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Originally Posted by Super_Dave_D
I dont dispute history and YES Cambrai is generally known as the MASS employmemt of tanks but were not talking about a Blitz! Were talking about 4-6 miles and most broke down - LOL hardly what is considered Blitzkreig!
Show me (something other than you) where it is considered to be perfected at Cambrai?
It has NEVER been perfected until this day!! The Germans were crippled by lack of logistics in almost major engagement.
If anyone could be said to have perfected Blitkreig - It was Patton in 1944 but he too had supply problems in the end as well.
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The 2 divisions of cavalry at Cambrai were to exploit the breakthrough and make the deep push.
"He scheduled the attack for November, even though weather conditions were predictably worsening. Consequently Tank Corps commanders feared that the planned attack would merely serve once again to further undermine the tank's doubtful reputation as an effective attacking weapon.
The attack was duly launched at dawn on the morning of 20 November 1917, with all available tanks advancing across a 10 km front. 476 tanks were accompanied by six infantry and two cavalry divisions (the latter to exploit any breakthrough), plus a further 1,000 guns. 14 newly formed squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps stood by - a forerunner of the blitzkrieg tactics employed to great effect by the German army during the Second World War. Notably the attack was not preceded by a preliminary bombardment, helping to ensure complete surprise."
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Cambrai saw massed armor on a compressed front to smash through the German lines; fast, agile cavalry forces to exploit a deep breakthrough once achieved; and massed airpower to support the attack. Part of the reason the tanks did not advance very far was because of the terrain and time of year, and the rest because of the unreliability of the early designs, but that's really ok, because the Cavalry was still the mobile manuever force in all the major armies of the day.
Cambrai was for all intents and purposes the first true use of Blitzkrieg in history, some 23 years before the infamous Nazi Blitz of 1940.
What the nazi's did was to refine the tactic of blitzkrieg, mainly via the addition of a radio in every tank and aircraft. That in and of itself was an absolutely huge advance in warfare.
But it was the British who invented the tactic.