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Post by quincannon on Dec 4, 2015 23:39:57 GMT
Having seen snow here on the 4th of July, the above comment is quite correct. The further north you go into Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana, the chances rise considerably.
Tom is correct. You hit them where they live at a time that is unexpected, and you hit them hard. You catch them when their winter supplies are diminished, and it is much too soon to start the hunting and gathering process for the coming year. You separate them from their infrastructure. When your logistics are destroyed or badly deleted, your war making potential becomes virtually nonexistent. You become capable of little, and turn your attention to survival.
Crook was a very successful commander in the southwest. Wyoming and Montana are not the southwest. The Sioux were not nearly the irregular warrior as the Apache, and Comanche. As far as that goes the Sioux were the scrub team, however in the 2nd and 3rd Cavalry, Crook's force were bench warmers. Crook had yet to make the transition from the southwestern style of irregular warfare to that of the north.
Blaming others for failure does not trip my trigger if those concerned were deserving of blame. In the early stages of the 76 campaign there were plenty that deserved blame for abject failure, but the responsibility lies with Crook alone.
There are not enough Sam Damons, and frankly I don't see any of these scratch farmers that passed for an army that can come anywhere near the Damon model. If your looking for something Damon like in that period look at Chamberlain.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2015 23:51:04 GMT
I noticed that Crook set off for his Powder River campaign on March 1, 1876 and within days ran into a blizzard. Leading to some questions that I have: 1) Why leave so early in the year knowing that winter might not be over? 2) Was it to beat Terry and Custer and gain early glory? 3) Was it to test the mettle and strength of the Indians prior to the summer campaign? 4) By having Reynolds in command did Crook have a patsy in place in case of disaster? 5) Was this proposed campaign well designed and planned? Or not? 6) Did Crook have better intel than Custer or about the same? Regards Dave Dave,
The campaign plan for 1876 was to attack the Indians in the winter. Indian mobility was limited and mobility was their greatest strength. All commanders met in DC in Nov 75 ans were told to get ready. The execution order was issued on 8 Feb 76. Crook and Gibbons executed this order. The 7th Cav failed utterly.
I believe Custer's refusal to obey this order should have resulted in his relief. The 7th Cav was untrained and unprepared in Feb. They were still untrained and unprepared in May.
SO: 1. That was the plan. 2. No 3. Plan was to beat the Indians in winter camps, where they had no mobility nor any way to support other camps. Beat them in winter and spring, so there is no summer campaign. 4. Reynolds was commander of the 3rd Cav. Crook cold not get his whole column to reach enemy camp. SO he sent out his fastest elements under his second in command, while he led the main body forward. The plan was sound. The execution was not. 5. Imagine if the 7th had moved in Fed 76. The winter camps were closest to the 7th than to Gibbon or Crook. 6. Crook did not have better intel. He was a more competent officer. More importantly, he understood how to train, equip and organize his command for operations and battle. Compare the training of his mule train versus Custers. Google what shave tail means. A mule had to train for a year before it was allowed on a campaign.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2015 0:26:14 GMT
QC,
I am not sure I understand you.
1. Levels. I look at officers through the lens of how they perform at three levels: tactical, operational and strategic. Tactical is on a battlefield. Operational is a campaign, generally, but not always, a yearly thing. (Crook conducted 3 distinct operations in 1876). Strategic is meeting national goals the US Army mantra is to fight and win the nation's wars.
Officers do not need to be able to master all three. Many very successful tactical officers are useless at operations and strategy. Several average tactical officers proved to be much more capable at operations and strategy. (Bradley, Marshall, even Kruger, etc).
2. Crook is an odd person in my studies of US military operations. He was successful at all 3 levels, and showed enormous flexibility. He constantly reorganized his units to meet specific missions. I knew nothing about Crook before joining the LBH boards. The more I see, the more impressed I am.
Miles is his opposite. A great tactical leader, but his operational sense was weak, and his strategic vision was zero. The higher his rank, the more damage he did to the nation. Our Army changed from an amateur group of untrained poorly educated poorly led misfits to a true professional force as a reaction to Miles.
3. My main focus in study and research is looking at the development and requirements of a professional, vice amateur military. Professional militaries cost a lot more, and are, by definition, smaller than amateur military forces.
This does not mean one is better than the other. There are times when a crappy amateur military is sufficient to meet national goals, at a fraction of the cost.
Force design is not creating the best force, but the force best suited to meeting national strategy.
QC helped design the US Army Light Divisions. This force design was clobbered by thousands of analysts, as it was incapable of beating the USSR in WW3. Who would use nuclear weapons.
The problem is that we never fought a nuclear war with Russia. What we fought were internal wars within states, none of whom were in the Warsaw Pact.
So look at how we used the heavy divisions, paid for because of the idiots who opposed QC. The US Army was forced to take Armor and Artillery battalions, toss their irrelevant Cold War gear into storage, and send them to war as motorized infantry.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 5, 2015 5:59:57 GMT
Will: I admire Crook. He was an innovative thinker, and pretty much all you say he was. I don't believe he had enough time up north before the campaign started to get his full game face on. The 2nd and 3rd were far better than the 7th, but that does in no way mean they could play in the big leagues.
It helped a lot to have the Chief on your side in those light division brawls. John Wickham deserves a lot more credit for today's army than he will ever get.
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Post by yanmacca on Dec 5, 2015 11:50:59 GMT
So they converted artillery men and tank crews into mobile infantry? I was watching a news show the other day and there was mention of how both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were fought by the USA without a draft and because of this troops had to do multiply tours, and the results of this showed that they suffered more from battle fatigue and other mental stress then previous wars.
It said that the US Army still bears the scars of the draft system used during the Vietnam war and now it is fighting long engagements (I am not sure if both the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns were the longest in US history) with the same troops due to any lack of a draft, as they cannot rotate a much as they should.
I am not saying that there should be a draft so don’t shoot the messenger, just relaying what I saw.
Yan.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 5, 2015 18:09:58 GMT
They did indeed Ian. Conversion is not the right word though, for the only thing that was done was take an existing organization, augment them with some Infantry peculiar equipment, give them some refresher ground combat training, and send them off to war. In theory every organization has a secondary Infantry mission, but theory that failed in practice.
The overall result is that readiness for the primary unit mission suffered greatly in the name of expediency. We had artillery units at Fort Carson, who had not fired a howitzer in more than two years.
The draft is no solution to wars on the far frontier as Fehrenbach called these local conflicts. When we drafted for WWI and WWII those peoples term of conscripted service was the duration, plus six months. In Korea and Vietnam it was for two years. The effect on unit readiness was catastrophic. Units were revolving doors of personnel in and personnel out. Just when you got a man trained to the point of peak proficiency, you lost him to ETS (End Term of Service), and you started all over again with another man just off the boat.
In this era nations are served best by smaller, but totally professional armies, built into units that train, fight, and stay together for extended periods. There is then but one learning curve.
In 1983 General John Wickham the then new Army Chief of Staff, who had previously served in the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in combat, and commanded the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), foresaw these continual wars on the far frontier, and realized, regardless of the then emphasis on the Fulda and Hof Gaps, and a general conflict in Europe, and concluded that they were the greatest threat. He had the courage to go against the conventional wisdom of the day, and issued a Light Division White Paper, outlining what a smaller lightly equipped division of extremely high strategic mobility could do to counter the most probable threat which would have nothing to do with nuclear armed, heavily armored, contesting of the inner-German border. It was not popular at all among the Army's leadership (except the Chief and Vice Chief) who fell back intellectually on what they had known since WWII.
I was privileged to work under the general, but still hands on, guidance of General Wickham to help, in a very small way to field five light divisions (two by conversion, and three by activation). It was both an exciting, and fulfilling time. We did not get it all right, but what we did was place a new emphasis on the highly trained, professional Infantry soldier, which I, perhaps selfishly, think has made a great impact of the wars of the last fifteen years.
I occasionally exchange e-mails with General Wickham, and anything I have said about his personal mindset and motivation came straight from the horse's mouth.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 5, 2015 18:44:09 GMT
What I did forget to mention was that the light divisions in general (all of them, including the one from the National Guard) were mandated to be at the highest state of personnel and equipment fill and readiness. That is unusual for an Army ALWAYS forced to rob from Peter to pay Paul. It was particularly unusual for the Guard division.
Heretofore the Guard had been looked upon as Christmas help, a strategic reserve for general conflict. It was a first step for the Guard to evolve from a strategic reserve to an operational (meaning part time, but still in such a state of readiness to be called upon and very quickly integrated into immediate combat status, without a long period of receiving new equipment, and months, if not years of training before employment)
This move from strategic to operational was also part of the Wickham vision, and a lot of credit for this transition goes to Lieutenant General Herb Temple, who oversaw the start of this transitional process. Another man with great vision, that has served us well in the last fifteen years of conflict, for now the transition is complete.
That too was an exciting time for a Guardsman, and to be a part of that was something I will always treasure. I think we made a difference, and making a difference is all that can be asked during one lifetime.
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Post by Beth on Dec 5, 2015 20:18:45 GMT
I'm going to back up the conversation a bit to holding a winter campaign. Why did the powers that be in Washington figure that US Forces would be equally bogged down by snow and weather and handicapped by the ability to pack in enough supplies? The NA might have been towards the end of their winter supplies but they were basically sitting on them. Ever item the soldiers needed had to be packed in.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 5, 2015 20:52:54 GMT
I don't know that the planners of this campaign were not aware of the fact that weather would be an inhibiting factor. I fully expect they did, because this was not to be the first winter rodeo, nor would it be the last.
Armies, good armies that is, are prepared to operate in any condition of weather and terrain. carrying your logistical base with you is not a matter of good weather you do, bad weather you don't. You always did regardless.
The Indians, on the other hand had, no such capability. In bad weather they were confined to a fixed logistical base. That for the offensive force is of prime advantage.
You can fault the army's planning. You might even fault the army's equipage, and training for operations in a harsh environment. What you cannot fault thought is the basic idea of exploiting great advantage.
The critical time is late winter, and early spring to exploit this advantage. Indian supplies were depleted, probably down to the level of twenty five to thirty percent of what they had started with. At that stage loss of all or a good portion of those remaining supplies would be catastrophic, for even if they got away from any battle, they would have no readily available source of replacement and would not for the next six to eight weeks.
An attack that destroys the means to fight is far more effective than an attack that seeks to destroy the will to fight. Professionals understand logistical implications before they turn to the operational and tactical.
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Post by yanmacca on Dec 6, 2015 13:35:24 GMT
The ability to fight a winter campaign should have been second nature to the US army as they had just fought a civil war which must have passed through four winters, and lessons must have been learnt on how to provide logistical support for food, clothing and horses for larger numbers of men then those which was massed against the Sioux, so the US army should have been able to organise mix brigades of Infantry and Cavalry to undertake a winter campaign against an enemy made up of virtually seasonal fighters who by all accounts lay down their coup sticks when the snows began to fall.
Yan.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 6, 2015 15:47:59 GMT
Winters in Maryland and Virginia are much less harsh than those in the west Ian. Doing something in the east is far different than doing the same thing in the northern plains.
In the east you can expect one or two large snowstorms that would inhibit movement. Rain and cold are constants, and it is rain, and the mud the rain produces that is the worst enemy of mobility.
Out west, in those latitudes, snow, major snow, can be expected eight to ten times per season, and the temperature, even though the humidity is low, makes Maryland and Virginia seem tropical by comparison.
If you look at the dates of the major battles in the east you will find most fought in the three seasons of spring-summer-fall. The only one I recall that was fought in late fall was Fredericksburg in mid December, and the earliest 17 March 63 at Kelly's Ford.
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Post by Beth on Dec 6, 2015 17:29:37 GMT
You forgot to mention the bitter, bitter cold--so cold it doesn't snow--like you get in the upper plains. I remember one winter where we didn't break out of subzero temps for 6 weeks.(and that didn't include windchill) It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't experienced that type of prolonged cold how hard it is to do anything--especially outside.
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Post by yanmacca on Dec 6, 2015 20:00:09 GMT
True, the USA is so vast that you can forget that temperatures and conditions can differ dramatically as you go from all points of the compass, the east coast would also have more roads, train lines and built up areas, the mid-west was still un-touched and therefore it would be difficult travelling between locations because of distance and places to billet would be less because of the lack of towns, and any supplies would have to be carried by horse and in larger quantities.
Yan.
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dave
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Post by dave on Dec 6, 2015 21:44:23 GMT
Custer spent too much time and effort during the Winter and Spring of 1876 testifying and making political connections and put the 7th Cavalry on the back burner. His naivety of thinking that nothing he said or did would adversely affect his military career and his life is amazing. I can not decide if he really was that much of a babe in the woods or cold calculating conniving SOB. Complicated man for sure.
Montrose mentioned that Custer should have been relieved since he was not prepared to execute the order of February 8 for the 1876 campaign. He mentioned that Crook and Gibbons responded as ordered but what about Terry? Was he not as guilty as Custer of not obeying the order?
A majority of the fighting in the West during the War was in Western and Middle Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, Northern Alabama, Chattanooga and south through Georgia to the coast. Our winters are milder than those of Virginia and Maryland and worlds apart from the plains. Operations were carried on during the winter months with the horrific battle of Franklin occurring on November 30, 1864 with the assault beginning at 4 pm.
To provide some information regarding winter conditions in the West I have listed the web site for the 33rd Mississippi Infantry which describes their winter camp in 1863. They executed 3 men for desertion just before establishing camp since many soldiers ran before the winter rains would set in and make the roads near impossible to use. The regiment was within 100 miles of were it was organized in 1862. Regards Dave
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Post by Beth on Dec 6, 2015 22:04:59 GMT
I doubt Custer was a babe in the woods when it came to politics--or else he didn't learn anything under McClellan. I do tend to think that Custer thought he was more essential to the campaign that perhaps historically was.
However was the 7th just waiting for Custer to arrived or wasn't it a case of the 7th itself had to be assembled from other locations at FAL. I wonder if Custer hadn't been on an extended leave if the assembly would have happened quicker though.
Dave I believe Terry going on the campaign was a result of Custer's political faux pas with Grant. Grant reinstated him based on Terry would be along to keep Custer on a short leash.
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