Tag Archives: Anti-tank warfare

Books, design, WW2

The Stress of Battle – Part 4 – Op Research on Anti-Tank Combat

3 Comments
IWM caption : El Alamein 1942: British tanks m...
IWM caption : El Alamein 1942: British tanks move up to the battle to engage the German armour after the infantry had cleared gaps in the enemy minefield. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the fourth part of my review of The stress of battle: quantifying human performance in combat by David Rowland, which is an essential piece of Operational Research on WW2 and Cold War combat operations. This part covers the findings on anti-tank combat.

Anti-Tank Combat

Unlike small arms, the effectiveness of weapons used for anti-tank combat has changed considerably over the course of the mid-20th century. From non-specialist gunfire in WW1, to high velocity armour piercing in WW2 and then to Anti-Tank Guided Weapons in the Cold War period. This makes the operational research on anti-tank combat harder to do because the start point needs to be battles where only one kind of AT weapon is in action. Much of the analysis on anti-tank combat starts with the ‘Snipe’ action during the second battle of El Alamein in North Africa where data on each of the guns individually was available.

  • ‘heroic performance’ plays a large factor in the effectiveness of anti-tank guns
  • about a quarter of guns (at most) performed heroically (including those where platoon, company or battalion level officers assisted with firing guns)
Campaign / Battle Heroes Others

No. Guns in combat

Total engagements

Tanks Hit per target per gun engagement

No. Guns in combat

Total engagements

Tanks Hit per target per gun engagement
Greece (1941)

8

8

0.400

38

44

0.054
Alamein (2RB at Snipe)

10

25

0.150

23

27

0.048
Medenine (Queens Bde)

2

7

0.430

22

38

0.027
Medenine (Guards & NZ)

6

9

0.390

14

14

0.120
Total all battles

26

49

0.275

97

123

0.052
  •  rate of fire is proportionate to target availability (i.e. when there are multiple targets crews fire faster)
  • the median point for heroes was 0.3 tank casualties per gun, where for non-heroes it was 0.03 tank casualties per gun
  • tanks are less effective in defence than AT guns alone, or tanks supported by AT Guns
  • AT Guns with tanks apparently kill three times more tanks than the tanks would on their own
  • AT Gun performance is attributed to having a higher concentration of SNCOs and Officers with deployed ATG compared to tanks (about three times as many)
  • heroes were disproportionately represented by SNCOs and Officers (at least in terms of who got the medals), in 75% of cases an SNCO or Officer senior to the gun crew commander was involved
  • Paddy Griffith is quoted on tank casualties that “relatively few appeared to have been caused by enemy tanks”

Overall it shows that the biggest single effect in anti-tank combat was down to leadership. Where gun crews are well lead then they are significantly more effective in battle. This is assuming that the guns in question can have some effect on the tanks that they are shooting at, which was the case in all of the battles examined (including a mix where the guns defended successfully with those where the gun lines were overrun by tanks).

Concluded in Part 5 – Operational Research on Heroism, Shock & Surprise

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta
Books, design, History, WW2

Book Review – The Stress of Battle by David Rowland (Part 1)

3 Comments
Real shooting tactical exercises in Smardan sh...
Real shooting tactical exercises in Smardan shooting-range with the 100 mm anti-tank gun M1977. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not exactly a book review, more of a synopsis of a great work of Operational Research by David Rowland. The Stress of Battle: Quantifying Human Performance in Combat is the end result of years of work by David Rowland and his team at the Ministry of Defence. Rowland was the father of historical analysis as a branch of Operational Research.

This particular work looks at a combination of field analysis experiments in the 1980s using lasers, well documented WW2 engagements and a handful of battles from other wars. Almost every page in it is packed with evidence or explanations of the complex methodology used to ensure that you could get controlled results from an otherwise messy and chaotic environment. If you are playing or designing wargames then this is one of the books that you absolutely must have on your book shelves (and have read too).

When I was reading the book I was often underlining or marking sections with post-it flags. In particular I drew the following interesting snippets from the book:

  • Tanks suppress defenders, but you need at least two tanks per defending MG to have any effect;
  • Combat degradation is about a factor of 10 compared to performance on firing ranges
  • Anti-tank guns focus the attention of tanks from suppressing MGs, and the bigger the anti-tank gun the more attention it diverts (unsurprisingly);
  • Fortifications & obstacles (i.e. properly prepared defensive positions) increase defence effectiveness by a factor of 1.65;
  • In defending against a 3:1 attack, the average rifleman will inflict 0.5 casualties on the attackers whereas a MG will inflict 4 casualties;
  • 1 in 8 riflemen will cause 4 casualties, and the other 7 none;
  • MG equivalents for casualty causing are: 9 rifles = 1 MG; 1 medium mortar (81mm) = 3 MG;
  • Combat effectiveness grows with experience, improving the casualty exchange ratio;

This is just a taster of what the book contains. Really worth reading. Not only that it is fantastically well illustrated with loads of graphs, diagrams and pictures from the field exercises to illustrate the points in the text.

Continued in Part 2 – Operational Research on Urban Warfare

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta