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Smiling Jack posted:This is not what we should be basing the future of our airpower around. This is what we've based military procurement around since at least the early Cold War and probably a lot further. You can see this in the litany of stories of "We bought 500 of these planes hoping engine development would catch up before they were delivered, but it didn't, and these turned out to really suck and kill their pilots" that are especially common on the Naval side. Then you get into the really early shift from guns to missiles with wild promises as to their effectiveness; the Battle of Palmdale has been linked as an example before with rockets, but the early missiles were just as fire and forget (about it hitting anything.) This leads into the air war lessons in Vietnam, which were partly due to unsuited tactics, but partly due to the equipment being far more junk than even the operators realized. And it was common with much higher capital purchases than just planes; I forget which classes were affected but there were whole decades of "We bought this destroyer class with this super-fancy new sonar, it turned out it couldn't find a whiff of perfume in a cathouse, we pretty much had no ASW detection capability on our premiere frontline ASW units and we just kinda hoped it never became an issue." I don't recall any Army-side lessons along the lines of "this tank was supposed to go super fast, but it turned out to have pathetic range and break down all the time" but I'm positive they exist. I mean, not counting the Sgt York but that was so egregious we didn't buy many. Basically transformative mil tech failing to live up to the promises in its first (or sometimes second) generation is the norm, not the exception. F-35 is hideous in its cost and that we have nothing running in parallel development, all of which puts an unusual amount of public eyes on it, but the program itself doesn't seem to be unusually disappointing as these projects go. RE: PAK-FA, supposedly the Indians (who are mostly funding development) are pretty disappointed in it, but this being India you can't tell how much is real and how much is graft-driven efforts to push for more Rafale purchases.
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Jan 26, 2014 08:48
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Why doesn't canada consider the F15se instead of only the super hornets (or let's be real the f35, which is what will actually end up being purchased, compelling competition or not)?
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Jan 26, 2014 08:53
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The defense expert fox talked to for that article in said India should really be after revolutionary aircraft like the F-35B.
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Jan 26, 2014 09:00
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I thought the F-15SE was mostly a "this is what we could put together if we had enough interest" from Boeing, and less than 100 units ordered from Canada would not be enough interest to bother with the program. I just really hope that the competition is taken seriously but yeah it'll probably be the f-35, fuuuuuuck.
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Jan 26, 2014 09:07
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Has Boeing even flown the F15SE yet?
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Jan 26, 2014 09:35
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Snowdens Secret posted:I don't recall any Army-side lessons along the lines of "this tank was supposed to go super fast, but it turned out to have pathetic range and break down all the time" but I'm positive they exist. I mean, not counting the Sgt York but that was so egregious we didn't buy many. Well there is the Sheridan, which was going to be this amazing new light tank that could fire missiles out of its gun except firing the gun damaged the fire control of the missiles, was airdroppable except half of them broke the one time they actually tried and which was armored with aluminium.
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Jan 26, 2014 09:43
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ArchangeI posted:Well there is the Sheridan, which was going to be this amazing new light tank that could fire missiles out of its gun except firing the gun damaged the fire control of the missiles, was airdroppable except half of them broke the one time they actually tried and which was armored with aluminium.
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Jan 26, 2014 09:50
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At least in the Sheridan's case we only bought about 1700 of them. And project expense was only about ~$9B in 2014 dollars, pssh. Also I love wiki quotes like this: quote:Like the M50 Ontos anti-tank vehicle, the battle reports from the troops were sometimes glowing, while the reports higher up the chain of command were often negative. This was largely due to the high casualty rate of both Sheridans and their crews as mines and RPGs that would only damage an M48 Patton tank, would destroy the Sheridan and kill or wound most, if not all, of its crew. "Survey feedback from soldiers was overall positive, as everyone who had actual combat experience with them were dead, and regrettably unable to complete the surveys."
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Jan 26, 2014 10:02
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Plinkey posted:Has Boeing even flown the F15SE yet? Well, depends on how you define "F15SE," but I would say no. They've used the Strike Eagle ever produced to serve as a prototype and it has flown with the internal munitions CFTs; they've even done testing where they fired an AIM-120 from them. But that's really the only mod to that aircraft, nothing with the canted out vertical stabs and/or any of the other signature reducing measures has flown. Additionally, nothing with all the internal upgrades (APG-82 AESA radar, EW suite, and digital FBW) flown. Of course, all of those things have flown or will soon fly individually, but flying individually on a testbed aircraft is a long way from being fully integrated on a flying production prototype.
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Jan 26, 2014 10:04
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Snowdens Secret posted:
Not quite the same thing, but the Bradley was kind of a hilarious example of mission creep that led to an embarrassing episode during the 80s, also a Kelsey Grammar movie in the 90s. The Navy also has the LCS thing going down which, I have been given to understand, is also a clusterfuck.
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Jan 26, 2014 10:14
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MiGs have defected to the US by landing in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. Is there are record of an american pilot defecting to the Soviets? I've been thinking about how hilariously awesome the shitstorm would have been if an SR-71 had decided not to come home (possibly the most improbable situation imaginable).
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Jan 26, 2014 10:21
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Boomerjinks posted:MiGs have defected to the US by landing in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. Is there are record of an american pilot defecting to the Soviets?
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Jan 26, 2014 10:47
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quote:France drat that's a weird one. I didn't know POWs could join the Foreign Legion after the war. Snowdens Secret posted:This is what we've based military procurement around since at least the early Cold War and probably a lot further. You can see this in the litany of stories of "We bought 500 of these planes hoping engine development would catch up before they were delivered, but it didn't, and these turned out to really suck and kill their pilots" that are especially common on the Naval side. Stuff like this always makes me wonder about the competence of militaries in general. At least part of why military history is interesting is the vague sense that it's about intelligent people working together to creatively solve problems. One likes to imagine that the stakes are high enough that merit (of ideas and people) takes priority over politics etc., resulting in one of the best examples of our ability to organise and accomplish goals collectively (however reprehensible those goals). But then you think about all the various bumbling mistakes (in every military in every period), and suddenly any kind of competent behaviour starts to look like an aberration rather than the norm. It's so hard to know where the balance lies.
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Jan 26, 2014 11:55
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iyaayas01 posted:Well, depends on how you define "F15SE," but I would say no. I would be absolutely amazed if PAK-FA ever makes it into production. Just seems like yet another in a long line of vaporware russian prototypes they don't have the money to properly develop, letalone build in significant numbers. I'm also wondering how long it's going to be until India gets fed up with imports and starts up their own indigenous program.
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Jan 26, 2014 15:44
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grover posted:I would be absolutely amazed if PAK-FA ever makes it into production. Just seems like yet another in a long line of vaporware russian prototypes they don't have the money to properly develop, letalone build in significant numbers. What do you even base this on?
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Jan 26, 2014 15:47
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Koesj posted:What do you even base this on?
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Jan 26, 2014 15:48
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But it is flying, with 5 prototypes no less? And what fighter programs exactly? They changed 1.42/1.44 and Su-47 into demonstration projects rather than proceed with production, after a lot of bullshit claims, I'll grant you that, but hey they were in a state of collapse and what was already there was good enough and pretty much the big Russian defense export success - Su-27. Also outside the Flanker family the new MiG-29K is up and running, as is Su-25SM, and the Su-34 is probably enough of a different plane (and mostly a post-USSR development) for it to count as well. So why couldn't they be able to *slowly* go from the one well-run fighter program to another? How does it seem like vaporware when the intensity with which it's been tackled is so much higher than non-starters like the 90s tech demonstrators or slow burning stuff like Su-35? Why would they right now lack the money - or maybe rather the will, they had a zillion dollars for Sochi - to develop it, seeing as how the funding rot has pretty much come to an end, after having destroyed much of their capabilities and forcing them to start anew in a lot of places? What is in your mind the importance of India to this project and what's their alternative? The Russians have decent aero engines, the Chinese have at least something going on, but the Indians are nowhere. Also their Lightweight Fighter has been a massive failure as an efficient program.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:07
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fuf posted:drat that's a weird one. I didn't know POWs could join the Foreign Legion after the war. I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the post-war Legion had a lot of former Wehrmacht and SS members in it, though I can't verify that to a certainty.
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Jan 26, 2014 16:25
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Koesj posted:But it is flying, with 5 prototypes no less? And what fighter programs exactly? They changed 1.42/1.44 and Su-47 into demonstration projects rather than proceed with production, after a lot of bullshit claims, I'll grant you that, but hey they were in a state of collapse and what was already there was good enough and pretty much the big Russian defense export success - Su-27. Also outside the Flanker family the new MiG-29K is up and running, as is Su-25SM, and the Su-34 is probably enough of a different plane (and mostly a post-USSR development) for it to count as well. Speaking of which, it doesn't take a defense expert to see that the PAK-FA is going to have an RCS at least an order of magnitude larger than an F-35, and probably worse. Though the general shape is that of a stealth aircraft, the "stealth" is a joke; the details are most decidedly not stealthy, and most likely added a lot of weight, which mean reduced performance compared to other Su-27 variants, with little to show for it. grover fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 16:25
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It pains me to say this (particularly after the stuff you've been posting lately), but I have to agree with Grover on this one. Well, mostly. I think it'll probably make production eventually.
Godholio fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 16:57
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grover posted:and the PAK-FA is just an Su-27 with a body kit This I really don't agree with for the moment, can you back it up? grover posted:The only way that's possible is if they're using off-the-shelf (eg, Soviet) technology This as well. quote:the PAK-FA of Russian claims appears to be complete vaporware. Whose claims? I would love to do a somewhat efforty post on PAK-FA, but if we're going into the politics of it, things should be put into their proper context quote:Speaking of which, it doesn't take a defense expert to see that the PAK-FA is going to have an RCS at least an order of magnitude larger than an F-35, and probably worse. Though the general shape is that of a stealth aircraft, the "stealth" is a joke; the details are most decidedly not stealthy, and most likely added a lot of weight, which mean reduced performance compared to other Su-27 variants, with little to show for it. Oh but I don't totally disagree with what you're saying here. The thing is that you stated that you'd be "amazed if PAK-FA ever makes it into production", because it "just seems like yet another in a long line of vaporware russian prototypes". You've also qualified the 'making it into production' part with possible programmatic and financial issues, which are for all I know very different in Russia as compared to, say, the environment you yourself are used to. And the 'vaporware' part is now something that has to be measured against... whose claims exactly? Or which of the possible requirements the Russian Air Force has, specifically? There's a lot about this I don't know and I'm not sure that you do either. I don't have any dog in the fight of which aircraft is better in a pew pew sense mind you, I'm mostly interested in defense-industrial policy and programs of the past, present and future.
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Jan 26, 2014 17:14
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fuf posted:At least part of why military history is interesting is the vague sense that it's about intelligent people working together to creatively solve problems. One likes to imagine that the stakes are high enough that merit (of ideas and people) takes priority over politics etc., resulting in one of the best examples of our ability to organise and accomplish goals collectively (however reprehensible those goals). But then you think about all the various bumbling mistakes (in every military in every period), and suddenly any kind of competent behaviour starts to look like an aberration rather than the norm. It's so hard to know where the balance lies. I remember the feeling of discovering this for myself when I looked at middle eastern history from 1948-present. The Six Day War was basically a case of Egypt and Syria accidentally baiting each other into a war that neither of them particularly wanted to have (rhetoric aside). Israel all but invited the Yom Kippur War by putting its fingers in its ears and refusing to believe that Egypt and Syria had gotten competent. The sheer amount of political and military blundering is simply mind-boggling. Yet we teach history as a clean, orderly progression from A to B to C, because there simply isn't time to convey the nuance. As a result, people assume it actually was as cut-and-dried as they learned in eleventh grade.
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Jan 26, 2014 17:18
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TheNakedJimbo posted:I remember the feeling of discovering this for myself when I looked at middle eastern history from 1948-present. The Six Day War was basically a case of Egypt and Syria accidentally baiting each other into a war that neither of them particularly wanted to have (rhetoric aside). Israel all but invited the Yom Kippur War by putting its fingers in its ears and refusing to believe that Egypt and Syria had gotten competent. The sheer amount of political and military blundering is simply mind-boggling. Yet we teach history as a clean, orderly progression from A to B to C, because there simply isn't time to convey the nuance. As a result, people assume it actually was as cut-and-dried as they learned in eleventh grade. The Six Day War was more or less a product of the Soviet Union feeding false intelligence to Nasser, who was already paranoid as hell. The Egyptians pulled the other Arab states in along for the ride. My favorite part was where one of the top Egyptian generals went to Syria personally and confirmed the Soviet reports were full of poo poo, came back, and was promptly ignored. Yom Kippur wasn't really a case of the Israelis refusing to believe the Arab states were "competent", but more that they did not believe they were willing to go to war again. King Hussein of Jordan literally flew to Tel-Aviv to warn the Israelis about the impending attack shortly before it happened and they still made no preparations whatsoever. On the subject of competence the Egyptians pulled off a very effective series of attacks before being halted, even enjoying many successes after the IDF began to respond. The Syrians, however, enjoyed some early successes in overrunning forward postions before being absolutely smashed by a numerically and technologically inferior IDF. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 18:11
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Fearless posted:I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the post-war Legion had a lot of former Wehrmacht and SS members in it, though I can't verify that to a certainty. Dien Bien Phu was basically the last hurrah of the Waffen SS. The 50s-era Legion was rife with German vets who didn't want to go home for whatever reason. TheNakedJimbo posted:I remember the feeling of discovering this for myself when I looked at middle eastern history from 1948-present. The Six Day War was basically a case of Egypt and Syria accidentally baiting each other into a war that neither of them particularly wanted to have (rhetoric aside). Israel all but invited the Yom Kippur War by putting its fingers in its ears and refusing to believe that Egypt and Syria had gotten competent. The sheer amount of political and military blundering is simply mind-boggling. If you think that's bad, look into WW2 military history. The supposed hyper-competence of the German military from 1939-1941 is one of the biggest myths there is. It's a goddamned miracle that they had the successes they did. A lot of that reputation for invulnerability was encouraged by post-war governments who were all to eager to cover up and ignore just how criminally unprepared, poorly organized, and incompetently lead they were during the inter-war and early war periods. This isn't to say that the Germans were especially incompetent, they just weren't the evil geniuses that they became in a lot of the immediate post-war literature.
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Jan 26, 2014 19:10
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Wow, you're kinda blowing my mind right now, Cyrano. Please keep going, seriously.
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Jan 26, 2014 19:43
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Victor Suvorov's book The Liberators describes how in the Six Day War the Egyptian Army was not only organized, trained, and equipped like the Soviet Army, but also for the lead-up to and duration of the war it was staffed with thousands of "advisors" from the USSR. It's basically a case study of how Western military organization was better than Eastern (according to Suvorov). But the Soviets blamed what they internally considered "their" failure on the Arabs, for being "poor fighters," "praying in combat," etc. and nobody could be punished for their fuckups during the war because that would indict everyone above too, including the Defense Minister. Suvorov used this tale as an example of how the Soviets had difficulty learning lessons from their mistakes, because in order to do that you have to admit mistakes, and admitting mistakes means someone gets in trouble. This is of course not a unique problem, but it's no doubt exacerbated in a society with no free press to blow the whistle on massive incompetence. This dovetails in with the mistakes made by the Allies at the start of World War II, because I bet a lot of their errors were kept hushed up under the censored wartime press.
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Jan 26, 2014 20:13
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Mortabis posted:Victor Suvorov's book The Liberators describes how in the Six Day War the Egyptian Army was not only organized, trained, and equipped like the Soviet Army, but also for the lead-up to and duration of the war it was staffed with thousands of "advisors" from the USSR. It's basically a case study of how Western military organization was better than Eastern (according to Suvorov). But the Soviets blamed what they internally considered "their" failure on the Arabs, for being "poor fighters," "praying in combat," etc. and nobody could be punished for their fuckups during the war because that would indict everyone above too, including the Defense Minister. The Soviets also likely fired the last shots of the Yom Kippur War in the form of three SCUDs fired after the cease fire had been signed but shortly before it took effect. It's probably no coincidence that it was the first combat use of the SCUD and the launchers were, like much of the other top-of-the-line equipment sent, staffed by Soviet "advisors".
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Jan 26, 2014 20:30
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Koesj posted:This I really don't agree with for the moment, can you back it up? The T-50 prototypes destined to become the actual PAK-FA if it goes into near-term production, however, exhibit none of these characteristics. That's why India is so pissed. The T-50 PAK-FAs are using the same engines as the Su-35S (itself a Su-27 variant), the same hydraulics, the same fuel system, the same cooling system, the same environmentals, the same avionics, and I could go on and on. It's even using the same airframe! The stealth really only goes as far as superficial shaping the wings and a few of the panels, and enclosing some hardpoints; they didn't even bother to cover the afterburners or snake the inlets to hide the compressors (one of the places most aircraft give the largest radar return). About the only thing new about it is the RADAR, which was already being developed for the Su-35S. As far as I know, they've not actually tested any weapons firing from the enclosed hardpoints yet. Hence my statement that it's an Su-27 with a body kit. Though it might be more appropriate to say it's an Su-35S wearing an F-22 costume. grover fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 20:33
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I feel really stupid for engaging in a 'discussion' here because we seem to be talking past each other in a massive way, you're arguing over points I never made, and the things I was trying to get across don't seem to register 
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Jan 26, 2014 20:49
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Koesj posted:I don't have any dog in the fight of which aircraft is better in a pew pew sense mind you, I'm mostly interested in defense-industrial policy and programs of the past, present and future. So, how DOES one unfuck military production/procurement? Ever since I did my history minor's final paper on Eisenhower's speech (and it's misrepresentation as some argument for pacifism and conspiracy theories) I've been thinking about this and I haven't got the faintest clue. If MrChips excellent write-ups are anything to go by Soviet style design bureau's seem just as hosed a system.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:02
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AlexanderCA posted:So, how DOES one unfuck military production/procurement? You can probably only get to the point of curbing the worst excesses of major capital investment programs (in the macroeconomic sense) over the long term, and it doesn't matter much whether private industry or a government is the one making the decisions in my opinion. I'm more familiar with state infrastructural policy myself, but I gather its problem set applies to the military sphere in broadly similar ways. Then again, participatory processes wouldn't exactly work in the latter case because then you should also be asking people exactly how they want to get shot in the face  I guess you should be looking at best practices but those can be very much fleeting and non-universally transferable.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:30
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Drav posted:Wow, you're kinda blowing my mind right now, Cyrano. Please keep going, seriously. Well, here are a few basic sketches of some telling examples in roughly chronological order, pretty much off the top of my head: Poland, 1939: This wasn't anything like the one-sided pushover that it's often portrayed as. You didn't have polish cavalry routinely charging Panzer divisions with pikes, etc. At best a lot of that is over-blown isolated incidents. The Polish and German militaries in 1939 weren't on exactly equal footing, but the Germans were probably in for a pretty ugly slog to get to Warsaw - at least they would have been if the Soviets hadn't kicked in Poland's backdoor, forcing them to engage on two fronts, and just royally loving them in every way. What's worse, the Soviet belligerence was a huge chunk of what kept the French and the English from launching an immediate offensive at Germany's western frontier, forcing an early two-front war on the Germans. As it was they (pretty correctly) estimated that the Soviet intervention would cause a rapid Polish collapse and didn't think it was worth the early battle. The Polish air force wasn't destroyed on the ground, but was more or less destroyed in combat. Despite being pretty over-matched technologically it still downed nearly 300 german aircraft, which given the scale of airforces at this time was pretty significant. Even with pretty much the ultimate in all worst case scenarios dumped in Poland's lap the Germans still lost about 20,000 KIA or MIA. Battle of France, 1940 - Jesus, this could be a huge effort post in itself. The tl;dr is that there was no sense of urgency at any time among the important parts of the French high command, which led to utterly disastrous problems later on. Everything from the halting of the limited offensive they launched in 1939 (both because of the Polish situation and a preference for fighting on the defense learned from WW1) to the atrocious communications between the northern and southern commands, down to their responses to the breakthroughs. Gamelin in particular was utterly unwilling to consider that the Germans might do anything else but charge through the low countries and pretty much set things up so that a defeat in the center (as happened at Sedan) would be a total loving disaster rather than a setback. The French civilian leadership was also really goddamned defeatist and seemed almost disinterested in prosecuting the war. As early as mid-may the French PM telephoned the British PM to lament that the war was lost. Once the Germans split the front at Sedan the French were criminally slow to organize a counter-attack against the shoulders of the advance, fired the general who was to have lead that offensive, and then the new guy canceled his predecessor's offensive, spent a few days visiting with foreign dignitaries, and then re-ordered almost the identical counter-offensive under his own name. It was bullshit politicking in the face of an imminent crisis raised to a loving art form and the results were predictably awful for everyone involved. Despite fighting against an enemy that you almost want to believe was being commanded by German sleeper agents the Germans lost nearly 40,000 KIA or MIA and 30% of Luftwaffe was destroyed. Battle of Britain, 1940-41: Where to even begin with this. Basically, it never should have happened. There was zero loving chance the German Army was going to invade England. The German navy had largely shot its wad invading Norway. They took heavy losses there, and what wasn't sunk was pretty hosed up. There was utterly no way they were going to be able to protect an invasion fleet from the Royal Navy. What's worse, the Germans had no transports or landing craft. They simply didn't exist and they only ever bothered to build a handful. The whole air campaign was a farce from the beginning, a ploy to try to drive the English to a negotiated cease fire. Even if we accept that as the real motivation for it, not some kind of Sea Lion fantasy, the Luftwaffe was woefully ill-prepared. Most of their fighters lacked the range to engage in serious escort duties. Your typical Bf-109 could only spend 20 minutes over London before needing to return to base, and as a result they lost a lot of aircraft when pilots ran out of fuel on the return. Their bombers had pretty mediocre payloads and range as well, and were far better suited to battlefield interdiction than strategic bombing of factories and population centers. It was a huge, expensive waste of resources all around. Barbarossa - this is pretty much all on the Soviets. Read a book on it, it's just a litany of tragic errors. Even the Germans were shocked with the speed at which they were able to advance and ordered numerous unnecessary stops because they were afraid that they were advancing into ambushes and counter-attacks that never materialized. They quite literally could not believe that a defense could be that profoundly hosed. Despite that they lost about 200,000 KIA or WIA between the invasion kicking off and the Soviet counter-offensive that winter. Just in those examples you have about 300,000 KIA/WIA for the German military to achieve some of its most spectacular victories. That's more men than the US lost during the entire war. There is absolutely no earthly reason why the Germans should have done as well as they did, other than inter-war institutional rot and sheer incompetence in some very senior positions. It wasn't so much about the Germans being amazing martial geniuses as them being the only ones who weren't criminally incompetent.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:30
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Cyrano4747 posted:Poland, 1939: This wasn't anything like the one-sided pushover that it's often portrayed as. You didn't have polish cavalry routinely charging Panzer divisions with pikes, etc. At best a lot of that is over-blown isolated incidents. The Polish and German militaries in 1939 weren't on exactly equal footing, but the Germans were probably in for a pretty ugly slog to get to Warsaw - at least they would have been if the Soviets hadn't kicked in Poland's backdoor, forcing them to engage on two fronts, and just royally loving them in every way. What's worse, the Soviet belligerence was a huge chunk of what kept the French and the English from launching an immediate offensive at Germany's western frontier, forcing an early two-front war on the Germans. As it was they (pretty correctly) estimated that the Soviet intervention would cause a rapid Polish collapse and didn't think it was worth the early battle. The Polish air force wasn't destroyed on the ground, but was more or less destroyed in combat. Despite being pretty over-matched technologically it still downed nearly 300 german aircraft, which given the scale of airforces at this time was pretty significant. From what I've read about the invasion of Poland, the whole Polish strategy was to hold the Germans off until the French in particular could get things going on another front. And the whole "cavalry charging tanks" happened after a Polish cavalry unit made a successful charge against infantry, and then ran into some tanks or armored cars that came up in support.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:43
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The other really common mythbusting of the German blitzkrieg involves how much stuff they had to pull into Poland behind horses because they still didn't have enough trucks. I don't know how much of that was really resolved by the time of the French invasion.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:45
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The way I remember reading it (and I could totally be wrong on this) was that the Poles had a somewhat successful tactic of using cavalry with anti-tank rifles to make hit-and-runs on German vehicles, which the Germans spun into face-saving propaganda about fighting untermensch bumpkins.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:47
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Snowdens Secret posted:The other really common mythbusting of the German blitzkrieg involves how much stuff they had to pull into Poland behind horses because they still didn't have enough trucks. I don't know how much of that was really resolved by the time of the French invasion. They didn't resolve that at all. I was reading Six Armies in Normandy (Which is excellent btw) and even in '44 and '45 most German infantry divisions marched into battle. Edit: ^^^ they did, but what basically happened, at least at the battle I'm thinking of is that the Poles made a mounted charge against infantry which was going fairly well, and then some German AFVs came up in support, the Poles retreated, and then the germans fed the fake story to some war journalists after the fact. Edit 2: Cyrano, in your professional opinion how is John Keegan's work? Beardless fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 21:47
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Snowdens Secret posted:The other really common mythbusting of the German blitzkrieg involves how much stuff they had to pull into Poland behind horses because they still didn't have enough trucks. I don't know how much of that was really resolved by the time of the French invasion. Pretty sure it was never resolved. EFB.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:48
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Fun fact: The Germans ended the war with more cavalry units then when they started. In '39 they had a single brigade, in '45 they had six divisions, mainly on the Eastern front and in the Balkans. They were mainly used for Anti-partisan operations. Many of them were also Cossacks.
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Jan 26, 2014 21:56
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Snowdens Secret posted:The other really common mythbusting of the German blitzkrieg involves how much stuff they had to pull into Poland behind horses because they still didn't have enough trucks. I don't know how much of that was really resolved by the time of the French invasion. If I had the willpower to go through my massive library of books I could pull an exact number, but wiki is accurate enough to get the point across: of the 322 divisions active in 1943, only 52 of them were 'motorized' and the rest depended mostly/entirely on horse drawn transports for their logistics. The situation only got worse from there - the Luftwaffe basically imploded in early 1944 and all those P-47s that weren't needed as escorts (besides the 56th fighter group, this means all of them) were given to the 9th with the orders "Shoot everything that moves on the other side of the channel." There is a fairly famous interview with a P-47 pilot who describes the effect x8 Brownings had on a column of horse drawn transports. "Blender" is the word that comes to mind.
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Jan 26, 2014 22:09
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And a good part of the motorization were trucks captured in the overrun countries. What that means for the spare parts situation is left to the reader's imagination.
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Jan 26, 2014 22:18
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