cannot hold long without relief.

The battle of Crete is an example of what happens if you drop them on top of the enemy. Even as a successful attack it was too bloody to repeat.

And Market-Garden is an example of what happens when they are not relieved quickly by ground forces.

The trench systems in WW1 were extensive in depth and had reserve forces behind the lines available to cut off any penetrations that did occur. Hence the progressively bigger and bigger Massed infantry attempts to punch through the lines.

If you used them without a means for ground forces to punch quickly through the trenches and link up they’d just come under attack from the enemies reserve forces behind the lines.
 
Would Paratroopers have been an effective way to break trench warfare if the technological and theoretical prerequisites were developed before/during WWI?

You're thinking Air Assault, which is a completely different kettle of fish. Paratroopers are light infantry once they hit the ground, while air assault infantry are more like mechanized infantry with flying IFVs.

For the flying IFV concept to work, you need helicopters. That...isn't likely to happen.
 
Iran-Iraq war anyone?
Big 10 year trench warfare nastyness.

The key I think is to have the opposing sides of equal power and with minimal air and artilery power.
Even tanks aren't a total winner for trench warfare at the best of times; in modern times AT weapons are such that they aren't at all.

Iraq resisting the US with trench warfare though- no. They didn't have enough loyal people to mount such a thing and the allies would be able to just kill them from above- nice and out in the open away from any schools or other nasty potential collateral.
 
Fascinating concept in this TL discussion.

I understand that the West Germans developed the North German Plain with villages at 4000 yard intervals. This gives good cover for anti-tank weapons and (with reinforced concrete cellars) turns the houses into dugouts. The consequences of a tank attack on that area would be severe.

Clancy's 'Bear and Dragon' debates the artillery/static tank problem, pointing out that a fixed position can (as in the late 19th century) become vulnerable to concentrated artillery fire. Air-portability and smart weapons are put up as the solution, holding the line until conventional blitzkrieg can finish the job.

The design of the West German system lets a cheaper system serve as 'hides' for a largely mobile defensive force supported by air power. The 'hides' can be replaced or vacated as artillery attacks them.

I am wondering whether the lesson of Finland in 1940 needs to be examined - the Finns often re-took and repaired Mannerheim Line fortifications when the Russians had taken them. This semi-mobile resistance was a remarkable trench warfare survival.

Any thoughts?
 
You have to invent weapons so deadly that mobile armies cannot survive. The machine gun and barbwire made this possible in WWI. Tanks overcame this in WWII. So what you need is highly effective anti-tank weapons before WWII to keep trench warfare the viable. Later on you will need highly effective anti-aircraft weapons to keep helicopters off the front lines.

If we had death rays today I expect there would be no choice but dig in.

i'd like to add something to that

Weapons so deadly and relatively immobile or with little mobility that mobile armies cannot survive.

If your deadly weapon was rather mobile then why fight trench warfare. it would be the perfect example for the gundams. mobile armies and a good number of mechs simply can't survive them yet the gundam is excessively mobile to the point where it makes trench warfare pointless.

same is true of death rays.. if you can't transport them easily then trench warfare makes sense, but if you can quickly transport them then you'd be crazy to use trench warfare.
 
Top