Amphibious warfare
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Amphibious warfare (amphibious) describes military operations in the coastal area with the participation of naval forces and marine infantry or other special landing forces, in which troops and material - even without using existing ports - are landed or taken on board. The term is derived from the ancient Greek prefix “amphi” (German: “double, both”) and is - based on the term amphibians - related to the simultaneous conduct of war at sea and on land. Since air vehicles are always involved in modern amphibious operations , the term triphibian operations was also used at times , but this term has not caught on. Amphibious operations require landing vehicles , floating tanks , landing troops, supporting warships, airplanes and helicopters . Because of these many different means, amphibious operations are considered to be the most complex military operations ever. Amphibious operations include:
- Battle landings
- Command company
- Evacuations of troops and civilians
- and, in a broader sense, support for troops deployed on land
Amphibious forces
Amphibious forces are means of military power projection . Nations with overseas interests in particular have special ships and troops for amphibious missions. The United States have a large number of landing ships and as a separate armed force organized US Marine Corps on the largest and most modern amphibious force in the world. Many European nations also have dropships and their own marines, including Great Britain , France , Spain ( Galicia class , Juan Carlos I , Infantería de Marina ), Italy ( San Giorgio class , San Marco regiment ) and the Netherlands ( Rotterdam -Class , Corps Mariniers ).
history
In addition to fighting enemy fleets, landing soldiers is one of the oldest forms of naval warfare . Basically, every conquest of an island presupposes an amphibious operation, with no specific tactics or specialized troops for amphibious warfare until modern times. For a long time, the amphibious operation was limited to bringing troops safely into the operational area with the help of ships and landing them as unnoticed as possible. In this sense there have been a number of large or historically significant landing operations through history, such as B .:
- 490 BC The Persian army landed in the plain of Marathon
- In 43 AD the Roman Empire conquered large parts of Britain .
- In 1274 and 1281 AD, Mongolian and Korean troops tried unsuccessfully to conquer Japan .
- In 1565 AD the Ottoman Empire failed in its attempt to conquer Malta .
In the age of discoveries and the colonial conquests of European naval powers , special marine infantry units emerged in many of these countries, for example the Royal Marines in Great Britain and the Infantería de Marina in Spain .
The first large amphibious operation in the modern sense, in which there was preparation and support by ship artillery and air support, took place in the First World War with the Battle of Gallipoli . The largest amphibious operations in history took place during World War II . These include Operation Husky (the Allied invasion of Sicily from July 10, 1943), Operation Shingle (from January 22, 1944, landing southeast of Rome) and, above all, the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944 ( Operation Overlord , D-Day ) and Operation Dragoon (from August 15, 1944: landing on the Côte d'Azur ).
Important amphibious operations after 1945 were z. B. the American landing at Incheon during the Korean War and the British recapture of the Falkland Islands in the Falklands War of 1982.
The importance of the amphibian today
Peace Support Operations
In the changed global situation since 1990, combat landings against defended coasts only play a minor role in the planning of amphibious operations. Instead, support for peacekeeping operations from the sea has come to the fore. Modern, large dropships have proven to be very suitable for transporting troops to distant regions and supporting them in their operations. With their helicopters and landing craft, they can also deliver material to regions with weak port infrastructure and serve as a floating base for various support services. Another important task is the evacuation of crisis regions, for example during a British operation in Sierra Leone in May 2000. Many nations in Europe have therefore acquired new dropships after 1990.
Advance stationing
The floating stationing of troops on landing ships is of particular importance. Before a decision is made about a military operation, the planned troops can be brought into the area of operation on landing ships. Since the landing ships move on the high seas and thus in a sovereign area, such troop movements are not dependent on the consent of foreign states. The USA, for example, maintains its own fleet of so-called Maritime Prepositioning Ships , which hold material for troops in various regions of the world.
Ship-to-objective maneuver (STOM)
A new form of amphibious operations is the tactic developed by the USA as ship-to-objective maneuver (STOM) , in which the landing forces are transported over the horizon directly to their target by means of suitable rapid means of transport by a fleet unit operating away from the coast (over the horizon) , even if this destination is not directly on the coast. The conceptual range is 200 nm , from 25 nm off the coast to 175 nm inland. The means of transportation are helicopters ( CH-53 Sea Stallion ), air cushion landing craft ( LCAC ), vertical takeoff ( MV-22A Osprey ) and amphibious vehicles ( Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle ). The British Royal Navy also has limited STOM capability.
Germany
Imperial Navy
In its history, Germany only had smaller amphibious forces at times. In the Imperial Navy , before the First World War , the marine infantry consisted of only three sea battalions that were supposed to guard the naval bases . Only the III. Sea battalion was stationed overseas in the Kiautschou Conservation Area in China . The other two were only used overseas during colonial unrest, for example during the Boxer uprising in China and during the Herero uprising in German South West Africa . It was not until World War I that its own marine corps grew up, which was mainly deployed in Flanders . The only major German landing companies in World War I were the Albion company , which occupied the Baltic islands of Ösel and Dagö in October 1917, and supported Finland in the spring of 1918. In addition, the company Schlussstein , the planned operation against the Murman Railway, was no longer implemented in the fall of 1918.
Navy
During the Second World War there were hardly any special amphibious forces on the German side. Nevertheless, with the occupation of Norway and Denmark ( Operation Weser Exercise ), a large amphibious operation succeeded in which parts of the army , air force and navy were used. For the planned landing in Great Britain ( Sea Lion Company ), various small ships and barges were provisionally prepared as landing craft and a construction program for landing craft was launched. However, these were not used due to the lack of air superiority, which is necessary for landing companies.
Federal Navy
In the plans of the German Navy after 1956, amphibious warfare initially played a major role. In the event of a Soviet attack on the Federal Republic, the intention was to support landings by the allies in the rear of the land front. For this purpose, a separate command of the amphibious armed forces was set up, which included a number of ships and special troops, including combat swimmers . When it became clear in the 1960s that such plans were unrealistic in view of the military balance of power in Europe , this amphibious component was greatly reduced. Instead, possible landings by the Warsaw Pact armed forces on the German and Danish Baltic coasts should be averted. In the 1970s and 1980s, the defense against amphibious operations was the main task of the German Navy in the Baltic Sea .
People's Navy
The People's Navy of the GDR also had amphibious forces, including a number of medium-sized landing ships. In the 1970s she had 12 medium-sized landing ships built with the NATO designation Frosch-Klasse , each of which could transport a combat company , a motorized rifle company with 10 combat vehicles and reinforcements (e.g. an anti-tank train or parts of the mortar battery). The reinforcements, which were mostly not buoyant, were loaded on the upper deck and then landed by bridges or ferries (PTM or GSP) after the Motschützenkompanie landed. A regiment of the land forces, the MSR-28, alternately (for 2 to 4 years) trained the I. or II. Motschützen Battalion to participate in sea landings. For more, the sea transport options of the landing ship brigade of the People's Navy was not enough. In this respect, the NVA could only carry out tactical sea landings or participate in operational sea landings as part of the combined Baltic Fleet. The MSR-28 was detached from the land forces on February 28, 1990 and placed under the People's Navy as KVR-18 (Coastal Defense Regiment - 18).
German Navy
After reunification in 1990, the amphibious forces of the now all-German navy were further reduced. However, with the repatriation of the German army contingent from Somalia in 1994 at the latest, the need for a military transport component arose . Since then there have been various plans to procure one or two larger dock landing ships for foreign missions of the Bundeswehr, but these have so far failed due to funding.
In the newer structure of the German Navy, there were two commandos of roughly battalion strength until 2014 , which were also suitable for marine infantry and amphibious tasks. On the one hand, there are the Naval Protection Forces (MSK) , which were supposed to protect ships and land facilities of the Navy at home and abroad against asymmetrical threats, and on the other hand, the Specialized Operations Forces of the Navy (SEKM) , which included combat swimmers. In the course of the realignment of the Bundeswehr, the associations were dissolved.
Their tasks will be continued by the Sea Battalion (SeeBtl) and Special Forces Command of the Navy (KSM), newly established on April 1, 2014 .
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ globalsecurity (English)
- ↑ Press release of the Royal Navy (English)