If France had not fallen...

Discussions on all aspects of France during the Inter-War era and Second World War.
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Re: If France had not fallen...

#16

Post by takata_1940 » 24 Sep 2009, 23:22

phylo_roadking wrote:In terms of French armour doctrine - possibly one of the major turning points in the event of a "France Fights On" scenario would have been the death - or not! - of Rene Prieux...whos tanks had fought the Germans to a standstill in the Gembloux Gap...despite all their unrelability, inbuilt problems, and unsuitable doctrines :wink: If HE had lived to guide the development of French armour doctrine by experience.... 8O
Hi Phylo,
Oh yes... that would be a major turning point!
I guess you were talking about Général Prioux, which was in command of the French Cavalerie Corps (2e & 3e DLM) at Gembloux.

Despite having certainly the finest tool in the French inventory for this mission, the Cavalerie Corps finaly underperformed mostly because Prioux wasn't able to support its engaged division with the other one. During the 20s and 30s, Prioux's views and influence (he was General Inspector of the Cavalry) was mostly about horse-motor units, a conservative employment of armor inside the Cavalry division still relying primarily on its horses "which would be in no circumstance replaced by any other means of locomotion .. We have to insist on the fact that the mobility provided by the tracks is different from the mobility provided by the horse. They are complementing each other: horses and armored cars have to co-operate". Hardly a visionnaire.

Beside, Prioux never died and served under Vichy. Billote (1st Army Group) was killed, replaced by Blanchard (1st Army), replaced by Prioux (Cavalry Corps).

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#17

Post by phylo_roadking » 25 Sep 2009, 00:10

Olivier, you're right, I'm getting his "demise" mixed up with Billote! As for Gembloux Gap - yes they may have underperformed...but didn't under perform as badly as other French armoured units :lol: (thinking of Blanchard's refusal to let the Char B unit later in the campaign time for their petrol bowsers to find them and refuel them after they had expended most of their fuel getting into position...resulting in many of them simply grinding to a halt and the Germans just manouvering round them to hit their weak points like the oil radiators) So yes - while being forced to take on board their performance and seeing the mistakes made doesn't take away from the fact that they performed better than the vast majority of armoured units committed and didn't make some of the REAL c0ckups that were made elsewhere 8O

And given the usually-formative experience of contact with the enemy, you might well have found Prioux's opinions had changed somewhat by the time of the Armistice!
They are complementing each other: horses and armored cars have to co-operate". Hardly a visionnaire.
Hardly a visionary - or making a virtue out of the necessity, and the hand that French spending and defence policy dealt him? He's hardly going to stand up and say "We've got sh1t", is he? His officers would just LOVE to hear that...seeing as he wasn't in much of a position to then DO much about it!I You try to build the confidence of others, not send them down in flames :D Especially if you've GOT horses, and you know you're going to be saddled with them for years more...
We have to insist on the fact that the mobility provided by the tracks is different from the mobility provided by the horse. They are complementing each other: horses and armored cars have to co-operate
Given the spending policies the French Army was saddled with for a long time - he's not exactly wrong! :lol:


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Re: If France had not fallen...

#18

Post by Gooner1 » 25 Sep 2009, 11:51

Bronsky wrote:! - the situation was a bit like that of the British Army. French performance in 1943-45 shows the leaders were able to adapt to mobile warfare, which means there was a mobile warfare corpus of doctrine (consider it a sort of "shadow doctrine" on the British model if it helps) to draw upon and a pool of leaders willing to implement it.
How do you mean "shadow doctrine"? From the FSR of 1935 the British seem to have known what they wanted from their tanks and what they wanted to do with them - they just did not have any!

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#19

Post by Bronsky » 27 Sep 2009, 11:20

Gooner1 wrote:How do you mean "shadow doctrine"?
Sorry, that was a reference to the British "shadow cabinet". I meant a different doctrine that was not officially adopted but still fully developed, and therefore ready to use as Plan B if the official one turned out not to work. The Soviets managed to transition to mobile warfare because they could build on the doctrinal framework evolved by Tukhachesvky and others in the 1920s & 30s.
Gooner1 wrote:From the FSR of 1935 the British seem to have known what they wanted from their tanks and what they wanted to do with them - they just did not have any!
Everyone agreed there was a need for infantry-support tanks and for independent armored formations. The British had Infantry and Cruiser tanks, the French had the independent tank battalions and the armored units, the Germans had the StuGs and panzer divisions, and so on.

The French problem wasn't therefore wanting infantry support - see how many independent tank battalions were attached to infantry units in the 1944-45 SHAEF armies - it was getting the right mix of tanks in both functions, given their likely opponent. In that regard, the British were about as bad as the French.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#20

Post by Bronsky » 27 Sep 2009, 11:56

phylo_roadking wrote:Olivier, you're right, I'm getting his "demise" mixed up with Billote!
Note that Billotte wasn't a particularly good commander. He was energetic, but all that resilient - he was near despair at the time of his death - and his grasp of mobile warfare as well as his strategic sense can't be described as having been better than average.

His death was a blow to the French in that he was the highest commander in the pocket and the only one with firsthand knowledge of Weygand's intentions. Add to that the fact that his replacement, Blanchard, was truly bad. But one shouldn't assume that, had Billotte lived, Weygand's by then thoroughly unrealistic plan could have been executed.
phylo_roadking wrote: As for Gembloux Gap - yes they may have underperformed...but didn't under perform as badly as other French armoured units :lol: (thinking of Blanchard's refusal to let the Char B unit later in the campaign time for their petrol bowsers to find them and refuel them after they had expended most of their fuel getting into position...resulting in many of them simply grinding to a halt and the Germans just manouvering round them to hit their weak points like the oil radiators)
The French Army as an institution lacked an adequate understanding of the logistics involved in deploying large mechanized forces. So, I suspect, did the British Army though as it had better transport resources that wouldn't have showed as much. The Germans had made all these mistakes before, with the invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland serving as large-scale manoeuvers to test the arrangements, so this was one campaign where German logistics were in a class above everyone else's.

My point here is that other French commanders consistently misused their armor by ordering an immediate attack rather than letting it rest and reorganize, and some of these commanders had been "general inspectors for the tank forces" so should have known better. Context doesn't help: when you have an emergency on your hands, you tend to send everything you have to stem the flow, ready or not. Other armies did the same later in the war, including blitzkrieg-savvy ones like the Germans.
phylo_roadking wrote:And given the usually-formative experience of contact with the enemy, you might well have found Prioux's opinions had changed somewhat by the time of the Armistice!
As Olivier wrote, Prioux was still around in the Vichy army. I've read some of the doctrinal documents issued under Vichy, they weren't nearly as progressive as one would expect as far as lessons learned went. On the other hand, Vichy in general acted as a stiffling influence to non-conservative thought, including what passed for military thought, so one should expect the French to do better absent an armistice than they did under Vichy doctrine.
phylo_roadking wrote:Hardly a visionary - or making a virtue out of the necessity, and the hand that French spending and defence policy dealt him?
I think Olivier's point is that Prioux' use of mechanized forces - and he did have a very modern force for the Hannut to Gembloux battles - wasn't particularly impressive. He can't blame inadequate French equipment, since he had just as mechanized and horseless a force as the opposing Germans. He still fought a largely static battle, the results of which weren't nearly as impressive as they could have been.

Given the piecemeal commitment of German armor in many of these battles, had someone like Rommel been in charge of the Corps de Cavalerie the attackers would have got a very bloody nose indeed.
phylo_roadking wrote:Given the spending policies the French Army was saddled with for a long time - he's not exactly wrong! :lol:
He was actually quite wrong. No-one in WWII had the vehicles to completely motorize their forces, even the 1944-45 SHAEF armies had to strip some units of transport to get the rest mobile enough. The French problem - and Prioux doesn't seem to have been better than the rest here - was in insisting on mixing horses and motor vehicles at the tactical level as well.

What the Germans did was to have entirely motorized units, and entirely horse-drawn ones. French cavalry divisions each included a mechanized and a horse brigade, so half of the division was moving at a different speed. The French should instead have created entirely motorized units and entirely horse-drawn ones instead of insisting on sharing out transport assets more or less equally.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#21

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 27 Sep 2009, 21:12

Bronsky wrote:
He was actually quite wrong. No-one in WWII had the vehicles to completely motorize their forces, even the 1944-45 SHAEF armies had to strip some units of transport to get the rest mobile enough. The French problem - and Prioux doesn't seem to have been better than the rest here - was in insisting on mixing horses and motor vehicles at the tactical level as well.

What the Germans did was to have entirely motorized units, and entirely horse-drawn ones. French cavalry divisions each included a mechanized and a horse brigade, so half of the division was moving at a different speed. The French should instead have created entirely motorized units and entirely horse-drawn ones instead of insisting on sharing out transport assets more or less equally.
Hmm... I recall the Germans had two horse cavalry divisions in 1939, unlike the French who retained none in Europe. More to the point the Germans did not have the eight armored or panzer divisions in the Polish campaign most people assume. Part were the hybrid horse/tank divisions similar to those the French had. Rommel commanded one of these 'Light' Divisions in the Polish campaign. In other words the German army thought these a good idea and did not dispose of them until after the Polish campaign made clear their defects. The French made a similar decision only a few months later and were in the act of removing the horse cavalry brigades from the "Mechanized Cavalry Division in May 1940.

If it took actual combat experience to convince the Germans the hybrid cav/mech division was not going to work then the French can hardly be criticized for coming to the same conclusion without combat experience.

Like the French the Germans had a habit of partially motorizing the infantry divisions. A look at the Tables of Equipment of the early wave French and German infantry divisions shows that while the artillery and part of the supply transport were still horse drawn there were also numerous utility automobiles and light trucks. The divisions mobilized later in each army had few motorized vehicalls. In the case of the Germans five 'Rifle' divisions were completely motorized. These were undersized with six rifle battalions and three artillery battalions. The French had seven completely motorized infantry divisions, with nine rifle battalions each and a full complement of five artillery battalions. The math shows the Germans had only 45% of the motorized infantry/artillery of the French outside the armored divisions.

Taking just the artillery of each side the Germans had slightly over 20% of their artillery motorized or mechanized with wheeled trucks or tracked vehicals. For the French it was approximately 40% equipped with automotive transport.

Whatever the French problem was it was not that they were distributing the motorized transport much differently that the Germans.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#22

Post by phylo_roadking » 27 Sep 2009, 21:42

I think Olivier's point is that Prioux' use of mechanized forces - and he did have a very modern force for the Hannut to Gembloux battles - wasn't particularly impressive. He can't blame inadequate French equipment, since he had just as mechanized and horseless a force as the opposing Germans. He still fought a largely static battle, the results of which weren't nearly as impressive as they could have been.
At Gembloux Prioux didn't have much choice but to fight a static battle - first of all, he (and his forces) were there in a defensive role, after all. Secondly - when the French arrived they found the line they had been expected to be occupying was a mess; the Belgians had stepped their defensive line forward a couple of times, and large sections of the Cointet anti-tank fence wasn't yet rebuilt, in places they'd moved it SO far forward that it made a nonsense of its purpose - being hundreds of yards in front of instead of backing-up a series of flood channels and river bottoms that were supposed to be the first line of defence against armour.

So when the French got into their pre-arranged position - they found that position was a shambles, robbing Prioux of the defensive base line he could have operated forward from. Instead, in many places he had to use his armour in place of the planned static defensive positions, and let the Germans come at him.
And given the usually-formative experience of contact with the enemy, you might well have found Prioux's opinions had changed somewhat by the time of the Armistice!
As Olivier wrote, Prioux was still around in the Vichy army. I've read some of the doctrinal documents issued under Vichy, they weren't nearly as progressive as one would expect as far as lessons learned went.
To which I'd have to reply - would you expect them to be??? Given that the Metropolitan French Army wasn't going to be permitted tanks by the terms of the Armistice? Instead those doctrinal documents are going to have to deal with the best use of what Vichy was left with...
No-one in WWII had the vehicles to completely motorize their forces
Depends what and where you look at :wink: Given the timeframe of this thread - don't forget the BEF was entirely motorised/mechanised.
The French problem - and Prioux doesn't seem to have been better than the rest here - was in insisting on mixing horses and motor vehicles at the tactical level as well.
The French problem - as with SO much else of their doctrine - was that this had worked so "well" in WWI, in the Belgian Salient by the British in 1914, and in the breakthrough battles of 1918...given the caveat of ONLY when distance travel was possible at all, at the start and end of the war :wink:
What the Germans did was to have entirely motorized units, and entirely horse-drawn ones
What the Germans did was to establish doctrine on the back of the difference of movement rates - what we (erroneously or not) refer to as blitzkrieg; use the motorised/mechanised forces to pound the enemy line at the schwerpunkt, break through, use their faster movement rate to manouver and package the enemy forces on both sides of the break into a salient that the slower-moving "conventional" forces (for that time! :lol: ) could march past, surround and reduce at their leisure.They created a "hierarchy of movement and use" in effect.
French cavalry divisions each included a mechanized and a horse brigade, so half of the division was moving at a different speed. The French should instead have created entirely motorized units and entirely horse-drawn ones instead of insisting on sharing out transport assets more or less equally.
if they'd done that - without the doctrine change - ALL they would have done is create two sets of units ....one of which probably wouldn't have been of any practical use in a given situation. You have to have a doctrine that makes use of the different rates of movement...and with the French defensive mindset - ALL it would have done is create a bunch of all-horse cavalry units that would have sat behind the lines waiting for a breakout that would never come - just like most of WWI.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#23

Post by Bronsky » 28 Sep 2009, 17:23

Carl Schwamberger wrote:Hmm... I recall the Germans had two horse cavalry divisions in 1939, unlike the French who retained none in Europe.
The French had 3 regular cavalry divisions plus two Spahi (colonial cavalry) brigades stationed in France in 1939, not counting units overseas. These had two cavalry brigades plus some motor vehicles, armored cars etc.

In February 1940, the French split these units to create 5 DLC (light cavalry divisions) instead, each with one cavalry brigade and a motorized infantry brigade. The remaining cavalry brigade became independent. These units were thoroughly thrashed by German armor in the Ardennes and generally ineffective throughout the campaign.
Carl Schwamberger wrote: More to the point the Germans did not have the eight armored or panzer divisions in the Polish campaign most people assume. Part were the hybrid horse/tank divisions similar to those the French had. Rommel commanded one of these 'Light' Divisions in the Polish campaign.
My sources show the light divisions to have been entirely motorized, save for a few pionneer and other companies. Certainly, the bulk of the combat units, including all of the infantry, travelled in trucks. So they were not hybrid horse/tank divisions.

Further note that the French did have information about the Polish campaign from their own military attachés as well as the reports forwarded by the Poles. The reason why they retained horses was both a shortage of vehicles to motorize everyone immediately, and visceral attachment to the horses.
Carl Schwamberger wrote:Like the French the Germans had a habit of partially motorizing the infantry divisions.
Yes, and since the French were less constrained by fuel, and marginally less by availability of vehicles, that's not what I'm blaming them for. On the other hand, the Germans did prioritize their fast units (light & panzer divisions) for motorization as well as their anti-tank assets. A lot of the French 47mm AT batteries were horse-towed, making them slower than the armor they were supposed to fight, at a time when there were enough motorized field artillery regiments in static sectors to make the necessary transport available.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#24

Post by Bronsky » 28 Sep 2009, 17:32

phylo_roadking wrote:At Gembloux Prioux didn't have much choice but to fight a static battle
Gembloux was a static battle and the points you make about the Belgian obstacles are sound, however that wasn't Prioux's battle. Prioux was supposed to fight a delaying action north of Gembloux, nothing in his mission compelled him to fight XVI Panzerkorps by attempting to turn Belgian villages such as Ernage as so many Alamos.
phylo_roadking wrote:To which I'd have to reply - would you expect them to be??? Given that the Metropolitan French Army wasn't going to be permitted tanks by the terms of the Armistice? Instead those doctrinal documents are going to have to deal with the best use of what Vichy was left with...
Of course I'd expect them to be. The French Army had been defeated by a mechanized force, the same officers were serving under Vichy and trying to study how best to organize a modern army for when they could have one.

My point here is that some of these commanders - Juin, de Lattre - eventually turned out to be keen practitionneers of mobile warfare, but Prioux wasn't among them.
phylo_roadking wrote:Depends what and where you look at :wink: Given the timeframe of this thread - don't forget the BEF was entirely motorised/mechanised.
The BEF was entirely motorised (or mechanised in contemporary parlance) by virtue of having no horse transport whatsoever. It shouldn't be construed to mean that it had enough transport to move all its forces at once. British infantrymen walked to battle, sometimes hitching a lift on transport that would pass by if they were lucky, but that was as far as it went.
The BEF was more motorized than either the German or French armies, though, but that was mostly due to its small size. Had Germany and France only fielded a 10-division army, they would have been fully motorized as well. British reinforcements weren't as motorized as the early BEF convoys either, for obvious reasons.
phylo_roadking wrote:if they'd done that - without the doctrine change - ALL they would have done is create two sets of units ....one of which probably wouldn't have been of any practical use in a given situation. You have to have a doctrine that makes use of the different rates of movement...and with the French defensive mindset - ALL it would have done is create a bunch of all-horse cavalry units that would have sat behind the lines waiting for a breakout that would never come - just like most of WWI.
Instead of 5 useless units to throw at advancing German columns in the Ardennes, the French would have been better off with 2.5 usable motorized and 2.5 useless horse-mounted divisions in my opinion.
Furthermore, cavalry did play a part during WWI, if not as great a one as it had hoped to. In the wake of the Michael 1918 German offensive, cavalry reinforcements eventually stopped their advance, as infantry couldn't move fast enough and rail & road transport was disorganized by battlefield chaos.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#25

Post by Gooner1 » 28 Sep 2009, 18:12

Bronsky wrote: Everyone agreed there was a need for infantry-support tanks and for independent armored formations. The British had Infantry and Cruiser tanks, the French had the independent tank battalions and the armored units, the Germans had the StuGs and panzer divisions, and so on.

The French problem wasn't therefore wanting infantry support - see how many independent tank battalions were attached to infantry units in the 1944-45 SHAEF armies - it was getting the right mix of tanks in both functions, given their likely opponent. In that regard, the British were about as bad as the French.
In what way do you think the French could have done better, more DLMs perhaps? (although thinking on your point about the bizarre horse/armour combination in the DLCs, a better organisation may have seen the DCRs broken up, with the H-35s joing to make an all armoured DLC and the Char-Bs acting as independent formations?)

In saying the British were as bad, do you mean in theory? I'm not sure the British had it too badly wrong in their thinking.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#26

Post by Bronsky » 28 Sep 2009, 20:24

Gooner1 wrote:In what way do you think the French could have done better, more DLMs perhaps? (although thinking on your point about the bizarre horse/armour combination in the DLCs, a better organisation may have seen the DCRs broken up, with the H-35s joing to make an all armoured DLC and the Char-Bs acting as independent formations?)

In saying the British were as bad, do you mean in theory? I'm not sure the British had it too badly wrong in their thinking.
In theory, both the French and the British had things right. They recognized that tanks were needed for infantry support and for independent action. The problem was striking the right balance, and making it work.

As far as the French were concerned, they were building a very modern armored force with self-contained armored divisions, mechanized infantry in APCs, etc. And again, the people who ended up being fairly successful practitionners of blitzkrieg in 1943-45 had all been around in 1940.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#27

Post by phylo_roadking » 28 Sep 2009, 20:52

In no particular order -
Furthermore, cavalry did play a part during WWI, if not as great a one as it had hoped to. In the wake of the Michael 1918 German offensive, cavalry reinforcements eventually stopped their advance, as infantry couldn't move fast enough and rail & road transport was disorganized by battlefield chaos
If you look back you'll see I earlier noted -
...this had worked so "well" in WWI, in the Belgian Salient by the British in 1914, and in the breakthrough battles of 1918...given the caveat of ONLY when distance travel was possible at all, at the start and end of the war
however that wasn't Prioux's battle. Prioux was supposed to fight a delaying action north of Gembloux, nothing in his mission compelled him to fight XVI Panzerkorps by attempting to turn Belgian villages such as Ernage as so many Alamos
IIRC without a base defence line behind him worth the name, and without any heavy forces (IIRC his heaviest tanks were S-35s?), nor any pre-laid minefields, he didn't have much option but to try to tie the Germans up in "complicated" terrain; an open-country tank battle would have let him be outmanouvered AND open to air attack in the absence of any great degree of air cover.
Instead of 5 useless units to throw at advancing German columns in the Ardennes, the French would have been better off with 2.5 usable motorized and 2.5 useless horse-mounted divisions in my opinion.
The problem in the Ardennes wasn't just what the French put in place along the Meuse...but also that they were not up to roster in AFVs or transport or artillery. Compared to the units that went into the Belgian Plain, or north towards the Belgian Redoubt, the units in the south of Belgium were definitely second-rate. Given that - it wouldn't matter how they were organised if they weren't used properly. Prioux in the Gembloux Gap proved that the mixed cavalry units COULD be used at least semi-effectively.

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#28

Post by takata_1940 » 28 Sep 2009, 21:48

phylo_roadking wrote:
however that wasn't Prioux's battle. Prioux was supposed to fight a delaying action north of Gembloux, nothing in his mission compelled him to fight XVI Panzerkorps by attempting to turn Belgian villages such as Ernage as so many Alamos
IIRC without a base defence line behind him worth the name, and without any heavy forces (IIRC his heaviest tanks were S-35s?), nor any pre-laid minefields, he didn't have much option but to try to tie the Germans up in "complicated" terrain; an open-country tank battle would have let him be outmanouvered AND open to air attack in the absence of any great degree of air cover.
1. Prioux was supposed to win the time necessary to set up this "base defence" behind him. Nobody asked him to build one for himself at Gembloux, wasting his very mobile force. Defence doesn't imply being static; the Mountain units are highly relying on mobility for defence, and so should do a mechanized force.
2. Minefields: The French "doctrine" was using minefields everywhere, but the French depots were empty of any (almost). An ersatz mine made of buried artillery round was the most common.
3. S-35 was heavy enough for the time being and air cover was provided by both the French Air Force and the RAF above Belgium (almost the whole Allied Air Force covered the move into Belgium/Netherlands as a primary task).
phylo_roadking wrote: The problem in the Ardennes wasn't just what the French put in place along the Meuse...but also that they were not up to roster in AFVs or transport or artillery. Compared to the units that went into the Belgian Plain, or north towards the Belgian Redoubt, the units in the south of Belgium were definitely second-rate. Given that - it wouldn't matter how they were organised if they weren't used properly. Prioux in the Gembloux Gap proved that the mixed cavalry units COULD be used at least semi-effectively.
Louis wasn't talking about what was put in place "along the Meuse", but what was sent accross the Meuse to delay the German in the Ardennes: the DLCs, which were designed for this task, mixing a Mechanized brigade with a horsed Cavalry brigade. The forested terrains looked good "in theory" for this Cavalry use, and might have been if they had to meet an Infantry force but it wasn't good vs the Panzerdivisionnen.
Prioux proved nothing about the effectiveness of mixed divisions as his Corps was fully mechanized, beside being not that good himself for its use vs a Panzerkorps (as you believed first).

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#29

Post by phylo_roadking » 01 Oct 2009, 23:37

The BEF was entirely motorised (or mechanised in contemporary parlance) by virtue of having no horse transport whatsoever. It shouldn't be construed to mean that it had enough transport to move all its forces at once. British infantrymen walked to battle, sometimes hitching a lift on transport that would pass by if they were lucky, but that was as far as it went.
No - "motorised" and "mechanised" were two different states. The BEF was 100% motorised...yes, it COULD move its troops by motorvehicle at convoy speed - but no, they didn't actually deploy into battle by vehicle; BY DOCTRINE they were at THAT point an infantry army supported by "I" armour, with cruiser tank units ideally covering. They certainly didn't INTEND their transport to be used as "battle taxis"....though in the end, there are plenty of anecdotes of JUST that happening, with bren gun carriers being used for forward deployment and as light armour! 8O

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Re: If France had not fallen...

#30

Post by takata_1940 » 02 Oct 2009, 06:03

phylo_roadking wrote:
The BEF was entirely motorised (or mechanised in contemporary parlance) by virtue of having no horse transport whatsoever. It shouldn't be construed to mean that it had enough transport to move all its forces at once. British infantrymen walked to battle, sometimes hitching a lift on transport that would pass by if they were lucky, but that was as far as it went.
No - "motorised" and "mechanised" were two different states. The BEF was 100% motorised...yes, it COULD move its troops by motorvehicle at convoy speed - but no, they didn't actually deploy into battle by vehicle; BY DOCTRINE they were at THAT point an infantry army supported by "I" armour, with cruiser tank units ideally covering. They certainly didn't INTEND their transport to be used as "battle taxis"....though in the end, there are plenty of anecdotes of JUST that happening, with bren gun carriers being used for forward deployment and as light armour! 8O
Hi Phylo,
Sorry, but Bronsky was right: the BEF was (nearly) 100% motorised, except for its foot soldiers, which were lorried by Corps assets when those transports were available and tasked for it. By no means, they would have enough RASC troops, or sections, for moving everybody at once. 1st Corps had three Infantry Divisions and two troops (1st and 3rd) for Infantry, and two other for "Animals" (32nd) and "Packs" (Cypriot muletiers). Obviously, it could only move two Infantry Brigades by motor transport at once. So yes, "it could move (some of) its troops by motor vehicle at convoy speed",... but the other troops were walking at the same time.

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