RAR: 1939, France invades Germany?

[Samuel]

<snip long post>

In addition to the factors you mentioned, wasn't there a strained/dysfunctional relationship between the different Allied commands? I don't remember too much about it, it's been a long time since I've read anything on the subject, but weren't the British and the French not cooperating as well as they should have? Not to mention their relationships with Belgium and the Netherlands?

Belgium and the Netherlands both tried to sit the war out- I believe they didn't coordiate with the allied forces in order to avoid provoking the Germans. I could look up more details if you are interested from Time Life's The Neutrals, but essentially they were between a rock and hard place.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Modern French Tanks were designed with excellent protection and heavy firepower, at the cost of range and parts lifespans. Ironically not unlike late war German Armour.

That's a pretty gross oversimplification. Most of the French modern tanks were still light tanks, which did have pretty good protection for their size, but also the glorious 37 mm SA18 gun. As much as I try, I can't bring myself to call it "heavy firepower". It wasn't totally useless against infantry in the open or machine gun nests, since it was developed from an infantry gun, but all in all I would have rather taken something like the 20 mm automatic cannon (Kw.K 38) the Panzer II had.

The British strongly believed that armoured vehicles were the modern equivalent of cavalry, or, like the French, pillboxes on treads.

The French had cavalry tanks as well, most notably the S35. Only the ratio of infantry and cavalry tanks (the latter were called cruiser tanks by the British) was different between the Allies; the British had much more of the latter.

British Armour was designed to take advantage of a hole punched in an enemy line by infantry, quickly riding into it and then attacking the enemy's rear. The problem was, the enemy's defensive line was always WAAAAY thicker than the British believed it was. Sea Skimmer mentioned somewhere that the British always anticipated a German defense line to be only about 1km thick when they were ALWAYS 20km or so thick. So what happened was British armour would pour through a gap only to get savaged by line after line of well concealed anti tank guns. One of which being the famous 88.

Of course, every German AT gun soon became an "88" in the mouths of the British tankers. All in all the actual AT guns (37 mm in France, later 50 mm and captured French 75 mm guns in North Africa, and finally the German 75 mm AT gun in Italy and France) probably destroyed a lot more British tanks than the 88s. The 88 was, after all, an anti-aircraft gun and they were increasingly needed for their design role as the war progressed.

French Armour was generally too slow and short ranged to perform encirclements. Moreover, it was often spread very thinly, negating its advantage in quality.

Well, only the light infantry support tanks were really spread thinly (i.e. in formations smaller than companies). Since they had no radios and a single man turret, they could not have been used in large formations effectively in any case. Maintaining some kind of unit cohesion would have required radios, or at least a guy (usually the tank commander) to use semaphores or hand signs for communication in addition to the gunner (that's what the Soviets did with the T-34 before they received enough lend-lease radios).

The French were aware of this design deficiency, but again, owing to post war funds exhaustion they couldn't really afford to build big, expensive 3-4 man turrets like the Germans were doing.

That's only half the truth. They could have built two-man turrets for the cavalry and heavy tanks if they had been willing to sacrifice some protection. In fact that's exactly what the British with the cruiser tanks and even the Germans did; the turret armor of the early Panzer III models was not very good. The light tanks should have been armed with heavy machine guns or automatic cannons in the 20-25 mm range like the Panzer II or the Soviet T-40 and T-60, which would have reduced the work load of the commander-gunner. But of course that's all with 20/20 hindsight. The French designed their tanks to follow their strategic thinking, which relied on the primacy of defense.

Finally, the French Air Force was very small. While it did have some fairly good aircraft, they were not available in sufficient numbers. No doctrine for ground attack or close air support existed either, the Army and Air Force had no relationship with one another.

The AdA was not that small. If it had been equipped with larger proportion of non-obsolescent aircraft and if it had deviced better tactics and organization, it could have been a tough nut to crack.

The lack of Army and Air Force coordination was not a particular shortcoming of the French; nobody else except the Germans had such coordination in place in 1940.

The Royal Air Force was both well equipped and well led, but the British never fully commit it to the theatre, fearing the possibility of German success in Europe.

The RAF had it's shortcomings as well, for example obsolescent tactics that relied on the Vic formation. Fortunately the overall organization of the RAF was better. Furthermore, the British air defense system was simply superb and combined with the radar gave the RAF a strategic edge over the Luftwaffe. They were not available in France, however, so it's not at all certain that even a more courageous commitment of the RAF would have changed much there.

[CaptHawkeye]

Admittedly I was being pretty simplistic about all of the factors of the invasion. Mainly because their are so many of them and it's truly difficult to express the Invasion of France even in abridged terms, because as Marcus pointed out, their are still more things to be said.

but also the glorious 37 mm SA18 gun. As much as I try, I can't bring myself to call it "heavy firepower".

Generally I was referring to the 47mm gun present on the S-35 and Char 1B. A gun size slightly above the average of the time for main guns. I hate being general about the characteristics of French and British armour because their were always non-trend designs like the Matilda and S-35.

Of course, every German AT gun soon became an "88" in the mouths of the British tankers. All in all the actual AT guns (37 mm in France, later 50 mm and captured French 75 mm guns in North Africa, and finally the German 75 mm AT gun in Italy and France) probably destroyed a lot more British tanks than the 88s. The 88 was, after all, an anti-aircraft gun and they were increasingly needed for their design role as the war progressed.

You're very right. The 88 became so legendary a weapon that it was easy to for allied tank crews to simply dub everything that killed them to be an 88. They would have the same problem later in the war, believing every German tank they encountered was a "Tiger".

[Thanas]

Spam by Richard Sharpe split to here.

[Darth Hoth]

On the other hand I don't believe the S35 was overall better than the Panzer III Ausf. E & F. It had more armor and a better gun, but the Panzer III had an optimal three man turret crew layout, which is still used today, a reliable two way radio and it was mechanically reliable; in fact more so than any other German-designed tank medium or heavy in WW2 and the only one that came even close to the American mediums in that regard. An S35 might win a hypothetical one on one encounter with a Panzer IIIe, but in real life tactical, let alone strategic, settings the German tank was better. One on one engagements are not exactly common in real armored warfare.

One slight nitpick: As far as I am aware, only the commanders had two-way radio, the ordinaries having only receivers.

[Sea Skimmer]

One slight nitpick: As far as I am aware, only the commanders had two-way radio, the ordinaries having only receivers.

Yup in the 1939-41 period only company commander and battalion commander tanks, battalion had two way radios. Everyone else only had a receiver. Latter two way sets did become standard. The Germans also always did have special command tanks (with either no turret or no gun to make more space) and command halftracks which had a couple of different radios.

Now this is just from memory, but as I recall the standard receiver was FuG 2, while the standard transmit/receiver was FuG 5 with a 10 watt transmitting power good for about 8km. The standard radio for talking to the Luftwaffe was 20 watt FuG 7 and the FuG 8 set was 30 watt and standard for talking between battalions and higher formations as well as to contacting artillery units. As I also recall they all had the capability for morse/voice operations but range sucked using voice, so almost everything went morse above the company level. Copying morse must have been fun under fire.