. Strategy and Tactics always interest me. Dr Robertss talk to the US Army War College contains some good insight. Add to that the fact that Germany had re-armed first, and had therefore only second- and third-rate opponents to fight, they originally thought in terms of short, decisive wars, and suffered from being first in the field, with limited horizons. Their armour, for example, was massively over-engineered, slow and expensive to manufacture, and difficult to repair. The British tanks in 1940 were useless, and although improvements were made, it was not until 1945 that the first-class Centurion arrived. The American-made Sherman tank was extremely fast to manufacture, used off-the-shelf components, and 50,000 were made, allowing the Allies to swamp the Germans in numbers. So, although the Sherman was lightly armoured, and had a rather ineffective gun, as long as you did not mind large numbers of tank crew losses, Shermans were inexpensive to lose, and easy to repair. Dismayed by rounds bouncing off German tank armour, the British produced a tank-killing gun, the 17 pounder, which was put on the Sherman Firefly, which could tackle the German Tigers. The other area where the Germans let themselves down, was in the doctrines of aerial warfare, as the Luftwaffe was essentially designed to act as Wehrmacht artillery, not a strategic bombing force. By going to war too soon, and being under-engineered for war, by 1942, the sheer mathematics worked against them ( although it was not clear to many by then! ). When one thinks that from the beaches of Dunkirk in June 1940, and the beaches of Normandy in June 1944, was a mere 4 years, the creative effort, the planning, the marshalling of the necessary resources, and the execution of the greatest sea-borne invasion in history, must go down as a huge achievement. I am proud to have known people who lived through it, and who fought for this country. I only wish the current system of government here was worth fighting for, because freedom finds no friends in the paramilitary regime of today. Unless action is taken soon, ultimately for freedom to be regained, blood will be required. It has always been so. .
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 00:12:06 +0000
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