Henri

Well my arrogant friend, you had better read the warfighting manual of your beloved USMC again again. Here are just a few quotes from the Marine Corps Warfighting Manual MCDP-1 that contradicts everything you wrote. MANEUVER WARFARE The Marine Corps concept for winning under these conditions is a warfighting doctrine based on rapid, flexible, and opportunistic maneuver... ...Maneuver warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope... ...Rather than wearing down an enemy’s defenses, maneuver warfare attempts to bypass these defenses in order to penetrate the enemy system and tear it apart. The aim is to render the enemy incapable of resisting effectively by shattering his moral, mental, and physical cohesion—his ability to fight as an effective, coordinated whole—rather than to destroy him physically through the incremental attrition of each of his components, which is generally more costly and time-consuming... ...Nonetheless, the aim of such attrition is not merely to reduce incrementally the enemy’s physical strength. Rather, it is to contribute to the enemy’s systemic disruption. The greatest effect of firepower is generally not physical destruction— the cumulative effects of which are felt only slowly— but the disruption it causes... ...If the aim of maneuver warfare is to shatter the cohesion of the enemy system, the immediate object toward that end is to create a situation in which the enemy cannot function.... ...In combat this includes violence and shock effect, again not so much as a source of physical attrition, but as a source of disruption... ...In order to appear unpredictable, we must avoid set rules and patterns, which inhibit imagination and initiative. In order to appear ambiguous and threatening, we should operate on axes that offer numerous courses of action, keeping the enemy unclear as to which we will choose... There is a lot more, but this should be enough to shatter your claim of what USMC official doctrine is.It is interesting to note that MCDP-1 is taken almost literally from Lind's book on Maneuver Warfare. As for your courageous fighting in the Gulf War, bravo! My understanding is that the main role of the Marines was to participate in a fake invasion sitting on ships while 7 Iraki Divisions waited in vain for them to land, a perfect example of the maneuver warfare ideal of neutralizing an enemy without actually fighting him Henri

Here are a couple of quotes from Leonhard: Maneuver warfare theory de-emphasizes but does not ignore, force ratios and loss rates. Numerical superiority in battles, campaigns and wars takes on a minor role;local superiority is somewhat more important. (p.79). I have maintained previously that this command-push approach to warfare is not necessarily a violation of maneuver theory. (p. 269). I have not found the specific sentence I was thinking of, so either I missed it(it is a thick book) or maybe I saw it in the Marine Corps Warfare Manual that I don't have the address of here. The part on Soviet doctrine is an interesting analysis of two different ways to apply maneuver warfare.The Soviet doctrine puts less emphasis on mission orders and more on planning, scouting, deception, surprise, stealth and deep penetrations. Henri

I would start with a small or medium scenario to learn the mechanics of the game.Wiltz is a good one, All or Nothing may be a bit much for a beginner, especially if you play the Allies where there is a lot of micro-management. Play Wiltz until you can beat the AI with both sides, then try something else. Just remember that the ONE most important factor in winning games is a detailed knowledge of unit strength and weaknesses, your own and those of the enemy.All fancy knowledge about tactics is useless if you don't know how to use your units to their best capabilities. Things like that Rifle platoons are better at long range and submachinegun platoons at short range, that Hetzers have a kickass cannon and a tough front armor but are slow to turn and have paper-thin side armor, these are the bread and butter that distinguish so-so players from the experts. I have been playing this game for a year and wargames for more years than I care to count, and this is still my main weakness in this game.When you are playing a game and you spot a Comet and you know immediately that it has a 50/50 chance of killing your JdPzIV with the first shot from 500 m, you are getting there. If you are like me, you will have to check out the specifications which you will misinterpret by forgetting to correct for the defective German armor, and confident that your JdPzIVis inivulnerable to the Comet, get a rude awakening when it is knocked out with the first shot, dooming you to defeat. Yes, it happened to me just last week Henri

So are you saying that CM is not a realistic enough simulation to reward/punish real-world tactics? If not, what ARE you saying exactly? Henri

Have you tried sending a reminder? I have founld that sometimes the emails are lost on the way and never reach the destination. Still, there are people who will not respond whatever you do. After trying unsuccessfully to contact them, put them on your black list and refuse to play them any more. Henri

The italicized part of the above is exactly the attritionist point of view as expressed by Lind and Leonhard. As one or both of them put it, attrition warfare uses movement in order to allow fighting, whereas maneuverists use fighting in order to allow movement. This requires a lot more explanation than I care to write right now (maneuver theory cannot be summed up in a single snappy statement), and its misinterpretation has caused a lot of useless discussion (maneuver warfare does not consist of avoiding combat). But I just wanted to point out that what you consider a given is nothing more than the attrition warfare point of view. I hope that this doesn't sound patronizing, but why don't you read the Marine Corps Warfighting Manual MCDP-1, which is free on the web? It is a pretty good description of maneuver warfare from a practical point of view, and it IS the USMC official doctrine of how to make war. Henri

Interesting post Pillar, since you wrote it off the top of your head, I read it as you intended, not as a thesis. I presume that based on past experience, you are not surprised that some took it as a thesis and attempted to shoot it full of holes.Although I have no problem with your opinion, I do have a few reservations also off the top of my head. So in the spirit of friendly discussion, here it is. One problem with your description is that it is about pure tactics, about which maneuver theory has little to say in such situations out of context. Maneuver theory is all about mission intent, adapting to changing circumstances, and so on, as you well know. As Lind puts it, "Maneuver warfare brooks no rules", so attempting to reduce maneuver warfare to a set of precepts about what to do in absolute terms independently of mission intent leaves you open to criticism where your opponent is free to add circumstances that make your approach bound to fail. As ScoutPL pointed out, some of the methods that you describe are standard fare and are not specifically maneuverist nor attritionist. While I am at it, let me give an example of when maneuver theory would require an attrition-type attack. Let us say that one has elite units facing a strong enemy line with very low morale and that somehow the friendly commander is aware of this. In such a circumstance, his best move could be a strong attack on the enemy line, which would have a high likelyhood of breaking, throwing the enemy force into disarray as the center disintegrates. Although this may look like an attritionist procedure, it is simply applying the maneuver idea of striking at the enemy's main vulnerability (not necessarily his weakest point, but his "center of gravity"). Leonhard clearly states in his book that maneuver theory does not always exclude attrition. Henri

Fair enough, ScoutPL, but the point is that the opposing team characterizes itself as shamelessly maneuverist, and as far as I know accepts Lind's and Leonhard's views without reservation, a point of view that you vilify, decisively reject and consider unrealistic. I don't think that the Capt. would object to the team opposing Fionn's maneuverists calling themselves "realists" instead of attritionists.This is not about labels, but about philosophies of fighting. So why don't you put your money where your mouth is and show that you can beat the maneuverists with your "realistic" style? C'mon, be a sport! My poor fighting record can be excused by my being an amateur, but being a professional soldier, you'll need another excuse if you think that you can't win against a team of attritionists, and amateurs at that (amateurs at real war, that is...). I have said before that I don't believe that the Capt's game will really prove anything, except that the best players of CM are maneuverists.It would be a shame if none of the so outspoken opponents of maneuver theory would dare to take up the challenge. Are they aplying the maneuverist dictum that the ideal victory is that which is won without fighting? Henri

Where are all the military guys who have military training in attrition warfare? Are they playing on the maneuver team? Jason is uncharacteristically quiet... Not that I think that the game will actually prove anything.The attritionists are probably quite right in thinking that with Fionn at the helm leading his merciless horde, it won't matter what the opponents play, they will get pounded into the ground so bad that they will have to dig their way out through China! I would bet my last dollar that one early alpha tester who is not well-known here (I promised not to tell) for whom I was the 50th and 51st victim in a row in 2 TCPIP games is also on Fionn's team.Pity the poor guy who faces him... Fionn wisely didn't put me on his team, after checking out my dismal won/lost record and reading my message of a few days ago where I couldn't figure out how a Comet could kill a JdPzIV from the front with the first shot... But I do hope that the attritionists find a leader. The game should be very interesting, although the only thing it might prove is that the better players are all maneuverists...errrr, manoeuvrists, Capt... Henri

Hold on to your hat (this is a long scenario...) and let us know how you make out. Henri

Just yesterday, in a TCPIP game, I had a JdPzIV defending at 500 m against a advancing Cromwell and a Comet.The JdPz was buttoned and it had taken a casualty from a lucky shot by infantry a mile away, and its first shot missed the Cromwell, which was in front. The Comet put its first shot through the front armor of the JdPz. Now I was convinced by the numbers that there was no way that a Comet can kill a JdPzIV through the front armor, because its gun can penetrate only less than 5 cm than the effective armor value of the JdPz. My opponent said that the cursor indicated a 50% probability of penetration with a sure kill.The kill indicated a penetration through "the front superstructure", and not the thinner lower hull. In addition, the JdPz was on a slight incline towards the rear, increasing the armor angle. Whaddahell is going on? Seems to me that there is no way that a Comet could kill a JdPz through the front armor on the first shot with a 50% probability.Or did I miss something? Henri

That is a tough question. Any victory-flag-oriented game is going to make it difficult to model maneuver warfare. I haven't played Combat Command 2 much yet, but I have played all of the other computer wargames. There are a few large scenarios of East Front that allow some degree of maneuver, and I have written an AAR of one that can be found on the Gamesdomain web site.Another EF one for which I wrote an AAR somewhere is a large tank battle with plenty of Tigers and Panthers against JS tanks and a bit of infantry, with a name something like "Clash of Titans". War in Russia and Pacific War allow some maneuver warfare at the operational level.(WIR 3 will be available in a few days...). Henri

I don't really want to start a debate on this, but the English language has adopted many French words (sometimes changing the meaning over time) and "manoeuvre" is one of them. "Oeuvre" in French means a piece of work (not necessarily artistic) such as a sculpture, a building or the writings of an author, and the ethymology of "man-" is clear enough.It is not used otherwise in English except for the French-borrowed "hors-d'oeuvre" (pronounced by some as "horse-dovers" .The most common use of "manoeuvre" in French is to designate a manual worker without a specialty.And the most common use of the verb "maneuvrer" is "to manhandle". "Manoeuvre" is also used in French in the military sense identical to the English, and it is clear that its use in English has been borrowed from the French. As usual the Americans have their own spelling more closely corresponding to the pronunciation, and there is nothing wrong with that. In any case, "manoeuvre" is definitely not a word of English origin. Henri

Apparently no one has mentioned the most important factor for a situation like this -suppression. A unit being fired upon is partially suppressed, and one being fired on a lot can be totally suppressed, which is probablyu why the attackers did not take a single casualty. This is of course an abstraction, but not always an unrealistic one. It DID happen that single squads in a foxhole being fired upon from all sides hit the bottom of their foxholes and did not fire back. The opposite also happened, I suppose, but not in CM. But in any case, the result is about the same: all of the defenders die and most of the attackers live... Henri

Capt, the only "extreme of maneuver" that I have seen are those that are wrongly attributed to maneuverists by their opponents. Jason's long dissertation of MCDP1 is interesting, but it makes the mistake of considering the doctrine as a set of recipes, which is certainly is not. Lind (on whose book MCDP1 is based) clearly states that "warfare brooks no rules", which means that it cannot be reduced to a set of rules. By doing so, Jason is whipping a dead cat. As you yourself have pointed out (I think), Maneuver Warfare is an approach to war, a philosophy. By requesting Maneuverists to state cases where the theory does not apply, Jason puts supporters of the theory in the dilemma of either admitting that the theory is false (does not always apply) or to appear as unbending extremists. I have recently quoted a passage by Leonhard himself on this forum where he states that maneuver does not always preclude attrition, but this is conveniently ignored by some. Henri

As has been pointed out a number of times, most notably by Steve of BTS, the CM game does not model maneuver warfare very well. IN any case, I doubt whether or not your interesting proposal will allow to resolve the debate, since the ability of the players may well be the determining factor much more than the style of play. For example, in chess, if you had a group of classical (Tarrash) and Hypermodern (Nimzovich) advocates playing together, there is little doubt that the classics would win if they had Morphy and Capablanca on their side, whatever the merits of the Hypermodern theory. In any case, the clear leader of the maneuver forces is Fionn Kelly, whose win/loss record speaks for itself and who is a vocal advocate of maneuver warfare.Unfortunately he is banned form this forum, but he is not banned from playing. BTW, I don't see why the French word "manoeuvre" is a better word than its English equivalent "maneuver", and it ethymology means "to work by hand" which has little to do with movement. Although French is my first language, I prefer to continue to use "maneuver", although Liddell-Hart's "indirect approach" is probably more accurate. Henri

Unfortunately this type of strategy is extremely rare in CM, due to the nature of the battles (flag objectives and limited time). The closest I have come to this is the underestimated value of waiting. Amateurs do not like unclear situations, and will often take rash action just to get rid of the uncertainty. I find that sometimes just waiting a turn or two to see what the enemy will do can yield dividends. For example, let us say that the enemy has a strong defensive position somewhere and you are about to attack it. If you wait two or three turns, an unexperienced opponent will sometimes crack under the stress of waiting and start to think that you are going to flank him or something and start moving his units to counter the imaginary threat.Of course one can amplify this with a feint. Henri

Since I had absolutely no information about your dispositions, I felt that I had no choice but to advance on a broad front initially then to adapt. As it turned out, you had a broad front defence except for your undefended right flank; I felt that I had almost broken through a couple of places, but it seems that reserves were brought up to plug the hole. I captured the flag on your extreme right which was undefended, but getting my platoon hung up on barbed wire, ambushed and wiped out in one minute by a single machinegun on the way to the center put an end to my intention of using this platoon as a flanking force.At that time, your center seemed on the verge of collapse and a falnking move as early as possible by this platoon seemed worth the risk, since I had seen no enemy units at all in this area since the beginning. The two places where I have almost broken through are both protected by the two remaining bunkers that I know of, supported by tanks and machineguns, and one of them has impenetrable wire defenses tht have already cost me a full platoon or more. The battle-worthy units that I have there are the remnants of my reinforcements that apparently arrived there at the same time as your own reinforcements. I tried firing smoke to cover a rush for the flags, but my remaining 60 mm mortars refuse to fire smoke. At this point, my choices are a suicidal dash in the open for the flags through barbed wire and bunkers, machinegun fire and tanks, or to stay put and wait for the end while saving as many of my men as I can. The designer says that there are 3 places where tanks can reach the enemy rear positions; I can see only one, right in the center to the left of the road, and three of the tanks that I tried to send there bogged down before making it far enough to shoot at the enemy, and the other two and a halftrack that made it were easily killed by bushwacking tanks and infantry covering the opening. The designer says that the game is balanced for play against the AI, which is probably true, but I would like to hear how an Allied player who has not seen the scenario should go about winning this against a human who knows how to defnd and how to use inner lines. Knowing what I know now, I would do a number of things differently. Here are some of them. 1)I would use my 240 mm artillery early firing blind on suspected enemy positions before my infantry got close enough to be hit by shells that stray up to 100 m. 2)I would use my engineers to remove mines from the roads (I lost 2 tanks to mines on the roads). 3) I would use less of my 75 mm and 81 mm artillery firing for area fire and hold most of it to fire on known concentrations of enemy infantry. 4) I would try to find a way to use my numerous bazookas to better effect (they were all killed without firing a shot). 5) I might try a feint in the middle followed by throwing everything at the enemy left flank where there is the only somewhat open terrain in front of enemy defenses (which include 2 bunkers and mucho wire), hoping to break through before he can bring up the reserves.Problem is this strategy is fairly obvious and the roads and open terrain behind the enemy positions allow rapid shifting of forces for the enemy. 6) I would try to find a way to reduce infantry casualties in the advance, possibly by more concentration of units. This would probably require more micro-management than I like to do in a huge scenario like this. In any case, I still believe that a numerical advantage of 2:1 in points with much of it in armor against an entrenched enemy in terrain like this where tanks are at a major disadvantage due to soft terrain and impenetrable forest and blockaded roads, without any air cover and knowledge of enemy dispositions amounts to a decisive advantage for the defender. The forward bunkers are not a major handicap for the attacker, since they can be taken out by tanks, it is the ones deep within the enemy position that are a headache, because they cannot be reached by tanks. This is not to criticize this fine scenario. To balance it better, the Allied attacker should be told to look at the scenario from the German position before playing it (I played it fully blind), and the ground should be made less conducive to bogging down.I am not sure tht would be enough, but it certainly would help. Finally kudos to Kitty for her excellent handling of the defensive; particularly decisive were her ambushes and counter-attacks on my left flank, which left me there with all of one 60 mm artillery unit and a crew to hold the flank. Henri

It is on the CD and by Wild Bill Wilder; I don't know if it is based on the ASL scenario or not. Henri

I am just about to finish a TCPIP game with this huge scenario, and I am getting my ass handed to me. Not to denigrate my oponent's upcoming victory, but it she had played the scenario beforehand and I had not, but I don't think that is is the significant difference. This is an combined forces assault scenario in heavily forested terrain against prepared enemy positions including foxholes, mines, barbed wire, road obstacles, pillboxes and so on. The ground is soft and all of the roads are blocked by mines and obstacles, so it is impossible for tanks to reach enemy positions by means of the roads. There is only one place on the whole map where tanks can get between forested areas into enemy positions, so this is easily defended with tanks and panzerfausts.I have six tanks bogged down and immobilized and therefore useless due to the hilly forested terrain. The Allies have no air support, and most of the artillery is onboard, which means that the heavy forest prevents the artillery from firing most of the time on suspected enemy positions. The Allies have about a 2:1 advantage in points which is usually considered inadequate for an assault against prepared enemy positions. Even moreso since ab out half of these points are for armor which is practically useless for the Allies since few of them are likely to see any enemies at all. I have succeeded in knocking out a half dozen pillboxes, but the attrition in moving towards unknown enemy positions and battling against entrenched enemies has left my forces inferior in numbers to the Germans, who still have armor support and a couple of pillboxes to defend their flags, whereas I have no armor left to support my battered infantry and only a few 60 mm mortars who refuse to fire because their HQs cannot see the enemy positions.As usual my 240 mm rockets killed more of my own men than of the enemy. If I had known the locations of enemy pillboxes, I might have had a better chance, but still I don't think that I could have carried the day against a competent opponent, because in addition to the other advantages mentioned above, the terrain on his side of the line of defense is fairly clear, which allows him to move his reserves quicly to any threatened sector on the large map, whereas my units have to slog through heavily forested terrain. Has anyone actually won this against a competent human player? Henri [This message has been edited by Henri (edited 02-13-2001).]

You mean the scenario that comes with the Game? I won this as both sides against the AI, but against a human, the Allies have a significant advantage.I wrote an AAR of a one battle somewhere... Henri

Just a few comments to set a few facts straight. According to the figures in Glantz and House compiled from Soviet and German souces, for most of the war until 1944, the ratio of men under arms Soviet/ German was less than 2:1 except for a very brief period in 1943. This means that number thrown about of Germans claiming to be outnumbered 10:1 or even 3:1 could be due only to a better ability of concentration of forces on the part of the Soviets or exaggerations on the part of the Germans. In May 1945 the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front stood at 5.7 million men (Clash of Titans, p.305), not counting Soviet Allies, so the myth of the Soviets standing on their last legs is also in error. This was the army of highly motivated, well armed and experienced veterans against which the Allies would have had to fight if they had taken Patton's advice and attacked the Soviets after the end of the War. The Allies were probably rightfully dubious about tackling such an army twice the size of the German army that had attacked Russia in 1941, and having to fight them all the way from the Elbe to Moscow... Henri

What is the time indicated on the messages? Clearly it is not EST, since I checked at 13:00 and saw messages indicted as 4 AM that were not there at 11 AM. Is it the local time of the poster? There should be a unified time scale so that one can easily determine at what time the messages were posted according to his local time. Henri

The next step is when you are waiting to cross the street and you mentally drop a TRP in the middle of the intersection -right next to the AT mines... Henri

House and Glantz (When Titans Clashed) give a detailed breakdown of military casualties for both sides on the Eastern Front: Soviet casualties were about 30 million, and German casualties were about 13 million, including killed, wounded and captured, but not including civilians. For the Germans, this was close to 40% of the 1939 male population. It is interesting to note that only 1/3 of the 30 milion Soviet casualties were killed in battle, the remainder dying of wounds or illness. Not many Soviet prisoners survived the war. Soviet casualties in the initial phases of deep penetrations were particularly high: according to one Soviet source quoted in the above, about 40% of the leading Soviet assault troops were killed in the initial stages of such operations. Henri