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The Battle of the Bulge
Seventy years ago today, the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany launched the Ardennes Counter-offensive. Germany, being pushed back to its borders on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, was on the ropes. The massive Soviet armies were poised to strike into the heart of Germany, while in the west, the Allies had only two major obstacles to overcome before reaching the industrial Ruhr and Saar.
Hitler still saw the Soviets as the greater threat (reasonably enough). He reasoned that if he could split the British and American allies, he could either buy enough time to shore up the Eastern Front, or conceivably bring the British and Americans to the peace table. A delusion, to be sure, but that was the vision that informed his thinking.
Even with massive numbers, the Allies in the West couldn’t be strong everywhere. And so, accepting an operational risk, the Allies, pausing before their next attacks, decided to hold the Ardennes forest with only the lightest screen of troops, mostly green units in need of some experience, and depleted units still reconstituting after the trials of the Huertgen forest and other battles.
In great secrecy, the Germans managed to build a massive force for the attack. From north to south, the 6th Panzer Army, the 5th Panzer Army, and the 7th Army were to attack through the heavily forested Ardennes, cross the Meuse River, and swing north to capture the critical logistical port of Antwerp. Denied the flow of material through Antwerp, at best the Allies would be stalled until spring. At worst, they might suffer a political rift and seek a separate peace.
Armchair historians are fond of pointing out that the Allies should not have been surprised by the German choice of the point of attack. Indeed, the Germans had attacked through the Ardennes in 1940 to envelop the French and unhinge their defense.
And while the Allies did twig to a coming German counterattack, they guessed wrongly as to German intentions. The Allies best guess was that the Germans would launch a spoiling attack against the northern arm of the Allies, namely against Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, to forestall his next planned offensive.
But there were good reasons why the Allies were willing to accept risk in the Ardennes. First, it’s a forest. It has a very limited road network. It was poor terrain for a mechanized offensive, whether for the Allies heading east, or the Germans heading west. And while the Germans had been able to move fairly rapidly through the Ardennes in the spring of 1940, with fair weather, they faced atrocious weather conditions in the winter of 1944. The choice to attack in bad weather was deliberate, as Allied tactical airpower was grounded. But that also meant the road conditions were so bad that German forces, already relatively lacking in mobility, were even less capable of rapid movement.
And the Germans, who had recently expertly used forests as stout defenses, soon learned that American soldiers too could capitalize on them to hold up rapid movement.
And Eisenhower, Bradley, Hodges and Patton, who had spent twenty years between the wars studying and planning a war of maneuver, realized the key concept of a penetration of lines. If you can hold the shoulders of a penetration, you can halt it. Any penetration that overextends itself without reducing the shoulders invites being cut off and destroyed. And the greater mobility of the Allied armies convinced them that they could respond to any attack fast enough to both reinforce the shoulders and to blunt the main thrust.
There are many, many valid criticisms of the Allied response to the German attack. Poor communication, disunity in command, being caught off guard. The failure to actually cut off and destroy the Germans once the thrust had been halted.
But at the end of the offensive, the Germans never even reached the Meuse, let alone Antwerp. For all the massive efforts, all they had gained was some trees.
The Germans losses were particularly troublesome. They suffered about 100,0o0 casualties. And every casualty they suffered in the Ardennes was a man not available to man the Siegfried Line, a defense where they might have inflicted even greater losses on the Allies. As far as Bradley and Patton were concerned, the farther west they killed a German, the better.
The Battle of the Bulge was the largest battle of the war for the US Army, indeed in its history. Over 600,000 men fought the battle, and 19,000 were killed, with 47,0000 wounded, and another 23,000 missing or captured. Some of the most desperate, bitter fighting in history occurred at the Losheim Gap, Eisenborn Ridge, Bastogne, St. Vith, and scores of other sleepy villages.
An entire Green Book is devoted to the history of the Battle of the Bulge, and makes some of the most compelling reading of the history of the entire war. You can read it here online or download it as a pdf.
The courage and fortitude of the average American soldier in the battle shines honor upon the nation and the service. Seldom have such feats of arms been equaled.
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Santa Robs Bank During S.F. SantaCon
A man in San Francisco pulled off an expertly camouflaged heist when he robbed a bank wearing a Santa costume during the annual SantaCon celebration on the weekend, when thousands of people were similarly dressed up and in the streets.
According to San Francisco Weekly, the unidentified Santa walked into a bank on the 400 block of Sutter Avenue at around 1 pm on Saturday, handed the teller a note, and simply walked out with an undisclosed sum of money.
via Santa Robs Bank During S.F. SantaCon.
P.P.P.P.P.P.
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MQ-8B Firescout aboard USCGC Bertholf
The Coast Guard’s newest class of long endurance cutters, known as National Security Cutters, is led off by the cutter Bertholf.
Equipped to carry a helicopter, here we see the Navy’s unmanned MQ-8B Firescout being tested aboard.
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Daily Dose of Splodey
The largest man-made explosion ever was the triple stage thermonuclear bomb Tsar Bomba, tested by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961. Generally rated at about 50 megatons, it was actually “dampened” by using a lead casing instead of a uranium casing, which likely would have doubled its yield, at the cost of horrendous downwind fallout.
The fireball is about 5 MILES across.
Obviously, no conventional explosives can rival thermonuclear weapons for their explosive power. Indeed, the largest deliverable conventional weapons pale in comparison. The US MOAB is a paltry 8-1/2 tons of explosives. The Russian Father of All Bombs carries a bit less, but is actually more powerful:
But that doesn’t mean man hasn’t been responsible, either deliberately or by accident, for some truly massive explosions.
Sean Linnane has compiled a list of some of history’s most massive, or most deadly explosions.
There have been many extremely large explosions, accidental and intentional, caused by modern high explosives, boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions (BLEVEs), older explosives such as gunpowder, volatile petroleum-based fuels such as gasoline and other chemical reactions. This list contains the largest known examples, sorted by date. An unambiguous ranking in order of severity is not possible; a 1994 study by historian Jay White of 130 large explosions suggested that they need to be ranked by an overall effect of power, quantity, radius, loss of life and property destruction, but concluded that such rankings are difficult to assess.
The weight of an explosive does not directly correlate with the energy or destructive impact of an explosion, as these can depend upon many other factors such as containment, proximity, purity, preheating, and external oxygenation (in the case of thermobaric weapons, gas leaks and BLEVEs).It’s worth scrolling through the list. Of particular interest is the large number of Royal Navy capital ships that suffered catastrophic explosions due to aged cordite.
Here are a couple of my favorites.
The Toronto propane explosion.
(Somewhat NSFW for adult language)
And of course, the British Heligoland explosion
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Snowden: 'Elf On A Shelf' Is An NSA Project
Speaking via Google Hangout to officials in Sweden last week, former NSA Contractor Edward Snowden dropped a bag of coal on his former employers by revealing the hugely popular “Elf on a Shelf” trend is actually an intelligence gathering operation originating with and run by the National Security Agency.
“It actually started out as a joke,” Snowden said in his speech. “Someone photocopied a picture of an elf with the caption ‘I’m watching you,’ and it just kept moving from cubicle to cubicle.”
Snowden said that at some point it occurred to someone that if people as paranoid as NSA staff would play this game, what would happen with civilians?
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Load HEAT- Anna Chapman
We don’t normally feature Russian spies here (though a Bond villainess has been featured) but Anna Chapman was in the news this week in regard to US traitor Eric Snowden. There are claims she was to seduce him to keep him in Moscow’s clutches. And she certainly looks tempting.
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BBC News – Gunman takes hostages in Sydney cafe
At least one gunman has taken several people hostage at a cafe in the Australian city of Sydney.
Pictures on Australian television show at least three people with their hands up against a window, and a black flag with Arabic writing.
Hundreds of armed police have sealed off Martin Place in Sydney’s central business district.
via BBC News – Gunman takes hostages in Sydney cafe.
Islam is a religion of peace.
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Patch Sunday
Patch Tuesday is Spill’s gig, whenever he gets around to posting it. But this is too fun to hold onto.
The National Reconnaissance Office is the home of US spy satellite operations. And like most institutions with strong ties to the military, they like morale patches. Unlike most organizations, however, their operations remain very, very secret. So while they have patches commemorating various launches and programs, their patches have to have oblique at best references to their make-up and objectives. Which means enthusiasts spend quite a bit of time speculating on just what is behind the imagery of a given patch.
A purple-haired sorceress holding a fireball. A three-headed dragon wrapping its claws around the world. A great raptor emerging from the flames.
No, these are not characters from a Magic: The Gathering deck. They are avatars depicted on the official mission patches made for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Just as NASA creates specially designed patches for each mission into space, NRO follows that tradition for its spy satellite launches. But while NASA patches tend to feature space ships and American flags, NRO prefers wizards, Vikings, teddy bears and the all-seeing eye. With these outlandish designs, a civilian would be justified in wondering if NRO is trolling.
Unfortunately, given the agency’s extreme secrecy, it’s impossible to answer that question for sure. But based on information that has been leaked about some of the patches, it seems there may be a method to the artistic madness.
It’s a fun read, and there are a lot more patches at the link. Go figure out what they mean.
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The Next Wave of Chinese Expansion
When we look at aggressive Chinese actions, we tend to see them in terms of the South China Sea, and the first island chain. That is, in the far reaches of the western Pacific Ocean.
Writing at The Diplomat, David Brewster takes a look at Chinese efforts to extend their influence not to their east, but rather to the west, in the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal.
Since late 2013, Beijing has been promoting its “Maritime Silk Route” (MSR) initiative as a proposed oceanic complement to its various overland “Silk Route” projects. Details remain sketchy, but the proposal appears to envisage a system of linked ports, infrastructure projects and special economic zones in Southeast Asia and the northern Indian Ocean. While much of the public discussion to date has focused on ports and infrastructure, probably of greater significance is the development of new production and distribution chains across the region, with China at its center. The concept might be seen as akin to Japan’s “flying geese” strategy of the 1970s when Japanese companies outsourced component production to successive tiers of lower-cost states in Southeast Asia.
This actually makes a fair amount of sense, and while the Chinese might resort to bullying and aggressive behavior, it isn’t necessarily so.
China’s massive economic growth in the last 40 years was largely financed by selling very cheap goods to America. Not solely, but largely. But that is changing. First, the market is saturated, with poor prospects for growth. And China desperately needs to continue economic growth or risk internal instability. Second, the growth in the Chinese economy has raised the standard of living, meaning that the very tool they used to achieve growth, dirt cheap labor, is no longer available. On the plus side, however, their manufacturing infrastructure and their pool of talent has grown.
The Bay nations have a large pool of low skilled, extremely cheap labor. China can seek to establish trade with those nations, buying the sort of cheap goods they formerly exported to us, now for their own domestic consumption, a prices cheaper than their own production can achieve. And the Chinese can then export to those Bay nation goods that they previously could not afford.
The Chinese Maritime Silk Road can be seen as a form of soft colonialism, or as embracing trade as a mutually beneficial means of economic growth and a path to prosperity.
Brewster’s article reasonably looks at Chinese attempts to gain access to ports and other facilities for military applications. Which, from a Chinese perspective is entirely reasonable. The Royal Navy didn’t grow to span the globe just because. It grew to protect the international trade of the British Empire. So too can one see the Chinese Navy protecting its trade routes, particularly when the post-war guarantor of maritime security, the United States Navy, is shrinking, and less and less able to exert its influences in areas such as the Bay of Bengal.
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Joint Light Tactical Vehicle
Way back in 2008 we talked about why the current Humvee was marginal at best in an environment full of IEDs. In that same post, we mentioned some of the shortcomings of MRAP trucks as well. At the same time it started buying off the shelf existing MRAP designs, and producing up-armored Humvees, the Army and Marines also started a design program for a replacement vehicle, one designed specifically to have excellent mobility, armor, and survivability in an IED enviroment. This program, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, has quietly been moving along. Oshkosh, AM General and Lockheed Martin have each built a handful of prototypes, and turned them over to an Army/Marine test.
But results of the evaluations haven’t been released and manufacturers are still waiting for the program office to issue a request for proposals — initially expected this month — to begin the next round of competition.
Defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin Corp., truck-maker Oshkosh Corp. and Humvee-maker AM General LLC each delivered 22 JLTV prototypes to the Army for testing under engineering and manufacturing development contracts signed in 2012. Now, the companies are competing against each other to build 17,000 of the vehicles under a much bigger low-rate initial production contract.
First, no one in their right mind would buy a truck from LockMart. But Oshkosh and AM General both have sterling reputations for delivering quality trucks to the services.
Oshkosh JLTV prototype
AM General JLTV prototype
LMT JLTV prototype
For old times sake, here’s an uparmored Humvee.
At its heart, it’s still the same old Humvee, not intended to serve as a fighting vehicle. Its flat bottom and wheel wells trap the blast of explosions underneath. Contrast that to the three prototypes above. Each one uses some shaping to better disperse blast overpressure. The uparmored Humvee is also pretty much at the limit of growth capability for payload, and for electrical power. There simply isn’t room to add any more protection or mission equipment. Its off road mobility is already severely compromised compared to its original unarmored configuration.
The JLTV is designed to address those issues. Of course, that won’t come cheap. I don’t know the unit cost for a current production M1151 Humvee. But I do know that a vanilla base model in 1982 was about $22,000. That’s about $52,000 adjusted for inflation. So my guess would be that a full up model, with armor and engine, transmission and suspension enhancements would probably run three to four times that, around $150,o00 to $200,000. The JLTV is looking to price at about $250,000 for a bare bones truck, and around $400,000 total unit cost including government furnished equipment.
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