"D-Day 75: How close did D-Day come to failure?" Topic

"….A problem with any of the vital elements – from keeping the invasion plans secret, to the complex operation that kept Allied troops supplied once they had landed – could have radically changed the outcome of D-Day…"

From here

link

Armand

Not at all.

(smile)

Armand

Have many books on D-Day under my belt, the Allies were getting in without a doubt, easy or hard was the only difference.

Thanks

Armand

From the article in the link:

The invasion of northern France was the first stage in a long campaign to defeat Nazi Germany. The Allied commanders had to get every detail of the D-Day plan to work.

No, the Allied commanders did not have to get every detail of the D-Day plan to work.

As it was every detail did not work, and yet the plan worked. The plan was constructed with MANY redundancies and over-lapping approaches to address core issues.

The Mulberry harbor built and installed to support the US Army forces was lost almost before it went into service. Still the plan worked.

The paratroopers were scattered far and wide, and often unable to assemble to attack their key objectives. Still the plan worked.

Allied intelligence missed (or lost?) the location/presence of the German 352nd Infantry Division, which caused significant(!) difficulties on the actual landing beaches. Still the plan worked.

A deliberate effort to silence the guns at Pointe-du-Hoc was entirely unsuccessful, as despite the courage and skill of the Rangers the guns had been moved inland before the day of the invasion, and could not be attacked by the Rangers during the initial landings. Still the plan worked.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head. Others here can chime in with more I'm sure. In fact Allied planners did NOT create a plan that was so complex and yet so fragile that any single point of failure would lead to overall failure. Not at all.

To suggest otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the Overlord plan.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Even after a major part of the D-Day plan went bad, the Mulberry port, a harder yet doable shutting from ships to land was put into action.
Point being the capability of the Allies was much more than the Germans could hope for.

Another example would be that the planners were expecting 75% losses among the paratroopers.

Thanks also…

Armand

Yes, as always, the "friction" of war caused many things to go wrong. But despite all the mishaps, in just a few hours the Allies smashed a 60 mile wide gap through the Atlantic Wall. If anyone's plans went wrong that day, it was the Germans'.

in calculating lorry loads 50% was used so from the outset thre was spare capacity.

Yeah, no chance. Films give it a bit too much of a forlorn hope type of effect. Saving Private Ryan was good, but even then, the sheer scale, if it could be seen without cover, could not represent the scale of reality. If could have been seen from a Magic Carpet vantage, it likely would have caused the Germans of lucid mind to simply give up.

Somehow I doubt we (Allies) could do that again. That kind of will is obscenely rare.

in calculating lorry loads 50% was used so from the outset the was spare capacity.

The USA badly miscalculated the number of trucks it would need in NWE. The severe shortages they suffered in the latter half of 1944 were (partly) due to this oversight.

As far as I can tell, the resource differential, coupled with the Germans inability to realise what that could mean and their own ability to restrict adequate responses, made it a far more winning hand than either side expected.

The USA badly miscalculated the number of trucks it would need in NWE.

It wasn't a unique to the U.S. issue.

It wasn't a unique to the U.S. issue

Combined with the US failure to secure a working port it created a 'perfect storm' where the US supply-chain experienced severe shortages in late 1944. By comparison Montgomery had enough trucks and ports to ensure he had no such problems. Monty even loaned the US several of his own trucking Units to help them out.

But if you manufacture more trucks you must sacrifice something else in industry, if it is working flat out. More trucks need more drivers. More trucks need more fuel. More fuel needs more oil tankers on the road to get it where it is needed. They need more drivers…..and so it goes on.

The British were working on shorter lines of communication across the Channel and NWE than the US Army. You can borrow our Trucking Units (sorry that message was garbled, say again?). Also a song by the Grateful Dead…Truckin'.

The US problem was a combination of several factors. An unrealistically low replacement pool of tanks, the failure of Bradley to capture a working port and the cancelation of CHASTITY. Combined with a too low truck establishment it meant there were severe US shortages in Autumn 1944. The cause was Bradley's deliberate decision to abandon the entire pre-Invasion US plan to support its armies direct from the USA via the French Atlantic Ports and make Monty responsible for capturing a port that the USA could use. In the post-war battle of the memoirs there was a concerted effort to cover up this failure and shift the blame for the shortages on to Monty with lies like 'Monty stole all of Patton's gas'. In reality Patton had no gas that Monty could steal and Monty had no real shortages and did not have to steal anything anyway.

I think your analysis is a bit one sided. Neither the British nor Americans had enough trucks. During the race to the Dutch and German frontiers the British were forced to dismount troops to free up trucks to move up supplies. The U.S. did too. 12th AG's cost benefit analysis came out a bit different than 21st AG's. With replacement tanks and tank parts it wasn't a matter of having them, but having them where needed. Stuff in England, Normandy or 100 miles to the rear isn't much help when you are in Belgium or eastern France. Transporting it where needed meant giving up transportation resources already in short supply.

So let's move to ports. There were no "owned ports". Western Allied planners understood when ports were captured and when they could be restored to functioning status were variables. Cherbourg, captured by U.S. forces was the only significant port city under control of the Western Allies at the time of the Normandy breakout. By the time Paris was liberated U.S. forces had captured St. Malo, but they soon decided it wasn't worth the effort to use it as a supply port. Brest was so damaged by the time it was captured by U.S. forces on September 19 that a similar decision was made. There is no assurance that it would have been different with La Rochelle and Lorient if the Americans went for them. Ports far to the west weren't worth as much when reliance was on trucks to move the supplies up to a front that had already crossed the Seine.

Now consider the ports captured by 21st AG. They were closer to the front. Le Havre was captured September 12, with Boulogne at the end of September and Calais in October. They did not come online as functioning ports until later. Dunkirk held out until the end of the war. By the time Le Havre was captured Patton had already been forced to halt at Lorraine. Before Le Havre was functioning the 1st U.S. Army was forced to halt its advance at the Siegfreid Line, 6th AG was forced to halt in Alsace and Market Garden went off. By the time all those things we debate endlessly about happened 21st AG had only added Dieppe and St. Valery.

The plan was for the US Army to build up an invasion force in England to make the crossing and establish a zone in NW France where they could pause and consolidate for a few months and land the bulk of the US Army direct from the USA via the French Atlantic Ports. Supplies had been pre-positioned in the USA for that delivery method. They even had a prefabricated port (CHASTITY) to be used if no working port could be captured. You have to understand this and not think that they were going to have to deliver the troops/supplies from the USA to England and then ship them over the channel to France. Everything was set in place for the reinforcements/supplies to come via the Atlantic ports. When Bradley/Ike decided to ditch all of that and move east they effectively cut themselves loose from their supply-chain and that is why they were desperate for Monty to capture Antwerp for them as a replacement port that could handle the ships that came from the USA. They also had a severe truck shortage so that they could not move the supplies they had already landed forward when they moved east. It was a very bad situation for them. Monty had always planned to capture channel ports and use them as his supply chain. That was his pre D-Day planning. He kept to this plan and thus his 'plans' worked. He could advance using the ports he captured. He never had the problems Bradley experienced because he actually managed to capture 'working ports' that met his supply needs. Monty did not need Antwerp and could manage without it. Bradley however, desperately needed Antwerp but even when it did come online he never had enough trucks to move the supplies quicker than they were landed and huge stockpiles built up that were landed so quickly they were not properly catalogued so no on eknew what was where. The US Quartermaster failed big-time in NWE in 1944 and the fault was entirely their own. Monty's supply chain functioned just as he had planned and he never suffered the same disruption as experienced by Bradley. Post-war there was a concerted effort to place the blame for all the problems on Monty with the bogus claims he was 'too slow' at Antwerp of that he 'stole Patton's gas' when in fact it was Bradley's failures that led to his problems.

Quite interesting… thanks.

Armand