"Useless army doctrines, anywhere, anytime." Topic

I am thinking of army doctrine that became outmoded and deadly for the soldiers. For example, the WW1 practice of storming large numbers of soldiers over the tops of trenches onto open fields or open muddy messes covered in barbed wire, into heavily-fortified machine gun shooting galleries. Deadly stupid and mostly useless.

I would suggest reading Mud Blood and Poppycock, and the Psychology of Military Incompetence.

Personally, I am of the view that the most deadl;y, outmoded and plain wrong doctrine is that which says that military action of a more sophisticated nature than simple punitive measures can justify its cost.

Actaualy the numbers dont support the over the top to slaughter time after time.

Most of the casualties in WWI where caused by artillery fire. But, they did not happen in huge bunches. rather the day to day shelling that got a few here a few there added up over the course of the war to huge numbers.

While there where certainly some over the top and into the grinder type assualts, there where many many attempts to find some other formula that would work. The idea that the generals just sat back and fed in troops over and over agian with thought or care really came up in the 1960s and was more of a political agenda than any really look at the actual history. Lions led by donkeys is simply wrong.

But nice idea for a thread.

Owen

Not giving them ammo until the last minute, or permitting them to fire until fired upon, which may sometimes be too late.

@Owen- I had heard that about the artie in WW1. The over-the-top stuff must have killed many as well.

If you extend the parameters slightly, unescorted daylight bombing took quite a while to die in certain quarters.

Regards

In early WWII, the RAF's adherence to formation flying as opposed to the more versatile finger four used by the Luftwaffe.

Tank Destroyer Doctrine and separate branch from Armor created by Gen. Leslie McNair.

Modern US rules of engagement, Sad that we care more about people in the cross fire and buildings (buildings????) then we do for are own troops being able to defend them self….
and not shooting first when you see people with weapons is just dumb as dumb can get.

Sorry if this went blue fez. but the question is a bit.

Ouzel von Schwartzwolfe, agreed. It's sad when they need to sit and be shot at for six hours while they receive permission to storm a cemetery being occupied by the enemy only to go in and lose a man while most of the insurgents escape.

They should have been let to surround it and shell it from one end to the other with air bursts and shot every person running away, but gods forbid we damage a cemetery of all the useless things on earth.

In the spirit of the OP. In RVN I much rather have ARVN artillery(4-6 tubes) in direct support, they were well trained to US standards, rather than US (multiple Bn's)because the firing restrictions on US units delayed support 10-30 minutes. One day after a 20 minute wait for US support, I got a radio call requesting clearance to fire within my area. I had to give clearance: it was my own mission!

When they can say that a million people were killed in this or that battle in a matter of a few days, I'd say it was pretty deadly.

When they can say that a million people were killed in this or that battle in a matter of a few days, I'd say it was pretty deadly.

Maybe, if there had ever been such a battle.

Verdun, the largest battle of WWI, had in the region of 300,000 killed/missing. Over some 10 months on a front spanning about 30 kilometres.

(Stalingrad, in it's widest sense, had about a million killed/missing. But that lasted more than a year and a huge distance.)

The first day of the Somme. Notorious for it's bloodiness, saw less than 20,000 British killed over 12 km or so of front. Despite frontal assaults on a strong fortified line.

Even in WWI it was the hanging around to be shelled after the attack that killed the most men, not the assault.

The casualties for the entire Battle of the Somme topped at around a million, but it lasted for several months. The daily average casualty rate was 2,500.

Unfortunately, this sort of discussion is very similar to the 'useless weapons't thread, where what is actually beng discussed are advances in tehcnology. Yesterdays hot thing is tomorrows useless piece of junk.

The two factors which generals struggled with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the vast expansion in Army size due to industrialisation and population increases, coupled with the massive increase in firepower due to the widespread adoption of rapid fire rifled weapons, both artillery and small arms.

The former rendered Jominian concentration (so successful in Napoleons time) a pointless and wasteful anachronism (comapre and contrast Prussia and Austrias aproaches in 1866 – Benedeck virtually destroyed his own army though excessive concentration). The latter rendered mass tactics obsolete and encouraged dispersion, although the Prussians at Gravelotte – St Privat in 1870 and the French in Alsace in 1914 might have observd it took alog time to figure it out. Even with dispersion, intensive industralised warfare produced shocking casualties with modern weapons to either or both sides – be it the Somme, Verdun, the Kaiserschlacht, Stalingrad, Normandy, Kursk, Berlin, Sinai or the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq. Interestingly though, daily casualty rates have fallen sharply compared to e.g. Leipzig, as dispersion slows the pace of operations and 'battles' last for days, weeks, months….

"not shooting first when you see people with weapons is just dumb as dumb can get"

Although the counter argument is that behaving like an army of occupation and just shooting anyone who might appear to be a threat is merely going to produce more insurgents.

Look how well internment worked in Northern Ireland.

Depends how far liberal democracies are willing to go down the road of militaristic despotism to meet their interests. Ther is always a degree of that in war of course, one of Richard Overys central arguments in 'How the Allies Won' was that they had to acquire some of the characteristics of Nazi Germany and Imperal Japan to beat them. Of course if you go too far, then you become what you are fighting against. From shoot on sight it is fairly logical step to detention without trial, and from there all sorts of deeply unpleasant options open up. We detained enemy aliens in WW2, but at least we didn't work them to death or gas them.

Admiral Kings refusal to use the convoy system until hundreds of seamen were killed strikes me as the dumbest, all be it naval not army.

Any doctrine that recognises the local population outnumbers you by 1000's to 1, don't them off isn't useless.

Here's one I give at work, when trying to convince managers we need to throw out any method that we don't have evidence of usefulness for. I admit it may well be apocryphal, and appears, from the person who knew, to have taken place between the wars.

The British army made a training film of how to correctly load and fire a field gun. When reviewing it the senior officers were surprised to see Gunner Number 6 stand smartly at attention the whole process. No one knew why.

Eventually, after much searching they found a old Boer War veteran. He recalled #6 held the horses.

The doctrine which has the military refute a new tactic that has just proven itself on the battlefield in order to revert to the tried and true(?) old system.

Happens in every war.

Sad that we care more about people in the cross fire and buildings (buildings????) then we do for are own troops being able to defend them self….

I would imagine a flip side there is that you are then sending a clear message to the local population that you rate the lives of your people to be of greater value than their own. This would not always pay off, especially when you are on their turf and claiming to be acting in their interests.

In the long run, it could mean more recruits- or at least passive sympathy and aid- for those you are trying to defeat.

Martin and Stavka make a good point.

If byou are using your army as a colonial police force, you cannot, on an ongoing basis for several years, simply pack a load of ammo and empty it where it is most militarily convenient.

The objective in counter insurgency is the defence and security of the civil population and it is a good idea not to become part of the problem.

If, indeed it is a misuse of your military assets to encumber them with these ROE, the solution is to review the mission rather than the means by which it is carried out.

Now

The US doctrine that tanks were to fight infantry and leave the tank destroyers to fight enemy tanks.

The US army also sticking with the accuracy over rate of fire (others do it to, but that image of the rifled weapon in the Revolution beating the Redcoats dies hard, and like any good zombie it doesn't stay dead for long)

I'm a bit sceptical about the 'BMP' doctrine – were 60s-early 90s IFVs supposed to operate at direct fire ranges or not?

Regards

Yes the american cult of the rifle is very hard to get rid of. I was raised in it, and when hunting verious critters, it works very well. Trying to translate that to a place where the critters shoot back is a hard proccess. And americans believe way to many old tales told by people that should know better that dont. But most of those are not official doctrine.

Of course even McNair had it sort of right, in that US tanks fought a lot more German infantry than they diod tanks. its just that when they did fight tanks the real problems arose.

If you want to see British doctrine at its worst, look at the Boer war. At the start they had a lot of old ideas that caused them massive problems. But they adapted and got better. Without the Boer war toshow the way thier casualties would have been much higher to start with.

One way to look at if a doctrrine was really terrible, is to see if their was something else they could have done. Certtainly not putting a better gun on some Shermans could have been done, as well as puttingh a top on the poor guys in the tank destroyers.

WWI is not nearly as simple as it appears. There was a lot going on. They did not just keep repeating the same old attacks. They adjusted, tried new ways of attack. mixed up what they did with fire support. Most of it didnt work all that well, but they where trying to find the way ahead.

And, beacuse of both the expansion of the army, and casualties, thier infantry proficiency actual dropped for a time. There where just not enough veteren junior leaders to control the troops the way they needed. So at times there where old formations and styles of attack used simply becauise the troops could not do much else.

Of course the idea firmly imbeded in modern minds is long lines of trenches. That had also change through the course of the war. Towrds the end there was much more strong points and defense in depth. Alll of which was a response to changes of tactics by the attackers.

It is interesting to note that at the time and after the war, the people involved did not think the Generals where a bunch of morons that mindlessly fedd them into the sausage machine. That is a much newer idea.

I have been told by some of my british correspondence that that idea, the lions led by donkeys is largely a product oof the british media in the 1960s, and it was all about a political agenda of the time rather than any review of actual history. Unfortunetly the idea has become fixed in a lot of minds and is hard to overcome.

We americans have our own myths about what really happened. all of us smart colonials hid behind trees and shot down those brits who insisted on hanging out in the open and got massicreed by us. Really? So how come we lost so many battles? The fact is, most americans did not have rifles, and could not have used them well if they had had them. It is very hard to control troops hiding in trees, and it takes very high quality troops to do it. In order to actual fight a battle you pretty much had to line up in the open, just as they did on both sides, using often the same weapon, the Brown Bess musket.

Owen

Useless doctrines? Well, besides the aforementioned practice of leaving the ammo boxes screwed shut until after the battle started and making everyone stand in line to get reloads one by one (Islandlwana), there's the marvelous doctrine of the notion that superior morale/elan/will to fight will overcome significant disadvantages in technology every time, the very doctrine of the French Army in 1914 and the IJA from the 1920s until the surrender in 1945.

Unless the other side is dramatically less competent, if their weapons technology and supply is orders of magnitude beyond your own, such as the US vs. Imperial Japan 1941-45, you'd best be able to adopt an asymmetric warfare strategy, or you're days are numbered IMHO (and it ain't gonna be pretty!).

Leland R. Erickson

"Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets!"

- George S. Patton, Jr.

Permitting politicians to dictate military doctrine and tactics.

They should decide on the goal, and then get out of the way, and permit the military leadership to figure out the best way to accomplish it.

Meddling in, and micromanagement of the military by politicians should be vociferously fought.

Some folks here are in danger of serious historical revisionism when it comes to WWI. First, 2500/day is an enormous amount over the course of time of the battles.
Second, even if artillery causes most of the casualties, ilt does not mean that therefore, the casualties were not lost in the assault (ie: the other side fired back). Third, the concept of the "lost generation" and the idiocy of the WWI commanders was most defitnitely not invented in the 1960's. Read the poetry. The novels. Look at the art and fim of the 1920's anf 30's. All Quiet on the Western Front. Grand Illusion. Then, go to the internet and google- WWI Cemeteries, pictures. Are we really arguing that massive, on one's feet, announced infantry assaults on entrenched postions with maxims did not cause high casualties for very little gain? Then why bother inventing the tank? Why did the Germans invent stormtroopers? Why did the Western Front devolve into a stalemate for almost 4 years?

That there was massive slaughter and stalemate is beyond question. Every village here has a memorial after all.

The question is the incompetance of the generals involved.

Doubtless there was some, there always is. But if the generals were that stupid, tanks and stormtroopers wouldn't have been developed.

Which they were in, all things considered, a short space of time.

(Stalingrad, in it's widest sense, had about a million killed/missing. But that lasted more than a year and a huge distance.)

Operation Blue to Operation Ring was from near the end of June '42 (OK, you can include the advances at the end of May if you want to) through the surrender of the 6th Army in the beginning of February '43.

"Why did the Western Front devolve into a stalemate for almost 4 years?"

Because the entire front from the Channel to Switzerland was garrisoned with a higher troop density than at Waterloo (albeit in somewhat greater depth) armed with rapid fire rifled weapons.

No-one is arguing that WW1 was a picnic, although 2500 casualties per day on the Somme compares rather favourably with the daily casualty rate at eg. Borodino. New techniques had to be developed to break through such fronts, and by 1917 they were there, but even then grinding through miles of defences backed up by large reserves takes time and is expensive with no guaranteee of success. Just ask the Germans at Kursk, the Allies in Normandy or the Soviets at Kharkov.

The sheer scale of the casualties was a huge shock to Britain in particular, and partly accounts for the outpouring of literature around the Great War and its particular place in popular memory in the UK. Whilst WW2 was much 'cheaper' to fight (apart from national bankruptcy and losing our Empire), it wasn't for many of the participants and the somewhat understandable response of the USSR wasn't to write hand wringing poetry but occupy the countries of their enemies for the next 45 years….

Modern industrialised warfare is a very nasty business, which is largely why we've stopped doing it (I hope) apart from colonial police actions.

But Borodino didn't last 30 days. As far as "new techniques", if the European militaries had not dismissed the participants in the US Civil War as "mere amateurs", they would have realized the folly of frontal assaults in line over 50 years before WWI. The British did learn some lessons from the Boer War, but still probably not enough.
Taking 3 years to "develop" infiltration tactics was ridiculous, because the concepts were not new. Anybody could have picked up Roger's Rangers handbook to learn the basics. The main problem was the catastrophically slow abandonment of Napoleonic style attitudes. For heaven's sake, the French went to war in red pants! How much more proof does one need to illustrate the inherent backward thinking of the commanders?

Then the French generals in WW1 in their wisdom switched to "horizon blue" uniforms. That is asking to be shot at, unless covered in mud and dust (which sometimes happened).

The idea that the generals just sat back and fed in troops over and over agian with thought or care really came up in the 1960s and was more of a political agenda than any really look at the actual history. Lions led by donkeys is simply wrong.

I think that is more true after the various 1916 offensives, when it finally penetrated the top brass's heads that if they carried on as thery were going they wouldn't have any more soldiers left. As to struggling with the lessons of rifles and machine guns, these had been plain from teh American Civil war onwards.

Btw the "Lions led by Donkeys" was certainly in use in S African history courses when I grew up in the 60s/70s, and Delville Wood was taught as a testament to military stupidity (and trusting someone else with your army, naturally) as well as heroic S African bravery :)

It is interesting to note that at the time and after the war, the people involved did not think the Generals where a bunch of morons that mindlessly fedd them into the sausage machine. That is a much newer idea.

Oh no its not :)

"‘GOOD-MORNING; good-morning!' the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
‘He's a cheery old card,' grunted Harry to Jack 5
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
. . . .

But he did for them both by his plan of attack."

- The General, Siegfried Sassoon, 1918.

The sheer scale of the casualties was a huge shock to Britain in particular, and partly accounts for the outpouring of literature around the Great War and its particular place in popular memory in the UK. Whilst WW2 was much 'cheaper' to fight (apart from national bankruptcy and losing our Empire), it wasn't for many of the participants and the somewhat understandable response of the USSR wasn't to write hand wringing poetry but occupy the countries of their enemies for the next 45 years….

Good point re impact of post WW1 literature, and Soviet Russia with WW2 being there War To end all wars.

As to my favourite "dumb" doctrine, well the Boer part of my ancestors say great-grandad used to chuckle at the rooinekke (British) having white cross belts so they could draw a perfect bead at long range

Wasteful Generals were certainly admonished in the second half of the Great War. Lloyd George came under intense political pressure about the wasting of British lives, which the Generals squandered without a second thought as if it was some sort of a necessity in war. Lloyd George eventually capped recruitment to try to make the generals less wasteful, much to the chagrin and complaint of the higher army staff.

And yes, whole villages lost their entire menfolk; pals battalions especially made losses intense in places of their recruitment – villages, workplaces, etc.

The thing I don't understand is how hard it is to work out that a line of infantry always fail against a few machine guns – after all, that's why the British Army bought their machine guns.

The second thing I don't understand is why Jerry didn't work out the same thing. Having slaughtered the troops in the Brit attacks Jerry promptly did the same thing. Britain might have lost 2,500 a day at the Somme, but so did Jerry.

Interesting to see some of the same old historical myths repeated here(US devastating potshots, Zulus war Ammo), despite an interested, enlightened and engaged audience.

PS, heres one of my own to add the the list:

Refusal of US in WW2 to listen to/dismiss British experience resulting in

a) huge US daylight raid bombing casualties

b) Not using Hobart's Funnies at Omaha

c) destruction of the US "lucky" 7th at Overloon

d) Sicilian invasion parachute drops made directly into the sea, not over land.

One could go on I guess….. but the waste of fine young lives through pig headed rivalry is not a happy thought.

Part of the imagery and perception that evolved around the Great War also is connected to the societal changes that happened in Europe in the years immediately afterwards: universal voting rights, broader social security systems, etc. Partly due to these changes, the story of the 'common man' fighting in the trenches, led by 'incompetent aristocrats' is never far away. Every country has its own unique mix of factors to add.

E.g. many of myth surrounding WW1 in Belgium does not focus so much on the mass slaughters due to the battles, but on the tensions between French-speaking officers and Flemish-speaking soldiers (and therefore the injustice of the war); and on the atrocities committed by the German occupying forces ('Poor Little Belgium, raped by the Hun').

Just to say that one has to be careful with post-constructed stories and myths, which have been often exploited for political gains in later years.

What about the Douhet doctrine – the belief that air power alone would be sufficient to win wars?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douhet

Perhaps it was the supreme misfortune of the ranks in WWI to have not one outstanding, innovative General in any of the engaged armies (excepting, of course, Von Lettow Vorbeck).

As far as I am aware, the European officers of the later 19th century (and the militaries they led) tended to be rather conservative by their very nature. For example, many of the technical advances that affected warfare in this period came from civilian innovators rather than from the militaries themselves.

So perhaps one should not expect great military innovators to develop under such circumstances.

Allowing the press to cover battles in progress.

"The thing I don't understand is how hard it is to work out that a line of infantry always fail against a few machine guns – after all, that's why the British Army bought their machine guns."

It won't fail with adequate covering fire. The biggest problem to solve in WW1 was how to co-ordinate infantry attacks with fire of their supporting weapons, principally artillery, given the communication breakdown which immediately descended on the a battlefield once over the start line. The second problem was how to apply that fire most effectively – neutralisation vs destruction, concentrations vs barrages, pre-registration vs prediction etc.

Perhaps the biggest failing of many/most WW1 Generals was prolonging engagements beyond the point where they were cost effective. Most armies developed techniques to break into deep defended systems, they had trouble knowing when to stop during the dog fight phase when a break through clearly wasn't going to occur.

The last month of Third Ypres was an exercise in utter futility.

If you want one very silly doctrine, it is the defence of the Hauptkampflinie (MLR) at all costs by the bulk of the defending forces with every inch of ground lost to be taken by immediate counter attack. This is what largely resulted in the 450,000+ German losses on the Somme (the prep bombardment only killed 8,000 or so) and this ruinouosly expensive doctrine was replaced to a degree with elastic defence in 1917. It was an entirely sensible doctrine in 1870 or even 1815 though. Strangely enough it is very popular with wargamers:) Perhaps our scenarios don't have enough artillery in them.

Griefbringer wrote:

What about the Douhet doctrine – the belief that air power alone would be sufficient to win wars?

That one has some legs to it. A harmfully stupid idea when first propounded, repeatedly proven so whenever tried, and still that old crackpot Guilio has his admirers among today's air forces, and politicos keen on defence on the cheap.

wargamer6 wrote:

Admiral Kings refusal to use the convoy system until hundreds of seamen were killed strikes me as the dumbest, all be it naval not army.

Any refusal to adopt convoy in wartime is extremely stupid, so the British Admiralty's delay in doing so in WW1 is in the same league. Everyone should have known better by WW2, and the Admiralty adopted convoy from day one, so for sheer unreasoning determination to give the enemy a massive free lunch with no possibility of any countervailing advantage to offer for it, King's idiocy would be hard to beat.

On ground warfare doctrine, Whirlwind wrote:

I'm a bit sceptical about the 'BMP' doctrine – were 60s-early 90s IFVs supposed to operate at direct fire ranges or not?

I vote the daftest tactical idea I have ever seen in a current official publication the idea that BAOR mechanized infantry could, fighting on the Central Front in the 1970s, motor through neutralised enemy positions in FV432s and then dismount to assault back through the enemy position from the rear.

BAOR's idea of having its reserve constituted by battlegroups assigned to the covering force battle was also brain-meltingly stupid, but at least that has the justification of being a forced error from insufficient troop numbers, and in any case if people followed the script we'd start dropping buckets of sunshine on day three instead of using reserves. No such justification can be offered for the idea of motoring through an enemy position in a 432, so whoever wrote that one must have read too much Sven Hassell while crazy on acid.

All the best,

John.

On defense of Giulio Douhet, I would say that at least he tried to be innovative and visionary and see the potential of aviation in warfare, in a time when air power was still a very fresh development in military field. At least he tried to push for a new way of thinking – though one based on extremely optimistic beliefs about the effects of the air power.

At least cannot blame him for conservativeness or lack of initiative and innovation in military thinking.

I've never thought novelty an adequate substitute for rigorous reasoning, but obviously I am frightfully old-fashioned in this respect.

"Network enabled capability", "the transparent battlespace", "cyber-warfare" and the mahoosive benefits promised by "enterprise architectures" such as DODAF and MODAF are a few more recent examples of where I feel deep and careful thinking would be preferable to gormless Prozac-fuelled neophilia.

Discovering why battles have happened the way they do requires a certain amount of observation, reflection, and hard thinking, but it's much easier just to follow the latest fashions.

Like, new stuff is always brilliant, innit? That's why we have so many flying cars, laser death rays and invisibility cloaks.

All the best,

John.

I always thought the whole "let's stand in tight formation and fire rifles at each other from short distances, because it's the gentlemanly way to fight a war" mentality was the stupidest thing I've ever heard. See the AWI and American Civil War for examples.

Seems we eventually learned better, though…

but it's much easier just to follow the latest fashions.

Being over-optimistic about the capabilities of new technologies is rarely a good starting point. However, neither is ignoring or underestimating them. European militaries in the 1850-1940 period were faced by many technological innovations, while overtly conservative military thinking was slow on adapting doctrine to match these technical developments.

Presumably somewhere between the extremes of excessive optimism and excessive consevativism there exists the fine balance of realistic doctrine, which takes into account technical developments but does not count on them providing more than what they can actually do.

___________________________________________________________

Douhet may have been naive and overtly optimistic about the capabilities of air power, but he also seems to have been pretty much an independent theorist at the time of writing his works – not on a position of power where he could have used his influence to push his ideas though hordes of spineless yes-men. If his readers failed to apply analytical and critical thinking into his thoughts, and adopted them as a basis for a national air force doctrine, then perhaps the blame should be put on those readers.

___________________________________________________________

On the other hand, doctrine is not only about technology. Doctrines intended for conventional warfare can encounter challenges when faced with a third world counter-insurgency instead of a conventional military.