Attack Assault battles

[noxiousnic]

Don't have any quotes handy, but the modern ratio is 3 to 1 / 1 to 3 depending on role (and not, not the obvious), but that's what a typical combat arms battalion from NATO is expected to tackle.
And we didn't have the numbers advantage against the Warsaw Pact : which is why you'll read a US battalion is expected to take on 3 times as much OPFOR on the attack or defense.
If I can find time to unearth some quotes from FMs, I will.
Cheers !

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by noxiousnic

Don't have any quotes handy, but the modern ratio is 3 to 1 / 1 to 3 depending on role (and not, not the obvious), but that's what a typical combat arms battalion from NATO is expected to tackle.
And we didn't have the numbers advantage against the Warsaw Pact : which is why you'll read a US battalion is expected to take on 3 times as much OPFOR on the attack or defense.
If I can find time to unearth some quotes from FMs, I will.
Cheers !

I could be crossing up ratios for maintaining status quo and actually winning. I've got a web sight I can check for US Army field manuals, but those would be the most current and perspectives would likely to have changed. The numbers I'm thinking of are late 70s, early 80s, but I don't remember where I got them from. This would have been before the M1 Abrams was fielded in any significant quantities. The ratios will probably change every time someone fields a new weapon that gives one side or another a technological edge or reduces the edge.

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by RT-Baseman

Carl von Clauswitz had the opinion, that an 6:1 odd is a goal an attacker should have, if he wanted to win an attack (military treatise "On war"). Maybe it ist worth a try, to bulid a scenario with this odds and try to defend succesful?

I'm trying it. My defending force is 4,000 points and I gave the AI assault force 24,000 points to use. Now, I get to find out if it's Custer's Last Stand or Rorke's Drift.

[PanzerBob]

It is worth noting those odds do not have to be across the front, creating those odds locally at your break-though point(s) can achieve the same result.

It is also worth taking into account that the more technically advanced your force is, how driven your troops are and even terrain, amongst many other factors, can play roles as Combat Modifiers. Many of Germany's early war achievements were against Armies who on paper should have been able to hand the Wehrmacht it's A**! However, many things contributed to the Wehrmacht creating the correct odds to win these battles. T o put Combat Modifiers another way, attach an Apache Attack Helicopter to an American Mechanized Company with an ammo supply, and the German Force in a short time would know the meaning of CM’s and Hellfire!!!

History is rift with Battles and Wars won against what should have been unbeatable numbers. There are attempts at formulating some aspects of how these combat modifiers actually modify the odds, but IMHO if you study the battles besides the military science involved, in most of these victories a lot of military art comes into play. That is to say the effect that the Leaders, the troops and their fusion with their engines of war had in those conflicts, these factors are much harder to quantify. There are certainly cases where even the Generals of either side when questioned as to what went wrong or right, especially right after the fray, neither could tell you until giving it much study or many others gave it much study as to what did happen. To this day some of those battles still leave room for plenty of discussion.

We here who fight the battles we fight come away from some battles thinking the very same things, especially when the Commanders are both human......

Another way of looking at this as well is subjectively, what does a force consider victory? On paper the USSR should have folded as quickly as Hitler envisioned, (even the Allies believed this at first) no one counted on the USSR being so willing to take much punishment in order to regroup and start coming out swinging. In retrospect, it is easy to see how the early defeats in Russia were not so much the victories the Germans believed they achieved.

Bottom-line IMHO is Odds are a starting place at best, a guideline if you will, something a Commander has to use his many assets to create, to forge the conditions to victory, at their worse Odds are not to be treated as a numbers game alone.

Bob out

[RERomine]

I figured it was just something worth giving a shot. My position is more of a 360 degree fortress than a line that I don't allow the AI forces to cross. I'm basically trying to not lose. If I win, all the better. Surviving is not really necessary given the extreme odds. I just need to inflict heavy casualties on the AI forces. At this point, it has 34 tanks burning and 10 immobilized with another 24 burning half-tracks. I'm holding my perimeter at the moment.

One mistake I did make in my set-up was I put a line of wire followed by a line of mines. The wire slows down the AI units, meaning they hit the mines as their first hex moved. They are less likely to set one off. I should have reversed it, mines outside the wire.

My force is three German grenadier companies, nine 50mm ATGs, bunkers to hide from artillery in, six pillboxes and artillery.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by PanzerBob

History is rift with Battles and Wars won against what should have been unbeatable numbers.

OK. For fun lets see if anyone can figure out this one. It's a battle fought sometime between 500 BC and the present

Two armies

One is half the size it was 10 weeks earlier and it's bedraggled soldiers
have been on a forced march to reach safety for 18 gruelling days being
harassed by the enemy. The month is October and the weather has been a cold
and rainy. Many of the troops have dysentery that is so bad than many have
cut the bottoms out of their pants and underwear so nature can take it's
course more easily. Some are reportedly shoeless as the campaign has worn
out their boots and shoes

The other army is at least 4 times larger and may be even as much as 6
times larger and made up mostly of hardened veterans who had spent their
lives in arms in both foreign and civil wars. They are well fed and well
rested and spoiling for as fight to avenge the loss a month earlier of an
important town and port to these invaders. So many well equipped men have
shown up to fight for the nations honour that less well equipped militiamen
were sent home.

Four hours later, in defiance of all logic and the received military wisdom
at the time the larger army is utterly and decisively destroyed and the
smaller one has lost a only a small fraction of it's troops in comparison.

Mud plays a major factor in this battle .

Name the battle.

Don

[RERomine]

Agincourt comes to mind, mainly because of the reference to mud being a factor.

[jaywalker]

Pretty sure it's the Battle of Agincourt, October 25, 1415 (St. Crispin's Day)

jaywalker

[DRG]

You guys are good.....

Yep, it's Agincourt.

....and to put things in further perspective the English knights had the same problem with dysentry as the footsoldiers and archers did but didn't have the easy solution the others had to readily deal with it.

Doubleplusungood...


Don

[PanzerBob]

Ah Dysentery, having been there done that with the benefits of modern medicine to clear it up, it boggles my mind at the resolve the men can muster to be able to fight though that horrible affection throughout history without modern cures!!

Bob out