The elaborate trench lines of WWI were not a tactic of them selves but were an improvised response to machine gun and artillery fire. Trenching was the most effective way to protect your people from a level of fire that had not been previously experienced in Europe, although there had been a foretaste in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and of course in the American Civil War. There was a tendency by European military thinkers to regard the American Civil War as an unseemly brawl between armed mobs and thus not illustrative of much of any thing.
While Germany certainly embraced automatic fire earlier than the other contending nations, the firepower of the Maxim gun had been used in Britain’s and France’s colonial wars. I don’t think any European power had ever fought a war in which the other side had any significant number of automatic weapons before 1914. The British with their small volunteer and semi professional army had made a God of musketry based on their experience in South Africa in the two Boer Wars and thought that rapid, aimed rifle fire was sufficient to any situation. It was. The problem was not the ability to lay down withering fire. The problem was how to deal with it and the answer was to dig in. Once dug in from the North Sea to Switzerland the fortified armies lost the power to maneuver against a vulnerable flank. This left them with nothing to do but stage straight ahead assaults that were futile and always tremendously costly of that most valuable military asset, seasoned infantry. The French answer was even worse, to go after machine guns with the bayonet.
To some extent artillery tactics tended to over come the defensive advantage of entrenched small arms, but that was countered by even more elaborate trench systems, posting advanced outposts and defenses in depth. In one of his books John Keegan points out that once the war in Europe passed into its siege stage, either side had the ability to over run the opponent’s front line trench if enough resources were devoted to the job but that the ground was so torn up and communications so disrupted by the first attack that the attack on the second line could not be mounted. The second line had to be dealt with in the same way as the first with huge expenditures in men and material and the time necessary to get every thing ready. The alternative was to forget the preparations and rush infantry on to the second line where it would be slaughtered. This is just what happened at the Somme in 1916 and in the Nivelle offensive in 1917, and in Flanders in 1917.
Armored vehicles proved to be the answer to industrialized gunfire. While tanks had been employed in WWI they were used piecemeal and were not mechanically capable of reliably crossing the shell torn belts between the armies. In WWII armored vehicles came into their own. German use of armor in Poland and France was a revelation and has been the jumping off point for armor doctrine ever since. None-the–less, in situations in which armor could not be used, as at Cassino and in the Italian mountains and in Korea, a WWI type stalemate quickly reasserted itself. The point of armor is that it allows you to get within killing distance of your enemy.
One of the fundamental missions of military engineers is he creation and destruction of battlefield obstacles. Tank traps, anti-tank ditches and minefields are standard devices. Usually the objective is not to stop tanks but to force them to go someplace where they will not be effective or where they can be more easily dealt with. The futility of trying to set up a continuous, integrated obstacle was demonstrated by Iraq’s anti-tank ditch in the Gulf Campaign. Coalition forces were able to chose when and where to breach the ditch. It was of no value as a device to force coalition armor to go someplace they did not want to go, that is, into a killing zone.
Another thing many people don’t realize is that modern tank warfare almost made its debue in WWI. The western allies had been throwing armored vehicles into combat as they became available and had achieved a number of tactical successes. Based on these, Plan 1919 was developed; tanks were going to be gathered into two large groups, along with mechanized infantry and artillery units, and the German lines were going to be broken at two points approx fifty miles apart. The two armored columns would penetrate past all the German forces and then unite in a pincer movement. This would cause the collapse of a fifty mile wide section of the front and the western armies (including hundreds of thousands of fresh American troops) would pour through and overrun all of Germany. However, before this plan could be put into action, the German military (which had virtually taken over the country) decided to throw in the towel and ask for an armistice.
Actually, there’s not much difference in your description and mine, the only one I can see is a question of camouflage, because the scheme you describe would work only for the first tank (and then only if there is no proper recon of the area), but the end result would be the same, bypass the area (channeling) to a more passable area.
And Spavined Gelding your description of WWI tank warfare is not quite accurate. The Allied had real successes with tanks at Cambrai and in August 1918. The problem was not breaking through, it was the exploitation afterward.
Detop, I think that Cambrai, November 20, 1917, was another of those fights in which a lack of appreciation of the new technology resulted in throwing away the potential for a war altering, if not war winning, weapon and method. The British attacked without an alerting artillery bombardment on an eight-division, 10,000 yard front in a lightly defended, quiet sector with chalky, dry ground. Something like 325 tanks were in the attack. In all but one division the infantry went in right behind the tanks, but in the center division the infantry was held 150 yards behind them. While the other divisions made good and relatively cheap progress, penetrating as much as four miles into the German defenses, the center division was stalled because German artillery was able to deal with the tanks before the supporting infantry came up. The cavalry divisions that were to exploit any break through were unable to get through the wire that the tanks had just rolled over, not cut, and German counter attacks patched up the breaks in the defensive line. The result was a double salient and the consumption of the tank reserve. While Cambrai, in hindsight showed the potential of massed armor used in conjunction with infantry (a tank-infantry combined arms task force) at the time it reinforced conventional thinking that the tank was not a war-winning weapon.
Like I said Spavined the tanks broke through, the exploitation (infantry, cavalry) didn’t follow through.
But I was referring more to this comment you made :
325 tanks was not piecemeal usage (I’ll grant you that previously to Cambrai, they had been used in penny-packets). And they were mechanically capable of reliably crossing the ground, when in good working order. The tanks were just not mechanically reliable. A nitpick I know, but so many things depend on those.
And I would also object to your comment about tanks not being “a war-winning weapon”. The battle of Cambrai was the only battle that was followed by the ringing of church bells all over England. So some people thought that it had potential (just look 10 months later, in August 1918).
I wish I could remember which damn book this was so I could double-check. But I really don’t think these pits were part of a larger AT trap. I think they were a once-off deal. Lure the tank towards you, get it to fall in, toss some explosives in there, run away before the rest of its buddies show up. The Russians weren’t exactly mounting the most impressive defensive works when retreating before the Nazi offensive, especially early on.
Hopefully Spavined Gelding will forgive my jumping in here. These tanks were not mechanically capable of crossing most ground in WWI. Before the war had started, sure. Not once it was going on. No man’s land, except in a really quiet sector, was pretty damn torn up. They couldn’t negotiate steep shell holes, much less deep mud, so very well. They might eventually be able to get to the other side, but not with any measure of surprise, and the fire-control of the time would have made a prolonged rolling barrage to cover a slow tank advance a bit dicey for all involved. Hence the fact that the Cambrai attack occurred on “chalky, dry ground,” as Spavined Gelding was so good as to point out.
Well poking around trying to find my source, I did come across this set of figures on gas, which some might find of interest, from Denis Winter’s Death’s Men. “After 1916, when accurate figures began to be kept, it was found that just 3 per cent of gas casualties died, under 2 per cent were invalided, while 93 per cent returned to duty.” Not the most effective weapon. Especially if the prevailing wind switches on you.
Nope…that would be Genghis Khan and the Mongol Hordes. Seriously…these guys were WAY ahead of their time in terms of military tactics and for a long time were 100% unstoppable. The Mongols were noted for their lightning attacks and very mobile and adaptable style of warfare. They brushed aside every army in their path with seeming ease (NOTE: IIRC the Polish still have a minor holiday that celebrates a victory over the Mongols but in fact the Mongols only appeared to be losing to draw the Polish army into a trap in which it was wiped out almost to a man with only very minor losses to the Mongols).
Read-up on those guys…they were really impressive from a military standpoint. IIRC at one point they had the largest empire ever know to man (dwarfing the Roman empire).
I’m surprised very little mention of the aircraft has been made. In WWI aircraft were usually only used as scouts. It wasn’t until WWII (using lessons learned in Spain) that the Germans used attack aircraft en mass to circumvent fixed defenses. What good are miles of trenches if a dozen dive bombers can simply fly over them and attack the deep into your rear area?
The Blitzkrieg didn’t just include tanks and mechanized infantry. If that was the case, you would still end up with trench warfare. The difference would be that the trenches were tank-scale and heavy AT guns would be used instead of machineguns. It was the Germans use of aircraft (and to a limited extent paratroops) that made the Blitzkrieg so effective.
The Iraquis lost the Gulf War as soon as we gained air superiority over Bagdad. Tanks and ground defenses are useless when attack aircraft can destroy them with impunity.
This sound more like a tactic that would be used by partisans, they would have the time to set up a trap like this, than by regular troops on the retreat.
Seems to me that we are comparing apples and oranges. If you’re talking about WWII-type blitzkrieg capabilities, you’re right, they didn’t have those. But in WWI, the tank was considered a tactical weapon, not a strategic one, IOW its purpose was to breach the trenchlines, exploitation was not as essential (cavalry and armoured cars were supposed to take care of that) and in that role, it was a successful weapon. Surprise was only factored in at the operational level (the when and where) since AT weapons were almost inexistent (elephant guns and field artillery mainly), the first tanks main weapons were psychological (size, apparent invulnerability, mobility). And IIRC, it is only at Passchendelle(sp.?) that tanks actually sank in the mud.
And Whack-a-Mole, IIRC the Mongols still hold the record as the fastest army (20 miles a day). Sure some military units made advances of hundred of miles, but the rate of advance of the whole army was maybe 3-4 miles a day. The Mongols moved their whole army day in, day out 20 miles a day when campaining.
msmith537, you’re right, we got sidetracked, air superiority or supremacy is an essential part of the blitzkrieg.
You’re right but that only goes so far. Certainly Desert Storm proved the value of air superiority (the Six Day War maybe proved that point even better). However, remember that in the end all the air superiority in the world will get you nothing. You still have to take the ground, physically, with troops.
Straffing troopsm in trenches only works if they have nothing to shoot back at you with. Chances are pretty good that if an army has had time to dig trenches they have at least some AA capability. If your enemy figures out how to stop your planes you might be screwed.
After the Six Day War the Arabs almost learned their lesson. In the Yom Kippur War the Arabs were loaded for bear with Russian AA missiles. For the first few days it was a dicey thing for the Israelis. If not for some stunningly heroic defenses on the part of some Israeli troops it might be a different world today. Eventually the Israeli Air Force gained control of the skies and it was all over for the Arabs at that point but it goes to show what happens with all of your eggs in one basket.
Plan 1919, which I mentioned in my previous post, planned for major air operations. Long range bombers were assigned to attack rear area targets and prevent enemy reinforcement. The armored columns and oncall bombers would be linked by radio and air support would be called in for any obstacles the tanks couldn’t overrun or bypass. There was even discussion of creating paratroop formations to seize bridges and fortifications in advance of the armored column.
The plan was remarkably similar to the ones used by the Germans in 1939 and 1940. Which is not surprising. Details of Plan 1919 were published between the wars and the German general staff based their plans on them.
I was interested by Little Nemo’s mention of Plan 1919, so I dug up some info from the net. This link seems to be the best of the bunch (the rest of the web site looks pretty good, too - worldatwar.net). The beginning of the page deals with the inadequacy of the material on-hand for the plan.
So it sounds like trenches were effective against the majority of the tanks in existence during WWI. It was only the final generations of the machines that were just coming into production at the end of the war that were capable of overcoming the defenses created to stop the previous generations.
detop, I agree with you about the usage of the tank pits. It’s pretty interesting any way you cut it, though.
I still disagree with your assessment of tank employment in WWI. Field artillery was a pretty good AT weapon, as you point out yourself. If it’s going to take your tank ten minutes to cross no-man’s land, which the artillery battery certainly has good range on, it’s going to get blown to hell. Or at least enough so that a massed attack would fall apart. Sure they could breach enemy lines, but nobody was having a problem doing that - it was knocking a hole quickly enough and deep enough so that it could be exploited that was the problem. I think that commanders all around had realized this by the time tanks were introduced, and saw in them a means to do just that. It was just that this potential was never realized (unwillingness to launch a truly massed, supported tank assault) that relegated tanks to limited “breaching” duties, as it were.
But I don’t have enough of my books on hand, so perhaps I should stop chattering until I’ve done some re-reading.
Hmm… this rubs me the wrong way… “Fastest” is a relative term. Comparing the speed of the Mongols to the speed of a modern army with helicopters and transport aircraft… Seems like apples and oranges.
You can draw inferances as to why trenches did not have the same suffocating effects on mobility in WWII as they had in WWI, and one chief suspect has to be better communications.
Tanks and aircraft are only as good as the means to control and coordinate their actions with ground troops plus reliable and current information about the results of their operations.
I agree with you cool site. And since a favor calls for another one, while trying to see if pictures of the tank trap you described earlier existed (didn’t find any), I ran into this. Now back to our discussion. You were saying :
So it sounds like trenches were effective against the majority of the tanks in existence during WWI. It was only the final generations of the machines that were just coming into production at the end of the war that were capable of overcoming the defenses created to stop the previous generations.
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That is not what the quote says, it says that 1916-type tanks could not deal with the new 1919 generation of field obstacles, it obviously means that previous WWI field obstacles could be dealt by the tanks (if the obstacles had to be improved). And BTW, not even today could a tank deal with a 20-30 feet AT ditch.
Yes, field artillery was a pretty good AT weapon, if deployed as such, which it was not. A lucky shell fired indirectly could kill a tank easily, but remember that they were advancing after a barrage and counter-battery fire. The most reliable way for artillery to kill a tank was direct fire, which meant that the tanks were already in the artillery position. And unfortunately, they did have problems breaching the lines, that is why tanks were created and I think it is a little bit unrealistic to expect mature tactics for a brand new weapon system.
And mrblue92, I tried to find a cite for these statistics, unfortunately I couldn’t, so I’ll retire the claim until I can find it again (which will probably in one or two days, after this thread has died :p).
Your link gave me a dead page message at Yahoo/Geocities - the high volume of traffic generated from the sdmb must have killed it. What was the content, if it never comes back on-line?
I read this to mean that defensive capabilities had kept ahead of the tanks, even if just barely. The link then goes on to describe the creation of a “deadlier” stalemate than before, with the massive AT ditches taking part in a SAT question…
wire and trenches:infantry::_____:AT ditches and minefields
A. Nazi groundhogs.
B. Tanks.
C. Opal.
D. None of the above.
Obviously, tanks were capable of breaking the first line of trenches, and did so on multiple occassions. But it seems as though tanks capable of performing such a feat on a reliable basis (and not requiring perfectly dry ground) weren’t being developed until the end of the war.
Point taken on the artillery. I was, for whatever stupid reason, completely forgetting the counter-artillery aspect of the barrage; too much reading from the perspective of the man in the trench, I guess, but those are the only books I’ve got to hand at the moment. I wonder how a trench mortar would have stacked up against a tank.
That’s OK… it’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that it’s a different world today. How many miles per day did we take in the Gulf War? Do you measure the distance from the Saudi border, or from the bases in the US from which the forces started? Do you start marking time from day one of the ground war, the air war, or the invasion of Kuwait? And considering the fact that modern war is far more complex, it is bad strategy to advance your entire army as the Mongols did. (Logistics alone would kill you.)
It’s kind of like saying China has the biggest military in the world based solely on the idea that they have the most men in uniform. The wording is just… iffy.
During the Falklands campaign, the Paras and Marines found a use for their anti-tank weapons (they faced no tanks and few armoured vehicles) which was trench clearing. It wasn’t a planned tactic and it was pretty successful.
Try this one. If you scroll down the page, you’ll see an item called “Tank Trap”. It shows something similar to what you were talking about, but as part of an integrated defense line.
Barely is the term. IIRC, the first AT rifles were elephant guns. The bullet you described was probably made and available, but in what quantity ? and where and when ?
And mrblue92, the record is not for ground taken. Its for moving the whole army. But I do agree with you that a modern army is much different.
This may be empty nationalistic jingoism, but I believe that the “creeping barrage”, where a line of artillery fire is slowly advanced with infantry following, was developed by the Canadian army at Vimy Ridge in 1917. Pierre Burton’s book Vimy describes in great detail how the Canadian army moved into that region following unsuccessful British and French attacks. They developed the creeping barrage and drilled the troops for months to march at the same pace as the fire advanced, so that during the attack, they were exactly 200 yards behind the landing shells, in place to shoot Germans coming out of their bunkers as the barrage seemed to pass. I don’t recall the number, but Canadian casualties were extremely light, and they succeeded in taking a strong point in the German lines.
Previously, the theory was that a heavy barrage would drive the enemy troops out of their trenches, then the infantry would charge across no-man’s land and occupy those trenches before the enemy could return to them. The difficulty co-ordinating such an attack led many (a la Gallipoli) to climb out of their trenches and start running just as the enemy machine gunners got back in place.
