[TML] Molding Ships

[MJ Dougherty]

The big thing about trench warfare was that reinforcements could be moved by 
the defender faster than the attacker. Once that changed, the swing back 
towards manoeuvre warfare began.


> "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
>
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