[TML] Molding Ships

[Charles Prevatte]

>
> Good point. There were many breakthroughs in trench warfare but usually
> never exploited because the following waves would get bogged down and
> attrited trying to cross no-man's land.


No, not really.  Trench warfare came about because of the invention of the
machine gun. That ended the effectiveness of the "charge" tactic across open
grond that was effective against slower firing weaponry.  Trench warfare was
the result of not having a good counter to massed machine gun fire.  Counter
that and trench warfare ends messily as the French and the Magiot Line
learned the hard way.

Things that would end trench war fair

Better air power:  Galting guns to increase straffing power, better engine
so plane could be larger can carry more weaponry(Think puff the magic dragon
from the veitnam era)  or helecopters.  No WW1 aircraft could fight a 1970
Huey gun ship.  They could not even keep up with it.  WW1 aircraft were
slow.

Napalm and a means to deliver it.  (Bigger planes and engines.)

The Tank tread clutch and modern tread linkages (the real problems in WW1
tank design).

White phospherious grenades (mostly for the smoke.)

More accurate artillery, better shells for the artillery,  more choices of
shells, and FOs with better field phones.

Paratroopers and the planes to carry them.  To heck with the treanches fly
over them.

All of these things were what prevented trench warfare from occuring in WW2.
It did happen after a fashion in places that forced the issue like
Stalingrad.  The Germans had to go through there and the Russains dug in
regardless of the cost, because not doing so was to loose.  The German war
machine devourered 3M+ russians.  The russians lost more people than all
other combants combined (See last months WW2 magazine for exact numbers.  My
copy is at home.)

So if better tanks and aircraft stopped trench warfare in WW2 then having it
in WW1 would have broken through it then as well as, supposedly, all sides
learned how to fight trench warefare in WW1 very well, and should have been
very good at it by WW2, but of course it did not happen that way in WW2 as
weapons changed and the tactics changed with the weapons, trenches did not
work.

Charles L.

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