Armies
British Logistics – “mechanism of war” I
In many respects the British army was equipped with weapons that were inferior to those of their enemies and until late 1942 they often lacked sufficient quantities of essential items. However, the British enjoyed one compensating advantage, their superior ability to provide their troops in the field with supplies and ordnance stores. This fact was fundamental to understanding how the…
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Big Red One 1945 Part I
The Sixth Panzer Army attacks the northern shoulder of the “Bulge,” 16–23 December 1944. (Positions approximate) The optimistic predictions of the war being over by Christmas lay dead and frozen in the snow-shrouded fields of Western Europe and coagulating on the blood-soaked sands of tropical isles and atolls. The far-flung,…
Big Red One 1945 Part II
The 1st Division’s drive from Aachen to Bonn. On 26 December 1944, the great Allied counter-counteroffensive began; the 1st Division’s part in it did not commence until 15 January, but the violence of it shattered the soldiers’ peaceful Christmas reveries. Hundreds of thousands of half-frozen GIs and British Tommies threw…
The Philippines 1944: Japanese Preparations and Plans II
Enemy Airfields Reported in Use, September 1944 Enemy Ground Dispositions, 30 September 1944 Army Plans On 24 July, the IGHQ’s Army section issued the basic order governing Army operations defending the inner zone of defense. The order repeated almost verbatim the IGHQ’s directive about the decisive battle and the anticipated…
French Cavalry 1914
The French strategic cavalry was composed of ten cavalry divisions. This strategic cavalry would be reinforced by infantry battalions and artillery. Each French corps had a light cavalry regiment assigned (six squadrons). There was no divisional cavalry. French reconnaissance patrols were to avoid combat. In reconnaissance and security the French…
Grants – Fire Now!!!
Because British factories proved unable to build a sufficient number of tanks for their own forces, the British government received permission from the United States government to have a modified version of the M3 series of medium tanks built for use by their own army. The British-ordered M3 series medium…
Continental Army Logistics
The Maryland soldier knew no more than any other ranker of the organization behind this state of affairs, which is to say that he knew very little. He may have been aware that the official apparatus for supplying the army began with Congress. If he did not know it, he…