Category Kursk

Korean War Records

Not much to say about captured records in the Korea War as I have never checked on them. I assume there must be some taken from North Korean and Chinese units and they are files away somewhere. My father did capture a Chinese soldier during the Korean War.

Oddly enough, there not been much done in the world of quantitative analysis on the Korea War outside of the work that ORO (Operations Research Office) did in the 1950s. We have never done any significant work on the Korean War. In the late 1980s we did explore conducting some analysis of Korean War battalion-level combat. As part of that effort Trevor Dupuy and I went over to the National Archives at Suitland and pulled up some U.S. Army Korea War records. They appeared to be quite complete. There were a couple of French infantry battalions attached to the U.S. Division and we appear to have good strength and loss data for them also.

Later, in 1989, Trevor Dupuy arranged with China to conduct a joint research project. It was funded by OSD Net Assessment (Andy Marshall). Trevor Dupuy really wanted to do some two-sided analysis of combat with the Chinese Army in Korea, but apparently getting access to the Chinese Army records was still too sensitive at that point. So, instead, they arranged to do a joint research contract on a more general and less sensitive theme like perceptions of each sides intentions during the Korean War. But then in June 1989 the Chinese government rolled over the student protestors in Tiananmen Square with tanks. That ended all joint research projects for many years.

We never got back to trying to conduct a joint research project on combat with China. Instead in 1993, we started a research project on Kursk using Russia records.

Trevor Dupuy did mention that the Chinese informally told him that the United States often overestimated the size of the Chinese forces they were facing, and often underestimated the casualties the Chinese took. I have no idea how valid that is.

 

Anyhow, this is an extended discussion of captured records originally inspired by this post:

The Sad Story Of The Captured Iraqi DESERT STORM Documents

Used Kursk Books

Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka: Amazon.com is selling off its used copies of the Kursk book at $118.80. This is the first time I have seen them selling the book for below $200. They have eight “used-acceptable” books at 118.80. Another seller has a “used-acceptable” for $114.82. Amazon.com has six “used-good” for $120.04, seven “used-very good” for $121.28, and three “used-like new” for $122.51.

Kind of mystified how Amazon.com ended up with 24 used books.

Status of Books

War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat: For some reason, Amazon.com does not have a Kindle edition available at the moment (I recall that they did). I have talked to the publisher and they are looking into it. The paperback edition is for sale on Amazon.com and of course, University of Nebraska Press. I have heard that some people overseas have gotten copies, but other people are having a problem. I also have the publisher looking into that. There is one 5-star review of the book on Amazon.com. I don’t know the reviewer (meaning it is not a planted review).

Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka: The book has been selling at a consistent rate this year, and at that rate, it will be out of stock in the second half of 2018. If you are thinking about getting it, you probably don’t want to tarry too long. There are currently no plans for a re-print.

America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam: I do consider this the most significant of my three books, and of course, it is the one with the worse sales. I guess the study and analysis of insurgencies is passé, as we have done such a great job of winning these type of wars.

 

Book Review – Eastern Front 1943

Obviously, anything related to the Battle of Kursk gets my attention. This book review was just emailed to me: https://saberandscroll.weebly.com/blog-ii/germany-and-the-second-world-war-volume-viii-the-eastern-front-1943-1944-the-war-in-the-east-and-on-the-neighbouring-fronts-edited-by-karl-heinz-frieser

I wonder if Frieser’s book references my book (probably not, as I did not publish until 2015). Anyhow, there is not a review of my Kursk book on the Saber and Scroll website.

That book review is part of very interesting website that has two book review blogs: https://saberandscroll.weebly.com/

First Guards Tank Army and new exercises

Hard for me to pass on articles on the First Guards Tank Army. That was one of the two Soviet tank armies in the Voronezh Front at Kursk during the defensive operations there. Its operations are discussed in some depth in my book. I found that the First Tank Army at Kursk under Katukov was much better handled than the Fifth Guards Tank Army under Rotmistrov, although Rotmistrov is now much more famous than Mikhail Efimovich Katukov.

Next Stop Berlin?

Article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/world/europe/russia-military-exercise-zapad-west.html

The important part of the article are:

  1. Russia is doing a 100,000 man exercise this late summer near the Baltic States (who are members of NATO). western Russian, Belarus and Kalingrad (near Poland, also a NATO member).
  2. It includes of course the First Guards Tank Army.
    1. “Its establishment represents the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union that so much offensive power has been concentrated in a single command.”
  3. There is some concern that Russia forces moved into Belarus may not leave.

Anyhow, it is probably just some shirtless swagger and signaling and I would be hesitant to read more into it than that.

There is also a pretty neat map in the article.

 

Cost of Creating a Data Base

Invariably, especially with a new book coming out (War by Numbers), I expected to get requests for copies of our data bases. In fact, I already have.

Back around 1987 or so, a very wise man (Curt Johnson, VP of HERO) estimated that for the LWDB (Land Warfare Data Base) that it took 3 man-days to create an engagement. The LWDB was the basis for creating many of our later data bases, including the DLEDB (Division Level Engagement Data Base). My experience over time is that this estimate is low, especially if your are working with primary sources (unit records) for both sides. I think it may average more like 6 man-days an engagement if based upon unit records (this includes the time to conduct research).

But going with Curt’s estimate, let’s take the DLEDB of 752 cases and re-create it. This would take 3 man-days times 752 engagements = 2,256 man-days. This is 9 man-years of effort. Now 9 man-years times a loaded professional rate. A loaded man-year is the cost of a person’s labor times indirect costs (vacation, SS and Medicare contributions, health insurance, illness, office space, etc.), general and administrative costs (corporate expenses not included in the indirect costs, including senior management and marketing), and any fee or profit. Loaded rate is invariably at least 60% of the direct costs and usually closer to 100% of direct costs (and I worked at one company where it was 200% of direct costs). So a loaded man-year may be as low at $120,000 a year but for people like RAND or CNA, it is certainly much higher. Nine man-years times $120,000 = $1,080,000.

Would it really cost more than a million dollars to re-created the DLEDB? If one started from scratch, certainly. Probably (much) more, because of all the research into the Ardennes and Kursk that we did as part of those database projects. The data bases were created incrementally over the course of more than 30 years as part of various on-going contracts and efforts. We also had a core group of very experienced personnel who were doing this.

Needless to say, if any part of the data base is given away, loaned out, or otherwise not protected, we loose control of the “proprietary” aspect of these data bases. This includes the programming and formatting. Right now, they are unique to The Dupuy Institute, and for obvious business reasons, need to remain so unless proper compensation is arranged.

Sorry.

 

P.S. The image used is from the old Dbase IV version of the Kursk Data Base. We have re-programmed it in Access.

 

$5,000 Book

Just browsing Amazon.com and notice that one of the re-sellers has my Kursk book up for sale for $5,008.00: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0971385254/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Really? Has he sold any at that price? I would be willing to part with a couple of my author’s copies at that price.

Anyhow, the book is still available from Aberdeen Books at a much more modest $195: http://www.aberdeenbookstore.com/

 

 

Soviet OR

There was a sense among some in the Sovietology community in the late 1980s that Soviet Operations Research (OR) was particularly advanced. People had noticed the 300-man Soviet Military History Institute and the Soviet use of the quantified “Correlation of Forces and Means,” which they used in WWII and since. Trevor Dupuy referenced these in his writings. They had noticed a number of OR books by professors at their Frunze Military Academy. In particular, the book Tactical Calculations by Anatoli Vainer was being used by a number of Sovietologists in their works and presentations (including TNDA alumni Col. John Sloan). There was a concern that the Soviet Union was conducting extensive quantitative analysis of its historical operations in World War II and using this to further improve their war fighting capabilities.

This is sort of a case of trying to determine what is going on by looking at the shadows on a cave wall (Plato analogy here). In October 1993 as part of the Kursk project, we meet with our Russian research team headed by Dr. Fyodor Sverdlov (retired Colonel, Soviet WWII veteran, and former head of the Frunze Military Academy History Department). Sitting there as his right hand man was Dr. Anatoli Vainer (also a retired Colonel, a Soviet WWII veteran and a Frunze Military Academy professor).

We had a list of quantitative data that we needed for the Kursk Data Base (KDB). The database was to be used as a validation database for the Center of Army Analysis (CAA) various modeling efforts. As such, we were trying to determine for each unit for each day the unit strength, losses, equipment lists, equipment losses, ammunition levels, ammunition expenditures, fuel levels, fuel expenditures, and so forth. They were stunned. They said that they did not have models like that. We were kind of surprised at that response.

Over the course of several days I got to know these two gentlemen, went swimming with Col. Sverdlov and had dinner over at Col. Vainer’s house. I got to see his personal library and the various books he wrote. Talked to him as much as I could sensitively do so about Soviet OR, and they were pretty adamant that there really wasn’t anything significant occurring. Vainer told me that his primary source for materials for his books was American writings on Operations Research. So, it appeared that we had completed a loop….the Soviets were writing OR books based upon our material and we were reading them and thinking they had a well developed OR structure.

Their historical research was also still primarily based upon one-side data. They simply were not allowed to access the German archives and regardless they knew that they should not be publishing Soviet casualty figures or any negative comparisons. Col. Sverdlov, who had been in the war since Moscow 1941, was well aware of the Soviet losses, and had some sense that the German losses were less, but this they could not publish [Sverdlov: “I was at Prokhorovka after the war, and I didn’t see 100 Tigers there”]. So, they were hardly able to freely conduct historical analysis in an unbiased manner.

In the end, at this time, they had not developed the analytical tools or capability to fully explore their own military history or to conduct operations research.

 

Extending the Battlefield

The second oldest article in this box I was about to throw away is called “Extending the Battlefield” by General Donn A. Starry, US Army. It is dated March 1981 from the Military Review. It is 20 pages long.

Its primary focus is on deep strike. It states 1) First, deep strike is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity to winning, 2) Second, deep strike, particular in an environment of scarce acquisition and strike assets, must be tightly coordinated over time with the decisive close-in battle…3) Third, it is important to consider now the number of systems entering the force in the near and middle-term future….4) Finally, the concept is designed to be the unifying idea which pulled all these emerging capabilities together so that, together, they can allow us to realize their full combined potential for winning.

This was an approach specifically oriented towards engaging the Soviet second echelon. I was never much of a fan of deep strike, as I sort of felt you probably wanted to engage the first echelon first….and could worry about the second echelon later. A reading of my Kursk book (in case you have the time) clearly shows the limitations of the Soviet two-echelon system of fighting. It did tend to lead to piecemeal attacks.

I met General Starry once. My father worked for him in the Pentagon and during a family visit during the Christmas party, he came down to say Merry Christmas to all the people working in the basement of the building. I happened to be there, and was applying to West Point (U.S. Military Academy) at the time. He sat down and had a half-hour talk with me about why someone should or should not attend West Point. It was nice gesture on his part.

I guess I will keep this article also.

 

Battle of Tarigo Convoy

The Italian Destroyer Lampo

On 16 April 1941, four British destroyers operating out of Malta, moved to intercept an Axis convoy moving along the coast of Tunisia. The British were able to intercept the convoy due to intercepted radio messages (but it was not Ultra). The Axis convoy consisted of three Italian destroyers protecting four German troopships and an Italian ammunition ship. The British attacked at night, having radar on several of their destroyers, which the Italians did not have. This night action that started at only 2,000 yards and at times closed to within 50 yards, with the Italians having all three destroyers and all five cargo ships sunk or beached. This one sided affair also ended up costing the British one destroyer, torpedoed by a sinking Italian destroyer, now commanded by an Italian junior officer. Around 1,800 men were killed in this convoy.

The British Destroyer Mohawk

While I was researching this, I came across a poorly translated article called the “Sinking of the Tarigo Convoy” by Cristiano D’Adamo. This article got my attention because he tracks the accounts of this battle as presented in nine books and accounts from 1948 to 1998. Of those nine accounts, only four mention that the British had radar and only two mention the interception of Italian signals. Seven of the nine accounts were missing critical material as to why the battle shaped up the way it did and why it was so one-sided. His article is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060910011054/http://regiamarina.net/engagements/tarigo/tarigo_us.htm

This is an exercise similar to what I did in Appendix VII “A History of the Histories” in my book Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka. In that appendix, I tracked a number the accounts of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka that had been written over the years. It continues to surprise me how many major errors and significant omissions are made in widely published military historical works.