# Some unique battelfield facts... Interesting - read on...



## 1feral1 (21 Jun 2004)

With all the hoop-la about the amount of 'rds down range' required in modern or recent wars to kill the EN, here is a few unique facts which come out of the book titled  'Acts of Wa'r ISBN 0-297-84668-X, published 2003, written by Richard Holmes.

BTW - This is a good book, and every Officer, SNCO and soldier should have it. It covers the 'military sociology' of human motivation before, during and after battle, using old and new wars in comparison. The only thing that has changed is the technology.

Anyways, here we go.


The Battle of Maida, 1806 Britain vs France - the English fired 1890 rds from their muskets inflicting 440 casualties (4.4rds/kill)

The Battle of Rosebud Creek, 1876 US vs Indians - US fired 25,000rds with 99 casualties (252rds/kill) 

The Battle of Rorkes Drift England vs Zulus 1897 - English fired 20,000rds from their Martin-Henrys' with 370 kills (13rds/kill)

WW1 Ypres 1914 English Vs Germany,  The English fired 24,000 .303 ctgs inflicting 300 casualties (26.6rds/kill)

So even in the old days heaps of SAA were required. 

Tomorrow some suprisingly shocking artillery figures.


Cheers, :soldier:


Wes


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## 1feral1 (21 Jun 2004)

Interesting facts of Artillery as fol:

01 July 1916, The Somme. England vs Germany, Opening battle fired 224,221 rds of HE with 6000 German casualties.

The Battle of Monte Cassino, 1943, where 150,000 HE rds were fired in a 24hr period. The Germans held out and created garrisons with the rubble.

Korea, 1954, Porkchop Hill, where 77,349 HE rds were fired in 2 days...

Dien Bien Phu, where 15,055rds wre fired at the EN by the French, with 13,000 of them being fired from from 17 105mm guns! yes and the French lost. 

During the Dhofar War in the 1970s, one well dug position was hit by over 10,000 arty and mortar rds, and over a 4 yr period the body count was 6, and 12 were wounded. Now thats well dug positions!

The 1973 War between Egypt and Israel, the Israelis had over 10,500 HE rds fired on to their positions in the first MINUTE (thats 175 rds per second) on the first day of the offensive.

The Falklands, 1982, The English fired over 12,000HE rds at the Argentine positions from their new L118 Britsh Light Guns in 105mm Abbott configuration. Thats over 4 yrs of an ammo trg allotment for a British RA Regiment. This was during the final battle for Stanley by 5 Btys. The BC from one Bty said 'we were dominated by the demands of the ammunition flow'.

A Bty I was attached to in Sholawater Bay fired fired over 450rds in a day, and that was enough mayhem!


Cheers,


Wes


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## Limpy (23 Jun 2004)

I heard that for every kill the Americans obtained in Veitnam, they fired about 400 000 rounds. I play paintball and for about every 6 people I knock off, I fire around 200 rds. :gunner:


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## JasonH (3 Jul 2004)

Holyshit


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## Spr.Earl (3 Jul 2004)

We would be better off with the long bow and club's as they were more effective.


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## Danjanou (4 Jul 2004)

Spr.Earl said:
			
		

> We would be better off with the long bow and club's as they were more effective.



Speaking from experience there old timer? ;D


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## Spr.Earl (4 Jul 2004)

Danjanou said:
			
		

> Spr.Earl said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yup,nothing like a mace to knock some sence into a foe  ;D


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## Sheerin (4 Jul 2004)

Just to show how geeky I am.  Have any of you played Civ III and had either a tank or modern armour destroyed by a spearmen?  It happens, in the computer world.  If a spearman could take out an M1A2 then ya gotta wonder...


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## Michael Dorosh (5 Jul 2004)

> The Battle of Monte Cassino, 1943, where 150,000 HE rds were fired in a 24hr period. The Germans held out and *created garrisons with the rubble.*



Holy crap - how did we manage to beat entire garrisons of Nazi Rockmen??  I know - we used huge sheets of paper!!  Thank God they never finished that Heavy Scissor project, or we would be speaking Italian today!



> Korea, 1954, Porkchop Hill, where 77,349 HE rds were fired in 2 days...



Not very impressive considering the battle for Pork Chop Hill ended a year earlier.  When the war was still going on.


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## MJP (5 Jul 2004)

Another interesting read that touches on somewhat the same subject but theorizes why it took so many rounds to inflict each casualty is On Killing by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman.  I've read it through a few times and found it puts a few things in perspective.  Publishers description of the book below.



The twentieth century, with its bloody world wars, revolutions, and genocides accounting for hundreds of millions dead, would seem to prove that human beings are incredibly vicious predators and that killing is as natural as eating. But Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman, a psychologist and U.S. Army Ranger, demonstrates this is not the case. The good news, according to Grossman - drawing on dozens of interviews, first-person reports, and historic studies of combat, ranging from Frederick the Great's battles in the eighteenth century through Vietnam - is that the vast majority of soldiers are loath to kill. In World War II, for instance, only 15 to 25 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles. The provocative news is that modern armies, using Pavlovian and operant conditioning, have learned how to overcome this reluctance. In Korea about 50 percent of combat infantry were willing to shoot, and in Vietnam the figure rose to over 90 percent. The bad news is that by conditioning soldiers to overcome their instinctive loathing of killing, we have drastically increased post-combat stress - witness the devastated psychological state of our Vietnam vets as compared with those from earlier wars. And the truly terrible news is that contemporary civilian society, particularly the media, replicates the army's conditioning techniques and - according to Grossman's controversial thesis - is responsible for our rising rates of murder and violence, particularly among the young. In the explosive last section of the book, he argues that high-body-count movies, television violence (both news and entertainment), and interactive point-and-shoot video games are dangerously similar to thetraining programs that dehumanize the enemy, desensitize soldiers to the psychological ramifications of killing, and make pulling the trigger an automatic response.*


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## stukirkpatrick (5 Jul 2004)

Thats interesting - on the flip side, Stanley Milgram argued in the 1970s that the majority of people could be convinced by an "authority figure" to inflict apparent harm (in the form of electrical shocks) on a subject, in order to conform.  Millgram controversially stated that he could take a concentration camp, and staff it with average Americans, based on the results of his  experiments - he was trying to prove why German guards would follow the orders of their superiors in death camps.

Milgram also attempted to explain the My Lai massacre, as a result of the depersonalization of the Vietnam war, and the culture differences, coupled with the soldiers' collective desire to obey their authority, resulting in their participation in the massacre.


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## MJP (5 Jul 2004)

On Killing goes into the same type of authority figure orders and the why people meekly just follow orders even to the point of causing extreme pain to another person.  IIRC it uses Milgram's studies to illustrate several points.  It easy to understand even for a simple layman like me and I thought well laid out.


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## Bill Smy (5 Jul 2004)

Wesley H. Allen said:
			
		

> With all the hoop-la about the amount of 'rds down range' required in modern or recent wars to kill the EN, here is a few unique facts which come out of the book titled   'Acts of Wa'r ISBN 0-297-84668-X, published 2003, written by Richard Holmes.
> 
> BTW - This is a good book, and every Officer, SNCO and soldier should have it. It covers the 'military sociology' of human motivation before, during and after battle, using old and new wars in comparison. The only thing that has changed is the technology.
> 
> ...



Interesting statistics Wes. But one comment. Instead of "English" I think it would be more accurate to say "British" for anything after 1606.


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## Michael Dorosh (5 Jul 2004)

There was a famous university experiment in the States whose name escapes me that had students taking on the roll of prison guards while fellow students role played as inmates.   It was quite revealing on the mentality of brutality, I'll see if I can dig out the name at home.

I didn't find the statistics above all that revealing, frankly.   As we gain the capacity to use firepower, we are more inclined to use it.   That's what it's for, after all.   "Use guns instead of men."

The statistics are open to interpretation also - the shells per casualty on the Somme, for example, may or may not include lightly wounded but remained on duty, casualties inflicted by machineguns, self-inflicted wounds, etc.   Pretty broad and vague...  SAA figures may or may not include ammo used in training, lost to shellfire while still in dumps, etc.  I'd be more interested in one single verifiable figure than such a broad number for an entire campaign like "Ypres".


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## winchable (5 Jul 2004)

I remember reading about that University Experiment as well, I only remember a few vague things.
If I remember correctly, they had to end the experiment early or..something else unexpected occurred because the "Guards" proved to be extremely brutal and sadistic.
I can't qualify that information though, it's a vague memory from a textbook from many years ago.


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## stukirkpatrick (5 Jul 2004)

That one was the Stanford prison experiment (by Zimbardo) - yeah, they ended it after only 6 days, because 'prisoners' and 'guards' (randomly assigned) 'became' their roles - prisoners were depressed and wanted to escape (although being able to voluntarily release at any point in the experiment) and guards became sadistic and cruel to the prisoners.


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## Michael Dorosh (5 Jul 2004)

Kirkpatrick said:
			
		

> That one was the Stanford prison experiment (by Zimbardo) - yeah, they ended it after only 6 days, because 'prisoners' and 'guards' (randomly assigned) 'became' their roles - prisoners were depressed and wanted to escape (although being able to voluntarily release at any point in the experiment) and guards became sadistic and cruel to the prisoners.



That's the one.  And those that could quit, didn't, because they felt a responsiblity to their "fellow inmates."


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