tank
Specialist
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- Mar 24, 2012
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Operation “Overlord”
75 years ago - on August 25, 1944 - our Anglo-American partners took possession of the city of Paris, the capital of France. It was the end of Operation Overlord - the very one that began the landing in Normandy on June 6th.
Although less than 140 kilometers from the landing point in Normandy to Paris, this route turned out to be long and dangerous. Despite the fact that the number of participants in Operation Overlord (from the “Allies”) was growing all the time due to the delivery of new and new divisions to the European Peninsula, and by the end of the operation exceeded 2.9 million people operating in a 200-kilometer-wide strip, the achieved results for 86 days of the operation are not at all impressive. For comparison, we can cite the largest of our operations - the Dnieper-Carpathian (spring of 1944): 2.4 million participants from our side, for 116 days advanced 250-450 kilometers on a stretch of 1,400 km wide - from the Pripyat swamps to the Black Sea. In second place (in terms of the number of participants), we are carrying out the Bagration operation, which was carried out synchronously with the Overlord, but shorter - 68 days: here Soviet troops with a total number of 2.3 million people advanced 600 kilometers, with the width of the operation zone 1100 kilometers.
As you can see, even in these formal indicators, their Second Front compared to our First, more like children's games in the sandbox. 140 kilometers from Normandy to Paris in almost three months, with such resources - this, from the point of view of the achieved result, is not an offensive, but, speaking the military language, an improvement in position. At about the same speed, the Germans advanced along the streets of Stalingrad.
But, of course, the main indicator (which no one ever takes into account) is the strength of the opposing enemy. It is well known who we broke in Ukraine and Belarus (with lesser forces and in shorter terms), and who opposed the “allies” in Normandy: vacationers and wounded on recovery (from survivors on the Eastern Front), teenagers from the Hitler Youth and the so-called “ Eastern Legions ”- from former Soviet citizens: both prisoners of war and volunteers and mobilized into the German army in the occupied territories of the USSR. Only in August did the Anglo-Americans have a serious adversary: the tank units of the SS, well known to everyone who was interested in the battles for Kharkov during 1943 and for Ternopol in the spring of 1944. However, SS tankmen are just included in the above category of "vacationers and the wounded, surviving on the Eastern Front and undergoing reconstruction in France."
At first, the “allies”, despite the relatively successful landing on the Normandy coast during the landing operation “Neptune”, for a long time could not advance deeper into the continent (in military terms - “open the bridgehead”), and remained in the coastal strip 10-17 km wide , and only the superiority of Anglo-American aviation in the skies of Western Europe prevented the Germans from dropping their troops back into the English Channel. By the end of June, the Allies only managed to deepen the bridgehead to 20-40 kilometers, with its length of 100 km along the sea.
Continuing continuous battles, on the twentieth of July, the Allies captured the coastal cities of Saint-Lo and Caen - the main strongholds in the German coastal defense system in Normandy. By July 25, they expanded the bridgehead to 110 km along the sea and deepened to 30-50 km from the coast.
It became obvious to the Allied command that it would not be so easy to break directly to Paris and further to Germany, and they went on a breakthrough bypassing - in the direction opposite to Paris: from Saint-Lo to the south-west, to the city of Avranches (with a further turn 90 degrees towards Paris). It was Operation Cobra: on the offensive, the Allies struck a “corridor” 6.5 kilometers wide, and thus leaving the rear of the enemy’s defensive line, turned 90 degrees and began to rapidly move east to Paris - deep German rear , behind the backs of a coastal defense soldier.
A “layer cake” was formed, where everything was mixed up: the top layer was the sea and the coastal strip (as mentioned above, up to 50 kilometers deep), on which the British and Canadian armies still stood. Further south is the German defense strip, 20 kilometers deep, which encircles the coast and prevents the Anglo-Canadians from going beyond the coastal strip. And the third strip is the American army, which broke through a narrow corridor, passed into it, turned 90 degrees and lined up along the German defensive line from the south. The result was a “sandwich”, where German troops stretched into a narrow line were sandwiched from the north and south between the two lines of the “allies”. For illustrative purposes, the modern reader can cite a similar example from our time: the Izvarinsky “boiler” (aka “Southern boiler” 2.0) in the summer of 2014, when a group of several APU brigades was caught between militias and the Russian border. Even the sizes of the “boilers” coincide: both of them had a width of up to 10 km and a length
The cauldron formed in Normandy was named “Falezsky” - by the name of the town of Falez (30 km south of Caen), near which until the very end (until August 21) there was a struggle for a “humanitarian corridor”: our partners tried to close the circle with counter attacks with south and north, i.e. “Seal the boiler”, and the Germans held the walls of the corridor, withdrawing troops from the boiler along it, from west to east.
But the exit from the Falezsky "cauldron" was still far away: the German command tried, by striking in the opposite direction - to the west - to block the very corridor between Saint-Lo and Avranches, along which the Americans made their way: then they would have been cut off in the rear of the enemy. It was here that the well-known SS tank divisions, which it would not be an exaggeration to call "Kharkov," entered the stage. Their offensive operation was called "Luttih", it began on August 7. The main role was played by the divisions that were part of the Second SS Panzer Corps of the period of the battles for Kharkov: Leibstandart Adolf Hitler and Das Reich, which came to their senses in the spring of 1944, after breaking out of the so-called Kamenetz-Podolsky “boiler” (remnants of the third division from the "Kharkov" composition, "Totenkopf", these days fought in the zone of operation "Bagration"). The updated Second SS Tank Corps took part here too - now it included the divisions “Hohenstauffen” (it was she who had previously unblocked the mentioned Kamenetz-Podolsky “boiler”) and “Frundsberg” (she had unsuccessfully tried to unlock Ternopol in April 44th: she had been defeated units of the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army, which just received the new IS-2 heavy tanks in service). There was also the SS “Hitler Youth” tank division, it was commanded by Kurt Meyer, a former reconnaissance battalion commander of the “Leibstandart Adolf Hitler” division, who was once awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross (the highest military award in Germany) following the battles for Kharkov. for the described battles in Normandy - also with “Swords to the Knight's Cross”.
All these divisions were reduced to the newly created 5th Panzer Army; commanded by General Eberbach. He once commanded the 48th Army Tank Corps on the Eastern Front, after a serious wound in December 1942, became disabled and almost didn’t do any more team work, remaining in the position of “inspector of tank troops” - and such a person was put at the head of the new army . At the end of August, he was captured by the British, and this army was led by Joseph Dietrich, the former commander of the Leibstandart Adolf Hitler division, who also received “Swords to the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves” after the battle for Kharkov, and on the 6th On August 1944, he became the 16th (out of 27 people in the whole history), also awarded with “Diamonds for the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords”.
75 years ago - on August 25, 1944 - our Anglo-American partners took possession of the city of Paris, the capital of France. It was the end of Operation Overlord - the very one that began the landing in Normandy on June 6th.
Although less than 140 kilometers from the landing point in Normandy to Paris, this route turned out to be long and dangerous. Despite the fact that the number of participants in Operation Overlord (from the “Allies”) was growing all the time due to the delivery of new and new divisions to the European Peninsula, and by the end of the operation exceeded 2.9 million people operating in a 200-kilometer-wide strip, the achieved results for 86 days of the operation are not at all impressive. For comparison, we can cite the largest of our operations - the Dnieper-Carpathian (spring of 1944): 2.4 million participants from our side, for 116 days advanced 250-450 kilometers on a stretch of 1,400 km wide - from the Pripyat swamps to the Black Sea. In second place (in terms of the number of participants), we are carrying out the Bagration operation, which was carried out synchronously with the Overlord, but shorter - 68 days: here Soviet troops with a total number of 2.3 million people advanced 600 kilometers, with the width of the operation zone 1100 kilometers.
As you can see, even in these formal indicators, their Second Front compared to our First, more like children's games in the sandbox. 140 kilometers from Normandy to Paris in almost three months, with such resources - this, from the point of view of the achieved result, is not an offensive, but, speaking the military language, an improvement in position. At about the same speed, the Germans advanced along the streets of Stalingrad.
But, of course, the main indicator (which no one ever takes into account) is the strength of the opposing enemy. It is well known who we broke in Ukraine and Belarus (with lesser forces and in shorter terms), and who opposed the “allies” in Normandy: vacationers and wounded on recovery (from survivors on the Eastern Front), teenagers from the Hitler Youth and the so-called “ Eastern Legions ”- from former Soviet citizens: both prisoners of war and volunteers and mobilized into the German army in the occupied territories of the USSR. Only in August did the Anglo-Americans have a serious adversary: the tank units of the SS, well known to everyone who was interested in the battles for Kharkov during 1943 and for Ternopol in the spring of 1944. However, SS tankmen are just included in the above category of "vacationers and the wounded, surviving on the Eastern Front and undergoing reconstruction in France."
At first, the “allies”, despite the relatively successful landing on the Normandy coast during the landing operation “Neptune”, for a long time could not advance deeper into the continent (in military terms - “open the bridgehead”), and remained in the coastal strip 10-17 km wide , and only the superiority of Anglo-American aviation in the skies of Western Europe prevented the Germans from dropping their troops back into the English Channel. By the end of June, the Allies only managed to deepen the bridgehead to 20-40 kilometers, with its length of 100 km along the sea.
Continuing continuous battles, on the twentieth of July, the Allies captured the coastal cities of Saint-Lo and Caen - the main strongholds in the German coastal defense system in Normandy. By July 25, they expanded the bridgehead to 110 km along the sea and deepened to 30-50 km from the coast.
It became obvious to the Allied command that it would not be so easy to break directly to Paris and further to Germany, and they went on a breakthrough bypassing - in the direction opposite to Paris: from Saint-Lo to the south-west, to the city of Avranches (with a further turn 90 degrees towards Paris). It was Operation Cobra: on the offensive, the Allies struck a “corridor” 6.5 kilometers wide, and thus leaving the rear of the enemy’s defensive line, turned 90 degrees and began to rapidly move east to Paris - deep German rear , behind the backs of a coastal defense soldier.
A “layer cake” was formed, where everything was mixed up: the top layer was the sea and the coastal strip (as mentioned above, up to 50 kilometers deep), on which the British and Canadian armies still stood. Further south is the German defense strip, 20 kilometers deep, which encircles the coast and prevents the Anglo-Canadians from going beyond the coastal strip. And the third strip is the American army, which broke through a narrow corridor, passed into it, turned 90 degrees and lined up along the German defensive line from the south. The result was a “sandwich”, where German troops stretched into a narrow line were sandwiched from the north and south between the two lines of the “allies”. For illustrative purposes, the modern reader can cite a similar example from our time: the Izvarinsky “boiler” (aka “Southern boiler” 2.0) in the summer of 2014, when a group of several APU brigades was caught between militias and the Russian border. Even the sizes of the “boilers” coincide: both of them had a width of up to 10 km and a length
The cauldron formed in Normandy was named “Falezsky” - by the name of the town of Falez (30 km south of Caen), near which until the very end (until August 21) there was a struggle for a “humanitarian corridor”: our partners tried to close the circle with counter attacks with south and north, i.e. “Seal the boiler”, and the Germans held the walls of the corridor, withdrawing troops from the boiler along it, from west to east.
But the exit from the Falezsky "cauldron" was still far away: the German command tried, by striking in the opposite direction - to the west - to block the very corridor between Saint-Lo and Avranches, along which the Americans made their way: then they would have been cut off in the rear of the enemy. It was here that the well-known SS tank divisions, which it would not be an exaggeration to call "Kharkov," entered the stage. Their offensive operation was called "Luttih", it began on August 7. The main role was played by the divisions that were part of the Second SS Panzer Corps of the period of the battles for Kharkov: Leibstandart Adolf Hitler and Das Reich, which came to their senses in the spring of 1944, after breaking out of the so-called Kamenetz-Podolsky “boiler” (remnants of the third division from the "Kharkov" composition, "Totenkopf", these days fought in the zone of operation "Bagration"). The updated Second SS Tank Corps took part here too - now it included the divisions “Hohenstauffen” (it was she who had previously unblocked the mentioned Kamenetz-Podolsky “boiler”) and “Frundsberg” (she had unsuccessfully tried to unlock Ternopol in April 44th: she had been defeated units of the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army, which just received the new IS-2 heavy tanks in service). There was also the SS “Hitler Youth” tank division, it was commanded by Kurt Meyer, a former reconnaissance battalion commander of the “Leibstandart Adolf Hitler” division, who was once awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross (the highest military award in Germany) following the battles for Kharkov. for the described battles in Normandy - also with “Swords to the Knight's Cross”.
All these divisions were reduced to the newly created 5th Panzer Army; commanded by General Eberbach. He once commanded the 48th Army Tank Corps on the Eastern Front, after a serious wound in December 1942, became disabled and almost didn’t do any more team work, remaining in the position of “inspector of tank troops” - and such a person was put at the head of the new army . At the end of August, he was captured by the British, and this army was led by Joseph Dietrich, the former commander of the Leibstandart Adolf Hitler division, who also received “Swords to the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves” after the battle for Kharkov, and on the 6th On August 1944, he became the 16th (out of 27 people in the whole history), also awarded with “Diamonds for the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords”.
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