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Post by Beth on Nov 1, 2015 22:16:59 GMT
I think it could be rightly said that those cadets at West Point in the 1850's for the most part were exposed to the wrong kind of training that ill prepared them for modern conflict. I believe that is what Grant was talking about. The one advantage the men you listed Dave had, along with quite a few others, is they started off with a clean sheet of paper, not encumbered by the useless lessons of WP. They were all problem solvers and they approached the tactical and operational levels of war in just that way. Mosby and Chamberlain of course are two of my favorites. Both had decent educations and adapted quickly to the environments they were cast into. Forrest was an out and out genius. Do you think part of the reason was because WP, its instructors and its mission became rather hide bound in a quickly changing world. It was not a visionary organization that looked to the future but seemed rather rooted in it's origins and traditions--which I believe was in line with systems like the French military academies at the turn of the 18th century.
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Post by quincannon on Nov 1, 2015 23:47:26 GMT
Militaries and by extension the military academies, and other training programs they spawn are by their very nature conservative and are more apt to look at the last war they won for a vision of the future. Other times they are just plain stupid.
As a for instance, I am sure that you are familiar with the complete abortion the U S Navy's Bureau of Ordnance made of the Mark 14 torpedo in the early war years. They refused to budge when submarine commanders were telling them that the thing was no damned good. They ran too deep and the magnetic fuses were faulty. We lost a lot of good men to that cock up, until mid 1943 when they could no longer cover their asses, and made adjustments.
What is not so widely known is that our submarine commanders, many, not all, early on were no damned good either, at least not for command in the Silent Service. They were hide bound by pre-war tactical concepts, in stead of the hard hitting, aggressive tactics, first practiced by Morton, Dealey and a few others. They were using the tactics required for mission solutions on powerful enemy warships, as was doctrine, against a merchant fleet. As a result the Japanese merchant fleet was crippled, but not nearly to the extent it would be in late 43 and on through 44 and 45 when they were swept from the ocean. It was a pure case of - we can't do that and doctrine says so - UNTIL someone said the hell with doctrine, and went in and mixed it up with the convoys and their puny escorts
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Post by Beth on Nov 2, 2015 0:27:14 GMT
I suspect being innovative in the military is a double edged sword. If something doesn't work as promised the first time, it would be very difficult to get a second chance even if the idea is sound. It's probably the small changes made over time especially for practical reasons that are the real innovations in any war.
I admit my knowledge of 20th century wars is extremely limited, even though I tell my kids all the time growing up in the 60's meant WWII dramas and comedies was standard fare every night on TV.
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dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
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Post by dave on Nov 2, 2015 1:50:45 GMT
Military leaders are often slow to change their long held beliefs. During the War, the rifled musket had made the Napoleonic tactics redundant but generals were resistant to change and many soldiers died needlessly.
QC is absolutely correct regrading the torpedo fiasco of WW II. The Japanese refused to acknowledge that air power and aircraft carriers had superseded the Battleship Doctrine of Alfred Thayer Mahan and continually attempted to have a battleship vs battleship duel. The Americans had belatedly realized the days of the battleships had passed and replaced by air power.
Lest we forget the US Air Force, the fighter of the future after the Korean Police Action did not have a gun. That oversight was finally corrected during the Viet Nam War and not repeated in future fighters. Regards Dave
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Post by Beth on Nov 2, 2015 2:11:24 GMT
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dave
Brigadier General
Posts: 1,679
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Post by dave on Nov 2, 2015 2:30:27 GMT
"the more things change, the more they stay the same" by Alphonse Karr. Pretty much sums things up. Regards Dave
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Post by quincannon on Nov 2, 2015 16:55:07 GMT
I am not all that sure about that Dave, as least as it is written.
The Japanese were strict adherents to the Mahan idea of the decisive sea battle. They structured and built their navy upon that idea. As a result their navy was completely unbalanced for the type of war they then chose to fight.
The idea was to attack the U S N as it crossed the Pacific with their small surface combatants and air power from their carriers, and land bases within their fortified ring. Then they planned to wage the decisive battle on a worn down USN, probably in the Philippine Sea, but if not there, somewhere within what they considered home waters.
The thing they forgot in all this was that the outer, then the inner ring of their fortified perimeter had to be supplied and maintained. They did a fair job of seizing that outer ring. They brought into the fold all of the resource rich areas they sought. Then they were reluctant to give them up and fall back toward those home waters. This created a terrific drain on their means to supply the outliers. As a result they expended naval forces at an alarming, and a rate to the point where they could not be replaced.
So to sum up, I don't believe the battleship was the centerpiece of the great decisive battle in IJN eyes after early 1942. They saw what airpower could do. I believe they were thinking in terms of integrated battle groups for that decisive battle. In effect there were two decisive battles rather than just one in what the IJN considered home waters. In the first (Philippine Sea)they had both carriers (with aircraft)and other heavy units. The problem is they had no well trained pilots. The air groups of 42 were gone, and they would have made a great difference. The second (Leyte Gulf) they were so poor that those carriers remaining had empty decks and were used a decoys.
Where does this fit in with Custer and the Centennial Campaign. The U S Army was just lie the IJN, completely unbalanced as to structure. They poured what resources they had into combat units, which left nothing for the logistical tail required to sustain these units in the field. Combat units must have a well organized tail to keep their teeth sharp.
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Post by Beth on Nov 2, 2015 17:42:52 GMT
Thanks QC-very interesting but I'm having a rather thick headed day and need clarification
You say that the Army poured their resources into combat units then had nothing for sustenance. Are you referring to fact they couldn't supply the basic needs like bullets to FAL so they could practice marksmanship or the fact that some of the forts were so isolated that it was difficult at best to get them supplies--or are both symptoms of the same disease.
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Post by quincannon on Nov 2, 2015 18:49:51 GMT
Both Beth, but in this instance centered on the lack of supporting services that wore blue, and became experts in how to support an army in the field. We had depended upon campaign specific hirelings for these services, and the result of that over the long haul is never climbing the learning curve. and developing the expertise required to maintain and sustain. We had no quartermasters units, no ordnance and transportation units. We had one engineer battalion for the whole army. Our artillery was primarily trained in coastal defense, and we had no full time field artillery, rather a battery made up of you, you, and you, here are some guns, go pretend you are field artillery.
Just to give you an idea of what the ratio of fighters (actual trigger pullers) to support personnel of all types is, and was even then had anyone bothered to organize them, a typical three brigade division has about 4000, while the total division's strength is around 15,000 or so. All the rest of these people serve to enable the shooters in one way or another. On top of that is the above the line forces necessary to support that division to a total of about 30,000 personnel. We call it a division slice and each of those is about 45,000. So you are talking an infrastructure of 41,000 to support about 4,000 shooters.
Now those figures are greatly skewed because of modernity, but the fact remains that an Army so overloaded with shooters cannot consistently maintain itself, just as the IJN could not maintain its forces at sea because there was no realistic and viable infrastructure to support the kind of war the IJN chose to wage in 41-42.
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Post by yanmacca on Nov 2, 2015 18:50:05 GMT
I am not sure if they even had enough horses for the campaign and some troopers had to say behind and do mundane tasks at places like FAL, tasks that could have been done by any one.
Yan.
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Post by yanmacca on Nov 2, 2015 19:04:32 GMT
The artillery arm of the US army had to be supplied by the French in WW1, I think they got the pudding dish helmet off us Brits, but their field guns and howitzers were all French, that's why 24 years later in 1941 the US army still had 75mm guns, 105mm howitzer and 155mm guns and howitzers, all these weapons were French in origin and when the US army decided to modernise around 1940-41 they kept to these calibres, they dropped the 75mm guns from their field artillery battalions and made the 105mm their standard piece, the 75mm then went to form the basis for the guns mounted in the M3 and M4 medium tanks, except for some that were mounted on half-tracks to make the M3 GMC.
Yan.
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Post by quincannon on Nov 2, 2015 19:05:31 GMT
As an example, each of these regiments should have had a service company as part of their structure. The functions of that theoretical company had to be done, but the way it was done was taking it out of hide, reducing the number of shooters available, and thus combat power. In the cavalry regiments this shortfall was not addressed until after WWI.
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