Field Marshall Haig

>>2810698
Scapegoat
They walked to the enemy trenches to be fit for the counterattack
Not his fault the artillery failed
And if the cavalry did break through then the front could have easily collapsed, but using napoleonic tactics were flawed he should have used the ones from the Afghan and boer war

>>2810962
>Walked to the enemy trenches to be fit for the counterattack

Is there any evidence of that?

>>2811100
Weren't the Germans practicing defense in depth by the battle of the Somme?
My understanding is that while the first line of trenches were relatively easy to take, they were also overlooked by a shit load of machine gun nests and field guns, and were also really easy to assault in a counter attack.

>>2811239
The German defence in general was of much higher quality. They had the higher ground and were also aware of the attack. The Somme was doomed even before the morning of the attack

>>2811327

IT'S OVER HAIG, I HAVE THE HIGHER GROUND

YOU UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER

*Newfoundland loses most of their male population in an hour, forcing them to join Canada*

>>2811368
t. trench warfare

>>2811100
Haug' she diary

>>2811480
>'A day of downs and ups. I visit two casualty-clearing stations. They were very pleased at my visit, the wounded were in wonderful spirits. Reported today that total casualties are estimated at over 40,000. This cannot be considered severe in view of numbers engaged and the length of front of attack. By nightfall the situation is much more favourable than when we started today.'
>40,000
>Not severe

is he mental

File: 1494007535310.jpg (45KB, 887x1097px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 887x1097px

>>2811522
>in view of numbers engaged and the length of front of attack.

eheheh war is hell xddddd, lyons led by donkeee

>>2811522
Thats casualties, not deaths, and even if it was deaths hes not wrong

>>2811522
It's not severe as long as you still can throw soldiers into the fire tomorrow.

>>2810698

First day at the Somme was bad, no question there. The failure was in the artillery however. The British just didn't have enough heavy guns in 1916 to really blast the re-enforced German positions apart.

The essential paradox of trench warfare was that they figured out quite early on how to take a line of trenches. You just saturated it in high explosives. And it did work, if you had enough high explosive. The Somme attack was too spread out for the amount of guns the British had.

But once you took that line of trenches, you were now in range of the enemy's artillery, but not your own. So now the enemy could use the very same tactics you use to take the trench to take it back. Moving up your own artillery was very difficult due to the size of the gun carriages, so you couldn't just continually advance. Resupplying forward troops was also extremely difficult due to the broken nature of the ground.

What finally broke that was a number of factors. Assault troops started carrying their own trench mortars and light machine guns forward to give themselves more firepower once they reached the trenches. Accurate counter-battery fire was utilized to knock out German artillery. And tanks started to be used as resupply vehicles, with a single tank able to carry as many supplies forward as 1,200 men. Even then, once breakouts started to happen, once you move beyond friendly artillery, casualties would shoot up again. There was never an easy or cheap way to break trenches.

>>2813331
>they got it
They didn't. Russians got it during Brusilov offensive and Germans got it during Spring Offensive with infiltration tactics.
Saturating trenches with HE is a weak solution, resource and time demanding.
It wasn't easy or cheap either but these methods were a lot more succesful.