BlondieBC
Banned
According to most sources I have found the British committed aprox. 180,000 men over the course of the 4 odd year campaign. The bulk of these forces were comprised of militia type units from south Africa, Rhodesia and other areas of the British African holdings. there were also numbers of Indian troops as well as the African members of the Kings Own African Rifles.
Wiki says 250,000, but a lot could depend on how they were counted. But look at the civilian losses of 360,000 for an average combat strength of 15,000. Since most of these civilian deaths were porters working for the Entente, it means 20 people died for each solider in combat. And most of the time, only a small minority of the British were actually in contact with the Germans. This should help indicate how horrible the logistic situation was. Now there is a lot of dispute on the deaths of blacks,and the counts simply for the reason that it was not worth the effort to record black deaths. Number of horse dying in the Boer wars have been well analyzed but the a few hundred thousand native dying is not worth the ink to keep records.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_Campaign_(World_War_I)
While wiki is not perfect, it generally matches the few books I could find on the subject.
The Commonwealth forces deployed neither well trained or led initially, with a goodly number of them being not much better than an organized rabble consisting of white settlers out for a bit of adventure. The total original force, numbering around 20 thousand effectives, was very much a polyglot of of nationalities as well as from different regions and back grounds.
Taking nothing away from the noted advantage both in skill set, morale and ability, for the German forces under L-V were competent, well trained and much better led, just about any force that would have deployed against the Empire troops in East Africa would have looked surprisingly powerful and brilliantly handled.
No, they would not look powerful, the only one looking powerful is the god of disease, crippling the fine youth of Australia. The Germans also had issues, but they were using a low value resource to the German empire (black africans) to tie up high value resources such as good combat units from South Africa and shipping. The best move the for British would be simply to take the ports and forget about the interior. Let disease and hardship slowly wear out the Germans. What resource was in German East Africa besides the ports that could have possibly let the Germans win the war? If the ports are not taken, then there is a risk the Germans can resupply or conduct U-boat operations from Africa. After the ports are taken, there is no other targets of military value.
While you state that even though it is understood that the German forces knew that they were fighting a second -or even third rate - foe, they were training to fight the best. Now I'm just not sure, given the circumstances and conditions, just how one would prepare to fight a first rate force, when in fact you have never been exposed to one to know the difference.
The German officers have training in European warfare. And many 3rd rate Guerilla forces have done well against 1st rate armies.
But for the sake of argument, I will allow that these colonial German troops were the finest trained troops on the face of the planet during the war years. But what exactly did these fine troops do?
The German were trying to get the Entente to divert resources to Africa. So what do the Germans do, simple. Allow disease to kill the Entente soldiers. Allow the Entente to waste VAST amounts of resources supply a corp of troops running around deep Africa. And attack any vulnerable targets that are available.
Any of the troops they tied down while all of this was taking place were at the best second rate troops with even more mediocre command. Even with these low level forces the German forces had been forced back sufficiently that toward the end of 1916 L-W was basically being contained in the south by a force mainly comprised of battalions fro the Kings Own Africa Rifles.
Even General Smuts must have felt the situation to be well in hand as he buggered off to partake in the Imperial Council in London.
Of course they were easily contained. The same logistical issues that make the Entente life hard also work against the Germans. The UK could have chosen the containment strategy at any point and time IOTL.
As I have stated before, the whole campaign was fought by forces no larger than brigade strength (3 battalions) in any one locale.That is not to say that an overall battle might have had two or more brigades active in it, but rather that these forces were operating independently.
3 battalions = one regiment, not a brigade.
And with the extra forces eating supplies, you will not get even this many forces into a battle.
So up against the light forces he was historically facing, L-V would be able to campaign in the limited manner he did for as long as he did with little difficulty. There was never a sufficient force assembled at one time or place to mark him down.
And there never will be without a railroad being built. If sufficient forces were ever assembled, L-V would simply retreat and allow hunger and disease to cripple the British forces. The idea of trying to supply a division or larger unit deep in Africa with a porter system would be extremely dumb.
As is understood, the Imperial and allied forces deployed against him were in numbers up to at least 180,000 men over the four years of the campaign in East Africa. But that is not to say they had 180,000 men in the field at the same time. From what I can discern the Empire was lucky if it could amass 20,000 troops for any one particular engagement. This restriction was not so much due to supply restrictions but rather by the fact that was all they had available at a given time.
Not counting porters, I doubt they ever had 20,000 combat effectives in theater.
So we now have the Anzac Corps taking the field against L-V and his forces. The Anzac's roughly 50,000 men and well equipped are going to have some initial problems. The first will be to lighten up. They won't be quite so hard hitting as they would be in a more traditional battlefield, but suffice to say that they will still be packing a sizeably more qualitative whallop than the German forces facing them.
They will have more machine guns, mortars and even artillery than L-V can even imagine, for while the country precludes support forces at a level that they have been previously used to, they will still be able to bring significant batteries into play here. For if previous British forces as well as L-Vs troops had been able to man handle an assortment of dismounted naval guns up to 6" calibre through he African wilderness, you may rest assured that the Anzac's will find away to bundle along a portion of their 18pdrs with them.
As to the problems with supply, yes there will be concerns and real serious issues as well. But keep in mind that the British carrier Corps numbered some 50,000 men .... a sizable portion of their 180,000 troops in theatre. Now you can add to that at least double the number from the Portuguese, and th supply situation can be managed.
so now we have L-V facing down the Anzac Corp ... whats going to happen? Well in the first few encounters I see the Germans actually having a bit of an upper hand. They will be better able to manage the terrain and environment, which should translate into a certain degree of tactical advantage. The heavier fire power of the Anzacs will be a rude surprise and any sort of concentration of artillery fire will provide an interesting out come I would think.
The big advantage for the Germans which the have had up to now however will be fast sliding away. This disappearing advantage is the ability to break contact and withdraw. They will get away with it a few times, but eventually even the'poorer trained' Anzacs will figure it out, and when they do L-V and his troops will be in the dah dah.
Once the Anzacs realize the size of forces that are deployed against them, the marking down of the Germans will become fairly simple. The Anzacs have the big battalions and are capable of using them appropriately.
Very basic tactical deployments will be used to best the Germans ... advance to contact in the center. Then while using superior fire power to hold the contact, the forces on the wings flank the German position. This leaves two choices for L-V, bolt or be pocketed.
No matter how elite you might think L-V's force is it does not have the numbers to protect it's flanks. To stand is to die. He will have only one option and that is to continuously fall back. That will only work or so long as Africa is only so big.
Sooner or later The Anzacs will turn a flank or two. It is not likely to be a complete rout off the hop, but rest assured that each time it happens more of the resolve of these exceptional soldiers of the Kaiser will fade away. And each time that it does happen the losses of the Germans will be harder to recoup.... and sooner or later with sooner being the a better chance of occurring ... a proper envelopment will occur.
and as to getting to Portuguese territory, looking at it in light of events here, there's not much of a chance they'll make it that far, and if they do it's going to be a rag tag bunch of joggers.
You scenario is wrong. The number of porters was well over 100,000 men for about 15,000 men. To go to 50,000 men, you will need easily over 325,000 porters. The food for these porters also has to be brought in. As you increase the density of the porters, controlling disease like typhus becomes harder. So do a mental exercise, imagine the somehow the porters are at a rate of about 2000 men per mile of trail and the trial stretchs 160 miles form the port (only 1/3 of the length really needed). Every bit of food eaten by the porters has to be hauled from the coast. L-V retreats a mere 50 miles perpendicular to the porter line. That means everyone has to walk 50 miles perpendicular to the trail and establish a new path. This will take 2-7 days just to walk the distance. This may sound doable, but the problem is their will be not spare food laying around, since it is already a shoe string logistical budget. Not only would the men not eat for 2-7 days, they would have to wait until food could be hand carried the whole 160 miles form the coast, since the porters near the coast will have eaten any food in route.
So what has to happen is the ANZAC will have to leave a small contact force, maybe a battalion and their porters. The bulk of the ANZAC will have to then march toward the coast with the bulk of the porters and establish a new supply pathway from much near to the coast to L-V locations. Once this is done, L-V could just move again, maybe back to where it started. Chasing a few thousand poorly armed men who are controlling no strategic resources or high value assets with 50,000 men is just stupid.
You also need to think about a porter eating food, and how the food being eaten impacts the war. Estimates is that IOTL, only 1% of the food reached the combat troops. The porter ate the rest. To add that one porter at the very end of the trail to go from 160 miles to 165 miles, can literally mean 100 more porters along the length of the trail. It is an exponential relationship. The operation you are proposing requires millions of porters, perhaps up to 5-10 million. The Entente simply did not have that much spare food laying around.