Tag archives for Stress of Battle
An Update
I'm a bit behind with writing things for the blog, there are about six books that I've read but not reviewed and also a continuation on a couple of projects that I'm working on that I was intending to write about. Part, but not all, of the reason for this is that I'm very busy with my day job. Over the last month I've been working much longer hours than normal, my team has doubled in size, and in the next two weeks it's going to treble in size (that's up from 7 to 43). This is a good from a day job perspective, but not so much for my side activities. I managed to completely miss doing TMA3 for B120. Fortunately I have had oustanding marks for TMA1 & TMA2, so provided I manage not to miss any more…
The Stress of Battle 5 – WW2 Heroism & Surprise
This is the fifth and final part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. This part is on the effects of heroism and combat degradation. Combat Degradation Combat degradation is a measure of how less effective weapon systems and individual soldiers are in actual combat when compared to training exercises and range work. A score of is equivalent to not being degraded at all. Degradation to would mean that it was operating at 30% of its peacetime range effectiveness. the analysis by Rowland's team broadly matches that done by Wigram in 1943, that there are three classes of effectiveness. About 20% of those involved could…
The Stress of Battle – Part 3 – Op Research on Terrain Effects
This is the third part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. Fighting in Woods The data comes from an analysis of 120 battles that took place in woods or forests from the US Civil War to the Korean War. It also applied all the things from the previous research and tried to see how woods differed from combat in other types of terrain. Woods Open Urban Attacker casualties per defence MG (at 1:1 force ratio) Force Ratio Power Relationship Defence is less effective in woods, most likely because limited fields of view mean that the engagement ranges are…