Engineers of victory

[garrett-sutton]

Book about how the tide was turned on WW2

[garrett-sutton]

Battle of the Atlantic

• interesting how tech advanced happened so fast and that the US/Allies were able to get the right ones at the right time. When Germany was pushing for more Uboats, the US was figuring out a bunch of different things to better equip ships and planes to combat them.
• crazy how pivotal this is to future success of the war effort. Without it, we don't have a landing ground in Britain to take back France and push for Berlin
• some things aren't that big of tech improvements, more of optimization. Hedgehogs on front of ships (i.e l. Grenade launchers), giving planes more fuel tanks, etc

[garrett-sutton]

Command of the air

• this talks about the fact that air warfare is new and innovative. Similar to what I read in Bomber Mafia
• interesting point that British were "ready" for Germans. Germans sort of just went for it as a way to eliminate UK.
• Radar crazy important during battle of Britain. Can see Nazis from 100 miles out. 1) Don't need to use jet fuel for recon and 2) men can rest while waiting for orders

[garrett-sutton]

Command of the air

• though the British figured out how to fend off they failed to recognize some of the advantages they had in defending themselves when they attacked Germans
  • the morale bit. Thinking they could just crack the Germans
    • the homeland bit. Airplanes take a non-trivial amount of time to go back across the channel to refuel

[garrett-sutton]

Command of the air

• As Rolls Royce got the merlin engine out, there was tension with the US about adopting it into the P-51. Seemingly a political game that the US wanted our planes to be entirely ours even though adding a Merlin to the P-51 would make it even better than the spitfire.
• This reality of increasing the range of the P51 fighter was a huge advantage when it came to needing to fly from Britian to Berlin and back. No other fighter could do it.
• It was absolutely paramount that the fighters were there to escort the long range bombers. Otherwise the bombers were sitting ducks.

[garrett-sutton]

command of the air

• Strategic bombing became more of a thing as the Allies has the resources and technologies to carry it out.
• They still do the indiscriminate bombing of civilians and that is really not all that effective.
• But hitting key strategic points within Germany are vital to the turning the tide. For example; the German war industry was still outputting a ton of planes and u boats, but the allied bombing that inhibitted oil production rendered these products useless. By hitting railways, they (Germans) also couldn't get things to the battlefield

[garrett-sutton]

How to stop a blitzkreig

This chapter goes into depth on how the Nazi blitzkreig was so successful in some circumstances and how it faultered on the Eastern Front. It's interesting because yes, there were operational failures, but the Wehrmacht were stretched so thin that they couldn't overcome those failures. And as they were continuing to fight a war on 3 fronts (i.e. pulling soldiers from the Eastern Front), the Russians continued to pile soldiers into the fight.

The blitzkreig tactic was so successful in other places because of smaller countries, more favorable geography and less prepared armies. In Russia, they took heavy heavy losses and were pushed back substantially, but they had the luxury of moving their industrial war complex further to the east. And they laid out mine fields all along their path. So the nazis strategy of moving very very fast was slowed significantly by these minefields. Then the geography. Interestingly, the Russian land could become so muddy that German panzer units (the key to their blitzkreig strategy) could end up stuck in the mud. The war on the Eastern Front seems to resemble the very stagnant battles of WW1 - a reality the blitzkreig tried to avoid.

I mentioned this above, but it's particularly interesting to add that the total war aspect of the war on the eastern front seems to particularly hurt the Nazis. The author highlights there are many times where german tank divisions are forced to sit idly because they are simply out of fuel. Like soldiers moving to other fronts, this is fuel that they either don't have or can't allocate to the eastern front.

I've always heard about "don't go into Russia in the winter" but it really plays a major role in the German defeat on the Eastern Front.

Also interestingly, the point about a Soviet Tank that was originally developed by US engineer (the T-34). It had many flaws early on, but with additional changes to address these flaws, it was a formidable opponent. And most interestingly, the Soviet's used it as a case for Communism (i.e. we can built the best tank in the world because we are communist).

The magnitude of the loss of life on the Eastern front is staggering.

[garrett-sutton]

How to land on an enemy held beach

This is the chapter of the book that I came for and it's fascinating.

This is largely the culmination of the previous chapters, especially command of the air and command of the sea. Without either of these, DDay is impossible.

For years into the war, the Allies seemed to struggle mightily with amphibious warfare. There are a decent amount of failures and a few successes that proceeded Overlord. Even the successful missions were sometimes unfair examples to learn from. They'd come across the Vichy French, a small German force or the Italians. All of these to say they weren't the most formidable foes. And even with that, the invaders often overestimated how many people they were fighting against because of the chaos of landing on an enemy held beach. (One person I think estimated something like 5,000 guns on a beach and there were only 50?? I'd have to check that). So they could take small tidbits from those wins.

There were collosal failures too. Even missions they had no strategic purpose but to be used as a dry run (to the fury of getting the Canadians into the war). Dieppe I believe is the place.

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The sheer volume of Operation Overlord is staggering. LOOK UP THE VOLUME OF PEOPLE AND MUNITIONS. But even with that massive advantage, the dug in Germans were still quite effective. It was no easy mission.

It truly required command of the sea - being able to shelter the landing craft, have a place for operational command to be, and a way to determinsitically fire on the beaches to provide cover for the landing forces.

It truly required command of the air - the landing forces needed to be able to focus straight ahead and have confidence that the planes overhead were there planes.

And then the biggest gamble. The Allies were fearful that land forces against the Germans would be very difficult. The Germans were magnificent at land battles and they were even banking on the fact that they were so good at the land battles.

Other interesting pieces to victory:

• deception
  • fooling the Germans into where the invasion would happen. With inflatable armies, moving Pattona post
• airborne landing all over the place was really hard to do their mission but it had an unintended benefit. The Germans were confused and surprised by people being everywhere
• timing: the speed of the attack was particularly advantageous to the allies because the Germans couldn't move their best infantry into the area in time to make a difference.

Author concludes that the biggest piece is the the operationalization of it all. Joint command of air, sea and land can't be underestimated. This idea wasn't one of the figure heads of WW2 but instead the planners before hand

[garrett-sutton]

Amphibious invasion/ Overlord

Weather impacting Overlord. Massive storm hit like a week after the landing and if it was earlier it could have completely derailed the op. Germans would have moved people in while more people couldn't land for the allies. The Allies wouldn't have been able to land people because of how bad the water was.

Also the weather was so bad in the days leading into the landings that it was postponed several times. But June 6 was the first or second day that it was sailable. It was so quick that the Germans thought it would be Ludacris that the allies would invade. So much so that some prominent German officers left and went back to German for a few days

[garrett-sutton]

Also amphibious assaults.

The tanks that the British had were labeled as funny. They would do these crazy things like make them carry logs or have chains that they'd use as tentacles to set off land mines or others that would literally eat hedges

[garrett-sutton]

The pacific theater

Japan's overly ambitous imperial expansion prompts US involvement in the Pacific. The japanese had ambitions to be labeled as a "greater" nation - in line with the great powers of europe post ww1. They were expanding into China and the world seemed to turn a blind eye to it. However, after a while, this expansion prompted the US to quit selling oil to the Japanese, a vital resource to keeping the island nation going. This prompted them to attack Pearl harbor with the intention of being able to get oil from places that they conquered in the Pacific. They figured that if they could eliminate the US navy from Hawaii, they could more easily expand and obtain the resourced they needed to continue their expansion into China.

They don't eliminate the US Navy from the Pacific after pearl harbor though.

Some of Japan's operational failures and the United State's operational and technical successes shape the rest of the war in the pacific.

Japan's operation failures:

• not having a unified front between their army and navy
• expanding far beyond what their resources could handle

Contributions to the US success story

• Putting some resources in China that would occupy the substantial Japanese forces while focusing a large effort on the Central Pacific theater (The Gilberts, Caroline, and Mariana Islands) as means to get to the Japanese mainland
• The marines and their specific training around amphibious warfare
• The fast carrier groups. These absolutely massive aircraft carriers were remarkably effective in transporting planes to allow the US to launch aerial attacks from all over. The F6F hellcats were designed to land and take off from the Essex class carriers and they were extraordinarily effective at controlling the skis above these aircraft carriers.
• The b-29s. These bombers were crazy. They could fly much higher than any other plane of the time. They could fly faster than most all other Japanese fighters too. We used them for altitude bombing and the low bombing that was used to absolutely devastate Tokyo. And B29s were used to carry the A bombs too.
• The seabees -- The Construction Battalions. These groups of older service members (those who were impressive construction workers in the US - building the NYC skyscrapers and the like) were able to build airstrips, piers, lodging, hospitals, and fuel tanks at astonishing rates.
• The submarine service - They operated as part of but also independent of the navy.

All of the above coming together at the right time. These pieces took time to design, build, test and deploy. But they all seemed to be ready to go around late 1943 - at which point we could use all of the above to overwhelm the Japanese forces. It didn't make it easy, but it certainly gave us a huge advantage against an enemy that had no intention on surrendering.

[garrett-sutton]

The conclusion

The Allies definitely had superior resources in the latter years of the war, but it is the efficient and creative use of these resources that truly make a difference in the war. And in order to achieve efficient and creative use of resources, it requires a culture of continuous innovation. You try, you make mistakes and you learn from those mistakes. That isn't done by the people history remembers. It's done by the mid level folks that are actually doing the designing, and building. The ones who are solving problems related to the state of the current technology.