Sherman Tank

Actually, I was mistaken. It wasn't just the US Marine Corps. The 8th USAAF lost more aircrew during WWII then did the US Marine Corps and the US Navy combined.

What's "misleading" about the fact that the Mighty 8th lost more combat aircrew then did the entire US Marine Corps and US Navy combined during WWII?

 

I guess when Rommel had to eat Adolf's poo and get pincered, by Americans and Commonwealth, instead of wiping out the Brits, at Suez, that proves some point, of yours.

You probably hold Rommel responsible, for failing to put enough C-4 in the bomb, which only wounded Hitler. Poor strategy!

 

Rommel was ordered by his high command, and the Italian high command, to not attack. Rommel disobeyed orders. The reason there he didn't get everything he needed was because he wasn't supposed to be doing what he was doing.

 

Quite right. Rommel was never trusted by Hitler and the high command. He was a traditional Wermacht officer and never a Nazi.

Frankly, the movie "The Desert Fox," didn't correctly describe Rommel's abilities as a military leader and didn't address his failures.

 

Of course, Hitler seemed to expect his subjects to fight, to the last man, while Rommel intended to either win or prevent his command, from wasting, under Hitler.

You haven't speculated, how Rommel was accustomed, to capturing Allied supplies, to survive, despite Hitler's constant thwarting, of Rommel and other competent German commanders.

No pincers at Suez? What good was Hitler, from Rommel's point? A.K. supplies were too intermittent.

 

Rommels orders were to hold in North Africa. He was given what he needed for that. You see, Rommel wasn't aware that the Soviet Union was going to be attacked. All Rommel knew was that glory was being denied to him and so he attacked. He only did so well at first because he was up again Wavell, who was, quite frankly, a (*)(*)(*)(*) Allied general who didn't know when to tell Churchill to bugger off.

 

Tank boy you are of course wrong about Rommel in Africa. One thing Rommel firmly grasped that the German high command should have known was that defensive warfare in the time period 1940-43 was doomed unless one had a large numerical advantage like the Russians more about which later. Rommel had no such advantage.

Had Rommel been a good little soldier boy and stayed on the Defensive per order the Afrika Corps would have been done in about six months instead of nearly two years and inflicted far fewer losses on the Brits into the bargain. As it was he came within an ace of cutting of the suez canal and disrupting allied shipping for a goodly portion of the war. And by the way had it not been for that first attack he wouldn't have been facing Wavell but the man who had just routed 150 k Italian Troops with about 30k british troops.

Now as to Russia, You are overlooking several things. 1st the US supplied Russia with nearly all of it's supply echelon vehicles so much so that the Soviet army still had US 2.5 ton trucks in its supply echelons as late as the mid sixties 20 years later. It also supplied the Soviet union with significant amounts of oil and petroleum. And further meant that the Soviets could concentrate on tank production rather than having to divert large amounts of their limited production capabilities to building transport vehicles. Reduce Soviet tank production by 20-30 percent so that she can build supply vehicles and see what that does to the Soviet war effort. And lets not forget that the Herculean task of moving Soviet production to the Urals would not have been posible without American made vehicles.

 

No sir, the reason Rommel did not get supplied properly, was because of the failure to take the island of Malta, from which British airplanes were able to sink transport ships and the Italian Navy was bombed into oblivion.

You contradict your own example of how rapidly the German Wehrmacht was able to advance to the coast in the invasion of France 1940, when you claim Rommel was not competent in modern warfare. It was primarily Rommel and the 7th Panzer division which was responsible, for which, Rommel was awarded the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross.

It was entirely because of Hitler, going upon Goerings promise that the Luftwaffe could finish off the BEF and remnant French at Dunkirk, which was the critical error in modern warfare, NOT the performance of Rommel, who had already demonstrated his competency by using 88 flak guns to destroy Matilda tanks at the Battle of Arras.

 

Yes, the Ghost Division, named so because Rommel was an idiot and outran his own lines of supply and communication.

A competent Allied commander would have put him in a Kessel and ended his career in France.

Backs up my claim that Rommel only looked good when up against those worse than he was.

 

Soldiers and weapon system fight the wars but logistics wins or loses them.

 

Part of being a good general is understanding your enemies weakness, Pzkw. Rommel did Sp did Guderian who fully approved of what Rommel was doing.

Another interesting thing roughly two German armored divisions were equiped with the Chech 38t which was a match for anything in the German inventory in 1940 other than the relatively rare PZKW IVF2. Thank you Neville Chanberlain...

 

I suppose you think Heinz Guderian and Erich Von Manstein were incompetent also, right? Those were the other 2 German Generals employing the same principles of Blitzkrieg that Rommel used.

In fact, it sounds like to me, that you are critical of the whole concept of Blitzkrieg, the method which was used so effectively to conquer France so quickly in 1940, and WOULD have taken Moscow, thus probably collapsing the USSR, had not Hitler once again interfered with Guderians advance after taking Smolensk in mid July 1941.

As far as outrunning supplies, that was not an issue in France 1940, because the Luftwaffe controlled the skys and supplies could be dropped by air transport.

 

I guess you think your high command not know where you are is also not a problem.

France was a throw of the dice. The Germans didn't actually expect to win.

And if Rommel was this awesome General that everyone makes him out to be, why was he never given an important command?

 

It would be EXTREMELY difficult for air transport to provide the full logistical support for an entire armored division engaged in full-scale offensive operations, especially with the aircraft back then.

 

Goering also promised to supply Stalingrad.

 

Because Rommel was a General not a field marshel, until after north Africa. Then he got command of the defence of France, which could have worked until his car got shoot at by the RAF. Also Rommel was a very good general, be beat the best Britain had in north Africa, and was only defeated when he was outnumbered. Rommel and Von Manstein were as good as people think, so was Patton and Zhukov, it's people like Montgomery that are overrated.

 

Of Course France was a roll of the dice, war is always a roll of the dice. One is never 100% certain of victory and if one waits for a 100% certainty one never goes to war.

The Nazi's had two big advantages at the outset. A far better trained army with a coherent tactical doctrine. And one other quite frequently overlooked advantage that actually proved decisive in France '40. Every German tank contained a radio, thus orders even down to individual tanks could be changed at near light speed. On the other hand French tanks issued radios down to only the company level and Brits at the squadron level. I've seen pictures of French armored company commanders trying to transmit orders to their platoons via semaphore (flag waving for those who don't know the term). Imagine trying to do that while bullets ae flying all around you.

 

I have never seen a documentary on the History Channel that ever stated that the Sherman was the equivalent to the King Tiger. In a head to head encounter the Sherman would always lose. The advantage for the Sherman was in shear numbers and not in individual superiority.

As I recall the Military Channel identified the T-34 as the number one tank on their Top Ten list. It introduced sloped armor, was easy to manufacture, and was involved in all of the decisive tank battles of WW II. People need to remember that the US effort against Germany was a diversionary attack, not the primary attack, on Germany. Russia was conducting the primary offensive on the Eastern Front and the invasion of Normandy was about diverting German forces from the Eastern Front.

 

This actually isn't true. Almost half of the German Army in 1940 was over the age of 40, and half of all German soldiers only had a few weeks of training. The Germans were also less mechanized than their British or French counterparts. The decisive factor was a small core of elite panzer units, effective communication (as you mentioned), combined arms tactics, small unit initiative, and general ineptitude by the allies.

 

I find it hard to believe that in 1940 that half of the Germany Army was over 40 when the combined size of the German military was over 20 million in 1939. I would be more likely to believe that when the allies landed in Normandy that 1/2 of the German troops were over 40 on the Western Front and we did face a few elite panzer units on the Western front. Most panzer units were deployed to the Eastern Front along with virtually all of the top line German units.

 

Wavell was not the best the British had.

 

The majority of the German troops in 1939/40 were conscripts. When you consider the huge age imbalance that WWI caused, it makes sense. Your average 18-25 year old would have been born immediately following WWI when millions of German men were killed and the country was going through a massive depression. I'm not sure what the statistics were for the duration of the war, but I got my numbers from author Karl-Heinz Frieser who's written several books on the Battle of France.

The Germans redeployed much of their elite/mechanized firepower to the Western Front

Historian Nigel Davies:

Raw numbers don't tell the real tale. In WW2 an overwhelming majority of units (with the exception of U.S./British ones post spring 1944) were good old fashioned foot mobile troops. One German panzer division could probably defeat 3 or 4 times its number in regular soviet infantry. However, armored divisions were incredibly expensive, and thus rare. (90% of German Infantry was footmobile throughout the war).

 

Roll of the dice as in the Germans hadn't expected the UK and France to become involved in the war. France and the UK (even just France) was very poweful on paper. The Germans didn't have hindsight. They didn't know what a mess the French were actually in. When the Germans attacked France they had no real expectation of winning. They were going all in and hoping, but not really expecting, to win.

 

It's funny because as I've been reading more into in this topic I've found that most historians agree that the concept of "blitzkrieg" didn't exist as a doctrine prior to the invasion of France and that it was actually just the result of the Germans quickly adapting and exploiting the weaknesses of the French/British. Most of this can be structure that encouraged individual commanders to take initiative and use their own judgement; something that I can definitely say the U.S. military (and competent Western ones) has long since copied.

 

The use of the 8.8m flak guns, which people tend to think of as part of the Blitzkrieg, was pretty much thought up on the spot.

There was never any official Blitzkrieg doctrine. Blitzkrieg is a covers all name.