A brief review of the fuel issues that the combatants faced during the Battle of the Bulge.
By the time of the Watch on the Rhine offensive the Germans were forced to fight a poor mans war. After five years of war and a punishing Allied Strategic Air offensive it was getting difficult for the German Army to get sufficient allocations of ammunition and particularly fuel.
By December of 1944 the Germans had lost the Polesti oil fields which represented 25% of the Germans oil supply. The synthetic oil plants which had been under sporadic bombardment since before D-Day have had their production curtailed by roughly a third.
Despite these losses the German High Command through scrounging and hoarding since October of 1944 had amassed a fuel reserve of some 5 million gallons for the Watch on the Rhine offensive!
German staff planners used as measure of the operational fuel reserves a unit called “Verbauchssatze” or VS for short. A VS was the amount of fuel that a formation would use to move 100 kilometers under optimum conditions. Filedmarshal Model had requested 5 VS for the units before the jumpoff but on December 15th at bets there was only 1 VS on hand. Any units had less than that. Emergency orders were put in but still on the December 16th on about 1.5 VS were on hand in the forward depots.
To give the reader some idea of fuel consumption here is a table to follow:
Tank Type Good Roads:MPG Bad Roads:MPG Battalion Use N.B.
Pzkpw Mk IV 0.78 0.39 6,154gals
Pzkpw Mk V 0.64 0.32 7,500gals
Pzkpw Mk VI 0.44 0.22 10,909gals
M4A1 "Sherman" 0.7 0.35 6,857gals
Note Bene this is the amount of fuel needed to move a battalion of 48 tanks 50 miles in the Ardennes. This does not include any support vehicles so add about a 30% to the totals above for a more accurate measure.
The Germans were desperately short of motorized transport in December of 1944. Truck losses from January to October 1944 amounted to almost 110,00 vehicles. This was equal to the entire 1943 production and meant a loss of 40% of military transport capacity. A loss not easily made up by the overtaxed German manufacturing base . This left the Germans with an ageing fleet of vehicles and a mix of captured trucks. And spare parts wer in short supply at best and usually non existent in the case of the captured units.
As mentioned yesterday the Germans had quite the stockpile of Gas on the EAST side of the Rhine where it was a one day drive to get the fuel to the front. Once the offensive kicked off that time expanded to two days and after the 23rd of December when the Allied Airpower made it’s appearance the time was as much as 4 days. There were case after case of German unit leaders begging for fuel to get the panzer units moving yet at best they could only get a battalion of tanks instead of the whole unit on the move. And there is nothing worse than committing an armored unit piecemeal and sacrificing the massive punch that the unit as a whole can provide.
So much for the Germans now a quick look at the American supply picture. After the shortages in September and October the Americans had built up a pretty extensive supply stockpile. Yes there were still spot shortages, especially in winter clothing, but overall the Allies were in really good shape supply wise.
Here is where the Americans secret weapon comes in to play, the truck company! The American Army was almost awash in trucks a quick example. From December 17th to December 23rd the US 3rd Army used 133,178 trucks to move 6 Infantry divisions, 3 armored divisions, 25 field artillery battalions and 42,000 tons of supplies. This was done over 100 miles of icy roads into the wake of the German offensive. Surely the 3rd Army was low on fuel after all this but no, 3rd Army fuel stocks stood at over 2.8 million gallons at the end of December and this was after 1.5 million miles of vehicle travel in the two weeks of getting 3ed Army repositioned.
Information for this was from the book Battle of the Bulge: Hitlers Ardennes Offensive 1944-1945 by Danny S. Parker Materialschlacht or the War of Supply!
A brief review of the logistical issues that the combatants faced during the Battle of the Bulge.
By the time of the Watch on the Rhine offensive the Germans were forced to fight a poor mans war. After five years of war and a punishing Allied Strategic Air offensive it was getting difficult for the German Army to get sufficient allocations of ammunition and particularly fuel.
By December of 1944 the Germans had lost the Polesti oil fields which represented 25% of the Germans oil supply. The synthetic oil plants which had been under sporadic bombardment since before D-Day have had their production curtailed by roughly a third.
Despite these losses the German High Command through scrounging and hoarding since October of 1944 had amassed a fuel reserve of some 5 million gallons for the Watch on the Rhine offensive!
German staff planners used as measure of the operational fuel reserves a unit called “Verbauchssatze” or VS for short. A VS was the amount of fuel that a formation would use to move 100 kilometers under optimum conditions. Filedmarshal Model had requested 5 VS for the units before the jumpoff but on December 15th at bets there was only 1 VS on hand. Any units had less than that. Emergency orders were put in but still on the December 16th on about 1.5 VS were on hand in the forward depots.
To give the reader some idea of fuel consumption here is a table to follow:
Tank Type Good Conditions: level ground, good roads / MPG Ardennes Conditions: hilly terrian, bad roads / MPG Battalion Use N.B. Pzkpw Mk IV 0.78 0.39 6,154 Pzkpw Mk V "Panther" 0.64 0.32 7,500 Pzkpw Mk VI "Tiger" 0.44 0.22 10,909 M4A1 "Sherman" 0.7 0.35 6,857
Note Bene this is the amount of fuel needed to move a battalion of 48 tanks 50 miles in the Ardennes. This does not include any support vehicles so add about a 30% to the totals above for a more accurate measure.
The Germans were desperately short of motorized transport in December of 1944. Truck losses from January to October 1944 amounted to almost 110,00 vehicles. This was equal to the entire 1943 production and meant a loss of 40% of military transport capacity. A loss not easily made up by the overtaxed German manufacturing base . This left the Germans with an ageing fleet of vehicles and a mix of captured trucks. And spare parts wer in short supply at best and usually non existent in the case of the captured units.
As mentioned yesterday the Germans had quite the stockpile of Gas on the EAST side of the Rhine where it was a one day drive to get the fuel to the front. Once the offensive kicked off that time expanded to two days and after the 23rd of December when the Allied Airpower made it’s appearance the time was as much as 4 days. There were case after case of German unit leaders begging for fuel to get the panzer units moving yet at best they could only get a battalion of tanks instead of the whole unit on the move. And there is nothing worse than committing an armored unit piecemeal and sacrificing the massive punch that the unit as a whole can provide.
So much for the Germans now a quick look at the American supply picture. After the shortages in September and October the Americans had built up a pretty extensive supply stockpile. Yes there were still spot shortages, especially in winter clothing, but overall the Allies were in really good shape supply wise.
Here is where the Americans secret weapon comes in to play, the truck company! The American Army was almost awash in trucks a quick example. From December 17th to December 23rd the US 3rd Army used 133,178 trucks to move 6 Infantry divisions, 3 armored divisions, 25 field artillery battalions and 42,000 tons of supplies. This was done over 100 miles of icy roads into the wake of the German offensive. Surely the 3rd Army was low on fuel after all this but no, 3rd Army fuel stocks stood at over 2.8 million gallons at the end of December and this was after 1.5 million miles of vehicle travel in the two weeks of getting 3ed Army repositioned.
Information for this was from the book Battle of the Bulge: Hitlers Ardennes Offensive 1944-1945 by Danny S. Parker
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
“The amateurs discuss tactics: the professionals discuss logistics.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte
The scale of Americcn logistic largesse was staggering. For example, the Germans came close to capturing the 1st Army’s warehouse that kept all of the army’s maps used for staff planning and for operational use by combat formations. There were only 1.5 million maps there.
Albert Seaton, in his seminal work on the war in the east “The Russo-German War” wrote an assessment of the Wehrmacht at the end of 1943. Given the widespread use of the small peasant pony and panje wagon for transport, Seaton concluded that by early 1944 the Wehrmacht was “one of the poorer armies in the world.”