I have no military experience, other than a lifetime of reading military history and an obsessive’s facility for identifying World War II planes, tanks and ships.
Take everything I say with a grain – what the heck, a block – of salt.
But I’m going to indulge in a little pointless speculation about the war in Ukraine.
When discussing a war where both sides are experts at propaganda and warping public perception, trying to comment on anything in “the news” with any certitude is a fool’s errand.
Noted. I am that fool, and for right now it is my errand.
He Who Forgets: The thought of being able to win an easy – or at least easier – victory by taking out a key objective – the enemty’s leadership, capitol, or a key defense – is one of those things that keeps millitary planners busy dreaming.
In some cases – the US drives to Baghdad in 2003, or the German airborne assault on Fort Eben Emaël, in Belgium in June of 1940 – it works.
But not always.
In April, 1940, as part of Germany’s invasion of Norway, a Navy task force raced up Oslo Fjord; it’s mission was to land an invasion force on the Oslo waterfront to seize the. Storting (Parliament) and capture King Håkon and his administration, giving him a choice of capitulation and serving as a puppet (as his cousin, Christian X of Denmark, in effect did) or something much less pleasant.
On the final approach to Oslo, 15-20 miles south of the capital, in one old coastal fort (Oscarsborg, armed with three antique 1890s cannon (only two of them manned, and even those with rookie draftee crews) and a couple of equally ancient torpedoes launched from a James Bond via Rube Goldberg-style secret underwater cave, the commander, Colonel Birger Eriksen, disobeyed a “Stand Down” order, and opened fire at the leading German ship (reportedly telling the gun crew “Damn right we’re firing live ammunition” as he gave the order to fire), the heavy cruiser Blücher, blowing off a turret and sinking it in the channel, blocking the rest of the invasion (I told the story here, 12 years ago), and allowing Håkon to escape Oslo, and eventually get to the UK to continue the war.
The German attempt to “decapitate” Norway, with all its elaborate planning, failed because of one guy disobeying orders.
Similarly, the German airborne attempt to decapitate the Dutch military command, two months later, ended up a nearly Pyrrhic victory, as the paratroopers ran into a prepared defense, and were gunned down in droves by alerted and angry Dutch defenders.
Not Nearly Far Enough: Similarly, in September, Field Marshal Montgomery hatched a plan to end the war by Christmas; launch a lightning (by 1944 standards) strike to vault across the Rhine River (and a few lesser rivers and canals on the way), which was Germany’s only real natural defense from invasion from the west, across terrain that isn’t a whole lot more naturally defensible than the road from Fargo to Winnipeg.
To do it, airborne forces would simultaneously capture bridges across the Maas, Waal and lower Rhein rivers, as well as three canals. Once over the Rhein, there was literally nothing but German towns and troops blocking the road to Berlin.
The crossings of the Maas, and two fo the three canals were captured smoothly. The Waal, at Nijjmegen? Not smoothly at all. And the final crossing of the Rhine at Arnhem failed completely. Only one of the 12 British and Polish airborne battalions reached the bridge; all were mauled, and the Germans held the crossing.
Because of that bloody scrap along the banks of the Rhein, Germany retained its barrier until the bridge at Remagen fell, nearly six bloody months later.
Like The TSA Line, Only With Live Ammo: Again – we don’t know yet how to separate truth from fiction in Ukraine – and forces on both sides, and no side, are doing their darnedest to obscure whatever truth does leak out.
But assuming some of the news is accurate?
As this is written the hot war in Ukraine is five years old; Russian forces are on the northern outskirts of an alerted, angry, heavily armed Kiev.
But around the end of the first day, reporters filtered out that a Russian Airborne assault on two of Kiev’s airports had stalled, and then failed; both airfields remained, apparently, in Ukrainian hands.
Speculation – possibly informed, possibly not – held that the assault was an attempt to get Russian troops into Kiev fast and on the relative cheap, taking the airfields and suppressing the air defenses in order to fly troops in from Russia, debouching them almost directly into the Ukrainian capitol – a move that Russian Airborne has speculated about doing for nearly fifty years, since well back in Soviet times.
Did the Ukrainians read the same operations manual (a rhetorical question – the Ukrainian and Russian Armies both have roots in the Soviet army)? Were the Russians counting on their airborne/air transport assault to knock Ukrainian leadership so off-kilter that they’d have a much harder time resisting the conventional, armored ground attack, which woujld then have an easier time getting into Kiev?
We won’t know until the fall of Putin’s Russia opens up all the secrets that have gotten covered over since the fall of the USSR, of course.
But it’s interesting, if armchair, speculation.
(NOTE: If your response to this post is “the war in Ukraine doesn’t affect us, so I don’t care” – that’s fine, duly noted, and save it for a different thread. Thanks.
