What were the strengths and weaknesses of the American and British

>>1730686

At what point in the conflict? Both militaries enormously changed their approach to things over the course of WW2?

>>1730690
Towards the end of WW2

What a gross simplifications.

American Military: Well armed. Obscenely well supplied. Plentiful. Minimal training. Low levels of experience. Large Navy. Well supplied great Air Force.

British military: Well armed. Well trained. Extremely experienced military structure. Irregularly supplied. Old fashioned slow to innovate command structure in the Army led to obsolete technology lasting far too long into the war. Back to the wall.

The Royal Fucking Navy speaks for itself.

>>1730697

I don't know as much about late war British military, since so many of their operations were joint ones with the Americans, but starting with 1944, the American military was:


>Strengths

Absolutely dominant air power. It wasn't just that they turned out the most planes, they also turned out some of the best planes, in almost every field category there was. They had the best single engined fighters. They had the best twin engined bombers. They had the best 4 engined bombers. About the only field they weren't clearly ahead on was jets, and even in that, they had jets, just decided they weren't worth using. (Since 99% of the time they were escorting bombers, that extra speed doesn't mean much there)

Their artillery was not only well supplied, and deployed in enormous numbers, it was also extremely accurate and quick to compute firing solutions. American artillery officers were trained with huge buckets of almost entirely pre-determined firing solutions for different conditions like wind and rain and smoke levels, and how to best direct the gunfire over to wherever the enemy had to be.

They were the only fully motorized logistical major power (Unless you count Canada as a major power) no horses hauling supplies.

Their navy was, by 1944, absurdly strong. They had the most carriers. They had the best carriers. They had the most battleships. They had the best battleships. They had the most cruisers. They had the best cruisers. It's so much so that their carrier forces could actually fight land based air formations on Japanese islands (CVP are almost always inferior in quality to land based planes which are bigger and have more stable take off and landing points) and win.


1/2

>>1730697

>Weaknesses.

Logistically hungry. An American infantry division in combat consumed roughly 600 tons of supplies per day. In comparison, a contemporary Soviet division consumed about 250. IIRC, a German division was about 200. Some of that was that American formations were larger than that of their counterparts, but it was also that they're swinging around more artillery and more automatic weapons, and their ammo usage was commensurately higher. This lead to problems when the railroads or ports were damaged to bring in stuff, they simply could not advance without the lifeline. Doubly a problem since the Americans usually ran around blowing up all the railroads to hamper German movements.

Extremely over-motorized. EVERYTHING in the American army had truck transport. Which in turn, meant they were tied to areas that trucks could go. One of the reasons Italy was such a shitshow is that the local road network was dominated by roads between mountain peaks, which meant that the Americans usually got ambushed time and time again by forces sitting on the mountains themselves pouring fire into those vulnerable trucks, having to call in artillery support, clearing out the ambushers, advancing again after significant losses, and then doing it all over again at the next mountain pass.
2/3

>>1730697

3/3

Lack of a viable machine gun doctrine. They didn't base their squads around a real MG, preferring instead to use automatic rifles to do more or less the same role. Turns out something like a BAR isn't a real machine gun and can't be expected to perform to the same level of suppressive ability.

As mentioned above, a weakish air doctrine. They were enamored with operational level interdiction bombing. Blow up the transport infrastructure, and the enemy army can't move. But then you advance, and now it's your transport infrastructure. Which you've just bombed into rubble. So then you have to wait and have your engineers repair all the stuff that you just blew up.

Their infantry was often considered reluctant to advance and get stuck in, although whether this is a weakness or just the knowledge that they almost always enjoyed overwhelming fire support and didn't need to take the risk is something I'll leave to others to evaluate.

>>1730686
American
>strengths
Manpower, technology, industry
>Weakness
Princess soldiers

British
>Strengths
The Channel, being allied with the Americans
>Weakness
Their military in comparison to other major powers
Britain was a joke, an oddity in the conflict, a France that accidentally didnt fall early because of a narrow strip of water

>>1730732

Britain was a joke, an oddity in the conflic

Top kek

More than 60% of d-day troops were British Empire troops and even right up until 1943/44 still had the largest and most experienced navy in the world.

In the real world both the U.S. and Brtain were only a small part of the show by comparison to the Soviets.


Also - American technology? The brits gave you guys the jet engine and merlin which powered their otherwise underpowered mustang, and allowed the US to catch up on the engine race.

>>1730752
>More than 60% of d-day troops were British Empire troops

Because they were kids who needed to feel important and Daddy America accepted to allow them that just for the initial landing
Still after all the allied troops arrived to Normandy, Brits were less than 15%

>>1730805

"Daddy America" haha ok son.

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>>1730812
Stay mad, bong

U S OF A DOMINATES WORLD FROM WW1 ONWARD.
HAHAHAH WEAK FRENCH AND BRITS CRYING 4 BIG DADDY USA TO HELP.
HAHAHA POOR SOVIETS DOING NOTHING IN WAR.
HAHAHA STUPID GERMANS FOR LOSING WAR AGAINST SOVIETS WHIC WERE PRETTY MUCH JUST SURRENDERING.

AMERICA. FUCK. YEAH.

Other posters have pointed this out but I want to stress just how mindblowingly incredible and light years ahead of Germany the American artillery was. Not only in terms of equipment, i.e. the VT fuse (fuze? I get the two confused), but especially in terms of doctrine.

They expanded on the French system from WW1 and pretty much provided everyone with firing calculations from anywhere to everywhere. The Americans had pre-calculated tables for virtually any scenario, any location.

Not just in the area of operations, not for specific, major objectives, not for a particular unit with particular guns in a particular place in particular weather. But for virtually any scenario in across an entire swath of Western and Central Europe. ENIAC was built for this purpose.

Couple that with the decentralization of fire support, the ubiquitous radio, and you have American artillery dropping fires as quickly as in 30 seconds on rare occasions, and usually in about two or three minutes. Meanwhile it takes the Germans twenty+ minutes and the Soviets even longer. Incredible stuff.

>>1730842
Christ anon, don't make it so obvious you feel inferior to americans. It's sad

>>1730851
>>1730701
>>1730726
>>1730728
>>1730730


I love this board. Thanks guys

I can only comment on the US naval doctrine in relation to Japan at the moment, since thats what I'm read up on;

But American naval aerial warfare had inferior doctrine to that of the japanese. Japanese air fleets would form up into large cohesive formations from several carriers before advancing on the enemy fleet, whereas every american squadron just took off and headed for the enemy independently. This was partly due to experience.

Overall, lack of experience was america's achilles' heel. When they entered the war, they did so at an operationally sub-par level. Their victory was ensured by their ability 1) produce more men and materiell than the enemy and 2) break enemy codes.

>>1730732
>>1730752
>>1730805
>>1730812
>>1730816
>>1730842
>>1730889
I love this board. Thanks guys

I though that the BAR was an outstanding all-around weapon, only con was it weight.
Btw, didint americans used 30.cal on platoon level? or was just mounted on vehicles?

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>>1730988
Bar is a good weapon but it is by no means a replacement for a squad level MG.
It's an automatic rifle and just doesn't fit the role they put it in. Would prob be better off with a squad level .30 like most nations had.