Frontsoldaten -- Allied Casualty Revelation?

[Mlapanzer]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I would like to see (at some point down the road) squads split up realistically - a Brit squad in the game breaks down as 5 and 5, in real life they trained to break down as a 4 man Bren team and 6 man rifle team. When at full strength. I guess I'm saying I would like to see more detail at the squad level - and this would also reflect the "fighting in 2s and 3s" you mention above. Maybe give squad leaders, or even fireteam leaders the same comand advantages a platoon HQ does, in order to simulate individual aggressiveness?

I doubt this is possible now given the complexity of the game as is - just something to consider when we all are running Pentium 1000s.

Not only is this not possible but would change the scope of the game. I look at it that a squad is actually fighting in smaller groups. You are just giving them the command of the area you want them to be in.

As for portraying national characteristics. How can you prevent a guy playing the British from using his infantry and armor together when the British doctrine was to separate the 2?

On another note I never said it was U.S. doctrine to put men from the same area together. But that there were many instances where they were.

and I still say you can't make blanket statements like the German soldier was 1.5 times more effective overall than the Allied soldiers.

(I.E. English,Scots,Welsh,Gurka,Pole, Free French,South African,New Zealand, Australian, Canadian, American and also African American. Hope I didn't leave anyone out )

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Mlapanzer:

Not only is this not possible but would change the scope of the game.

True enough.

I look at it that a squad is actually fighting in smaller groups.

They don't. They only fire at one target at a time, for example, unless you split the squad. I don't think this one can be rationalized around. I will agree, though, that having control over this would be ahistorical and cumbersome.

As for portraying national characteristics. How can you prevent a guy playing the British from using his infantry and armor together when the British doctrine was to separate the 2?

Not the kind of characteristics I meant - we were talking about the stereotypical stuff - British are "cool under fire", Japanese are suicidal and stealty, Russians go berserk - if you ever played Squad Leader you would know what I mean. Don't confuse this with doctrine.

On another note I never said it was U.S. doctrine to put men from the same area together. But that there were many instances where they were.

See above

and I still say you can't make blanket statements like the German soldier was 1.5 times more effective overall than the Allied soldiers.

(I.E. English,Scots,Welsh,Gurka,Pole, Free French,South African,New Zealand, Australian, Canadian, American and also African American. Hope I didn't leave anyone out )

Sure we can, didn't you hear us? As for it being true or not...

No, you are perfectly correct that such a thing may be difficult to prove, but I think we are making some headway here. I don't like statistics at the best of time, but coupled with some of the anecdotal bits here, there may be a convincing enough case to be made.

[Mlapanzer]

since this should be write under your post micheal I won't bother with the quotes. It gets cumbersome.

I have played squad leader quite a bit in my youth before I found women and booze

I think maybe by accident were starting to converge on onto the same thought.

[Michael Dorosh]

You have to admit, those red BERSERK counters added some flavour to the game, yes? Same with the black SS counters in Cross of Iron.

I think that kind of stuff would be out of place in CM so I won't push the conversation much farther in that direction. However, if it can be "proven" (good luck) that German infantry platoons routinely acted with more initiative, it is worth considering some sort of portrayal of that.

Remember the Finnish in Crescendo of Doom? They were allowed to rally without leaders in homage to the individualism they were reputed to have shown. Perhaps the real Finns on the board can comment on this - I've always wondered if this (I think they call it "sissui" in the rulebook) was an exaggeration as well.

[Mlapanzer]

OOPs hit the submit Reply button by mistake

When you talk about the stereotypical aspects of the different nationalities not being able to be attributated to all the individuals of a countries forces. Thats the same thing I'm saying about ALL German soldiers being 1.5 times more effective than an Allied soldier. Blanket statements like that just sound very racist to me. Oh man I'm starting to sound like a liberal

I think the point about the German and Allied armies effectiveness peaking at different times in the war is very true.

The German soldier in 1940 and 41 is far different the soldiers faced very late in the war. Now if maybe these so called effectiveness rating were broken down by time periods and situations I could stomach them more but as I have read and understood them in this thread they are just to general of a statement to hold any water to me.

The idea that the only way the Allies won the war is because they out manufactured and could stand to loose more men than the Germans is just such an over simplification of history as to useless. No Allied leader planed on winning by saying we can afford to loose more men than the Germans. Well not the western ones anyway.

One last question. Why is it that everytime the German Generals made mistakes it's either ALL Hitlers fault or it's because they didn't have the supllies to do the job?

Not every German commander was a military genius and not every Allied one was a bumbling idiot.

BTW: how about sending me some of those Cuba cigars you can get up in the Great White North

[Michael Dorosh]

I agree with what you're saying - but if the German soldier was trained differently, and fought differently, that CAN be applied universally across the board. Don't ask me how! But I think it comes out of the realm of "racial" characteristics - but of course we've just gone in a full circle since I told you not to confuse it with doctrine - which is what I'm now talking about!

That being the case, I'm forced to agree with you; my thinking on this is sufficiently muddy to confuse myself, much less anyone else unfortunate enough to stumble on this. This is better left alone, and for CM to attempt to modify this would be a mistake.

Can't send you any goodies; Customs is TOO good!

[Kitty]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

your name calling doesn't add to the level of discourse - this was, for me, one of the best conversations we've had going in recent days, I hope it won't devolve into immature name calling because of your lack of understanding of military procedure. I'm here to learn, not namecall when I don't understand something, B]

Hehe, get a grip. I understand perfectly. I wasn't calling anyone names except the author of the book for making that unfounded statement. And I again say it, he is a twit. As for any "lack of understanding of military procedure" I may or may not have, I'm fairly certain that you have no clue as to what I do and do not know, and what I do know would probably surprise you.

Kitty

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[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Kitty:

Hehe, get a grip.

yeah, yeah, day late and a dollar short. Check out my apology to you in the locked thread called Apology to Kitty, before it passes onto page 2

[Guest tero]

>Remember the Finnish in Crescendo of Doom? They were allowed to rally without leaders in homage to the individualism they were reputed to have shown. Perhaps the real Finns on the board can comment on this -

Unfortunately I was never fortunate enough to get a hands-on acquaintance on SL/ASL.

From what I have heard it is the best representation of the Finnish .... elan ... ever to present in a game.

Finnish units did panic under extreme pressure with the best of them. But the did also repulse attacks against odds that were extraordinary as well. Übermench our fathers and grandfathers were not.

>I've always wondered if this (I think they call it "sissui" in the rulebook) was an exaggeration as well.

It is spelled sisu BTW.

Was it an exaggeration ? Lets just say that if you apply the DuPuy formula you will get results that will unbalance the Gauss curve. From 1939 to 1944 we sustained around 25 000 KIA during Winter War while we inflicted KIA on the Soviet around 140 000 - 200 000 KIA. When the ridiculously lobsided advantage the Soviets had on EVERY cathegory (except perhaps troop morale and commitment) you care to mention is taken into account our army should have folded before the war even started. We did lose but we did deny the attacker his ultimate goal.

How can our very survival be explained away if not with troop training, "national characteristics" and one over looked factor that was the early mobilization ?

[Michael Dorosh]

I knew the spelling was wrong, I was too lazy to dig out my rulebook.

Thanks for comments; Finnish national character has fascinated me ever since I first read about it - you are right in that much of your history is unknown to us in North America.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

I will start with less controversial, later, elements of the thread, then move back to the pulling of teeth.

In answer to the "fight in small units" questions, you already can in CM. Take VGs and split the squads and you have 4 man teams, some with all MPs and some with LMG+MPs, and one or both with a faust too. Use LMGs and you have 2 man nests. Snipers are single men of course. Schreck and FT teams are 2 men as well. There is nothing stopping you from doing it if you think it actually helps. I personally find it useful in deception situations, but in few others. Staying power is useful for most infantry tasks, more useful than risk limitation by using just a few men.

Next, I find someone advancing the proposition that PWs should not be considered combat losses, and excluding them shows the "effectiveness" of the typical German soldier. I get it. By combat effective, you mean 10 times as likely to shout "kamarade!" and throw down his arms, right? And, say, if when the first ramp went down, one sniper shot one tommy, and then the entire Wehrmacht surrendered, then by this "definition", the "combat effectiveness" of the Germans would be infinite. For that matter, if the Allies had shot them all instead, then the Allies would have been more "effective", right? It is patently ridiculous to exclude PWs from forces KO'ed.

Moreover, it misses half the point of firepower tactics, of the "heavy on the HE, please" variety. Here is how those were described at the time in a "lessons learned" report, about the breakout period, and Brittany and western France campaign. Understand, these are tactics intended to make complete use of an overwhelming local superiority, brought about by prior maneuver, and used by U.S. armored division units.

"Techniques of combat teams varied, but generally they consisted of the application of great fire power with large caliber guns on enemy positions, followed by infantry and engineer assault. All was one continuous movement of fire power on and men into and through the position, and the design was to *drive the enemy under cover* in *isolated groups* incapable of *organized* resistance. The sequence was as follows:

1. Arty placed a heavy concentration of white phosphorus and high explosive which produced casualties on enemy in the open, started fires, and drove the enemy into buildings or trenches and away from their anti-tank guns and machine gun emplacements.

2. Before the Arty ceased firing, tanks, tank destroyers, and anti-aircraft guns as well as assaulting infantry and engineers moved in close to swell the volume of fire on enemy positions. Through direct fire on likely buildings and positions, the enemy was driven from upper stories to cellars or pinned down in trenches or dug-outs. Moreover, this direct fire destroyed any anti-tank guns or machine guns still firing.

3. Under cover of this barrage of direct and indirect fire (controlled by Arty forward observers and leaders of armored large caliber guns with the assault wave) the infantry moved on foot into the town or position and dropped white phosphorus and fragmentation grenades into cellars and trenches to destroy isolated groups or bring them out prisoner. A minimum time elapsed between the lifting of large caliber gun fire and the arrival of infantry on the objective. The risk of minor casualities from our own fires was of less consequence than attack on an enemy who had remanned his guns.

The effect on the enemy of this type of assault was decisive. Whole companies surrendered without much opposition and, in one case where 182 had been killed by large caliber gun fire, a heavily armed infantry battalion surrendered in ARMAUCOURT to a platoon of engineers fighting as infantry. The Combat Team of which this platoon was a part also included one light tank company, 1 tank destroyer platoon and 2 sections of anti-aircraft supported by Arty. In JEANDELINCOURT, it was reported that an entire German company which surrendered fired hardly a shot in opposition."

The whole idea of such tactics is to convince the defenders that "we can just stand here and shoot you all day", and to make exposed positions to fight back suicidal. It is not in the least surprising, and in no way changes questions of "effectiveness", that men in such relatively isolated positions, so attacked, capitulate. They are every bit as much "taken out" as if the grenades had hit them all.

And it seems to me it ought to come as shocking news to the CM maneuver guru contingent, that surrounding and pocketing some formation, reducing them and eventually taking them prisoner, doesn't "count". Is this an advocacy of firepower over maneuver masquerading as a definition of "effectiveness"?

Some seem to have completely misunderstood my discussion of the combat effects of odds. If anything like the sorts of number Dupuy is after (or anyone else trying to make the same analysis), are to make the slightest sense, then odds effects have to be understood first. His entire point was to try to remove them, by first estimating them. Which he may have gotten wrong or right, that is neither here nor there. But I instead get bizarre assertions like odds do not matter for determining effectiveness. If so, then there is nothing to determine - everybody knows who won.

In addition, I find assertions being advanced about "seperated TDs", apparently passing for a sort of conventional wisdom on this board, that simply have no connection to facts. Indeed, they make me wonder if those making them, have ever read a unit history in their life. (Or perhaps, some have never read an Allied one).

TDs were organized into divisional-level battalions in all armies, including the German army. That allowed the divisional commanders to add or subtract AT fighting power from his sub-units, based on how he assigned these assets among them. But they were so assigned. The U.S. armor used task forces, the U.S. infantry called them combat teams, the Germans called them kampgruppes. None of these refers to depleted whatsis or amalgamated leftovers, although those are not excluded from them. They just mean combined arms from various units to achieve some purpose.

A typical U.S. armor task force was 1-2 tank companies, 1-2 armored infantry companies, support by an assigned artillery battalion - *and* a TD platoon, an engineer platoon, a AA platoon, and a light tank or other recon platoon. The TDs were not off in Montana. They were able to operate independently, but that just meant they could work in any team, because they did not need outside assets to do their own job (for instance, they had their own FOs and recon etc).

This system had great flexibility. A single TD battalion sometimes served at different times in 4 different armies, in 7 different corps, in 11 different divisions, over its operational life. There were 84 of these battalions, enough for every division to have one and for others to be available in corps and army level reserves, to be assigned to whatever division needed more help, or to relieve spent formations. The U.S. used a similar system for the recon guys, although every armored division also had an organic recon battalion.

The assertion seems to me to be based on an idea, not only that armor didn't have TDs with it, when it did, but also that the U.S. armor was constantly colliding with German armor on a large scale. This is simply not the case. Yes, such fights happened. But for a typical armor battalion, they happened 1-3 times over the course of the whole war.

You don't believe me. You haven't read the unit histories. OK, so this is how they go.

An armored battalion in a U.S. armored division. Saw no combat in Normandy, was deployed for the breakout. Never *saw* a German tank during Cobra. Raced through Brittany, reducing pockets, swept over the Seine, makes it to the westwall without a single tank duel. First big set-piece attack there, 2 companies go in to lead an attack by armored infantry. Heavy shell fire, on the same ridge for hours supporting the foot-pounders. 2 tanks disabled by enemy artillery, the first combat losses of the battalion's life.

Next, fighting through westwall and related lines. They keep getting infantry-gun blocking positions set up in the villages. So they decide to go up on the ridges, despite the mud (which the defenders were probably counting on, in their "roadblock" style strongpoint defense). They get far enough along one, shoot back into the village behind, support the infantry by fire, etc. No losses.

One team doing this gets far enough ahead, that it is basically through the German defense-in-depth, and occupies an undefended village farther on. This team has a company of Shermans (~15), a platoon of TDs (4), and 2 platoons of armored infantry (~10 HTs). Well, the Germans don't like how far they've gotten, so they counterattack, with what they have. That turns out to be 8 StuG and a company of infantry.

19 against 8. The 8 are attacking. They are not Panthers, they are StuGs. There are TDs there. Strategy is the art of not fighting fair. The Germans lose 2 StuGs and withdraw the rest, but the infantry keeps attacking. The team calls arty in on them and repulses them with that and all their MGs (60-70 vehicle-mounted MGs), etc.

But the Germans aren't done. They come again, in greater numbers. A full company of U.S. armored infantry reaches the same village to add to the defense, and this second attack is repulsed too. Altogether, the Germans have sent a battalion of infantry after them so far. But no more tanks or TDs, because they don't have enough and 6 against 20 would just be suicide.

The Germans send the other two battalions of the same infantry *regiment* after them, at night. What do you think the defenders do? Do they need 17-lbers? No, they call for fire, and by the end of this particular fight, 18 *battalions* of artillery (that is more than 50 arty FOs in CM terms, folks) are firing in support of this one team. Naturally, even 3-4:1 infantry odds do not help much, when two infantry battalions are trying to walk through the fire of 18 artillery battalions. The German counterattacks fail; the team lost no tanks or TDs.

Am I giving you only the examples where the team does well? No, not at all. This battalion had its downside experiences in the Bulge, that is all. Before the Bulge, every single fight it was in, the U.S. held all the aces. The only "high card" it had seen so far, was arty getting those 2 out of ~30 back at the westwall over the course of hours. When things go bad, they still do not go bad in a "fight fair", marquis of queensbury rules, CM-like manner.

One of the battalion's component tank companies, counter-attacking in the Bulge, is trying to climb a particular slope, and have problems with bogs. It is dusk. Half stuck and in the open, they are suddenly fired upon by well hidden PAK (plural) in a village to their left rear. They are up in the still-lighted hills. The PAK are down in the shadows of the village somewhere. They can't see the PAK to save their lives, literally. They pull off the ridge, but in the course of doing so, in less than four minutes, 7 of the company's 17 tanks are knocked out.

"And then?" And then nothing. Nobody ever saw those PAK. No follow on fight ensued.

But they did have to tackle a different village later. This time they were trying to actually attack. They lost 14 tanks to concealed PAKs, calling in artillery fire on them without result, and had to call it off.

Then a German tank-infantry team counterattacks them. They are obviously not in great shape. The German tanks KO 4 more tanks, and the Americans just retreat. More tank-infantry teams come after them. They get help from some extra TDs showing up, and call in lots of arty which manages to strip the infantry off of the tanks. The counterattack is stopped with heavy loss. The battalion lost 6 Shermans.

All of the above happened in one 8 day stretch in January. The battalion is then taken out of the line for replacements - it lost 31 tanks in those 8 days in the Bulge. The men also sleep for the first time in 3 days. By the time they are back to the front, the Bulge fight is basically over and won.

The same formation soldiers on. Does anything remotely like the Bulge fighting every happen to them again? No. From then one, every fight they are in until the end of the war, again, the U.S. holds all of the aces. But it is instructive to go through them.

They lost one TD to a faust at a roadblock. Notice, this is the only time that happened to this battalion in the entire war. I will describe other late-war roadblocks encountered, later. But once was a "lesson", and that was enough.

The battalion team hit a serious blocking position, defended by around 10 StuG supported by abundant mortar fire. Do you think they noticed their ~4:1 odds, their faster turrets and gyros, and waded in to duke it out in a CM armor-fest?

Noooo. They had seen companies get blown up by AT weapons in villages. They did not have to face the grind of the Bulge style fight, where tank numbers were locally near-equal and holding this or that position meant life of death to a unit on the flank. They had all the time in the world.

They pulled back and used the radio. Not 2, not 4, but 36 P-47s dove out of the sky and went for that village and its defenders. They worked the place over for about 10 minutes. Then infantry flanked the village and worked its way forward. The Germans abandoned the position, and a number of PWs were taken. No tank duel took place at all, and not one battalion AFV was hit.

Later, they came upon isolated StuG-infantry positions, probably from those who withdrew from the previous block. But now the Germans had positions of 2 StuGs here with a platoon, 3 Stugs there with 2 platoons. They were taken out in sequence.

Understand, in CM terms these fights would be - give the Germans 2-3 Stug and 1-2 infantry platoons, put them in the middle of the map, and then give the U.S. 15 Sherman 76, 15 Sherman 75, 12 Hellcat, 15 Stuart, 4 Priest, 25 M3 halftracks, an infantry company, a pioneer platoon, and 3 105mm FOs. The U.S. didn't lose a single vehicle. When that same force saw *10* Stugs, it didn't want to fight even *that* fair, and called for 36 fighter-bombers instead. Why? Because they *could*, that's why. That is the kind of match-ups this battalion faced in the late war.

They hit another small roadblock. This time they didn't lose a TD to a faust, because they didn't get that close. They stopped short of it, deployed 5 tanks alongside the road, had a couple of "mad minutes", and took all of 10 PWs. Then they drove on. They hit another one. Then hung a right and just went around. Why? Because they could - there was no line anymore.

This same battalion, over the course of the whole war, lost about as many tanks to mechanical failures as to German action. Which was not untypical, by the way. It had a TOE of around 70 tanks, and usually swapped a company or two of them to other battalions for armored infantry and other attachments, leaving a tank-heavy team. It was still the administrative unit for its tanks, whoever had them in their column. It drew a total of 80 replacement tanks over the course of the war, to replace the 33 lost in combat, the mechanical failures, and upgrades to 76mm types.

Now, of all the action this unit saw - and there is plenty I haven't mentioned, where it was shooting up infantry and gun positions but not in any serious danger of losing tanks - or didn't lose them anyway - the *only* actions it was involved it, that bear a resemblence to CM fights, were those 8 days in the Bulge, or even more narrowly, about the second half of them. That was the period when it faced enemy tanks in near-even numbers, and that is when it took serious losses. But if you thought those 4 or 8 days were the typical days for a U.S. armored battalion, you'd have an entirely erroneous view of the whole war.

Next, I notice that one fellow reacted to my entirely factual and verifiable claim about U.S. armor divisions not having frontages until the breakout, with a rhetorical question about whether CM is wrong to allow U.S. tanks in Normandy. Then, the same fellow seemed to imagine I was "unfairly" comparing losses of armor to loses of armor and infantry or something. Huh?

OK, maybe I am facing a level of ignorance about U.S. forces that I hadn't dreamed of. The tanks were not all in the armored divisions. About half of them were, if you count the TDs along with the tanks. The rest were with the infantry divisions.

A U.S. infantry division almost uniformly had one battalion of tanks attacked, plus the TD battalion, and often a recon battalion in addition but not always. That means the infantry divisions had 90 heavy AFVs, and 6-32 light ones (Stuarts, M-8s). About half the tanks of a German Panzer division, in other words.

A U.S. armored division had around 300 AFVs, around 1/4 of them light. A German infantry division might theoretically be authorized 31 assault guns, but in Normandy they didn't have them - the StuGs were filling holes in the Panzer divisions (e.g. missing Jadgpanzers).

For the armored battalions attached to the infantry divisions, the Normandy fight was much like the Bulge fight was for both kinds. In both cases there were periods of intense attrition combat on relatively even terms, for some periods. Some of these armor battalions lost up to 80% of their TOE in Normandy, much as the one gone through above lost a high % of its TOE in the Bulge. Some infantry divisions were in one fight and not the other, several were in both, most were only in the Bulge (or Alsace counterattacks). These battalions have losses of up to 200% of TOE over the course of the war, much like the infantry divisions as a whole.

And the overall losses in the infantry tank battalions was higher for another reason - because they tended to be committed in smaller formations to more fights, instead of in big wallops where the U.S. would be more likely to hold all the aces.

Incidentally, casualties varied in the armor divisions too, by the unit type. They were highest in the armored infantry, 3 or 4 times higher than most types. Artillery and AA were three times lower than most types. Armor, TDs, and engineers were similar. Non battle losses were generally equal to battle losses, with artillery the #1 battle cause, and disease the #1 non-battle cause. Bullets were a distance second for battle casualties, and accidents were about as common.

One fellow made the comment that he doesn't see the relevance of the number of operational AFVs in a theater. Then he doesn't see most of the military realities of WW II. The fights where one side had the aces are set up by exactly such imbalances, and in that particular item. "But PAK did half of those losses in the Bulge". Certainly, but for that unit, they didn't do *any* outside of it. Why do you suppose that is?

Because when you can take your time, or go around, or send the infantry in on the flank, or call the air-force, or dump 18 battalions worth of HE on somebodies head, his well hidden PAK doesn't do diddly. At best, the ambush by the roadblock effect. But when attempting those things would mean the unit just to your right gets overrun by a tank-infantry team and chopped to pieces while you stand there waiting, you do not have the luxury of stopping the war until you have pulled and played your ace-de-jour.

As long as the Germans had serious tank reserves in Normandy, here is what happened. The infantry went in and got pinned. Artillery fire depleted the Germans some in reply. If the tanks were sent in in dribs and drabs, they made little difference. If the tanks were sent in en masse, the nearest Panther battalion was lent to the guys at the front and it killed a bunch of tanks, losing some but not too many in return.

Take away the last option, and let the artillery crump away for a while to make the initial pinning harder, and when the tanks go in, nobody stops them. PAK do not stop them. Fausts do not stop them. They drive to Paris. And every position along the way sees the "won't fight fair" type of fights, not Quick Battles.

What I am saying happened in Normandy, is that the Allies attrited the German tank force before the breakout. The Germans could not replace the lost tanks, and their fielded tank force was dropping. The U.S. and British might have been losing tanks at 2:1, but it didn't matter, because they were replacing at least many of them - and even more so, because they were holding 1500 of the things in reserve in the uncommitted U.S. armor divisions - and another 750-1000 in divisions only put ashore after the breakout.

The Germans send 2500 AFVs to Normandy, and they only have 300 operational. Probably 500 of the difference is mechanical breakdowns and such. 1700 were lost in action. Perhaps they killed 3000, the full TOE of the U.S. infantry division tanks and TDs, and 2/3rds of the TOE of the Brits, and perhaps the U.S. infantry division tanks and TDs were only at 1/2 of TOE because of it, and the Brits at 2/3rds, having collectively taken 1500 replacements.

The end result is quite completely the same. There are 1500-2200 tanks held out of the battle, *ignoring* the Brit and U.S. infantry division ones. There are perhaps 2500 more in those, but who cares? There is no way in a warm place that a mere 300 running tanks can hold a front 150 kilometers long against a mass of 1500 tanks released at some point along it.

The Allies only needed to send 2-3 times as many tanks to Normandy, and then to let attrition take its course, and nudge it along with attacks, even costly attacks. The result would be a small German tank force, and as soon as that was brought about, the Allied armor not yet used at all would prove decisive.

That is just how you apply an odds edge intelligently. You don't need to break through with your initial 2:1. You kill the defenders (or their critical weapons in this case), and then your initial 2-3:1 becomes 10 to 1. That logic is what attrition is all about.

I wonder why this is so hard to grok. Perhaps it is easy enough to understand, but the conclusion is resented for some unfathomable reason.

[Michael Dorosh]

There are 1500-2200 tanks held out of the battle, *ignoring* the Brit and U.S. infantry division ones. There are perhaps 2500 more in those, but who cares?

Jason, British and Canadian infantry divisions did not have tanks.

Once again you are applying American numbers and stats across the board, aside from not admitting to your serious error of confusing "Allied" losses with "American" losses (there is a large difference.) While I don't know enough to agree or disagree with the numbers and examples you provide, your treatment of anything outside your obvious area of expertise doesn't provide me much confidence in your other statements.

I'm not sure I agree that the Tank was the Allied ace - especially given their technical inferiority. Artillery, and even heavy bomber support, was surely just as important, if not more so on many occasions.

Getting back to the original line of thought regarding training - here's something a little more relevant.

(British infantry) had never been encouraged to "probe, draw conclusions, infltrate and exploit weaknesses in the enemy's dispositions."

Not so the Germans. Private Adolf Rogosch of the German 352nd Infantry Division....(knew he) could rely on his own skills and not be dependent on other combat units. "We knew that if the American attack came, we'd probably be cut off from one another. So we learned to fight as individuals."

The Soldiers's Story: Victory at Falaise by Denis Whitaker

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

Michael, why are you being so dense, and blaming it on me? LOL. I know how the Brits deployed their tanks. I said the British tanks, and those of the American infantry. All of both of those categories were engaged during the attrition phase of the battle, with the Brits using their armor formations in e.g. Epsom and Goodwood. The British armor was not held out of the battle. The U.S. armor in the armored divisions was, until the breakout.

And I did not "make a serious error about U.S. v. Allied", I simply gave a U.S. figure and assumed everyone is capable of multiplying by 1.5 (whole war), or 2 (Normandy alone). If you aren't, then be sure to say so, but do not assume I am not.

The Germans cannot lose more in Normandy in 2-2.5 months, than the U.S. lost in the whole ETO ground war, and *not* have lost more overall than the Allies lost, in the whole war. Normandy is not 2/3rds of the campaign, it is not 1/2 of the campaign. (it is more like 1/4). If you are incapable of seeing this deduction, that is your fault and not mine.

As for "comments outside area of expertise", just what is that, in my case?