Military Geo Flashcards
Military Geography
Study of relationship between warfare + environment (physical + cultural landscape)
Operation Overlord
1) D-day landings + movement inland
June 6 1944
2) 11K aircraft, 6K ships, 150K troops
3) got info from family pics
Where
1) Don’t want rock –> want sand so that artillery won’t blow up rocks + create shrapnel
2) Don’t want mud –> boats could get beached
3) Don’t want too much land btwn water + cliffs –> more time to get shot
4) Want to avoid riptides + longshore current + nausea
5) no cliffs –> enemy could fire from there + hard to go over
6) tide –> if it’s low you can see German fortifications BUT you don’t want to be too far away + want incoming tide so boats wont beach
7) no islands –> do not want island-hopping since difficult + requires lots of equipment
8) no peninsula –> easier for Germans to put mass amount of troops
9) no bays/estuaries –> makes it hard to communicate
10) no dunes/marshes –> hard to move through + easy for Germans to have cover/concealment
Why Normandy
1) large bay
2) flat beach
3) gradual rise inland
4) no big canals or rivers that will make it muddy
5) firm sand to move troops
6) big tidal range to see obstacles
7) maneuver room to bring lots of troops quickly
8) wooded cover
9) road network
10) sheltered to west
Situational Factors
Situation = relative location
1) Close to bridges + infrastructure on rivers –> could blow it up
2) Normandy has less transportation/roads –> harder for Germans to resupply
3) Far away from Ruhr Valley industrial zone, so Germans cannot get supplies
4) opposite to main ports of England –> infrastructure, big trains, ports alr existed
5) within range of fighter pilot support from England
6) avoids bottleneck of Strait of Dover –> Germans could easily amass troops + Luftwaffe + ships
When
1) Clear skies + low winds for Airborne troops, want high pressure zone
2) Moonlight - full moon
3) Want mid-tide
4) Calm seas + clear skies for 36 hours
5) talked to people in Atlantic –> knew the weather hitting Atlantic would hit them in 5ish days (Axis powers had limited info regarding weather, they thought it would be so stormy so main generals went back to Paris)
Cultural Landscape
1) Bocage country –> patchwork of woods/fields to protect livestock (very hard to go through)
2) difficult to move tanks through it + exposed soft underbelly of tank
3) Nucleated villages = meant surrounding fields have virtually no cover + made it harder for tanks to go through since goal was to go across France quickly
4) hard to avoid nucleated settlements since so many roads went through these settlements
Equipment used by Germans
1) Rommel’s Asparagus - massive poles into ground with explosives at top
2) Hedgehogs = Railway thingies from Private Ryan
