So our work on urban warfare ended in 2005 with the Stalingrad contract being cancelled because of the weather. It was a pretty significant body of work, but the Army’s interest shifted to insurgencies and so did our work. From 2005 through 2009, our major work was on insurgencies, which is summarized in my book America’s Modern Wars.
When things finally got quiet enough for me to consider writing books, I briefly considered doing a book on urban warfare. But, the subject had fallen out of fashion. I therefore decided to try to summarize all our conventional warfare work into a single book, War by Numbers.
Our urban warfare work is described in a half dozen earlier posts. It is covered in much more depth in two chapters of my book War by Numbers. Chapter 16: Urban Legends, cover the three phases of this work (Phase I = ETO, II = Kharkov, III = Manila and post-WWII). The chapter is called “urban legends,” because so much of the work on urban warfare in the time immediately preceding our work overemphasized the intensity, casualties, fatigue and actions that would occur in urban warfare. They had, mistakenly, created a mythology about urban warfare, based upon looking at a few extreme case studies. This discussion on urban warfare flowed into the next chapter, Chapter 17: Use of Case Studies. As I pointed out at the start of that chapter (pages 265-266):
Unfortunately, military history is often the study of exceptions…..What often gets lost is the norm, or what is typical….we at the Dupuy Institute are not averse to using case studies; we simply prefer not to use them as our only analytical tool….We look for the norms and the typical situation and use case studies only as part of a further examination of the study.
The rest of the chapter is based upon the outstanding work that Richard C. Anderson did looking at a number individual division’s operations in a variety of cities (in particular Brest, Aachen, Cherbourg and Manila). More than six different case studies. The most significant one was the work done on urban operations and combat stress, or battle fatigue (it is in our Phase I report, which is on line). This was the work that caused RAND to revise their work and prepare a report that paralleled our research effort.
Chapter 16 is 59 pages long, while Chapter 17 is 20 pages.
Am 25.10.1941 konnte die faschistische deutsche Wehrmacht mit überlegenen Kräften Charkow, die Hauptstadt der Ukraine erobern. UBz.: Panzer und Infanterie bei Strassenkämpfen in der Stadt
Description: Street fighting at Kharkov on 25 October 1941: infantry advancing covered by a StuG III assault gun and Sd.Kfz. 250 halftrack(Bundesarchiv Bild 183-L20582)
So, in our three phases of urban warfare study, taking place over three years, how much urban warfare did we examine? Well by count of engagements, we looked at 304 urban cases, division-level and battalion-level. Mostly what this means is one division or battalion-level engagement per day. Still, this is not insignificant.
We did assemble back in 2003 a listing of all the significant urban engagements we had identified since 1904. There are not all that common. We counted 117 of them in conventional combat between 1904 and 2003 (they are listed on pages 3-7 of the Phase III report). Of those 117, we had examined 22 of them (18.8 percent). We considered that 38 or so of them were major urban battles (division-level or larger). Of those, we examined 17 (44.7%). Only three of the remaining 21 major urban battles are known to have good data for both sides. The biggest remaining untapped source of data was the Battle of Stalingrad, which could yield over a hundred division-level engagements. This led us to make four points (page 10-11 of the report):
We suggest that there remain a number of ways in which we can broaden and deepen or knowledge of the effects of urban warfare.
Conduct a detailed study of the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad may also represent one of the most intense examples of urban combat, so may provide some clues to the causes of the urban outliers.
Conduct a detailed study of battalion/brigade-level urban combat. This would begin with an analysis of battalion-level actions from the first two phases of this study (European Theater of Operations and Eastern Front), added to the battalion-level actions completed in this third phase of the study. Additional battalion-level engagements would be added as needed.
Conduct a detailed study of the outliers in an attempt to discover the causes for the atypical nature of these urban battles.
Conduct a detailed study of urban warfare in an unconventional warfare setting.
Anyhow, it was clear that our next step was Stalingrad. You will also note that in 2003/2004 we were also suggesting we study urban warfare in an unconventional warfare setting. This suggestion seemed to get no attention.
I forgot a cool graphic from these charts I posted in the Phase III – part 2 discussion:
This is on page 61 of the Phase III report. It is also on page 260 of my book War by Numbers.
There is some explanatory text for this chart on pages 60-61 (and pages 259-261 of my book War by Numbers). The text from the report is below:
Over time one may note that the average weighted percent-loss-per-day in urban operations from 1943 to 2003 – a 60-year time span – ranges from 0.50 to 0.71 if Soviet attacks are excluded. In contrast, the average weighted percent-loss-per-day in non-urban terrain ranges from 0.76 to 1.27 if the Soviet attacks and Tet are excluded.
These data can be plotted over time by simply inserting the various percentage-loss-per-day for each of the engagements under the appropriate year. To do so we have eliminated the Eastern Front Soviet attacks (urban and non-urban) and Tet Offensive non-urban outliers and have normalized the intervening years where there are no data points. The result is interesting and clearly establishes that that over the last 60 years urban warfare has remained less intense than non-urban warfare (at least at the division-level and as measured as a percent-loss-per-day).
It is notable that the sole point at which the two lines intersect – during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War may actually shed some light upon why the belief that urban warfare is more costly and/or intense than that in other types of terrain exists. Quite simply, the urban case in the 1973 War – the Battle of Suez City – is one unique engagement fought during that entire war and is just one of 32 engagements from that war that was fought in urban terrain. And it is one of the few cases that we have found where division-level urban combat was as intense as the average non-urban combat during the same campaign. Overall in just seven of the 31 non-urban engagements in the 1973 War was the attacker percent-per-day loss higher than 1.57 percent found at Suez City, and in only two of those were the attackers Israeli. Nor were the Israeli armor losses extraordinary at Suez City, they amounted to only about 11 tanks, for a loss rate of just 4.6 percent-per-day. This may be contrasted to the 11.43 percent-per-day armor loss that the Israelis averaged in the nine non-urban attacks they made against the Egyptians in the 1973 War.[1]
That Suez City stands out as unique should hardly be surprising. What is surprising is that it – and the few other possible outliers we have found – has become identified as the “typical” urban battle rather than as a unique case. In that respect Suez City and the other outliers may provide copious lessons to be learned for future battles in urban terrain, but they should not be accepted as the norm. On that note however, it is somewhat depressing to see that many lessons of urban warfare apparently learned by the different combatants in World War II apparently were forcibly relearned in later wars. That the mistakes made in earlier urban battles are repeated over and over again in later wars – such as avoiding sending unsupported armor into built-up areas – is more than somewhat perplexing. Worse, we have been unable to find any example in World War II of the misemployment of armor in an urban environment that mirrors the foolishness exhibited by the attackers at Suez City or Grozny. Thus it could be supposed that any benefit of technological evolution in warfare over time might be counterbalanced in part by the simple failure to draw adequate lessons from the past.
[1] The highest rate was at Chinese Farm I when the Israelis armor loss was 24.40 percent-per-day.
U.S. Army troops in Hue, South Vietnam monitor the streets below during the Tet Offensive, 1968. [Bettmann/CORBIS]
Another part of our Phase III effort was to look at post-World War II cases. This is, by its nature, invariably one-sided data. Maybe at some point we will get the Chinese, North Koreans, Vietnamese, Syrians, etc. to open up their archives to us researchers, but, except for possibly Vietnam, I don’t think that is going to happen any time in the near future. So, we ended up building our post-World War II cases primarily from U.S. data.
We added 10 engagements from the Inchon/Seoul operation in 1950. For Vietnam we added 65 division-level urban engagements from the Tet Offensive in 1968 and 57 division-level non-urban engagements. We also added 56 battalion-level urban engagements from the Tet Offensive (all in Hue). We had 14 division-level urban engagements and 65 division-level non-urban engagements from various contingencies and conventional operations from 1944 to 2003. This included ELAS Insurgency, Arab-Isreali Wars, Panama, Mogadishu, the 1991 Gulf War and Baghdad in 2003. We also added 9 battalion-level urban cases, mostly from Beirut 1982-1984.
To add it all up this was:
Urban Non-urban
Phase I (ETO) 46 91
Phase II (Kharkov/Kursk) 51 65
Phase III (Manila/PTO) 53 41
Post-WWII – Division-level 89 123
Post-WWII – Battalion-level 65 0
——- ——
Total cases 304 319
This is a lot of cases for comparisons.
Just to show how they match up (from page 28 of the report):
Attackers in Division-Level Engagements:
Urban
PTO
Kor
Tet
Oth
ETO
EF (Ger Atk)
EF (Sov Atk)
Avg Str/day
12,099
28,304
6,294
10,903
34,601
17,080
17,001
Avg Cas
78
30
94
254
178
86
371
Avg Cas/day
78
30
39
59
169
86
371
Avg % Loss/day
0.63
0.71
0.78
0.56
0.50
0.49
1.95
Wgt % Loss/day
0.65
0.71
0.62
0.54
0.49
0.50
2.18
Non-urban
PTO
Tet
Oth
ETO
EF (Ger Atk)
EF (Sov Atk)
Avg Str/day
17,445
13,232
18,991
21,060
27,083
27,044
Avg Cas
663
44
377
469
276
761
Avg Cas/day
221
22
191
237
206
653
Avg % Loss/day
0.83
0.19
1.56
1.09
1.00
2.39
Wgt % Loss/day
1.27
0.17
1.01
1.13
0.76
2.41
I will pick up more on the Phase III effort in a subsequent posting (a part 3 to this series). These charts are also on page 238 of War by Numbers.
Now comes Phase III of this effort. The Phase I report was dated 11 January 2002 and covered the European Theater of Operations (ETO). The Phase II report [Part I and Part II] was dated 30 June 2003 and covered the Eastern Front (the three battles of Kharkov). Phase III was completed in 31 July 2004 and covered the Battle of Manila in the Pacific Theater, post-WWII engagements, and battalion-level engagements. It was a pretty far ranging effort.
In the case of Manila, this was the first time that we based our analysis using only one-side data (U.S. only). In this case, the Japanese tended to fight to almost the last man. We occupied the field of combat after the battle and picked up their surviving unit records. Among the Japanese, almost all died and only a few were captured by the U.S. So, we had fairly good data from the U.S. intelligence files. Regardless, the U.S. battle reports for Japanese data was the best data available. This allowed us to work with one-sided data. The engagements were based upon the daily operations of the U.S. Army’s 37th Infantry Division and the 1st Cavalry Division.
Conclusions (from pages 44-45):
The overall conclusions derived from the data analysis in Phase I were as follows, while those from this Phase III analysis are in bold italics.
Urban combat did not significantly influence the Mission Accomplishment (Outcome) of the engagements. Phase III Conclusion: This conclusion was further supported.
Urban combat may have influenced the casualty rate. If so, it appears that it resulted in a reduction of the attacker casualty rate and a more favorable casualty exchange ratio compared to non-urban warfare. Whether or not these differences are caused by the data selection or by the terrain differences is difficult to say, but regardless, there appears to be no basis to the claim that urban combat is significantly more intense with regards to casualties than is non-urban warfare. Phase III Conclusion: This conclusion was further supported. If urban combat influenced the casualty rate, it appears that it resulted in a reduction of the attacker casualty rate and a more favorable casualty exchange ratio compared to non-urban warfare. There still appears to be no basis to the claim that urban combat is significantly more intense with regards to casualties than is non-urban warfare.
The average advance rate in urban combat should be one-half to one-third that of non-urban combat. Phase III Conclusion: There was strong evidence of a reduction in the advance rates in urban terrain in the PTO data. However, given that this was a single extreme case, then TDI still stands by its original conclusion that the average advance rate in urban combat should be about one-half to one-third that of non-urban combat/
Overall, there is little evidence that the presence of urban terrain results in a higher linear density of troops, although the data does seem to trend in that direction. Phase III Conclusion: The PTO data shows the highest densities found in the data sets for all three phases of this study. However, it does not appear that the urban density in the PTO was significantly higher than the non-urban density. So it remains difficult to tell whether or not the higher density was a result of the urban terrain or was simply a consequence of the doctrine adopted to meet the requirements found in the Pacific Theater.
Overall, it appears that the loss of armor in urban terrain is the same as or less than that found in non-urban terrain, and in some cases is significantly lower. Phase III Conclusion: This conclusion was further supported.
Urban combat did not significantly influence the Force Ratio required to achieve success or effectively conduct combat operations. Phase III Conclusion: This conclusion was further supported.
Nothing could be determined from an analysis of the data regarding the Duration of Combat (Time) in urban versus non-urban terrain. Phase III Conclusion: Nothing could be determined from an analysis of the data regarding the Duration of Combat (Time) in urban versus non-urban terrain.
So, in Phase I we compared 46 urban and conurban engagements in the ETO to 91 non-urban engagements. In Phase II, we compared 51 urban and conurban engagements in an around Kharkov to 49 non-urban Kursk engagements. On Phase III, from Manila we compared 53 urban and conurban engagements to 41 non-urban engagements mostly from Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Manila. The next blog post on urban warfare will discuss our post-WWII data.
P.S. The picture is an aerial view of the destroyed walled city of Intramuros taken on May 1945
There was actually supposed to be a part 2 to this Phase II contract, which was analysis of urban combat at the army-level based upon 50 operations, of which a half-dozen would include significant urban terrain. This effort was not funded.
On the other hand, the quantitative analysis of battles of Kharkov only took up the first 41 pages of the report. A significant part of the rest of the report was a more detailed analysis and case study of the three fights over Kharkov in February, March and August of 1943. Kharkov was a large city, according to the January 1939 census, it has a population of 1,344,200, although a Soviet-era encyclopedia gives the pre-war population as 840,000. We never were able to figure out why there was a discrepancy. The whole area was populated with many villages. The January 1939 gives Kharkov Oblast (region) a population of 1,209,496. This is in addition to the city, so the region had a total population of 2,552,686. Soviet-era sources state that when the city was liberated in August 1943, the remaining population was only 190,000. Kharkov was a much larger city than any of the others ones covered in Phase I effort (except for Paris, but the liberation of that city was hardly a major urban battle).
The report then does a day-by-day review of the urban fighting in Kharkov. Doing a book or two on the battles of Kharkov is on my short list of books to write, as I have already done a lot of the research. We do have daily logistical expenditures of the SS Panzer Corps for February and March (tons of ammo fired, gasoline used and diesel used). In March when the SS Panzer Corps re-took Kharkov, we noted that the daily average for the four days of urban combat from 12 to 15 March was 97.25 tons of ammunition, 92 cubic meters of gasoline and 10 cubic meters of diesel. For the previous five days (7-11 March) the daily average was 93.20 tons of ammunition, 145 cubic meters of gasoline and 9 cubic meters of diesel. Thus it does not produce a lot of support for the idea that–as has sometimes been expressed (for example in RAND’s earlier reports on the subject)–that ammunition and other supplies will be consumed at a higher rate in urban operations.
We do observe from the three battles of Kharkov that (page 95):
There is no question that the most important lesson found in the three battles of Kharkov is that one should just bypass cities rather than attack them. The Phase I study also points out that the attacker is usually aware that faster progress can be made outside the urban terrain, and that the tendency is to weight one or both flanks and not bother to attack the city until it is enveloped. This is indeed what happened in two of the three cases at Kharkov and was also the order given by the Fourth Panzer Army that was violated by the SS Panzer Corps in March.
One must also note that since this study began the United States invaded Iraq and conducted operations in some major urban areas, albeit against somewhat desultory and ineffective opposition. In the southern part of Iraq the two major port cities Umm Qasar and Basra were first enveloped before any forces were sent in to clear them. In the case of Baghdad, it could have been enveloped if sufficient forces were available. As it was, it was not seriously defended. The recent operations in Iraq again confirmed that observations made in the two phases of this study.
P.S. The picture is of Kharkov in 1942, when it was under German occupation.
Our first urban warfare report that we did had a big impact. It clearly showed that the intensity of urban warfare was not what some of the “experts” out there were claiming. In particular, it called into question some of the claims being made by RAND. But, the report was based upon Aachen, Cherbourg, and a collection of mop-up operations along the Channel Coast. Although this was a good starting point because of the ease of research and availability of data, we did not feel that this was a fully representative collection of cases. We also did not feel that it was based upon enough cases, although we had already assembled more cases than most “experts” were using. We therefore convinced CAA (Center for Army Analysis) to fund a similar effort for the Eastern Front in World War II.
For this second phase, we again assembled a collection of Eastern Front urban warfare engagements in our DLEDB (Division-level Engagement Data Base) and compared it to Eastern Front non-urban engagements. We had, of course, a considerable collection of non-urban engagements already assembled from the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. We therefore needed a good urban engagement nearby. Kharkov is the nearest major city to where these non-urban engagements occurred and it was fought over three times in 1943. It was taken by the Red Army in February, it was retaken by the German Army in March, and it was taken again by the Red Army in August. Many of the units involved were the same units involved in the Battle of Kursk. This was a good close match. It has the additional advantage that both sides were at times on the offense.
Furthermore, Kharkov was a big city. At the time it was the fourth biggest city in the Soviet Union, being bigger than Stalingrad (as measured by pre-war population). A picture of its Red Square in March 1943, after the Germans retook it, is above.
We did have good German records for 1943 and we were able to get access to Soviet division-level records from February, March and August from the Soviet military archives in Podolsk. Therefore, we were able to assembled all the engagements based upon the unit records of both sides. No secondary sources were used, and those that were available were incomplete, usually one-sided, sometimes biased and often riddled with factual errors.
So, we ended up with 51 urban and conurban engagements from the fighting around Kharkov, along with 65 non-urban engagements from Kursk (we have more now).
The Phase II effort was completed on 30 June 2003. The conclusions of Phase II (pages 40-41) were similar to Phase I:
.Phase II Conclusions:
Mission Accomplishment: This [Phase I] conclusion was further supported. The data does show a tendency for urban engagements not to generate penetrations.
Casualty Rates: This [Phase I] conclusion was further supported. If urban combat influenced the casualty rate, it appears that it resulted in a reduction of the attacker casualty rate and a more favorable casualty exchange ratio compared to nonurban warfare. There still appears to be no basis to the claim that urban combat is significantly more intense with regards to casualties than is nonurban warfare.
Advance Rates: There is no strong evidence of a reduction in the advance rates in urban terrain in the Eastern Front data. TDI still stands by its original conclusion that the average advance rate in urban combat should be one-half to one-third that of nonurban combat.
Linear Density: Again, there is little evidence that the presence of urban terrain results in a higher linear density of troops, but unlike the ETO data, the data did not show a tendency to trend in that direction.
Armor Losses: This conclusion was further supported (Phase I conclusion was: Overall, it appears that the loss of armor in urban terrain is the same as or less than that found in nonurban terrain, and in some cases is significantly lower.)
Force Ratios: The conclusion was further supported (Phase I conclusion was: Urban combat did not significantly influence the Force Ratio required to achieve success or effectively conduct combat operations).
Duration of Combat: Nothing could be determined from an analysis of the data regarding the Duration of Combat (Time) in urban versus nonurban terrain.
There is a part 2 to this effort that I will pick up in a later post.
“Catalina Kid,” a M4 medium tank of Company C, 745th Tank Battalion, U.S. Army, drives through the entrance of the Aachen-Rothe Erde railroad station during the fighting around the city viaduct on Oct. 20, 1944. [Courtesy of First Division Museum/Daily Herald]
In 2002, TDI submitted a report to the U.S. Army Center for Army Analysis (CAA) on the first phase of a study examining the effects of combat in cities, or what was then called “military operations on urbanized terrain,” or MOUT. This first phase of a series of studies on urban warfare focused on the impact of urban terrain on division-level engagements and army-level operations, based on data drawn from TDI’s DuWar database suite.
This included engagements in France during 1944 including the Channel and Brittany port cities of Brest, Boulogne, Le Havre, Calais, and Cherbourg, as well as Paris, and the extended series of battles in and around Aachen in 1944. These were then compared to data on fighting in contrasting non-urban terrain in Western Europe in 1944-45.
The data appears to support a null hypothesis, that is, that the urban terrain had no significantly measurable influence on the outcome of battle.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Casualties
Overall, any way the data is sectioned, the attacker casualties in the urban engagements are less than in the non-urban engagements and the casualty exchange ratio favors the attacker as well. Because of the selection of the data, there is some question whether these observations can be extended beyond this data, but it does not provide much support to the notion that urban combat is a more intense environment than non-urban combat.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Advance Rates
It would appear that one of the primary effects of urban terrain is that it slows opposed advance rates. One can conclude that the average advance rate in urban combat should be one-half to one-third that of non-urban combat.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Force Density
Overall, there is little evidence that combat operations in urban terrain result in a higher linear density of troops, although the data does seem to trend in that direction.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Armor
Overall, it appears that armor losses in urban terrain are the same as, or lower than armor losses in non-urban terrain. And in some cases it appears that armor losses are significantly lower in urban than non-urban terrain.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Force Ratios
Urban terrain did not significantly influence the force ratio required to achieve success or effectively conduct combat operations.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Stress in Combat
Overall, it appears that urban terrain was no more stressful a combat environment during actual combat operations than was non-urban terrain.
The Effect of Urban Terrain on Logistics
Overall, the evidence appears to be that the expenditure of artillery ammunition in urban operations was not greater than that in non-urban operations. In the two cases where exact comparisons could be made, the average expenditure rates were about one-third to one-quarter the average expenditure rates expected for an attack posture in the European Theater of Operations as a whole.
The evidence regarding the expenditure of other types of ammunition is less conclusive, but again does not appear to be significantly greater than the expenditures in non-urban terrain. Expenditures of specialized ordnance may have been higher, but the total weight expended was a minor fraction of that for all of the ammunition expended.
There is no evidence that the expenditure of other consumable items (rations, water or POL) was significantly different in urban as opposed to non-urban combat.
The Effect of Urban Combat on Time Requirements
It was impossible to draw significant conclusions from the data set as a whole. However, in the five significant urban operations that were carefully studied, the maximum length of time required to secure the urban area was twelve days in the case of Aachen, followed by six days in the case of Brest. But the other operations all required little more than a day to complete (Cherbourg, Boulogne and Calais).
However, since it was found that advance rates in urban combat were significantly reduced, then it is obvious that these two effects (advance rates and time) are interrelated. It does appear that the primary impact of urban combat is to slow the tempo of operations.
This in turn leads to a hypothetical construct, where the reduced tempo of urban operations (reduced casualties, reduced opposed advance rates and increased time) compared to non-urban operations, results in two possible scenarios.
The first is if the urban area is bounded by non-urban terrain. In this case the urban area will tend to be enveloped during combat, since the pace of battle in the non-urban terrain is quicker. Thus, the urban battle becomes more a mopping-up operation, as it historically has usually been, rather than a full-fledged battle.
The alternate scenario is that created by an urban area that cannot be enveloped and must therefore be directly attacked. This may be caused by geography, as in a city on an island or peninsula, by operational requirements, as in the case of Cherbourg, Brest and the Channel Ports, or by political requirements, as in the case of Stalingrad, Suez City and Grozny.
Of course these last three cases are also those usually included as examples of combat in urban terrain that resulted in high casualty rates. However, all three of them had significant political requirements that influenced the nature, tempo and even the simple necessity of conducting the operation. And, in the case of Stalingrad and Suez City, significant geographical limitations effected the operations as well. These may well be better used to quantify the impact of political agendas on casualties, rather than to quantify the effects of urban terrain on casualties.
The effects of urban terrain at the operational level, and the effect of urban terrain on the tempo of operations, will be further addressed in Phase II of this study.
Shawn likes to post up on the blog old articles from The International TNDM Newsletter. The previous blog post was one such article I wrote in 1997 (he posted it under my name…although he put together the post). This is the first time I have read it since say….1997. A few comments:
In fact, we did go back in systematically review and correct all the Italian engagements. This was primarily done by Richard Anderson from German records and UK records. All the UK engagements were revised as were many of the other Italian Campaign records. In fact, we ended up revising at least half of the WWII engagements in the Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB).
We did greatly expand our collection of data, to over 1,200 engagements, including 752 in a division-level engagement database. Basically we doubled the size of the database (and placed it in Access).
Using this more powerful data collection, I then re-shot the analysis of combat effectiveness. I did not use any modeling structure, but simply just used basic statistics. This effort again showed a performance difference in combat in Italy between the Germans, the Americans and the British. This is discussed in War by Numbers, pages 19-31.
We did actually re-validate the TNDM. The results of this validation are published in War by Numbers, pages 299-324. They were separately validated at corps-level (WWII), division-level (WWII) and at Battalion-level (WWI, WWII and post-WWII).
War by Numbers also includes a detailed discussion of differences in casualty reporting between nations (pages 202-205) and between services (pages 193-202).
We have never done an analysis of the value of terrain using our larger more robust databases, although this is on my short-list of things to do. This is expected to be part of War by Numbers II, if I get around to writing it.
We have done no significant re-design of the TNDM.
Anyhow, that is some of what we have been doing in the intervening 20 years since I wrote that article.
People do send me some damn interesting stuff. Someone just sent me a page clipped from U.S. Army FM 3-0 Operations, dated 6 October 2017. There is a discussion in Chapter 7 on “penetration.” This brief discussion on paragraph 7-115 states in part:
7-115. A penetration is a form of maneuver in which an attacking force seeks to rupture enemy defenses on a narrow front to disrupt the defensive system (FM 3-90-1) ….The First U.S. Army’s Operation Cobra (the breakout from the Normandy lodgment in July 1944) is a classic example of a penetration. Figure 7-10 illustrates potential correlation of forces or combat power for a penetration…..”
This is figure 7-10:
So:
Corps shaping operations: 3:1
Corps decisive operations: 9-1
Lead battalion: 18-1
Now, in contrast, let me pull some material from War by Numbers:
From page 10:
European Theater of Operations (ETO) Data, 1944
Force Ratio Result Percent Failure Number of cases
0.55 to 1.01-to-1.00 Attack Fails 100% 5
1.15 to 1.88-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 21% 48
1.95 to 2.56-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 10% 21
2.71-to-1.00 and higher Attacker Advances 0% 42
Note that these are division-level engagements. I guess I could assemble the same data for corps-level engagements, but I don’t think it would look much different.
From page 210:
Force Ratio…………Cases……Terrain…….Result
1.18 to 1.29 to 1 4 Nonurban Defender penetrated
1.51 to 1.64 3 Nonurban Defender penetrated
2.01 to 2.64 2 Nonurban Defender penetrated
3.03 to 4.28 2 Nonurban Defender penetrated
4.16 to 4.78 2 Urban Defender penetrated
6.98 to 8.20 2 Nonurban Defender penetrated
6.46 to 11.96 to 1 2 Urban Defender penetrated
These are also division-level engagements from the ETO. One will note that out of 17 cases where the defender was penetrated, only once was the force ratio as high as 9 to 1. The mean force ratio for these 17 cases is 3.77 and the median force ratio is 2.64.
Now the other relevant tables in this book are in Chapter 8: Outcome of Battles (page 60-71). There I have a set of tables looking at the loss rates based upon one of six outcomes. Outcome V is defender penetrated. Unfortunately, as the purpose of the project was to determine prisoner of war capture rates, we did not bother to calculate the average force ratio for each outcome. But, knowing the database well, the average force ratio for defender penetrated results may be less than 3-to-1 and is certainly is less than 9-to-1. Maybe I will take few days at some point and put together a force ratio by outcome table.
Now, the source of FM 3.0 data is not known to us and is not referenced in the manual. Why they don’t provide such a reference is a mystery to me, as I can point out several examples of this being an issue. On more than one occasion data has appeared in Army manuals that we can neither confirm or check, and which we could never find the source for. But…it is not referenced. I have not looked at the operation in depth, but don’t doubt that at some point during Cobra they had a 9:1 force ratio and achieved a penetration. But…..this is different than leaving the impression that a 9:1 force ratio is needed to achieve a penetration. I do not know it that was the author’s intent, but it is something that the casual reader might infer. This probably needs to be clarified.
Our 
