Montgomery

Purely a one off. I'm now being told by my stepson for not getting on with it

All the best

Andreas

 

Moving on to the next chunk...

There is no doubt cap-badge rivalry played a part in the problem of effective combined-arms effort. Especially when set against the German model. Would an infantry battalion have been better served by having its own integral field guns? The RAC having a Close Support tank with a proper gun (a la Pz.IV with 75mm short) rather than a smoke mortar? And so on? The strict division of weapon systems by cap badge certainly played its part as did the relatively poor effort to work and train together before the war.

However, going deeper than the superficial suggests there was more to those issues than simply a different cap-badge.

Moreover, you seem to lift this issue from the perspective of cap-badge snobbery which I suggest is very wrong. British combined-arms ineffectiveness in the early desert battles, I suggest, had absolutely nothing whatseover to do with cavalry regiments reluctant to consort with gunners. Scott-Cockburn's unsupported frontal charge onto the Italian anti-tank guns at Bir el Gubi had nothing to do with being reluctant to consort with gunners and everything to do with incompetence. Poor understanding and application of doctrine played a part too. 6 months after BATTLEAXE, still the same column attached to an armoured brigade and no motor battalion.

 

The issue of commander competence, rather than doctrinal weakness (columns) or cap-badge hideboundness (cavalry) is a critical one, and it isn't pretty, because it probably, if dug into deeply, would hark back to some ingrained upper-class culture issues and the cliquishness of the public schools of England.

Some examples:

• Gatehouse ignored his orders on 19 November and missed a chance to defeat KG Stephan (see my forthcoming article in Scientia Militaria).
  
• Scott-Cockburn attacked a combined arms division with an unsupported regiment (not even a brigade) on 19 November.
• Davy exhorted his tank commanders to go alongside the German tanks and fight it out, like a latter-day Nelson.
  
• Davy and/or Campbell sent 6 RTR to their death across the skyline towards Belhamed, again unsupported on 21 November.
  
• Norrie lost control of his Armoured Corps on 19 November and let brigades fight individual actions, badly, because he couldn't believe that Rommel didn't do what he expected him to do. The only good decision Norrie made (ordering the TobFort breakout to start) was because he got things totally wrong.

The command layer of the RAC in the desert was exceptionally weak in autumn 1941. It is no surprise that many of these officers were quickly replaced and never served in field command again.

https://crusaderproject.wordpress.c...operation-fate-of-empire-commanding-officers/

But this isn't a comfortable conversation for the British, at all. Much easier to blame it all on conceptual issues that are nobody's fault.

All the best

Andreas

 

Scott Cockburn had the whole of 1 S.A. Bde Group standing by, who could have gone into the attack with 22 Armd Bde and he didn't call on them. That the man got a DSO instead of being cashiered in front of all ranks is another scandal.

All the best

Andreas

 

The conclusions drawn from this report were obviously deeply flawed, if judged by subsequent events.

a. The structure of the 1944 armoured division was very different from the 1940 one. It had a lot more infantry and guns of all sorts. The 1940 Armoured division failed repeatedly in North Africa and but and large became an administrative HQ for brigade groups

b. The "Lessons" from 1st Armoured Division's returnees would appear to have reinforced the folly of lack of co-operation practised in the Western Desert.

We fund it much harder to recognise the strengths and attributes of someone we do not like, than someone we admire. Montgomery's reputation suffers because of his personal obnoxiousness. He was a four letter word of a man and it is easy to dismiss his strengths.

There has been far more written about theoretical doctrine that the practicalities of turning doctrine into practice. Without practice the doctrine is just waffle. One of Montgomery's strengths was as a trainer.

Training, like morale is intangible. We can look at the technology and compare notes on the concepts, but it is much harder to see how well these were put into practice.

Between December 1940 and April 1941 Montgomery put his Corps through five field training exercises. One of which was set in the desert, using featureless maps of Wiltshire with a nominal armoured division and infantry division under command. His methods were copied across Home Forces - before export to the Middle East.

When did anyone practice the 1940 armoured division in battle? Was it war-gamed? Were there large scale manouvres to practice the handling of this formation in all phases of war? I suspect that other than bloody noses at Battleaxe, the big organisational test of British armoured formations was OP Bumper which involved four armoured and nine infantry divisions in a two sided exercise designed to test the structure of armoured Divisions. mOne of the stars in that show must have been Dick McCreery GOC 8th Armd Div(?)

 

Except that by and large Alex did whatever Montgomery asked him to do.

Brooke had sent Dick McCreery out earlier as an RAC adviser to Auchinlek, as "one of our best Amoured Division Commanders" and briefed McCreery on 3rd March 1942 but commented after the war that that he thought McCreery would have a difficult furrow to plough but had not expected that he would be practically ignored. Brooke obviously thought highly of McCreery as a practitioner of armoured warfare.

 

I'm not passing judgement on them. You asked a question, I answered it.

Yes. But so what? The same applied to every other army. Structural evolution was a thing, and could have multiple reasons. Martel's 1943 report, referring to experience in 1942 notes that this evolution had happened.

At which point it is important to note that while these views were noted, the conclusion was disregarding them and went with the Flanders view. That this wasn't applied in the desert is another topic altogether. What would be interesting is to see how far BUMPER was based on the premise that the conclusion in the report was correct, if indeed it played any role at all.

I suggest you get a hold of a copy of the report.

All the best

Andreas

 

RE 1 & 2. This arose because MarkN in post #61 appeared to claim that Op Battleaxe was conducted in accordance with "Handling of an Armoured Division" issued in May 1941.

If this battle was based on flawed untested doctrine then the previous criticism by Bidwell stands.

Returning to the topic of this thread. Montgomery would probably not have allowed himself to be pushed into fighting under unsound doctrine at odds with his own ideas.

He had been thinking about tactics for mobile warfare for some time and published his ideas in article in the RE Journal in 1937 on the Encounter Battle. As I mentioned in post #85, between December 1940 and April 1941, Montgomery had been training his corps (and himself) in fighting as an army corps of an infantry division and an armoured division in desert operations. I suspect that if parachuted in to command the Western Desert Force in May 1941 he would have been as bumptiously confident as he was in August 1942.

Exactly what he would have done and whether he would have fared better can only be speculation.

Can we move the non Montgomery Battleaxe discussion to one of the other threads devoted to this, OT albeit fascinating subject?

 

Perhaps the crux of the matter is to what extent the parallel experiences of the desert generals - and brigadiers - reinforced or revised Montgomery's theories. I don't think there's any doubt that he was prepared to learn from others' mistakes and that he would do his utmost to fight his battles his way. My question is whether he would have learned anything he didn't already know from BATTLEAXE?

 

And was that because Alexander was beholden to the aura of Saint Monty or because Montgomery was asking things which he knew Alexander would have little difficulty agreing to?

Indeed. And Bumper may have had something to do with that.

But again, I wish to suggest the deliberately chosen leadership group of Alexander, McCreery and Montgomery by Brooke was a key element to the success of Monty's Alamein. Even Brooke was concerned Montgomery would not be able to work with Auchinleck.

Turning full circle to your first oint, do you think Auckinleck wpuld have done everything Montgomery asked him to do?

 

I didn't. I pointed out a number of things where the BATTLEAXE organization conformed and rejected the extant doctrine.

I guess then the DS answer to Beresford-Peirce's planning was to ask Rommel for a time out until he go receive the latest doctrinal ideas and thoroughly test them out.

Yes. Resigning from his commission was always a possibility.

Yes. Anything that is not historical can only be speculated upon.

 

I appreciate the Montgomery link to Bumper pushes it to the top of the thread relevance list.

However, it would be incorrect to have Bumper as a start date for testing (new) armoured doctrine in the field.

Bumper was not designed to test the structure of armoured Division any more than it was testing the design of any other formation in the exercise.

No doubt the armoured divisions were practising their new organization and doctrine, but this was not the first exercise in that process. For example - and I'm picking this one as it links to Montgomery, McCreery and BATTLEAXE - Exercise Waterloo. An army level exercise pitting the equivalent of 2 corps fighting one another with about 100,000 troops participating.


Edited to note that Montgomery was still Commander XII Corps during Waterloo and was, at best, probably a guest to the exercise and not a participant. My mistake.

 

Mark old chap,

You don't like Montgomery do you?

I posted that Montgomery had been studying and exercising his own command in handling a corps with an armoured and and infantry division in a desert war setting. Based on what I have read, I postulated that if MOntgomery was parachuted into command of the western desert force he would be as arrogantly confident as he was in 1942. As a new broom he might have been granted some leeway to sweep clean.

It was probably far easier to play war in southern England than on the Libyan frontier, but not impossible. (Didn't O Connor do preliminary training for Op Compass?) What training was undertaken prior to ex Battleaxe? Were there study days? Cloth model exercises? TEWTS or CPXs? This was bread and butter to the Monty and the norm for the post war British Army. We tend to ignore the extent to which Monty's training methods have become the norm.

I could have written those anodyne exercise aims which cover almost everything. However, Monty's biographer has a couple of paragraphs on the significance of Bumper as a test of armoured forces. The only references in Brooke's diary to the events of the exercise suggests Brooke had a particular interest in armoured divisions.

1 Oct "..sad mishandling of armoured forces by higher commanders"
2 Oct "I am delighted with the way that armoured forces have come on, but disappointed at6 the way higher com,manders are handling them."

Bumper was a chance to look at operational manouvre - by armies. What were the tactical level exercises than proved the functioning of the armoured division?

 

Sheldrake dear chap,

I have nothing bad to say about Montgomery so have no reason to dislike him.

My opinion is that the success of Monty's Alamein has a lot to do with the leadership group as a whole and that that factor has been significantly understated by the histography extant. I take nothing away from Montgomery's efforts; I don't assume to bestow on him the plaudits rightly earned by others.

Flowing from that opinion, I summise that had he been made commander WDF in April or May 1941 vice Beresford-Peirce, the outcomes of BREVITY and BATTLEAXE would not have altered and he he would have been sacked in similar fashion. I do not believe the conditions were in place for success to be achieved by anybody. I think Beresford-Peirce is judged too harshly by post-war writing. For Bidwell to lash out he needs to prop up his arguments with falsehoods.

None of that indicates I have any negative feelings towards Montgomery in any way.

Perhaps your rhetorical question about my supposed dislike of him tells us more about your feeling on the subject.

Is your admiration of Montgomery as General and Commander so great that any word or thought that has the temerity to suggest that he may not have had the ability to conquer all, and may have had some help where he did conquor, has to be publically dismissed as hate speech?

I concur on the arrogantly confident, I disagree on the idea he gets the degree of leeway that changes the condition to winnable.

I repeat, this is no slur on Montgomery in any shape, size or form; it is a belief that the conditions surrounding the battle had far greater import on the outcome than the commander.

I don't doubt he would have stamped his feet until his soles wore out to get what he wanted, but I don't believe he would have got his way. It's no good harping on about what was his bread and butter if he's dining on a set menu. In September 1942, he was on the mess committee.

You could have done. But it doesn't change the historical reality that Bumper was set up for the benefit of corps and army commanders to test/practice their ability to handle such formations. The purpose of Bumper was not to give the armoured division their first attempt to shake down the latest organization and doctrine.

Amongst many other issues, senior British officers had had almost no experience at handling such large forces and results on the battlefield reflected that. Brooke knew it hence why he set it up. The (abundant) use of the armoured division (3 of the 4 then extant in the UK) is no coincidence in at least two respects. The employment of armoured divisions was going to be the norm moving forward and there was even less corporate understanding of how they should be handled at corps and army level than there was in the handling of such formations without them.

Across Waterloo and Bumper, 3 army and 4 corps commanders got the opportunity to practice the above.

Sorely needed, I suggest.

Again, none of this is in any way a slur on Montgomery. I just don't see how everything about Bumper has to be written in such a way as to make it look like Montgomery was a the font of all military genius - which is where your words lead.

Yep, they were still long way short of what was needed.

Lots and lots of TEWTS to begin with due to lack of tanks. As you would expect, gradual build up through scale: regiment > brigade > division then onto the likes of Waterloo and Bumper once enough tanks existed to put them into the field.

 

I'm sorry, but why? If there's one thing you have in Egypt it's space.

They weren't 'Monty's training methods'. I can't speak for BATTLEAXE but there is photo and war diary evidence of TobFort conducting sand table exercises for the breakout about ten days before, which went down to fairly junior level. I need to look into some war diaries but expect similar things happened in 30 and 13 Corps.

The German also did a sand table exercise for their assault planning on Tobruk in the first days of November 1941, and I doubt Monty shared his insights with them.

All the best

Andreas

 

It's actually just come out.

A reassessment of the tank battle between 4th Armoured Brigade and Panzerregiment 5 during Operation Crusader in North Africa on 19 November 1941 | Scientia Militaria - South African Journal of Military Studies

All the best

Andreas

 

My belief is that Montgomery was comfortable with set piece battles where two forces faced one another along an extended and well defined front line. I feel this flows from his WW1 experience which Sheldrake pointed out much earlier in the thread. I do not think he was alone in this respect as I discern that as being the default mindset of senior British officers of the time.

From that observation, I summize a number of things including, but not limited to:
- the early war desert battles placed so many out of their comfort zone and the results seen are a consequence of this
- Monty's Alamein was the first real chance in the desert for those with that mindset to shine
- Montgomery took that opportunity and didn't look back
- there were probably others who could have achieved the same outcome

Would he have learned anything from being WDF commander vice Beresford-Peirce? Probably a huge amount. I suspect Beresford-Peirce and many others did in historical reality.

 

Andreas,

That's not quite what Davy said though -

'This will be a tank commander's battle. No tank commander will go far wrong if he places his gun within killing range of an enemy'.

That's hardly a recommendation to pull alongside and board. Eye patch or no eye patch.

I'd be interested to see 7th Armd Bde accounts of Battleaxe and whether they thought they'd learnt anything. I did note that Davy said in his Nov '41 memorandum:

"Commanders must guard against using too great forces against small objectives, to the detriment of the main battle. This applies both to the handling of units and to the choice of weapons. The 2-pr and its ammunition must be reserved for penetrating armour."

Is that a veiled hint that his tank regiments shouldn't be used to attack fortified anti-tank, infantry and artillery positions?

Do you mean on 19 November? 1 SA Bde weren't under command of Scott Cockburn that day were they though? They weren't even under command of 7th Armoured Division. The SA OH hardly suggests that they were champing at the bit to get involved in a tank battle either.

Additionally, according to the SA OH account, the description of 22nd Armoured Brigade's encounter battle with Ariete has much less of a blind cavalry charge about it than the critics of British tank units and tactics would have us believe. Scott Cockburn apparently reported encountering enemy forces to 7th Armd Div HQ and was ordered to attack. When the RGH ran into trouble the other regiments of the brigade were sent to work round a flank. That doesn't sound like a blind cavalry charge either.

Regards

Tom

 

Check your PMs.

 

Okay, if you want to believe that he used that phrasing by accident...

I read that as a hint that they were supposed to use the Besa.

Yes, 19 November. They would have been able to intervene, and had received a warning order to that effect in the morning and been informed that 7 Armd Div would move against Bir el Gobi. They were only 12 miles away when they stopped. While later the South Africans have a lot to answer for, this time they were primed to intervene and simply ignored by the tankies. Instead at 1230 they were ordered to move to Qaret Hamza and take up defensive (!) positions there. I.e. before the mess at el Gobi kicked off.

But was he ordered to attack with one regiment only instead of the brigade, and was he ordered to not make use of the supporting arms?

How do you call a cavalry charge against a fortified enemy position where the extent of the position is not known, and no prior reconnaissance worth mentioning took place in the area that was supposed to be the flank? 'Blind' seems fitting.

Keep in mind he either i) was fully aware Ariete was at el Gobi and had had time to dig in, or ii) had not paid attention to his intel briefings. It's one or the other, and the only discussion to be had is which of the two is worse.

All the best

Andreas