There was a suggestion during WWII of allied bombers targeting the Prussian breeding ranches that supplied the German military with most of its horses. It was felt that killing the horses would have a serious effect on German logistics. The plan wasn’t approved.
You’ll always have different sources giving different figures; and yes the FT-17 saw combat and no, it wasn’t all that substandard compared to the Pz-I for all of the years difference between them. The Pz-I was faster and had a greater operational range, but had even thinner armor than the FT-17; they both had a two man crew. The FT-17 is considered the first ‘modern’ tank having the characteristics that tanks have had ever since; a revolving turret, caterpillar treads, crew compartment in the front, engine in the back. The French Army in 1940 had 534 FT-17s in lower category operational units in 1940 and apparently more were pulled from the material reserve after the early disasters:
The most widely used French tanks, the Renault R35 and Hotchkiss H35 were better armed and much more heavily armored than the Pz-II though slower, the SOMUA S35 was superior to the Pz-III of the day but like the Pz-III was only available in limited numbers, and the Germans had nothing equivalent to the Char B1 heavy tank at all, which like the British Matildas caused major headaches for the Germans when 37mm anti-tank guns proved all but useless against them.
This is all sort of academic though; Germany had fewer and weaker tanks than the British and French and yet they still won the Battle of France, quite quickly and at a very low cost to themselves. The Germans also had far fewer and weaker tanks in Barbarossa yet they won that - at least for the time being. The biggest problem the French faced was a prevailing sense of defeatism, starting from the very top and permeating down the chain of command. The amount of a fight put up by Poland, in spite of a clearly hopeless strategic situation being surrounded on three sides by Germany from the start and then entirely when the Soviet Union joined in, is rather more impressive than the fight put up by France. That’s not to say that a German victory in France was inevitable or assured though; had Hitler gotten his way with the start date for the invasion of France being October 25 or November 12, 1939 it could have turned into a quick stalemate, and had the original and relatively conventional German plans for Case Yellow not been compromised by the Mechelen Incident Manstein’s sickle stroke might never have been adopted, leaving the BEF and the French Army battered and pushed out of Belgium, but not encircled and destroyed.
Well, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the war would definitely end more quickly. The bad news is, the Axis is the winner.
I’m assuming that you mean raw tactics, not the infrastructure and technological advancement that supports those tactics.
The United States has not fought an industrialized nation directly since the end of the Second World War. Our fights have been against insurgents and guerrillas, not superpowers.
In the Second World War, there were no drone strikes (excluding the V-1 and V-2, which were haphazard at best), coordinated missile strikes, or any sort of guided missiles. Wild Weasels would be useless, since the only rockets that can be launched at planes are generally mounted on other planes. Tanks were slow, lumbering behemoths that took a long time to accelerate, a long time to turn, and could get bogged down fairly quickly. The only RPG you had was a bazooka, or the Calliope modification of the Sherman. Bazookas did not fair well against angled tanks or heavy tanks. And, the few helicopters in existence were only suited to submarine hunting (they would find a submarine by following torpedo trails or air bubbles, and drop depth charges on it), so there would be no SEAL infiltration missions. There was no satellite-imaging, so all targets had to be “lit-up” by RADAR bases, infantry, light-tanks, or aircraft. RADAR was only effective against aircraft. And, most notably, there were no advanced code-breaking computers until the Bombe and Purple, and those took a while.
So, with the Western Allies using tactics and strategies not designed to be used against superpowers, and the Axis using strategies that WERE designed to be used effectively against superpowers, we’d have a long time to concentrate on our mistakes in camp.
Well, in addition to being rather against the spirit of the hypothetical, why would it only be the Allies who would suffer from this kind of failure of perspective? The Axis, too, would be trying to land airmobile troops using non-existent GPS coordinates, and it would cost them every bit as dearly.
The scenario in the question was if modern generals went back in time and commanded the Western Allied forces, not the Axis forces.
Okay, fair enough. But I still think your answer is absurd and flies against the spirit of the hypothetical.
Think of all those poor airmobile assault troops, jumping out of helicopters that don’t exist yet. They’d break their legs, if not their necks.
Where to even begin.
So what were Korea, Desert Storm and a rather significant part of Vietnam when the US was fighting the NVA in conventional battle?
See Fritz X, Hs 293, the Bat guided bomb and the Ohka human-guided suicide rocket bomb for starters.
Wait, what? The OP posited sending a general or generals back in time, not sending F-105s or F-4Gs carrying anti-radiation missiles back in time. If they are fair game for sending back in time, I’d hardly call being able to destroy the German radar network ‘useless’ just because it wasn’t being used to direct surface-to-air missiles. Oh, and the Japanese made extensive use of 5" AA rockets on their capital ships usually in 6 launchers of 28 or 30 rockets near the end of the war, but they proved to be of little actual use.
The T34 Calliope was an artillery rocket launcher, not an anti-tank weapon. If you’re going to call the bazooka an RPG, then they fared quite well against sloped armor and heavy tanks, just not the American ‘RPGs’. The panzerfaust and panzerschreck were dangerous even to the heaviest of Soviet armor in street fighting. The few helicopters in existence were most certainly not suited for submarine hunting; ironically they were actually suited for use by U-boats as towed aerial reconnaissance. Helicopters in WW2 such as they were had nothing like the endurance needed for anti-submarine patrolling and couldn’t hope to carry any kind of payload such as a depth charge to drop. Assuming helicopters of the day could take to the air with any sort of substantial payload and had any meaningful range, there is no reason they would have to hunt submarines by looking for air bubbles; that’s certainly not what aircraft did. Since submarines had to spend most of their time on the surface radar was used, along with the Leigh Light. For dealing with submerged U-boats, the magnetic anomaly detector and sonobouys were used by aircraft in WW2.
Yes, where to begin indeed. Vietnam and Korea were not “total war.” There were no massive tank platoons charging across Vietnam. There were no massive sea engagements. In fact, Vietnam is the prime example of America using tactics designed to be used against superpowers against guerrillas.
Also, Wild Weasels are a tactic, and, while it got it’s name from the aircraft that did it, it was still a tactic, not a technology.
I have a massive warplane encyclopedia given to me by my grandfather (a Vietnam war pilot, flew the F-4) that has a load of technical specifications, histories, et cetera that includes a photo of a Luftwaffe anti-submarine helicopter. It would be stationed near a base, and launched if a destroyer detected a nearby submarine. It would carry one depth charge, drop it on the estim
Yes it did, but I didn’t consider my suggestion outside the broad spirit of the thread as it’s been going for a while and discussions do tend to drift a bit.
Apologies to Mr. K if it was a bridge too far.
Damn fine point! Perhaps this is more relative to “technologies” than to “tactics,” but it could certainly save a whole lot of learning time and expenses in the move away from horse-drawn transport.
Another thing the guy from the future could tell his friends in the past: “You know those nifty 88mm anti-aircraft guns? Try firing one at a tank some day…”
Grin!
Also, I wanted to try to rehabilitate Tank Destroyers. They aren’t that bad a piece of equipment…if used correctly! They’re like the Battlecruisers in WWI. If you use them as Battlecruisers, they work just fine. If you try to use them as Battleships, you get in trouble.
Tank Destroyers are excellent defensive weapons, but, even better, they’re excellent “passive-aggressive” weapons – i.e., you move them as far forward as you can, then back into cover and wait for the enemy to come to you. You can’t just go out “hunting tanks” with them. You use them kind of like “mobile minefields.” They have most of the advantages of those PAK 88s, but with much more mobility.
Move aggressively, fight defensively.
(Which, by the way, is, in my opinion, “The Secret of Life.”)
[QUOTE=TSBG]
Back on topic, what about horses? General 2014 shows up in Berlin, let’s say, in 1939, and notices all the four-legged troops. Urges immediate ramping up of production of motorized vehicles, fuel conservation among civilians, more coal gasification, confiscation of private autos, and the transfer of military drays to civilian uses like trolleys. Possibly helpful?
[/QUOTE]
I think a better tact for advice would have been ‘shoot that Hitler guy and all his black clad flunkies’, ‘leave the Jews alone’ and ‘stay the fuck out of Russia…the ME has all the oil we could ever need, let’s go there!’. 
But who would you give this advice to?
The why and how they got it right is interesting and useful to me at least. 
France and Britain faced the bird in the hand versus two in the bush dilemma (without the same cultural factors brought about by the depth of the Prussian reforms). Innovating came at the possible risk to what they already had with more evolutionary than revolutionary decisions. Germany had nothing much in hand except culture and a professional General Staff to rebuild from. Even in their case they had some senior leaders that opposed the depth of the innovations that ended up being instituted, and some that wanted to fight the new units in ways more like French and British doctrine even after they were created.
I disagree that trying to find an explanation for important events should ever be dismissed as “academic”.
I have been combing through Wiki performance data for both German and French AFV looking for something that might help explain the much better German performance. The thing that stands out is road speed. Here is what Wiki had to say about the most powerful French model, the Char B1:
If the Char B1 was seriously impeded by slowness (17mph road) compared to its opposite numbers the Pz III (25mph) and Pz IV (26mph) then it is reasonable to assume that all other relatively slow tanks would also be. The R35 (12mph), H35 (17mph) were much slower than the Pz I (31mph) and Pz II (25mph). Only the Souma (25mph) was a match. Such a difference ought to greatly enable the Pz powers of flanking and concentration of force while reducing or even eliminating their own vulnerability to the same hazards.
Elsewhere see these sites for the best detail I have ever found on comparative ACV totals for the 1940 campaign:
I might have to backtrack on my use of the word “parity” since the Germans had about a 40% numerical disadvantage in ACV numbers assigned to combat units (French: 3650, Germans 2614). However, that ratio is reversed when one considers that all German ACV were concentrated in 10 Pz divisions, whereas only 1488 French AVC were concentrated in 7 armored divisions, with the rest (including 17% of the Char B1) dispersed in over 50 other units.
Would be me…I wouldn’t deal with those crazy bastards for anything.
[QUOTE=Nelson Pike]
I have been combing through Wiki performance data for both German and French AFV looking for something that might help explain the much better German performance. The thing that stands out is road speed. Here is what Wiki had to say about the most powerful French model, the Char B1:
[/QUOTE]
The much better performance is probably more attributable to the radios in the panzers and the training and doctrine the Germans used with massed tanks designed as armored spearheads thrusts, driving deep into the enemies rear areas, while the French thought of tanks as basic infantry support.
An interesting idea would be for a time traveler to go back and intentionally feed the Nazis disinformation in order to end the war quicker. Of course, the time traveler would have to make his information sound convincing so the Nazis would use it so he’d probably have to use a mix of harmless truths and significant lies.
The Germans also has a much better system of close support. Their artillery and air units were trained to work with their armor units at a much lower tactical level than other countries were.
The radio contribution sounds reasonable to me, although I am not sure I would rate it above ACV speed. I had earlier assumed the French radio equipment was as plentiful and relaible as the German. Just in the last few days I ran across comments re radio in discussion at another board, but did not cite anything from it here because it did not provide its own cites.
This is well known.
I have always thought so too, but since I have been surprised, again just in the last few days, by the extent concentration of French ACV I would like to know more about where they were positioned and what role they were supposed to perform.
[QUOTE=Nelson Pike]
The radio contribution sounds reasonable to me, although I am not sure I would rate it above ACV speed. I had earlier assumed the French radio equipment was as plentiful and relaible as the German. Just in the last few days I ran across comments re radio in discussion at another board, but did not cite anything from it here because it did not provide its own cites.
[/QUOTE]
No, the French lacked radios in their tanks at the start of WWII, while the Germans heavily relied on them. From Wiki:
There are other cites for this if you Google it, but the gist is that the French doctrine for the use of tanks was flawed. They deliberately had their tanks move slowly and deliberately, they tasked their tanks out in penny packets along the front in support of their infantry and didn’t think radios in the tanks were that important since they wanted them to move slowly and deliberately. Basically, they thought of the tank in WWI terms where it would be used to support the infantry in assaulting fixed fortifications, not in smashing through the front and attacking deep in the enemies rear and doing so in a coordinated way (thus needing a radio).
It’s academic because arguments over who had the better tanks usually miss the bigger picture. French and British armor was generally better than German armor in 1940 and available in larger numbers but they were still defeated, and quite rapidly. Soviet tanks were better than German ones in 1941, some of them (the T-34 and KV-1) absurdly better, but the Germans still drove them all the way across the European USSR. The Sherman vs. Panther debates are always academic in the end, as the Western Allies drove the Germans across Europe regardless.
The Char B1 was a heavy tank, it had no opposite number on the German side in 1940. It was intended as a breakthrough tank where its lumbering slowness wouldn’t be as much of an impediment. The actual powers of flanking and concentration of force you attribute to the panzers weren’t what you imagine them to be when French and German tank formations collided; the Battle of Hannut ended in a French tactical victory.
A tiny nit-pick and I’ve made the same mistake myself, but SOUMA should be in allcaps as it’s an acronym for Société d’Outillage Mécanique et d’Usinage d’Artillerie.
This, particularly the radios.
A source I ran across said at least some French ACV had radios, but that they were unreliable because of poor batteries. That source was a discussion board reply like yours and mine but much longer and possibly more knowledgeable. Unfortunately it provided no cites of its own.
It would be helpful if you would provide links to these.
If you have a cite for French doctrine I would like to see it, especially where it might help explain the ponderousness of their ACV.
I have found out only in the last few days that this is not entirely true. See cites I posted earlier for ACV unit assignment:
Although a majority of the French ACV were dispersed, they had 1400 ACV (40% of the total) concentrated in 7 armored divisions. I regret not having a real cite, but if the discussion board contributor I mention above is accurate then two of these French divisions were side by side and met the German armored spearhead head-on.
I do not believe slowness and lack of signaling ability are ever desirable combat characteristics. There must have been some perceived positive trade-off with other factors, or maybe they just did not want to spend enough money to do the job right.