Got a Real-World Weapon, Armour or Tactics Question? Mk. XXX

[GloatingSwine]

This may be one of those situations where people before the Victorians were really not all that interested in precisely defining and compartmentalising stuff, and the name for a bit of wall connecting to a lone tower is just "wall".

[fusilier]

Unfortunately, I donÂ’t have a real-world example to point to. I only have a vague remembrance of an image that I think briefly appeared in some YouTube video or another that I watched several years ago.

The image was a closeup of a wall segment, so I couldnÂ’t get an idea of what the castle as a whole looked like. The image definitely had at least one tower out in front of the curtain wall, but connected to it. My hazy recollection says multiple towers, near to each other, but I suppose thereÂ’s a chance thatÂ’s my memory playing tricks on me.

My hazy recollection also says the tower was connected to the wall by another wall segment, not a bridge or arcade, but I suppose that could also be my memory playing tricks on me.

Fortezza Firmafede in Sarzana Italy, has a single tower that's kind of set off from the others in a similar way. But it's just the one -- I don't know if there used to be a curtain wall that it was a part of (I think this is likely), or if it was set up this way to add extra protection to some feature.

Note: Don't confuse Fortezza Firmafede with Fortezza Sarzanello, also in Sarzana. They were built (or updated) around the same time and have similar construction. An online search for one will often bring up photos of both. Sarzanello is a triangular work with an early Ravelin added. Firmafede is a rectangular pattern with the one odd outlying tower.

EDIT -- image:

[gbaji]

Was the entire castle designed and built at the same time? I can think of just a couple of reasons for having that lone tower kinda hanging out there:

1. There's some other terrain in the area, and this tower allows visibility over/around that terrain. So basically, it's a look out location, and why not connect it to the rest of the fort, just to make it easier/safer to get folks to/from it if enemies are about. Could also make it more difficult for an attacking enemy to move around that portion of the fort (which again, is relevant based on terrain in the area). Though, to be fair, the same thing could be accomplished with just a wall jutting out there with no tower.

2. Maybe that one tower was built first. Similar concept to above. Single towers might be built as a point for visibility (overlook), in an area, and then a much larger fortification built later which incorporates it. It's not terribly uncommon for the later larger construction to be off a bit to the side or set back a bit, just due to the lay of the land in the area. Usually, you'd build up in a way that incorporates the entire thing into one larger structure, but maybe something made that a bit more difficult here.

So yeah. I'm leaning a bit in both cases on some interaction with the surrouding terrain making this something that just fit somehow. Absent that, it would just seem to be odd and/or superflous.

[Maat Mons]

When you're building ravelins around a star fort, is it important to block any shot an enemy might have at the curtain, or is it fine as long as the only shots the enemy will be able to get are at bad angles?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Was the entire castle designed and built at the same time? I can think of just a couple of reasons for having that lone tower kinda hanging out there:

It also looks like there's some synergy with the ravelins. The East ravelin in particular seems pretty horrible without a wall around its back, and the South ravelin appears to be the forts main entrance, which can always use more protection.

Of course, that just begs the question of why those ravelins had to be there is the first place.

[gbaji]

It also looks like there's some synergy with the ravelins. The East ravelin in particular seems pretty horrible without a wall around its back, and the South ravelin appears to be the forts main entrance, which can always use more protection.

Of course, that just begs the question of why those ravelins had to be there is the first place.

I guess we could speculate that, in addition to the main entrance being on the south wall, that maybe the southern approach in general is more accessable. So they wanted a ravelin on the south side to allow for movement outside the southern wall, but realized this left it really exposed (cause it would), so they built that wall to the east out a bit to shield it. But now they need a ravelin on the east side as well. And hey. Let's put a tower out at the end of that wall to provide a bit more protection as well. Maybe?

Would be interesting to see a topographical map of the area around this fort. My guess is that the southern approach (probably nearly an entire hemisphere's worth) is reasonably accessible. So they wanted to push the defensive works a bit farther out in that direction. And I guess this is what they came up with? A more complete defense would build another tower to the south west, and connect them via walls, and provide an additional outer defense to the main entrance. And heck. Maybe they would eventually have done that, and this just represnts a step in that direction. If there's one thing I've noticed about fortifications it's that they do tend to build and expand over time. Rarely are they designed and built in one go, and never change or expand later on (well, if they stand long enough, that is).


As a general comment on forts, it is interesting to see the vast difference between pre and post gunpowder designs (which has been mentioned). You look at old fortifications in Europe, and there's a lot of tall walls. Height is king. I semi-recently spent a day in Old San Juan (arrived two days before our cruise ship departed), and checked out the fort just a few blocks from our hotel (Castillo San Felipe del Morro). It's facinating to see the design and layers of forts designed with cannon bombardment and firearm assaults in mind. And in this particular case, it's also a harbor defense as well. When you are inside, it doesn't even look like a fort. The walls are short, and you're basically standing on large flat sections of land (grassy fields, with lots of large lizards roaming around as it happened). But around these are stepped sections of walls, as the fort gets higher and higher. And the walls are less designed to block access as to funnel people into kill zones. It doesn't look like much, until you actually envision the route attackers on foot would have to take to get inside, and how many layers of such defenses they'd have to fight their way through.

As someone mentioned earlier, defenses stop being about height, but rather depth. You keep the actual walls low (and in this case, built into the hillside, so hitting it with cannon shot doesn't really do much), but make the attackers traverse a large amount of horizontal distance, subjected to fire the entire time. Brutal. Yes. I took a ton of pictures.

[GloatingSwine]

Would be interesting to see a topographical map of the area around this fort. My guess is that the southern approach (probably nearly an entire hemisphere's worth) is reasonably accessible. So they wanted to push the defensive works a bit farther out in that direction. And I guess this is what they came up with? A more complete defense would build another tower to the south west, and connect them via walls, and provide an additional outer defense to the main entrance. And heck. Maybe they would eventually have done that, and this just represnts a step in that direction. If there's one thing I've noticed about fortifications it's that they do tend to build and expand over time. Rarely are they designed and built in one go, and never change or expand later on (well, if they stand long enough, that is).

Yeah, the southern approach is pretty much your only one really.

This is a topographical map of the region, the fort is about where the map label for Sarzana is

So if you're coming at it in the 15th century you're coming from the south/southeast, because every other direction hits a mountain pretty fast (Northern Italy do be like that), and if you try and bypass it by going up the Magra it's going to be able to express opinions about that with cannons, big impressive ones like a fort might be able to have back then could get out to about 10km.

If you try and sneak into the mountains to the northeast of the fort like it looks like you can, guess what? Another fort!

Late edit: This is also something to think about when designing forts for your games. Location! Location! Location! A fort is there because it controls access to something.

[Grim Portent]

Looking at an aerial view I think I have an idea of its purpose.

The town its built to protect seems to have the densest part to the immediate west of the fort, with a church being there as well, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is/was the town center, and the land to the east which is now built on might have been farmland or estates. The housing there now certainly looks less dense, and where I live at least that tends to indicate it being more modern with medieval towns being really packed in tight.

So if this fort is intended to protect the town, and Fortezza di Sarzanello on the hill a few hundred meters away is more tactically located, what if the purpose of the outlying wall is to provide additional protection for townsfolk and supplies being brought into Firmafede from the west against enemies approaching from the east?

The original was apparently built in 1249, and presumably looked quite different, the version that still stands dates to 1487. I can't read Italian or find convenient English sources, but Sarzanello already existed when Firmafede was built, being first mentioned in 963. I can't find anything about why the second fort was added, but I feel it's location and relative size hint at the older fort being inadequate for the purpose of protecting the town itself.

[snowblizz]

So if you're coming at it in the 15th century you're coming from the south/southeast, because every other direction hits a mountain pretty fast (Northern Italy do be like that), and if you try and bypass it by going up the Magra it's going to be able to express opinions about that with cannons, big impressive ones like a fort might be able to have back then could get out to about 10km.

The what now? There is no 15th century cannon that reaches 10km. There isn't one that with any accuracy reaches 1km. The whole period of starforts and trench-digging approaches comes from the need to fire at extreme short ranges.

[Gnoman]

The what now? There is no 15th century cannon that reaches 10km. There isn't one that with any accuracy reaches 1km. The whole period of starforts and trench-digging approaches comes from the need to fire at extreme short ranges.

Even the "long nine" naval gun of three centuries later, a weapon noted for long range, would be hard-pressed to reach 7km.

[fusilier]

Was the entire castle designed and built at the same time? I can think of just a couple of reasons for having that lone tower kinda hanging out there:

1. There's some other terrain in the area, and this tower allows visibility over/around that terrain. So basically, it's a look out location, and why not connect it to the rest of the fort, just to make it easier/safer to get folks to/from it if enemies are about. Could also make it more difficult for an attacking enemy to move around that portion of the fort (which again, is relevant based on terrain in the area). Though, to be fair, the same thing could be accomplished with just a wall jutting out there with no tower.

2. Maybe that one tower was built first. Similar concept to above. Single towers might be built as a point for visibility (overlook), in an area, and then a much larger fortification built later which incorporates it. It's not terribly uncommon for the later larger construction to be off a bit to the side or set back a bit, just due to the lay of the land in the area. Usually, you'd build up in a way that incorporates the entire thing into one larger structure, but maybe something made that a bit more difficult here.

So yeah. I'm leaning a bit in both cases on some interaction with the surrouding terrain making this something that just fit somehow. Absent that, it would just seem to be odd and/or superflous.

Sorry about the late reply. The outlying tower is of a similar but different design. I think it was added later.

As for the ravelins, I suspect they were added at a later date too. The construction of the main fort is typical of the early response to artillery -- thick round towers, shortened to the height of the walls. Photos don't really show the ravelins that are present in the plan very well.

[fusilier]

When you're building ravelins around a star fort, is it important to block any shot an enemy might have at the curtain, or is it fine as long as the only shots the enemy will be able to get are at bad angles?

The concept of a "trace italienne" (aka star fort) is that the walls can be "swept" by fire from some other part of the fortress. The concern here is an infantry attack, and not a bombardment. Even if a breach has been made in the walls, any attacking force will be subject to enfilade fire. Which is why counterbattery fire was the first step before making a breach. The ravelin (and all other outworks) should have all their walls swept as well.

A ravelin does force the enemy "back" one level. They now have to take the outwork, before they can make an attempt on the main works. I'm not sure how important it is that they physically block bombardment of a wall, as it is that they provide another difficult obstacle to take.

Fortezza Firmafede actually predates that style of "star fort" (aka "trace italienne").

*Star fort is a popular but somewhat imprecise term. Historically the term often referred to a simpler style of fort that lacks bastions. The trace of the fort is literally like drawing a six-pointed star (or four or five), like the Star of David. These small star forts were usually constructed as part of siege works and were temporary. However, it is now common to call the larger forts with proper bastions (and optional ravelins, crownworks, etc.) "star forts" as well. Just be aware that in some contexts the term may not be accurate.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Even the "long nine" naval gun of three centuries later, a weapon noted for long range, would be hard-pressed to reach 7km.

Interestingly enough the general point made in that post still mostly stands: it can be a very costly mistake to try and ignore and avoid a fort. A castle or fortress is a place that projects power. 10 kilometers is outside of the range of their cannons, but not their cavalry, if they have any handy. Even if you feel like your pike squares, the terrain or whatever protect you from serious damage by the cavalry, it can still try to pin you down while the infantry and/or field artillery get in position.

This is one of the reasons forts on a hill are so nice, any troops projecting power onto nearby places get to have the high ground.

[Raunchel]

Interestingly enough the general point made in that post still mostly stands: it can be a very costly mistake to try and ignore and avoid a fort. A castle or fortress is a place that projects power. 10 kilometers is outside of the range of their cannons, but not their cavalry, if they have any handy. Even if you feel like your pike squares, the terrain or whatever protect you from serious damage by the cavalry, it can still try to pin you down while the infantry and/or field artillery get in position.

This is one of the reasons forts on a hill are so nice, any troops projecting power onto nearby places get to have the high ground.

That, and they don't have to go after your main army. Even a few dozen cavalry can do a lot of damage to your foraging parties, supply lines, and things like that. And usually, there won't just be one fortification. There will be dozens all over the place, all capable of sending out raiders to make life very hard for an army that would typically be one step away from starvation anyways.

[Maat Mons]

Looking at images of Fort Bourtange, I see that the main “wall” wasn’t faced with anything, and instead was basically a steep hill. How common was that in star fort design? I’m specifically talking about the innermost defenses, the… scarp? I think it’s called? Not the outer defenses, the glacis, which I understand would not have had any facing on the outward side. I assume this was a cost-saving measure. How much would it reduce the cost of building and then maintaining the fortification? How tall and steep can an unfaced earthen structure be before mudslides become a real concern? How much defense does this sacrifice relative to a steeper, faced structure?

[fusilier]

Looking at images of Fort Bourtange, I see that the main “wall” wasn’t faced with anything, and instead was basically a steep hill. How common was that in star fort design? I’m specifically talking about the innermost defenses, the… scarp? I think it’s called? Not the outer defenses, the glacis, which I understand would not have had any facing on the outward side. I assume this was a cost-saving measure. How much would it reduce the cost of building and then maintaining the fortification? How tall and steep can an unfaced earthen structure be before mudslides become a real concern? How much defense does this sacrifice relative to a steeper, faced structure?

The scarp is the wall of the ditch on the inside edge (the outer edge of the wall would sit on this). However, some diagrams show this as one uninterrupted wall, so it's possible the scarp can refer to both? I'll need to check my sources.

Earthworks were very common. Often temporary, but if the earth was good, and you get sod to grow on it, then it would be relatively permanent. Cheaper to build and easier to repair than brick or masonry, but erosion is a potential issue.

The ability to absorb damage is just as good, and it doesn't tend to "spill out" like when the outer shell of masonry walls are breached. If I recall correctly, some military authorities actually thought earth was preferable, as it was harder to make a "practicable" breach in the walls. But that has to be balanced with maintenance over time for a permanent work, plus other factors.

[fusilier]

Looking at images of Fort Bourtange, I see that the main “wall” wasn’t faced with anything, and instead was basically a steep hill. How common was that in star fort design? I’m specifically talking about the innermost defenses, the… scarp? I think it’s called? Not the outer defenses, the glacis, which I understand would not have had any facing on the outward side. I assume this was a cost-saving measure. How much would it reduce the cost of building and then maintaining the fortification? How tall and steep can an unfaced earthen structure be before mudslides become a real concern? How much defense does this sacrifice relative to a steeper, faced structure?

I did find a nineteenth century manual, although its focus is on fieldworks, and not permanent works (I suspect many principles apply):

1. The exterior of the wall is often referred to as the "exterior slope". There is a "berm" that separates the exterior slope from the scarp. But once the work has had a few days to settle the berm can be cut away.

2. The exterior slope is 45 degrees as this is the angle that unpacked earth will naturally form. (I don't know if for a more permanent work they could pack it more steeply. I will look at other sources, but suspect 45 degrees was considered good).

3. As its cut out of live earth, the ditch could have steeper walls. Depending upon how deep, and the nature of the earth: the counterscarp, which doesn't have to support the weight of the wall, could be nearly vertical, otherwise a ratio of height to base of 4-to-1 to 1-to-1.

[oudeis]

How often have actual suicide missions happened in history? They are a staple of fantasy and pop sci-fi, but are there recorded instances where troops were knowingly ordered into an action that would result in their annihilation? I'm thinking particularly of a scenario like Hurin's Last Stand in The Silmarillion, when the entire army of the Men of Dor-Lomin died to allow the Elves of Gondolin to escape, or the end of Myth: The Fallen Lords where the Hero-King Alric sends his army to their death to draw the sorceror Balor into a trap. The Kamikaze attkcs on the US Navy in WW2 are an obvious example, but are there others?

[Thane of Fife]

How often have actual suicide missions happened in history?

Look up the Forlorn Hope page on Wikipedia, which is the name that was commonly given to especially dangerous military missions.

That said, stories tend to make battles more dangerous than they actually were. For example, the Maryland 400 were a small unit of men in the Battle of Long Island who launched repeated charges against much larger numbers of British in strong positions in order to serve as a rearguard, and the casualty rate appears to be "only" about 2/3, with most of the rest being captured. Of course, 2/3 is an incredibly high casualty rate for a real action.

So if your idea of a suicide mission is something where everyone was expected to actually die, that probably didn't happen much. If you would interpret it as a mission that was hideously dangerous, where the unit would probably be destroyed, that's probably not too uncommon.

[Grim Portent]

Would Thermopylae comes to mind. Rearguard delaying action, 1000-2500-ish on the Greek side against at least 120000 Persians, near total annihilation.

Rearguards covering retreats are probably a good place to start in general.

[Maat Mons]

I'm told the Russian military has a long tradition of "penal units," units formed specifically to take on only the most dangerous missions, and formed exclusively from soldiers who had committed some sort of major infraction. On the plus side, if a soldier survived a certain number of missions in the penal unit, they could apparently earn their way out of it and back into a regular unit.

[GeoffWatson]

Would Thermopylae comes to mind. Rearguard delaying action, 1000-2500-ish on the Greek side against at least 120000 Persians, near total annihilation.

Rearguards covering retreats are probably a good place to start in general.

They expected to win at Thermopylae - the narrow pass was suited to Greek phalanx battle style (there were more like 7000) and the Persians couldn't use their superior numbers (or cavalry) effectively.

[fusilier]

Would Thermopylae comes to mind. Rearguard delaying action, 1000-2500-ish on the Greek side against at least 120000 Persians, near total annihilation.

Rearguards covering retreats are probably a good place to start in general.

In that vain, would the charge of the 1st Minnesota at the Battle of Gettysburg qualify?

[Grim Portent]

They expected to win at Thermopylae - the narrow pass was suited to Greek phalanx battle style (there were more like 7000) and the Persians couldn't use their superior numbers (or cavalry) effectively.

Wasn't the 7000 the original plan, not the rearguard that got left behind when the bulk of the army decided to withdraw?

My understanding is that they went to Therompylae with the intent of fighting the decisive battle there, changed their minds, left a portion of their men behind to slow the Persians down and left to sort something else out.

[Maat Mons]

My impression, though I could easily be wrong, is that it wasn't so much an agreement by the city-states that the bulk of the force should retreat while some stayed behind to cover them, but rather a lack of agreement by the city-states on what they ought to do. The ones who left were the ones who felt it was ill-advised to remain, and the ones who remained either felt they could win, or were too prideful to retreat. I suspect those who remained took a rather negative view of those who left, instead of viewing a partial retreat with some men remaining as a sound military strategy.

[Gnoman]

How often have actual suicide missions happened in history? They are a staple of fantasy and pop sci-fi, but are there recorded instances where troops were knowingly ordered into an action that would result in their annihilation? I'm thinking particularly of a scenario like Hurin's Last Stand in The Silmarillion, when the entire army of the Men of Dor-Lomin died to allow the Elves of Gondolin to escape, or the end of Myth: The Fallen Lords where the Hero-King Alric sends his army to their death to draw the sorceror Balor into a trap. The Kamikaze attkcs on the US Navy in WW2 are an obvious example, but are there others?

The issue with this question is that it can cover a number of situations.

The most obvious is the last stand - choosing to stand and die rather than surrender or retreat. This is rarely done for no reason - sometimes you don't trust the enemy to take prisoners, sometimes you're trading lives for time, sometimes you're just too proud and stubborn to quit.

Examples of this are common in history, but all have the common denominator that nobody sat down and planned for it to happen. It is forced on the people involved because of a defeat, or a screwup, or bad luck. Examples of this in history are Thermopylae (not intended as a to-the-last-man stand, but things didn't work out as planned), Taffey 3 in the Battle Of Samar during WW2, the Papal Guard in the 1527 Sack of Rome, dozens of Medal of Honor winners, and forgotten rearguard actions since the dawn of war.


The second, also quite common, is the very risky operation that Has To Be Done. These are done deliberately in the knowledge that losses will (or might) be heavy, but the risk is judged to be worth the price. Easy examples of this are the Forlorn Hope already mentioned, the Confederate submarine Hunley, French Infiltrators and German Stormtroopers in WWI, the Gallipoli landings in that same war, and the Inchon invasion in Korea. Note that this is preferentially not suicidal, and commanders are delighted if they get an appreciable number of men back.

Much rarer are missions where the people involved set out to die. It happens from time to time that a weaker party is desperate for anything that can hurt the enemy - kamikazes/kaitens/"baka" bombs in WW2 and terrorist people bombs in the modern era are the obvious examples. More rarely, people who can't bear to admit they've lost for one reason or another will choose to charge out and die instead. The most famous example of this is the fate of the battleship Yamato - they had no chance of stopping the American advance, or even slowing it in the slightest. They knew this, beyond all doubt, and attacked anyway because they preferred to die fighting.

The absolute rarest of all, though a staple of fiction, is sending men to their near-certain deaths to decisively shift a war with a single stroke. This is extremely rare in real life because there are very few circumstances where such a suicide strike can work - real life doesn't have Load Bearing Bosses or other single points of failure. The closest I can think of is another WWII example - Operation CHASTISE. It was known that the dams in the Ruhr valley were incredibly well defended and that the attack profile necessitated by the bouncing bombs would leave the planes horrifically vulnerable, but they were sent in anyway because RAF planners hoped that taking out the dams would cripple German industry enough to either drastically shorten the war or outright win it in an evening. It didn't work.

[GloatingSwine]

Operation Chariot/the St. Nazaire raid is probably a better WW2 example.

It was an attack to disable the drydock at St. Nazaire (the only one big enough for the Tirpitz on the French coast) which was expected to be an extremely high risk operation (When you stuff a Destroyer full of enough high explosive to destroy a drydock there tend to be risks, as it was over half the men who set out were captured or killed).

There's also the French forces who stood and fought off the German advance so that the evacuations at Dunkirk could be completed.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Earthworks were very common. ... The ability to absorb damage is just as good,

Better even! Or, more accurately, stacking large enough amounts of earth together to stop cannonballs was a thing people can afford, producing a brick wall thick enough for that was not.

Bourtange and basically every other "vesting" (walled town to small city) in the Netherlands* are from a period/school where earth was the material of choice because stone walls just wouldn't work. Later forts in places like Italy would find a way to make stone work: just cut the entire fort out of solid bedrock. This style of polygonal forts made the walls nearly indestructible while also allowing for the walls to be steep and difficult to climb, giving them the best of both worlds. Cutting things from bedrock isn't an option in the Netherlands for a lack of bedrock**, so over here even our WW2 era defenses look largely like mounts if dirt. Places like Fort Vechten.

There are a few things you can do to make it not just earth:
1 Add a steep brick outer wall. This can be shot up, but as long as it isn't shot up it's a steep brick wall, so the enemy has a lot of shooting to do if they want to make every part of your fort just as climmable as regular earthworks. If they make just one or two breaches you just assign those places some extra defenders.
2 Add brick buildings like barracks and munition storage inside of the earth walls. Now your buildings are supremely protected by a thick earthen roof and walls, you need less space for buildings in your fort, allowing for it to be smaller, and you even need less earth to make a certain size wall.
3 If you're preparing for WW2, add some standard concrete bunkers on top of the existing fort. It doesn't provide protection to the whole fort, but at least you have some extra protection for active defenders and people on watch.

Permanent earth forts and defenses were very much a thing in Europe.

*There were and are lots of smaller forts in this style too, and larger lines made up of these forts and towns, for instance the water lines and the defenses around Amsterdam, but the vestingen make for the best example.

**The few places that have bedrock near the surface consist mostly of pretty soft rock types, so even those aren't great.

[Raunchel]

Operation Chariot/the St. Nazaire raid is probably a better WW2 example.

It was an attack to disable the drydock at St. Nazaire (the only one big enough for the Tirpitz on the French coast) which was expected to be an extremely high risk operation (When you stuff a Destroyer full of enough high explosive to destroy a drydock there tend to be risks, as it was over half the men who set out were captured or killed).

There's also the French forces who stood and fought off the German advance so that the evacuations at Dunkirk could be completed.

And even Chariot and Chastise (is there something about very dangerous missions using 'cha' is the first part of the name? Does that mean that if anyone ever suggest something like Operation Charmander I should run away screaming?) didn't suffer total casualties. In fact, they didn't even have have the involved soldiers killed which probably has them beat some front line units at Verdun or the like.

Generally speaking, if you take a group of people and tell them that they're going on some mission that will most likely see all of them die, they will say no. And the problem with a group of soldiers saying no is that that's the sort of thing that can very quickly end with dead generals and a whole army falling apart. So as a prepared mission, it just doesn't work. It can easily work as a spur of the moment thing (especially in naval warfare where most sailors have no clue of what's going on) or as a failure state (cut off by the enemy and not one you can really surrender to at that). You of course also have the situations where there are two possible outcomes. Something works and almost everyone survives to be given medals and the like or there are high casualties. But that's many military operations.

And then there is the difficulty that Gnoman also mentioned. There aren't many situations where a small group of soldiers can have a war-altering impact. The scale of things is just too great. Objectives that can be achieved by small groups tend to require pretty good intelligence (say, you want to kidnap the enemy head honcho while disguised as a group of nuns) but such critical people and installations tend to be pretty well-protected.

One example that might work was in the Cold War. NATO frontline troops were basically expected to face mass casualties as they faced the full force of the WP. So especially the first units would probably be annihilated. I however wouldn't count that because they weren't special raiders that were sent in or the like. They were just ordinary soldiers facing pretty steep odds. Perhaps the planned Spetznaz operations might have counted though because they were going to be parachuted in, behind enemy lines, and just hoping for relief. That said, they were still hoping for relief and not expecting to all die. And, of course, as soon as they found out about that relief not coming for them, many units might well have surrendered.

[halfeye]

In fact, they didn't even have have the involved soldiers killed which probably has them beat some front line units at Verdun or the like.

WW1 was exceptionally brutal, i can't understand how French and Haig got away with it.

Generally speaking, if you take a group of people and tell them that they're going on some mission that will most likely see all of them die, they will say no.

Decimation, loss of one tenth of the personnel in one day, is said to be the end of a military unit's fighting potential.

And then there is the difficulty that Gnoman also mentioned. There aren't many situations where a small group of soldiers can have a war-altering impact. The scale of things is just too great. Objectives that can be achieved by small groups tend to require pretty good intelligence (say, you want to kidnap the enemy head honcho while disguised as a group of nuns) but such critical people and installations tend to be pretty well-protected.

The assassination of Yamamoto in WW2 is one of the rare examples of that happening, I'm not at all sure that it advanced the allied war effort, and I don't think the Americans took heavy losses doing it.

One example that might work was in the Cold War. NATO frontline troops were basically expected to face mass casualties as they faced the full force of the WP. So especially the first units would probably be annihilated. I however wouldn't count that because they weren't special raiders that were sent in or the like. They were just ordinary soldiers facing pretty steep odds.

Defence seems likely to require less morale than attack.

Perhaps the planned Spetznaz operations might have counted though because they were going to be parachuted in, behind enemy lines, and just hoping for relief. That said, they were still hoping for relief and not expecting to all die. And, of course, as soon as they found out about that relief not coming for them, many units might well have surrendered.

Spetznaz from the NATO side? surely they'd be called commandos?

Market Garden sounds like one of these, the far bridge anyway.