Motorised army - the cheapest way

The issue with Germany, France, USSR in motorizing military units in the interwar period was the limitation of the auto industries of these countries - production capacity was not there to produce enough vehicles. This also drove the unit cost up. In terms of the T, yes it could move on crap roads - but only with a driver in it, not full of passengers or cargo - the difficulties of motorized ambulances in WWI close to the front were noted, although horse drawn ambulances had issues as well. BYW that truck in one of the photos, an "FWD" had that name because that company made 4 wheel drive vehicles.

The issue of the average American soldier to deal with mechanical issues/vehicles to some extent is still there, and now includes the ability of the average recruit to use computers.
 
I've also seen/heard/read that model T's are exhausting to drive by our standards and were bastards to drive.

as is seen here in an amusing way.

They aren't that bad, and throttle does work fine in 'High'

The T used a planetary band transmission. Think of it as a two speed GM powerglide where there is no hydraulic valvebody to do the shifting.
You had a pedal for each band, and the handlever could be set to hold some of them in place.

However, it's actually easier than shifting a non-synchronized 'crash' gearbox with a clutch.
The hardest thing modern drivers have with transitioning to a T, is the spark advance lever and a throttle level.
oh, and the main brakes suck. It's another band in the transmission. Aftermarket rear brakes were a popular option to add onto the tiny metal shoes that were there mostly as parking brakes.

The Dodge Brothers, who had been working with Ford (and also Ransom Olds) in producing most T subassemblies for FoMoCo , split with him over his refusal to improve the Model T. Ford had been continually improving autos since his original Model A, that was really similar to the auto Cadillac had- H.F. designed it for them while part of that company.

Anyway, back to Dodge Brothers. They sued Henry, and won. With the money, they expanded to make all the improvements they wanted wanted Henry to do.
It cost $785 dollars(vs $490), but a much nicer ride, and 35HP. It also had a 12V electrical start system, and fuel, oil and water pumps, all not there on the T
460ooo.jpg
 
This also drove the unit cost up. In terms of the T, yes it could move on crap roads - but only with a driver in it, not full of passengers or cargo

The point of savings, is that you had to feed and water horses every day, if they were working or not. Autos used fuel, oil and water only when working.
 
I like a comment I had from a Sergeant in a modern British Police horse unit. 'If the injector pump fails on a lorry then you get a new one from stores. If a horse has an equivalent problem you have to get a whole new horse.'
 
And again, no it wasn't. Motor transportation was more expensive and required a longer logistics train, all the way to Texas and Saudi Arabia in fact. The British could do so because they could afford to and because they had the access to the logistics, as could the United States and later the Soviet Union - on the backs of American supplied Lend Lease vehicles. Germany could not; they simply did not have the industrial capacity to manufacture enough trucks to fully motorise their army, nor did they have the petroleum to supply them with, nor could they have afforded to in any respect.

That is an idiotic argument to make. The British could afford to equip their army steadily, only a small section of it was actually fighting between 1940 and 1944; British and American manufacturing was able to produce the required vehicles, and Britain, despite Lend Lease, racked up a debt that took decades to pay off.

I am confused here. Are you arguing that mechanised armies are better than horsed ones or worse? I was suggesting that WW2 horsed armies used them as they had to but that they would have gone fully mechanised if they could. Your comments seem to be backing that up and I totally agree with them. Yes Britain and the USA were in a better position to do so and thus they did.
 
And again,



That is an idiotic argument to make. The British could afford to equip their army steadily, only a small section of it was actually fighting between 1940 and 1944; British and American manufacturing was able to produce the required vehicles, and Britain, despite Lend Lease, racked up a debt that took decades to pay off.

I rather think you are missing the point. One of the big drivers in the British Army going mechanised was the simple fact that British society and agriculture was mechanising. Thus there was no longer the reserve of horses the Army would need to mobilise (or rather it was getting to the touch and go stage for a small BEF but woefully short of the numbers needed by a sixty division army say) whilst on the other hand there were plenty of recruits who already knew how to drive a motor vehicle.
 
In monetary terms mechanical transport was cheaper than horse transport, at least for the Royal Artillery between the World Wars.

According to the 1925-26 Army Estimates a HT Field Brigade with 521 men cost £113,600 a year, compared to a £99,500 for MT Field Brigade with 417 men. Both types of brigade had 16 guns, that is four 4.5" howitzers and twelve 18pdr guns.

By 1937-38 a HT Field Brigade had 513 men and 261 horses to operate 16 artillery pieces at an annual cost of £95,100. Meanwhile a MT Field Brigade needed 398 men and 31 horses to operate 16 artillery pieces at an annual cost of £80,000.

The costs of the HT Brigade broke down as:

£42,100 Pay (including Marriage Allowance)
£11,300 Provisions
£4,400 Clothing
£16,400 Accommodation (including buildings, barrack services, fuel, light, and water)
£11,400 Stores (regimental and personal equipment, arms, ammunition &c.)
£1,200 Travelling and carriage of stores
£8,000 Animals and forage
£300 Miscellaneous
£95,100 Total

The costs of the MT Brigade broke down as:

£36,100 Pay (including Marriage Allowance)
£8,800 Provisions
£3,400 Clothing
£12,800 Accommodation (including buildings, barrack services, fuel, light, and water)
£16,700 Stores (regimental and personal equipment, arms, ammunition &c.)
£900 Travelling and carriage of stores
£1,100 Animals and forage
£200 Miscellaneous
£80,000 Total

Based on the above I don't understand why it took so long to mechanise the field brigades. 13 out of 23 were still on a horsed basis in the 1936-37 Estimates and weren't mechanised until 1937-38. By contrast all the medium and heavy artillery brigades were mechanised by 1927-28.
 

Archibald

Banned
somewhere I can't remember I've seen a picture of a V2 rocket carried to the pad on a horse-drawn cart. In a nutshell, the siliness of nazi Germany.
 
The information on the RASC is less clear cut. I only have information for 1925-26 when

A Transport Company (HT) Royal Army Service Corps had 59 men and cost £11,575 a year to run. I don't know how many horses it had or the carrying capacity of the company.

There were two types of Transport Company (MT) Royal Army Service Corps. There was a higher establishment company with 141 men costing £27,580 a year to run and a lower establishment company with 84 men and costing £16,593 to run. I don't know what the carrying capacity of those were either.

However, MT must have had a significant advantage over HT if it wasn't the cost. This is because 20 of the 24 of the transport companies in 1924-25 were on a MT basis and only 3 were on a HT basis. The RASC was fully mechanised by the 1930-31 Estimates making it one of the first corps of the British Army to be fully mechanised.
 
there were plenty of recruits who already knew how to drive a motor vehicle.
My father was a young soldier in the 1930s. His training to become a driver was being shown the controls, driving the lorry around a field once and coming to a halt. He was then signed off as a driver. Mind you this was a time before civilian driving tests.
 

Deleted member 1487

I had read once that one of the main issues with European motorized divisions was the inability of the normal soldier to maintenance and repair breakdowns. I believe it was something like only 5% of the average soldiers (not in the maintenance area) had any idea how to work on engines or trucks in general. Plus German designs tended to be over engineered and difficult to work on by the average layman. Conversely in the American Army 65 to 75% of it's soldiers could do normal maintenance of the vehicles it was operating. Plus the engineering was typically simple and easily learned by the operator. It was one of the USA's greatest "hidden" weapons was when driving into battle the majority of the unit arrived ready to fight. As opposed to a German division that say had to move 50 miles into a battle you would see 15 to 25% of it's vehicles strung out waiting for a repair group.
I'm not sure the usual 'over-engineered' claim really applied to German automobiles as they used a GM design with Opel (subsidiary of GM) that was able to use US Army spare parts and be repaired and operated by the US in France in 1944 because the designs were so similar. German designs like the Kubelwagen were extremely simple and rugged, and based off the 'Beetle' civilian version engineered to be easily maintained by the average person (it was supposed to be a German model T for the 1930s):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Kübelwagen

The Daimler L3000 used a simple V4 Diesel engine and proved even more rugged than the GM based Opel trucks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_L3000

I think the 'over-engineered' idea comes from a few high end tank designs in WW2 (Tiger, Elefant, and Panther) and post-war German cars in the luxury class Mercedes and BMW designs. Its ironic though that no one mentions how similar English made cars had similar design/maintenance issues in the 1960s like Jaguar.

But yes German society had the least automotively experienced population of any 'western' society in the lead up to WW2 due to the economic situation in the 1920s-30s meaning that fewer people could afford automobiles, while the US had the most car ownership of any society on earth, so most people had some experience driving or doing simple maintenance. Still I think the German army did better than 5% of soldiers having automotive knowledge, as car ownership in Germany was significantly more than 5% of the population, but perhaps the most knowledgable soldiers were siphoned off for the technical branches and services like the navy and Luftwaffe.

Of course when you say the Germans had maybe up to a quarter of their vehicles broken down on the march you need to consider when and the situation, in 1938 there was virtually no time to prepare for an operation when orders came down to move on Austria, so there was a lot of vehicles that broke down due to little preparation for operations, while in France in 1940 I don't recall ever reading anything close to even 15% were broken down due to maintenance issues. Barbarossa probably ran into 25% or more due to the unique situation of the mixture of civilian and foreign booty automobiles used for the invasion, the conditions, and the lack of proper air filters for the dusty unpaved roads. In that situation even the US and UK would have massive breakdowns. AFAIK the 1942 campaign had much fewer breakdowns as a result of honing down to fewer models and more military/4x4 models, but then the huge advance in that year meant wear and tear was going to knock out any vehicle eventually. I do not think that any Allied advance even in 1944 traveled so far, yet the the US and USSR had trouble with their logistics after their big advances in France and Belarus in that year.
 

Driftless

Donor
(snip)

Based on the above I don't understand why it took so long to mechanise the field brigades. 13 out of 23 were still on a horsed basis in the 1936-37 Estimates and weren't mechanised until 1937-38. By contrast all the medium and heavy artillery brigades were mechanised by 1927-28.

How much might be the "old school" outlook of senior commanders and senior civilian administration?
 
How much might be the "old school" outlook of senior commanders and senior civilian administration?
I don't know, but I suspect that the "old school" had very little to do with it. Mechanisation was the great project of the interwar British Army. IRRC the British Army was able to move a whole infantry division with Mechanical Transport in about 1930 and IIRC it was the first army in the world to do so.

This is an extract from the official history of British War Production from Hyperwar.
Lower still was the equipment of the field forces. The Army did not occupy a place in the traditional concepts of British power as important as that of the Navy and did not figure as prominently in the plans of Imperial defence. Nor could it match the R.A.F. in its ability to impress the public and overawe the statesmen by its terrible and yet undisclosed potentialities for destruction. The field forces were therefore bound to be the main victims of the financial stringency. The annual allocation for the purchase and maintenance of army weapons and war-stores in the decade between 1923 and 1933 seldom exceeded £2.5 millions and averaged about £2 millions, or slightly less than nine percent of the small sums spent on armaments in an average year.

The effects of the stringency were all but crippling. The official doctrine of the War Office in the late twenties and the early thirties was that of a highly-equipped small and mobile professional army. Small it indeed was—its regular nucleus in the twenties was only four divisions strong. To some extent it was also becoming mobile, for under the current scheme of mechanisation its entire transport, cavalry and artillery, was due to be motorised. But highly equipped it certainly was not.

Mechanisation was the largest and the best-advertised of the Army's projects of modernisation, but in fact throughout the twenties and early thirties it was not carried beyond a merely experimental stage. The Royal Army Service Corps alone was completely mechanised by 1930. By 1929 some brigades of the Royal Artillery were equipped with tracked tractors, several Royal Engineer and Signal units were mechanised, and a few cavalry units had their first-line transport converted to lorries. Between 1930 and 1934 the artillery, the engineer and signal and R.A.S.C units of the Territorials were also supplied with lorries. It was not, however, until 1934 that the infantry began to be mechanised, and it was not until 1939 that the Regular Army obtained its peacetime complement of wheeled vehicles and as much as one-half of its complement of tracked vehicles, quite apart from tanks. Before 1934 the process appeared more impressive in lists of units than in terms of actual equipment ordered and supplied. The total number of all wheeled motor vehicles ordered in the ten years from 1923 to 1932 was little more than 5,000, or about 500 per annum. Of this six-wheeled lorries, the main element of mechanised equipment, formed somewhat less than half.
 
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Deleted member 1487

How much might be the "old school" outlook of senior commanders and senior civilian administration?
The biggest problem was probably finances. The Great Depression gutted British military funding through the 1930s and it was only after rearmament was prioritized around 1936-38 to various degrees did they finally have the funding to make it happen.
 
I'm not sure the usual 'over-engineered' claim really applied to German automobiles as they used a GM design with Opel (subsidiary of GM) that was able to use US Army spare parts and be repaired and operated by the US in France in 1944 because the designs were so similar. German designs like the Kubelwagen were extremely simple and rugged, and based off the 'Beetle' civilian version engineered to be easily maintained by the average person (it was supposed to be a German model T for the 1930s):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Kübelwagen

The Daimler L3000 used a simple V4 Diesel engine and proved even more rugged than the GM based Opel trucks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_L3000

I think the 'over-engineered' idea comes from a few high end tank designs in WW2 (Tiger, Elefant, and Panther) and post-war German cars in the luxury class Mercedes and BMW designs. Its ironic though that no one mentions how similar English made cars had similar design/maintenance issues in the 1960s like Jaguar.

But yes German society had the least automotively experienced population of any 'western' society in the lead up to WW2 due to the economic situation in the 1920s-30s meaning that fewer people could afford automobiles, while the US had the most car ownership of any society on earth, so most people had some experience driving or doing simple maintenance. Still I think the German army did better than 5% of soldiers having automotive knowledge, as car ownership in Germany was significantly more than 5% of the population, but perhaps the most knowledgable soldiers were siphoned off for the technical branches and services like the navy and Luftwaffe.

Of course when you say the Germans had maybe up to a quarter of their vehicles broken down on the march you need to consider when and the situation, in 1938 there was virtually no time to prepare for an operation when orders came down to move on Austria, so there was a lot of vehicles that broke down due to little preparation for operations, while in France in 1940 I don't recall ever reading anything close to even 15% were broken down due to maintenance issues. Barbarossa probably ran into 25% or more due to the unique situation of the mixture of civilian and foreign booty automobiles used for the invasion, the conditions, and the lack of proper air filters for the dusty unpaved roads. In that situation even the US and UK would have massive breakdowns. AFAIK the 1942 campaign had much fewer breakdowns as a result of honing down to fewer models and more military/4x4 models, but then the huge advance in that year meant wear and tear was going to knock out any vehicle eventually. I do not think that any Allied advance even in 1944 traveled so far, yet the the US and USSR had trouble with their logistics after their big advances in France and Belarus in that year.

You are absolutely correct in that I pulled the breakdown number from the 1938 march into Austria. I (maybe incorrectly) assumed that situation would not have improved much from the standpoint of the fighting vehicles. You are also right in that the trucks were relatively simple so many Germans learned on the job and that side of it probably improved as the war went on.

On the American side weren't most of the engines used gasoline? I don't recall the US using many diesel engines, but I really don't know.
 
In monetary terms mechanical transport was cheaper than horse transport, at least for the Royal Artillery between the World Wars.

According to the 1925-26 Army Estimates a HT Field Brigade with 521 men cost £113,600 a year, compared to a £99,500 for MT Field Brigade with 417 men. Both types of brigade had 16 guns, that is four 4.5" howitzers and twelve 18pdr guns.

By 1937-38 a HT Field Brigade had 513 men and 261 horses to operate 16 artillery pieces at an annual cost of £95,100. Meanwhile a MT Field Brigade needed 398 men and 31 horses to operate 16 artillery pieces at an annual cost of £80,000.

This is amazing! Not just the cost, but the manpower savings. That is a 20%+ decrease in manpower to achieve the same firepower out of a unit. For countries with manpower shortages this should have been a no-brainer move. I would have thought France would have keyed on this quickly. How many more units could you have activated with the manpower savings by motorizing your artillery sections across the army?
 

Deleted member 1487

You are absolutely correct in that I pulled the breakdown number from the 1938 march into Austria. I (maybe incorrectly) assumed that situation would not have improved much from the standpoint of the fighting vehicles. You are also right in that the trucks were relatively simple so many Germans learned on the job and that side of it probably improved as the war went on.

On the American side weren't most of the engines used gasoline? I don't recall the US using many diesel engines, but I really don't know.
The 1938 Anschluss occupation was one of the worst run operations in Germany military history to that point, so they learned a LOT of lessons that they applied to Poland in 1939 and France in 1940. They didn't make those same mistakes if they could avoid it.

On the American side yes, they mostly used gasoline AFAIK. If you are referring to the Diesel Daimler trucks, they weren't the ones I was referring to when I said the US troops repaired and used German trucks, they were repairing the Opel Blitz's as they were gasoline based and effectively the same trucks the US was using (or at least those parts worked in the German trucks):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Blitz
 
I was referring to when I said the US troops repaired and used German trucks, they were repairing the Opel Blitz's as they were gasoline based and effectively the same trucks the US was using (or at least those parts worked in the German trucks):

They used the 213ci straight Six from the Buick Marquette line, that had its origin with Oldsmobile. Olds went to a 230 cu design in 1937. Maybe that's where the tooling went, over to Opel.

Like most GM sixes of the era, similar enough to interchange distributor caps and such,as well as some internals
 
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