Guest mch Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 Hello everyone! I remember reading somewhere that in the U.S. Army(don't know about the Whermacht,but I'd guess it was probably MUCH higher,Anyone know?)the percentage of the men actually doing the killing,maiming,wounding,etc.. was verry low,around 6%..I'm positive it was less than 20%in any case.. I bring this up because,well, I KEEP SEEING THIS IN CM!it seems every time I play as U.S.(or German,for that matter) it's one little squad that rakes in double digits when it's all over.(perhaps my methods of deployment should be called into question,eh?)whereas,it seems all my other teams excell in suppresion fire. Anyone else notice this in their games? (it seems I read alot about one tank often doing the work of ten,but Infantry?) Any Stories? [This message has been edited by mch (edited 03-26-2000).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walt Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 Most of the people in the military are fixing the tanks, or the rifles, or making food, or fixing up the lumps of flesh coming out of the grinder, or scrubing the bathroom floor in the office of the secretary of defense... That's the way a modern army works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Username Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 While Walt is correct that a large portion of most modern armies are non-combattants, its also valid what mch is saying. Or I have read similar accounts. Small knots of guys in an outfit who have lost buddies or just like taking out the enemy for whatever reason. Most people are bad shots on a firing range. Throw in the explosions , yelling, screaming in a battle and they might not fire at all. They can hopefully suppress a position. Other guys are killing machines. I guess it depends on the unit also. The more elite, the more the killers in the outfit. Lewis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEF BUNGIS Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 Oh.. but we need the "kinder-gentler" Army to win wars. You know it just don't look right if you yell and cuss at soldiers on the battle field these day's! ------------------ Better to make the wrong decision than be the sorry son of a bitch to scared to make one at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
argie Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 Some studies made in the 50s determined that for the combatant troops (not rear echelon) about the 10% was activelly involucred in fight, i.e, firing to enemy and maneouvering. The rest was hitting the ground and watching their asses. The only could prevent this behaviour is good leadership. In "Changing an Army", Gen. Depuy makes a revision of this topic in WWII and other conflicts. Ariel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mch Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 I WAS reffering to combatants.sorry if that wasn't verry clear.Just interested to see how much of this anyone has seen in CM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hakko Ichiu Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mch: I WAS reffering to combatants.sorry if that wasn't verry clear.Just interested to see how much of this anyone has seen in CM.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> that's certainly been my experience. Remember though, that when you have realistic tactics, e.g., no tank rushes, then a certain proportion of your units will be at the sharp end, while others will be guarding flanks, laying down suppressive fire, etc. These actions are very important -- they save the lives of the guys at the sharp end -- but they don't necessarily rack up a huge bodycount. One more way that CM provides excellent realism. Ethan ------------------ Das also war des Pudels Kern! -- Goethe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guachi Posted March 26, 2000 Share Posted March 26, 2000 Try http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/000037.html for an old discussion of this topic. Jason - the search function kneels to my mastery!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darryl Posted March 27, 2000 Share Posted March 27, 2000 Probably the starkest illustration of how inefficient the ratio of total men in combat units to men who actually cause enemy casualties can be found in General S.L.A. Marshalls excellent "Pork Chop Hill". I don't know if it's currently in print, and it's subject matter is from the Korean war, not WW 2, but it's lessons still apply. Marshall also wrote about the Normandy airborne ops in "night Drop". Which I also highly recommend to those interested in CM. ------------------ Darryl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walt Posted March 27, 2000 Share Posted March 27, 2000 Sorry about that. I would guess, it's more to do with positioning than anything else. Human beings are fragile, but that works both ways. A soldier is usually more concerned with staying alive than killing. Even the diehards will duck instead of shooting if shooting would have mortal consequenses. Of course both sides are doing their best to put themselves in a position where the enemy can concentrate the least of their forces, and allies can concentrate their forces at the most effective point. That's great if only one of you is doing it, but it's going to cancel it's self to an extent and just result in fewer options for the forces to smash into each other. If we wanted to we could just line up each others armies and take potshots. You'd have 100% of forces commited and you'd probably get 80% casualties. As far as I'm concerned it's a good thing. Enough people die in wars as it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lorak Posted March 28, 2000 Share Posted March 28, 2000 well.. I can't remember where i came across this info..Just thought I'd throw it out there. The US army found that it was against human nature to kill. In fact they found that a very low precentage of their soldiers were firing at the enemy to do so. When examining fallen soldiers guns after gettysburg they found about 20,000 that had never been fired. of those a lot of them had 3 and 4 loads in them. the soldiers were loading their weapons ( to keep face i assume) but weren't firing them. This goes back even to sword and spear battles, most deaths were caused by back wounds. They figure that a man is more likely to knife someone when they can't see his face. In WWI the precentage was harder to judge due to the warfare involved. After WWII it looked like 10-20% actually fired to kill the enemy. Thats when the army started new training, using life size targets, human shilloetts, ect...By the time VNam rolled around they increased that % to about 40-50% if i recall correctly. Thats about as much as i remember on it. I'll try to find the article again. It was very interesting reading. Lorak ------------------ http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/combatmissionclub Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest PeterNZ Posted March 28, 2000 Share Posted March 28, 2000 there was something about this on discovery too i think.. They were talking about increasing the people shooting at target and were doing so through 'instinctive' type stuff. Target pops up, you fire automatically, don't think about it, and doing it a lot to drum it in. was quite interesting doco and also covered other psych stuff. PeterNZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Rock Posted March 28, 2000 Share Posted March 28, 2000 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>well.. I can't remember where i came across this info..Just thought I'd throw it out there.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I wonder if it was an article by Lt Col David Grossman. He's become a bit of a specialist on this and related topics. His book "On Killing" is an extraordinarily good read on issues related to the psychology of killing, both in combat and in non-military contexts. Highly recommended. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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