The victory engineers: Anglo-Canadian and American engineering operations in northwest Europe 1944–1945
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Date
2015
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
Volumes of studies have investigated the strategy and tactics used in pursuit of Allied victory in Northwest Europe during World War II. These focus primarily on the actions of the combat arms – infantry, armor, and artillery – with vital supporting elements such as engineering given limited exposure. This is unfortunate, since the victory of mechanized Allied armies would have been impossible without effective combat engineer support.
This study presents the operations of Anglo-Canadian and American engineering troops during the Northwest European campaign, highlighting the efforts of such troops as vibrant, necessary elements in the pursuit and final defeat of German forces in 1945. Drawing upon extant source material this study highlights Allied engineering equipment, doctrine and operations as the foundation for Allied operational and tactical mobility.
Basing their doctrine on historical models and preparing to support “mechanized” armies during the inter-war period, Allied engineers developed methods, equipment and procedures to support armies engaged in highly mobile, mechanized combat. Practices developed during the training stages of the inter-war period were first used on the battlefield in the North African, Sicilian and Italian Campaigns. As a result of lessons learned in those early campaigns, Allied engineers refined their doctrine and equipment in order to provide unimpeded avenues of advance for the Allied armies driving across Northwest Europe. Without demolition removal missions, road, rail, bridge reconstruction efforts and river assault crossing operations of front-line engineers, Allied combat forces would have never landed on the Normandy coast nor been able to drive into Germany to achieve final victory.
This study draws on Allied engineer documents, reports and publications to demonstrate how Anglo-Canadian and American engineers approached fundamental problems of battlefield mobility. It outlines equipment, method and doctrine evolution over the course of the war, and then focuses on engineering maturity in the final push into Germany in 1945. It reveals that despite the different and unconnected starting points, Allied combat engineers developed a professional approach to sharing ideas, equipment and methods resulting in an approach that laid the ground work for what eventually became the NATO standard for military engineering in the field.