marathag
Banned
Yet look what Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck did with troops who had been hardly exposed to Industrial Revolution era technology.
How well would Nazi-trained Arab forces do against the IDF
- Thread starter walmart
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Yet look what Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck did with troops who had been hardly exposed to Industrial Revolution era technology.
longsword14
Banned
But the size must also be considered. The Arabs would require a lot more troops, and their own officers would not be coming from outside; which would be the long term problem : the officers do not improve enough with time.
might I ask what game you were using for this? Sounds interesting...
marathag
Banned
Askaris, and even the bearers, were treated as important part of the Army by the German Officers.
The Arab Officer mostly were from the outside, a different socio-economic class, let alone tribal affiliation. How is that any different from what occurred in Africa?
Treating troops like slaves/peons was the problem. Germans in Africa avoided that, had a decent NCO setup.
The 'Arab Israli Wars' by Avalon Hill was our vehicle. Some minor changes were made to accommodate some possible or perceived differences in German tactical doctrine, but nothing major. For those not familiar it is a tactical game for modeling 1-3 hours of combat by units from battalion to brigade size. The scale revolves around platoon & section as the smallest representation, a 250 meter increment for measuring weapons range and movement, and 6-18 minutes as the basic time increment. Unlike the preceding game Panzerblitz AIW was derived from, the tactical leadership ability is separated from training and weapons performance, into a separate portion of the game system. This makes it useful for a easy modeling of differing doctrines and small unit leadership at the platoon through battalion level.
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Riain
Banned
Poor mig armament is cancelled out by poor mirage armament, with aa2/guns going up against guns for the most part until virtually the end of the war of attrition. Therefore its pilot ability that makes the difference.
As for the Phantom, yes it did have numerous air to air engagements during the war of attrition, including one specifically set up at the behest of the US to test Sparrows. However the mirage was the main air to air fighter until the arrival of the F15 in the mid 70s.
For gods sake, Go make a new thread about the Bradley if you want to shit talk it. The Bradley is not used by the IDF, and it will CERTAINLY not be used by any of the Arab armies if they're Nazi influenced. They'd be using Marders or some such.
To quote Eric Morecambe, "Rubbish!"
Because IOTL the Egyptian Army did employ ex-Wehrmacht personnel and the results spoke for themselves.
BlondieBC
Banned
Don't know why the M1113 is so hated. It is cheap and reliable. It has good off road ability. It's armor looks really good compared to the humvee that I used to drive. Each one carries one nice weapon. Nothing wrong with a extra 50 caliber.
Pretty much, if the Soviets tried for years to make the Arabs not shit, the Germans sure as hell aren't going to manage it with their racial ideologies.
BlondieBC
Banned
While the Egyptian pilots do deserve criticism, I am not sure that we are not finding an easy group to blame instead of dealing with some really easy to fix issues at the top. Before the war, a civilian plane penetrated Egyptian air space by coming in via an indirect route over the sea. The Egyptians did not have radar coverage over that area. This prompted the Israelis to plan an attack via the same route. How hard would it have been to turn some of the radars out to sea? So we end up with the Egyptian Air Force being destroyed on the ground. Sounds like a failure of flag officers to me.
Even without air cover, the Egyptian army was generally holding its ground when the retreat order was issue. This turned into a rout, and yes this largely falls on field grade, company grade and NCO's shoulders. But retreating in good order without air cover is one of the more difficult actions in combat. Exactly how well the the well respected US Army do in the PI in WW2? Or in Korea? Even in the battle of the bulge, we had a division simply disintegrate. BEF fell apart in 1940 on retreat order. Retreats are really, really hard to do well.
So my argument is most of the blame here is not the lackies, but high level leadership. I can easily write an ATL where with the Egyptian army holds as the Egyptian Air Force is worn down at roughly the rate of the Israelis.
So while I think the Egyptian pilots are not as good as Israeli pilots, I am not persuaded the difference would have decided the war if we remove incompetence by the Egyptian high command. A bad series of decisions by a flag officer can cost a nation a war in a week or two. Not sure why we need such complicated answers to such an obvious failure.
We can say the same thing of the 73 war where a halt order by a Syrian officer saved Israel.
Or the 1948/49 war where the Israelis were out of reserves and down to their final line. Then a diplomatic pause allowed the Israeli to rearm but not the Arabs.
Really looks like to me the Israelis got three really big, lucky rolls of the dice. Let me do that to any other power not Nazi Germany, and I can wank the living daylights out of them.
marathag
Banned
And that was with the B-40, an RPG-2 knockoff
It was safer to ride ontop, when mines were around
Riain
Banned
I don't deny any of that, my point is that German success was based on having good systems and good raw material to put into these systems. The Arabs lacked the human raw materials to make a fancy pants German system to work, the fighter pilot example was to show these limits and why Egypt put emphasis on SAMs.
BlondieBC
Banned
And that was with the B-40, an RPG-2 knockoff
It was safer to ride ontop, when mines were around
Do not let perfection be the enemy of the good. Would a 2.5 ton truck be better? A jeep? Walking on foot?
BlondieBC
Banned
Fancy pants German system worked great with East African Tribesman. I find it quite hard to believe that a randomly selected tribesman from Africa has better "raw material" than an average Arab. Or that a random Kansas farm boy is better than random average Arab dirt farmer.
Besides the errors listed in my first post, we should probably deal with the Arab armies were not armies, but Regime Protection Forces who also fought wars from time to time. This how we get flag officer that are loyal but can't figure out to also point the radars in the way the system was breached six months ago. We don't need to replace the NCOs and company officers in mass. We need a single Luftwaffe Colonel to be in charge of the Egyptian Air Force. Or an RAF Colonel. Or we just need some random brigade commander from the Heer (or Red Army) to be in charge of the Syrian armor division.
And the problem does not go away. Mosul was lost to ISIL because the officer above battalion level fled. The Iraqi had better forces, more forces. Nearly 100% of any WW2 nation generals don't do this. There is a cultural issue in Arab Armies and the NCO are not as good, but that is not the real issue. The real rot is in the top 1% of the leadership of these countries, and often to be fair, in the few dozen people at the top and corruption involved in these governments.
Question is: Did they? Since apart from the legion, from that era only the soviet training give us some sample - and of course, the more recent US trainings - it would be worth to first investigate that issue first.
Riain
Banned
Lettow Vorbecks force consisted at the start of about 50% German shutzetruppe and 50% Askaris, and not less than 20% German troops at the peak when the force was still only 14,000 strong. This is a far cry from maybe 1000 advisor in armies of hundreds of thousands.
As for the Kansas farmboy, when this kid got drafted at 18 in the 50s or 60s he was 99% likely to be literate, having been to school for maybe 10 years. Hes also likely to be able to drive a car and probably do minor repairs, been around electronic devices like radios. He's also been socialised in a law abiding democracy with experience in civic life as a participant in a minor way. So yeah, the Kansas farmboy is better raw material for a modern military than an Arab dirt farmer.
The M113 is, by role, an armored personnel carrier. It's not meant to be a solid wall of steel the way an MBT is, but it was supposed to carry troops in and out of the line of fire with some semblance of protection. As it turned out, it was too lightly armored to protect against anything and too bulky to be anything but a target. Yes, the RPG-7 was a massive nasty surprise, but with the development of AT weapons during and after WW2, you'd think they'd make something capable of taking anything stronger than a rough sneeze.
Trucks, jeeps, and Humvees do a great job at transporting troops and logistics, but they weren't explicitly designed to protect infantry from incoming fire. The M113 was explicitly designed to protect the troops inside, and it failed miserably at its job at protecting from anything larger than small arms fire.