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What effect did the stabilized MG have on rifles?


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John: do you mean this man

http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/Wignam.txt

(Lionel Wigram ?)

That's the man -- "The forgotten father of battle drill". There has recently (in the past year or three) been a memorial tablet to him place in (IIRC) the senior NCOs' mess at Brecon.

Wigram saw battle drill as a means to overcoming the psychological shock of modern close combat. Another approach he expounded, which failed to catch on in the British Army, was "hate training".

I can't recall if he's been mentioned yet on this thread, but Dave Grossman ("On Killing" and "On Combat") provides what I think is the best and most recent overall summary of the question of the psychology of killing in combat. He is certainly much more readable than Joanna Bourke, especially as the edition of her book I have suffers from the vilest type-setting I have seen in all my puff. I also think he understands the soldier's mind in a way that Prof. Bourke, as an outsider, no matter how scholarly, really doesn't.

All the best,

John.

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Thanks, John. Such a good piece of writing by Wigram, too (gutful individuals !-- in plain English, "nutters"). Reminds me of something JasonC once wrote: elite units not made up of supermen, just guys who turn up on time and do what they're told, as a unit, under any conditions, no matter how dangerous or disgusting. Reminds me of Steinbeck's descrption of seeing SAS or commandos in Italy in '43: lots of expectation about the heroes of derring 'do, but finally sees 6 very tired, very small, very dirty men with huge packs, brewing tea.

Have read Bourke, on and off, quite illuminating about how vile WWII really was; Grossman, only know as a name. Will look up !

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[snips]

Reminds me of something JasonC once wrote: elite units not made up of supermen, just guys who turn up on time and do what they're told, as a unit, under any conditions, no matter how dangerous or disgusting.

I can't remember which Special Forces officer it was told this to me, and probably shouldn't tell you if I could, but he said something very similar; that special forces didn't do anything different from basic infantry, they just did the basic stuff better, and carried on doing it for longer.

Reminds me of Steinbeck's descrption of seeing SAS or commandos in Italy in '43: lots of expectation about the heroes of derring 'do, but finally sees 6 very tired, very small, very dirty men with huge packs, brewing tea.

Quite a few of the SF people I have met have the physique of weasels. Also, the eyes.

Have read Bourke, on and off, quite illuminating about how vile WWII really was; Grossman, only know as a name. Will look up !

In the unlikely event that you haven't read it already, I would also recommend John Ellis' "The Sharp End of War" for a comprehensive view of the all-round vileness of life in the infantry in WW2.

All the best,

John.

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I believe, reading first hand accounts, that quite a few of the survivors of the first wave, on Omaha, stripped off most of their kit and lay in the surf, pretending to be dead. I guess the Germans, hunched behind their 20rps MG-42's, were carrying out exemplary fire discipline. As for the Boer war, the widespread introduction of Khaki uniforms should have hampered the Boers target aquisition, once the soldiers had gone to cover (tropical topees and white webbing notwithstanding) that, and the disproportionate amount of fire directed at the officers. All those ostentatious badges of rank and uniforms, festooned with shiny buttons, might impress the ladies, but it also attracts a Mauser bullet.

On the topic of the Boer war, did the battlefield tactics of the non-regular regiments, especially the Commonwealth forces, have any influence on British Infantry tactics?

John Ellis is fantastic, it's not just infantry though, the account of the brewed up Shermans at Salerno still haunts me. The story of Davis in C Squadron, deliberately bouncing the shell of the Panthers sloped mantlet, to KO the tank, is also instructional, when debates about realistic simulation occur. His commander reported, that after pulling off this feat, (the only one to have done so) he was, "back at Headquarters, trying to recover his nerve".

I'll second the comments about the special forces, the only one who conformed to Hollywood was the South African, a 6ft four, moustachioed block of muscle. The rest were so 'normal' they wouldn't stand out in a crowd of one, the eyes though, being the mirror of the soul, were a different matter.

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Vark wrote:

Keegan's book on war is very interesting, in that the majority of soldiers seem to replicate the ancient battles, where the aim was to intimidate your opponent not kill them.

Which has always been my take on why berserkers and other "nutters" have been feared, and also those steely eyed veterans of Caesar's Xth Legion adn teh Old Guard - it's generally considered (by me at least) that the sooner the other guy runs away the safer you are.

If the other guy isn't going to run away......no matter how intimidating you look.....and you don't feel like running away either...then there's a serious psychological barrier created that has to be crossed - you actually have to kill or be killed.

this presupposes that you're not going to run away of course - knowing the other guy isn't going to run away may be just the ticket to persuade you that you should do so yourself!

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Some thoughts on the matters raised.

One of the reasons men perform brilliantly on the range and poorly on the battlefield is that stress reactions cause them to both tighten up their weapon supporting muscles and yank the trigger, thus firing high. Thus, we see the basis for the admonition to "aim at their bootlaces," for troops doing so are very likely to score deadly torso hits that way.

There are plenty of accounts of soldiers coming across each other at close range and neither one shooting, even though one had the drop on the other at times. For example, I just read an account from LZ Albany in the Ia Drang Campaign in which a wounded American soldier encountered a young Main Force VC guy who was mopping up the battlefield. Range was close, and the gestured importunings and utterances of the American, despite the language barrier, got through. In another case, one soldier from each side encountered the other at around 10 foot range. Neither fired and both left after a lingering look at the foe.

Regarding weapon lethality against troops in open ground, there is the 1967 case in which elite IDF paratroopers, armed with Uzis and attacking across open desert, were butchered by unimpressed Egyptian infantry armed with AK-47s, from ranges where the Israelis couldn't even reply effectively. While this may be taken as a limiting case--desert hardpan--it serves to show, I think, what can happen when there's no cover and you're armed only with short range weapons. That said, I'd bet the Israelis figured the Egyptians would break and run when assaulted. Instead, they coolly chopped Israel's finest soldiers to mincemeat. IOW, I think the IDF paras tried the elan approach and got handed their heads.

Regards,

John Kettler

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On trying to tell any trained soldiers what men look like at 300 meters, um, you realize every one of us has passed basic rifle marksmenship, right? Personally, I do not miss at 200 meters or less, with carbine ammo. I can occasionally miss at 250 and can frequently miss at 300 with a carbine, but the issue is almost entirely the bullet drop, which is dramatically less at such ranges with full rifle ammo.

On South Africa, see the contemporary pictures of the battles of Colenso and Spion Kop, please. There is no low chapperel of scrub trees, and the grass is quite short. The only effective cover is changes in ground height, and the Boers were much, much higher than the Brits, and the fields the Brits were on are remarkably flat. Google either and choose "images", you will rapidly see what I mean. The Boers had cover behind rocks on heights. The Brits did not have cover. At Spion, they made some in the form of a very shallow trench, 2 feet deep at best, and that was only possible because the battle ran overnight.

On Omaha results, in the hardest hit companies, losses ran 50%, but the rest reached the seawall or survived. There were sectors later that took little fire or were obscured by brush-fire smoke, but even the hardest hit units had half the men live. Those who expect 100% casualties to men in the open need to tell me why.

As for trying to ascribe the difference to firing behavior and only a minority shooting, as others have mentioned Marshall on the subject was flat making it up. There can be little doubt he and other officers were as puzzled by the facts I am describing as anyone here, and it was his made up explanation, but it is false. It may contribute somewhat at the margin, but it is easy to see why it cannot be the actual explanation in itself.

The thesis that fire is as effective as rifle ranges or approximately so, but only a portion of the men are firing, predicts a ratio between ammo supplied and used and men hit on the other side, that is not remotely seen in practice. If firepower per unit time is low because the men simply are not firing but for no other reason, then ammo use per man hit will remain as low as on a rifle range. It would suffice to give the men a basic load of ammo when they first went into the field --- it would last them the entire war.

Suppose only 1 out of 10 men fire, but hit 2/3rds of the time. Then a single basic load would suffice for the shooters to hit 3 times the total manpower of their unit, even if no ammo is redistributed, and even if one only counts half the natural shooters to allow for losses over the course of the fight.

Real bullet expenditure per casualty inflicted by bullets runs 10,000 rounds per hit, supplied, and at least 1000 rounds per hit in the most intense close infantry combat that occurs.

Next question for Adam - in your last company or battalion scale fight in CMBB or CMAK, casualties ran what percentage of those engaged, on winning and losing sides respectively?

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Some thoughts on the matters raised.

One of the reasons men perform brilliantly on the range and poorly on the battlefield is that stress reactions cause them to both tighten up their weapon supporting muscles and yank the trigger, thus firing high. Thus, we see the basis for the admonition to "aim at their bootlaces," for troops doing so are very likely to score deadly torso hits that way.

My copy of the already-mentioned Laffargue's "Les Lecons du Fantassin" (196th edition, for goodness' sake) mentions precisely this, and contrasts aiming centre target on the range with aiming at the bottom of the target in combat.

However, current British (and I believe everyone else's) combat shooting advice is to aim centre mass.

Personally, I suspect that the oft-reported idea that most troops in combat fire high is false, for the following reason. Assume that misses are distributed normally around the point of aim. A target at the point of aim, lying on the deck and wishing these beastly people would stop shooting at him, will be aware of the shots, roughly half of those fired, that pass above his head. He will probably not be aware of almost all the other half, which strike the ground between the firer and him.

Regarding weapon lethality against troops in open ground, there is the 1967 case in which elite IDF paratroopers, armed with Uzis and attacking across open desert, were butchered by unimpressed Egyptian infantry armed with AK-47s,

Interesting, and a new one on me -- do you have a sorce for this incident?

All the best,

John.

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Adam - you are flat wrong, the terrain in both cases is exactly what you describe and claim should result in 100% losses, and it does not actually do so. You didn't answer the typical CMBB or CMAK rate of causalities question.

As for "demonstration fire", the Marshall claim is that most people literally do not fire their weapon in combat. If that were the cause of the descrepancy, ammo would not be expended in the amounts it is seen to be. The thesis is false, Marshall made it up, it is wrong.

It is true, nevertheless, that the typical US rifleman in WW II in the ETO expected a basic load of about 90 rounds ball to last him a week (call it 100, to count extra carried for BARs etc), or in heavier fighting to use maybe 2 such allotments per week. Can a typical rifleman fire off 100-200 rounds per week without discharging his weapon? Clearly not, Marshall refuted. But second, if the typical rifleman is firing off 100 rounds per week, what is his life expectancy if his typical per shot accuracy in anything like rifle ranges? Now, what portion of the time do you think he can have a target in open ground, if you think anyone in open ground inside 300 yards is a 100% casualty with certainty?

Do you think the sort of open you are imagining occurs on only some minute infinitessimal fraction of the earth's surface?

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As for trying to ascribe the difference to firing behavior and only a minority shooting, as others have mentioned Marshall on the subject was flat making it up.

Not making it up entitrely -- just badly overselling his method and data to reach the conclusion he wanted to get to. The conclusion itself still seems to be quite a good one; and it is sometimes possible to reach a good conclusion by dodgy methods. To take an example from the history of science, I think it is now generally accepted that Gregor Mendel must have rigged his experiment with pea-seeds that pionerred the study of genetics.

The thesis that fire is as effective as rifle ranges or approximately so, but only a portion of the men are firing, predicts a ratio between ammo supplied and used and men hit on the other side, that is not remotely seen in practice.

Who has ever suggested that "fire is as effective as rifle ranges or approximately so"? I don't believe that Marshall claims such a thing anywhere.

[snips]

Real bullet expenditure per casualty inflicted by bullets runs 10,000 rounds per hit, supplied, and at least 1000 rounds per hit in the most intense close infantry combat that occurs.

Can you cite a source for either of those figures? I know "A thousand rounds to hit a man" is traditional, but I've never seen any analysis to base it on.

As an example of a rather more favourable ratio, I happened this morning to be looking at a couple of items from the "Good to Knows" booklet issued by the Platoon Commanders Division at the School of Infantry in the 1970s.

One is a translation of a VC operation report on an attack on a strategic hamlet in November 1962. This gives an ammunition expenditure of 1320 rounds (mostly Thompson) inflicting 13 killed and 9 wounded on the enemy. Even allowing for the fact that an unspecified number of the dead seem to have been killed after capture, this is a lot better than 1 casualty per thousand rounds.

The other is an operational report on an action at Rasau in North Borneo in June 1964, when a couple of British platoons were very badly handled by Indonesian and Chinese insurgents. The action lasted from 20:30 to 01:45, at a range of about 60 yards. The British platoons (4 LMGs, 29 SLRs, 13 SMGs) expended 2081 rounds for no definite result. The enemy are estimated to have fired "very approximately" 6000 rounds of SAA, and given their strength of about 60 men this would presumably be about right for their full basic load. In addition, they used about 15 grenades, 10 light mortar rounds and 10 Energa grenades. This expenditure produced 5 killed and 5 wounded; three of those killed, including a platoon commander, were hit by a single Energa grenade. If you discount that lucky Energa grenade, and assume the Brits didn't hit anything, that comes out very close to one casualty per 1000 rounds.

My own back-of-the-envelope calculations on basic loads and Dave Rowland's expected attacker casualties per defender (published in "The Nugget" as "Five Minutes of Rooty-Tooty") suggest something like 150 defender shots to produce one attacker casualty, varying strongly with force ratio. As the attackers would presumably do very much worse than the defenders in terms of shots per hit, this is not necessarily inconsistent with an overall average of something like 1000 rounds per hit.

All the best,

John.

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60 yards, you might get somewhat higher figures than the average. Very small actions, infantry is essentially defenseless, again you cannot scale it. You might as readily say "a cop shot a perp using 4 rounds in Chicago yesterday, so clearly..."

Look at whole battles or campaigns and you will see the real average figures, which are far lower than single firefight cases. (A readily accessible example - Poles took 200,000 KIA and WIA, at least 1/2 and probably more like 3/4 HE caused; Germans expended just under 400 million rounds of 7.92mm ball doing it. Elapsed time one month). Operationally, we know that average hits per round fired are materially lower for modern rifled firearms than they were for smoothbore muskets, by 1-2 orders of magnitude. The technologically focused, as opposed to the tactically and morale-ee focused, can't tell us why.

As for who is claiming rifle range like accuracy, in this thread the supposed "evidence" from *first person shooters* of the survival or lack thereof, of exposed infantry at combat ranges, is being advanced as evidence, that the exposure ratings of open ground in CM are far too low.

Also, I am trying to force those so maintaining to explain the facts, themselves. So far they are dodging and ducking and refusing, but not actually accounting for the empirical relationship between fire effort and fire results, actually seen.

My claim is that the actual relationships depicted in CM are far more nearly correct than those expecting 100% slaughters in open ground, claim, with only the ammo used up doing it being high, and that by a minor factor (something under 10, order of magnitude is right, etc). The driving issue is not per shot accuracy nor cover, it is morale and willingness to expose oneself to danger, and it operates by driving dispersion, cover-seeking vs. mission continuance, and firing behavior - all of them linked, none of them itself the explanation. And that therefore any approach that starts from imaginary weapon accuracies and tries to make minor drawdowns for cover, will err on the side of "way too bloody for the real thing". While any *morale failure* based approach that tunes to overall outcomes, not per shot ones, can get into the right ballpark almost effortlessly.

Tobruk sucked, Squad Leader ruled. There is a reason. Adam hasn't figured it out yet.

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