"Breakpoints, morale failure and success in battle " Topic

"As part of the forthcoming essay on the rules of infantry combat I was pondering why some units break and some don't. I started to look at the research, and as these things do, what was meant to be a couple of paragraphs in another essay turned into an essay itself. Although I started being interested in morale failure, and what was most likely to cause it, I found myself looking at what made units successful as well. I reasoned that this was the antithesis of failure so the causes of success would be the same as those for defeat but the "other way around".

What I wanted to do was to put numerical values on causes of failure and success as this is the first stage in working out some wargames rules to model the effects. Janice Fain and her co-authors in Forced Changes of Combat Posture had tried a similar approach but did not apply ratings to the elements they discovered as significant.

In this essay a "variable" is a factor that causes good or poor combat results, such as the Morale of Friendly Troops…"
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link

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks Armand, an interesting piece.

Yes, this is very good. Two hedges:
--nothing seems to pre-date "modern" warfare. The world of close-order warfare may have differed in some respects.
--there is no provision for level. Are the factors which apply to a platoon equally relevant at regimental level?

But I want to come back and re-read this one in a bit. Lots of good material.

Glad you enjoyed it my friends!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Very interesting. When I was writing a quick and easy rule set to play with my kids I was forced to boil down to the essence of what effects unit morale (or will this unit do what you want them to do). I came up with the same positive modifiers.

1) COMMAND AND CONTROL – Leaders have an command radius and to benefit the unit must be within the radius. If my unit is in trouble will the leader send help or order a withdrawal? If we do well will our efforts be noticed/rewarded?

2) FLANKS – Are both the units flanks secure. Is the unit supported or isolated?

3) TRAINING/EXPERIENCE – During a moment of combat stress does superior training kick in? If this is a veteran unit they have obviously survived this situation or have NCO's that have.

I also added negative modifiers which as the article implies are not necessarily the antithesis of the positive modifiers.

1) DISORDER – Could be caused by unfavorable terrain, fatigue, indecision, or losses.

2) FLANKS – Is the unit currently being attacked from the flank or rear.

3) LOSSES – Unless trapped, a unit will almost never stand to the last man. I found very few examples of units being effective with losses over 50%. I measured losses in increments of 1/6th.

Two 6 sided dice generate a nice bell curve. With 7 being the most likely outcome I was able to assign unit ratings fairly easily. For example, a poor unit would be rated a "4" thus usually requiring all three positive modifiers to be present and no negatives to ensure a reasonable chance of success.

I noticed in the article that "surprise" was a heavy hitter as well and I suppose it could be modeled as a morale modifier but that could lead to a level complexity that some would feel unwarranted. To an extent all of the listed modifiers could be included and weighted as done in the article (and I have played games that have sought to do so). This might be advantageous to those seeking a true battlefield simulation but might not appeal to those looking more for a gaming experience. The use of a computer to track the numerous and related modifiers as listed in the article could add to playability.

Just my musings. I don't think I've ever played with a group that did not want to add at least one house rule to any rule set we've ever played.

Interesting as I have been working on the same view for the past 20+ years. Who is the author? Tango, can you get me in touch with him?

Thanks.

v/r
Tom

This is the "contact me" email on the home page of the website the article is from:

Bob_Mackenzie@ntlworld.com

All,

Bob Mackenzie is a wonderful guy to interact with. Very personable and quite forthcoming. I've pinged with him on two different topics in recent years and really think you will find him to be a decent fellow.

+1 davbenbak. No, +2. A well done summary, especially your reference to the power of surprise (the flank attack upon the Iron Brigade at Cedar Mountain is an excellent example)

IMO, most wargame rules greatly under-represent morale sensitivity of units, not only with respect to flank and rear threats, but also in connection with the discouraging effects of fire.

B

@Blutarski ( or anyone ).
Have you read "Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars"?
I recommend you do if you haven't.

Psychology is pretty much THE major factor.

I really liked Bob's article. I think maybe just listing the significant factors has a value beyond trying to math them out. Or maybe I'm just not good enough at the maths.
There goes that pure maths teacher of mine – spinning in his grave again.

Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars" by Murray
is a thought-provoking book, though not readily available at a reasonable price. One of the things that the author provides is evidence that frontal assaults create heavy casualties for both opponents, whereas flank attacks produce light casualties for both sides [because in modern wars, the flanked opponent doesn't stick around to take casualties.

On first blush, the response is 'Duh!', of course flank attacks are more effective offensively… it was the lighter casualties for both sides was the surprise.

Andy wrote -
"Have you read "Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars"?"

I had been keeping an eye out for a reasonably priced copy of this book as a result of a reference made to it in a previous TMP thread some months ago. Actually very recently ordered a reasonably priced copy from Amazon. I have read various modern works on the topic of battlefield morale and reaction, but, to be honest, the resources that most influenced me (so far at least) have been the works of Balck and DuPicq.

B

Very interesting. When I was writing a quick and easy rule set to play with my kids I was forced to boil down to the essence of what effects unit morale (or will this unit do what you want them to do). I came up with the same positive modifiers.

1) COMMAND AND CONTROL – Leaders have an command radius and to benefit the unit must be within the radius. If my unit is in trouble will the leader send help or order a withdrawal? If we do well will our efforts be noticed/rewarded?

2) FLANKS – Are both the units flanks secure. Is the unit supported or isolated?

3) TRAINING/EXPERIENCE – During a moment of combat stress does superior training kick in? If this is a veteran unit they have obviously survived this situation or have NCO's that have.

I also added negative modifiers which as the article implies are not necessarily the antithesis of the positive modifiers.

1) DISORDER – Could be caused by unfavorable terrain, fatigue, indecision, or losses.

2) FLANKS – Is the unit currently being attacked from the flank or rear.

3) LOSSES – Unless trapped, a unit will almost never stand to the last man. I found very few examples of units being effective with losses over 50%. I measured losses in increments of 1/6th.

Two 6 sided dice generate a nice bell curve. With 7 being the most likely outcome I was able to assign unit ratings fairly easily. For example, a poor unit would be rated a "4" thus usually requiring all three positive modifiers to be present and no negatives to ensure a reasonable chance of success.

davbenbak:
There are a lot of categorizing of battlefield issues and factors which are very useful. The question I would have for each of those are the conclusions on how they are represented.

For instance, are you sure that a 'command radius' of X actually has anything to do with actual command control? Or saying that losses are represented by a bell curve and '7' being the "most likely outcome."

Have any of those conclusions been tested against the history/combat they are supposed to represent?

I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm asking how do you know?

The discussion of flanking attacks in this thread prompted me to re-visit some events from the ACW, in particular the ill-fated assault by Sedgwick's division into the West Woods at Antietam.

The participating Union regiments are organized below in three rows, corresponding to their positions relative to one another in the attack column (assuming that their advance is toward the top of your screen) along with their respective casualties and percentages of loss.

59NY – – – – 15MA – – – – 82NY – – – – 1MN
201(53pct) – 295(50pct) – 113(33pct) – 75(17pct)

42NY – – – – 106PA- – – – 20MA – – – – 19MA
162(47pct) – 73(15pct)- – 96(n/a)- – – 116(n/a)

71PA – – – – 03DE – – – – 78NY – – – – 60NY
121(24pct) – 17(13pct)- – 27(12pct)- – 22(10pct)

Casualty figures and percentages were based solely upon data from "Union Regiments at Antietam" (Schildt) as a matter of convenience and weekend laziness. Other reference sources will differ here and there, but the above, I think, suffices to illustrate the overall nature of the action. The three regiments which constituted the forward left corner of Sedgwick's formation (i.e. – deepest within the jaws of the flanking attack) suffered horrendous casualties – an average of 50 percent within only 20-30 minutes of action. By comparison, those regiments making up the right rear of the formation suffered quite modest casualties by comparison – only about 15-20 pct.

Interesting (IMO).

B

I think the ACW example is a good comparison/contrast to the Brain & Bullets modern combat flank attack which causes fewer casualties than a frontal attack.

The inability of a column of men being able to move/react also can have something to do with it.

McLaddie wrote –
"The inability of a column of men being able to move/react also can have something to do with it."

Absolutely true in the Horse and Musket era, to be sure. In Sedgwick's case (some sources cite Sumner as the party responsible), the intervals between his brigade lines were so exceedingly close that the flank regiments had no room to face to the flank in response to the Confederate attack.

B