Replies to various comments, both extremely perspicacious and some not so... well.
Okay regarding Tracked Amphibious assault vehicles and my earlier question as to why they were not used so much in Europe
Just found a few sites on landing craft in general and
one mentions the LVTs were designed to over come reefs - Traditional landing craft would be blocked by them forcing the troops to wade or even swim long distances from the reefs to the beach itself.
Not good - particulalrly if under fire.
As there were no reefs along the French shore line and there were reefs on most of the Pacific islands invaded by the US most of the LVTs were therefore reserved for Pacific use.
I think this satisfied my query.
Very good points.
Well... Over 16,000 LVTs were made. Landing craft, (technically troop lighters) were a lot cheaper, easier to build, did not require scarce strategic raw materials, were easier to train coxswains to use and could be used as cargo lighters as well as human being transports for ship to shore movement, where conditions permitted. LVTs were specialized assault craft intended to be used against a fortified coast, over low-pressure ground flotation, coral reefs be damned. Then there is the service rivalries, involved, with the American army and navy being very Japanese about not cooperating about equipment. I could comment negatively about the army not looking sensibly at an across the services need for pannier bomb-bays in their lines of excellent medium bombers which could drop long skinny things like torpedoes, or the American navy's reluctance to share their far superior artillery and close air support expertise with the army, but you get the additional points? Amphibious warfare was another such area. It is true that the American Marines trained the American army on how to mark assault lanes, organize boat echelons, and conduct a proper beach landing, something for which the American army never credits the American navy. However, when it comes to advice about how to supply the landings, what kind of equipment, and what resources to allocate and how to operate past the red-line, the American army tended to ignore good, proper, and prudent advice. Examples of this, can be seen at Omaha beach where close air support in the form of an overhead CAP of dive bombers and fighters was not available to be used to drop ordnance in response to forward air controllers who could talk a Dauntless or Avenger down onto those murderous flanking fire pillboxes to the west side of the landing beaches, or the lack of LVTs with demolition mortars, or the lack of sufficient pre-assault infiltrator teams to swim in to blow the obstacles up prior to the LCI waves coming ashore. But that is just me applying a Pacific war mindset to the Germans.
A. Armoured engineers are a force multiplier it is not a secondary, The crews of the AVREs and armoured bulldozers were Royal Engineers. Agreed that Crocodiles, Crabs, Kangaroos et al where crewed from the RTR and other armoured units they are still force multipliers hardly a waste of their talents.
B. The airfields defended by the RAF Regiment housed further force multipliers, the protection of which needs fit and active troops.
C. Without landing craft crew - no landing or a smaller landing. Handling landing craft is mentally and physically demanding, you need fit and active personal
D. Coal mining in Britain at the time was largely manual labour for which you need young and fit people - without coal no or reduced industrial output putting Britain further behind the eight-ball post war.
[E.] Probably the best source of young, fit, active manpower was the ridiculously overmanned Empire Air Training Scheme - although a considerable number of these had one way missions when they were transferred to the army's Glider Pilot Regiment - one landing after which if you survived you became infantry replacements until you were pulled out for the next mission.
[F.]It should be noted that the men conscripted into the coal mines were kept at it until about 1947, unlike those in uniform that were released form service as soon as practicable.
A mixed bag of crocodiles and rabbits here to answer.
a. Answer to the Funnies depends on whether one thinks the solution to the DIEPPE RAID lessons learned was partially these AVREs? In effect, one wants to get off the beach as fast as one can, in as good shape as one can beyond the red-line and seize defendable ground beyond the soft low floatation ground pressure ground shelf that the British and Americans chose where to land. Armored vehicles are heavy. No matter if landed by boat or if they swim ashore using flimsy canvas flotation screens, no matter if they are converted matt laying machines that provide Treadway Flats for follow on mine clearing machines, they will bog down as about 30% of them did on Gold Beach. If that predictable outcome is not factored in; then one has not thought the Funnies through. If one does not get through the red-line fast enough with the Funnies, then one has not thought the whole assault process through, if one does not reach the !@# !@#$%^ key terrain to the southwest, that critical ridge southwest of CAEN and set up to meet and repulse the expected German counterattack with the Funnies and one's other forces; before that counterattack develops and hangs one up for 6 whole weeks short of that dominant terrain then one has NOT THOUGHT it through.
b. RAF airfields need to be defended. If one could trust second echelon troops to man the AAA and to handle the ground defense, this would probably suffice, but AAA and airfield ground defense unfortunately requires extremely good quality artillery men and very competent infantry. I'll have more to say about the manpower distributions in a moment.
c. I have already commented on the difference between LVT and LCI drivers, but the point must be emphasized. CXWN Clutz cannot be assigned to an LCI (LCA to the RN) and CPL Clod cannot be a tank driver. (Well, he can, but NOT during a beach assault where he lands from an LCT or swims it in. You need capable smart men in those postings and the rest of the crews have to be "elite" too, or you will lose 28 out of 29 DD tanks as at Omaha Beach (Training failure as mentioned.)).
d. Now we get to manpower allocation. The UK problem in this respect is geographic, technological and personnel management. In the middle of a war, with an electrical grid powered by coal-fired steam plants and with ship bottom space needed for FOOD, munitions, oil and strategic raw materials, the need to ship in coal in a country fueled by it and sitting on top of huge reserves is kind of dumb. So, mining to fuel the existing power plants will be done. Most working mines are too DEEP for strip-mining to work, so it is into the shafts to get at the coal seams. Modern driller and excavator machinery for deep shaft mining is American, in its infancy, and for obvious reasons, is unavailable to ship to Britain (America has her own critical manpower crisis, which I will discuss next.). The British now have to decide, who swings the picks, shovels the lumps into the rail trucks and sends it up the shafts to be collected, loaded and freighted to the powerplants? One will not use one's best, bravest, brightest, or most capable to mine coal. One will use those citizens with strong backs and weak minds. This is kind of a bitter result of modern industrialized warfare, but it seems to be a discerned historical practice among many nations of humanity, regardless of the culture or mindset. The Japanese certainly did. Why not the British?
British practices extend beyond the coal mines. The best and brightest of the drafted cohorts go into the RN and the RAF to operate and maintain the air and surface forces. That does not mean the commanders use these forces well, (I tend to damn the RAF, with very few exceptions everywhere they operate, and give the RN mixed marks on their performance; excellent RN in the North Atlantic, good RN in the Med, utter RN failures in the Indian Ocean and Pacific; my opinion only, your mileage should and could vary.). For the British army, the cream of the draft they receive ought to have wound up in the motorized formations and technical arms. Armor, artillery, engineers (sappers), elite infantry units and so forth. That means Private Fumbles will make up a huge % of the line infantry. He will take disproportionate and high casualties because he lacks the skills and smarts to stay alive in an industrialized warfare environment. He will also not be trained to the thoroughness he needs to learn by rote what he needs to know to stay alive when his enemy applies kinetics to him.
How about the Americans? They are suffering the same exact problems and outcomes the British face. The US not only has to create the same war machine 2x the British have in size, but they now have to arm, feed, supply and PAY for the UK war, Russia, and their own efforts. Anybody male with half a brain over 40 not able to withstand combat, and able to be trained to semi-skilled standards will be at work producing weaponry and supplies. Much of the female population will be factory bound, too. What is left goes to the navy, army air forces, MARINES, coast guard, technical civilian services, and what's draftable and left in the cohorts goes to the army. How does that break down?
1. engineers
2. artillery
3. armor
4. services and supply (because of racism, the services and supply gets a high proportion of excellent African American draftees who make outstanding contributions everywhere they serve. This is noticed (Truman) postwar and ends the despicable Woodrow Wilson legally imposed segregation in the American armed services postwar.)
5. Infantry.
Bottom of the barrel goes into the infantry. Outcomes? 1944 it turns out that the US line infantry is critically short in riflemen and other line infantry. Armor, too, is short of trained crews, for while the deaths per tank is far less than the British suffer (Same exact machines, but the Americans are smarter and more competent tankers. Example:
they wear helmets and attack with whole maneuvering platoons against identified German tank aces and immediately KILL them first, which the British seem not to have done. [Goodwood].) they still lose many tank crews to physical injuries in battle^1. The Americans break up AAA units and raid services and supply for replacements in theater for their undermanned armored combat units, BUT... back in the United States, the CAT IV 30-40 year olds are called up in expectation months before it happens that there will be very heavy casualties in France after D-day. These draftees, the dumbest, least capable, and most expendable, of the "older men", as determined by testing, are rushed through minimal training from March 1944 onward and shipped immediately to the front in France as replacements to fill out the rifle companies, to take the places of those men killed or maimed in the fighting from June to September and these Joe Schmuck replacements DIE in droves. Especially in the HURTGEN Forest; they die. They don't know enough and they are not competent enough to be used in the really clever ways they should have been used to take that horrible ground. One thinks that generals like Gerow and Coda did not know exactly what they had in human resources or what they could do and expect from those troops? Frontal attacks, attrition assaults, the simplest, least intelligent kind of warfare against experienced German east front veterans was the result. The amazing thing from all of this utterly horrible nonsense is not that the Germans held the Hurtgen, for that was almost inevitable. It was how high a price they were forced to pay in their own irreplaceable well-trained infantry to do it. The exchange ratios were almost equal. Incredible that Joe Schmuck infantry was able to perform that well in the attack in that battle. That was the true result of the Hurtgen Forest and why it was fought. U.S. Grant style mode of warfare. Kill off the enemy's best with your worst (Overland Campaign) and what is left is no damned good. It paid dividends when the German infantry failed during The Bulge.
e. I don't know if the Empire Air Training Scheme was overmanned. I know the RAF pilotage at the squadron and below level was excellent and their ground establishment was "good to excellent", so that program yielded good to excellent results for effort invested. I do know that with few exceptions, the RAF
air marshals were utterly incompetent. I would have sent a lot of those men to the rifle companies and let them show CPL Snidkens how to stop a bullet. Harris and Leigh Mallory are two more candidates (Is Beaverbrook eligible, too, even if he is a "civilian"?). Even loan the RAF Brereton, Bissell and Short from the USAAF as long as they get "the treatment".
So the obvious answer for the British to maintain combat effectiveness of their limited numbers of combat troops would have been to maximize the replacement pool, which means don't cream off a) trained tankers for armoured engineers, b) trained infantry to guard RAF bases or c) form landing craft crews, or d) physically fit 18- and 19-year-old conscripts for coal miners. Being e) slightly more open to the here and now needs for infantry volunteers from the colonies, rather than being concerned about postwar politics in an Empire that was already moribund and essentially indefensible, would have helped as well.
Your points about US forces are semantics. The US planned a troop basis and found the replacements necessary to sustain it; the British planned a troop basis, organized the units, equipped them, trained them, and committed them to combat, and then broke them up in the face of the enemy in order to maintain manpower pools for obviously secondary missions.
I think I've answered this one and I hope it was a fair answer. The WHY a thing is done is something one has to think through. For example; why would the Germans use irreplaceable trained coal miners for U-boat crews and replace such coal miners in the mines (a resource which they needed as much as the British) with what were essentially much less capable slave laborers or native Germans who frankly did not know what they were doing? Answer: German coal mining was fairly heavily automated with UNSAFE EXPOSED powered drill and excavate machinery used in tight claustrophobic spaces. The trained coal miners were used to working in tight quarters with such machinery as WORK TEAMS and required much less overall team training to adapt to a similar environment with such industrial hazards in those incompetently designed unsafe badly engineered from a human factors viewpoint U-boats the Germans used. Might point out that sea experience would have helped produce a higher combat competency in the U-boat arm overall, but no-one and I mean no-one can question the dedication or the applied professionalism the German coal miners brought to the U-boats as the crews during the war. When other Germans quit, the U-boat men fought on with Japanese obstinacy. These were not the "best" men (Luftwaffe and Panzers got those.) but they, "the dumb coal miners allocated to the Kriegsmarine", the second best men. They outperformed [German] expectations by a wide margin.
IOW,
prejudice and classification bias should not drive expectations or manpower planning, but results oriented research. The KM got that one "right".
Modern example? MacNamara's (Damn him, and anyone else so perfidiously evil, who thinks like him. YMMV but MINE won't with that "gentleman".) "100,000".
To go back to operations, I find very plaussible a more successful Market Garden to end up with a front on the Issel. I recently been to the area north of Arnhem. The terrain is suitable for advance: Veluwe forest is nothing like Hürtgen. The hills are up to 110m and they are very gentle bumps. The forest is also not dense, with large tracks of heath between the various cores of the forest. No polders, no dense urban settlements (even today). It seems quite possible to have then an Issel front by October 1944. That I believe will have huge butterflies.
I think that the points Cryhavoc raised are valid. The 15th Army had about 13 infantry divisions at the time. It is quite plausible that most of them will be cut off. The need to replace those and cover the larger front (and the gap between the Mass and Rhine) will most certainly butterfly away Ardennes. But what does it mean? I doubt the 21st AG would have the resources to reach Ruhr any time soon. However, it makes sense that with this positioning, Monty's narrow front offensive into Germany in early 1945 to gain several points. If we avoid the idiotic broad front attack that only accomodates Stalin, we may yet see WAliies in Berlin. That would change history!
Fermion explains the drive north option and outcome, better than I did.
Now about USN cowardice at Omaha Beach and Hovercraft.
It was a British invention. However, its successful development as a ship to shore transfer medium for war has been largely a Russian achievement.
The Americans have their own LCACs of course. Credit goes where it is due.
Considering the American Captains refused to get closer than 5 miles off shore, getting them to run up to the beach would be impossible!
That, sir, is not true.
^1. Good discussion found here.