soc.history.war.world-war-ii Google Group

Re: Overlord Security in England

2009-11-07T15:30:47Z

Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-07T02:05:31Z

Taken from this ref,
[link]
(Blitzkeig section)
"On 16 May, both Guderian and Rommel disobeyed their explicit direct
orders in an act of open insubordination against their superiors. They
broke out of their bridgeheads and moved their divisions many
kilometres to the west as fast as they could push them. Guderian

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-06T18:37:28Z

"Ken S. Tucker" <dynam...@vianet.on.ca> ha scritto nel messaggio
...and not fighting. That's the main point I was making.
FM 21-18 of the US Army, in the 1990 release, acknowledges that well trained
soldiers, moving only on roads, and of course not fighting while moving, can
cover 35 miles in a day - walking for 15 hours. It's called, unsurprisingly,

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-06T18:36:43Z

In article
<0493f52e-f983-4083-8b73-3ec20 c630...@2g2000prl.googlegroups .com>,
No army has done much better on a regular basis than the Romans. They
considered a day's march was twenty miles which dictated the spacing of
their permanent camps. That was of course twenty Roman miles which IIRC
works out about 18 statute miles. It might be possible to march father

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-06T18:36:10Z

No. The only European units I know of who were able to sustain that
kind of speed on foot were Foreign Legion - where the standard was 50
km per day. Other infantry units usually come in under 20 miles a day
(and closer to 12-15 miles per day). Jackson's Foot Cavalry (the Army
of the Valley in 1862 in the US Civil War) got it's nickname because

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-06T18:34:55Z

I remembered this and just checked wikipedia for what it's worth--
Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz was in part due to a corps Grand Army
covering 70 miles in two days to arrive on the battlefield and then
fight. In googling around for Napoleon, I found this:
According to modern US Army doctrine, the average rate of march for

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-06T18:34:19Z

The Wiki page appears to concern only one-day marches followed
by rest in familiar quarters (at home.) The soldier's march is
different. He is marching into unfamiliar space, thus knows:
(1) he is subject to ambush or enemy air action at any moment,
and the risk of ambush or attack increases every day;

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-05T23:35:28Z

.........
Don't forget to allow for some form of night watch / guard duty and
its supervision, even when marching outside of the actual battle area.
That's going to cost most enlisted men and JO's an hour or more of
interruption to sleep every night or three, on some kind of rotation.
The closer to 'Indian country' you are or get, the more sleep that's

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-05T23:16:34Z

Copious amounts of Benzedrine to front line troops might have
had something to do with it
**
mike
**

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-05T21:29:34Z

Thank you all for your replies to my question.
Well I think the TV show was ok, it's my curiousity about the "foot
soldier" marching. I looked up walkathon, and 30 miles a day looks
reasonable for a trained soldier, on roads,
[link]
Assuming most of the weight is carried by truck or carts, as I think

Re: Navajo Code Talkers

2009-11-05T20:58:06Z

That's pretty much what I was trying to get at when I called the
Navajo-language code "effectively unbreakable" upthread. There were
not enough Navajo-speaking Axis citizens/subjects/service-men or women
to be useful in the context, learned German professors
notwithstanding.
OTOH, sometimes you can't tell people what you know, because it might

Re: Navajo Code Talkers

2009-11-05T18:18:36Z

A key concept in encryption is value-to-break. If the message traffic
that you are passing will be useless to the enemy in five minutes
(when the fire support you are calling for will hit, remember that
it's hard to keep that a secret from the guys being shelled) then it
probably isn't worth putting a lot of cryptographic effort into

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-05T17:50:45Z

<narrled...@hotmail.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
For how many days on end?

Re: Marching, (Infantry speed).

2009-11-05T17:08:05Z

IIRC, the Kaiser's army in 1914 put in much more impressive sustained
marches in their great lunge towards Paris, and those were "marching
marches," not motorized in any way, shape, or form. Of course, it was
ultimately for naught, and led to the utter exhaustion of men and
beasts.
WW II accounts are always complicated by the motorisation question, as

Re: Kursk eyewitness accounts?

2009-11-05T16:18:11Z

from [link]
Title: Nazi Waterloo, the Battle of Kursk, July 1943.
AD Number: AD0765647 Corporate Author: ARMY WAR COLL CARLISLE
BARRACKS PA Personal Author: Thorsen,Peter L Report Date: March
15, 1972 Media: 33 page(s
Title: Why Fight On? The Decision to Close the Kursk Salient