Quote:
Originally Posted by raketenjagdpanzer
I recall something from an Ambrose book (Citizen Soldiers, IIRC) about the Battle of the Bulge that a former German officer related. He said (and this is not verbatim, mind you, but essentially) that they'd overrun an American supply depot and as they drove through it in his (captured) Jeep they started passing pallet after pallet of 105mm shells. Just 105s. He realized that this hastily abandoned dump of shells was bigger than the village he'd grown up in, and at that point he realized that the war was utterly lost.
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RakJpz,
Man, if he was only figuring it out then, he was a slow learner! And/or hadn't been to the Eastern front, where the Russians used far more artillery in general, if not as well as the Americans/western allied forces.
Personally, I'm a believer when it comes to US (or other) artillery when it comes to wargames. My miniature wargame buddies and I did a few Bulge scenarios, and a couple of nail-biters were decided in the US's favour by a Foo in a jeep directing a well-supplied battery of 105mms.
As for Rae's point of a "circus" unit making use of captured German equipment, I've heard of wide-spread of small arms/side arms, not to mention some Kubelwagens and half-tracks (popular as armoured ambulances) but anything else would be difficult to maintain and supply, especially considering the mountains of your own supply. A captured Storch for observation, I could see, but an Me109 has pretty poor ground visibility and it would be almost suicide considering Allied air superiority. All possible in theory, however. This also may have also been a "training" unit of some kind.
Tony