AJFFM wrote:As the eastern front demonstrates the best terrain for encirclement operations is open terrain. Most of the major encirclements there happened in the Ukraine and North Caucasus steppe.
In the larger encirclements bad terrain plays a role in that the best units are trapped in the bad section (usually wood\urban areas) while the flanks are in open terrain and guarded by weak troops.
Carl Schwamberger wrote:
The Axis army group trapped in Tunisia was not encircled in the common usage of the term, but I am wondering how that event can be described. The Anglo US forces did use their advantage with terrain - the sea, and their numbers in the air, to cut off supply and prevent withdrawl of the Axis air and ground forces in Africa. I this mere semantics, or is there a real difference between a group encircled only by ground force & a group which is trapped by a combination of different military forces?
AJFFM wrote:
While that is true I think the fact that the allies had full air-sea control denying German retreat makes it as close to an encirclement as possible. Another feature of encirclement, denying manoeuvrability in space and time, exists in this case.
Aber wrote:Arguably Tunisia after Operation Vulcan was an encirclement; IIRC the British armoured divisions who broke through encircled the divisions still facing 8th Army in the South. Granted the Germans had little to gain by fighting on as they could not escape by sea, but they collapsed and surrendered fairly quickly.
steverodgers801 wrote:They were encircled in the sense they had no where to retreat to. Allied control of the air and sea completed the task.
Following all that , then the Pacific war included a number of encirclements. That is the deliberte isolation fo Japanese forces was conducted though both naval campaigns, and combined air/naval/ground campaigns. The Isolation of the Raubal garrison in 1943 would be a example of such a deliberate combined campaign.