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Remembrance Challenge

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We took our cubs to the local war memorial in the Church just down the road from the Scout Hall. Before we went we”d got the cubs to make a wreath of poppies and to write a message on it. Each boy did his own personal wreath. We then went on a walk down the road and went into the Church where we spoke to them about why we remember and also how things were different back in 1914. South Merstham wasn”t as big then as it is now, for a start the new houses were mostly built in the 1950s. In the 1911 census there were somewhere in the region of 600 men in the locality, about 150 of whom signed up in August 1914 (I”m guessing some would be unfit, others in jobs that couldn”t just go off to war and some others not that keen).

Clark Pack #Merstham #cubs pay tribute to the fallen of South Merstham

Remembrance Challenge

At the end of the session we gave each of the cubs a slip of paper with one of the names from the WW1 memorial in the church and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. They were asked to come up with what they could about the name they were given. I took a name too, and being more grown up and a bit of an analyst I went a bit further than just the CWGC website. I didn”t pay for any information though, I only used free open sources.Why don”t you go down to your war memorial and do something similar. Post your findings on your favourite social media and challenge your friends.

Who was William English?

William English was born in Bletchingley in the Autumn of 1874, his father was Gordon English (who lived in South Merstham by 1918). In the summer of 1905 he married Catherine Colgate Dagnall in Reigate. Catherine was born in Reigate in the Summer of 1879 and her family is reasonably well documented on http://loiselden.com/tag/dagnall/.The search entry for the 1911 census (which I couldn”t see the whole record of without paying) showed that William was a caretaker in 1911. He seems to be in Reigate, although I couldn”t quite see the address details. His wife is listed as living at 14 Croydon Road in Reigate by CWGC, he may well have been living there at the time, or she could have moved after his enlistment.

War Service

William”s service number is G/450 and he is listed as an Acting Company Sergeant Major with the 7th (Service) Battalion of the Queen”s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment at the time of his death in May 1918.His regimental service number is very low, the series was used for the wartime volunteers and started in August 1914. This suggests that he was in the first batch of volunteers, although the battalion he served with is part of K2, or the second hundred thousand volunteers. Either way it is likely he was with the 7th (Service) Battalion (NB there was another 7th Bn of the Queen”s Regiment).

7th (Service) Battalion, Queen’s Regiment

Sept 1914 Formed at Guildford as part of the Second New Army (K2) and then moved to Purfleet to join the 55th Brigade of the 18th Division then moved to Colchester.

May 1915 Moved to Salisbury Plain.

27.07.1915 Mobilised for war and landed at Boulogne. This is the start of the Battalion war diary which has been digitised and you can read it online. The first entry lists all the officers and warrant officers with the battalion as well as the overall strength. William English was not a CSM at this stage.

The Battalion spent most of 1916 in the line or resting between spells at the front. It was one of the assault battalions on 1st July and while it took casualties these weren’t enough to stop it actively participating in The Battle of Albert, The Battle of Bazentin Ridge, The Battle of Delville Wood, The Battle of Thiepval Ridge, The Battle of the Ancre Heights, The Battle of the Ancre.

1917 was a similar pattern of operations with periods of rest, consolidation & training between spells in the front line trenches. Operations on the Ancre, The German retreat to the Hindenburg Line, The Third Battle of the Scarpe, The Battle of Pilkem Ridge, The Battle of Langemarck, First Battle of Passchendaele, The Second Battle of Passchendaele. Notably it took a pasting at Passchendaele and lost a lot of men.

In 1918 the battalion was in the line when the Michael offensive happened, and two companies were completely lost, in addition to casualties taken in the other companies that managed to retire. I’d surmise that this is when William English, as an Acting CSM, was captured by the Germans. I’d also guess that he was wounded when he was captured and this is what lead to his death in Germany on 9th May 1918.

It is possible that he was captured earlier and that there was some other cause of death, without seeing a death certificate or a service record (I looked and could not find his service record at all) it is difficult to be sure. I read the entire battalion war diary from when it starts in 1915 up to May 1918 and he isn’t mentioned once. The CSMs occasionally get a mention, usually when they are either replacing the RSM, leaving to be commissioned or running some instruction for junior officers.

Knowing that the role usually keeps them moving between the rear and the front when in action, and ensuring discipline and training in camp it is unlikely that a CSM would be taken prisoner except when the lines are fluid, which is during a large battle. CSMs don’t usually go out and patrol, they’re more likely to be checking sentries or that the rations and ammo have come up if they are in the trenches. In battle they may well be moving forwards to find where people are, which would make them more prone to capture. In a retirement they may not have been with the company when orders were given to retire and could easily turn up where the enemy now are.

CSM William English is listed as a Prisoner of War in the Queen’s Regiment archives, and he is buried in the Niederzwehren cemetery, Kasseler Stadtkreis, Hessen, Germany. This is a concentration cemetery bringing in graves from POWs from southern Germany.

That’s what I know. If you know more please drop me a comment.

Thanks.

Some Sources

Commonwealth War Graves Commission http://www.cwgc.org/

basic info about casualties, as a minimum name, rank, regiment & date of death

UK, Soldiers Died in the Great War, 1914-1919

normally paid but usually free around 11 November each year, has slightly more information that CWGC tends to have

Records of the Queen’s Regiment are online, some with Surrey County Council

http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/825571/Queens-Royal-West-Surrey-Regiment-Prisoners-of-War-1918.pdf

http://www.queensroyalsurreys.org.uk/war_diaries/local/7Bn_Queens/7Bn_Queens_1915/7Bn_Queens_1915_07.shtml

FreeBMD (& FreeCEN)http://www.freebmd.org/

Has copies of the transcribed indexes of Births, Marriages & Deaths in England and Wales from the General Register Office. These aren’t very detailed, they’re just intended to point you at the correct page in the register. If you have time you can go into a register office and see the register for free, although they will encourage you to order a certificate instead.

Birth Index Oct-Dec 1874

Surname Given Name District Volume Page

ENGLISH William Godstone 2a 172

Jul-Sep 1879

Dagnall Catherine Colgate Reigate 2a 168

Marriage Jul-Sep 1905

Surname Given Name District Volume Page

ENGLISH William Reigate 2a 439

DAGNALL Catherine Colgate Reigate 2a 439

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Book Review – Zero Six Bravo by Damien Lewis

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Zero Six Bravo: 60 Special Forces. 100,000 Enemy. The Explosive True StoryZero Six Bravo: 60 Special Forces. 100,000 Enemy. The Explosive True Story by Damien Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I make a point of reading first hand accounts of special forces operations. I started with world war two tales of the SAS and have worked up to the present time. Since the Bravo Two Zero fiasco I don’t expect much from tales of recent events.

This particular book tells the tale of a Special Boat Service mission in Iraq in 2003. It suffers a bit from excessive hypebole, presumably to garner sales. However it is actually very readable, and although much of the outcome is telepgrahed in advance the way it’s done is through a good hook to keep you reading to find out the detail of how/what happens. Well before all the debates in Parliament in 2003 M Squadron SBS were training up for their mission, changing their role from maritime operations to being vehicle borne. They then went into Iraq just before the air war started in 2003 with an attempt to contact a major Iraqui army formation to persuade it to surrender.

You know when you start to read it that the mission isn’t going to go well. In fact without even knowing anything about it I picked up that it must have gone horribly wrong. However I also knew that it couldn’t have gone that far wrong, because otherwise I probably would have heard about it since I have an interest in current affairs and military operations.

The story follows the perspective of one SBS Sergeant who was the lead navigator for most of the mission. Mainly it focusses on what he sees, and the actions of his three man vehicle crew. On the whole it is an interesting narrative and it gripped me enough to read longer than I normally do.

There’s a clear thread running through it of the forebodings, that may well have been how the central character felt, but are laboured to the extent that it comes across as 20:20 hindsight. There are also some rather strained references to Bravo Two Zero and the similarities with that patrol (both seem to have been compromised because they refused to shoot a child goat herder). That doesn’t really wash with me because the goat incident in Bravo Two Zero wasn’t repeated in the other books about the patrol and The Real “Bravo Two Zero” gives another version of events (apparently two Iraqui veterans of the Iran-Iraq War spotted the patrol, not a child goat herder).

Despite this I still think it’s worth a read, especially if you get it for the knock down price of 99p as I did.

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The 200 Foot General

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This is the third post on my Operational Research driven wargame rules (and it’s probably about time that I came up with a catchy name for them, ideas in the comments section most welcome).

One of the most unrealistic things I find in most commercial wargames that I have read or played is that it is very easy for players to change their plans and give new orders to their troops every turn. This is so common that there’s even a name for it, the 200ft General.

What is the Problem?

The concept being that the player is like a General with perfect perception and control of his troops, and he can react to things that they aren’t yet aware of because the player can see the models on the table.

Here are a couple of relevant quotes from the Operational Research that demonstrate why this is a problem.

“a detailed, well-rehearsed plan blocks acceptance of the quick orders rattled out over the radio ten minutes before an attack starts. This mix of friction and mental block can be seen to play a part in nearly half of all mission failures.” Murray in Brains & Bullets

“complicated plans were much more likely to fail.” Murray in Brains & Bullets

So this gives a constraint to the game design. A successful OR driven wargame will ensure that it isn’t easy to change orders and that the more complicated a plan is the more likely it will be to fail.

Potential Solutions

This isn’t a new problem, many wargame designers have grappled with it over the decades that wargaming has been popular. Lots of games have mechanisms of one sort or another to counteract this, ranging from hidden movement and deployment through to complex activation systems. All of these have problems, but at least they’re trying to solve the core problem of limiting player decisions to those that are reasonable for a commander on the ground.

  • Hidden movement & Deployment. This is a very good solution, and one that lots of games try to implement. It has difficulties in that you either need to trust the other player or have an umpire. Failing that some pre-game organisation to produce maps that can be annotated helps. It tends not to be used for competition wargames.
  • Written Orders. This is what real armies do, and so far as I’m aware only one commercial game has attempted this (Spearhead). It slows down the game, or increases setup time. Possibly producing a pro-forma might speed things up.
  • Unit activations. This seems to be common in popular rules. The actual mechanisms vary considerably, but the gist of it is that as a player you cannot be sure whether or not particular units will be activated. About all you can be sure of is that you cannot move your entire army. A good example of this is the DBA PIP system. A general gets 1d6 unit activations each turn.

I think that a good solution would be streamlined and easy to implement by players. Something like this is likely to have a major impact on gameplay speed, and we’re looking for ‘fast’ as a default setting. Each game turn needs to take 5-10 minutes to run through so that a whole game (including setup) can happen in about 2 hours.

Do you have any other potential solutions to this problem?

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Faith in Morale

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An Army Padre in Afghanistan with a CrossI’ve been reading operational research on the psychology of combat recently. It got me to thinking about the role of religious faith in morale of soldiers. I’m not personally religious and don’t have an axe to grind on this. What I am trying to do is build a game design model that properly accounts for relevant factors.

The thought that struck me was that combat is very stressful and that soldiers are called on to do unpleasant things to others. This isn’t an every day thing but it does happen. The after effects can be very severe, PTSD isn’t pleasant for anyone and can last for years after the traumatic events have finished. Psychological casualties are as real as the physical ones, they just have a delayed onset and are harder to spot.

Faith in Morale

Looking at rational human reactions in combat and life threatening situations you can see that the belief system of the individual plays a strong part. If you read first hand accounts enough you begin to understand this. Heroes often do what they do because they don’t see other options that they find acceptable.  People run into burning buildings or stay at a point of danger to help others. A selfish rational view would get you out of there. This often comes down to helping other members of the in group, not letting others down or not being able to live with themselves if they hadn’t tried to help. It is rare to hear patriotism cited, although often modestly you’ll hear ‘I was just doing my job’. That last is rarely true from a technical perspective but it reveals that the person that said it was driven by their belief system.

You’ll have noticed that I’ve been writing about a belief system here rather than faith. That’s deliberate. Faith is a kind of belief system but isn’t all of it. Everyone has a belief system, even atheists. Not everyone has faith.

So where do belief systems come from?

They are a product of our upbringing and life experiences.  Religious faith has a major part in shaping them, as does the dominant culture in the society that we live in. Even those that consciously reject those are shaped by it in their rejection.

Some examples. Homophobia is driven by belief systems. The dominant culture in the UK has taught us that it is a bad thing. Some religious groups disagree, and there is a high level of support far that point of view from the older members of society and those that have arrived from other cultures that don’t share the same belief as our dominant culture.  In the main the driver for homophobia is the classic out group of psychology.  Humans form groups of similar outlooks and turn against other groups. It’s animal instinct and manifests in many places and in many ways. Civilised humans learn to control the behaviour it drives and accept that other people (mostly) aren’t a threat. Being indoctrinated from birth into thinking about things makes this much easier.

Back to combat. The fundamental beliefs that go on here are about harming others and self preservation.  Religion tends to have a view on both of these. Typically it is don’t harm others and you need to make earthly sacrifices for a heavenly reward.

The combat calculus every combatant goes through is pretty much ‘does the risk to me outweigh the benefits of what I’m doing?’

If you are an atheist with no belief in an afterlife then you aren’t going to be as keen on checking out as someone expecting a massive reward for furthering the cause of their chosen religion (and it is the individual combatant’s interpretation that counts here, not the orthodox view).

So perhaps you get something like this:

Belief harm to others self-preservation Overall result
Atheist Only if its within the rules of engagement I don’t want to die Avoids taking risks where possible, but is ready to kill to do the job at hand. Unlikely to operate outside the rules of engagement lest there is an earthly punishment.
Humanist Do unto others as you would have done to yourself I don’t want to die Kills only when there iis no alternative. Will stay well within the rules of engagement as it is what their belief system demands. Won’t take unnecessary risks but will do what they can to help others.
Orthodox Christian/Muslim Killing is wrong, but God accepts that sometimes it is necessary. I don’t want to die yet, but there will a reward in the afterlife if I do good work. As with the Humanist avoids harm to others, but if it him or me will kill the enemy. Will self-sacrifice to save/help others but tries where possible to preserve their ability to continue to act.
Religious Fanatic God wants me to kill unbelievers If I do God’s work I will be rewarded in the after life. Disregards personal safety to achieve the mission objective (which implictly includes doing what God demands and converting or killing the unbelievers.

Let me know what you think in the comments thread.

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Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray

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Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins WarsBrains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Brains and Bullets is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up.

This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn’t an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up to operations in Afghanistan, and they’re the products of proper scientific research not just a collection of war stories from unreliable sources.

That said there is no need to be an operational researcher, or scientist to understand the book. The language used is straightforward and direct, each of the concepts is very well explained and it forms an excellent introductory work as well as being well researched. The target audience is ordinary people without a technical or military background (although the author hopes that many military officers and civil servants will read it and think about it). Here’s my favourite line from the end of the book “if you are paid to be a military analyst, don’t forget that you work for the Crown (or the people) and for soldiers. You owe no allegiance to your cost centre manager. Crack on.”

If you do have a serious interest then it is worth saying that this isn’t fluffy pop psychology (I like those as light reading, having read Psychology at uni). All the conclusions are backed up with hard numbers from years of solid operational research. The author is hoping to influence army officers to use tactical psychology to make them more effective, so for example “even the hardest-fought flank attack seized ground with a smaller force, captured more of the enemy and caused fewer fatalities on both sides. flanking attack was six times more effective than a frontal attack.”

I’m not going to summarise this book like I did for the Stress of Battle, it’s way more available and affordable. Go buy it yourself (or borrow from the Library) and enjoy it. I certainly did.

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Book Review – First Light by Geoffrey Wellum

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First LightFirst Light by Geoffrey Wellum

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you want to know what it was like as a spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain, then this is the book you need to read. The author was a public schoolboy that joined the RAF just before the outbreak of war. He signed up in the spring of 1939 and started training as soon as he finished school in July 1939.

The first third of the book is a very detailed account of his entry to the service and the flight training. Through this we get to know the author as a typical public schoolboy, he struggles with the academic side, but has no problems with the discipline and dealing with being in a service institution. Flying is clearly his passion, and is most of the focus of the book. Other than his struggles with the training matter, and the mental stress of combat flying and dealing with the progressive loss of his friends there is little else in the story.

There is no bigger picture, or even narrative of the wider progress of the war to put things in context. When he is rushed out of training and posted directly to an operational squadron (no.92) it is because the Germans have invaded France, however we’re not directly told this. The closest he comes is when the rest of the squadron patrol over Dunkirk, losing many of the old hands including the CO Roger Bushell (who lead the Great Escape). If you didn’t know how the war went then you could be baffled by some of this. Also, there is nothing about the Battle of Britain directly, other than accounts of some of his more notable sorties (the first, some where he has narrow escapes or shoots down or damages enemy aircraft).

That said, it is a very good first hand account of what it was like on a very personal level. The flights are very well described in some detail. It is clear that Geoffrey Wellum was deeply affected by his war experience and that being an operational fighter pilot represented the pinnacle for him. His tour as an instructor between operational tours is dispensed with in a couple of pages. The narrative between flights shows him moving from an enthusiastic schoolboy to a novice pilot and eventually to a mentally exhausted veteran.

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CLWG, design, games, History, Strategy, WW1

Game Design Notes: World War One Strategic Battles

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This was originally written as a game design session prompt for a session at Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group back in April 2004. A discussion thread on about this excellent blog post http://sketchinggamedesigns.blogspot.com.es/2014/01/the-wrinkles-of-tactics-first-world-war.html lead me to dig it out and post it here.

World War One Strategic Battles

Turn structure

Three turns per year, March – June (Spring), July to September (Summer) and October to February (Winter).

Actions

Small offensives can be prepared and launched within one turn. Large offensives take a turn of preparation and then take a whole turn of offensive action. Small offensives can be carried on into large offensives.

Battles are fought in phases.

  • Preparation: divisions are allocated to the line, first wave, second wave, exploitation, training and reserve tasks
  • Bombardment
  • Assault
  • Counter-attack
  • Continuation phases if appropriate

Resolution

Fighting is resolved at Army level, with Divisions as the smallest unit (two down). One player per Army?

Three kinds of Division:

  • infantry (standard)
  • cavalry (rare)
  • artillery (representing Corps/Army artillery)

All divisions of a particular kind are the same except for level of experience and training. This can be open to the player as it was generally well known which units were the most effective and had the most offensive spirit.

Special training can be given to units to allow them to be competent at tasks, e.g. building fortifications, pioneer tasks, tank support, amphibious landings etc. The number of turns that they get in this task should be recorded separately from that of infantry training.

Infantry divisions take one turn to raise, cavalry and artillery take two turns. Ideally more training should be given before a unit is used in combat. A minimum of three turns of training is suggested before committing a new Division to the assault.

Training States Turns Experience

New 0 none

Effective 2 time in line

Regular 4 time in line

Experienced 6 time in major offensive (including defending)

Veteran 8 Several major offensives

Both the number of turns training and the combat experience are required for the troops to be considered at the higher training state. Note that the training state is just a label and not a guarantee of performance.

Political End

Resource allocation

Sources of resources

Taxation – can set a proportion of GDP to be spent on government. Level has effect on popularity, standard of living, economic growth, industrial output.

Loans – need to be repaid later but avoids some of the problems with increasing taxation. Can also inject foreign capital into paying for the war which increases overall resources available to any particular nation.

Manpower

Can conscript or get volunteers. Quality issues with conscription but increased numbers may offset that. Volunteers make more aggressive units, conscripts more passive ones. Has impact on economic growth, popularity & industrial output. Also issue of women’s rights if they are mobilised for the war effort.

 

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Books, design, History, WW2

The Stress of Battle – Pt5 Operational Research on WW2 Heroism

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This is the fifth and final part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research on WW2 heroism that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. This part is on the effects of heroism and combat degradation.

Combat Degradation

Combat degradation is a measure of how less effective weapon systems and individual soldiers are in actual combat when compared to training exercises and range work. A score of 1.0 is equivalent to not being degraded at all. Degradation to 0.3 would mean that it was operating at 30% of its peacetime range effectiveness.

  • the analysis by Rowland’s team broadly matches that done by Wigram in 1943, that there are three classes of effectiveness.
    • About 20% of those involved could be classed as heroes (26% for guns, 9% for tanks).
    • Of the rest, one third were ineffective (either they didn’t engage, or what they did do didn’t have any significant impact) (27% of the total);
    • The remaining two-thirds were about 30% effective (53% of the total);
  • Weapon systems crewed with at least one hero were about five times more effective than those with no heroes;
  • Overall effectiveness of a unit = 0.2+([Heroes/gun]*0.8)
  • Leadership improves combat effectiveness (i.e. more officers/SNCOs present leads to greater effectiveness, which is the reason that tanks are less effective than gun crews).

Impact of Heroism

Rowland and his team compared the effectiveness of the most effective and the partly effective groups in both the historical battles for which there was information and also for the field trials conducted by the British Army in the 1970s & 1980s. What they found was that there was the same variability within the two groups, which was attributed to opportunities to engage. However there was a significant difference between the groups, which was attributed to heroes being more effective.

  • Heroism seems to be a product of genetics, social conditioning and values. Many recipients of gallantry awards had previously been mentioned in despatches, or were decorated again.
    • Comments on citations for subsequent decorations indicate that a second award always required a stronger case than the first award did.
  • Heroes maintain their combat effectiveness in future battles, even if not further awarded.
  • Heroism is more likely at higher ranks (i.e. officers and senior NCOs (Sergeants and above) are more likely to be in the higher performing groups than other ranks).
    • Officers had 1.56 Awards/KIA
    • SNCOs had 0.52 Awards/KIA
    • Other Ranks had 0.10 Awards/KIA
  • Rank may be an effect (promotion coming from heroic behaviour) or a cause (feeling responsible because of higher rank).
  • Crews operate at the level of the highest effective person present.

Probabilities of Heroic Action being recognised

Rank
Infantry
Guns
Senior Officers 30.00% 34.00%
Lieutenants 6.10% 4.20%
All Officers

14.00%

14.00%
Sergeants & Warrant Officers 6.10% 8.40%
Corporals / Bombardiers 2.50% 2.95%
Privates & Equivalent 0.48% 0.73%

NB there is a possibility that the awarding of decorations was unfairly skewed by rank, and that those of lower rank that performed heroically weren’t adequately recognised.

Gurkhas

Gurkha units were noticably different from British unit, and appear to be 60% more effective in inflicting casualties on the enemy and 60% more likely to be decorated. This comes at the price of higher levels of casualties.

Surprise & Shock

The defintion of Surprise is “the achievement of the unexpected in timing, place or direction such that the enemy cannot react properly”. This is distinct from Shock, where soldiers could react, but didn’t.

Again historical analysis was used and battles where surprise and shock were involved were identified. These were then compared with other battles with similar characteristics so that only either Shock or Surprise were different. The two factors being compared individually with a reference set.

Surprise

  • Attack surprise reduces infantry defence effectiveness by 60% at 3:1 attack ratio.
  • Attack surprise may vary with force ratio (being more marked at low ratios and less effective at higher ratios)
  • Surprise for tank vs tank reduces casualties  by a factor of 3 at 1:1 attack ratio for the side achieving surprise.
  • Attacks below 1:1 ratio were successful 65% of the time when surprise was achieved, where attacks at these ratios were never successful without surprise
  • At force ratios above 1:1 surprise is less important to success, although there is still higher levels of success with surprise, just not statistically significant.
    • with surprise force ratio is less important to success (at 1:1 70%, at 3:1 76%)
    • without surprise the probability of success increases in proportion to the force ratio (at 1:1 40%, at 3:1 54%)

Shock

  • Infantry attacks caused shock in about 15% of cases, rising to 50% when combined with surprise and some of the factors below. Three factors were found to have influenced the ability of infantry to inflict shock:
    • Charge distance was usually under 100 metres (limited by weight of kit), where it was longer that was found to be because the enemy had already broken.
    • Visibility was significant, typically shock occurs at night or in poor visibility including where the terrain offers concealment
    • Defence morale was affected by Battle cries, cheers and yells seemed to put defenders off balance.
      • Bayonets played a major role (but not to cause casualties, as a psychological weapon inducing the enemy to surrender or run away).
  • Tank attacks caused shock in about 10% of battles analysed.
    • ‘Invulnerable’ tanks cause shock which can lead to panic, in about 50% of cases
    • Surprise alone caused shock in 27% of the time
    • Surprise + invulnerable tanks gave 70% Shock
    • Surprise + poor visibility gave 85% shock
    • Surprise + all of the above gave 95% shock
  • Air attacks cause shock most often when they are a dive/strafe attack where the aircraft is aimed directly at the target.
  • Typically shock by ground attack reduces defence effectiveness by 65%.

 

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

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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

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Books, design, WW2

The Stress of Battle – Part 3 – Op Research on Terrain Effects

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504th Regiment, 82nd Airborne troops advancing...
504th Regiment, 82nd Airborne troops advancing through snow-covered forest during the Battle of the Bulge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the third part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles.

Fighting in Woods

The data comes from an analysis of 120 battles that took place in woods or forests from the US Civil War to the Korean War. It also applied all the things from the previous research and tried to see how woods differed from combat in other types of terrain.

Woods Open Urban
Attacker casualties per defence MG (at 1:1 force ratio)

0.818

2.07

0.76
Force Ratio Power Relationship

0.418

0.685

0.50
  • Defence is less effective in woods, most likely because limited fields of view mean that the engagement ranges are shorter
  • Combat degradation is greater in woods during night battles
  • Artillery suppression is less effective in woods (presumably because the trees absorb some of the shell splinters)
  • Attack casualties reduce with attacker experience (after ten battles attacker casualties are half of that of inexperienced troops)

Continued in Part 4 – Operational Research on Anti-Tank Combat

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