Comments by "Tizi 08" (@tizi087) on "Eastory"
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A few important bits i feel a bit missing here:
Tank numbers are not all, as a smaller more trained force can still achieve a higher combat value than a larger froce (see eastern front)
Especially north africa shows this, as at El Ala the brits won, by outlasting the germans in tank losses --> thus montgomery move to wait till all was set in his favour was smart.
for those wondering why the brits earlier lost even tough they had more tanks:
The reason why the 8.8 became so famous and a tank threat was due to the Germans realising that the training needed to fight aircraft is also handy when fighting tanks and ground targets. Thus the crews were trained for this too and commanders were willing to use the 8.8 in ground combat. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIA, Askey Nigel page 51-52
--> i suppose nobody is suprised that i have to bring up the 8.8 here. The germans used their flank in the anti tank role while the brits didnt, giving them an advantage
Tank heavy units are endangered to counter attacks and have a hard time dealing with infantry and AT guns. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIA, Askey Nigel page 343
The Germans were the first ones to realise the mistake of tank heavy divisions. The French and British divisions were way more tank heavy than the Germans. The French outset this by dispersing the tanks into their infantry divisions. The brits meanwhile hat two armoured brigades with 342 tanks while having only 2 infantry Battalions. Thus these units suffered heavy losses especially in North Afrika in 1941 and 42 against the Africakorps. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIA, Askey Nigel page 344
--> the brits like many other realsied quite late how bad tank heavy formations are. When a tank heavy formation losses many of its tanks, it also looses most of its comabt power. Panzer divisions also had many other elements and thus could hold out even with less tanks. You will find many authors stating, that a german tank division with as few as 50 tanks would be capable of all operations. The brits thus got a bloody nose, when they attack with their tank heavy formations, lost many of them and then didnt had the sufficent strenght to stop the german coutnerattack.
Panzer divisions showed numerous times, that with as few as 50 tanks they were able to do very effective offensive Operations. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIB, Askey Nigel page 182
And one always needs to keep in mind, that the germans had the superior training and tank doctrine too! also according to one source the germans had some form of air superiority for parts of the campaign.
Fliegerführer Afrika albeit being outnumbered managed to achieve a degree of air superiority till early 1942, mainly due to the battle-hardened I./JG 27. The kill to loss ratio was better than 4 to 1 and aces like Hans-Joachim Marseille [known as the Star of Afrika] were born in this units. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIB, Askey Nigel page 247
it still an wonderful video, but i feel like it shows a bit too much the numbers without the context. After all combat power is what matters. To exxagerate it:
20 Leopard 2s will very likely win against 200 T26. As their comabt power is vastly diffrent. Even tough the comabt power of the individual tanks in north africa wasnt too diffrent, the training and leadership was. And tank warfare after all calls for mobile operations, something the germans back thenw ere leading in. So it is really intresting to see, how they always succeded in north africa in these operations, while the brits succeded in their well planned battles (something they were suited for)
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@warthoggoulags1679
saying that the soviets have good logistics is one of the biggest jokes i ever read. Especially in 1941 there logistics were..... terrible.
While the German Supply was mainly hampered by longer supply lines and the bad infrastructure the Soviets had a chronic shortage of almost all types of transport equipment. Combined with their massive amounts of heavy equipment they had sever supply problems (as tanks and artillery are supply hungry). See Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Organisational and statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume I, Nigel Askey page 25
Many of the Soviet units in the western military district had less than half their allocated manpower on 22nd June 1941. Additionally, they lacked missed 33-66% of their horses and sometimes up to 80% of their motor vehicles. At the same time they had all of their heavy equipment. See Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Organisational and statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume I, Nigel Askey page 36
23% of all motor vehicles of the Red Army were inoperable in June 1941. Including the whole UdSSR 45% of all trucks were unusable. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIB, Askey Nigel page 310
The average supply distribution efficiency factor for the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front in 1941 was around 74%. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIB, Askey Nigel page 299
VS
The Soviet SDE with more realistic numbers, was probably around 20% in 1941. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIB, Askey Nigel page 312
The authors stresses, that the Red Army had massive supply problems in 1941 and if a German and a soviet division would face each other in similar circumstances the former would have almost 5 times as much supply. The author states that the only time when the supply of the two sides became equally bad, was when German motorised corps operated far away from their supply hubs. See Operation Barbarossa the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis and Military Simulation Volume IIB, Askey Nigel page 313-314
Soviet truck production fell significantly during WWII! Big reasons for this were, that they retooled factories to produce tanks as well as needing more weaposn for their ever-expanding army. See Operation Barbarossa: the Complete organisational and Statistical Analysis and military Simulation Volume IIIA by Nigel Askey page 107
The Allies provided the Soviets with well over twice the number of trucks the Soviets produced themselves and 3.5 times when the Lift Capacity is taken into account! See Operation Barbarossa: the Complete organisational and Statistical Analysis and military Simulation Volume IIIA by Nigel Askey page 108
--> without the allies there would be no soviet truck park or way less tanks. had a far to small motor industry.
“Thus, for example, the 22nd Army since the start of the winter offensive in January had lost its entire complement twice over. Replacements for the fronts on the Western Direction in the period between January and April 1942, though 5.6 times greater in number than in December 1941, were untrained and immediately consumed in the fighting. The artillery of several of the attacking divisions in March-April was down to one-tenth to one-third of a standard allotment of shells and only 10 mortar rounds. It was unable to inflict any perceptible damage to the enemy’s defenses. In addition, the muddy season began in April.”
Gerasimova, Svetlana; Britton, Stuart. The Rzhev Slaughterhouse: The Red Army's Forgotten 15-month Campaign against Army Group Center, 1942-1943 (S.84). Helion and Company. Kindle-Version.
--> artillery was litrally running out of ammo
from all I know the red army didnt had good supply in the first 2 years of the war and needed much lend lease to improve. maybe in 1944 onwards their logistics got better. but in the beginning they were.... really really bad.
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