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Post by yanmacca on Apr 30, 2017 18:58:49 GMT
To be honest, I think that both of us are right, you make some valid points and so did I, they made mistakes, well the officers did, the men did what was asked of them.
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Post by quincannon on Apr 30, 2017 19:16:56 GMT
You are completely correct as to why the British Force lost the battle outside the perimeter.
You overlook or dismiss though why the battle itself was lost, that being because they failed to properly establish and fortify that perimeter, and then having failed in the first measure went outside it and fought on Zulu terms instead of their own which was to stay inside. When you fail in the fundamental aspects of battle, it does not much matter what you do thereafter. You are going to lose.
It is the exact same principle that was in play at LBH. At LBH Custer split his regiment over great distances. At that point, the fundamental root cause error, it does not matter how well or how badly he and the rest performed. They were still going to lose, because, like the failure to entrench and stay within to defend at Isandlwana, the splitting of the regiment was the proximate (root) cause of defeat, the BUT FOR decision.
All this goes back to an example I wrote for Beth many moons ago. Tactics, from the Greek Tactikos means to arrange. Tactics are the arrangement of forces for a given purpose, and set forth in a menu from which to chose the proper course. If Beth was giving a formal dinner party her table "arrangement-tactics" would follow one set form. If she was giving a picnic she would follow other "arrangement-tactics" that are completely different. Therefore, before you choose what your "arrangement-tactics" are you must first decide if it is to be a formal dinner party or a picnic. That is, picnic or formal, the root decision. If you do not first look at the outside factors before you make that root decision, then choosing a picnic, disrupted by a rainstorm that could have been foreseen, is the proximate (root) cause the event was a failure, and it had nothing to do with your arrangement of plates, knives, forks, and spoons, or even the choice of mustard.
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Post by BrevetorCoffin on Apr 30, 2017 20:07:36 GMT
David at The Battle of Abu Klea a British square of 1.400 men armed with the same rifles as the troops at Isandlwana, defeated a force of 13.000 Mahdists, killing over a thousand of them. That's about the same # of Zulus killed at Isandlwana then add 2000 more wounded. One a victory, one a defeat. Of course we can't point to one single reason for the Isandlwana debacle but a combination of things. Whereas Custer at LBH was outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outfought IMHO, he was on the offensive till near the end. Isandlwana seems to be a matter of Western European Superiority Complex with poor preparation, poor deployment, porous defense. You and QC are making some great points.
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Post by quincannon on Apr 30, 2017 21:17:58 GMT
The only numbers that count are the numbers at the point of contact. The numbers at the point of contact were British 1400 - Dervishes about a third of 13,000. Still inflicting over a 1000 Dervish KIA's is fairly impressive for a fifteen minute fight.
Squares, like perimeters cannot be flanked. They can be destroyed but not flanked.
I disagree in that we can point to one single reason for the defeat at Isandlwana, choosing to establish a fortified perimeter, and staying within it to fight the battle. Consult "The Defense of Duffer's Drift" by Swinton, for the associated reasoning of my statement.
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Post by yanmacca on May 1, 2017 9:52:54 GMT
David I have dug up the low down on the man in charge of the British expedition into Zulu land, a certain Lord Chelmsford;
When he was around twenty he was unsuccessful in joining the Grenadier Guards so he purchased a commission in the Rifle Brigade, here is his military career.
1845: Served with the Rifles in Nova Scotia Later that years he purchased an exchange to serve with Guards firstly as an Ensign then Lieutenant and finally in 1850 as a captain.
1852-1854: He became an Aide-de-camp to a bunch of lords and other top brass
1855: he served in the Crimean war, briefly as a line officer in his battalion and then as Aide-de-camp to his divisional commander. He finished the campaign as a Major (Brevet) in the Quartermaster Headquarters. But he was mentioned in dispatches so he must have done something right.
1857-1858: He rose in the ranks from a captain to a lieutenant colonel and served in the Indian Rebellion, again receiving a mention in dispatches.
1863: He was promoted to Colonel (brevet) and after moving in the right circles by 1988 he ends up being deputy adjutant general and took part in a big bash in Abyssinia, which did him no harm at all, in fact he ends up being awarded the order of the bath plus Aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria.
1869-1874: He was adjutant general India.
1874-1877: He returned to England as a colonel and took over a brigade with a temporary rank of brigadier general, but he then goes abroad again and ends up in South Africa as a major general and later commands the British forces in South Africa as a lieutenant general.
1878: He takes up his Fathers title as Baron Chelmsford and takes part in campaigns against the local tribes in the Cape, in which he had a low regard for as fighters. For defeating these local natives he gets another big award “the Knight Commander of the order of the bath”.
1979: He takes command of the expeditionary British Imperial military force and heads into Zulu land.
So my friend you can make up your own mind if this man had the right credentials to lead men in battle, because as far as I see he has only faced one professional army and that was old Russian army.
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Post by quincannon on May 1, 2017 14:16:52 GMT
Ian I am going to recommend to you three books by John F. Antal - Armor Attacks - Infantry Combat - the third name escapes my memory, but centers on a heavy armor-Infantry task force.
These books are actually interactive games, where the reader is the commander, and he is given situations where he must make the decisions necessary to go forward to the next event, and each succeeding event takes you down the trail to an eventual win or loss. Early on you find that the present decision you make is interrelated to everything that follows good or bad. In that respect you can go through nearly the entire book thinking you are doing everything right, until the end where your unit is destroyed, usually because of a 50-50 call you made near the beginning or middle of the exercise.
It is very similar to "Defense of Duffers Drift" in that if you stay at it five or six times through the exercise, you eventually see your mistakes, and learn how to correct them. Therefore it is meant to be a learning exercise, and I know of some commanders that insist that these books be read, carefully studied, and used as the basis of training exercises before a unit goes to NTC or JRTC. They are in fact as nearly a perfect simulation of decision making in combat conditions that I know of.
I highly doubt if some of the more notable commanders over time could get through these books the first three or four times without complete failure. But then again that is why they are written. They put you in real situations, and only you can find your way through the multi level maze that is combat.
It may lead you to understand why I am very hard on mistakes, demand complete word pictures of things, events, and proposals, and all the other things that from time to time become irritating on how I approach the most serious and dangerous of man's endeavors, small unit combat.
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Post by yanmacca on May 1, 2017 14:25:54 GMT
Chuck, I have just ordered the first of those books [armour attack], it was only a £1 [another £2 for postage], so I will give it a go.
BTW: the Infantry Combat book by the same author was £74 so I chose the cheaper option.
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Post by quincannon on May 1, 2017 14:53:40 GMT
I will look at the Military Clothing Sales book department at Carson the next time I go there. These books should be around 20 USD retail.
The one I cannot remember the title of is the best, but Armor Attacks and Infantry Combat gets you into the same type of exercise at lower levels, and is a good primer for the task force level book.
Defense of Duffers Drift should be readily available in the UK. The Infantry School has reprinted it six or seven times here, over the last fifty years. "Infantry in Combat" by Marshall is another must read.
I recall one mistake I made several times in the task force book, failing to top off fuel ammo when I had the opportunity, instead continuing to press the attack, when I had the enemy on the run. Bad decision making on my part, which led to the destruction of my task force each time. As you go up to the next level, you will be asked to make all kinds of personnel and logistical decisions, not only tactical, which have a great impact on what you do, can do, or fail at. You will find that every decision you make is somehow interrelated with all the rest.
These are the things you must learn, and the end result will be to find that even if the Masked Musketeer had breakfasted, and tarried over a luncheon, instead of just eating rubber chicken with that "Cavalry" colonel, he still would not know jack shit. It takes a lifetime, and the best of them make just as many mistakes as the worst of them. The only difference is that the best know how to recover, and the worst do not have a clue.
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Post by yanmacca on May 1, 2017 15:02:14 GMT
I remember down loading duffers drift a while back, but I have just searched my hard drive and it is missing.
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Post by quincannon on May 1, 2017 15:05:03 GMT
There is also a novel by Antal, "Proud Legions", which does many of the same things, as well as another called "Team Yankee", can't remember the author's name. Another that is very good is about a Canadian Brigade in mythical combat on the North German Plain circa 1980's
All of these, even though they are novels, are meant to teach the art of command.
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Post by quincannon on May 1, 2017 15:31:47 GMT
The third book by Antal is "Combat Team"
"Team Yankee" is by Harold Coyle
The Canadian Brigade book is called "First Battle" and I think the author is Cockburn
Maybe you filed "Duffers Drift" under Swinton's pen name Backsight Forethought
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Post by yanmacca on May 1, 2017 17:52:40 GMT
Got it, now this is a free down load and you can save it to you computer, all you do is open the link below and click on the icon with the downward arrow contained in a box in the top right hand corner of the black screen, don't worry it is safe. link
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Post by Beth on May 1, 2017 21:46:14 GMT
i find the subject of the fundamental sameness of battles through time intriguing. Is there enough interest to expand the subject?
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Post by quincannon on May 1, 2017 22:24:41 GMT
For about the fifth time in the last ten minutes I disagree, but this time not by much.
No battle is the same, and it is a FUNDAMENTAL error to think they might be. What is the same is the Fundamentals of battle never change, and if the fundamentals are correctly applied to the analysis of battle, you can readily see the difference and decide for yourself why all are different from one another. Washita and LBH are often compared on this site, and the truth is that the only thing they have in common was the presence of an Indian camp site. Everything else was different. That said though, people will always try to connect the two as if they were mirror images of themselves.
I do think the analysis of battles throughout time aid in the understanding of our primary focus here. There are aspects of Midway that apply to LBH, just as there are aspects of LBH that apply to Monmouth Court House and the Teutoburger Wald. But it is not the battles themselves, but how they are linked by the fundamentals of battle.
Myself I would love to see Tom start a thread based upon our discussion of yesterday. For a wing wiper he has an insightful tactical and operational mind. I will not let the cat out of his bag as to subject matter, but I flat guarantee it will be one that sparks widespread interest.
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