IronDuke_slith
Posts: 1595
Joined: 6/30/2002
From: Manchester, UK
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
Pardon my absence. I was in Mexico.
Two things.
Firstly, bravo for starting to look for historical evidence to support your beliefs. I think you should have done it the other way round, but lets not quibble.....
Secondly, you seem to have raised the temparature with some of your comments, so remember where you saw it first now the gloves are off...
quote:
For some examples of units functioning sentiently, let’s examine the Normandy Campaign in some detail.
Good call.
quote:
First, Utah Beach, day one:
http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/ww2%20europe/ww2%20europe%20pages/ww2%20europe%20map%2056.htm
The important thing to note about Utah is that the 4th Division landed at the wrong place. The actual scheduled landing site was more than a mile south of where they actually landed. It was no problem. The plan (for a full division) was revised on the spot and they carried on from there.
Curtis, a little learning is a dangerous thing.
For the Pedants, I think they landed 2 Kilometres south of where they intended, meaning the intended landing site was 2 kilometres north of where they actually landed not south as Curtis asserts, but it is immaterial.
The key thing to remember is actually that the plan wasn't revised on the spot. The Americans still headed for their D-Day objectives which were the four exits off the beach numbered (strangely enough) one through four. In other words, Roosevelt told his men to carry out their existing orders from a different start line. He didn't give out fresh orders or objectives.
They had not landed in the correct position but were still in the area between exits one and four as originally intended and their task remained to secure these prized routes inland. He didn't say "Lets go for Cherbourg", he said, "our orders are to take the exits, lets do it from here."
The second thing to remember is that it is impossible within a WEGO or IGOUGO game to simulate a Unit landing in the wrong position. You select the hex, it doesn't go anywhere else. Therefore, at best this example is irrelevant because its never going to happen.
For argument's sake, if you could simulate it, in WEGO the units would presumably have to attack their objectives (they have no other programming since they are "mindless") which is.....yes, you''ve guessed it, exactly what the men of 4th infantry did on 6th June.
I don't need to provide any more evidence by the looks of it as you are doing it for me.
Out of interest's sake, any deviation from his assigned orders on 6th June by Roosevelt would have led to the Exits not being taken and the Americans not getting off the beach. As I keep trying to tell you, Curtis, in the real world, you get orders for a reason. Ignore them and the whole plan goes out of the window as GIs stack up on shore with the exits in German hands and Roosevelt leading his men towards Cherbourg with the immortal cry "Lets show them we are not mindless automatons men, this isn't WEGO, it's real life, on to Cherbourg!"
Utah is a brave man carrying out his orders as assigned, lets be thankful he ignored the attractiveness of Infiltration principles and didn't deviate from those orders because we needed that beach.
quote:
A similar problem faced the paratroops, since most had scattered far from their drop zones. Again, it was no problem. In fact, note from the map that the paratroops and the 4th Division have combined to envelop a German strongpoint by the end of the day. In fact, most movements and end positions appear dependent more upon the discovered locations of enemy forces, not arbitrary map locations.
The Paratroops uniformly attempted to reach their objectives as best they could. They didn't deviate from their orders, merely attempted to carry them out from their current positions. Again, mis drops of this scale can not be simulated because units have to land in at least enough numbers to form a counter do they not, so this is another red herring.
If the American Paras found themselves concentrated around German strongpoints at the end of the day, it was only partly out of a desire to attack anything German. These strongpoints in many cases lay astride the route from where they landed to where they believed they should be. Remember, these men had objectives crucial to securing the beaches and preventing early German counterattack. Are you seriously suggesting that they would discard such an important mission in order to go swanning around in squad sized groups looking for trouble for the sake of it? They had a crucial part in the day of days, they attempted to follow orders.
quote:
Second, Omaha Beach, day one:
http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/ww2%20europe/ww2%20europe%20pages/ww2%20europe%20map%2057.htm
This is the most telling case. Here you see classic infiltration principles applied by companies, battalions, and even regiments. The map shows three time snapshots, the landings at about 7:00am, the penetrations reached by noon, and the end-of-day final locations.
Note the breadth of the landings. They uniformly cover the entire length of the beach shown on the map. Contrast that to the four narrow penetrations achieved by noon. You don’t see each platoon trying to create its own personal penetration of the German position. Rather, once one penetration had been achieved, all nearby units shifted to exploit that success, abandoning their own efforts. (Remember the infiltration principle: Exploit Success, Abandon Failure! Here it is to the letter.) This allowed each penetration to be expanded and exploited. Note that exactly where a successful breach would occur could not be known in advance. The assault had to be revised on the spot to exploit any successful breach. That’s infiltration.
More infiltration principles were applied in the afternoon, as the penetrations were exploited. Note how units fanned out relative to each other. Note that the left penetration was exploited to the left and the right penetration was exploited to the right. The central penetrations were exploited in both directions. That seems to be the obvious move based upon what we see in the map at that point. But remember that the invasion was planned without foreknowledge of where the penetrations would occur. If either the right or left penetration had been the only one to succeed, the correct exploitation would have been to fan out from it in both directions. Clearly, their exploitation was devised from knowledge that the other penetrations had occurred. And, note the efforts to get into the rear of German strongpoints and their ending locations (none of which could have been known in advance) and seal off their escape.
Curtis, this was a defining moment for our argument because you have so seriously misunderstood what you are looking at that it's laughable. I've added a little bold to key bits of the above in order to heighten your discomfort as we analyse what you've said.
Lets take an intelligent look at this map of yours. What this looks to represent is a map of where individual battalions got on D-Day. Fine, I'm happy with the positions.
Now, to recap, Curtis is telling us that these positions were effectively caused by inflitration principles (something he seems to be the sole Guardian of at the moment as I am yet to see any other Historian cited in support of this) which reinforced success and not failure. In other words, without needing orders, these units swarmed into the defences and exploiting success and ignoring failure, drove into the areas indicated because these were where the paths of least resistance (or best success) took them.
In other words, since they can't have known where the penetrations would be or where the Germans would end up or where the successes to reinforce would happen, it's all people thinking on their feet and exploiting success not failure.
It's a crock, Curtis, it's a crock.
Your map carries a legend saying it is a composite of others, all of which are in Harrison's Cross Channel Attack. I have this, so lets turn to the original for some enlightenment.
His MAP XII seems to form the basis of this, which shows where the Infantry Assault got to on D-Day.
However, the thing to do is actually look at map XI, rather tellingly entitled V Corps D-Day objectives.
Okay lets start on the American left flank. Your map tells us that 3/16th ended up breaking out from Fox Green and ended up in Le Gd Hameau. 3/16th's D-Day objective was Huppain. The plan was to break out from Fox and turn left because Huppain was a couple of miles up the coast. It's axis of advance took it through Le Grand Hameau which is what your map entry means when it says Le Gd Hameau. Harrison's map XV shows V Corps on 7th-8th June and guess what? 3/16th advances from Le Grand Hameau, takes Huppain and moves on toward Port-en-Bessin to link with the British coming off Gold beach.
In other words, in an absolute miracle of chaos theory, 3/16th has exploited success and that exploitation of success has taken it exactly where it was supposed to go.
What you thought was....
quote:
Note that the left penetration was exploited to the left
...was not a living embodiment of infiltration principles, but 3/16th getting off the beach and attacking towards it's pre-set objectives. It only got as far as Le Gd Hameau because (quite a crucial point this) there were some delays getting off the beach at Omaha on account of German rowdiness. It therefore ran out of daylight. When daylight re-appeared, off it merrily set towards its objectives. Rather amusingly, these objectives were set months before by 21st AG planners. So much for sentience.
But, I hear you cry, one example does not a trashing of infiltration theory make.
Okey-dokey, lets move to the next unit and have a look at that. The 2/16th and 1/16th (rather tellingly) did not exploit with their sister battalion, the rather sentiently led 3/16th, but presumably found other weaknesses to exploit and ended up south of Colleville Sur Mer. Lets do two battalions for the price of one to increase the potency of this example.
Lets consult the good Mr Harrison's weighty tome, map XI. What we find is that these two battalions were ordered (orders drawn up months before) to get off the beach and head for positions south of Colleville Sur Mer. These units did get to their objectives before the end of the day.
Move onto the 18th Infantry Regiment. We see all three infantry battalions getting beyond the 16th and heading for their objectives on D-day which was to get beyond the 16th and establish themselves further south. They were a second wave formation.
Your map shows them on their way, they actually got further by day's end and the reason the battalions are fanning out is not some weird and wonderful infiltration method but that their objective is to control a swathe of land 2 miles wide between Mosles and Mandeville about three miles inland. The 18th's battalion's on your map are spread across about 3.5 kilometres by the looks of it so they can get into the two mile front they need at their objective.
this isn't random, it isn't infiltration, it's units following orders and heading for objectives.
The 116th Regiment are all in the right areas, the 115th is nowhere near it's objectives which were much deeper, but guess where they end up on 7th/8th June? Yup, exactly where the D-day plan said they should be.
Your have rather hopelessly misinterpreted what you are seeing. This is not random, it isn't dependent on the reinforcement of success, it isn't ad-hoc decision making, it is units getting off the beaches, forming up into their consituent macro tactical units (battalions) and heading towards their objectives.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
quote:
Third, the COBRA breakthrough:
Oh, Joy.
quote:
http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/atlases/ww2%20europe/ww2%20europe%20pages/ww2%20europe%20map%2062.htm
Now we’re at the brigade scale (typically half-week turns), and we still see classic exploitation principles applied, with a clear fan out from the breach in the German lines. Note how the exploitation was greater to the east of the breakout than the west – hardly something that would have been planned in advance. There is no question that the two armored divisions were exploiting the path of least resistance.
Okay, this map looks to be based on Blumenson's official history "Breakout and pursuit" Map 6 (in my PDF version). Rather unluckily for Infiltration principle theory I have a copy of this work.
Now, turning to page 217 in Breakout and pursuit we find a copy of the plan for this operation. Can you guess where I'm heading with this, Curtis...?
The plan calls for 3rd Armoured to get through the Infantry penetration and break right towards the coast (Objective the area of Coutances), with CCB on the right flank.
2nd Armoured goes deeper before fanning out to secure a new start line with one end of it on the coast near Cerences. This is a classic short and long hook or shallow and deep encirclement (however tou want to term it - but not infiltration theory).
Now to your map.
What do we see. We see exactly that. 3rd Armoured with CCB on the right enveloping Coutances and 2nd Armoured going straighter and then hooking towards the coast at Cerences.
What you have hopelessly misinterpreted as infiltration and exploitation of success, is actually a plan working, with 3rd Armoured taking Coutances (as planned) and trapping German forces between itself and the oncoming 4th and 6th Armoured and 2nd Armoured taking Cerences (as planned) and trapping forces between itself and 3rd Armoured. A short and a long hook.
In other words, the Americans didn't go around that German pocket you see as a red line of 28th july, somehow exploiting success and avoiding reinforcing failure, but created that pocket with their axis of advance which took its objectives of Coutances to the north of the pocket and Cerences to the South.
Note that the Americans get above and below the pocket on 28th july (creating it), and then destroy it on 29th.
The only thing that didn't immediately happen with the plan was the full establishment of the required line by 2nd Armoured which took Cerances and St Denis le Gast and Villebaudon but didn't take the far end of the desired line at Tessay Sur Vire. However, note on your map that that's because the lead elements of 2 Panzer Divisions intervened on 27th and 28th and helped block that AXIS of advance.
You are looking at maps with only a fraction of the knowledge and understanding required to make sense of them.
quote:
Fourth, the exploitation of the breakthrough:
Not tonight, it is late and I'm losing the will to live but I'll review these tomorrow for completeness.
I did like this, though.
quote:
And, frankly, I shouldn’t even have had to post this. It was as obvious as the nose on your face.
You have just hopelessly mis-interpreted the D-day landings and Operation Cobra. I anticipate finding much else the same with your tinpot analysis of the exploitation tomorrow, but suffice to say, you simply do not understand what you are looking at. You have seen what happened, and assumed there was no planning beforehand.
How can you possibly measure infiltration principles and reinforcing success but not failure ( ) without understanding what the plan was? How can you test whether a unit deviated for infiltration reasons without knowing where it should have been in the first place? If it ends up where it planned to, it can't have changed its orders, can it?
Your most telling piece of nonsense is this. You have seen where units ended up, looked at those positions on maps and decided that the direction of the advances was governed by least resistance. You have decided that the pockets were where the Germans were strong and the Americans bypassed these strongpoints travelling where the Germans were weak thus surrounding the German strong areas and creating the pockets.
In fact, (and you never seem to have considered this rather surprisingly) the Americans chose where to attack and created the pockets with their advance. This really is as obvious as your nose. In Russia, the same principles applied with the Germans creating huge pockets by encirclement. These weren't ad hoc though. AGC's PanzerGruppe met at Minsk and Smolensk as planned, not at Minsk and Smolensk because that's where the path of least resistance magically led them both.
You're wrong, period. I'd also appeal to you to give it up on the grounds that this thread is well over 2500 hits. The longer you take to admit defeat, the more laughable and hopelessly clueless analysis of Military operations you produce, the more embarrassing it gets. Let it go.
The real conclusion is that we either accept that units follow orders, or we assume that the path of least resistance and the principles of exploting success always (rather magically, amazingly and completely implausibly) left units in the areas the plan said they should be, and travelling in the directions the plan said they should be.
What say ye, Occam...?
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
IronDuke
< Message edited by IronDuke -- 11/2/2007 4:30:08 AM >
_____________________________
|
Printable Version
RE: Defending a river line - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread