Whats the best tank for a "Deliberate" attack ?

The French Armored school of thought was subordinate to the national policy embracing the role of artillery, fortification and the "deliberate" attack. The most numerous french AFV in 1939-40 was the FT-17.
Why would an obselete tank like this be in the arsenal of a modern army during the "Blitzkrieg" era if the french didnt feel they had a better plan ?

Which generals favored the "Deliberate" attack.
what exactly was the role of armor in the "deliberate" attack and exactly how did the Dyle Plan and the use of armor therein fit into this theory ?

Name 4 famous battles that were fought using the "deliberate" attack method and what was the outcome ?

 

Why don't you share your opinion with us on thi?

 

that was my opinion =).... everyone has a different viewpoint on it.. I'd like to see how many people truly know the mechanics behind germanys initial successes and their eventual defeat.

France is a great case in point. France was stuck in the world war victors mindset: If you thoroughly saturate an area with artillery fire and advance with limited objectives.. then stop and wait for the artillery to move forward... by sheer weight the advance is inexplorable. Totally unstoppable. By calculating the range of your artillery and the rate of movement of your troops you can create a deliberate, methodical timetable... x kilometers per day. Troops dont need to be trained too well, cus they arent expected to meet resistance. The bombardment should destroy the enemies will to resist. Trick is not to advance out of the range of your own artillery support and to move artillery up to continue the attack. This type of attack takes a tremendous amount of logistical preparation and its expected the enemy will kindly oblige by not doing anything rude.

The problem is armor... what place does it have in this pefect, unfallable scheme ? Ya cant let em get too far ahead of the troops cus theyll outrun the artillery and mess up the timetable. ya do need em to silence machine guns and strongpoints so the inf can take em... So what kind of tank would be good in this role ?

 

Isn't this method, you described, as a failure. Failur meaning the human cost to land gained ratio much to high to be considered successful. I thought the Canadian army at the end of WW I had set the standard for infantry squad tactics along side armour? It definitely worked, why did the French seem to continue on in the same old way? If memory recollects that Wellington defeated the French beacause '"they, the French, came on in the same old way, and he defeated them in the same old way."'

 

french had some good reasons... franc and his buddy franc for the most part. They were of the opinion tht defense was so incredibly powerful that offense was doomed to failure unless the weight of artillery was so strong as to decimate everything before it. the role of the tank to the french was merely to engage enemy machine guns as the infantry advanced between bombardments. thus the fact that the ft-17 at 8 mph perfectly suited french doctrine. once again artillery was the key... the french had no doctrine based on a what if we lose our artillery scenario.

 

http://www.libraryautomation.com/nymas/ ... ordon.html


http://members.aol.com/counterpaneland/Fr1940m.htm

France instead had been a victim of its own military doctrine. The French officer corps had entered the First World War with a belief that only offensive warfare could bring victory. The nation as a result had suffered terrible losses. By the late 1920s, when Marshal Philippe’s Pétain was Vice President of the Conseil Supérieur de la Guerre (CSG), his fear of the murderous effect of firepower on infantry and assumptions about the advantage of the defense, combined with the obvious need to husband French lives in future wars, had come to dominate French military thinking. It would continue to do so through 1940.



The French plan is well known. The general staff understood that France’s greatest weakness was the concentration of industry in the north. They therefore planned to advance deep into Belgium early in the campaign to establish defensive positions as far from the French border as possible. Once entrenched, French artillery and antitank weapons would then be able to inflict heavy casualties on the attacking Germans. French offensives, when they occurred, would be carefully prepared. Allied strategy was based on the importance of maintaining a continuous, unbroken front against the enemy. In order to preserve that front, the army could only be allowed to move forward slowly, as part of what the French called a methodical battle (la bataille conduite). General Maurice Gamelin’s one audacious gambit, the so-called Breda variant, in which he decided to move still farther into the Netherlands, depleted his strategic reserve. This fatally weakened the French. When Guderian’s panzers broke through the Ardennes, there were no strategic reserves left to stop him. Nor were there many to take advantage of the German exposed left flank as they wheeled north to cut off the allied troops in the Low Countries. French attacks when they did occur were uncoordinated, and hampered by poor air cover. By the time the French were prepared to strongly resist the subsequent German move south, the battle was already lost.


http://2ndww.tripod.com/West/maginot.html

The French military doctrine had also caused a fatal influence on military activities. The First World War had generally a positional character, but its last months clearly indicated that the next war would be the war of motors. The battlefields saw tanks and aeroplanes. A keen analyst could understand that only the saturation of troops with combat technics would give them a capability to manoeuvre and breakthrough. Nevertheless France's strategists, scared of German manpower and horrified by the bloody casualties of the First World War, were seeking an advantage in the static defence based on sophisticated system of fortifications. It had to "bleed" attacking Germans and annihilate their superiority in manpower. This strategic doctrine obviously influenced combat tactics: French staffs paid attention mostly to defence through a gigantic development of strongholds. The results of such doctrine had also stigmatized the development of technics. The role of tanks was limited solely to the infantry support: they were heavily armoured at the expense of manoeuvre and range. Most of the army officials preferred the thesis of defence's superiority to attack. And this army faced the modern war.


http://2ndww.tripod.com/West/west.html

De Gaulle -

"There were, however, 3000 up-to-date French tanks and 800 motorized machine-guns. The Germans had no more. But ours were, according to the plan, distributed up and down the sectors of the front. Also, they were not, for the most part, built or armed to form part of a mass manoeuvre. Even the few large mechanized units included in the order of battle were engaged piecemeal. The three light divisions, which had been thrown towards Liege and towards Breda for scouting purposes, were quickly forced back and were then spread out to hold a front. The 1st Armoured Division, restored to a corps d'armée and launched alone in a counter-attack on May 16 to the west of Namur, was enveloped and destroyed. On the same day the 2nd, having been transported by rail in the direction of Hirson, had its elements, as they were disentrained, swallowed up one by one in the general confusion. On the day before, to the south of Sedan, the 3rd Division, which had just been formed, was immediately split up between the battalions of an infantry division and was engulfed, fragment after fragment, in an abortive counter-attack. Had they been grouped together beforehand, these mechanized units, for all their deficiencies, would have been able to deal the invader some formidable blows. But, isolated one from another, they were nothing but shreds six days after the German armoured groups had begun to move."

http://www.fireandfury.com/blitzinfo/blitzinfo.shtml
http://www.fireandfury.com/blitzinfo/frenchob.pdf
http://france1940.free.fr/oob/oob.html
http://france1940.free.fr/en_index.html#Army
overall resource - EXCELLENT
French armored order of battle.


basically heres all the info for you

one of the core elements regarding frances decision to maintain a defensive posture was the reduction of the length of draft from 2 years to 18 months ? is that right ?

it reduced the size of the standing army an made some politicians popular.

 

Hoepners deathride against the french cavalry corps in holland/belgium was probably the greatest fight of the french campaign. Casualties were extremely high and both sides were pretty much wiped out. thats a battle ya want to check out. the KURSK of 1940. and the largest tank battle ever fought with the exception of Nomonhan.

 

Interesting.
Although the French did go on the offensive in the early stages of the war.
They invaded Germany in the few areas where the Siegfried Line / Westwall was not actually on the border, and occupied the territory just outside the Defenses. Later they quietly withdrew.

 

In such an attack that would rely on the artillery to defeat everything, I would argue in favour of a mopup tank; light main gun, good lot of MGs, armoured skirts against AT rifles and such. In short, something along the lines of the PanzerIII M.

In 1940, I'd go for the Somua because it was the best tank of the time.

 

Well, you would need a tank with a slow speed (roughly human fast walk - run, at about 8-12mph) good armour just in case enemy guns survive, and armament need only be a light gun and/or an mg or two.

And what does this remind you of?

The Matilda I and II - designed precisely for this kind of assault...

 

Somua was good in the role but it was a cavalry tank - very fast little bugger.

Char b1 ( the french matilda ) was much slower heavier armored and had 2 main guns. - 1 was the 47mm main gun and the other a potent 75mm low velocity. with these 2 guns it could take on any german tank of the day and was devastating against infantry targets. Using the R-35 and FT-17 as backup ya could get a fairly solid wall of armor going.

 

absolutely correct. the British Infantry tanks were designed along these lines. the Cruiser tanks were meant in the cavalry reconnaisance role.


Notice that the germans had no infantry tanks... period UNTIL LATE WAR... when the tactical roles were reversed. Infantry tanks are primarily a defensive mindset.

 

Sure, but I refuse to recognize the Char B1 Bis as a good tank even though by 1940 standards it certainly was. Simply because it has two barrels, one of them stuck so far into the bodywork that its field of vision is limited by the suspension; this can't be terribly useful in combat even if your enemy is straight ahead. You'd soon be relying on the 47mm anyway.

 

understood... but paired with the notorious R-35 rubber band powered tank and the FT-17 it appears to be the cream of some very spoilt milk =)

 

I can't deny that the basic design has considerable potential, as well as being quite powerful, even beyond its time. But it's also so very ugly...

 

Rather the reverse - the role of I-Tanks was the breaking of defensive positions which, when accomplished, allowed faster lighter tanks to exploit the success. Rarely in Tunisia and Italy were Churchills deployed in a defensive role.

 

yes - thats in use. The theory behind the actual designs were much different. the tanks were meant to exploit but only to a limited extent. They werent designed to hold any ground and were dependent on infantry... their mission was merely to penetrate into the enemy artilly positions and then wait for support to arrive. The allies had no doctrine as regards combined arms, had never taken part in large scale mechanised manuevers etc... so basically they worked on the theory that a limited objective attack pursued relentlessly will bring success... sort of like pounding ones face against the enemies fist till one hears knuckles cracking. For this purpose the matlda and the Char were ideally suited. Once an objective was reached the light armor was supposed to fall back and wait for the artillery to come up and the attack to move forward again. Notice the British had absolutely nothing in the armored infantry support role and their light and medium mortars pretty much sucked. The 2 pounder was underpowered, turret rings were too small on the heavies... and artillery was outdated and cumbersome with the exception of the 25 pounder. Basically ya can see just by looking at the equipment and the firepower it projected that the brit army was not intended to leave the range of its effective artillery in any way, shape or form.

in my opinion that spells D.E.F.E.N.S.E. or Methodical attack with limited objectives.

remember that the Churchill is a much later design. Im dealing with the thought and theory prior to 1941 involving the combined French and British strategy.

 

As an interesting question - so far we have decreed that 'infantry tanks' need only a light gun.
Surely they would be better with a larger gun for HE (like the early Pz.IVs & Shermans, or the Churchill with Petard Mortar) for killing off infantry & smashing up strongpoints?

 

Only if it doesn't mean significant loss of the amount of RPM. When fighting infantry strongpoints there are many small targets so speed of firing is mpre important than firepower.

 

But the defensive thinking at the time was pillboxes, bunkers and pillboxes. Which often need a fairly big charge of HE to destroy.
(Pillboxes of the Siegfried line generally survived direct bomb & artillery hits, and were often taken out by self-propelled 155mm guns firing over open sights)
What is the point of being able to shoot 5 extra shells per minute when none of them can knock out that big concrete pillbox that is ruining your attack?