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Edited on Fri Aug-06-04 12:18 PM by The Magistrate
First, the principle of infantry co-operation was built into French tanks by design. They were not machines suitable for use as mobile striking elements in a fluid engagement. It is not widely realized that French tanks were generally better armored and armed than German tanks, but that is not sufficient for victory. French tanks were deliberately geared for slow speeds, not much above the running pace of an infantryman. They had minimal crews, in which one man only was responsible for aiming and loading the cannon, as well as commanding the tank. They had no radios, and had to communicate by flag signals, which this one man in the turret was also responsible for flying and reading. All German tanks save the earliest machine-gun armed Panzer I had a seperate commander who could view the battle and direct a gunner, and many of their cannon armed tanks had a seperate loader to assist the gunner. Platoon leaders of most cannon-armed units had radios in their tanks, and so could easily co-ordinate their actions without reference to line of sight. English tank design was oddly bifurcated, into Cruiser and Infantry lines, and England had experimented with all-armor mobile formations between the wars. Cruiser tanks were built for speed, and were well armed and adequately crewed but lightly armored: they were intended as mobile exploitation forces, to operate without any reference to infantry. Their cannon, the two-pounder gun, had no explosive shell, however, and so they proved unable to suppress anti-tank gun fire. Infantry tanks, of which the heavy Matilda II was the best example, were geared slow like the French vehicles, and very heavily armored. The Matilda II was crewed on the German pattern, and radio equipped.
Second, a great proportion of German armored striking power in the period of classic Blitzkrieg derived not from German design and manufacture, but from Czechoslovakian. It is often stated that Munich brought time for critical Allied re-armament, but it probably benefited the Germans much more, by enabling them to absorb Czech equipment and manufacturing facilities. Czech tanks already in service by Munich, the T-35 and T-38, had cannon armament and two-man turrets, as well as adequate armor and good speed. Those already built were taken over by the Germans on the occupation of that country, and large numbers were built in the subsequent two years. These comprised the majority of German tanks armed with cannon in the spring of 1940, and without them, the effectiveness of German armored forces would have been greatly reduced.
Third, the outcome of the air battle over France that spring was largely rooted in two elements; first, the very poor state of the French aircraft industry, and second, the English reluctance to commit any great number of fighter planes to the continent. French aircraft manufacture remained more a craft industry than a tool for mass production, so that a very long time passed between design and commencement of manufacture, which then proceeded by fits and starts in small batches. Thus, the principal French fighter design, the Morane 406, although begun about the same time as the Spitfire and the Me 109, had not been as well developed by 1940, and some superior machines, that might have been in wide service if French industry worked at an English or German or Soviet tempo, were only beginning to be produced at the critical juncture. England had sent over with the BEF only the less valuable of its modern fighters, the Hurricane, which was much easier to produce than the Spitfire, and only in numbers sufficient to equalize the disparity between French and German fighter strength. When the situation on the ground began to deteriorate rapidly, the English decided to maintain their fighter strength safe for protection of the homeland, rather than hazard their own security against the increasingly dubious prospect of pulling the French chestnut out of the fire.
The Maginot Line was certainly an attempt to re-fight the last war. M. Maginot, the driving force behind its construction, had been a sergeant at Verdun, where the tremendous value of fortification in an artillery struggle had been amply demonstrated. Budgetary constraints, as much as anything, rendered it ineffective in the event. The original plan had been to run the fortifications clear to the Channel along the French border, but that was far beyond the fiscal capability of France in the depression years. Had that proved feasible, or been driven through despite looming bankruptcy, the system of fortification might have stood in history with a better name. While the Germans were able, with specially trained paratroop detachments, to neutralize some critical and formidable Belgian fortifications (with some assistance from unreadiness of the garrissons), this means would probably have fallen short of breaching decisively such a system of fortifications as was envisioned for the Franco-Belgian border, and the Germans would have had to blast a way through, at a cost of time, and predictability of their lines of advance.
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