Marston mats & east front.

How might these have changed east front supply situation for Germans? If they had em available for Barbarossa.

http://www.answers.com/topic/marston-mats

One of Americas finest hours as a military innovation I'd say.

 

They were used to make tank roads in North Africa

http://www.answers.com/topic/marsden-matting

and became used in other engineering applications such as road and bridge construction.

The idea is not to make a road from Berlin to Moscow, rather to use it strategically in difficult areas, i.e. as in the desert they would be used in sandpits & other difficult terrain.

In Russia, problem areas such as bogs & muddy terrain would be more the type of application. Runways too would be made with it. It's cheap to make & easy to transport & install.

 

These mats did have their limitations in wet weather. very good for desert terrain though.

http://alanc.carey.freeservers.com/custom.html

He told me that during the rainy season the mud would get so deep that as the airplane rolled along the martson mats, the airplane would sink down quite a bit lower than the surrounding ground. He said it was like taxiing in a bubble several feet deep.

Better then just plain mud though.

 

Well, laying miles of road with this material in North africa made a huge difference for the Americans. Essentially solved their transpo probs.

It was used to good effect in Greenland as well for big airstrips. That makes 3 different soil type areas where it was beneficial.

Here's book about the Greenland strip. a bit outside the topic, but interesting story.

In 1940 a decision was made between the U.S. and Great Britain to build an air base in Greenland. The mission for the airbase was to patrol the North Atlantic shipping lanes, to protect the cryolite mines at Ivigtut, Greenland, from German occupation. (Cryolite is a flux used in the refining of aluminum-the only known source in the world), and to act as a rescue station for any Allied planes that encountered trouble along the route.

http://www.merriam-press.com/mono_200/m076.htm

The original survey stated the surface was gravel. They were told just grade it, lay a surface of Pierced Steel Planking (PSP) and they would be home in three months. The magnitude of the problem is difficult to describe. The gravel turned out to be sprinkled with boulders three to twenty feet in diameter.

Load of work as it turned out.

 

PSP was miraculous stuff! The envy of all. It made Chicken Soup out of Chicken ____ (feet).
Airfields could be repaired in a day after a shelling/bombing. I'm sure those who didn't have it wish they did. Anyone with any imagination
could find uses for it, just about anywhere. Even if it wasn't "perfect" for all occasions, it was better than everything else.

 

Imagine, Germans could've set up airfields in extreme winter weather with this stuff.

 

And then flown their aircraft into the howling snowstorms.

Peppy >>> being his usual pain in the arse...

 

& only when it snowed, which isn't most of the time.

 

Germans? How egotistical! What about Italians, Roumanians, Slovaks and Hungarians?

However methinks in East Front the main users of that quintessential product of the super-efficient American Cornucopia were the Soviets, so yes, someone was setting up airfields in extreme weather (albeit flying only when the blizzard abated a bit) but certainly not the Germans.

Note for next time: do not start wars with the wrong guys, and never never two at the same time

 

Nothing egotistical, the Germans started the east front conflict. The sattelites got much equipment from the Germans.

 

I have pictures of it being used in the Aleutians for runways. P-39's and B-24's landing on it and putting up huge amounts of water spray. I don't think they could have taken off under such conditions and I am sure the tires froze to the wet steel after a short period.

 

It wasn't just matting that made the Allies formidable at building airfields. A US airfield engineer battalion (yes, there were special battalions just for building them) was a tour de force in construction equipment (without counting other motor vehicles):

37 2 1/2 ton dump trucks
4 air compressors (leroy) mounted on 2 1/2 trucks (these were designed to run about 8 jackhammers each)
10 road graders
2 excavators crawler tractor type ("steam shovels") with dragline, clamshell, and back hoe attachments.
13 crawler tractors various classes 'Caterpillars' (all with bulldozer blade attachments)
10 earth scraper trailers (towed by the catepillars)
4 truck mounted cranes with clamshell and dragline bucket attachments
3 cement mixers various sizes
1 Back hoe
1 tractor drawn lawn mower
1 road roller
9 rotary sweepers
1 three tooth rotary excavator
14 4 ton dump trucks
1 asphalt spreader
1 asphalt heating truck

When you add a gravel plant and an asphalt plant (general HQ engineer detachments) one battalion could build what several regiments of German construction troops could not.
The US unit not only built the airfield but they would survey and construct draniage ditches, taxiways, hardstands, and, of course, put up buildings for various uses.

 

Snow would likely present probs. Easier to keep cement clean of snow than psp one would think.

 

Yes, but whereas you can just dump a few (well, a lot) truckloads of PSP and just drop them in place and is ready to use as seen as the last coolie leaves the runway, concrete needs to be mixed, you need to bring the correct ammounts of inert materials, water, and you will take a few days wait to be used. Also you'll need to leave expansion joints etc. It does take trouble and you need a lot of equipment.

If damaged you have to bring the whole shebang to repair it, whereas with PSP you'll just remove the twisted metal, fill the craters and lay a few more panels.

If the front moves you can rip up the plates and move them over to another location, not the same with concrete.

Of course we're not talking about durability, a fairly made concrete strip can be left alone and last decades, whereas PSP if not maintained will become unusable as the ground shifts with the rain and general wear.

 

I know.

 

I know you know, but you are not the only reader of this forum, or so Otto hopes.

 

The choice of material for the runways, etc. is just one of many things necessary for a proper airfield. The US included most of the above equipment to allow proper grading, fill, and compaction of the ground. This ensured the runways could take the aircraft's weight. It also ensured proper drainage in wet weather.
Concrete could be limited to just building foundations and other uses where there was no substitute.
In addition to proper runways and such, the advantages of having things like quonset huts with heating, storage buildings, and hangers meant that maintenance, administration, and logistics were vastly improved particularly in poor weather. Even where the US just set up tents some sort of lighting and heating was provided in the unit establishment.
The squadrons could also count on having pump trucks, tow tractors, and other mechanized equipment to service the aircraft with. The Germans in the East all too often had to rely on manpower and hand pumps to perform these tasks.

 

I would imagine they built the strip at Guadalcanal in a hurry. It didn't have proper drainage.

The US were great at construction, but they had more available materials to work with than any of the other WW2 players.

[ 10. January 2007, 01:10 AM: Message edited by: chromeboomerang ]