Shermans and Tigers

The speed of a column's advance is determined by the slowest vehicle of the column. I highly doubt that the slowest vehicle of a divisional column is the main battle tank it uses, seeing as it will have to drag along its own artillery, anti-tank guns, engineers and infantry in vehicles much less suited to mud and snow than tanks.

 

Patton and his supply trains


In late August, over 1,000 aircraft delivered rations and fuel to Patton’s forward elements



http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airc ... ecker.html

 

weren't the later tigers also fitted with steel rimmed rather than rubber ones?

Probably more due to shortages than anything else.

and as I said, the difference in hours between service of a sherman and tiger are not massive.

FNG

 

the point is, Tigers were not perfect, but they were not the mechanical disaster that some people make out.

I believe that the UK chieftens had a fairly poor mechanical record and they never saw any real action and should have had a perfect service history and low mileage.

FNG

 

Then again the Germans used a lot of horses :roll: ..

 

What does this have to do with anything?

 

not very reliable are horses, need lots of servicing and they are very slow to move and make.

I also believe they need special shoes to go on trains.



FNG

 

This isn't about Patton's ability to supply his troops but to move them. This source says absolutely nothing about the speed with which the column of 4th Armoured actually moved, and which vehicles determined this pace; therefore it is completely irrelevant.

Also note that where you mentioned just 4th Armoured, this source heaps the unit up with 80th Infantry and a third division which I assume must have been the 26th. Therefore there is absolutely no way in which this source can be used to figure out the speed at which an American armoured column moved and whether or not this speed would have decreased had they had a contingent of Tigers with them.

The source also mentions that 3rd Army's column suffered from enemy air attack, which is unlikely due to the bad weather. In any case the fact that 4th Armoured's lead elements broke through to Bastogne itself after no less than three days of fighting (rather than "just three days") is not a great achievement of the American unit but rather a testimony to the amazing tenacity of 5th Fallschirmjäger's inexperienced regiments which were the only unit that opposed them.

 

Joachim Pieper.. passed the comment that he could not have gotten a bicycle throudh some of the roads in the Ardennes, nevermind a KoenigsTiger..

Time for Trumpets. Mc Donald


some link

http://www.worldwar2aces.com/


It suffered mechanically with many breakdowns and had poor maneuverability. Many roads and especially bridges were not suitable for a tank this size and the fuel requirements was enormous.


In May 1940 The Germans attacked France throught he Ardennes with no problem using MkIII's etc..

hmmm


A lot of the battle was for road junctions, bridges etc..


SEARCH

kampfgruppe peiper roads
kampfgruppe peiper bridges
peiper those damned engineers


This was not the eastern front, they were not going cross country

Those damned engineers" that Peiper and his fellow commanders cursed as their advances were constantly thwarted by Combat Engineers who blew up bridges.


urban legend?

 

One important difference: it was winter during Wacht am Rhein, as opposed to late spring furing Fall Gelb.

 

Patton outpaced his trucks and used aircraft not horses for supply, given the KingTigers fuel requirements, this is significant..

Well, it has been written that Pattons advance accross fFrance was the fastest in the history of modern warfare..

***
>I highly doubt that the slowest vehicle of a divisional column is the main battle tank it uses, seeing as it will have to drag along its own artillery, anti-tank guns, engineers and infantry in vehicles much less suited to mud and snow than tanks.


There were to be a lead and follow jeeps. The trucks were to stay 60 feet apart and travel at 35 m.p.h.


faster than a TigerII or a horse..

http://www.fatherryan.org/blackmilitary/redball.htm


The late Charles B. MacDonald, one of America's premier military historians and himself a company commander in the Ardennes campaign, captures the chaos, misery, bravery, and drama of the U.S. Army's largest battle in history in A Time For Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge. The author of such acclaimed works as Company Commander and The Mighty Endeavor, MacDonald uses his skills as a writer and his knowledge of the infantryman's combat experiences to paint a vivid picture of Hitler's last gamble to gain even a temporary victory in the West and the efforts of over 600,000 U.S. and several thousand British troops to contain the salient or "bulge" that gave the Ardennes counteroffensive its popular moniker.


has anybody else read McDonald

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/068815 ... e&n=283155




The amazon link shows the index..

I think this book is better than the US Army's Green Book , Hugh Cole

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_cont.htm





or many of the others books on the subject

 

Stonewall...

Peiper was not Patton, the Red Ball Express wasn't Patton's achievement in the least, and Patton's march cannot be compared to Peiper's march because one was an advance against a fighting enemy whereas the other was a manoeuvre in friendly rear areas. Tigers are not the same as Tiger II's, either. Now, you supposed this:

I don't think the type of tank used would have mattered much because the tank is not the slowest vehicle in an armoured column, as far as I know. I'm not suggesting that Patton's advance was slow (until he got stuck into the actual fighting, after which I would argue that his advance was tediously and tragically slow).

 

>I would argue that his advance was tediously and tragically slow

Why, Abrams played it 'soft & sweet' at 4:15 Pm on the 26th...

I would say nothing in the history of WWII was accomplished in a similar manner.

http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_21.htm

For a change, Patton followed orders, in this much celebrated episode..




Air Chief Marshal Tedder, the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, and a number of others on the SHAEF staff feared that the impetuous Patton would persuade Bradley to let him start the counterattack from the south with only a couple of divisions and that it then would develop piecemeal, as had the German counterattack in Normandy, without a solid tactical base or concrete result. The Supreme Commander himself was well aware of the Third Army commander's penchant for cut and thrust tactics and probably needed little urging to take some action calculated to hold Patton within the constraints of "the big picture." On the other hand Eisenhower recognized that the continued occupation of Bastogne, the key to the entire road net on the south side of the German Bulge, was essential to future offensive operations. Patton, as the SHAEF staff saw it, would make the narrow thrust on the Arlon-Bastogne axis, but any more ambitious plans would have to be subordinated to the larger strategy.1 Eisenhower, therefore, told Bradley that the American counterattack via Bastogne should be held in check and not allowed to spread, that it was, after all, only a steppingstone for the "main counteroffensive."

 

You're taking my words out of context. Patton's advance with 4th Armoured and 80th Infantry, and later the rest of 3rd Army, was indeed phenomenally fast for a column so vast and terrain and weather so difficult.

However, the first fighting units of this column arrived at their battle stations on December 22nd. They did not break through to Bastogne until the morning of December 26th; an advance of something like ten kilometers in three days. The only opposition in the area was 5th FJ Division - inexperienced, undermanned, with little more than a core of veteran officers, these men held off an assault by two American divisions (a force outnumbering them at least 3:1), one of them armoured, for three days.

Would you like me to underline the lack of actual strategic importance of the city of Bastogne for either side?

 

Chaumont, on the 23d, and Warnach, on the 24th, are tabbed in the journals of the 4th Armored as "hot spots" on the march to Bastogne. Quite unexpectedly, however, a third developed at Bigonville, a village some two and a half miles east of the Bastogne highway close to the boundary between the 4th Armored and the 26th Infantry Division. The gap between these divisions, only partially screened by light forces, suddenly became a matter of more than normal concern on the night of 22 December with reports that a large body of German armor was moving in (actually the advance guard of the Fuehrer Grenadier Brigade which had appeared in front of the left wing of the 26th Division). To protect CCA's open right flank, Gaffey ordered Col. Wendell Blanchard to form the Reserve Combat Command as a balanced task force (using the 53d Armored Infantry Battalion and 37th Tank Battalion) and advance toward Bigonville. Early on 23 December CCR left Quatre-Vents, followed the main road nearly to Martelange, then turned right onto a secondary road which angled northeast. This road was "sheer ice" and much time was consumed moving the column forward.

same link

you can try and tell me,

I would ignore it though

Perhaps a few of the armored officers still believed that a hell-for-leather tank attack could cleave a way to Bastogne. But by the evening of 24 December it seemed to both Gaffey and Millikin that tanks were bound to meet tough going in frontal attack on the hard-surfaced roads to which they were confined and that the operation would demand more use of the foot-slogger, particularly since the German infantry showed a marked proclivity for stealing back into the villages nominally "taken" by the tankers. Attack around the clock, enjoined by General Patton, had not been notably successful so far as the tank arm was concerned. From commander down, the 4th Armored was opposed to further use of the weakened tank battalions in hours of darkness. Further, night attacks by the two infantry divisions had failed to achieve any unusual gains and the troops were tiring.

 

Granted, the FGB was a considerable force. But it did not move into 4th Armoured's flank; in fact I believe it was first moved to the western side of the encirclement before it went into action at all. Meanwhile 80th Infantry, unopposed by anything but 5th FJ, should have been making decent headway along with 4th Armoured's left and central CCs.

 

just to take a break from cut & paste,,


That would be against the lessons learned by Stonewall Jackson, a VMI professor, by Patton ( a VMI Graduate) to attack immediately..

the biggest mistake Jackson had in his carreer..

The attack on Romney through Berkley Springs from Winchester..

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage ... onewal.htm

Patton & Jackson

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_n6123799


more

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/ci ... fault.aspx

The division left with Early was a veteran one. Not a traditional part of the Army of Northern Virginia, it had spent most of the war campaigning in West Virginia. Early in the war some of its veterans had even fought at and escaped the Confederate debacle at Fort Donelson. It had on occasion come east to fight in the Valley, and once even in the Richmond vicinity at the time of Cold Harbor. Perhaps its proudest moment was at the Battle of New Market, when, having taken under its command the Virginia Military Institute Cadet Battalion, it launched the attack that won the battle. Interestingly, one of it's brigade commanders - until mortally wounded at Winchester - was Colonel George S. Patton, grandfather of the World War II general. By February of 1865, however, this division was a shadow of its former self. One of its brigades had been detached back to West Virginia, and the division's two remaining brigades could field less than 1500 infantrymen. Nevertheless, small veteran Confederate divisions such as this one had shown to be tough in many battles during the last year of the war. This was not a force to be taken too lightly.


4 Patton Brothers were in the Cadets Brigade

 

coldest winter in a long time

Blue Ridge & Ardennes

Fast March

too many similarities to count



Patton could not help but make the comparison

images

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=1 ... q=ardennes



http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q ... a=N&tab=wi

 

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundat ... omney.html

Jacksons mistake at Romney..

against some pretty good enemy Generals

Loring reached Winchester on Christmas Day. Once more the enemy threatened to advance, and information had been received that he had been largely strengthened. Jackson was of opinion that the true policy of the Federals would be to concentrate at Martinsburg, midway between Romney and Frederick, and “to march on Winchester over a road that presented no very strong positions.” To counteract such a combination, he determined to anticipate their movements, and to attack them before they received additional reinforcements.



Dec 25 :bang:

 

Nicknamed “Jackson’s Foot Cavalry” his army, composed mostly of Virginia ...



Stonewall, was an artillery professor, was famous for his fast marches & mobile atillery ( gained at Mexico city - Techulpultec ?spelling?)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_cavalry


Foot cavalry was an oxymoron coined to describe the rapid movements of infantry troops serving under Confederate General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson during the American Civil War (1861–1865). The use of the words "foot" and "cavalry" to describe the same troops were seemingly in conflict with one another, as unlike normal cavalry units with horses, his men were infantry troops, usually on foot (although occasionally traveling by train).



PATTON FROM WIKI

The future general was introduced by his father to the reading of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Bible, and the works of William Shakespeare. The father was also a friend of John Singleton Mosby, a cavalry hero of the Confederate States of America, serving first under J.E.B. Stuart and then as a guerrilla fighter. The younger Patton grew up hearing Mosby's stories of military glory. Apparently inspired by them, from an early age the young Patton sought to become a general and hero in his own right. It is rumored that Patton's mother kept paintings of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in their living room, and he used to admire them as she read to him from her rocking chair. Patton is quoted as saying, " Until I was old enough to know better, I thought those were portraits of God the Father, and God the Son (Jesus)."