"Idiots Guide to Capturing a City?" Topic

Does anyone know and can recommend a book or paper that deals with the military capture and occupation of a modern city?

Somewhere like in former-Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Baghdad, or Tripoli. So from about 1990-the present.

We are looking at whether a standard/tested method of capture is adhered to by most/all armies.

Thanks in advance

The second battle of Fallujah (2004) comes to mind. Several good books on that one. The two I like are:

New Dawn:The Battles for Fallujah by Richard Lowry

No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle of Fallujah.

Mike

Read No True Glory and it was riveting.

??

link

YouTube link

Anthony Beever's book on Stalingrad.
link

Thanks to those who answered. This is something that interests me as well.

Whats to read about?Chaos Iron Warriors tactics work-seal it off with a strong perimeter guard,disrupt flow of food,water and power,bombard by land and air mercilessly…..destroy any who attempt to flee.When resistance seems brittle send is assault teams,heavy use of flamethrowers recommended.

Nuke it first then roll up in NBC suits. Cities are the worst place to fight anyone, just ask the Germans.

(nods to Grossman) From what I've read, starting with the Designers Notes from an old SPI game called Cityfight, it's no fun at all.

In open field engagements you typically need a 3:1 superiority in numbers to ensure victory. In a cityfight, closer to 10:1… and the city will be well and truly worked over.

The defence has a massive advantage.

Sometimes you have to take a city without destroying it. Say you're retaking your own city after the enemy overran it. Somewhere that could be full of civilians that actually matter.

In this case – you can't just destroy the place and mop up afterwards.

You need to make the enemy defend everything while you focus on a small section – clear it, secure it and move on.

You need the right tools. Don't let the armour branch spin you the old line about it being an infantry fight. It's a fight were everyone has to work together.

You need special training and proper plans.

Explosives to breach walls and ladders to reach the roofs and work downwards.

It will still be costly and you will still need a large numerical superiority. I don't think 10:1 is necessary if you have powerful force mulitpliers on your side.

Small scale drones and tactical robots will also help a great deal to reduce losses and civilian casualties in room to room fighting.

Moving through "mouseholes" (large openings blown into walls between attached buildings), to avoid walking down the streets, into prepared killzones, especially in larger cities.

In smaller villages, if you don't have that, get your nearest friendly M-1 tank gunner, or M-2 Bradley driver to open up holes in the brick/stone fenced in areas, or walls of the buildings.

Sorry to defer back,an enemy conquered ex friendly city deserves no respite,cleanse and burn,the citizens were unloyal.Todays non combatants are tommorrows problems.

Cityfight was interesting.
I wonder how often US forces have actually used the bottom down approach to clearing.
If delta have problems getting there from a helicopter when everyone's asleep then it's got to be pretty tricky for the grunt with a bit of rope stood there at street level.

House to House by David Bellavia is a good read for the nitty gritty.
You can see why they eventually decided it was best to just pull back and level any problem building rather than clear it.
I got mine cheap.

Mr Pumblechook wrote:

The defence has a massive advantage.

In fact, the defender's advantage in FIBUA is much less than in open country. Dave Rowland's historical analysis which shows this is in his book "Stress of Battle", and IIRC the original paper was published in the Journal of the OR Society (JORS). Those cases where defenders in FIBUA did best -- Arnhem, Cassino and Stalingrad -- were characterised by very agressive defenders. Against most defenders, the short fields of observation and fire and the astonishing ability of urban terrain to soak up troops mean that defensive positions are infiltrated, surrounded and defeated piecemeal.

The game "Block Busting" in Phil Sabin's "Simulating War" is about as simpl a wargame as it is possible to design, and well worth a look.

All the best,

John.

The British Army is trained extensively in FIBUA and calculates that it needs a platoon to clear a normal house sized building.

A mate in the Scots Guards took part in an exercise in the late 80s in which they were defending against US Rangers. The Rangers were apparently doing quite well in clearing a street when a British RE Sergeant attached to the Scots Guards asked the umpire if he could fire his Giant Viper mine clearing device down the street. Apparently the umpire agreed and declared most of the Rangers KIA.

Someone posted a link on here recently (I think) about the declassified East German plans to take West Berlin – would have thought that would contain lots of relevant & useful info.

Here is the link from the thread I was thinking of:

PDF link

HH, you're a top bloke for that link. Many thanks.

An interesting read is the siege of Saragossa in the Peninsular War.

Captain DEwell, saw this today. Looks right up yer alley!

link

At Hobbit, interesting article! Also interesting are the numbers provided for the assault. These mirror the numbers used by the Russians in the intial assault on Grozny very closely in troops, tanks, APC's.