JonS wrote:Which makes the two appraoches sound as good - or as bad - as each other. That may or may not be true, except that regadless of how well things progressed around Metz, the overall logistic situation wasn't going to improve. Putting all the eggs in one basket N of the Ardennes allows the rapid-er opening of ports (instead of the Canoodlians opening them in sequence), overrunning the Beveland Peninsular shortly after capturing Antwerp, etc, rather than battering about the Metz forts.
Fair that and a good way of looking at it. OTOH as I understand it there simply wasn't enough logistical oomph in 21 Army Group to do more than they did
at the time and I still don't think that shoving more trucks into the stovepipe was going to work. Plus, there was really only a single "fortress reduction train", essentially the 2nd Canadian Division with a heavily reinforced II Canadian Corps artillery, plus 1st Assault Brigade RE (51 Highland got into the act at Le Havre, but was neither that important to the outcome nor was it as far to support as Boulogne was). I'm afraid the idea of opening the Channel Ports simultenously is a non-starter unless you want to ground even more of Second Army, which means the pursuit runs out of steam and, anyway, only Antwerp was really important tonnage-wise and they got that nearly for free.
Doing that would put the Allied forces N of the Ardennes in a much better logisitcal posn sometime around mid-late Sept, and they'd be concentrated.
Le Havre - first week of September and it starts meaningful offloading there in the first week of October
Boulogne - third week of September and it starts meaningful offloading there in the third week of October
So it's actually mid October at best and "better" amounts to about 1,400 tons a day average 6 October - 10 January, Boulogne is mostly POL, which is nice, but only 300 tons/day rising to 660 tons/day by 1 December
Looking at it from a Principles of War perspective (maintenance of aim, offensive action, mass, maneouvre, unity of command, surprise, simplicity, security), moving N of the Ardennes has a lot to recommend it. The following table is a quick* and admittedly subjective scorecard lokoking at the three approaches against the principles.
But the aim, as agreed long prior to D-Day, was a broad front advance onto the German border, coupled with an advance from the Southern landing...sure and steady wins the race. Offensive action was maintained in all plans since that was dependent on logistics and troops available. Mass of course goes to the Northern or Southern options...except that the logistical realities prevented it. I would hesitate to say that maneuver was something included or excluded in any of the plans since that was more a tactical or operational principal difficult to assess at the army group level...and a maneuver through the low countries simplified Germany's defensive planning immeasurably and gave them much greater opportunity for maneuver themselves by concentration on either the Northern or Southern forces. Unity of command? There was - SHAEF and it was pretty much Monty trying to kick up the traces and causing problems in that respect. Surprise...little real opportunity there on the strategic level by that point. Simplicity - the broad front since they were already oriented to it, communications routes favored it, and it maximized the use of the Southern landing. Security? Only the broad front really offered that. Pretty much a dead heat I think between the Northern and Broad options, with the Southern one trailing for a number of reasons.
Edit: My names Jon, and I have ADD
Hello Jon! My name is Rich and I have typing dyslexia. Can we move on to the twelve steps now?
Cheers!