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Battle tactics of the Western Front : the British Army's art of attack, 1916-18 /

Historians have portrayed British participation in the Great War as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, untried new military technology and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book Paddy Griffith, a renow...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Clasificación:Libro Electrónico
Autor principal: Griffith, Paddy (Autor)
Formato: Electrónico eBook
Idioma:Inglés
Publicado: New Haven : Yale University Press, 1994.
Temas:
Acceso en línea:Texto completo
Tabla de Contenidos:
  • Part one: Setting the scene. 1. Introduction
  • Competence and incompetence
  • The larger second half of the war
  • 2. The tactical dilemma
  • The nature of tactics
  • Lines, densities and timescales
  • The storm of steel
  • Part two: Infantry. 3. Infantry during the first two years of the War
  • Tactics of the old contemptibles
  • The new armies arrive
  • 4. The lessons of the Somme
  • Rifles, hayonets and the cult of the bomb
  • The importance of careful preparaton
  • The assault spearhead of the BEF
  • 5. The final eighteen months
  • The formal battles of 1917 and the chaotic battles of 1918
  • Flexible formations for mobile war
  • Part three: Heavier weapons. 6. The search for new weapons
  • The mobilisation of invention
  • Bombs, smoke and gas
  • 7. Automatic weapons
  • The struggle to control automatic fire
  • The rise of the light machine gun
  • 8. Artillery
  • The evolution of precision munitions
  • The shift from destructive to neutralising fire
  • The emergence of the deep battle
  • 9. Controlling the mobile battle
  • Cavalry and armour
  • Signals and command
  • Part four: The BEF's tactical achievement. 10. Doctrine and training
  • Captain Partridge and the dissemination of doctrine
  • Trainitg schools and other exhortations
  • 11. Conclusion
  • Appendix 1. Some limitations in the university approach to military history
  • Appendix 2. A Great War perspective on the American Civil War
  • Appendix 3. Armies, corps and divisions of the BEF
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index.