Breakthroughs: Armored Offensives in Western Europe 1944

Breakthroughs: Armored Offensives in Western Europe 1944

Ed., Barry R. Posen and the MIT/DACS Conventional Forces Working Group

? 1994, 2009, SSP/MIT draft: not to be used or quoted from without the consent of Barry R. Posen

Preface

June 6, 2009 marked the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the beginning of the challenging campaign to invade Germany from the West. Less remembered is that a period of brutal attrition fighting then began on the Normandy Peninsula, which did not end until the success on July 25 of "Operation Cobra," a classical "breakthrough battle." Shortly before the end of the Cold War, I and a group of graduate students became interested in the potential lessons that the experience of breakthrough battles on the Western Front could offer for a possible clash of arms between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Though that danger subsided, our interest did not. We launched a comparative study of several of the best known battles of this kind initiated by the British, the Americans, and the Germans and completed a draft of the study in 1994. As one might imagine, no publisher was then interested. As the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings approached, I recalled that I had retained digital copies of this work, and that an intervening invention, the internet, would allow us to share it. This study would normally have gone through one more editing before publication. We do not view this as a truly finished product. In the last fifteen years, however, the authors have developed other interests, and additional work is out of the question. Some of their names will be familiar to regular visitors to this site, as they have gone on to careers in security studies, while other authors have pursued different kinds of careers. We offer this study in the hopes that it will be of some interest and utility to students of armored warfare, and as a modest tribute to the allied soldiers who liberated Western Europe from the Nazi regime.

Barry R. Posen July, 2009

Table of Contents

Introduction -- by Barry R. Posen

Goodwood -- by Eric Heginbotham

The Cobra Breakthrough -- by Nick Beldecos

Bluecoat -- by Kevin Oliveau

The Mortain Counterattack -- by Jonathan Ladinsky

The Battle of the Bulge -- by Brian Nichiporuk

Blitzing by Numbers: A Quantitative Analysis - by Eugene Gholz and Ken Pollack

Conclusion -- by Barry R. Posen

Appendix I - Breakthrough Battle Data Base

Appendix II - Breakthrough Battle Data Base: Guidance for Data Collection

Maps - by Ken Pollack Map Key Planned British Goodwood Offensive Goodwood - Operations on Day One Goodwood - Operations on Days 2-3 Planned US Cobra Offensive, July 1944 Cobra - US Attacks 25 & 26 July 1944 Cobra - US Attacks on 27 July 1944 Bluecoat - British Breakthrough, 30-31 July 1944 Bluecoat - British Exploitation, 1-2 August 1944 Bluecoat - German Counterattacks, 3-6 August 1944 Planned German Offensive August 1944 Mortain Bulge - Fifth Panzer Army Attacks, 16-18 Dec. 1944 Bulge - German attack against the Schnee Eifel, 16-18 Dec. 1944 Bulge - 6th Panzer Army Attack, 16-18 Dec.

Acknowledgments

This is a project of the MIT Defense and Arms Control Studies Program. It was supported in part by the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Lynne Levine provided administrative support.

Cambridge, MA August, 1994

Introduction Barry R. Posen

This is a study of armored breakthrough operations. This type of battle has been central to the conduct of warfare since the emergence of the tank as the core element of modern ground armies at the beginning of the Second World War. Wherever a defender can cover an extended front with many, reasonably well armed units, attackers must find a way to pierce these positions, widen the gap, and then push sufficient forces deep into the defender's territory to cause a general collapse of the frontal defenses. Since the early years of the First World War it has been clear that breakthroughs of extended defended frontages, and exploitations of these breakthroughs, is no easy task. There are, of course, other kinds of armored battles that merit study--flanking attacks, encounter battles, pursuits, and even ambushes. But where the opponents are strong and competent, their ability to execute or thwart breakthrough operations will likely influence the entire course of a campaign, and even a war. The tank was devised, but not yet perfected, during World War I to deal with the problem of penetration of defended fronts. Since then, many armored breakthroughs have occurred, but many have been thwarted. The subject of breakthrough operations has thus been of keen interest to attackers and defenders alike. Much craft knowledge has developed about the conduct of such operations, and much of it has been codified in military training manuals.

Yet, the study of past armored breakthrough battles has been somewhat unsystematic. Single case studies abound. Systematic comparative case studies are rare. This book adds to the literature on this central question of modern conventional warfare. We conduct focused, comparative case studies of five armored breakthrough battles that occurred on the Western Front in 1944--Goodwood, Cobra, Bluecoat, Mortain, and the Bulge.

My interest in this subject emerged during the great debate on the NATO-Warsaw Pact conventional balance that began in the late 1970s. It would be tempting to believe that the evaporation of the Cold War has rendered the whole question moot. But it has not. Wherever

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