Talk:Battle of Arracourt

Strength comparisons

I made some edits and comments regarding the strength comparisons for the two forces listed in Barnes' study. Barnes' table on page 28 of his study includes questionable ratios of strength as well as making assumptions that should be explained to the reader but are not. I am skeptical of the manpower ratios given in Barnes' study as the German figures seem to be for combat arms personnel while the total used for the U.S. division include the entire division's strength. However, without the actual records of the units involved, it is difficult to be sure of this. W. B. Wilson (talk) 17:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Having read the description of Barnes work, I see it is a MA thesis, which means it falls short of Reliable Source level. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:30, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

That said, it seems to identify the course of the battle and if it is correct there will be relaible sources out there to confirm.GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:47, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Somebody please explain the math here: actual strength of 182 tanks (135 Panzer IVs(ausf H variant) and 280 Mark V Panther tanks)(ausf G variant), with an additional 80 self-propelled assault guns, for a total of 262 vehicles89.27.34.202 (talk) 21:55, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

The what now?

What is a "4th Armored water point support crew "? Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:42, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Don't have the original sources, but the writer likely meant a potable water distribution unit that was either assigned or attached to the 4th Armored Division. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 05:32, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

This entire article doesn't agree with my Wehrabooism

Why is this pro-war and pro-american war propaganda allowed on wikipedia? Please take it down or change the stats to looks less one-sided. Yuck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:100:42A9:88FF:A15A:D40B:22C8:2635 (talk) 20:37, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Do you have a source that disagrees with the numbers as sourced in the article? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:32, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

The article does not state how many German tanks were taken out by US tanks, US aircraft, etc. The article is disingenuous. 94.3.125.209 (talk) 13:44, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but I have to second that. I don't have any sources or numbers on this particular battle, but honestly this sounds like some Hollywood fantasy tale pulled out of someones arse. Sorry for the language. It's just so ridiculous that I am not able to process why there isn't further research done on the article before it's being published TheMightyGeneral (talk) 15:46, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree. This so called major tank battle was never heard of until recently. The British destroyed over 90% of US armour in Normandy, not the US, with the British effectively destroying the German army in the west. The US were steamrolled in the Battle of the Bulge. They performed poorly against German armour because US armour was so poor to the Germans. British armour was not and a match for German armour, as Normandy proved. The US never had large scale tank successes - not with those puny 75mm gun Shermans they would not. This tank battle has been dreamt up. The German losses were due to unmolested US aircraft and ground armour and that includes anti-tank weapons. It is difficult to get the number of US and German tanks involved (US tanks outnumbered German tanks). This article does not mention what the losses were by tank, aircraft, etc. This US army report on the Lorraine Campaign does mention Arrancourt but not as significant, and mentions the contribution of aircraft and destroying tanks - "received overwhelming air support". http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf

From the report is in italics.....

"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."

"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province *contained few significant military objectives."

"Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.' The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."'

Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like he did when running his troops into Brittany.

"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."

In other words a waste of time.

"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."

They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.

"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."

In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches. Monty approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into the Scheld.

"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."

Some army they were going to fight.

"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."

Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army. How clever.

"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."

It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and Patton never used the territory to move into Germany.

"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be."

"Patton violated tactical principles"

"His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."

Not flattering at all.

.94.3.125.209 (talk) 13:42, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Zaloga's book "Armored Thunderbolt" is the main reference source for this battle, and his info mostly comes from US Army records stored at NARA. If you don't trust American sources, read "Panzer Battles", the memoirs of General Fredrich von Mellenthin. I'm the one that found the brief two paragraphs that von Mellenthin devoted to this battle in his book and made the connection to what Zaloga was describing in his book. The key point from the German side is that the Germans suffered very heavy losses, but still thought they had "won" because Patton and the 3rd Army had stopped advancing. - DarthRad (talk) 22:06, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

A battle has a target, an aim. This was a series of engagements as a part of the Lorraine Campaign, that had no defined aim. It was not a battle. It should be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.3.126.11 (talk) 18:43, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

And I have no idea why this article is "pro-war", or "pro-American". A major reason to examine this battle more closely, and to give it a name, from Zaloga's point of view, was that there had been such a glorification of how "vastly superior" the German tanks and AFVs were compared to the U.S. Army's tanks and AFVs (best exemplified by the execrable book "Death Traps" by Belton Cooper, which virtually turned the words "vastly superior German tanks" into a religious mantra) that there needed to be an examination of tank battles in WWII where the German tanks did terribly. And this battle was one where the German tanks, largely Panther tanks, did terribly. The article goes into great detail about how and why the U.S. Army was able to defeat the attacking German tanks. Better tactics, better organization, and favorable terrain and weather conditions, despite having mediocre tanks. Air power, the traditional answer to how the US defeated German tanks, played only a small role in the actual tank versus tank engagements. Very simple.

The Battle of Arracourt was otherwise a totally forgettable moment in WWII as far as most American military historians were concerned for a great many years, because it was such a glaring highlight of how Eisenhower's decision to divert resources away from Patton to Montgomery's Operation Market Garden was such a horrible decision that would end up delaying the US Army's drive into Germany and end up costing more American lives. You will simply NOT find any mention of it as a named battle before Zaloga's accounts resurrected interest in this battle. So no way can an article about this Battle be construed as "pro-war" or "pro-American". It is just as much an example of a bad American strategic military decision as anything else. - DarthRad (talk) 22:20, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Market Garden was supplied from the air and took nothing from the Lorraine Campaign. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.3.126.11 (talk) 18:51, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Read above about Lorraine being the wrong territory to take the war to Germany. To hit Germany it had to be in the north, the Ruhr, where the British were heading with US Hodges to the south of the Ruhr. 94.3.125.209 (talk) 11:14, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

This was not a tank battle in the sense of the tank v tank battle like at Kursk, or tank battles the Germans had with the British in the desert. The figures used are for the Lorraine Campaign which lasted THREE months, not a skirmish in comparison on the edge of Arracourt. 94.3.125.209 (talk) 11:05, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

"Market garden was supplied by the air..." I'm sorry but that is utter nonsense. Market Garden was Corps-level offensive. Even today no one can do that via aerial resupply only. Market Garden's entire significance lies in the fact that it failed *while having supply priority* and thus cost the allies other opportunities. DMorpheus2 (talk) 21:16, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

No supplies were taken from US armies for Market Garden. The problem with US forces supply was the long road from Normandy. Normandy was full of supplies. Do some reading. 90.213.249.104 (talk) 09:55, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Believe me, I have. The US Army official history has very detailed accounts of this problem. Kindly refrain from personal attacks. And remember that 2/3rds of the Airborne force at Market-garden was US. DMorpheus2 (talk) 14:30, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

How many German tanks were smashed by aircraft?

This article does not say. The Panthers were outnumbered by inferior Shermans. But without the air support the battle would have gone differently. The aircraft are not getting enough recognition.

Few resources were diverted to Market Garden. All armies were at the end of their supply lines from Normandy. Trucks running to Lorraine from Normandy used up all the fuel they brought. Antwerp had to be taken to get a port intact. Montgomery asked Gavin of the First Allied Airborne Army to assist in taking the Scheld. He said it was too risky, so Market Garden it had to be for the paras.

Lorraine and the Sar was not aiming at the heart of the Ruhr. The US armies needed to be further north and the British in Holland to form a pincer on the Ruhr and secure the port of Antwerp and its approaches. Also to overrun the V rocket launch sites.

If the US 3rd army had run into Germany it was in danger of being encircled. All allied armies had to consolidate. 94.3.125.209 (talk) 16:51, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Utter nonsense and mostly unrelated to this article. DMorpheus2 (talk) 11:51, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

How many German tanks were smashed by aircraft? This article does not say. The Panthers were outnumbered by inferior Shermans. But without the air support the battle would have gone differently. The aircraft are not getting enough recognition. All was way way within the scope of this article as it mentions the point I brought up. This is a tank battle that was not recorded in history then it emerges. Something does not seem right. We need more detail. What was the killing rate of tank v tank, as it was supposed to be tank battle. 94.3.125.209 (talk) 10:25, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

In battle of Arracourt, the Germans had lost 33 tanks due to air attacks, many more being damaged. 14 PzIV and 22 PzV with a further 18 undefined, for a total of 87 destroyed tanks. However, when including the Nancy bridgehead; 107 tanks, for a overall total loss (damaged and destroyed) of 285 tanks, including 30 SPGs and armored vehicles. Makwitz (talk) 00:40, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Makwitz, please give a reference for your numbers, and whether the numbers of German tanks destroyed from air attack that you gave came from pilot claims or a thorough post battle ground survey by the U.S. Army. The numbers of German tanks destroyed by aircraft is excessively high compared to other, similar and much better documented and surveyed tank actions.

In general, the ability of U.S. and British aircraft in the WWII European theater to destroy German tanks has been greatly exaggerated, another long standing myth of WWII started by the memoirs of German Army generals eager to blame their failures on somebody else (Göring, and the absent Luftwaffe protection) and continued by American generals and historians eager to boast about the superiority of American air power in WWII.

Ian Gooderson's book "Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45" provides a much needed corrective to all of that myth, and is a must-read. I wrote a detailed review of the book some years ago here:

https://www.amazon.com/review/R16CXX2PFZWUK0/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0714642118

And here is the excerpt from that review relevant to what really happened with Allied tactical airpower vs. German tanks:

The results of this analysis are frequently surprising, and many details go completely against what is commonly assumed to be true about the air war in Europe.

For one thing, the famed rocket Typhoons were terribly inaccurate - one British study showed that the average Typhoon pilot firing all eight rockets had only a four percent chance of hitting a target the size of a tank (p.76). Earlier, in north Africa, the British had used 40mm cannons mounted on Hurricane fighters to attack German armor, and the 40mm cannons were highly successful at destroying tanks, but proved to be extremely costly to the fighters, as they had to fly in low and close to attack their targets and were thus extremely vulnerable to ground fire. The rockets had a longer range and so allowed for a greater stand off distance, which was why the British discontinued the use of these more lethal (to both the pilots and their targets) 40mm cannons on their fighter-bombers.

In one of the classic episodes of the tactical air war in Europe, the German panzer counterattack at Mortain is acknowledged by all participants to have been stopped and decimated by air attacks from rocket Typhoons and bomb carrying P-47s (p. 111-117). The pilots themselves claimed over two hundred German tanks destroyed. However, a British survey of the battlefield afterwards found only 46 destroyed German tanks and self-propelled guns, of which only 7 were attributable to the rockets and 2 to bombs (none to machine gun or cannon fire). Seven German tanks were found abandoned intact. Ten of the support vehicles were destroyed by rockets and 14 were destroyed by machine gun or cannon fire. Interviews with German POWs later confirmed that a number of the inexperienced tank crewmen had abandoned their intact tanks when the air attacks started, frightened by the rocket barrages. Thus, the main effect of the air attacks at Mortain appears to not have been the actual destruction of very many of the German tanks, but rather to have been to force the German tanks and support vehicles to take cover, destroy the "soft" targets of support vehicles and troops, and cause the abandonment of some of the tanks by inexperienced tank crews. The weapons used in the air attacks were simply too inaccurate to destroy the large numbers of the German tanks claimed by the pilots. The British survey showed that the great majority of the destroyed German tanks in the Battle of Mortain were actually destroyed by gunfire from the opposing U.S. Army units.

Of all the weapons available to the British and American air forces, bombs were the least accurate, followed by rockets. Machine gun or cannon fire in strafing attacks were the most accurate, but the 20mm cannon and .50 caliber machine gun shells could only penetrate parts of the engine decks of the German tanks and disable them, not destroy the tanks. Except for the brief episode of using 40mm cannons in North Africa, British and American fighter bombers did not have larger caliber cannons with which to destroy tanks.

DarthRad (talk) 09:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Battle of Arracourt; no such thing

There is no such thing as the "Battle of Arracourt", with no such designation in either American or German records. If it was referred to at all, it would usually be described as "the German counter-attack around Arracourt". It is usually described as part of the overall Lorraine Campaign fought by the US Third Army in Sept 1944. Arracourt demonstrates that it was not tank v tank, but armoured force (inc aircraft on the US side) v armoured force (no aircraft on the German side) and the mix of weapons. Also Arracourt, a German counter-attack from 19-22 Sept, was only one of series of counter-attacks all through September 1944. A battle is something that is decisive. After the battle there is winner - as at Kursk. Arracourt did not achieve that, as the counter-attacks continued. 94.3.125.209 (talk) 13:30, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

You are technically correct, and in an earlier version (November 29, 2009) of this article, I had made that same point explicitly with this ending paragraph:

"Since the U.S. victory at Arracourt proved to have no strategic value for the Allies, the tank-to-tank action there had long been ignored by historians or simply lumped together with the rest of Patton's campaign in the Lorraine, and was not even generally known as a named battle until recent debates on the relative merits of Allied tanks versus German tanks in World War II resurrected interest in this action. The Battle of Arracourt was the largest tank battle involving U.S. forces in the Western Front until the Battle of the Bulge and has been used as an example of how the tactical situation and quality of the tank crews were far more important factors in determining the outcome of a tank battle than the technical merits of the tanks involved."

Some self styled Wiki editor did not like the first line in that paragraph, kept demanding a reference, and then deleted it. But it's true. Patton's 3rd Army brushed off this German attack so easily that Patton never even realized that he'd been attacked by a major German offensive. So none of the early WWII historians ever assigned it a name. Even the location name was different - in the original Mellenthin quote I put in, Mellenthin described the location as Nancy, not Arracourt (they are 30km apart). Some Wiki editor screwed that up too.

Steven Zaloga did the most to popularize the name Battle of Arracourt with his two books "Panther vs. Sherman" and "Armored Thunderbolt", which were basically written to counter the popular culture thinking a few years ago that the M4 Sherman was a lousy tank "vastly inferior" to German tanks. The M4s shot up the Panther tanks in this battle.

DarthRad (talk) 11:14, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

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