Army Trips Manual: Fill & Download for Free

The real question is why the Luftwaffe (I have originally written “Goering” but was rightly corrected by comrade Sekishki Mei Kaiha in the comments that it was not in fact Goering) beleived they could do it when basically it was obvious that it could not.I will give here the information from the book of Major General Hans Doerr “Der Feldzug nach Stalingrad. Versuch eines operativen überblickes”. It is a good source for the evaluation of German forces and efforts (though it’s rather sketchy about the Soviet side of the battle).On the 22 November 1942 H. Schroter, the commander of Army Group “5” submitted a report with a calculation of the amount of supply necessary to keep the 6th Army alive. (here I note that those calculations totally ignore the 8th Italian, 3rd and 4rth Romanian and elements of the German 4th Panzer armies that were also cut off along with the 6th, so those were written off from the beginning).On the 24th of November Schroter estimated the 6th army at 284 000 men, 8 000 horses, 1 800 artillery pieces and over 10 000 cars. For that number the required daily amount of supplies would be:For 250 000 men (as some elements of the army were outside the encirclement) 1.225 kg of food per person => 306 tonns dailyFor 1 800 guns, at 10 shots per gun per day => 540 tonns of ammunitionFor 10 000 motors, at 10 liters per motor per day => 100 tonns of fuelTOTAL: 946 tonns.It is worth noting that this calculation does not include any supplies for the 8 000 horses, nor any ammo for small arms, no spare parts or consruction materials, no medical supplies, no replacement clothes or personal items, all of which is actually indispensable. It is also obvious that consumption norms are really minimal, especially considering that the 6th army was not just sitting there, but holding off constant pressure of soviet armies on all fronts (the soviet command had really hoped it could mop-up the 6th army right away to proceed south-west ASAP with the objective of cappturing Rostov). Overall more or less realistic requirements were thus about 1200 tonns per day.However the 6th Army HQ (major von Kunovski) in November reported as requiring only 650 tons per day - 300 tons of fuel, 200 tons of ammo and only 150 tonns of food. Why? Probably because the 6th army was hoping for a breakthrough and the army still had some food supplies left, as well as the horses, so there was still some room to cut back on food, while ammo and fuel were essential for continued resistance and anticipated breakthrough.Based on that Hitler issued a supply order to the 4th Luftflotte. But the order cut on this even further - 200 tons of fuel and 40 tons of ammunition. The foodstuffs were only mentioned in passing.Thus the real requirements of 1200 tons per day were cut at every step and finally transformed into just 240 tonns.But even that was unrealistic.1. The huge amount of flights that had to be made to supply the army had forced the Germans to distribute the airforce to several airfields and the inbound stream of goods was likewise distributed. This inevitably caused some airfields to be overflowing with stuff, while others ran out of materials and had to deliver non-essential stuff to just avoid going idle and missing their delivery window. At the initial stages there were three supplying airfields, 200km from delivery points on average, as the Russians advanced the bases were shifted to a distance of 300 km on average and then even further to a 450 km distance.Below: one of the supply airfields - Tatsinskaya in November 1942. (I cannot verify it is exactly Tatsinskaya, but anyway it looked like that).2. Second factor was, of course, the receiving airfields. In order to smoothly receive even 240 tonns of cargo per day the unloading of the transport planes should be perfectly organized. It also requires sufficient equipment to enable the unloading. In the Stalingrad pocket such cargo handling equipment was not available - the planes were unloaded manually. There was a single more or less stocked airfield - Pitomnik, secondary airport was at Gumrak, and then just a minor landing strip in Stalingradski. But only Pitomnik was suitable and prepared to receive airplanes. The 240 tons (even had they arrived) had to be manually unloaded from the airplanes by the airport crews. Hauled manually.This is a standard sea 40ft sea container. It normally holds about 20 tons of cargo, if full to the brim. The airfield teams at Pitomnik would need to unload the equivalent of 12 of theese every day by hand.It’s about that many. An extremely daunting task. I’ve worked for some time managing a warehouse operation and I can tell you with full authority, debagging 12 containers per day is a serious load even for a warehouse with 4–5 teams with modern forklifts and cranes. Doing that by hand in freezing wind and snow is a horrible idea. Doing that every single day for an extended period would require constant turnover of men, as after a couple days men would really be exhausted. It’s worth noting that the airfield teams had actually to move double that volume, because after unloading the planes they had to load them again for the revese trip with sick and wounded. So daily turnover would really be double the inbound cargo volume.3. Third factor was weather - bad weather means no flights. Each day of missing flights means a deficit of 600 tonns added to the balance.Below: German airfield crews are heating-up the Ju-52 engine with a heater to enable it to start-up, December 1942, Pitomnik airfield.Ju-52 on the Pitomnic airfield.4. Fourth factor was that the transport planes had to cross the frontline twice to get to the encircled army and had to fly part of the way over enemy territory. Very soon the Russian command understood what was going on and had the western encirclement front bristling with AA guns. Air superiority over the theater was also firmly in the hands of the Russians. As a result the German transport fleet lost around 500 airplanes throughout the operation. That was the highest losses the Luftwaffe had sustained in a single operation since the Battle for Britain.5. The numbers of available transport planes were simply not sufficient to enable the supply operation of this scale, even if all other problems had been solved. Luftwaffe possesed overall on all fronts and in all reserves 878 Ju-52 transport planes, of which 357 were in working condition. Additionaly some He-111 bombers and Ju-86 could be used as a stopgap solution, but there weren’t so many of them and they were needed in their bomber roles as well. The calculations showed that around 700 operational Ju-52 were required to provide the required necessary supply (240 tons), if they were able to make 3–4 sorties per day and if the airports remained at a distance of 200km. The Germans just didn’t have that many, they only had about half this number.6. In december a powerful blow to the supply effort was dealt by gen. Badanov’s tank raid on Tatsinskaya. In the morning of 24th of December Badanov’s tanks suddenly rushed the airfield. German transports were taking off under fire. 106 Ju-52 and 16 Ju-86 managed to get away, but around 70 airplanes were lost. This paralysed all supply of the 6th Army for two days - on the 24th and 25th the army did not receive a single gramm of supplies. The airfield had to be moved to Salsk. Salsk was at the very edge of operational radius of Ju-52s, so all the airplanes with higher than normal fuel consumption could no longer participate in the supply effort. All the supplies accumulated at Tatsinskaya for shipping to Stalingrad had also been lost, Salsk had to be restocked from zero.Above: Tatinskaya after Badanov’s raid.Above: A memorial on the former location of the airfield. I personally think the design is awesome.Things went from bad to worse from there - on the 10th of January the Red Army started operation “Ring” - an offensive on the beseiged 6th Army. This increased the army requirements for fuel and ammo manyfold. On the 11th the 6th Army received 36 (!) artillery shells and 33 tons of fuel. On the 16th the beseiged had to abandon the Pitomnik airfield to the advancing Russians. That was essentially the end. Gumrak could not hope to receive airplanes properly. Even during the rebasing of airplanes from Pitomnik five airplanes crashed at landing. Luftwaffe swithched to dropping supplies without landing, but the soldiers could not collect the drops because they were too weak with starvation. On the same date - 16th January, the suppluying airfield of Salsk had likewize to be abandoned.On the 22nd of January the Russian forces took Gumrak, on the 23rd - Stalingradski. Without airfields, there could be nothing but paradrops. On the 2nd of February the Luftwaffe pilots reported no signs of fighting in the Stalingrad pocket and all supply efforts were halted.

I’m quite qualified to answer this.Both my grandfather and my great grandfather fought in Stalingrad.My great grandfather died there.My grandfather was captured there and won a one-way trip to Siberia.It was cold as sin, hard labor and basically an extermination camp.Fortunately he was young and charismatic and befriended an elderly German officer.At the end of the war, some Wehrmacht officers were allowed to be sent home. Germany was the enemy, and Democrat Germany was the new depopulated friend, while East Europeans were considered more like traitors and were treated more harshly.Back to our story, so this officer really liked my grandfather, he had no family and started seeing him as a son. So when he got the chance to go home, he proposed to switch clothes and for my grandfather to go back home instead: “You are young, you have two beautiful, young daughters, you must be there for them.”So my grandfather, dressed as a German, took an unheated freight train from Siberia to Germany. It took him almost a month to get to Romania with almost no food. People were stuffed in and were dying left and right.When the train got to the Romanian border, he jumped off and on foot and with some local help he managed to get home eventually.He was one of the very few lucky ones.My grandfather was an extraordinary man. He rose to be chief of the entire border police post-war at under 30, then he defied the communists and was banned from the army, so he started to teach driving and became a well known driving manual author, and in the end he also was re instituted in the army.I’m always sad I never got to meet him, he died of leukemia a year before I was born. They say I look and act just like him … just never lived up to his standards.Not Stalingrad, but a related story: My uncle (from my grandmother’s side) was born in Cernautsi, which was in Bukovina, taken over by USSR, now in Ukraine. As news of losing Moldova came, they fled in the middle of the night towards Romania, with only the clothes on their backs.Most of those who had stayed, have been executed on the spot or sent to Siberia, never to be seen again.

Good question, thank you!Indeed! Why?Well, everyone knows it’s “the logistics”, and that’s true. But exactly what about the logistics? Exactly how this mysterious “logistics” suddenly makes it a problem to deliver stuff 450 km away while it seemingly is much less of a problem delivering stuff 350 km away from the staging point?Being a logistics professional at my day job and an amateur historian as a hobby I think I’m in a good position to answer.The troops in WW2 era fighting actively, that is engaged in an offensive or defensive operation and faced with stiff and determined opposition are expending supplies extremely rapidly. For example, during the battle of Kursk (one of the most pitched battles of the whole war) and the ensuing offensive, the Red Army had expanded 10 600 rail carts of ammunition in 50 days. Wartime load norms were 16.5 metric tons per cart. That makes total ammo expenditure 174 900 tons of ammo in 50 days. That makes it nearly 3 500 tons of ammunition in a single day! That is only ammunition! OK, this is an example that is quite extreme - at Stalingrad, say, expenditures were four times lower. But even then, during the Stalingrad operation, one year earlier, the Red Army had been expending on average about 800 tons of ammo per day. Food and miscellaneous equipment and supplies (like medicine, uniforms, replacement arms, etc., etc.) required by a soldier must run up to at the very least a kilogram per day. That means that a force of, say, five hundred thousand requires another five hundred tons of foodstuffs and miscellaneous items per day. Plus the reinforcements and replacements of manpower and machinery. But let’s not even count this for now. All in all the requirements of a section of front in the middle of an operation in early war on the eastern front would come up to at least 1000 - 1500 tons of cargo per day, and 4 - 4.5 thousand in late war. If the army can’t get this - it will be running out of supplies (ammunition before anything else).As is quite clear from the sheer tonnage the only way you could possibly deliver this is by rail. A single train can be around 40 carts, so it can deliver about 650 tons of material. Thus you need 2–3 trains arriving daily to keep the army supplied.Here’s the catch. Unloading a train is no small feat. In the WW2 era the trains were basically unloaded by hand and the cargo did not come in containers like today - so you had to put it down from the carts manually. Of course, in wartime you could put quite a lot of labor into unloading it, but anyway you can’t have more than one team working at a single cart at a time. Then you need other teams taking the cargo somewhere off the platform to some kind of storage. Then maneuver the train out of the way to prepare the platform for the next one. All of this basically means that you can’t really do this kind of stuff just anywhere - you need a decent rail yard, preferably with cranes, definitely with enough rail junctions to maneuver the trains around and definitely with enough storage space to handle the huge throughput. And you need it very well protected from enemy air strikes because there’s simply nothing like watching 500 tons of ammunition just unloaded from a train catch fire from the enemy incendiary bombs.Liski station after a German air raid. That’s what happens when the enemy catches your rail station when it’s crammed with trains, which are crammed with explosives. Now imagine that all of this has to be cleared out in a matter of hours, because the next train is already coming up.Here’s the second catch - when stuff is arriving in such huge bulk, it takes a heroic effort to keep it well organized. You’re getting crates of all shapes and sizes, bales, boxes, bags and trunks. And then you need to distribute EXACT quantities of stuff to exact points in time and space - the riflemen must get rifle ammo, the artillery - their caliber shells, the mechanized units - their caliber shells and their kind of fuel, everyone needs to get some food and so on. What this takes is effort. But also, importantly, space: the storage area needs to be well organized and sorted out, allowing for easy loading for the next delivery stage (by trucks or horse carts) that will deliver the exact cargo needed to recipients.Here’s the third catch - you need to have huge stocks of everything ready at that logistical staging point before the operation because otherwise you risk running out even if temporarily. Trains can be bombed, rail lines can be disrupted, there can be unexpected holdups during loading and unloading, disruptions in timetables, etc. The net result of the above is that the train can be late to arrive or late to be unloaded. Also sometimes the train can’t carry the whole assortment - say it brings double the amount of food, but half the amount of ammo. Then you must have stock to supply the fighting units or risk some running out of ammo or gas in the middle of battle.So, what do the above three points mean practically? They mean that the initial logistical staging area for the army MUST be a well-outfitted rail yard, well-connected to the network, safe from the immediate fighting, well-staffed with both workers and logistics officers and with readily available large storage facilities and well-stocked with all kinds of supplies to smooth-out the disruptions in the supply flow. Normally that would be a railway station of a large enough city. That point is actually the point you’re calculating the “operational distance” from, that is the base point of operations.Next there is the “local” leg of the supply chain - from this well-stocked rail yard the goods then need to be spread out to the actual frontier units. That was typically by trucks or even by horse-drawn carts. And here’s where the 400 km limit first comes in. A 400 km distance is actually a distance at which a truck of the era was still cargo-efficient, that means that after allowing for fuel for the round trip there still was enough capacity to load something else. After the 400 km mark the truck had to carry more and more fuel for itself and thus less and less efficient cargo.And sometimes because of the weather and/or road conditions 400 km is just out of the question.Now what happens when the armies start active offensive operation and move away from this base point? Two things really: first is that the delivery leg from the base to the actual units increases. You can’t move the base after the units, so you need to deliver farther and farther by truck and by horse. With the trucks - you consequently consume more and more fuel and so haul more and more fuel and less and less actual cargo. With the horses it’s the same thing, only worse - you need food for horses and you also need vastly more horses as a 400 km move by horse would take like what? 10–15 days? 30 days for a round trip? So you’d be having a huge number of horse carts enroute. Same with trucks - on a wartime road on leg of 200 km a truck can probably make a round trip in a single day (if unloading is organized well and weather is good). On a 400 km that is probably impossible - you’ll have twice as many trucks enroute at any given moment of time. On a 600 km leg you’ll need a supply dump midway, and round trip would take 3–4 days at least.Oh, and you’re also losing trucks and cargo and drivers all along. The longer the road - the more losses.The second thing that invariably happens is that the supply depot starts running out. Even if you can maintain the bulk volume necessary, you can’t prevent individual imbalances from piling up. The initial stocks and subsequent deliveries are planned and calculated based on theoretical calculations of forecast consumption. Then reality kicks in - the armies suffer more losses than expected and you run out of medicine while ammunition starts to pile up; the armies suffer fewer losses and you start to run out of food and ammunition; the enemy bombs one of the warehouses and 50% of supply of 152 mm ammo is lost and needs urgent replacing; the tanks get into heavy fighting and require more shells and fuel than planned; the tanks fail to break through and consume less fuel while the artillery is chewing through high-caliber ammunition at double the expected rates; the enemy counterattacks and the sector of the front that was not supposed to consume so many resources suddenly needs hundreds of tons of cargo; the train carrying ammo was bombed to hell and didn’t arrive, etc. The result is that some things begin to run out while other things begin to pile up, taking up space and effort to handle.These things above ensure that as the armies are pulling away from the logistical supply dump the supply gets more and more problematic. And the only way to solve this is to organize and properly stock another supply node which would be closer to the front. This does not always mean that the operation has to stop - but that depends very much on the exact situation - is there enough rail capacity to keep the old supply center operational and at the same time allocate resources to stockpiling stuff at the new supply point?How hard is the fighting - if the breakthrough had been achieved and the enemy is not putting up much of a fight (albeit temporarily) that may be the opportunity to move the supply depots forward. If there’s a meat grinder going on then probably it’d be very disruptive to try to rearrange the supply lines on the fly. This leads to the momentum of the advance to falter as disruptions start to accumulate and become more and more difficult to fix. Imagine your unit has overspent ammo in a fierce firefight. If the supply depot is 50 km away all you need to do is grab hold of the truck and you’re back in action by the next day. If the supply depot is 400 km away - maybe you’re getting your ammo tomorrow. If the truck doesn’t get stuck or break down somewhere or, say, gets hit by a bomb on the way. If you’re unlucky in this way - no ammo till the day after that. Essentially the unit becomes useless for the day.This is what a simple answer “logistics” actually entails. Quite simple and practical things really, but worth looking at in great detail.Now though my answer is mostly dedicated to logistics I want to mark another reason for a limit on operation duration and depth that is not related to logistics - physical exhaustion of people.During an active operation, it was very common for fighting to cease for just two-three hours a day - between one and four in the morning typically. This time was used by both sides to try and evacuate disabled vehicles, do some repairs, change position and generally order-up for the next day. Most of the time one could expect three hours for sleep for the riflemen, one hour of sleep for the artillerymen and tankers and none for recon, communications, and medics. And then off for another 18–20 hours of extremely stressful and physically tough activity - mostly running, shooting, huge amount of digging and often walking very long distances. Oh, and carrying a lot of very heavy stuff around.Soviet mortarmen on the march. I have to say that in this particular case the mortarmen are in luck - attached infantry is helping to carry the shells. That was not always the case - carrying 20 shells each had been the responsibility of two of the mortar crew. But the base (that round thing) was the worst - it weighs 30 kg. In my grandfather’s squad they used to carry it in turns, switching the barrel (10 kg, so it was considered a “relief” duty) and the base around between squadmates. That’s IN ADDITION to all the normal infantryman loadout, except they got carbines instead of rifles.Even in the breakthrough without enemy resistance, a day of walking/driving after a sleepless night is something that one can physically do for only so long. It’s much worse if there’s actual fighting going on. For example, at the German offensive at Kursk, the Germans reports had begun mentioning losses due to tank crews sleeping in combat on the fifth and sixth day of fighting. The men were literally falling asleep in the middle of a firefight. Of course, this is very much dependent on the level of resistance one is facing, how much the enemy is prepared to counterattack when you’re trying to catch a break, and how much pressure enemy is putting on. But in many operations, this had been a very significant factor that had forced the generals to halt the advance.