Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Cfant2

Thanks for this interesting AAR. I played the scenario years ago against the AI, but you know... the AI never achieved a good frontline. So it's interesting to see a hotseat-game, seems to be a realistic process of the game.
Two questions:

1. Artillery counter have strong values - is there infantry included, or will they RBC?
2. Turn one - would it have been an alternativa to march into the gap south of St. Quentin?

Bye the way: 8 combat turns on turn 1 - that's amazing! Is there a major shock bonus?

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ORIGINAL: Cfant2

Speaking of this two gaps:



I don't know the movement rates of the german counters, but given the overcrowded hexes, it might be valuable to send some into the holes of the allied defense. If they have enough movement points of course.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

(4. The Forces: The composition of the forces is very similar. However, the Germans, thanks to their tactics, have a significant edge in movement allowances, and enjoy the benefit of the Special Forces icon on all their Stosstruppen units. Their squads tend to be a step above the Allied squads. They have a proficiency advantage as well (all of these factors are to model the Germany’s improved tactics). And the Germans are a homogeneous force, while the Allies must combine British with French – sometimes giving an edge in cooperation. The Allies, however, have a smattering of tanks and armored cars that may stiffen their resistance. Both sides have huge artillery concentrations – this was World War I, after all.

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

That's not really true tho - by 1918 the western allies were fully conversant with infiltration tactics and using them almost exclusively - and the British especially combined them with the pre-eminent artillery of the war to great effect.

for these German offensives many allied units were not well trained to be sure, and infiltration tactics are not much use of the defence, and the appropriate defensive tactics of defence in depth with multiple zones was particularly not much used by the 5th army.

successful allied implementation of surprise and infiltration was demonstrated by Australians at Hamel in July. Certainly such tactics could only be successfully implemented by well trained troops - which the Germans had in their initial offensives, and the allies were able to additionally use massed armour and superb artillery tactics that the Germans did not have.

it was the allied attacks from Hamel onward that are really the first "modern warfare" - the infantry-only infiltration the Germans used was but a stepping stone that lacked an all-arms approach because the Germans didn't have all arms available.

The difference shows in the strategic effects - the German offensives suffered massive casualties, especially among the highly trained stosstruppen, and eventually failed. teh allied combined arms attacks tore the German front line "a new one" from which it never recovered.

I don't think it matters too much in eth context of this game tho - since it is concerned just with the German offensives :)

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

Here you go - actually back up to page 261 for the bit about bypassing defences that can't be overcome - and this was for the Canadians at Passchendaele.

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

I wasn't comparing results - I was comparing tactics.

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As I pointed out - Allied infiltration tactics were different from German ones - they were much more advanced, using combined arms that the Germans simply did not have.

And in eth 100 days they were also much more successful than the German offensives.

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

Here you go - actually back up to page 261 for the bit about bypassing defences that can't be overcome - and this was for the Canadians at Passchendaele.

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

I am quite puzzled by this ferocious defence of the idea that the allies did not use infiltration tactics when quite clearly they did.

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ORIGINAL: wodin

You will also learn that the walking slowly in a line after going over the top was not the usual way of doing things, it was used during the first day of the Somme as they presumed the German lines would be flattened and due to the soldiers attacking where nearly all citizen soldiers it was felt this was the best way to keep control and bounding tactics would be to much to expect from them. Some germans state that if the British had rushed the trenches they wouldn't have had a chance. This walking in formation in a line to be mown down was NOT how WW1 was fought.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

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ORIGINAL: wodin

You will also learn that the walking slowly in a line after going over the top was not the usual way of doing things, it was used during the first day of the Somme as they presumed the German lines would be flattened and due to the soldiers attacking where nearly all citizen soldiers it was felt this was the best way to keep control and bounding tactics would be to much to expect from them. Some germans state that if the British had rushed the trenches they wouldn't have had a chance. This walking in formation in a line to be mown down was NOT how WW1 was fought.

Did you see the quote I posted in #40? That wasn't the first day. Linear tactics were SOP for most of the war.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


I just go where the evidence takes me. The results are the evidence. Everything else is irrelevant. The Allies did not have any results that could in any way be compared to Caporetto or Kaiserschlacht prior to Kaiserschlacht. The one surprising success they did have was due to massed tanks (Cambrai). So how can anyone know just how advanced, if at all, their infantry tactics really were?

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

By looking at the evidence of how they trained and what tactics the used.

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Sorry you think that is irrelevant, but it seems to me that going by "results" alone does not tell you anything about the tactics at all - the Schliefflen plan didn't use infiltration tactics, and did much better than the Kaiserschlacht.

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In the place of a single line of riflemen, SS143 promoted the self contained platoon comprising a small HQ and four sections of specialists. In simple terms, the attack was to be led forward by bomb and rifle sections, with the rifle grenade and Lewis gun sections following close behind. Upon contact with the enemy, the rifles and the bombers were to seek out the enemy flank and attack with fire, bayonet and bomb. The rifle grenadiers and Lewis gun team were to attempt to suppress the enemy, allowing the other sections to press home their attack.

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The first German assault battalions took part in the titanic struggle at Verdun in 1916 and this is erroneously cited as the first example of infiltration tactics. The British had already begun to implement wholesale changes in their minor tactical doctrine as early as the Battle of Loos in 1915. Immediately after the Battle of Loos, nearly a year before Rohr used his assault battalions at Verdun, the British infantry platoons in the company were being divided by their distinctively different roles. The fighting platoons were to press forward with all haste and find and exploit any weakness in the enemy line. The support platoon was to pin the enemy in their position by suppression fire. (Suppression fire differs from normal firing. Suppression fire is to be heavy and concentrated at one place so that the enemy does not dare raise his head over the parapet of the trench or firing slit of the bunker to fire at the advancing troops. Normal fire is a deliberate attempt to wound or kill the enemy and is not aimed at causing the enemy to seek and remain behind cover.) The third type of platoon was the carrying platoon whose job was to storm the trench or strong point. The last group was the mopping up platoon. Their job was to destroy or capture any enemy strong point or enemy stragglers.[17] The British employed this type of attack first on a large scale in 1916. These tactics were very similar to the German Stormtrooper tactics that would be copied and then employed on a large scale at Cambrai in November 1917. Previously to the Battle of Cambrai, the Germans utilized small Stormtrooper units that had been trained in the new tactics. These Stormtrooper units were attached to larger infantry units which used the older tactics. During the winter of 1917 and 1918, the entire German Army on the Western Front underwent training in the new tactics. Thus contrary to popular myth, the British adopted these tactics throughout their entire army fully a year before the Germans.

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ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

"Vague words on paper"? Really?? How about the British manual for infantry tactics, originally published February 1917??
Is that a little better perhaps than "vague words on paper"?

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In the place of a single line of riflemen, SS143 promoted the self contained platoon comprising a small HQ and four sections of specialists. In simple terms, the attack was to be led forward by bomb and rifle sections, with the rifle grenade and Lewis gun sections following close behind. Upon contact with the enemy, the rifles and the bombers were to seek out the enemy flank and attack with fire, bayonet and bomb. The rifle grenadiers and Lewis gun team were to attempt to suppress the enemy, allowing the other sections to press home their attack.

the full text of the manual is available here in txt format from an American reprint - unfortunately the platoon formation diagrams in het appendices at the end don't reproduce in txt :/

Or the assessment of allied tactics in 1917 in this Leavenworth paper on the evolution of German tactics in WW1 - which assesses Nivelles 1917 offensive at Amiens - the page below highlights both the innovative tactics....and how the French screwed up their application.

And here's another analysis of het evolution of allied infantry tactics:

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The first German assault battalions took part in the titanic struggle at Verdun in 1916 and this is erroneously cited as the first example of infiltration tactics. The British had already begun to implement wholesale changes in their minor tactical doctrine as early as the Battle of Loos in 1915. Immediately after the Battle of Loos, nearly a year before Rohr used his assault battalions at Verdun, the British infantry platoons in the company were being divided by their distinctively different roles. The fighting platoons were to press forward with all haste and find and exploit any weakness in the enemy line. The support platoon was to pin the enemy in their position by suppression fire. (Suppression fire differs from normal firing. Suppression fire is to be heavy and concentrated at one place so that the enemy does not dare raise his head over the parapet of the trench or firing slit of the bunker to fire at the advancing troops. Normal fire is a deliberate attempt to wound or kill the enemy and is not aimed at causing the enemy to seek and remain behind cover.) The third type of platoon was the carrying platoon whose job was to storm the trench or strong point. The last group was the mopping up platoon. Their job was to destroy or capture any enemy strong point or enemy stragglers.[17] The British employed this type of attack first on a large scale in 1916. These tactics were very similar to the German Stormtrooper tactics that would be copied and then employed on a large scale at Cambrai in November 1917. Previously to the Battle of Cambrai, the Germans utilized small Stormtrooper units that had been trained in the new tactics. These Stormtrooper units were attached to larger infantry units which used the older tactics. During the winter of 1917 and 1918, the entire German Army on the Western Front underwent training in the new tactics. Thus contrary to popular myth, the British adopted these tactics throughout their entire army fully a year before the Germans.

(emphasis is mine)

honestly - there is bucketloads of information available now, and really no excuse for the serious wargamer to reproduce any of the hoary old myths of WW1 tactics.

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The results tell you the effects of the tactics AND of the defence, and all the other conditions that applied during the combat - it is silly to take one without the others.

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For what it's worth I did mention earlier on that I didn't think your gradings were wrong for these scenarios!

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Well, those designs strongly leveraged Stosstruppen combat strength relative to all others in order to account for their superior tactics.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

What's striking is not the different tactics of the lead German units in the Spring offensive, but the fact that those units were put together from the best personnel from each unit. As SMK has demonstrated, these tactical innovations were known to the Allies well before 1918, ...

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but by concentrating their best men in a few units, the Germans were able to achieve an offensive momentum previously impossible.

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It's easy to see how big a factor this could be when one considers the post-Second World War US study which found that only around two in ten soldiers actively seeks to shoot and kill the enemy. Pick those two men from every ten and put them in the same unit and you will end up with an army of which 20% is extremely lethal, and 80% of which is largely useless.

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Ultimately, though, this was a false dawn for the German army. Even these elites were only able to advance 40 miles, and the real decider of the campaign- attrition- was not in their favour once the quality of the troops is factored in.

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The 80% was then left over, and the Allies rolled over it in their Summer offensive.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Regardless of what they may have "known", I remain dubious that the Allies actually could match the Germans in that regard.

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I think a good case can be made that the Allies didn't even grasp infiltration tactics until they were hit over the head with them shortly after May, 1940. They fully expected it to be WWI all over again.

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They did select for youth, experience, and fitness. But they also got weeks of special training in infiltration tactics. I doubt that they selected for who was willing to fire their weapon at the enemy (how would that even have been determined?).

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I find it dubious that 80% of soldiers are useless. More likely is that they didn't restrict that study to front line squads. Most of the US Army in WWII was rear-area, so most soldiers didn't ever even encounter an enemy.

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Regardless, most firepower is provided by artillery, mortars, and machine guns.

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By that line of reasoning, May, 1940, was a false dawn for the German Army, too.

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Let's not forget the huge American reinforcements and the use of massed tank combat.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

If you go to the source that SMK quoted, it provides a number of specific examples of sophisticated infantry tactics being employed by the British Army prior to 1918, with references to diaries and journals of individual soldiers.

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What they expected was the campaign they were preparing for in 1919.

You're painting a picture of the Allied armies sending men forward in columns right up until the Armistice. That's a cliche but not one that's accurate. Actually, the Allies were feeling their way toward a good combined arms solution to the problem of trench warfare, and one which proved to actually work in the second half of 1918. The problem in 1940 was that in the intervening 20 years technology had made it possible for the attacker to deliver concentrated power well beyond the zone of battle that existed in the First World War.

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That they fire their weapons isn't the point; I was merely illustrating that most men in combat arms are- quite understandably- not interesting in killing the enemy or winning the battle, but only in surviving. The balance are the men who were drawn out for the Spring 1918 offensives.

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It is in the forward and battle zones, but Allied lines stretched back behind these. The difference here is that the Germans were able to continue to be effective offensively outside the range of the bulk of their artillery, which was virtually immobile during the battle. Here, the ability of riflemen to actually aggressively attack the enemy is going to be critical- even if most casualties are still by machine gun fire.

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In what world are these situations analogous?

In 1918, the Germans suffered roughly equal casualties with their best troops against the Allies average, and in doing so they advanced forty miles in a limited sector of the front.

In 1940, the Germans caused twice the casualties that they suffered even before counting prisoners. Including prisoners brings that ratio to about 12 to 1. They overran the whole of the Low Countries and northeastern France in three weeks.

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Had massive additions of men produced rapid, decisive advances in 1915, 1916 or 1917? Moreover if you believe the British hadn't mastered modern infantry tactics by 1918, it's fantasy to think the US Army had done so.

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Had massed deployment of armour produced decisive results at Cambrai and elsewhere? Note also that British analysts determined that the addition of tanks to an infantry assault only marginally increased the chance of success, and not as much as simple pouring in more shells.

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The difference in 1918 was that the German army had loss hundreds of thousands of its best men and was essentially a shell.