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How vital was the development of tanks to ending the static positions on the western front? Were they the critical element to creating breakthroughs, or just one more straw stacked on the back of the German camel?
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Oct 26, 2016 20:38
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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| # ? May 4, 2024 06:42 |
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ok, trin and i are discussing this over PMs, if you were going to raise pappenheim from the dead and give him a tank, which tank would it be thanks and namaste
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Oct 26, 2016 21:05
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Depends on era but maybe the BT-7? Fast cavalry tank designed to punch holes in other cavalry tanks. In the moder era, the leclerc or Leo 1 seem appropriate.
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Oct 26, 2016 21:09
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sticking his head out a hatch in the side, hair blowing in the wind, wheeeeeeeee
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Oct 26, 2016 21:09
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Not at bad time to post this!
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Oct 26, 2016 21:31
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HEY GAL posted:ok, trin and i are discussing this over PMs, if you were going to raise pappenheim from the dead and give him a tank, which tank would it be He'd probably want something from back before the MBT doctrine was a thing, and probably a light tank at that. Gotta be the one to rush in without thinking of the overall plan and in doing so lose the battle, so probably something German from the WWII era so that he can actually make something of the instrument labels.
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Oct 26, 2016 21:32
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HEY GAL posted:sticking his head out a hatch in the side, hair blowing in the wind, wheeeeeeeee Hatches in the side are actually a terrible idea.
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Oct 26, 2016 21:33
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FAUXTON posted:Gotta be the one to rush in without thinking of the overall plan and in doing so lose the battle Sounds like he needs an Aerogavin.
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Oct 26, 2016 21:34
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FAUXTON posted:Gotta be the one to rush in without thinking of the overall plan and in doing so lose the battle 
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Oct 26, 2016 21:48
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Ensign Expendable posted:Hatches in the side are actually a terrible idea. Actually they're cool and fun, especially if you're expected to disembark from a moving vehicle! 
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Oct 26, 2016 21:55
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There were also trench systems in WW2 in the Finnish front, both in Winter War (where the main defensive position, Mannerheim Line (http://www.nortfort.ru/mline/index_e.html) was situated) and in the Continuation War (1941-44), when the front stagnated for a few years. It was not unknown for more remote positions to have saunas in their dugouts, with most dugouts being rather deep (multiple layers of logs, not concrete, in most places).
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Oct 26, 2016 21:57
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HEY GAL posted:ok, trin and i are discussing this over PMs, if you were going to raise pappenheim from the dead and give him a tank, which tank would it be German Wiesel: Almost horse sized, invulnerable to musket fire, can cross existing bridges.
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Oct 26, 2016 22:09
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HEY GAL posted:ok, trin and i are discussing this over PMs, if you were going to raise pappenheim from the dead and give him a tank, which tank would it be T-35. As ostentatious as they come, and why would a noble ride anything that would not fit their attendants, friends and random sychophants.
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Oct 26, 2016 22:16
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Ataxerxes posted:T-35. As ostentatious as they come, and why would a noble ride anything that would not fit their attendants, friends and random sychophants. entourage MORE LIKE NONTOURAGE AM I RIGHT
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Oct 26, 2016 22:20
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Picking up from earlier, let's talk about how the German conception of "trenches" changed during 1916. On the left, a German trench system as it might have been constructed in an ideal location in 1915; on the right, as it might have been constructed in winter 1916. These all would have looked more or less the same from an aerial shot; thickness of lines is just to help me make the point. This is "a line", as you might hear when people talk about e.g. the German First Line on July 1 on the Somme. The line in both cases is built round three separate trenches (running horizontally in the diagram) connected to each other by communications trenches and anchored on a redoubt in the middle; the whole system is between 200 and 500 metres from the front of the fire trench to the back of the reserve trench. In accordance with 1914 and 1915 doctrine, the one on the left has been built near the crest of a hill, on the facing slope; you look out of the fire trench (carefully) and you have a lovely panorama of the lower ground and the enemy trenches in front of you. All the trenches are built to the same standard; nice and deep to get away from shells, nice and narrow to stop the shells falling inside. Most of the men occupying this system will, in accordance with General von Falkenhayn's direct orders, be located either in the redoubt or in the fire trench, with local reinforcements available in the reserve line, and then more in the Second Line to the rear. They do have the giant, deep, concrete-filled, carpeted dugouts that we've all heard stories about, and a vast and bristling barbed wire belt in front, but there is one obvious flaw here. If you can just suppress the defenders, and keep them down in their giant dugouts and not up in the trench firing their machine guns and calling in artillery support, you can in theory charge across No Man's Land on the heels of a rolling artillery barrage and get into all three lines before the defenders are ready to repel you. The redoubt will probably be rather more difficult to deal with, but they're not invulnerable as long as you can take care of the trenches with minimal fuss. Furthermore, the defenders in the Second Line will then obligingly come and counter-attack and keep bashing their head against your own attack as long as they possibly can, again in accordance with von Falkenhayn's direct orders. Lots of casualties, and plenty of them prisoners; it's one thing to put up a spirited fight when you're ready for it and you have all your weapons handy, and another thing to put up another when the enemy suddenly appears among you with bayonets pointed right at your throat. So German field commanders, not being stupid, begin to consider what can be done about this, and particularly in the context of ground where the sheer weight of artillery fire makes it difficult to dig a new trench that's up to the standard of the ones you've just left. By summer 1916 they have some new theories, but it's not until von Falkenhayn gets himself shitcanned that the blokes can finally put them into practice. That's when you get a system like you see over on the right. The big fat principal line of resistance is located about where the old support trench would have been, still anchored on the redoubt. However, it's now got even deeper than the earlier trenches; and it's also a lot wider so that these newfangled "tanks" can't cross it without falling on their noses. This is where you also keep most of the blokes, to keep them as safe as possible from the artillery barrages; only after an attack is confirmed do you commit most of your men. The whole thing is also located on the reverse slope of a hill, so that all you can see if you look over the parapet is the hill. Sure, you're denied direct observation of the enemy, but that's why you put a little outpost line on the facing slope, and it's rarely more elaborate than a series of connected shell-holes. The outpost line isn't intended to do much more than fend off raids, give warnings of a general attack, and give artillery observers a taste of real trench life. When the general attack comes you either pull your men out or write them off. So the enemy comes at you and the first thing they do is they walk over the crest of the hill, and then you shoot gently caress out of them and call in more artillery support while they're silhouetted nicely for you against the sky. This is the point where, ideally, the commander orders men forward into the fire trench - it's probably been knocked about a bit by the preliminary barrage, but again, that's okay; you want things to be confusing and difficult for the enemy. They come over the hill and start walking down; now they're having to pick their way through whatever barbed wire is left. At this point, just as they're beginning to get within grenade range of your fire trench, a bunch of your men have now noticed that the rolling barrage has rolled over their heads. So they all come out from under big canvas sheets in various shell-holes, take out their machine guns, and begin shooting the attackers in the back, front, side, and any other which way they can. You want to draw the attackers into your wrecked fire trench, then counter-attack them from your principal line while also enfilading them and their reinforcements from the shell-holes in front; this also defeats some of the advantages the enemy gets from aerial photographs. Even losing the principal line isn't so much of a worry as long as you still hold the redoubts in it; by this point most of them will have underground entrances that go 200m back and can be accessed by the communications trenches leading to your Second Line. The principal line is also so deep that it's extremely difficult for attackers to build fire-steps and machine-gun emplacements on the parados and so direct fire forward to sustain the advance. The enemy will have to deal with the redoubts before advancing again, their momentum is stalled, and now the worst-case scenario is that you lose the trench system but with enough warning to rail in serious reinforcements and prevent the offensive from losing you more than a few hundred yards of ground per day. And these are the first steps towards modern defence-in-depth theories. It's specifically designed to frustrate a methodical bite-and-hold battle, to force the enemy to use overwhelming force and take heavy casualties for a few hundred yards of ground at a time. It's all about buying you enough time to raise the alarm and buy yourself the 24 hours or so that is generally necessary to get corps and Army-level reinforcements into the next line behind you, and so prevent a small loss of territory turning into a war-changing breakthrough. And, as an initial reaction to the rolling barrage, to methodical battle, and to the first generation of tanks, it worked very well. Just as before, it would eventually prove possible through sheer weight of firepower to break through one of those systems in short order; just as before, everyone on both sides still moves around at walking pace, even the tanks. What everyone still lacks is something that can exploit the breakthrough, that can follow it up quick enough that you're launching a sustained offensive on that next line to the rear before the enemy can get into it... PittTheElder posted:How vital was the development of tanks to ending the static positions on the western front? Were they the critical element to creating breakthroughs, or just one more straw stacked on the back of the German camel? Both. From one angle, sure, they're just one part of a giant combined arms whole and it's wrong to consider them as a wonder weapon without also considering the impact of using aircraft for ground attack and deep bombing and live artillery corrections; without considering the impact of the first clunky portable radio sets and more durable field-telephone wire to improve communications; without considering how vital sound-ranging and gas was to suppressing German artillery; without considering all the shortages and exhaustion being caused by the tightening blockade; without considering the strategic flexibility given by having 5 million Americans in your back pocket for use in 1919; without considering the appointment of Foch as Supreme Allied Commander and the benefits of more integrated planning; and many other things besides. But, on the other hand, even with all those other advantages, it would have been a lot harder to end trench warfare without the Renault FT, the Mark V, and the Medium A, tanks that were fast enough and durable enough and reliable enough to speed up the pace of an offensive just enough so that they could punch right through a First Line, and then get forward and gently caress up the next line before it could be properly garrisoned. There's your instrument of exploitation. We do have a pretty good model for what the second half of 1918 might have looked like without those fast tanks; it's called "the first half of 1918".
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Oct 26, 2016 22:24
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Trin Tragula posted:Great stuff. Awesome post.
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Oct 26, 2016 22:50
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Can someone link the series of blog posts on the R100 and R101 airships from a while back? My google-fu is failing me.
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Oct 26, 2016 23:10
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Tevery Best posted:effort post Trin Tragula posted:effort post thanks!
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Oct 26, 2016 23:34
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TaurusTorus posted:Can someone link the series of blog posts on the R100 and R101 airships from a while back? My google-fu is failing me. Pretty sure Neb's blog is daydream notes.
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Oct 26, 2016 23:36
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TaurusTorus posted:Can someone link the series of blog posts on the R100 and R101 airships from a while back? My google-fu is failing me. http://horseformer.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-story-of-r100-and-r101-i-imperial.html I think he was missing a part, though.
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Oct 26, 2016 23:43
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:http://horseformer.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-story-of-r100-and-r101-i-imperial.html Thanks a bunch!
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Oct 27, 2016 00:06
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:http://horseformer.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-story-of-r100-and-r101-i-imperial.html No, all the parts are there...at one point not all chapters had links on the bottom for all the other chapters, but I fix'd that.
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Oct 27, 2016 00:20
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I was under the impression that one of the more valuable and underrated contributions of WWI tanks was that they were super good at clearing the forests of barbed wire. Especially if you throw an anchor behind. Also that after 2 days of battle, 95% of the tanks had broken down. And in a 90+ day campaign, it really makes me question what kind of contribution they had overall, except in the very initial assaults. Pappenheim: Luchs or T70. Luchs for german reasons though.
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Oct 27, 2016 02:29
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They kept making and fielding them long enough for someone to make a stretch limo variant of the Mk IV so I assume even if they were unreliable they were at least reliable enough to be repaired and used again. Even if it breaks down every two days it doesn't matter as long as it gets you somewhere in the interim when it works. Because that was a lot more success than people were having most of the time. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Oct 27, 2016 |
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Oct 27, 2016 02:31
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BattleMoose posted:I was under the impression that one of the more valuable and underrated contributions of WWI tanks was that they were super good at clearing the forests of barbed wire. Especially if you throw an anchor behind. Having played Battlefield One, I can confirm to you that it is a myth that WW1 tanks were slow and unreliable. They were fast and well-armed and used in blitzkrieg tactics, advancing under covering fire from the heavily armored and well-armed Zeppelin Gunships, and if the tanks broke down the crew could quickly repair them from inside anyways.
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Oct 27, 2016 02:34
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Great trench post!!
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Oct 27, 2016 02:38
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Wire-clearing is actually not as important as you might think as an attribute for a tank, although it was very helpful; 1916 shows that wire-clearing could be done as long as the attackers had enough artillery firepower and munitions that actually deigned to explode. And then, here's the thing about defence-in-depth arrangements: you have to leave space for your blokes to move around within them, and that means leaving more paths through the wire that enemies can also follow if they twig where the wire is. (Sure, you arrange it so you funnel them into interlocking MG fields of fire, but if the people who should be manning the guns are all hiding from an enemy barrage or just got stabbed in the back by infiltration troops...) The Germans had no tanks in spring 1918 and they still did an excellent job of getting through Entente wire.BattleMoose posted:Also that after 2 days of battle, 95% of the tanks had broken down. And in a 90+ day campaign, it really makes me question what kind of contribution they had overall, except in the very initial assaults. If I've got a thousand tanks, I throw 250 against a line, they break the line and get ten miles through and then they all break down or run out of petrol and ammo, gently caress it, they've done their job, the enemy's on the run and making GBS threads himself, I've got 250 more to throw in and now we're in mobile warfare and we're not in a crater-ridden hellscape, so this next 250 are going to find it much easier going. Sure, no one individual tank is going to take me to Berlin by tea-time, but it is going to get me the next bit of the way down the road much more effectively than a horse would.
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Oct 27, 2016 03:05
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It's not like Imperial Germany can do much except make a handful of boxy mobile fortresses that make the early French heavy tanks look mobile and graceful in comparism.
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Oct 27, 2016 03:11
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Trin Tragula posted:Wire-clearing is actually not as important as you might think as an attribute for a tank, although it was very helpful; 1916 shows that wire-clearing could be done as long as the attackers had enough artillery firepower and munitions that actually deigned to explode. Oh yeah, its certainly an effective means of clearing wire. But not having to focus your artillery on wire clearing duties frees them up to fire on other targets and potentially reducing how long a bombardment is necessary. Reducing the time the enemy has to bring up reserves and so forth. Not having to use artillery for wire clearing or not as much, has to be an advantage. Also fewer craters and such. I also see the success (relative) of the 1918 offensive as indicative that with the correct amount of artillery and infantry doctrines, trench systems could be overcome. Of course tanks would help, on the first few days. Trin Tragula posted:If I've got a thousand tanks, I throw 250 against a line, they break the line and get ten miles through and then they all break down or run out of petrol and ammo, gently caress it, they've done their job, the enemy's on the run and making GBS threads himself, I've got 250 more to throw in and now we're in mobile warfare and we're not in a crater-ridden hellscape, so this next 250 are going to find it much easier going. Sure, no one individual tank is going to take me to Berlin by tea-time, but it is going to get me the next bit of the way down the road much more effectively than a horse would. Not sure how you intend to get the second wave of tanks through the crater filled hellscape of the trench systems, without directly driving them and with them subsequently breaking down. Getting through the hell scape of the trench system isn't sufficient, you also have to figure out how to get all your logistics and heavy artillery through it too. And that takes time. Enough time for your enemy to dig in, just 10 miles back?
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Oct 27, 2016 03:26
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BattleMoose posted:Oh yeah, its certainly an effective means of clearing wire. But not having to focus your artillery on wire clearing duties frees them up to fire on other targets and potentially reducing how long a bombardment is necessary. Reducing the time the enemy has to bring up reserves and so forth. Not having to use artillery for wire clearing or not as much, has to be an advantage. Also fewer craters and such. I also see the success (relative) of the 1918 offensive as indicative that with the correct amount of artillery and infantry doctrines, trench systems could be overcome. Of course tanks would help, on the first few days. I imagine it is much easier to move a tank through a cratered hellscape when nobody is shooting at you and the engineering corps is there to help
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Oct 27, 2016 04:08
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BattleMoose posted:Not sure how you intend to get the second wave of tanks through the crater filled hellscape of the trench systems, without directly driving them and with them subsequently breaking down. Getting through the hell scape of the trench system isn't sufficient, you also have to figure out how to get all your logistics and heavy artillery through it too. And that takes time. Enough time for your enemy to dig in, just 10 miles back? You build a road.
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Oct 27, 2016 04:12
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Jobbo_Fett posted:You build a road. Well yes. The issue I flagged is that, that takes time. Occupying the enemy trench system, particularly the front part, was something that could generally be done even in 1916 without too much difficulty. Advancing further typically means advancing beyond range of supporting artillery and supplying those troops with food and ammunition was particularly difficult. As well as getting communications back and forth. Invariably this gives the enemy ample time to bring up forces to contain whatever advance was made. By the time a road is built and the artillery has been able to be brought forward, the enemy has fortified himself again. Rinse and repeat. Bite and hold tactics was something that worked. The idea of achieving mobile warfare and being able to supply it through the hellscape before the enemy fortified himself again, was not something that was achieved in WWI. I would argue it wasn't achievable given the technology of the time.
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Oct 27, 2016 04:36
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The ability to look up Soviet records to compare to German versions of events will never not be amazing. I read about a battle where (as the Germans claim) two Mechanized Corps' worth of T-34s drove into their ambush and 90% of them were destroyed. Actual Soviet tank losses for that day, across the entire Front: 5.
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Oct 27, 2016 04:46
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Ensign Expendable posted:The ability to look up Soviet records to compare to German versions of events will never not be amazing. I read about a battle where (as the Germans claim) two Mechanized Corps' worth of T-34s drove into their ambush and 90% of them were destroyed. Actual Soviet tank losses for that day, across the entire Front: 5. 
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Oct 27, 2016 04:48
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HEY GAL posted:that only happened once It only needed to happen once
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Oct 27, 2016 04:53
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You lose one battle...
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Oct 27, 2016 04:59
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xthetenth posted:You lose one battle... And the French show up.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:00
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tilly managed to raise a new army in record time, during which g.a. inexplicably failed to harry him. pappenheim remained rad. little of value was lost.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:08
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BattleMoose posted:Well yes. The issue I flagged is that, that takes time. Occupying the enemy trench system, particularly the front part, was something that could generally be done even in 1916 without too much difficulty. Advancing further typically means advancing beyond range of supporting artillery and supplying those troops with food and ammunition was particularly difficult. As well as getting communications back and forth. Invariably this gives the enemy ample time to bring up forces to contain whatever advance was made. By the time a road is built and the artillery has been able to be brought forward, the enemy has fortified himself again. Rinse and repeat. Bite and hold tactics was something that worked. But isn't what people are arguing for specifically Bite and Hold where you use the tanks to Bite and the infantry to Hold?  Like, you use your tanks to break through heavily fortified lines and now he's forced to retreat and fortify a new spot, which also takes time and now is in potentially unfavorable terrain.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:15
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| # ? May 4, 2024 06:42 |
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One of the previous posters suggested that mobile warfare could be achieved using tanks in waves(?).
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Oct 27, 2016 05:19
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