Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses

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Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 1:37:35 PM

RedLancer

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I am looking for some detailed casualty figures from the Battle of the Bulge. Ideally I'm looking for losses that I might be able to compare to specific attacks and Turns in the Bulge to the Rhine scenario.

If anyone has any information that they can provide I'd be really grateful.

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 2:46:13 PM

gmtello

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Bergstrom last book the ardennes reads between 16 and 30 dec the all�es lost 600 shermanns and 100 tank destroyers while the germans lost 222 tanks and 100 tanks destroyers

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 2:49:16 PM

VI66_slith

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http://www.history.army.mil/html/reference/bulge/index.html

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"Many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men." ~Patton

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 3:00:46 PM

zakblood

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https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ASVTaalp5wgC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=detailed+day+to+day+casualty+figures+from+the+Battle+of+the+Bulge&source=bl&ots=rj6BFPqswf&sig=dTCfFWnC0lQRV8DCM_GhpIDjg0c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwADgKahUKEwiQtvys4I3JAhWBuBQKHX7CDsM#v=onepage&q=detailed%20day%20to%20day%20casualty%20figures%20from%20the%20Battle%20of%20the%20Bulge&f=false

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZSMgBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA326&lpg=PA326&dq=detailed+day+to+day+casualty+figures+from+the+Battle+of+the+Bulge&source=bl&ots=C5CC_uGDJW&sig=0GMTkv3UCSshGihUNMXdH68PCXY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAzgKahUKEwjV15S_4I3JAhVJwxQKHVYLDc8#v=onepage&q=detailed%20day%20to%20day%20casualty%20figures%20from%20the%20Battle%20of%20the%20Bulge&f=false

pdf books ^^

http://www.secondworldwarhistory.com/battle-of-the-bulge.asp

http://www.schiele.us/battleDetail.asp?n=15

sites ^^

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 3:04:17 PM

VI66_slith

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Nice work Zak

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 3:08:13 PM

VI66_slith

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Here is a good book that can be read via HTML or PDF:

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/7-8/7-8_cont.htm

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"Many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men." ~Patton

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/13/2015 4:42:37 PM

VI66_slith

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I served with the 1/110. We kicked Nazi ass at the Bulge for the first 3 days, significantly screwing the Gurman timetable. May I add I wasn't with the unit until the 90's lol.

< Message edited by VI66 -- 11/13/2015 5:43:41 PM >

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/14/2015 12:03:02 AM

JeffroK

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Surely the most researched and published campaign in US military history, bit of research wouldnt hurt.

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/14/2015 12:13:20 AM

JeffroK

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In game terms, the Ardennes offensive takes up about 2 turns, at this scale you could not replicate or define losses in any individual attack, IMVHO one of the great failings in this game. (Market-Garden = 1 turn, Op Cobra = 1 turn)

Overall US Losses
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Ardennes/USA-E-Ardennes-25.html

In late December German propagandists claimed that the object of the Ardennes offensive had been to cripple the attack capabilities of the Allied armies and chew up their divisions east of the Meuse. There also is considerable evidence that Model, and perhaps Rundstedt, accepted this as a reasonable tactical objective in the operations from Christmas onward. The attainment of this goal, to chew up Allied divisions and dull the cutting edge of the American armies, was achieved in only limited fashion. The attack of twenty-nine German divisions and brigades destroyed one American infantry division as a unit, badly crippled two infantry divisions, and cut one armored combat command to pieces. The total of American battle casualties reported for the period 16 December through 2 January (although these probably were incomplete returns) numbered 41,315 officers and men, of which 4,138 were known to be killed in action, 20,231 were wounded in action, and 16,946 were reported missing. During the same period the American formations in the Ardennes received 31,505 replacements, or "reinforcements" as these individual soldiers now were named. The mat�riel losses inflicted by German action represented only a temporary diminution in the fighting strength of a few of the American divisions and normally were replaced within a fortnight.

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/14/2015 6:49:45 AM

RedLancer

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quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

Surely the most researched and published campaign in US military history, bit of research wouldnt hurt.

Of course but a short post has saved me enough time to create some additional graphics for improving the WitW interface. In the Dev world time is very precious.

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WitE & WitW Dev

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/16/2015 5:07:27 PM

micheljq

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I did read that the decision to accelerate the sending of M26 Pershing heavy tanks to Europe was taken after seeing the casualties suffered by the shermans in armor to armor fighting during the Ardennes campaign.

The production of the M26 had been delayed multiple times.

Michel.

< Message edited by micheljq -- 11/16/2015 6:10:39 PM >

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/16/2015 8:51:14 PM

VI66_slith

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I came to the same conclusion as JeffK regarding the battles being discussed and game scale. I can't agree however that this is a failing point of WiTW.

In my opinion the designers did superb work and accomplished the task of bringing a great game to us on an operational warfare level.

That said, I came of age concerning war games with ASL and 3R. I always had the idea that someday the two games could be brought together in a meaningful way via the computer.

Operational level strategy and tactics being resolved, perhaps at the players discretion, on a minor tactical level.

To my knowledge this hasn't really been attempted and if so, not well.

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"Many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men." ~Patton

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/17/2015 7:21:24 AM

LiquidSky

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The problem with ASL is that it is a poor representation of how war is fought tactically. In fact it is an excellent example of how detail doesn't equal realism.

However it really is a fun game to play...I've been playing it since it came out in the eighties (and SL before it). I've even got my name on one of the leader counters

for playtesting.

War isn't really the sum of all the tactical battles put together. And while it may be sad fight the battle of Ardennes over two turns, in WitW you get to make your own Ardennes battle...in the place of your choosing and with objectives you came up with. Which can turn into a breakthrough or end in a stalemate. Who knows?

Battles are the means to the end. They are not the focus...what is important are the offensives. And how they develop. And for that the turn scale of 1 week per turn is fine.

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/17/2015 1:22:51 PM

HMSWarspite

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The problem people who want games like this on (presumably) daily turns is the match of ground scale to timescale. A daily turn 10 mile hex game either needs hexes to have variable or joint ownership, or to be much smaller than 10 miles. Name the occasions where units in combat advanced 10 miles in a day. I haven't done a count but I guess 20 days in Russia and maybe 10 days France '40, with another 5 in 44. Note I am talking when in contact not pursuit into empty space or approach marches. This gives about 35 days in 6 years! Now name all the days where nobody advanced at all or 1 mile was a good penetration. And here we have sitzkreig at its best. So make 1 or 2 mile hexes. But a division is much bigger than that. So let's do regiments or battalions....To do daily turns with divisions is really hard. I think 10 miles and one week is the best compromise that doesn't make the game completely unmanageable for (wo)man and machine

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/17/2015 2:34:33 PM

LiquidSky

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HMSWarspite

The problem people who want games like this on (presumably) daily turns is the match of ground scale to timescale. A daily turn 10 mile hex game either needs hexes to have variable or joint ownership, or to be much smaller than 10 miles. Name the occasions where units in combat advanced 10 miles in a day. I haven't done a count but I guess 20 days in Russia and maybe 10 days France '40, with another 5 in 44. Note I am talking when in contact not pursuit into empty space or approach marches. This gives about 35 days in 6 years! Now name all the days where nobody advanced at all or 1 mile was a good penetration. And here we have sitzkreig at its best. So make 1 or 2 mile hexes. But a division is much bigger than that. So let's do regiments or battalions....To do daily turns with divisions is really hard. I think 10 miles and one week is the best compromise that doesn't make the game completely unmanageable for (wo)man and machine

There are lots of occasions where divisions advanced even more then 10 miles a day.

The Russians went 300 miles against the Germans from the Vistula to the Oder. In 3 weeks.

Pretty sure Patton did something similar in the Battle of the bulge.

But that is besides the point

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�My logisticians are a humorless lot � they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.� � Alexander the Great

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/18/2015 5:16:46 AM

JeffroK

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First Canadian Army moved from Falaise (Its not on the map????, neither is Cassino??) to the Seine in 1 week and from the Seine to Dunkerque in the following week. Similar for British and American Armies in the same period.
This was after heavy fighting in the Falaise gap.

IMVHO, either 2 day or 2turns/wk and 5 or 10km hexes would provide the detail needed to make this a truly amazing game. Stacking can be altered to fit the scale.

WITW uses the same scale as the Europa series, great for a complete WW2 in Europe but surely we can expect something better for a Western Front offering.

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/18/2015 7:01:44 AM

zakblood

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game would go from epic to maybe unmanageable if scale and maybe even time was smaller imo, even if it was half the size, the units would what double or triple in size? as divisions get broken down into army groups, corps, then divisions, then brigade and regiments etc, get down to battalion, squadron sized ete on this scale and unit counters would be in the 1000's to 10.000 and so would be unmanageable, but nice if you wished for a certain battle to be fought in a more realistic way, Arnhem, Bulge etc to name but 2...

i'd love it, but would many have the time to play such grand epic scaled battles, i'd love the hex to mileage to be altered but can't see it on this scale any time soon

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/18/2015 7:10:01 AM

RedLancer

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quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

IMVHO, either 2 day or 2turns/wk and 5 or 10km hexes would provide the detail needed to make this [sic] a truly amazing game. Stacking can be altered to fit the scale.

Those changes would make a completely different game.

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WitE & WitW Dev

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/18/2015 11:05:11 AM

LiquidSky

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quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK

First Canadian Army moved from Falaise (Its not on the map????, neither is Cassino??) to the Seine in 1 week and from the Seine to Dunkerque in the following week. Similar for British and American Armies in the same period.
This was after heavy fighting in the Falaise gap.

IMVHO, either 2 day or 2turns/wk and 5 or 10km hexes would provide the detail needed to make this a truly amazing game. Stacking can be altered to fit the scale.

WITW uses the same scale as the Europa series, great for a complete WW2 in Europe but surely we can expect something better for a Western Front offering.

Not sure about your map, or maybe you don't actually play....but Cassino is on my map. I'll give you a hint....it was the place of the Battle of Monte Cassino. Not the town of Cassino.

The biggest problem I would have with a finer granularity of time is the battle in Normandy would be a long boring slugfest of attrition...then several turns of just pushing counters across the map until you reach the westwall.

I mean, could you really picture daily turns while the allies move across france? Over the Winter while waiting for the weather to allow an invasion? That would be like 300 turns from the invasion of sicily to the invasion of Normandy.

2 day turns would make that a 150 turn wait.

2 turns a week....well....might as well have 1 turn a week. Oh wait. We already do.

Now there are games where you can fight the more interesting bits of the war in the west. Panzer Campaigns has 2 hour turns and 1 km hexes. I love playing them and they allow you to go all the way down to company sized units. For the entire Normandy battle. I even got to July in one online campaign game. It took over a year to play. They also have market garden, and Bulge.

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�My logisticians are a humorless lot � they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.� � Alexander the Great

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/18/2015 4:37:49 PM

VI66_slith

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I hear you. Been playing SL and ASL since release as well. My point is the "fun" factor. No game is realistic but they can still give you thousands of hours of fun. I had a setup in the garage where I used 32 boards for battles involving thousands of pieces. They were not "real" battles but for a time in the garage, for myself and my opponent they might as well have been. I had enough realism during my time with the Navy and Army. Now is the time for fun I figure.

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"Many, who should know better, think that wars can be decided by soulless machines, rather than by the blood and anguish of brave men." ~Patton

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RE: Battle of the Bulge Historic Losses - 11/18/2015 11:56:17 PM

HMSWarspite

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quote:

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

There are lots of occasions where divisions advanced even more then 10 miles a day.

The Russians went 300 miles against the Germans from the Vistula to the Oder. In 3 weeks.

Pretty sure Patton did something similar in the Battle of the bulge.

But that is besides the point

These are not when in combat, they were breakthroughs. Advances into empty space. Just shuffling counters. Against an enemy unit, a 1 hex advance with 1 day (or even 2 day) turns would be so rare that it would be grounds to have a family get together. You would be playing for RL years before you got one!

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