AHC: Better Strategy on the Western Front? [WWII]
- Thread starter RedTerra
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Depends on where they place their priorities. From early 1944 the Allied air forces in the UK were: attacking the V1/V2 launch sites & support structure under construction, making a maximum effort vs German industry, residual attacks on French industry, a ongoing campaign vs the Franco Belgian railways that ramped up to a maximum effort March-May, ramped up attacks vs the German supply depots & coastal defense, continued attacks on the submarine bases. The RAF 2d Tac AF, 8th AF, 8th AF, embryonic 5th AF, and RAF Bomber Command were extremely busy across all of western Europe attacking about everything in site. With fewer aircraft in the UK in 1943 priorities would need to narrower & less all encompassing.
Interestingly my father was directly involved in this, as a ordnance officer in the 555th Medium Bomber Squadron (B26). Aside from his observations he left me with a few books on the subject. The short version is when the 9th bomber division stood up in the summer /autum of 1943 there was a assumption bridges & like point targets were impractical. It was chosen to "destroy" the French railway system by attacking the repair depots, marshaling yards, and supporting industry. After just a couple months it was clear the plan was not working. Repair depots and marshaling yards were back in operation in a few weeks, days in some cases. The Germans had prepared a small army of repair crews, dispersed across France, and staged repair material near probable targets. Salvage crews could be at work within a hour after the last 1000lb bomb hit. a large reinforcing crew with rail wagons of repair items would be on site before the next dawn. By mid autumn morale from the senior commander down through the division and wing staff, all the way to Captain Schwamberger was dropping. Everyone could see that attacking the same targets twice, and three times in three months was a sign of failure. These targets were supposed to stay down for many months, into 1944.
Major General Andersen, Hap Arnolds trouble shooter & targeting expert in the UK took a long look at the problem & concluded the experts were wrong. The target should be the bridges. His recommendations were: 1. A hyper thurough training program for pilots and bombardiers. 2. Dropping attack altitudes from 20,000+ feet, to 15,000 & lower. 3 Attack in much larger bombing groups, boxes of 54 planes became the norm for 9th Bomber Div, and two- three boxes were to attack in serial. If the first dropped the bridge the following groups could go on to a alternate target, otherwise they attacked the primary shortly after the lead. This began to pay off soon proving the "Knotheads" as my father put it were wrong. Bridges were dropping under the bomber groups following the regime Andersen laid out.
However this did not lead to the railways all cut in December 43. The Brits were understandably concerned over all those V1 launchers being built in Flanders & Normandy. The 9th AF was ordered to put priority on supporting the Brits in destroying the launchers and support structures. The other targets of the 9th AF got the leftover sorties. This went on until February/March when orders came from above turning all the 9th AF back to bridge busting, and other invasion support. This seems to have been the case for the RAF 2d Tactical AF, tho I may be misreading there. In any case by March the Germans were starting to abandon the fixed V1 system and were going for mobile deployment and launch methods.
When you dig into the German accounts of the battle in Normandy, from the participants, a severe supply shortage emerges. Equipment & ammunition expended was replaced from outside the battle area at a estimated 1-10 ratio. initially some material could be provided from the local 7th Army depots. But, the standard spares of artillery, radios, horse, vehicles, parts ran out swiftly. Ammunition lasted longer, but by mid July replacement of anything was rare or unknown. New corps drawn from the 15th Army, or Army Group G to the south made good some of the losses but as July ran its course the 7th Army & the Pz Group were at the end of their rope. The railroads could not run past Paris, & even east of Paris was slow and dangerous. automotive transport of supplies was limited to the short summer nights. Any vehicles not camouflaged at dawn were at high risk. The 12,000+ combat aircraft deployed on 6th June by the Allies did not go away the next few months. Bomber Command and 8th Air Force went back to hammering the Reich, but some 5000+ medium and tactical bombers and escorts were still available for the Normandy battle.
From August the retreating Germans were able to pick up fuel & ammo scattered across France as they retreated, more so in September. So the Allied air forces had to start over again on the supply interdiction gig. They also had to displace forward. the UK was out of range for effective interdiction of the Rhine region transport network. My fathers Group displaced in mid September to Eastern Belgium. The trucks carrying the ground echelon came ashore via the Brit Mulberry at Arvanches. I still have his Michilien road map showing the route taken across France.
The same general pattern can be found in Operation STRANGLE of the US 15th AF in Italy during the same months. Kesselring watched as transit of supplies from Aurstira across Italy slowed to a walk, then a crawl. His quartermasters could point to the dates when the flow would fall below the minimum needed to sustain the defense south of Rome. After the advance north that summer the air interdiction campaign was restarted against the north Italian and Austrian railways. This was diluted by the need to do the same to support Operation DRAGOON on the other side of the Maritime Alps in France.
Trivia note: One of the bomber groups in my fathers Wing had been assigned the Remagen Bridge in February. They missed
& weather prevented a effective return strike. When the news of the Remagen bridge coup arrived the offending bombardier was rousted from his ease and awarded a large faux medal for screwing up.
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PDF here.
Thx for all that.
That's what I'm saying. The upcoming invasion will tend to "focus the mind". Plus, OTL diversions to V1s & V2s, which were fairly substantial, aren't happening.
In ref the supply issue for Monty's "thrust", that 650 tons/d figure is a bit deceptive. Fact is, it's possible to maintain normal ops down to about 65% of that without loss of effectiveness. (There's cannibalization & other improvisation going on.) So the 40-div op is still out of bounds, but 18 might not be.
That's a great story.Trivia note: One of the bomber groups in my fathers Wing had been assigned the Remagen Bridge in February. They missed
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Thanks
The air supply was less than 500 tons/day in September; Dieppe was open from 8 September supplying 6000+ tons/day.
Van Creveld's Supplying War has an analysis which IIRC demonstrates that there was enough supply to reach Berlin, but I can't find it at the moment.
Invading Italy was the right call. Prince Umberto and his wife had been communicating that the King was ready to surrender in late 1942. Unfortunately, the Italian Facists had told everybody but the army of the impending coup. While the initial landings tactically were botched and Shingle was an operational nightmare, overall, in hindsight if you believe some of the more modern casualty estimates, it was a net positive.
(I don't think the Italian campaign would get nearly as much scrutiny if Gen. Mark Clark had just followed orders in the breakout in Anzio. While I don't think he could have cut off the retreat of the German 10th Army completely, he had a very good shot at surrounding the defenders from the 14th Army in front of Rome and making the 10th Army's retreat much more costly.)
(I don't think the Italian campaign would get nearly as much scrutiny if Gen. Mark Clark had just followed orders in the breakout in Anzio. While I don't think he could have cut off the retreat of the German 10th Army completely, he had a very good shot at surrounding the defenders from the 14th Army in front of Rome and making the 10th Army's retreat much more costly.)
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Yes it is. It looks to me like strictly 'division' consumption. May include corps but not army overhead. ie: how is one counting the supply for all those independent tanks brigades. The Planners of logistics for OVERLORD had a goal of 900 tons daily for each "Division Slice" That is all the ground forces, tactical air forces, and service support ashore in Normandy, divided by the number of Division HQ. About 44,000 men per slice. Based on previous experience it was understood this amount was need to keep the 'divisions' at full offensive power & attacking. After 90 days the goal was 950 tons per slice.
For a limited operation like MARKET-GARDEN the 650 tons is probably good enough. Maybe even 500 or 400 tones. But, for a entire army group in sustained operations, that 40 division or 20 division full blooded thrust the supply needs to cover all the combat and service support units close behind and trailing back to the port.
Goal & necessity aren't always the same. AIUI, 65% of the goal would still achieve the desired result; below that meant reduction in effectiveness. And only in the case of really heavy combat would the actual demand mean the 65% amount is a "hard limit": it'd actually inhibit, then, since the total amount required is well above the norm. (Have I phrased that really unclearly?
)As I read the capacity of the ports, there's still a bit of slack for higher HQs at the 18 div level. Not as much as desired, but, arguably, enough to achieve the aim. (Knowing that, however, might require facts not at hand at the time...so likely it'd get called on lack of capacity. For somebody to propose going anyhow might well have provoked remarks of, "You have more nerve than sense."
)I'd have to check details, but IIRC that total included building up reserves in theatre and was not an estimate of likely daily consumption. When 21st Army Group started moving its logistics base forward from Normandy at the end of August they had reserve stocks of 300,000 tonnes plus (perhaps 30 days supply?).
Yes the 900 ton goal had a 5% allowance for building reserve. At d+ 90 this was to increase to 950 tons, or a 10% build up allowance.
Goal & necessity aren't always the same. AIUI, 65% of the goal would still achieve the desired result; below that meant reduction in effectiveness. And only in the case of really heavy combat would the actual demand mean the 65% amount is a "hard limit": it'd actually inhibit, then, since the total amount required is well above the norm. (Have I phrased that really unclearly?
The 900 tones per 'Div Slice' or 44,000 men does not seem high as its to cover everything, not just the ground combat division. After corps and army overhead are tossed in, the service forces including the fuel for supply transport and rebuilding the essential infrastructure (excluding port reconstruction & operations), and the tactical air forces it does not seem excessive. My first reaction when I read this in Ruppenthal was it did not sound like enough.
As I read the capacity of the ports, there's still a bit of slack for higher HQs at the 18 div level. Not as much as desired, but, arguably, enough to achieve the aim. (Knowing that, however, might require facts not at hand at the time...so likely it'd get called on lack of capacity. For somebody to propose going anyhow might well have provoked remarks of, "You have more nerve than sense."
The port thing is tricky. I have both Ruppenthal & a logistics history of 21 Army Group. And a bit of data on prewar average intake of the ports. The first thing I see is the variable in actual discharge when secured from the Germans, and the increase in discharge as the port was restored. some ports reached their peacetime intake slowly or not at all, others went to more than double the nominal capacity. Sorting through the two books to extract a idea of the actual intake at different dates is a task I procrastinated on for a couple years.
But, all that is heavily modified by the transportation problem. As late as December 1944 Antwerp ceased discharge operations for some days as the docks could not be cleared due to transport deficiencies. There were complaints about cargo ships held in Cherbourg loaded as the port was not being cleared fast enough. Estimating the supply available in October to Pattons Third Army at Metz, or my fathers bomber wing near Vouziers east of Rheims from peace time nominal capacity, or a September discharge rate may be deceptive.