Bangkok--3 Nov--Image Impact
Title: Battleplan: Breaking a Fortified Line
Channel: HISTORY on TrueVisions A23 and D48
Date & Time: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 8.00 p.m.
Breaking a fortified line is the Battleplan every soldier fears, and every commander’s last resort. It means attacking defences head-on that are dug in and protected. The enemy is ready for it and expecting it. It’s going to be a bloodbath — win or lose.
This programme considers the factors that a commander must consider when deciding to use this Battleplan, and then looks at two classic case studies:
Meuse-Argonne. September 1918. The attack on the formidable Hindenburg German Hindenburg Line by US armies under General ‘Black Jack Pershing, which began the victorious offensive which ended World War 1.
North Africa, October 1942. The Battle of El Alamein when Allied forces under British General Bernard Montgomery broke through a line which could not be outflanked, and finally defeated the German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.