Patton wanted to take on the Soviets 1945

yes I was a bit over the top with my reply, I know that Patton was robbed of all his petrol by Ike to feed Montys Market Garden, but I do think that the allied air force and Navy (if it was a coastal operation) gave the allies a big advantage. I read about more German AFVs being knocked out air strilkes then ground fire.

 

Allied artillery in particular it's flexability was probably more important than the airforce at least tactically. The impact of air was more on a strategic or at least an operational level. For instance a German force would have had a very hard time duplicating Patton's reorientation during the battle of the Bulge if the weather was decent.

 

was the allied fire plan must better then the Germans and even the Russians ?, did they have more FOOs then the Germans ?. the British rellied on there 25 pdrs and the Americans there 105mm Howitzers, but the American 155mm guns gives them a great advantage over most nations, I dont know if the British used medium guns like 5.5in guns in there divisions, where they used as corps artillery or was thet the 7.2in, I will have to check, report back later.

 

Patton died in December 1945. By that time he'd seen both the Yalta and Potsdam conferences go by, and on both occasions he'd seen Stalin get a lot more than he deserved.
I often wonder what leaders of that time thought of their "ally" Stalin, given the memories of things like the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939. His intentions were clear with that. Patton was certainly under no illusions.
The other curiosity in the mix here is the A-Bomb used in August. Truman, it's been said, didn't even know about it when he was VP. Through his spies, Stalin might have known about it sooner. Truman evidently did not feel like using it as leverage against Stalin to move back to his original borders. I wonder if Patton would have?
By 1945, western nations were sick of the war. The Battle of the Bulge had been brutal. Stalin, alas, was just getting started.

 

American and British artillery was far more flexable than that of the Germans which was more flexable than that of the Soviets although the Soviets made up part of the difference in sheer numbers. I've seen German vets say that they could almost count on recieving artillery within about 5 minutes of the western allies figuring out that there was a worthwhile target in the area. It got so the infantry wasn't all that happy to see armor anywhere near them. It wasn't so much the FO's although that was part of it but the way the info was passed back to fire control centers and the span those fire control centers had. If a Britt or GI asked for artillery and it was judged worthwhile he could have a divisions worth of artillery fire arriving in short order and the allies had enough radios to allow all interested parties to have one or more. Furthermore at least in the US case it didn't necessarily take a FO to call it in. I believe there were occasions when even NCO's were able to call in impressive amounts of artillery in short order. I think the Britt's were not quite as flexible this way on the other hand they could get a significant mass of artillery on target even faster.

 

Good stuff Lwd, I once put together a set of wargame rules to cover the period from 1920-1950, I had a go at giving each nation some sort rule covering there artillery fire, and it was a nightmare, I have even tried to cover every weapon used by about 25 nations, so I had to a put things into perpective and these fell into three catagories.
A: map fire (firing at a village on the map say)
B: direct fire (FOO)
C: indirect fire (firing blind)
I still have a lot of work to do, I had to take a year off it eas so difficult.

 

Less familiar with CW forces but one of the innovative things the Americans did was having vacuum tube computers to pre-compute firing solutions at different ranges and in various elevations and put them in ballistic tables that field fire control centers had access to. Another advantage they had in abundance were accurate maps and good radios. Combined, this meant US observers could report call down artillery fire on enemy positions with a great deal less fuss than their adversaries. Theoretically, as long as the location of the target was known, the firing center could take over the control of the batteries.

 

I do know cases in which platoon commanders or even NCOs ordered divisional or even corps artillery shoots. That was a luxury that I think German commanders never had the chance to enjoy.

 

IMO Patton was a very capable commander but only with a limited number of troops just as Rommel was. He was simply IMO, not on the same level as Von Bock or Rokossovsky.

 

Was it true that the Germans found Patton the most competent general the U.S. had or was that simplified for the movie?

I know the allies made Patton a diversion for the Germans to fool them into thinking he was going to lead the invasion, but was that because the Germans really feared him the most or was it because he stuck out like a soar thumb with controversy?

 

The German certainly found him the most threatening army commander on the other side. His attack on Lorraine for awhile fooled the Germans into thinking the Third US Army was the main effort instead of Mongomery's 21st Army Group. A commonly held misconception is that Monty "stole" all of Patton's fuel & ammo with Ike's connivance. In fact, Ike wanted to keeping Patton going to divert German forces from Monty to pave way for Market-Garden.

Patton's administrative and logistical ability to run an army group is untested. However, inferring from his correspondences with Bradley, Patton's grasp on the operational art was sound.

 

Going back to the Germans being threatend by Patton, it seams that no matter what army your in, if an enemy commander keeps winning battles against you on a regular basis, then the men under your command will be thinking 'oh not him again remenber what happened last time we faced him' that sort of senario was faced by the British 8th army when Rommel started routing them.

 

Consider the Lorraine Campaign from the other side. The Germans call it a 'miracle' that they were able to survive and stop the Allied advance. The resistance encountered was enough to end all hopes the war would be over by Christmas. It gained enough time for Germany to rebuild her forces and fight on for another 8 months.

 

Was Metz Pattons first big rebuff in Europe ?. Going back to artillery, I have just done a little research and come up with this,
British infantry division = 72 pieces
American infantry division =48 pieces
German infantry division = 48 pieces + 24 infantry guns = 72 total
this is around 1944 in Europe and of course it is each Division at full strength (which wad not usually the case)

 

US and British divisions were usually at full strength. There's also the corp slice to consider. In any case it wasn't just the number of guns available. It was their flexability. A British or US FO could easily find himself spotting for not just the guns of his unit but those of adjacent units and corp aritllery as well. Here's a link of interest:
The US Army in World War II ... - Google Books

 

Thanks Lwd, that book I have seen in Liverpool, I am visiting there soon I will buy it this time. the French artillery must have made a good impression on the American army, the 60mm M2 Mortar, 75mm M.1897 Gun, 155mm M.1917 Howitzer were used by them in modified forms. was the 105mm M2 Howitzer a French design too ?.

 

It doesn't seem to have been from the info at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M101_howitzer
Here's a book on the topic that might be worth investigating: Amazon.com: US Field Artillery of World War II (New Vanguard) (9781846030611): Steven Zaloga, Brian Delf: Books
Here's a link to a battalion history that served with Patton at least part of the time: www.seemyaccount.com/.../wwii%20558th%20fab%20history.pdf
This site list the TO&E of a US infantry division as haveing a bit more arty than the 48 guns you mentioned: Military History Online - US Army in World War II

That's 54 105mm howitzwers and 12 155mm howitzers. Again however I would suggest you look at how the guns were controlled as much as the equipment and of course how well supplied they were.
With that we are wandering far afield and it would probably be best to start a thread on artillery if you wish to continue this.

 

Patton was chosen as a decoy for D-Day because he was the most famous US general in the European theater who wasn't holding an active command on D-Day.
The German High Command might have regarded Patton as a competant commander, but they wouldn't have feared him. In North Africa and Sicily the units under his command fought well, but they didn't achieve any major victories over the Axis forces

For example. In Sicily they pushed the Axis units back, but these were able to retire in good order, and eventually escape to mainland Italy with their equipment.

 

Thanks Lwd, back to Patton, Ike posted him to command a fictious army in Kent before he got a command in France, but going back to Sicily the two Amphibious assalults he made after the initial landers to bypass the main German defences were a master stroke in 1943, I know the last one nearly failed but it was a audicious move and it was one of the main reasons he got the messina first.

 

Taylor, for your information, German units often had horrible artillery regardless of what the table said. It was probably a rule that German infantry divisions had less guns. Many static divisions in Normandy had to make do with Russian 76.2mm artillery, very little ammunition and without carriages. I read it somewhere that in 1944, the bulk of artillery guns in the German army were captured Czech, French and Russian pieces, for which there was inadequate ammunition. To make things interesting, shells were often transported by horse making supply in a fluid situation a challenging problem for the logistics people. The Germans rated Allied artillery very highly.