Direct hits on theoretically confined units

[JonS]

Originally posted by JasonC:

"Something the Western Allies wouldn't really be able to do until March-May '45"

Um, were they still in the south of France in March?

Narrow front, approx Corps-sized advance.

Were they in Normandy?

Granted, but obvious, and it was following on the heels of a comprehensive collapse.

Salerno or the toe of Italy?

Both ~ corps sized advances.

The beaches of Gela?

Small isolated battlefield. Corps sized.

The edge of Tunisia?

Initial approach from both the south and the west was corps sized. Final break-in/through was on a corps (actually divisional) frontage.

At El Alamein?

The follow up was at best corps sized.

There were spurts in the west just like there were spurts in the east. Rapid exploitations that stall from logistical overreach, build up, large scale hard fighting with attrition, one side getting too weak to stand at the old positions, a collapse and a new pursuit phase - was utterly normal on all fronts.

Agreed, but invariably on a much smaller scale in the west.

The Russian front is bigger and the forces much larger, that is about all one can say.

Which, oddly enough, is what I said

Regards

JonS

[JasonC]

""spurts of significant motion" were months-long campaigns invoving vast amounts of men and material. Something the Western Allies wouldn't really be able to do until March"

False on its face. You deserved it. lol.

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

didn't the Russians basically defeat the Germans in a giant war of artillery attrition? I mean sure, Barbarossa started out as a highly mobile affair but really, once the RKKA started producing lots of T-34s and German tank losses piled up didn't things basically grind to a halt except for a few spurts of significant motion?

Well, sort of, except those "spurts of significant motion" were months-long campaigns invoving vast amounts of men and material. Something the Western Allies wouldn't really be able to do until March-May '45.

the long term detrimental effects of sustained artillery pressure ring fairly true to me when I think about the fate of the German army. I might be mistaken about this, but didn't the Russians essentially win by neutralizing the German armoured threat and then slowly grinding away with concentrated artillery (in the order of hundreds of guns per kilometre of front)?

Artillery and mortars caused by far the largest proportion of cas in all armies, AFAIK. On the order of 60-80%.

There are others (calling Kip! Calling Kip! Kip, please come to reception!) far more capable of speaking to the Russian tactics in the later war years, but your description above is somewhat simplistic. Also, the 'X hundred guns per kilometre' kind of stats - when applied to the army of any nation - are fairly meaningless. Easy to visualise, but meaningless. Command and control, and resupply, are the real arbeiters of artillery 'power', though they're much hander to visualise.

Regards

Jon </font>

[Andreas]

Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

Not sure about 1944 and 45.

Read this.

How to attack like a Soviet Rifle Corps in 1944

[Wartgamer]

Actually Jason came into the thread with his attrition theory and used the bad example of DBP as proof of his theory. As has been pointed out, the French were perfect targets. Its hardly material to relate to the armies fielded in ETO.

Also, it has been pointed out to him that his 'tons-o-ammo' vs. 'tons-o-building-materials' is wrong in many situations. The hedgerows being a prime example. The tons of material (hedgerows/sturdy buildings) are already there and easily defeats artillery. See the Normandy map he posted. Individual dugouts into a hedgerow do not take weeks to build. It is perhaps a few hours work. Multiple dugouts are positioned throughout that map. He wants you to believe each one is manned.

Jason's attrition theory is spiraling closely to using artillery as a tactical weapon. He wants you to believe that you must go out and attack with it AND with other weapons. In other words, combined arms. Nothing new.

For whatever reason, winning must be by attrition to Jason. The Germans lost nearly as many men from surrendering units. They will be explained as attrition by Jason. The Germans did not send more than 1 replacement for each 10 men lost in Normandy (June/July). There will be another attrition aspect to this.

The Germans were not always defending and suffered horribly at St. Lo trying to counter attack (and in many other actions in Normandy). They were murdered by artillery while trying to counter attack St. Lo (which saved the day since the US units in St Lo were weak). Artillery is best used against troops that are attacking in the open to get the best bang for buck. The US and CW artillery was just too well tied in and the German tactics from the previous years of fighting were old school.

Mortars, believe it or not, are more effective in support of units attacking hedgerows than most artillery. They do not have the very long dispersion that artillery exhibits, and the very steep angle, combined with fuse delay, can inflict casualties. The US used HE/smoke mortar concentrations to root out Germans in hedgerows on more than a few occasions.

Artillery in the jungle only accounts for about 50% cas usually. The Bocage may have had similar results and inf weapons/direct fire AFV, etc may have made up for the numbers. Being in one hedgerow, facing an enemy in another; I would not want artillery that was behind me to fire at that hedgerow. I would be well within friendly-fire danger.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

Nothing pretty, mind you, like the Allies, but effective nonetheless.

I am wondering - what were the 'pretty' operations the western Allies conducted in 1943? The Kasserine Pass? The not very neat landing at Salerno? The successive bashing their heads against mountain lines in Italy? The failure to stop Axis forces from escaping across the straits of Messina? Monty's and Georgie's p*ssing match in Sicily?

So many to choose from... (and yes, I know there were great successes too, and they were still learning - but so was the Red Army, and it did have its 'pretty' successes too).

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

My impression is that the materiel needed to maintain forward motion can be as great or greater than that required to maintain a static line.

Well, sort of. An army in pursuit needs lots of petrol but doesn't shoot off as much ammo, tonnage-wise. The same army in a static situation won't burn as much fuel, but will usually shoot off a hell of a lot more ammo, and the ammo will tend to have a higher percentage of the big, heavy stuff in it because the artillery isn't struggling to keep up.

On the other hand, in a static situation, the logistics transportation net will usually be better established and therefore more efficient. The problem for the logisticians on the top level staff is anticipating what will be needed weeks or even months ahead and having plenty of it in the pipeline so that it arrives at the right time in the right quantities. The Western Allies were probably better at this than anybody, but there were still huge shortfalls. The fuel shortage at the end of summer, 1944, is well known, but there was also a shortage of artillery ammo for several months after they got to the West Wall.

Michael

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by Andreas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by jacobs_ladder2:

Nothing pretty, mind you, like the Allies, but effective nonetheless.

I am wondering - what were the 'pretty' operations the western Allies conducted in 1943? The Kasserine Pass? The not very neat landing at Salerno? The successive bashing their heads against mountain lines in Italy? The failure to stop Axis forces from escaping across the straits of Messina? Monty's and Georgie's p*ssing match in Sicily?

So many to choose from... (and yes, I know there were great successes too, and they were still learning - but so was the Red Army, and it did have its 'pretty' successes too). </font>

[Andreas]

If you read the link I provided, you'll know something about Iassy-Kishinev (Romania August 44) as well.

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by Andreas:

If you read the link I provided, you'll know something about Iassy-Kishinev (Romania August 44) as well.

Thanks for the link. One of these days I must really get around to taking a serious look at the Russian counterattack at Stalingrad. I would love to see how it evolved into something like what Mazulenko described.

Cheers

Paul

[Wartgamer]

Cover/vulnerability from artillery can be broken down as follows:

1. None. Out in the open. The impacting artillery will cause casualties primarily from fragments. Being close enough to be killed/wounded from the actual blast would mean 100% death from fragments anyway. Lying down significantly reduces your vulnerability. Height being the factor. Airbursts can negate even lying down. Airbursts can be caused by timed fuses, proxity fuses or shells jumping back off the ground from impact (those shells that come in at a steep enough angle).

2. Beneath ground level. Purposely dug position or naturally occuring terrain feature (ditch, etc). Very good temporary protection. Fragments defeated by earth. Airbursts mitigated but still a problem. ground bursts need very close strikes to defeat the earth cover.

3. Beneath ground level w/overhead cover. Overhead cover defeats most fragments. Safe from falling ejecta. Still vulnerable to direct hits by HE shells that will defeat the structure through collapse.

4. Same as above with additional thickness. Thickness depends on HE content of threat artillery. HE set on delay (even mortars) require substantial earthworks.

In the case of the infantry trench I posted before, the weapons positions give cover from direct fire weapons and initial rounds of artillery. The communication trench gives type 2. cover. The individual 'U.' positions give type 3. cover. And finally, the Unterstant gives type 4 cover for a group of men.

Bocage: The actual nature of the hedgerows allowed each man to generate an individual U position that also functioned as a Unterstant position also. The Command Posts still would have to dig a substantial fortification I would suppose.

The use of Bocage fighting, with its extreme density of troops, is as poor an example of troop dispersion in defense that you could find. I am not surprised that Jason would have to resort to it.

I actually copied that map into MS Paint and did substantial measurements. Even in this dense situation, you can't typically get that many positions under a square like he thinks.

Artillery can not be as squared as he says. You can not 'place' the square with such precision as needed.

[ March 25, 2005, 02:13 PM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]

[Sailor Malan]

I can follow JasonC's points, and they seem to make sense as written. I am struggling to understand Wartgamer's arguements though.

In response to the original question (do we need a critical system?), I am inclined to think that the borg spotting and other abstractions are far more significant, and don't really miss it (although it livened up many a game of SL!)

The high level statistics arguement that Jason uses does not get invalidated even if he were out on the unit density/barrage footprint debate (and I am not convinced he is). A significant number of casulties will be on units moving around (either whole units, or ammo carriers etc), or forming up for attack etc. Thus trying to decide whether his arguement stands or falls on the density of a infantry position is not helpful.

But I may have misunderstood the debate...

[Wartgamer]

A tactician may think the only point of arty is to suppress, because he doesn't expect a modest barrage to annihilate whole companies at a go. But a logistician knows better. You don't have to win the war this afternoon. The enemy is right over there, he isn't going anyplace. As fast as you can truck up the shells, he bleeds.

The only way to stop that is to dig in so deep, with such an enourmous investment in materials and labor, that every unit really has that double log bunker with 3 feet of packed earth, or (when the 150s and 155s come up) even more. Which only happens at lines prepared six months in advance by huge engineering operations, or static for ages.

This is Jason's origional argument. He seems to want to imply that just tossing shells will eventually defeat an enemy. Unless they have 6 months of labor/material invested.

Its untrue. The German trench position shown would not take anything like 6 months. Hedgerows defeat his time period even quicker.

His argument is clearly based on non-typical enemy unit densitys. There is no way that should have been missed.

[jacobs_ladder2]

Another question:

This one concerns the lethality radius of artillery. After looking at the FAS site for a while I came across something interesting that I did not fully understand. That being, the effect of trajectory on the shape of the lethality radius. Let me sum up what I have learned and hopefully someone will tell me if I have it right.

Obviously there are a few variables in play here, but generally, the higher the trajectory the more circular the blast area and the more centered the impact point. Also, a higher trajectory shell is more efficient because its blast hugs the ground while a large part of the blast of a lower trajectory shell will either go straight into the ground or up into the air.

A mortar round relies more on fragmentation then do other shells because a mortar round is fin-stabilized and therefore loses a certain percentage of its length (therebye decreasing its possible payload). A regular artillery shell is spin-stabilized and therefore does not require fins (therebye enabling it to carry a larger payload).

These two factors, to me, explain the 82mm mortar having roughly the same lethality radius as the 105mm howitzer. However, there is something I do not understand.

The lethality radius refers to the effect of a round on a standing/unprotected person. So shells fired from both weapons should be equally effective against standing/unprotected infantry. However, it seems to me that an 82mm mortar could not be anywhere near as effective against a prone/protected soldier. Or rather, the lethality radius would shrink much faster for an 82mm mortar round as the amount of cover increased than it would for the 105mm howitzer.

And since the majority of shells will be fired against prone/protected soldiers, the 82mm loses a great deal of its effect and is not truly as lethal as a 105mm shell.

All of which is fine and dandy, but there is still the matter of surpression. Which weapon is better at keeping the enemies heads down? Which weapon is more damaging psychologically? Does the high fire rate of an 82mm mortar allow it to compensate for its decreased lethality against protected targets?

Cheers

Paul

[JonS]

Here's something I wrote a few years ago. It's mostly on VT or prox, but the first section covers what you're asking about in your first two paragraphs. (note that the formatting is all up the wop)

link

[JonS]

More on the differences between mtrs and arty

[JasonC]

Right wargamer, everyone understands the Germans ran out of infantry in Normandy because of really aggressive toenail fungus. Or, they are still there. I'm done trying to reason with you, on this or any other subject. It is clearly just about your ego. And I don't take charity cases.

[Sailor Malan]

Originally posted by Wartgamer:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> A tactician may think the only point of arty is to suppress, because he doesn't expect a modest barrage to annihilate whole companies at a go. But a logistician knows better. You don't have to win the war this afternoon. The enemy is right over there, he isn't going anyplace. As fast as you can truck up the shells, he bleeds.

The only way to stop that is to dig in so deep, with such an enourmous investment in materials and labor, that every unit really has that double log bunker with 3 feet of packed earth, or (when the 150s and 155s come up) even more. Which only happens at lines prepared six months in advance by huge engineering operations, or static for ages.

This is Jason's origional argument. He seems to want to imply that just tossing shells will eventually defeat an enemy. Unless they have 6 months of labor/material invested.

Its untrue. The German trench position shown would not take anything like 6 months. Hedgerows defeat his time period even quicker.

His argument is clearly based on non-typical enemy unit densitys. There is no way that should have been missed. </font>

[Wartgamer]

The origional point of the thread was about vulnerability of certain positions to indirect fire. A mortar emplacement being cited I believe. The discussion, while naturally looking at many aspects, is relevant.

What is being discussed is how much more effective a 'concentration' (that is, when multiple batteries combine fire on a target area) and the expected payoff for rounds burned.

The CW expected about 250mx250m to be a concentration a regiment of guns (24 guns). Thats 62500 sq m. I think nearly everyone would agree with that.

What is debateable is the ability to 'move' that square around. Or even to observe it once it starts developing.

Now nearly anyone must realize that the shells are not distributed uniformly in the square. In the very real situation where artillery is firing perpendicular to an enemy line (that is, the guns and enemy front line are parallel), The square will basically having greater 'concentration' in the middle parrelel area.

So any optimization of using these concentrations relies on a concentration of troops and hopefully near the center area.

Its trading precision for numbers.

In the bocage, the necessity to concentrate ones own infantry (to cover small individual fields) was offset by the excellent cover/concealment available.

Calling in concentrations in the Bocage is hampered by the inability to actually observe the initial ranging rounds and the danger to one's own troops.

Targets were located using a map reference or target number. The basic process for ranging was to use a single gun, ordering corrections to it that all batteries in the engagement applied, unless otherwise ordered. If the correction was less than about 500 yards, it was ordered in the form Left or Right and Add or Drop in yards, which was applied by each battery to its own BT line. If more than about 500 yards then a cardinal point bearing and distance was used. Since these large concentrations covered quite large areas (regiment – about 250 × 250 yards, division about 350 × 350 yards, division with AGRA about 400 × 400 yards) precise corrections were generally deemed unnecessary.

In each battery all CPs calculated map data, which had to agree to within 50 yards and 30 minutes between the BCP and TCPs. On completion of ranging a regimental target it was usual to fire a single round from a pivot gun in each battery, and from each regiment for multi-regiment targets, before ordering gunfire.

Obviously the more regiments firing at a target the bigger the area affected by the fire. However, this was not a linear relationship. Basically, each troop’s mean point of impact (MPI) would be a distance from the MPI of the whole concentration in some direction. The more troops there were the greater the probability of there being some at a greater distance, a normal probability distribution. This is explained in more detail in Errors and Mistakes.

http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/errorsmistakes.htm

This is a must read.

Notice the use of a 'pivot' gun to fire a single round to confirm the calcs. This is somewhat hopeful since the dispersion of a gun can be much greater than the requirement.

Just using a single battery of guns, where one gun is used to 'vector-in' the battery, can be prone to error-assumptions. Lets say you are a FO, see a target (platoon of infantry moving), call for a ranging round (based off a nearby terrain feature), estimate its relation to the moving target, and then call for a 10 round FFE.

The fact that the ranging round could have been an outlier (see dispersion), makes the whole FFE a crap shoot. At best, given the predictable nature of width of dispersion to length, you may have got quite a few rounds somewhere laong the line between the guns and the target. But getting some of the target guys would have been luck. More than likely, the ranging round and initial rounds of the FFE would have made the target troops scramble for cover/concealment.

dispersion

This is a top down look at dispersion from a gun showing percentages.

Some data for thought..

From the above tables for predicted fire some key points emerge, assuming no mistakes. For 25-pdr at a range of 9,500 yds:

50% of fire unit's MPIs will be within 100 yds of the ordered target location in range and about 54 yds in line; and

100% of fire unit's MPIs will be within 400 yds and about 216 yds.

[ March 26, 2005, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]

[JasonC]

If infantry can sit at the bottom of cellars or in bomb proof dugouts all day, they can sit there for years. You don't even need to man the front. A few LPs will do. The other guy can fire all he wants at empty ground or cellar roofs. I've said repeatedly that concentrated artillery in time and place is a waste because it invites this response, and the proper application is gradual, against men threatened by infantry assault continually.

You can't stop continually infantry probing from the bottom of a cellar. Manned fronts - as opposed to LPs only - make good artillery targets. Infantry doesn't need to take the position in one rush, it just creates the threat that makes the enemy stand under the shellfire.

In practice, you can't hold ground without counterattacking, either. Constant infantry probing sets up a terrain ratchet. You have to be able to move the line the other way occasionally, to hold any defensive feature. Also the best time to get infantry out of an important position is the instant they take it, before they have had time to improve it etc.

Also, if you let such a ratchet exist you lose the improvements in your positions, continually. Even if the front only moves a few miles. You wind up fighting from foxholes and slit trenches, not continuous communications trenches and weapon positions with 105 proof overhead cover.

If you man a front, fight infantry probes every day, have to counterattack occasionally, lose ground - then you will be vulnerable to operational scale attrition by artillery fire. And not a little vulnerable, not as an afterthought. Run out of manpower sufficient to hold a line inside of a month vulnerable. Even with fresh formations arriving. Arty teeth grab you and logistics takes over from tactics. His shell thruput directly couples to your trench strength and infantry replacement rate, as something like big shells / 30 per unit time vs. new men per unit time. If his rate is higher, you lose.

One can calculate roughly what the Germans would have needed to hold in Normandy. The answer is at least 500 AFVs and 100,000 fresh, trained infantry per month. Fall short on either and the front collapses. Provide half those figures and you can postpone the outcome, but not stop it.

[Wartgamer]

So the Germans had adequate artillery?

They did not even supply adequate panzerfaust.

A German estimate of casualties was around 100K for June/July btw. The fact that they lost so many troops to surrender is another 'resource' wasted (not sure if counted in the 100K). Rommel himself brought it to Hitler's attention that he was not being supplied enough men/material to allow fighting to continue. Then a plane shot him up.

The Germans should not have held anything in Normandy but fought a war of defensive attrition where they inflicted greater casualties while slowly giving ground. This would have curtailed the loss from Prisoners and stopped the wholesale loss of major equipment. The Germans lost many more men to artillery while attacking than they did while defending.

I suppose most of the initial posts in this thread have been forgotten but I will reiterate the points anyway.

One of the things that this 'logisticians' warfare supposes is that the enemy will let you just bombard the snot out of you. In other words, artillery supremacy. The US may have had 'shell' superiority but not supremacy. The obvious thing is that an enemy will be able to determine where your very valuable/expensive artillerymen and pieces are (counter-battery). Will you risk losing them to kill/wound a half dozen grunts?

If the arty is being used as a pre-lude to an attack, will the enemy artillery not prepare to get its bloody bang for buck by attacking your exposed troops? So even if you get 1 'victory' for each 100 shells, the enemy might get his 1 victory for 15 shells?

[ March 26, 2005, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]

[Wartgamer]

I think Jason and I are in agreement that attacking defensive positions with artillery, and Veritible proves this out, is largely a waste of material. Veritible was attacking typically dug in troops. Not the Maginot line.

Artillery, if not used against an enemy that is attacking, is best used against enemy artillery, mortars, Command Posts, lines of communications.

Artillery can not fire full tilt forever. The US found this out in WWII. Shooting 24 guns at platoon sized targets gets expensive. The logistics of moving ammo from a US factory, across an ocean, across France shoots the logistician in the foot. Each 33 pound shell 'weighs' 100s of pounds in fuel, space, time, parts, food, lives, etc.

Troops do not have to stay in the cellers by the way. WWI proved this out. As long as a warning system allows troops to reman thier positions with fields of fire, an artillery attack followed by assaulting troops can be repulsed.

[ March 26, 2005, 11:53 AM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]

[jacobs_ladder2]

Now I'm lost. If 60-80% of casualties were from artillery and the vast majority of those casualties were from the infantry, where do these numbers come from?

What I mean is, Operation Veritable aside, clearly a lot of soldiers were being converted to casualties by artillery. I would think that would be a given.

Cheers

Paul

[Wartgamer]

It is a given. Its when troops are attacking or other situations where they are in the open. The Germans were very insistant on attacking any time they could. It became almost preditatble.

Its usually mortars AND artillery that are combined to get those high percentages. It is not always those high numbers either. In jungle warfare, it can be as low as 50%.

Heres an interesting stat. In Italy, 1000 KIA US troops were examined in detail. They wanted to see how they died, who died, etc.

87.5% were infantry or armored infantry. 2.7% were artillery. 2.7% were tank. 2.1% Engineers. 0.9% TD and the rest some others. Clearly, the inf/arm-inf were not 87.5% of the troops in the area. Most of the infs were due to either fragments or 'HE'. 80% were non-coms. 5.9% were officers. Rest NCOs.

228 out of 310 of single wound cases were either described as HE or Fragments. About 3/4. Rest were 'samll arms'. Multiple wound cases were very messy and often hard to determine what did the killing. Being machine gunned to death but laying in artillery barrage afterwards starts mucking up the stats.

But many HE and Frags could also have been direct fire weapons also. Its a messy business and some of the pics are unbelievable.

Even though the actual missiles were not recovered, the general breakdown of the causative agents was comparable to that determined in other ground force casualty surveys where witnesses were interrogated and autopsies were performed. Small arms accounted for 107 (10.9 percent) of the 983 missile-wounded casualties. Fragment-producing weapons were tentatively identified in the remaining 876 (89.1 percent) of these casualties. Shell fragments were identified with certainty in 382 (38.9 percent) of the casualties. However, the noncommittal term "high explosive" was used for 471 (47.9 percent) of the cases, and it was presumed that most of the missiles were derived from mortar and artillery shells. Hand grenades were positively identified in 3 (0.1 percent) of the casualties, landmines in 19 (1.9 percent), and aerial bombs in 1 (0.1 percent). If the exact identification of the missiles could have been made, the proportion of hand grenade and landmine casualties might have increased.

[ March 26, 2005, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]

[JonS]

Jacob - a word to the wise: Ignore member # 16504. The rest of us are.