thesaint

How about ze luftwaffe ?

troung

And that is leaving out the scores of other bolt action rifles in different calibers and models that were pressed into service from Lebels and MAS-36s, to Mosin Nagats.

Unsophisticated and a mess of different calibers and models...

Bluesman

Oh, I was referring to present-day American infantry being the tops of their class. The old Army from just thirty years ago is light years behind, and I grant that back in the day of the draftee, there was definitely NOT the high degree of professionalism and awesome motivation that today's soldier is imbued with.

But your point is a great one: the raw material was exactly the same THEN as it is NOW (and may have been slightly better), and yet we see an ENORMOUS difference in degree and scale.

So, if anybody thinks I'm saying that Americans are just better troops SIMPLY BECAUSE they're American, I'm not.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

astralis

bluesman,

good points. i had neglected the draftee aspect of the VN era army. by the way, one of the things which i do credit pres. bush for in the handling of this war is by utilizing the NG to the full measure. in vietnam, for the sake of political expediency, LBJ refused to use the NG, only deploying a few units; as the average age of a NG member was considerably older than their active army counterparts, this represented a bastion of skills and maturity that was largely untapped and needed in the VN war.

that should be a warning, immediate political expediency during a war can mean not just strategic setbacks but also medium-long range political costs later. the problem is recognizing when this will occur.

Chino

Speaking of the VN War draft, read that later on in the war, the draft system was such that you could easily escape a rifleman job if you try hard enough.

Those were, of course, those who became riflemen because they WANTED to fight as a rifleman. But the majority of riflemen were those whose IQ was to low to escape the infantry job, or those who simply accepted fate. As a result, there were always a lot of reports of poor infantry performance in VN cos the soldiering quality of the majority of the VN War draftees were poor to begin with.

Unlike WW2, where a lot of good men joined up willingly to fight.

Shek

Chino,

1. IIRC, the percentage of draftees in WWII vs. Vietnam wasn't a whole lot different. I'm reading a book now about the 95th Division in WWII, and pretty everyone interviewed was drafted. However, I think that there was definitely a greater sense of duty due to fewer people trying to "dodge" the draft through waivers and deferments.

2. The conception about infantrymen being dumb is a false one. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, but there's plenty of things that you need to memorize and need to be able to calculate. If you'd like me to give you an example of battlefield "calculus" to demonstrate the complexities of the battlefield and what infantry leaders need to be to do.

3. The biggest failings of Vietnam later in the war was the combination of the decimation of the NCO corps, which means that you didn't have the requisite leadership to nip problems in the bud and properly execute orders, and the individual replacement system, which eroded team building and inhibited unit training due to the constant turnover.

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

sparten

Col, if LB type operations had been carried out in the late sixties (when support for the war was still strong in the US), would the US have been able to save S.Vietnam?

__________________
"Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality." ~ George William Russell

Officer of Engineers

More than anything else, it was South Vietnam who lost South Vietnam. There was too much corruption and incompetence for Saigon to stand up to a determined Hanoi.

__________________
Chimo

RepublicanGuard

Jagdpanzers actually faired well in combat. I agree they where a cheap way to get the powerful 75's, 88's, and in the jagdtiger-the 12.8 cm gun onto the field. however, unlike the american M-10 and later tank destroyers, these jagdpanzers actually had good armor.

leib10

The Germans' greatest mistake of WWII, other than attacking the Soviet Union, was fielding too many different and non-interchangeable pieces of equipment. Unlike the Allies, who fielded many vehicles of few types that were often inferior to German ones, the Germans had a lot of vehicles of all sorts of makes which led to supply problems that resulted in catastrophe.

__________________
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes." G-Man

dalem

Irrelevant. I am not claiming they didn't fare reasonably well in combat (I have no hard stats for comparison), I am saying that they shouldn't be thought of as examples of superior German design or implementation.

U.S. TD doctrine was completely different (and heavily flawed). U.S. TDs were designed with light and thin armor on purpose.

-dale

leib10

So were some German TD's, such as the Marder series. They weren't even fully enclosed.

dalem

Mmm, different concepts. The Marders were stopgap designs, as were most of the German junkwagens, again designed only around getting an AT gun onto a tracked platform ASAP. Protection for the crew was secondary, but as the war progressed the JagdPanzers evolved into the fully-armored types like the Hetzer and JagdPanther.

U.S. TD design was purposeful and deliberate from the start, albeit flawed. When the U.S. was designing their army structure and doctrine in '39-40, it was very reactive to the German bliztkrieg offensive successes, i.e. the thought was that there was going to be a large need to defend against onslaughts of German armored spearheads (and waves of Stukas - hence the mounting of an M2 .50cal on everything with wheels or tracks). Early wargames showed high successes of mobile AT guns against tank attacks, so the armor doctrine that emerged was that tanks should be designed to fight infantry via breakthrough attacks and enemy tanks would be dealt with by highly mobile towed and self-propelled AT guns. The dedicated TD was designed from the ground up to be highly mobile - its defense would be its speed and maneuverability. So light, thin armor, low weight, and an open top for higher visibility were all intentional. Note that the last new TD design to be fielded, the M18 Hellcat, had the lightest armor and fastest speed of the whole series!

Now reality dictated a different matchup, and U.S. tankers in their near-perfect breakthrough infantry-killer, the M4 Sherman, of course found themselves facing off against German tanks on a regular basis, and the TDs, with their inadequate machineguns, open and vulnerable turrets, and low HE ammo loadout, likewise were often pressed into service to support the GIs in the role of "tank", a role for which they were poorly suited.

Such is war.

-dale

Chino

I misrepresented myself when I said "those whose IQ was too low to escape the infantry job". The book I read said that kids whom had the least education were the first ones for the infantry job during the VN War. I wasn't saying that they were too dumb to be riflemen.

I can quote you the name of the book once I'm back home.

Sir, I myself served as a conscript in a infantry rifle company for 2 years and thereafter another 7 years as a reservist, doing a month's combat training every year. So you don't need to further enlighten me about the infantry.

In my country, the lowest quality of men goes to the infantry battalions. In my platoon, we had triad members, illegal gambling den operators, drug addicts, illegal money lenders and many other layabouts. Nearly all had below high school education. There were one or two whom were so ignorant you had to keep a wary eye when they were handling weapons with live ammo.

The ones deem to be a little "cleverer" were sent to the airforce, navy or other arms of the army like armour, scouts etc.

RepublicanGuard

Quote:
Originally Posted by RepublicanGuard
Jagdpanzers actually faired well in combat.


Irrelevant. I am not claiming they didn't fare reasonably well in combat (I have no hard stats for comparison), I am saying that they shouldn't be thought of as examples of superior German design or implementation

No, i wouldnt regard them as quite a "Superior Design". superior design would have to go to the Mk4, Mk5 Panther, and the Tiger series of tank.

BTW forgot to think of the Marders but this is a message board. Im not going to list the numerous types of Jagdpanzers due to the germans fielding so many diff. types w/many diff. classis's and AT guns. Marders, yes they where junk heaps, and most where used on the Russian front equipped with modified captured Soviet 76mm AT guns.

Still, the "Jagdpanzer" in general faired well in combat. unlike your example the M4 Sherman. I know it was designed to support infantry but by god, we all know the german tankers called them "Matchboxes" and "Fire Crackers"

Not to flame, just this so called "14 year old kid" is countering your argument