[TML] Molding Ships

[Stephen Tempest]

"Leon Wu" <Leon.Wu at newswire.ca> writes:

>No objections that tech would solve this problem. However in 1918 the
>Germans just used different tactics to win, had they tried this in 1915
>the war (and the world) would be very different.

There's a reason I included infiltration tactics in my list of "things
that achieve a local breakthrough but not a strategic success"
alongside poison gas and flamethrowers...

The German offensives of March 1918 didn't "win"; they did manage to
break through the enemy lines, but then were unable to exploit their
victory because of problems bringing up supplies and reinforcements
over the broken ground, while fresh Allied troops rushed into position
and blocked them before reaching any of their strategic objectives.

In other words, at a larger scale (dozens of divisions involved) but
otherwise no difference to the British breakthrough in 1915 at Neuve
Chapelle or in 1917 at Cambrai, which were also sealed off and went
nowhere.

Ending trench warfare would take a lot of different factors, including
the humble motor truck and the portable radio. Even so the difference
between WW1 and WW2 is often exaggerated. Everybody knows about
Guderian and Rommel and Patton; but take a soldier from Flanders 1917
and drop him into Italy 1943 or Normandy 1944 or Leningrad at just
about any year, and he'd feel right at home. 

What prevented WW2 bogging down into nothing but trench warfare was
partly sheer troop density - smaller armies in a larger amount of
territory, especially on the Eastern Front (which was pretty mobile
even in WW1), and partly the ability, aided by radio and air power and
motor transport, to *quickly* launch an attack on a weak point of the
enemy line and then follow through faster than they could reinforce.

Stephen