ORIGINAL: Lobster
942 trucks seems like far too high a number. More like an average of about 520 medium to heavy trucks and an average of about 220 light (1.5 ton) trucks with maybe 20 light to medium half tracks. And to make it a logistical nightmare for some divisions the trucks were of several different nationalities. The numbers varied a bit from division to division regardless of Wave number but if you want the starting numbers for each division I have them. All from different references like Niehorster, Buchner, Nafziger, Mueller-Hillebrand, Beiersdorf, U.S. War Department. Maybe some others.
The figure was from the Handbook on German Military Forces. That was the TO&E figure. Perhaps they weren't at full TO&E, if you say 760. Regardless, there were additional, non-divisional, trucks in the supply lines as well. The supply lines were already motorized.
And if all of the divisional trucks were involved in supply (they weren't) then how would you use them to motorize divisions without resorting to a horse drawn logistical debacle? ...
I'm not sure where you got all of the trucks...
If you read the first post: They loot them from the occupied countries prior to Barbarossa. My source said they looted 290,000 after Barbarossa - the idea is that they have the foresight to do it before.
...and how supplies got to the motorized troops when needed. It was difficult keeping the armored spearheads supplies as it was. But motorize the whole mess
AND keep it supplied using the worst road net in Europe?
They get there the same way they got to the armored spearheads historically - using the exact same logistical net. And that's what I modeled. And, yes, they do end up at the end of their supply tether eventually. Remember that while they add about 170,000 trucks they deduct about 20,000 horse teams. The weight of the fodder for those teams is, incredibly, about comparable to the petrol for those trucks. It doesn't really require much additional tonnage, if any.
BTW, a motorized German Infantry Division TOE had 1261 medium to heavy trucks and 780 light trucks. They were able to more or less hit that number June 22 for those divisions that were motorized. They were also supposed to have 77 light halftracks and 27 medium half tracks. Seems they had that handled fairly well too.
The motorized division had 6 infantry battalions with about 2000 light, medium and heavy trucks. An non motorized infantry division had 9 battalions with about 730 heavy, medium and light trucks. Even if you used only as many trucks as a motorized infantry division that would be an additional 1200+ trucks per division multiplied by what, a couple hundred divisions? Just sayin.
About 132 infantry (or otherwise non-motorized) divisions, if I recall. 1200 x 132 = 158,400, plus some non-divisional stuff must have come to about 170,000. That was the figure my source listed. They also listed that there were 320,000 trucks in the invasion historically, so that figure is about a 50% increase in total trucks.
Note that I left a few corps unmotorized, though - to deal with badlands.
Nice what if scenario and AAR.
Thanks. We can quibble about whether it was doable or not, but just answering the question of what the effect would have been is interesting. I was surprised by what a difference a few trucks made.
