Reply To: Battle of the Bulge – December 16, 1944

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Good afternoon, @zorg –

In answer to your question, no.  I’ve used Comets in the past (World War 2.5, Part 02), but not in the Bulge.

1) The Bulge is an American battle.  Churchill himself had to step in and say this publicly when Montgomery tried stealing the credit for the victory – a move that damned near broke the back of Eisenhower’s patience and ruined Monty’s career once and for all (already hanging by a thread after getting so many Americans killed in that Market-Garden fiasco).

1a)  I hope I don’t sound too “nationalist” here, but I just believe in keeping participation in historical battles in proper perspective.  For the record, I always roll my eyes when Americans focus on the handful of American pilots that participated in … say … the Battle of Britain.

2)  29th Brigade was the only British unit to actively participate in an operational sense in that battle, to my knowledge.  So one brigade is roughly 1/3 of a division, against 30+ German divisions that participated (26 initial, plus reserves),and 50+ American divisions.  That means that 29th Brigade = 1/240th of the forces involved.  But those others 80+ divisions were engaged for the full 30-day duration of the battle.  29th fought in this one action on 25 December.  Now not all of these divisions fought all 30 days, but if we approximate down to half and taking this into account, 29th Brigade put in 240 x 15 =  1/3,600th of the “division-days” participation in the Bulge, or 00.027%.

2a)  So if 00.027% of the total force clicks up one notch by upgrading from Cromwells to Comets,  does that make a difference?  No.

3).  Did 29th Brigade have Cromwells?  I know 11th Armoured Division did, but we’ve already discussed how 11th Arm’d Div and 29th Arm’d Brgde are not synonymous.

4) Did the British Army upgrade Cromwells to Comets, or regiments / battalions equipped with Shermans?  I honestly don’t know.

5) Would the British have upgraded tank troops, squadrons, battalions, and regiments en masse to Cromwell, or create mixed troops like they did with their other 17-pounder armed tank, the Firefly?  Historically speaking there’s really no such think as a Firefly troop (by and large), one Firefly was added to three standard Shermans to create an upgraded troop.  Would the British have adopted a similar policy with the 17-pounder Comet?  Again, I honestly don’t know.  But this is the reason the Firefly never had as much impact as the American variants like the Easy Eight or Jumbo (even though the British Firefly was objectively the better tank, assuming they had some HE-FRAG ammo).  You can’t spread your heavy strike elements thinly throughout your army and expect it to have the same effect as concentrated, hard-hitting units.

5a) – I only go off on that tangent because I don’t know if the British would have treated their 17-pounder Comets the same way, and the question has a real impact on your question – would the Comets have made a difference in the Bulge or any other battle in which they participated?