Armoured Warfare - Second World War

Second World War

Modern armour warfare doctrine developed during the years immediately preceding World War II, in most cases with the tank seen as an infantry support weapon in the breakthrough of defence lines role. A fundamental key to conventional warfare is the concentration of force at a particular point on the enemy's defence line seen as either weak or offering other tactical, operational or strategic advantages.

Concentration of force increases the chance of victory in a particular engagement through application of one of the Principles of War—Mass. This point, if correctly chosen and exploited, assures a greater chance of success in a given tactical engagement or a small number of operational engagements which are often sufficient to win a strategically decisive battle. The German term that later came to define the building of such a concentration at a given point is Schwerpunktbildung, which translates as center of gravity-creation, meaning a "development of a centre of effort".

This can be visualized when looking at two opposing defensive lines, each composed of two infantry and two armoured divisions, distributed consistently along the length of a line. A numerically equivalent attacker can win by concentrating his two armoured divisions at one point of the line with his two infantry divisions holding the rest of the line, thus increasing the chance of breaching the enemy defences, then passing through, turning the flank of the severed two halves of the defensive line, and further exploiting the numerical superiority against the smaller number of defenders on the flank to force them to retreat onto the intact part of the line, therefore widening the breach.

The defensive line could attempt to counterattack, but it is not strong at any point and although the combined infantry and armour attack of the defenders is stronger than an infantry only attack, it is not very much stronger (since the divisions are spread out along the entire line) and it is in general much easier to defend than attack due to the factor of field entrenchment and field engineering in preparation for such counterattacks.

A major aspect of all warfare is the simple formula, known as the Lanchester's Square Law, that the relative combat power of a combat unit in contact with each other to the relative combat power of an enemy of a given size, all other factors being equal, is the square of the number of members of that unit:

  • One tank obviously has the combat power of one tank. (1² = 1)
  • Two tanks have four times the relative combat power of a single tank. (2² = 4)

From this it is derived that twice as many tanks will quadruple the relative firepower — relative that is, to the amount of firepower the enemy has per member of the friendly unit; one could also express this by saying that their relative punishment from enemy action is reduced four times, which is the same thing — as not only their own absolute number is doubled, but the number of enemy tanks relative to each of their own, is thereby halved also.

Thus, concentrating two divisions into one point and attacking generates a far greater force than is achieved by spreading two divisions into a line and pushing forward on a broad front.

Concentration of force requires mobility to prevent the enemy detecting the point of attack in time to reinforce the section of the defence, and concentration of firepower to be effective in combat once concentrated. The tank embodies these two properties, and so constitutes the primary weapon in armoured warfare.

Forces of all participating powers during WW2 were composed predominantly of the Infantry and other combat supporting Arms (artillery, reconnaissance troops, engineers and logistics and service troops). With the possible exceptions of the United Kingdom and the United States ( which both had fully mechanized by the war's end), the infantry units were still highly dependent on horse-drawn vehicles, as was the artillery on horse-towed guns when operating in the field. Strategic movement was provided by the rail transport networks.

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