1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

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dieseltaylor
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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#16

Post by dieseltaylor » 30 Jan 2010, 20:30

Unfortunately "bollocks" and the requirement to read your book for a refutation is not actually that helpful in establishing whether or not the offer was made. However I am happy to take your word for it that it is what happened.

Your remark about Wikipedia was perhaps a little cruel as for what it tries to be it is very good. If I wanted to be exhaustive about all the vehicles available pre-invasion I could have been but it would have been a very long article.

However are you not confusing the hypothetical answer to -" Should have been better? - with the actuality of D-Day. The D-Day beaches are not the bocage so talk of what was deployed and what was useful on the day is helpful but not conclusive. I agree that the Bullshorn and Onion were not that great weapons but the concept but the point I was making was that a plough type device and the ramming of explosives into embankments were ideas generated by the US Army to deal with the bocage.

I dispute the comment that the AVRE and Crocodile would have been as useful as any other tank. Bocage fields are generally very small and flamethrowing would have been ideal for burning hedgerows. You are possibly familiar with the mass used of Crocodiles from an embankment to clear an opposing riverbank of enemy troops - I am sure this could have been employed in the bocage. However hindsight makes us all wiser ...

I agree that a cramped beachhead is not efficient but there was limited chance of running out of fuel or being caught in a counterattack with such a limited area. The closeness to naval and air support was also enhanced. So not ideal but not necessarily a disaster.

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#17

Post by RichTO90 » 30 Jan 2010, 23:19

dieseltaylor wrote:Unfortunately "bollocks" and the requirement to read your book for a refutation is not actually that helpful in establishing whether or not the offer was made. However I am happy to take your word for it that it is what happened.
Um, that was part of the reason for the smilies. :D Of course, you could also search this very good website where much of these discussions have been hashed out over the years. Or at TankNet where we went through this subject to quite a degree while I was writing my book.
Your remark about Wikipedia was perhaps a little cruel as for what it tries to be it is very good. If I wanted to be exhaustive about all the vehicles available pre-invasion I could have been but it would have been a very long article.
It would only be cruel if it wasn't true... :lol:

And I could have been more exhaustive in my answer, having researched the subject for some nine years prior to publication, but I am stuck in a blizzard in Washington, DC, so am away from my sources... 8-)
However are you not confusing the hypothetical answer to -" Should have been better? - with the actuality of D-Day. The D-Day beaches are not the bocage so talk of what was deployed and what was useful on the day is helpful but not conclusive. I agree that the Bullshorn and Onion were not that great weapons but the concept but the point I was making was that a plough type device and the ramming of explosives into embankments were ideas generated by the US Army to deal with the bocage.
Sorry, but no, the Funnies were useful on D-Day, but there is no evidence that they were of any special use in the bocage. You put the cart before the horse by bringing up Funnies as a solution for the bocage; I was just correcting your missapprehension. :D

BTW, the Bullshorn Plough was designed to be used in sand...i.e., on the beaches , and didn't work all that well there. It had no utility inland. The Boase bangalore likewise was designed to deal with sand dunes, there was no way it could work in hedgerows. Further, the American ideas for the bocage were simpler, pipes designed to be rammed into the hedge to form a hole into which explosive could be inserted. It worked, but not all that well and not as well as the Culin device...and in any case neither was really needed in the hedgerow. As you said, sort of, it was more a morale building device than anything.
I dispute the comment that the AVRE and Crocodile would have been as useful as any other tank. Bocage fields are generally very small and flamethrowing would have been ideal for burning hedgerows. You are possibly familiar with the mass used of Crocodiles from an embankment to clear an opposing riverbank of enemy troops - I am sure this could have been employed in the bocage. However hindsight makes us all wiser ...
You can dispute it all you wish, or be sure of whatever you wish, but it might be helpful if you provide an example of their use in that way in the bocage. :D Nor is mass use of Crocodiles very practicable when the available number is a squadron of about a dozen...at least until late July IIRC.
I agree that a cramped beachhead is not efficient but there was limited chance of running out of fuel or being caught in a counterattack with such a limited area. The closeness to naval and air support was also enhanced. So not ideal but not necessarily a disaster.
Efficiency has little to do with it. As I mentioned, one problem was that the negineers who should have been properly used in helping the troops forward against obstacles, were instead concerned with preserving the crumbling transportation infrastructure. Adding airfields to improve air support made problems worse since the fuel and ordnance had to be brought in as well. Naval gunfire was useful on the flanks of the beachhead and about 10,000-15,000 meters inland


dieseltaylor
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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#18

Post by dieseltaylor » 31 Jan 2010, 00:21

You seem to be carrying out an argument where on one side you are using practical examples of D-Day to compare to a what-if situation of better preparedness before the event. : )

I am well aware of the limited availablity of Funnies but IF there had been a better appreciation of the Germans fighting where they stood there may have been more effort - and more Crocodiles or similar. As you may know there where experiments with Wasps with a range of !50yds - fired at high angle which I would think ideal range for the small bocage fields. Wasps in themselves not ideal being open-topped :)

So if we revert to what might have been .......

I understand fully what you say regarding the beachhead however if we posit a German run for the Seine then perhaps the requirement for fuel would have been significantly more AND with the possibility that the as then unwritten down German panzers may have made a serious dent in the Allied spearhead. Obviously this is hypothetical other than the greater requirement for fuel.

Incidentally Doubler when writing of the blowing away of the bocage provides figures for the amount of explosives required and the fact the required amounts were simply not available. I am pleased we can both agree that the hedgrow plow was more hyped than used as it grieves me to see it being touted as a one man war winning invention - but splendid propaganda.

Alll the best.

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#19

Post by phylo_roadking » 31 Jan 2010, 03:09

It's worth remembering that the hedgerows themselves were less than half the problem :wink: What they were growing in was much more important - field boundaries/banks of stones and soil...with drainage depressions along the field side of them..."stone ditches" as they're called in Ireland...centuries old, bound together with the matured root systems of said hedgerows; think an effect roughly the same as steel formers in reinforced concrete! :lol: These banks varied from 2-3 feet on one side to sometimes 6-8 on the other....for often the lanes between fields were much lower than the fields themselves on either side.

Think therefore a landscape of a seemingly-endless series of ready-made and reinforced emplacements. Burning off the cover was only part of the problem - each field was a natural emplacement that had to be cleared, each bank or lane provided a ready-made hull-down position for armour...

...even if they were weakly held, the Bocage field system would have ended up having to be cleared and made safe field by field, taking days to do anyway around the full extent of the bridgehead - to clear the risk that each potential obstacle COULD be held.

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#20

Post by Delta Tank » 31 Jan 2010, 23:53

Bf109,
Bf109 wrote: IMHO showing the men and training for this would have perhaps cut down on casualties, but just as likely and word by the hundreds of thousands of troops training for this, a simple slip up, a person captured on d-day and interrogated, etc. would have turned months of planning, hundreds of hours of a phantom army schemes, numerous thousands of air sorties for deception all for not had the OKH got wind or a prisoner tortured or a careless radio operator or spy noting this specific training taking place...and reveal they where training for a specific terrain and training involved thousands of men, might have resulted in a tougher fight...the bocage was distinct and totally logistically located far from where the Allied forces and SHAEF set about going to deceive the Wehrmacht and OKH...

--IMHO training tens of thousands of men, for a certain area/local was more a threat then not training them and coping as they came to this obstacle for had it leaked...Germany would for certain know where the allied landing where to commence
I also never considered this as an OPSEC (Operational Security) issue. Good deduction!

Mike

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#21

Post by bf109 emil » 01 Feb 2010, 00:29

Thanks mike, but perhaps what maybe a better question as the whole Bocage lack of training other then perhaps a direct security risk, or lack of training might also take another fold if i may ask...

We all know how the outcome of the Bocage turned into a nightmare due to Germany heavily defending this position...

What i would like to ask likewise is the following...

was the Wehrmacht already in place or apt to defend the Bocage vigorously prior to D-Day?
---or---
was the Wehrmacht defense of the Bocage a result of the Allied landings in this locale and thus a hastily rushed defensive stand was made here with continued Wehrmacht troops funneled as a direct result of the conflict which had now commenced in this locale?

Thus maybe my above statement might be re-phrased to...why train a potential number of men and risk revealing a secret location of an invasion if prior to the invasion intelligence had shown almost nil in the potential Wehrmacht build-up and defense in this terrain prior!!

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#22

Post by phylo_roadking » 01 Feb 2010, 00:37

IIRC the Allies deal with this in TWO ways....

1/ they trained visibly in ALL terrains available to them! :lol: The British Isles was remarkably crowded with ranges and exercise grounds in those days, with troops training VERY far from sight or risk of the Germans. For instance - many tens of thousands of U.S. troops did their training in Northern Ireland where in many areas the terrain DOES STILL and did then resemble the Bocage;

2/ they accepted a moderate amount of risk - given that they KNEW the Germans knew they were coming SOMEWHERE. For example - Slapton Sands!...which wouldn't ressemble the terrain around the Pas de Calais much either! :wink:

In fact - if you look at a map of the UK - there was potential to train troops on Bocage-like terrain far MORE than terrain strictly ressembling the immediate landing beaches in Normandy 8O Kent and Sussex could very easily have been used...given that the Allies desperately NEEDED to keep up the deception of Fortitude South/QUICKSILVER! They PRETENDED to locate tens of thousands of troops in the South-East and train them there for landings in the Pas de Calais...if they'd really been on the ball they could have had Fortitude South fill a DUAL role of allowing troops to be "rotated" into the fictional "1st U.S. Army Group (FUSAG)" for training in Bocage-like terrain 8O After all - we had the Germans EXPECTING to see "FUSAG" troops training in Kent and Sussex!!! :lol:

Missed opportunity...

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#23

Post by bf109 emil » 01 Feb 2010, 00:50

PRETENDED to locate tens of thousands of troops in the South-East and train them there for landings in the Pas de Calais...if they'd really been on the ball they could have had Fortitude South fill a DUAL role of allowing troops to be "rotated" into the fictional "1st U.S. Army Group (FUSAG)" for training in Bocage-like terrain 8O After all - we had the Germans EXPECTING to see "FUSAG" troops training in Kent and Sussex!!!
but landing or training to land upon a beach or coast perhaps leaks an amphibious operation, as IMHO Germany knew the landing where to be amphibious, but to specifically train an army to combat a unique and identifiable terrain similar to the Bocage only risks the exact locale of where said army intends to fight...IMHO the months leading up to Normandy and a simple fly-over in these months by a reconnaissance plane showing thousands of men training in Bocage like terrain would have been more apt as a threat then as a benefit :wink:
For instance - many tens of thousands of U.S. troops did their training in Northern Ireland where in many areas the terrain DOES STILL and did then resemble the Bocage;
hmm, then why the thread if army's had already been trained in this terrain :lol:

but was the Bocage heavily defended prior to launching Overlord or does one know, became defended heavily post Overlord

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#24

Post by Delta Tank » 01 Feb 2010, 01:04

Bf109,

I have no information about German defensive preparations in the Bocage prior to the landings, at least I can't remember any :( .

Mike

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#25

Post by phylo_roadking » 01 Feb 2010, 02:01

IMHO the months leading up to Normandy and a simple fly-over in these months by a reconnaissance plane showing thousands of men training in Bocage like terrain would have been more apt as a threat then as a benefit
Jim - FORTITUDE SOUTH depended on them seeing "troops" training in Kent and Sussex! :lol:

And there weren't many other places in the United Kingdom where there WEREN'T "thousands of men training"
hmm, then why the thread if army's had already been trained in this terrain
Training IN the terrain if it's on your front door isn't the same thing as training HOW to deal with the terrain and how it could be used. For instance - despite their presence on many assault courses, not many soldiers would have really expected conveniently-tied ropes over streams or nice horizontally placed logs...

In the Bocage example - troops training how to hold road junctions or taking defended ones on country roads and banked lanes isn't the same as how to take the actual roadway inbetween if it's held against you 8O :wink:

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#26

Post by dieseltaylor » 01 Feb 2010, 15:15

All interesting points but the security angle does seem convincing - in hindsight. I do own to feeling it was possibly unlikely of theAllies to have done it! - I would be very impressed if it were policy - is there any evidence on the matter. Or is it one of those decisions which, because it was oing to cost lives, that was neve formally raised to be recorded. I think they were banking on the Germans not fighting in Normandy after the initial landing as fiercely as they did.

We all have the hindsight of what unravelled but how much would you have committed to in the months prior to the invasion in the way of predicting how it would pan out. Tricky.

As for more mechanised Funnies that would have probably seen as area neutral. The addition of telephone handsets on the rear of tanks seems obvious now for close co-operation. Is that something that could have been sensibly anticipated by the mindsets of those involved.?

PS. my gut feeling is that the bocage was not designated defensive area it was simply the Germans making very good use of the terrian .

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#27

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 01 Feb 2010, 16:39

phylo_roadking wrote:
IMHO the months leading up to Normandy and a simple fly-over in these months by a reconnaissance plane showing thousands of men training in Bocage like terrain would have been more apt as a threat then as a benefit
Jim - FORTITUDE SOUTH depended on them seeing "troops" training in Kent and Sussex! :lol:


Correct as far as what the Deception plans for Fortitude proposed. Although "depend" is to strong a word. 'The Decievers' by T Holt & 'Body Guaard of Lies' describes the various channels the deception plan aimed at. There were the physical measures, the dummy tanks and fake installations. Those were aimed at German efforts to collect info from air recon/photography. There was the fake radio network set up for German signal intel to listen in on. And, the false information sent via the XX agents in Britian and Spain plus planted info across Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. Holt also briefly mentions post war analysis of German intellegence records on the subject. The analysts were suprised to find German air recon failed to reveal much, deception or real. The signals intel was worse. Lots of traffic recorded but little actually evaluated and less evaluated correctly. It appears the Germans learned little or nothing from their signal analysis of Fortitude Souths radio deception. They may not have even identified that traffic correctly. it is also known post war the Germans had no effective agents on the ground in the UK or British isles. The very few that were not controlled by the Brit Counter Intelligence organization were losers in Ireland or distant Spain. However the Abweher and the 'Forgien Armies West' department in the Army relied primarily on the info from the XX Cross agents, and agents in other nations picking up rumors and deceptive plants. The information actually used by Forgien Armies West, the Abwehr & Hitler seems to have come via the agents across the globe and in Britain. The rest of the deception info presented was either uncollected or filed and left unsorted and unused.
phylo_roadking wrote:And there weren't many other places in the United Kingdom where there WEREN'T "thousands of men training"
Cant agree more. While the US Army was based principally in the western half of Great Britain the bulk of the Commonwealth ground forces were spread across the eastern half, along with a dense blanket of airbases, logistics installations, and other support organizations. Getting back to Fortitude South, the deception was oriented towards deciving the Germans as to the target of the Allied forces in the Eastern regions. The fake Allied units established were part of the deception as to the target. The Germans were aware there were a lot of Allied forces in this area and fell for the deception of their objective. If there is any evidence the Germans drew conclusions from the type of terrain in this area I'd like to see it.
hmm, then why the thread if army's had already been trained in this terrain
phylo_roadking wrote:Training IN the terrain if it's on your front door isn't the same thing as training HOW to deal with the terrain and how it could be used. For instance - despite their presence on many assault courses, not many soldiers would have really expected conveniently-tied ropes over streams or nice horizontally placed logs...
Precisely. just because some particular terrain feature is present where soldiers are training does not directly or even indirectly prove they are training for that tactical problem. Actually the logic is rather silly. The large manuver training area of Salisbury Plain was constantly used by the US and Commonwealth corps. Should that tell the Germans the Allies intended to fight a battle of manuver on the open plains of France? To avoid giving that away maybe the Allied army should have confined its training to the Scottish Highlands?

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#28

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 02 Feb 2010, 22:05

Rich,

Informative posts as usual, the only "funnie" you failed to comment on, however, was the "Crab"...
Crab - A modified Sherman tank equipped with a mine flail, a rotating cylinder of weighted chains that exploded mines in the path of the tank.
* DD tank - from "Duplex Drive", an amphibious Sherman or Valentine tank able to swim ashore after being launched from a landing craft several miles from the beach. They were intended to give support to the first waves of infantry that attacked the beaches. The Valentine version was used only for training.

The DD tank was used by American forces on D-Day and was the only item of special equipment requested by ETOUSA that was actually supplied for their use by British forces.
Did the ETOUSA request any of these beasts? Given the long lead time, could modification kits not have been built in US and shipped across to the UK? In fact, thinking about it, could the Sherman not have been modified to at least carry Fascines, and perhaps other obstacle crossing equipment like scissors bridges? Obviously they may not have made a difference at Omaha due to terrain and opposition :) , but Crabs would have been useful at Utah, I would have thought, to clear along the causeways. IIRC the movement inland from Utah was snail like due to the mined causeways and the infantry having to wade through the inundated areas.

Re Croccodiles - not much use on D-Day perhaps, butmuch more use in the Bocage, do you know when the USMC started using Sherman flamethrowers in the Pacific? I can't recall them being used at all by US forces in Europe although IIRC British Croccodiles were loaned to US forces at Brest and in the Siegfried Line campaign in Nov 1944.

Generally speaking, do you know if any of the perceived success of the "funnies" in Normandy or Marine experience in the Pacific lead to similar Armoured Engineer Vehicles being developed late- or post-war in the US forces?

Re training for the Bocage - is there any similar terrain on the US mainland? It can't all be wide open spaces surely. :D

Am saving up to buy your book, have you got anything else in the pipeline?

Regards

Tom

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#29

Post by dieseltaylor » 02 Feb 2010, 22:28

I liked what I saw of Rich's book online. I had been thinking that they tend to be ignored. The Royal Engineers have such a huge history and seem to have got involved in everything. Planes trains, balloons, torpedoes, mail!

A visit to their Museum in Gillingham is very worthwhile not only for the VC's but I especially liked Wellingtons map for the Waterloo area.

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Re: 1944 Preparing for the Bocage - Should it have been better?

#30

Post by RichTO90 » 02 Feb 2010, 22:48

dieseltaylor wrote:You seem to be carrying out an argument where on one side you are using practical examples of D-Day to compare to a what-if situation of better preparedness before the event. : )
Sorry, but it was you that brought up the calumny regarding the supposed "offer" and "refusal" and related it to the bocage, not I. 8-)
I am well aware of the limited availablity of Funnies but IF there had been a better appreciation of the Germans fighting where they stood there may have been more effort - and more Crocodiles or similar.
Sorry again, but I'm afraid I fail to follow the logic that you seem to be employing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying that if the Allies realized that the Germans would defend the bocage they would have been able to ignore the time that it took to prototype, develop, and manufacture such devices and would have had them available at a faster schedule than they did for what they considered to be the much more serious and difficult task of getting ashore and establishing a viable beachhead? Isn't that the same as saying if they were prescient then wishful thinking would have been sufficient?
As you may know there where experiments with Wasps with a range of !50yds - fired at high angle which I would think ideal range for the small bocage fields. Wasps in themselves not ideal being open-topped :)
Yes I do. So where are the examples of them...or Crocodiles being so employed in combat in the bocage? After all, if they had already experimented with the method and it was such a simple matter, then we should expect to have plenty of examples of their being used in such a manner, right?
So if we revert to what might have been .......

I understand fully what you say regarding the beachhead however if we posit a German run for the Seine then perhaps the requirement for fuel would have been significantly more AND with the possibility that the as then unwritten down German panzers may have made a serious dent in the Allied spearhead. Obviously this is hypothetical other than the greater requirement for fuel.
Sure, but that is rapidly turning into a game of "rock, paper, scissors" based upon "might have beens". As it was, gasoline supply, or rather the means of getting the supply forward to the troops, was as important or possibly more important a factor in the pursuit than the fuel requirement. Further, given that absolute German losses were so low until the pursuit began it could be posited that it was the pursuit that wrote down the Panzers and not the battle in the bocage...
Incidentally Doubler when writing of the blowing away of the bocage provides figures for the amount of explosives required and the fact the required amounts were simply not available. I am pleased we can both agree that the hedgrow plow was more hyped than used as it grieves me to see it being touted as a one man war winning invention - but splendid propaganda.

Alll the best.
Yep, because a large amount was being consumed in engineer maintenance of communications in the beachhead rather than in blowing holes in the bocage. As an aside, one of the strongest memories my Dad had of Normandy when we visited in 2000 (aside from the towns not being mashed flat and the fields full of dead cows) was the lack of smell, which he described as an evil mixture of excrement and body odor, rotting flesh, and a burnt-sugar sweetness caused by the extensive use of Composition-B explosive, which was a nitro-starch... gag! :D

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