Frontal Attacks

[Flibby]

Everyone knows the old tenants and warnings about frontal attacks. Army manuals warned against it unless almost as a last case scenario since the Great War.

I have recently been reading through the unit history of the 1st Gordon Highlanders of the 51st Highland Division in Normandy. My Grandmother is now 101 and one of her 10 brothers was killed just east of Caen sparking my interest.

What is of note is that the attacks that they were involved in from Battalion level, to Platoon level, were almost exclusively frontal attacks supported by armour, artillery and sometimes indirect fire from MGs in addition to their organic weapons, from June '44 to the end of the war.

Likewise when you consider the Falklands War, Goose Green, Wireless Ridge etc etc were frontal attacks albeit with varying levels of firepower in support.

Is it fair to say that the frontal attack is actual more common than the more widely taught flanking attacks? If so, is this due to training levels, a common lack of suitable terrain for flanking attacks, or simply that it's not necessary to do so when you have overwhelming firepower advantage?

[chuckdyke]

37 minutes ago, Flibby said:

Is it fair to say that the frontal attack is actual more common than the more widely taught flanking attacks?

Terrain dictates, example hard to do a flanking attack on D-Day. 

[Flibby]

7 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Terrain dictates, example hard to do a flanking attack on D-Day. 

Yes of course.

But aside from even very niche scenarios like an opposed amphibious landing, how often is one presented with an enemy who has left you a covered flanking position into close quarters of your position without there being another unit over watching that position?

The frontal attack seems the default in reality yet the outlier in training ...

[chuckdyke]

6 minutes ago, Flibby said:

The frontal attack seems the default in reality yet the outlier in training ..

Frontal by the units covering and the maneuver is doing the flanking. It all depends.

[Flibby]

23 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Frontal by the units covering and the maneuver is doing the flanking. It all depends.

 

I'm not sure whether I'm misunderstanding here.

I'm referring to flanking in the sense of one unit making a physical manoeuvre via a covered path to the side of the enemy unit before assaulting. 

I really just don't see massive evidence for this being a common occurrence at platoon or company level.

 

[chuckdyke]

Four Fs Find, Fix, Flank and Finish. Blitzkrieg of 1940 was a flanking attack they flanked the Maginot line. It is the function of armor. Flanking is assaulting Imo you can't attack straight on when the suppressive fire unit is behind you. 

[domfluff]

I'm curious as to why you consider Goose Green or Wireless Ridge specifically to not be examples of flanking.



For Goose Green, A company is fixing the main positions on Darwin Hill, with D and B using the dead ground around Boca House (what little there is in the area) to flank the Argentinian position.



For Wireless Ridge, you have a similar story, at a higher level, with a two axis attack.

Now, the Falklands is pretty barren, so you're not going to get the kind of density of terrain seen in Normandy, or even West Germany, because everything has to adapt to terrain.

So... I'm not sure where this idea comes from. Clausewitz has a lot to say about flanking, and the general thrust of the thing is that there's nothing particularly magical about being on a flank, it's only relevant in the context of the enemy. This is true for all levels - you don't have to have an approach route that's a convenient line of trees to allow your assault element to close... you just need a safe route to get as close as you can, regardless of what that looks like or how close that actually is.

The basic principles - attacking from two directions, with as much angular separation as you can manage between them - are as sound today as they've ever been, and even in extremely unsupportive terrain like the Falklands, it was still important enough to try to do in any way possible. It's certainly true that battlefield conditions won't match the textbook diagrams, but the purpose of that kind of thing is to teach you the core concepts, so you can apply them to rather more complex real-world situations later. You can't write a novel until you have a proper grasp of the alphabet. This definitely doesn't make the doctrinal manuals pointless or "just a guideline" - they're foundational, and foundations are what you build on.

Now, a broader question that is the subject of rather more discussion is whether the manoeuvreist approach to warfare that's dominated western military thinking for decades is actually a sound one. As a theoretical basis, there are certainly more voices recently that have argued that this kind of thinking doesn't match practical experience, and instead something rather more attritional is more effective... but regardless of the evidence for that, it won't apply to the tactical level, on a CM-relevant scale. 

[Flibby]

On 7/9/2023 at 11:40 PM, domfluff said:

I'm curious as to why you consider Goose Green or Wireless Ridge specifically to not be examples of flanking.



For Goose Green, A company is fixing the main positions on Darwin Hill, with D and B using the dead ground around Boca House (what little there is in the area) to flank the Argentinian position.

 

Dom

Sorry for my ignorance. I didn't see to get a notification of your reply as I would usually do.

I have literally just read Maj Phil Neame's new book 'Penal Company' about D Company of 2 Para in the Falklands.

The CO ordered the attack as a "2 up 1 back" movement to contact. D company was initially in reserve and C company was the reconnaissance company. A and B companies were engaged on the slopes of Darwin Hill and engaged in a very much frontal attack which was heavily bogged down. For the benefit of others, the CO joined up with A company and was killed when charging a machine gun nest. There was certainly no intent at that stage to perform a flanking attack and the CO even told Neame not to attempt to flank around the side of Boca House.

Once the CO went down, Neame did go to flank with his reserve company but ended up on the beach facing strong Argentine positions. It was only when the hill was finally taken by use of Milan missiles that Neame began firing his 12 company MGs and Milans at the Argies around Boca house. After this show of fire they surrendered despite being in particularly strong positions.

It was reading this which starting my thought process around the merits of a flanking attack. Obviously this wasn't the country for it anyway, but even if denser terrain, if you have fire superiority then it seems to me that you can advance frontally, maintaining rushes and performing fire and movement too. Of course it would be best to have an angle between the support fires but that would be more to increase the duration of their fires and maintain fire superiority than it would be to enable a wide flanking manoeuvre for the sake of it.

Your last paragraph makes me think however - is what you are saying that the flanking is useful to the point that you can reach your assault position without exposure to fire, but that of course the final 100-200 meters of an assault is always going to be frontal anyway? If so I can readily get on board so long as you were able to guarantee the flank security of that flanking element. Surely that it often if not more often than not, impractical. If you can guarantee fire superiority with arty and MGs on a raised position for example, surely the safest attack is straight up, where you know that the manoeuvre element isn't going to find any nasty surprises.

Of course this is often academic in actual conflict because someone being flanked is likely to reposition before you get anywhere near them if they can.

What I am not suggesting is frontal attacks ala the Canadian Black Watch on the Scheldt crossing 1200m without adequate support and getting mown down. It just seems that fire superiority is the key rather than a positional advantage from flanking which could present more of a problem than it solves...

Perhaps I just need to play against one of your experts to teach me how to do things properly   

[chuckdyke]

16 minutes ago, Flibby said:

What I am not suggesting is frontal attacks ala the Canadian Black Watch on the Scheldt crossing 1200m

It was not only a frontal attack, they flanked the Germans. 

[Flibby]

5 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

It was not only a frontal attack, they flanked the Germans. 

Operationally, absolutely. I was specifically talking about this action: https://www.liberationroute.com/pois/447/black-friday

[chuckdyke]

Frontal attack the Soviet method not 3:1 but 6:1 at least. Only massive fire superiority will succeed without communications. Funny the Germans attempted something similar in 1940. North of the country at a place called Kornwerderzand. They didn't get further than a probing attack, only place in Western Europe where the Wehrmacht was stopped. No way they could flank there, the Dutch Navy supported the defenders in the bunkers which were very strong defensive positions. 

Edited July 14, 2023 by chuckdyke

[chuckdyke]

Makes a nice scenario. 

[chuckdyke]

Story is here. 

[MikeyD]

If you're able to knock down or suppress anyone who pops up to shoot at you you'll be able to make progress, if you can't you won't. The reason why flank attacks are preferred is you've theoretically got fewer enemy units to suppress at any one time.

[Combatintman]

42 CDO RM's assault on Mount Harriet in the same conflict was about as flanking as flanking gets so it's not like that generation of commanders either didn't know of or didn't buy into the concept of flanking.  I can't speak for Wireless Ridge but I've been to Goose Green and finding a flank there is somewhat challenging - 2 PARA managed it after a while but probably had to start with the assumption that the Darwin Hill position more or less required battering through frontally.  I don't recall what information was available for planning at the time but a quick swatch at the map would immediately lead to the assumption that Darwin Hill would be held and that there wasn't a whole lot of room for fancy flanking stuff let alone very few covered/concealed approaches ...

[StieliAlpha]

How did a gaming friend in board game times say:  Why seek the flanks, when you can break through the center?

More seriously:

- Somebody has to be in the center and cannot always remain passive.

- Scale and perception: Performing a frontal attack in CM, does not mean that you are not part of a flanking attack in the larger picture.

- Being in a frontal attack mission does not stop you from seeking the „local flank“.

[Dynaman216]

Frontal attacks were more common since, in general, an opponent that allowed themselves to be flanked didn't last very long.