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Archives for December, 2013
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…
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Themself – a Word Cloud
Inspired by some of the word clouds posted by friends on facebook I thought that I would do a word cloud of the blog on so here it is. (NB click on the image to see the full size version) Related articles The 100 Most Useful Websites On The Internet
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Christmas Reading
And a bit of viewing too! Got quite a few things from my wish list that will help me with my next writing project.
The Stress of Battle – Part 4 – Op Research on Anti-Tank Combat
This is the fourth part of my review of The stress of battle: quantifying human performance in combat by David Rowland, which is an essential piece of Operational Research on WW2 and Cold War combat operations. Unlike small arms, the effectiveness of anti-armour weapons has changed considerably over the course of the mid-20th century. From non-specialist gunfire in WW1, to high velocity armour piercing in WW2 and then to Anti-Tank Guided Weapons in the Cold War period. This makes the operational research harder to do because the start point needs to be battles where only one kind of AT weapon is in action. Much of the analysis starts with the 'Snipe' action during the second battle of El Alamein in North Africa where data on each of the guns individually was available. 'heroic performance' plays a large factor in the effectiveness of anti-tank guns about a quarter of guns (at…
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…