Hollywood Tactics: Difference between revisions

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**** The creeping artillery barrage was intended to keep the enemy under cover while your own forces advanced. If it succeeded (which usually involved a few casualties due to friendly artillery fire), there was no need to run. If it failed, all the running in the world wouldn't save you. The biggest problem was insufficient damage to the barbed wire and other structures that impeded attacking troops long enough to allow the enemy to start shooting back.
**** The creeping artillery barrage was intended to keep the enemy under cover while your own forces advanced. If it succeeded (which usually involved a few casualties due to friendly artillery fire), there was no need to run. If it failed, all the running in the world wouldn't save you. The biggest problem was insufficient damage to the barbed wire and other structures that impeded attacking troops long enough to allow the enemy to start shooting back.
** Lack of a maneuverable strike force able to take advantage of any breakthroughs and attack the rear and flanks of the enemy. In the early stages of WWI there was only one option: honest-to-goodness guy-on-top-of-a-horse cavalry that already became mostly obsolete. Tanks and armoured vehicles would later fill this role, but the first versions weren't powerful enough to field anything faster or better armored than weak infantry support tanks (as in, slowly moving machinegun nests). Consequently, warfare quickly degenerated to the choice between doomed attacks and stalemate of two lines of trenches with artillery behind them. The only major break through the lines was [http://www.worldwar1.com/tlbruoff.htm done by Brusilov]. Which still did not go as far as it could, since Russian army was not ready to support this success on strategical level <ref>unsurprising, with Commander-In-Chief being the same man who first looked forward to the [[Russo-Japanese War]] despite being plainly told it's logistically impossible, and then allowed the other side to strike first</ref> - though the advancing units weren't actually ''stopped'' by hostile forces, once they exhausted and stopped moving, there weren't reserves close enough to move on. The belated support - in the way Brusilov himself opposed - was worse than nothing: by the time more troops arrived, Germans were ready, so the follow-up turned into yet another doomed straightforward march into meatgrinder (half a million of losses, but little result).
** Lack of a maneuverable strike force able to take advantage of any breakthroughs and attack the rear and flanks of the enemy. In the early stages of WWI there was only one option: honest-to-goodness guy-on-top-of-a-horse cavalry that already became mostly obsolete. Tanks and armoured vehicles would later fill this role, but the first versions weren't powerful enough to field anything faster or better armored than weak infantry support tanks (as in, slowly moving machinegun nests). Consequently, warfare quickly degenerated to the choice between doomed attacks and stalemate of two lines of trenches with artillery behind them. The only major break through the lines was [http://www.worldwar1.com/tlbruoff.htm done by Brusilov]. Which still did not go as far as it could, since Russian army was not ready to support this success on strategical level <ref>unsurprising, with Commander-In-Chief being the same man who first looked forward to the [[Russo-Japanese War]] despite being plainly told it's logistically impossible, and then allowed the other side to strike first</ref> - though the advancing units weren't actually ''stopped'' by hostile forces, once they exhausted and stopped moving, there weren't reserves close enough to move on. The belated support - in the way Brusilov himself opposed - was worse than nothing: by the time more troops arrived, Germans were ready, so the follow-up turned into yet another doomed straightforward march into meatgrinder (half a million of losses, but little result).
***Train tracks could be built rather easy behind ones own lines and of course could not be built in front without the enemies permission which he was usually not sporting enough to give. Landlines to take awhile to lay on the wrong side of no mans land and wireless wasn't as well distributed then. As a result a breech could be plugged before the attackers own command even knew there was a breech in the first place, and in any case the defender can always get reinforcements faster by rail then the attacker by foot.
** Rather neatly subverted when Hollywood Tactics actually resulted in a ''victory'' for the Australian Light Horse Brigade. The charge was so fast and straight-forward that the Turkish defenders didn't have time to re-adjust their gun sights before they were overrun. The Turks expected the Light Horse to dismount and attack on foot as they were not proper cavalry, but a mounted infantry unit, intended to engage on foot, only using their horses to reach locations quicker than regular infantry.
** Rather neatly subverted when Hollywood Tactics actually resulted in a ''victory'' for the Australian Light Horse Brigade. The charge was so fast and straight-forward that the Turkish defenders didn't have time to re-adjust their gun sights before they were overrun. The Turks expected the Light Horse to dismount and attack on foot as they were not proper cavalry, but a mounted infantry unit, intended to engage on foot, only using their horses to reach locations quicker than regular infantry.
* Interestingly reversed at Minden (1759) where an unsupported infantry charge in column formation by the British and Hanoverian reserves against the centre of the French force resulted in a victory, rather than a slaughter you'd expect. [[Determinator|Said infantry were under constant bombardment throughout the advance]] [[Badass|and fought off repeated charges by the best cavalry in Europe.]]
* Interestingly reversed at Minden (1759) where an unsupported infantry charge in column formation by the British and Hanoverian reserves against the centre of the French force resulted in a victory, rather than a slaughter you'd expect. [[Determinator|Said infantry were under constant bombardment throughout the advance]] [[Badass|and fought off repeated charges by the best cavalry in Europe.]]
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