How Effective were Spears Against Cavalry?

[Domen]

Brent wrote:

. No single event cannot be defined as causing the "final downfall."

I think technology finally caught up with the use of horses for cavalry with the introduction of the machine gun and barbed wire which sounded the death knell of cavalry in ww1 in Europe at least, but cavalry still had a major role to play in Sinai campaign with the last successful cavalry charge in a world war at Beersheba not by heavy cavalry but mounted infantry using bayonets. I said world war because I think Polish cavalry chased Red army back to Russia in 1923.
Regards
Michael Kerr

I fully agree. Machine gun, barbed wire and trench was what killed traditional cavalry.

The only thing I might add, is that on the European Eastern Front of WW1 (Russian Empire vs Germany and Austro-Hungary) cavalry was also quite important, like in the Sinai campaign. That's because the Eastern European Front was still much more mobile than the Western Front, where trench warfare dominated over maneuver and mobility. On the Western Front cavalry was used only in 1914 during the initial German offensive into Belgium and France, before static trench warfare started.

In WW2 cavalry was already replaced by mobile motorized and armoured units. But some armies (including the Soviet army in 1939 - 1945 or the Polish army in 1939 and even the German Waffen SS on the Eastern Front in the last years of war) still used many mounted units - but those were used as mounted infantry and were using horses for movement, but fighting dismounted. Mounted cavalry charges in the old style (with saber and pistol in hands) took place in WW2, but were something very rare.

The Polish army in the 1930s used cavalry as Poland was a country with low level of motorization and also creating a large armoured-motorized army was something very expensive - at that time only economic powers such as the USSR, the US, GB, France or Germany could afford this. Just to say that in 1938 there were 4,000,000 horses in Poland, while only 70,000 motor vehicles! Number of people with driving licence was small, which means that a motorized army would experience shortages of drivers.

Poland planned to transform all of its cavalry brigades into mechanized brigades until 1941. The outbreak of war stopped that transformation (and until 1.9.1939 only 2 brigades were already transformed). In mechanized brigades, horses were replaced by motorcycles and horse wagons by trucks and cars.

During WW2, only US army and British army were fully motorized. German army was mostly horse-drawn throughout entire war (and since 1942 it was gradually becoming less motorized than before - they were suffering heavy losses in motor vehicles and experiencing problems with fuel supplies). The German army in WW2 consisted of elite armoured-motorized divisions (ca. 30%) and infantry divisions only partly motorized and still using large amounts of horse-drawn wagons for transportation (ca. 70%).

Most of reconnaissance units in WW2 were still scouts on horseback, rather than motorized units.

Actually, the last cavalry charge in the old style took place recently in Afghanistan by forces of the Northern Alliance (Afghan troops supporting NATO against the Talibans).

========================================

Another thing is that in the 1900s infantry no longer fought in close-ordered formations. So when speaking about cavalry charges against close-ordered infantry, we can speak only about the 1800s and before. And already after 1850 infantry started to loosen their formations in many battles.

=========================================

Also check this discussion here:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.ph...post481109