Comments by "TheVilla Aston" (@thevillaaston7811) on "Military History Visualized"
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@davidhimmelsbach557
'The Bocage never reached the President. The Pentagon LONG decided that they wanted to be in the EAST because most of the intense fighting figured to be along that axis.' So you have changd your mind having previously stated this:
'This issue was a MAJOR bone of contention between FDR and WC. Winnie jammed it down FDR's throat.'
'This is utter nonsense. British RAIL would solve the criss-cross -- same as they did during the actual event. It didn't matter WHERE a unit was stationed, British Rail got the boys to their port and ships. British rail capacity was so great that D-Day was no 'biggie.' All that was necessary was the elimination of some commuter trains.'
Err...There was no British Rail in 1944. The railway were run by four compaies, the Great Western Railway, the London Midland Scottish Railway, The London & North Eastern Railway and the Southern Railway. The railway network, far from having redundant capacity was under severe strain as peacetime norms for maintence were ignored, the huge demands already being made on the system with maximum effort on the home front, damage caused by enemy action and so on.
'BTW, during this period, Britain was totally locked down. You could NOT MOVE ANYWHERE. You were not to even use public transport. All of the Allied armies were using a fist-full of truck convoys -- and the roads became strictly ONE-WAY under British MPs. This was martial law.'
Nope. The only special regulations in place were on the south coast, mainly from the Thames through to West Cornwall, and this was only for a brief period from May through to D-Day. Public transport remained in place throughout this period. Wartime regulations were in place regarding freedom of movement, but this was not martial law.
'British civilians treated the lock-down as a national 'holiday.' But, of course. Said lock-down was brief. It does not show up in common war histories.'
Absolutely not. Work continued as before and afterwards, including on the South Coast, despite the temporary cordon imposed on on those areas.
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@davidhimmelsbach557
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
By Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
P130
'Responsibility for the complex troop carrier role fell to the commander of the IX Troop Carrier Command, General Williams. The overall commander was General Brereton.'
P132
'One of the more crucial decisions facing General Brereton and the staff of the First Allied Airborne Army was that of daylight versus night attack. Moving by day, planes and gliders would be exposed to more accurate flak. This was a serious consideration, both because the C-47 (Sky train) troop carrier planes were lowspeed aircraft possessing neither armor nor self-sealing gasoline tanks and because
marked increase had been noted recently in antiaircraft guns in the vicinity of the target area. On the other hand, moving by night invited greater danger from enemy aircraft. Although the enemy's daylight fighter force had been reduced almost to inconsequence, his night fighters had retained some measure of potency. In regard to the actual drop, it went without saying that a daylight operation
should provide a better drop pattern. To realize what could happen in the dark, one had but to recall the Normandy operation when drop sticks had scattered like windblown confetti.
A major factor governing selection of a night drop in Normandy had been a need to co-ordinate airborne and seaborne units. The plan for co-ordination of air and ground efforts in Operation MARKET GARDEN imposed no restrictions. Neither had the Allies at the time of the Normandy
drop possessed the unquestioned air supremacy they now had attained. It was an air supremacy that could be maintained through proximity of the target area to bases in England, France, and Belgium. Assured of a comprehensive antiflak program, General Brereton made his decision: by day.'
At the the time of Market Garden, the Dutch Underground had been penetrated by the German, leading to the German 'Englandspiel' deception of British intelligence. As a result, all contact perporting to have come from the Dutch Underground at that time was routinely disregarded. Market Garden was no different to any other situation in that regard.
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@davidhimmelsbach557
Before you bang on any more, you should know that I have already forgotten more about this subject than you will ever know. I have been on it for over 50 years.
Not only that, my Uncle was an RN gunner in a Royal Navy ship that bombarded UTAH Beach on D-Day, my father landed on Sword Beach on D-Day with a Churchill Tank Regiment, and he was a life long railway enthusiast. Further, he was in one of those ships 'circling round', in his case in the Channel, for two days, due to D-Day being delayed by 24 hours. It gets worse (For you), the stuff about telephone calls is nonsense. My mother was a telephone exchange supervisor in Surrey. There, only certain places were restricted. My paternal grand parents lived in one of the restricted area, Hove in Sussex.
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@davidhimmelsbach557
'But Brooke and Winston would NOT hear of it. The British were still shaken by Dunkirk, and so figured that there might be a Dunkirk II in their future. WInnie's confidence in Overlord was THAT low. It always had been. He's the reason that Overlord did not begin 5-1-1943 -- the date the AMERICANS wanted from the first.'
Nope. The Ameicans (Mainly General Marshall) wanted to invade France in 1942. The British pointed out that there was landing craft for just 5,000 troops and that Britain could only supply seven divisions for such an undertaking. When the Americans were asked how many divisions they could supply, the answer was two and a half. That is nine and a half divisions to take on 25 German divisions already in France. Further, the Battle of the Atlantic was far from won, and the bombing campaign against German infrastructure had only just began. In 1942, the USAAF had not droped a single bomb on Germany.
Any invasion attempt would have been crushed by the Germans without the need to take a single soldier away from the eastern Front.
WINSTON S CHURCHILL.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
CASSELL & CO LTD REVISED EDITION NOVEMBER 1950.
VOLUME IV THE HINGE OF FATE
P391
Former Naval Person to President 8 July 42
‘No responsible British general, admiral, or air marshal is prepared to recommend “Sledgehammer” as a practical operation in 1942. The Chiefs of Staff have reported “The conditions which would make “Sledgehammer” a sound, sensible enterprise are very unlikely to occur. They are now sending their paper to your Chiefs of Staff.’
As for 1943, this from one of Eisenhower's closest coleagues:
WITH PREJUDICE
The War Memoirs of Marshall of the Royal Air Force
Lord Tedder G.C.B.
CASSELL & COMPANY 1966
P 395
'At Casablanca he [Alan Brooke] had raised the question of a Second Front, suggesting that operations in Italy should be used to divert the Germans from the west in preparation for a full-scale invasion of France. Although this plan was officially adopted, Anglo-American differences reached a sharper pitch on this issue than any other major matter. To General Marshall the continuation of warfare in the Mediterranean was a sign of British Lukewarmness towards the full-scale assault on the Reich through France, which alone could secure the defeat of the main enemy. In Alan Brooke’s eyes the continued lack of American reinforcements to Europe and the preoccupation with Admiral King’s operations in the Pacific, signified America’s lack of perception.’
‘At this distance of time, there can be no possible doubt that Brooke was right. Not only did we have no hope in 1943 of sufficient picked and trained troops, with a vast armada of shipping and landing craft for a cross-Channel invasion; even more important, we should not possess until the end of the year the air strength which, wisely used in advance of an assault on France, would ensure its success. It seemed clear to me that our right policy was to clear North Africa first, to take Sicily as a springboard for operations in Italy, the weak spot of the Axis, and to cause in the coming months the maximum devastation of German productive capacity.’
As in the 1942, none of the key conditions for a successful invasion of France were in place.
'Had that date been used, the Nazis would not have had any Panthers -- and very few Tigers. They also would've been still reeling from Stalingrad. France would've still had only crippled German units recovering from the Eastern Front. The Sherman tank would've been easily the best tank in the world in May 1943.'
In May 1943 the best tank in the world was the T-34, as the Germans acknowledged. The Sherman was a fire hazzard to its troops.
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The RightStuff
All the Wikipedia stuff you have pasted is fine but would it not have been better if you had put say ‘single quotes’ against them?
The War in Russia started 22.06.41 and by the end of November that year the Germans were 1,000 miles from their homeland, having to man a near 2,000 mile front in some of the harshest weather conditions in the world. From start of the campaign up to that time the Germans had suffered one million casualties, a quarter of their attacking force. German technocrats had warned in 1937 that across the board, existing German military technology would be obsolete by 1943.
By that time the key Russian industries were located 1,000 East of Moscow.
What price a German victory then?
In 1942 Russia produced 25,436 aircraft, 24,446 tanks and 127,000 artillery pieces. The equivalent German figures were 15,409, 9,300 and 12,000.
The game was up for Germany.
As for Lend-Lease:
No US deliveries before the middle of 1942.
The Soviets started the war with over 28,000 locomotives and 600,000 rolling stock, suffering only limited losses to destruction or capture.
Lend-lease delivered 1,977 steam and Diesel locomotives (3.6% of the total soviet stock), 11,000 rolling stock items (1.8% of the total soviet stock).
US Lend Lease locomotives and rolling stock were used to deliver Lend Lease in Persia and mostly arrived from mid 1944 onwards.
Food: 1.75 million tons. Over 35 months = 50,000 tons per month or 1,642 per day over 1066 days.
About 1 Liberty Ship per week – to feed a population of 100 million plus.
Tanks, artillery aircraft and so on, go through the totals and see how Russian production and Le d-Lease numbers compare.
Russian GDP for the years 1941-45 stood at $1,913 billion. Total US Lend-Lease aid to Russia stood at $11 billion.
Even going the Wikipedia stats one thing that stands out is the fantastic British mobilisation and production effort.
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The RightStuff
your words in 'single quotes'
'1. Your numbers are fanciful. What is your source? Politburo?
'
For those 1942 Russian armaments production figures its:
(Kursk, The Greatest Battle, Eastern Front 1943. Lloyd Clark. Headline Review 2011.Chapter 6, Uneasy Calm, p180).
For railway assets its:
www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/russia-stands-alone-no-ww2-lend-lease.321273/page-4
The numbers are not sourced, but the number very similar those noted in Wikipedia – from one Weeks, Albert L. Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2004.
take kit how you will.
‘2. The US was expected to feed 100 million Soviets? Exactly the Russian way: complain about being helped.’
But your contention is that US Lend-Lease was significant. The author you cited, one Robert Hill seems to have described US Lend –Lease as ‘Russia's life-saver’ – his words.
Do you think that 1.75 million tons of food spread amongst 100 million plus people over 3 years was significant?
'3. I don't know why you are crowing about wikipedia. I have original writings that I posted which are my own work. I credit other sources where appropriate. You on the other hand have no sources.
'
See point 1 above.
'4. An area where you are especially wrong is railroads. They were decimated by the Germans in the first few months. The Soviets had 29,000 locomotives at the start of the war. Source: "Russia and Serbia, A Century of Progress in Rail Transport". A Look at Railways History in 1935 and Before. Open Publishing. July 2008. Retrieved 9 June 2016....
*Second, "From June to December 1941 on the front-line railways objects Luftwaffe flew about 6 thousand air raids. During the war, was destroyed 16 thousand. Locomotives" http://eng.rzd.ru/statice/public/en?STRUCTURE_ID=4334 *
So out of your 20,000 locomotives, 16,000 were immediately destroyed by the Germans, leaving you 4,000. Soviets were virtually unable to replace locomotives themselves during the war - and only produced about 300. The US supplied nearly 2,000 locomotives. Therefore, of the 6,000 locomotives operating during the war in USSR, the US was responsible for 33% - a significant number.’
As far as the Russian site you cited is concerned, here are some of their statistics:
‘20 million railcars transported with soldiers, shells, military equipment, foodstuffs. If we build these echelons along the chain, then they can wrap the whole Earth 4 times at the equator. The trains went in a continuous stream, sometimes the interval between them was 600-700 meters.
During the defensive battles near Moscow, 333.5 thousand railcars were served for military transport.
In the course of the preparation of the Battle of Kursk, 14,410 echelons transported entire armies in full force.
2.5 thousand plants and factories were exported beyond the Urals. This made it possible in the shortest possible time to restore military and industrial potential.
18 million people were evacuated. To do this, it took more than 1.5 million cars.’
And all this with 4,000 Locomotives?
Notice that the site talks about rolling stock in the millions. Numbers of wagons of wagon loads, the site seems to be unclear on this point.
As for Locomotives, I note that no total number of these items is noted. If the figure is true, which I very much doubt, then the Russia lost 80% of those 20,000 Locomotives in six months. How the system kept running is anybody’s guess. The arrival of 2,000 US Locomotives from late 1944 onwards would have amounted to the replacement of 12.5% of Russian losses. Significant? Not for me.
A more significant statistic might have have to say 2,000 Locomotives arriving in 1941 to replace say 2,500 Russian losses or whatever the number was. How was the arrival of 2,00) Locomotives in the latter part of 1944 supposed to have been significant?
Of course, if the total number of Russian Locomotives at the start of the Russian war was the Wikipedia figure of 29,000 then those supposed 16,000 losses would amount to 55% of that total – in which case those 2,000 US locomotives would seem to be of greater significance. Which one do you want?
By way of comparison, Russia began the First World War with 20,071 Locomotives but by February 1917 that figure had reduced to 9,021 - a major contribution to Russia’s defeat and the Revolution. What happened in the period 1941-44? With supposedly less than half that number of Locomotives the Soviets moved a huge numbers of factories over thousands of miles, millions troops and delivered huge numbers of munitions, as well as delivering food and essentials to millions of Russians.
‘5. You must have failed economics if you want to compare or equate GDP to Military aid amounts supplied. lol. It doesn’t work that way. In any event, USSR had the lowest GDP compared to US, Germany and even little Brittan. And USSR was a mere 25% of the USA output.’
Have it your own way.
So what does a GDP comparison with the USA prove? Russia and the USA were not at war. The relevant comparison is surely between Russia and Germany – they were at war.
Let us use that Mark Harrison document (which I already have): 1941-45 Russian GDP was $1,643. 1941-45 German GDP was $2,002.
Of course, Russia was fighting on one land front Germany was fighting on two, then three land fronts, the Battle of the Atlantic and the air war in the west.
You should read this Harrison document – it’s a good read. Here is a snippet:
‘The pressure on resources was somewhat alleviated by foreign aid, which added approximately 5 per cent to Soviet resources in 1942 and 10 per cent in 1943 and 1944.’
‘6. Your GDP numbers are off - imagine that! For years 1941-44 combined by country: 1,300, for USSR; 1,404 for UK; 1,692 for Germany; 5,227 for USA. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/totalwar2005.pdf’
If you check you see that I noted figures for 1941- 1945. The war ended in 1945 – take my word for it. Harrison’s figures for Russian GDP show $1,643. Set that against Western aid figures and see how the figures compare.
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