Category Kursk

First Guards Tank Army and new exercises

Hard for me to pass on articles on the First Guards Tank Army. That was one of the two Soviet tank armies in the Voronezh Front at Kursk during the defensive operations there. Its operations are discussed in some depth in my book. I found that the First Tank Army at Kursk under Katukov was much better handled than the Fifth Guards Tank Army under Rotmistrov, although Rotmistrov is now much more famous than Mikhail Efimovich Katukov.

Next Stop Berlin?

Article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/world/europe/russia-military-exercise-zapad-west.html

The important part of the article are:

  1. Russia is doing a 100,000 man exercise this late summer near the Baltic States (who are members of NATO). western Russian, Belarus and Kalingrad (near Poland, also a NATO member).
  2. It includes of course the First Guards Tank Army.
    1. “Its establishment represents the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that so much offensive power has been concentrated in a single command.”
  3. There is some concern that Russia forces moved into Belarus may not leave.

Anyhow, it is probably just some shirtless swagger and signaling and I would be hesitant to read more into it than that.

There is also a pretty neat map in the article.

 

Cost of Creating a Data Base

Invariably, especially with a new book coming out (War by Numbers), I expected to get requests for copies of our data bases. In fact, I already have.

Back around 1987 or so, a very wise man (Curt Johnson, VP of HERO) estimated that for the LWDB (Land Warfare Data Base) that it took 3 man-days to create an engagement. The LWDB was the basis for creating many of our later data bases, including the DLEDB (Division Level Engagement Data Base). My experience over time is that this estimate is low, especially if your are working with primary sources (unit records) for both sides. I think it may average more like 6 man-days an engagement if based upon unit records (this includes the time to conduct research).

But going with Curt’s estimate, let’s take the DLEDB of 752 cases and re-create it. This would take 3 man-days times 752 engagements = 2,256 man-days. This is 9 man-years of effort. Now 9 man-years times a loaded professional rate. A loaded man-year is the cost of a person’s labor times indirect costs (vacation, SS and Medicare contributions, health insurance, illness, office space, etc.), general and administrative costs (corporate expenses not included in the indirect costs, including senior management and marketing), and any fee or profit. Loaded rate is invariably at least 60% of the direct costs and usually closer to 100% of direct costs (and I worked at one company where it was 200% of direct costs). So a loaded man-year may be as low at $120,000 a year but for people like RAND or CNA, it is certainly much higher. Nine man-years times $120,000 = $1,080,000.

Would it really cost more than a million dollars to re-created the DLEDB? If one started from scratch, certainly. Probably (much) more, because of all the research into the Ardennes and Kursk that we did as part of those database projects. The data bases were created incrementally over the course of more than 30 years as part of various on-going contracts and efforts. We also had a core group of very experienced personnel who were doing this.

Needless to say, if any part of the data base is given away, loaned out, or otherwise not protected, we loose control of the “proprietary” aspect of these data bases. This includes the programming and formatting. Right now, they are unique to The Dupuy Institute, and for obvious business reasons, need to remain so unless proper compensation is arranged.

Sorry.

 

P.S. The image used is from the old Dbase IV version of the Kursk Data Base. We have re-programmed it in Access.

 

$5,000 Book

Just browsing Amazon.com and notice that one of the re-sellers has my Kursk book up for sale for $5,008.00: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971385254/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Really? Has he sold any at that price? I would be willing to part with a couple of my author’s copies at that price.

Anyhow, the book is still available from Aberdeen Books at a much more modest $195: http://www.aberdeenbookstore.com/

 

 

Soviet OR

There was a sense among some in the Sovietology community in the late 1980s that Soviet Operations Research (OR) was particularly advanced. People had noticed the 300-man Soviet Military History Institute and the Soviet use of the quantified “Correlation of Forces and Means,” which they used in WWII and since. Trevor Dupuy referenced these in his writings. They had noticed a number of OR books by professors at their Frunze Military Academy. In particular, the book Tactical Calculations by Anatoli Vainer was being used by a number of Sovietologists in their works and presentations (including TNDA alumni Col. John Sloan). There was a concern that the Soviet Union was conducting extensive quantitative analysis of its historical operations in World War II and using this to further improve their war fighting capabilities.

This is sort of a case of trying to determine what is going on by looking at the shadows on a cave wall (Plato analogy here). In October 1993 as part of the Kursk project, we meet with our Russian research team headed by Dr. Fyodor Sverdlov (retired Colonel, Soviet WWII veteran, and former head of the Frunze Military Academy History Department). Sitting there as his right hand man was Dr. Anatoli Vainer (also a retired Colonel, a Soviet WWII veteran and a Frunze Military Academy professor).

We had a list of quantitative data that we needed for the Kursk Data Base (KDB). The database was to be used as a validation database for the Center of Army Analysis (CAA) various modeling efforts. As such, we were trying to determine for each unit for each day the unit strength, losses, equipment lists, equipment losses, ammunition levels, ammunition expenditures, fuel levels, fuel expenditures, and so forth. They were stunned. They said that they did not have models like that. We were kind of surprised at that response.

Over the course of several days I got to know these two gentlemen, went swimming with Col. Sverdlov and had dinner over at Col. Vainer’s house. I got to see his personal library and the various books he wrote. Talked to him as much as I could sensitively do so about Soviet OR, and they were pretty adamant that there really wasn’t anything significant occurring. Vainer told me that his primary source for materials for his books was American writings on Operations Research. So, it appeared that we had completed a loop….the Soviets were writing OR books based upon our material and we were reading them and thinking they had a well developed OR structure.

Their historical research was also still primarily based upon one-side data. They simply were not allowed to access the German archives and regardless they knew that they should not be publishing Soviet casualty figures or any negative comparisons. Col. Sverdlov, who had been in the war since Moscow 1941, was well aware of the Soviet losses, and had some sense that the German losses were less, but this they could not publish [Sverdlov: “I was at Prokhorovka after the war, and I didn’t see 100 Tigers there”]. So, they were hardly able to freely conduct historical analysis in an unbiased manner.

In the end, at this time, they had not developed the analytical tools or capability to fully explore their own military history or to conduct operations research.

 

Extending the Battlefield

The second oldest article in this box I was about to throw away is called “Extending the Battlefield” by General Donn A. Starry, US Army. It is dated March 1981 from the Military Review. It is 20 pages long.

Its primary focus is on deep strike. It states 1) First, deep strike is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity to winning, 2) Second, deep strike, particular in an environment of scarce acquisition and strike assets, must be tightly coordinated over time with the decisive close-in battle…3) Third, it is important to consider now the number of systems entering the force in the near and middle-term future….4) Finally, the concept is designed to be the unifying idea which pulled all these emerging capabilities together so that, together, they can allow us to realize their full combined potential for winning.

This was an approach specifically oriented towards engaging the Soviet second echelon. I was never much of a fan of deep strike, as I sort of felt you probably wanted to engage the first echelon first….and could worry about the second echelon later. A reading of my Kursk book (in case you have the time) clearly shows the limitations of the Soviet two-echelon system of fighting. It did tend to lead to piecemeal attacks.

I met General Starry once. My father worked for him in the Pentagon and during a family visit during the Christmas party, he came down to say Merry Christmas to all the people working in the basement of the building. I happened to be there, and was applying to West Point (U.S. Military Academy) at the time. He sat down and had a half-hour talk with me about why someone should or should not attend West Point. It was nice gesture on his part.

I guess I will keep this article also.

 

Battle of Tarigo Convoy

The Italian Destroyer Lampo

On 16 April 1941, four British destroyers operating out of Malta, moved to intercept an Axis convoy moving along the coast of Tunisia. The British were able to intercept the convoy due to intercepted radio messages (but it was not Ultra). The Axis convoy consisted of three Italian destroyers protecting four German troopships and an Italian ammunition ship. The British attacked at night, having radar on several of their destroyers, which the Italians did not have. This night action that started at only 2,000 yards and at times closed to within 50 yards, with the Italians having all three destroyers and all five cargo ships sunk or beached. This one sided affair also ended up costing the British one destroyer, torpedoed by a sinking Italian destroyer, now commanded by an Italian junior officer. Around 1,800 men were killed in this convoy.

The British Destroyer Mohawk

While I was researching this, I came across a poorly translated article called the “Sinking of the Tarigo Convoy” by Cristiano D’Adamo. This article got my attention because he tracks the accounts of this battle as presented in nine books and accounts from 1948 to 1998. Of those nine accounts, only four mention that the British had radar and only two mention the interception of Italian signals. Seven of the nine accounts were missing critical material as to why the battle shaped up the way it did and why it was so one-sided. His article is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060910011054/http://regiamarina.net/engagements/tarigo/tarigo_us.htm

This is an exercise similar to what I did in Appendix VII “A History of the Histories” in my book Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka. In that appendix, I tracked a number the accounts of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka that had been written over the years. It continues to surprise me how many major errors and significant omissions are made in widely published military historical works.

World War IV

One of Roger Mickelson’s TMCI briefings is on-line at the Xenophon Group site: World War IV

Don’t know the date of this briefing, but it was fairly recent. I never quite bought into Roger’s construct that World War III was the Cold War….and now we are in World War IV. But I do find it to be an interesting categorization.

The Fatwa on “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” dated 23 February 1998 is worth reading. It is on slides 16 and 17.

The Xenophon Group is run by John Sloan, a retired Sovietologist and historian. He used to work with Trevor Dupuy’s HERO (Historical Evaluation Research Organization) and played a major role in getting the Kursk project started (which turned into my book Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka). His site is here: http://www.xenophon-mil.org/xenophon.htm

The index to his site is here: http://www.xenophon-mil.org/xenindex.htm

This is worth trolling through. There are all kinds of interesting bits and pieces here. There is a review of my book America’ Modern Wars here: http://www.xenophon-mil.org/politicaleconomy/lawrencemodernwars.htm

War by Numbers is on Amazon

lawrencefinal

My new book, with a release date of 1 August, is now available on Amazon.com for pre-order: War by Numbers (Amazon)

It is still listed at 498 pages, and I am pretty sure I only wrote 342. I will receive the proofs next month for review, so will have a chance to see how they got there. My Kursk book was over 2,500 pages in Microsoft Word, and we got it down to a mere 1,662 pages in print form. Not sure how this one is heading the other way.

Unlike the Kursk book, there will be a kindle version.

It is already available for pre-order from University of Nebraska Press here: War by Numbers (US)

It is available for pre-order in the UK through Casemate: War by Numbers (UK)

The table of contents for the book is here: War by Numbers: Table of Contents

Like the cover? I did not have a lot to do with it.

Kursk Book Status

Kursk

The Kursk book remains sold out at Amazon.com, although there are four sellers on the site selling new copies. One of those is the publisher Aberdeen Books. I gather most of the other book sellers have also sold out of their copies, leaving Aberdeen Books as the primary source for the book. He has enough inventory to get through this Christmas and winter. There are currently no plans to print any additional copies, although I have not ruled out doing an abridged or condensed version at some point in the future.

Aberdeen website: http://www.aberdeenbookstore.com/

Kursk Book Sold Out on Amazon

My book, Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka has sold out on Amazon.com. If you click on the Amazon.com link below the book picture, you will see the statement “This item is only available from third-party sellers.” There are 32 there, including 25 “Amazon warehousedeals” starting $205.31.

The book is still available from the publisher for the list price of $195.00 at: http://www.aberdeenbookstore.com/

You can also get to this link by clicking on picture of the book to your right.

Right now, there is no plans to re-stock Amazon.com. Aberdeen still has inventory.