Category Research & Analysis

Basis of the Tank Ditch Story of 12 July 1943

Figure 12 showing the tank ditch on 16 July 1943

The story of the Soviet tank ditch disrupting the operations of one or more attacking Soviet tank brigades at Prokhorovka is not based upon any documented records. It is entirely based upon post-war interviews and post-war accounts. This is always an uncomfortable basis from which to build an account from.

The primary source for this story of Captain Rudolf Ribbentrop’s account, who was the company commander of the 6th Panzer Company and was in the midst of the fight. As he was the eldest son of the German foreign minister, there is reason to be concerned that he may not have given an unbiased or unvarnished account. I still moved forward and accepted his account, but only after Major General Brand (Bundeswehr, ret) had discussed it with him and Ribbentrop had again discussed it with one or more crew members that were with him at the time. So there was reason to believe that this account is valid, even though it was originally published in a publication that was raising funds for SS veterans (see page 933, footnote 36 in my Kursk book; or page 320, footnote 60 in my Prokhorovka book).

The only other source for the tank ditch story is an account from Wilhelm Roes of the 7th Panzer Company. In this case, I drew his account from Zamulin’s writing, and his source is footnoted that the story came from the “author’s personal archive” (see page 328, footnote 64 in my Prokhorovka book). There may a more detailed Wilhelm Roes’ account in German sources, but I have not taken the time to chase them down. As it is, Zamulin’s used Roes account in Zamulin’s claim the tank ditch was encountered in the early afternoon.

Was the Tank Ditch encountered in the morning, the afternoon, or both?

It appears that these are the only two accounts for the tank ditch story. There may be others, but I have not located them. Now, there is not much question that the tank ditch existed. But, the basis of the story that Soviet tanks drove into and/or were stopped by the tank ditch is primarily (or only) based upon two post-war German accounts.

The interesting aspects of Dr. Wheatley’s research (which I do think is worthwhile, even if I disagree with him over a number of interpretations) is that his photo reconnaissance research could help confirm these stories. In particular in his article Visual Examination…. there are figures 12, 14, 15, 19 and 20 which actually show the tank ditch on 16 July 1943 and 7 August 1943. Figure 12 is displayed at the head of this blog post. Now, I don’t see any Soviet tanks in the ditch, but if there was, this would be very useful confirmation for an otherwise poorly documented action. Does anyone see any tanks in and around the tank ditch in these five pictures?

Now, Dr. Wheatley does note:

By closely comparing the photographs of 16 July and 7 August we can see the location of the destroyed tanks in the anti-tank ditch in the later, though by no means as clearly as on 16 July. The track in front of anti-tank ditch is less worn on 7 August which only goes to highlight (given its clear marking on 16 July) how many tanks on 12 July must have traversed the route whilst looking for a crossing.

I’ll be honest. I don’t see anything identifiable. They may be there and others may see them, but I do not. I see lots of black splotches in the pictures, but I cannot tell what they are. Are they tanks, are they shell holes? I can clearly see planes on airfields on the pictures I copied (see pages 575-576 of my Kursk book) and I can clearly see shell holes in the pictures I copied (see pages 573 and 600 of my Kursk book). There may be a resolution problem with the pictures attached to his article. They may be clear on his copies.

What probably should be done is to make a map and plot all the tanks that can be observed in these pictures on that map. Not sure who, if anyone, is going to take this on.

Counting Holes in Tanks in Tunisia

M4A1 Sherman destroyed in combat in Tunisia, 1943.

[NOTE: This piece was originally posted on 23 August 2016]

A few years ago, I came across a student battle analysis exercise prepared by the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute on the Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia in February 1943. At the time, I noted the diagram below (click for larger version), which showed the locations of U.S. tanks knocked out during a counterattack conducted by Combat Command C (CCC) of the U.S. 1st Armored Division against elements of the German 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions near the village of Sidi Bou Zid on 15 February 1943. Without reconnaissance and in the teeth of enemy air superiority, the inexperienced CCC attacked directly into a classic German tank ambush. CCC’s drive on Sidi Bou Zid was halted by a screen of German anti-tank guns, while elements of the two panzer divisions attacked the Americans on both flanks. By the time CCC withdrew several hours later, it had lost 46 of 52 M4 Sherman medium tanks, along with 15 officers and 298 men killed, captured, or missing.

Sidi Bou Zid00During a recent conversation with my colleague, Chris Lawrence, I recalled the diagram and became curious where it had originated. It identified the location of each destroyed tank, which company it belonged to, and what type of enemy weapon apparently destroyed it; significant battlefield features; and the general locations and movements of the enemy forces. What it revealed was significant. None of CCC’s M4 tanks were disabled or destroyed by a penetration of their frontal armor. Only one was hit by a German 88mm round from either the anti-tank guns or from the handful of available Panzer Mk. VI Tigers. All of the rest were hit with 50mm rounds from Panzer Mk. IIIs, which constituted most of the German force, or by 75mm rounds from Mk. IV’s. The Americans were not defeated by better German tanks. The M4 was superior to the Mk. III and equal to the Mk. IV; the dreaded 88mm anti-tank guns and Tiger tanks played little role in the destruction. The Americans had succumbed to superior German tactics and their own errors.

Counting dead tanks and analyzing their cause of death would have been an undertaking conducted by military operations researchers, at least in the early days of the profession. As Chris pointed out however, the Kasserine battle took place before the inception of operations research in the U.S. Army.

After a bit of digging online, I still have not been able to establish paternity of the diagram, but I think it was created as part of a battlefield survey conducted by the headquarters staff of either the U.S. 1st Armored Division, or one of its subordinate combat commands. The only reference I can find for it is as part of a historical report compiled by Brigadier General Paul Robinett, submitted to support the preparation of Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West by George F. Howe, the U.S. Army Center of Military History’s (CMH) official history volume on U.S. Army operations in North Africa, published in 1956. Robinett was the commander of Combat Command B, U.S. 1st Armored Division during the Battle of Kasserine Pass, but did not participate in the engagement at Sidi Bou Zid. His report is excerpted in a set of readings (pp. 103-120) provided as background material for a Kasserine Pass staff ride prepared by CMH. (Curiously, the account of the 15 February engagement at Sidi Bou Zid in Northwest Africa [pp. 419-422] does not reference Robinett’s study.)

Robinett’s report appeared to include an annotated copy of a topographical map labeled “approximate location of destroyed U.S. tanks (as surveyed three weeks later).” This suggests that the battlefield was surveyed in late March 1943, after U.S. forces had defeated the Germans and regained control of the area.

Sidi Bou Zid02The report also included a version of the schematic diagram later reproduced by CMH. The notes on the map seem to indicate that the survey was the work of staff officers, perhaps at Robinett’s direction, possibly as part of an after-action report.

Sidi Bou Zid03If anyone knows more about the origins of this bit of battlefield archaeology, I would love to know more about it. As far as I know, this assessment was unique, at least in the U.S. Army in World War II.

145 or 10?

A German Henschel Hs-126 (1940 or earlier)

As some are aware, I am working on a book on the air battles during the Battle of Kursk. On 2 June 1943, the Germans organized a mass raid on the Kursk railway station using aircraft from the 1st Air Division of the Sixth Air Fleet and from the VIII Air Corps of the Fourth Air Fleet. The Sixth Air Fleet sent in 95 bomber sorties and 64 “destroyer” sorties (Me-110s) during the day, with heavy fighter cover. That night, they hit the Kursk area again with another 52 bomber sorties. The VIII Air Corps sent in 138 bomber missions during the day and 150 more during the night.

The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) burned its records towards the end of WWII, so in most cases there are not detailed records of their activity. In this case, there was. In the files of the Second Army, west of Kursk, are the records of the air liaison officer. It is in the National Archives, in the Captured German Records collection, file T312, roll R1234. The sortie counts given above are from those records. They also report their losses as 13 aircraft. The VIII Air Corps lost 1 Hs-126, 1 Ju-87, 3 He-111s and 1 Me-109 during the day and a Ju-88 at night. The Sixth Air Fleet lost 4 Ju-88s, 1 Me-110 and 1 Fw-190 during the day and nothing at night. I state in my book that “German losses connected with these raids were about 10 aircraft (2 percent losses)” as I am guessing that some of those 13 planes may have been lost in other operations (for example, the lost Hs-126 was probably doing reconnaissance). See Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka, page 303. E. R. Hooton in the book War Over the Steppes, page 200, states that the Germans lost 17 bombers. He does not footnote his sources. Bergstrom in Kursk: The Air Battle: July 1943, page 21, states that “Seventeen of these aircraft were shot down and destroyed and another eight sustained severe battle damage.” His source is the Luftwaffe Quartermaster reports. These claims from the Luftwaffe Quartermaster reports probably include losses from other causes (like mechanical, accidents and returned planes that were later scavenged for parts) and other missions.

On the other hand, another book written by two U.S. based authors state that “Certain Soviet sources list 145 German aircraft down (104 by VVS fighters and 41 by antiaircraft fire), with a modest loss of 27 Soviet fighters.”  They footnote the source as a Soviet-era book from 1977. I had found the same claim of 145 kills in a Soviet-era Progress Press publication from 1974.

I am not breaking new ground by pointing out that Soviet-era publications often exaggerated enemy casualties. As discussed in my Kursk book, the units involved often made these outrageous claims and this it what was in their unit records. Therefore these claims ended up in the Soviet historical accounts.

Needless to say, one needs to cross-check all Soviet-era claims before they are used in a book. It is not enough just to say “Certain Soviet sources…” and ignor the German records. It certainly does give the wrong impressions of the operations, especially to the casual reader. Yet this is done repeatedly in this book, even though it was updated and published in 2012.

Other TDI Data Bases

What we have listed in the previous articles is what we consider the six best databases to use for validation. The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) was used for a validation effort by CAA (Center for Army Analysis). The Kursk Data Base (KDB) was never used for a validation effort but was used, along with Ardennes, to test Lanchester equations (they failed).

The Use of the Two Campaign Data Bases

The Battle of Britain Data Base to date has not been used for anything that we are aware of. As the program we were supporting was classified, then they may have done some work with it that we are not aware of, but I do not think that is the case.

The Battle of Britain Data Base

Our three battles databases, the division-level data base, the battalion-level data base and the company-level data base, have all be used for validating our own TNDM (Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model). These efforts have been written up in our newsletters (here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub4.htm) and briefly discussed in Chapter 19 of War by Numbers. These are very good databases to use for validation of a combat model or testing a casualty estimation methodology. We have also used them for a number of other studies (Capture Rate, Urban Warfare, Lighter-Weight Armor, Situational Awareness, Casualty Estimation Methodologies, etc.). They are extremely useful tools analyzing the nature of conflict and how it impacts certain aspects. They are, of course, unique to The Dupuy Institute and for obvious business reasons, we do keep them close hold.

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

Battalion and Company Level Data Bases

We do have a number of other database that have not been used as much. There is a list of 793 conflicts from 1898-1998 that we have yet to use for anything (the WACCO – Warfare, Armed Conflict and Contingency Operations database). There is the Campaign Data Base (CaDB) of 196 cases from 1904 to 1991, which was used for the Lighter Weight Armor study. There are three databases that are mostly made of cases from the original Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB) that did not fit into our division-level, battalion-level, and company-level data bases. They are the Large Action Data Base (LADB) of 55 cases from 1912-1973, the Small Action Data Base (SADB) of 5 cases and the Battles Data Base (BaDB) of 243 cases from 1600-1900. We have not used these three database for any studies, although the BaDB is used for analysis in War by Numbers.

Finally, there are three databases on insurgencies, interventions and peacekeeping operations that we have developed. This first was the Modern Contingency Operations Data Base (MCODB) that we developed to use for Bosnia estimate that we did for the Joint Staff in 1995. This is discussed in Appendix II of America’s Modern Wars. It then morphed into the Small Scale Contingency Operations (SSCO) database which we used for the Lighter Weight Army study. We then did the Iraq Casualty Estimate in 2004 and significant part of the SSCO database was then used to create the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets (MISS). This is all discussed in some depth in my book America’s Modern Wars.

None of these, except the Campaign Data Base and the Battles Data Base (1600-1900), are good for use in a model validation effort. The use of the Campaign Data Base should be supplementary to validation by another database, much like we used it in the Lighter Weight Armor study.

Now, there have been three other major historical validation efforts done that we were not involved in. I will discuss their supporting data on my next post on this subject.

Battalion and Company Level Data Bases

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the need and desire to model combat at the division-level has declined. The focus has shifted to lower levels of combat. As such, we have created the Battalion-Level Operations Data Base (BLODB) and the Company-Level Actions Data Base (CLADB).

The challenge for both of these databases is to find actions that have good data for both sides. It is the nature of military organizations that divisions have the staff and record keeping that allows one to model them. These records are often (but not always !!!) preserved. So, it is possible to assemble the data for both sides for an engagement at division level. This is true through at least World War II (up through 1945). After that, getting unit records from both sides is difficult. Usually one or both of the opponents are still keeping their records classified or close hold. This is why we ended up posting on this subject:

The Sad Story Of The Captured Iraqi DESERT STORM Documents

And:

So Why Are Iraqi Records Important?

 

Just to give an example of the difficulty of creating battalion-level engagements, for the southern offensive around Belgorod (Battle of Kursk) from 4-18 July 1943 I was able to created 192 engagements using the unit records for both sides. I have yet to create a single battalion-level engagement from those records. The only detailed description of a battalion-level action offered in the German records are of a mop-up operation done by the 74th Engineer Battalion. We have no idea of who they were facing or what their strength was. We do have strengths at times of various German battalions and we sometimes have strength and losses for some of the Soviet infantry and tank regiments, so it might be possible to work something up with a little estimation, but it certainly can not be done systematically like we have for division-level engagements. As U.S. and British armies (and USMC) tend to have better battalion-level record keeping than most other armies, it is possible to work something up from their records, if you can put together anything on their opponents. So far, our work on battalion-level and company-level combat has been more of a grab-bag and catch-and-catch-can effort that we had done over time.

Our battalion-level data base consists of 127 cases. They cover from 1918 to 1991. It is described here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/blodb.htm The blurry photo at the start of this blog if from that database.

Our company-level data base is more recent. It has not been set up yet as an Access data base. It consists of 98 cases from 1914 to 2000.

The BLODB was used for the battalion-level validation of the TNDM. This is discussed briefly in Chapter 19 of War by Numbers. These engagements are discussed in depth in four issues of  our International TNDM Newsletter (see Vol. 1, Numbers 2, 4, 5, 6 here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub4.htm )

The CLADB was used for a study done for Boeing on casualty rates compared to unit sizes in combat. This is discussed in depth in Chapter 12: The Nature of Lower Levels of Combat in War by Numbers.

Both databases are in need to expansion. To date, we have not found anyone willing to fund such an effort.

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB) is one of eight data bases that make up our DuWar suite of databases: See http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/dbases.htm This data base, of 752 engagements, is described in depth at: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/dledb.htm

It now consists of 752 engagements from 1904 to 1991. It was originally created in 2000-2001 by us independent of any government contracts (so as to ensure it was corporate proprietary). We then used it as an instrumental part of the our Enemy Prisoner of War studies and then our three Urban Warfare studies.

Below is a list of wars/campaigns the engagements are pulled from:

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905): 3 engagements

Balkan Wars (1912-1913): 1 engagement

World War I (1914-1918): 25 engagements

…East Prussia (1914): 1

…Gallipoli (1915): 2

…Mesopotamia (1915): 2

…1st & 2nd Artois (1915): 7

…Loos (1915): 2

…Somme (1916): 2

…Mesopotamia (1917): 1

…Palestine (1917): 2

…Palestine (1918): 1

…US engagements (1918): 5

World War II (1939-1945): 657 engagements

…Western Front: 295

……France (1940): 2

……North Africa (1941): 5

……Crete (1941): 1

……Tunisia (1943): 5

……Italian Campaign (1943-1944): 141

……France (1944): 61

…,,,Aachen (1944): 23

……Ardennes (1944-1945): 57

…Eastern Front: 267

……Eastern Front (1943-1945): 11

…….Kursk (1943): 192

……Kharkov (1943): 64

…Pacific Campaign: 95

…….Manchuria (1938): 1

…….Malayan Campaign (1941): 1

…….Phillipines (1942): 1

…….Islands (1944-1945): 4

…….Okinawa (1945): 27

…….Manila (1945): 61

Arab-Israeli Wars (1956-1973): 51 engagements

…1956: 2

…1967: 16

…1968: 1

…1973: 32

Gulf War (1991): 15 engagements

 

Now our revised version of the earlier Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB) of 605 engagements had more World War I engagements. But some of these engagements had over a hundred of thousand men on a side and some lasted for months. It was based upon how the battles were defined at the time; but was really not relevant for use in a division-level database. So, we shuffled them off to something called the Large Action Data Base (LADB), were 55 engagements have sat, unused, since then. Some actions in the original LWDB were smaller than division-level. These made up the core of our battalion-level and company-level data bases.

The Italian Campaign Engagements were the original core of this database. An earlier version of the data base has only 76 engagements from Italy in them (around year 2000). We then expanded, corrected and revised them. So the database still has 40 of the original engagements, 22 were revised, and the rest (79) are new.

The original LWDB was used for parts of Trevor Dupuy’s book Understanding War. The DLEDB was a major component of my book War by Numbers.

As can be seen, it is possible to use this database for model development and/or validation. One could start by developing/testing the model to the 141 Italian Campaign engagements, and then further develop it by testing it to the 141 campaigns from France and the Battle of the Bulge. And then, to test the human factors elements of your models (which if you are modeling warfare I would hope you would have), one could then test it to the 267 division-level engagements on the Eastern Front. Then move forward in time with the 51 engagements from the Arab-Israeli Wars and the 15 engagements from the Gulf War. There is not a lack of data available for model development or model testing. It is, of course, a lot of work; and lately it seems that the  industry has been more concerned about making sure their models have good graphics.

Just to beat a dead horse, we remind you of this post that annoyed several people over at TRADOC (the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command):

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

Finally, it is possible to examine changes in warfare over time. This is useful to understand it one is looking at changes in warfare in the future. The DLEDB covers 88 years of warfare. We also have the Battles Data Base (BaDB) of 243 battles from 1600-1900. It is described here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/badb.htm

Next I will describe our battalion-level and company-level databases.

Reviews of NPW

I was just surfing Amazon.com yesterday and noticed that Trevor Dupuy’s book Numbers, Predictions and Wars had 8 reviews. This is odd as I think the book went out of print before Amazon.com existed. The version they were reviewing was the hardcover from 1979. All the reviews were from 2012-2018, all four and five stars. Interesting. Even I don’t have a copy of the hardback version.

Numbers, Predictions & War

Now, if only people would pay more attention to his greatest work, Understanding War. It only has two reviews.

Understanding War

The Battle of Britain Data Base

The Battle of Britain data base came into existence at the request of OSD PA&E (Office of the Secretary of Defense, Program Analysis and Evaluation). They contacted us. They were working with LMI (Logistics Management Institute, on of a dozen FFRDCs) to develop an air combat model. They felt that the Battle of Britain would be perfect for helping to develop, test and validate their model. The effort was led by a retired Air Force colonel who had the misfortune of spending part of his career in North Vietnam.

The problem with developing any air campaign database is that, unlike the German army, the Luftwaffe actually followed their orders late in the war to destroy their records. I understand from conversations with Trevor Dupuy that Luftwaffe records were stored in a train and had been moved to the German countryside (to get them away from the bombing and/or advancing armies). They then burned all the records there at the rail siding.

So, when HERO (Trevor Dupuy’s Historical Evaluation Research Organization) did their work on the Italian Campaign (which was funded by the Air Force), they had to find records on the German air activity with the Luftwaffe liaison officers of the German armies involved. The same with Kursk, where one of the few air records we had was with the air liaison officer to the German Second Army. This was the army on the tip of the bulge that was simply holding in place during the battle. It was the only source that gave us a daily count of sorties, German losses, etc. Of the eight or so full wings that were involved in the battle from the VIII Air Corps, we had records for one group of He-111s (there were usually three groups to a wing). We did have good records from the Soviet archives. But it hard to assemble a good picture of the German side of the battle with records from only 1/24th of the units involved. So the very limited surviving files of the Luftwaffe air liaison officers was all we had to work with for Italy and Kursk. We did not even have that for the Ardennes. Luckily the German air force simplified things by flying almost no missions until the disastrous Operation Bodenplatte on 1 January 1945. Of course, we had great records from the U.S. and the UK, but….hard to develop a good database without records from both sides. Therefore, one is left with few well-documented air battles anywhere for use in developing, evaluating and validating an air campaign model.

The exception is the Battle of Britain, which has been so well researched, and extensively written about, that it is possible to assemble an accurate and detailed daily account for both sides for every day of the battle. There are also a few surviving records that can be tapped, including the personal kill records of the pilots, the aircraft loss reports of the quartermaster, and the ULTRA reports of intercepted German radio messages. Therefore, we (mostly Richard Anderson) assembled the Battle of Britain data base from British unit records and the surviving records and the extensive secondary sources for the German side. We have already done considerable preliminary research covering 15 August to 19 September 1940 as a result of our work on DACM (Dupuy Air Combat Model)

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM)

The database covered the period from 8 August to 30 September 1940. It was programmed in Access by Jay Karamales.  From April to July 2004 we did a feasibility study for LMI. We were awarded a contract from OSD PA&E on 1 September to start work on the database. We sent a two-person research team to the British National Archives in Kew Gardens, London. There we examined 249 document files and copied 4,443 pages. The completed database and supporting documentation was delivered to OSD PA&E in August 2005. It was certainly the easiest of our campaign databases to do.

We do not know if OSD PA&E or LMI ever used the data base, but we think not. The database was ordered while they were still working on the model. After we delivered the database to them, we do not know what happened. We suspect the model was never completed and the effort was halted. The database has never been publically available. PA&E became defunct in 2009 and was replaced by CAPE (Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation). We may be the only people who still have (or can find) a copy of this database.

I will provide a more detailed description of this database in a later post.

Has The Army Given Up On Counterinsurgency Research, Again?

Mind-the-Gap

[In light of the U.S. Army’s recent publication of a history of it’s involvement in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, it may be relevant to re-post this piece from from 29 June 2016.]

As Chris Lawrence mentioned yesterday, retired Brigadier General John Hanley’s review of America’s Modern Wars in the current edition of Military Review concluded by pointing out the importance of a solid empirical basis for staff planning support for reliable military decision-making. This notion seems so obvious as to be a truism, but in reality, the U.S. Army has demonstrated no serious interest in remedying the weaknesses or gaps in the base of knowledge underpinning its basic concepts and doctrine.

In 2012, Major James A. Zanella published a monograph for the School of Advanced Military Studies of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (graduates of which are known informally as “Jedi Knights”), which examined problems the Army has had with estimating force requirements, particularly in recent stability and counterinsurgency efforts.

Historically, the United States military has had difficulty articulating and justifying force requirements to civilian decision makers. Since at least 1975, governmental officials and civilian analysts have consistently criticized the military for inadequate planning and execution. Most recently, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq reinvigorated the debate over the proper identification of force requirements…Because Army planners have failed numerous times to provide force estimates acceptable to the President, the question arises, why are the planning methods inadequate and why have they not been improved?[1]

Zanella surveyed the various available Army planning tools and methodologies for determining force requirements, but found them all either inappropriate or only marginally applicable, or unsupported by any real-world data. He concluded

Considering the limitations of Army force planning methods, it is fair to conclude that Army force estimates have failed to persuade civilian decision-makers because the advice is not supported by a consistent valid method for estimating the force requirements… What is clear is that the current methods have utility when dealing with military situations that mirror the conditions represented by each model. In the contemporary military operating environment, the doctrinal models no longer fit.[2]

Zanella did identify the existence of recent, relevant empirical studies on manpower and counterinsurgency. He noted that “the existing doctrine on force requirements does not benefit from recent research” but suggested optimistically that it could provide “the Army with new tools to reinvigorate the discussion of troops-to-task calculations.”[3] Even before Zanella published his monograph, however, the Defense Department began removing any detailed reference or discussion about force requirements in counterinsurgency from Army and Joint doctrinal publications.

As Zanella discussed, there is a body of recent empirical research on manpower and counterinsurgency that contains a variety of valid and useful insights, but as I recently discussed, it does not yet offer definitive conclusions. Much more research and analysis is needed before the conclusions can be counted on as a valid and justifiably reliable basis for life and death decision-making. Yet, the last of these government sponsored studies was completed in 2010. Neither the Army nor any other organization in the U.S. government has funded any follow-on work on this subject and none appears forthcoming. This boom-or-bust pattern is nothing new, but the failure to do anything about it is becoming less and less understandable.

NOTES

[1] Major James A. Zanella, “Combat Power Analysis is Combat Power Density” (Ft. Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2012), pp. 1-2.

[2] Ibid, 50.

[3] Ibid, 47.

Historians and the Early Era of U.S. Army Operations Research

While perusing Charles Shrader’s fascinating history of the U.S. Army’s experience with operations research (OR), I came across several references to the part played by historians and historical analysis in early era of that effort.

The ground forces were the last branch of the Army to incorporate OR into their efforts during World War II, lagging behind the Army Air Forces, the technical services, and the Navy. Where the Army was a step ahead, however, was in creating a robust wartime historical field history documentation program. (After the war, this enabled the publication of the U.S. Army in World War II series, known as the “Green Books,” which set a new standard for government sponsored military histories.)

As Shrader related, the first OR personnel the Army deployed forward in 1944-45 often crossed paths with War Department General Staff Historical Branch field historian detachments. They both engaged in similar activities: collecting data on real-world combat operations, which was then analyzed and used for studies and reports written for the use of the commands to which they were assigned. The only significant difference was in their respective methodologies, with the historians using historical methods and the OR analysts using mathematical and scientific tools.

History and OR after World War II

The usefulness of historical approaches to collecting operational data did not go unnoticed by the OR practitioners, according to Shrader. When the Army established the Operations Research Office (ORO) in 1948, it hired a contingent of historians specifically for the purpose of facilitating research and analysis using WWII Army records, “the most likely source for data on operational matters.”

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, ORO sent eight multi-disciplinary teams, including the historians, to collect operational data and provide analytical support for U.S. By 1953, half of ORO’s personnel had spent time in combat zones. Throughout the 1950s, about 40-43% of ORO’s staff was comprised of specialists in the social sciences, history, business, literature, and law. Shrader quoted one leading ORO analyst as noting that, “there is reason to believe that the lawyer, social scientist or historian is better equipped professionally to evaluate evidence which is derived from the mind and experience of the human species.”

Among the notable historians who worked at or with ORO was Dr. Hugh M. Cole, an Army officer who had served as a staff historian for General George Patton during World War II. Cole rose to become a senior manager at ORO and later served as vice-president and president of ORO’s successor, the Research Analysis Corporation (RAC). Cole brought in WWII colleague Forrest C. Pogue (best known as the biographer of General George C. Marshall) and Charles B. MacDonald. ORO also employed another WWII field historian, the controversial S. L. A. Marshall, as a consultant during the Korean War. Dorothy Kneeland Clark did pioneering historical analysis on combat phenomena while at ORO.

The Demise of ORO…and Historical Combat Analysis?

By the late 1950s, considerable institutional friction had developed between ORO, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU)—ORO’s institutional owner—and the Army. According to Shrader,

Continued distrust of operations analysts by Army personnel, questions about the timeliness and focus of ORO studies, the ever-expanding scope of ORO interests, and, above all, [ORO director] Ellis Johnson’s irascible personality caused tensions that led in August 1961 to the cancellation of the Army’s contract with JHU and the replacement of ORO with a new, independent research organization, the Research Analysis Corporation [RAC].

RAC inherited ORO’s research agenda and most of its personnel, but changing events and circumstances led Army OR to shift its priorities away from field collection and empirical research on operational combat data in favor of the use of modeling and wargaming in its analyses. As Chris Lawrence described in his history of federally-funded Defense Department “think tanks,” the rise and fall of scientific management in DOD, the Vietnam War, social and congressional criticism, and an unhappiness by the military services with the analysis led to retrenchment in military OR by the end of the 60s. The Army sold RAC and created its own in-house Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA; now known as the Center for Army Analysis).

By the early 1970s, analysts, such as RAND’s Martin Shubik and Gary Brewer, and John Stockfisch, began to note that the relationships and processes being modeled in the Army’s combat simulations were not based on real-world data and that empirical research on combat phenomena by the Army OR community had languished. In 1991, Paul Davis and Donald Blumenthal gave this problem a name: the “Base of Sand.”