Breakthrough

[BlackSeptember1918]

The Breakthrough that was everyones wish at the start of an offensive on the Western Front . Would it have led to the rolling up of the lines as imagined . Or would there have been other results ?.

Would the cavalry really rode through and created havoc , or would they have been isolated and destroyed by machinegun fire ?.

Would there have been a real chance of loosing Thousands upon thousands of prisoners if an attack from the flanks had sealed the breached line and cut off the attacking force ( as sort of almost happened at Cambrai ).

Would the attack run out of steam and the attackers been left in a dangerous salient , or exposed position without any real defensive structures ( as after Michael ) ?.

Blitkrieg was hailed in 1940 ....but a well organised defence may have cut the panzers supply lines and doomed them to being wiped out or surrendering ?. Would this have happened in WWI ? with the advance never going to reach motorised transport speeds .

Anyone had any thoughts on this one ?.

Phil.

[armourersergeant]

For my money a hell for leather charge against a still strong well supported enemy could have the effect of having severe counterattacks against weak flanks. If you take the Somme as an example, hardly a hell for leather charge, but how often do you read of divisions being enfiladed from the flanks because a different division had failed to advance.

If all the divisions had advanced as one and kept pace then that may be a different thing. But this would surely never happen

But even if the cavalry had been able to get in behind the lines of the trenches then the effect they could have had would have been more of a fear factor rather then a war winning threat. You would still have needed the PBI to catch up and support the cavalry.

Should we perhaps ask what Haig and other thrusters thought of as a break through and how far they envisaged a breakthrough to encompass. Did even they see it as roling up a large section of the line before it settled again. You can after all only advance as far as your supplies can go and as quick as they can go.

I suppose if you can keep the men and munnitions going leap on leap then it can be sustained, but this is not pratical to assume. I think the Canadains always made an attack based not on what the infantry could achieve but on how far and how well their engineers could keep the lines of supply running.Very sound military thinking. Build from the bottom up not the top down.

I am going to shut up now as i think i am waffling and i am not sure i have answered the question!!

regards

Arm.

[Tim Birch]

I don't think it was or could have ever been achieved whilst the strength of the opposing Armies was broadly equal. There just wasn't the logistical technology available to achieve it. Every attack - even Michael - eventually lost it's momentum as the deeper you penetrated the greater became the logistical problems of follow up and supplies, coupled with, as Arm has said, increasingly vunerable flanks.

Even the last 100 days was fought on the basis of "bite and hold" rather than breakthrough.

Artilley had reached it's zenith as a weapon but was also responsible for creating much of the problem as it totally destroyed the infra-structure creating a wasteland through which supplies and re-inforcemnts had to come forward, and making it diificult to bring your heavy artillery forward at a fast enough rate to maintain the momentum. Conversley you enemy's supply lines were becoming shorter and shorter, and he started to gain strength as you weakened.

It was not until tanks and mobile guns had developed more, accompanied by specifically designed ground attack aircraft, by the second world war, that true breakthroughs started to occur. Even then the Germans struggled to keep up with their speed of advance due to too much reliance on horse transport and insufficient motorised transport. An example of this was Dunkirk when the tanks out ran their supplies, particularly fuel and were unable to close the final noose on the Allies.

Even with all our technology today this remains a problem for Armies and in the recent Iraq war the speed of advance was not only dictated by pockets of resistance but more by the rate at which re-supply could take place.

Tim

[PhilB]

I suspect that Haig had settled for attrition soon after taking over (or before) and that plans for sweeping breakthroughs were purely for PR purposes. We don`t seem to have discussed French`s real aspirations enough to reach a verdict on him. Perhaps it`s time for a "What about French" thread to take the pressure off DH. Andy H would be pleased! Phil B

[AndyHollinger]

The concept of Breakthrough as PR is intreguing ... I think that everyone wanted a breakthrough because they were supposed to want that ... what happens next? Well, we exploit it ... How, let's worry about that, then.

If we take Petersburg for example. Lee was able to steal a days march on Grant even though they were locked in battle ... I am not sure of examples in the Franco-Prussian affair ... but it would seem to me that the great hope was ... to nullify the effect of a breath through, the enemy would pull back and dress their lines ... and a great movement would begin (again) ... But if you don't try for a breakthrough, what do you try for ...

hmmm.... Bite and Hold maybe ...

Smile

[Robert Dunlop]

The desire for a breakthrough was based on very sound military principles. The effect of encircling a large body of the enemy was probably best illustrated on the Eastern Front and by the Battle of Megiddo. Not so much the early success of the Germans at Tannenberg, which didn't really involve a breakthrough of static defences as such. Megiddo worked in large part because the lines of retreat for the Turkish armies were very limited in number. When the allied mounted units were released into the Turkish rear areas they could seal off the lines of retreat quicker than the Turkish infantry could fall back.

The concept of breakthrough can be sub-divided into:

1. Break-in - where the attacking force gets into the defenders lines but not through them. The British attacks in Third Ypres fall into this category.

2. Break-through - where the defensive line is breached, for example at Neuve Chapelle.

3. Break-out - where the enemy gets into the relatively undefended rear areas. It is really this aspect that most people are referring to, and is what I was alluding to above.

On the Western Front, it was extremely difficult to execute the latter. Reserves would often be present and could contain a break-through. The railway systems and then the widespread use of motorised transport enabled further reserves to be moved up very quickly. Even the German successes of the 1918 Spring offensives did not really involve break-outs as such. Break-throughs, yes.

Robert

[Robert Dunlop]

Would the cavalry really rode through and created havoc , or would they have been isolated and destroyed by machinegun fire ?.

Megiddo is a perfect example of just this. But it worked because of the specific conditions pertaining to the geography of Palestine.

On the Western Front, right from the outset, cavalry really struggled. And not just because of machine guns. There were very few wide open spaces. The geography meant that wire fences, hedge rows, villages, etc could all enable riflemen to effectively take on cavalry at quite long ranges. I have just been reading the regimental histories of the 14th, 15th and 20th Hussars. It is very difficult to see how they could have exploited any breakthroughs. Take Cambrai for example. Just the few machine gunners at Flesquieres were essentially able to stop the advance of the bulk of the cavalry.

'A cavalry division... compelled to march along tracks [made to enable cavalry to cross two lines of trenches and No Mans Land] in column of half sections [would see the] fighting troops stretched out to a length of twelve miles; and it therefore took nearly all day to deploy the rear regiments for action, as it was impossible to move along these tracks except a slow pace.' Quite enough time for the Germans to ensure that some defences were in place to contain the break-out. Even by the afternoon of the first day at Cambrai, some reinforcements were already on the battlefield.

The same problems would have pertained to motorised non-tracked vehicles. There were a couple of occasions where armoured cars broke-out on the Western Front - Amiens being the best known - but the numbers were too small to have a significant effect.

Robert