So in 2005 the Center for Army Analysis (CAA) decided to award us a contract to do Stalingrad based upon our recommendations at the end of the Phase III effort (see the previous post) and our proposal of dated 31 August 2004. We noted in our proposal that we had looked at 304 urban engagements and compared them to 319 non-urban engagements.
This is certainly the most comprehensive collection of urban combat data collected. Still, it is not definitive. In almost all cases, the defender is in a losing battle and is being enveloped. While this is the norm for urban warfare, one is left to wonder if the results for the first three phases of the analysis changes if the urban terrain is part of the front line and part of a set piece attack.
So we ended up proposing to create around 60 division-level urban engagements from the Battle of Stalingrad and compare them to 120 or more non-urban engagements from Kursk.
As we noted in our proposal “Assuming a contract award of 31 March 2005, The Dupuy Institute intends to complete the effort by the end of December 2005.”
Well, the contract was not awarded quite as quick as we liked. But it was in the government contracting office in August 2005, and fully funded. We had our Russian research team ready to go. They had access to the Soviet unit records. We had a staff of researchers in place (including me and Shawn). We had our German and Russian translators lined up. We were ready to start work in October 2005.
Then Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It was 29 August 2005. In early September the tragedy was so significant and the U.S. rescue and recovery efforts were so overwhelmed, that the U.S. military was called in to help. No additional funding was provided for this, so the military had to pay for it from existing funds. The DOD then decided to fund the rescue effort by grabbing all non-essential funds from any contract not awarded, and this included ours. So come October 1st, instead of us starting work on a new contract, we discovered, on rather short notice, that it was no longer funded. Instead I had to hand out pink slips.
P.S. We later assembled most of the Russian unit records we needed for this project, but were never able to convince CAA to fund this fourth phase of our urban study effort.
[…] The second study on the three battles of Kharkov was primarily my work. The third study, which covered Manila and Hue was mostly Richard Anderson’s study. The fourth study was cancelled by Hurricane Katrina: Urban Phase IV – Stalingrad | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org). […]