Napalm the bocage!

Hi MontyB
It is very difficult to counter attack when the trees have been wiped out by fire and you have to face lots of tanks and planes.

Hi 84RFK,
You're obviously not familiar with the French casualties incurred in carpet bombing, naval shelling, etc in Normandy, the Filipino causalties caused by American artillery in Manila, etc, Liberating is often expensive. Trees are certainly not a valuable asset, compared to humans and population density in the bocage was quite low. Placing nepalm with small planes is quite accurate, so much so that they destroyed many foxholes, etc,

It is surprising that Canada with a much smaller population and stake in the war provided 10 divisions, compared to 6 from Britain, yet the Canadians yielded command to Monty. Moreover, Churchill asked for Canadian casualties to be counted as British. Most importantly, Ike put a much larger American force under Monty's command and didn't demote Monty until he performed dismally and then put Bradley in charge of the American troops and the British press and people were quite bitter about it.
 
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samneanderthal said:
Hi MontyB
It is very difficult to counter attack when the trees have been wipe out by fire and you have to face lots of tanks and planes.

Hi 84RFK,
You're obviously not familiar with the French casualties incurred in carpet bombing, naval shelling, etc in Normandy, the filipino causalties caused by American artillery in Manila, etc, Liberating is often expensive. Trees are certainly not a valuable asset, compared to humans and population density in the bocage was quite low. Placing nepalm with small planes is quite accurate, so much so that they destroyed many foxholes, etc,

It is surprising that Canada with a much smaller population and stake in the war provided 10 divisions, compared to 6 from Britain, yet the Canadians yielded command to Monty. Moreover, Churchill asked for Canadian casualties to be counted as British. Most importantly, Ike put a much larger American force under Monty's command and didn't demote Monty until he performed dismally and then put Bradley in charge of the American troops and the British press and people were quite bitter about it.
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Again you are talking out of your arse

*Any American troops in the vicinity of Argentan were ordered to be withdrawn.*This order effectively halted the southern pincer movement of General Haislip's XV Corps.

Though General Patton protested the order, he obeyed it, leaving an exit - a 'trap with a gap' - for the remaining German forces. Around 20-50,000 German troops (leaving almost all of their heavy material) escaped through the gap, avoiding encirclement and almost certain destruction. They would later be reorganized and rearmed in time to slow the Allied advance into Holland and Germany.

Most of the blame for this outcome has been placed on Bradley. Bradley had incorrectly assumed, based on*Ultra*decoding transcripts, that most of the Germans had already escaped encirclement, and he feared a German counterattack as well as possible friendly fire casualties.*Though admitting a mistake had been made, Bradley placed the blame on General Montgomery for moving the Commonwealth troops too slowly, though the latter were in direct contact with a large number of SS Panzer,*Fallschirmjaeger, and other elite German forces.

Pick the bones out of that you prat.
 
Bradley's A soldier's Story is great reading, though you will probably call it fiction

By the way, the brilliant Polish General who closed Falaise did not receive a pension from Britain, but tended bar in a London hotel at age 80 to make a living.
Churchill and Monty made excellent use of troops from Poland, Australia, South Africa, India, Canada, New Zealand, free France, etc, but not very good use of British troops.

The experienced Monty was so slow in Sicily, that the rooky Patton had to bypass him and request permission to advance on his own and then covered impressive territory in a short time, to Monty's dismay.
 
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samneanderthal said:
Hi MontyB
It is very difficult to counter attack when the trees have been wiped out by fire and you have to face lots of tanks and planes.

Hi 84RFK,
You're obviously not familiar with the French casualties incurred in carpet bombing, naval shelling, etc in Normandy, the Filipino causalties caused by American artillery in Manila, etc, Liberating is often expensive. Trees are certainly not a valuable asset, compared to humans and population density in the bocage was quite low. Placing nepalm with small planes is quite accurate, so much so that they destroyed many foxholes, etc,

It is surprising that Canada with a much smaller population and stake in the war provided 10 divisions, compared to 6 from Britain, yet the Canadians yielded command to Monty. Moreover, Churchill asked for Canadian casualties to be counted as British. Most importantly, Ike put a much larger American force under Monty's command and didn't demote Monty until he performed dismally and then put Bradley in charge of the American troops and the British press and people were quite bitter about it.
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Done much counterattacking?

The primary dispersment of napalm in WWII was through the usage of 165-gallon containers. A single firebomb dropped from an airplane at low-altitude was capable of producing damage to a 2500-yd2 area. Bombing at very low levels (25 feet) was satisfactory, but the effectiveness of the bomb was reduced to some extent by its skipping when it hit.

It is not a precision weapon. It’s most effective against tanks, troops in trenches, and inflammable targets.
 
Skipping bombs is used against water-borne targets. It´s possible to skip bombs off the surface of the water in a very predictable way.

It was actually the British, early in September, 1939, who first tried low-level and skip bombing tactics against actual naval targets with mixed success. But they continued with these types of attacks and developed a workable method of consistently hitting moving ships. Not to be confused with Skip bombing was the Bouncing bomb. A bomb designed specifically to bounce to a target across water in a calculated manner, in order to avoid obstacles such as torpedo nets, and to allow both the bomb's speed on arrival at the target and the timing of its detonation to be pre-determined.
 
The Americans also used skip bombing in the early Mustangs when they found they were not very good in aerial combat
 
Barnes Wallis stated that Nelson used it at Trafalgar against the French and Spanish ships.

I wouldn't be surprised if neanderthal says Nelson lost at Trafalgar, was a useless commander and Barnes Wallis copied the bouncing bomb from someone else.
 
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LeEnfield said:
Quote
That is vey superficial :as far as I know,the broad front advance was the only option possible,because an advance on a narrow front was excluded by logistics.


Are you saying that the Allies were the only country that logistical problems, there was only one major attempt to cut of the retreating German armies and that was at Falsie, and even that was half hearted. When ever the situation arose when this could have been it was vetoed by Ike. The only time German troops were surrounded and left was in the French Ports
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At the end of november 1944,incomplete German loss figures on the western front since 6 june 1944 were :516000 men,of which 398000 MIA (most of them being POW)
Source :WWII Stats .
2 Sources on the broad front/narrow front discussion
on Armchair General :Broad front versus narrow thrust strategy
Logistics and the Broad front (by Ruppenthal )
 
The Turks used it to blockade Constantinople, sinking a Venetian ship with a cannon from a fortification. However, skipping implies retaining a high velocity and a low trajectory, otherwise it is rather bouncing. A P-47 flying a few feet above the treetops is much more likely to smash the container against the trees that to make it bounce over them.
 
Sorry, you are right, Monty was indeed a brilliant commander, in 1942 in el Alamein II, soon after Rommel had been trounced in el Alamein I (but not finished off, by the likewise brilliant Auchinleck) he used over 100,000 Anzacs, Indians, Frenchmen, etc, fighting with incredible amounts of American fuel, tanks, planes, cannon and ammunition and in heavily mined and long prepared defenses just to stop Rommel (who was over 1,000 miles away from his ports), short of fuel, water, ammunition, tanks (using many tanks captured from the British), planes and men and could not finish him off, just because Rommel had a few 88 mm cannon (which the German had been using very efficiently for antitank purposes since 1939, but the brilliant Brits couldn't imitate 3 years into the war).

Monty also shone in Sicily, where he allowed hundreds of thousands of Italian and German troops to escape dragging his feet.

Monty also shone in Libya, Tunisia, Caen, Falaise, Market Garden and Germany.
Long live Monty. But please do not compare him with Nelson, who had 10 times more guts and brains and 10 times less ego, was out numbered and in an era when the British fought their battles and made their ships and cannon.
 
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samneanderthal said:
Sorry, you are right, Monty was indeed a brilliant commander, in 1942 in el Alamein II, soon after Rommel had been trounced in el Alamein I (but not finished off, by the likewise brilliant Auchinleck) he used over 100,000 Anzacs, Indians, Frenchmen, etc, fighting with incredible amounts of American fuel, tanks, planes, cannon and ammunition and in heavily mined and long prepared defenses just to stop Rommel (who was over 1,000 miles away from his ports), short of fuel, water, ammunition, tanks (using many tanks captured from the British), planes and men and could not finish him off, just because Rommel had a few 88 mm cannon (which the German had been using very efficiently for antitank purposes since 1939, but the brilliant Brits couldn't imitate 3 years into the war).
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Well you don't beat an enemy by being on equal terms numbnut. As for an anti tank gun, Britain had a brilliant anti tank gun in the 3.7

samneanderthal said:
Monty also shone in Sicily, where he allowed hundreds of thousands of Italian and German troops to escape dragging his feet.
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Yes he did shine in Sicily, but as far as I am aware, it was a British/US operation, so what you are saying the Americans were not at fault for allowing Germans and Italians to escape, but the British were?

samneanderthal said:
Monty also shone in Falaise and in Market Garden.
Long live Monty. But please do not compare him with Nelson, who had 10 times more guts and brains and 10 times less ego, was out numbered and in an era when the British fought their battles and made their ships and cannon.
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You need to remember it was Bradley who wanted the Germans to escape from the Falaise pocket, Monty was tied up with German special forces and para's. As far as Market Garden, we are all aware after the event, Monty saw a chance to shorten the war and he took it. Unfortunately it didn't pay off.

Monty never sat in an armchair criticising others, he went to war and saw the horrors of WW1, he changed a lot that was wrong with the British Army in WW1.

Monty was more of a man then you will ever be, to be honest you and people like you are not fit to lick his feet, let alone criticise.

As I keep telling you, why don't you come right out with it and say you are anti-British. Are you that much of a coward?
 
Yes the 3.7 was brilliant, but had less than half the effective range of the 88

Alexander the Great, Caesar, Nelson, Rommel, Napoleon, Guderian, the Tiger of Malaya, etc, beat their enemies with much inferior numbers, let alone equal terms.

The problem with the Americans is that they thought that after a few battles, Monty had acquired experience. Too bad Ike did not put the Polish general I mentioned before who ended up as a bar tender, in charge of the invasion he was far above Monty in brains and guts, or even Patton. It was a combined operation under British leadership. Patton was under Monty and he had to ask their Bitish superior permission to advance on his own. Ike's big mistake. Like I said it is remarkable that the british provided the fewest men and equipment and kept the leadership.

Monty did sit in an armchair criticizing Bradley, Ike, etc, and claiming that if they had listened to him war would have ended a few days after landing in Normandy. His mouth was as big as his ego. He was lucky that ike's brain was much larger than his ego or Monty would have been dismissed.

I have told you I am not anti British, I admire Wellington, Nelson, Slim, Tedder, O´Connor, etc, But am amazed at the incompetence of most British leaders in WW I and of Churchill, Ritchie, Mountbatten, Auchinleck, Wavell, etc, I have even defended Percival in my thread about Churchill's blunder in Singapore. It is interesting that Churchill replaced Auchinleck with Monty in NA for not finishing off Rommel in el Alamein I, but he rewarded Monty for doing exactly the same in el Alamein II. So desperate was Churchill to manufacture a heroic commander.
 
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