Text 17773, 39 rader
Skriven 2005-12-04 17:27:32 av Björn Felten (2:203/2)
  Kommentar till text 17693 av Dale Shipp (1:261/1466.0)
Ärende: Copyright
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 DS>   And if you had been CIC of the Allied forces, what would you have
 DS>   done?

   Ahhh... Yet another one of those what-if discussions regarding WWII, that we
are so fond of here in fidonet? :)

   I'll tell you one thing that *I* would have done differently. After the
Allied forces landed on mainland Italy in July 1943, I would *not* have
reverted to 19th century tactics, wasting more than a month on "consolidating
the troops" but rather used the newly invented Blitzkrieg, rushing up to Rome
as fast as I could.

   I would have been there within two weeks because Italy surrendered
immediately after the Allied forces landed in Italy, and even arrested
Mussolini (liberated by the Nazis when they took over Rome in September 1943).
But because the Nazis were given more than a month to strengthen the defence
(aka replacing the Italian soldiers with German), it took the Allied forces
almost a year, and tens of thousands of casualties) to get the 500km to Rome.

   If I got to Rome already in August 1943 I could have pushed forward against
the south shores of France and easily beaten the German troops there, let's say
around December 1943. Then it would have been easy to land all the heavy
equipment needed via the Med ports.

   One of the big mistakes about operation Overlord was, that it all was based
upon landing massive amounts of heavy equipment. Obviously the US high command
thought that the roads and streets of northern France looked like those in the
US. But as it turned out, the tanks were more of a liability than an asset on
the narrow European roads and streets, so landing much more para-troopers
behind the shore defence would probably have been much better.

   The 17,000 para-troopers that now was inserted was so badly organized that
they didn't do much good, but at least they had a much lower casualty rate than
their unfortunate colleagues on the shores of Normandy. The few casualties they
had were mostly caused by the badly built and operated glider planes and not by
enemy fire.

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 * Origin: news://felten.yi.org (2:203/2)