D-Day +23: First Stakes

So, seventy years ago today, Operation EPSOM is closing down. Three days ago, General Sir Richard O'Connor, star a few World War II counterfactuals,* launched 15th Scottish Division across the River Odon as the first echelon of newly-arrived XXX Corps' first attack in the Battle of Caen, with 11th Armoured Division, 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, with 31st Army Tank Brigade attached to the !5th Scottish, and 4th Armoured Brigade attached to 11th Armoured for the operation. 

Source. 

It has not gone well. Some workmen are blaming their tools.

Because the 15th Division was the "Scottish Lions." Right?

Since nothing helps understand Decisive Battles of World History like a map of an operation of the Battle for Caen that leaves off Caen, here's what you can do with Google Maps, instead. 

I've had to scale up to an uncomfortable degree and it is still hard to pick out the thinning of the road net as the laterals approach the Odon, but the point is clear enough. A 47 kilometer left-bank tributary of the Orne, it runs through 11% reclaimed land, 83% agricultural, and 6% forested. The narrowly divided up-and-down land facing the river is, of course, characterised as "bocage" in campaign histories. The point of the operation is to take Hill 112, between the Odon and the little creek of La Guigne, giving access to the Odon upstream of Caen. Not surprisingly, this triggered an energetic German reaction that ultimately drew in, per Wikipedia, 3 SS armoured divisions, 5 battle groups from other divisions, and the 101st SS Heavy Tank Battalion. By the morning of the 29th, this reaction had been successful in shutting down the Commonwealth offensive with minor gains. (That being said, given the logistical situation in the beachhead, any territorial gains were a boon to the Allies.)

I confess that I was not really expecting to blog about Epsom. Traditionally, it has been interpreted as another disappointment on the bloody road to Caen, or as the first in a bizarre series of operation names. (Horse races? Seriously?). In other words, a pretty uninteresting episode as far as fighting goes, only really engaging attention in novelty sidebars. 

This is not the way that a historian could take it. There is a great deal to interest the historiographer in the controversy over the Battle of Caen. We will recall that it is very frequently argued that "Montgomery's" slow pace in taking Caen was a very big deal in the history of World War II. I personally find this a little silly. Destroying the German army in the west in two months is not "slow." For the record, my interpretation is that this is about Eisenhower's run for the Presidency in 1952. Ike's candidacy was seen to required the burnishing his reputation at the expense of Montgomery. It is striking the extent that some of the American military correspondent/historians were so unapologetically in the tank for Ike, though it certainly doesn't hurt that Monty had by 1952 completed his lifelong evolution into a complete wanker. the historiographic reflection here is on the way that politics refracts contemporary history, which is all the more important in that politics gets old, while we return to the well in history. Who now is confident of their ability to disentangle the politics of 1757 from (supposed) first person narratives of the Battle of Leuthen? and who wants to start a history of the Battle of Leuthen with a long chapter discussing the evolution of Frederick the Great's public image through three centuries of historical writing? So arguably you want to jump into something like Operation EPSOM as soon after the fact as possible and lay waste to the reputations of everyone involved in as thorough a fashion as possible, lest some contemporary spin job contaminate the historical record for centuries thereafter.

Er, wait. Was I talking about how to make military history less partisan?

All this preliminary reflection aside, there does not however, appear to be much to be said about it from my personal perspective. But the moving finger writes on, and the Wikipedia article has reached a remarkable standard of insight, and so when I followed up other people writing about Operation Epsom, I discovered that this was the specific battle in which II SS Panzer Corps was committed to the fight. As opposed to an offensive towards Bayeux aiming at cutting the link between the American and British beaches, preparatory to rolling them up one-by-one. (Mood music.)**

If you followed my link to the Battle of Leuthen, you will be introduced to the most remarkable example of what Jomini called Frederick's "strategy of interior lines." Having been defeated by Daun at the Battle of Prague, Frederick was forced to withdraw before Prince Charles' army into Silesia. Then, detaching a corps from the screening army, Frederick marched across central Germany, defeated the French-and-Reichsarmee at Rossbach, and then back to Silesia to defeat Charles near Wroclaw at the field then called Leuthen. Although some of Frederick's switches of front during the Seven Years War were probably even better timed, this illustration of the importance of Prussian control of the crucial road-and-water axis of Berlin-Magdeburg is unrivalled in its geographical scope. Not that anyone tells the tale of the Seven Years War in terms of the Oder-Spree canal. 

If Leuthen is a distant memory of two centuries past in general, and for English-language readers in particular, it was not going to be far from the memories of German generals in 1944. It is hard to think of II SS Armoured Corps in any other context. Raised in France as Panzergrenadier divisions, 9th and 10th SS were moved to Ukraine as "fire brigade" divisions, transformed into armoured formations by the addition of a three-battalion armoured regiment. This incidentally, made them pretty big formationsn for "divisions" --13 manoeuvre battalions, counting the assault gun battalion as a manoeuvre formation rather than artillery-- compared with seven for a typical Allied armoured divison. 

The decision to move them to Ukraine, and then to move them back to Normandy was meant to be comparable to Frederick's marches across Germany in the fall of 1757, and to have much the same effect. This is how we need to understand the "rail manoeuvre" of the second week of June, and the contribution of the POINTBLANK attack on German rail communications. Had II SS been back in Normandy and ready to attack on 18 June, as originally planned, it would probably have had the effect intended. 

Although I do  not want to fanwank the might of the SS any more than I have to, because 11th Armoured Division had a second armoured brigade attached to it, and was just as far overstrength as the German formations it opposed. EPSOM was a big battle, fought with an intensity unmatched on either front at the time. The reason that a German attack towards Bayeux on the 18th might well have succeeded is that the Allied buildup was falling well behind schedule. 

But loading and unloading is a subject for development on another day. Today I have decided to drill down into the railways-and-tanks nexus.

I think that the Angus Shops of the Canadian Pacific Railway are more interested in giving Fortune an eye-catching factoid here than with accurate labour accounting. The Hudson-type 4-6-4 steam locomotive ran to 150 tons of mostly cast steel and gave 45,000 pounds of tractive force at the hitch. It seems counter-intuitive that the 17 ton, 131--210hp  Vickers Valentine tank took more labour to build than the locomotive chosen to pull the Royal Train across Canada in the 1939 Visit.

 It gets even more difficult to understand when I note that the Angus Works and other Canadian firms erected some 5000 Valentines in 1942/43, while the CPR opreated a total of only 3257 steam locomotives in the course of almost a century of external combustion railroading. from beginning to end. The longer the production run, the lower the initial tooling and design charge on individual units, as the article (to be fair to Fortune) goes on to acknowledge. With all of its corners and edges, the Valentine clearly demanded more work from the mold makers than the smooth lines of the 2801.

At the same time, the 2801's power plant would have been made in house, while the Angus works just ordered a job lot of Detroit Diesel 6004 two-stroke four-cylinder inline 160hp engines. 

So beautiful..... Where did I leave my anorak, again?

At this point, we're deep in the woods of production practice. There is a reason that the steam locomotives were invented in the first decade of the 1800s, and automotive diesels were a work in progress in the 1940s. Steam engines were designed at a time when the heat stress of burning coal and a few atmospheres of pressure were the biggest things an engineer had to worry about. Post-"Pacific" low-hammering locomotives are much more technically challenging than Stevenson's Rocket, but it still comes down to not having to spin masses of overheated metal around at very high speeds. 

Incidentally, here's another wartime application of the GM 6004.

(Source.)

It looks a little quaint and blocky, but that is a seven-ton, 6" medium howitzer it is towing, designed to throw 100lb shells 17 kilometers. As I have stressed before, monster guns like the ML-20 152mm howitzer actually deliver less weight at the bar than the German 88mm FlaK, but that just underlines how heavy the 88 is, and just how far we have evolved in a towing-heavy-stuff direction under the stress of the fighting in Normandy. III Anti-Aircraft Corps is going to throw 70 88s into the fighting in Operation EPSOM. Seventy 88s implies rather more than 70 tractors, and if the Germans seriously intend to fight a "mobile" battle in Normandy, they had better be a great deal less poky than the Ya-11! 

Of course, they don't, and they aren't. The Germans are having a bit of a "prime mover" crisis right now, having slighted production of tractors in favour of tanks. As a consequence, they are having some trouble running away from the Russians in the East, and their situation in the West will collapse if they have to retreat at any speed  --but I probably shouldn't overstress that, given that I've mislaid the citation.

What I want to talk about instead is British tanks. The outline history is clear enough. In 1939, Britain was not making many tanks. In 1939--42, tank production spiked to rapidly exceed German. In the first six months of 1940, 5,773 light, Cruiser and Infantry tanks were ordered from  16 manufacturers, including a number of railway shops. Because I could not find it conveniently elsewhere, here is a screencap of Postan's summary of deliveries of warlike stores to the Ministry of Supply:

What a wonderful resource Hyperwar is! Or, to put it another way, lifting from Overy:

	1939	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945
Tanks
Britain	969	1399	4841	8611	7467	5000	2100
USA		400	4052	24,997	29,497	17,565	11,908
Russia	2950	2794	6590	24,446	24,089	Q28,963	15,400
Germany	1300	2200	5200	9200	17,300	22,100	4400
Japan	200	1023	1024	1191	790	401	142
Artillery
Britain	1400	1900	5300	6600	12,200	12,400	Unavailable
USA		1800	29,615	72,658	67,544	33,558	19,699
Russia	17,348	15,300	42,300	127,000	130,300	122,400	31,000
Germany	2000	5000	7000	12,000	27,000	41,000

The artillery columns here are weird enough to make me suspect that the data is not strictly comparable, but tanks presumably have a clear enough meaning to capture the incredible ramp-up of British production in the mid-war years and the dramatic collapse in 1944. 

The reason for this, we are given to understand, is that the rushed generation of tanks that appeared on the Western Desert front were not greatly loved. First, they were not well-armed. Although the ordnance side had done its part, developing the 2 pounder, 6 pounder and 17-pounder well in advance of requirements, British tank designs were slow to mount the successors to the 2 pounder. Meanwhile, the African fighting showed up the mechanical reliability of these designs and raised a completely different question about tank armament. Perhaps high velocity anti-tank guns should be de-emphasised in favour of the medium-velocity 75mm gun preferred by the Americans? And, that being the case, should the British not embrace the M4 Sherman tank, the American design projected to be available in such numbers in 1944, which was built around the 75?

The outline story goes on to say that the answer to this question is "yes," and that is why the tanks launched into Operation EPSOM comprised a relatively small number of British-built Cromwells and Churchills predominantly armed with the MV 75, and a large number of Lend-Lease Sherman tanks. The cut in British tank production, so notable in the table I lifted from Overy, reflects this reliance on American production. Although the fall in American tank production in 1944 is a bit worrisome...

Anyway, a little further drilling down turns up the key moment. In May, 1943, the man whom Benjamin Coombs choose to call "Lend-Lease liaison officer Averill Harriman" writes to Prime Minister Winston Churchill to recommend that the British wind down tank production  and shift industrial resources to other areas so as to take an additional requisition of 3000 Shermans under Lend-Lease. 

Which is a somewhat odd way to phrase things, since the sniff test would suggest that the causality at least plausibly goes the other way. And this indeed turns out to be the case. The Russians have refused a further allocation of Sherman tanks under Lend-Lease, and the Administration faces the embarrassment of surplus tanks if it does not get rid of them somehow. (The Angus shop will also abandon tanks in the face of  American tank dumping.)

Now, to get back to the other odd phrase here, for which I am quite unfairly picking on Dr. Coombs, because Averill Harriman is not a mere liaison officer. Wikipedia's biography choose to describe Harriman as a "Democratic Party politician and son of railway baron E. H. Harriman." The biography gives Harriman's "business activities" about as much space as his thoroughbred racing. The impression one gets is that the Harriman clan made enough money in the rough-and-tumble South Pacific age to establish scion Averill as a comfortable Hudson River squire who could afford to dedicate his life to public service, more-or-less. 

Except, well, i), ii). I think that you have to follow up in print to find out that it E. J. Harriman stands behind the Southern Pacific Railway's ownership of the Eagle Mountain iron mine that used to supply Henry Kaiser's steel mill at Fontana, California. (Spoiler alert: I've been talking about Kaiser and Fontana in my Postblogging series.) But the link in ii), although not the best I've found, elucidates Averill Harriman's pre-political career as a promoter of diesel locomotives. Harriman was rich, Harriman was connected, and Harriman cared about the future of internal combustion railroading in the United States.

I will not press this point further here --which unfortunately leaves this post more rambly, but already longer than I would like-- so I will leave this as another tantalising vector pointing in the direction of the rail-tank connection. It is not, I think, entirely an accident that stands behind the particular tanks that clash on Hill 112,  nor entirely a British doctrinal failing. It is not realistic to imagine that there might have been Comets and Centurions in the British order of battle for Operation EPSOM, but Black Princes, Tortoises and Challengers are not stretching counterfactual history too far. If only the voice of American heavy traction had not reached out to the Prime Minister in the spring of 1943.

Of course, I have not gotten any further in explaining what, apart from "doctrine," might have inspired the Prime Minister to agree. 

*Though not any I could find on Axis History Forums, and apparently "Awesome Counterfactual Histories of British Awesomeness" are not much of a thing on the Internet.) 

**Yes, it's Tomorrow Belongs to Me again. I can't help it, it's just so creepy. Plus, I watched Children of Men last night, and there are images of that very British Holocaust that are going to stay with me for a while.