Fight Night: Joe vs. Trent on the American Way of Urban Combat

Joe put up a bunch of interesting links today on urban combat and UAV/UGVs. However, he seems to have missed this source,The Urban Operations Journal , and particularly a link there to this article""Knock 'em All Down:" The Reduction of Aachen, October 1944 by Christopher R. Gabel, Ph.D.

This is the money 'graph from my point of view:

The battle for Aachen challenges conventional wisdom in another respect. Urban operations are commonly regarded as bloody, time consuming operations in which the defender can exact many times his own number in enemy casualties. In Aachen, however, the defenders outnumbered the attackers, and yet managed to hold out for only nine days because of the American offensive methods and the incoherent nature of the German defense. The two battalions of the 26th Infantry (plus attachments) that bore the brunt of the fighting in Aachen lost 75 killed, 414 wounded, and 9 missing in securing a city defended by over 5,000 enemy troops.[58] For the U.S. Army, the true bloodbath of the 1944 campaign was not an urban operation, but rather the battle of the Huertgen Forest.

And how did these two infantry assault battalions pull this off against a skilled foe who made the Somalis of Blackhawk Down seem like the drugged out, armed children they really were? They used a tactical doctrine dubbed "Knock 'em all down."

"Knock 'em all down" started with artillery fire. Heavy artillery struck German lines of communication to isolate the battle area. Medium artillery and mortars fired across the front itself. Artillerymen used delayed fuses to ensure that rounds penetrated buildings before exploding. Division and corps artillery was arrayed south of the city, which allowed artillery to fire parallel to the front of troops fighting in the city. With the danger of short rounds falling on American troops thus minimized, artillerymen were able to adjust fires within yards of the infantry lines. However, since the encirclement battle still raged, the forces fighting in Aachen could not count upon artillery support all the time.[30]

Tanks and tank destroyers assigned to the platoons were, on the other hand, an ever-present source of mobile firepower. The American troops, acutely aware of the dangers posed by German panzerfausts in close-quarters fighting, developed combined arms tactics in which infantry protected the armor from panzerfausts while the armor engaged strongpoints that impeded the infantry. Platoons generally kept their armor one street back from the street being cleared. The tank or tank destroyer would nose cautiously around the corner and pour fire into a specific building. Then, the infantry would assault the building, whereupon the armor would shift fire to the next in line. Once the block had been systematically cleared, all available weapons would fire into every possible panzerfaust firing position while the armor dashed forward into the street just cleared.[31]

As for the infantry, the rifle platoons stayed out of the streets as much as possible. Heavy machine guns maintained steady fire up the streets along the axis of advance, thus impeding German lateral movements, while the American infantry moved from building to building by blowing holes through adjoining walls with bazookas and demolition charges. The preferred mode of clearing a building was to fight from the top down, with grenades being the weapon of choice.[32]

The 2/26 eliminated every German position as it was encountered, intentionally bypassing none. Every sewer manhole was blocked off to prevent the reoccupation of positions behind American lines. In accordance with orders from higher headquarters, all civilians encountered were evacuated from the city.

As fighting progressed on 14 October, the 2/26 received augmentation from VII Corps in the form of a self-propelled 155mm gun. (The 3/26 was likewise reinforced on this date.) This weapon fired a 95-pound armor-piercing projectile at a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second[33]—sufficient kinetic energy to penetrate an entire block of buildings. Daniel was strictly enjoined to take good care of this asset.

As far as American soldiers were concerned, "Overkill is good. More Overkill is Better!" This was especially true in dealing with snipers and enemy obervation posts:

During this period, the 2/26 found itself taking fire from the rear, despite all its precautions to assure that no Germans were bypassed. After a careful search, the Americans discovered that the fire was coming from a church steeple that had been reinforced with concrete, making it a fortified observation post. This position proved to be impervious to both small arms and 75mm tank destroyer fire, whereupon Daniel again called upon his 155mm artillery piece. One shot from the 155 brought the entire structure crashing to the ground.[38] This use of a 155mm gun as an anti-sniper weapon is perhaps the epitome of "Knock 'em all down."

A similar suite of American tactics was used in the Pacific in the taking Manila in Feb. 1945:

The American method, once area artillery fires and tanks became available, was to pulverize the building they faced and then to assault into the remains. They used bazookas and flamethrowers against machine gun nests. They used abundant light suppressive fire weapons, grenades, and mortars, as well as small arms. Sometimes U.S. assaults failed because of withering fire or counterattacks, in which case troops would pull back and repeat the process. Tanks and tank destroyers were used in a direct-fire role for the artillery preparation. Their use beyond that was evidently limited by mines, rubble and the heavy concrete walls of the buildings themselves. Tanks could not follow infantry into the cellars and onto the roofs. Americans in Manila evidently learned to use their assets as they went along and used them to full advantage. Casualties suffered by the 37th Infantry Division when artillery restrictions were first lifted from 10-12 February averaged twenty-six KIA per day. By the period 21-23 February when the division was fighting at City Hall and assaulting Intramuros, casualties were down to six KIA per day on average.[l]

The key to low casualty urban combat isn't technology. It is attitude.

The point isn't to defeat the enemy in "urban terrain".

It is to remove the urban terrain.

If American political and military leaders are not prepared to engage in "High Firepower Civil Engineering" for political reasons. Then don't do it. Or send in send in the local "loyal allies" to pay in blood for the bricks and mortar (and kill their own civilians). The later is what we did in Khafji and what we should do in the future when politics gets in the way of doing the "right thing" militarily with American forces.

Update:

Joe e-mailed a reply to me saying that he viewed my post here complimentary and not confrontational.

I beg to differ and now that I found my copy of T.R. Fehrenbach's Korean War classic, "THIS KIND OF WAR" I can quote the passage I meant to show up in my first go:

The American way of street and town fighting did not resemble that of other armies. To Americans, flesh and blood and lives have always been more precious than sticks and stones, however assembled. An American commander, faced with taking the Louvre from a defending enemy, unquestionably would have blown it apart or burn it down without hesitation if such would save the life of one of his men. And he would be acting in complete accord with American ideals and ethics in doing so. Already, in the Korean War, American units were proceeding to destroy utterly enemy-held towns and villages rather than engage in the costly business of reducing them block by block with men and bayonets, as did European armies. If bombing and artillery would save lives, even though they destroyed sites of beauty and history, saving lived obviously had preference. And already foreign observers with the United States Army -- not ROK's -- were beginning to criticize such tactics.

Observers from France and Britain, realizing that war was also highly possible in their own part of the world, were disturbed at the thought of a ground defense of their homelands. For the United States Army, according to its history and doctrine, would choose the lives of its men over the continued existence of storied cathedrals. these observers wrote news releases -- and soon Frank Munoz could get no artillery on the enemy assembling in plain sight in the villages below him. When he asked Battalion to fire on the village, and burn it down, Battalion replied it could not. Fortunately, such orders in Korea were soon changed.

In the book BLACKHAWK DOWN, much is made over the fact that the Rangers did not have the armor or the AC-130 gunships that then Secretary of Defense Aspin denied them. And also much is made of the fact that the U.N. was passing information to the Aideed clan so they could not be trusted ahead of time with a pre-arranged rescue plan. Actually the problem wasn't Aspin or the U.N. It was the Chateau Generalship of the modern US Army in ignoring its own history and doctrine to cater to the whims of its political masters.

The measure of an American military leader is his “GO To Hell” or “GOTH” plan. That is, what do you do in case everything else in your plan goes to hell? When all the rules of engagement go out the window because the enemy blew them to hell and you are looking to make sure your force gets out alive. In that test, Gen. Garrison failed hands down.

First, the USMC had a platoon of tanks available off-shore in amphibious ships that could have been quietly landed in Mogadishu (and kept hidden in the Ranger compound for a rescue force) without going all the way to the Pentagon ahead of time. But Gen. Garrison wasn’t going to do that, bad for the Pentagon Budget Wars, you know.

Second, the real place the Crusader artillery gun died wasn't in the hills of Afghanistan nor in the halls of the Pentagon. It was in the streets of Mogadishu. Why should Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld let the Army buy a brand new artillery system when the Army refuses to use the ones it has in the most desperate conditions not once, just in Mogadishu, but twice including Afghanistan?

Not once during the entire Mogadishu engagement was their any indirect fire used to protect the Rangers and Delta. The Ranger’s own organic mortars were in range of the street fighting. So were the mortars and artillery of the 10th Mountain Division. There was a general rule of engagement imposed by the Clinton Administration not to use indirect fire in cities and no one in the American Army chain of command was willing to over rule it, even when the best people in our ground forces were in danger of being over run and killed for 16 hours.

The U.S. Army pays you not only to obey orders, but to know when to disobey them, and live with the career consequences afterwards.

The lives of enlisted men, junior and field grade officers are made for sacrifice in war. The corollary is so too are the careers of flag rank officers. We seem to have another generation, just like the one in Vietnam, of flag ranks without the moral courage to face down their political masters for the sake of their men. Until that attitude is fixed, arguing over how this or that technical toy will make urban combat easier is less than useless.