Force Ratios (the old 3-to-1 rule)

[Fuchs]

Wilf,
it was hardly Liddell-Hart's fault that the British Army was too dumb to issue 40mm HE shells for the 2pounder, even for infantry support tanks as the Mathilda II. Meanwhile French and Germans issued even 37mm HE shells.
The few "close support" CS versions of British tanks which carried a 76mm low velocity gun didn't compensate for this usually overlooked and disastrous hit on British tank firepower in 1939-1941.

Liddell-Hart did neither dictate that a tank needs to have a length:width ratio that made pivoting difficult and allowed only for small turret rings which didn't enable the use of recoiling long 76mm guns.

He wasn't responsible for the timetable which turned the Crusader into a tank which - despite hasty design and subsequent teething problems - didn't absorb lessons from France in time for the Desert War.

L-H didn't request the Covenanter to have a freakishly high ground pressure either, did he?

It wasn't his fault that the 2pdr AT gun was too complex and not superseded in time by a better gun, or for the fact that the British equivalent of the 8-8 was too heavy for tactical deployment in land battles for AT purposes.

L-H wasn't at fault for metallurgical problems in AP shell production which led to many AP shells breaking up on German face-hardened armour, either.

The division into infantry and cruiser tanks wasn't a major mistake either, as proved by the StuG III later on. Guderian was actually wrong on this one early on.


So how exactly did L-H mess up British tank development?

The British tank development mess of 1930s till 1943 looks to me rather like an engineering and procurement bureaucracy failure.

[JMA]

The British tank development mess of 1930s till 1943 looks to me rather like an engineering and procurement bureaucracy failure.

Yes it does rather, but the British being the British need a scapegoat... in this case two.

Guderian seemed to be happy with what Fuller and Liddell-Hart propoosed as can be seen from his book General Der Panzertruppen Heinz W Guderian Memories... so maybe it was more a case that the British were half asleep?

It was principally the books and articles of the Englishmen, Fuller, Liddell-Hart and Martel, that excited my interest and gave food for thought. These farsighted soldiers were even then trying to make the tank something more than just an infantry support weapon. The envisaged it in relationship to the growing motorisation of our age, and thus they became the pioneers of a new type of warfare on the largest scale.

I learned from them the concentration of armour, as employed in the Battle of Cambrai. Further, it was Liddell-Hart who emphasised the use of armoured forces for long-range strokes, operations against the opposing army’s communications, and also proposed a type of armoured division combining panzer and panzer-infantry units. Deeply impressed by these ideas I tried to develop them in a sense practicable for our own army. So I owe many suggestions of our further development to Captain Liddell-Hart.

Surely an example of the proverb; A prophet is not recognized in his own land.

[Fuchs]

Interestingly, General Willmann who attempted a kind of operational revival of the German Heer in about 1996/97 was apparently a huge fan of Liddell-Hart and the "indirect approach". That idea is mentioned many times in the (published) key document of that short reform movement.

I attempted to dig into what exactly happened at that time in the German army last year, but a Lt.Gen. hinted to me that appearance and behind the scenes facts didn't match. I made no further progress with this mini investigation.

There's a nice summary about "Freie Operationen" here:
http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/show...lename=650.pdf

The most important effect of this top-down one-man reform movement was probably that it served as an umbrella for many smallish and unspectacular fixes for ill-advised Cold War habits.

----------------------

Some officers/reformers who deserved recognition succeeded much less than Liddell-Hart in exercising influence;

Percy Hobart, an excellent armor formation trainer and father of armoured combat engineers

Sir Archibald Wavell dismissed Hobart into retirement in 1940, based on hostile War Office information due to his "unconventional" ideas about armoured warfare. Hobart joined the Local Defence Volunteers (precursor to the Home Guard) as a lance-corporal and was charged with the defence of his home village, Chipping Campden. "At once, Chipping Campden became a hedgehog of bristling defiance", and Hobart was promoted to become Deputy Area Organiser.[3] Liddell Hart criticised the decision to retire Hobart and wrote an article in the newspaper Sunday Pictorial. Winston Churchill was notified and he had Hobart re-enlisted into the army in 1941.

De Gaulle, to some extent...

[Granite_State]

Some officers/reformers who deserved recognition succeeded much less than Liddell-Hart in exercising influence;

Percy Hobart, an excellent armor formation trainer and father of armoured combat engineers

On the contrary. Hobart exercised entirely too much influence in the Thirties, and was a major factor in faulty British armor tactics (the lack of combined arms) that got them kicked around the desert for two years. Auchinleck and others had to rebuild an army that he had set up for failure.

[JMA]

On the contrary. Hobart exercised entirely too much influence in the Thirties, and was a major factor in faulty British armor tactics (the lack of combined arms) that got them kicked around the desert for two years. Auchinleck and others had to rebuild an army that he had set up for failure.

Can you provide some sources to substantiate this please?

[Infanteer]

Guderian seemed to be happy with what Fuller and Liddell-Hart propoosed as can be seen from his book General Der Panzertruppen Heinz W Guderian Memories... so maybe it was more a case that the British were half asleep?

From what I can tell, interwar German facination with Liddell-Hart's writings have pretty much been debunked as a post-war sleight of hand by Sir Basil while working with the German generals on their memoirs.

[JMA]

From what I can tell, interwar German facination with Liddell-Hart's writings have pretty much been debunked as a post-war sleight of hand by Sir Basil while working with the German generals on their memoirs.

Difficult to accept the obvious?

Stick with what Guderian wrote. That is enough. Fuller and Liddell-Hart provided the spark... no more... no less.

[Granite_State]

From what I can tell, interwar German facination with Liddell-Hart's writings have pretty much been debunked as a post-war sleight of hand by Sir Basil while working with the German generals on their memoirs.

Yes, John Mearsheimer wrote the book on that, I think it was called Liddell Hart and the Weight of History.

Liddell Hart wrote and said some interesting things, but he was also all over the map. He, along with many others, drew the wrong lessons from the Spanish Civil War, and was opposed to a continental commitment until pretty late in the game.

[JMA]

Yes, John Mearsheimer wrote the book on that, I think it was called Liddell Hart and the Weight of History.

Liddell Hart wrote and said some interesting things, but he was also all over the map. He, along with many others, drew the wrong lessons from the Spanish Civil War, and was opposed to a continental commitment until pretty late in the game.

There were no positives in Liddell-Hart's contribution?

[William F. Owen]

There were no positives in Liddell-Hart's contribution?

Some. His work on Infantry Doctrine in the early 1920's was good. Some was a bit blue sky and stating the obvious, but never really wholly misleading. Having said that he copied and plagiarised Foch's ideas and then sort to destroy Foch's reputation.

After 1945, Liddell-Hart allied himself with the "blitzkrieg" and basically re-invented himself. - BUT, if you read his work, little he says is either insightful, original (not required) or really useful.

There is a far larger issue, that men such as Liddell-Hart, Fuller, and I would also include T.E. Lawrence and Boyd, were masters of gently walking the limelight path, in a way to ensures the actual content of their ideas is never really subject to investigation. MOST Military Theory is rubbish, and that includes the stuff that has come out in the last 10 years.

[William F. Owen]

Wilf,
it was hardly Liddell-Hart's fault that the British Army was too dumb to issue 40mm HE shells for the 2pounder, .....

Liddell-Hart never really said much about AFV per se. The guilty party is Fuller. Liddell-Hart was more imprecise about his ideas, and really majored on his supposed "Indirect Approach."

Dumb was not the problem. It wasn't ignorance. It was well-sold ideas put forth by supposedly smart men.

The division into infantry and cruiser tanks wasn't a major mistake either, as proved by the StuG III later on. Guderian was actually wrong on this one early on.

I beg to differ. If you mean the StuG III/IV were excellent at infantry support, I would agree. The creation of "Cruiser/Cavalry" tanks was a disaster. Correct me if I am wrong, but were not StuGs manned by the artillery and attached to the infantry?

The British tank development mess of 1930s till 1943 looks to me rather like an engineering and procurement bureaucracy failure.

Their were engineering and bureaucracy problems, and all was made far worse by the "Tank Avant Garde" who really screwed it up. Had they know what they had wanted, - and been right, they rest would have followed.

[Fuchs]

I beg to differ. If you mean the StuG III/IV were excellent at infantry support, I would agree. The creation of "Cruiser/Cavalry" tanks was a disaster. Correct me if I am wrong, but were not StuGs manned by the artillery and attached to the infantry?

That's correct, but the key here is that a division between infantry-supporting tanks for solving tactical problems of infantry-centric forces (infantry divisions) were necessary next to more mobile tanks in motorized forces (armour/mech. infantry divisions or brigades) for solving operational problems.
History showed that the former had the potential of being more cost-efficient tank destroyers as well.


The British infantry tank/cruiser tank and especially the French dispersion of tanks has been bashed in military history and doctrine-related writings a lot, but unfairly. Guderian was wrong in the 30's on this, the British, French, Russians and Manstein were right: At that time the armies needed both infantry and cruiser tanks.
The exact designs (infantry tank with small gun in turret or assault gun with casemate gun with decent HE effect) was only a(n important) detail.

http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot....nd-future.html

[William F. Owen]

At that time the armies needed both infantry and cruiser tanks.

I do not agree, but as to why, wait for my thesis.

[slapout9]

I do not agree, but as to why, wait for my thesis.

Can you tell us when that will be?