Auchinleck

The Allies 1939-1945, and those fighting against Germany.

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stevenz
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

Reb wrote:Monty made a big deal about not using Brigade Groups and then went ahead and used them!

The Germans used Brigade sized battle groups routinely and after the war this became sort of an accepted practice.

The problem the Brits had with it was not that the Brigade Group itself was bad (see Armd Div Org in Normandy - they codified it!). IT was that they didn't do it well.

Oddly enough - the NZ Div was pretty good at it. Which explains why they were assigned an integral armoured brigade (the 9th) and used as sort of a pz gren div.

cheers
Reb
The New Zealand Division leadership hated the Brigade sized battle group and had to constantly fight the British high command to prevent our Division being split into Brigade sized groups and spread around the battle field to far from each other to provide support.

They use to call these British tactics the cowpat theory because when you looked at a map the troop dispositions of all these brigades looked like a whole lot of cowpats.

To make matters worse no tank support was provided for the infantry which exposed infantry brigades to being overrun by tanks and we suffered from this many times after we had taken our objectives being counter attacked by tanks and having no means of defence.

Rommel was fighting the right way he didn,t disperse his forces all over the battle in Brigade sized groups with no tank support he fought with combined arms infantry,artillary,tanks andthat is why the eighth army struggled for so long.

Howard Kippenberger one of our best stated the the Brigade sized battle group was fine when travelling to a battle area but once you got there you bring the brigades together to fight as a division.

I can assure you our leadership had no time time for Auckinleck as a commander and no faith in his tactics and when we went to Syria after crusader the offical line was to rebuild the division but the real reason is because Our leadership wanted to get away rom the british high command because of how faulty there tactics were.

Brigade sized battle groups with no tank support are a death trap and even with tank support you don,t have the power to deliver a knockout punch you disperse your artillary, anti tank guns,mortars and everything else dispersing your power and as a result losing power.

I do know a bit about the New Zealand divisions history my grand father served with 2nd New Zealand Division in Greece,Crete and in the desert from June 1941-Jan 1043.

Cheers Steve
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by Reb »

Steve

First off, you write as if the North African campaign were a single entity. The difference in org and tactics from Battleaxe through Crusader was great but consider the changes between the Gazala fighting and First Alamein.

Auchinleck was big on fighting in mass - but what is mass but a collection of small units? Rommel is always given points for using whole divs but I can show you many examples of that where his whole divs were actually the size of british brigade groups.

I'm surprised your grandpa didn't like the Auk. Typically, he was so far off in the distance most men wouldn't have known him. He interevened in Crusader, forbidding Cunningham to retreat (a major decision that saved the battle) and relieving him. But Ritchie (subsequently) commanded eighth army and made most of the mistakes of which you speak.

Auckinleck came back to the fore after the fall of Tobruk and wisely relieved Ritchie (who was in over his head), got 8th Army back to the Alamein 'line' and fought Rommel to a standstill.

And no offense intented but NZ Div did a lousy job at Mersa Matruh (just prior to First Alamien) as did all of 8th Army - allowing themselves to be encircled by a force they outnumbered considerably. In their defense, they had indeed lost confidence in British command and who can blame them? But they soon learned that the Auk was cut from different cloth than Ritchie and played a key role in stopping DAK in their tracks.

And the Auk got one very important thing very right indeed - he relied on his guns instead of his tanks. The British armour wasn't very good tactically, but the gunners rocked.

I think it was Phylo who noted that for most of the compaign, Auchinleck (and Wavell before him), were commanded the entire middle east theatre and had to rely on local tactical commanders like Ritchie. (or at least felt they should)

I'd also point out that relying on anecdotal evidence can be risky. My own father had a lot to say about the pacific campaign but really didn't see much from behind his AA mount on his carrier.

cheers
Reb
stevenz
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

Reb wrote:Steve

First off, you write as if the North African campaign were a single entity. The difference in org and tactics from Battleaxe through Crusader was great but consider the changes between the Gazala fighting and First Alamein.

Auchinleck was big on fighting in mass - but what is mass but a collection of small units? Rommel is always given points for using whole divs but I can show you many examples of that where his whole divs were actually the size of british brigade groups.

I'm surprised your grandpa didn't like the Auk. Typically, he was so far off in the distance most men wouldn't have known him. He interevened in Crusader, forbidding Cunningham to retreat (a major decision that saved the battle) and relieving him. But Ritchie (subsequently) commanded eighth army and made most of the mistakes of which you speak.

Auckinleck came back to the fore after the fall of Tobruk and wisely relieved Ritchie (who was in over his head), got 8th Army back to the Alamein 'line' and fought Rommel to a standstill.

And no offense intented but NZ Div did a lousy job at Mersa Matruh (just prior to First Alamien) as did all of 8th Army - allowing themselves to be encircled by a force they outnumbered considerably. In their defense, they had indeed lost confidence in British command and who can blame them? But they soon learned that the Auk was cut from different cloth than Ritchie and played a key role in stopping DAK in their tracks.

And the Auk got one very important thing very right indeed - he relied on his guns instead of his tanks. The British armour wasn't very good tactically, but the gunners rocked.

I think it was Phylo who noted that for most of the compaign, Auchinleck (and Wavell before him), were commanded the entire middle east theatre and had to rely on local tactical commanders like Ritchie. (or at least felt they should)

I'd also point out that relying on anecdotal evidence can be risky. My own father had a lot to say about the pacific campaign but really didn't see much from behind his AA mount on his carrier.

cheers
Reb
Well it wasn,t my grandfather who didn,t like Auk it was the whole New Zealand Divisional leadership they had no faith in any of the British commanders.

They constantly tried to break up the New zealand division into brigade sized groups to be used where ever they felt like it and we had no belief in it we believed rightly in fighting as a division and concentrating our power with all our artillary under divisional control where we had the ability to bring all our guns to bare on one point 360 shells in two minutes maximizing our power and with our brigades in range of each other to provide support to each other.

In Crusader yes Auk refused a retreat but he can,t take the sole credit for the victory that lies with Rommel and the New Zealand Division.

Rommel had the fight won he had lost 100 tanks the British had lost around 500 there armour was smashed and the 4th and 6th New Zealand brigades who had been ordered in were going to there ruin without even knowing it but then rommel made the biggest mistake of his career and sent 15th and 21st Panzer away from Tobruk opening the door for our infantry and we broke through and linked up with Tobruk only for the German armour to comeback and overrun us because the British armour who had been told to support our positions on Belhammed and Sidi Rezegh didn,t do so and sadly it wasn,t the last time this happened.

But it was to late for Rommel because we had already decimated his infantry and he couldn,t take the losses in tanks he was only able to fight for a few more days and had to retreat and the Germans have said that the battle was largly won by the New Zealanders.

British brillance played no part in the victory of Crusader.

As for the new Zealanders at Mersa Matruh are you talking about the stand we made at Minqar Qaim if you are how can you
say we were lousy we returned from Syria after Tobruk had been lost and decided to fight and it was the Auk who sent us to Minqar Qaim.

We were there prepared to fight which soldiers are supposed to do we had fighting spirit and if the British armour had stood with us we could have got something done we had a force at our disposel the same size as crusader but once again the British armour didn,t support us they retreated to the Alamein line and we had to hold the german armour off with our artillary until dark and then break out with 19th,20th,28th maori battalions in a silent atttack with the bayonet and we wiped out an entire german battalion killing 300 and escaped.

We clearly demonstrated on Minqar Qaim the benefits of having brigades operating within reach of each other and able to concentrate there artillary fire rather than being spread all over the desert in isolated groups unable to support each other.

Not what i would consider a poor performance we showed the fighting spirit that an army should show.

Cheers
steve
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by sid guttridge »

Hi stevenz,

While Dominion troops were a major reinforcement, their use sometimes constricted British planning. For example, Churchill stated that if the ANZAC Corps in Greece in 1941 had been entirely British, he would have had a freer hand to make a stand there. In the Rhodesian case, it was recognised that if all Rhodesians were concentrated in a single unit, its loss might wipe out the prime white manpower of the entire colony. They were therefore split up amongst British battalions. (In WWI the Americans insisted for political reasons in not integrating with British or French armies, at the probable cost of extra casualties incurred due to the consequent inability to tap into hard won Allied experience.)

I don't know the specifics of the New Zealand case, but it may resemble the Rhodesian one.

For political reasons the Dominions were undersandably keen to assert themselves as independent states. However, this was not always in the wider British Commonwealth advantage, as seen from London.

There may have been sound reasons to break up the New Zealand Division which may not necessarily be apparent at first glance from a New Zealand perspective.

Cheers,

Sid.
stevenz
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

sid guttridge wrote:Hi stevenz,

While Dominion troops were a major reinforcement, their use sometimes constricted British planning. For example, Churchill stated that if the ANZAC Corps in Greece in 1941 had been entirely British, he would have had a freer hand to make a stand there. In the Rhodesian case, it was recognised that if all Rhodesians were concentrated in a single unit, its loss might wipe out the prime white manpower of the entire colony. They were therefore split up amongst British battalions. (In WWI the Americans insisted for political reasons in not integrating with British or French armies, at the probable cost of extra casualties incurred due to the consequent inability to tap into hard won Allied experience.)

I don't know the specifics of the New Zealand case, but it may resemble the Rhodesian one.

For political reasons the Dominions were undersandably keen to assert themselves as independent states. However, this was not always in the wider British Commonwealth advantage, as seen from London.

There may have been sound reasons to break up the New Zealand Division which may not necessarily be apparent at first glance from a New Zealand perspective.

Cheers,

Sid.
I can,t really see where Churchill was coming from i mean we went to greece to fight not retreat there was simply no where a stand could be made if the force was entirely british it wouldn,t have made any difference because the problem lay in that the force was to small and had no air support once the Greeks went down the allied force of One New Zealand division,One Australian division and a british armoured brigade was no where near enough.

The germans had smething like 10 divisions for the greek campaign way more tanks and advantage in the air of 10.1
The allies were done for no matter what the nationality of the troops was.

We didn,t want to have our division split up because our commanders could see how faulty the British tactics were based on the results they had achieved which was basically nothing.

Brigade sized groups spread over the battlefield to far apart to support each other with no tank support sitting in what the British called boxes, static defensive positions with artillary and anti tank guns plus infantry were sitting ducks for being isolated and ground down our commanders wanted none of it we fought under british command in WW1 and there was no way we were going to just do whatever they wanted after the experiences we had had and the Australians were the same.

Our commanders wanted to fight as a division with the brigades able to support each other with the artillary under divisional control generating maximum power on offense and defence and they wanted tanks operating alongside the infantry and if this had happened things would have gone a lot better.

If we had allowed our division to be split up and sent where ever the British command wanted it would have been no were near as effective and the Brigades i have no doubt would have been thrown away through the faulty tactics of desert command.

Dispersion of firepower is a mistake.

Cheers
steve
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by Reb »

"Dispersion of firepower is a mistake"

A true statement of course - but Auchinleck's tactic in making the Germans play "tennis" at First Alamein was geared towards making them disperse not only their firepower but their German forces.

The "breakout" at Mersa Matruh was dramatic enought "By God, another Balaclava!" etc. But ultimately, being surronded by a vastly outnumbered enemy is not such a big deal. It was Rommel's last big win based on pyscological dominance actually. (and yes - the British command fumbled that in an astonishing fashion).

Sid's comments about splitting commonwealth units is valid - look at how badly hit South Africa was after the fall of Tobruk?
Now I confess I'd be very careful about giving the Brits too much control over my people but in this case (as Sid presents it) the goal was most probably simple enough - to limit casualties to a small country.

In one of the last scraps at First Alamein for instance - a NZ Brigade was badly cut up because the Brit Armour didn't show up - somewhere between 600 and 1200 casulties. Tough break for the home folks! Sid and I can tell you from experience how badly losses can impact a small colonial country :( .

That said, I think it was a very good thing for the allies that the NZ div stayed together - they were considered rightly as an elite by both the allies and the Germans.

cheers
Reb
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by phylo_roadking »

If you move slightly north of the Libyan/Egypt desert, the answer is in Greece and Crete's stony mountains and the many discussions of the NZ and Australians' operations there. It wasn't a pure case of losses to a small country - but of losses to a voluntarily supporting Dominion while ultimately under British command. The two official histories - the NZ and Australian official histories of their forces' involvement in WWII - while a wealth of information over military affairs tend to be a little quiet over the political concerns of fielding then in the "european" conflict, breaking them up, keeping them/not keeping them under "native" commanders etc. - but the sheer politics of Dominion forces operating VERY far from home under british command....and suffering major losses in the process...was VERY prickly after WWI.

Not to put too fine a point on it - the theatre GOC wasn't as free to "do with as he will" with them as he would have been with British troops. He couldn't risk VERY major losses - though it happened, and there were repercussions - and where humanly possible they had to be kept under immediate Dominion command; hence the c0ck-up of a SIXTH change in command in six months on Crete when Freyberg arrived to take over from Weston. Crete was expected to be a hard-fought but definitive victory (er....) and likewise Syria - though that took harder fighting than expected.

And like it or not - there CAN be discerned an element of Dominion forces being "clumped" in "secondary theatres" like this, where they could operated "packaged" with not too much EXPECTED in the way of losses. Unfortunately - the way the Noth African campaign panned out - after Greece, Crete, Syria, Ehtiopia and Iraq...there simply WERE no more "secondary theatres" where Dominion toops could be given their head - and they ended up suffering the same level of losses etc. as British troops against the DAK/Italians directly.
"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle." - Malcolm Reynolds
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

Reb wrote:"Dispersion of firepower is a mistake"

A true statement of course - but Auchinleck's tactic in making the Germans play "tennis" at First Alamein was geared towards making them disperse not only their firepower but their German forces.

The "breakout" at Mersa Matruh was dramatic enought "By God, another Balaclava!" etc. But ultimately, being surronded by a vastly outnumbered enemy is not such a big deal. It was Rommel's last big win based on pyscological dominance actually. (and yes - the British command fumbled that in an astonishing fashion).

Sid's comments about splitting commonwealth units is valid - look at how badly hit South Africa was after the fall of Tobruk?
Now I confess I'd be very careful about giving the Brits too much control over my people but in this case (as Sid presents it) the goal was most probably simple enough - to limit casualties to a small country.

In one of the last scraps at First Alamein for instance - a NZ Brigade was badly cut up because the Brit Armour didn't show up - somewhere between 600 and 1200 casulties. Tough break for the home folks! Sid and I can tell you from experience how badly losses can impact a small colonial country :( .

That said, I think it was a very good thing for the allies that the NZ div stayed together - they were considered rightly as an elite by both the allies and the Germans.

cheers
Reb
Being surrounded by 2-3 Panzer divisions with no tank support of your own facing being wiped out may not be that big a deal from where we are sitting but when you are there you can be sure it is a big deal.

As far as splitting our Division into brigades they weren,t doing it because they were concerned about saving us casulties they were doing it because of there belief in the brigade sized battle groups it was about tactics not casulties.

Auk told freyberg this is a brigade sized war and Freyberg said since when.

At Ruweisat ridge on July 15 1942 we had 22nd battalion over run plus headquarters of 23 Battalion these formations were in fifth brigade and later in the day we lost 19th and 20th battalions of forth brigade wiped out.

All these formations had taken there objectives and were failed by the armour they sat a few miles from the 22nd and watched them be wiped out and did nothing when 19th and 20th were wiped out they were less than a mile away and just sat and watched that happen and there excuse for not doing anything was that they hadn,t been given orders to.

We lost 83 officers and 1322 men total 1415.

A week later at El Mrier it was 6th brigades turn there were serious concerns that the tanks weren,t going to show up and Howard Kippenberger the commander of 5th Brigade had written in fifth Brigades diary there will be another bloody disaster and that is exactly what happened.

They took there objectives the tanks didn,t show up german tanks did instead and we were over run again losing another 69 officers and 835 men for a total of 904 and an hour and a half after we had been over run the British armour still hadn,t moved.

We lost 2319 in the space of a week both times overrun after taking our objectives because the tanks support didn,t arrive,8th army at this time was a debacle.
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

phylo_roadking wrote:If you move slightly north of the Libyan/Egypt desert, the answer is in Greece and Crete's stony mountains and the many discussions of the NZ and Australians' operations there. It wasn't a pure case of losses to a small country - but of losses to a voluntarily supporting Dominion while ultimately under British command. The two official histories - the NZ and Australian official histories of their forces' involvement in WWII - while a wealth of information over military affairs tend to be a little quiet over the political concerns of fielding then in the "european" conflict, breaking them up, keeping them/not keeping them under "native" commanders etc. - but the sheer politics of Dominion forces operating VERY far from home under british command....and suffering major losses in the process...was VERY prickly after WWI.

Not to put too fine a point on it - the theatre GOC wasn't as free to "do with as he will" with them as he would have been with British troops. He couldn't risk VERY major losses - though it happened, and there were repercussions - and where humanly possible they had to be kept under immediate Dominion command; hence the c0ck-up of a SIXTH change in command in six months on Crete when Freyberg arrived to take over from Weston. Crete was expected to be a hard-fought but definitive victory (er....) and likewise Syria - though that took harder fighting than expected.

And like it or not - there CAN be discerned an element of Dominion forces being "clumped" in "secondary theatres" like this, where they could operated "packaged" with not too much EXPECTED in the way of losses. Unfortunately - the way the Noth African campaign panned out - after Greece, Crete, Syria, Ehtiopia and Iraq...there simply WERE no more "secondary theatres" where Dominion toops could be given their head - and they ended up suffering the same level of losses etc. as British troops against the DAK/Italians directly.
If the British leadership though they could send us to greece outnumbered in infantry and tanks and being out numbered in the air 10-1 and not siffer serious casulties you have to wonder what planet they were living on.
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by phylo_roadking »

The Dominion forces were ONLY "supposedly" the first elements of the "hundred thousand men" and equivalent guns and aircraft Eden promised the Greeks - alledgedly backed up by Wavell etc. Unfortunately the Aliakmon Line collapsed before the British were really in place in any strength...and once on the move - backwards - the Greek Expeditionary Force simply rolled up back to the Piraeus and out of Greece almost as fast as they had arrived. 100,000 men in place and their full complement of artillery and armour would have made a VERY different situation out of Greece.
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

phylo_roadking wrote:The Dominion forces were ONLY "supposedly" the first elements of the "hundred thousand men" and equivalent guns and aircraft Eden promised the Greeks - alledgedly backed up by Wavell etc. Unfortunately the Aliakmon Line collapsed before the British were really in place in any strength...and once on the move - backwards - the Greek Expeditionary Force simply rolled up back to the Piraeus and out of Greece almost as fast as they had arrived. 100,000 men in place and their full complement of artillery and armour would have made a VERY different situation out of Greece.
God only knows where they thought the 100,000 troops were going to come and even if they had sent them without air support they still would have been in trouble.

We should never have gone there they should have put all there efforts into the desert getting rid of the Italians before Rommel showed up which would have left him isolated.
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by phylo_roadking »

There was certainly a lot of "creative accounting" went into the list that Eden gave to the Greeks - such as every "organic" 2pdr AT gun with infantry units was counted separately as an "artillery piece" :D :D :D
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Re: Auchinleck and CW armies

Post by Eduard »

dear srs,

Most of the problems within CW brigade groups were technological, not of other reasons: The main reason for me is the capability of infantry do be able to defend herself.


-: The 2 pdr AT gun was unable to defeat frontal armour of german tanks at anything but very short range
-: the 25 pdr had to be used to defend infantry from enemy tanks an so could not be used in a "proper" artilleryy role.
-:The bofors 40mm AA gun had to be fired unlimbered, not in a self propelled mount like the germans used. This was corrected later, after the campaign.
-: Infantry in the open, or entrenched but without capable AT guns is of no use in the desert.
-: British tanks were easily defeated by enemy ones and specially and most important by enemy anti tank guns like 50mm pack 38 or the 76'2 pack 36... not speak of the 88mm AA.
-: Most armoured cars: Marmon-herrington series were not well armed nor protected to be used to suport infantry or fight enemy recce units.


When in may 1942 the british 6 pdr began to arrive to the battlefield things started to change, and as the action at snipe and other actions during alamein showed CW infantry could now defend herself aganist german tanks. At first and during the battles of jUne and july most were provided without enough training to the crews... but from then on no german tank attack would succed to crush without good support from artillery... Medenine battle is another example.

When you have a good AT gun then you could start to thing how to give better use to your 25 pdr's ...and develop the best method to give a support weapon the category of a winner as the british did with their artillery later in the war...

If the 6 pdr would have appeared on the battlefield early on 1942 as an AT gun and as gun for the Crusader tank, the Gazzala Battles, that nearly ended in disaster for Rommel most probably would have been a disaster.... and Rommel's name would be remembered like Paulus...


Of course a bit simple
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Rodger Herbst
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by Rodger Herbst »

I don't think the military wanted to go to Greece, another political decision that the military had to conform to. I think if we look back we'll find others that were losers.
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Re: Auchinleck

Post by stevenz »

Rodger Herbst wrote:I don't think the military wanted to go to Greece, another political decision that the military had to conform to. I think if we look back we'll find others that were losers.
General freyberg in charge of the New Zealand Division didn,t believe in the operation and there was a lot of anger from our government when he didnt relay these views to them but he didn,t because he said it was difficult to go against superiors.

He didn,t have this problem later on.
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