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Post by yanmacca on Sept 1, 2015 8:59:41 GMT
To be honest though, to be very good at something you have to be match fit, now match fit in my eyes means that you can train all the hours god gives you, but it doesn’t compare to taking part in the real thing, example a rugby player gets injured, he gets over the injury and trains every day until he is in peak fitness, he then goes out and plays a proper professional match and gets found wanting, now I have witnessed this many times and these athletes have to get at least half a dozen games under their belt before they are match fit.
What is all this leading to you may ask, well after the end of the civil war the US army had no wars to fight, and especially against a fully professional foe, the British and the Europeans were pitting their wits against each other and their armies were battle hardened, which they had to be because they were all surrounded by potential enemies and a war could breakout at any time, but the US army never had such circumstances were they could be invaded or their neighbour who also had a fully professional army, could declare war on you at a drop of a hat.
Going back to Custer, and this inactivity showed on how the US army formed for battle, if this was against a European nation how would you think they would have fared?
Yan.
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Post by quincannon on Sept 1, 2015 13:55:04 GMT
You pose an impossible question Ian.
This country is blessed with two moats around our battlements, the Atlantic and Pacific moats and those battlements are the two mountain ranges that immediately back them up allowing no access into our interior. Remember we fought the Revolution and the War of 1812 against the finest army on the planet of that time, and the British Army never got further inland than 100 miles, if you discount the incursions from Canada. Any army attempting to take on the U S Army would have to be supplied by sea. I mention this because that factor the ocean barriers must enter into the prevailing mindset.
In a fantasy world though, I think the answer is that in 1865 we would have done quite well, and in 1867 we would have stunk.
We did not have an Army from 1866 to 1917. We had a police force, and people to man coast defenses, and that is all we wanted, and more importantly all Congress was willing to pay for. Recall that the first expansion of the Regular U S Army following that of the immediate post ACW era was post Span-Am War, and only then because we needed more regular army strength to police territory gained during that war. It is pretty hard for an army to get its mind around fighting the Coldstream Guards or the Prussian Death's Head Hussars, when you have been chasing Mexican bandits, and subduing the occasional tribal flair up. We weren't very good at that either. Americans love big things, holy crusades for peace, justice, and apple pie. We have neither patience nor preference for the small, the mundane, savage war of peace.
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Post by yanmacca on Sept 1, 2015 18:03:56 GMT
Chuck, there are similarities in both our posts which point to the same agenda and that was about the ACW army being battle hardened and the 1876 army being rusty, just look at Custer’s 7th and their lack of shooting practice, and compare them with the troopers in Buford’s 1st Cavalry division, if these men could not shoot then Heth’s men would have took Gettysburg.
Sidebar; Myles Keogh was with Buford that day, so how come the troops under his command became such bad shots.
Yan.
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Post by quincannon on Sept 1, 2015 18:34:30 GMT
Well they did takes Gettysburg, but it took a bit of fighting through I and XI Corps to do it, but I get your point, but for Buford's division they could have walked in.
Because Keogh was a piss poor officer, lazy, and unconcerned about the welfare of his soldiers. Rommel said it best.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 1, 2015 20:29:19 GMT
QC has a lot of experience in force design. The post ACW force was tiny. The US planned to fight any war with mass recruitment of civilians with minimum training.
But the Army still gets things wrong. Look at the Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicle. The vehicle was so useless in GWOT that in 2006 the vehicle was banned from deployments. So units parked their IFVs and deployed with whatever was available, HUMMVs or MRAPs. The whole intent of the Stryker Brigade was to avoid using the Bradley in combat ever again.
Now we still have Bradley units in the heavy divisions. Imagine being a Bn an Company commander. How do you train your unit? Do you train with the vehicles you will leave behind if you go to combat? Do you send hate mail and threats to North Korea, hoping to start a war where your vehicles still have limited use?
As I write this the Army still has not selected a Bradley replacement. We have been at war 14 years, and they still have not figured it out. The Bradley is a crap infantry vehicle. It is really a tank destroyer. Great against vehicles with useless armor for fighting vehicles.
Chuck and Ian have written how US Army never found a satisfactory solution for tank destroyers in WW2. We abandoned the concept. Kinda amazing that the Army has been wrestling with a concept for 80 years and still can not sort it out.
Kinda like MGs, mortars and hand held antitank weapons, until we gave up and bought foreign designs.
This impacts using horse mounted units that do all their fighting on foot. The US lacked an operational concept of how to make this work.
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Post by quincannon on Sept 1, 2015 21:26:19 GMT
It is a trifle hard to argue with the truth.
The Bradley is crap. We should give them all to North Korea.
The weakness in the Stryker Brigade is the Stryker MGP variant. We leased some Centauros from Italy when we first stood up the Stryker Brigades. We should have bought them.
What we require for our mechanized Infantry is a transport vehicle to keep up with tanks, but one that you would not dream of fighting from. Sort of sounds like the half track doesn't it Ian. Riflemen are no good sitting inside a steel shell. They are riflemen, and you cannot protect the tank's freedom of movement inside a steel box. You must be dismounted and deployed to do that.
The Bradley was a ain't that neat kneejerk to the Russian BMP. The Infantry fighting vehicle concept and its concept of employment is an invitation to suicide.
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dave
Brigadier General
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Post by dave on Sept 2, 2015 1:23:37 GMT
America has a history of not being prepared for war, I think. The price we pay for being a democracy is not being on a war footing all the time as dictatorships do. Y'all mentioned the fall off of combat efficiency of the army from 1865 to 1876. Are you not forgetting how ill prepared both sides were for the War in 1861? The same situation occurred in 1917, 1941 and 1950. We gin up the war machine then shut it down as soon as possible with no thought of saving equipment that was developed and perfected at such cost of life. The army was woefully unprepared for the Korean conflict and the marines were not much better. The staffing and manning the units took time and the North Koreans didn't wait. It took us 6 months to prepare for Desert Storm and Saddam allowed us the time. I do n't think we were ready for 911 either. Mentioning John Buford makes me wonder if he would fail keogh's mindset fetish. Buford was a fighter and did it on or off horse. Myles Keogh didn't learn a thing from being Buford's aide. Regards Dave
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Post by quincannon on Sept 2, 2015 2:36:21 GMT
Actually Dave parallels can be drawn directly from the 7th Cavalry of 25 June 1876 and the 7th Cavalry (and everyone in Japan at the time) of 25 June 1950. Exactly seventy four years to the day.
The 7th Cavalry of 1876 was poorly led, poorly trained, ill equipped, and engaged as a security force, a constabulary, not a combat ready force. The 7th Cavalry of 1950 was poorly led, poorly trained, ill equipped, and engaged as a security force, a constabulary, not a combat ready force. Both failed miserably, and both for the same reasons.
For a long time I have wanted to start a thread that asks a simple question. Why is the 7th Cavalry so famous as a regiment (meaning 1866 to 1957) in the eyes of both the American public, and by some measure the world? What did they ever do to deserve it? They had two good years 43-45, then another, from the Fall of 50 to mid 1951 Other than that they could not walk and chew gum. So why?
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Post by yanmacca on Sept 2, 2015 9:50:51 GMT
The 7th cavalry has such a high profile because of the media, western movies and books have done their bit and it is really all down to GAC, he was the military version of a rock star and was placed on a pinnacle because he could sell and make money, does anybody think that if Custer had died during the ACW that the 7th cavalry would end up so famous?
I mean what sounds more likely to the normal person; There goes Custer’s 7th cavalry marching out in columns of fours with their blue uniforms and yellow scarfs to the tune of “Garryowen” Or; There goes Brisbane’s 2nd cavalry marching out in columns of fours with their blue uniforms and yellow scarfs to the tune of “A Hundred Pipers and All”
The designers will never come up with the perfect APC, I suppose the concept of giving infantry units a vehicle which can carry troops, give them protection to small arms fire and allow them to travel cross country and keep up with their armour, has been a must since WW1 and if we drop the concept of the APC then we may has well just place troops on a deuce and a half, take them to the edge of the combat zone and let them walk into action.
But I do agree with my two military friends (QC and Will) that putting men in a vehicle that has a turret mounted cannon not capable of engaging anything larger than light AFVs is crazy, as this will always take incoming, it is obvious to any gunners that when a Bradley comes into their sights then they are capable of killing two birds with one stone, not only will they neutralise the effect of the cannon mounted vehicle but they take out an infantry squad too.
Yan.
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Post by quincannon on Sept 2, 2015 12:33:29 GMT
So what you are saying Ian, with regard to the notoriety of the 7th Cavalry is that in the eyes of the public the show trumps the go, when what the public should concern itself with is the go and to hell with the show. I agree. I agree. I agree.
The more an Infantry Fighting vehicle is tank like, the more one will be tempted to use it as a tank. We need an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) vice an Infantry Fighting vehicle (IFV) If God wanted Infantrymen to ride around and fight from a vehicle, He would not have invented shoe leather.
An APC must be as fast as, and equal the cross country mobility of the tank, be protected against shrapnel, have a machine gun to provide supporting fires to its dismounts where appropriate, be economical on fuel, and be designed so that no one wants to fight from it EVER.
The Stryker (troop carrier variant) meets nearly all of this criteria, except the cross country mobility. It can carry a full squad of dismounts (nine), vice the normal five, sometimes six in the Brad. It dedicates only two to crew the vehicle, vice three for the Brad.
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mac
Brigadier General
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Post by mac on Sept 2, 2015 12:54:38 GMT
Could one not just take a tank chassis lighten the armour, put in an appropriate engine for speed and economy and a couple of machine guns? Such a vehicle could keep up with the armour and probably, thus stripped, hold a squad.
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colt45
First Lieutenant
Posts: 439
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Post by colt45 on Sept 2, 2015 14:09:32 GMT
QC said: "An APC must be as fast as, and equal the cross country mobility of the tank, be protected against shrapnel, have a machine gun to provide supporting fires to its dismounts where appropriate, be economical on fuel, and be designed so that no one wants to fight from it EVER."
That is the description of the M113 APC we had back in the 70's. Crew of two with a 50 cal, and room to carry a full squad of 10. It had the ability to keep up with the M60 tank, protect against shrapnel and small arms fire, could give fire support to the squad when deployed, and was the last place one would want to be during the fight. Sometimes, if something isn't broken it just doesn't pay to try and fix it.
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Post by quincannon on Sept 2, 2015 16:06:30 GMT
I loved the M113. The problem with it though is that while it could keep up with the M60 series of AFV's, it could not keep up with the M-1.
We need a new M113, and it should be simple, relatively inexpensive and do all the things that Colt just said the 113 can do.
Why does this matter, and how does it relate to LBH and the period we are here to discuss? The TTP of the modern mechanized force is nearly identical to the dragoon TTP of that era. Advanced mounted as far as practicable, then dismount and fight on foot, keeping a portion of your force mounted to cover and compliment the dismounts. That is exactly how tanks and mechanized Infantry work together in bi-arm cross attached company teams, and on a larger scale in the combined arms battalion made up of up to four such teams.
Back in the day when the M113 was around, Company E of each mech Infantry battalion had M113 mounting a TOW launcher. Maybe we should consider that again too.
Maybe we ought to include a battery of assault guns as an organic element of each combined arms battalion, four would be sufficient considering the greater precision of artillery today.
Whatever the final solution it is must be based on a combined arms concept of horse, foot, and guns under the same commander, in the same manner Custer and all the others should have had horse, foot, and guns.
Mac: The problem with adapting a tank is that most of the world's tanks have the engine in the rear. The only one I can think of that does not it the Israeli Merkavka.
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Post by yanmacca on Sept 2, 2015 18:49:32 GMT
Mac the notion of using a tank as a APC was done during WW2, the Canadians developed what was termed the “Kangaroo” and utilised the chassis and hull of their Ram medium tank, they did away with the turret and added enough seats for a squad of 10, the Ram was only really used as a training vehicle because the Canadian armoured divisions were all equipped with M4 Sherman’s, but they found a use for them as APCs and they apparently were well liked. The basic Ram tank and the Ram Kangaroo;
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Post by Beth on Sept 2, 2015 20:42:06 GMT
Actually Dave parallels can be drawn directly from the 7th Cavalry of 25 June 1876 and the 7th Cavalry (and everyone in Japan at the time) of 25 June 1950. Exactly seventy four years to the day. The 7th Cavalry of 1876 was poorly led, poorly trained, ill equipped, and engaged as a security force, a constabulary, not a combat ready force. The 7th Cavalry of 1950 was poorly led, poorly trained, ill equipped, and engaged as a security force, a constabulary, not a combat ready force. Both failed miserably, and both for the same reasons. For a long time I have wanted to start a thread that asks a simple question. Why is the 7th Cavalry so famous as a regiment (meaning 1866 to 1957) in the eyes of both the American public, and by some measure the world? What did they ever do to deserve it? They had two good years 43-45, then another, from the Fall of 50 to mid 1951 Other than that they could not walk and chew gum. So why? The thread is a great idea. It could even be expanded to cover the whole era but most of the myths and legends do surround Custer and the 7th.
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