Your opinions of the biggest waste of time/money on fortifications. Maginot Line,West wall,Sevastopol,Atlantic wall,others? Best ? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

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They were all a waste of time and money.

The best fortresses of WWII were without doubt the Japanese in the Pacific, which used very deep underground inter-connected tunnels, depots, artillery positions, mine-fields and MG-nests, counter-attacks and terrian in a very effective defense-in-depth. If most of the Japanese garrisons in these isles would have had more favourable conditions of air and naval support and therefore, supply lines and fresh reinforcements —as in Guadalcanal— the American casualties would have been many times worse than they actually were.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

I've always thought that this was yet another case of fighting the previous war...

In WW1 there were the Verdun Forts, the underground bunkers of the Somme, the Pillboxes of Flanders - all of which were extremely effective.

In WW2, airpower changed everything....

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

But as in WWI, artillery and infantry had the last word in destroying fortifications, not so much air power. There were no Tomahawks then to destroy the Atlantic Wall, but there were battleships and cruisers, and GIs and Tommies to blow machine gun nests with hand grenades and flamme-throwers...

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

You want good fortifications? Look at some of the US coastal defense systems at major ports. The Manila Bay fortifications like Corregidor or el Fraile (Fort Drum) were quite good. Corregidor's 2 12" mortar batteries (8 guns total) had a devastating impact on Japanese operations up until one battery received a very unlucky direct hit on an ammunition bunker and was demolished taking with it the majority of the remaining ammunition available.
Fort Drum surrendered without being taken. It was so well armored that the Japanese had nothing to knock it out with (4 14" guns in near 360 degree traverse turrets plus a number of 5" and 3" guns).
In Hawaii and the Panama Canal Zone there were coastal defense guns to 16" sited in batteries that would have proved difficult if not impossible to take out. A note here: The US decided not to place these particular guns in heavy bunkers but rather on open 360 degree traverse platforms flat to the ground making them almost impossible to spot from the air when not firing. The crews and ammunition were in deep bunkers co-located with the gun for protection against counter-fire. This way, anything but a direct hit on the gun itself did nothing to take out the weapon and the only means to suppress it was to keep it under continious fire (a difficult proposition)
San Diego (Fort Rosecrans on Sunset Point for example where the guns were dug in deep within a cliff face overlooking the Pacific) and San Francisco bay were both heavily defended too as were many East Coast ports. These defense systems made what the Japanese had look like a joke. They made the Pas de Calais system the Germans installed look weak by comparison. Those 12" mortars were a particularly nasty proposition. They were usually sited inland, spread out for maximum defense against return fire in very small pits in pairs, usually on reverse slopes where anything less than high angle fire was impossible and, were invisible to shipboard spotters when firing. These mortars also fired a very heavy armor piercing shell that would impact at near vertical angles on a ship making deck penetrations very likely.....
One smart thing the US did was install a number of points along the coast and inland that were accessable by road for mobile 155mm rifle batteries that could be moved by truck. In this manner they could reinforce a threatened point with numerous batteries of guns in a short period of time.
For those of you into battlefield exploration a good number of these forts still exist to one degree or another and are worth a look.

TA,

There's a link for those, but I can't for the life of me remember it! [img]redface.gif[/img]

Regards,

Gordon

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Regards,

Gordon
History Vault Bookshop
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

The US fortifications might have been the best[I never knew we had all that] but they would have to be lumped in the "biggest waste of money" catagory. Germany had no stomach to cross the "channel" much less the Atlantic ocean.Japan? They just wanted our Navy out of the way. Japan[Okinawa,Iwo etc.]had the least expensive defences yet the most difficult to defeat.IMO. The Germans in Italy rank up high,too.

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Framert,

Yep, just look at Cassino. The Allies did all the heavy work for 'em.

Regards,

Gordon

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Regards,

Gordon
History Vault Bookshop
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

Exactly. The best defense after attack itself is defense-in-depth.

I've already mentioned Japanese defense and fortresses in the Pacific but I very idiotically forgot about marshal Kesselring's master defense of Italy.

Using mountains, river, hills, towns, blowing up and mining everything, along with defending strategic spots and ocassionally counter-attacking. Kesselring was definately one of the greatest geniouses of defense in warfare!

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

One thing this thread has made me think about, that is somewhat related, is a comparison between how the Germans went about defending Western Europe against invasion and the US doing it.
Now, the US spent years thinking about how to defend a long coastline. Their conclusion was to make the major ports defensible against direct invasion while producing mobile systems to defend the remaining coast putting nothing or next to nothing into fixed defenses. Also, the US figured out what seems reasonable methods to minimize the vulnerability of their weapons and, which ones might be most effective against naval vessels.
What if the Germans had come to similar conclusions? That is, they built more hard to destroy open mount heavy guns with good protection for the crew when under fire and mortar batteries (after all, they had a good number of very large mortars in the 11" + category available) that were invulnerable to naval gunfire (even if somewhat vulnerable to air attack) while concentrating on improving road systems laterally behind the front.
As it was they were using as many as 250 rail cars of cement a week building the Atlantic Wall not to mention thousands of tons of steel. Putting a fraction of this into railways and roads while continuing to build cheaper coast defense gun positions might have gotten them a better defense. How would things have changed in Normandy if the Panzer divisions could have moved there in, say, half the time it originally took them and, they arrived complete not piecemeal?
A mobile defense in depth backing a system of very heavy coast defense guns and strong points laid out to prevent taking critical points like ports (note: the coast defense guns would have a 360 degree field of fire like many US guns did so they could support a land defense not just fire on a seaborne assault) might have made more sense. While some of this is the von Ruendstadt (sp) concept, adding a deliberate increase in roads and rails was not part of the original idea.

The best option is always to entirely annihilate your enemy, not just repelling his attack and Von Rundstedt's plan stipulated exactly this, but as Rommel realised; it could not be done at the time with their available resources and strategical condition.

Then, even with more resources destined to more powerful and non-continous coast defenses as you say, T. A. they would have still needed an immediate Panzer counter attack, which would have been a complete failure.

Allied air power and naval guns would have simply annihilated any German attempt of a breakthrough. It happened many times to the Red Army in Courland and Eastern Prussia, and the attack capabilities of the Red Army in 1944 were immensely superior to German ones and the German Navy in 1944 in the Baltic had a couple of cruisers, nothing compared to 9 battleships, a dozen cruisers and dozens of destroyers.

It would have been quite impressive to see those 60-ton Tiger tanks being blown up ten metres from the ground by 16-inches guns...

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

In the strategic way I think the Maginot line was the worst of it all. The French put all of their defence ideology and strength in it, yet the weakness was the possibility to attack around it and they knew it, and yet they did nothing to stop it. Then again if the Germans had attacked in late autumn 1939 or had used the original attack plan in spring 1940, the Maginot line might have proved its stregth (?).

On the German system in 1944 I think it was not possible to use the railways any more than the allied accepted as they themselves ( The allied ) were dedicated to bombing the railways to kingdom come in Normandy. Putting more reserves in railway systems after spring 1944 other than stopping the bombing would have gone like smoke in the wind ,I think. So it was not possible to make the troops move any faster, yet the major mistake was in keeping the 15th Army stay in Calais until the invasion truly was succesfull, but then again we must remember that the allied succeeded in faking Hitler to believe there was another invasion on its way.

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Good point Kia. The German rails/roads would've been blown to bits.I think the elaborate forts at Normandy were partially to show the world how "invincible" they were."No one would ever invade here". But in '44 Germany now faced a third front and there just was'nt enough of anything to go around.

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Think the British GHQ line in 1940 would have rated as one of the worst, if it had ever actually seen action.
Large parts of it were substandard due to material shortages, and even though there were miles of anti-tank ditches and blockhouses guarding essential river crossings, Eben Emael showed how vulnerable they were to airborne attack.
Think of how many thousands of new guns etc which could have been made, if all the scaffolding erected on British beaches had been used for something more tangible.
Got to admit-as a morale booster, Ironside's Line was second to none.

Regards,

Gordon

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Regards,

Gordon
History Vault Bookshop
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

Anyone know how many miles of trenchs were dug in WWII? Is there a statistic on it?

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Don't want much, do you?!

Regards,
Gordon

__________________
Regards,

Gordon
History Vault Bookshop
FortressScotland-http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y20/Historian/

I think one can only say that it was a lot less than were dug in WW1....

( Actually, due to the much more fluid nature of the fighting, the two-man 'slit-trench' was much more common in WWII, plus of course the one-man 'foxhole' favoured by the US Army ).

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson