Ditto!
Posted on 03/27/2002 7:05:44 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Really? And is that where you got all of your Civil War knowledge? From novels?
Neville Powell! I had to read that twice before I got it. :)
Hackworth was the journalist who was on his way to interview Mike Boorda -- the CNO who committed suicide.
Walt
You mean other than the fact that he beat every Southern general sent against him? If Grant was that bad then what does it say about his opponents?
Grant was absolutely a great general. He was a master of maneuver warfare as he showed in the Vicksburg campaign, and bested Lee when attrition was called for. Lee himself complimented Grant, so criticisms of Grant's generalship are always lame.
But YOU know that. :)
The American way of war owes a LOT to the way Grant did things.
Walt
Generally concur with your post but Montgomery was/is the most overrated general of all times.
His "Victory" at El Alamein came against a foe whom he outnumbered 2-1 in manpower 4-1 in tanks, 3-1 in planes, and 10-1 in artillery -- and the Axis forces ran out of gas!
In Normandy, the inability of his forces to achieve their D-day objectives brought on a bloody battle of attrition where he was losing three men to each German casualty. His Operation Goodwood resulted in the loss of 470 tanks in four days for little gain after tremendous aerial bombardment.
The one thing Montgomery was master of was spin control. He pretended that all of what was happening was his plan (as if getting the British in a WWI type battle of attrition was a good plan); unfortunately for Montgomery's memory the paper trail is not there to back up his ex post facto claims.
See "Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" by R.W. Thompson where Thompson suggests that Montgomery's ideas didn't advance one whit from 1918 until the day he died.
Not meaning to bust your chops; Montgomery and his apologists are a sore point with me.
Walt
Monty's performance in France in 1944 is certainly less than stellar, but I blame Ike for that, not Monty. When Patton broke out of the bocage in August of 44, Ike should have opportunistically supported the drive of the Third Army across the mid-section of France. He could have used Monty as a "pivot point" and surrounded the entire German army (the Schlieffen Plan -- in reverse!). Monty could always be counted on to not give any territory -- he just couldn't be counted on to take any, at least in a timely manner.
Anyway, I'm glad Monty held the numerical and material edge over Rommel in 1942 -- if he hadn't, things in Africa might have gotten quite sticky indeed.
Since I was researching Grant, those two battles weren't mentioned. If you're writing about Lee, I don't think those two battles say much about him since Burnside and Hooker were fairly inept commanders.
I would have thought that the book should have given more praise to Lee but he threw away his troops at Gettyburg in a way that Grant never did.
Maneuver warfare is a buzz phrase popularized in the 80's by retired Air Force Col John Boyd. The concepts are ageless.
The idea of maneuver warfare is to confuse your enemy and make his own actions appear more and more useless or even counter-productive. To illustrate this, Col Boyd came up with the concept of the 'OODA loop'. This inelegant term stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action.
If you can see what the enemy is doing, orient your activities to that, decide what to do and act faster than he, then his operations will tend to come unglued. Take the German campaign in France, 1940.
The Germans approach the Muerse (sp) river. The French, with their World War One mentality, figure it will take five days for the Germans to bring up siege guns to blast an assault crossing. The Germans 'bring up' 1,500 Stuka dive bombers and cross the same day. The Frogs are flummoxed. Their OODA cycle was totally disrupted and things came totally unravelled on them. It wasn't unusual for French brigade HQ's to pick up their land line phones (The Frog army having eschewed radios) and heard someone on the other end speaking German.
Lee's Chancellorsville campaign and Grant's maneuvering around Vicksburg also had their opponents asking, "which way did they go?"
Maneuver warfare also posits seeking different centers of gravity, rather than strength to attack. If you are fighting a mechanized foe, can a raid or air strike wreck a bridge he depends on for supply? Can a clever use of terrain blunt an enemy or magnify your capabilities? All successful infantry commanders are very serious students of terrain. N.B. Forest comes to mind. Omar Bradley is often thought of as plebian, but he kept a scale map of all of Europe in his trailer on a scale to show promnent terrain features. Crazy George Patton was also a master of maneuver warfare techniques. His "hold 'em by the nose while you kick 'em in the ass!" was a MW manifestation. Patton also was bold enough to take risks that he knew his tactical air power could recoup. Patton made prodigious use of his reconnasiance assets. This all pertains to his campaign in France. After that, MW techniques were hard to apply as the terrain he was in defintely favored the Germans, as did the weather, Montgomery (g) and supply.
Fight smart, is the MW way.
The OODA loop concept is often hard to see in the historical record, because one good iteration means you won't need a second.
Walt
My mama could have done the same thing.
Rommel ended El Alamein with 35 tanks. I think Montgomery had something like 800. His "pursuit" was tardy in the extreme. One Amercian oberver said the 8th Army approached the Mareth line (Rommels' Tunisian defenses) with all the speed and grace of a pachyderm.
Walt
Thank the Russians. Without them, Montgomery would never have won a thing. :)
Walt
Ditto!
It's been about 15 years since I was exposed to the MW thing.
Grant clearly was doing MW when he smashed CSA forces in his campaign that culminated with the siege and surrender of Vicksburg.
Just getting on the east side of the river was an MW technique.
Sherman's abandoning his supply lines and burning Atlanta was too. Certainly Hood never expected such a thing, and swept up through AL to Nashville to whack the unwhackable -- supply lines that didn't exist. Sherman was definitely inside Hood's OODA loop.
Walt
Yeah, that's all great stuff, but the OODA Loop concept helps you examine history with an eye to seeing what Napoleon, Patton, Rommel, Grant or whomever was doing and see HOW what they did was in fact maneuver warfare.
Col Boyd passed away a couple of years ago. When MW first burst onto the scene, he was sort of the 'inventor' as I recall.
Walt
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