D-Day Fails

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T. A. Gardner
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Re: D-Day Fails

#16

Post by T. A. Gardner » 09 May 2016, 21:55

The only sure way to defeat an amphibious landing is to crush the naval forces delivering it. That is literally impossible for Germany to do at any point in the war.

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Re: D-Day Fails

#17

Post by OpanaPointer » 09 May 2016, 22:32

T. A. Gardner wrote:The only sure way to defeat an amphibious landing is to crush the naval forces delivering it. That is literally impossible for Germany to do at any point in the war.
Meh, sinking a few thousand troop transports should be that hard.

:lol:
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T. A. Gardner
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Re: D-Day Fails

#18

Post by T. A. Gardner » 09 May 2016, 22:44

OpanaPointer wrote:
T. A. Gardner wrote:The only sure way to defeat an amphibious landing is to crush the naval forces delivering it. That is literally impossible for Germany to do at any point in the war.
Meh, sinking a few thousand troop transports should be that hard.

:lol:
Not according to a certain someone on another board...

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... p?t=166239

:roll:

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Re: D-Day Fails

#19

Post by OpanaPointer » 09 May 2016, 23:03

T. A. Gardner wrote:
OpanaPointer wrote:
T. A. Gardner wrote:The only sure way to defeat an amphibious landing is to crush the naval forces delivering it. That is literally impossible for Germany to do at any point in the war.
Meh, sinking a few thousand troop transports should be that hard.

:lol:
Not according to a certain someone on another board...

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... p?t=166239

:roll:
One of my profs is using him in "Historiography on the Internet". :lol:
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Re: D-Day Fails

#20

Post by Aber » 10 May 2016, 08:10

OpanaPointer wrote:
T. A. Gardner wrote:
OpanaPointer wrote:
T. A. Gardner wrote:The only sure way to defeat an amphibious landing is to crush the naval forces delivering it. That is literally impossible for Germany to do at any point in the war.
Meh, sinking a few thousand troop transports should be that hard.

:lol:
Not according to a certain someone on another board...

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... p?t=166239

:roll:
One of my profs is using him in "Historiography on the Internet". :lol:

As an example of what? :D

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Re: D-Day Fails

#21

Post by OpanaPointer » 10 May 2016, 14:39

Historiography is the study of how to NOT do history, required first semester course for grad students doing history. Also required to get a Bachelors in History, at least at Purdue. I got Stinnett's book on Pearl Harbor included one year.
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T. A. Gardner
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Re: D-Day Fails

#22

Post by T. A. Gardner » 10 May 2016, 20:57

Then I'm sure those terrible books by John Mosier, like The Blitzkrieg Myth were mandatory reading for such a course.

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Re: D-Day Fails

#23

Post by OpanaPointer » 11 May 2016, 01:04

T. A. Gardner wrote:Then I'm sure those terrible books by John Mosier, like The Blitzkrieg Myth were mandatory reading for such a course.
I will forward that suggestion.
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Re: D-Day Fails

#24

Post by wm » 11 May 2016, 02:43

Futurist wrote:OK. Thus, would you say that the success of D-Day was inevitable? Completely serious question, for the record.
Here is a credible scenario :)

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Re: D-Day Fails

#25

Post by Erwinn » 18 May 2016, 08:55

lol I'm raising the odds here and go on to say:

What if Hitler had an A-Bomb ready for D-Day and drops it on the invasion force?

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Re: D-Day Fails

#26

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 18 May 2016, 16:58

The only reasonable departure I've seen for a failed Neptune operation is if a serious storm abruptly develops on the night of 6th or 7th June, after the landings start. If something akin to the June 19-24th storm sets in then its a Divine Wind scenario for the Germans. The one saving throw of the dice for the Allies is while the storm is blowing the rain will seriously hampper the defenders ground ops - Panthers stuck in the Normandy fields. Given the disruption to the fleet/landing force and a three day halt in landing ops I'm unsure the mud problem would save the Allies.

The long term problems such a storm would incur are large. Roughly 25% of the Mulberry components were in the Channel 5 - 7 June. The small landing craft could not be easily reembarked onto their carriers, the Rhino barges were vulnerable, the corridors through the minefields were narrow, and mines would be adrift as the storm progressed, there were shoals inside the Seine Bay to run aground on.

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Re: D-Day Fails

#27

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 18 May 2016, 17:12

Erwinn wrote:lol I'm raising the odds here and go on to say:

What if Hitler had an A-Bomb ready for D-Day and drops it on the invasion force?
Worst case it falls on the British Mulberry B site. That stuffs the landing on that beach for a couple days, wrecks the Muberry components that might be in place. If it is a airburst then residual radiation effects wont be a problem. 48 hours after the bomb is detonated the beach could be back in operation. If a ground burst the long term radiation effects will be worse, but no one will understand that at the moment & the 21 Army Group might still try to restart beach operations there.

The fleet at sea was fairly disbursed & while a atomic mine or air dropped bomb is going to be spectacular its not going to sink a massive number of ships. I'd have to take a look at my notes but a device on the same scale as the Fat Man or Little Boy models covers a relatively small part of the invasion fleet.

Perhaps the largest effect might be the EMP disrupting communications. Since that effect was not well understood by the people in the Manhatten Project the Germans might miss the possibility as well & have their signals disrupted for a day or two as well.

Probablly a lot more details to add but thats my take based on my 1980s training for a nuclear battlefield.

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Re: D-Day Fails

#28

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 18 May 2016, 17:27

OpanaPointer wrote:Historiography is the study of how to NOT do history, required first semester course for grad students doing history. Also required to get a Bachelors in History, at least at Purdue. I got Stinnett's book on Pearl Harbor included one year.
I took that one under Flannigan back in 1979. At the time I missed his point about the relative merits of Original Documents vs Eyewitnesses as reliable sources. Decades later after reflecting on the fakery and sloppiness I witnessed in the writing of those 'Original Documents' I started to recall and understand his warning.

ie: during Desert Storm 4th Battalion 14th Marines was organized as a 18 cannon unit with three different cannon models. But you cannot prove it via the offcial USMC records. Through a major administrative error the records that would prove all that were not generated & retained. That is no Reporting Unit Code assigned, so no ERO Matrix created, no documentation of the transfer of the equipment from the Reserve system to the Active equpment accountability system... The Reserve Admin system badly botched the tracking of reservists ordered to active service and did equally badly in tracking their return to reserve status afterwards. We wasted considerable man hours trying to correct the post war documentation and gave up trying to do anything about the period during the Desert Storm activation. US military records are relatively accurate, but I'd never take a single page as gospel without crosschecking somehow.

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Re: D-Day Fails by A Bomb

#29

Post by BDV » 18 May 2016, 17:45

EMP won't do squat as electronics on all sides is vacuum tube based.
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Re: D-Day Fails by A Bomb

#30

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 19 May 2016, 00:12

BDV wrote:EMP won't do squat as electronics on all sides is vacuum tube based.
I'd recommend reading into what went on in Japan, or what occured in the US concerning the assorted detonations. Its a lot more complicated than that.

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