[tcolvin]

I don't buy your thesis, Bill.
Logistics were a fact of life.
But it's true that if Patton and not Montgomery had commanded the left flank, then Antwerp would have been cleared, and probably Rotterdam as well, solving the logistics problem for everybody.

Patton, however, had no more success in the set-piece than Montgomery, losing more men while failing around Metz than Montgomery did failing in Market Garden.

Every analysis of what went wrong in 1944 always comes back to the inability of the Western Allies to make progress in the set-piece against the Wehrmacht.

You say possession of dive-bombers, A/T aircraft and immune tanks would have made no difference.
I say they should have been tried.
The fact they weren't was due to the uncooperative attitude of the RAF.
Don't forget the Germans remustered a lot of LW ground crew personnel into eight divisions of effective paratroops.
The Allies would have almost certainly been more effective if they had done the same. There were thousands of surplus RAF ground and aircrew doing nothing while the British Army had to disband divisions because of lack of reinforcements, although some RAF Regiments were re-mustered.

Thanks for the reference to the Finnish Continuation War, Juha.
I would like to know why the Red Army failed against the Finns but succeeded against the Wehrmacht. Where, for example, were the IL-2 ground attack and Pe-2 dive bombers at Tali-Ihantala?
It seems the IS-IIs were destroyed by Panzerfaust/Panzerschreck fired into the engine compartment. It was the Russian infantry's job to prevent that. I know of no Churchills destroyed by hand-held weapons in Op Veritable except in built-up areas, but many had their turrets blown off by 88-mm and StuGs as they attempted to attack across open ground. StuGs changed position by moving fast along roads and were rarely if ever attacked by 2TAF fighter-bombers.

Which leads to the final observation, that modern war is successful only where there is intimate all-arms cooperation. 2TAF and the armoured divisions refused to cooperate intimately with the army, leaving only the infantry and artillery with an effective bond. That was very different from 1918 when tanks, aircraft, infantry and artillery fought cooperatively with equipment designed for the job, and destroyed the German army. That outcome was not due to the arrival of the US Army.

The difference with 1944/5 is marked, and therein lies the key to the difference in perfomance.

Tony