2 difficult ones
1) what would be the road space needed for a supply column of 170 trucks and what would be its possible average speed?
2)how many roads (+road space) would be needed for the advance of a small German mobile division ?
place : Russia
time: october 1941(operation Typhoon)

I know this is probably not what you are looking for but there is an interesting break down of logistics on the Eastern Front available on the web.

It may provide some answers then again it may not but I found it interesting none the less.

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...4a07p_0001.htm

As a lad I would watch convoys pass down the road for hour after hour. After one night convoy had passed by we went out and flattened in the road was a motorcycle dispatch rider who had fallen of his bike and the whole convoy must have run over him.

Originally Posted by MontyB

I know this is probably not what you are looking for but there is an interesting break down of logistics on the Eastern Front available on the web.

It may provide some answers then again it may not but I found it interesting none the less.

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...4a07p_0001.htm

Thank you,but I already consulted this source .
Could one not say that 100 trucks would need 10 km of road space ,resulting in the fact that a road of 10 km could handle only 100 trucs ?

Between each truck there was little over another trucks length between them, so a hundred truck convoy would take up the space of around 225 trucks which would be less than one km. When these convoys started rolling they stopped for nothing and dispatch riders would control every junction. We never reckoned on the distance they covered but how many hours they took to pass. Watching some of these convoys in southern england during WW2 prior to D Day were a sight that you would never forget

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

Between each truck there was little over another trucks length between them, so a hundred truck convoy would take up the space of around 225 trucks which would be less than one km. When these convoys started rolling they stopped for nothing and dispatch riders would control every junction. We never reckoned on the distance they covered but how many hours they took to pass. Watching some of these convoys in southern england during WW2 prior to D Day were a sight that you would never forget

In the RAF the space between trucks in convoy was 12 meters in town and 50 meters in open country.

I did convoy control in the TA in Germany with other DR's leap frogging each other, which at times could be scary, especially on the autobahns. On one convoy control I pulled up at a road junction in a town and waved through literally hundreds of trucks and Land Rovers.

The bike was a Can Am, which broke down later that night! The bloke in the background was a mad Welshman.

The slowest vehicle was always (usually) at the front of the convoy, the weird thing about convoys, the front truck would doing 50 kph, the rear truck could't keep up at 80kph.

Part of my job in the RMP during our wartime role was to monitor convoys, book them in to harbour areas, check for stragglers, provide traffic control at junctions etc.

Originally Posted by lljadw

Thank you,but I already consulted this source .
Could one not say that 100 trucks would need 10 km of road space ,resulting in the fact that a road of 10 km could handle only 100 trucs ?

You could say anything really because as indicated in that source supply transport was not uniform you had a mixture of everything from 30 ton haulers to 5 ton trucks and horse and cart.

In the absence of any hard data you would probably be better off using BritinAfrica's data as I don't imagine there would be a huge difference in logistics protocols just the level of mechanisation.

Well,I am looking for figures in wartime :I have a discussion in an other forum with some one who claims that after the Battles of Bryansk/Vyazma,there was no need for the whole AGC to advance to Moscow:4 mobile divisions would do the job.Something that I am challenging,because,I doubt that one division could advance on one road only:the road would be congested.From what I remember,when the first German units arrived at Dunkirk,a lot still were in the Ardennes .
And,I remember vaguely that only small units of the 2nd Army were liberating Brussels and Antwerp,the main part still being in France .
That's why I am searching how much road space a division would need that was using one road only .

During the war the roads would be taken over by the army and only the army would use them. There was the famous American Red Bull Express in France where there was continuous circle of trucks on the move the whole time. Now you could try looking up some fact and figures on that operation, and if I remember rightly that was to supply Patton's army while advancing. As crew got out of the lorry another would get and the whole just kept going.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ball_Express