Quote Originally Posted by ericmwalters View Post
Tarawa is actually a terrific case of recon-pull. I could also cite Omaha Beach. When the whole plan went to hell, local leaders took charge and improvised solutions with what they had on hand, finding gaps and exploiting them to establish toe-holds inland. "There are two kinds of people on this beach--those who are dead, and those who are gonna die if they don't get off it."
While Tarawa may be a good example of recon pull, I doubt that it fills the bill as an MW example--pretty tough for me to consider it MW given the size of the available maneuver space,the fact that you outnumber your opponent about 7 to 1, and the opponent really has no place to go to get reinforcements to alter the balance of power.
Omaha might be a better case but I doubt it. In the context of the entire Normandy operation I think it well to remember Utah Beach and the other great quotation by TR Jr from "The Longest Day"; "The reinforcements will have to follow us wherever we are. We're starting the war from right here. Head inland." Had 4ID forces reconned, found the weak spot, and then maneuvered, great. But they didn't--they were landed at a weakly defended area by pure luck. The great thing about it was that TR Jr recognized the opportunity and directed the rest of the division to follow on rather than follow the original landing plan. Adroit follow on actions cleared the beachhead with far fewer causualties than on any other beach IIRC--this, I think, is the essence of what has been categorized as German Style MW. But, I also think that it really is nothing more than good operational level combat leadership About the only other places that I am aware it happened on the scale that warrants calling it anything other than small unit tactics were in the "lead from the front" battles fought by Rommel in the 1940 Blitzkreig and in N. Africa before Alam Halfa. (Alam Halfa could have been another great victory for Rommel except that, unbeknowst to him, Ultra had already stacked the deck against him.)
I think, BTW, that the organization of Rommel's recon units in N. Africa propbably had much to do with the ability to conduct successful MW. As Cavguy laments below, US Cav has been eviscerated to such an extent that it seems hardly likely that it can do the economy of force missions of fix, screen, or guard that MW really seems to require. After Alam Halfa, Rommel no longer had the force structure to do much more than minimal MW to cover the retreat of his foot-borne Italian allies across Cyrenaica and Tripolitana. and that success was possible only because of the methodical plodding (timidity?) of Montgomery's 8th Army.

Perhaps we might be better off by just identifying MW as a flexible state of mind, one that recognizes that the best offensive solution is not always a "3 yards and a cloud of dust fullback smash up the middle." That seems to be the lesson from both Omaha and Utah (and maybe Tarawa as well).