in Combined Arms Battle Since 1939 - US Army Combined Arms

299 Pages·2000·8.32 MB·English

Combined Arms
in Battle Since 1939
Roger J. Spitter
General Editor
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Prees
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
1992
-
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Combined arms in battle since 1939 / Roger J. Spiller, general editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Unified operatians (Military science)-History-20 century.
2. United States-History, Military--2Qth century. 3. Military
history, Modern-20th century. I. Spiller, Roger J.
UZ6O.C66 1992
355.4’0973’0904-dc20
92-l 1472
CIP
Contents
Illustrations vii
Introduction ix
Airborne Operations
1. Seizing and Holding the German Bridges at Arnhem,
September 1944
Lieutenant Colonel Robert D. Ramsey III 1
Airmobile Operations
2. The 1st Cavalry Division’s Exploitation of Helicopters
in the Ia Drang Valley
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur T. Frame, U,fL Army, Retired 11
Amphibious Operations
3. Tarawa: The Testing of an Amphibious Doctrine
Dr. Jerold E. Brown
Antiarmor Operations
4. Antiarmor Operations on the Golan Heights, October 1973
Major George E. Knapp 27
Attack Helicopter Operations
5. Attack Helicopters in Lebanon, 1982
Dr. George W. Gawrych 35
Combat Engineering
6. Egyptian Engineers in the Crossing Operation of 1973
Dr. George W. Gawrych 43
Communications
7. Allied Special Operations: Jedburgh Teams, Summer 1944
Dr. Samuel J. Lewis 51
Deception
8. Deceiving the Enemy in Operation Desert Storm
59
Dr. Thomas M. Huber
I..
111
Decisiveness
9, The German Thrust to the English Channel, May 1940
Dr. Gary J. Bjorge 67
Defensive Operations
10. The Defense of the No Name Line in the Korean War
Major Robert E. Connor 75
Discipline
11. The Execution of Private Eddie D. Slovik
Dr. Jerold E. Brown 83
Doctrine
12. Active Defense
Dr. Christopher R. Gabel 91
Economy of Force
13. Repulsing the North Koreans Along the Naktong, 1950
Dr. William G, Robertson 97
Endurance
14. The British Triumph of Endurance in the Falkland
Islands War
Major Gary D. Rhay 105
Environment
15. The 84th Smoke Generator Company’s Operations
at the Moselle River, September 1944
Major Terry L. &ems 113
Fire Support
16. Assessing the Adversary at Dien Bien Phu
Lieutenant Colonel James R. McLean 121
Flexibility
17. The U.S. Third Army at the Battle of the Bulge, 1944
Dr. Michael D. Pearlman 131
Initiative
18. The Chance Seizure of the Remagen Bridge Over the Rhine
Major Bruce Alsup 139
iv
Innovation
19. Close Air Support in World War II: The Roots of the
Tragedy in Operation Cobra
Dr. Michael D. Pearlman 147
Logistics
20. British Logistics in the Falklands
Lieutenant Colonel Matthew S. Klimow 155
Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain
21. The 2d Battalion, 26th Infantry, at Aachen, October 1944
Dr. Christopher R. Gabel 163
Miracles
22. A Platoon’s Heroic Stand at Lanzerath
Lieutenant Colonel John R. Finch, U.S. Army, Retired 171
Morale
23. The Destruction of the 28th Infantry Division in the
Huertgen Forest, November 1944
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas E. Christianson 181
Night Operations
24. Claiming the Night: Operation Just Cause, 1989-1990
Dr. Thomas M. Huber 191
Planning
25. Operation Just Cause, December 1989
Dr. Lawrence A. Yates 197
Political Factors
26. The U.S.-Panama Crisis, 1987-1990
Dr. Lawrence A. Yates 205
Reconnaissance
27. Fighting on the Upper Seine River, August 1944
Dr. Samuel J. Lewis 213
River Crossings
28. Crossing the Rapid0
Dr. Roger J. Spiller 221
V
Surprise
29. The XIX Panzer Corps’ Lightning Advance into France,
May 1940 231
Lieutenant Colonel Edward P. Shanahan
Teamwork
30. Seizing the Critical Bridges at Benouville
Major(P) Neil V. Lamont 241
Tenacity
31. The 43d Infantry Division’s Determined Attack
on the Ipo Dam, 1945
Major George J. Mordica II 249
Terrain
32. Operation Spark: Breaking Through the BIockade at
Leningrad
Dr. Robert F. Baumann 259
Time
33. Operation Market-Garden, September 1944
Dr. Gary J. Bjorge 269
Training
34. The “Truscott Trot”: Training for Operation Husky, 1943
Major Stephen D. Coats 277
Unity of Command
35. The Failure to Achieve Unity of Command in Vietnam
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur T. Frame, U.S. Army, Retired 283
Weather
36. The Influence of Weather on Combined Arms
Operations in Korea, 1950
Dr. Jack J. Gifford 291
Authors 301
vi
Illustrations
Maps
1. Arnhem, 17-20 September 1944 4
2. The area around LZ X-ray 14
3. Betio Islet 22
4. Start positions on the Golan front, 6 October 1973 28
5. Einan’s axis of advance into Lebanon 38
6. The Sinai front (initial dispositions), 6 October 1973 44
7. Operation Desert Storm, 24-25 February 1991 63
8. Germany’s offensive against France, May 1940 70
9. Korea, May 1951 76
10. The sector occupied by the 24th Infantry Division,
5 August 1950 99
11. Initial British movements, 26-30 May 1982 107
12. Smoke generator operations at Arnaville,
lo-15 September 1944 115
13. Dien Bien Phu, 13 March-8 May 1954 128
14. Battle of the Ardennes, 16-26 December 1944 132
15. The Battle of the Rhineland and crossing of the Rhine River 141
16. The area of US. VII Corps’ advance in Operation Cobra 151
17. The advance of the 2d Battalion, 26th Infantry,
into central Aachen, 12-21 October 1944 165
18. The southern flank of the US. 99th Infantry Division,
16 December 1944 175
19. The 28th Infantry Division’s attack on Schmidt,
2-9 November 1944 184
20. The U.S. Third Army drive to the Seine River 217
21. The Rapid0 River crossings, 20-22 January 1944 223
22. The XIX Panzer Corps’ advance, lo-15 May 1940 235
23. The area of the British 6th Airborne Division’s assault
on D-day 242
24. The attack on Ipo Dam 251
25. Breaking the blockade at Leningrad 261
vii
26. Troop dispositions in Operation Market-Garden 274
27. Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, 27-29 November 1950 295
Figures
1. Communications channels for SFHQ 52
Introduction
In 1927, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall left his faculty
position at the Army War College for a tour of duty as the assistant
commander of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia.
Marshall was already well known in the U.S. Army. He had been a
student and then an instructor at Fort Leavenworth’s Army service
schools-later the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College-
while only a Iieutenant. He had also served two tours of duty in the
Philippines, and after America’s entry into World War I, he rose steadily
through the staff of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France
to become the G3 (Operations) officer of the General Headquarters, AEF.
Immediately after the war, Marshall served as aide-de-camp to General
John J. Pershing, the former commander of the AEF and now chief of
staff of the Army. Although Marshall finished the war as a colonel,
this rank was only temporary; not until 1920 was he to win a regular
promotion to the rank of major.
But when he arrived at Fort Benning, Marshall’s thoughts were
on his army’s performance in World War I, and what he remembered,
he did not remember fondly. He had been part of an AEF staff that
seemed to specialize in highly elaborate, tightly knit operational plans
that had little or nothing to do with the realities on the front lines,
nothing to do with the actualities of troop handling in ordinary tactical
situations. Marshall thought that the U.S. Army had benefited from
coming into the Great War so late, when the enemy was worn out.
Any professional officer who took pride in how the U.S. Army had
handled itself, Marshall thought, even under such favorable conditions,
was merely deluding himself.
The schoo1 that Marshall found at Fort Benning in 1927 was as
self-satisfied as the U.S. Army of which it was a part. The instruction
was stilted; lectures were read to the students. Even then, the students
were provided with highly precise maps of the local terrain, and these,
combined with the near-perfect intelligence on aggressor forces they
were allowed, made tactical problems highly stylized and easily pre-
dictable. Nine years after the conclusion of World War I, the U.S. Army-
long since largely demobilized and sliding toward record low budgets
and total strength-was slipping into the time-honored mental and
physical routines of garrison life. There was no threat on the horizon,
none at least the American people wanted to notice, and so there was
no pressing or overt reason for those inside the Army to worry much
about maintaining its warlike proficiency.
ix
Introduction
But Marshall’s knowledge of military history and his soldier’s faith
that sometime in the future he would again be called to war drove
him to resist the inertia that was then settling over his army. In his
view, an army’s most perishable skills were the ones learned in the
hard school of combat itself, where a soldier’s imagination, inven-
tiveness, practicality, and common sense were of more value than any
amount of school technique learned by rote,
Twelve years after he assumed his duties at the Infantry School,
Marshall would become chief of staff of the United States Army, taking
office on the day German forces invaded Poland, effectively beginning
World War II. Then, the whole Army was his to transform. But in
1927, Marshall’s world was confined to Fort Benning. Here, he resolved
he would make a difference. After he arrived, he made his educational
philosophy abundantly clear:
I insist we must get down to the essentials, make clear the real dif-
ficulties, and expunge the bunk, complications, and ponderosities; we
must concentrate on registering in men’s minds certain vita1 con-
siderations instead of a mass of less important details. We must develop
a technique and methods so simple and brief that the citizen officer of
good common sense can readily grasp the idea.
The qualities Marshall demanded of both his faculty and students
at Fort Benning could be developed in a number of ways, most of
them comparatively unorthodox for his time. He decreed that school
lectures would no longer be read to the students; indeed, he refused to
allow instructors to bring their notes to class. For tactical problems,
accurate maps were replaced with out-of-date and incomplete ones. On
occasion, no maps were allowed at all. Throughout, Marshall insisted
his men be schooled to make a decision at the proper time with incom-
plete information. He was not interested in producing an officer whose
only accomplishment was technique or, worse yet, one who was com-
petent in tactical theory but would fail when he tried to execute it. He
wanted Fort Benning to give back to the Army quick-thinking, inventive,
and practical soldiers.
Marshall’s conception of the successful professional soldier had been
shaped during his time as a student at Fort Leavenworth under the
tutelage of Major (later Major General) John F. Morrison. It had been
Morrison’s standard of “tactical simplicity” that Marshall had taken
with him into World War I, and it had been that standard that the
U.S. Army had failed to meet. Both Morrison and, after he joined the
faculty at Leavenworth, Marshall assumed that a thorough knowledge
of military history was essential to the formation of a professional
soldier and was a field of knowledge that was critical to the officer
who meant to meet his obligations to his soldiers, his army, and his
nation. Both men would have agreed that without a knowledge of mili-
X