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17th Century, Books, design, History, Re-enactment

Destructive & Formidable by David Blackmore [Book Review]

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Destructive and Formidable: British Infantry Firepower 1642 - 1765Destructive and Formidable by David Blackmore is a quantitative look at British infantry doctrine using period sources from the British Civil Wars of the seventeenth century up to just before the Napoleonic wars. If anything you can see the constancy, which drove the success in battle of British forces, even when outnumbered.

Development of British Infantry Doctrine

Re-enactors from the Fairfax Battalia demonstrate infantry drill in the Tower of London. Pikes are charged and the musketeers present for a salvee in two ranks. (photo: Mandy Holloway)

This has got a lot of the detail you need to model infantry battles in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It’s not quite at the level of the WW2 operational research, but it’s good enough. There are comparative weights and rates of fire. Measured hit rates based on range, and commentary on doctrine and how certain tactics worked in certain situations but not others. In short everything you need to design a game (although there’s clearly a morale factor, which Destructive and Formidable covers but makes no attempt to quantify).

There’s a fairly readable style, and the book isn’t long. The examples are of individual battles and focus only on what the British infantry did, their immediate context and the doctrine/tactics of their immediate enemy. The only place there’s anything more in context, and discussion of the commanders impact, is the chapter on the North American irregular wars. This latter chapter also touches on failures of leadership, and shows that there is an effect of good leadership on the successful application of doctrine. The defeats are more attributable to poor leadership and lack of confidence than to failure of doctrine.

Core Infantry Doctrine

The core of British infantry doctrine was to reserve fire until they were close enough to ensure that it was effective. Once fired from close range the British infantry then closed to hand to hand, with clubbed muskets in the early period and bayonets later. Only one or two round were fired, often from a salvee or volley. This kept the effect concentrated, which increased the shock value.

Why didn’t British infantry doctrine spread?

Musket practice by re-enactors from the Fairfax Battalia. You can see the second rank ramming home their charge as the front rank fires. The third rank is charging with powder. (photo: Cindy Holton)

If British infantry doctrine was so successful why did other nations not copy it? Blackmore shows a relative isolation in the British officer corps from the debate of firepower vs shock which European armies seem to have spent the period arguing about. British infantry doctrine seems to have developed by trial and error during the British civil wars to get decisive battles based on the available people and technology. Early civil war battles were inconclusive, yet the British on both sides strove to improve effectiveness. They got closer before opening fire, massed to fire salvos and closed with the enemy to finish them off. Europe spent the same period in the Thirty Years War yet never came to the same conclusion. Drill manuals from the period emphasise fire, the cavalry doctrine shows shock of impact is what works.

What made the British successful?

My suspicion is one of the main things that keeps the British Army successful in this period is a continuity of experience. From the civil wars there is a near continuous presence of warfare. More importantly the outcome of the civil war is the establishment of a standing army. Even though this is supposed to be temporary, Parliament needs to renew it every year, it remains continuously in being. This means that soldiers pass on their experience to the new recruits, and many officers are professionals. Serving in one war as juniors and returning to later wars as commanders of battalions and armies.

Designing a game

My copy of this is flagged in many places, and there are a lot of marginal notations. I fully expect to use it as the core of an infantry combat model for one or more games. There’s a good model explained in the book. Maximum effective range is about 80 yards, at 100 yards less than 1% of shots result in a casualty. At 25-30 yards about a quarter of shots cause casualties. Closing with the enemy is pretty much always decisive (they either break or die). Infantry firing by platoon can stop cavalry with firepower alone if they reserve fire until the cavalry is about 30 yards away. Similarly if you fire at charging Highlanders at about 10 yards (or less) then it ends the charge…

This is an edited version of a post that was first published at https://www.themself.org/2019/01/destructive-formidable-david-blackmore-review/

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OR Driven Wargame Rules

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I’ve been tinkering with a set of small unit wargame rules informed by operational research rather than fashions in wargaming for a couple of years. The crux of these rules is the morale mechanism.  These haven’t quite got as far as I would have liked as I’ve not really had any time to complete or playtest them. However there is enough here as a work in progress to run a session at Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group the next time I manage to make it. Also others that also design wargames might find some of this of interest.

Operational Research

My main sources are two books that I’ve reviewed elsewhere on this blog (although before I split out the wargaming and military history bits from Themself to form Hot Blood & Cold Steel). I’ve also got some bits from various military OR articles in the Journal of the Operational Research Society and things I’ve found using the Open University library.

The Rules

These rules are intended to cover small unit actions at a platoon plus to company minus in size. The sort of thing that has happened a lot over the last decade or so for most armies.

There are some gaps in these, but it shows the structure. The primary gap is that I’ve not yet properly incorporated the effects of casualties, and there isn’t a proper OR driven basis for this (there’s loads of source material though). There is a morale driven combat model though, that determines whether attacks will be successful or not.

Attacker casualties don’t seem to be determined by the success or failure of the attack. They are more affected by whether the defenders are engaged. Defender casualties are completely different when the defence is overwhelmed (about 80% including killed, wounded and prisoners). If the attack fails and defenders are well sited then they can take no casualties.

Here are the rules, both as open document text ODT and PDF. Also another ODS spreadsheet that shows some of the workings out of probabilities and charts etc.

 

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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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2D Morale Chart

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Further to the previous post Faith in Morale I’ve tried to synthesize the varioius readings on military psychology into a set of morale rules that might give a realistic ebb and flow to an engagement. I’ve not had a chance to test these yet, but here’s what the chart looks like.

v01 of the 2D Morale Chart, (c) 2014 James Kemp
v01 of the 2D Morale Chart, (c) 2014 James Kemp

Reading through the various OR type publications it seems to me that morale is affected by proximity to both friends and the enemy. The closer solders get to the enemy the more they seem to do things other than follow orders. This is not really a surprise, but it’s nice to see the research back up the gut feel.

Where I can find hard numbers for things I have used them to construct the 2D morale chart. In some ways this is sort of arbitrary, the numbers aren’t comprehensive enough to complete it. I’ve taken distance from the enemy as one axis and propensity to fight as the other axis. Probability isn’t as straightforwards as counting the squares, as I’ve chosen to use a 2d6 roll on this chart. This tends the answer towards 7 and I have used the probabilty of a given result (or greater) as the method for putting the shading on the boxes. Where certain conditions make something more or less likely the difference from the probability of 7 or more is what I’ve used to decide whether the die modifier would be +/- 1, 2 or 3 (most end up as +/-1).

I’ll post up more of this, along with some ideas on how I expect it to work, in a later post. Broadly though each glob of troops will have a marker on the chart showing their current morale state. Each time morale is tested they will roll 2d6 and modify. Scores of 6-8 (about 45%) will remain unchanged. scores of 9-11 will improve morale and 12 will improve it and move the unit closer to the enemy (except for defenders in prepared positions). Scores of 4 or 5 will decrease morale, a 2 or 3 will decrease morale and cause the soldiers to give ground back to cover.

 

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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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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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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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Stress of Battle – Part 2 – Op Research on Urban Battles

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Belgian soldiers during an exercise
Belgian soldiers during an exercise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the second 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.

For this part I thought that I would focus on the lessons on urban battles. Rowland and his team used historical analysis on lots of WW2 urban battles and then compared this to a series of field trials using laser attachments to small arms and tank main armaments in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  The approach was to find battles where single variables could be controlled, and then use them to work out what the effect of that variable was on outcomes.

Here’s an interesting table on how attacker casualties vary by odds and the density of defending machine guns. Interestingly, in successful assaults the defender casualties are constant.

Force Ratio Attack Force(100 man Inf Company in Defence) Attack Casualties        (killed and wounded) Defence Casualties (Killed, POW & Wounded)
1 MG / Section 2 MG / Section

1:1

 Infantry Only

16

24

80

3:1

 Infantry Only

27

40

80

1:1

 Heavy Tank Support (no def AT)

3

12

80

3:1

 Heavy Tank Support (no def AT)

5

20

80

1:1

 Trained attack – infantry only

8

12

80

1:1

 Trained attack – Heavy AFV support

2

6

80

The interesting thing for me is that training/experience counts for a lot, halving casualties. Also attacking with the conventional 3:1 odds for success increases the casualties that you suffer, without having any appreciable difference in those inflicted on the enemy (although it does make it more likely for succesful attacks with untrained/inexperienced troops).

English: Cilieni This is a fake village that i...
English: Cilieni This is a fake village that is used for training for fighting in a built up area (FIBUA). The village has been named after the adjacent river, and all the street names are in Welsh, although it is most representative of an East European village. This area is not often open to the public. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adding armour support makes a huge difference too. Although tanks in urban areas are more vulnerable if they lose their infantry support. However with infantry they significantly reduce attacker casualties.

  • Defence experience gave no detectable benefit to causing casualties, but attack experience does (in urban combat)
  • typically three times as many defenders will surrender (some wounded) as are killed or withdraw, the only sensitivity on this is being completely surrounded (so 20% dead, 60% captured (incl wounded) and 20% withdraw);
  • attack casualties are less affected by force ratio in urban attacks than in open counrtyside;
  • successful defence of urban areas is best achieved by light defence with counter attacks supported by armour

Rubble & Prepared Defences

This another area covered. There is a general increase in attacker casualties by about 50% when defenders are in rubble or prepared defences. The primary effect of rubble though is to slow down rates of advance.

  • Rubble halved the rate of advance compared to undamaged urban areas
  • maximum unopposed advance rates were about 800 metres per hour in urban areas (400m/hr for rubble)
  • Opposition slowed the advance by a factor of 7

An interesting aside on this was the relative effectiveness of different types of German Infantry. Parachute troops and Panzergrenadiers were reckoned to be tougher opponents than normal infantry. However the analysis showed that the extra stubbornness was a factor of the higher than normal allocation of MGs to those troops. The rate of attacker casualties per defence MG wasn’t significantly different.

Continued in Part 3 – Operational Research on Terrain Effects

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