Sledgehammer 1942

Further to British opinion between the April and July 1942 meetings with Marshall et al. This is WSC's response to the COS Committee paper to the War Cabinet of 6 June 1942 (an interesting date!) entitled Operations on the Continent in 1942:





Reading this it did strike me that some of the criticism of Sledgehammer may in fact be owing to some conflation between Sledgehammer and Imperator. It's also interesting to see Churchill's linkage of the launching of Sledgehammer not to Russian weakness but to evident Russian strength and resultant German "demoralization".

If anyone would like to see the COS paper just let me know and I can add it to the thread.

Regards

Tom

 

Yes, I think you are right and now that explains the confusion Kennedy shows on p. 213 of The Business of War where he lumps Sledgehammer in with raiding operations and even adds that Sledgehammer "was strongly supported by all three Services" in late March 1942. Now, I would love to say that Sledgehammer has the support of all three British services at the time, but I know from original source documents that was not the case so I didn't bring it up before (edit: I've had the book for years but have not found in particularly helpful in that it does not agree with archival documents). In his defense he is writing 15 years after the event, probably without the relevant files, about an operation that never happened and because of that has almost no significance compared to the grander events he comments on elsewhere in the book. So a mix up with Imperator makes a lot of sense.

I also see nothing in any of the planning documents about "the great stretches of sea coast behind it [the neck of the Cotentin Peninsula] would also have had to be defended" and for good reason because it makes no sense. Anyways the plan says you'll need 3 divisions to defend the neck of the peninsula, so even if it takes 4 and you have 3 in reserve right behind it that leaves another to defend (against what? German raids?) the rest of the Cotentin (edit: on the premise of a buildup to 8 divisions which is the max the plan envisions at first). You might also check out Hinkley 191 if you require further evidence of how unnecessary that would be.

 

Sorry, I had in my mind what I was going to say in my post before I saw yours and thus was thinking of Porch's unqualified statement about the necessity of wearing Germany down. But you are right, I should have been more careful and taken your response into account...

Not really, at least in the way I think you think it is. German tank production peaks in 1944 while British and American tank production goes way down, especially in early 1944. In 1942 Britain produces 8,611 AFVs (not counting 9,253 imports) while Germany produces just 6,174. In the first 6 months of 1944 Britain produces 2,474 AFVs while the corresponding figure for Germany is 8,929 (David Edgerton, Britain's War Machine, 220). One might say "well of course Gary, the British and the Americans have already produced so many they don't really need to make that many more later in the war" and my reply would be "exactly my point!" What you see in the graph below I like to describe as an armored wave ready to break down on Germany in 1943, except that it never happens because the tanks involved stay in the US, or are otherwise mostly sitting unused somewhere in the UK.



But relative production figures are really not the question. You can pretty much bet that most any German AFV that is produced is going to be in a combat zone within weeks. The same does not hold for Anglo-American production, so such comparisons are highly misleading. What is really significant is the relative numbers of weapons that each side can bring to a common battlefield. By Feb 20, 1943 the German Army has just 1,300 operational tanks (Mk III or better), a number that is almost sure to be at least 200-300 less if Sledgehammer goes forward and maintains itself in France. With just around 2,000 Shermans and 1,000 Churchill and other British tanks you stand to have a 5:1 advantage in tanks even in the unlikely case that Germany can spare fully half its tanks for the West, a ratio probably about the same as late July 1944 but at a time when new tank production is very low and most German tanks are the obsolescent, inferior Mk III. A defeat in Normandy in early 1943 is much more difficult for Germany to recover from than in late summer of 1944 due to tank production alone.

The story for fighters is effectively the same - exceptionally vulnerable to systemic defeat in early 1943 due to fuel shortages (see below).

As far as gasoline and diesel if it were not 10, or more likely, 20 times as much as Torch I would be surprised, with the caveat that if you haven't got it (in October for Sledgehammer) you can't consume it. Here is a graph I could have included before that shows 7th Panzer's gasoline situation (by way of comparison on the eve of Overlord your average Panzer Div. in France has 700,000 - 1 million liters of gas on hand, 700 - 1,000 cu meters; it's hard to see on the graph, but the high point for 7th Pz between Oct 5 and 20 is less than 19 cu meters on October 12, and the average during that period is less than 8 cu meters). As you can see the crisis abates somewhat in late October and enters a merely "tight" situation in early November. Hopefully soon I will go into how British Intelligence was fooling Hitler early October into thinking that an invasion of Cherbourg was coming (once Sledgehammer was cancelled its basic outline was converted into a cover for Torch), but even then you can see 7th Panzer, one of only 3 Panzer Divisions in the West is woefully under-supplied with gas for weeks. I don't have figures for the other 2 other Panzer divsions (though I have tried to find them!), but I do know that 6th Panzer has stopped driver training due to lack of fuel. All of that, over and above the supply figures themselves, scream severe fuel shortage, as does a lot of other evidence I'll leave for later. It's the same for the GAF that has to shut down 4 of its 5 fighter pilot schools at the time. You don't do that if you are not desperately short of fuel.

In the first 3 months probably not. After that requires a longer answer. Maybe later.

The nuance I was referring to was that it wasn't, of course, a matter of an Italian taken to Germany and then a couple weeks later a German soldier comes back to fight in Italy. It's really a net offset that benefits the manpower build up divisions defending the West in the months prior to Overlord (long story short).

 

Yes, the landing at Utah Beach also missed its mark as well, but by more than a mile, I think. The best I can tell maybe most US landing craft in the first wave for Overlord landed in the wrong place (not sure about this, but it seemed like the British crewed landing craft did better, even ones transporting American troops).

For Torch, which consisted of several invasion areas across almost 1000 miles, you had like 9 different landing zones. So lets take a landing of 2 battalions abreast. That takes around 33 LCAs, so for Torch you would want 300 well-trained crews for that first wave, and an equal number for the next wave (I am not pretending these are the real numbers, I'm just illustrating the problem). But you do not have as many landing zones for Sledgehammer. There is really just one main landing zone in the plan, but say it expands to 3 zones you are only talking about 100 crews for the first wave and another 100 for the second wave, so overall you only need 100-200 well trained crews to assault the beach where the defenses are extremely weak; after that the follow up is tanks and vehicles in LCTs near first light.

There is also talk of using the navigation device GEE for the Sledgehammer guidance vessels, the signal for which was not being jammed yet at that time, so that may have helped too.

The brilliant thing about the Madeleine Beach area on the east coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, where the main Sledgehammer was supposed to take place, and the beaches to the north of it all the way up to St. Vaast is that, just like we see on 6 June 1944 even a considerable navigation error does not make that much of a difference because the terrain is pretty much the same and there are no geographical features like cliffs or rivers that breakup the coastline. Also, the road just behind the beach is pretty much the same distance from the water the entire length and the strength of the defense is the same throughout except for the final mile or so on the south end where there are no defenders at all (except perhaps foot patrols).

As far as how quickly the Germans would have reacted if we look at the Jubilee beach closest in characteristics to Madeleine, Green Beach, the German documents indicate it took nearly 5 1/2 hours for the local reserve battalion to mount a counterattack and it was much closer to the landing beach than any German reserve battalions were from Madeleine. There is a lot more detail I could give, but that is a quick and dirty answer.

 

Would I be right in presuming it’s Beach 51 they were considering (Quineville to St Vaast)?

(Side note: this map is from the archive at the UK Hydrographic Office; they say they’re happy for people to use material that is out of copyright if they’re credited as the source, and always welcome visitors … Epexio)

 

They did consider that area, as you can see from the document below (the second listed beach area considered), but settled on Madeleine Beach (the first listed area), as far as I can tell centering about 2 miles north of Utah Beach (Sledgehammer/Wetbob plan as of July 30, 1942). I am reckoning on more resources being available (so, for example, this version of the plan includes 0 American amphibious lift even though about half of the combat loaders they would use for Torch were in hand at this time) so I assume they would expand it to include Quineville-Morsalines once that was added to the mix because there were to be Commando landings there already targeting coastal batteries. Note that though this includes beaches where they are not going to land it does not include anything about beaches near Cherbourg. I do not see anywhere they ever considered a frontal assault there (see below for more on that).



While I am at it I threw this in as well just to prove that the Allies did not need the experience of Dieppe to avoid frontal assaults on well-defended ports. All the planning I am familiar with for Roundup similarly avoids frontal assaults on ports. Raids are not invasions - they have quite distinct operational objectives that affect the tactical plans.



This might be helpful as well (though it does not depict the Commando operations). Note that for Jubilee they were able to sweep the mid-Channel minefield no problem and I just heard an author last year said the Jubilee minesweepers didn't even find a single mine to sweep mid-Channel.

 

While we are at it why not include the German side? This map is for 2 October 1942. I was extremely fortunate to find this (RH 26/320/6 for anyone going to Freiburg) because it is by far the most detailed map of defensive positions found in the records of 320th ID and it just so happens to be just days before D-Day. Note that by this time the British were already sending fake info to the Germans suggesting that there was going to be a landing targeting Cherbourg, so for that and a lot of other reasons it is doubtful anything changes if Sledgehammer goes forward.

So the area between the heavy dashed line (divisional boundary) and the light dashed line (company boundary) was about 5 miles and was defended by one company with 2 platoons on the beach and one in reserve at Ravenoville, about 4 road miles from Madeleine. Behind it there is nothing of any consequence for miles in any direction. The artillery you see at Azeville are 2 x 8 cm le. F.K. 30(t) (captured Czech weapons of pre WWI Austro-Hungarian origin).

The resistance nests depicted by the red circles are all open trench works (not concrete bunkers). Not shown is a small resistance nest just on the other side of the divisional boundary (716th ID that defended the coastline from there all the way past Caen).

 

Long story short: there was a lot of back and forth on that but by July the consensus had turned against it I think because the main the need that would fulfill - airbases that were closer to the landing area - was lessened by the conceptual breakthrough of using drop tanks with fighters

 

While I'm posting German maps, why not one more (detail below)? Also from 320th ID from 2 October 1942. As you can see they are mostly concentrated to the north (as one would expect). Road to Carentan looking pretty open, wouldn't you say? Note that there were airborne landings near Lessay and Carentan (approx. 2,000 - 2,500 at each). The red outlined areas with dots are LXIIIIV Corps reserves. Red outlined areas without dots divisional reserve I think, I might put some commentary in later as edits.



Main landing would be around where les Dunes de Varreville shows on this map.

 

Hi,

Given that Brooke's concern was as much with the campaign following any landing as with the landing itself, have you seen any references to German plans from an operational perspective? Given the infamous debate about the location and control of panzer reserves in the spring of 1944, have you seen anything that suggests that debate was already up and running in the summer/autumn of 1942? I suppose the forces that were used for the occupation of Vichy France were held at relatively high readiness and would have been available in early October 1942 as well?

Given that the Vichy French army was limited to about 85,000, had no armour, no modern air support (if any?), I don't suppose the Germans would have been too worried about a Vichy French "stab-in-the-back" and would have concentrated their available mobile forces against an Allied invasion. Is that your take as well?

Having read more into the COS Committee documents and the Churchill papers, I'm beginning to agree with you here and even more suggest that the British authorities hadn't totally agreed to the abandonment of operations in NW Europe in 1942. For example, see the memorandum below especially para 2.





However, I have recently read John Kiszely's excellent Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940 and also have studied the British Empire campaign in Greece in 1941 so am very aware of the danger of letting the 'policy imperatives' (what was desired and would be a 'great prize') overshadow what was feasible in terms of the ways and means available. As Kiszely points out (p.277), "Without this consideration, policy becomes divorces from reality". Kiszely also points out how the Allied planners in 1939-1940 paid "inadequate attention to risk, particularly the compound risk" involved in the prosecution of a complex, combined and joint operation.

Had the British veered to far towards a lower-risk strategy with lower appetite for risk even at the operational level by mid-1942. Well perhaps, but given the context of the war at the time and of Allied performance in the field up to this point I will take a lot of persuading that the decision to conduct Torch rather than Sledgehammer was wrong. What this thread has shown though, is that Sledgehammer wasn't perhaps such a mad-cap scheme as much of the historiography would have us believe.

Regards

Tom

 

Technically I think it is limited by the Armistice to 100,000 but it is indeed around 85,000 at this time I am pretty sure because no one is reenlisting and actually the French Army is facing a potential crisis because the enlistments of lots more are near to coming to an end. The key thing is that Hitler is wondering what the British will do in conjunction with the Vichy French in his rear. So all the French would have to do is open their airfields and ports to British air and ground units and that could be very bad. It doesn't matter that you and I know that from an air standpoint the Allies could probably not do that much and as far as bringing a lot of troops to Marseilles, well that is really not going to happen either. Hitler does not know that so he at least has to worry about some such possibility. It is also just 20 miles from the demarcation line to the Atlantic port of Bordeaux. One reason I doubt he would not move 7th Panzer (which is south of the Loire) right away to Normandy even if they could get fuel to it quickly and putting aside the unsuitability of the terrain in Normandy for mobile tank operations to begin with (as I discuss again below).

I would note that one of the earliest appreciations of Sledgehammer from March (which John Kennedy notates at the end saying things that don't quite jive, IMO, with what he writes in his book) refers to the possibility of a coup d'etat in France bringing the "French Army and French Fleet over to our side". Such talk seems to disappear later on, but it shows someone relatively high up in the British staff (the D.D.M.O. (H), which I don't know who that is and I can't read his signature so maybe you can clue me in on who it is if you know, though I think that stands for Deputy Director Military Operation, Home Army) is thinking about it .

Not a full on plan per se, but a deployment plan for the case in which the Allies land in the Cherbourg area which is reflected in the (admittedly horribly difficult to read) map below. German mobile units will assemble to the south and await a rapid Allied thrust from the peninsula. The arc you see just south of Cherbourg is, based on what I have seen from other documents (but not 1000% sure) just a holding position while the mobile units assemble to the south. That is all I can say for sure because the Germans don't have a full-fledged plan that I have been able to find and really, it would not be there way to plan it in too fine a detail. It looks to me that Rundstedt is either channeling his former chief of staff Manstein or has been communicating with him (and why wouldn't he?) and the deployments position his mobile reserves to hit the Allies in a "backhand blow" either if they thrust to Paris or, prefiguring Operation Lüttich, if they thrust to Brittany. And why would he send his Panzers to the Cotentin where the terrain is so highly unfavorable to their employment? He is on record in October 1942 as saying that his mobile forces need to be concentrated on the most favorable ground. That describes what you see below, but NOT the tangled bocage in much of the rest of Normandy. A nice plan, but the problem is the Allies aren't thrusting anywhere, so this is just going to delay a counterattack.

The reserve headquarters only recently assigned the task of defending against an Allied invasion of Normandy or Brittany is the brand new (inexperienced) SS Panzer Corps (Hauser). When Hitler is deceived by British intelligence in early October that the Allies are going to invade near Cherbourg he sends his two motorized SS divisions to Normandy (neither to the peninsula itself, however, the closest being still south of St. Lô.). Hitler already said in July that in the event of an Allied invasion he would come West and personally command the battle (that bodes well for Allied success right there IMO) and also sets the stage for a unhelpful two or even three way tug of war (if you count the headstrong Hauser) of the kind you see at other times on the German side. So maybe? probably? Who knows? But possibly for sure. All I would say that the fundamental cause of that debate prior to Overlord is not dependent on circumstances unique to that time and place. I feel like you might concur on that.

Well if you're like 7th Pz and have no fuel it is hard to describe it in a state of "high readiness". I do know when the original order comes for it to deploy east in early December it gets a delay for a few weeks on the basis that it is "not ready". I don't really know why it is not ready, but presumably it needs more training to face the Red Army, its participation in the occupation of Vichy not being a true test of anything beyond how well it can move as a unit. When 10th and 6th Panzer come back to France (I think in May or June) they are truly in pitiful condition, but by now 10th Panzer is probably the best equipped Panzer division in the German Army and is arguably its most powerful Panzer division. I would like to say otherwise, but that is how I see it. The only thing is it is at Amiens so it would take probably 3 days to get there and you would then be leaving yourself without a single mobile division between Calais and the Ruhr (Rundstedt's consistent great fear) and its the same story - what good is a Panzer division offensively in the Norman hedgerows? Cannot guarantee anything but it seems like there would be a delay to see how things develop especially because if there is one thing Hitler and Rundstedt can agree on is that the British are tricky bastards and their first landing may very well be a diversion for a follow up "true" main operation later on (with the German Navy agreeing with that if you followed my earlier posts). I would say the fact that they stop and dig in at the neck of the peninsula (and start flooding the ground there, which is part of the plan) would be highly suggestive that it was a diversion designed to tie down German reserves while the big show came somewhere else.

6th Panzer is just a little behind 10 Pz I think in recovery, but overall in pretty good shape. A little behind 6th Pz is 2nd SS (DR), and a little behind that is 1st SS (LSAH), neither being 100% ready but getting pretty close, so both combat capable. Note that the order to reorganize as Panzergrenadier divisions does not come until mid-November so they are still just motorized divisions (though still with 1 tank btl each)

For all I know the Germans would have went all out with everything from day 1 and Allied air efforts to slow them down would be minimally effective. Can't say for sure because it is counterfactual, but from the evidence I see there are certainly lots of reasons to think that the initial counterattack would come principally from just the 2 SS divisions with perhaps the below average 337 ID holding their coats and even that might be delayed by Allied air (not for days and days, but maybe 1 day plus, but that is a lot under the circumstance). If they full on crash into the Allies before they were ready for a counterattack the results could be very favorable for the Germans I would admit, but if the Allies were dug in with their guns ready such an attack is a recipe for a costly repulse IMO.

I would like to address your other points, which I may later, but I have at least 2 other posts I want to do first.

 

It probably would not have saved "a collapsing USSR" but war is full of many examples where success or failure turned on small things and you cannot really know what those might be in advance. There is, however, definitely the chance to bring real and rapid help to the Red Army with respect to the GAF. By late summer pretty much the only place where it was not stripped to the bone was around Stalingrad, where it was operating effectively. Chuikov called it the Germans' trump card. If the Germans were going to send any air reinforcements it pretty much would have to come from there.

But the key is to keep the USSR from making a separate peace. Their perspective is that you are letting us do all the fighting while you do so little and risk so little. Stalin is saying when Churchill visits him in August "you won't even risk 10 divisions?" Actually in between Stalingrad and Kursk there are secret negotiations between the USSR and Germany and, as you remember, they did a dirty deal back in 1939, right?

Here is a quote from Trumball Higgins, Winston Churchill and the Second Front:

Molotov during his visit to Washington in 1942 asked for a definitive answer about the second front in 1942 question and let it be known that though the Soviets considered the second front both a 'military and political' question, that it was 'predominantly political'.​

I asked Dr. Mark Stoler, one of the foremost scholars on the question of the politics of the Second Front, about this and his reply was:

Stalin feared the US and UK might just sit back and let the Germans and Russian bleed each other to death. He wanted an Anglo-American commitment in blood as proof that this was not the Anglo-American plan. A cross-Channel operation would provide such proof. In that sense the success of the operation was secondary to making the commitment.​

Here is a snippet from the British staff appreciation I refereed to in my last post from the D. D. M. O. (H) to the D. M. O. & P. (who is John Kennedy, I think), from March 1942:


Here is the next part of that document:



As regards sections (ii) and (iii) above, last time I was at Kew I stumbled upon another document, this one from the MAP, where whoever was writing it also referred to the fact that morale on the home front in Britain while not necessarily "bad" was not really pumped up because no one could relate to the distant war in N. Africa. He also alluded to needing something closer to home to fix that, I think.

It does not have to bring 1 division back from the East. All it has to do is keep all or most of the 17 divisions that transfer from West to East over the next several months to have a MAJOR favorable impact on the fighting there. Yes, most are crap 300 series divisions who get a hasty upgrade from static to field divisions starting mostly in November, but they still fill in what would otherwise be huge gaps in the line. I have already posted on it in this thread so I won't repeat much here, but if I ever get a chance to write a book about Sledgehammer it will in involve a fat chapter on the subject.

It also has tremendous propaganda value - war for the narrative is so important! Just want you to consider what Anglo-American historians would say after the war. Referring to a map of Stalingrad in mid-October they would point out what a small sliver of the west bank of the Volga the Red Army still held and declare "obviously it was Sledgehammer that kept the Germans from winning there!" That would be true even if Sledgehammer lasted just weeks. And surely commentators at the time would be saying much the same thing (without the benefit of the map, probably). Look at what was said for a long time about the Greek debacle in 1941 delaying Barbarossa. In this case as well it could be seen as a response to the groundswell of public demand for a "Second Front Now!" If it fails a clever politician with the initials of WSC might even leverage that and American advocacy into fuller control of Anglo-American strategy going forward ("we tried your way - that being directed at either Marshall or the Second Front Now! crowd - now we will return to a more sober strategy"). EDIT: Yes, it would be a blow to Anglo-American relations, but there was really no alternative to cooperation with each other and the recognition of the necessity to move past short-term recriminations.

Also, and this is the most important thing from my perspective, it anchors the Western Allies in NW Europe. Even if the Sledgehammer force is still "stuck" on the peninsula with air bases there that offer the Allies air cover over more areas of the French coastline (probably more as a threat than as a reality, but that has real value in spreading the German defenses) and having most likely attrited the GAF, with lots of LSTs and LCTs available the following spring and the Germans weakened in the East, there would be the opportunity to go through with Roundup (original target date 1 April 1943). It probably would still have to be scaled back, but it was originally scheduled to be much larger than Overlord turned out to be. Now we are really far down the alternative rabbit hole, so I won't go farther than that, at least for now.

Yeah, there is a whole lot I would like to say about that because the possibilities are truly intriguing and I have addressed some of them in my last post, but the thing is, I still end up right there where you are: hard to predict what would happen, maybe the hardest of all the subsequent "what if's" following the launch of Sledgehammer.

 

This is certainly a fascinating reexamination of an oft dismissed subject, and I certainly agree that in the circumstances as they existed at the end of 1942, the odds of the Allies making a successful landing would have been quite favourable. However, as I think I've mentioned before, I just fear that even at the end of 1942, the Allied ground forces were still too inexperienced and frankly in many cases too unprofessional (look at the 7th Armoured Division being caught having breakfast at the start of the Gazala battle, despite being warned for the previous 12 hours that Rommel was coming), to carry out the operation as planned, and succeed in defeating the inevitable German counterattack.

A Sledgehammer that ended in defeat and the loss of several division's would have been to the benefit of no one and could the UK Government have survived this latest disaster in a year that had already contained so many more.

 

Glad it has been of some interest at least and my long-winded posts have not overly detracted from that.

You could say that about any battle. Why not use that same standard for 2nd El Alamein? The last time 8th Army deployed for offensive action they got the Gazala debacle. If Montgomery had lost essentially all of his divisions, which is essentially the specter you conjure up for Sledgehammer, then what stands between Rommel and the Middle East oil fields? So, that is a comparison that is much closer than between Gazala and Sledgehammer. And Montgomery had a harder task: offensive action along a line protected by hundreds of thousands of mines and against an opponent who has shown himself a tactical master in battles fought in much the same terrain.

More on that below, but I just want to add that why is it there is this thought that the British are going to lose essentially all their invasion force if Sledgehammer fails? What is the evidence for that? They have already executed multiple successful evacuations (Dunkirk, Greece, Crete) when they were able to get most all of troops out. Why should it be different for Sledgehammer, when some of the primary factors, the balance of air power and the hours of daylight, are so much more in their favor than those other three? If leaders prepare for battle thinking "what if I lose everything?" they are never going to accomplish anything.

EDIT: forgot to add that if the force is split half and half British/American then even if after they have built up to 8 divisions the Germans are able to throw the Allies out then and if they can only evacuate 50% of their force (far worse than Dunkirk, Greece or Crete, I believe) then the British have only lost 2 divisions, and most of those would probably be POWs who survive the war. That is hardly a "small" loss, but even less is it a loss that would cripple the British Army for years to come. If 1 of the 4 is Canadian, then the math translates to 1.5 British divisions. Also, if El Alamein turns out the same then there is a chance within weeks to flip the narrative, plus you undoubtedly would have people saying that Sledgehammer had contributed to victory at El Alamein by holding resources in France that might otherwise have gone to Rommel. Obviously we know that Rommel would have lost anyways, but no one then would know that.

First of all, 7th Armoured Division suffered from inexperience in the spring of 1942? If all or most or even a high percentage of Allied divisions had to have more experience than 7th Armoured had in the spring of 1942 in order to ever successfully launch a cross-Channel invasion, then it never would have happened. It was actually an "ill-prepared and poorly supported brigade filled with inexperienced soldiers" (Niall Barr, Pendulum of War, p. 80), the 18th Indian Brigade, that could not even "rely on the concentrated artillery fire which was so essential to breaking up any determined assault" (p. 77) that stopped Rommel's two Panzer divisions at El Alamein in July. Yes, those Panzer divisions were depleted, but still, the experience factor is clearly in their favor as is momentum and equipment (they had tanks, but I don't think the Indians did).

Here is something I know you must know already, but, as so many others when it comes to this question, for some reason fail to bring into the discussion: in ground combat terrain matters! The one thing the 18th Indian Brigade had in its favor is that it positioned itself on strong defensive ground (p. 77) not something you can always count on in the Western Desert - flat, virtually devoid of vegetation and often rock-hard - but something found in abundance in Normandy where every hedgerow is a ready-made defensive position. In N. Africa if a mobile German unit gets into your rear they could, due to the hard ground, often drive rapidly in any direction spreading panic and destruction in their wake, but in Normandy where movement is restricted to narrow roads, many with high earthen banks, that is not the case.

While I don't deny that combat experience is very helpful to a fighting formation the whole "experience" narrative is so full of holes as the example I just gave attests to. I'm trying to keep this reply from getting as long as some of my earlier ones, so I will defer elaborating on that until maybe later.

The real difference maker for the Allies was not experience, as helpful as that is, but fighting the kind of battle that favors your side. It is like a boxing match between a pure boxer and a powerful puncher. The puncher wants to cut the ring off, corner his opponent and pummel him into submission, not dance around the ring throwing jabs which is his opponent's forte. That's the way Monty fought his Battle of El Alamein and that is, more or less, how the Anglo-Americans fought most of the rest of their campaigns from then on. Montgomery actually had the harder task as compared to a Sledgehammer force defending the Cotentin since he had to take offensive action against an enemy strongly deployed defensively behind thick minefields. The Sledgehammer force in Normandy, on the other hand, could hope for the (German) boxer to exhaust himself trying to out slug the puncher. The Rommel quote I posted before attests to the fact that he saw the relative advantages of each side the way I do.

Once the Allies got dug in and their communications between their FOs and artillery functioning they would be in a formidably strong position to fight back any attacks, just with their own organic fires. Any German breakthrough would find it hard to build the kind of momentum of the kind they used to their advantage at Gazala and elsewhere. If all else fails they bring in their naval artillery and smash the Germans that way, just like at Salerno. The Gazala analogy does not hold, they are just too different. Much closer is the comparison with El Alamein in July where at least you have the similarity that the Germans are funneled, due to the constrained geography just like the neck of the Cotentin, into frontal attacks on concentrated Allied formations. Also, these same factors bode well for an evacuation of most of the Sledgehammer force if, inexplicably, they fumble things anyways.

It's simple: fight battles in a way that plays to your strengths and diminishes the strengths of your opponent. That is the way the Sledgehammer plan is designed to unfold, provided, of course, they are able to quickly seize the neck of the Cotentin.

Actually if you look how things might have turned out in the wake of a failed Sledgehammer I am not so sure about that. I hope to elaborate soon, but right now I have to, believe it or not, distribute 80-90 bags of steer manure in my front yard, something I think many of you must believe I have been doing all along, metaphorically speaking, during this whole thread! Lol

 

Hi,

I'm not sure I agree with this analysis (whether it is Barr's or yours). The Indian Infantry Brigade at Deir el Shein was supported by "approximately 18 x 25 pdrs, 16 x 6 pdrs and 20 x 2 pdrs A/Tk. (source WD 4/11 Sikhs - WO169/7773) plus 7 Matilda infantry tanks. They did not "stop" Rommel's two Panzer Divisions but did delay, disorganize and divert them for a few hours. The Afrika Korps were operating at the far end of 1,000 miles of LoC, were exhausted and extremely understrength and yet...

By October, 1942, at least 6 and 10 Panzer Division seem to have been fully rebuilt and combat ready, if supported by the two SS Motorised Divisions you mention (I'm going to see if I can do so more digging into their state of readiness) then that would have been a hell of a blow for an Allied Sledgehammer force to withstand.

I've not got much time this evening, but would also point out that this statement is somewhat naïve IMHO:

The supporting bombardment forces at SALERNO were much greater than those described in the "Sledgehammer/Wetbob" plans which allocate nothing larger than a fleet destroyer for the bombardment role. Given the extent to which the Luftwaffe bomber units in NW Europe could be reinforced from other theatres it would be highly likely that Allied naval forces off the Cherbourg peninsula would have faced increasing opposition from the air. I'm doubtful that the RN would have been willing to risk many, if any, of its heavier units in the Channel. They might have been willing to deploy the light cruisers to evacuate personnel at night if required but that hardly provides a strong rationale for launching the operation.

There are quite a few high risk elements of the plan, as you have often conceded. There are some big IFs which we could discuss further such as - logistically (IF the port of Cherbourg can be captured within 3 days; if that, a couple of other small ports and the beaches can support a high intensity battle (noting that during OVERLORD lack of ammunition had a serious impact on Allied operations); if the follow-up and logistic convoys can be fought through what will quickly become a high priority objective for German naval and air forces, etc); operationally (IF the neck of the Cotentin is quickly seized; if the Germans react relatively slowly; if the Germans divert forces to occupy Vichy France, etc); tactically (IF the relatively complicated airborne plan for separate night drops achieves anything other than scattering paratroops across the peninsula and into the sea; if the weak naval covering force can suppress the German coastal gun batteries; if the assaulting infantry can sustain the momentum of the initial landings in the face of what is likely to be limited resistance but in terrain which favours the defence; if the Allies can get their forces dug in before a major German counteroffensive; if the Allied air forces can maintain at least air parity over the battlefront, etc).

I'll respond to your points about the impact of a failed Sledgehammer over the weekend.

I hope you've cleaned your boots since then!

Regards

Tom

 

Are you sure? My reading of the plan you kindly shared with me is that the parachute missions were intending to be conducted at night, see below:



The two companies to be landed in the GRAND CAMP area were clearly being dropped by night if they had to capture the CD battery "before first light".



The details above do not entirely chime with the remarks made about the lack of moonlight although, given the extreme inexperience of dropping significant forces by daylight on exercises by this point, let alone by night and over hostile territory, perhaps there was just a completely inadequate understanding of how difficult the planned mission would actually be. Given the dropping accuracy exhibited by night drops over Sicily a year after this plan, I think these plans would most likely have proved a catastrophic failure. I also note that there is nothing in the naval section talking about a hold fire during the airborne operation, one of the key points that emerged from the Sicily debacle.

Of course the scattering of paratroops across Normandy in June 1944 did also provide some benefits, in that it confused the Germans as to the Allied objectives and also small parties of airborne troops did impede German reinforcements. Those benefits could be replicated in an October 1942 operation but whether that would have been worth the loss of the first brigade of British airborne troops is perhaps an argument for another day.

Regards

Tom

 

The plan called for a 10 week preparatory period. My premise is that at the London meetings in July Sledgehammer was approved rather than rejected. October 5th is just over 10 weeks from July 22, the date Sledgehammer is effectively rejected. The copy of the plan I sent you was from July 30 or 31, so now they would have to wait until mid-October if they were going to adhere to the 10 week preparatory period, and at that point there was moonlight.

Look at Appendix O.1 and you will see on October 2 the waning (last) quarter moon, so at moon rise on Oct 5 at 0140 there is going to be very little moonlight. On October 19, which I think would be then next date (or thereabouts) when the tides were right (high tide would ideally fall x hours before first light, but off the top of my head I can't remember what x is - I think it is 2-3 hours and I'm pretty sure it's in the version of the plan I sent you), there is more than three-quarters moon.

There was definitely going to be nighttime bombing by the RAF, mostly of communication nodes. As far as Grandcamp, at times it seems like they are considering a nighttime drop regardless of the moon, but I am not sure. But that is essentially a Commando type operation and they haven't decided if that was going to be an air drop or be amphibious, I think.

The main air drops were going to be near Lessay and Carentan, which, if you look at the German map I posted before, are areas where there are no German troop concentrations (or AA). Having flown as a private pilot for a few years when I was younger I can definitely attest to the fact that we are literally talking about a night and day situation. It is so much easier to pick up something on the ground during the day - actually virtually impossible at night with little or no moonlight and without bright and really distinctive lighting on the ground. If you look at the geography of the Cotentin relative to the drop zone and you will see that you don't get a much easier daytime pilotage situation than that. First you look for the 90 degree bend in the peninsula (almost impossible to miss) and then you follow the Carentan Estuary to the Carentan drop zone and maybe take a heading a few degrees one way or the other for maybe 5 minutes for the Lessay drop zone. Of course, that does not guarantee accuracy, but the level of difficulty compared to actual drops up until Market Garden when they finally "see the light" with respect to nighttime drops is so much less.

The problems at Sicily relate to (as far as I can remember) the attempt to do a glider operation at night (not applicable to Oct 5, 1942) and the friendly-fire incidents of the second night of the operation after the ships had already been subjected to air attacks during the day, so the guns crews were understandably trigger happy. I do not believe that there were any friendly-fire incidents on the first night of Husky (but I am open to being corrected on that).

 

[Posted in error]

 

I have wanted to do some more posts, but have just been too busy. Also, wondering if there is still any interest here. I will definitely try to do one major post later today but in the meantime I have a couple of (fun?) questions to pose.

1. Amphibious invasions are reputedly the most difficult type of military operation in the context of WWII. Name the top 5 amphibious invasions during WWII (where the invading force intended to stay, so excluding raids) involving the landing of a total of 5000 men or more, when the invaders evacuate, are driven back into the water, or otherwise completely defeated within the first 90 days. This can be from any nation, Allied or Axis.

2. What was the first successful Allied amphibious operation during WWII involving the landing of a total of 5000 men or more? Hint: the invading force had no special amphibious landing craft, no amphibious training and landed on a peninsula somewhat smaller (I think) than the Cotentin, but was defended by an experienced 1st Wave (meaning prewar) German division (I think it was in pretty good shape as far as casualties, but I would like to research that more the next time I am at Freiburg).

 

Not my area of knowledge, so I'd say for Q1: Norway 1940 by the Allies; Leros September 1943 by UK and possibly Japanese operations in the SW Pacific (around New Guinea), mentioned when watching a recent YouTube documentary, they may have been reinforcement landings though.