Why is bombardment so weak?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie
1.) About a million of that 1.5 million shells were 18 pounder shrapnel shells, only about 0.5 million was HE, again, fired mainly from light guns. John Keegan in his analysis in "Face of Battle" estimates that only about 900 tons of HE were actually delivered in the preliminary bombardment.

2.) Dividing that 900 tons by seven days gives us a mere HE weight of 128.5 tons a day.

A carpet bomb attack by heavy bombers is going to deliver quite a lot of HE in about an hour or so.

Right. Tell me again why the shrapnel doesn't count?

Even with radar computing bombsights? The B-36's K-1 bomb/nav system could bomb at night from high altitudes (40,000+ feet) with better accuracy than former daylight bombing at much lower altitudes.

I'm sure you can hit the spot you intended to hit. Whether there's anything there or not is another matter. We're not talking about bombing Napoleon's infantry in attack columns. These are modern troops using squad tactics.

1.) 30 B-36s x 72 1,000 lb bombs = 2,160 bombs.

If you're going to introduce facts into this discussion then we're not going to get anywhere. I probably should not have gone off on this line of argument at all.

Minimum safe distance for the M117 750 lb Hi Drag bomb is 160m for protected troops, and 830m for unprotected troops.

I really doubt it. These sort of statements are along the lines of the ones which led to the government buying a million cardboard coffins to prepare for the consequences of German air attack on London. If a 750 lb bomb could kill "protected troops" at 160m, then the entire German race would have been wiped out from the air by 1945. I'm sure I could quite easily mathematically demonstrate that we in fact did so.

Why bother with an army when you've got this kind of weapon? Just take your 150 bombers and demolish a strip 25 miles wide on the far side of the Iron Curtain. No more Red Army.

B-36s bombed from around 36,000 to 40,000+ feet. How is it that a rifle squad is going to be able to reach up to that altitude?

That's a problem. I don't know what's causing it.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

The bombardment on D-Day had almost no effect at all.

That's really not true. The impact of the bombardment on the defenders of the beaches besides Omaha is quite clear when you look at the relative ease with which the Allies got off the beaches. Compare Dieppe.

You must be thinking of the naval bombardment. The heavy bomber bombardment fell too far inland. That's what I was referring to.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

You must be thinking of the naval bombardment. The heavy bomber bombardment fell too far inland. That's what I was referring to.

Fair enough.

[Bloodybucket28th]

I'm thinking that the game should be renamed "The Operational Art of Heavy Bombers".
 
Really, if the whole idea of victory in combat was merely the application of enough big bombs per square kilometer, or cubit, or arshin, or whatever, you'd think the bright guys who do this for a living would have just done it at some point and said "See, my mathematical formula for victory was spot-on!  Let's pop the champagne and have a nice parade, with showgirls and everything!" but so far, it hasn't worked that way.
 
Air power has been advertised as the magic bullet since somebody figured out you could drop stuff out of a Zeppelin.  So far, for whatever reason it hasn't worked as a stand alone war winner.  You could argue that the prospect of nuclear devastation brought Japan to her knees, but that was due to atomic weapons dropped on cities, not units in the field being obliterated from the sky. 
 
LeMay was going to win WWII with bombs alone.  Didn't work.  The Air Force was going to win the Korean war with bombs alone.  Didn't work.  The US dropped megatons of munitions in Vietnam.  Didn't work.  Ditto for Kosovo, Iraq, etc.  The idjits with AKs we were dealing with in Iraq didn't seem to have gotten the "You lost to US airpower" memo. 
 
The Iron Birds in the Sky are a great thing, and us groundlings love them (if they are on our side).  They blow stuff up.  They see thing you can't.  They are a tremendous force multiplier.  They give Hollywood really great ideas for films starring Tom Cruise.  They are intimidating as all get out, but in my little conflict "Shock and Awe" led to "Aw schucks, you mean I gotta go in there with a rifle?".  
 
The main problem with mathematical victory through airpower is that the pesky enemy gets a vote.  He hides.  He moves.  He digs.  He digs deeper.  He takes the casualties and doesn't quit.  He gets intermingled with civies.  He absolutely and unsportingly refuses to cooperate.
 
I'm all for the game being tweaked to make the twain between interdiction and air strikes meet (and what the heck is a twain, anyway?) but if somebody is trying to convince me that all an operational level ground commander has or had to do if he really wants to win a particular battle is get on the horn and say "Ok, enough of this shooting nonsense, let's get all the Zoomies to show up and drop a full Photon Carbet Bombing and then we'll just stroll in" I'm not buying, either on a realism or interesting gameplay level.
 
 
    

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

.

Air power has been advertised as the magic bullet since somebody figured out you could drop stuff out of a Zeppelin.     

..hot air balloon, not Zeppelin, some time at the end of the 18C i think..

[Bloodybucket28th]

I considered going back to Icarus, but he didn't have the really cool aviator glasses.

[RyanCrierie]

but so far, it hasn't worked that way.

Actually it has. When heavy bombers have been used in a tactical support role, the enemy pretty much dies if he's in the area being bombed. Anyone caught in a ARC LIGHT raid in Vietnam was pretty much dead, and Iraqi formations that had been worked over by B-52s in the 1991 war weren't of much effectiveness afterwards.

Are you familiar with the Tunnels of Cu Chi? They withstood everything we tried to in getting rid of them, from dropping satchel charges down the tunnel entrances, pumping them full of gasoline, and then lighting a match. All of it didn't work. What did work was when we sent in the B-52s and carpet bombed the "Iron Triangle" where the Cu Chi tunnels were. Either the bomb craters dug out the tunnels, or the shockwaves collapsed them.

<snip Pointless discussion on the worth of Strategic Airpower, which would really only apply if this game was Bombing the Reich, not TOAW3>

The main problem with mathematical victory through airpower is that the pesky enemy gets a vote.  He hides.  He moves.  He digs.  He digs deeper.  He takes the casualties and doesn't quit.  He gets intermingled with civies.  He absolutely and unsportingly refuses to cooperate.

I see you completely miss the point. When you carpet bomb an area with heavy bombers. a lot of stuff in that area is going to die, your protestations to the contrary otherwise.

I'm all for the game being tweaked to make the twain between interdiction and air strikes meet (and what the heck is a twain, anyway?) but if somebody is trying to convince me that all an operational level ground commander has or had to do if he really wants to win a particular battle is get on the horn and say "Ok, enough of this shooting nonsense, let's get all the Zoomies to show up and drop a full Photon Carbet Bombing and then we'll just stroll in" I'm not buying, either on a realism or interesting gameplay level.

Funny, that's what happened with Operation COBRA in Normandy in 1944. The ground commanders got tired and simply called in the entire Eighth Air Force to carpet bomb German positions to oblivion.

1,000+ casualties occured in Panzer Lehr as a result of that single carpet bombing operation, and according to Bayerlein, pretty much destroyed morale and readiness throughout the bombed elements of PzLehr.

[Industrial]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Funny, that's what happened with Operation COBRA in Normandy in 1944. The ground commanders got tired and simply called in the entire Eighth Air Force to carpet bomb German positions to oblivion.

1,000+ casualties occured in Panzer Lehr as a result of that single carpet bombing operation, and according to Bayerlein, pretty much destroyed morale and readiness throughout the bombed elements of PzLehr.

I think the best example for a heavy allied bombing campaign is the bombing of Monte Cassino, truely and utterly weakened the german defence there, hurray to heavy bombers! [8D]

Oh, and dont forget that the heavy COBRA bombardments caused about 1000 allied casualties through frindly fire, we surely what that modeled as well! Your bombers attack enemy positions, frindly ground troop losses in the vicinity: 30% [:D]

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

(and what the heck is a twain, anyway?)

It's just an antiquated word for two.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Anyone caught in a ARC LIGHT raid in Vietnam was pretty much dead,

Funny that the side with all the airpower went on to lose the war.

and Iraqi formations that had been worked over by B-52s in the 1991 war weren't of much effectiveness afterwards.

This implies they were of much effectiveness beforehand. I remain skeptical.

<snip Pointless discussion on the worth of Strategic Airpower, which would really only apply if this game was Bombing the Reich, not TOAW3>

It's the same principle of carpet bombing. Folks survive both- in large numbers.

Funny, that's what happened with Operation COBRA in Normandy in 1944. The ground commanders got tired and simply called in the entire Eighth Air Force to carpet bomb German positions to oblivion.

The Americans still had to fight. What's more, this was a really astonishing amount of bombardment delivered to what was really a very small area- about eight square miles. Two hexes at 2.5km/hex. Yet you say that one of the divisions which was in that box only took a little over 1,000 casualties? I think you'll find that this level of bombardment will have about that effect in TOAW.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Industrial

Oh, and dont forget that the heavy COBRA bombardments caused about 1000 allied casualties through frindly fire, we surely what that modeled as well! Your bombers attack enemy positions, frindly ground troop losses in the vicinity: 30%

Friendly fire is certainly something which should be looked into. Different issue, though.

[Uncle_Joe]

Funny that the side with all the airpower went on to lose the war.

I'm not going to go into all of the airpower vs non-airpower discussion again since concrete examples of EFFECTIVE airpower seemed to have been ignored by y'all but this quote has NOTHING to do with the effects of airpower on the battlefield.

I dont think anyone is saying that airpower alone should be able to win a war. I believe everyone agrees that has never been the case and (with the exception of nukes) probably never WILL be the case.

But what some of you all seem to be missing is that there is a VAST difference between bombing dispersed and dug in troops and bombing troop CONCENTRATIONS of units trying to attack or remain a cohesive OFFENSIVE force. As I said before, its the same difference between casualties taken by ground troops when fighting a 'standard' battle in Europe or fighting an island campaign in the Pacific...its both ground combat...the weapons are the same, but the cost in casualties is SUBSTANTIALLY higher in the latter.

Show me some instances of units on the ATTACK when their side was subjected to heavy air attacks. About the only place you'll find it in 'modern' combat was the Arab-Israeli wars where the Arab forces suffered heavy casualties from Israeli airstrikes in both 1967 and 1973.

So, the situation I'm referring to is a general war in Europe in the modern age (for me at least, circa 1990). That would not be some spread out, dug in defenders, immobile and attempting to survive nothing but air attacks. It would be masses of relatively close order troops moving to the attack or massed up for defense against the same. And anyone who thinks the results of strikes against troops under those conditions would be the same as the strikes in Kosovo, Vietnam, or Desert Storm just havent bothered to take a look at what now obsolete aircraft accomplished in 67/73 under similar circumstances.

Finally, in 'game terms'...everything that happened in Kosovo and Desert Storm at the least would have been carried out under what would have been the equivalent of 'Minimize Losses'. Not losing aircraft was the primary goal of both of those operations (as heavy losses would have resulted in potential loss of support for the wars).

[Industrial]

ORIGINAL: Uncle_Joe
But what some of you all seem to be missing is that there is a VAST difference between bombing dispersed and dug in troops and bombing troop CONCENTRATIONS of units trying to attack or remain a cohesive OFFENSIVE force. As I said before, its the same difference between casualties taken by ground troops when fighting a 'standard' battle in Europe or fighting an island campaign in the Pacific...its both ground combat...the weapons are the same, but the cost in casualties is SUBSTANTIALLY higher in the latter.

Nonsense, US losses vs Japan losses during the island campaign were about 1 US : 2 japanese, yes, including Iwo Jima, against the germans US losses were often 1:1 (unless the US had clearly overwhelming forces in a battle) for example the Battle of the Bulge (100.000 casualties on each side), in other Battles (Hurtgen Forest) the losses were even up to 2 US : 1 German.

So, the situation I'm referring to is a general war in Europe in the modern age (for me at least, circa 1990). That would not be some spread out, dug in defenders, immobile and attempting to survive nothing but air attacks. It would be masses of relatively close order troops moving to the attack or massed up for defense against the same. And anyone who thinks the results of strikes against troops under those conditions would be the same as the strikes in Kosovo, Vietnam, or Desert Storm just havent bothered to take a look at what now obsolete aircraft accomplished in 67/73 under similar circumstances.

So your ideas of modern combat is that opposing forces will meet each other in densly compressed moving collums, to allow the other side to easily kill them all at the same time? LOL, or better ROFL!

Yeah, defence is for weaklings, our tankers prefer to park in the open without camouflage or cover, bring it on!

Finally, in 'game terms'...everything that happened in Kosovo and Desert Storm at the least would have been carried out under what would have been the equivalent of 'Minimize Losses'. Not losing aircraft was the primary goal of both of those operations (as heavy losses would have resulted in potential loss of support for the wars).

Duh, the US had air supremacy in both battles, there was nothing to fear for the fly boys, ideal combat conditions if you ask me. So don't try to argue that the air-force wasn't really trying to bomb their targets out of fear of taking casualties.

[Uncle_Joe]

So your ideas of modern combat is that opposing forces will meet each other in densly compressed moving collums, to allow the other side to easily kill them all at the same time? LOL, or better ROFL!

Because YOU know what Soviet massed echelon attacks were, eh? I guess not. So LOL right back. Go do some reading.

Duh, the US had air supremacy in both battles, there was nothing to fear for the fly boys, ideal combat conditions if you ask me. So don't try to argue that the air-force wasn't really trying to bomb their targets out of fear of taking casualties.

Whatever. If you think that taking ANY undue risk was acceptable at those times you are just whistling Dixie.


Look you can continue to act like a douche bag and denigrate my ideas/thoughts if you choose. It will get nowhere.

Personally, I dont see what is so hard about making BOTH sides happy. It wouldnt be all that hard...simply make Interdiction and Strikes closer in results (either by reducing the former or increasing the latter). Then put an Air to Ground Shock modifier in. The current PGM doesnt work for that since it doesnt cut evenly across the board (and doesnt apply at all to earlier conflicts like the A-I Wars). Air Shock as a whole also makes air-to-air combat more deadly so again, its not a good tool for just modifying strikes.

In summary:
What makes it hard to adjust now are two items:

1) The lack of a blanket Air to Ground modifier.

2) The disparity of results between AI controlled Interdiciton and player-ordered Strikes. Any increase in air ratings to increase the latter will lead to the former being well over the top (an opinion that some seem to share already).

So why not put something in there to truly allow people to 'season to taste' rather than having pointless debates that will get nowhere (and these have been present since the earliest day of the TOAW engine).

[Industrial]

ORIGINAL: Uncle_Joe

Because YOU know what Soviet massed echelon attacks were, eh? I guess not. So LOL right back. Go do some reading.

That concentration of force would only happen during the actual attack, but most likely not during the move (I read somewhere that precisely for fear of air attacks warsaw pact collums would move with a space of about 150m between each vehicle, to disperse their forces and making them a less dense target) or when settling down somewhere, parking your tanks next to eachother, without cover or camouflage during major hostilities with as deadly weapon systems as both sides had would have been suicidal, and you can be sure that even the warsaw pact states knew that. Maybe we have some warsaw pact experts here who can enighten us about their tactics?
Anyway, so the concentration would only happen during the attack, so only air wings on CombatSupport would see these masses of tanks in close proximity, but than there will be combat on the ground, with smoke and dust and a confusing combat situation, would be make it hard to tell apart frind from foe, so again air power would be restrained for fear of frindly fire.

So why not put something in there to truly allow people to 'season to taste' rather than having pointless debates that will get nowhere (and these have been present since the earliest day of the TOAW engine).

I agree that TOAW should allow scenario designers to tweak the combat results until they fit their intended results, and should the TOAW model fail to deliver that you can always hope for a new version of BioEdit, which will allow you to tweak any weapon system to whatever super performace desired.

[Bloodybucket28th]

I'll point out one more time that there is plenty of evidence to indicate that the COBRA carpet bombing was not the "magic bullet" that the Allies were seeking...see my earlier post. The German generals are probably not the best source of information when it comes to a dispassionate assesment of Allied airpower and the effects thereof. Much as every German tank was a Tiger to most GIs, most German generals were pretty quick to point to the air when explaining defeats, since that wasn't their fault.

I suspect that if it was "the answer" it would have been applied again, but for several reasons it wasn't on a routine basis.

As to those tunnels, I confess that is something I hadn't considered or heard about, but if TOAW simulated tunnel attrition due to B52 strikes, I'd be fine with that[:)].


I will concede that being caught in an ARC LIGHT raid probably sucked, and they caused lots of casualties. The NVA/VC seem to have figured out a way around that magic bullet, if not at a tactical or operational level, at least at a level that let them win the war. It may well be beyond the scope of TAOW to calculate the political costs of unrestricted bombing and free fire zones. Perhaps more liberal application of heavy bombers would have done the trick, but then again, the use of NBC weapons might have done the trick also.

I'm not trying to argue that airpower isn't a force multiplier, extremely valuable and a dreadfully effective way to kill things. It just seems to me that it has yet to secure victory by itself on a regular basis, and I would find a game that let me win any engagement I chose merely by applying a lot of airpower both ahistorical and boring. I'm equaly sure that an aipower advocate would find the same thing satisfying and merely in line with the kills claimed by pilots and air force histories. I would bet that a game that falls somewhere in the middle trending towards emphasizing ground combat and manuever is probably going to be popular with more people than a magic bullet air game.

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: TheBloodyBucket

I considered going back to Icarus, but he didn't have the really cool aviator glasses.

..nice wings tho

[RyanCrierie]

I think the best example for a heavy allied bombing campaign is the bombing of Monte Cassino, truely and utterly weakened the german defence there, hurray to heavy bombers! [8D]

Cassino was actually off limits to the Germans, the Germans did not have any combat units near the Monastery. That changed after we carpet bombed it into nothing, the Germans then decided that since the Allies had just levelled the place, it was no longer exempt from the war.

[RyanCrierie]

Funny that the side with all the airpower went on to lose the war.

Actually, no we didn't. I suggest you read "Linebacker" by Karl J. Eischmann. When the US Air Force was finally freed of it's restrictive ROEs imposed upon it by Johnson, and given free rein by Richard Nixon, they completely ripped the guts out of North Vietnam to the point that it took North Vietnam three whole years to rebuild it's forces to the level that they were able to invade South Vietnam with a massive armored thrust in violation of the peace treaty which ended the Vietnam War.

It's the same principle of carpet bombing. Folks survive both- in large numbers.

And are completely useless for some time afterwards, due to the effects of carpet bombing.

The Americans still had to fight. What's more, this was a really astonishing amount of bombardment delivered to what was really a very small area- about eight square miles.

It's actually 5.5~ square miles. According to Zaloga's Operation Cobra by Osprey, the bomb zone was 7,000 yds by 2,500.

Yet you say that one of the divisions which was in that box only took a little over 1,000 casualties? I think you'll find that this level of bombardment will have about that effect in TOAW.

If you turn to page 40 of Zaloga's Cobra, you'll find a nice breakdown of PzLehr. Of 3,600 troops under Panzer Lehr's control, at least 1,000 were killed outright by the bombing, and at least as many were severely wounded or shellshocked into insensate wrecks.

That's a 27% fatality rate, and a total casualty rate of 40% of the soldiers assigned to Panzer Lehr's units. Small wonder by the end of the day Bayerlein reported that he had virtually no division left at all.

[Industrial]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

I think the best example for a heavy allied bombing campaign is the bombing of Monte Cassino, truely and utterly weakened the german defence there, hurray to heavy bombers! [8D]

Cassino was actually off limits to the Germans, the Germans did not have any combat units near the Monastery. That changed after we carpet bombed it into nothing, the Germans then decided that since the Allies had just levelled the place, it was no longer exempt from the war.

That's exactly what I ment, in game turns the paratroopers were down in the town of Cassino, which is located at the bottom of the Mount and so close to the Mount that both should be in the same hex, even at a 2,5km scale. Now the allies attacked these paratroopers in that hex, beliving that the germans were dug in in the Mount, killing not a single german but creating a formidable defence for them.

So in game turns: You attack hex xx,yy, enemy losses 0%, fortification increased to 100% [:D]

But earlier arguments were that TAOW should model such a devasting airstrike such as that nobody could survive it... and all I posted was an example from history that not only such a devasting attack could end with no enemy losses, it can also actually help the enemy in some cases. For example Operation Cobra, the moonlike landscape created by the heavy allied bombardment was a major hinderance for allied tanks, they had real problems manneuvering across all those craters.

If you take both possibilities (heavy casualties, no casualties) into account, mix it as to get a somewhat average result, you end with pretty much the numbers we have in TOAW at the moment, which is exactly what we want for an operational wargame. If you want to simulate individual battles that could easily go to either extreme, you are better off with a tactical wargame.