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Posted
1 hour ago, futon said:

Ah, more of those Rich vs Glenn ones. 

As an ex-sailor who knows little of W.W.2 I would take Rich's posts as gospel.  Along with his posts here, his book "American Thunder" is absolutely superb.

Posted
16 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

thank you for the additions, it is much appreciated.

 

I feel like that from Heurtgen to Ardennes it is difficult to decide who bears more responsibility between Hodges and Bradley but the simple fact is that Bradley was in charge and DID have access to information that First Army didn't have (or certainly didn't have as quickly).  The Huertgen battles were American generalship at their worst given the nearly limitless maneuverability of US forces there's almost nothing the US Army couldn't go around.

We spend a lot of time bashing the relief effort of Arnhem.  Some say that if Patton had been in charge rather than Horrocks that the Airborne would've been relieved.  If Bradley had been in charge the Germans would still have been in Arnhem in 1949.

Some years ago I got to go to Falaise (in a tank).  What I saw was pretty good ground for an encirclement.  If Patton's forces could've been overrun it would have been expensive for the Germans to do so and while we couldn't be sure that they didn't have the strength to do it Patton had a pretty good idea that he could hold.  Of course, the trend now is to blame the British and Canadians but that's crap.  Patton's forces had the ability and the right ground to do it but even then they could've swept wider on the fly.  US forces could advance faster than German forces could withdraw.

 

If you want one harsh thing to focus on with Omar Bradley a good place to look is Eisenhower's loss of confidence in the Ardennes.  Putting US forces under Montgomery's command was downplayed at the time but even Eisenhower realized that Bradley and First Army had Germans inside the perimeter and more importantly inside their decision loop.  It's fashionable today to bash the French response to the German movement through the Ardennes but certain parts of our command didn't do any better when it happened again.

US Army had some great General officers, Bradley just wasn't one of them.  Sort of an ETO version of Buckner?

From my limited understanding the whole Huertgen thing was about some dams?

Posted
4 minutes ago, Rick said:

As an ex-sailor who knows little of W.W.2 I would take Rich's posts as gospel.  Along with his posts here, his book "American Thunder" is absolutely superb.

Then he can keep to his area of expertise instead of acting like a big know it all in areas that are outsude his area of expertise. Regardless of the nature of the Ukraine threads, I've learned nothing about that current on-going conflict from him. 

No gospel can clear anyone to ride a high horse and letting it drop royalty sh!ts wherever, not in my view anyway.

Posted

 "He knew the issues the 1st Armored and 34th Infantry divisions had in Tunisia, the troubles with the 45th in Sicily and the 36th at Salerno, so he was blowing smoke for sure on that one. "

Rich, would you elaborate on what those issues were? Thank you.

Posted
14 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

Patton may not have done better but Bradley in Horrocks' role would've done worse.

Patton's legitimate claim to fame is his performance in and around the Ardennes when Third Army was clearly far ahead of SHAEF and First Army on the preparedness meter.  Bradley's claim to fame is Cobra and the truth is that Cobra wasn't the masterpiece accomplishment of Generalship that is is made out to be.

Montgomery is known for the 8th Army in the desert but the reality is that excepting Caen and Market Garden Montgomery did very well in NE Europe.  I don't think anybody was taking Caen on day one, not even George.  I can't compete in the Arnhem thread but the failures weren't all on General Montgomery.

Just FYI, if you are looking for some kick ass commanders look at Juin and LeClerc.  LeClerc in particular had flair and elan in spades.

A bit off topic, but what about Montgomery and Antwerp? I presume it could have been opened sooner even with the vision of hindsight?

Posted

At the risk of trying to mind-read Rich with respect to his comment on the Ukraine conflict, I think that futon is doing him a dis-service - his comment applies to the quality (or lack thereof) of discourse in those topics and its purpose, not on the importance or seriousness of the conflict itself.

There is a reason he used to term "pornography". A scatalogical interest rather than an academic interest, if you will.

Posted
9 hours ago, futon said:

Bluffing.

No, I am not "bluffing", which is an incredibly silly turn of phrase in this instance. We were talking here on the theme of the capabilities and reputation of General Omar Bradley in World War II. It simply remarked that I found it a more interesting conversation than anything recently posted on Military Current Events, primarily because that forum now seems to be used entirely for poorly supported speculation, juvenile nationalistic and/or political posturing, and generalized mental masturbation similar to that achieved on Facebook. It's tiresome, but has zero to do with a lack of books written about it, which BTW, is incorrect. If you want to get butthurt about the opinion I hold on those conversations in Military Current Events, then so be it, but don't try to derail this topic with your uninformed opinion.

Posted
9 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

I wouldnt entirely rule out Gavin as being partially responsible also. Recent authors are pointing to Nijmegen bridge as the last place where it all finally apart, and that was on his watch after all. But yes, there should be a special place in hell for Browning. His insistence on assaulting with his HQ was a ridiculous waste of gliders that could have been better employed in Arnhem or perhaps even Nijmegen.

As for Urquhart, there was a podcast by Al Murray, a British comedian and an amateur historian I thought was amusing. He related talking to one of the veterans of 6th Airborne Division. He asked him why it was that 6th Airborne were able to fulfill virtually all their taskings and why 1st Airborne Div could not? His words were 'Well, 1st Airborne Innit?' :D

You can put that down to simple rivalry, or he really had a point. The upper leadership (im not talking of the battalion commanders here) of 1st Airborne Division simply wasnt as good as the  other Allied airborne units, and Urquhart has to be the prime reason for that.

The "responsibility" of Gavin was to attempt to make the best use of his available troops to achieve the objectives assigned to him. The priority off those objectives was laid out by Browning's operational plan. With the troops Gavin was allocated in the first lift he could either seize the bridge or defend the Groosbeck heights. Browning prioritized the latter above the former rather than allocate more lift to Gavin so he could reasonably plan to achieve both.

Gavin followed the priority assigned by his commander. If he had disobeyed and instead prioritized the bridge, then it may well have been captured, but it is extremely unlikely the heights could have been held. No heights and the approached to the bridge are useless, which makes the bridge useless.

It really is as simple as that. If Browning had had the good sense to realize there was no point to bringing in a corps headquarters in the first lift, or if Montgomery had realized it and attacked, then Gavin would have been able to lift another Parachute Rifle Battalion and assign equal priority to each mission.

Posted
8 hours ago, Rick said:

From my limited understanding the whole Huertgen thing was about some dams?

It was one dam thing after another. The entire rational for the attack on the dams was that the Ninth Army could not cross the Roer River until the dams were in Allied hands. Okay, but did anyone ever think that perhaps then it might be better to cross the Ninth Army above the dams? That would have meant screening the Roer between 21 Army Group and the dams with a corps, while concentrating in the Ardennes to drive east between the Eifel and say Trier. Except that no one attacks in the Ardennes. 😁

 

See how that logic works?

Posted
8 hours ago, Rick said:

 "He knew the issues the 1st Armored and 34th Infantry divisions had in Tunisia, the troubles with the 45th in Sicily and the 36th at Salerno, so he was blowing smoke for sure on that one. "

Rich, would you elaborate on what those issues were? Thank you.

Almost all American divisions had major problems based upon training and doctrinal issues, the rapid expansion of the Army, and leadership quality and experience because of it.

The 1st Armored Division found in Tunisia that the rapid tank maneuver taught by the Armored Force did not work as expected, plus it was broken up and committed piecemeal exacerbating problems and losses. The 34th Infantry Division also had bad experience in Tunisia and lost two battalions captured because of poorly thought out doctrine by senior leadership. Tactically, infantry bunched up and froze in position, the requirement to get them moving meant that junior officers were critical...and suffered heavy casualties as a result. The 45th Infantry Division had a similar experience in Sicily, but was aided by the performance of its excellent artillery. Even the initial performance of "good" divisions like the 1st were not always excellent, although there it usually was associated with doctrine rather than the quality and training of the officers and men.

The problems with infantry doctrine and training tended to lead to an over reliance on artillery and later airpower to compensate. It took time for a division to learn and adapt the infantry tactics that would work.

Posted
8 hours ago, Rick said:

A bit off topic, but what about Montgomery and Antwerp? I presume it could have been opened sooner even with the vision of hindsight?

Probably not. It required a prescience not displayed by many in World War II. Opening Antwerp required clearing the Scheldt, which meant clearing Breskens and Walcheren. Even if 21 Army Group had been able to push beyond Antwerp to say the base of the Beveland Peninsula or even Bergen op Zoom, the Germans still could have supported the troops on Walcheren. That meant a direct amphibious assault was required, which took time to plan, and more critically, to assemble the landing craft, which had been dispersed to other tasks after NEPTUNE - to DRAGOON for one thing.

Posted
21 hours ago, RichTO90 said:

I tend to agree with Blumenson that the allied high command was the perfect mix for failure, partly because of Eisenhower's hands off, consensus style of command. If the two Army Group commanders had been Montgomery and Patton, as it logically should have been, then it would have been Patton driving on Hodges and Bradley without letup, similar to the way he rode his corps commanders during the breakout. Both Patton and Montgomery were looking at a deep envelopment on 8 August and quite possibly would have accomplished it.

One of the problems with what happened on 13-14 August with XV Corps is that Leclerc was uninterested in attacking through Argentan to Falaise. He had his sights on Paris.

Interesting, could the allies have reached the Rhine by winter 1944 across most of its length? No Bulge then. Opens up interesting alternatives.

Posted
5 hours ago, RichTO90 said:

No, I am not "bluffing", which is an incredibly silly turn of phrase in this instance. We were talking here on the theme of the capabilities and reputation of General Omar Bradley in World War II. It simply remarked that I found it a more interesting conversation than anything recently posted on Military Current Events, primarily because that forum now seems to be used entirely for poorly supported speculation, juvenile nationalistic and/or political posturing, and generalized mental masturbation similar to that achieved on Facebook. It's tiresome, but has zero to do with a lack of books written about it, which BTW, is incorrect. If you want to get butthurt about the opinion I hold on those conversations in Military Current Events, then so be it, but don't try to derail this topic with your uninformed opinion.

I beg you to take into deeper consideration about what I'm saying.

On the book point.. what I says stands because this squabble is about the difference in quality between the two threads. This thread is is about a US WW2 general. WW2, a conflict which has ended almost 80 years ago. That means decades of time for professional writers to do research, write work about it, and for that work to be read by others, and for the same others to read other works. This conflict in Ukraine hasn't finished yet. The same level of resourses is not possible for comparisons of field commanders down to the same level of detail as with Bradley and company, ally and adversaries alike. There's no comparison.

About pointing out the quality issues of the Ukraine threads.. you have not been the first to criticize it. It's been said many times, where have you been? The nationalism, posturing, all that, yeah.. its there. It's certainly not fun. I agree with that. But you said it was also not interesting.. so that's getting into something else. Interesting is a measure of its value. Since its an ongoing conflict that all sorts of people are implicated by it, people post in how they want it to go. The war of words. It's inevitable. Should we just delete the threads? If they are not intetesting, but then suddenly disapoear, do you have an alternate source for these on-going conflicts? Syria, Israel, and elsewhere. It's natural that the nature of the threads on these on-going conflicts are going to be different with taken positions by people that are not well-trained book writets. More than the book writes are implicated by these conflicts and as a conflict arises, it's either add content or not when the time comes, regardless at what point of time the conflict happens in the posters life. What's the point of criticizing what's natural? It's not fun.. true. But not interesting? We're all stuck with that human behavior, regrettably. If something is said or happens that implicates someone else's interest, are they fools or immature to rebuttal? Just because they participated in the festpool of war of words, doesn't mean the counter points they raise are also of low quality. Any posters that clearly posture a lot.. should they be banned? They posture because that's in their interest. People that have it in their interest to posture exist and are actively posturing is because the war exists. It's as natural of a thing as the laws in physics. Who criticizes a law in physics for not being fun? Ignoring it completely gives it greater ability to redefine what's "common knowledge" to its benefit.

So then why raise this at all in this thread if those threads have been criticized before plenty of times. Exactly because as how Rick indicated, your work can be treaty as gospel. The high credibility in that does, however, carry over to in the eyes of some, when the person starts talking about sonething that is outside of the area that generated that high credibility. So other readers might then erraneously view everything in the other threads as unvaluable and everyone regardless of why they post is perceived as just another posturer. 

We're stuck with the war of words Rich. If not taken with interest, it'll just make it worse.

Posted
2 hours ago, RETAC21 said:

Interesting, could the allies have reached the Rhine by winter 1944 across most of its length? No Bulge then. Opens up interesting alternatives.

Okay, if Patton had been allowed to drive to the Seine with three corps on 8 August, he would have likely reached it between Paris and Elboeuf by the 12th or 14th. Nearly 150 kilometers in the German rear. So there would have been nine divisions in the German rear, rather than on their flank, with another twenty odd divisions pressing them from front and flank. Everything west of the Seine would have been threatened with annihilation and the Germans could not have executed the slow withdrawal of the front they managed between 14 and 18 August that saved quite a bit of their forces.

Not only would the divisions have suffered more, they would have lost the administrative elements that historically escaped. For the Panzerwaffe it would have meant the utter destruction of the 1., 2., 9., 10., and 12. SS-Panzer, the 2., 9., 21., 116., and Lehr Panzer, and the 17. SS-Panzergrenadier divisions. They would all have had to been rebuilt as new divisions. There would have been no Panzer remnants at Arnhem to delay 30 Corps. No Panzer remnants covering the approaches to the Westwall in Aachen, Metz, and Nancy. The only mobile forces available would have been the few Panzer-Brigaden, 11. Panzer, and, when they arrived from Italy, 3. and 15. Panzergrenadier.

The logistical issues dogging the American Army would not go away, so I suspect they would not close up along the length of the Rhine, but the Westwall would likely be bounced along its length. I suspect much of the grinding battles on the lower Rhine that so badly attritted British forces and those along the Roer and Saar that did the same to the Americans would simply not happen.

Posted

Al Irzyk was adamant that what Rich suggest in the last post is true.  He said there were two times where they went wrong and this was one of them.  He was going to work on a book but I don't know if it got done or not...

Posted
24 minutes ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

Al Irzyk was adamant that what Rich suggest in the last post is true.  He said there were two times where they went wrong and this was one of them.  He was going to work on a book but I don't know if it got done or not...

Patton's Juggernaut: The Rolling 8-Ball? It was published the year before his death in 2017. I haven't seen it though. He actually wrote a lot.

Posted

I don't remember.  I met him in 2006 or so in FL.  We pen palled til about 2014.  His last letter said that he wasn't going to be able to write anymore but that he was doing okay.  I know his handwriting was harder to read at the end.  His wife was there when we met and she was a real pistol

He was a go getter though.  I recall him being completely committed to Patton's methodology.  He talked about getting hit in his tank in winter of 1944 that the shell came in at such an angle that it cracked the armor rather than cut through it.  Maybe he said they couldn't turn the turret anymore.  It's been so long ago now...  I guess I let a lot of that stuff slip from my mind when I stopped doing the tank thing.

He also talked about going up on a ridgeline behind some Germans that had 88's in an ambush position and they caught them unawares and shot them up.  Irzyk said the ambush was perfectly concealed but totally obvious.  At that particular event he was in an M5 rather than an M4, I think.

 

One thing I feel like that I have learned is that eye witness accounts don't always line up with the facts.  Even the best, most observant witness can get confused.  There's a lot going on in combat and what a witness recollects isn't always the whole picture. (Not referring to Al Irzyk's recollections specifically, just recollections in general)

Posted
13 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

I don't remember.  I met him in 2006 or so in FL.  We pen palled til about 2014.  His last letter said that he wasn't going to be able to write anymore but that he was doing okay.  I know his handwriting was harder to read at the end.  His wife was there when we met and she was a real pistol

He was a go getter though.  I recall him being completely committed to Patton's methodology.  He talked about getting hit in his tank in winter of 1944 that the shell came in at such an angle that it cracked the armor rather than cut through it.  Maybe he said they couldn't turn the turret anymore.  It's been so long ago now...  I guess I let a lot of that stuff slip from my mind when I stopped doing the tank thing.

He also talked about going up on a ridgeline behind some Germans that had 88's in an ambush position and they caught them unawares and shot them up.  Irzyk said the ambush was perfectly concealed but totally obvious.  At that particular event he was in an M5 rather than an M4, I think.

 

One thing I feel like that I have learned is that eye witness accounts don't always line up with the facts.  Even the best, most observant witness can get confused.  There's a lot going on in combat and what a witness recollects isn't always the whole picture. (Not referring to Al Irzyk's recollections specifically, just recollections in general)

The best example of that was the capture of Tiger 131. Peter Gudgeon was convinced he was part of the action that captured the tank (which had some resonance as he was the officer in charge of evaluating it in the UK). As it turned out, an investigation after his death proved that he had indeed fought against a Tiger, but that was another actions some 10-20 miles away, that he conflated with the one where the Tiger was abandoned. I would imagine there was a hell of a lot of that kind of thing going on in postwar memoirs.

Sounds like a nice guy, I hope you kept those letters.

 

  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

   Most people forget Bradley was Chairman Joint Chiefs prior to and during the hot phase of the Korean War.   A lot of people blame Louis Johnson for the destruction of the US Military post WW2 but Bradley was complicit in which he carried out the gutting of the Military.   The Admiral's Revolt literally prevented the Navy from becoming a brown water littoral fleet and also prevented the Marine Corp from becoming a few under strength regiments subordinate to the Army.   He deserves the responsibility for the lack of preparation and equipping of our Armed Forces.   Not on my top 10  list.

Posted

That's a very good point.  It's too easy to overlook the period right after World War 2 and forget the effects that that time frame's activities had on Korea and Vietnam.

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