View Single Post
  #49  
Old 01-08-2011, 08:19 PM
dragoon500ly dragoon500ly is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: East Tennessee, USA
Posts: 2,873
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer View Post
Indeed; the German attacks on Bastogne were almost entirely piecemeal after the siege was laid in. The US result was to use it's tiny handful of 105s and throw concentrations at the German spearheads, helping to drive them back. POW interviews and postwar document combing showed that the Germans thought they were facing units reinforced by a battalion strength artillery unit, rather than two or three guns that were being shuffled around by very adroit cannon-cockers.

Had the Nazis pushed hard from multiple directions, it'd have been much different.
Bastogne had a bit more than a handful of guns...CCR, 9th Armored and CCB, 10th Armored would field a battalion of M-7 HMC apiece, 101st Airborne would have three battalions of 75mm pack howitzers and a battalion of M-3 105mm howitzers, there were also three battalions of corps artillery (two battalions of 155mm howitzers and one of 4.5-inch guns)....so supporting two tank, two armored infantry, one tank destroyer, three glider infantry and nine parachute infantry battalions (17 combat battalions) are a total of nine battalions of artillery. This would be one of the largest concretrations of artillery on the southern shoulder of the Bulge until Third Army made its swing north.
__________________
The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
Reply With Quote