“A few more such victories, and I am utterly undone.” - King Pyrrhus.
MarcusF
Yes, I agree. But reading history is a neccesity, not a luxury, for a good general. Damn near all the best ones had a clear understanding of how military tactics evolved. Heck, even today we study Sun Tzu, and not just for general principles, in order to understand war properly.
However, that is precisely how trenches were busted. The British tactics were essentially just that, although they started experimenting with early tanks.
MichaelQReilly
On Grant: No, he emphatically did not want to make the one-kill-for-two-trade, and he did not want to get bogged down fighting what was, essentialy, a siege as he did. He was willing to take those casualties, but every strategy he devised had as the immediate goal brining Le out into the open. Lee chose a battle of attrition because he knew it was the only way he could possibly hold off Grant. It wasn’t all defensive - Lee made small attacks regularly and particularly at the Batlle of the Wilderness. Grant wanted to smash Lee. Not only his actual actions, but his words before, during, and after.
That’s not the reason he won in any case. Grant had agreed that Sherman should march (from Savannah) into Lee’s rear. Even if Sherman didn’t actually reach Lee, he could conquer the Carolinas and cut off Lee from the rest of the Confederacy, weakening everyone’s supply situation grossly. Lee’s defeat would become inevitable and probably imminent. Lee recognized this, and made one last attempt to break Grant’s siege lines, failed, and realized that Richmond - and probably all Virginia, would have to be abandoned. He was unable to escape Grant, however.
On NCOs: And? I am not saying they should have neccessarily learned it at the Somme. That wasn’t really the thrust of my argument, which applies more after the Somme. But even relatively inexperienced, but discpliplined and willing, officers can succeed at that. I would have thought the French certainly could have.
On retreat and counter-attack: Yes, it might be politically unpopular. I would be rather dubious of the proposition that sitting in the trenches was more politically popular, however. And you do need to coordinate forces, yes.
Right, but the reason Lee was in such a bind vis a vis Grant is the fact that his army was falling apart due to the war of attrition that he was engaged in. Thus my point that even if Grant didn’t intend to win via a war of attrition, which I’m still not convinced of, his desire for a decisive battle notwithstanding, the fact that he did wind up in a war of attrition with Lee is what won the day for him.
In a couple of threads I’ve started in the past, I alluded to a parallel history in which WW1 was somehow fought from the beginning with 1918 tactics and weapons. One question that’s been debated is whether “trench busting” (stormtrooper, etc.) tactics would have been as successful against defenders that weren’t so ground down as the Germans were by 1918.
Another possible influence on how WW1 generals expected to fight might have been the Russo-Japanese war. The Japanese had actually made human wave frontal assaults against defensive positions work. However, this was probably because that the Russians were fighting at the end of an 8,000-mile supply and reenforcement line, and that the Russian commanders were under orders to retreat rather than take inordinate casualties. The temporary loss of comparitively worthless Siberian territory was hardly comparable to a European war. The Russians stalled for time expecting their fleet to smash the Japanese navy and then cut off the Japanese land forces. When that didn’t happen, the Russians had little interest in continuing. A special case, but all that European observers took away from the conflict was that machine guns and barbed wire wouldn’t stop a sufficiently brave enemy.
I’m genuinely curious: in those discussions, what was the “trench busting” weapon of choice in 1915? Handguns?
Well in one thread when I specifically asked what contemporary weapon you would want to storm a trench with, the majority chose the German MP18, the world’s first operational submachine gun.
I’d rather storm a trench with a few hundred pounds of well placed artillery.
I’d rather storm a trench with a few [del]hundred[/del] thousand pounds of well placed artillery.
Fixed that for you.
That’s because most of them haven’t seen this baby.
ETA: really, this is my preferred trench-storming weapon.
Well said, lots of properly used artillery was the key to the battlefield on the Western Front. It was this that won battle and this is why I find **smiling bandit’s **ideas so strange.
Assuming the “that” in “The British tactics were essentially just that” refer to the tactics described in **smiling bandit’s **earlier post, I’ll take this a piece at a time:
Second, while trench-busting is hard, it has the singular advantage that it actually works. Not every time, but it doesn’t take too much training. It takes discipline, and the British had that. The French too, before they wasted their strength. And as I said, I can understand trying the massed attacks once or twice, but that’s would be it.
*The “top-level basic idea” is to put a lot of men through a very narrow area. *
I am not clear what scale you are talking about here. For a company attack a 100 metres might be a narrow front, for an Army (two or three Corps) 10 miles would be a very narrow front. Remember on the Western Front we are talking of forces of up to 200 Divisions on each side. Whatever scale we are on, concentrating your forces in a very narrow area just is disaster in the face of quick firing artillery and machine guns.
Then they can fan out.
I assume this means once they’ve taken the front line but there is very likely to be a second and third line destroying your now dispersed attackers. See below.
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Depending on the circumstances, of course, it’s good to have covering fire, but the soldiers must under all circumstances move like a freight train with no brakes.*
No “depending on the circumstances”; effective coving fire is absolutely essential. On the Western Front there were no open flanks to move round so all assaults were on defended positions. As was established from the beginning, unsupported infantry attacking unsuppressed defences was suicidal, however brave and well disciplined the troops were. It is hard to move “like a freight train with no breaks” when being shot and blown to pieces while struggling through uncut barbed wire… -
Night attacks, or perhaps dawn or dusk attacks, are encouraged. The covering fire and darkness prevent reinforcement at that area or effective fire on it *
In principle night attacks are good but unless the attackers are very highly skilled and well led they are likely to lose their way and get disorganised, allowing the defenders to destroy them in detail. Unfortunately – certainly in 1916 - the BEF was not that skilled and, as noted, there was a desperate shortage of experienced junior leaders. Hence most attacks were at dawn. It’s also worth saying that darkness does not prevent the defenders reinforcing – they are coming up pre-defined and marked routes - nor does it prevent artillery fire on the area. Defending artillery were always pre-ranged in on their own front line ready to be called in if the line was lost. -
(and you always choose a weak spot or vulnerable salient.*
On the Western Front, with the massive force to space ratio, there were not that many weak spots – at least not until the Germans had been ground down by 3 years of war. If there were apparent weak spots it was probably because the led nowhere, i.e. there was no way of rapidly exploiting a breakthrough.
You then move in reserves into the trench area.
This was always hard to do. First, the commander normally had no way of knowing whether the first assault had succeeded in taking the enemy line (no man portable radios) and second the defending artillery is likely to be laying down a barrage between the lines to prevent just such reinforcement. In the early years this was one of the major problems, the first wave took the enemy front line but was then cut off from their reserves and extremely vulnerable to the inevitable German counter-attack, particularly as they had no way of calling artillery support.
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Depending on circumstances, units to the flanks begin to move forward, pinning defenders between soldiers pouring from the sides and those advancing on the front.*
What circumstances? Again we are back to the scale of the forces involved on the Western Front. “Pouring from the sides” is a pretty image but unlikely to match reality. In general the defenders will be able to bring up reserves more quickly than the attackers can move up their troops through the “narrow” assault front. -
Special units should be set aside to stop any attempt by the enemy reserves to move forward before their lines are thoroughly disrupted.*
What sort of “Special units”? How are units, however special, going to impact on reserves that are by definition some distance behind the enemy line. The only arm that can do this is the artillery and they had only a limited reach. Later in the war ground attack aircraft were used for this but there was always the problem of communication from the leading attackers to and from the aircraft. Also, WW1 planes had nothing like the firepower available in WW2 and were very vulnerable to ground fire.
That sounds complicated, but it’s not that hard to set up. You just make sure that each unit (and commander) understands what’s up and knows their own role.
Of course everyone has to know his own role but this does not help when the inevitable delays and disruptions occur. Friction always occurs and – as I’ve said before – there was no effective way of the front line commanders telling others – including higher formations with the possibility of doing something about it – what was going on, whether to provide additional support to those in trouble or to exploit unexpected success.
Someone also needs to lead from the front.
At what level? Right down to battalion level the commanders would be with their troops and suffered for it – check out the figures for officer casualties – but what use is a Brigade, Divisional, or Corps commander in the front line? He can’t see what is happening, he can’t react to changing circumstances, and he cannot direct any reserves he may have available. Actually there was very little he could do in his advanced HQ but the point where the field telephone lines came together was the only point at which he had any chance of influencing the battle.
By 1918 both sides had evolved techniques that overcame most of these difficulties and allowed them to break into and even through enemy lines. These replied on an all arms battle system: infantry, tanks, aircraft, engineers, and – most especially – artillery working together. Improved infantry tactics of infiltration and by-passing strong points, together with more effective quick and automatic fire weapons, was certainly important as were the introduction of significant numbers of tanks but not, in my mind, as important as the improvement in artillery effectiveness. Firstly, by 1917/18 for the first time there was sufficient artillery, of heavy enough calibre, and with sufficient (reliable) ammunition to make a real difference. Secondly, techniques had been worked out to allow artillery to hit their target without using ranging shots. Predicted fire reintroduced surprise as a factor in the attack, limiting the enemy’s chance of moving reserves up prior to the attack. Third, an effective recipe for utilising the guns had been developed. Counter battery fire (often using gas) to suppress the enemy’s artillery, hurricane barrages on the enemy lines to kill as many as possible before they could take shelter, effective rolling barrages that skilled troops knew how to follow right into the enemy lines, and box barrages of high explosive and smoke to interdict the attack zone from enemy counter-attacks.
What these tactics could not do was convert a breakthrough into a rout. As soon as the attackers moved out of the range of their own artillery they once again became vulnerable to enemy artillery and counter attack. The only reliable option was to stop, consolidate, move the guns forward, bring up more ammunition, and start all over again on biting off another chunk. Not spectacular but it worked and the Allies were able to keep driving the Germans back, each time destroying yet more irreplaceable German men and materiel.
For not so young Generals that grew up in 19th century England or France and learned their soldiering in colonial campaigns in Asia and Africa they did not do so badly at learning new tricks and finding solutions to unprecedented problems.
Sorry about the length of this :dubious: but I just could not allow some of the misinformation to stand.
I agree with Marcus F on a lot of the points. And I believe I will change my perspective on a few points about Aylmer Hunter-Weston. But it has been a long day here and I will post in full tomorrow. And I don’t believe Birdwood was a bad general either .
I have some sympathy for Civil War generals who are criticized for not “following up” on a victory: Bragg at Chickamauga, McClellan at Antietam, Meade at Gettysburg. It’s easy enough to criticize them from our armchairs for not pursuing the enemy, but war is not a computer game, and we don’t have to deal with the logistics of trying to rapidly move a beat-up, exhausted, and freaking huge army. (Not to mention the exhaustion the general must feel after two or three days of supervising massive, high-stress carnage.)
Cute, but I did say contemporary (to WW1 that is). 
Seriously though, an infantryman tasked with attacking a heavily defended trench in WW1 would probably have wept for joy if shown and given an MM1.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some truly awful WW1 Generals - I don’t know enough about him to say if Hunter-Weston was one of them.
He would probably wept even more tears of joy when he dropped it on his foot and got sent back to England to recover 
Ignoring his own staff’s advice, Gen. McArthur decided to invade North Korea. Things were going OK…cept he never thought about retreat (he didn’t consider that a possibility). Also, his men were not equipped for the bitter cold of a Korean winter. Fortunately, a Marine general (forget his name), planned a retreat route.
When the Chinese attacked, Dougie lost it… they only thig that prevented a complete disaster was the heroic stand of the marines at the Chosin reservoir-by covering the retreat, the valiant marines saved thousands of soldier’s lives.
Yet McArthur never refers to this incident in his memoirs…odd that!
Even MacArthur’s best moment in Korea - the Inchon landing - was probably not really a good idea. It worked and there’s no disputing success. But at the time, a lot of people pointed out that the plan depended on favorable weather conditions at the landing site - and those conditions usually only were present about 30% of the time and couldn’t be predicted in advance. But MacArthur apparently believed that Destiny would not let him fail and ordered the invasion to proceed without any apparent back-up plan ready in case it failed. And as it turned out, the conditions were right and the landing succeeded. But in my humble opinion, being lucky is not the same as being competent.
True, it was very difficult, but it could be done, as Thomas (one of my favorites) proved at Nashville.
General Disarray has an uneven performance record . . .
I remember hearing or reading that one of the reasons the western front became so ugly is that most of the artillery that was used in WWI wasn’t correctly designed to smash up bunkers, so that the massive bombardments that preceeded many of the frontal attacks left largely intact defenders wainting for the attackers. I can’t find anything on google right now, but I will check my books when I get home.