Quote:
(angie999 @ Feb 10 2006, 07:51 AM) [post=45561]
Yes, you are missing something. The British used them and they worked. Their descendants are still found today in the engineer components of armoured divisions.
The AVRE with the Petard mortar was basically a Churchill tank. They were not adapted for DD drive, so they landed via LCTs. Their role was to deliver a demolition charge to fortified positions and they were very effective in doing this. The British continued to use them to attack fortifications until the end of the war.
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The issue here was why didn’t the Americans want them. The inference was that they were just gung-ho idiots.
As far as the DDay invasion you(they?) are comparing apples to oranges. The British invasion was completely different from the American invasion. The British invasion happened much later and with higher tide than the American attack along with massive pre-bombardment from air and navy. The context was not “did it work for the British”, but was it the best solution for the Americans. For that matter American engineers blowing up the traps worked for the Americans even out in the water, and worked terrifically on shore once they got some armor on the beach, so that does not address the article’s claim that it cost the US in the invasion. If you can’t get a Sherman on the shore you can’t get a “AVRE” ashore.
A Sherman is lighter than a Churchill and the Americans couldn’t get them to shore in the LCTs either because they got hung up in the underwater obstacles which the AVRE could not have helped move either, they didn’t simply rely on DDs which were overwhelmed by the high seas at early light. The AVREs would have been scrap iron had you have even got it ashore on Omaha early in the morning of June 6th.
But in the context of the value of a fortification destroyer, there were other solutions that worked much better. For instance the M7s, M8s, M12s (mobile long toms), M37s M43s, T92/93s most of which could fire from 16 miles direct or howitzer style rounds from 105-240mm. I have yet to hear (until to day) anyone make an argument that the US had trouble destroying fixed fortifications. Patton crossed the Siegfried Line in three places just rolling the M7s up close enough to the lines for direct fire and letting them quickly blow the fortifications to pieces. He didn’t even have to wait for the heavy stuff. Not to mention the convenience of precision air strikes. All of these weapons could destroy the heaviest fixed fortifications from a distance without having to take out the German heavy armor first. The “Funnies” had to fear mines, anti-tank guns, other tanks and even infantry hidden in the bushes with panzershreks and panzerfausts. Why would the Americans have needed it in any scenario over any other type of vehicle in their inventory that would warrant an inference that they were over-zealous and too stupid to realize it? The American strategy was mobile warfare. It sounds like a liability to me unless you are waging tank on tank static warfare. That’s what I don’t get.