pincer

(noun)

A military maneuver in which forces simultaneously attack both flanks (sides) of an enemy formation.

Related Terms

  • British Ultra code-breaking
  • Ultra
  • Western Desert Campaign
  • Tunisia Campaign

Examples of pincer in the following topics:

  • The Allied Drive Toward Berlin

    • In the south, while Third Army headed east, the First Army headed northeast and formed the southern pincer of the Ruhr envelopment.
    • Ninth Army (assigned to Montgomery's British 21st Army Group) headed southeast forming the northern pincer, while the rest of 21st Army Group went east and northeast.
  • The North Africa Campaign

    • In an attempt to pincer German and Italian forces, Allied forces, landed in Vichy-held French North Africa under the assumption that there would be little to no resistance.
    • Rommel and von Arnim found themselves in an Allied "two army" pincer.
  • The North African Front

    • In an attempt to pincer German and Italian forces, Allied forces (American and British Commonwealth), landed in Vichy-held French North Africa under the assumption that there would be little to no resistance.
    • Rommel and von Arnim found themselves in an Allied "two army" pincer.
  • Blitzkrieg

    • In 2000, Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson characterized only the southern pincer of the German offensive as a "classical blitzkrieg attack." 
  • Expansion Throughout Central and Western Asia

    • His son Jochi led the first division into the northeast, and the second division under Jebe marched secretly to the southeast to form, with the first division, a pincer attack on Samarkand.
  • Dunkirk and Vichy France

    • He believed that any enemy force emerging from the forest would be vulnerable to a pincer attack and destroyed.
  • Operation Barbarossa

    • Hitler by now had lost faith in battles of encirclement as large numbers of Soviet soldiers had escaped the pincers.
  • The Truman Doctrine

    • Truman, the growing unrest in Greece began to look like a pincer movement against the oil-rich areas of the Middle East and the warm-water ports of the Mediterranean.
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