attacking in belgium would be like attacking during the spring rains in russia...
No hard surfaced roads?
Hundreds of miles of logistic train?
Come on, honestly?
attacking in belgium would be like attacking during the spring rains in russia...
Originally Posted by perfectgeneral![]()
We could take Antwerp
theres a reason antwerp is like 50 miles inland on the sheldt... its because coastal belgium is a swamp
to land at antwerp or anywhere near it requires steaming up the sheldt at slow speed, being horribly vulnerable to artillery strikes or even tanks firing at ships (the russians actually did that with some success during the fighting for the baltic balcony in 1945)
normandy was a brilliant landing space if one must land in northern france. france is weird with lines of communication. the channel ports arent connected lateraly in any significant way.... all the lines radiate out from paris. therefore a unit at dunkirk has to go back down to paris and then up to normandy to fight there allowing the allies precious time to build up their beachhead
landing in belgium is the making of disaster at dday. hitler had served in ypres in ww1 he had intimate knowledge of the area. the first possible thing he would order would be for the all the drainedge sites to be blown up to flood the allies onto an island. units that had advanced would be horribly cut off and unable to resupply except by air... they would actually have to use catalinas in some areas!
BW,
Very much so.
I'm not the only one who remembers those WW1 photos of Flanders and can extrapolate what WW2 aerial and naval bombardment will do to similar terrain with an even higher water table... shudder...
Longer invasion routes for the landing forces that can't be sealed off against U and E boats as the Channel was? More mines that will need sweeping thus adding to the risk of tipping the Germans off to the invasion sites? Closer to Germany and more of the Luftwaffe? Closer to Calais and more of the Heer? Closer to more KM forces? Having to advance into terrain that was and can be flooded? Having to advance into a denser network of deeper rivers closer to your landing zones? Shall I go on?
Do we abject amateurs with far less knowledge despite our hindsight really need to continue to radically second guess the actual professionals on the spot? I can understand nibbling around the edges, but radically recasting the Overlord invasion requires an in depth knowledge that no one here possesses and few would possess outside of professional military historians with years of research at hand.
Bill
Perfectgeneral,
Yeah, they probably had a better one seeing as they had Enigma decrypts and tons of other SIGINT that you don't.
Yup, that was a mistake. Of course the Germans hadn't planned on the bocage being so useful for them either.
That's hindsight, nothing more. We know there should have been a third PLUTO and a third Mulberry and lots of other things. Assuming we could plan the operation better than they did is utter nonsense however.
You and I can't even begin the imagine all the issues and options they juggled.
Armchair quarterbacking does it for me, especially military strategy armchair quarterbacking from folks whose only brush with organizing a military operation comes from wargames.
Trust me.
Bill
Yep, and the good ol' U.S. Army is ALWAYS right about everything! Yee Haw!
Anything you could think of was considered by Overlord planners...trust me.
Does that include intervention by space lizards or talking donuts?