Remembering the Red Ball Express

By Jack Roberts

The Red Ball Express keep Allied troops supplied with food, ammunition and other vital supplies, and helped hasten the fall of Nazi Germany. Photo: U.S. Army

“>

The German Army was a military wonder at the beginning of World War II, thanks to visionary generals who grasped the concept of mechanized warfare early on and perfected techniques for hitting their enemies hard and fast. And the effectiveness of this new type of warfare became apparent as soon as the war began, with the Wehrmacht rolling over France, Belgium, Norway, The Low Countries and Russia with apparent ease.

But there was a fatal flaw with the Germans’ approach to motorized war, as genius and powerful as it was: logistics.

It seems hard to believe, given the modern, motorized hardware at the front of the German columns driving deep into enemy territory, but even well into the war, the logistics train following those tanks, trucks and scout cars, carrying vital food, ammunition and supplies, were largely horse-drawn wagons.

This was the case all throughout the war. Once air superiority over Europe was achieved, American fighter pilots would shoot up columns of horses and wagons moving on the roads.

The American Army, on the other hand, had a far different view of logistics. This was due to a number of factors. The United States was already the leading automotive manufacturer in the world before World War II. And the vast distances across North America meant there was already an embryonic, mostly regional, trucking industry in operation by the time the war began. So there was simply a lot more experience among the American population with trucks and motorized logistics than there was on the German side.

Another advantage the Americans had was Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who, as a young lieutenant in 1919, had been tasked with leading …Read the rest of this story

Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/blog/truck-tech/story/2018/02/remembering-the-red-ball-express.aspx