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Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Nobody can doubt there were acts of bravery on both individual and unit level.
Where the issues laid, and basically why they were trounced so quickly, is really due to the lack of understanding of how tanks and modern equipment should be used. The Germans got it fairly right, intergrating their forces, making breakthroughs and exploiting them (blitzkrieg).
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Sorry Leg but this is false. Modern tank use was theorized by the General Jean-Baptiste Eugène Estienne. This time a Frenchman, colonel at the time, father of the french aviation, of the modernization of our artillery and of the tanks. He was read and taken into account by Liddle Hart (UK), Heinz Guderian (Germany), Toukhatchevsky (Soviet Union) and probably Patton (US, who had met him in 1917). However, these theories were refused by most high commands (except Soviet Union until the Stalin's purges) including Germany (Hitler ruled over the Generals on that matter, including the Blitzkrieg into a much wider classical plan)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Unfortunately pretty much the rest of the world saw things differently and used their vehicles etc in a completely different, and ultimately ineffective (for the most part) way, technicques etc which would change and develop over the next few years.
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In 1940, the British Army was the only army in the world to be entirely motorized. British matildas were excellent and couldn't be stopped by anything in the German's army except for the fame 88mm anti-air gun. On the down side they lacked the guns to destroy the German tanks (Leg, you just pointed that out
). Else, this is pretty much right. To cite French General Gamelin
"They had three columns of 1000 tanks each, we had 1000 columns of 3 tanks each".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
The same happened in the first world war. NOBODY understood the true lethality of the "modern" battlefield, something shown time and time again with the bayonet "charges" (at a walk) against dig in machineguns....
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Right but that mistake dates back to the US Civil War and Russo-Japanese War.